Untitled article by R. F. Cottrell

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 16, 1864

Are the Dead Conscious? No. 7.

By R. F. Cottrell

“For to him that is joined to all the living, there is hope: for a living dog is better than a dead lion. For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything, neither have they any more a reward; for the memory of them is forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion for ever in anything that is done under the sun.” Eccl. ix, 4-6.

This testimony is decisive of the question, if the positive affirmations of the word of the Lord can decide a question at all. That human invention which may be denominated the double-entity swivel, though it turns very readily either way, in accordance with the will of the operator, must fail to evade its force. Persons in one condition are represented as living—in another, as dead. The living have the preference—“a living dog is better than a dead lion.” But why use such a comparison to illustrate the difference between living and dead men? The reason follows: “For the living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything.” No stronger language can be used to affirm man's utter unconsciousness in death. If we should say, The living are conscious of some things, but the dead are unconscious of everything, we express no more than the text expresses.

It is of no avail to say that the body, which of itself, according to popular theology, knows nothing when living, and of which the conscious soul is entirely independent as to its faculties of mind, knows nothing when dead. It is evidently that which knows while the person is living, that knows nothing after death.

Now, if any part of man has knowledge while he is dead, the broad assertion that the dead know not anything, is, to my mind, at least, entirely too broad. I trust I shall not be accused of trifling while I illustrate this point, in accordance with the common theory, by the use of the best comparison which I can think of in nature. We will suppose that oysters know much more than we have reason to think that they do, and that the fleshy part can be separated from the shell without the least injury to its vitality or consciousness, just as it is affirmed of the soul in its separation from the body. Now, I take up one fresh from his native element and say, This oyster knows that I am about to take him from his shell. I do so. I cleave him out and place him in a dish, throw down the shell and say, Now he knows not anything. Would you not accuse me of quibbling when I gravely tell you I meant only the shell?

It is evident that it is the mind that ceases its functions, that knows while man lives, and knows nothing when he is dead. Love and hatred and envy pertain to the mind; and of these it is affirmed, “Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished.” And, for the benefit of those who hear that the dead are actively engaged in rapping, tipping tables, conversing and controlling writing and speaking mediums, &c., the inspired writer adds, “Neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.” They are not then the guardian spirits of the living, as many professed ministers of the gospel represent them to be.

Again, we are exhorted to improve our time to the best advantage while we live, because our labor and our knowledge must cease at death. “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave, whither thou goest.” Verse 10. Nothing is done, nothing is devised, nothing is known in the grave. We are told, however, and Socrates has taught it, that men do not go into the grave at death. But the text speaks to the real man—the intelligent, reasoning, conscious man—as going into the grave. “In the grave, whither thou goest,” is the language. Now, unless this can be disproved—unless it can be shown that man does not go into the grave, as the Scriptures represent, it is fully proved that the dead are unconscious.

But, objects a learned friend, the spirits of the dead, both good and bad, go, at death, into a subterranean abode, called sheol in the Hebrew and hades in the Greek, where they all exist, either in conscious happiness or misery, till the resurrection. This view, it is thought, is confirmed by the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, where the rich man is represented as lifting up his eyes in hades, being in torment. It is true that the Spirit of inspiration has chosen the term hades in the Greek to represent the sheol of the Hebrew; hence, what is true of the one is also true of the other. But this is the very place spoken of in Eccl. ix, 10, where it is positively affirmed that “there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in sheol, whither thou goest.” Then if the spirits or souls are separated from their bodies at death, and go into sheol or hades, there is nothing gained, for there is no knowledge there; and they might as well be unconscious in the grave, as to be in sheol or hades, where there is no knowledge. These terms are properly translated grave, both in the Old Testament and the New. It is the place of the dead—“a land of darkness as darkness itself,” a “land of forgetfulness,” a place where there is “no work, nor device, nor knowledge.”

Since we have the positive statements of the word of God that the dead know not anything, and that in the place of the dead there is no knowledge, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, and all other passages which represent the dead in hades or sheol as acting or speaking, must be understood as figurative language. We have no right to infer from them a doctrine that contradicts the express word of the Lord. To prove that the dead are conscious, some passage must be found that positively asserts it; and when that passage is found, these passages which assert their unconsciousness must be expunged, or there will be a positive contradiction in the Bible. As long as the old Bible stands, so long it will remain a truth that “The dead know not anything.”