his followers from natural
decay and death: therefore that is not what Adam's transgression
brought upon his children; but it entailed upon them proclivities
to evil, spiritual unrest, and woe. The basis of the comparison is
evidently this: Adam's fall showed that the consequences of sin,
through the stern operation of the law, were strife, despair, and
misery, all of which is implied in the New Testament usage of the
word "death;" Christ's mission showed that the consequences of
righteousness, through the free grace of God, were faith, peace,
and indestructible happiness, all of which is implied in the New
Testament usage of the word "life." In the mind of Paul there was
undoubtedly an additional thought, connecting the descent of the
soul to the under world with the death of the sinful Adam, and its
ascent to heaven with the resurrection of the immaculate Christ;
but this does not touch the argument just advanced, because it
does not refer to the cause of physical dissolution, but to what
followed that event.

4. It will not be out of place here to demonstrate that sin
actually was not the origin of natural decay, by the revelations
of science, which prove that death was a monarch on the earth for
ages before moral transgression was known. As the geologist
wanders, and studies the records of nature, where earthquake,
deluge, and volcano have exposed the structure of the globe and
its organic remains in strata piled on strata, upon these, as upon
so many pages of the earth's autobiography, he reads the history
of a hundred races of animals which lived and died, leaving their
bones layer above layer, in regular succession, centuries before
the existence of man. It is evident, then, that, independent of
human guilt, and from the very first, chemical laws were in force,
and death was a part of God's plan in the material creation. As
the previous animals perished without sin, so without sin the
animal part of man too would have died. It was made perishable
from the outset. The important point just here in the theology of
Paul was, as previously implied, that death was intended to lead
the soul directly to heaven in a new "spiritual body" or "heavenly
house;" but sin marred the plan, and doomed the soul to go into
the under world, a naked manes, when "unclothed" of "the natural
body" or "earthly house." The mission of Christ was to restore the
original plan; and it would be consummated at his second coming.

5. There i