MEETING WITH THE DISCIPLES.
By R. F. C.
Bro. Smith: Some weeks since, Bro. Wheeler preached a number of discourses at the Disciples' house in Lancaster, Erie Co. N. Y., which had the effect to call forth an appointment from a Disciple preacher on the Sabbath question. At the time appointed I found myself at liberty to attend, but learned that the minister had preached his promised discourse a week previous to the time appointed. However, another preacher was present, and I remained to hear on another subject. The Disciples have, from their very first introduction in this part of the country, stoutly advocated the no-Sabbath doctrine. You may therefore conceive something of my surprise, when, at the close of their Sunday school, the minister gave out a hymn commencing:
'This day belongs to God alone,
This day he chooses for his own;
And we must neither work nor play,
Because it is God's holy day.' To hear those who have repeatedly affirmed that there was no holy time under the gospel dispensation, and could not be all over the habitable surface of this revolving globe, now teaching the young that Sunday is God's holy day, might well produce astonishment. I could scarcely help wishing to revise the next verse, for their use, as follows:
'Tis well to have one day in seven
To think of God and Christ and heaven;
Since God divorced his day of rest,
We take the day the Popes have blest.' The discourse was on the subject of man's nature and destiny. The speaker made a very just distinction between destruction and annihilation, but represented his opponents as teaching that the wicked will be annihilated, whereas we only affirm that they will be burned up root and branch, and be ashes under the feet of the righteous. If this is true, (and who will deny it, since the word of God affirms it,) they certainly will have no conscious existence, unless ashes have. As persons they will not be, i. e. they will not exist; but this is not saying that their dust will not exist. He proceeded to affirm that "man is a triune being," consisting of body, soul and spirit. I never heard a Disciple confess faith in the doctrine of the trinity; but why not, if man consists of three persons in one person? especially, since man was made in the image of God? But the image he said, was a moral likeness. So man may be a triune being without proving that God is. But does he mean that one man is three men? I might say that a tree consists of body, bark and leaves, and no one perhaps would dispute it. But if I should affirm that each tree consists of three trees, the assertion would possibly be doubted by some. But if all admitted that one tree is three trees, I might then affirm that there were ninety trees in my orchard, when no one could count but thirty. I might then proceed and say, I have ninety trees in my orchard, and as each tree consists of three trees, I have two hundred and seventy. So if one man is three men, you may multiply him by three as often as you please. But if it takes body, soul and spirit to make one perfect, living man; then separate these, and the man is unmade. He defined soul as signifying animal life, and said that beasts have soul and body. Consequently he did not claim immortality for the soul, but for the spirit. And to prove that the spirit of man is not the breath of life, he quoted some passages where the word is used, in which it will not do to substitute breath; such as unclean spirits, unclean breaths, &c. He seemed to forget that no one definition will in all cases, answer for either soul or spirit, as used in the Bible. It still remains a fact that soul, in its primary use, includes the whole person; (Gen. ii, 7;) and that the spirit of man, in its first sense is the breath of the spirit of life, which God breathed into his nostrils. See Gen. vii, 21, 22. Job xxvii, 3. He affirmed that "spirits are never said to die." He must have forgotten, just here, that beasts have a spirit as well as man; so that if this argument proves the immortality of man, it proves that of brutes also. It is not strange that the spirit of man is not said to die, for the term is seldom used as signifying anything that has life, but generally means the life principle in man. Sometimes it means the whole man; as, "The spirits of just men made perfect," means just men made perfect, soul, body and spirit, in the resurrection state. But the spirit can fail if it cannot die. The Lord says, I will not contend forever, neither will I be always wroth; for the spirit should fail before me, and the souls which I have made. Isa. lvii, 16. Here spirit is used in the singular number, for all have one spirit—"all have one breath." And should this spirit fail, as a consequence, all the souls that God has created would fail also. In speaking of what Jesus said to the thief upon the cross, in order to show that the term to-day could not qualify I say unto you, he said that, in the Greek, to-day begins with a capital letter, and that the sentence is marked as a quotation. Now I have often said that punctuation is not inspiration. If I am mistaken, I wish to be corrected. Were the Greek Scriptures first written without points, and wholly in capital letters? If so, what sort of proof are the capitals and quotations in a modern Greek Testament? Does it approach any nearer to inspiration than the same thing in English? But the most outrageous thing of all was, he branded our views as "Sadduceesim." The Sadducees say, there is no resurrection, neither angel or Spirit. Now did he not know that we give more prominence and importance to the resurrection than any other people? Certainly he did. Did he not know that we believe in angels as ministering spirits, and also that the spirits of devils are working miracles all over the land? He understood this well. Why then the charge of Sadduceesim? Simply because we do not hold the popular notion of man's immortality. But I would not be severe. The man is of a mild and gentle turn, and seems quite candid. And I should really expect him to embrace the truth, were it not for the overwhelming influence against it, with which he is surrounded. In one point, if no more, he is far in advance of professed christians generally. He sees no propriety in attempting to sustain earthly governments, while we are looking for a kingdom which will overthrow all these as usurpers. God bless the man with the light of present truth.