"Death is the crown of life; Were death denied, poor man would live in vain; Were death denied, to live would not be life; Were death denied, e'en fools would wish to die. Death wounds to cure: we fall; we rise; we reign; Spring from our fetters; hasten to the skies, Where blooming Eden withers in our sight. Death gives us more than was in Eden lost; The king of terrors is the prince of peace." There is need for a reconstruction of the prevalent thoughts and conceptions of heaven. We have trained ourselves to think of life beyond the grave as something altogether different from what life is in this world. It has always been pictured thus to us. We have been taught that heaven is a place of rest, a place of fellowship with God, a place of ceaseless praise. The human element has been largely left out of our usual conceptions of the blessed life. Not much is made of the relations of believers to one another. That which is emphasized in Christian hymns and in most books about heaven is the Godward side. Much is made of the glory of the place as suggested by the visions of St. John in the Apocalypse. In many of these conceptions the chief thought of heavenly blessedness is that it is a release from earth and from earthly conditions. There is no sorrow, no trouble, no pain, no struggle, no toil, in the home to which we are going. We shall sit on the green banks of beautiful rivers, amid unfading flowers, and sing forever. We shall lie prostrate before the throne, and gaze and gaze on the face of God. But this is not the kind of heaven and heavenly life which the teachings of Jesus Would lead us to imagine. True, he speaks of the place to which he is going, and where, by and by, he would gather all his disciples, as "my Father's house." This suggests home and love; and the thought is in harmony with what we have seen in the life of Jesus during the forty days,--the continuance of the friendships formed and knit in earthly fellowships. But the vision of home life thus suggested need not imply a heaven of inaction. Indeed, no life could be more natural and beautiful than that which the thought of home suggests. We have no perfect homes on earth; but every true home has in it fragments of heaven's meaning, and always the idea is of love's service rather than of blissful indolence.