hen brought into such a state by
the experience of live spirits in live frames, "We feel through
all this fleshly dresse Bright shootes of everlastingnesse."

Spiritual sloth and sensual indulgence stupefy, blunt, and confuse
together in lifeless meshes, the vital tenant and the mortal
tenement; they grow incorporate, alike unclean, powerless, guilty,
and wretched. Then "Man lives a life half dead, a living death,
Himself his sepulchre, a moving grave." Active virtue, profound
love, and the earnest pursuit, in the daily duties of life, of
"Those lofty musings which within us sow The seeds of higher kind
and brighter being." Cleanse, vivify, and distinguish the body and
the soul, so that, when this tabernacle of clay crumbles from
around it, the unimprisoned spirit soars into the universe at
once, and, looking back upon the shadowy king bearing his pale
prey to the tomb, exclaims, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave,
where is thy victory?" The facts, then, of sin, guilt, weakness,
misery, unbelief, decay, insensibility, and death, joined with the
opposite corresponding class of facts, and considered in their
mutual spiritual and physical relations and results, originally
suggested, and now interpret and justify, that peculiar
phraseology of the New Testament which we have been investigating.
It has no recondite meaning drawn from arbitrary dogmas, but a
plain meaning drawn from natural truths.

It remains next to see what is the Christian doctrine concerning
literal, physical death, concerning the actual origin and
significance of that solemn event. This point must be treated the
more at length on account of the erroneous notions prevailing upon
the subject. For that man's first disobedience was the procuring
cause of organic, as well as of moral, death, is a doctrine quite
generally believed. It is a fundamental article in the creeds of
all the principal denominations of Christendom, and is
traditionally held, from the neglect of investigation, by nearly
all Christians. By this theory the words of James who writes,
"Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death" are interpreted
with strict literalness. It is conceived that, had not evil
entered the first man's heart and caused him to fall from his
native innocence, he would have roamed among the flowers of Eden
to this day. But he violated the commandment of his Maker, and
sentence of death was passed upon him and his posterity. We are
now to prove that this ima