Historical Sketches on the Immortality of the Soul.
THERE is but one Scripture that can be produced in proof of man's immortality. That may be found Gen. iii, 4. "Ye shall not surely die; . . . ye shall be as gods," &c. But necromancy did exist among the idolatrous heathens even in the days of Moses, as Deut. xviii, 9-14, will show. Necromancy is a profession to consult with the departed spirits of the dead. By this we can see that this doctrine was very ancient, and must have had its origin from the Devil; not from God, as it was "an abomination" to him. The earliest history of which we can get authentic accounts informs us that "PYTHAGORAS was in Egypt, and from thence went to Babylon. His stay there, Jamblicus tells us, was twelve years: and that, in his converse with the Magians, he learned from them arithmetic, music, and the knowledge of divine things, and the sacred mysteries pertaining thereto. But the most important doctrine which he brought home from thence was the immortality of the soul; for it is generally agreed among the ancients, that he was the first of all the Greeks that taught it. And this, I take it for certain, he had from Zoroaster; for as I have before shown, it was his doctrine, and he is the ancientest of any whom we have upon record of all the heathen nations that taught it." Prid. Con., Vol. I, p. 205. SOCRATES. "The demon of Socrates, from the Greek word which signifies something of a divine nature, conceived as a secret voice, a sign, or such an inspiration as divines are supposed to have had. It is well known what his prognostications had been long before, upon the unfortunate expedition to Sicily. He attributed it to his demon, and declared it to be the inspiration of that spirit. Socrates, the last day of his life, explained to his friends all the arguments for believing the soul immortal, and refuted all the objections against it, which are very nearly the same as are made at this day. The philosopher here sets forth these great truths, which a constant tradition, though very much obscured by fiction and fable, had always preserved among the pagans; the last judgment of the righteous and wicked; the eternal punishment to which great criminals are condemned; a place of peace and joy without end for the souls that retain their purity and innocence, or which, during this life, have expiated their offences by repentance and satisfaction; and an intermediate state, in which they purify themselves, for a certain time, for less considerable crimes, that have not been atoned for during this life. (Catholic purgatory.) . . . But as the soul is immortal, it has no other means of being freed from its evils, nor any safety for it, but in becoming very good and very wise; for it carries nothing away with it, but its good or bad deeds, its virtues or vices, which are commonly the consequences of the education it has received, and the causes of eternal happiness or misery. But for those who have passed through life with peculiar sanctity of manners, delivered from their base earthly abodes as from a prison, they are received on high in a pure region which they inhabit; and as philosophy has sufficiently purified them, they live without their bodies through all eternity. I can never persuade Crito, that Socrates is he who converses with you, and disposes the several parts of his discourse; for he always imagines that I am what he is about to see dead in a little while. He confounds me with my carcass," &c. Rollins History, Vol. II, pp. 304, 322-324. PLATO. Josephus to the Greeks on hades says: "You believe that the soul is created, and yet made immortal by God, according to the doctrine of Plato." "They that die in time of peace, by some distemper or other, since their souls are already condemned to the grave, together with their bodies; for what man of virtue is there who does not know that those souls which are severed from their fleshly bodies in battles by the sword, are received by the ether, that purest of elements, and joined to that company which are placed among the stars; that they become good demons, and propitious heroes, and show themselves as such to their posterity afterwards, while upon those souls that wear away in and with their distempered bodies, come to a subterranean night, dissolve them to nothing." Wars, Book VI, Chap. i, Sec. 5. "ORIGEN was at the head of this speculative tribe. This great man, enchanted by the charms of the Platonic philosophy, set it up as the test of all religions, and imagined that the reasons of each doctrine were to be found in that favorite philosophy, and their nature and extent to be determined by it. Its first promoters argued from that known doctrine of the Platonic school, which also was adopted by Origen and his disciples, that the divine nature was diffused through all human souls." Mosheim, Vol. I, p. 88. PAUSANIAS. "Chaldean and Indian magi have been the first who asserted the immortality of the soul." Herodotus, p. 111. LARCHER. "It is indeed known that the immortality of the soul was not known to the Jews, but by the commerce which they had with the Assyrians during the time of their captivity." Ib. DR. CAMPBELL says: "Before the captivity, and the Macedonian and Roman conquests, the Jews observed the most profound silence upon the state of the dead, as to their happiness or misery. They spoke of it simply as a state of silence, darkness, and inactivity. But after the Hebrews mingled with the Greeks and Romans, they insensibly slid into their use of terms, and adopted some of their ideas on such subjects as those on which their oracles were silent." Preface to his Translation. MOSES. "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and MAN became a living soul." Gen. ii, 7. WATSON. "The body, formed out of preexistent matter, the earth, and a living soul, breathed into the body by inspiration of God. . . . That was the rational spirit itself, which, by a law of its Creator, was incapable of death, even after the body had fallen under that penalty. In spirituality, and consequently, immateriality, this image of God is man, then, in the first existence, consists. Nor is it any valid objection to say, that immateriality is not peculiar to the soul of man, for we have reason to believe that the inferior animals of the earth are actuated by an immaterial principle. But the tenets of the soul's descent appears to have most countenance from the language of Scripture. . . . The philosophical difficulties which have presented themselves to this opinion appear chiefly to have arisen from supposing that consciousness is an essential attribute of spirit; and that the soul is naturally immortal; the former of which cannot be proved, while the latter is contradicted by Scripture, which makes our immortality a gift dependent on the will of the Giver." Institutes, p. 252. M. E. CHURCH. "How did God make man? His body out of the dust; his soul out of nothing." S. S. Book for children, by the M. E. C. BENSON. The soul is "the spiritual and immaterial part of you; this will still survive in all its vigor, while its tabernacle lies in ruins." Benson's Commentary, Matt. x, 28. WESLEY. "For what is immaterial fire? The same as immaterial water, or earth! Both the one and the other is absolute nonsense; a contradiction in terms. Either therefore we must affirm it to be material, or we deny its existence." Wesley's Sermons, Vol. II, p. 150. LUTHER LEE. "An immaterial substance therefore can have no surface, and that which has no surface can never be brought into contact with that which has." Luther Lee, p. 62. BUCK. "The rational soul is simple, uncompounded, and immaterial, not composed of matter and form." Theological Dictionary, Art., Soul. SPIRITUALISM. "Ques. What do spirits propose to accomplish by these new manifestations?" "Ans. To unite mankind, and convince skeptical minds of the immortality of the soul." W. Channing. "Ques. What good can result from these manifestations?" "I will answer it. It is to draw mankind together in harmony, and convince skeptics of the immortality of the soul." J. C. Calhoun.