The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 318

—

XVI.

Our Death. "

You who were dead and

Ephes.

sin."

in trespasses

ii.

i.

Next

in order comes the discussion of death. There is sin, which is deviation from and resistance against the law. There is guilt, which is withholding from God that which, as the Giver and Upholder of that law, is due to Him. But there is a.\so punishffiefit, which is the Lawgiver's act of upholding His law

against the lawbreaker.

ment

"

The Sacred

Scripture calls this punish-

death."

To understand what death is, we must first ask: " What is life?" And the answer in its most general form is "A thing lives if it moves from within." A man found in the street, leaning against a :

wall, perfectly motionless, is

his head, or

moves

his hand,

supposed to be dead

we know

;

tho almost imperceptible and so feeble that

tion,

but

that he is alive. it

if

he turns

The mo-

requires the

always the sign of life. The muscles may be paralyzed, tendons and sinews rigid, yet so long as the pulse beats, the heart throbs, and the lungs inhale

practised fingers of the physician to detect

the

air, life

is

it,

is

In the doubtful cases of drowning,

not extinct.

trance, or paralysis, the doubt is not removed, if

removed

at all,

motion has been observed. Hence we may safely say a body lives if it moves from within. This can not be said of a clock, for its mechanism lacks inherent, self-moving power. By winding, energy may be stored in its mainspring, but when this is spent the clock stops. But life is not a force added to a prepared organism, mechanically and temporarily, but an energy that inheres in the organism as an organic prinuntil

ciple.

Hence itself,

it is

plain that the

but receives

moved by

the soul.

it

human body has no

from the

Even

soul.

The arm

vital principle in

is

motionless until

the functions of circulation, breathing,

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