UNFAIRNESS by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jul 20, 1869

UNFAIRNESS.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

The advocates of truth can always afford to be fair and candid. They have sound arguments enough to use without resorting to unsound ones. But the advocates of error generally have to resort to all kinds of unfair arguments to support their positions. We find an instance of this in the arguments advanced to prove the immortality of the soul. The denial of the soul’s immortality is usually construed by them into a denial of any future life whatever. Hence they proceed to array all the evidences in favor of a future life, and then triumphantly assert that they have proved the immortality of the soul. This is very unfair. Here is an example of this uncandid method of reasoning. Says D. W. Clarke, while arguing for the immortality of the soul, “Our second argument is drawn from the concurrent belief of all ages and all people in a future state.” (“Man all Immortal,” p. 108.) How does this prove the soul to be immortal? Can there be no future life unless the soul is immortal? Most certainly there can. Man is to have a future life, not by virtue of his immortal soul, but by a resurrection from the dead. Hear the Saviour’s promise of a future life: “And this is the will of Him that sent me, that every one that seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life, and I will raise him up at the last day.” John, vi, 40. Paul says, “If the dead rise not, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die.” 1 Cor. xv, 32. He does not say, “If the soul is not immortal,” &c., but he rests all upon the resurrection of the dead.

This is the way the Bible points out a future life for man, and so we believe he will have it. Many unanswerable arguments show that man is designed for a future life, and should have it. Hence nearly all nations have some notions of a future life. But this by no means proves that man has an immortal life. Here is another specimen of this unfair arguing: Prof. S. C. Bartlett, D. D., of Chicago, Ill., in his preface to “Life and Death Eternal,” p. 6, says, “For as a matter of fact, the race have believed it [the immortality of man]. We certainly have testimony showing that the expectation of another life existed throughout the tribes of the Western Continent, from Greenland to Patagonia, &c.” He then goes on to argue the necessity of a future state in order to rectify the inequalities of this life, &c., as though the denial of the immortality of the soul would not allow of this. Now we protest against such arguments on this point. We believe in a future life and a future Judgment, as well as they, and so do thousands of others who do not believe that the soul is immortal.

The Bible doctrine of a future life by means of a Saviour and a resurrection from the dead, has been perverted into the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul. Man will have a future life, it is said, because his soul is immortal. Then all the arguments in favor of a future life are brought to prove this false doctrine, while the true doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, is entirely ignored. This is always Satan’s plan to pervert God’s truth by a counterfeit, which in many points resembles it. The heathen lost sight of the resurrection; then Satan introduced this counterfeit and he has made capital of it.

There is another fact of the same nature as the above, which I have noticed, viz., many tribes and rude nations are reported by believers in the immortality of the soul, as holding that doctrine, when all the evidence they have of it, is that these people have some exceedingly vague ideas of a future life. From this it is immediately assumed that they believe in the immortality of the soul, and they are set down as orthodox on that point! Such a conclusion is entirely gratuitous. Such statements should be received with much caution and much discount. Yet this is the nature of much of the evidence that is used to show that “all nations and ages have believed the soul immortal.” It wants proof.

D. M. CANRIGHT. Talleyrand, Iowa.