And is it not quite clear that to such persons God cannot be said to be their God? He may be the God of heaven and earth, the God of the universe, the God of Christ's Church; but He is not their God, for they feel to have nothing at all to do with Him; and therefore, as He is not their God, they are, and must be according to the Scripture, reckoned among the dead. But God is the God "of the living." That is, as before, all who are alive live unto Him; all who live unto Him are alive. "God said, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob"; and therefore, says our Lord, "Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob are not and cannot be dead." They cannot be dead, because God owns them: He is not ashamed to be called their God; therefore they are not cast out from Him; therefore, by necessity, they live. Wonderful, indeed, is the truth here implied, in exact agreement, as we have seen, with the general language of Scripture; that, as she who but touched the hem of Christ's garment was in a moment relieved from her infirmity, so great was the virtue which went out from Him; so they who are not cast out from God, but have anything whatever to do with Him, feel the virtue of His gracious presence penetrating their whole nature; because He lives, they must live also. Behold, then, life and death set before us; not remote (if a few years be, indeed, to be called remote), but even now present before us; even now suffered or enjoyed. Even now, we are alive unto God, or dead unto God; and, as we are either the one or the other, so we are, in the highest possible sense of the terms, alive or dead. In the highest possible sense of the terms; but who can tell what that highest possible sense of the terms is? So much has, indeed, been revealed to us, that we know now that death means a conscious and perpetual death, as life means a conscious and perpetual life. But greatly, indeed, do we deceive ourselves, if we fancy that, by having thus much told us, we have also risen to the infinite heights, or descended to the infinite depths, contained in those little words, life and death. They are far higher, and far deeper, than ever thought or fancy of man has reached to. But, even on the first edge of either, at the visible beginnings of that infinite ascent or descent, there is surely something which may give us a foretaste of what is beyond. Even to us in this mortal state, even to you, advanced but so short a way on your very earthly journey, life and death have a meaning: to be dead unto God, or to be alive to Him, are things perceptibly different. For, let me ask of those who think least of God, who are most separate from Him, and most without Him, whether there is not now actually, perceptibly, in their state, something of the coldness, the loneliness, the fearfulness of death? I do not ask them whether they are made unhappy by the fear of God's anger; of course they are not: for they who fear God are not dead to Him, nor He to them.