Untitled article by N. V. Hull

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, September 24, 1867

FromAdvent Review and Sabbath Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 15

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NATURE AND DESTINY OF MAN.

By N. V. Hull

DISCUSSION BETWEEN ELD. N. V. HULL, SEVENTH-DAY BAPTIST, AND ELD. R. F. COTTRELL, SEVENTH-DAY ADVENTIST.

(Concluded from Review No. 5, Vol. xxx.)

Elder Hull's Fourteenth Article.

ELD. R. F. COTTRELL:

Dear Brother,— I perceive, on reading your reply to my last letter, that our discussion must come to a close. When you make the direful woe pronounced upon the people and land of Edom, (Isaiah xxxiv,) to be the punishment to be inflicted upon the wicked, (Matt. xxv, 46,) I have no inclination to further pursue the investigation. To quote the highly figurative language of the Old Testament in reference to judgments denounced against the Jews, and now in the process of fulfillment, (as in the case of Malachi, 4th chapter,) as the condemnation of the wicked after the resurrection, and declared at the final judgment, is so subversive of all sober interpretation, as to turn into ridicule, and belittle the whole question of the religion of the Bible. When you repeat, as you do in your last letter, that the saints receive eternal life at the resurrection, as well as immortality, you evince, as I fear, a purpose to sustain your theory at any hazard. I confess that I do not like to make such a statement. But how can I help it? Is it possible for me to believe that you do not know, that the Bible contains no such a statement? That at the resurrection the saints will have given them spiritual, glorious, immortal bodies, is in the clearest manner stated. But that they shall then receive eternal life, is not stated, but is added by you wittingly. Eternal life is no where predicated of the body received at the resurrection, but is many times stated to be the fruit of, and received at the time of, the regeneration of the spirit. In your recent discussion with my brother upon this point, you were so overwhelmingly beaten, that to continue to repeat your puerilities is to degrade and make odious public discussions, as simply a strife for the mastery, at whatever hazard to truth. Your attention has, during our discussion, been repeatedly drawn to the fact, that neither mortality nor immortality is anywhere affirmed of the spirit of man in the Bible, and yet you have continued to write as if no such thing had happened. Still I have all of the time hoped that you would finally overcome your pride, and allow yourself the high honor of finally letting the truth come from your pen, without any of these perversions. You have had free access to the columns of our paper, and ample time to so revise your forms of statement as to show that you only desired the simple truth. I sincerely regret you have not done so. I hoped, in the beginning of our discussion, that you and I might be instrumental in drawing the Christian communities that we in some sense represent, into closer union, but fear that my hopes have not been realized. If anything has been said by me, in the course of the discussion, that was not Christian in spirit, or wise in form, I ask forgiveness. I now, with feelings of the utmost good will, bid you and the readers of the Advent Review and Sabbath Herald adieu.

N. V. HULL.