ill of God. In the story of Eden God
is represented as warning man of the poisonous nature of the forbidden
fruit, which is incompatible with the idea of death as an essential feature
of man's nature. Then from the point where man has taken the poison all the
rest of the Bible is devoted to telling us how to get rid of it. Christ, it
tells us, was manifested to bring Life and Immortality to light--to abolish
death--to destroy the works of the devil, that is the death-dealing power,
for "he that hath the power of death is the devil." It is impossible to
reconcile this life-giving conception of the Bible with the idea that death
at any stage or in any degree is the desire of God. Let us, therefore,
start with the recognition that this negative force, whether in its minor
degrees as disease or in its culmination as death, is that which it is the
will of God to abolish. This also is logical; for if God be the Universal
Spirit of Life finding manifestation in individual lives, how can the
desire of this Spirit be to act in opposition to its own manifestation?
Therefore Scripture and common-sense alike assure us that the will of God
toward us is Life and not death.[8]

We may therefore start on our quest for Life with the happy certainty that
God is on our side. But people will meet us with the objection that though
God wills Life to us, He does not will it just yet, but only in some dim
far-off future. How do we know this? Certainly not from the Bible. In the
Bible Jesus speaks of two classes of persons who believe on Him as the
Manifestation or Individualisation of the Spirit of Life. He speaks of
those who, having passed through death, still believe on Him, and says that
these _shall_ live--a future event. And at the same time He speaks of those
who are living and believe on Him, and says that they shall never die--thus
contemplating the entire elimination of the contingency of death (John xi.
25).

Again St. Paul expresses his wish not to be unclothed but to be clothed
upon, which he certainly would not have done had he considered the latter
alternative a nonsensical fancy. And in another place he expressly states
that we shall not all die, but that some shall be transmuted into the
Resurrection body without passing through physical death. And if we turn to
the Old Testament we find two instances in which this is said to have
actually occurred, those of Enoch and Elijah. And we may note in passing
that the Bible draws our