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The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Third-day, January 21, 1868

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXXI, No. 6

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THE TWO-EDGED SWORD:

TWENTY-FOUR QUESTIONS TO BE ANSWERED BY THE CLERGY.

1. Is the soul a part of God or a part of man?
2. If it is a part of God, can it sin?
3. If it is a part of man, is it not mortal, and subject to death?
4. Is there an intimation in the Bible that God put a soul (mortal or immortal) into Adam at his creation; but, as he was made of dust, is it not said that this man of dust became a living soul?
5. If men can exist without bodies, why were Enoch and Elijah taken out of the world bodily?
6. If the body is a prison-house for the soul, are not these good old prophets still in prison?
7. If the body is a prison-house, why was Adam's soul put into it before it sinned?
8. When the soul (the prisoner) becomes guilty, why is the prison (the body) destroyed to let it out?
9. Did not Christ suffer the penalty due to Adam's transgression in making the atonement?
10. Then, if that penalty was moral or spiritual death, did not Christ suffer it?
11. If in Adam all die a spiritual death, will not all be made spiritually alive in Christ?
12. If the soul is an immortal or spiritual thing, must it not die a spiritual death?
13. As nothing can die except what is mortal, if the soul dies a spiritual death, must it not be spiritually mortal?
14. If the soul is a spiritual thing, and immortal, it must have spiritual immortality: how then can it die a spiritual death?
15. If literal death destroys a literal thing, must not spiritual death destroy a spiritual thing?
16. How could David say, “God will redeem my soul from the power of the grave,” If the grave has no dominion over the soul?
17. How is it written that Christ's soul should be made an offering for sin; and, again, that he poured out his soul unto death, if his soul did not die?
18. If the soul is the conscious and responsible part, how is it that, by repentance, it escapes to paradise at death, and leaves the innocent body to suffer the penalty?
19. If the righteous go to glory at death, did not the serpent speak the truth?
20. If God spake the truth, does not that which he calls the soul return to dust?
21. But if that which man calls the soul does not surely die, did not the serpent speak the truth?
22. Are not the spiritual manifestations the ripe fruit of the popular doctrine of the immortality of the soul,—that is, “Ye shall not surely die?”
23. Is there any difference between this popular doctrine and rapping Spiritualism, only this: that the rapping Spiritualist is a little a head of the popular church; she having taught the doctrine of the innate immortality of man, (not surely die,) and the rapping Spiritualist is (by satanic agency) pretending to prove it?
24. How can the clergy say that rapping Spiritualism is of the devil?—do they intend to say that he is proving the immortality of the soul, which they have long tried to do, but always failed?