g cast out of Eden go together; and if any one compares the
description of the second Eden in the Revelation, and recollects how
especially it is there said, that God dwells in the midst of it, and is
its light by day and night, he will see that the banishment from the
first Eden means a banishment from the presence of God. And thus, in the
day that Adam sinned, he died; for he was cast out of Eden immediately,
however long he may have moved about afterwards upon the earth where
God was not. And how very strong to the same point are the words of
Hezekiah's prayer, "The grave cannot praise thee, Death cannot celebrate
thee; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth;" words
which express completely the feeling that God is not the God of the
dead. This, too, appears to be the sense generally of the expression
used in various parts of the Old Testament, "Thou shalt surely die." It
is, no doubt, left purposely obscure; nor are we ever told, in so many
words, all that is meant by death; but, surely, it always implies a
separation from God, and the being--whatever the notion may extend
to--the being dead to him. Thus, when David had committed his great sin,
and had expressed his repentance for it, Nathan tells him, "The Lord
also hath put away thy sin; thou shalt not die:" which means, most
expressively, thou shalt not die to God. In one sense, David died, as
all men die; nor was he, by any means, freed from the punishment of his
sin: he was not, in that sense, forgiven; but he was allowed still to
regard God as his God; and, therefore, his punishments were but fatherly
chastisements from God's hand, designed for his profit, that he might be
partaker of God's holiness. And thus although Saul was sentenced to lose
his kingdom, and although he was killed with his sons on Mount Gilboa,
yet I do not think that we find the sentence passed upon him, "Thou
shalt surely die;" and, therefore, we have no right to say that God had
ceased to be his God, although be visited him with severe chastisements,
and would not allow him to hand down to his sons the crown of Israel.
Observe, also, the language of the eighteenth chapter of Ezekiel, where
the expressions occur so often, "He shall surely live," and "He shall
surely die." We have no right to refer these to a mere extension, on the
one hand, or a cutting short, on the other, of the term of earthly
existence. The promise of living long in the land, or, as in Hezekiah's
case,