Their memory is a golden cord binding us to God's throne, and drawing us upward into the kingdom of light.
Absent, they enrich us as those present cannot.

And so the child who smiled upon us and then went away, the son and the daughter whose talents blossomed here to bear fruit above, the sweet mother's face, the father's gentle spirit--their going it was that set open the door of heaven and made on earth a new world.

These all lived vicariously for us, and vicariously they died! No deeply reflective nature, therefore, will be surprised that the vicarious principle is manifest in the Savior of the soul.

Rejecting all commercial theories, all judicial exchanges, all imputations of characters, let us recognize the universality of this principle.

God is not at warfare with himself.