I turn to the question of the entrance of death. Mr. N. examines the present condition of man's body, which scripture declares and every one knows to be mortal; and states, that as it is constituted it must be so, and hence argues that it must have been so in a state which he knows nothing about. And that is called logic! Is it impossible that it should have been in another state? Of course, as it is, it is mortal. But could not God have sustained it? All things subsist by Him. An animal that lives a century or two, or an insect that closes its life with the evening of its birthday, are all constituted so by Him with whom are the issues of life. Could He not have ever sustained the life of him whom He had made in His own image? A heathen, Callimachus, will tell him, that in Him we live, and move, and have our being. Mr. N. will tell us that the earth could not have held them. Who told him they would have stayed there? All this is mete gratuitous supposition.
One thing is certain, that some dire and ruinous confusion is entered in; and whatever Mr. N. may dream in his closet, the misery, the violence, the horrors of the four quarters of the globe proclaim an unintelligible Deity, or a desolated and ruined, because a sinful, world. He must be as hard-hearted as the god his imagination would content itself with, or admit that sin has brought in desolation and misery. Death is but the seal and stamp that characterizes an existence over which it casts its fear, if thought allows anything but a willful folly which is worse; and indeed it extends its power and gloom over man in spite of folly, so as to make a Savior weep, though he that denies Him can look at it with indifference, because he can hide it from his heart, till it meets his eye, or-which God forbid-too late, appalls his conscience.
But Mr. N. will teach us more than scripture. Man is like the brutes that perish, and must have always been so. Death could not have come upon animals. Geology, he says, tells us so. Now I do not pretend to judge this absolutely. The apostle, in speaking of death entering into this world, says nothing whatever of what has happened in others, or with other creatures. He does not even speak of beasts. Now man has not been found in any ancient fossil remains.