p. 11 | MUCH IN LITTLE

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jan 10, 1878

"MUCH IN LITTLE."

BRIEF TESTIMONIALS ON MAN'S PRESENT CONDITION, THE INTERMEDIATE STATE, FUTURE PUNISHMENT, ETC., FROM REPUTABLE AUTHORS.

BISHOP WHATELY'S VIEW OF ETERNAL MISERY.

This celebrated divine, Archbishop of Dublin, in speaking of 1 Cor. 15:25, thus candidly bears witness: "We are told by Paul that Christ must reign till he hath put all things under his feet; and that the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. And this does not seem consistent with the continuance forever of a number of wicked beings alive, and hating Christ, and odious in his sight." Well may we say, in the words of one of old, "How forcible are right words."

NO "THUS SAITH THE LORD" FOR IT.

However strongly theologians inveigh against the reform view of natural immortality, there are some who make surprising concessions toward this truth. Thus, Bishop Tillotson, in his Sermons, printed in 1774, Vol. 2, admits the whole question. Said he: "The immortality of the soul is rather supposed, or taken for granted, than expressly revealed in the Bible." And Dr. Bagnall, in the Methodist Quarterly Review for April, 1852, while writing in favor of natural immortality, acknowledges: "In the Bible, we think, there is no passage which can be strictly said to declare that all human souls are immortal." We heartily coincide with the above declarations, and conjecture that perhaps this lack of inspiration is made up in the teachings of theology and modern spiritualism.

ADAM NOT NATURALLY IMMORTAL.

Bishop Jeremy Taylor, the famous author and scholar of the seventeenth century, thus beautifully states our position: "Whatsoever had a beginning can also have an ending, and it shall die, unless it be daily watered from the streams flowing from the fountain of life, and refreshed with the dews of Heaven and the wells of God; and, therefore, God had prepared a tree in Paradise to have supported Adam in his artificial immortality. Immortality was not in his nature, but in the hands and parts, in the favor and superadditions of God."—Future Life, p. 311.

To this we may add the remark of Richard Watson, whose "Institutes" are the Methodist standard of theology. He says: "That the soul is naturally immortal is contradicted by Scripture, which makes our immortality dependent on the will of God."—Inst. II, 83.

A PROBABLE FACT—WHAT IS IT?

The great and godly Dr. Vinet once sagaciously observed, that, "even now, after eighteen centuries of Christianity, we are very probably involved in some enormous error, of which Christianity will at some future time make us ashamed." The doctrine of endless woe is just such an "enormous error," and many in the churches are beginning to be ashamed of it.

TO CEASE TO BE IS A PUNISHMENT.

We are sometimes met with the hasty assertion, that to be destroyed, consumed, burned up, etc., is no punishment. With this sentiment we join issue, mainly in the language of others, and those of opposite sentiments. It seems there are some who regard the extinction of beings as an "infinite punishment."

Says Mr. Edwards, in reply to Chauncey (Works I, 80): "Endless annihilation is an endless or infinite punishment."

Mr. Baxter, author of many works published by the American Tract Society, in his Unreasonableness of Infidelity, says: "Would you not be contented to suffer a terrible degree of misery everlasting rather than die? Whatever men may say, it is certain they would."

Jurieu, called the "Goliah of Protestants," inquires, "When a criminal is condemned to death, is not that an eternal punishment? Does the judge order him to be resuscitated in the course of a year?"

Dr. Gordon, Hall's Memoirs, p. 95, testifies: "So dreadful do I think of annihilation," said a dying man, "that I would rather live in pain than not to live at all."

St. Augustine uses the following strong language: "If any one shall say, 'I would rather not be, than be in misery,' I should reply, 'You say what is false.'"—De. Lib. Arb., 1, 3, c. 6.

And Mr. Daubuz, in speaking of those who believed in a deprivation of future existence, says, with emphasis: "The remedy is worse than the disease."—Com. on Rev. 20:12.

To us, the thought of a candidate for immortality losing Heaven is deplorable beyond expression. That one who might flame with seraphs should be condemned to eternal deprivation of being, is a penalty from which most hearts shrink back in horror and consternation.

DID MR. WESLEY BELIEVE THE COMMON VIEW?

In the second volume of his published Sermons, in a discourse upon the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, occurs this paragraph, though perhaps much to the mortification of his present followers. Said he: "It is, indeed, very generally supposed that the souls of good men, as soon as they are discharged from the body, go directly to Heaven; but this opinion has not the least foundation in the oracles of God." Mr. Wesley did, indeed, believe in a conscious state somewhere outside of Heaven; but what it is or where it is, is beyond our ken. We, however, remark that his "ante-chamber of Heaven" is altogether anti-scriptural, and submit the whole in the language of Pres. Mahan: "Admissions in favor of the truth from the ranks of its opposers constitute the highest kind of evidence."

CRITICISM FROM CLARKE.

Dr. Adam Clarke, the well-known commentator and critic, thus disposes of the passage, Matt. 16:26, "What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" He says: "On what authority many have translated the word psuche, in the 25th verse, 'life,' and in this verse 'soul,' I know not; but I am certain it means 'life' in both places." Dr. Clarke was a strenuous believer in the soul's immortality, with all its adjuncts, as consciousness in death, eternal misery, etc.; therefore, we like his honest comments in the present instance the better. His remarks will also apply with equal force to Matt. 10:28, 39, which is an exact parallel to the present case.

LUTHER ON THE INTERMEDIATE STATE.

This zealous reformer and expounder, while treating on the text, "there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest," says: "Another proof that the dead are insensible. Solomon thinks, therefore, that the dead are altogether asleep, and think of nothing. They lie, not reckoning days or years, but, when awakened, will seem to themselves to have slept scarcely a moment."—Bayle's Hist. and Crit. Dict. Luther's views on this question exposed him to much odium and calumny from his enemies. Sir Thomas More, a Catholic, in his dispute with Tyndale, thus kicked at him: "What shall he care how long he live in sin, that believeth Luther, that he shall after this life feel neither good nor evil, in body nor soul, until the day of doom?"

BEECHER'S VIEW OF ETERNAL MISERY.

Dr. Edward Beecher, in speaking of the present theory of punishment in the Conflict of Ages, pp. 225, 306, says: "It involves God, his whole administration, and his eternal kingdom in the deepest dishonor that the mind of man or angel can conceive. The human mind cannot be held back from abhorring such a theory, except by the most unnatural violence to its divinely-inspired convictions of right." So have many others reasoned, as well as Dr. Beecher. No wonder that even the little child, when told by its mother of an ever-burning hell, said, "I wish I had never been born!" But thank Heaven that so revolting a sentiment is altogether human and anti-scriptural.

DEATH MEANS DEATH.

Dr. Watts, the church's poet, in his Ruin and Recovery of Mankind, p. 11, §3, deposes the following candid testimony on the penalty pronounced upon Adam. Said he, "There is not one place of Scripture that occurs to me, where the word death, as it was first threatened in the law of innocency, necessarily signifies a miserable immortality of the soul, either to Adam, the actual sinner, or to his posterity." There is more truth than poetry in this paragraph of Watts'; for the statement is exactly in harmony with the divine Scriptures.

AN IMPORTANT DISTINCTION.

On the conversation between Christ and the Sadducees, Matt. 22:23-32, Mr. Olshausen, the distinguished German commentator, says: "In this passage, we have, chiefly, an expressed confirmation of the resurrection, which, it is to be observed, we must distinguish from the immortality of the soul. Of the latter, the Scriptures never speak; on the contrary, God is called, He who alone hath immortality. 1 Tim. 6:16."

DWIGHT'S TESTIMONY.

Dr. Dwight, the well-known theological writer, makes the following statement concerning everlasting misery: "There are, I know," said he, "persons who speak of future punishment with an air of cool, self-complacency, as being, in their view, easy of investigation, and free from embarrassment. I am inclined, perhaps uncharitably, to give them little credit for candor, clearness of intellect, or soundness of character; and greatly doubt whether it has been investigated by them."—Dwight, Vol. 4, p. 457. How few there are, if they would candidly examine the matter, but would be of the same mind with Dr. Dwight.

(To be continued.)