Let us now apply this to the scriptures.  Man sinned, and not only involved himself in guilt and misery, but was sentenced to that very death with which God threatened him—­“Dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return.”  Here was the end of the first covenant, and the termination of all the miseries of life.  It is evident from revelation as well as reason that man at death drops to a state of insensibility, and knows no more till he is made alive in Christ, who is himself the second covenant.  The language of scripture is, the dead know not any thing—­they sleep—­and the apostle (in 1 Cor. xv Chap.) reasons that if there be no resurrection, then there will be no future existence—­ that they which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished—­that preaching was vain—­faith was also vain, and that the christians were yet in their sins.  On such language as this, I can put no other construction than that the resurrection is our salvation and eternal life, our deliverance from sin and imperfection.  Under the first covenant the resurrection in Christ was not revealed to the human family, and they remained of course under the sentence of condemnation with no hopes of a future existence.  “By the offense of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation.”  Obedience to the law was enforced by threatenings on the one hand, and promises of temporal rewards on the other, which were communicated to the fathers by the prophets.

But God has in these latter days spoken unto us by his Son, and through him revealed the second covenant in which he “gave him the heathen for an inheritance, and the utter most parts of the earth for a possession,” and declared him to be the resurrection and life of the world.  If in the divine counsels no Christ had been provided, the human family it appears would have remained in eternal slumber.  They would have known but one covenant, which would have rewarded and punished them according to their deeds, and consigned them to the regions of the dead.  “But since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.”

God saw fit to keep the human family for four thousand years under the first covenant, without the knowledge of eternal life through the resurrection of the dead.  But it was, at length, “made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”  Yes, he first brought it to light, and through his apostle declared “In hope of eternal life which God that cannot lie promised before the world began, but hath in due time manifested his word through preaching.”  This promise of eternal life, all men are called upon to believe.  The moment they believe, they are saved by faith, and are at peace; and they that doubt are damned—­they are already under condemnation.  But shall their unbelief make God’s promise of eternal life of none effect?  God forbid; yea let God be true but every man a liar.  “For he hath concluded them all in unbelief that he might have mercy upon all.”