(iii.) Moreover, it is the work of Satan to invest death with its chief terrors. We shrink indeed from the humiliating prospect of corruption and decay; we cling fondly to those companionships, associations, and pleasures, from which death for ever separates us; we deprecate and dread the blighting of our earthly hopes, and the ruthless frustration of our schemes. These are very painful accessories of death; but they are not its sting; they do not make it a poison for the soul as well as for the body. "The sting of death is sin." That sting has been drawn for the Christian, and death hath no terrors for him. But, had the power of the devil in death been unassailed and uncounteracted, the dissolution of the body and the eternal ruin of the soul would have been alike complete and irrecoverable. By the consciousness of guilt, Satan has infused an element of insupportable terror into death. For it is that consciousness which makes death dreadful. It is quite probable that, if man had not sinned, his body would have undergone some great change, that it might be fitted for that "kingdom of God," which "flesh and blood cannot inherit;" but such change would have inflicted no pain, and involved no humiliation; it would only have been a change "from glory to glory;" and would have been anticipated with no sentiments contrary to desire and hope. But death, besides its own inherent ghastliness, is rendered dreadful through the malice of the devil, and the guilty fear of the penal hereafter which haunts all those who are in his power. 3. _Jesus died to destroy_ "_him that had the power of death_." He has indeed provisionally destroyed death itself for all "the sons of God." "Death, the last enemy, shall be destroyed." But it is not absolutely and immediately abolished. The death of the body remains, even for God's people, as a sad and humiliating monument of the evil of sin; but to them it is not now a punishment, but the mode of their birth into a new and more glorious life. "Mortals cry, 'A man is dead!' Angels sing, 'A child is born!'"