John Murray on Our Hope in the Face of Death

The following is an except from a letter written by John Murray to Valerie Knowlton, the woman who would eventually become his wife, on the occasion of her grandmother's death:

How real is death, and how dismal except as its darkness is illumined by the hope of resurrection to life! It is as we look death squarely in the face that the grace and power of the Savior take on new meaning. How tawdry are all human attempts to dress it up! The light and faith of Jesus alone can cast a halo of joy and hope around it. Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, and only they! There is nothing that any person can place between himself or herself and the damnation that sin demands, but the merit, blood, righteousness, mediatorship, and intercession of the risen and glorified Redeemer.

--Taken from The Life of John Murray, Iain Murray