But some one will say--"Die?--of course we shall all die--good and bad alike." Is it so, my friends? Then why does our Lord say, "He that liveth and believeth in me shall never die?" And why does St. Paul say, "If ye through the spirit do mortify," that is crush, and as it were kill, "the deeds of the body," all those low animal passions and vices, "ye shall live." Let us look at the text again. "If ye live after the flesh ye shall die." If you give way to those animal passions and vices--low and cruel--or even merely selfish and frivolous, you shall die; not merely your bodies--they will die in any case--the animals do--for animals they are, and as animals die they must. But over and above that--you yourselves shall die--your character will die, your manhood or your womanhood will die, your immortal soul will die. The likeness of God in you will die. Oh, my friends, there is a second death to which that first death of the body is a mere trivial and harmless accident--the death of sin which kills the true man and true woman within you. And that second death may begin in this life, and if it be not stopped and cured in time, may go on for ever. The black horse of which I spoke just now, may get the mastery and drag us down, down, into bogs out of which we can never rise--over cliffs which we can never climb again--down lower and lower--more and more foolish, more and more reckless, more and more base, more and more wretched. And then there will be no more use in saying, "The Lord have mercy on my soul," for we shall have no soul left to have mercy on. This is the dark side of the matter--a very dark one: but it has to be spoken of, because it is true; and what is more, it comes true only too often in this world. God grant, my dear friends, that it may not come true of any of you. But there is also a bright side to the matter--and on that I will speak now, in order that this sermon may end, as such gospel sermons surely should end, not with threats and fear, but with hope and comfort.