happy and blessed, only because we shall be living that eternal life
of which I have been preaching to you all along, the life which
Christ lives and has lived and will live for ever, saying to the
Eternal Father--I come to do thy will--not my will but thine be done.

Oh! may God give to us all his Spirit; the Spirit by which Christ did
his Father's will, and lived his Father's life in the soul and body
of a mortal man, that we may live here a life of obedience and of
good works, which is the only true and living life of faith; and that
when we die it may be said of us--'Blessed are the dead who die in
the Lord; for they rest from their labours, and their works do follow
them.'

They rest from their labours. All their struggles, disappointments,
failures, backslidings, which made them unhappy here, because they
could not perfectly do the will of God, are past and over for ever.
But their works follow them. The good which they did on earth--that
is not past and over. It cannot die. It lives and grows for ever,
following on in their path long after they are dead, and bearing
fruit unto everlasting life, not only in them, but in men whom they
never saw, and in generations yet unborn.



SERMON IV. THE SONG OF THE THREE CHILDREN



DANIEL iii. 16, 17, 18.