1. Death is compared to sleep. There must, then, be some analogy between a state of sleep and a state of death, and this analogy must pertain to that which renders sleep a peculiar condition. Our condition in sleep differs from our condition when awake, simply in this, that when we are soundly asleep we are entirely _unconscious_. In this respect, then, death is like sleep; that is, the dead are unconscious. This figure is frequently used to represent the condition of the dead. Dan. 12:2: “Many of them that _sleep_ in the dust of the earth shall awake.” Matt. 27:52: “Many bodies of the saints which _slept_ arose.” Acts 7:60: After Stephen had beheld the vision of Christ and was stoned to death, the record says, he “fell _asleep_.” In 1 Cor. 15:20, Christ is called the first-fruits of them that _slept_; and in verse 57, Paul says, “We shall not all _sleep_.” Again Paul writes to the Thessalonians, 1 Thess. 4:13, 14, that he would not have them ignorant concerning them which are _asleep_. In verse 14, he speaks of them as _asleep_ in Jesus, and explains what he means, in verse 16, by calling them “dead in Christ.” And the advocates of the conscious state cannot dispose of these expressions by saying that they apply to the body merely; for they do not hold that the consciousness which we have in life (which is what we lose in death) pertains to the body merely. Job plainly declares that they will not awake till the resurrection, at the last day. “Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.” If, therefore, there is no resurrection, these dead are destined to sleep in unconsciousness forever. 2. The dead are in a condition as though they had not been. So Job testifies; for he affirms that if he could have died in earliest infancy, like a hidden, untimely birth, he would not have been; and in this respect he declared he would have been like kings, counsellors, and princes of the earth who built costly tombs in which to enshrine their bodies when dead. To that condition he applies the expression which has since been so often quoted, “There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest.” Job 3:11-18. If, then, a person when dead is as though he had not been, without a resurrection to release him from this state, he will never be, or exist, again.