IMMORTALITY

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 7, 1877

THE denial of the immortality of the soul is the denial of what can stand the test of neither reason nor Scripture. It is not the denial of anything attaching to human dignity, for it never did attach in any conceivable sense to mankind. It is passing strange that immortality, or the duration of being without end, should be so commonly referred to as the most distinguished mark of human nature, to deny which is declared to be a degrading of man to the level of the brute beasts. Is it not more truthful to say that the possession of a mental and moral constitution in which man resembles the Being who created him, and differs so vastly from the creatures beneath him, comprises man’s pre-eminence and distinction?

Immortality, in the only sense in which it is applicable to man, is deathlessness—a duration of being without end. Is man pre-eminently a nobler being than the inferior animals because he has a longer lease of life than they? Is longevity to take the wall of mental and moral greatness? Then must it be true that he is most dignified who lives the longest, so that a man who lives thirty or forty years in the world is more dignified (in this life) than he who lives twenty. If there is such remarkable dignity in mere duration, then to what dignity must some animals, and even trees, arrive, a dignity super-eminent above that of man, in many cases; for there are animals

and trees which survive the life of man. We shall need to adopt a new classification in our natural history, if longevity is to take so distinguished a place; for the inferior animals must be brought to the same standard, and that must be reputed the noblest animal who lives the longest. The swift and stately tiger must give place to the creeping tortoise, and the majestic lion must abdicate his throne in favor of his liege subjects of the forest. It must surely be apparent that the denial to man of immortality as his actual privilege, cannot be equivalent to the degrading of him to a level with the beasts that perish, inasmuch as it denies no constitutional characteristic, but only an alleged circumstance of his being.—Eng. Christian Examiner.