“Again: we find our Saviour saying, ‘He that believeth on me hath everlasting life;’ ‘Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you;’ and, ‘The words that I speak unto you are spirit, and are life.’ (John 6:47, 53, 63.) By these verses we are taught once more, that the Greek terms which denote life and death, living and dying, were applied by Christ to opposite moral states of the soul. For, observe, (1.) he more than intimates that his words, his doctrines, are the source of present life to those who receive them, and that, by eating his flesh and drinking his blood, he signifies a reception of his words, and so of himself as the Lamb of God. And, (2.) he declares that one who believes _has_ eternal life; that one who eats of the true bread shall not die, but shall live forever; and that one who does not eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man _hath not life_ in himself. “Is it not plain that the words _life_ and _death_, as well as the words _bread_, _flesh_, and _blood_, _eating_ and _drinking_, are here used in a spiritual sense? Is it not plain that Jesus here speaks of something in the believer’s soul which is nourished by Christian truth, and which is at the same time called _life_? But it is the function of truth to quicken thought and feeling, to determine the modes of conscious life, the character or moral condition of the human soul; and hence the rejection of it may involve the utter want of certain spiritual _qualities_ and blessed _emotions_, but not the want of personal existence. In still another place we read, ‘Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ (John 11:25, 26.) Christ here affirms that every believer is exempted from death. And it matters not for our present purpose whether the word ζῶν, translated in our version ‘liveth,’ refers in this passage to physical or to moral life. If it refers to physical life, then our Saviour pronounces the Christian to be already, in time, delivered from the power of death, and in possession of a true and immortal life. But if it refers to moral life, Christ declares that whoever possesses this life, whether in the body or out of the body, is delivered from the power of death; that is, his union with God and delight in him, which alone constitute the normal living of the soul, shall never be interrupted: οὐ μὴ ἀποθάνῃ εἰς τὸν αἰώνα—_he shall never die_....