“But in another and yet higher aspect, this life was a precious gift to us by virtue of its strong support to our faith in immortality. If all men died in old age, and by slow decay of strength and faculty, it might be hard to imagine the new birth and new beginning which should rejuvenate them. But when a vigorous, full life is withdrawn from our sight in the prime of its power, the very momentum of it carries our faith forward with it. It is like an arrow, shot towards the forest by a strong-armed archer. Has it ceased to move because, in swift mid-flight, it enters the shadow and we suddenly lose sight of it? “‘The avalanche that has slid a mile will not stop for a tombstone!’ “Still another hint of immortality--and a truer one--is given by the character developed in earthly life. Science, it is true, affords us, as yet, no demonstration of a future life. Perhaps we shall always rest for that truth, as we do to-day, upon the word of our Lord, who went and came so easily between the two chambers of the Father’s house. Yet science has done much in these later times to illuminate His declaration. It has hinted to us a God, patient and tender through the ages of ages, carrying the world upon His bosom and nursing its slow growth, from stage to stage, through crystal, cell, and soul, that He might at last fill the spaces immeasurable with loving and beloved human souls, as dear companions of Himself. He cannot afford, it seems to us, to destroy perpetually the fairest fruits of this long preparation. They have lain upon His heart and felt the pulse-beat of the Universe. He is no Arabian tyrant, to slay them one by one, every morning. Having loved His own, He loves them to the end, and beyond the seeming end--for love is immortality. Our brother, who knew and loved every one of God’s trees on these hills of Washington,--shall he not have access to the Trees of Life, that grow by the River of Life? Shall his spirit, attuned already to the divine harmonies of earth, be dumb amid the songs of heaven? Nay; such completed souls declare the Life Eternal, echoing to us the Master’s word of hope: ‘I live; and because I live, ye shall live also!’ “For this life of his was already a life with God. You will not misunderstand me, if I say little of that part of his religious experience which is common to all believers, or of that part of his work which we technically call Christian work. It is not because I undervalue repentance, faith in Jesus Christ, or communion and co-operation with His visible church on earth. Still less is it because I need to make out, in [Illustration: _Gibson’s Grave_ _Washington Cemetery_]