IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL by Dudley Marvin Canright

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 30, 1879

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

ELD. D. M. CANRIGHT.

PERIODICAL DESTRUCTION.

There was another point universally held by the ancients which utterly forbade their believing in the soul’s immortality. They held to a periodical destruction of all things, not excepting the soul.

Thus writes Mr. Leland: “It was a notion which generally obtained among them [the philosophers], that at certain periods which the Stoics termed conflagrations, and which were to happen at the end of what they as well as the Pythagoreans and Platonists called the great year, there should be an utter end put to the present state of things; and the souls of all men, and even of those of them which had become gods, demons, or heroes, were to be resumed into the universal soul, and thereby lose their individual existence.”

Watson confirms this testimony thus: “Another notion equally extensive and equally destructive of the original doctrine of the immortality of the human soul, and a state of future rewards and punishments, which sprung up in the Egyptian schools, and was from thence transmitted into Greece, India, and throughout all Asia, was that of a periodical destruction and renovation of all things.” “When the universal inundation takes place,” says Enfield, “the whole surface of the earth is covered with water and all animal life is destroyed; after which nature is renewed, and subsists as before till the element of fire, becoming prevalent in its turn, dries up all the moisture, converts every substance into its own nature, and at last, by universal conflagration, reduces the world to its pristine state. At this period, all material forms are lost in one chaotic mass; all animated nature is reunited to the deity, and nature again exists in its original form, as one whole, consisting of God and matter. From this chaotic state, however, it again emerges, by the energy of the Efficient Principle, and gods, and men, and all the forms of regulated nature, are renewed, to be dissolved and renewed in endless successions.”

Then none among them could possibly believe in the immortality of the soul as a separate personality.

EMINENT MEN WHO REJECTED THE SOUL’S IMMORTALITY.

On examination we find that most of the eminent orators and authors of antiquity have recorded themselves as unbelievers in the soul’s immortality. Among these, Cicero stands prominent as a great orator and statesman. Though in some of his writings he argues for the immortality of the soul, yet after all he confesses that he did not really believe it. Of him Warburton says, “He professes his disbelief of a future state of rewards and punishments in the frankest and freest manner.”

Virgil, Horace, and Seneca were all disbelievers in the immortality of man.

After showing that Cicero was full of doubts on the subject, Dr. Horne says: “All which gave Seneca just occasion to say that ‘immortality, however desirable, was rather promised than proved by these great men.’ While the followers of these great philosophers were thus perplexed with doubts, others of the heathen entertained the most gloomy notions,—either imagining that they should be removed from one body to another, and be perpetual wanderers, or contemplating the grave as their eternal habitation, and sadly complaining that the sun and stars could rise again, but that man, when his day was set, must lie down in darkness, and sleep a perpetual sleep.”

No wonder that Paul said that the heathen had no hope; for it was really true.

Gibbon, the celebrated historian, says: “The writings of Cicero represent in the most lively colors the ignorance, the errors, and the uncertainty, of the ancient philosophers with regard to the immortality of the soul. When they are desirous of arming their disciples against the fear of death, they inculcate, as an obvious though melancholy position, that the fatal stroke of our dissolution releases us from the calamities of life, and that those can no longer suffer who no longer exist.”

So, then, the belief of the ancients was against the immortality of the soul.

BELIEF OF THE HINDOOS.

To-day the doctrine of the soul’s immortality is not universally nor even generally believed, though it has been industriously propagated for over two thousand years, from the time of the school of Plato down to that of the modern theological seminaries. Nearly the whole of the Asiatic nations reject it, and hold to the total annihilation of all souls! That this is not merely my assertion will be seen from the following testimonies, all from men who hold to the immortality of the soul. Mr. Watson’s testimony will not be questioned. Hear him:—

“With us, this [the doctrine of the soul’s immortality] is a matter of general belief; but not so with the generality of either ancient or modern pagans. The same darkness which obscured the glory of God, proportionately diminished the glory of man,—his true and proper immortality. The very ancient notion of an absorption of souls back again into the divine Essence was with the ancients what we know it to be now in the metaphysical system of the Hindoos, a denial of individual immortality; nor have the demonstrations of reason done anything to convince the other grand division of metaphysical pagans into which modern heathenism is divided, the followers of Buddha who believe in the total annihilation of both men and gods after a series of ages,—a point of faith held probably by the majority of the present race of mankind.”

This is a valuable testimony, especially coming from one who is such good authority. This alone gives a majority at the present day against the doctrine of the soul’s immortality.

Mr. Davy says: “The religion of Buddha is more widely extended than any other religion. It appears to be the religion of the whole of Tartary, China, Japan, and their dependencies, and of all the countries between China and the Brahmapootra. They appear to be materialists in the strictest sense of the term, and to have no notion of pure spirit or mind. . . . Ordinary death is merely a change of form, and this change is almost infinite, and bounded only by annihilation, which they esteem the acme of happiness.”

Then a majority of the race are materialists, instead of immortal-soulists!

Our next witness is that candid author, Henry Howe. He writes: “Buddhism, the religion of Burmah, has the greatest number of disciples of any on the globe, among whom is half of the people of China, Laos, Cochin China, and Ceylon; all of Cambodia, Siam, Burmah, Tibet, Tartary, and Loo-Choo; and a great part of Japan, and most of the islands of the Southern seas.”

“Existence and sorrow are declared to be necessary concomitants; and therefore ‘the chief end of man’ is to finish this eternal round of changes, and be annihilated. The great doctrines of this faith are five; viz., 1. The eternal existence of the universe and all things; 2. Metempsychosis; 3. Nirban, or annihilation,” etc.

Of this religion, Alger says, “It is the basis and motive of the most extensive disbelief of individual immortality the world has known.”

In the Methodist of April 16, 1870, Bishop Thomson publishes a sermon in which he says: “As to the existing systems of India, China, and Japan, Hindooism, Confucianism, and Buddhism are all, as every intelligent man knows, decaying and ready to perish, without satisfying the wants of mankind. They hinder human development, and must be swept from the earth by human progress. Nor need we lament; nay, we should rejoice in the prospect, for they offer no salvation to man in this life, but by the extinction of all interests in this life,—its duties, responsibilities, and possibilities,—and no salvation beyond the grave but annihilation, the blowing out of the soul as the blowing out of a candle.”

Then the bishop understood them to teach the annihilation of the soul after death, and they do not believe in the immortality of the soul.

In the same paper I find still further unquestionable proof of the belief of the Hindoos on this point. A new sect has lately originated in India called the “Church of the One God.” Says the Methodist: “Representatives of the ‘Church,’ learned in the Sanskrit, were sent to the sacred city of Benares to study more fully the Vedas—the supreme scriptures of Brahmanism—in order to ascertain if the new movement could not be reconciled to the primitive and purest faith of the country; but they reported that these ancient documents taught Pantheism, Metempsychosis, and the annihilation of the soul.”

“The Hindoo books describe several different degrees or states of happiness for mankind after death. Of these the highest state is called Mooktee, and consists of union with the deity, or absorption into the infinite Spirit. This state is the result or reward of attaining divine knowledge. As soon as any man acquires a knowledge of Brahma, it overcomes or extinguishes all sin within him, and its influence upon him; he disregards all work, however meritorious in general opinion, and, emancipated from all worldly desires and bodily passions, his spirit becomes united with Brahma, or is absorbed into him, ‘as a drop of water when it falls into the ocean.’ He loses all personal identity. He is no longer, and will never again be, a conscious and separate being, and so is not subject to any further transmigrations or changes.”

“The third and fourth states of happiness are in the heaven, or abode of the gods, called the Swarga. Some few persons who in this life have performed works of extraordinary merit, after death proceed to Swarga, and reside there till the close of the present Kalpa, when Swarga and all its residents, whether gods or saints, will be annihilated.”

This is the faith held by the majority of the human race to-day. Is this the doctrine of the immortality of the soul? It is just the opposite. Do not our orthodox friends know these facts? How, then, can they have the face to claim a universal belief in their notion of the soul’s immortality—when all the facts are the other way?