So that more must be meant than mere safe keeping in the Redeemer's hands. We may surely say, that nothing less than conscious existence in the presence of Christ can be intended. And if that is intended, then very much more is intended also, than those words at first seem to imply. Remember the contrast which this same Apostle elsewhere draws. "We know," he says, "that while we are present in the body, we are absent from the Lord: for we walk by faith, not by appearance: we are willing rather to be absent from the body and present with the Lord." That is, if we follow out the thought, this present state of dwelling in our home the body is a state of severance from the Lord; but there is a better state, into which we shall be introduced when this house of the body is pulled down: and from the context in that place we may add, much as we wish to be clothed upon with our new and glorious body which is from heaven, yet even short of that, we have learned to prefer being simply unclothed from the body, because thus we shall be present with the Lord. So that we may safely assume thus much, my brethren: that the moment a Christian's spirit is released from the body, it does enter into the presence of our Blessed Lord and Saviour, in a way of which it knows nothing here: a way which, compared to all that its previous faith could know of Him, is like presence of friends compared to absence. Now let us take another remarkable passage of Holy Writ bearing on this same matter. St. John, in his first Epistle says, "Beloved, now are we children of God, and it never yet was manifested what we shall be; but if it should be manifested, we know that we shall be like Him: for we shall see Him as He is:" for this is the more accurate rendering of the words: meaning, if any one could come back, or come down, to us, and tell us what our future state is to be, the information could amount for us now only to this, that we shall be like Him, like Christ; because we shall see Him as He is. And in treating these words at considerable length last year, I pressed it on you that this concluding sentence might bear two meanings: either, we shall be like Him, _because in order to see Him as He is, we_ MUST _be like Him;_ or, _we shall be like Him, because the sight of Him as He is will change us into His perfect likeness_. For, our present purpose, or indeed for any purpose, it matters little which of these meanings we take. At any rate, we have gained this knowledge from St. John's words, that the sight of the Blessed Lord which will be enjoyed by the Christian's spirit on its release from the body, will be accompanied by being also perfectly like Him. Now, here, my brethren, are the elements of an immediate change, blessed and joyous beyond our conception. Let us spend the rest of our time to-day in dwelling upon it.