| The Building of Character |
Chapter 24 |
Page 7 |
Some day we shall slip away from the things that are familiar to our eyes and hearts here, and shall enter into what we call the “other life.” Really, however, it is not another life, but a fuller, deeper revealing of the life we have been living in Christ since we first gave ourselves to Him. The mystery of the Christian’s life of faith is that it is “hid with Christ in God.” Here we touch but the outer edge of it; in what we call dying we shall press further into its blessedness. Here our little barques move only along the shore; by-and-bye we shall sail out into the infinite expanse. There will be nothing to dread in the experience. We call it death, but really it is life. To those who watch us in departing we shall disappear, but to us the path will be only one of increasing brightness, as we go on until we enter into the presence of Christ
“I watched a sail until it dropped from sight
Over the rounding sea. A gleam of white,
A last far-flashed farewell; and like to thought
Slipt out of mind, it vanished and was not.
“Yet, to the helmsman standing at the wheel,
Broad seas still stretched before the gliding keel.
Disaster? Change? He left no slightest sign,
Nor dreamed he of that dim horizon line.
“So may it be, perchance, when down the tide
Our dear ones vanish. Peacefully they glide
On level seas, nor mark the unknown bound.
We call it death—to them ‘tis life beyond.”
So will it be when we leave this world. It will not grow dark as we imagine it will in dying. We shall pass into fuller light, until we too are hid with Christ in God, in the glory of eternal life.
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