Gathered to His People.
By Uriah Smith
THE pleasing doctrine that man can never die, though unfortunate in its parentage, is very tenacious of its life. In treating this subject we find that the record of man's creation brings to view no immortal element as entering into his being; that the Bible in its use of the terms immortal and immortality never employs them to express an attribute inherent in man's nature; that no description of soul and spirit, and no signification of the original words, will sustain the present popular definition of those terms—that the soul and spirit, though spoken of in the Bible, in the aggregate, seventeen hundred times, are never once said to be immortal or never-dying; and that no text in which these words are supposed to be employed in such a manner as to show that they signify an ever-conscious, immortal principle, can possibly be interpreted to sustain such a doctrine. Behind the obituaries of the patriarchs it seeks to shield itself. It is claimed, for instance, that the death of Abraham is recorded in such a manner as to show that his conscious existence did not cease with his earthly life. We might justly insist on their going farther back and taking the recorded close of the lives of the antediluvian patriarchs as the basis of their argument. One of these, Enoch, was translated to Heaven without seeing death; and all the others, according to popular belief, went to Heaven just as effectually, through death. But how different is their record. Of Enoch it is said that he "was not; for God took him;" while of the others it is said, "And they died." Surely these two records do not mean the same thing, and Enoch whom God took, and who is consequently alive in Heaven, must be, judging from the record, in a different condition from those who died. But to return to the case of Abraham. The record of his death reads: "Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man full of years, and was gathered to his people." On this verse, Landis, p. 130, thus remarks:— "What then is this gathering? Does it refer to the body or the soul? It cannot refer to the body, for while its body was buried in the cave of Macpelah, in Canaan, his fathers were buried afar off; Terah in Haran, in Mesopotamia, and the rest of his ancestors far off in Chaldea. Of course, then, this gathering relates not to the body, but to the soul; he was gathered to the assembly of the blessed, and thus entered his habitation." To show how gratuitous, not to say preposterous, is this conclusion, we raise a query on two points: 1. Does the expression "gathered to his people" denote that he went to dwell in conscious intercourse with them? 2. Were his ancestors such righteous persons that they went to Heaven when they died? In answering these queries, the last shall be first. It is a significant fact that Abraham had to be separated from his kindred and his father's house, in order that God might make him a special subject of his providence. And in Josh. 24:2, we are plainly told that his ancestors were idolators; for they served other gods. Such being their character, death would send them, according to the popular view, to the regions of the damned. At the time, then, of Abraham's death, they were writhing amid the lurid waves of the lake of fire. And when Abraham was gathered to them, if it was in the sense which the theology of our day teaches, he too was consigned to the flames of hell! Oh! to what absurdities will men suffer themselves to be led blindfold by a petty theory. God had said to Abram, Gen. 15:15: "And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age." Was this the consoling promise that he should go to hell in peace in a good old age? And is the record of his death an assertion that he has his place among the damned? Yes! if the immaterialist theory be correct. Children of Abraham, arise! and with one mouth vindicate your "righteous father" from the foul aspersion. Renounce a theory as far from Heaven-born, which compels you thus to look upon the "father of the faithful." Does, then, the expression "gathered to his people" mean his personal conscious intercourse with them? If man has an immortal soul which lives in death, it does; and if it does, Abraham is in hell. There is no way of avoiding this conclusion, except by repudiating the idea that man has such a soul, and denying his conscious happiness or misery while in a state of death. But how then could he be gathered to his people? Answer, he could go into the grave into which they had gone, into the state of death, in which they were held. Jacob said, when mourning for Joseph whom he supposed dead, "I will go down into the grave unto my son mourning." Not that he expected to go into the same locality, or the same grave; for he did not suppose that his son, being, as he then thought, devoured by wild beasts, was in the grave literally at all; but by the grave he evidently meant a state of death; and as his son had been violently deprived of life, he too would go down mourning into the state of death; and this he calls going unto his son. In Acts 13:36, Paul, speaking of David, says that he "was laid unto his fathers." This all must acknowledge to be the exact equivalent of being "gathered to his people;" then the apostle goes on and adds, "and saw corruption." That which was laid unto his fathers, or was gathered to his people, saw corruption. Men may labor, if they choose, to refer it to the immortal soul; but in that way they do it a very doubtful favor; for the success of their argument is the destruction of their theory; and the soul is shown to be something which is perishable and corruptible in its nature.