The beautiful passage in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, already quoted, where the Christian, in view of death, exultingly exclaims, _O death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory!_ will doubtless occur to all who hear me, in this connection. Here the sting of death is expressly declared to be sin, and that the pardoned Christian obtains the victory over it. To him all that renders this king of terrors formidable is gone. Its physical sufferings may indeed be left, but these are hardly worth naming, when that which constitutes the sting of this great enemy--unpardoned guilt--is taken away. Little more than his harmless shadow is left. Worlds, indeed, are to be exchanged, and so they must have been if Adam had never been driven from paradise. The eyes, too, must close on beloved friends; but how soon to open them upon the bright glories of heaven! In short, the strong impression of this passage upon the mind is, that the essential thing in death is unpardoned sin; and therefore the death threatened to Adam may have been only the terrible aggravations of a departure out of this world, which have followed in the train of transgression.
Another striking passage, bearing upon the same point, is the declaration of Paul, that _Jesus Christ hath abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel_.
The apostle does not surely mean that Christians are freed from what is commonly called death, since universal experience shows that animal life in them is as sure to be extinguished, and the soul to be separated from the body, as in others. But so different is death now, since Christ has brought to light a future and an immortal life, and by the sacrifice of himself shown how the heart may be reconciled to God, and sin forgiven, and faith inspired, that, in fact, while the shadow of death still occupies the passage to eternity, its substance is gone.
That death, which sin introduced, Christ has abolished, because, by his sacrifice and his grace, he has conquered sin.
Upon the whole, though we may not be convinced that either of the theories that have been explained is directly taught in the Scriptures, or can be shown to be infallibly true, yet they are sustained by probable evidence enough to remove the apprehension that there is any real discrepancy between geology and revelation on the subject of death. Between these theories there is but a slight difference. They are in fact but modifications of the same general principles; and I say it would be more philosophical to admit the truth of either of them, than a disagreement between science and Scripture, since the truth of both geology and revelation is sustained by such a mass of independent evidence.