The Meaning of Eternal Life
By Editor
ELSEWHERE in this paper we have written briefly on the subject of eternal life, showing that it can be obtained only in Christ, and that to deny that life comes only through Christ is virtually to deny Christ. Now it is doubtless a fact that the most of the professed Christians who believe that all men, whether good or bad, will exist throughout eternity, imagine that they do believe in life through Christ, because they confound life with happiness. They hold that only believers in Christ will have eternal happiness, and that unbelievers will be doomed to eternal misery, and they call the first state eternal life, and the second state eternal death. But in considering this subject it should not be forgotten that life and death are distinctly opposite conditions. As long as a man has breath he is alive, no matter how miserable he may be. People who are suffering intense agony, sometimes pray for death to relieve them of their sufferings. Nobody considers them dead because they are in misery. So if the wicked were to be drowned to an eternity of conscious suffering, they would have eternal life just as surely as would the righteous in glory. Let the terms "life" and "death" be taken in their simple, obvious meaning, and the doctrine of immortality as revealed in the Bible may very easily be understood.