soul begins its deathless career, amidst joys and thanksgivings, which
swell through the wide circles of kindred and acquaintanceship. The Holy
Spirit, in the process of time, renews and sanctifies the soul through
the blood of the everlasting covenant; and having, through life, walked
with God, the day arrives when the spirit must return to God who gave
it. You saw how it was received here, at its entrance into the world.
You have seen what the atonement, and regeneration, and sanctification,
and providence, and grace, have done for it, and with what accumulated
love the Father of Spirits, and Redeemer, and Sanctifier, must regard
it. And now do we suppose that the shroud, and coffin, and the funeral,
and the narrow house, and the darkness, and the solitude and corruption,
and the whole dreary and terrible train of death and the grave, are
symbols of its reception into heaven, the proper pageantry of its
arrival and resting place within the veil? Believe it not! If God
prepared in our hearts such a welcome for the infant stranger, that even
its helpless feet were thought of and cared for, surely when those feet,
wearied in the pilgrimage of the strait and narrow way, arrive at
heaven's gate, it must be, it is, amidst rejoicings and ministrations of
love to which earth has no parallel. Let kings and queens prepare a
royal room for the new-born prince: "In my Father's house are many
mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a
place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come
again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be
also."

Could we look into that place, as it stands waiting for its occupant
from earth, we should behold sights which would instantly clothe even
death with beauty, and make it seem now, as it will seem then, a blessed
thing to die.