immortal soul that flies away from the body at death, and is conscious somewhere, either happy or miserable. It is only your inference drawn from certain passages. And you should know one thing: that when you draw an inference from one passage that flatly contradicts a plain and positive assertion in another passage, your inference is wrong and must be given up. If we allow men to draw inferences to contradict positive assertions, we allow men to sustain every false doctrine and system of error from the Bible under heaven. We destroy at once every sound principle of true interpretation, and common-sense understanding of the Scriptures. But to proceed. Ps. 6 4, 5: Return, O Lord, deliver my soul: Oh save me for thy mercies' sake. For in death there is no remembrance of thee; in the grave who shall give thee thanks? David understood well where he was going he was going into the land of forgetfulness, where there would be no remembrance of God, and he cries earnestly to the Lord that he might not be left there, that the Lord would return and deliver his soul. Ps. 17: 15: As for me I will behold thy face in righteousness. I shall be satisfied when I awake with thy likeness. No beholding his face in death, no satisfaction when in the sleep of death, but he was confident that he should awake again, that the Lord would return and awake him, i.e., resurrect him. Job has the same faith. 19:23:

Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were written in a book!

That they were graven with an iron pen and lead in the rock forever!

For I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth.

And though, after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God;

Whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another, though my reins be consumed within me.

How plain the truth is brought out in these passages,

that the dead enjoy not the knowledge and presence of God, that their hope was in a resurrection, and that without this they would indeed perish. 10:18:

Wherefore then hast thou brought me forth out of the womb? Oh that I had given up the ghost, and no eye had ever seen me!

I should have been as though I had not been; I should have been carried from the womb to the grave.

Are not my days few? cease then, and let me alone, that I may take comfort a little,

Before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and the shadow of death;

A land of darkness, as darkness itself; and of the shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness.

To believe in the doctrine of the resurrection, we must see its necessity; and to see its necessity we must know the state of the dead. And their state and condition can not be more definitely and plainly set forth than in the Scriptures we are noticing.

Oh, that he had died as soon as he was born, then he would have been carried from the womb to the grave, and been as though he had not been; but as it is, my days are few, therefore I shall go to that dark land-dark as darkness itself, where there is no order—no law, physical or moralor intelligence, but all is still and unconscious. 14; 10:

But 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.

O that thou wouldst hide me in the grave, that thou wouldst keep me secret, until thy wrath be past, that thou wouldst appoint me a set time, and remember me!

If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.

Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee, thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands.

In a natural sleep-sound and healthy-the person is

not capable of knowing and doing business, he cannot in this state praise the Lord, or take any part in the common concerns of life, how much less when he goes into a dead sleep-when spirit and body are disunited! Hence this truth: As the flood decayeth and drieth up, so that there is nothing to be seen of it—the earth having drunk it in— so man lieth down-goes into the earth until the heavens be no more, he shall not awake or be raised out of his sleep. So Job, like the Psalmist, wanted to be remembered. He wanted God to appoint the time--a set time--and all this appointed time would he wait with patience and resignation, till his change should come. Then said he, Thou shalt call, and I will answer. Yes, Job and all the servants of Christ will hear his voice, and answer to the call, and come forth at the appointed time-at the resurrection of the great day.

The reason why Job and David were so anxious to be remembered, and seemed to express some fears as though they might be forgotten, was their limited knowledge, from necessity, of the doctrine of the resurrection. Life and immortality was not brought to light fully till the gospel, and the doctrine of the resurrection was not so definitely preached and understood, till Christ appeared. He showed that he was the resurrection and the life, and would certainly raise up all his followers at the last day.

Again, Eccl. 3: 18, 19, 20, 21.

I said in my heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts.

For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath: so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity.

All go unto one place: all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?

Let it be noticed in this quotation, that only in one thing are men and beasts alike, viz., they die alike, and go to one place all are of the dust, and all go to dust again. In this one particular, man has no preeminence above a beast. Now then, to the doctrine of the spirit. Who knoweth the one that goeth up, or the other that goeth down? If we say that the spirit of life that God breathed into man, was a rational mind and soul, we say that beasts have rational souls, for the same thing that God breathed into man, he gave to beasts. See Gen. 1: 30. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein is [a living spirit. Heb.] life. 6:17.

And, behold, I, even I, do bring a flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy all flesh, wherein is the breath of life, from under heaven; and every thing that is in the earth shall die.

7:15, 21, 22, And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.

And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth, and every man.

All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, dieth.

It is a truth then, from which we cannot escape—we are chained to the point, that the spirit of life in a beast is the same as the spirit of life in a man. All that God did was to put this spirit in man's organism, and he became a living soul. The difference between man and beast does not consist in the spirit or breath of life, which each possesses, but in the organism. The beasts were made after their kind but man after the image of God and angels. Beasts have animal life enough to think, and reason, but they have no rational mind, because they have no organism adapted to reasoning. Mind is the result of spirit, or the power and principle of life acting upon the brain. Man can see when he has a perfect organ of sight, or eye, upon which

this spirit of life can act. And sight is the result of the action of this power within us upon the organ of the eye. If this organ is defective, sight is defective; and if he is born blind and without the proper construction of this organ of the eyes, he is never conscious of sight. And so with the ear-with tasting-smelling, and all the organs and sensations of the body. You may have this spirit in you, but it cannot see without the eye, or hear without the ear, or feel without the nervous system, or think and reason, and carry on mental operations, without the organ of the brain. And when this organ is defective, the mind is defective. Consequently at death, when the spirit of life separates from the organism, there is no conscious existence, for there is no more exercise of these organs to produce conscious existence. Hence, the organism is the man proper.

And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into man's nostrils this spirit or breath of life, and man became a living soul. His soul or body was not alive before. Organism then, is necessary to have a living soul. If there could be a living soul without organism, then the Lord's form out of the dust, with its beautiful organs, was a vain and unnecessary work; as the doctrine is believed, that man has more mind, knows more, and is better capable of mental acts out of the body than in it. The absurdity of such a doctrine is too apparent, and too ridiculous to be retained in the creed of any man. There is not the shadow of a foundation, or any semblance to reason and common sense, and much less Scripture, in the idea that the dead are conscious, or that the spirit, or soul, if you please to call it, can see, hear, speak, and perform mental operations out of the body.

The spirit is the moving power in man, or the power that works all his organs and faculties.To illustrate. We enter a factory, and view a machine