Belief of Immortal Soulism
By Winford C. Hankins
Its Awful Effects upon China
(Abstract of sermon by Evangelist Winford C. Hankins, of Amoy, China, at annual camp-meeting of Western Oregon Conference Seventh-day Adventists, East Fifteenth and Davis streets, Portland, Oregon, June 2, 1912) Some people wonder why China is so far behind the other nations of the earth. It is because they have believed that first satanic falsehood that the soul of man is immortal. Jesus said, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Then if a man is in bondage, it is because he does not know the truth. China to-day is in bondage to the devil because for centuries she has believed that lie. It is a most cruel bondage, I can assure you. Many people in this country told me before I went to China, and many still say, that it makes absolutely no difference, so far as a man's salvation is concerned, what he believes in regard to the state of the dead. They queried what difference it could make whether a man believed a man's soul, when he died, went straight to heaven, or to hell, or slept in the grave. That very doctrine, that when a man is dead he is still alive, is the doctrine to which China can trace the most of her trouble. This belief stands out like an immense mountain blocking the progress of Christianity. If the Chinese would surrender that false doctrine, they would accept Christianity by thousands where they accept it by twos and threes now. The Chinese word for "soul" is represented by a character the main portion of which means "devil." To the left of this character is another which means "death." Taking it literally, it means "dead devil." That is the word the Chinese use when they speak of the soul. That is why it is so difficult to preach the gospel in China—because when we think we are speaking of the soul, we are conveying to our hearers a very different idea. The Chinese believe that a man has three spirits, or souls, and that when he dies, these are released from the body. One, they believe, abides in the grave, one in the ancestral tablet, and one in hell. The ancestral tablets are preserved from generation to generation. They are pieces of wood, on which are written the name, date of birth, and date of death of the deceased. They are worshiped by the dead man's descendants. It is the belief of the Chinese that each of these spirits has an existence, especially the one which goes to hell, and whether this one is a beggar spirit or one of wealth, whether it has a good or a bad time, depends entirely upon how it is treated by its descendants. If a man who dies, leaves considerable property, his descendants will have a paper house made, with paper furniture, paper servants, paper horses, and at the time of his burial all this is burned. These are all believed to go to hades. They believe if they did not do it the poor fellow would have nothing when in hades, but that he would be a beggar. At certain times in the year you will find on all the graves a great amount of paper. It has been cut into circles, great strings of them. Some of them are stamped with something which looks like gold and silver. That is make-believe money. They go to the priests, and spend millions of dollars a year for this paper money. This is burned before the grave, to supply these souls in hades with sufficient cash to live upon. It is a great system of fraud. This idea that they can defraud the spirits in the other world by giving them paper money has its effect upon the Chinese character. It causes them to cheat and lie and steal. Another Chinese custom is to prepare big feasts at certain times in the year. These are set out in front of the door, and the spirits are believed to partake of them. At certain times feasts are set out for the beggar spirits, those who have no descendants, so that they may not trouble the living. Sufficient money is spent in this ancestor worship to take Christianity to all China. How It Hinders Christianity
Now you can see why this belief stands in the way of the acceptance of Christianity. Suppose I am an old man, ready to die. I have some sons. One comes to me and says: "I have heard the new teaching concerning Christ, and I believe it. I believe it is better than our ancestor worship. I want to become a Christian." My answer to him is, "You must not listen to that teaching any more." "Do you want me to go over there to be a beggar spirit simply because you want to accept this Christian religion? No, sir. You are a very unfilial son. When I get over there you must worship me." The Chinese believe that for their descendants to accept Christianity, is the worst thing that could happen to them after they die. This belief has had its effect upon every institution, upon all Chinese life, upon their building, their buying, their selling, upon their women and upon their men. Everything connected with China has felt the blighting influence of this falsehood which Satan has led them to believe. Responsible for Girl Deaths
When a baby girl comes into the family, the mother looks at it and weeps. Sometimes she will say to the nurse, "Go and get me a bucket of water." The little one is held in it, face down, and then they say that the baby was born dead. What is the matter? — Girls are not welcome. Sometimes you will find a little baby girl outside the city wall, crying, with nobody to care for it, starving to death. Why? — It has been thrown out there and abandoned because it is a girl. Sometimes they throw them into the wells. They will do anything to get rid of them. Thousands of them are given away, to be raised for lives of shame. But why aren't the girls as welcome as the boys? — Simply because of this doctrine of the immortality of the soul. It is the custom in China that when a woman marries she belongs to the family of her husband. Therefore she worships and provides for the ancestors of her husband. They don't seem to care so much what happens to them in this life, but every one wants a son, that he and his descendants may worship him and provide for his soul in hades. That is why women hold the position they do to-day in China. Can we not be thankful we were not reared in China? That little belief, which some people here say has no bearing upon a man's salvation, has cost wo to millions of hearts in China, has caused millions of baby girls to be killed, and millions of others to be given away to be raised for lives of shame. Do you think it is of no consequence what we believe? The Lord says, "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." To-day China is a poor nation. Why? Has not China mines rich in gold and silver? Has she not millions of tons of coal? Has she not iron and copper and lead and tin and many precious metals? — Yes, China has enough mineral wealth to make her the richest nation on earth. You say she is unprogressive, that she lacks ambition to mine it? No, indeed. Do you think the Chinaman is stupid? He is one of the sharpest, shrewdest men you will meet anywhere in the world. General Grant said the funniest sight he ever saw was a Chinaman beating a Jew at a bargain. Then why has he not mined this wealth? — Simply because of his belief in the immortality of the soul. Not only does the man who dies depend upon his descendants to worship him, but it is the prevailing belief that the choosing of a suitable burying-place will bring either good or bad luck. The burial places are always in the hills. The hills are literally covered with graves. But the minerals are generally in the hills, and to open a great mine in the side of one of these hills would be to spoil the good luck of these graves. Therefore when a man comes along and says, "Here is a gold-mine," the village elders get together and inform him that the minute he opens that hill up he will die. "We do not propose to have our good luck spoiled by your digging a big hole in the midst of those graves," is the way they express themselves. Ill Health and Inconvenience
In some localities you will find none but one-story houses. You can see that if they were put up two stories high the sleeping rooms would not be so unhealthy. But in some of these localities the people believe if they build the houses more than one story high they will invite bad luck. In some places foreigners are absolutely prohibited7from building any structures more than one story high. Because they have put the graves on the hills, it would spoil their good luck to build also on the hills. Consequently the houses are built in the hollow. They provide for no ventilation, no sanitation, no drainage. The water just stands there. As a result a man gets the plague. There is no quarantine, and scores of friends of the man visit him, and ask, "I wonder what spirit this is that is bothering him?" They send for the witch-doctor. He names the spirit, and instructs the relatives to sprinkle sand on the floor, to say certain things, and to fire firecrackers. Or perhaps they give the man some ground-up spiders to drive out the devils, or pierce his flesh with red-hot needles so as to drive the devils out. He dies, and before long a whole street has plague patients, or a whole neighborhood, or, in some instances, tens of thousands of cases of smallpox. There is no quarantine. If a man is ill, his neighbors visit him, and try to rid the place of the evil spirits. The great difficulty is the lack of sanitation, the crowding together, and the lack of drainage. These things are traceable to their belief in the immortality of the soul. Their streets are crooked, and in Canton it is a wide street that you can not touch on both sides with your hands at the same time. Many are so narrow you can not carry an umbrella in them. The trouble is, the people fear all the time that the spirits of other ancestors than their own will visit their houses. So they make the streets crooked in order that these spirits will not be able to find the place. The spirits of a man's own ancestors are regarded as spirits, but the spirits of all others are devils. The Chinese live daily and hourly in fear of these devils. Everything of importance that is undertaken is preceded by the firing of firecrackers. China to-day is hundreds of years behind the rest of the world in civilization, is poor and needy, is wretched and blind and naked, simply because of this belief which thousands of people here in the United States say is of no importance. There is not one truth in God's Word but it is important we believe, and not one lie which has been invented by the devil but it is important we know to be a lie, and treat it as such by refusing to believe it. Just the minute we believe a lie, no matter of how little consequence we regard it, just that minute the devil can use that lie and our belief in it to take us away from the kingdom of God, and away from all true happiness. There is nothing but the truth of God on this question of the immortality of the soul, that will ever take China out of the spiritual depths into which she has sunk.