The Pagan Theory of Immortality
By Editor
At the Howard Street M. E. Church, Rev. Dr. Harcourt preached a sermon Christmas-day on the immortality of the soul, which question he settled to his own satisfaction, as follows:— “The great question that concerns us is, ‘Does death end all?’ Has man ceased to be, when the physical is destroyed? The conclusions of the materialist we cannot accept. They are neither reasonable nor religious. It is impossible to account for the existence of an organized brain without a pre-existing mind through and by which it was produced and developed.” From his conclusion we should suppose that the question was not, “Does death end all?” but, “Does birth begin all?” His argument makes solely for the pre-existence of souls, and not only that, but it makes the soul the creator of the physical organism in which it dwells. In other words, it is but the old Platonic theory that men are gods. It is an evidence of the fact that the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul cannot be argued without the use of pagan arguments. That doctrine does away with the necessity for one God, the Creator of all things; it tends only to paganism, and to pagan morality, which is immorality.