p. 83 | MUCH IN LITTLE

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Mar 14, 1878

"MUCH IN LITTLE."

A TRUTH ADMITTED.

The expression, "God created man in his own image," Gen. 1: 27, is usually taken to prove that man has immortality by nature. The Rev. Mr. Gleig, a well-known theological writer, thus succinctly states what seems to be the truth on this point: "In our image. This similitude is to be sought for in the WHOLE being of man: in his moral, intellectual, and corporeal constitution."—Comp. Com. on Gen. 1: 26.

Mr. Dobney, a Baptist minister of England, says, "If the phrase, 'made in the image of God,' as employed by Moses, proves immortality, the phrase, as employed by Paul, must mean the same; and so, since the latter affirms this is restored [created anew in the image of God], it would follow that it had been lost; and thus, being now bestowed only upon those who are recovered to God, is not universal, and therefore was not absolute, but contingent."

MILTON'S VIEW.

There are some who have much reverence for great names. Such will be pleased with the following criticism from John Milton, author of "Paradise Lost," so well known in the poetic world. Milton did not believe in the two-fold nature of man, as his Treatise on Christian Doctrine, Vol. 1, pp. 250, 251, shows: "Man is a living being, intrinsically and properly one and individual, not compound and separable, not according to the common opinion, made up and framed of two distinct and different natures, as of body and soul, but the whole man is soul, and the soul, man; that is to say, a body or substance, individual, animated, sensitive, and rational." Let those who believe in the duplex-entity of human beings ponder well what the distinguished bard has said.

IT IS JUST SO.

Elder J. Blain, Baptist minister of Buffalo, makes use of the following sarcastic paragraph: "It is a notorious fact that in our theological works a non-descript dictionary is made with definitions as follows: 'To be dead,' means to be more conscious. 'To die,' is to live on in woe. 'To lose life,' is to preserve a miserable existence. 'Life' means happiness. 'To burn up,' is to make a salamander. 'To destroy,' is to preserve whole. 'To devour,' 'perish,' 'consume,' etc., means to make indestructible and immortal. 'Not to be,' to be without end!"