The next step in the qualification for obtaining a place of royalty with Jesus, is that of so overcoming by faith of all the difficulties in the way of Christian growth, as not to be hurt of the second death. In order to understand what the second death is, we must have a scriptural knowledge of what is the first death. When God told Adam that in the day he ate of the fruit of the tree of good and evil, he should surely die; the literal rendering would be, "in dying, thou shalt surely die." That is in the day he ate of the fruit, he would begin to die, and that death would be consummated in a complete death, both spiritually and physically. Adam did die spiritually, in the loss of primitive holiness, and though his body lived nearly a thousand years, yet it at last yielded to mortality. Now the first death is that which is entailed upon us by the fall of our first parents. Death nowhere means annihilation, but simply the separation of any living being or organ, from its true foundation of life. Hence spiritual death is the separation of the human spirit from God, who is the ceaseless fountain of holiness and love, and when the soul breaks company with the Spirit of God, and loses inward purity and holy love, it enters a state of soul death. And the death of the body consists, not in the destruction of a single particle of the bodily organism, but in the separation of the body from the animating soul which inhabits it. A piece of plank was once a living tree, but it has been separated from the vital sap which once flowed in it, and is dead, but not one atom of it is annihilated. So Satan and all his evil angels, were once in their primitive creation in fellowship with God, but they have broken union with the eternal fountain of love, and are utterly dead in sin, and filled with, iniquity, yet not annihilated, nor have any of their original faculties or capabilities been destroyed, but are utterly perverted in a life of sin. Hence the iniquitous heresy of the annihilation of men's souls is a delusion of Satan, and comes from an ignorant confounding of the term death, with non-existence. Now this first death, which comes from Adam, both morally and physically, has been atoned for by the incarnation and death of the Son of God. So that no human being will ever be finally lost because of Adam's transgression. Jesus has purchased, by His sufferings and death and resurrection, an absolute indemnity from the fall of Adam, making ample provision for all of the consequences of Adam's transgression, both for the removal of all original sin. and the raising again from the dead every human being. Every infant born in the human race comes into being under the covenant of redeeming grace. We are expressly told that, "as in Adam all died, so in Christ shall all be made alive." From this we learn that the iniquity of Adam, as an open transgressor, is not imputed to any infant in the form of actual guilt, and that the principle of indwelling sin, which is in the infant, has its ample remedy in the shed blood of Jesus, and if the infant dies before reaching the age of accountability, its nature is thoroughly purified, on the basis of the covenant which the Son of God made with the Father, as the second Adam, and true head of the race. Thus we see that of all the millions of human beings, who may be finally lost, not one of them will be permitted to attribute his everlasting woe to our first parents. God will never allow any human being to attribute his ruin and perdition to another fellow-creature. He has dealt with the human race on such an enormous scale of mercy, and justice, and equity, and redeeming love, and impartiality, that every one will be compelled to attribute his ruin to himself. Thus the first death, both morally and physically, flows out from the first fall of the race of Adam, and the race have ail been redeemed from that first fall, and that first death. Now let us remember that Jesus is the second Adam, and the second head of the race. If, when we come to years of accountability, we turn away from the Lord Jesus, "who is the second man from Heaven," and persistently turn away from Him, rejecting or postponing the salvation he offers us, and die in that attitude of rejection or neglect, we thereby fall a second time, and plunge into a second death. The apostle tells us that there is only one sacrifice for sins, and if we turn away from that one Savior, there can be found no other redeemer, but a fearful looking for of judgment, and of firey indignation from the Lord. This second fall, resulting from the rejection of Jesus, entails a second death in the utter separation of the soul from all fellowship with God, and all the touches of His grace, and also the banishment of the soul and body into the torments of hell, with the devil and his angels. We see that with regard to the first fall, and the first death, there is a limit. God's covenant of redemption rushes in to intervene, and stop the results that would naturally flow from the first fall, and the first death, in order that every creature may have the advantages of saving grace. The second fall and the second death have no limits to them, but their sad and awful consequences flow on forever. The same terms of duration which are used in Scripture concerning the destiny of the saved are also used concerning the destiny of the lost. There is no Greek word which exactly corresponds with our word "eternity," but the word used in the Greek Testament is that of "ages of the ages." And when it speaks of our having eternal life, it is that of living to the "ages of the ages," and these same terms are used expressive of the duration of the lost. It requires as much grace to keep us saved as it does to save us in the first place. In fact our continuance in salvation is but a prolonged and extended act of saving grace. So that when we are born of God, and eat of the tree of life, we are by faith to continue in the path of overcoming, lest we lose that life and drift away from the Lord Jesus, and fall into the second death. There are scores of scriptures which teach emphatically that after having once been saved, the soul may lose its grace and sink into utter darkness. In the 5th verse of the epistle of Jude, where our version says, "that after the Lord saved the Jewish people out of the land of Egypt, He afterward destroyed them that believed not,"' in the Greek it says, "that after he saved them from Egypt they were destroyed because they would not believe a second time," that is, they had faith to cross the Red Sea, but would not have faith to go into Canaan. And then the apostle Peter tells us (as translated in the common version) it were better for us not to have known the way of righteousness than after we have known it to turn from the holy commandment, but in the Greek it reads, it were better for us not to have known the way of justification, than after we have known it, "to turn from the commandment to be holy." This is exactly what thousands have done, commenced to live by faith, and been justified by faith, and then utterly rejected the commandment concerning holiness, and have forfeited all they gained, and in many instances they have utterly rejected Jesus and fallen into the second death. So this promise in the second overcometh is exceedingly vital. It requires an overcoming faith not only to be born again, but to keep from backsliding and falling into the second death.