Reply to "A Friendly Letter."
By R. F. Cotterell
From the Sabbath Recorder. Reply to "A Friendly Letter."
To the Editor of The Sabbath Recorder. PERMIT me of your clemency to speak a few words through your paper, by way of a friendly reply to "A Friendly Letter" of your correspondent, L. A. Davis, of Ohio. Let us reason together. Is not man sufficiently elevated above the brute creation, by his intellectual powers and moral endowments, and from the revealed fact that he is a candidate for immortality—that he was created "to be immortal?"—though it be another fact that "through envy of the Devil death came into the world, and they that do hold of his side do find it?" Wis. ii: 23, 24. Is it not enough that the righteous will have eternal life? Will it add to his enjoyment for the wicked to have eternal life in woe? Why should it displease the heir of eternal life and incorruptibility, that the enemies of the Lord should "utterly perish in their own corruption," and should not suffer eternal conscious pain and misery? Will it diminish aught from the glory and happiness of the saved, that the wicked "shall be as though they had not been?" And should we be so unfortunate as to be found upon the left hand, would it flatter our pride or lessen our woe to know that we were so exalted a being as to possess an immortal soul? Then let us look at the subject without prejudice or pride, willing to confess the low estate of fallen, degraded humanity, and let the revelation which God has given us decide whether man is mortal or immortal. In regard to what your correspondent calls "the highest and best meaning of the term soul," viz., "the immortal substance in man," we do not believe man has such a soul, because the Bible does not reveal it. But that he has the power of thought and reason above a brute, which renders him a subject of moral government, we believe as truly as any one. And that his mind and affections are the proper subject of "regeneration," or of being "created anew in Christ Jesus," is a doctrine as prominent in our faith as in that of any others. We insist upon this spiritual renovation as absolutely necessary in order to eternal life; and that those who do not have it, but remain in their sinful state, "have no eternal life abiding in them." Why should any be prejudiced against us, as though we did not believe these things? Must we add an article of faith, and one not noticed by inspiration, and say, "We believe in the immortality of the soul," in order to a respectable standing in the human family? But that the man possesses a "spirit entity," which is capable of conscious existence and activity, "independent of his physical organism" and "animal vitality," we do not admit. Only give us the Bible proof of it, and we will believe it. But your proof, which ought to be positive on a subject of such magnitude, and which is so much magnified as an essential Christian doctrine, is merely inferential, and not necessary; and, beside this, the Bible gives us positive proof to the contrary, declaring that the dead know nothing, that in Sheol—the place of all the dead, both righteous and wicked—there is no knowledge, and that the wicked have no eternal life abiding in them, but that the soul that sinneth shall die. Every one ought to know that the word soul is used in different senses in the Bible, and that in one of its most prominent senses, "man is a soul, dead or alive." If we read the original Hebrew of the Old Testament, we find the expression, "dead soul," of frequent occurrence. Either our friend misapprehends us, or he departs from the spirit of candid argument, when he gets together such a "jiggling of words of different meanings," charging us of holding that Jesus committed to his Father, and Stephen to his Lord, the "possession of a few cubic inches of atmospheric air, or a dead life." Is not the life and the air that sustains it two distinct things? If they are, the committing of our life to God, is not asking him "to take possession of a few cubic inches of atmospheric air." Our friend speaks of a "dead life." Is there such a thing as a living life? Is animal life a living being? I can see no absurdity in committing our life to God, believing he will give it to us again, while I regard life as an endowment given by God to a being, and not a living being itself. A living life is an equal absurdity with a dead life. Lazarus was dead. Jesus was about to restore him to life, and affirms that he has the power of raising the dead. He teaches the sister of Lazarus that believers in him may die, yet that they shall live again; and that those that live again in the resurrection at the last day, being believers in him, shall never die. This is plain and easy of understanding. Our Saviour in teaching that the children of God, the children of the resurrection, cannot "die any more," clearly recognizes the fact that they had died once, but were raised from the dead to an endless life. Our friend's argument, based on the "present tense" of the affirmation, "I give to them eternal life," is shown to be fallacious thus: Paul was "in hope of eternal life" long after he had believed in Christ. Tit. i, 3. John said to those in Christ, "And this is the promise that he hath promised us, [Christians,] even eternal life." 1 John ii, 25. They were believers in Christ, but had not received eternal life—they only had the sure promise of it, on condition that they should "continue in the Father and in the Son." Again, our Saviour contrasts the present world with the future—that which lies beyond the resurrection—thus: "The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage; but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage; neither can they die any more." Luke xx, 35-37. The Scriptures are harmonious in promising to the believer "in the world to come eternal life." Mark x, 30. So the argument that gives him eternal life in the "present tense" is a fallacy. Your correspondent remarks, "But according to the Advent doctrine, the believer's soul dies with his body and the conclusion is inevitable, that he has no entity left; he is totally non-existence; he is a nonentity, and can never be resuscitated; God can make another just like him; but the same can never be resuscitated, for there is nothing to resuscitate. Here is a conflict between teachers in reference to the destiny of believers," &c. I do not know how it appears to others, but to me it looks like sheer unbelief to say that God cannot raise the dead, provided they are dead—that unless man is alive while dead, he cannot be restored to life. The great God who, at first, gave life to man formed of the dust of the earth, doubtless has power to revivify the dust of those "that are in the graves," as his word has promised. But our friend says, "The same can never be resuscitated, for there is nothing to resuscitate." According to this logic, the body which is returned to the dust, and is the only part of man that needs resuscitation, has become a nonentity and cannot be resuscitated; but the soul, the part that lives right on unharmed by death, and consequently needs no resuscitation, can be resuscitated. "Here is a conflict," not between different teachers, but between L. A. Davis and L. A. Davis. Should it be desired, I am ready to give a reason of my faith relative to the second birth, or birth of the Spirit, with meekness and fear.