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Unbelief in immortality existed generally before the Christian era. About that time implicit belief in the after life became a conviction with multitudes. We ask any unbeliever to account for that. What produced this result? There is no effect without a cause. Was there not some grand event that gave the truth that we are immortal such vital power that even the lowly, the poor, the humblest — not the learned, not the philosophers only — became thoroughly convinced of it? Walk through the Roman catacombs; mark the difference there is between the epitaphs of the Epicureans on the one side, and the Christians on the other. One of the Roman tombs has this inscription, "While I lived, I lived well — my play is now ended, soon yours will be; — farewell, and applaud me." Another says, "Baths, wine, and love ruin the constitution, but they make life what it is — farewell." Then comes the tender stroke of a mother's grief — "O relentless fortune, that delights in cruel death, why is Maximus so early snatched from me?" Then turn and see the epitaphs of the early Christians — "Zoticus laid here to sleep." "The sleeping place in Christ of Elipis." "Yaleria sleeps in peace." Is not that an echo of those wonderful words that were uttered at the tomb of Lazarus: "He is not dead, but sleepeth," or, when He said of the ruler's daughter, "The maid is not dead, but sleepeth?" Is not that an echo of that wonderful teaching of Christ that death is sleep — that the cemetery is what the word literally means, "a sleeping place"? What can have brought about such a change in the world? Intuition failed utterly to do more than faintly discern that such a thing as immortality might be. Philosophical reasoning produced nothing but Epicurean carelessness and Stoical contempt for death. But here we see a poor mother lay down her daughter, slain it may be by the arrows of persecution, but she says, "She sleeps in Jesus." It is sleep that knows an awaking, a short night that breaks into a glorious morning. Immortality is not now a dubious opinion, it is positive conviction. Whence comes it? Only from Christ. His life, His death, and especially His resurrection unfold it with marvellous clearness.

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KJV: But I would not have you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others which have no hope.

WEB: But we don't want you to be ignorant, brothers, concerning those who have fallen asleep, so that you don't grieve like the rest, who have no hope.