rd in a symbolic sense,
meaning spiritual deadness and misery, which is a perfect
retribution, because it discriminates with unerring exactness.
This has been conclusively proved by Klaiber,1 who shows that the
peculiar language of Paul in regard to the trichotomist division
of man into spirit, soul, and body necessarily involves the
perception of physical death as a natural fact.

7. Finally, natural death cannot be the penalty of
unrighteousness, because it is not a curse and a woe, but a
blessing and a privilege. Epictetus wrote, "It would be a curse
upon ears of corn not to be reaped; and we ought to know that it
would be a curse upon man not to die." 2 It cannot be the effect
of man's sin, because it is the improvement of man's condition.
Who can believe it would be better for man to remain on earth
forever, under any

1 Die Neutestamentliche Lehre von der Sunde and Erlosung, ss. 22
45.

2 Dissert. ii. 6, 2.

circumstances, than it is for him to go to heaven to such an
experience as the faithful follower of Christ supposes is there
awaiting him? It is not to be thought by us that death is a
frowning enemy thrusting us into the gloom of eternal night or
into the flaming waves of irremediable torment, but rather a
smiling friend ushering us into the endless life of the spiritual
world and into the unveiled presence of God. According to the
arrangement and desire of God, for us to die is gain: every
personal exception to this if there be any exception is caused
through the marring interference of personal wickedness with the
Creator's intention and with natural order. Who has not sometimes
felt the bondage of the body and the trials of earth, and peered
with awful thrills of curiosity into the mysteries of the unseen
world, until he has longed for the hour of the soul's liberation,
that it might plume itself for an immortal flight? Who has not
experienced moments of serene faith, in which he could hardly help
exclaiming, "I would not live alway; I ask not to stay: Oh, who
would live alway away from his God?"

A favorite of Apollo prayed for the best gift Heaven could bestow
upon man. The god said, "At the end of seven days it shall be
granted: in the mean time, live happy." At the appointed hour he
fell into a sweet slumber, from which he never awoke.3 He who
regards death as upon the whole an evil does not take the
Christian's view of it, not even the enlightened pagan's view, but
the frightened sensualis