"His mantle was too great," we said. Not one of us so tall and grown up in the ways of God could wear that great cloak of him now gone. Not one could pick it up and wear the whole. And so with one accord we thought to share it while we're growing. "Mine the corner made up of love," one cried -- "His love for everyone he knew." "Give to me the portion of his gentleness to soften my harshness," begged another.

So on through the list we made our choices; his intellect, his humor, his compassion, generosity, awareness, understanding. Each one making claim according to his deep-felt need. It was not a dividing but the wrapping of his mantle of greatness around so many that had drawn us together in a closeness never quite achieved before.

Now as with bowed heads we close the grave of the one gone from us, and share the mantle he left. May we grow in stature beneath its folds until we all attain a measure of the godliness, compassion, love, gentleness, and all the other characteristics that made up the warp and woof of that beautiful garment. Worn so easily, yet so regally by our Elijah.

Look up! Lift up your heads! Your redemption dreweth nigh. Jesus still lives; the Holy Spirit is yet at work; God is still on the throne. Things may go so terribly wrong that the holiest center of life seems violated and defiled and spoiled. Look up. This is the worst and most sinister danger, that we, looking down, will be content to live in the lowlands of doubt and fear and defeat.

Some of you may have come to that really desperate and terrible place, to that awful night of the soul where you suspect that there is no God anywhere in all the thick and starless night through which you are passing. Some of you sitting out there may be at the place where you wonder if trying to be decent and honest is still worthwhile, that right and wrong are just words that people use. When that kind of terrible doubt grips you by the throat and starts choking you, scramble loose; look up! God lives and is on His way to relieve and rescue you right now.

Looking up you may well climb above the clouds and mists and rains which have now blinded your view. Once, years ago, I told here of an illustration I once heard my father use in the pulpit of a little church in Louisiana Bayou village. He repeated an incident which Charles Lindberg told of his lonely flight to Paris, the first man to cross the Atlantic alone in a plane.

I remember it as if it was yesterday, my father saying that Lindberg reported running into a blinding storm out of whose thick clouds lightening flashed. The flier looked to his right, but the clouds and the storm seemed to extend as far as he could see to the right. He looked to his left, but, again, the storm seemed as far as he could peer to his left. The clouds seemed to hover ever lower. The pilot said that he knew his little plane would never stand that buffeting wind and those sharp lightening bolts for long. There was just one thing to do. The pilot tilted the controls upward, and the little plane trembled and shivered and climbed until it shot through the clouds and out into the bright sunshine of a cloudless sky.

The clouds may be heavy where you are traveling. Look up, and by faith face skyward. Above the clouds the sun is shining, somewhere kind winds are blowing, and the skies are cloudless and clear. Up above the clouds of gossip and slander there is fellowship, a joy divine. Look up! God lives, and by faith, looking up and climbing up, you may see the blessed sunshine and move in the calm, pure atmosphere of the Holy Spirit. Look up!