Immortal Life by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 31, 1882

Immortal Life.

By Editor

THIS is the heading of a sermon preached by H. W. Beecher, reported in a recent number of the Christian Union. His text was: "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." 1 Cor. 15:19. He read the context, as follows:—

"Now if Christ is preached that he hath been raised from the dead, how say some among you that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, neither hath Christ been raised; and if Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God; because we witnessed of God that he raised up Christ, whom he raised not up, if so be that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, neither hath Christ been raised; and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most pitiable."

With such a text, so strongly affirming the resurrection of the dead, we should marvel that Mr. Beecher made it the basis of an argument—no, an essay—on the immortality of the soul, of the undying nature of man, and his continued existence, were we not so well acquainted with the vagaries of the wise theologians of the day. His very first remark is: "This thought of continued life underlies all modern religions." But he did not find the "thought of continued life" in his text. The thought therein is of resumed life after death. The resurrection of Christ is the example, and the assurance. Was it "continued life" with him? Did Christ die, or did he not? If he did not die, there was no atonement. But this would not disturb Mr. Beecher, for he has no place for the atonement in his system of theology, if his crudities can be called a system. If he did not "die for our sins," then "the Scriptures" are unreliable; then he was not raised from the dead; and then, Paul says, "Your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins." And then the "testimony of Jesus" himself is a mistake, for he said: "I am he that liveth, and was dead." Beecher would have him say: "I am he that never died, but have demonstrated the undying nature of Adam's race, and the continued nature of mankind."

The fact is, Mr. Beecher has no more faith in the resurrection than he has in the atonement. But is it not singular that a large congregation present at the preaching, and a still larger number of readers of the Union, complacently listen to such utterances, based on the apostle's affirmation of the resurrection of the dead? What is the Bible worth to such people? What do they care for its plainest statements? The words of an eloquent, and therefore popular, preacher are worth more to them than the words of the holy Scriptures. It is no marvel that the Bible has yet to fight its battle for indorsement in the English-speaking churches, as Prof. Green says.

It is come to this among the most popular religionists of the age, that any mention of future life, even when the resurrection of the dead is named, is taken as proof of the immortality of the soul; of the continued life of man; of the undying nature of the race. Of course, in such a belief the doctrine of the resurrection naturally drops out of sight, and becomes of no consequence, as being of no manner of necessity. Mr. Beecher takes this common view, growing in popularity under the preaching of such men as himself, and, to sustain it, he openly misrepresents the Hebrew Scriptures—the Old Testament.

He denies in direct terms that Abraham had any faith equivalent to that held by Christians in the present age. He says:—

"Abraham went away from the idolaters in the East, to the West, along the Euphrates, seeking another country. Modern Christian hymns use that fact as an illustration of our whole life—seeking another country; and we are apt to think, in reading and singing those hymns, that Abraham thought about it as we do. He did no such thing. There is no evidence that there is anything more in it than simply that he went over to settle in this new territory with a purer idea of God in his mind, and to provide for himself and his posterity. You never hear one word from his lips about anything you care to remember. He was a magnificent old chief from the desert, on the pattern of a modern sheik," etc.

The reader should know that he is giving a brief biography of the characters of the Old Testament to prove that they were ignorant as regards the great truths of which we are now the recipients; that they lived in the childhood of the race, with the ignorance of childhood, and especially that they knew nothing of the doctrine of immortality. In this he directly contradicts the Scriptures at every step he takes. Note the following points:—

Jesus says Abraham rejoiced to see his day; he saw it and was glad.
Paul says the gospel was preached to Abraham.
The covenant which God made with Abraham is that on which Christians rest, and he is our father in the faith.
The promises made to Abraham are, in all the Scripture, made the basis of the Christian's hope.
Abraham recognized that he was a stranger in the land of Palestine, looking for a better, a heavenly country.
Abraham believed in the resurrection from the dead, and this faith alone sustained him in offering up Isaac, believing that God's promises would be fulfilled in Isaac, even though his life were sacrificed.

If Mr. Beecher had any faith in the Scriptures, these points would stand before him to confound him in teaching his mysticisms. But they have no effect on him. Can he be so ignorant of the Bible as to not know that these facts are revealed therein? We can hardly think so.

He disposes of the teachings of the prophets in the following manner:—

"You cannot find, in the lives of any of the prophets who were leading their age and nation up to a higher stand-point, a single one of their sharp-pointed arrows that aimed in the direction of immortality. Oh, what men they would have been; how Isaiah would have thundered; how Jeremiah would have mourned; how Ezekiel would have risen to the highest forms of mysticism, if there had lain open to their minds, as to ours, the whole idea of the future life! But you can go through these chapters with your eyes open, reading and thinking, comparing dates with dates and men with men, and the new knowledge with the old, and nothing is more remarkable than that the Old Testament times or history lay wholly within the horizon of this world, and had no atmosphere beyond which the stars shone, and in which there was renewed life."

What men Enoch, and Abraham, and Moses, and Samuel, and David, and all the prophets would have been, if they had only had the wisdom of Henry Ward Beecher! We have noticed that Abraham believed in the resurrection. Job believed it. David wrote of it. Isaiah said distinctly, "Thy dead men shall live." Jeremiah said of those were slain, "they shall come again from the land of the enemy." Ezekiel was instructed of God to say to Israel, "Behold, O my people, I will open your graves, and cause you to come up out of your graves, and bring you into the land of Israel." Daniel wrote, "Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake." And the Lord said by Hosea, "I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death." Solomon, and others, warned of the Judgment, wherein should be brought every work, even every secret thing. Yet all these, in the estimation of H. W. Beecher, had no knowledge of a life beyond the present! We can not say whether blindness or egotism is most prominent in the Plymouth pulpit.

Several other extracts we have marked, of equal interest with these we have quoted, equally contradictory of the Scriptures, but why quote more? Our point is sustained: Mr. Beecher does not believe the Scriptures. We must notice his statement of the origin and growth of the idea of a future life. He says:—

"God developed some nations along one line, and developed a conterminous nation along another line, and by bringing these separate beams of light together, and pouring them forth at last upon the New Testament itself. For, when Christ came, the Jews had brought back from Babylon the idea of immortality."

They did not bring from Babylon the idea of a future life through a resurrection of the dead, for that was taught in their Scriptures. God's promises were based on this great truth. That they found in Babylon, and brought thence, such an idea of immortality as Henry Ward Beecher preaches, we will not deny. It comes from Babylon. It was taught in Egypt, and by the philosophers of Greece, but always by the heathen—never by the "holy men of old, who spoke as they were moved of the Holy Ghost." This Mr. Beecher himself proves. We give him welcome of the doctrine, and every thing else of like heathen origin. We have no need of it.

We notice that in the chapter from which Mr. Beecher took his text, Paul taught the future life through the resurrection of the dead, exactly as it is taught in the Old Testament, and he quotes from the Old Testament—from Hosea—in his argument.

But how does Mr. Beecher possibly reconcile his teachings with those of the Bible? He does not—he does not attempt to do it. If any body thinks that a conflict with the Bible worries him, let him read the following from the same sermon:—

"The doctrine of a continued existence after this mortal life, in one sense is scientific— . . . It has been said that it is, comparatively speaking, modern; that it does not exist in many nations; and that it has been developed at a later period. This is the fact in respect to the whole Bible itself. One of the most mischievous things in the present state of public sentiment is to teach that the Bible is the fruit of God's mind, speaking it to somebody, and having it written down from beginning to end; just as Milton dictated a poem to his daughters, who wrote it down. To tell men that the Bible was built up directly from the thought of God, and that from beginning to end it is absolute truth, is exceedingly harmful."

If any are in doubt as to the intent of this, read the following:—

"The mischief is that we put into the hands of those who go about the country declaiming against the word of God the theory that God wrote the Bible, or that he inspired somebody to write it."

It must be confessed that the idea of the inspiration of the Bible does play "the mischief" with Beecher's theology! But we have no hesitancy in deciding which is "mischievous," the Bible or the utterances of Plymouth pulpit. We are not slow to declare that Mr. Beecher is a spiritualist and an infidel; an infidel with a very thin disguise. So far as he is concerned personally we should never consider it worth while to expose his unbelief; his denial of the Bible as inspired by the Spirit of God. But what shall we say of the many ten thousands of professed Christians who hang upon his words as those of an oracle? Are they ignorant of God's word? or do they love to hear pleasing deceits? And is this the kind of Christianity that is increasing in the earth? In the millennium of "modern orthodoxy," will the whole world believe the Bible as Mr. Beecher does, and regard it with as much reverence as he does?

What are we coming to, when such men are accepted as teachers of Bible truth? Lord, spare thy people from the fables and delusions of popular religion. This is our earnest prayer.