perhaps you saw that young heart being perfected under the higher and
holier discipline of suffering, bearing pain patiently, facing trouble
and danger like a hero, not shrinking even from the presence of death,
but trusting all to your love and to God's, and taking just what came
from day to day, from hour to hour. And then suddenly the light went out
in the shining eyes. The brave heart stopped. The soul was gone. Lost,
perished, blotted out forever in the darkness of death? Ah, no; you know
better than that. That clear, dawning intelligence, that deepening love,
that childlike faith in God, that pure innocence of soul, did not come
from the dust. How could they return thither? The music ceases because
the instrument is broken. But the player is not dead. He is learning a
better music. He is finding a more perfect instrument. It is impossible
that he should be holden of death. God wastes nothing so precious.

"What is excellent
As God lives is permanent.
Hearts are dust; hearts' loves remain.
Hearts' love will meet thee again."

But I am sure that we must go further than this in order to understand
the full strength and comfort of the text. The assertion of the
impotence of death to end all is based upon something deeper than the
prophecy of immortality in the human heart. It has a stronger foundation
than the outreachings of human knowledge and moral effort towards a
higher state in which completion may be attained. It has a more secure
ground to rest upon than the deathless affection with which our love
clings to its object The impotence of death is revealed to us in the
spiritual perfection of Christ.

Here then, in the "power of an endless life," I find the corner-stone of