dead while he lives," Paul asserts; but he that lives
in spiritual righteousness has already risen from the dead. To sum
up the whole in a single sentence, the service and the fruits of
sin form an experience which Christianity calls death, because it
is a state of insensibility to the elements and results of true
life, in the adequate sense of that term, meaning the serene
activity and religious joy of the soul.

The second particular in the essential doctrine of Christianity
concerning the states of human experience which it entitles death
and life is their inherent, enduring nature, their independence on
the objects and changes of this world. The gospel teaches that the
elements of our being and experience are transferred from the life
that now is into the life that is to come, or, rather, that we
exist continuously forever, uninterrupted by the event of physical
dissolution. "Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give
him," Jesus declares, "shall never thirst; but the water that I
shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into
everlasting life." John affirms, "The world passeth away, and the
lust thereof; but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever."
Paul writes to the Christians at Rome, "In that Christ died, he
died unto sin once; but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but
alive unto God." Numerous additional texts of kindred import might
be cited. They announce the immortality of man, the unending
continuance of the Christian consciousness, unless forfeited by
voluntary defection. They show that sin and woe are not
arbitrarily bounded by the limits of time and sense in the grave,
and that nothing can ever exhaust or destroy the satisfaction of
true life, faith in the love of God: it abides, blessed and
eternal, in the uninterrupted blessedness and eternity of its
Object. The revelation and offer of all this to the acceptance of
men, its conditions, claims, and alternative sanctions, were first
divinely made known and planted in the heart of the world, as the
Scriptures assert, by Jesus Christ, who promulgated them by his
preaching, illustrated them by his example, proved them by his
works, attested them by his blood, and crowned them by his
resurrection.

And now there is opened for all of us, through him, that is to
say, through belief and obedience of what he taught and
exemplified, an access unto the Father,