dieth, he shall carry nothing away.' Let us see to it that not in utter
nakedness do we go hence, but clothed with that immortal robe, and rich
in those possessions that cannot be taken away from us, which they have
who have lived on earth as heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ. Let
us pierce, for the foundation of our life's house, beneath the shifting
sands of time down to the Rock of Ages, and build there.

IV. Finally, death is for some men the annihilation of the vain shows in
order to reveal the great reality.

'I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.'

'Likeness' is properly 'form,' and is the same word which is employed in
reference to Moses, who saw 'the similitude of the Lord.' If there be,
as is most probable, an allusion to that ancient vision in these words,
then the 'likeness' is not that conformity to the divine character which
it is the goal of our hopes to possess, but the beholding of His
self-manifestation. The parallelism of the verse also points to such an
interpretation.

If so, then, we have here the blessed confidence that when all the
baseless fabric of the dream of life has faded from our opening eyes, we
shall see the face of our ever-loving God. Here the distracting whirl of
earthly things obscures Him from even the devoutest souls, and His own
mighty works which reveal do also conceal. In them is the hiding as well
as the showing of His power. But there the veil which draped the perfect
likeness, and gave but dim hints through its heavy swathings of the
outline of immortal beauty that lay beneath, shall fall away. No longer
befooled by shadows, we shall possess the true substance; no longer
bedazzled by shows, we shall behold the reality.