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WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?

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Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 26, 1869

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 33, No. 5.

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WHAT IS YOUR LIFE?

By John Nevins Andrews

James iv. 7: “For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away.”
If there is anything immortal to man it is the principle of life. This he has from God. But it is not a conscious being that once lived with God, and by God’s direction comes to live with men; then returns to live with God. No; by no means. It is that principle which makes man alive. When man has lost it he returns again to dust. The man did not live till he had it from God; he does not live after God has taken it back. The great error in all this subject is in supposing that the real man is alive after God has taken back that life which he gave him. Was he alive before God gave life to him? If not, can he be still alive after God has taken it back to himself? The life is not the man. If so, the man existed once in Heaven with God. But God made the man of earth and gave him that life. Just as long as the man retains the life that God gave, so long he lives; when that is given up the man is dead. If the man went to God also when the life is taken back by the Almighty, we might perhaps think the man retained his life and continued to live. But when God takes it man has it no longer till God gives it again. The period that man possesses it is the length of time that he lives. Is not this the truth? Then how forcible the words of James: “What is your life? It is even a vapor that appeareth for a little time and then vanisheth away.”
Did James believe that we have within us an immortal life? If we have, could we compare it to a vapor, lasting only a little time and then gone? Surely, we want a longer, better, and more elevated life, than our present one, which is in duration only a hand breadth. Instead of contending that we have immortality now, our true wisdom is to reach out after, and lay hold on, immortality when God gives it to the just.
J. N. ANDREWS.