it, bear it! and understand the meaning of the blow of the sculptor’s mallet, and see in all life the divine hand working towards the accomplishment of His own loving purpose.  Then if we turn to Him, amid the pains of His discipline and the joys of His gifts of grace, with recognition and acceptance of His meaning in them all, and cry to Him, ’Thy mercy, O Lord, endureth for ever, forsake not the work of Thine own hands,’ we may be always confident, as knowing that ‘the Lord will perfect that which concerneth us.’

THE OLD HOUSE AND THE NEW

   ’We are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent
   from the body, and to be present with the Lord.’—­2 COR. v. 8.

There lie in the words of my text simply these two things; the Christian view of what death is, and the Christian temper in which to anticipate it.

I. First, the Christian view of what death is.

Now it is to be observed that, properly speaking, the Apostle is not here referring to the state of the dead, but to the act of dying.  The language would more literally and accurately be rendered ’willing to go from home, from the body, and to go home, to the Lord.’  The moment of transition of course leads to a permanent state, but it is the moment of transition which is in view in the words.  I need not remind you, I suppose, that the metaphor of the home is one which has already been dwelt upon in the early part of the chapter, where the contrast is drawn between the transitory house of ‘this tent,’ and the ‘building of God,’ the body of incorruption and glory which the saints at the Resurrection day shall receive.  So, then, the Christian view of the act of death is that it is simply a change of abode.

Very clearly and firmly does Paul draw the line between the man and his dwelling-place.  Life is more than a result of organisation.  Consciousness, thought, feeling, are more than functions of matter.  No materialist philosopher has ever been, or ever will be, able to explain within the limits of his system the strange difference between the cause and the effect; how it comes to pass that at the one end of the chain there is an impression upon a nerve, and at the other there is pain; how at the one end there is the throb of an inch of matter in a man’s skull, and at the other end there are thoughts that breathe and words that burn, and that live for ever.  That brings us up to the edge of a gulf over which no materialist philosopher has ever been able to cast a bridge.  The scalpel cannot cut deep enough to solve this mystery.  Conscience as well as instinct cry out against the theory that the worker and the tools are inseparable.  For such a theory reduces human actions to mechanical results, and shatters all responsibility.  Man is more than his dwelling-place.  You crush a shell on the beach with your heel, and you slay its tiny inhabitant.  But you can pull down the tent, and pluck up its pegs, and roll up its canvas, and put it away in a dark corner, and the tenant is untouched.  The foolish senses crown Death as last, and lord of all.  But wisdom says, ’Life and thought have gone away side by side, leaving doors and windows wide,’ and that is all that has happened.