Two deaths are here brought to view: First, the death common to this state of being, which all share alike, good and bad, which is called the first, or temporal, death; secondly, if a person dies this death in a state of sin, that is, with sins upon him of which he does not repent before he dies, _for_ those sins that he has committed he shall die. Another death awaits him. The first death was not for his personal transgressions; for this is entailed upon all alike through Adam, both good and bad. But every one is to die for his own sins unless he repents. How is this to be brought about? He is to be raised from the first death and judged; and, if sins are then found upon him, for those sins he suffers the same penalty, death; and being thus reduced to death again, he will forever remain dead; for from this death there is no release nor redemption provided. This is the second death, and is the everlasting punishment in store for all the workers of iniquity. Paul says, Rom. 6:23, “The wages of sin is death;” and James (1:15) corroborates this testimony, by saying, “Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” In Rom. 2, Paul tells us of certain characters which are certainly deserving, if any can be, of eternal torture; but, in passing sentence upon them, he does not draw out before us a picture of unending conscious misery, a course for which he has the most appropriate occasion, if it be true, but only tells us, in accordance with reason as well as revelation, that they are worthy of _death_. But death is a state which can be reached only on a complete extinction of life. As long as there is any life about a man, he is not dead. “The death that never dies,” is a contradiction of terms. Nor can a person properly be said to be dying, unless he is tending to a state of death, which he will by and by reach. And yet the popular view of this subject is well expressed in the following language of Thomas Vincent:-- “The torments of hell will not be in one part only, but in every part, not in a weaker degree, but in the greatest extremity; not for a day, or a month, or a year, but forever: the wicked will be always dying, never dead; the pangs of death will ever be upon them, and yet they shall never give up the ghost; if they could die they would think themselves happy; they will always be roaring, and never breathe out their last; always sinking, and never come to the bottom; always burning in those flames, and never consumed; the eternity of hell will be the hell of hell.”