As then
the dissolving in the furnace was not a destruction but a renewing of
the statue, so the death of our bodies is not a destruction but a
renovation. When, therefore, you see as in a furnace our flesh flowing
away to corruption, dwell not on that sight, but wait for the recasting.
And be not satisfied with the extent of this illustration, but advance
in your thoughts to a still higher point; for the statuary, casting into
the furnace a brazen image, does not furnish you in its place a golden
and undecaying statue, but again makes a brazen one. God does not thus;
but casting in a mortal body formed of clay, he returns to you a golden
and immortal statue; for the earth, receiving a corruptible and decaying
body gives back the same, incorruptible and undecaying. Look not,
therefore, on the corpse, lying with closed eyes and speechless lips,
but on the man that is risen, that has received glory unspeakable and
amazing, and direct your thoughts from the present sight to the future
hope.
But do you miss his society, and therefore lament and mourn? Now is it
not unreasonable, that, if you should have given your daughter in
marriage, and her husband should take her to a distant country and
should there enjoy prosperity, you would not think the circumstance a
calamity, but the intelligence of their prosperity would console the
sorrow occasioned by her absence; and yet here, while it is not a man,
nor a fellow servant, but the Lord Himself who has taken your relative,
that you should grieve and lament?
And how is it possible, you ask, not to grieve, since I am only a man?
Nor do I say that you should not grieve: I do not condemn dejection, but
the intensity of it.
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