MUCH IN LITTLE | AdventAI

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 12, 1860

"MUCH IN LITTLE."

Short Testimonies on the Soul, &c.

VERY CONSISTENT.

Gen. ii, 17. "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."

LOCKE, the great Mental Philosopher and Christian, says: "It seems a STRANGE way of understanding a Law which requires the plainest and directest words, that by 'death,' should be meant eternal life IN MISERY."

FRANK ADMISSION.

OLSHAUSEN in his comments on 1 Cor. xv, 19, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ," &c., says, "The doctrine of the IMMORTALITY of the SOUL, and the name, are alike unknown to the ENTIRE BIBLE."

IT'S JUST SO.

Eld. J. BLAIN, Baptist minister of Buffalo, makes use of the following sarcastic paragraph: "It is a notorious fact that in our theological works, a nondescript dictionary is made with definitions, as follows: To be dead, means to be more conscious. To die, is to live on in woe. To lose life, is to preserve a miserable existence. Life means happiness. To burn up is to make a living salamander. To destroy, is to preserve whole. To devour, perish, consume, &c., mean to make indestructible and immortal. Not to be, to be without end!"

PHILOSOPHICAL REASONING.

BISHOP NEWTON, the noted writer on the prophecies, justly remarks: "Nothing can be more CONTRARY to the divine nature and attributes, than for a God All-wise, All-good, All-powerful, All-perfect, to bestow existence on any beings whose destiny he foresees and foreknows, must terminate in wretchedness and misery, without recovery or remedy, without respite or end. God is love, and he would rather have not given life, than render that life a torment and curse to ALL ETERNITY. Imagine such a state of misery you may, but you can NEVER seriously believe it, nor reconcile it to God and goodness."—Newton's Works, V. 6.

A HEATHEN'S CONCLUSION.

In Siam a priest came to our missionary and asked "how long his God tormented bad men in a future state," and when answered, "Forever," he replied, "Our god torments the worst of men only one thousand years, so we will not have your American God in Siam!" The doctrine is a barrier to the gospel to the heathen as well as to us.

ANCIENT TESTIMONY.

JUSTIN MARTYR, who was born A. D. 89, and suffered martyrdom for Christ A. D. 163, in his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, says: "Should you happen upon some who are called Christians, . . . and say there is no resurrection of the dead, but INSTANTLY when they die are received up into heaven, do not count these among Christians."

AN ILLUSTRATION.

It is said, "The terror of eternal woe is greater than that of destruction, and so more salutary." This might be partly true if men believed it; but in our day it affects sinners just as a child ten years old is affected by the parent's saying, "Obey or I'll cut your head off!" It is the certainty and justness, and not the severity of threatened punishment which is salutary.

LUTHER'S VIEW.

This great Reformer, "Defense Prop. 27," says: "I permit the pope to make articles of faith for himself and his faithful, such as, the pope is emperor of the world and the king of heaven, and God upon earth, (that) the soul is IMMORTAL, with all those monstrous opinions found in the Roman dung-hill of decretals!" Audlin in his "Life of Luther," speaking of Italian reformers, says: "They left Wittemburg and went to Geneva, where we find them in 1561, sustaining in a crowded school and in printed theses, that all which was said about the immortality of the soul was invented by anti-christ for the purpose of making the pope's pot boil!"

TYNDALE'S ARGUMENT.

This great man and translator of the Bible, while writing to Sir Thomas Moore, a Catholic, says; "In putting departed souls in heaven, hell and purgatory, you destroy the argument wherewith Christ and Paul prove the resurrection. . . . If the souls be in heaven, tell me why they be not in as good case as the angels be? And then what cause is there of the resurrection?"

A GOOD WITNESS.

Mr. DARBY, in his "Hopes of the Church," frankly admits what many others now begin to see. He says: "We would express our conviction that the immortality of the soul HAS NO SOURCE IN THE GOSPEL : that it comes on the contrary, from the Platonists. . . . The immortality of the soul came in to replace that of the resurrection."

SUPERSTITIOUS.

Says Eld. Blain, "Death not Life," p. 114: "An old Baptist minister lately told me it would be impossible to convert sinners by preaching destruction!" This is the same as saying, We must preach a lie, for fear God will not, or cannot, bless the truth; and so join hands with the heathen who go on the principle of doing evil that good may come!

AN IMPORTANT FACT.

DR. MCCULLOH, an author of Baltimore, says: "There is no word in the Hebrew language that signifies either soul or spirit in the technical sense in which we use the terms, as implying something distinct from the body." Vol. ii, p. 466-8.

A LITTLE BOY'S OPINION.

The doctrine of eternal woe has a pernicious effect even upon children. This is well illustrated by the following authentic fact: Said a pious minister, "The first I ever heard of a God was by my mother's telling me when two years old, that there was a God, and if I was bad he would burn me forever in such a fire as I saw on the hearth. My reply was, 'If God does so, he is a bad man!' I grew up an infidel, and remained so till converted by those who preached destruction."

HORRID TEACHING.

The Am. Tract Society published a tract, No. 277, by Rev. James Saurin, which says: "The wicked (in the fire of hell) utter as many blasphemies AGAINST God as the happy souls in heaven shout HALLELUJAHS to his PRAISE!" To which we answer: "Wo to them that utter error against the Lord," "Wo unto them that put darkness for light," "Wo unto the blind guides." Give us the "mind of the Spirit," if it tears every creed in christendom to atoms.

CUTTING RETORT.

It is contended by the advocates of endless woe, that "the eternal sufferings of the lost will give the intelligent creation, as a whole, a higher knowledge and ENJOYMENT of God." That is, "The woes of some will make others happy." So teaches Dr. Beecher. To this slanderous sentiment the Rev. S. Cobb retorts: "Now be it known that I, Sylvanus Cobb, will consent, and even petition to be permitted to forego that extra share of happiness which was to be added to me by the infinite sufferings of my brothers and sisters, and so put up with that moderate degree of happiness which I may enjoy in the divine love and grace in common with all, for the sake of having them too, reformed and blessed." This sarcastic reviewer adds, we should "have a unanimous petition from the righteous to be disencumbered of that enormous surfeit of ENJOYMENT which should be derived from the endless misery of others!"

AWFUL SLANDER.

Speaking of the miseries of the lost, Mr. Benson, the commentator, says: "God will

exert all his divine attributes to make them as wretched as the capacity of their natures will admit." The "Rev." Mr. Vincent adds: "The wicked will always be roaring and never breathe out the last; always sinking and never come to the bottom; always burning in the flames and never be consumed; the eternity of hell will be the hell of hell!" And Pres. Finney of Oberlin outdoes them all, by saying "this torment will eternally INCREASE!" May we not suppose with Mr. John Foster of England, "that if so transcendently DREADFUL a doctrine had been meant to be taught, there would have been such forms of propositions as to render all doubt a palpable absurdity." But the devotees of this doctrine may find relief in the remarks of Prof. Stuart. He says: "Perhaps God may in mercy extinguish our social susceptibilities in heaven!"

A PREDICTION.

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 the church are beginning to be ashamed of it!

CLOSING TRIBUTE.

MR. PANTON HAM, of Bristol England, in writing of the origin of the Immortality of the Soul, says: Let it be registered as the genuine genealogy, that Pagan Plato was its father, and the profligate Pope Leo its foster-father. Born and bred by the Pagan philosophy, the protege of Popery, this notion of the soul's immortality has become a pet dogma of popular Protestantism, which with a strange forgetfulness of its low lineage, openly declares it to be the honorable offspring of a true orthodoxy!