Precious truth! This "word of Jesus" spans like a celestial rainbow the entrance to the dark valley. Death is robbed of its sting. In the case of every child of God, the grave holds in custody precious, because redeemed, dust. Talk of it not, as being committed to a dishonoured tomb!--it is locked up, rather, in the casket, of God until the day "when He maketh up His jewels," when it will be fashioned in deathless beauty like unto the glorified body of the Redeemer. Angels, meanwhile, are commissioned to keep watch over it, till the trump of the archangel shall proclaim the great "Easter of creation." They are the "reapers," waiting for the world's great "Harvest Home," when Jesus Himself shall come again--not as He once did, humiliated and in sorrow, but rejoicing in the thought of bringing back all His sheaves with him. Afflicted and bereaved Christian!--thou who mayest be mourning in bitterness those who are not--rejoice through thy tears in these hopes "full of immortality." The silver cord is only "loosed," not broken. Perchance, as thou standest in the chamber of death, or by the brink of the grave,--in the depths of that awful solitude and silence which reigns around, this may be thy plaintive and mournful soliloquy--"Shall the dust praise Thee?" Yes, it _shall_! This very dust that hears now unheeded thy footsteps, and unmoved thy tears, shall through eternity praise its redeeming God--it shall proclaim His truth! "LORD, TO WHOM SHALL WE GO BUT UNTO THEE, THOU HAST THE _WORDS_ OF _ETERNAL LIFE_." 27TH DAY. "Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said"-- "A little while, and ye shall not see me; and again, a little while, and ye shall see me, because I go to the Father."--John xvi. 16. The Little While. Long seem the moments when we are separated from the friend we love. An absent brother--how his return is looked and longed for! The "Elder Brother"--the "Living Kinsman"--sends a message to His waiting Church and people--a word of solace, telling that _soon_ ("a little while,") and He will be back again, never again to leave them. There are indeed blessed moments of communion which the believer enjoys with His beloved Lord _now_; but how fitful and transient! To-day, life is a brief Emmaus journey--the soul happy in the presence and love of an unseen Saviour. To-morrow, He is _gone_; and the bereft spirit is led to interrogate itself in plaintive sorrow,--"Where is now thy God?" Even when there is no such experience of darkness and depression, how much there is in the world around to fill the believer with sadness! His Lord rejected and disowned--His love set at nought--His providences slighted--His name blasphemed--His creation groaning and travailing in pain--disunion, too, among His people--His loving heart wounded in the house of His friends!