'crown' Death, as 'Omega,' the last, 'the Lord,' because '_they_ find no
_motion_ in the dead.' Rest, cessation of consciousness of the outer
world, and of action upon it, are set forth by the figure. But even the
figure might teach us that the consciousness of life, and the vivid
exercise of thought and feeling, are not denied by it. Death is sleep.
Be it so. But does not that suggest the doubt--'in that sleep, what
dreams may come?' Do we not all know that, when the chains of slumber
bind sense, and the disturbance of the outer world is hushed, there are
faculties of our souls which work more strongly than in our waking
hours? We are all poets, 'makers' in our sleep. Memory and imagination
open their eyes when flesh closes it. We can live through years in the
dreams of a night; so swiftly can spirit move when even partially freed
from 'this muddy vesture of decay.' That very phrase, then, which at
first sight seems the opposite of the representation of our text, in
reality is preparatory to and confirmatory of it. That very
representation which has lent itself to cheerless and heathenish
thoughts of death as the cessation not only of toil but of activity, is
the basis of the deeper and truer representation, the truth for the
spirit, that death is an awaking. If, on the one hand, we have to say,
as we anticipate the approaching end of life, 'The night cometh, when no
man can work'; on the other the converse is true, 'The night is far
spent; the day is at hand.'

We shall sleep. Yes; but we shall wake too. We shall wake just because
we sleep. For flesh and all its weakness, and all its disturbing
strength, and craving importunities--for the outer world, and all its
dissipating garish shows, and all its sullen resistance to our hand--for
weariness, and fevered activity and toil against the grain of our
tastes, too great for our strength, disappointing in its results, the
end is blessed, calm sleep. And precisely because it is so, therefore