"But man himself is involved in the common doom. It is appointed unto all men once to die. The reigning foct, man's death, seems to force upon us the conclusion that death is a physical necessity, or a universal law extending to all material organizations, however oth- erwise psychologically distinguished or divinely allied. And this opinion has generally obtained among men of pantheistic and materialistic views in philosophy, and of Pelagian and Socinian views in theology. But surely it is impossible, consistently with Grod's omnip- otency, to allege the necessity or the power of this law, as existing in despite of his pleasure and purpose, to constitute our nature under a law of life. It is more than probable that the other orders of creatures who dwell in lifo immortal in the heavenly places are not all spirit, or without their own mode and form of organized existence. We are assured that the bodies of the risen saints are clothed with incorruption and immortality. We know that, even as now constituted, the life of these frail bodies in antediluvian age was prolonged to the verge of a millennium. And why should it be thought impossible for Grod, if so it had pleased him, to endue them with the powers, or pro- vide for them the means of repairing the wear and waste of life, so as to preserve their powers and sen- sibilities in unabated vigor and Areshness, *■ even to length of days forever and ever ?' This, Scripture in- forms us, was in the beginning provisionally ordained. The threatening of death as the penalty of a breach of the covenant is rightly understood to imply the prom«
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ise of deathless and incorniptible lifb so long as the covenant should stand. And the tree of life in the midst of the garden, if not by its physical virtue the means of perpetual renqyation, was certainly the sac- ramental pledge of God's purpose to preserve life in- violate while man was steadfast to the covenant. Thus runs the tenor of the covenant, or the constitu- tion under which man's life was originally given and held : * Thou shalt not eat of the tree of knowl- edge of good and evil, for in the day thou eatest there- of thou shalt surely die.' And, in terms equally ex- plicit to the transgression of the law is the entrance and reign of death over man ascribed : < By one man sin entered into the wprld, and death by sin ; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.' Let it be observed that this declares the cause of death as it reigns over all men only. It affirms nothing re- specting the cause of death as it reigns over other or- ders of creatures in the present or in preceding stages of the world's existence. Whether, in any way, they may have been constitnted under a law of death by an- ticipation, and as in keeping with a state of things in which death should reign over man, we do not ven- ture to pronounce. That indirectly, as a conseqdbnce of their relation to man as a sinner against God, their sufferings have been increased and their lives short- ened, it is impossible to doubt or deny. But if, in this view, sin be the occasion of their death, it cannot be the cause of it. They are incapable of sin, and cannot die judicially for sin. The contrary opinion, which long and generally prevailed, that the creatures were immortal until man sinned, has as little to justify it in Scripture as in science. Death, it is there said, is the law of their being ; and the true doctrine of the Scrip- ture is not that they die because man has sinned, but that man, because he has sinned, has forfeited his orig- inal and high distinction, and has become like *the beasts that perish.' It is unnecessary here to multi- ply Scripture proofb of this awful and humbling truth. Every one is familiar with the Arequent and equiva- lent testimonies that death is *the fruit,' 'the wages,' the * end' and consummation of sin ; and the circum- stances which attend and induce it impressively con- nect it with sin as its cause. How, if not through guilty forfeiture, should the life of man have been ab- breviated in its term so much more than that of many of the inferior creatures, and in so many instances still further shortened by disease and by calamity? To how great extent is it consumed by the fire of evU passion, smitten by the stroke of vengefbl violence, taken away by the arm of judicial authority? in all these cases sin visibly working death. And while embittered and burdened by manifold pain and sor- rows, how irresistibly does conscience within disquiet and alarm us by the conviction of guilt and the terror of righteous judgment ?
*' But now what is death, or what does it import as an appointed doom ? To answer this question right- ly, we require to ascertain the true constitution of our nature. Obviously death must be very different in the view of the materialist, who regards man as only a higher species of animal, whose mental and moral distinctions are the result of a higher physical organi- zation, and in the judgment of those who consider man as the possessor of a soul distinct f^om the body, the subject and seat of a higher nature. If the body be the whole of man, death is the end of his conscious ex- istence. If he consist of body and spirit, death may prove but his birthday into another and more impor- tant state of being. Now this point, which till the present hour has proved too hard for man himself to clear up. Scripture decides conclusively for all who will receive its testimony. Man is both body and spirit, the first placing him in communion with the outward world, the second allying him to God and his spiritual creation. The record of his primeval f^te