Temporal death alone remains to be considered; but the interpretation which is given to this, completely nullifies the penalty, and makes Satan to have been correct when he said, “Thou shalt not surely die.” Temporal death is interpreted to mean the separation of the soul from the body, the body alone to die, but the soul, which is called the real, responsible man, to enter upon an enlarged and higher life. In this case, there is no death; and the sentence should have read, In the day thou eatest thereof, thou shalt be freed from the clog of this mortal body, and enter upon a new and eternal life. So said Satan, “Ye shall be as gods;” and true to this assertion from the father of lies, the heathen have all along deified their dead men, and worshiped their departed heroes; and modern poets have sung, “There is no death; what seems so is transition.” If ever the skill of a deceiver and the gullibility of a victim were manifested in an unaccountable degree, it is in this fact, that right in the face and eyes of the pale throng that daily passes down through the gate of death, the devil can make men believe that after all his first lie was true, and there is no such thing as death. From these considerations, it is evident that nothing will meet the demands of the sentence but the cessation of the life of the whole man. But that, says one, cannot be, for he was to die in the very day he ate of the forbidden fruit; but he did not literally die for nine hundred and thirty years. If this is an objection against the view we advocate, it is equally such against every other. Take the threefold penalty above noticed. If death spiritual, death temporal, and death eternal, was the penalty, how much was fulfilled on the day he sinned? Not death eternal, surely, and not death temporal, which did not take place for nine hundred and thirty years, but only death spiritual. But this was only the first installment of the penalty, and far less important than the other two. The most that the friends of this interpretation can say, therefore, is that the penalty begun on that very day to be fulfilled. But we can say as much with our view. “Dying, thou shalt die,” reads the margin; which some understand to mean, thou shalt inherit a mortal nature, and the process of decay shall commence. As soon as he sinned, he came under the sentence of death, and the work commenced. He bore up against the encroachments of dissolution for nine hundred and thirty years, and then the work was fully accomplished. When God proceeded to pronounce sentence upon Adam, he gave us an authoritative interpretation of the penalty from which there is no appeal. Gen. 3:19: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: _for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return_.”