MUCH IN LITTLE | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Apr 11, 1878

"MUCH IN LITTLE."

"A GLOOMY DOCTRINE!"

It has been objected that the doctrine which makes our friends sleep in the ground until the judgment and resurrection, is a gloomy one. But wherein? There is no loss of time to unconscious sleepers; when they awake to glory, it will be as if they had but just passed quickly through the valley of death. But we must bear in mind that the majority of our friends and neighbors die impenitent. And they are all, according to the theory of the immortality of the soul, alive and conscious in the torments of hell! Is there no gloom in this doctrine? Please read again the remarks of Albert Barnes, and you must confess that the theory of natural immortality is "dark—dark—dark" to the conscientious and sensitive heart. Why does not this theory fill every soul with gloom, as it did that of Dr. Barnes? The following is the only answer: THEY DO NOT BELIEVE IT.

BELIEF IN ETERNAL MISERY TENDS TO INFIDELITY.

Of the truth of this statement the case of the Earl of Shaftsbury furnishes a remarkable instance. This personage was a noted skeptic and unbeliever. "There is a tradition," says Dr. Kippis, "that among other difficulties which occurred to him in regard to the Christian revelation, he was startled at the idea of its containing the doctrine of the eternity of hell torments; that he consulted some eminent churchmen whether the New Testament positively asserted that doctrine; and that upon being assured that it did, he declared himself incapable of assenting to a system of religion which maintained a tenet so repugnant to all his views of the great government of the universe."—Biog. Britan., London, 1789. Thousands of thinking men, whose biographies will remain a secret till the great day, have been driven into the same oblivious state of mind as Lord Shaftsbury—aye, and by the same doctrine.

PLAIN, BUT TRUE.

A recent reviewer of a work on unconditional immortality utters the following, though truthful, sentence: "The doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul is the foundation on which the harlot mother sits; and, as she is the mother of harlots, all her daughters have drank deeply of her spiritual fornication. The whole Protestant world is tinctured with this subtile heresy; and in vain do they oppose the mass, purgatory, and invocation of saints, whose very existence depends upon the popular dogma of immortality, while they maintain, uphold, and defend this foundation."—Anthropos, p. 69. He might also have added, Spiritualism. For all that sublime jerking, howling, barking, reeling, staggering, rapping, and twitching of half-crazy mediums, the rattling, clattering, thumping, knocking, and tipping of household furniture, the peeping and muttering of officious spirits, is founded on this mighty corner-stone of Protestant belief and religious education.