ERROR DEEP-ROOTED by Roswell F. Cottrell

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 30, 1877

ERROR DEEP-ROOTED.

By Roswell F. Cottrell

If men's minds were like blank paper, it would be an easy matter to write the truth in them. If errors did not fill the mind, the truth could be as easily learned as the child can learn the alphabet. It is a greater task to get men to unlearn their errors, than to teach them the truth. False ideas fill the mind, which must be dislodged before there is any room for the truth. To expel these is the hardest of the battle.

“For error cherished long, e’en when confessed, With deep reluctance leaves the human breast.”

For example, a person has the popular idea of disembodied, human spirits, a sort of living entity which the Bible does not mention, and it seems impossible to make him see that the spirit that returns at death to God who gave it (Eccl. 12:7) is merely the breath of life which God breathed into his nostrils. The spirit in his vocabulary is an immaterial, conscious entity, living, acting, and immortal; therefore the plainest testimonies of Scripture, clearly defining the spirit of man, cannot find a place in his mind, because his mind is full of a false theory.

If he were rid of his false definition of spirit, it would be easy for him to learn that, as man became a living soul when God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, so when the spirit returns to God, and the dust to the earth as it was, it is merely the unmaking of man, or resolving him into the original elements; and is equivalent to the expression, “Thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust.” Ps. 104 : 20. “The body without the breath is dead.” James 2 : 26. Job says, “All the while my breath is in me, and the Spirit of God is in my nostrils;” and then in the margin it is said, “That is, the breath which God gave him. Gen. 2 : 7.” R. F. C.