mixture, death seemingly triumphant over Christ's people on the very
day on which life triumphed in Jesus Christ Himself. Let us see,
though, whether death has not something to do with Ascension-day.
Let us see whether a sermon about death is not a fit sermon for the
Sunday after Ascension-day. Let us see whether the text has not a
message about life and death too--a message which may make us feel
that in the midst of life we are in death, and that yet in the midst
of death we are in life; that however things may SEEM, yet death has
not conquered life, but life has conquered and WILL conquer death,
and conquer it most completely at the very moment that we die, and
our bodies return to their dust.

Do I speak riddles? I think the text will explain my riddles, for
it tells us how life comes, how death comes. Life comes from God:
He sends forth His spirit, and things are made, and He renews the
face of the earth. We read in the very two verses of the book of
Genesis how the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters the
creation, and woke all things into life. Therefore the Creed well
calls the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of God, that is--the Lord and Giver
of life. And the text tells us that He gives life, not only to us
who have immortal souls, but to every thing on the face of the
earth; for the psalm has been talking all through, not only of men,
but of beasts, fishes, trees, and rivers, and rocks, sun and moon.
Now, all these things have a life in them. Not a life like ours;
but still you speak rightly and wisely when you say, 'That tree is
alive, and, That tree is dead. That running water is live water--it
is sweet and fresh, but if it is kept standing it begins to putrefy,
its life is gone from it, and a sort of death comes over it, and
makes it foul, and unwholesome, and unfit to drink.' This is a deep
matter, this, how there is a sort of life in every thing, even to