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If a man die, shall he live again? asks the anxious, hopeful, human spirit. This composition of Hezekiah either indicates or suggests -

I. THE LIGHT WHICH THE HEBREW SAINTS POSSESSED. They believed that death did not terminate man's existence; that, after death, he dwelt in Sheol with the spirits of the departed, with "the inhabitants of the land of stillness;" in a region, deep, dark, shut up within impassable gates through which they that have entered may never more return (ver. 10).

II. THE PAINFUL FEEBLENESS OF THEIR LIGHT. This abode of the dead was dismal in a high degree to their imagination; it was "the pit of corruption" (ver. 17); it was the place where God was unapproachable (ver. 11), where his praises were untold and unsung (ver. 18), where the delights of human fellowship were unknown (ver. 11), where the opportunities of gaining the highest wisdom were closed against the soul, where men "cannot hope for thy truth" (ver. 18). Such life as there was in those sepulchral region,'s would hardly be worth having, where privations like these prevailed.

III. THE GREAT DISCLOSURE BY JESUS CHRIST. He did not, indeed, for the first time announce that there was a life beyond death for men. But he did reveal such a life of blessedness and glory as gave a new meaning to immortality. As his disciples, we look for a life which will be characterized, not by the removal, but by the renewal and the immeasurable enlargement, of all the higher blessings of the present time. As exactly opposed to the privations here lamented, we look for:

1. The near presence of God. (Ver. 11.) To depart is to "be with Christ," is to "be with him that we may behold his glory," is to be at home in "the Father's house."

2. A life of holiest, happiest worship. (Ver. 18.) Where the praises of God will never tire the tongue. Heaven is, to our hope, the very home of praise: "The living, they that live indeed," - they will praise God in accents to which our fainter and feebler life is unequal now.

3. Communion with the perfected spirits of men. (Ver. 11.) We hope to behold and to have ennobling fellowship with men at their very best, when they and we shall be purged of all that hinders or lowers our intercourse on earth.

4. Access to Divine truth. (Ver. 18.) "Then shall we know even as also we are known" (1 Corinthians 13:12); then shall we look "face to face" on many truths which here we have only dimly espied; then shall we grasp with firm, rejoicing hold what now we can but delicately touch, or are ineffectually pursuing.

5. Life in its large and blessed fulness. (Ver. 19.) It is they who dwell in the light of God of whom we rightly speak as "the living, the living;" it is they who "have life more abundantly." We conclude that:

(1) This language of lamentation does not suit Christian lips.

(2) We have no need to think of death as Hezekiah thought.

(3) We who have such high hopes in us as these should live lives of purity, and so of preparation (1 John 3:3). - C.

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KJV: I said, I shall not see the LORD, even the LORD, in the land of the living: I shall behold man no more with the inhabitants of the world.

WEB: I said, "I won't see Yah, Yah in the land of the living. I will see man no more with the inhabitants of the world.