'He will swallow up death in victory,' or, as probably the word more
correctly means, 'He will swallow up death _for ever_.' None of the
other panaceas for the world's evils that I have been speaking of even
attempt to deal with that 'Shadow feared of Man' that sits at the end of
all our paths. Jesus Christ has dealt with it. Like the warrior of Judah
who went down into a pit and slew a lion, He has gone down into the lair
of the dreadful thing, and has come up leaving Death dead on the
threshold.

By His death Christ has so altered that grim fact, which awaits us all,
that to those who will trust their souls to Him it ceases to be death,
even though the physical fact remains unaltered. For what is death? Is
it simply the separation of soul from body, the cessation of corporeal
existence? Surely not. We have to add to that all the spiritual tremors,
all the dreads of passing into the unknown, and leaving this familiar
order of things, and all the other reluctances and half-conscious
feelings which make the difference between the death of a man and the
death of a dog. And all these are swept clean away, if we believe that
Jesus died, and died as our Redeemer and our Saviour. So, unconsciously
and instinctively, the New Testament writers will seldom condescend to
call the physical fact by the ugly old name. It has changed its
character; it is 'a sleep' now; it is 'an exodus,' a 'going out' from
the land of Egypt into a land of peace. It is a plucking up of the
tent-pegs, according to another of the words which the writers employ
for death, in preparation for entering, when the 'tabernacle is
dissolved,' into 'a house not made with hands,' a statelier edifice,
'eternal in the heavens.' To die in Christ is not to die, but becomes a
mere change of condition and of place, to be with Him, which is far
'better.' So an Apostle who was coming within measurable distance of his
own martyrdom, even whilst the headsman's block was all but in his