New Work by Editor

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Michigan · Aug 26, 1862

New Work.

By Editor

We have just published a valuable little pamphlet entitled, The State of the Dead, by John Milton. Price 5 cents a copy, one-third discount by the quantity. The following is the preface:

In matters of religion, many are, at the present time proverbially afraid of new things. Had this fear existed before new things usurped the place of the old, it had been well. As it is, we have not only the state of things spoken of by the prophet, when men shall put darkness for light and light for darkness, and bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter, but we have them also putting old things for new, and new for old, clinging to the new things as if they were the old, and crying out against the old things as if they were new.

Such is emphatically the case with the doctrine discussed in the following pages. An immortal soul and consciousness in death are really the new things in this controversy. These are everywhere opposed by the writers of the Bible, and were only able to creep into the church by means of the great apostasy this side the days of the apostles. Yet men would have us believe that these are the ancient doctrines of God's word, and that the truth has stood on the side of the serpent from the days of Eve to the present. Gen. iii, 4. Hence, anything which opposes these, is branded as innovation—as some new doctrine which has come newly up. It is to remove this deception from the minds of the people that we labor. And in sending forth such teaching as this work contains, we are only calling attention to one of the "old paths," out of which the nations have been turned by the great enchantress that sits upon her seven hills on the banks of the Tiber, Rev. xvii, 1, 2; xviii, 3; and which the prophet calls upon us to seek out, and, when we have found them, to walk therein. Jer. vi, 16.

To this truth there have all along been witnesses; and those with whom great names are essential to authority, will find no lack of these connected with this doctrine. The name of John Milton, author of "Paradise Lost," and who has been styled "The Christian Homer," is all that could be asked in this direction. He was born in London, Dec. 9, 1608, and stood at the head of his generation in literature and theology. With him we may mention, as holding the same views, such men as the Rt. Hon. Sir James Stephens, Regius Professor of Mod. Hist. in Cambridge College, Eng., Archbishop Whately, of Dublin, Bishop Law, author of a Call to the Unconverted, Edward White, Wm. G. Moncrieff, of Scotland, H. H. Dobney and Panton Ham, of England; eminent as ministers and authors, John Locke, the Christian philosopher, Olshausen, the German commentator, who says, "The doctrine of the immortality of the soul and the name are alike unknown to the entire Bible," John Taylor, author of a Hebrew Concordance, Tholuck, the German critic, &c., &c.