the real man passes from one stage of being to another. It is said that the obedient and faithful shall "never see death," "never die," because all such are delivered from condemnation, and gifted with the blessings of "life eternal."
Death, as denoting the extinction of life, is a term applicable only to the natural body. It takes place when the disarrangement of its organization, by disease or other causes, unfits it for the habitation of the soul. Death then means that event by which the soul, as the real spiritual man, is separated from the body, which is merely its earthly covering. The body, which dies, is constituted of material substances, and therefore it is liable to all their mutations. It is not properly the man; it is only an instrument annexed to him, in order that the end of his creation may be promoted by a residence for a season in this world of nature. When the material body comes into such a condition that it is incapable of serving the soul's purposes as such an instrument, man is said to die: not that the man suffers an extinction of his life, but by that circumstance he is only separated from that outward covering by which he communicated with this world and its concerns, and has his existence transferred to the spiritual world.[1] The man lives, though his earthly tabernacle is dissolved. The natural body dies, whether it belongs to the sinner or to the saint; still, in all cases, the real being survives the catastrophe; for it is said of the wicked that "their worm dieth not,"[2] and of the good that they "shall never see death."[3] The death of the natural body cannot for a moment interrupt the life of the soul: if it did so we must at once relinquish all belief in its immortality; for that which dies, even for a moment, cannot be immortal.
- ↑ Burial Service of the New Church Liturgy.
- ↑ Mark ix. 44.
- ↑ John viii. 51.
