Death, when applied to the animal nature, properly ;nifies a dissolution or failure of all its powers and lotions ; so, when applied to the spiritual nature, or lis of men, it denotes a corresponding disorder there- a being spiritually dead in trespasses and sins (Rom. i, 6 ; Eph. a, 1, 8 ; Col. ii, 18 ; Jude 12). The term death is metaphorically applied to denote , utter failure of customary functions, so that the ing spoken of can no longer act according to its na- ro. Thus, in Amos ii, 2, *' Moab shall die with tu- ult" — that is, the Idng and government shall lose eir power, and the nation be brought into subjection id slavery. So in Rom. vii, 8, *' Without the law, a was dead"— that is, without the law, sin does not cert its power ; and, on the other hand, it is said (ver. i, " Sin revived and I died"—" Sin got strength to :t, and I lost my power to resist. I was not the same lan as before ; sin destroyed my power." The ** second death'* (Rev. ii, 11) is so called in re- )ect to the natural or temporal as coming after it, and Dplies everlasting punishment (Rev. xxi, 8). DEATH, Thbolooical Aspects op. (On this >pic we give Henderson's article in Fairbaim, Imperi- i Bible Dictionary^ i, 418 sq., with slight modifications nd omissions.)
*' Death may be defined as the UmunaUon ofUfi, ^ond question, it had been possible for God, if such tad been his pleasure, to have made all creatures un- ler a law of life. Scripture assures us that man at east was at first placed conditionally under this law. rhere is, however, decisive evidence that, from the be- ^nning, all other terrestrial life was constituted under the hiw of death. The rcrproductive and assimilating )rgan8 and powers common to all living creatures, and the destructive organs, instincts, and habits of birds uad beasts of prey, unmistakably contemplate, as they provide for, a system or constitution of things in which ieath should reign. It was long and genially held, indeed, that this law in the natural economy super- vened upon the introduction of sin. But this idea, vrhich Scripture does nowhere assert or sanction, is hard to be reconciled with the conclusion which phys- iology and anatomy have deduced firom powers and or- gans of the animal fhime, with the same certainty that any final cause is inferred Arom any of the works of God. And it must be regarded as conclusively re- lated by the discoveries of geology, which demonstrate the prevalence of death in ages long anterior to the creation of man, or, so far as is known, to the exist- ence of sin. The earth's strata are now found to be full of the buried remains of extinct life ; and it is made evident by the state in which many of these fos- sils are found, that then, as now, life was sustained by d^th. Nor can it well be doubted that this state of things obtained even in the days of man's primeval innocence. If we try, we shall find ourselves baffled in the attempt to conceive how even then death could he strange or unknown. Must not the revolving year have been marked by the opening and the fall of the
earth's foliage, the r^ning consumption and decay of earth's fhiits ? Could our first parents drink of the rivers of paradise, or tread its verdant surface, or keep and dress its trees and plants, without in every draught, at every step, by every stroke quenching or cutting down myriads of animalcnlar or insect as well as veg- etalde life ? Although the flesh of anlmflls was not yet given to man for food, is it supposable that the laws of animal life itself were all the while in abey- ance— its histincts restrained, its powers unused, its appropriate pleasure withheld or denied? We know that firom the day of man's creation he had given to him the idea of death. It was set before him as the just desert and consequence of disobedience. And whence should he have derived his conception of the import of the threatened evil so readily as from death's visible domain over the fowls of the heaven and the beasts of the field?
"With regard to creatures of mere instinot or animal nature, there can be nothing judicial or of the nature of punishment in their ordination to death. It is be- yond question that for man's sake a curse had * been brought upon the ground,' and the * whole creation grotfneth and travaileth in pain together until now.' Still man himself is by this means tiie greatest sufier- er ; and so Car as it affects the other creatures, it can be only a physical evil, equally without moral cause or penal effect, of which, by their nature, they are un- susceptible. How this appointment Ib to be reconciled with the benevolence of the Creator is a hard ques* tion, which no light yet given to man enables him fUly to resolve. So for, however, it may relieve the mystery that, as a general rule, the enjoyments of the inferior creatures greatly exceed their sufferings that death is hut little, if at all, the object of their fear, or much even a cause of pain. That ' the sum of animal enjoyment quenched in death is amply compensated by the law of increase and succession, which both per- petuates life and preserves it in the vigor of its powers and the fi-eshness of its joys, is certain ;' also (as bear- ing on the physical and moral condition of man, to whose behalf, as chief in this lower world, all arrange- ments and disposals afifiscting the lower forms of life were subordinated), that their subjection to death has enlarged immensely the extent of man's physical re- sources, and multiplied manifold the means of his mor- al development and discipline.