Consider the position of death in the present economy of human development. The human body, as being compounded of matter, was of its own nature subject to change, dissolution, and the revival of its atoms in new combinations. Only Supreme Infinite Life is permanent. But God raised man in Paradise above the rest of creation. By imparting supernatural life He raised matter in man to a certain union with the Divinity. He gave man an immortal soul, not as an evolution of anterior life, but as an extraneous gift from Himself. "He breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul" (Gen. ii. 7). The immortal superior life carried with it the permanence of the material life. Man was to survive in his entirety. The sin of Adam disorganized all this. The supernatural life was the key stone of the arch, keeping every other element in its place; that being lost, the cohesion of the rest ceased, the system collapsed, man fell to the lower natural state. "By one man sin entered into this world, and by sin death; and so death passed upon all men in whom all have sinned" (Rom. v. 12). The supernatural life is indeed reconveyed to us, but without fixity of tenure, and with only the reversion of immortality. The body must be resolved and remade again, in order that the taint of sin be thoroughly eliminated. Submit humbly to the decree of death.
