Elder R. F. Cottrell's Fifth Reply.
By R. F. Cottrell
Dear Brother,—Yours of Recorder, March 23d, is received. If I have appeared "boastful," or "conceited," or have "over-estimated my efforts, I beg your pardon, and that of our readers. I certainly did not intend it. This, however, is not the subject we agreed to discuss. Consequently, to this part of your argument I shall not attempt a reply; but rather, so far as boasting is concerned, freely confess myself completely vanquished. Still, in regard to the subject in debate, if I speak at all, I must beg to be allowed to speak with confidence; for I have the utmost confidence in my position, believing, without a doubt, that I am on the side of God and truth. And I cheerfully accord to you the same right and privilege. I shall not accuse you of unfairness and deception, as long as I have a good stock of better arguments; for I am not wrestling with you, but with your errors. Perhaps I ought further to confess, that I erred in designating yours as a "crumbling theory;" for almost the whole infidel world are embracing it as their last engine with which to overthrow the Bible. Spiritualism is the "last ditch" in which the rebels against high Heaven are entrenching themselves, and in which they will perish. But I think I should speak safely should I say, that of Bible believers, the gain from your theory to the one I hold, in the United States alone, within the last twenty years, is not less than one hundred thousand. When you manufacture a position for me, and then exhibit your skill in demolishing it, you waste your strength in heating the air. This is the case with the greater part of the article now before me. You say, "A fundamental principle in your theory is, if I understand you, that life is the result of organized matter." So far from being a fundamental principle, this is no part of my theory. Life is not the result of organization, but is the gift of God. And my principal object in this discussion is to convince you and our readers, that life is not inherent in man—that he will not naturally live eternally—but that, as an apostle says, eternal life is the gift of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Rom. vi, 23. I have held, in this discussion, that man was perfectly organized from the dust of the ground, and yet had no life nor knowledge till God gave him the gift, by breathing into his nostrils the breath of life; and that when this gift is recalled, or "returneth to God who gave it," man is in his former state, having no life nor knowledge, though his organization remain perfect up to the moment of his death. Your effort to disprove a theory which I do not hold, demands no reply. I freely admit that there is a spirit in man, and that the in-breathing of the Almighty giveth them understanding. Job xxxii, 8. It remains for you to prove that there is a human spirit out of man, which retains its understanding after God has taken back the gift of life which he gave. The body, without the spirit, has no life nor knowledge. On Matt. x, 28, I have held that to kill the body, in this text, means to cut off our present life, and that the killing of the soul relates to the future punishment of the wicked, a punishment to be inflicted after the resurrection. But you argue from this text, that the soul is a distinct, living, conscious entity, while the body is dead—a thing which Jesus does not affirm, and which is positively contradicted by other scriptures; and then you infer, that if this imaginary soul lives after the body is dead, it is destined to live eternally—an inference not at all necessary, provided your premises were wholly true. It would come as far short of proving your conclusion, as it would to say, The soul lives to-day; therefore it is destined to live eternally. At this point you leave the Bible, because it fails to prove your point, and begin to talk of the philosophical principles of immaterial mind, as not being subject to physical corruption. To head off your philosophy, I refer you to the brutes, showing that the fact that they have immaterial thoughts would make them too, immortal were your reasoning true. You admit, they think, but now plead ignorance of the mysterious philosophy of thought. "The brain is the organ of thought," say you, "but who can prove that the brain thinks?" "Beasts think, but who can tell how they think?" And you wonder why beasts should be brought into a controversy concerning the nature of man! I admit with you, that what we don't know about these immaterial, invisible and mysterious things, would make a bigger hook than what we do know. Hence the necessity of a revelation concerning the future and the unseen. Philosophy cannot prove the immortality of the soul; the Scriptures do not reveal it, only as a gift to the righteous, to be given at the resurrection. If the "idea" was in the Bible, you could have found the words which convey it, as I have requested. But seeing you hang upon your unwarranted inference drawn from Matt. x, 28, combined with your philosophical knowledge of immaterial things, I proceeded to prove, from the text itself, even viewing it from your own standpoint, that the soul is liable to death, because God threatens to kill it in the same sense in which the body is said to be killed. The only real fault which you attempt to find in this argument is in respect to the meaning of the term mortal. You say, "The proper idea of mortality is not in death simply, but in decay." What! were you not attempting to prove that every soul of man is destined to live eternally, and not die? I thought, since you had confessed the imperfection of our philosophical knowledge, you would not appeal to it again to set aside the testimony of the perfect word, which God has graciously given us, to supply our deficiencies, and correct our errors. God threatens to kill the soul. Will you undertake to prove the immortality of dead souls? Yes; and here is your argument: "If it were the appointment of God, that the particles of matter of which the body is composed should remain intact after life is gone, then the body would be immortal, because corruption would not follow." Yes, then you would have an immortal dead body, and its immortality would be no evidence that it would ever live again. But you continue: "Death and mortality are not, therefore, convertible terms. To affirm, then, mortality of spirits, as you do, is a palpable error, unless you can show that the law of decay inheres in them." Ah! you are determined, then, to have the soul immortal, dead or alive? Is this the solution of the question how the dead are immortal, and yet, "know not any thing?" I thank you for this illustration of the soul's immortality. It is a virtual admission of all that I claim. I do not claim that the immaterial mind must rot, "after life is gone," or that the particles of the body must be annihilated. But this immortality, which a person might have and not know it, is not the kind for which I am seeking. What consolation can it be to a living soul, to know, that after it is dead, it will not waste away, but ever remain an undecaying mummy? Although you do not want my syllogisms, I call your attention, and that of the reader, again to them. I have given you, and might give you again, the testimonies of the word: "Mortal man," "The soul that sinneth it shall die," "The wages of sin is death," &c. But you would try to parry their force, though you hold that, "accountability can only be affirmed of SPIRIT," and that, "MATTER cannot be the subject of moral rewards or punishments." I should like to know, however, how this is reconciled with the threatening, that the "whole body should be cast into hell." Matt. v, 29, 30. As I said, I have noticed your only real assault upon my syllogisms. To what you say besides concerning them, I am not bound to reply, as it is not my sentiments which you attack, but a creature of your own creation. Your attempted caricature of my sentiments is only a kind of hybrid, obtained by crossing your own theory with the words of the text and other teachings of the Bible. My aim is brevity; therefore I can touch only the main points in debate. So I have not noticed your opinion concerning the change of our Saviour's body at the ascension. But upon your chief text, (Matt. x, 28), I think it due the reader to have a few more thoughts, sustaining the position I have taken; and I beg the indulgence to present them as arranged by another: "And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."—Matt. x, 28. "And I say unto you, my friends, Be not afraid of them which kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him which, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, fear him."—Luke xii, 4, 5. 1. These texts are the record, by different writers, of the same language of the Saviour. In Matthew's version of the Saviour's words, the soul is indeed made very prominent; but in that of Luke, it is not even mentioned. Yet the language of the one is the same in substance with the other. 2. Thus, while Matthew represents the Saviour as saying, "Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul," Luke expresses the idea thus: "Be not afraid of them which kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do." And as Matthew adds: "Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell," Luke gives the same warning thus: "Fear him, which after he hath killed, hath power to cast into hell." 3. Thus it is seen, that our Lord recognizes the fact so plainly expressed elsewhere, that there are two deaths. The first death, which is the common lot of mankind, is thus spoken of by Paul: "It is appointed unto men once to die."—Heb. ix, 27. The second death is the portion only of the wicked. "He that overcometh shall not be hurt of the second195death."—Rev. ii, 11, 20: vi, 21; viii. The Saviour bids us not to fear those who can only inflict the first of these deaths, but warns us to fear him who alone is able to kill with the second death. 4. The place in which this terrible punishment here set forth is inflicted, is called hell. This word is found in the English Testament twenty-three times. But in the Greek Testament there are three different words, Hades, Gehenna, and Tartarus, signifying different places, all rendered by the English word, hell. Thus Hades is used eleven times in the original, and is rendered hell ten times, and grave once. The following are the places of its occurrence, the italicised word in each case being the translation of Hades: Rev. xx, 14.—"Death and hell were cast into the lake of fire." Gehenna is found in the following places: Tartarus is used only in the following text: "God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them into hell."—2 Peter ii, 4. Thus Hades is seen to be the place of the dead, whether righteous or wicked, the place into which they are introduced by death, and from which they are delivered by the resurrection. Those who are in Hades are said to be dead. Rev. xx, 10. Once in the English Testament, Hades is rendered grave. 1 Cor. xv, 55. Gehenna, on the contrary, is the place where the wicked are to be cast alive, with all their members, and to be destroyed soul and body. It is the lake of fire in which the wicked dead are to be punished after their resurrection. Rev. xx, 13-15. Tartarus is the place into which the evil angels were cast after their rebellion. These three places, therefore, though rendered by the one English word hell, are not to be confounded together. 5. In giving the warning recorded in Matt. x, 28, Luke xii, 4, 5, it is claimed that the Saviour taught the continued existence of the soul in death. But it is worthy of notice, that in each of these texts he utters no warning concerning the punishment of the soul in Hades, the place or state of the dead, but his warning relates to that which shall be inflicted upon the "soul and body" together in Gehenna. 6. That he should speak nothing of the punishment of the soul in its disembodied state in Hades, if such punishment really takes place, is very remarkable; for here, more than any where else in the Bible, is there evidence of the continued existence of the soul while the body is under the power of death. Yet while expressly stating the dreadful fate of the lost, and that too, in such connection as would especially call out the fact, if it were a fact, that the souls of the wicked exist in a place of dreadful suffering, between death and the resurrection, the Saviour says not one word concerning the suffering of the soul in its disembodied state, but confines his warning to that which shall be inflicted upon "both soul and body in hell," i. e., in Gehenna, thus showing that the retribution against which he warns us, comes after the resurrection, and not before it. 7. Our Lord means to point out precisely the danger to which the ungodly are exposed. When, therefore, he says, "Fear him which, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into Gehenna," he means to teach that God will cast the wicked into Gehenna. And when Matthew, expressing the same warning in different words, makes the Saviour say, "Fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna," the fact set forth is, that such will be the fate of the lost. 8. "Fear him which, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into Gehenna." As the wicked are to be cast into Gehenna alive, and in possession of all their bodily members, (see the list of passages in this article where Gehenna is used,) it follows, that he who can cast them there, after they have once been killed, is God alone; for to do this he must raise them from the dead. The "resurrection to damnation" must precede the "damnation of Gehenna." Compare John v, 28, 29, with Matt. xxiii, 33. These remarks show that the phrase, "kill the body," relates to the first death, which is the common lot of men; and that the phrase, "kill the soul," is used to signify the second death, the punishment to be inflicted on the wicked after they are raised from the dead. Jesus says nothing of the soul as living while the body is dead. Other scriptures fully describe man's state in death. Men can kill men once. Their power can go no farther. None but He that has the resurrection power can kill men with the second death. The Christian may fall by the hand of the persecutor, but his "life is hid with Christ in God;" and "when Christ, who is our life, shall appear," then (not before) shall he "appear with him in glory." Thank the Lord that the time is near! Yours with kindest regard.