The Bible vs. Mythology.
By W.
AMONG Christian people of modern times nothing is more common than to speak of death as a river. It is spoken of as "the dark river," "death's river," "the dismal flood," etc. People who have died are said to have "crossed the river," or "passed over to the other side." Of course these terms can be used only by those who believe the paradox that at death men still continue to live. They believe that death is but the entrance to life, and therefore they sing, "Death is the gate to endless joy," and, "'Tis but the voice that Jesus sends to call us to his arms." In harmony with this idea, also, they sing, "Shall we meet beyond the river?" meaning, shall we meet after death? Now every Bible student ought to know that these expressions are entirely unscriptural. Death is not the gate to endless joy, but an enemy. See 1 Cor. 15:26. It is not the voice that Jesus sends to call us to his arms, but something that is under the control of the devil. Heb. 2:14. Christ gained the power and the right to call his children to his arms295only by gaining the victory over death. Heb. 2:14, 15; Rev. 3:18. Death is not a river across which the righteous are ferried to the realms of bliss, but a voracious monster by which they are held until the last trump releases them from its cruel grasp. 1 Thess. 4:16; 1 Cor. 15:51, 52; Hosea 13:14. And then this last enemy shall be destroyed. Nowhere in the Bible is death likened to a river. Whence then did these expressions arise? Some, no doubt, think that the figure comes from the Israelites crossing the river Jordan into the land of Canaan. But that is a mistaken idea. 1. Although the entering of the Israelites into Canaan was a type of the entering of the saints into their final inheritance, we have seen that death is not the gate to that inheritance, and that some will receive their inheritance without seeing death. See 1 Cor. 15:51, 52; 1 Thess. 4:15-17. Therefore the river Jordan cannot be a type of death. 2. Even if it were a type of death, the popular idea would not hold, because the river was cut off, so that the Israelites went over dry shod. 3. There was no change whatever in the condition of the Israelites after they crossed the river. The entire absence of any Bible comparison of death to a river, and the fact that death is emphatically stated to be an enemy, and that it is not in any sense the boundary of our eternal inheritance, show that the popular expressions for death have no Bible foundation. If we study heathen mythology, however, we find the origin of these terms. Among the heathen, the river Styx encircled the abode of the dead. In order to get to this abode, the departed had to be rowed over the Styx in a ferry-boat managed by Charon, who demanded an obolus, about three cents, as his fee. To provide the soul with the necessary means to defray his expenses to hades, an obolus was always placed in the mouth of a dead person. From this heathen custom arose the modern practice of calling death a river, and of speaking of the dead as having passed to the other shore, or as having been wafted over the river. Now we have no objection to this. Indeed, we think that it is eminently fitting that those who hold to the heathen doctrine of natural immortality should use heathen terms in speaking of it. Nevertheless, the users of such language sometimes get mixed in their metaphors, as is evident from the following extract from a communication written by Dr. William Dean to the Watchman:— "Yesterday I stood on the banks of the dark river to help a young man of twenty-nine years, a New York broker, into the ferry-boat to take him over to the other side. As he was moving off, his young wife stretched out her arms and caught him, exclaiming, in her anguish, '—, don't go! I cannot let you go. If you must go, take me with you.' This departure reminded me that I was soon to cross the same river, and gave rise to a train of serious reflections." The mixture of the literal and the figurative in the above paragraph is amusing. For instance, are we to suppose that the Doctor was himself at the point of death? That is what is usually meant when a person is said to be standing on the brink of "the dark river." Again, when the Doctor says that he was helping the young man into the ferry-boat which was to bear him over the river, are we to understand that he was trying to hasten the young man's death? We have never heard it claimed by even the most enthusiastic believer in the doctrine that "death is the gate to endless joy," that it is allowable to kill a good man in order to get him to Heaven sooner. The Doctor's conduct ought to be inquired into. But the next sentence is more wonderful still: "As he was moving off, his young wife stretched out her arms and caught him, exclaiming in her anguish, '—, don't go! I cannot let you go!'" How was this? Was the young man about to cross the river bodily? We never supposed that Charon's craft was staunch enough to carry anything more substantial than an immaterial spirit. The language would indicate that his body was about to make the attempt to accompany the spirit to the "other side." Or are we to infer that the young wife caught her husband's immaterial spirit in her arms? If so, it was a remarkable case of materialization. We hope that in a future letter the Doctor will give us more of the details of this affair. He ought at least to tell us plainly whether he killed the young man or not. The only moral which we shall draw from this narrative is that professed Christians ought not to mix their faith with heathen doctrines and mythological expressions. Leave such things to the unenlightened heathen, but let Christians follow the doctrines and use the language of the Bible.