Junior. Sir, I am exceeding glad to meet you once more in the body. You are drawing on towards the close of life; as such, I conceive you are well suited to converse with, about death, heaven, glory, eternal life, and a blessed immortality. I should therefore be much pleased, if agreeable, to enter on these subjects, having conceived in my own mind, you are the only person in the circle of my acquaintance, can converse with on such subjects to my real and spiritual advantage.

Senior. I believe, according to what you said in our first conversation, such subjects as you have just hinted, were to be closing ones in the interviews which were to be improved by us to mutual advantage; therefore, state them in your own order, and as you would like to have them brought forward.

Junior. I should like you to discourse on Death: what it is; also what it prepares for. They are doubtless grave subjects; yet my conception is, your mind is so fully possessed with views of the glory which is to be revealed in you, when you shall be called to be absent from the body, and present with the Lord, that I conclude your mind will by no means be discomposed, by elucidating such subjects as these.

Senior. I may most certainly say, should be greatly ashamed, if death gave me any sort of concern. It is appointed unto men once to die. I have for many a year felt the sentence of death in myself; and have been accordingly looking out for it, and expecting it. I have many a time really wished for it, as it will put a stop to all sin within me. This will be such a great deliverance, as I can at present have no adequate ideas of.

Junior. Then, Sir, your discourse on the proposed subject, will administer support to your own mind, as well as convey light and instruction to mine. It is said, He that watereth, shall be watered also himself.

Senior. I am willing to contribute to the, uttermost I am capable of. The increase of your knowledge in every spiritual subject, and with the, increase of God, is what I most sincerely long to promote.

Junior. You are exceedingly kind. The subject of mortality I wish now to be treated of, so that I may have some true knowledge of and insight into it.

Senior. I hope you do not look on this as a spiritual subject. I do not. It is a serious one. It may lead to great solemnity of mind. It may serve to raise many observations which may be of real importance, and most truly beneficial. As we proceed, an opportunity may open, to point out the only cordial for the mind, and the alone antidote against the fears of death. But our mortality, or death, is a natural subject. I conceive the wise man glances on this when he says, For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth, them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again. Eccles. 3:19,20. This is a very humbling truth; yet it is not a spiritual truth, nor such an one as may be profitable for you and me to enter very fully into.

Junior. Sir, I am really startled at your saying death is not a spiritual subject.

Senior. It may be you are. Death is a solemn, awful subject; yet it hath nothing in it, which is spiritual. A mind enlightened by the Spirit of God, cannot but be lifted up above and beyond it, so as to fear no evil from it, and not to shrink at its near approach, yet this alters not the nature of death, which is a natural evil, and falls on the body as such, it being the sentence of the Lord over all flesh, in consequence of the sin of the first man: of whom we read, Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned. Rom. 5:12. Death came into our nature and world by sin. Now sin is not a spiritual act: it is an evil one, it hath produced every evil. This is one-death. The death of the body is a temporal evil. Whilst Christ can turn our death into life everlasting, by his making it to us who believe on him, the very passage into eternal glory; yet this does not alter the nature of death, nor make it a spiritual subject.

Junior. But, Sir, are not the minds of many, saints very spiritual in their dying moments, so that their very last breath is richly perfumed with the love and salvation of the Lord Jesus, and they most truly blessed and happy even when heart and flesh fail?

Senior. Most assuredly it is even so: but the acts of the spiritual mind on Christ, do not make the act of death spiritual. I conceive natural death is one and the same in all. I think, in the very act of dying, what is felt in one is alike in all. Some suffer more, some less, before death doth its office; but when it has completed its sentence, by disengaging the soul from the body, I conceive it is, for the act of it, the same in every one.

Junior. What is death? How would you describe it? Can you point out the process of it? You say it is a natural subject; yet you allow it to be a solemn and important one. We should never have died, should we, had it not been for sin? We enter by it into an unseen world, do we not? We fall by it into the hands of the Holy Lord God, do we not? Is not our state then settled for eternity to come? And will you, under all these considerations, say death is not a spiritual subject?

Senior. My good friend, let us understand each other rightly, it will be the means of removing all prejudice from the mind. Nothing can be more pleasing than a right understanding of each other's mind on, every subject we converse about; and most especially this now before us, as you seem to boggle at this assertion, that death, or the dissolution of the body thereby, is not a spiritual, but a natural subject. You ask me, do you not, what is death? I reply, it is a suspension of all animal, sensitive, and rational life from the body. The blood stagnates, the heart ceases all motion, the senses are closed, the rational soul leaves the body, the pulse ceases, and the man dies this is death. Thus the body is dissolved, and it is fully proved to be in itself but a dust heap: it turns to corruption: it is reduced to its primitive dust, out of which it was originally formed. Thus the original statute of heaven is executed on it, Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. Gen.3: 19. I cannot myself describe its process, but the Holy Ghost hath done it very expressly in the 12th chapter of the Ecclesiastes, where, having given a very full portrait of old age, he proceeds to speak of what takes place in the body at the article of death, Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel broken at the cistern. Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God that gave it. Verses,6,7.

Junior. I should much like to have this explained.

Senior. What is out of my power, you can have no right to expect from me: this is; but I will, if you please, endeavor to quote from an excellent man, what will, I conceive, cast great light on it.

Junior. Pray, Sir, do so; for though you say all this is but a natural subject, yet I really find it a very interesting one.

Senior. I say nothing against this: most assuredly it is so. The Holy Ghost, who is the creator of man, and formed the spirit within him, has given us a full account of the whole man in his first formation. He also gives us the account of the conception of man, and his state in the womb: of what he is at his birth: of the anatomy of his body: of his life: how he lives it is entirely by breathing: what death is: how man dies; and were we to attend to the revealed account of all this, we should have all that wisdom which is profitable to direct us in the care and economy of our bodies, so as to enjoy comfort in and from them, until we are called to lay them aside by death for a season, and to sleep quietly in the grave until the morn of a glorious resurrection.

Junior. How is it then, if, what you say is true, that we know so little of our bodies, and the diseases, which befall them, and manage, them? So poorly?

Senior. Because we neglect the Creator for the creature: we all prefer human help to divine; hence all of us go to doctors and physicians, more than to Christ. The body is made up of the four elements: earth air fire, and water. It is inhabited by an immaterial spirit, which we call the soul; which, though,, immortal, yet the body is not in which it dwells: that is kept up and sustained by the air, which is the grand vehicle of its life. We live so long as we breathe, and not one moment longer: so soon as we cease to respire, we die, and are turned unto dust. We are so constructed in our bodies, that our life depends moment after moment upon the will of God alone. When we have fetched one breath, we are not sure we shall ever fetch another.

Junior. But was not Adam's body before the fall immortal?

Senior. Adam would have been what he was by creation, had be not sinned: yet his body was not immortal by creation. The Lord God might have endowed it with immorality if he had pleased, but he did not. His body was a mortal one, and whilst he sinned not, he felt no decay; yet he would have needed that to recruit it, which would have kept it in perpetual vigor. To this very end the Lord God created and made to grow out of the garden, the tree of life. This would have been the means, had not man fallen, of continuing his body in the most perfect state, so that he would have enjoyed the blessedness of immortality in his body, and never have known death in it: otherwise, the very elements of which the body is composed, needed a perpetual poise. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living soul, Gen. 2: 7. Life was infused, and set a going by the Creator himself, through the nose, respiration being principally through it; and on this action depends life or animal motion; as also the continuation of the immaterial soul in the body.

Junior. You have most certainly given me many views on these subjects which I had not before the least apprehension of.

Senior. Then I hope our mutual conversation will tend to each other's profit.

Junior. It most certainly does to my mind; but I want you to explain that passage concerning the silver cord, its being loosed, the golden bowl, its being broken, the pitcher broken at the fountain, the wheel broken at the cistern. I think you would endeavour to quote from another to assist me to a clearer idea.

Senior. If you will at your leisure read from the beginning of chapter 12th, to the end of verse 7th, you will have a most exact portrait of old age, and also of death. "The hoary head resembles an-almond-tree, and the bald pate that tree when its flowers are dropped off; and the skeleton is like a grasshopper, or ever the, silver cord be loosed, which fails in old age, and it is, broken at death. It is the pith or marrow of the backbone, which, descending from the brain goes down to the lowest part of the back-bone, and produces the Various tendons, nerves, and sinews of the body. This is round as a cord, and white as silver, and by it the, motion of the body is effected. One asks the question, May not this silver cord be the union between soul and body? The golden bowl is the head: it is called the golden bowl, for the same reason the other was called the silver cord. The wheel is the great artery, which being joined to the left ventricle of the heart, sets the blood in motion, and keeps it in perpetual circulation. One explains the whole thus: Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or, the golden bowl be broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the wheel be broken at the cistern. Here are three things said to fail after the silver cord: a golden bowl, or bason, a pitcher to receive a flowing liquor, to convey it into the house for the uses of it, and a wheel at the top of the well to draw it up. The heart is a bason or bowl, a double bason within; the aorata is a pitcher at the fountain, to catch the running stream in; and the lungs a wheel, that draws up the water out of the pit. The air, by its pressure, turns this wheel. The belly is the pit, which we render cistern. Out of the belly flows the water of life, i. e. it runs by the arteries into the outer parts, but the wheel draws it up, that this pitcher, the arteries, may receive it; it must, therefore, return into the belly again, before the wheel can draw it up, as water circulates into the well, and supplies its spring, The spring that flows into the pitcher, is supplied by liquor drawn up out of the pit, by a wheel at the top of the pit; and when the silver cord fails in old age, the spring runs weak, and the wheel turns heavily; and little is drawn up, 'and that slowly." Thus the circulation becomes so languid, as to leave the body motionless, and life expires.

Junior. Sir, be pleased to say what death prepares for. I understand from what you say, the process of death on the body begins with the silver cord being loosed, with the golden bowl being broken, or a membrane about the scull being shriveled, the pitcher being broken at the fountain, and the wheel being broken at the cistern; the blood is congealed, the pulse stops, and all the animality of the body expires. Now I want to ask, what does this prepare for?

Senior. For the grave, the house appointed for all living; what you could most certainly conceive without my replying.

Junior. I have been before led to understand from you, that death is but a natural subject, and you still continue the same idea. I should have conceived you would have made at least the issue of it a spiritual one, and said death fitted the soul of a believer for a glorious immortality.

Senior. If I had so said, I should have expressed myself wrong. Death sets the soul at liberty from the body, but it by no means fits it for another world it only affects the body, and turns it into a dust heap, Whereby it is fitted for the grave. The body by death begins to corrupt: it is in the first stage of it. When laid in the grave, it is in the second state of corruption, and the office of the grave is to swallow up the corruption of it. The soul is with Gods who gave it. The preparation for its entrance into eternal glory consists in the indwelling of the Lord the Spirit in it, in his work of regeneration, and his' own operation on it. Death hath nothing to do with this subject. It finds a believer a saint, a child of God in Christ. It, cannot touch his immortal part. its sole commission from God himself, only concerns the body; to loosen its pins; to take down the frame; to destroy all the mechanism of it; to reduce it to a breathless corpse, and there it ends. The body is then fit only to be covered over with putrefaction. There is therefore no place fit for it but the grave, which having received it, there it is reduced to its primitive, particles out of which it was composed, and from hence it is to be raised at the last day. Surely you are not at a Loss to comprehend what I have delivered unto you concerning this, are you?

Junior. I freely acknowledge you have delivered yourself on the subject of death, and what it is, beyond what I conceived of it before. I also must confess, I see a great deal of Excellency in what hath been said all I am surprised at is, that you say death and the grave are not spiritual subjects. I can assure you, that what has been stated in the course of the present discourse, hath brought a great solemnity upon my mind. I want to know what you will think of this. Pray, is not this spirituality? Or what else will you call it?

Senior. I have not said that death and the grave, are not solemn subjects, neither do I say that a spiritual mind may not improve them, nor that the Lord's people may not profit by them; but it is as they are carried above and beyond these, up to Christ himself, in the views of his death, burial, and resurrection. It is not by thinking on death as death, that we are spiritual: we must have spiritual minds, or we cannot be fitted for spiritual subjects; and we must have spiritual subjects suited to our minds, or they cannot be exercised. Now it is the person of Christ, the love of Christ, the righteousness and sacrifice of Christ, and the everlasting love of the Father to us in him, that are truly suited to make us more spiritual and more heavenly. I do not look on a solemnity of spirit, to be spirituality; neither do I conceive very awful thoughts of death and dying to be spiritual acts: I know they are not, by what hath passed in my own mind. When I look at death out of Christ, and consider what it is, I find I either tremble at it, or grow hardened, careless, and indifferent about it. When I look at death in Christ, as conquered, destroyed, and abolished by him, I find my mind very differently affected: I am not afraid of it; I see I have nothing to do with it; I go beyond it; I triumph over it: all which is the entire fruit of believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, and not by looking at death, at what it is, nor at what it prepares for, nor at, the grave. No. Death and the grave are but natural and common subjects. The death of Christ, by which he hath destroyed death; the burial of Christ, by which he hath sanctified the grave; the resurrection of Christ, by which he hath proved and proclaimed his conquest and triumph over death and the grave: are most divine, glorious, and sublime subjects; in the knowledge of which we shout victory in Christ over our own deaths, and our laying in the grave; as the Apostle says, If we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him. I Thess, 4:14. Now I do not like too much solemnity of spirit; I do love real spirituality; I do love, and most earnestly covet, supernatural communion with the Three in Jehovah: but I do, not love to be taken off this by a solemnity of spirit which makes me stand in fear of death and the grave.

Senior. You do. I am not without sin, nor without; the perceptions and feelings of it; nor shall I be, so long as I am in the body. Yet, this does not take off my eye of faith from Christ. It is kept fixed on him, because I know it would be unsafe to look one single moment at myself or sin. I have found in past experience, when not so fully acquainted with Christ as now, that thinking on sin, death, the grave, and damnation, never weakened one single corruption in my fallen nature. I find, looking at Christ, the only antidote against every evil. So, with respect to death, I have found, looking at it, I am startled, I am alarmed, I want to avoid it, I shrink and tremble at it. All this is void of grace and spirituality. Not that I mean by this that there are none of the Lord's people have these views and fears; yet these views and fears spring not from faith, but from unbelief, Now, the Lord the Spirit hath taught me to look away from death, as truly as he hath taught me to look off and away from sin, wholly and alone to Christ. I feel the sentence of death in me. It works and operates upon me. There is no one-day in which I do not expect it. If it should be ever go long postponed, yet it cannot but do its office. I give myself no concern about it. I know I shall die with the whole body of sin inherent in my fallen nature. I know death only can dissolve my mortal frame. I look to Christ as my perpetual friend. I commit myself wholly to him: to be with me in the article of death; to receive my soul to his everlasting glory. I look off death, as if it were not in me; and expect, in a dying moment, to have no more to do with it, than if it were not. I do not expect my animal frame to feel it; but give myself no trouble, about it. , I know it will have to do with me, but I will not have to do, with it. I do not expect to find that in it, which I have found in sin. If, therefore, Christ is a complete Saviour from the One, he will be a complete deliverer from the other. These thoughts do my mind more good, than thoughts of death and the grave. I therefore aim to live on Christ, and in views of my conquest of death and the grave in him, just as if I were in heaven. I say I aim at this, because, let the outgoings of the mind be what they may, it is but an effort. The Apostle says of himself, Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended: but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. Philip. 3: 13, 14. I cannot more freely open my mind, nor explain myself on this head more fully.

Junior. I confess myself very greatly indebted for your conversation on the subjects' before us. I apprehend, in a measure, what you have delivered. Having been always led to consider death and dying a very serious, solemn subject, I now plainly perceive I have been led off Christ thereby. I looked on death as a spiritual matter, and thought the more I really contemplated it, so much the more spiritual I should become; when you therefore said  there was nothing in death spiritual, it hit the nail on the head, I knew not what to think of the assertion. I have, on your opening the subjects, some views which I never had before, and hope to profit by them. The profit of mind I might reap from conversing with you, was my great motive in seeking to have these particular intercourses we have enjoyed one with the other.

Senior. If such ends be answered, as for us to be edified, and the Lord glorified, then all is well. Whilst I would by no means take state to myself, God forbid, yet I would say, Most freely would I impart to you an I know, which might increase your knowledge and spirituality. I am no loser thereby; as I have found many a time, in conversations like those we have together, the mind is quickened and enlarged by some questions put: they serve to set the thoughts on fresh exercise; and it is hereby we often get real good from the subjects discussed.

Junior. I have most certainly found the truth of this. May the Lord give me to look off death as you have spoken; then I clearly see I should walk comfortably. I really think one cannot live as becomes the gospel without it.

Senior. Indeed, this is true. I do not know, in the sense we are now speaking, that there is any person fit to live or die, but such as see themselves saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation, and enjoy the blessedness of the same in their own souls, by faith in the Lord Jesus. And such are fit to live and safe to die, whose minds are clothed with the knowledge of Christ; whose hearts are fixed on him as their treasure, portion, and everlasting inheritance ; who are living by the faith of the Son of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life: such can have no fears of death. These truths realized in their minds from the word and by the Spirit, must lift off their hearts from sin and death, so as for them to live down the guilt of the one, and the fears of the other, by living continually in the belief of the truths of the everlasting gospel of the blessed God. But, I hope enough has been laid before you for the present. I feel it seasonable for me to retire. May the Lord give you understanding in all things and bless you, by shedding the Holy Ghost richly upon you, and bestowing his own divine unction, which teacheth all things, and leadeth into all truth. Amen. The Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.

Junior. Thank you, Sir. May the love of God be shed abroad in your heart. Amen.