Nay, when such faith and hope form an anchor to the soul, it is not necessary that the physical preparation, which I have described, should exist. The poor body may be torn by fierce disease, nay, by the infernal cruelties of martyrdom, and yet faith can rise--often has risen--over the pains of nature, in joyful triumph; and in the midst of the tempest, with her anchor fastened to the eternal Rock, she can exclaim, _O death, where is thy sting! O grave, where is thy victory! Thanks be to God, which giveth me the victory through my Lord Jesus Christ._ Surely such a dissolution as this cannot mean the death mentioned in the primeval curse. Look now at the contrast. Behold a man writhing in the fangs of unrelenting disease, and feeling at the same time the scorpion sting of a guilty conscience. His present suffering is terrible, but that in prospect is more so; yet he cannot bribe the king of terrors to delay the fatal stroke. "The foe, Like a stanch murderer, steady to his purpose, Urges the soul through every nook and lane of life." It were enough for an unruffled mind to bear the bodily anguish of that dying hour. But the unpardoned sins of a whole life, and the awful retributions of a whole eternity, come crowding into that point of time; and no human fortitude can stand under the crushing load. This, this is emphatically death; the genuine fruit of sin, and therefore in correspondence with the original threatening. If we turn now to the Scriptures, we shall find some passages in striking agreement with the opinion that the death threatened to man was not the mere dissolution of the body and soul; not a mere going out of the world, but the manner of going. This is, indeed, made exceedingly probable by the facts already stated respecting the translation of Enoch and Elijah, and those alive at the coming of Christ. For the sacred writers do not call this death, although it be a removal out of the world, and a transformation of the natural into the spiritual body. Hence, upon the material part of men, the same effects were produced as result from ordinary death, and the subsequent resurrection. If we recur to the original threatening of death as the consequence of sin, we shall find a peculiarity in the form of expression, which our English translators have rendered by the phrase _thou shalt surely die_; but literally it should be, _dying thou shalt die_.