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Life Sketches of Ellen G. White
that she would say. I think she would read, for the benefit of her friends
and relatives and neighbors and others who are congregated here, this
passage:
“‘For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all
men’—and I venture to say that no living person in this generation
has ever held up more insistently the grace of God for the salvation of
men than has she—’teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly
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lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present
world.’
“She would speak to her neighbors and friends along that line, but
she would not stop there. This afternoon she would add, ‘Looking for
that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our
Saviour Jesus Christ.’ She would emphasize that. She would press it
home upon all our hearts and all our minds. Not only that, in a general
way; but she would emphasize the fact, the great truth, that that blessed
hope is soon to be consummated. She would lift our hearts and our
minds up to that blessed hope which was her hope, and her joy, and
her inspiration. I should like to echo that voice here this afternoon,
brethren and friends and neighbors. I am sure that is the message she
would give. But she is at rest.
“Somehow I am impressed that there is a present fulfillment of that
passage in the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, where it says, ‘The
sting of death is sin.’ Let me read it to you. It is this: ‘For if the dead
rise not, then is not Christ raised: and if Christ be not raised, your faith
is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep
in Christ are perished.’ And she would read further: ‘Then shall be
brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in
victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’
“The thought I have in mind is this,—that there is a certain sense in
which the sting is taken out of death here and now, brethren. [Hearty
amens.] Our natural affections, the love of our hearts, will force the
tears from our eyes, and we cannot help it; but back of it all, brethren,
there is the consolation that sin has gone from this one, and hence the
sting of sin has been extracted, and death cannot hold such a person a
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great while. [Many amens.]
“We read in one place of Jesus that it was not possible that He
should be holden of death. Why?—Because there was no sin there.
Where righteousness reigns and sin is gone, death has lost its grip. The