I found this on the internet – written by James Hastings, an early 20th century Scottish Presbyterian minister , and I think it bears reading …

1. There is nothing more marvellous in the history of Christianity than the change which it wrought in men’s views of death. The change is one stamped into the very life of humanity, however it may be explained. Whereas men had previously thought of death as only a great darkness, or a dreamless and perpetual sleep, they began to think of it as a change from darkness to light, and as a sleep with a glorious awakening. The brightness and joy were no longer here. This was not the true life from which men should shrink to part. All was brighter in the future; the higher life was above. Death was not only welcome, but joyfully welcome. To die was gain. It was “to depart, and be with Christ ; which is far better.” This was not merely the experience of an enthusiastic Apostle; it became the overwhelming experience of hundreds and thousands. Death was swallowed up in victory. “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” was the triumphant echo from Jerusalem to Rome, and from Antioch to Alexandria, in thousands of hearts, that had but lately known no hope and shared no enthusiasm—not even the enthusiasm of a common country or common citizenship.

2. What is the explanation of all this? What was it that sent such a thrill of hopeful anticipation through a world dying of philosophic despair and moral perplexity and indifference? Was it any higher speculation? any intellectual discovery? any eclectic accident or amalgam of Jewish inspiration with Hellenic thought? Men had everywhere—in Greece and Rome, in Alexandria and Jerusalem—been trying such modes of reviving a dead world, of reawakening spiritual hopefulness; but without success. No mere opinion or combination of opinions wrought this great change. Men did not learn anything more of the future than they had formerly known; no philosopher had discovered its possibilities or unveiled its secrets. But there had gone forth from a few simple men, and from one of more learning and power than the others, the faithful saying that “Christ is risen indeed.” “Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them that slept.” And it was this suddenly inspired faith that raised the world from its insensibility and corruption, and kindled it with a new hope—and the joy of a life not meted by mortal bounds, but “incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away.”

3. It was on the strength of this assurance that St. Paul sought to comfort the Thessalonians. They had been—from what causes are not said—in anxiety as to the fate of their departed friends. They seem to have doubted whether these friends would share with them in the resurrection of the dead and the joy of the second coming of the Lord. The Apostle assured them that they had no need to be in trouble. The departed were safe with God, and the same great faith in the death and resurrection of Christ that sustained themselves was the ground of confidence for all.

Jesus Christ, who knew the universe, whose eye penetrated the unseen, who could not be mistaken, who knew the meaning of every word He spoke and of everything He did, died—died, committing His person and spirit into the hands of a Personal God, that God being His Father. Here is comfort; I feel it, I praise God for it; I see light amidst darkness; simplicity amidst confusion, a path passing through the mysteries of the unseen and going straight up to the throne of God; midnight and great depths are as a wall on either side, but the path itself is beautiful and safe, for Jesus, the very truth and life, goes before as my forerunner. Give me grace only to have this mind which was in Jesus—to be able amidst the agonies of death to see God as my Father, and to know nothing more than this, that I can commit myself into His hands, then, O Death, where is thy sting?—O Grave, where is thy victory?1