Thoughts on Immortality:
By G. W. A.
Being a Selection of Brief Testimonies on Man's Present Condition, the Intermediate State, Future Punishment, &c., from the Pens of Reputable Authors. BISHOP WHATELY'S VIEW OF ETERNAL MISERY.
This celebrated divine, Archbishop of Dublin, in speaking of 1 Cor. xv, 25, thus candidly bears witness: "We are told by Paul that Christ must reign till he hath put all things under his feet; and that the last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. And this does not seem consistent with the continuance forever of a number of wicked beings alive, and hating Christ, and odious in his sight." Well may we say in the words of one of old, "How forcible are right words." NO "THUS SAITH THE LORD" FOR IT.
However strongly theologians inveigh against the reform view of natural immortality, there are some who make surprising concessions toward this truth. Thus BISHOP TILLOTSON in his Sermons, printed in 1774, vol. 2, admits the whole question. Said he, "The immortality of the soul is rather supposed, or taken for granted, than expressly revealed in the Bible." And DR. BAGNALL, in the Methodist Quarterly Review for Apr. 1852, while writing in favor of natural immortality, acknowledges, "In the Bible, we think, there is no passage which can be strictly said to declare that all human souls are immortal." We heartily co-incide with the above declarations, and conjecture that perhaps this lack of inspiration is made up in the teachings of theology and modern Spiritualism. TORMENTED DAY AND NIGHT FOR EVER AND EVER.
MR. DAUBUZ, one of the oldest commentators on the Apocalypse, and who states very strongly the common view of the lost, finds no proof of that doctrine in this scripture. While commenting on Rev. xiv, 11, he says: "So then, the smoke ascending up for ever and ever, is not to signify a continual burning; but by a metonymy of the efficient for the effect, to signify that it is burnt for ever, and NEVER TO BE RESTORED." What person who believes in the complete destruction of the wicked, could have given a better exposition of the text! LUTHER ON THE INTERMEDIATE STATE.
This zealous reformer and expounder, while treating on the text, "There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest," says: "Another proof that the dead are insensible. Solomon thinks therefore that the dead are altogether asleep, and think of nothing. They lie, not reckoning days or years, but, when awakened, will seem to themselves to have slept scarcely a moment." Bayle's Hist. and Crit. Dic. Luther's views on this question exposed him to much odium and calumny from his enemies. Sir Thomas Moore, a Catholic, in his dispute with Tyndale, thus kicked at him: "What shall he care how long he live in sin, that believeth Luther, that he shall after this life feel neither good nor evil, in body nor soul, until the day of doom?" BEECHER'S VIEW OF ETERNAL MISERY.
DR. EDWARD BEECHER, in speaking of the present theory of punishment, in the Conflict of Ages, pp. 225, 306, says: "It involves God, his whole administration, and his eternal kingdom in the deepest dishonor that the mind of man or angel can conceive. The human mind cannot be held back from abhorring such a theory, except by the most unnatural violence to its divinely inspired convictions of right." So have many others reasoned as well as Dr. Beecher. No wonder that even the little child, when told by its mother of an ever-burning hell, said, "I wish I had never been born!" But, thank Heaven that so revolting a sentiment is altogether human and anti-scriptural. BELIEF IN ETERNAL MISERY TENDS TO INFIDELITY.
Of the truth of this statement the case of the EARL OF SHAFTESBURY furnishes a remarkable instance. This personage was a noted skeptic and unbeliever. "There is a tradition," says Dr. Kippis, "that among other difficulties which occurred to him in regard to the truth of the Christian Revelation, he was startled at the idea of its containing the doctrine of the eternity of hell torments; that he consulted some eminent churchmen whether the New Testament positively asserted that doctrine; and that upon being assured that it did, he declared himself incapable of assenting to a system of religion which maintained a tenet so repugnant to all his views of the great government of the Universe."—Biog. Britan., London, 1789. Thousands of thinking men whose biographies will remain a secret till the great day, have been driven into the same oblivious state of mind as Lord Shaftesbury,—and by the same doctrine, too. DR. WATTS, the church's poet, in his Ruin and Recovery of Mankind q. 11, § 3, deposes the following candid testimony on the penalty pronounced upon Adam. Said he, "There is not one place of Scripture that occurs to me, where the word death, as it was first threatened in the law of innocency, necessarily signifies a miserable immortality of the soul, either to Adam the actual sinner, or to his posterity." There is more truth than poetry in this paragraph of Watts, for the statement is exactly in harmony with Scripture. ADAM NOT NATURALLY IMMORTAL.
BISHOP JEREMY TAYLOR, the famous author and scholar of the seventeenth century, thus beautifully states our position: "Whatsoever had a beginning can also have an ending, and it shall die, unless it be daily watered from the streams flowing from the fountain of life, and refreshed with the dews of heaven, and the wells of God; and therefore God had prepared a tree in Paradise to have supported Adam in his artificial immortality. Immortality was not in his nature, but in the hands and parts, in the favor and superadditions of God."—Future Life p. 311. To this we may add the remark of RICHARD WATSON, whose "Institutes" are the Methodist standard of theology. He says: "That the soul is naturally immortal is contradicted by Scripture, which makes our immortality dependent on the will of God."—Inst. ii, 83. WHAT NATURE DID ADAM HAVE?
THEOPHILUS of Antioch argues the proposition thus: "Some one will ask, Was Adam by nature mortal? By no means. Immortal? Not thus, either. What then?—nothing at all! I answer, neither mortal nor immortal; for if the Creator had made him the first immortal, he would have made him a god. If mortal, then God would appear as the author of death. He made him, then, capable of becoming either; so that by keeping the command of God he might attain immortality as his reward, and become a god [or glorified being]. But if he should turn to mortal things, and disobey God, he would be himself the author of his own death. For God made man free, and with power of self-control."—Future Life p. 309. With this agrees the view of BALSAMON, a medieval annotator, who comments as follows: "God made man neither mortal nor immortal; but midway between greatness and humility; and having made him master of himself, and with power of free-will, he left him to choose either virtue or vice, and to receive either immortality or mortality."—Id., p. 311. Says a Christian Bishop of the fifth century (NEMESIUS), in descanting on the nature of the soul: "Originally man was made evidently neither mortal nor immortal, but on the confines of either nature."—Id., p. 310. A recent reviewer of a work on unconditional immortality, utters the following severe, though truthful, sentence: "The doctrine of the natural immortality of138the soul, is the foundation on which the harlot Mother sits, and, as she is the mother of harlots, all her daughters have drank deeply of her spiritual fornication. The whole Protestant world is tinctured with this subtle heresy; and in vain do they oppose the Mass, Purgatory, and Invocation of Saints, whose very existence depends upon the popular dogma of immortality, while they maintain, uphold, and defend this foundation."—Anthropos, p. 69. He might also have added, Spiritualism. For all that sublime jerking, howling, barking, reeling, staggering, rapping, and twitching of half-crazy mediums, the rattling, clattering, thumping, knocking, and tipping of household furniture, the peeping and muttering of officious spirits, is founded on this mighty corner-stone of Protestant belief and religious education. DR. ADAM CLARKE, the well-known commentator and critic thus disposes of the passage, Matt. xvi, 26, "What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?" He says, "On what authority many have translated the word psyche in the 25th verse LIFE and in this verse SOUL, I know not; but I am certain it means life in both places." Dr. Clarke was a strenuous believer in the soul's immortality, with all its adjuncts, as consciousness in death, eternal misery, etc., therefore we like his honest comments in the present instance the better. His remarks will also apply with equal force to Matt. x, 28, 39, which is an exact parallel to the present case. DID MR. WESLEY BELIEVE THE COMMON VIEW?
In the second volume of his published Sermons, while discoursing upon the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, this good man penned the following paragraph, though perhaps much to the mortification of his present followers. Said he: "It is, indeed, very generally supposed that the souls of good men, as soon as they are discharged from the body, go directly to heaven; but this opinion has not the least foundation in the Oracles of God." MR. WESLEY did, indeed, believe in a conscious state somewhere outside of heaven; but what it is, or where it was, is beyond our ken. We however remark that his "ante-chamber of heaven" is altogether anti-scriptural, and submit the whole in the language of PRES. MAHAN: "Admissions in favor of the truth from the ranks of its opposers, constitute the highest kind of evidence." MAN IS ALL SOUL—MILTON'S VIEW.
There are some who have much reverence for great names. Such will be pleased with the following criticism from JOHN MILTON, author of "Paradise Lost," so well known in the poetic world. Milton did not believe in the two-fold nature of man, as his "Treatise on Christian Doctrine," vol. 1, pp. 250, 251, shows: "Man is a living being, intrinsically and properly one and individual, not compound and separable, not, according to the common opinion, made up and framed of two distinct and different natures, as of body and soul, but the whole man is soul, and the soul man; that is to say, a body or substance, individual, animated, sensitive, and rational." Let those who believe in the duplex-entity of human beings, ponder well what the distinguished bard has said. DR. DWIGHT, the well-known theological writer, makes the following statement concerning everlasting misery: "There are, I know," said he, "persons who speak of future punishment with an air of cool, self-complacency, as being in their view, easy of investigation and free from embarrassment. I am inclined, perhaps uncharitably, to give them little credit for candor, clearness of intellect, or soundness of character; and greatly doubt whether it has been investigated by them."—Dwight vol. 4, p. 457. How few there are, if they would candidly examine the matter, but would be of the same mind with Dr. Dwight. TO CEASE TO BE IS A PUNISHMENT.
We are sometimes met with the hasty assertion, that to be destroyed, consumed, burned up, &c., is no punishment. With this sentiment we join issue, mainly in the language of others, and those of opposite sentiments. It seems there are some who do regard the extinction of being as an "infinite punishment." Says MR. EDWARDS in reply to Chauncey (Works i, 80), "Endless annihilation is an endless or infinite punishment." MR. BAXTER, author of many works published by the Am. Tract Society, in his Unreasonableness of Infidelity, says: "Would you not be contented to suffer a terrible degree of misery everlastingly, rather than die? Whatsoever men may say, it is certain they would." JURIEU, called the "Goliath of Protestants," inquires, "When a criminal is condemned to death, is not that an eternal punishment? Does the judge order him to be resuscitated in the course of a year?" DR. GORDON, Hall's Memoirs, p. 95, testifies: "So dreadful do I think of annihilation" said a dying man, "that I would rather live in pain, than not to live at all." ST. AUGUSTINE uses the following strong language: "If any one shall say, 'I would rather not be, than be in misery,' I should reply, 'you say what is false.'"—De Lib. Arb., 1, 3, c. 6. And MR. DAUBUZ, in speaking of those who believed in a deprivation of future existence, says with emphasis, "The remedy is worse than the disease."—Com. on Rev. xx, 12. To us the thought of a candidate for immortality losing heaven, is deplorable beyond expression. That one who might flame with seraphs, should be condemned to eternal deprivation of being, is a penalty from which most hearts shrink back in horror and consternation. TO THE READER.—I have many more extracts in my possession similar in character to the foregoing, and should occasion offer, shall at some future time present them to the readers of the Review.