p. 16 | Good Confessions by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · BATTLE CREEK, MICH. · Jan 4, 1870

Good Confessions.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

It is often asserted that reason and philosophy can prove the immortality of the soul. But this is not true, as many of the ablest advocates of that doctrine have candidly confessed. Watson makes this admission: “There is no indubitable declaration of man’s immortality, nor any facts and principles so obvious as to enable us confidently to infer it. All observation lies directly against the doctrine of the immortality of man.” Theol. Inst. Vol. I. p. 11. Dr. Taylor agrees with him thus: “Whatever the metaphysical nature, essence, or substance of the soul may be, which is altogether unknown to us, all arguments for the natural immortality of the soul, taken from the nature of its substance or essence, are manifestly vain; we can never prove that the soul of man is of such a nature that it can and must exist and live, think and act, separate from, and independent of, the body; all our present experience shows the contrary.” Quoted in Balfour’s Essays, Es. I, p. 114. These are good confessions on this point.

D. M. CANRIGHT.