o
it is one which to our minds is quite obvious and natural, so we are apt
to think that in this particular story there is less than usual that
particularly concerns us. But it so happens, that our Lord, in answering
the Sadducees, has brought in one of the most universal and most solemn
of all truths,--which is indeed implied in many parts of the Old
Testament, but which the Gospel has revealed to us in all its
fulness,--the truth contained in the words of the text, that "God is not
the God of the dead, but of the living."

I would wish to unfold a little what is contained in these words, which
we often hear even, perhaps, without quite understanding them; and many
times oftener without fully entering into them. And we may take them,
first, in their first part, where they say that "God is not the God of
the dead."

The word "dead," we know, is constantly used in Scripture in a double
sense, as meaning those who are dead spiritually, as well as those who
are dead naturally. And, in either sense, the words are alike
applicable: "God is not the God of the dead."

God's not being the God of the dead signifies two things: that they who
are without him are dead, as well as that they who are dead are also
without him. So far as our knowledge goes respecting inferior animals,
they appear to be examples of this truth. They appear to us to have no
knowledge of God; and we are not told that they have any other life than
the short one of which our senses inform us. I am well aware that our
ignorance of their condition is so great that, we may not dare to say
anything of them positively; there may be a hundred things true
respecting them which we neither know nor imagine. I would only say
that, according to that most imperfect light in which we see them, the
two points of which I have been speaking appear to meet in them: we
believe that they have no consciousness of God, and we believe that they
will die. And so far, therefore, they afford an example of the
agreement, if I may so speak, between these two points; and were
intended, perhaps, to be to our view a continual image of it. But we had
far better speak of ourselves. And here, too, it is the case that "God
is not the God of the dead." If we are without him we are dead; and if
we are dead we are without him: in other words, the two ideas of death
and absence from God are in fact synonymous.

Thus, in the account given of the fall of man, the sentence of death and
of bein