A Good Confession

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 10, 1874

A Good Confession.

EDWARD BEECHER, D. D., in a recent article in the Christian Union, has the following:—

“GROUNDS OF BELIEF IN IMMORTALITY.

“But before doing this it will be expedient to consider the real foundations of any reliable belief in immortality. Plato sought to find them in the inherent nature of the deathless soul, existing from eternity to eternity. Others have sought them in the aspirations of the soul, and the imperfect development of retribution in this life. But the fundamental positions of the system of the Bible are not of this kind. It does not recognize, nay, it expressly denies the natural and inherent immortality of the soul. It assures us that God only hath immortality (1 Tim. 6 : 16). By this we understand that he only has immortality, in the highest sense—that is, inherent immortality. All existences besides himself he created, and he upholds. Men are not, as Plato taught, self-existent, eternal beings, immortal by their very nature. There is no such being except one, and that is God. There is no inherent immortality of the soul in this sense. What God created he sustains in being, and can annihilate if he will. It is by his will that we live, and move, and have our being.”