"Mother with unbowed head, Hear thou across the sea The farewell of the dead, The dead who died for thee. Greet them again with tender words and grave, For, saving thee, themselves they could not save.
"To keep the house unharmed Their fathers built so fair, Deeming endurance armed Better than brute despair, They found the secret of the word that saith, 'Service is sweet, for all true life is death.'
"So greet thou well thy dead Across the homeless sea, And be thou comforted Because they died for thee. Far off they served, but now their deed is done For evermore their life and thine are one."
Now, do you suppose--this is to me an absolutely irrefragable argument--do you suppose that GOD would have planted the love of that son in that mother's heart, and given her that faith, and then mean to disappoint her? All I can say is that, if He does, He is no GOD I could love, nor that anyone could love. The world is in the hand of some foul fiend, who loves to disappoint and blast the hopes of his children. That is not the GOD of the New Testament. No, our LORD says something very touching about that. He says: "In My FATHER'S house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you." "I would have told you." I would not have let you live all your lives and see your sons die, and your husbands die, and then disappoint you. "If it were not so, I would have told you."
4. And so we are prepared--you see now why I chose that particular text--we are prepared for _the great revelation when it comes_. Even science has prepared us. This great instinct of the soul, that it will live again, has prepared us. Our belief in a good GOD prepared us. We were all ready to hear it, and at last it comes from heaven. "I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die."
And now we have got it. It has been all led up to; we were all prepared for it. We could not have been certain till we were told it by One who came from heaven. This is the Christian religion. It is no miserable half-and-half Gospel about a good man that once lived. That view of JESUS CHRIST has nothing to do with Christianity. The SON of GOD came Himself from heaven.