dead. That
their mortal flesh was all you put into the grave; but that _they_
themselves, their souls and spirits, which were their very and real
selves, are alive for evermore; and you trust and hope to meet them
when you die;--ay, to meet them body and soul too, at the last day,
the very same persons whom you knew here on earth, though the flesh
which they wore here in this life has crumbled into dust years and
ages before.

Is not this true? Is not this a blessed life-giving thought--I had
almost said the most blessed and life-giving thought man can have--
that those whom we have loved and lost are not dead, but only gone
before; that they live still to God and with God; that only their
flesh has perished, and they themselves are alive for evermore?

Now believe me, my friends, as surely as a man's flesh can die and
be buried, while he himself, his soul, lives for ever, just so a
man's self, his soul, can die, while his flesh lives on upon earth.
You do not think so, but the Bible thinks so. The Bible talks of
men being _dead_ in trespasses and sins, while their flesh and body
is alive and walking this earth. It talks, too, of a worse state,
of men twice dead; of men, who, after God has brought their souls to
life, let those souls of theirs die down again within them, and rot
away, as far as we can see, hopelessly and for ever. And what is it
which kills a man's soul within him on this side the grave, and
makes him dead while he has a name to live? _Sin_, evil-doing, the
disease of the soul, the death of the soul, yea, the death of the
man himself. And what is sin but living according to the flesh, and
not according to the spirit? What is sin but living as the dumb
animals do, as if we were debtors to our own flesh, to fulfil its
lusts, and to please our own appetites, fancies, and tempers,
instead of remembering that we are debtors to God, who made us, and
blesses us all day long;--debtors to our Lord Jesus Christ, who
bought us with His own blood, that we might please Him and obey
Him;--debtors to God's Holy Spirit, who puts into our minds good
desires;--debtors to our baptism vows, in which we were consecrated
to God, that He, and not this flesh of ours, might be our Master for
ever?

This is sin; to give way to those selfish and evil tempers, against
which I warned you in the beginning of my sermon, and which, if any
man indulges in them, will surely and steadily, bit by bit, kill
that man's soul wit