Creator, who is all-wise and perfect, would fix in the soul of man the thought of a nonentity? Is it not a clear subject of Divine Revelation, that man, at creation, "became a living soul?" And does not the Lord Jesus say, "Whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die?" (John xi. 26.) Thousands have lived and believed in the Lord, and all have died or will die as to the body, but have never, in the sense of extinction of being, died in reality, nor can they ever so die. Bodily death is of Divine appointment, because it is the means by which we pass out of the material into the spiritual world, to receive the just reward of our doings. Death is but a change in the mode of human existence, a continuation of life in a world of beauty and peace far more real than this. There is no perceptible time between bodily death and the resurrection. The rich evil man died, and then in hell he lifted up his eyes! The poor good man died and was seen in heaven! While the contrariety that ever distinguishes good from evil, is the great gulf between, which makes and preserves an eternal separation between the two!—there can be no passing from the one to the other. Resurrection follows bodily death much quicker than the blade springs from the buried corn-seed. To die, then, is gain! Death, to the good man, has no sting, and the grave no victory; for,
"Death is another Life. We bow our heads
At going out, we think, and enter straight
Another golden chamber of the king's,
Larger than this we leave, and lovelier."—Festus.
That death is not a calamity, but a real good, and a blessing, is evident from the fact, that "the death
