The State of the Dead and the Destiny of the Wicked

CHAPTER IV. THE BREATH OF LIFE.

Gen. 1:27, states, in general terms, the form in which man was created, as contrasted with other orders of animal life. In Gen. 2:7, the process is described by which this creation was accomplished. Finding no proof in the former passage that man was put in possession of immortality (see preceding chapter) we turn to the latter text to examine the claims based upon that. The verse reads: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life: and man became a living soul.”

Here the advocates of man’s natural immortality endeavor to make a strong stand, as it is very proper they should do; for certainly if in that inspired record which describes the building up of man, the putting together of the different parts or constituent elements of which he is composed, there is no testimony that he was clothed with immortality, and no hook furnished upon which an argument for such an attribute can be hung, their whole system is shaken to its very foundation.

The claim based upon this passage is that man is composed of two parts: the body formed of the dust of the ground, and an immortal soul placed 32therein by God’s breathing into the nostrils of that dust-formed body the breath of life. We will let two representative men speak on this point, and state the popular view. Thomas Scott, D. D., on Gen. 2:7, says:--

Adam Clarke, LL. D., on Gen. 2:7, says:--

Critics speak of this expression in a different manner from theologians; for whereas the latter make it confer immortality, and raise man in this respect to the same plane with his Maker, the former speak of it as suggestive of man’s frail nature, and his precarious tenure of life itself. Thus Dr. Conant says:--

And in a note on Isa. 2:22, where the prophet says, “Cease ye from man whose breath is in his nostrils; for wherein is he to be accounted of?” he adds:--

To the same intent the psalmist speaks, Ps. 146:3, 4: “Put not your trust in princes, nor in the son of man, in whom there is no help. His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.”

But let us examine the claim that the “breath of life” which God breathed into man conferred upon him the attribute of immortality. There was nothing naturally immortal, certainly, in the dust of which Adam was composed. Whatever of immortality he had, therefore, after receiving the breath of life, must have existed in that breath in itself considered. Hence, it must follow that the “breath of life” confers immortality upon any creature to which it is given. Will our friends accept this issue? If not, they abandon the argument; for certainly it can confer no more upon man than upon any other being. And if they do accept it, we will introduce to them a class of immortal associates not very flattering to their vanity nor to their argument; for Moses applies the very same expression to all the lower orders of the animal creation.

In Gen. 7:15, we read: “And they went in unto Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, wherein is the breath of life.” It must be evident to every one, at a glance, that the whole animal creation, including man, is comprehended 34in the phrase “all flesh.” But verses 21 and 22 contain stronger expressions still: “And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing that creepeth upon the face of the earth, and every man. All in whose nostrils was the breath of life, of all that was in the dry land, died.”

Here the different orders of animals are named, and man is expressly mentioned with them; and all alike are said to have had in their nostrils the breath of life. It matters not that we are not told in the case of the lower animals how this breath was conferred, as in the case of man; for the immortality, if there is any in this matter, must reside, as we have seen, in the breath itself, not in the manner of its bestowal; and here it is affirmed that all creatures possess it; and of the animals, it is declared, as well as of man, that it resides in their nostrils.

It is objected that in Gen. 2:7, the “breath of life” as applied to man is plural, “breath of lives” (see Clarke), meaning both animal life, and that immortality which is the subject of our investigation. But, we reply, it is the same form in Gen. 7:22, where it is applied to all animals; and if the reader will look at the margin of this latter text he will see that the expression is stronger still, “the breath of the spirit of life” or of lives.

The language which Solomon uses respecting 35both men and beasts strongly expresses their common mortality: “For that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man [in this respect] hath no pre-eminence above a beast; for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” Eccl. 3:19, 20.

Thus the advocates of natural immortality by appealing to Moses’ record respecting the breath of life, are crushed beneath the weight of their own arguments; for if “the breath of life” proves immortality for man, it must prove the same for every creature to which it is given. The Bible affirms that all orders of the animal creation that live upon the land, possess it. Hence our opponents are bound to concede the immortality of birds, beasts, bugs, beetles, and every creeping thing. We are sometimes accused of bringing man down by our argument to a level with the beast. What better is this argument of our friends which brings beasts and reptiles up to a level with man? We deny the charge that we are doing the one, and shall be pardoned for declining to do the other.

CHAPTER V. THE LIVING SOUL.

Finding no immortality for man in the breath of life which God breathed into man’s nostrils at the commencement of his mysterious existence, it remains to inquire if it resides in the “living soul,” which man, as the result of that action, immediately became. “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” Gen. 2:7.

On this point also it is proper to let the representatives of the popular view define their position. Prof. H. Mattison, on the verse just quoted, says:--

Dr. Clarke, on Gen. 2:7, says:--

To the same end see the reasonings of Landis, Clark (D. W.), and others. Aware of the importance to their system of maintaining this interpretation, they very consistently rally to its support the flower of their strength. It is the redan of their works, and they cannot be blamed for being unwilling to surrender it without a decisive struggle. For if there is nothing in the inspired record of the formation of man, that record which undertakes to give us a correct view of his nature, to show that he is endowed with immortality, their system is not only shaken to its foundation, but even the foundation itself is swept entirely away.

The vital point, to which they bend all their energies, is somehow to show that a distinct entity, an intelligent part, an immortal soul, was brought near to that body as it lay there perfect in its organization, and thrust therein, which immediately began through the eyes of that body to see, through its ears to hear, through its lips to speak, and through its nerves to feel. Query: Was this soul capable of performing all these functions before it entered the body? If it was, why thrust it within this prison house? If it was not, will it be capable of performing them after it leaves the body?

38Heavy drafts are made on rhetoric in favor of this superadded soul. Figures of beauty are summoned to lend to the argument their aid. An avalanche of flowers is thrown upon it, to adorn its strength, or perchance to hide its weakness. But when we search for the logic, we find it a chain of sand. Right at the critical point, the argument fails to connect; and so after all their expenditure of effort, after all their lofty flights, and sweating toil, their conclusion comes out--blank assumption. Why? Because they are endeavoring to reach a result which they are dependent upon the text to establish, but which the text directly contradicts. The record does not say that God formed a body, and put therein a superadded soul, to use that body as an instrument; but he formed man of the dust. That which was formed of the dust was the man himself, not simply an instrument for the man to use when he should be put therein. Adam was just as essentially a man before the breath of life was imparted, as after that event. This was the difference: before, he was a dead man; afterward, a living one. The organs were all there ready for their proper action. It only needed the vitalizing principle of the breath of life to set them in motion. That came, and the lungs began to expand, the heart to beat, the blood to flow, and the limbs to move; then was exhibited all the phenomena of physical action; then, too, the 39brain began to act, and there was exhibited all the phenomena of mental action, perception, thought, memory, will, &c.

The engine is an engine before the motive power is applied. The bolts, bars, pistons, cranks, shafts, and wheels, are all there. The parts designed to move are ready for action. But all is silent and still. Apply the steam, and it springs, as it were, into a thing of life, and gives forth all its marvelous exhibitions of celerity and power.

So with man. When the breath of life was imparted, which, as we have seen was given in common to all the animal creation, that simply was applied which set the machine in motion. No separate and independent organization was added, but a change took place in the man himself. The man became something, or reached a condition which before he had not attained. The verb “became” is defined by Webster, “to pass from one state to another; to enter into some state or condition, by a change from another state or condition, or by assuming or receiving new properties or qualities, additional matter or a new character.” And Gen. 2:7, is then cited as an illustration of this definition. But it will be seen that none of these will fit the popular idea of the superadded soul; for that is not held to be simply a change in Adam’s condition, or a new property or quality of his being, or an addition 40of matter, or a new character; but a separate and independent entity, capable, without the body, of a higher existence than with it. The boy becomes a man; the acorn, an oak; the egg, an eagle; the chrysalis, a butterfly; but the capabilities of the change all inhere in the object which experiences it. A superadded, independent soul could not have been put into man, and be said to have become that soul. Yet it is said of Adam, that he, on receiving the breath of life, became a living soul. An engine is put into a ship, and by its power propels it over the face of the deep; but the ship, by receiving the engine, does not become the engine, nor the engine the ship. No sophistry, even from the darkest depths of its alchemy, can bring up and attach to the word “become” a definition which will make it mean, as applied to any body, the addition of a distinct and separate organization to that body.

To the inquiry of Prof. Mattison, “If he was ‘a soul’ before, then how could he become such by the last act of creation,” it may be replied, The antithesis is not based upon the word soul, but upon the word living. This will become evident by trying to read the passage without this word: “And the Lord God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a soul.” That is not it. He became a living soul. He was a soul before, but not a living soul. To thus speak 41of a dead soul, may provoke from some a sneer; nevertheless, the Hebrews so used the terms. See Num. 6:6: “He shall come at no dead body,” on which Cruden says, “in Hebrew, dead soul.”

Kitto, in his Relig. Encyclopedia, under the term Adam, says:--

The “abundant argument from both philosophy and the Scriptures” for man’s immortal spirit, may be more difficult to find than many suppose. But this admission that nothing of the kind is implied in this passage, is a gratifying triumph of fair and candid criticism over what has been almost universally believed and taught.

But we are not left to our own reasoning on this point; for inspiration itself has given us a comment upon the passage in question; and certainly it is safe to let one inspired writer explain the words of another.

42Paul, in 1 Cor. 15:44, and onward, is contrasting the first Adam with the second, and our present state with the future. He says: “There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul, the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.” Here Paul refers directly to the facts recorded in Gen. 2:7. In verse 47, he tells us the nature of this man that was made a living soul: “The first man is of the earth, earthy; the second man is the Lord from Heaven.” In verse 49, he says, “And as we have borne the image of the earthy,” have been, like Adam, living souls, “we shall also bear the image of the heavenly,” when our bodies are fashioned like unto his glorious body. Phil. 3:21. In verses 50 and 53, he tells us why it is necessary that this should be done, and how it will be accomplished: “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; neither doth corruption inherit incorruption. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.”

Putting these declarations all together, what do we have? We have a very explicit statement that this first man, this living soul which Adam was made, was of the earth, earthy, did not bear the image of the heavenly in its freedom from a decaying nature, did not possess that incorruption without which we cannot inherit the kingdom of 43God, but was wholly mortal and corruptible. Would people allow these plain and weighty words of the apostle their true meaning upon this question, it would not only summarily arrest all controversy over the particular text under consideration, but leave small ground, at least from the teachings of the Scriptures, to argue for the natural immortality of man.

But the terms “living soul” like the breath of life, are applied to all orders of the animate creation, to beasts and reptiles, as well as to man. The Hebrew words are nephesh chaiyah; and these words are in the very first chapter of Genesis four times applied to the lower orders of animals: Gen. 1:20, 21, 24, 30. On Gen. 1:21, Dr. A. Clarke offers this comment:--

This is a valuable comment on the meaning of these words. He would have greatly enhanced the utility of that information, if he had told us that the same words are applied to man in Gen. 2:7.

Prof. Bush, in his notes on this latter text, says:--

And there is nothing in the term “living” to imply that the life with which Adam was then endowed would continue forever; for these living souls are said to die. Rev. 16:3: “And every living soul died in the sea.” Whether this means men navigating its surface or the animals living in its waters, it is equally to the point as showing that that which is designated by the terms “living soul,” whatever it is, is subject to death.

Staggered by the fact (and unable to conceal it) that the terms “living soul” are applied to all animals, the advocates of man’s immortality then undertake to make the word “became” the pivot of their argument. Man “became” a living soul, but it is not said of the beasts that they became such; hence this must denote the addition of something to man which the animals did not receive. And in their anxiety to make this appear, they surreptitiously insert the idea that 45the animal life of man is derived from the dust of the ground, and that something of a higher nature was imparted to man by the breath of life which was breathed into him, and the living soul which he became. Thus Mr. Landis, in his work, “The Immortality of the Soul,”^[A] p. 141, says: “Hence something was to be added to the mere animal life derived from the dust of the ground.” Now Mr. L. ought to know, and knowing, ought to have the candor to admit, that no life at all is derived from the dust of the ground. All the life that Adam had was imparted by the breath of life which God breathed into his nostrils, which breath all breathing animals, no matter how they obtained it, possessed as well as he.

No emphasis can be attached to the word “became:” for everything that is called a living soul must by some process have become such. “Whatever was or is first became what it was or is.”

Take the case of Eve. She was formed of a rib of Adam, made of pre-existent matter. It is not said of her that God breathed into her nostrils the breath of life, or that she became a living soul; yet no one claims that her nature was essentially different from that of Adam with 46whom she was associated, as a fitting companion.

And it will be further seen that this word “became” can have no value in the argument, unless the absurd principle be first set up as truth, that whatever becomes anything must forever remain what it has become.

Defenders of the popular view, by such reasoning reduce their argument to its last degree of attenuation; but here its assumption becomes so transparent that it has no longer power to mislead, and needs no further reply.

CHAPTER VI. WHAT IS SOUL? WHAT IS SPIRIT?

CHAPTER VII. THE SPIRIT RETURNS TO GOD.

CHAPTER VIII. THE FORMATION OF THE SPIRIT.

CHAPTER IX. WHO KNOWETH?

With these words Solomon introduces, in Eccl. 3:21, a very important question respecting the spirit of man. He says: “Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?” Deeming this a good foundation, the advocates of natural immortality proceed to build thereon. They take it to be, first, a positive declaration that the spirit of man does go up, and the spirit of the beast downward to the earth. Then the superstructure is easily erected: Thus, Solomon must have believed that man had a spirit capable of a separate and conscious existence in death; and this spirit, in the hour of dissolution, ascends up on high, and goes into the presence of God. It therefore survives the stroke of death, and is consequently immortal.

Here they rest their argument; but we would like to have them proceed; for the text speaks of the spirit of the beast, which must also be disposed of. If the spirit of man, because it separates from him and goes up, is conscious, is not the spirit of the beast, because it separates from it and goes down, conscious also? There is nothing in the man’s spirit going up which can 73by any means show it to be conscious, any more than there is in the spirit of the beast going down, to show it to be conscious. But, if the spirit of the beast survives the stroke of death, it has just as much immortality as that of man. This line of argument, therefore, proves too much, and must be abandoned.

But is not the word spirit as applied to the beast a different word in the original from the one translated spirit and applied to man? No; they are both from the same original word; and that word is ruach, the word from which spirit is translated in the Old Testament in every instance with two exceptions. The beast has the same spirit that man has.

Landis (p. 146) feels the weight of the stunning blow which this fact gives to the popular view, and endeavors to parry its force by the following desperate resort: He says that Solomon is here describing the state of doubt and perplexity through which he had formerly passed; and, to use Mr. L.’s own words, “in this perplexity he attributes to both man and beast a ruach.” But he says that Solomon got over this state of doubt and uncertainty, and “never again attributed a ruach to beasts.” What we regard as the Bible view of man’s nature is not unfrequently denominated infidelity by the popular theologians of the present day; but it strikes us as rather a bold position to go back and accuse the sacred 74writers of laboring under a spirit of infidelity when they penned these sentiments.

But if we take Solomon’s words to be a declaration that the spirit of man does go up, his question, even then, would imply a strong affirmation that we are ignorant of its essential qualities. Who knoweth this spirit? Who can tell its nature? Who can describe its inherent characteristics? Who can tell how long it shall continue to exist? On these vital points, the text is entirely silent, granting all that is claimed for it.

But, further, if this text asserts that the spirit of man goes up to God, it will be noticed that it is spoken promiscuously of all mankind. Then the same queries would arise respecting the spirits of the wicked, for what purpose they go to God, and the same objections would lie against that view that were stated in the examination of Eccl. 12:7, in chapter vii.

To arrive, however, at the correct meaning of Eccl. 3:21, a brief examination of the context is necessary. In verse 18, Solomon expresses a desire that the sons of men may see that they themselves are beasts. Not that he intended to be understood that man is in no respect superior to a beast; for no one, inspired or not, above the level of an idiot, would make such an assertion, in view of man’s more perfect organization, his reasoning faculties, and, above all, his future 75prospects, if righteous. He simply means, as plainly expressed in the next verse, that in one respect, namely, their dissolution in death, man possesses no superiority over the other orders of animated existence. “For,” he says, “that which befalleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth [here is the point of similarity], so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath [ruach, the same word that is rendered spirit in verse 21]; so that a man [in this respect] hath no pre-eminence above a beast. All go unto one place [is that place Heaven? and is this a declaration that all, men and beasts alike, go there?] all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.”

Thus definite and positive is the teaching of Solomon that in respect to their life here upon earth, and their condition in death, men and beasts are exactly alike; and now can we suppose that, after having thus clearly expressed his views of this matter, he proceeds in the very next sentence to contradict it all, and assert that in death there is a difference between men and beasts, that men do have a pre-eminence, that all do not go to one place, that the spirit of man goes up conscious to God, and the spirit of the beast goes down to perish in the earth? This would be to make the wisest man that ever lived, the most stupid reasoner that ever put pen to paper.

76How, then, is his language in verse 21 to be understood? Answer: Understand it as a question whether the spirit of man goes up, and the spirit of the beast down, as some asserted in opposition to the views which he taught. John Milton, author of Paradise Lost, so translates it: “Who knoweth the spirit of man [an sursum ascendat] whether it goeth upward?” &c. The Douay Bible renders the passage thus: “Who knoweth if the spirit of the children of Adam ascend upward, and if the spirit of the beasts descend downward?” The Septuagint, the Vulgate, the Chaldee Paraphrase, the Syriac, and the German of Luther, give the same reading.

This puts the matter in quite a different light, and saves Solomon from self-contradiction; but, alas for the immaterialist! it completely overturns the structure of immortality built thereon.

The notion prevailed in the heathen world that man’s spirit ascended up to be with the gods, but the spirit of the beast went down to the earth. It was the old lesson taught by that unreliable character. in Eden, “Ye shall not surely die,” but “ye shall be as gods.” Solomon contradicts this by stating the truth in the case, that death reduces man and beast alike to one common condition. Then he asks, Who knows that the opposite heathen doctrine is true, that the spirit of man goes up, and that of the beast down? He had declared that they all went to one place, in 77accordance with God’s original sentence, “Thou shalt surely die;” now he calls for evidence, if there be any, to show that the opposite doctrine is true. Thus he smites to the ground this pagan notion by putting it to the proof of its claims, for which no proof exists.

There is another class of expressions respecting the word spirit, which properly come under consideration at this point. The first is Ps. 31:5, where David says: “Into thine hand I commit my spirit.” Our Lord used similar language, perhaps borrowed from this expression of David, when, expiring on the cross, he said, “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” Luke 23:46. And Stephen, the martyr, in the same line of thought, put up this expiring prayer: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Acts 7:59. What was it which David and our Lord wished to commit into the hands of God, and Stephen, into the hands of Christ? A conscious entity it is claimed, the living and immortal part of man; for nothing less could properly be committed to God. Thus Mr. Landis (p. 131) asks: “What was it then? The mere life which passed into nonentity at death? And can any one suppose they would have commended to God a nonentity? This would be a shameless trifling with sacred things.” But David, on one occasion (1 Sam. 26:24), prayed that his life might be much set by, or be precious, in the eyes of the Lord. 78That which is precious in his sight, it seems might very properly be commended to his keeping, especially when passing, for his sake, out of our immediate control. And in the very psalm (31) in which he commits his spirit to God, he does it in view of the fact that his enemies had “devised to take away his life.” Verse 13.

It is a fact that the same or similar acts are spoken of frequently as done in reference to the life that are said to be done in reference to the spirit. Can a person commit his spirit to God? So he can commit to him the preservation of his life. Thus David says, Ps. 64:1: “Preserve my life.” What! Mr. Landis would exclaim, preserve a nonentity? Jonah prayed (4:3), “O Lord, take, I beseech thee, my life from me.” Christ says, John 10:15: “I lay down my life for the sheep;” and in John 13:38, he asks Peter, “Wilt thou lay down thy life for my sake?”

Thus our life is something that we can commit to another for safe keeping; it can be taken away from us; we can give it up, or lay it down. Is it, therefore, a distinct entity, conscious in death? If it is not, then equivalent expressions applied to the spirit do not prove that to be conscious in death and immortal; for they prove the same in the one case as in the other; and whatever they fail to prove in the one case, they fail to prove also in the other.

But if the spirit, as is claimed, lives right along 79after death, just as conscious as before, and a hundred-fold more active, capable, intelligent, and free, where would be the propriety of committing it to God in the hour of death, any more than at any point during its earthly existence? There would be none whatever. Entering upon that permanent higher life, it would be much more capable of caring for itself than in this earthly condition. The expression bears upon its very face evidence that those who used it desired to commit something into the care of their Maker which was about to pass out of their possession; to commit something into his hands for safe keeping until they should be brought back from the state of unconsciousness and inactivity into which they were then falling. And what was that? It was what they were then losing, namely, their life, their pneuma, which Robinson defines as meaning, among other things, “The principle of life residing in the breath, breathed into man from God, and again returning to God.” And when the life is thus given up to God by his people, where is it? “Hid with Christ in God.” Col. 3:3. AndGod.” Col. 3:3. And when will the believer receive it again? “When“When Christ who is our life shall appear.” Verse 4. Then Stephen will receive from his Lord that which while dying he besought him to receive. Then they who for Christ’s sake have lost their life (not merely their bodies while their life continued right on) will have that life restored to them again.

CHAPTER X. THE SPIRITS OF JUST MEN MADE PERFECT.

With a great show of confidence, either pretended or real, the advocates of man’s immortality bring forward this text in proof of their position. That portion of the forgoing quotation upon which they hang their theory is the expression, “the spirits of just men made perfect,” which they take to be both a declaration and proof thereof, that the spirits of men are released by death, and thereupon are made perfect or glorified in the presence of God in Heaven. A little further examination of the language will, we think, show that such an assertion is not made in the text and that even such an inference cannot justly be drawn.

That Paul is here contrasting the blessings and privileges enjoyed by believers under the gospel dispensation with those possessed by the Jews 81under the former dispensation, will probably not be questioned on either side. Ye are not come to the mount that might be touched [Mount Sinai] and the sound of a trumpet, &c., that is, to that system of types and ceremonies instituted through Moses at Sinai, of which an outward priesthood were the ministers, and Old Jerusalem the representative city; but ye are come to Mount Zion, to the New Jerusalem, to Jesus, and to his better sacrifice. These things to which we are come are the superior blessings of the gospel, over what was enjoyed under the former dispensation. But where or how does the fact come in, as one of these blessings, that man has a spirit which is conscious in death, and is made perfect by the dissolution of the body? It will be seen that if this be a fact, it is brought in, at best, only incidentally. There is no proof of it in the expression, “spirits of just men made perfect,” in itself considered; for they could be made perfect at some future time, without supposing them conscious from death to the resurrection. The only proof that can here be found, then, lies in the fact that we are said to have come to these spirits. This is supposed to prove that they must be spirits out of the body, and that they must also be conscious. Then we inquire, How do we come to the spirits of just men made perfect, and what is meant by the expression?

It is not difficult to determine how we come to 82all the other objects mentioned by Paul in the three verses quoted; but how we come to the spirits of just men made perfect, according to the popular view of that expression, is not so clear. If we mistake not, the common view will have to be modified, or the explanation remain ungiven.

Let us see: “Ye are come [or, putting it in the first person, since Paul brings these to view as present blessings all through the gospel dispensation, we are come] unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem.” That is, we in this dispensation no longer look to Old Jerusalem as the center of our worship, but we look above, to the New Jerusalem, where the sanctuary and Priest of this dispensation are. In this sense we are come to them.

“And to an innumerable company of angels.” Angels are the assistants of our Lord in his work, who now mediates for his people individually. Dan. 7:10. They are sent forth to minister to those who shall be heirs of salvation. Heb. 1:14. They are therefore more intimately concerned in the believer’s welfare in this dispensation than in the old. We have thus come to their presence and ministration.

“To the general assembly and church of the firstborn which are written in Heaven.” That is, we have now come to the time when believers 83of whatever nationality, whose names are recorded in the Lamb’s book of life in Heaven, constitute a general assembly, or compose one church. We do not now look to Jewish genealogies to find the people of God, but we look to the record in Heaven. And God now takes his people into covenant relation with himself as individuals, and not as a nation. Thus we are come in this dispensation to the general assembly, the church of the firstborn.

“And to God the Judge of all.” Directly, through the mediation of his Son, we draw near to God. Passing over for a time the expression under discussion, the spirits of just men made perfect, we read on:--

“And to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant.” We now come to Jesus, the real mediator, instead of to the typical priesthood of the former dispensation.

“And to the blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than that of Abel.” That is, there is now ministered for us the blood of Jesus, the better sacrifice, which takes away from us sin in fact, instead of the blood of beasts, which took it away only in figure.

It can readily be seen how we come to all these things under this dispensation; how these are all privileges and blessings under the gospel, beyond what was enjoyed in the former dispensation. But now, if the spirits of just men made perfect 84mean disembodied spirits in the popular sense, how do we come to these as a gospel blessing? This is what we would like to have our friends tell us. In what respect is our relation to our dead friends, the supposed spirits of the departed, changed by the gospel? If there is any sense in which we may be said to have come to these, we would like to know it.

But again, when do we come into closest contact with a man’s spirit? Is it when that spirit is disembodied, and has gone far away to dwell in the presence of God, and is to have no more to do forever with anything that is done under the sun? Eccl. 9:6. Is it not rather when the spirit of a man through the eyes of that man looks upon us, through his mouth speaks to us, and through his hands handles us? Outside the hell-doomed hosts of spiritualists, will any one say that we enjoy more intimate relations with a spirit when it is out of the body than we do while it is in the body? A consideration of this point must convince any one that the idea of coming to the spirits of just men made perfect cannot possibly be applied to spirits out of the body.

It will be noticed further that the text does not speak of spirits made perfect, but of men made perfect. The Greek (και πνεύμασι δικαίων τετελειωμένων) shows that the participle, “made perfect,” agrees with “the just,” or “just men,” and 85not with “spirits.” When, then, we inquire, are men made perfect? There is a certain sense in which they are made perfect in this life through the justification of the blood of Christ, and sanctification of his Spirit; and they are made perfect in an absolute sense, as in Heb. 11:40, when they experience the final glorification, and their vile bodies are made like unto Christ’s most glorious body. Phil. 3:21.

If it is said that the text refers to this latter perfection, then it is placed beyond the resurrection, and affords no proof of a conscious disembodied spirit. If it refers to the former, then it applies to persons still in this state, and not in death. To one or the other it must refer; and apply it which way we may, it does not bring to view a spirit conscious in death. Therefore it fails entirely to prove the point in favor of which our friends produce it.

In harmony with the context, we apply it to the present state, to men in this life, to a blessing peculiar to the gospel, to the justification and sanctification which the believer now enjoys through Christ. And in this sense we see how we come to it, as to all the other things mentioned by Paul. We come to the enjoyment of this blessing ourselves, and to communion and fellowship with those who are also in possession of it.

86Finally, to show that this not a view devised to meet any exigency of our position, we will bring to its support a name which with all will have great weight, and with many will be final authority. Dr. Adam Clarke, on this passage, says:--

The reader is also referred to Dr. C.’s note at the end of Heb. 12.

CHAPTER XI. THE SPIRITS IN PRISON.

The advocates of natural immortality are not long in finding their way to this passage. Here, it is claimed, are spirits brought to view, out of the body; for they were the spirits of the antediluvians: and they were conscious and intelligent; for they could listen to the preaching of Christ, who, by his conscious spirit, while his body lay in the grave, went and preached to them.

Let us see just what conclusions the popular interpretation of this passage involves, that we may test their claims by the Scriptures. 1. The spirits were the spirits of wicked men; for they were disobedient in the days of Noah, and perished in the flood. 2. They were consequently in their place of punishment, the place to which popular theology assigns all such spirits immediately on their passing from this state of existence. 3. The spirit of Christ went into hell to preach 88to them. These are the facts that are to be cleared of improbabilities, and harmonized with the Scriptures, before the passage can be made available for the popular view.

But the bare suggestion of so singular a transaction as Christ’s going to preach to these spirits, immediately gives rise to the query for what purpose Christ should take pains to go down into hell, to preach to damned spirits there; and what message he could possibly bear to them. The day of their probation was past; they could not be helped by any gospel message; then why preach to them? Would Christ go to taunt them by describing before them blessings which they could never receive, or raising in their bosoms hopes of a release from damnation, which he never designed to grant?

These considerations fall like a mighty avalanche across the way of the common interpretation. The thought is felt to be almost an insuperable objection, and many are the shifts devised to get around it. One thinks that the word preached does not necessarily mean to preach the gospel, notwithstanding almost every instance of the use of the word in the New Testament describes the preaching of the gospel by Christ or his apostles; but that Christ went there to announce to them that his sufferings had been accomplished, and the prophecies concerning him fulfilled. But what object could there be 89in that? How would that affect their condition? Was it to add poignancy to their pain by rendering their misery doubly sure? And were there not devils enough in hell to perform that work, without making it necessary that Christ should perform such a ghostly task, and that, too, right between those points of time when he laid down his life for our sins and was raised again for our justification?

Another thinks these were the spirits of such as repented during the forty days’ rain of the flood; that they were with the saved in Paradise, a department of the under world where the spirits of the good are kept (the elysium, in fact, of ancient heathen mythology), but that they “still felt uneasy on account of having perished [that is, lost their bodies] under a divine judgment,” and “were now assured by Jesus that their repentance had been accepted.”

Such resorts show the desperate extremities to which the popular exposition of this passage is driven.

Others frankly acknowledge that they cannot tell what, nor for what purpose, Christ preached to the lost in hell. So Landis, p. 236. But he says it makes no difference if we cannot tell what he preached nor why he preached, since we have the assurance that he did go there and preach. Profound conclusion! Would it not be better, since we have the assurance that he preached, 90to conclude that he preached at a time when preaching could benefit them, rather than at a time when we know that it could not profit them, and there could be no occasion for it whatever?

The whole issue thus turns on the question, When was this work of preaching performed? Some will say, “While they were in prison, and that means the state of death, and shows that the dead are conscious and can be preached to.” Then, we reply, the dead also can be benefited by preaching, and led to repentance; and the doctrine of purgatory springs in full blossom into our creed.

But does the text affirm that the preaching was done to these spirits while they were in prison? May it not be that the preaching was done at some previous time to persons who were, when Peter wrote, in prison, or, if you please, in a state of death? So it would be true that the spirits were in prison when Peter makes mention of them, and yet the preaching might have been done to them at a former period, while they were still in the flesh and could be benefited by it. This is the view taken of the passage by Dr. Clarke. He says:--

Thus he places Christ’s going and preaching by his Spirit in the days of Noah, and not during the time his body lay in the grave.

91Again, he says:--

The preaching was certainly to the antediluvians. But why should Christ single out that class to preach to, about twenty-four hundred years afterward, in hell? The whole idea is forced, unnatural, and absurd. The preaching that was given to them was through Noah, who, by the power of the Holy Ghost (1 Pet. 1:12), delivered to them the message of warning. Let this be the preaching referred to, and all is harmonious and clear; and this interpretation the construction of the original demands; for the word rendered in our version, “were disobedient,” is simply the aorist participle; and the dependent sentence, “when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah,” limits the verb “preached” rather than the participle. The whole passage might be translated thus: “In which also, having gone to the spirits in prison, he preached to the then disobedient ones, when once [or at the time when] the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah.”

92But how were they in prison? In the same sense in which persons in error and darkness are said to be in prison. Isa. 42:7: “To open the blind eyes, to bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house.” Also Isa. 61:1: “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” Christ himself declared, Luke 4:18-21, that this scripture was fulfilled in his mission to those here on earth who sat in darkness and error, and under the dominion of sin. So the antediluvians were shut up under the sentence of condemnation. Their days were limited to a hundred and twenty years; and their only way of escape from impending destruction was through the preaching of Noah.

So much with reference to the spirits to whom the preaching was given. Now we affirm further that Christ’s spirit did not go anywhere to preach to anybody, while he lay in the grave. If Christ’s spirit, the real being, the divine part, did survive the death of the cross, then

1. We have only a human offering for our sacrifice; and the claim of the spiritualists is true that the blood of Christ is no more than that of any man.

932. Then Christ did not pour out his soul unto death and make it an offering for sin, as the prophet declared that he would, Isa. 53:10, 12; and his soul was not sorrowful even unto death, as he himself affirmed. Matt. 26:38.

3. The text says Christ was quickened by the Spirit; and between his death and quickening no action is affirmed of him; and hence any such affirmation on the part of man is assumption. There can be no doubt but the quickening here brought to view was his resurrection. The Greek word is a very strong one, ζωοποιέω, to impart life, to make alive. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive by the Spirit. Landis, p. 232, labors hard to turn this word from its natural meaning and make it signify, not giving life, but continuing alive. It is impossible to regard this as anything less than unmitigated sophistry. The verb is a regular active verb. In the passive voice it expresses an action received. Christ did not continue alive, but was made alive by the Spirit. Then he was for a time dead. How long? From the cross to the resurrection. Rom. 1:4. So he says himself in Rev. 1:18, I am he that liveth and was dead. Yet men will stand up, and for the purpose of sustaining a pet theory, rob the world’s Offering of all its virtue, and nullify the whole plan of salvation, by declaring that Christ never was dead.

94The word quicken is the same that is used in Rom. 8:11: “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead, dwell in you, He that raised up Christ from the dead, shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” God brought again our Lord from the dead by the Holy Spirit; and by the same Spirit are his followers to be raised up at the last day. But that Christ went anywhere in spirit, or did any action between his death and quickening, is what the Scriptures nowhere affirm, and no man has a right to claim.

Mr. Landis, p. 235, argues that this preaching could not have been in the days of Noah, because the events narrated took place this side the death of Christ. Why did he not say this side the resurrection of Christ? Oh! that would spoil it all. But the record shows upon its very face that if it refers to a time subsequent to Christ’s death, it was also subsequent to his resurrection; for if events are here stated in chronological order, the resurrection of Christ as well as his death comes before his preaching. Thus, 1. He was put to death in the flesh. 2. Was quickened by the Spirit, which was his resurrection, as no man with any show of reason can dispute; and 3. Went and preached to the spirits in prison. So the preaching does not come in, on this ground, till after Christ was made alive from the dead.

Some people seem to treat the Scriptures as if 95they were given to man that he might exercise his inventive powers in trying to get around them. But no inventive power that the human mind has yet developed will enable a man, let him plan, contrive, devise, and arrange, as he may, to fix this preaching of Christ between his death and resurrection. If he could fix it there, what would it prove? The man of sin would rise up and bless him from his papal throne, for proving his darling purgatory. Such a position may do for Mormons, Mohammedans, Pagans, and Papists; but let no Protestant try to defend it, and not hang his head for shame. Mr. Landis says that “Mr. Dobney and the rest of the fraternity conveniently forget that there is any such passage [as 1 Pet. 3:19] in the word of God.” But we cannot help thinking that it would have been well for him, and saved a pitiful display of distorted logic, if he had been prudent enough to forget it too.

THE WORD SPIRIT IN OTHER TEXTS.

There are a few other texts which contain the word spirit an explanation of which may be properly introduced at this point:--

Luke 24:39: “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me have.” These are the words of Christ as on one occasion he met with his disciples after his resurrection; 96and as he then possessed a spiritual body which is given by the resurrection, it is claimed that his words prove the existence of spirits utterly disembodied in the popular sense. But we inquire, What did the disciples suppose they saw? Verse 37 states: “They supposed they had seen a spirit;” and on this verse Greenfield puts in the margin the word phantasma instead of pneuma, and marks it as a reading adopted by Griesbach. They supposed they had seen a phantom, apparition, specter. This exactly corresponds with their action when on another occasion Christ came to them walking on the sea, Matt. 14:26; Mark 6:49, and they were affrighted and cried out, supposing it was a spirit, where the Greek uses phantom in both instances. The Bible nowhere countenances the idea that phantoms or specters have any real existence; but the imagination and superstition of the human mind have ever been prolific in such conceptions. The disciples were of course familiar with the popular notions on this question; and when the Saviour suddenly appeared in their midst, coming in without lifting the latch, or making any visible opening, as spiritual bodies are able to do, their first idea was the superstitious one of an apparition or specter, and they were affrighted.

Now when Jesus, to allay their fears, told them that a spirit had not flesh and bones as he had, 97he evidently used the word spirit in the sense of the idea which they then had in their minds, namely, that of a phantom; and though the word pneuma is used, which in its very great variety of meanings may be employed, perhaps, to express such a conception, we are not to understand that the word cannot be used to describe bodies like that which Christ then possessed. He was not such a spirit as they supposed; for a pneuma, such as they then conceived of, in the sense of a phantom, had not flesh and bones as he had. Bloomfield, on verse 37, says:--

Acts 23:8: “For the Sadducees say that there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit, but the Pharisees confess both.” Paul declared himself in verse 6 to be a Pharisee; and in telling what they believed, in verse 8, it is claimed that Paul plainly ranged himself on the side of those who believe in the separate conscious existence of the spirit of man. But does this text say that the Pharisees believed any such thing? Three terms are used in expressing what the Sadducees did not believe, “resurrection, angel, and spirit.” But when the faith of the Pharisees is stated, these three are reduced to two: “The Pharisees confess both.” Both means only two, not three. Now what two of the three terms before employed 98unite to express one branch of the faith of the Pharisees? The word angel could not be one; for angels are a distinct race of beings from the human family. Then we have left, resurrection and spirit. The Pharisees believed in angels and in the resurrection of the human race. Then all the spirit they believed in, as pertaining to man, according to this testimony, is what is connected with the resurrection; and that, of course, is the spiritual body with which we are then endowed. “It is sown,” says this same apostle, “a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” 1 Cor. 15:44. That the term spirit is applied to those beings which possess a spiritual body is evident from Heb. 1:7, which reads, “Who maketh his angels spirits.” Angels are personal beings, but their bodies are spiritual bodies, invisible, under ordinary circumstances, to mortal eyes. Hence they are called spirits. So of God, John 4:24: “God is a Spirit;” that is, a spiritual being; not an impersonal one, as much in one place as another.

1 Cor. 5:5: “To deliver such an one unto Satan for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus.” Although this text is quoted to prove the separate conscious existence of a part of man between death and the resurrection, the reader cannot fail to notice that the time when the spirit is saved is in the day of the Lord Jesus, 99when the resurrection takes place. This text proves nothing, therefore, respecting the condition of the spirit previous to that time; and, so far as our present purpose is concerned, we might dismiss it with this remark; but a word or two more may serve to free the text still further from difficulty. What is meant by delivering the person to Satan? and what is the destruction of the flesh? Satan is the God of this world; and if any man is a friend of the world, he is on the side of Satan and an enemy of God. The church is the body of Christ, and belongs to him. A person committing the deeds spoken of in this chapter must be separated from that body, and given back to the world. He is thus delivered unto Satan. This is for the destruction of the flesh. The flesh is often used to mean the carnal mind. Gal. 5:19-21. The spiritually-minded man has crucified, or destroyed, the flesh. Now, a person who desires eternal life, when he finds himself set aside from the church, and placed back in the world, the kingdom of Satan, on account of his having the carnal mind, understands that to gain eternal life he must then put away the carnal mind, or crucify and destroy the flesh. If he does this, he becomes spiritually minded, joined again to the body of Christ, and the old man, the flesh, being destroyed, he, as a spiritually-minded man, will be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus. Spirit we understand to 100be used in contrast with the flesh, the one denoting a person in a carnal state, the other, in a spiritual. To deal with a person as the apostle here directs, set him aside from the church till he sees, and repents of, his sins, is often the only way to save him. In the day of the Lord Jesus, a person is saved by having his body fashioned like unto Christ’s glorious body, not destroyed. Phil. 3:21. The destruction spoken of in the text cannot therefore be the literal destruction of the body in contrast with the disembodied spirit.

CHAPTER XII. DEPARTURE AND RETURN OF THE SOUL.

CHAPTER XIII. CAN THE SOUL BE KILLED?

Luke records the same sentiment in these words:--

The estimate which immaterialists put upon these texts is thus expressed by Mr. Landis, p. 181: “This text [Matt, 10:28] therefore must continue to stand as the testimony of the Son of God in favor of the soul’s immortality, and his solemn condemnation of the soul-ruining errors of the annihilation and Sadducean doctrine.”

We reply: Mr. L. evidently applies the argument to a wrong issue; for whatever it may teach concerning the intermediate state, it is most positively against the doctrine of eternal misery, and the consequent immortality of the soul. It teaches that God can destroy the soul in hell; and there is no force in our Lord’s warning unless we understand it to affirm that he will thus destroy the souls of the wicked. We never could with any propriety be warned to fear a person because 106he could do that which he never designed to do, and never would do. We are to fear the civil magistrate to such a degree, at least, as not to offend against the laws, because he has power to put those laws into execution, and visit upon us merited punishment; but our fear is to rest not simply upon the fact that he has power to do this, but upon the certainty that he will do it if we are guilty of crime. Otherwise there could be no cause of fear, and no ground for any exhortation to fear.

Now we are to fear God, that is, fear to disobey him, because he is able to destroy body and soul in hell; and what is necessarily implied in this? It is implied that he certainly will do this in the cases of all those who do not fear him enough to comply with his requirements. So the text is a direct affirmation that the wicked will be destroyed, both soul and body in hell.

The next inquiry is, What is the meaning of the word, destroy? We answer that, take the word, soul, to mean what we will, the word, destroy, here has the same meaning and the same force as applied to the soul, that the word kill has as applied to the body in the sentence before. Whatever killing does to the body, destroying does to the soul. Don’t fear men because they cannot kill the soul as they kill the body; but fear God because he can and will kill the soul (if wicked) just as men kill the body. 107This is the only consistent interpretation of the language. But all well understand what it does to the body to kill it. It deprives it of all its functions and powers of life and activity. It does the same to the soul to destroy it, supposing the soul to be what is popularly supposed. The word here rendered destroy is ἀπολλύω (appolluo), and is defined by Greenfield, “to destroy, to kill, to put to death,” &c.

Having seen that the text affirms in the most positive manner the destruction of soul and body, or the complete cessation of existence, for all the wicked, in hell, we now inquire whether it teaches a conscious existence for the soul in the intermediate state? This must be, it is claimed, because man cannot kill it. But the killing which God inflicts, according to the popular view, is torment in the flames of hell, and that commences immediately upon the death of the body. Let us then see what the Scriptures testify concerning the receptacle of the dead and the place of punishment.

The word, hell, in our English version is from three different Greek words. These words are ἅδης (hades), γεέννα (ge-enna), and ταρταρόω (tartaro-o, a verb signifying to thrust down to tartarus). These all designate different places; and the following full list of the instances of their occurrence in the New Testament, will show their use.

108Hades occurs in the following passages:--

Ge-enna signifies Gehenna, the valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem, in which fires were kept constantly burning to consume the bodies of malefactors and the rubbish which was brought from the city and cast therein. It is found in the following places:--

Tartaro-o is used only in the following text:

109“God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell.” 2 Pet. 2:4.

From these references it will be seen that hades is the place of the dead whether righteous or wicked, from which they are brought only by a resurrection. Rev. 20:13. On the contrary, Gehenna is the place into which the wicked are to be cast alive with all their members, to be destroyed soul and body. These places, therefore, are not to be confounded together.

Now the punishment against which the text warns us, is not a punishment in hades, the state or place of the dead, but in Gehenna, which is not inflicted till after the resurrection. Therefore we affirm that the text contains no evidence whatever of the condition of man in death, but passes over the entire period from the death of the body to the resurrection. And this is further evident from the record in Luke: “Be not afraid of them that 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.”

Luke does not use the term, soul, at all; yet he expresses the same sentiment as Matthew. Man can kill the body or destroy this present life; but he can accomplish no destruction beyond that. But God can not only kill the body, or destroy the present life, but he can cast into Gehenna, or 110destroy the life that we have beyond the resurrection. These two things alone the text has in view. And now when we remember that psuche, the word here rendered, soul, often means life, either the present or future, and is forty times in the New Testament so rendered, the text is freed from all difficulty. The word, kill, to be sure is not such as would naturally be used in connection with life; but the word, destroy, which is among the definitions of the original word, apokteino, can be appropriately used with life. Thus, fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to destroy the future life; but rather fear him who is able to destroy the body and put an end to all future life in hell. And it is worthy of notice that the destruction in hell here threatened is not inflicted upon a person without his body. Nothing is said about God’s destroying the soul alone; but it is at some point beyond this life, when the person again has a body: which is not till after the resurrection.

Another declaration from the lips of our Lord, found in Matt. 16:25, 26, will throw some light on our present subject: “For whosoever will save his life shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it. For 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?” The word soul should here be rendered life. Dr. Clarke, on verse 26, 111says: “On what authority many here translate the word psuche in the 25th verse, life, and in this verse, soul, I know not, but am certain it means life in both places.”

But let us take the expressions, “soul” and “to lose the soul,” in the popular sense, and what should we have? Whosoever will save his soul (to save the soul meaning to save it from hell) shall lose it (that is shall go into hell torments): but whosoever will lose his soul (suffer eternal misery) for my sake, shall find it (shall be saved in Heaven). This makes utter nonsense of the passage, and so is a sufficient condemnation of the view which makes such an interpretation necessary.

The passage simply refers to the present and future life. Thus, whosoever will save his life, that is, will deny Christ and his gospel for the sake of avoiding persecution, or of preserving his present life, he shall lose it in the world to come, when God shall destroy both soul and body in Gehenna; but he who shall lose his present life if need be, for the sake of Christ and his cause, shall find it in the world to come, when eternal life is given to all the overcomers.

Here the life is spoken of as something which can be lost and found again. Between the losing and finding no one can claim that it maintains a conscious existence. And what is meant by finding it? Simply that God will bestow it upon us 112in the future beyond the resurrection. So what is meant by the expression that man cannot kill it? Simply the same thing, that God will, in the resurrection, endow us with life again, a life which is beyond the power of man.

The life of all men is in the hands of God. The body was formed of the dust, but the life was imparted by God. Man, by sin, has made this present life a temporary one. But through the plan of salvation, by which the human race was placed upon a second probation, after Adam’s fall, with the privilege of still gaining eternal life, a future life is decreed for all; for there shall be a resurrection of the just and unjust. With the righteous, this life will be eternal; for they have secured the forgiveness of all their sins through Jesus Christ; but with the wicked, it will soon end in the second death; for they have thrown away their golden privilege, and clung to their sins, the wages of which is death. Man may hasten the close of this present temporary life, may cut it short by killing the body, for some years before it would close in the natural course of events; but that future life, which in the purpose of God is as sure as his own throne, they cannot touch.

The exhortation is to those who are striving to serve God, and who thereby are liable to lose their present lives at the hands of wicked men for the truth’s sake. Fear them not, though with the bloody arm of persecution they may deprive 113you of the present life; for the life which is to come they cannot reach.

And the warning is to the wicked that unless they fear God more than men, and are governed by his glory more than by worldly considerations, he will bring their existence to an utter end in the fire Gehenna.

The text, therefore, so far from proving the existence in man of an independent, death-surviving, conscious entity called the immortal soul, speaks only of the present and future life, and, passing over the entire period between death and the resurrection, then promises the righteous a life which man cannot destroy, and affirms that the wicked shall utterly cease to be in the second death.

CHAPTER XIV. THE SOULS UNDER THE ALTAR.

CHAPTER XV. GATHERED TO HIS PEOPLE.

CHAPTER XVI. SAMUEL AND THE WOMAN OF ENDOR.

CHAPTER XVII. THE TRANSFIGURATION. MATT. 17:1-9.

CHAPTER XVIII. DID CHRIST TEACH THAT THE DEAD ARE ALIVE?

Yes, says the immaterialist, for he taught that God, who declares himself to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is not the God of the dead, but of the living; therefore, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, are living; but they are living as immaterial, disembodied immortal spirits; for their bodies are in the grave.

The occasion on which these words were spoken is described in Matt. 22:23-32. To understand the words of Christ, we must understand fully the point at issue, and what his words were designed to prove; and to do this, we must look carefully at the narrative:--

What, then, was the point at issue between Christ and the Sadducees? See verse 23: “The same day, came to him the Sadducees, which say there is no resurrection, and asked him,” &c. The Sadducees professed to believe the writings of Moses, but denied the resurrection. Christ also believed the writings of Moses, but taught the resurrection. Here, then, was a fair issue between them. They hear him teaching the resurrection; and to object their faith to his, they refer to the law of Moses concerning marriage, and then state a familiar fact; viz., that seven brothers, one after another, all had one woman, and all died. Now arises a problem very difficult to their minds, no doubt. How will this matter be arranged in the resurrection which you teach? Whose wife shall she be in the resurrection? Let it be noticed that the controversy between Christ and the Sadducees had no respect whatever to an intermediate state, nor does their query or Christ’s answer have any reference to such a state. They do not inquire whose wife she is now, or which of the men’s immortal souls claims her immortal soul in the spirit world; but, Whose wife shall she be in the resurrection (a future event)? Christ tells them that they err, 151not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. And then, to defend himself and condemn them out of their own mouth, he proceeds to prove--what? a conscious intermediate state? No; but the resurrection, from the writings of Moses. “But as touching the resurrection from the dead,” says he [as touching the dead that they rise, says Mark; and that the dead are raised, says Luke], “have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

Let us now show that this quotation did prove the resurrection, and our argument on this passage is closed. That, Moses by this language, did teach the resurrection of the dead, we think is easily evident. Thus, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were dead; but God is not the God of the dead (or those who are irrecoverably and eternally dead, as the Sadducees believed them to be), but he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. What, therefore, shall we logically and scripturally conclude from this fact? Why, simply that they shall live again, or have a resurrection from the dead. In this view of the subject, Christ reasoned well, proved the point he aimed to prove, confounded the Sadducees, and gained the applause of the Pharisees, who believed in the resurrection.

152But grant for a moment that the language means what is popularly claimed for it, and what becomes of Christ’s reputation as a reasoner, and a teacher of wisdom sent from God? He set out to prove the resurrection; but when he closes his argument, lo, wonderful to tell! he has proved that all men are alive, and, therefore, there is no need of a resurrection! He neither meets the query of the Sadducees, nor defends himself, but quite the reverse. Believe that our Lord would reason thus, ye who can!

If any should admit that a resurrection is proved by the language, but claim from it that such resurrection takes place at death, a theory not uncommon at the present time, we reply that they thereby abandon the conscious-state theory, and affirm the existence of those who have died, on another ground, viz., a resurrection. But, further, this is equally foreign from what Christ set out to prove; for he had reference to an event which was then future to the seven brethren and the woman that died. They asked him, saying, “In the resurrection, therefore, when they shall rise, whose wife shall she be of them,” &c. And Jesus answered and said, “When they shall rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels in Heaven.” Mark 12:23-25. Again, in Luke’s account, Jesus says, “But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection 153from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage.” Luke 20:35. Thus we see that a future event is everywhere referred to, and if he in reality proved that an event had already taken place, which he designed to show would take place in the future, it speaks no better for his reasoning or his wisdom than the former supposition.

Why God calls himself the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, though they are yet dead, we learn from Heb. 11:16. It is not because they are now alive, but because in God’s purpose who speaks of things that are not, as though they were, they are to live, and “he hath prepared for them a city.” “Wherefore“Wherefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God; for he hath prepared for them a city,” into possession of which they will of course come in the future.

In view of these facts, our friends should be careful lest they expose themselves to the rebuke Christ gave to the Sadducees: “Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures;” for this instance, like all others, when properly understood, so far from sustaining their position, becomes an irrefragable evidence of the resurrection of the dead, and a future life, but affirms nothing whatever for consciousness in death.

CHAPTER XIX. MOSES AND THE PROPHETS ON THE PLACE AND CONDITION OF THE DEAD.

The hoary fable that every man has in his own nature an immaterial, ever-conscious, never-dying principle, vaulting from the gloomy regions of heathen mythology over into the precincts of Christianity, and claiming the positive authority of Christ and his apostles, instead of the uncertain speculations of Socrates and Plato, conceives that it finds a secure intrenchment in Luke 16:19-31, or the record concerning the rich man and Lazarus.

Into this record, as into the strongest of strongholds, it enters with every demonstration of confidence; and from its supposed impregnable walls, it hurls mockery and defiance against all opposing views, as the infatuated subjects of Belshazzar defied the soldiers of Cyrus from the walls of Babylon.

We venture to approach, at least to reconnoiter. We venture further, from the record itself, even to lay siege to it, and dig a trench about it, which, if we mistake not, will soon effectually reduce it, and all the arguments for immortality it is supposed to contain.

The first fact to which we call the attention of 155the reader is that Christ, as the result of this narrative or parable, or whatever it may be, refers us to Moses and the prophets for light and information respecting the place and condition of the dead. In the record, the rich man is represented as requesting that Lazarus might be sent to his brethren on earth, lest they should come into the same place of torment. How would he prevent them? By carrying back to them information respecting the state that follows this life; by telling how it fared with the covetous rich man who had enjoyed his good things in this life, and inducing them to live such a life here as to avoid the condition into which he had fallen.

And what was Abraham’s answer? “They have Moses and the prophets.... If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” That is to say, Moses and the prophets had given them just as positive information respecting the condition into which man passes from this life, as could be given them by one who should repass the portals of the grave and rise from the dead.

The significance of this declaration should not be overlooked. It throws us right back upon the records of Moses and the prophets for information upon that subject respecting which the incident here related is claimed to be full and sufficient testimony.

156We therefore inquire what Moses and the prophets have taught us respecting the place where the scene here depicted is represented to have taken place. What place was this? Answer, Hades; for this is the word from which hell is translated in verse 23. In hell, hades, the rich man lifted up his eyes, and saw Abraham and Lazarus afar off, though still within sight and speaking distance. The New Testament was written in Greek, while Moses and the prophets wrote in Hebrew. What is the Hebrew word answering to the Greek hades? Answer, Sheol. These are the equivalent terms in the two languages. All that a Hebrew writer meant by sheol, a Greek writer meant by hades, and vice versa. The question, then, is simply this: What have Moses and the prophets taught us respecting sheol, and the condition of those who enter therein?

Meaning of hades and sheol. These words denote the common receptacle of the dead, both righteous and wicked. The righteous dead are there; for at the resurrection they raise the victorious shout, “O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave [Gr. hades], where is thy victory?” 1 Cor. 15:55. And the wicked dead are there; for at the resurrection to damnation it is said that death and hell [Gr. hades] deliver them up. Rev. 20:13. That the hades of the New Testament is the sheol of the Old, Ps. 16, and Acts 2:27, bear testimony. Thus Ps. 16:10, says, “Thou 157wilt not leave my soul in hell [Heb. sheol];” and the New Testament, as above, makes a direct quotation of this passage by saying, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in hades.”

Use of the word sheol. This word occurs in the Old Testament sixty-five times. It is rendered hell and grave each thirty-one times, and pit three times. With our Lord’s special indorsement of what is there written concerning it, we may look with interest at the facts brought out by the testimony of Moses and the prophets.

All alike go there. Thus Jacob says, “I will go down into sheol [to use the original word in place of the English rendering], unto my son mourning.” Gen. 37:35. Korah and his company went down into sheol. Num. 16:30, 33. All mankind go there. Ps. 89:48.

What goes into sheol. Sheol receives the whole man bodily at death. Jacob expected to go down with his gray hairs to sheol. Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, went into sheol bodily. The soul of the Saviour left sheol at his resurrection. Ps. 16:10; Acts 2:27, 31. David, when restored from dangerous sickness, testified that his soul was saved from going into sheol. Ps. 30:2, 3.

The duration of its dominion. Those who go down into sheol must remain there till their resurrection. At the second coming of Christ, 158all the righteous are delivered from sheol. All the living wicked are then turned into sheol, and for one thousand years it holds them in its dread embrace. Then it gives them up, and judgment is executed upon them. Rev. 20:11-15.

Location of sheol. It is in the earth beneath. It embraces the interior of the earth as the region of the dead, and the place of every grave. Eze. 32:18-32. It is always spoken of as beneath, in the interior of the earth, or in the nether parts of the earth. See Num. 16:30, 33; Isa. 5:14; 14:9-20; Eze. 31:15-18; 32:18-32. Referring to the fires now preying upon the interior parts of the earth, and which shall at last cause the earth to melt with fervent heat, the Lord, through Moses, says: “For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest sheol, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundation of the mountains.” Deut. 32:22. Jonah went down into sheol when he descended into the depths of the waters, where none but dead men had ever been. Jonah 1:2.

Condition of the righteous in sheol. They do not praise the Lord there. David so testifies: “In death there is no remembrance of thee; in sheol who shall give thee thanks?” Ps. 6:5. Hezekiah uttered the same great truth, when he was delivered from death in answer to prayer: “I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go 159to the gates of sheol; I am deprived of the residue of my years.... Behold, for peace I had great bitterness; but thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit of corruption; for thou hast cast all my sins behind my back. For sheol cannot praise thee, death cannot celebrate thee: they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day: the father to the children shall make known thy truth.” Isa. 38:10-19; Ps. 115:17; 146:1-4.

Condition of the wicked in sheol. They are still and silent there. David, in a prayer indited by the Spirit of God, says: “Let the wicked be ashamed, and let them be silent in sheol.” Ps. 31:17. In 1 Sam. 2:9, we read that the wicked shall be silent in darkness.

General character of sheol. It is a place of silence, secresy, sleep, rest, darkness, corruption, and worms. Job says: “So man lieth down, and riseth not: till the heavens be no more they shall not awake nor be raised out of their sleep. Oh! that thou wouldst hide me in sheol, that thou wouldst keep me secret till thy wrath be past, that thou wouldst appoint me a set time and remember me. If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time will I wait till my change come. Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee; thou wilt have a desire to the work of thine hands.” Job 14:12-15. Again he says: 160“If I wait, sheol is mine house: I have made my bed in the darkness. I have said to corruption, Thou art my father: to the worm, Thou art my mother and my sister. And where is now my hope? As for my hope, who shall see it? They shall go down to the bars of sheol, when our rest together is in the dust.”dust.” Job. 17:13-16; 4:11-19; Ps. 88:10-12.

There is no knowledge in sheol. This fact is plainly stated by Solomon through the Spirit of inspiration: “Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in sheol whither thou goest.”goest.” Eccl. 9:4-6, 10. When man goes in there his very thoughts perish. Ps. 146:4.

Such are the great facts concerning sheol, or hades, revealed to us in the books of “Moses and the prophets.” Their statements are literal, plain, explicit, and unequivocal. In opposition to all these, can it be maintained that in sheol and hades there is consciousness, wisdom, device, knowledge, happiness, and misery, as is popularly claimed on the authority of this record about the rich man and Lazarus? If not, and if sheol is such a place of silence, darkness, inactivity, and unconsciousness, as they declare, can the use of such language as is employed respecting the rich man and Lazarus in this very place be accounted for?

CHAPTER XX. THE RICH MAN AND LAZARUS.

The previous chapter left us with the problem on our hands whether it were better to try to overthrow all that Moses and the prophets have written respecting sheol and the condition of those who enter therein, for the purpose of sustaining the common view of the rich man and Lazarus, or to try to account for the use of the language used in that narrative, in harmony with what Moses and the prophets have said respecting that place.

In the first place, we cannot set aside what Moses and the prophets have written; for Christ, in the very case under consideration, indorses them and refers us to them for instruction. How, then, can we account for the fact that the rich man is represented as conscious, intelligent, and active, in hades, when Moses and the prophets have taught us that hades is a place of darkness and silence, without knowledge, wisdom, or device? If the record of the rich man and Lazarus is a parable, the use of such language is at once accounted for; for if it is a parable, the language is allegorical; and in allegory, life and action are often attributed to inanimate objects, 162for the sake of enforcing or illustrating some particular truth.

Some notable instances of this style of writing are furnished us in the Old Testament. In Judges 9:7-15, the trees are represented as going forth to anoint a king over them; and they appealed to the olive tree and the fig tree and the vine, and received answers from them in which they declined to leave their stations of usefulness to be promoted over them. Finally, they appealed to the bramble; and the bramble accepted the trust. Now this representation was not designed to teach that trees ordain civil government, walk about, and converse together; but it was to illustrate the folly of the men of Shechem in electing Abimelech king. Again, in 2 Kings 14:9, we read that the king of Israel sent to the king of Judah, saying, “The thistle in Lebanon sent to the cedar that was in Lebanon, saying, Give thy daughter to my son to wife.” This is not to teach that thistles and cedars have sons and daughters who unite in marriage, but to illustrate the contempt which the king of Israel felt for the proposition which the king of Judah made to him.

Landis, p. 188, claims that it makes no difference whether the case of the rich man and Lazarus is a parable or not, since a parable should not be so worded as to convey a wrong impression to the mind, which this would do, if the 163soul is not conscious in death. We reply, It makes all the difference in the world; for if it is a parable, the life and action attributed to the inanimate inhabitants of hades, is not to teach anything respecting their real condition, any more than the life and action attributed to the trees and brambles in the cases referred to, is designed to teach what their condition is; but this intelligence and action are attributed to these inanimate objects, to illustrate some great truth which the speaker wished to enforce.

In the case of the rich man and Lazarus, what was the object in view? Answer: To rebuke the Pharisees for their covetousness (“And the Pharisees also, who were covetous, heard all these things; and they derided him.” Verse 14); to show to them, since they thought that riches in this life was a mark of the divine favor and would secure God’s blessing in the next, that if they gave themselves up to the sensual enjoyment of their riches, neglecting and oppressing the poor, they would, in the future, meet God’s wrath instead of his favor; and that the poor, whom they despised and oppressed, might attain to that very state of felicity, set forth under the figure of Abraham’s bosom, of which they thought themselves so sure.

That this is a parable seems abundantly evident: 1. It stands in connection with a long list of parables. The preceding chapter, Luke 16415, contains three. This chapter opens with the parable of the unjust steward; and there is no intimation of a change from parable to literal narration in this case. 2. It is said that this cannot be a parable, because it is introduced by a direct assertion. “There was a certain rich man,” &c. But others which are parables are introduced in exactly the same manner. Thus verse 1, “There was a certain rich man which had a steward,” &c. And chapter 15:11: “A certain man had two sons,” &c. 3. The prophets, to whom we are referred, speak of the dead in sheol, in the nether parts of the earth, as conversing together, taunting each other, weeping bitterly, refusing to be comforted, &c., representations exactly similar to those made in the case of the rich man and Lazarus, and full as striking, but which no one can regard as setting forth the actual condition of the dead.

Thus in Isa. 14:9-20, it is represented that when the king of Babylon is overthrown, he goes down into sheol, and the DEAD (for there are no others in its dark domain) are stirred up to meet him. The kings that had been destroyed by the king of Babylon, are represented as having thrones in sheol beneath, and when the king of Babylon joins them in their dark abode, they rise up from their thrones, and mock him with feigned obeisance, as in life they had rendered him real homage. And they say, “Art thou become 165weak as we? Art thou become like unto us? Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms?” No one can suppose that they literally act or speak thus. But all this is a striking figure to represent that death would reduce the king of Babylon to the same level with his subjects and prisoners.

Again in Eze. 31:15-18, and 32:17-32, Pharaoh and his host, slain in battle with the king of Babylon, are set forth in the same manner. The strong among the mighty are represented as speaking to him out of the midst of sheol, as he enters therein. And this sheol, in “the nether parts of the earth,” full of graves and of the dead, is contrasted with the land of the living. These victims of slaughter went down to sheol with their weapons of war; and their swords they “laid under their heads;” and when Pharaoh, lying among them, saw the multitude of his enemies that were slain also, he was comforted at the sight.

Another case, perhaps still more remarkable, is that of Rachel. Jer. 31:15-17; Matt. 2:17, 18; Gen. 25:17-20. Long ages after Rachel had died, and entered into sheol, a dreadful slaughter took place among her posterity. Thereupon she is represented as breaking forth into lamentation and bitter weeping, and refusing to be comforted because her children were not. And the Lord says to her, “Refrain thy voice from weeping, 166and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord.”

No one can suppose that Rachel literally wept at the murder of her children nearly 2000 years after her death, nor that the slaughtered Egyptians put their swords under their heads as they were lying in sheol, and conversed together in the nether parts of the earth, some being comforted, and others ashamed; nor that the kings overthrown by the king of Babylon rose up from their sepulchral thrones in mock solemnity, and taunted him with becoming weak as they.

But these were all figures to set forth great and salutary truths. May not our Lord then, for once, be permitted for a like purpose to use a like figure, so largely employed by the prophets, and so well known to his hearers, by personifying persons in hades to perform actions which were not there literally to occur? We have certainly as good reason to suppose that Rachel, the Egyptians, and the king of Babylon, were real personages, and their descent into sheol and the accompanying circumstance as related by the prophets, veritable history, as to suppose that Dives was a real character, and his torment in hades, and his conversation with Abraham, a real transaction.

Those who held in their hands the Old-Testament scriptures were perfectly familiar with such figures. There the “trees of the field” converse 167and “clap their hands,” the “floods” lift up their “voice,” the hills and mountains “sing,” stones from the wall “cry out,” and beams “answer,” the blood of Abel finds a “voice,” and “cries out from the ground,” and dead men rejoice over the fall of their rivals, slain by the sword. In a volume abounding with such figures, cannot for once a rich man, representing a class of living persons, be endowed in hades with life and speech? must this one figure of personification be singled out from all others, as a rigidly literal narrative, and be made to sustain the weight of the most terrific doctrine of which the mind of man can conceive?

Sufficient evidence has been produced to show that this is a parable. And now we invite the attention of the reader to the testimony of two eminent authors respecting the use which should be made of parables.

Dr. Clarke (note on Matt. 5:26) says:--

And Trench, in his work on parables, lays down this very important rule:--

But some persist that this is not a parable, but a literal narrative; and not to seem captious, we will consider it in this light. If this is veritable history, all the particulars must be taken literally. Then the wicked, tormented in the flames of hell, are within sight and speaking distance of the saved in Heaven. In other words, Heaven is but the shore of hell, and on that shore the redeemed can sit and watch the damned in their fearful contortions of agony for which there is no name, and listen to their entreaties for relief and their shrieks of fathomless despair, to an extent, it would seem, sufficient to satisfy the fiercest vengeance and the most implacable revenge. If this be so, our friends must certainly abandon the argument they build on Rev. 6:9, 10, where they have it that the souls of the martyrs, disembodied and conscious, cry to God to visit vengeance upon their persecutors. If they were where they could look over into the fiery gulf, and behold their persecutors vainly battling 169with its flaming billows, or if not already there, destined in a few short years to be plunged therein, let no one say of the holy martyrs that they would, under such circumstances, cry impatiently to God to hasten or intensify his vengeance. The arguments based on the narrative of the rich man and Lazarus, and Rev. 6:9, 10, must, one or the other of them, be given up; for they devour each other. Let the advocates of the popular theory look to this.

The beggar died, and was carried by the angels into Abraham’s bosom. The rich man also died, and was buried. Let it be noted that the persons themselves, as a whole, are spoken of, not any of their essential elements, or immaterial appendages. Nothing is said of the soul of either the rich man or Lazarus. As we are now considering this as a literal transaction, a question vital to the argument is, When do the angels bear those who have died, as persons (for there is nothing anywhere said about the angels’ carrying their souls), into Abraham’s bosom, or the state of the blessed? Such scriptures as Matt. 24:30, 31; 1 Thess. 4:16, 17, answer this question very explicitly: “And he shall send his angels with a great sound of a trumpet, and they shall gather together his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other.” When? At the second advent of the Son of man in majesty and glory; for then it is that the voice of the archangel, 170ringing through the long galleries of hades, shall wake the righteous dead from their silent slumbers, and angels bear them upward on wings of light, to be forever with the Lord.

The rich man dies, and is buried; and his next experience is the suffering of torment in consuming flame. How long after his burial he finds himself in this torment, we are not directly informed. But he has bodily organs; for he has eyes to see, and a tongue to be cooled; but these the dead are not usually considered to possess till the resurrection. This drives Landis, p. 191, to the unusual admission that the soul retains the human form, with its corresponding organs, hands, feet, eyes, tongue, &c. Again, the rich man sees Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom; but, as we have already seen, Lazarus is not literally borne there by the angels till the resurrection.

As a literal transaction, the scene is inevitably located, by the concurrent testimony of all Scripture, beyond the resurrection. How, then, it can be said to transpire in hades, we leave those to decide who believe that it is a literal transaction. Certain it is that no such scenes can really occur in hades, if the representations of that place given us by Moses and the prophets are correct; while analogous scenes will really take place beyond the resurrection: there the righteous are rewarded, and the wicked punished in devouring fire; there the Lord told the impenitent 171Jews that they should see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of God, and they themselves thrust out, and that then there would be weeping and gnashing of teeth. Luke 13:28.

One view, only, maintains harmony between this and other portions of the sacred writings; and that is the one which is here, imperfectly it may be, but yet sincerely, advocated: that Christ, following the example of the prophets, uses the figure of personification, and anticipates, as transpiring in the grave, scenes which substantially occur beyond the resurrection; and that the object of the parable was to rebuke the Pharisees for their covetousness by indicating the fate that awaited a life of avarice and oppression here, however sumptuous that life might be.

That it does not teach the existence of conscious souls between death and the resurrection, is forever settled by the fact that Lazarus could return only by a resurrection from the dead. When the rich man requested that Lazarus might be sent to warn his brethren, Abraham replied that they had Moses and the prophets, and if they would not hear them, they would not “be persuaded though one rose from the dead.” The conversation did not therefore relate to the coming back of the immortal soul of Lazarus; and indeed no mention is made of any such thing in the whole transaction.

172Therefore, interpret it as we may, it cannot be reasonably or scripturally used to prove the entrance of man’s naked, unclothed spirit into bliss or woe at the hour of death.

CHAPTER XXI. WITH ME IN PARADISE.

CHAPTER XXII. ABSENT FROM THE BODY.

Another passage, supposed to teach the separate conscious existence of the soul, is found in 2 Cor. 5:8: “We are confident, I say, and willing rather, to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord.” On the acknowledged principle that it is illogical to endeavor to build any great doctrine upon an isolated passage, without taking into consideration the general tenor of the context, if not also other writings from the same author, let us look at some of the statements which Paul has made in this connection.

In verse 1 of this chapter, Paul introduces an earthly house and a heavenly house, and says, “For we know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” He states our condition while in the earthly house. Verse 2: “In this we groan,” verse 4, “being burdened.” He tells what we desire in this state. Verse 2. “Earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from Heaven [verse 3]: if so be that being clothed, we shall not be found naked.” In verse 4, Paul repeats all these facts in order to state 184the result of the work which he desired: “For we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon.” Now he states the result of being clothed upon with the house from Heaven which he so earnestly desired: “But clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.” Then he states that the condition he had in view is that for which God in the beginning designed the human race: “Now he that has wrought us for the self-same thing is God.” That is, God designed that we should ultimately reach that condition which he here designates as being clothed upon with our house from Heaven. Then he states what assurance we have in this life that we shall eventually attain to this condition: “who also hath given unto us the earnest [assurance, pledge, token] of the Spirit.” That is, the Spirit dwelling in our hearts, is the assurance or pledge we have that we shall finally receive the desire of our hearts, and be clothed upon with our house from Heaven. In verse 6, he states this to be the ground of his confidence, although while “we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord.” And then after incidentally stating the secret of the Christian’s course in this life, “we walk by faith, not by sight,” he penned the text quoted at the commencement of this chapter, stating that he was willing rather to be absent from the body and to be present with the Lord.

185We now have before us quite fully, the subject upon which Paul is here treating. A thought now as to the meaning of the terms he employs. What does he mean by the earthly house and the heavenly house? by being clothed and unclothed? by mortality being swallowed up of life? and by being absent from the body and present with the Lord?

What he calls in verse 1, “our earthly house,” he designates in verse 6, as being “at home in the body.” The chief characteristic of this house is that it may be dissolved, or is mortal. This earthly house is therefore our mortal body, or what is essentially the same thing, this present mortal condition. The house from Heaven is eternal or immortal. This, therefore, by parity of reasoning, is the immortal body or the state of immortality which awaits the redeemed beyond the resurrection.

Paul, in Rom. 8:22, 23, speaks very plainly of these two conditions: “For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the first-fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” None can fail to see the parallel between this passage in Romans, and that portion of 2 Cor. 5, now under consideration. To the Corinthians, Paul says, that in 186our earthly house we groan, being burdened; to the Romans, that we groan within ourselves, or in this mortal body; to the Corinthians, that while in this state we have the earnest of the Spirit; to the Romans, that we have the first-fruits of the Spirit, which is the same thing, the pledge, assurance, or earnest; to the Corinthians, that we desire to be clothed upon with our house from Heaven; to the Romans, that we wait for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body. The ultimate object in view in both cases, as a matter of hope and desire, is the redeemed or eternal state; but in the one case it is being “clothed upon with our house from Heaven,” and in the other, it is “the redemption of our body.” These two expressions, therefore, denote one and the same thing.

Returning to a consideration of the meaning of the terms which Paul uses, we inquire what is meant by being unclothed. And the evident answer is, The dissolution of our earthly house, or the falling of our mortal body in death. The state of death, then, is that condition in which we are unclothed. And the being clothed upon, is being released from this state, when mortality is swallowed up of life, and we are taken into the presence of the Lord. Then Paul states a conclusion very apparent from his premises, that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord, and adds that he is willing rather 187to be absent from the body and present with the Lord.

The only verse in which consciousness in death can even be supposed to be intimated, is the 8th verse, which speaks of our being absent from the body and present with the Lord. But even here it will be seen that the whole question turns on the time when we enter the presence of the Lord. Is it immediately on the dissolution of our earthly house? This the text does not inform us; but on this the preceding verses are very explicit, as we shall presently see.

Let us now look at a few considerations which show that it is impossible to harmonize the popular view of consciousness in death, with the statements which the apostle here makes. It is claimed that the house which we have eternal in the Heavens is the immortal soul with which we immediately enter into Heaven when the earthly house is dissolved. Granting that this is so, let us go forward a little and mark the difficulty in which this view is involved. The time comes when the mortal body is raised from the dead and made immortal. In these redeemed bodies we are to live in the kingdom of God to all eternity. This is finally our eternal house. But when we take possession of this, what becomes of our house that we occupied between death and the resurrection? If we pass from our mortal bodies at death immediately into a spiritual 188body prepared for us, which is the house we have in Heaven, and in which we live till the resurrection, when our natural bodies are redeemed, and we take possession of them, it necessarily follows that we vacate that second house which we had occupied in Heaven. Then what becomes of that house? Moreover this view introduces something before us of which Paul has made no mention; for here we have three houses, but Paul’s language allows of only two; and one of these three houses, on the view before us, has to be abandoned, to go to ruin, when we take possession of our redeemed bodies. All this is unscriptural and absurd. Such a view is an impossibility.

Again, Paul affirms in verse 5 that God hath wrought us for this self-same thing, that is, created man for such a state of being as we shall enjoy, when clothed upon with our house from Heaven. Is this condition the separate existence of an immortal soul? No; for if man had never sinned, he would have reached that state without seeing death, and the idea of an immortal soul would never have had an existence. The whole doctrine is the offspring of sin, for it is the result of the fall. It is the second falsehood which the devil found necessary to sustain his first one, “Ye shall not surely die.” For when all that is outward, tangible, and visible of man does fall in death, his untruth would be very apparent 189unless he could make them believe that there is an invisible medium through which they still continue to live. Paul, therefore, in the scripture under notice, does not have any reference to an intermediate state.

He further says that we have through the Spirit an earnest, or pledge, that this condition, which is set forth as the chief object of desire, will finally be reached, and we shall be clothed with our house from Heaven. But what is the Holy Spirit in our hearts an earnest or pledge of? What does it signify that we have a measure of the Holy Spirit here? Is it a proof or assurance that we have immortal souls that will live when the body is dead? No, but that we shall be redeemed and made immortal. See Eph. 1:13, 14: “In whom also, after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.” And in Rom. 8:11, Paul again says: “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”

These are the glorious promises of which the Holy Spirit in our hearts is a pledge and assurance: that these mortal bodies shall be quickened from the dead, even as Christ was raised 190up, and that we shall share in the inheritance, when the purchased possession shall be redeemed. It looks not to any intermediate state, but to the ultimate reward.

And finally, Paul forever bars his teaching against the entrance of the conscious state dogma, by saying that when we are clothed upon with our house from Heaven, mortality is swallowed up of life. How can mortality be swallowed up of life? It can be only by having a principle of life come upon it which shall overpower and absorb it. Mortality can be swallowed up only by immortality or eternal life. Is this the passing of the soul from the mortal body at the hour of death? Let us look at it. What is there about man, according to the common view, which is mortal? The body. And what is immortal? The soul. At death, the body, that part which is mortal, does not become immortal, but loses all its life, and goes into the grave to crumble back to dust. And the soul, which was immortal before, is no more than immortal afterward. Is there any swallowing up of mortality by life here? Just the reverse. Mortality, or the mortal part, is swallowed up by death. There is not so much life afterward as before; for after death, the soul only lives, while the body, which was alive before, is now dead.

But Paul, before penning this language in 2 Cor. 5, had already told the Corinthians when 191mortality would be swallowed up of life, and how it would be accomplished; so he knew when he penned this portion of his second epistle that they would understand it perfectly. See the 15th chapter of his first epistle, verses 51-55: “Behold I show you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump; for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?victory?”

In verse 50, he says: “Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth corruption inherit incorruption.” Corruption does not inherit, or possess, incorruption. Mortality does not possess immortality. The mortal body does not inclose an immortal principle, which it has power to hold within its grasp, till that grasp is rendered nerveless by the stroke of death, and the soul flies away in glad release. But this mortal, all that there is about man that is mortal, must put on, must be itself invested with, immortality, and 192this corruptible, all about us that is perishable, must itself become incorruptible; then it will not be this corruptible flesh and blood, and then it can inherit the kingdom of God, and start off bold and vigorous on its race of endless life; and outside of this change, and independent of this grand investiture of our mortal nature with immortality, there is no eternal life for any of the race. And when this is accomplished, then death is swallowed up in victory; then we are clothed upon with our house from Heaven; then mortality is swallowed up of life. But this is not at death, but at the last trump, when the Lord appears in glory, and the dead are raised, and the righteous living are changed in the twinkling of an eye. How can the religious world stumble in a path so plain!

But if the heavenly house is our future immortal body, it may be asked how Paul can say, as he does in 2 Cor. 5:1, “We have [present tense] a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” We have this in the same sense that we have, at the present time, eternal life. And John tells us how this is: It is by faith, or by promise, not by actual possession. 1 John 5:11: “And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life.” God hath given it to us; and on the strength of this promise we have it. But where is it now? “And this life is”--in us? No, but--“in his 193Son.” And when he, the Son, who is our life, shall appear, we shall be clothed upon with our heavenly house, and appear with him in glory. Col. 3:4.

Again, it may be asked how Paul can speak of two houses, as though we moved from one into the other, if it is only a change of condition from mortal to immortality. He illustrates this in the figure he takes to represent conversion. Eph. 4:22-24: “That ye put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness.” Here the simple change of heart, the change of the disposition, from sin to holiness, is spoken of as putting off one man and putting on another. With even greater propriety, may the change from mortal to immortality be spoken of as removing from an earthly, perishable house, to an immortal, heavenly one.

The terms Paul uses to describe the two states, are clearly defined. On the one side it is an earthly house, groaning with burdens, mortality, absent from the Lord. On the other, it is clothed upon with our house from Heaven, mortality swallowed up of life, present with the Lord. He did not desire to be unclothed, which, as already noticed, signifies the condition of death; but he did desire to be present with the Lord; therefore 194in death he would have us understand that the Christian is not present with the Lord.

From all this, we can only conclude that when he says he is willing to be absent from the body and present with the Lord, he means to be understood that he is willing that this burdened, groaning, mortal state should end, and the promised glorious and eternal day begin. And being confident, through the presence of the Spirit of God in his heart, that when this change should be wrought, he would have a glorious part therein, he was more than willing it should come. It was but the breathing again of that prayer which has arisen like a continual sigh from the heart of the church through all her weary pilgrimage, “Thy kingdom come; yea, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly;” not, “Let our immortal souls,” which they did not suppose they possessed, “enter a conscious state in death” in which they did not believe.

CHAPTER XXIII. IN THE BODY AND OUT.

It is confidently asserted that Paul believed a man could exist independently of the body from certain expressions which he uses in 2 Cor. 12: 2-4:--

By the man whom he knew, it is generally supposed that the apostle means himself, and the language he uses is a record of his own experience. Paul was taken to the third Heaven, to paradise, and heard words which it is not possible for a man to utter; but whether it was in his body, or out, he did not know.

This instance, then, furnishes no example of a spirit actually existing in a conscious condition outside of the body, even if this is what is meant by the expression, “out of the body;” for Paul assures us that he did not know that he was in that condition. Yet it is claimed that it has all the force of an actual example; for such a condition 196is recognized as possible. It is very readily admitted that such a condition is recognized, as is expressed by the terms, “out of the body;” but that this means an immaterial spirit, an immortal soul, the real, intelligent man, speeding away through the universe even to the third Heaven, there to hear unspeakable words, and gather up heavenly information, and return at will to resume its abode in the, for a time, deserted body, should not be too hastily inferred from this passage.

Of what is the apostle speaking? He says, in verse 1: “It is not expedient for me, doubtless, to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord. I knew a man in Christ, above fourteen years ago,” &c., as previously quoted. His subject, then, is the visions and revelations he had received from the Lord; and the language from verse 2 to verse 4 is the record of one such remarkable revelation, perhaps the most remarkable one he had ever experienced. He was given a view of paradise, and heard unspeakable words. And so real and clear and vivid was the view, that he did not know but that he was transported bodily into that place. If not in this manner, the view was given in the ordinary course of vision, that is, by having the scene presented before the mind by the power of the Holy Ghost.

All must concede that only these two conditions 197are brought to view, either his transportation bodily to paradise, or the ordinary condition of being in vision. If he went bodily to paradise, the instance has no bearing of course on the question of consciousness in death. And if it was an ordinary vision, how does this prove consciousness in death? The question is reduced to this one point; and the answer turns on the definition given to the expression, “out of the body.” Did Paul mean by it, what modern expositors wish us to understand by it? Paul meant by it, simply being in vision; the expositors aforesaid mean by it, the going out of the immortal spirit from the body, and its existence for a time in a separate conscious intelligent condition independent of the body. But let us look a little further, and see what this condition is. According to the common view, the separation of the soul from the body is death. This is what death is defined to mean. There can be no such thing as the separation of soul and body, and death not result. And the return of the soul to again inhabit the body, is a resurrection from the dead. This is what is claimed in the case of Rachel, whose soul departed, and she died, Gen. 35:18, and the widow’s son whom Elijah raised, whose soul came into him again, and he revived. 1 Kings 17:22.

But does any one suppose that Paul meant to say that he did not know but that he died and had a resurrection? That is what he did say, if the words, “out of the body,” mean what some 198would have us understand by them. His soul went off to paradise, and his body lay here, we know not how long, a corpse upon the earth! And when his soul returned, he had a resurrection from the dead! A necessary conclusion so preposterous, must be sufficient to convince any one that Paul, by the expression, “out of the body,” does not mean a state of death. He simply means that he was in vision, a state in which the mind, controlled for the time by the Holy Ghost, is made to take cognizance of distant or future scenes, and the person seems to himself to be really and bodily present, viewing the scenes, and listening to the words that are spoken, before him. Dreams, which all have experienced, are doubtless good illustrations of how this can be, and the case of John, in the Revelation, furnishes a notable example; for he was carried forward far into the future, and seemed to be present and taking part in scenes that did not then exist, and at which he could not really have been present, even in his supposed immaterial immortal soul.

Paul, then, had no reference whatever to a state of death in 2 Cor. 12:2-4. To suppose him to refer to that, according to the immaterialist view, runs us into the greatest absurdity. Hence his language affords no proof that there is a soul in man which can live on in a conscious intelligent state, while the mortal body crumbles back to dust.

CHAPTER XXIV. DEPARTING AND BEING WITH CHRIST.

When will all men come to agree respecting the state of the dead? When will the question whether the dead are alive, conscious, active, and intelligent, or whether they rest in the grave in unconsciousness and inactivity, cease to be a vexed question? When shall it be decided whether the shout of triumph which the ransomed are to raise, “O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” is the celebration of a real victory, or only an unnecessary and useless transaction, as it must be if the grave holds not the real man, but only the shell, the mortal body, which is generally considered an incumbrance and a clog? Never will this question be decided till men shall be willing to follow the Scriptures, instead of trying to compel the Scriptures to follow them; never, while they put the figurative for the literal, and the literal for the figurative, mistake sound for sense, and rest on the possible construction of an isolated text, instead of, and in opposition to, the general tenor of the teaching of the inspired writers.

Paul has told us often enough, and it would seem explicitly enough, when the Christian goes to be with his Lord. It is at the redemption of 200the body. Rom. 8:23. It is in the day of the Lord Jesus. 1 Cor. 5:5. It is at the last trump. 1 Cor. 15:51-55. It is when we are clothed upon with our house from Heaven. 2 Cor. 5:4. It is when Christ our life shall appear. Col. 3:4. It is when the Lord descends from Heaven with a shout, and the dead are raised. 1 Thess. 4:16, 17. It is at the coming of the Lord. 2 Thess. 2:1. It is to be at “that day,” an expression by which Paul frequently designates the day of Christ’s appearing. 2 Tim. 4:7, 8.

Yet Paul, in one instance, without stopping to explain, uses the expression, “to depart and to be with Christ;” whereupon his words are seized by religious teachers as unanswerable evidence that at death the spirit enters at once into the presence of its Redeemer. The passage is found in Phil. 1:21-24, and reads as follows:--

Willing to go with our friends as far as we can in their interpretation of any passage, we raise no issue here on the word depart. Paul probably means by it the same as in 2 Tim. 4:6, where he says, “The time of my departure is at hand,” referring to his approaching death. Then 201Paul, immediately on dying, was to be with Christ. Not so fast. The very point intended to be proved has, in such a conclusion, to be assumed. Paul had in view two conditions: this present state, and the future state. Between these two he was in a strait. The cause of God on earth, the interests of the church, stirring to its very depths his large and sympathetic heart, drew him here; his own desires drew him to the future state of victory and rest. And so evenly balanced were the influences drawing him in either direction, that he hardly knew upon which course he would decide, were it left to him as a matter of choice. Nevertheless, he said that it was more needful for the church that he remain here, to give them still the benefit of his counsel and his labors.

The state or condition to which he looked forward was one which he greatly desired. About four years before he wrote these words to the Philippians, he had written to the Corinthians, telling them what he did desire, and what he did not desire, in reference to the future. Said he, “Not that we would be unclothed.” 2 Cor. 5:4. By being unclothed, he meant the state of death, from the cessation of mortal life to the resurrection. This he did not desire; but he immediately adds what he did desire, namely, to be “clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life;” and when this is done, all that 202is mortal of us is made immortal, the dead are raised, and the body is redeemed. Rom. 8:23; 1 Cor. 15:52, 53.

In writing to the Corinthians, he thus stated that the object of his desire was to be clothed upon, and have mortality swallowed up of life; to the Philippians he stated that the object of his desire was to be with Christ. These expressions, then, mean the same thing. Therefore, in Phil. 1:23, Paul passes over the state of death, the unclothed state, just as he had done to the Corinthians; for he would not tell the Corinthians that he did not desire a certain state, and four years after write to the Philippians that he did desire it. Paul did not thus contradict himself.

But this intermediate state is the disputed territory in this controversy; the condition of the dead therein is the very point in question: and on this the text before us is entirely silent.

This is the vulnerable point in the popular argument on this text. It is assumed that the being with Christ takes place immediately on the departure. But, while the text asserts nothing of this kind, multitudes of other texts affirm that the point when we gain immortality and the presence of Christ, is a point in the future beyond the resurrection. And, unless some necessary connection can be shown between the departing and the being with Christ, and the hosts 203of texts which make our entrance into Christ’s presence a future event can be harmonized therewith, any attempt to prove consciousness in death from this text is an utter failure.

Landis seems to feel the weakness of his side in this respect, and spends the strength of his argument, pp. 224-229, in trying to make the inference appear necessary that the being with Christ must be immediate on the departure. He would have us think it utterly absurd and nonsensical to suppose a moment to elapse between the two events.

Let us then see if there is anything in Paul’s language which contradicts the idea that a period of utter unconsciousness, of greater or less length, intervenes between death and our entrance into the future life. In the first place, if the unconsciousness is absolute, as we suppose, the space passed over in the individual’s experience is an utter blank. There is not the least perception, with such person, of the lapse of a moment of time. When consciousness returns, the line of thought is taken up at the very point where it ceased, without the consciousness of a moment’s interruption. This fact is often proved by actual experience. Persons have been known to become utterly unconscious by a fracture of the skull, and a portion of it being depressed upon the brain, suspending its action. Perhaps when the accident happened they were in the act of issuing 204an order, or giving directions to those about them. They have lain unconscious for months, and then been relieved by a surgical operation; and when the brain began again to act, and consciousness returned, they have immediately spoken and completed the sentence they were in the act of uttering when they were struck down, months before. This shows that to these persons there was no consciousness of any time intervening, more than what passes between the words of a sentence which we are speaking. It was all the same to them as if they had at once completed the sentence they commenced to utter, instead of having weeks and months of unconsciousness thrown in between the words of which that sentence was composed.

So with the dead. They are not aware of the lapse of a moment of time between their death and the resurrection. A wink of the eye shuts out for an instant the sight of all objects, but it is so instantaneous that we do not perceive any interruption of the rays of vision. Six thousand years in the grave to a dead man is no more than a wink of the eye to the living. To them, consciousness, our only means of measuring time, is gone; and it will seem to them when they awake that absolutely none has elapsed. When Abel awakes from the dead, it will seem to him, until his attention is attracted by the new scenes of immortality to which he will be raised, that he 205is rising up from the murderous blows of Cain, under which he had seemingly just fallen. And to Stephen, who died beholding the exaltation of Christ in Heaven, it will be the same as if he had, without a moment’s interruption, entered into his glorious presence. And when Paul himself shall be raised, it will seem to him that the stroke of the executioner was his translation to glory.

Such being the indisputable evidence of facts upon this point, we ask how a person, understanding this matter, would speak of the future life, if he expected to obtain it in the kingdom of God? Would he speak of passing long ages in the grave before he reached it? He might, if he designed to state, for any one’s instruction, the actual facts in the case; but if he was speaking simply of his own experience, it would not be proper for him to mention the intervening time, because he would not be conscious of any such time, and it would not seem to him on awaking to life again that any such period had elapsed.

Accordingly, Bishop Law lays down this general principle on this question:--

206John Crellius says:--

Dr. Priestly says:--

So in harmony with this reference to our Lord’s teaching is the language used by Paul in 1 Thess. 4:16, 17, that we here refer to it again: “For the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air; and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

As Christ taught that the time when his people were to be with him again was at his second coming, so Paul here teaches. We call attention to the word so, in the last sentence of the quotation. So means in this way, in this manner, by 207this means. “So,” in this manner, by this means, “shall we ever be with the Lord.” When Paul, as he does here, describes without any limitations, the way and means by which we go to be with the Lord, he precludes every other means. He the same as says there is no other means by which we can be with the Lord, and if there is any other means of gaining this end, this language is not true. If we go to be with the Lord, by means of our immortal spirit, when we die, we do not go to be with him by means of the visible coming of Christ, the resurrection of the dead, and the change of the living, and Paul’s language is a stupendous falsehood. There is no possible way of avoiding this conclusion, except by claiming that the descent of the Lord from Heaven, the mighty shout, the voice of the archangel, the sounding of the great trump of God, the resurrection of the dead, and the change of the living, all take place when a person dies--a position too absurd to be seriously refuted, and almost too ridiculous to be even stated.

Shall we then take the position that Paul taught the Philippians that a person went by his immortal spirit immediately at death to be with the Lord, when he had plainly told the Thessalonians that this was to be brought about in altogether a different manner, and by altogether different means? No one who would have venerated that holy apostle when alive, or who has 208any decent regard for his memory now that he is dead, will accuse him of so teaching.

Why, then, does he say that he has a desire to depart, that is, to die? Because he well understood that his life of suffering, of toil, and trial here was to terminate by death; and if the church could spare him, he would gladly have it come, not only to release him from his almost unbearable burdens, but because he knew further that all the intervening space between his death and the return of his Lord would seem to him to be instantly annihilated, and the glories of the eternal world, through his resurrection from the dead, would instantly open upon his view.

It is objected again that Paul was very foolish to express such a desire if he was not to be with his Lord till the resurrection; for, in that case, he would be with him no sooner if he died than he would if he did not die. Those who make this objection, either cannot have fully considered this subject, or they utterly fail to comprehend it. They have no difficulty in seeing how Paul would be with Christ sooner by dying, provided his spirit, when he died, immediately entered into his presence; but they cannot see how it would be so when the time between his death and the coming of Christ is to him an utter blank, and then without the consciousness on his part, that a single instant has elapsed, he is ushered into the presence of his Redeemer. Remember that 209Paul’s consciousness was his only means of measuring time; and if he had died just as he wrote these words to the Philippians, it would have been to him an entrance into Christ’s presence just as much sooner as what time elapsed between the penning of that sentence and the day of his death. None can fail to see this point, if they will consider it in the light of the fact we have here tried so fully to set forth, that the dead have no perceptions of passing time.

In the light of the foregoing reasoning, let us read and paraphrase this famous passage to the Philippians:--

Who can say, bearing in mind the language Paul frequently uses in his other epistles, that this is not a just paraphrase of his language here. The only objection against it is, that, so rendered, 210it does not support the conscious-state dogma. But it makes a harmony in all that Paul has taught on the subject; and is it not far more desirable to maintain the harmony of the sacred writings, than to try to make them defend a dogma which involves them in a fatal contradiction?

REMAINING TEXTS CONSIDERED.

We have now examined all the principal texts of the Scriptures which are supposed to have a bearing on the question of the intermediate state. A few others of minor importance are occasionally urged in favor of the popular view, and as such are entitled to a passing notice. We give them in consecutive order as follows:--

It is claimed that death cannot separate us from the love of God; but, as God cannot exercise his love toward any but a rational and conscious creature, therefore the soul must be alive after death. (Immortality of the Soul, by Luther Lee, p. 111.) To what far-fetched and abortive reasoning will wrong theories lead intelligent men. We owe the reader an apology for noticing this passage at all. We should not here introduce it, were it not used as an objection to the view we advocate; and we should not believe 211it could ever be urged as an objection, had we not actually seen it. The reasoning of the apostle has to be completely inverted before any argument (may we be pardoned the misnomer) can be manufactured out of it for the conscious-state theory. For it is of our love to God, through Christ, and not of his to us, that the apostle speaks. It has reference, also, wholly to this life. Thus he says, verse 35, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” That is, shall these things which we have to endure in this life on account of our profession of the gospel and our love for Christ, quench that love in any wise? Shall we compromise the gospel, and alienate ourselves from the love of Christ, who has done so much for us, and through whom we hope for so much (see the whole chapter), to avoid a little persecution, peril, and distress? The separation from the love of Christ by death, of which he speaks, is the same as the separation by persecution, &c.; but tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and sword, do not necessarily kill us; they have respect to this life; the separation, therefore, is something which takes place here--simply an alienation of our hearts from him. And shall all these things, he asks--nay, more, shall even the prospect of death on account of our profession of Christ, prevent our loving and 212following him? No! is the implied and emphatic answer.

Such we believe to be the view which any one must take of this passage, who does not find himself under the unfortunateunfortunate necessity of making out a case.

But looking at this scripture from the objector’s stand-point, the singular inquiry at once forces itself upon us, Can the immortal soul in its disembodied state suffer tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and sword!?

Is this inward man the immortal soul? We answer, No; but the new man which we put on, Christ formed within the hope of glory. See Col. 3:9, 10; Eph. 4:22, 24; 3:16, 17; Col. 1:27.

Yes, says the objector, bring them from Heaven; so they must now be with him there in a conscious state. Not quite so fast. The text speaks of those who sleep in Jesus. Do you believe those who have gone to Heaven are asleep? We always supposed that Heaven was a place of unceasing activity, and of uninterrupted joy. And, again, are all these persons going to be brought 213from Heaven asleep! What a theological incongruity! But, from what place are they brought, if not from Heaven? The same place, we answer, from which God brought our Lord Jesus Christ. And what place was that? See Heb. 13:20: “Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus,” &c. We may then read the text in Thessalonians, as follows: “For if we believe that Jesus died and God brought him from the dead, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him from the dead.” Simply this the text affirms, and nothing more. It is a glorious pledge of the resurrection, and so far diametrically opposed to the conscious-state theory.

It is claimed that the departure here referred to is death, with which we agree. We take no exceptions to the remark so often made, “Departed this life,” &c. ButBut as Paul does not here intimate that his departure was to be to Heaven, or even to any conscious intermediate state, we have no right to infer this.

It is here claimed that the “I” that speaks, and the “my” that is in possession of a tabernacle, is Peter’s soul, the man proper, and 214the tabernacle, is the body which he was going to lay off. That Peter here has reference to death, we doubt not; but it was to be as the Lord Jesus Christ had showed him. How had he shown him it would be? See John 21:18, 19: “But when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch forth thy hands, and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not. This spake he, signifying by what death he should glorify God.” Here we are shown that the “thou” and the “he,” claimed on 1 Pet. 1:14, to be Peter’s soul, the man proper, was going to die, and by death, glorify God. And Peter himself says in the next verse, “Moreover, I will endeavor that ye may be able after my decease to have these things always in remembrance.” Here, then, the same “my,” Peter’s soul, the man proper, recollect, which in the verse before is in the possessive case, and governed by tabernacle, is again in the possessive case, and governed by decease, or death! Yes, Peter himself was going to die. We find no proof of a double entity here.

This phraseology is well illustrated by Job 7:21, which shows that the man proper, the “I,” sleeps in the dust: “And why dost Thou not pardon my transgression, and take away mine iniquity? for now shall I sleep in the dust; and thou shalt seek me in the morning, but I shall not be.”

This testimony shows that the unjust do not enter into a place of punishment at death, but are reserved to the day of Judgment. Where are they reserved? Answer. In the general receptacle of the dead, the grave. See Job 21:30.

By this first resurrection a portion of the dead are restored to life, consciousness, and activity, while it is said of those whose condition is not affected by this resurrection, that they lived not for a thousand years. This proves that up to the time of this resurrection, all the dead were in a condition just the opposite of life--a condition in which it might be said of them that they “lived not.” And this, mark, is spoken of the whole conscious being, not of the body merely. No language could more positively show that in death the whole person is in a state just the opposite of life.

216This text is supposed to prove that one of the old prophets came to John as an angel, showing that the dead exist in a conscious state. But it does not so teach. The angel simply stated that he was John’s fellow-servant, and the fellow-servant of John’s brethren, the prophets, and the fellow-servant of them which keep the sayings of this book. The being of whom they were all worshipers together was the great God. Therefore, says the angel, do not worship me, since I am only a worshiper with you at the throne of God; but worship God. This angel had doubtless been sent to the ancient prophets to reveal things to them, as he had now come to John. Such we believe to be the legitimate teaching of this scripture, the last that is found in the book of God supposed to teach a conscious state.

CHAPTER XXV. THE DEATH OF ADAM.

CHAPTER XXVI. THE RESURRECTION.

As clearly as the human race have been taught by the experience of six thousand years that death is their common lot, so clearly are we taught by the word of God, and by some notable exhibitions of divine power, that all who have gone into their graves shall come forth again to life.

The words in the New Testament which express this fact are anastasis, egersis, and exanastasis. The two latter occur but once each, the first in reference to the resurrection of Christ, in Matt. 27:53, the last in Phil. 3:11, where Paul expresses a desire to attain to a resurrection out from among the dead. Anastasis occurs forty-two times, being the word which is invariably used in the New Testament, with the exceptions just named, to express the resurrection. This word is defined by Robinson to mean, literally, a rising up, as of walls, of a suppliant, or from a seat. Specially in the New Testament, the resurrection of the body from death, the return of the dead body to life, as, first of individuals who have returned to life on earth, Heb. 11:35; secondly, of the future and general resurrection at the end of all things, John 11:24. It is often 232joined to the word, dead; as in the expression, the resurrection of the dead.

From these well-established meanings of the word it is evident that that which goes down will rise again. That which goes into the grave will come up again out of the grave. The rising again of the body is certainly assured by this word, and the manner in which it is used. This resurrection is a future event: “The hour is coming, in the which all that are in the graves shall hear His voice, and shall come forth.” John 5:28, 29. Paul said, when disputing with Tertullus before the governor, I “have hope toward God, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and the unjust.” Acts 24:15. And he tells us in chapter 26:7, that unto that promise the twelve tribes hope to come.

If, then, this is a firmly-established fact, that God is to make such a mighty manifestation of his power as to re-animate the scattered dust of those whom the grave has consumed from time’s earliest morn, there must be some cause for such an action. This great event has a tremendous bearing on the question of the intermediate state, and all views of that state must be adjusted to harmonize therewith. If any view is entertained which virtually renders such an event unnecessary, it must be shown that the resurrection as here defined is not taught in the word of 233God, or it must be admitted that the doctrine which nullifies it, is unscriptural.

The important inquiry now arises respecting the popular view, If the real being, the intelligent, responsible entity, ceases not its life and consciousness at death, but continues on in a more enlarged and perfect sphere of existence and activity, what need is there of the resurrection of the body? If the body is but a trammel, a clog to the operations of the soul, what need that it should come back and gather up its scattered particles from the silent tomb, and re-fetter itself with this material robe?

Wm. Tyndale, defending the doctrine of Martin Luther, that the dead sleep, addressed to his opponent the same pungent inquiry. He said:--

Andrew Carmichael (Theology of Scripture, vol. ii., p. 315) says:--

Dr. Muller (Ch. Doc. of Sin, p. 318) says:--

234We now propose to show that the resurrection is a prominent doctrine of the Bible; and if this can be established, it follows, upon the judgment of these eminent men, that the immortality of the soul cannot be true. We need not stop to notice that impalpable and groundless theory which makes the resurrection take place immediately at death, by supposing it to be the rising of the soul from the earthly house of this tabernacle, and its entering at once into its spiritual house, this to be inhabited, and the former, abandoned, forever. For in this case there is no resurrection; since the soul lives right on, and does not die at all. The resurrection which the Bible brings to view is a resurrection of the dead. It cannot be applied to anything that continuously lives, however many changes it may pass through. A person must go down into a state of death before he can be raised from the dead. Hence this theory is no resurrection at all, and so is at war with all the Bible says about the resurrection of the dead. Moreover, it is utterly impossible to harmonize this with the many references to the general resurrection at the end of the world.

We return to the Bible doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, the literal resurrection and resuscitation of our natural bodies, and affirm that the Bible makes this resurrection necessary, by representing the dead to be in such a condition that without this event they can have no future existence.

2351. Death is compared to sleep. There must, then, be some analogy between a state of sleep and a state of death, and this analogy must pertain to that which renders sleep a peculiar condition. Our condition in sleep differs from our condition when awake, simply in this, that when we are soundly asleep we are entirely unconscious. In this respect, then, death is like sleep; that is, the dead are unconscious. This figure is frequently used to represent the condition of the dead. Dan. 12:2: “Many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake.” Matt. 27:52: “Many bodies of the saints which slept arose.” Acts 7:60: After Stephen had beheld the vision of Christ and was stoned to death, the record says, he “fell asleep.” In 1 Cor. 15:20, Christ is called the first-fruits of them that slept; and in verse 57, Paul says, “We shall not all sleep.” Again Paul writes to the Thessalonians, 1 Thess. 4:13, 14, that he would not have them ignorant concerning them which are asleep. In verse 14, he speaks of them as asleep in Jesus, and explains what he means, in verse 16, by calling them “dead in Christ.” And the advocates of the conscious state cannot dispose of these expressions by saying that they apply to the body merely; for they do not hold that the consciousness which we have in life (which is what we lose in death) pertains to the body merely. Job plainly declares that they will not awake till the 236resurrection, at the last day. “Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he? As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up, so man lieth down and riseth not: till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep.” If, therefore, there is no resurrection, these dead are destined to sleep in unconsciousness forever.

2. The dead are in a condition as though they had not been. So Job testifies; for he affirms that if he could have died in earliest infancy, like a hidden, untimely birth, he would not have been; and in this respect he declared he would have been like kings, counsellors, and princes of the earth who built costly tombs in which to enshrine their bodies when dead. To that condition he applies the expression which has since been so often quoted, “There the wicked cease from troubling, and there the weary be at rest.” Job 3:11-18. If, then, a person when dead is as though he had not been, without a resurrection to release him from this state, he will never be, or exist, again.

3. The dead have no knowledge. Speaking of the dead man, Job says (14:21), “His sons come to honor, and he knoweth it not; and they are brought low, and he perceiveth it not of them.” Ps. 146:4. “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts 237perish.” Solomon was inspired to speak to the same effect as his father David: Eccl. 9:5, 6: “For the living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything.... Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun.” Verse 10: “There is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave whither thou goest.” Evidence like this can neither be mistaken nor evaded. It is vain for the immaterialist to claim that it applies to the body in distinction from an immortal soul; for they do not hold that the thoughts (διαλογισμός, thought, reasoning,) which David says perish in death, belong to the body, but to the soul. And according to Solomon, that which knows when the man is living, does not know when he is dead. Without a resurrection, therefore, the dead will forever remain without knowledge.

4. The dead are not in Heaven nor in hell, but in the dust of the earth. Job 17:13-16: “If I wait, the grave is mine house.” In chap. 14:14, he said, “All the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.” The change referred to, must therefore be the resurrection, and he describes his condition till that time, in the following language: “I have made my bed in the darkness. I have said to corruption, Thou art my father; to the worm, Thou art my mother 238and my sister, ... when our rest together is in the dust.” Isa. 26:19: “Thy dead men shall live; together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs; and the earth shall cast out the dead.” Is it possible that the phraseology of this text can be misunderstood? It speaks of the living again of dead men, of the arising of dead bodies, and of the earth’s casting out the dead. And the command is addressed to them thus: “Awake and sing.” Who? Ye who are still conscious, basking in the bliss of Heaven and chanting the high praises of God? No; but, “Ye who dwell in dust;” ye who are in your graves. If the dead are conscious, Isaiah talked nonsense. If we believe his testimony we must look into the graves for the dead; and if there is no resurrection, there they will forever lie mingled with the clods of the valley.

5. The dead, even the most holy and righteous, have no remembrance of God, and cannot, while in that condition, render him any praise and thanksgiving. Ps. 6:5: “For in death there is no remembrance of thee: in the grave who shall give thee thanks?” Ps. 115:17: “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence.” Good King Hezekiah, when praising the Lord for adding to his days fifteen years, gives this as the reason why he thus rejoiced: Isa. 38:18, 19: “For the grave cannot praise 239thee, death cannot celebrate thee; they that go down into the pit cannot hope for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall praise thee, as I do this day; the father to the children shall make known thy truth.” Modern doctors of divinity have Hezekiah in Heaven praising God. He declared that when he was dead he could not do this. Whose testimony is the more worthy of credit, that of the inspired king of Israel, or that of the theologians of subsequent ages of error and confusion? If we can believe Hezekiah, unless there is to be a resurrection, the righteous dead are never more to praise their Maker.

6. The dead, even the righteous, are not ascended to the Heavens. So Peter testifies respecting the patriarch David: Acts 2:29, 34, 35: “Men and brethren, let me freely speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and buried, and his sepulcher is with us unto this day. For David is not ascended into the Heavens: but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool.” We call the especial attention of the reader to the whole argument presented by Peter, beginning with verse 24. Peter undertakes to prove from a prophecy recorded in the Psalms, the resurrection of Christ. He says, verse 31, “He, seeing this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was not left in hell [hades, the grave], neither did his flesh see corruption.” 240And how does he prove that David speaks of Christ, and not of himself? He proves it from the fact that David’s soul was left in hades and his flesh did see corruption; and his sepulcher was with them to that day. For David, he says, has not ascended into the Heavens. Now if David’s soul did live right on in consciousness; if it was not left in hades, no man can show that David, in that psalm, did not speak of himself instead of Christ; and then Peter’s argument for the resurrection of Christ would be entirely destroyed. But Peter, especially when speaking as he was on this occasion under the influence of the Holy Ghost, knew how to reason; and his argument entirely destroys the dogma of the immortality of the soul. But if David has not yet ascended into the Heavens, how is he ever to get there? There is no other way but by a resurrection of the dead. So he himself says, Ps. 17:15: “I shall be satisfied when I awake [from the sleep of death], with Thy likeness.”

7. And finally, Paul, in his masterly argument in 1 Cor. 15, states explicitly the conclusion which is necessary from every one of the texts which we have quoted, that if there is no resurrection, then all the dead, even those who have fallen asleep in Christ, are perished. Verses 16-18. “For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised. And if Christ be not raised, your faith 241is vain; ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are PERISHED.”

As we read this testimony, we pause in utter amazement that any who profess to believe the Bible should cling with tenacity to the doctrine of the immortality of the soul which so directly contradicts it. If the souls of the dead live right on, are they perished? What! perished? and yet living in a larger sphere? Perished? and yet enjoying the attendant blessings of everlasting life in Heaven? Perished? and yet at God’s right hand where there is fullness of joy, and pleasures forevermore? Perish, amid the ruins of the heathen mythology from which it springs, that theory which thus lifts its dead men on high, contrary to the teachings of the word of God!

Paul speaks of the whole being. As in Adam we die, so in Christ shall we be made alive. Is it conceivable that Paul drops out of sight the real man, the soul which soars away to realms of light, and frames all this argument, and talks thus seriously about the cast-off shell, the body, merely? The idea is preposterous to the last degree.

After stating that if there is no resurrection we perish, he assures us that Christ is risen and that there is a resurrection for all; then he takes up the resurrection of those who sleep in Christ, and tells us when that resurrection shall be. It is to 242take place, not by the rising from this mortal coil of an ethereal, immaterial essence when we die, but it is to be at the great day when the last trump shall shatter this decrepid earth from center to circumference.

The testimony on this point is well summed up by Bishop Law, who speaks as follows:--

This representation is abundantly sustained by the Scriptures referred to; and by all these the great fact is inscribed in indelible characters over the portals of the dark valley, that our existence is not perpetuated by means of an immortal soul, but that without a resurrection from the dead, there is no future life.

But it is objected that, from our standpoint of the unconsciousness of the dead, a resurrection is impossible; for if a person ever ceases to exist as a conscious being, the re-organization of the matter of which he was composed would be a new creation, but not a resurrection. It is sufficient to say in reply that continued consciousness is not necessary to preserve identity of being. This is proved by nearly every member of the human family every day. Did the reader ever enjoy a period of sound, unconscious sleep? If so, when 243he awoke, how did he know that he was the same individual he was before? How does any one know, after a good night’s sleep, that he is the same person that retired to rest the night before? Simply because his organization is the same on awaking that it was when he became unconscious in sleep. Now suppose that during this period of unconsciousness, while the soul itself, if there is in man such a distinct entity as is claimed, is also unconscious, the body of a person could be cut up into innumerable fragments, the bones ground to powder, the flesh dissolved in acids, and the entire being, soul and all, destroyed. After remaining in this condition a little time, suppose all those particles could be put back again substantially as they were before, the general arrangement of the matter, especially of the brain, the organ of the mind being identically what it was; and then suppose that life could be imparted to it again, and the person be allowed to sleep on till morning; when he woke, would he be conscious of any break in the line of his existence? Any one must see that he would not. Being organized just as before, his mind would resume its consciousness just as if nothing had happened.

So with the dissolution of death. After its period of unconsciousness is passed over, in the resurrection the particles of the body are reunited, re-organized, and re-arranged, essentially 244as they were at the moment of death, and reanimated; then the line of life is taken up, and the current of thought resumed just where it was laid down in death, it matters not how many thousands of years before. This, the power of God can do; and to deny this is to “err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” In this way, we can have a true and proper resurrection, a living again of the whole person, as the Bible affirms. On the supposition of continued consciousness, this is impossible; for in this case the real man lives right on, the body, which the Bible makes of so much importance, being only the garment with which it was temporarily clothed; and in this case the resuscitation of the body would not and could not be the resurrection of the man. The popular view makes the Bible as inconsistent on the subject of man, as it would be for a historian to give the history of some celebrated man’s coat, and call it the history of the man himself.

Then it is further objected that if persons come up in the resurrection as they went down in death, we should have a motley group, bloated with dropsy, emaciated with consumption, scabbed, scarred, ulcered, maimed and deformed; which would be both unreasonable and disgusting. And this, it is claimed, is a necessary consequence from the view that the same matter is raised that went into the grave, and so far re-organized according 245to its previous arrangement as to constitute identity of being. But when we speak of the re-arrangement of the particles of the body, is it not evident to all that there are fortuitous and abnormal conditions which are not to be taken at all into the account? and that the essential and elemental parts are only to be understood? Who would imagine that the body might not differ in the resurrection from what it was before, as much at least as it differs at one period in its earthly history from its condition at another, and yet its identity be preserved? But we are sometimes in health, sometimes in sickness, sometimes in flesh, and sometimes wasted away, sometimes with diseased members, and sometimes entirely free from disease; and in all these changes we are conscious that we have the same body. Why? Because its essential elements remain, and its organization is continued. Whatever change can take place in our bodies during our earth life, and our identity be continued, changed to the same degree may be the body when raised from the dead, and yet it be the same body. But a missing member might be instantly replaced, a diseased limb healed, the consumptive restored to the bloom of health, or the body, swollen with dropsy, reduced to its natural size, and the individual still be conscious that he was the same person.

It is said still further by way of objection, that 246the matter of one body, after being decomposed by death, is absorbed and taken into other bodies, and becomes constituent parts of them; so that at the resurrection the same matter may have belonged to several different bodies, and cannot be restored to them all; therefore the doctrine of the resurrection of the body is unphilosophical.

If the reader will take the trouble to submit this objection to a little intelligent scrutiny, he will find it to grow rapidly and beautifully less, until finally it vanishes entirely away. Let us take the extremest case supposable: that of the cannibal who might possibly (though this would not naturally be the case), make an entire meal of human flesh. We cannot admit the statement of a certain minister who, in his zeal to make this objection appear very strong, claimed that a cannibal might have the whole body of his victim within his own at the same time. For this supposes that he would eat a whole man at one meal, and, further, that he would consume the viscera, skull, bones, brains, and all. But it is hardly supposable that, cannibals though they are, they have such an enormous capacity, or are such unpardonable eaters.

Nevertheless, let us suppose that a cannibal would, in process of time, consume an entire victim; what proportion could he use in this way? Not one-half, by weight. And what proportion of this would be taken up by the body and become 247incorporated with it? But a small fraction. And to what parts would this naturally go? To those grosser and unessential parts which most rapidly change, and demand the most constant supply. But while a few pounds of matter are supplied to the body, if that body maintains a uniform condition, an equal amount of matter has been thrown off. Thus it will be seen that at no one time is it possible for any material amount of one body to be a part of another. But if there was danger, in these rare cases, that an essential element of one body would become a constituent part of another, and so remain, could not the providence of God easily interpose to prevent this, by giving these particles another direction? Most assuredly it could. And this is not beneath His care who numbers all the hairs of our heads, and without whose notice not a sparrow falls to the ground. This objection not only betrays an utter lack of faith in God’s power and care in such matters, but philosophically considered, it amounts simply to a cavil.

It is the resurrection of the body of which the Bible treats. It knows no other. In 1 Cor. 15:35, 36, Paul asserts an obvious fact, that nothing can be quickened (revived or resuscitated, as from death, or an inanimate state--Webster,) except it first die. To talk of a quickening or making alive of that which does not die, or of a resurrection from the dead of that which does not 248go down into death, is richly deserving of the epithet which Paul there applies to it.

And what is it that shall be quickened in the resurrection? The holy and infallible word of God replies, This mortal body. Rom. 8:11: “But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus Christ from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.” Again, in verse 23, Paul says: “Even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.” And in 1 Cor. 15, Paul is as explicit as he well can be on this subject. Verse 44: “It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” What does he mean by the natural body, and by its being sown? He means the burial of our present bodies in the grave. So he says in verses 42, 43: “So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption: it is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: it is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body.” What is sown? The natural body. Then what is raised? The very same thing. IT is sown; IT is raised; raised in incorruption, in glory, in power, a spiritual body. Raised in this manner, the natural body becomes a spiritual body. Why? Because the Spirit of Him that raised up Christ quickens, resuscitates, or makes 249it alive again, as Paul wrote to the Romans. Should it be said that there is a natural body and a spiritual body in existence at the same time, we answer that according to Paul, that is not so. He says, verse 46: “Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.” In verse 49, he says we have borne the image of the earthly, and we shall bear, future, the image of the heavenly; and this will be when this mortal and corruptible, which is this mortal body, puts on incorruption, verses 52, 53, or is clothed upon with the house from Heaven. 2 Cor. 5.

To the Philippians, Paul testifies again on this point: “For our conversation is in Heaven, from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body.” This language is explicit. A change is to be wrought in the vile, mortal or corruptible body of this present state, not a spiritual body released from it, which never sees death and needs no change; and the change that is promised is, that this body taken as it now is, is to be fashioned, changed over, into the likeness of Christ’s glorious, immortal body.

Having thus shown that a future resurrection is an event of the most absolute necessity, inasmuch as without it there is no future existence for the human race (a fact which entirely destroys 250at one blow the doctrine of the immortality of the soul), we now propose to notice the prominence given to this event in the sacred writings, and some of the plain declarations that it will surely take place.

1. The resurrection is the great event to which the sacred writers looked forward as the object of their hope. In the far distant ages a day rose to their view in which the dead came forth from their graves, and stood before God; and before the coming of that day, they did not expect eternal life.

So Job testifies: “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he will stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.” Job 19:25, 26.

David entertained the same satisfactory hope. “As for me,” he says, “I shall be satisfied when I awake with Thy likeness.” Ps. 17:15.

Isaiah struck some thrilling notes on the same theme: “Thy dead men shall live, together with my dead body shall they arise. Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust; for thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall cast out the dead.” Isa. 26:19.

It was the hope of Paul, that eminent apostle, through all his sufferings and toils. For this he could sacrifice any temporal good, and take up any cross. He assures us that he considered his 251afflictions, his troubles on every side, his perplexities, persecutions, stripes, imprisonments, and perils, but light afflictions; yea, he could utterly lose sight of them; and then he tells us why he could do it: it was in view of “the glory which shall be revealed in us,” “knowing,” says he, “that He which raised up the Lord Jesus, shall raise us up also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.” 2 Cor. 4:14. The assurance that he should be raised up at the last day, and be presented with the rest of the saints, when the Lord shall present to his Father a church without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, Eph. 5:27, sustained him under all his burdens. The resurrection was the staff of his hope. Again he says that he could count all things loss, if by any means he might attain to a resurrection (exanastasis) out from among the dead. Phil. 3:8-11.

We refer to one more passage which expresses as clearly as language can do it, the apostle’s hope. 2 Cor. 1:8, 9: “For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, insomuch that we despaired even of life. But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.” Paul here gives us to understand that he could not trust in himself because he was mortal. He must therefore put his trust in God; and he tells 252us why he does this: not because God had promised him any happiness as a disembodied soul; but because he was able and willing to raise him from the dead. Paul “kept back nothing that was profitable,” and did not shun “to declare all the counsel of God,” yet he never once endeavored to console himself or his brethren by any allusion to a disembodied state of existence, but passed over this as if it were not at all to be taken into the account, and fixed all his hope on the resurrection. Why this, if going to Heaven or hell at death, be a gospel doctrine?

2. The resurrection is the time to which prophets and apostles looked forward as the day of their reward. Should any one carefully search the Bible to ascertain the time which it designates as the time of reward to the righteous, and punishment to the wicked, he would find it to be not at death, but at the resurrection. Our Saviour clearly sets forth this fact in Luke 14:13, 14: “But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind; and thou shalt be blessed; for they cannot recompense thee; for thou shalt be recompensed,” not at death, but, “at the resurrection of the just.”

Mark also the language by which the Lord would restrain that voice of weeping which was heard in Ramah. When Herod sent forth and slew all the children in Bethlehem from two years old and under, in hopes thereby to put to 253death the infant Saviour, then was fulfilled, says Matthew, what was spoken by the prophet, “In Ramah was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they were not.” But what said the Lord to Rachel? See the original prophecy, Jer. 31:15-17: “Thus saith the Lord, Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears; for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border.” Not thus would the mourning Rachels of the 19th century be comforted by the professed shepherds of the flock of Christ. They would tell them, Refrain thy voice from weeping; for thy sons are now angel cherubs chanting their joyful anthems in their Heavenly Father’s home. But the Lord points the mourners in Ramah forward to the resurrection for their hope; and though till that time their children “were not,” or were out of existence, in the land of death, the great enemy of our race, yet, says the Lord, they shall come again from the land of the enemy, they shall return again to their own border, and thy work shall be rewarded; and he bids them refrain their voices from weeping, their eyes from tears, and their hearts from sorrow, in view of that glorious event.

254The apostles represent the day of Christ’s coming and the resurrection as the time when the saints will receive their crowns of glory. Says Peter, “And when the Chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away.” 1 Pet. 5:4. And Paul says that there is laid up for him a crown of righteousness, and not for him only, but for all those also that love his appearing, and which shall be given him in that day (the day of Christ’s appearing). These holy apostles were not expecting their crowns of reward sooner than this.

All this is utterly inconsistent with the idea of a conscious intermediate state, and rewards or punishments at death. But the word of God must stand, and the theories of men must bow to its authority.

In 1 Cor. 15:32, Paul further tells us when he expected to reap advantage or reward for all the dangers he incurred here in behalf of the truth: “If after the manner of men I have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advantageth it me, if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for to-morrow we die.” If without a resurrection he would receive no reward, it is evident that he expected his reward at that time, but not before. His language here is moreover a re-iteration of verse 18, that if there is no resurrection, they which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished.

Our Lord testified that of all which the Father 255had given him he should lose nothing, but would raise it up at the last day. This language is also at once a positive declaration that the resurrection shall take place, and that without this event, all is lost. To the same effect is 1 Cor. 15:52, 53, “The trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” Here is a plain announcement that the resurrection will take place; that the change mentioned will be wrought at that time; and that this change must take place or we cannot inherit the kingdom of God. Verse 50. Therefore, without a resurrection, none who have fallen in death will ever behold the kingdom of God.

3. The resurrection is made the basis of many of the comforting promises of Scripture. 1 Thess. 4:16, 17: “For the Lord himself shall descend from Heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God; and the dead in Christ shall rise first. Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.” We have already referred to this passage in this chapter on the Resurrection. We quote it again to show that God designed that from these promises we should comfort ourselves and one another in that keenest of all our afflictions, and the darkest 256of all our hours, the hour of bereavement. For the apostle immediately adds, “Wherefore comfort one another with these words.” Is it to such facts as these, the second coming of Christ, and the resurrection of the dead, that the theology of our day appeals to alleviate the sorrow which the human heart will feel for the loss of departed loved ones? Here, if anywhere, and on this subject, if on any that the apostle has anywhere taken up, should come in the modern doctrine of uninterrupted consciousness in the intermediate state. But Paul was evidently against any such doctrine, and so denies it a place on the page of truth, but passes right over to the resurrection as the place where comfort is to be found for the mourners.

As the resurrection is inseparably connected with the second coming of Christ, the words of Christ in John 14:1-3, are equally in point on this question. When he was about to leave his sorrowing disciples, he told them that he was going to prepare a place for them; he informed them moreover of his design that they should ultimately be with himself. But how was this to be accomplished? Was it through death, by which a deathless spirit would be released to soar away to meet its Saviour? No; but, says he, I will come again and receive you to myself, that where I am, there ye may be also. Should any say that this coming of the Saviour is at 257death, we reply that the disciples of our Lord did not so understand it. See John 21:22, 23. Jesus incidentally remarked concerning one of his followers, “If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that to thee? follow thou me;” and the saying went immediately abroad among the disciples, on the strength of these words, that that disciple should not die.

The eminent and pious Joseph Alleine also testifies:--

Dr. Clarke, in his general remarks on 1 Cor. 15, says:--

CHAPTER XXVII. THE JUDGMENT.

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE WAGES OF SIN.

CHAPTER XXIX. EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT.

CHAPTER XXX. THE UNDYING WORM AND QUENCHLESS FIRE.

Twice our Lord repeats this solemn sentence against the wicked, “Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.” Verses 46, 48. These passages are relied on with as much assurance, perhaps, as any, to prove the eternal misery of the reprobate. If this language had never been used by any of the inspired writers of the Scriptures, till it was thus used in the New Testament, it might be urged with some degree of plausibility, as an expressive imagery of eternal torment. But, even in this case, it might be replied that fire, so far as we have any experience with it, or knowledge of its nature, invariably consumes that upon which it preys, and hence must be a symbol of complete destruction; and that the expression, as it occurs in Mark 9:44, can denote nothing less than the utter consumption of those who are cast into that fire.

But this expression was one which was well known and understood by those whom Christ was addressing. Isaiah and Jeremiah frequently 280use the figure of the undying worm and quenchless fire. In their familiar scriptures the people daily read these expressions. Let us see what idea they would derive from them. We turn to Jeremiah 17:27, and read:--

From this text we certainly can learn the meaning that was attached to the expression, “unquenchable fire,” by the Hebrew people. This fire was not to be quenched, therefore it was unquenchable. But it was to be kindled in the gates of Jerusalem, and devour the palaces thereof. It was therefore literal, natural, fire. But how could a fire of this kind, thus kindled, be supposed to be a fire that would burn eternally? They certainly would not so understand it. No more should we. Moreover, this threatening of the Lord by Jeremiah was fulfilled. 2 Chron. 36:19: “And they burnt the house of God, and brake down the wall of Jerusalem, and burnt all the palaces thereof with fire, and destroyed all the goodly vessels thereof.” Verse 21. “To fulfill the word of the Lord by Jeremiah.” Thus Jerusalem was burned according to Jeremiah’s prediction that it should be consumed in unquenchable fire. But how long did that fire 281burn? Only till it had reduced to ashes the gates and palaces on which it preyed. Unquenchable fire is therefore simply a fire that is not quenched, or does not cease, till it has entirely consumed that which causes or supports it. Then it dies out of itself, because there is nothing more to burn. The expression does not mean a fire that must absolutely eternally burn, and that consequently all that is cast therein to feed the flame must forever be preserved by having the portion consumed immediately renewed.

To the wicked the threatened fire is unquenchable because it will not be quenched, or caused to cease, till it has entirely devoured them.

Ezekiel speaks of unquenchable fire in a similar manner.

Though this is doubtless figurative language, denoting sore calamities upon a certain land called the forest of the south field, it nevertheless 282furnishes an instance of how the expression, unquenchable fire, was then used and understood; for that generation many ages ago perished, and those judgments long since ceased to exist.

Isaiah not only speaks of the unquenchable fire, but he couples with it the undying worm, the same as the language in Mark:

This is undoubtedly the language from which the expression in Mark is borrowed; but a moment’s examination of it will show that the worm is not the remorse of a guilty conscience, but that, like the fire, it is something external to, and distinct from, the objects upon which it preys; and moreover that those upon whom it feeds are not the living, but the dead: it is the “carcasses” of the men that have transgressed against the Lord. In Isa. 14: 11, and 51: 8, the prophet again speaks of the worm as an agent of destruction, but it is always in connection with death. It is thus evident that the terms employed by our Lord in describing the doom of the wicked would convey to the minds of his hearers the very opposite of the idea of eternal life in misery.

There is other evidence, though no other is necessary, to show that the idea which would be 283conveyed, and which the language was designed to convey, to their minds, was that of complete extinction of being, an utter consumption by external elements of destruction. The word translated hell in the passage under consideration is ge-enna. It is better to enter into life maimed, than to go in full possession of all our members and faculties into ge-enna. Did those to whom Christ spoke know anything about this place, and what kind of a fate awaited those who were cast therein? A vivid picture of the place of torment to which our Lord refers was in constant operation before their eyes, near by Jerusalem.

Greenfield defines the word thus:--

Such was the fire of Gehenna; not a fire into which people were cast to be kept alive and tortured, but one into which they were cast to be consumed; not one which was designed to prey upon living beings, but upon the carcasses of animals and the dead bodies of malefactors. Hence we can see the consistency of associating the fire and the worm together. Whatever portion of the dead body the fire failed to consume, the worm would soon seize upon and devour. If 284a person had been condemned to be cast alive into this place, as the wicked will be cast into their Gehenna, what would have been his hope of escape? If the fire could have been speedily quenched before it had taken his life, and the worms which consumed what the fire left, could have been destroyed, he might have had some hope of coming out alive; but if this could not be done, he would know of a surety that his life would soon become extinct, and then even his lifeless remains would be utterly consumed by these agents of destruction.

This was the scene to which Christ pointed his hearers to represent the doom that awaits the wicked; that, as they gazed upon the work of complete destruction going on in the valley of Hinnom, the worms devouring what the flames spared, they might learn that in the future Gehenna which awaited them, no part of their being would be exempt from utter and complete destruction, one agent of death completing what another failed to accomplish.

As the definition of the word ge-enna throws great light on the meaning of this text, so the definition of another term used is equally to the point. The words for unquenchable fire are pur (long u) asbeston, and this word asbeston, primarily means simply unquenched, that is, not caused to cease by any external means: the idea of eternal is a theological definition which has 285been attached to it. Ancient writers used it in this sense. Homer, in the IlliadIlliad, xvi., 123, 294, speaks of the Trojans’ hurling “unquenchable fire” upon the Grecian ships, though but one of them was burnt by it. And Eusebius, who was a learned Greek, employs the same expression in two instances in recounting the martyrdom of Christians. Cronion and Julian, after being tortured in various ways, were consumed in an “unquenchable fire,” puri asbesto. The same is also said of Epimachus and Alexander. “The pur asbeston,” says Wetstein, “denotes such a fire as cannot be extinguishedextinguished before it has consumed and destroyed all.”

Such is the evident meaning of this passage, and the sense in which it must have been understood at that time. Yet commentators, eighteen hundred years this side of that time, presume to turn this whole representation upside down, and give to the terms a meaning exactly opposite from that which they were intended to convey. That sense alone can be the correct one in which they were first spoken; and concerning that there can be no question.

There is another text often urged to prove the eternal conscious misery of the wicked. It is one in which fire is mentioned as the instrument used for the punishment of the wicked; and this fire being called eternal, is understood in the same sense as the unquenchable fire of Mark 9:43. 286It may therefore properly be examined in this connection.

This text, when rightly understood, will, we think, like that in Mark 9, be found to convey just the opposite meaning from that popularly given to it. The first great error in the interpretation of this text, lies, as we view it, in a wrong application of the tense employed. It is claimed that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah, having been destroyed, were committed to the flames of hell, where they are now (present tense) suffering the vengeance of that eternal fire. But a moment’s glance at the text will show that it is the example set forth, and not the suffering, that is in the present tense. There are other facts mentioned in the same tense with the suffering; thus, “giving themselves over to fornication,” “going after strange flesh,” “suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.” If one of these expressions denotes something that is now going on, the others also denote the same. If they are now suffering the fire, they are now giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh; for all these declarations are in the same construction. But no one will claim that the Sodomites are now taking the course here described; 287neither, then, can it be claimed that they are now suffering the pain of fire.

The sense of the passage appears to be very evidently this: That the Sodomites, giving themselves up to their wicked practices, and, as a consequence, suffering an eternal overthrow by fire rained down upon them from heaven, are thus set forth as an example to the ungodly of all coming ages, of the overthrow they will also experience if they follow the same course.

Peter speaks of the same event, as an example to the wicked, and tells what effect that fire had upon the cities of the plain. It did not preserve them in the midst of the fire in unceasing torture, but turned them into ashes. He says, 2 Pet. 2:6: “And turning the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah into ashes, condemned them with an overthrow, making them an ensample unto those that after should live ungodly.” This language is too plain to need comment. How are the Sodomites made an example? By being overthrown and turned into ashes for their open and presumptuous sins. It is God saying to the wicked of all coming time, Behold, how your sins shall be visited unless you repent.

But those fires are not now burning. Seek out the site of those ancient and abandoned cities, and the brackish waters of the Dead Sea will be found rolling their sluggish waves over the spot where once they stood. Those fires are 288therefore called eternal, because their effects are eternal, or age-lasting. They never have recovered, nor will they ever recover while the world stands, from that terrible overthrow.

And thus this text is very much to the purpose on the question before us; for it declares that the punishment of Sodom is an exact pattern of the future punishment of the wicked; hence that punishment will not be eternal life in the fiery flame, but an utter consumption, even as Sodom was consumed, by its resistless vengeance.

CHAPTER XXXI. TORMENTED FOREVER AND EVER.

CHAPTER XXXII. THE END OF THEM THAT OBEY NOT THE GOSPEL.

CHAPTER XXXIII. GOD’S DEALINGS WITH HIS CREATURES.

CHAPTER XXXIV. THE CLAIMS OF PHILOSOPHY.

After the Bible, what? When once the word of God pronounces upon a question, what further evidence is needed to sustain the position, or what evidence is strong enough to break its decision? What can human reason, science, and philosophy, do for a theory upon which the Scriptures have written “Ichabod”?

We have, in previous chapters, examined the teaching of the Bible on the whole subject of man’s creation, nature, death, intermediate state, and final doom. We have found that man was not created absolutely mortal or immortal, but relatively both: immortality was within his reach, and mortality lay as a danger in his path. He sinned and became absolutely mortal. Then death becomes an unconscious sleep in the grave, and his destiny beyond the tomb, if he does not secure through Christ, eternal life, is an utter loss of existence. But there are some who think that reason, science, and philosophy, are sufficient to disprove these conclusions; or, at least, that they are so strong that the Bible record must be made to harmonize with the claims drawn from these sources. But they forget that much that we call reason is in the sight of God “foolishness,” that 323there is a philosophy which the Bible pronounces “vain,” and some kinds of science which it says are “falsely so called.”

We are willing to grant philosophy the privilege of trying to substantiate its claims. It may boast like Goliah, but it will be found weaker than Belshazzar before the handwriting on the wall.

The soul immortal. It is claimed that the soul is immaterial, and cannot therefore be destroyed, and hence must be immortal. Luther Lee says:--

This claim is good if whatever is indestructible is immortal. But this is a manifest error. The elements of the human body are indestructible, but the body is not therefore immortal. It is subject to change, death, and decay. But if it is claimed that the soul, being immaterial, is without elements, then perhaps it might follow that it is indestructible; for that which is nothing can never be made less than nothing.

But if the soul of man, being immaterial, is thus proved to be immortal, what shall we say of the souls of the lower orders of animals? for they manifest the phenomena of mind as well as men. They remember, fear, imagine, compare, manifest gratitude, anger, sorrow, desire, &c. Bishop Warburton says:--

Whoever, therefore, affirms the immortality of man from the immateriality of his soul, is bound to affirm the same, not only of the nobler animals, but also of all the lower orders of the brute creation. Here, believers in natural immortality are crushed beneath the weight of their own arguments. If it be said that God can, if he choose, blot from existence the immaterial soul of the beetle and the titmouse, we reply, so can he that of man; and then its immortality is at an end, and the whole argument is abandoned.

“Matter cannot think.” This is the fundamental proposition on which the airy phantom of the immortality of the soul relies for its support. Since man does think, and matter cannot think, the mind or soul must be immaterial and immortal. It is one thing to make such an assertion; it is quite another thing to prove it; and the proof lies not within the power of man. That mind, like electricity, may be a property of matter, or result from material causes, Sidney Smith, in his Principles of Phrenology, 1838, very clearly states as follows:--

On the same point, Mr. W. G. Moncrieff says:--

We arraign this theory also before the majesty of the brute creation. What about the immaterial minds of the lower animals? Does matter think in their cases? or have they also immortal souls? Dogs, horses, monkeys, elephants, &c., have been taught to perform different acts, imitate various movements, and even to dance the same tune over and over again, to accompanying strains of music: acts which involve the exercise of memory, will, reason, and judgment.

The exercise of high mental powers is shown in the intelligence and sagacity of the horse and elephant, in the manifold cunning of the fox, in the beaver and bee, which construct their houses with such mechanical ingenuity, in the mules of the Andes, which thread with so sure a foot the gloomy gorges and craggy heightsheights of the mountains, and in the dogs of St. Bernard, as they rescue benighted and half-frozen travelers in the passes of the Alps. Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, speaking of the sagacity of one of his dogs, says:--

John Locke, the distinguished writer on metaphysical questions, says:--

Pritchard, On the Vital Principle, says:--

H. H. Dobney, Future Punishment, p. 101, says:--

329Similar views are attributed to Coleridge and Cudworth.

Dalton, in his treatise on Human Physiology, p. 428, says:--

With these testimonies from such eminent witnesses, we leave the friends of the rational argument inextricably mixed up with the brute creation. The legitimate result of their theory is to confer immortality upon all orders of animated existence. We are sometimes accused of degrading man to the level of the brute. But if 330our friends of the other side elevate all brutes up to the level of man, how does that practically differ from what they accuse us of doing? The result is the same. If all come at last upon the same level, it matters not whether brutes come up or man goes down.

But our view is not open to this objection. While we deny that immortality is proved for either man or beast by any vital or mental powers which they may exhibit, our theory finds a superior position for man in his more refined mental and physical organization, whereby he becomes possessed of a higher mental and moral nature, and is the proper recipient of the hope of immortality.

Another fact on which it is supposed that an argument for immortality can be founded is,

The capacities of the soul. The mind of man, it is argued, by its wonderful achievements, and its lofty aspirations, shows itself capable of some higher and better state of being than we at present enjoy. And from this the conclusion is easy (if people will not stop to scan very critically the connection) that such a state of being inevitably awaits mankind, in which they are destined to live forever.

But this argument, which, stripped of its disguise, is simply an egotistical assertion, I am fit to be a god, and therefore I am a god, will be found to collapse under very slight pressure. Mr. 331J. Panton Ham describes it in fitting terms, when he speaks of it as follows:--

But all men cannot engineer the construction of a pyramid, nor construct a balloon, nor build an engine, much less accomplish the greater feat involved in their first invention. All men are not learned and skillful, and of such eminent capabilities. Is it not, in fact, almost an infinitely small proportion of the human race that has manifested those great powers on which this argument is based! And can the capacities of a few leading minds determine the destiny of the great mass of men who possess no such powers?

And if an argument may be based on the capacities of some, may not an equal and opposite argument be based on the incapacity of others? 332and in this case on which side would the weight of evidence lie? And as there is almost every conceivable gradation of intelligence, who will tell us whereabouts in this scale the infinite endowment of immortality is first perceptible? Looking at the human race, and the races immediately below, we behold a point where they seem to blend indistinguishably into each other. Will an utter lack of capacity be affirmed of the higher orders of the brute creation? And descending in the scale, where shall we stop? Where is the transition from immortality to mortality?

We have given, in the preceding portion of this chapter, extracts from eminent authors showing that brutes reason, that they exercise, to a degree, all the powers of the human mind, that they have a sense, to some extent, of right and wrong, and give evidence, of the same nature as man is able to give in reference to himself, that they possess just as immaterial a soul as he. And have we not all seen horses and dogs that gave evidence of possessing more good sense than some men? And in this graduated scale of animated existence, where is the dividing line between the mortal and the immortal? Will some one locate it? What degree of mental capacity is necessary to constitute an evidence of immortality? And here we leave this argument. It demands no further notice till its friends who 333base immortality on mental capacity will determine which class of their less fortunate brothers is so low as to be beyond its reach.

Universal belief and inborn desire. Men have universally believed in the immortality of the soul, it is claimed, and all men desire it; therefore, all men have it. Strange conclusion from strange premises. As to the first part of this argument, the universal belief, that appears not to be true, in fact. On this, a glance at a quotation or two must suffice. Whately (Essay 1 on a Future State) says:--

Leland, on the Advantages of Revelation, says:--

Touching the other portion of the argument, the universal and inborn desire, those who make use of it, to make it of any avail, are bound to supply and prove the suppressed premise, which 334is that all men have what they desire. The syllogism would then stand thus: 1. All men have what they desire. 2. All men desire immortality. Conclusion. Therefore, all men are immortal. This is a fair statement of the question; but are any presumptuous enough to take the ground that all men have what they desire? Is it true, in fact? Do not our every-day’s observations give it the unqualified lie? Men desire riches, but do all possess them? they desire health, but do all have it? they desire happiness here, but what an infinitely small portion of the race are really happy. To try to get over the matter by saying that these desires that men have may be gratified by their taking a right course, is an abandonment of the whole argument; for thus much we readily grant concerning immortality: all men may gratify their desires here by taking a right course; immortality also is suspended upon conditions, and those only will have it in whom those conditions are found to be scrupulously complied with.

But there is another fatal flaw in this argument in another respect; for it is not immortality in the abstract that is the object of this great desire among men, but happiness. And the very persons who contend for immortality because men desire it, hold that a great portion of the race will be forever miserable. But this is not what men desire; and not being what they desire, 335it follows that all will not obtain what they desire, and hence the argument built on desire is good for nothing on their own showing. It simply proves universal salvation, or that men will be forever happy because all men desire it, or it proves nothing.

The analogies of nature. The day shuts down in darkness, but is not forever lost; the morn returns again, and the bright sun comes forth rejoicing as a strong man to run a race. Nature is bound, cold and lifeless, in the icy chains of winter; but it is not lost in absolute death. Anon the spring approaches, and at its animating voice and warm breath, the pulse of life beats again through all her works; her cold cheek kindles with the glow of fresh vitality; and she comes forth adorned with new beauty, waking new songs of praise in every grove. The chrysalis, too, that lay apparently a dead worm, motionless and dry, soon wakes up to a higher life, and comes forth gloriously arrayed, like a “living blossom of the air,” sipping nectar from the choicest sweets of earth, and nestling in the bosom of its fairest flowers. And so, too, it is claimed of man, “that when the body shall drop as a withered calyx, the soul shall go forth like a winged seed.”--Horticultural Address, by E. H. Chapin.

Let us take care that here our judgments are not led captive by the fascinations of poetry, or 336the rhetorical beauties of which this argument is so eminently susceptible. Among the many instances of nature, we find only a few that furnish the analogies here presented. The chrysalis, so often referred to, after it has spent its brief day as a living butterfly, perishes and is heard of no more forever. So with all the higher order of brutes: they fall in death and make no more their appearance upon our path. The most, then, that can be drawn from this argument, is a faint foreshadowing, perhaps, of a future life. But here, let it be understood, there is no issue. We all agree that the race shall be called again to life. “As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive.” 1 Cor. 15:22. But the point at issue is, Are our souls immortal, and must this life be, to all our race, necessarily eternal? To prove that man will live again is one thing; to prove that that life will be eternal, is quite another.

The anomalies of the present state. How often do we here see the wicked spreading himself like a green bay tree, having more than heart could wish, while the righteous grope their way along, in trouble and want. The wicked are exalted, and the good are oppressed. This does not look like the arrangement of a God who is the patron of virtue and the enemy of vice. It is therefore argued that there will be another state in which all these wrongs shall be righted, virtue rewarded, 337and wickedness punished. Yes, we reply, there will. But, certainly, a space of time infinitely short of eternity would suffice to correct all the anomalies of this brief life, which so puzzle men here. This argument, like the former, may be a fair inference for a future state; it may portend to the ungodly a scene of retribution, but can prove nothing as to its duration.

Immortality assumed. We are told that the Bible assumes the immortality of the soul as a truth so evident that it is not necessary to expressly affirm it. This is why the doctrine has come to be so generally received against so explicit evidence against it. It has been taken for granted! Says Bishop Tillotson:--

“It is taken for granted” that immortality is an essential attribute of the soul, and that therefore for the Bible to affirm it would be mere tautology. But we reply, Is not immortality an essential attribute also of Jehovah? Yet the Bible has been tautological enough to plainly state this fact. And it would seem that it might have carried its “tautology” a little further, and told us as much, at least once, about the soul, if that too is immortal; for surely its immortality cannot be more essential than that of Jehovah.

Annihilation impossible. Nature everywhere revolts, we are told, against our doctrine of annihilation, 338and everywhere proves it false; for nothing ever has been, nor ever can be, annihilated. To which we reply, Very true; and here we would correct the impression which some seem to entertain, that we believe in any such annihilation of the wicked; or the annihilation of anything as matter. In reference to the wicked, we simply affirm that they will be annihilatedannihilated as living beings, the matter of which they are composed passing into other forms. The second definition of annihilate, according to Webster, is, “To destroy the form or the peculiar distinctive properties, so that the specific thing no longer exists; as, to annihilate a forest by cutting and carrying away the trees, though the timber may still exist; to annihilate a house by demolishing the structure.” Just so of the wicked: as conscious intelligent beings they are annihilated, being resolved into their original elements.

Evil tendency. Why promulgate the doctrine of the destruction of the wicked, it is asked, even if it be true? Will not evil rather than good result from it? Some, honestly no doubt, deprecate any agitation of this question; and we have even heard some, impelled either by their fears or their prejudices, go so far as to declare that “it will make more infidels than Tom Paine’s Age of Reason,” and that “no conversions to God will ever follow in the track of its blighting and soul-destroying influence.”

339It might be necessary first to inquire what idea these persons have of infidelity. Perhaps they apply that term to everything that is not in agreement with their own views. And if this is the standard by which they judge of this matter, their assertion may possibly be in part correct; for converts to this doctrine are multiplying at a rapid rate. But giving to infidelity its legitimate definition, we call upon all those who claim that this doctrine makes infidels, to give some proof of their assertion before they again repeat it. This matter can be easily tested. The friends and advocates of this doctrine are neither few nor obscure. Men from all the walks of life, public and private, are daily swelling the ranks; and if this doctrine makes infidels, the infidels of our day should be found among those who receive it. But do we find them there? If one solitary individual can be found who repudiates the Scriptures as the revealed will of God, because he has been made to believe that they do not teach eternal misery for the lost, we would be glad to see him, or even to learn of him. This is not what causes infidelity, it is what cures it. What do we find in the ranks of the friends of this doctrine? Not the criminal and vicious classes, not those who have thrown off all restraint, not rejecters of divine revelation; but we find those who were formerly skeptics rescued from their skepticism, and infidels recovered from their infidelity. 340We find multitudes who can now rest down with sweet assurance on the word of God, the perplexities with which they had been troubled respecting God’s dealings with his creatures all cleared from the mind, and whose feelings may be well expressed in the following language from Henry Constable, A. M.:--

These are among its general good effects. But there exists a special reason at the present time why men should be made acquainted with the true teachings of the Bible on this question. It is the only antidote against modern spiritualism, that master-piece of Satanic cunning and deception, and the climax of his corrupting work in the earth. In what horrid blasphemies has this 341delusion arrayed itself! To what corruption does it lead its votaries! How utterly it debauches the moral natures of all those who suffer themselves to receive its polluting touch! And notwithstanding it carries in its train all these terrible evils, how rapidly is it spreading through the land, and at what a fearful rate is it swelling the catalogue of its victims!

Why is this? It is because the way has long and thoroughly been prepared for it in the doctrine of the conscious state of the dead, and the immortality of the soul. This is its foundation, its life and spirit. Take away this, and it is robbed of its vitality. For if it be true, as the Bible declares, that when a man goes into the grave, his thoughts perish, his love and hatred and envy are no longer exercised, and he knows not anything, then whatever spirit comes to us from the unseen world, professing to be the spirit of a dead man, it comes with a lie in its mouth, and thus shows itself to be of the synagogue of Satan. This is the Ithuriel spear that transforms this lying system, which at its best showing is as low and ugly as the blotchiest toad that ever lived, into the real devil that it is. Then let this truth be spread abroad on all the wings of the wind, that in the hands of the people may be placed some safeguard against this ghastly embodiment of falsehood, pollution, and death.

With the truth clearly stated as to how God 342will deal with the sinner and finally dispose of sin, we can appeal with confidence to the calm reason and the better nature of every child of Adam. We can second the tender entreaty which God extends to every wayward soul, “Turn ye, turn ye, for why will ye die?” “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that he turn from his way and live.” Life and death are set before you. The Saviour bids you look unto him and live. Mercy entreats you to destroy not yourself. The spirit and the bride bid you come and partake of the water of life freely.

You can no longer take refuge from an awakened conscience under the idea that the threatenings of the Lord are not understood, and may not therefore be so terrific as supposed. The sinner’s doom is unmistakably declared; and in the justness of that sentence, however slightly you may now realize the heinousness and just desert of sin, your own reason can but heartily concur. Will you then plunge headlong to ruin? or will you turn and accept the immense gratuity of eternal life? Of course you do not mean to perish. We accuse you not of this. The shining form of Hope is dancing on before you in the path of life--hope that ere it is too late, ere the silver cord be loosed or ever the golden bowl be broken, you will make sure a treasure and inheritance in Heaven.

343We would impress upon your mind that this hope may deceive you. Ere you reach the delusive phantom, the earth may suddenly open beneath your feet, and Hades receive you to its fixed embrace. Ere you overtake the beckoning form, ere the good intention be carried out, ere you grasp the prize now held only by the uncertain tenure of good resolve, the glory of the coming Judge, descending through the parting and dissolving heavens, may suddenly burst upon your unprepared soul. Yes! the great voice from the temple of Heaven, crying, “It is finished!” may suddenly arrest you in the midst of your delaying and dallying career! The heavenly court of mercy may cease its sitting, ere you have made a friend of the great Advocate who alone can plead your cause!

“Procrastination is the thief of time.” It may be the thief of your eternal bliss. Its every moment is high-handed and insane presumption. Its path is a path of unseen and innumerable dangers. You have no lease of your life. The present state is one of exposure and peril. The shafts of death are flying thickly about you. Time is short and its sands are swiftly falling. The bliss of Heaven, or the blackness of darkness forever, will soon be yours. With the saved or lost you must soon take your position. There is no intermediate ground. Choose, then, we beseech you, the enduring portion. Choose for eternity, choose 344wisely, choose now. And may it be ours to join the great song of salvation at last, ascribing blessing, and honor, and glory, and power, unto Him who sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb who poured out his soul an offering for sin, that whosoever would believe on him might not perish but have everlasting life.

APPENDIX. MORALITY OF THE DOCTRINE OF A FUTURE LIFE.

The following is from “The Doctrine of a Future Life,” by W. R. Alger. He here discusses the “morality of the doctrine of a future life” on the strong hypothesis that there is to be no existence hereafter, and utterly disproves the conclusions which some would make the inevitable consequence of such a doctrine. The same objections are urged against the view we entertain that after the Judgment the sinner is to endure a punishment which reaches its climax in the loss of existence. With a hundred-fold more force the reasoning of Mr. Alger lies against these objections when urged in opposition to our view. We have in this life the great incentive to goodness and virtue, that is involved in the hope of immortality, seconded by the wonderful intervention of Christ in our behalf, which is calculated to arouse all the nobler sentiments of our being. If this will not win men from sin to a holy life, they would not be driven to it by threats of eternal torture. Mr. Alger says:--

INDEX OF AUTHORS QUOTED.

• Alger, W. R., 264, 345
• Alleine, Jos., 257
• Andrews, S. J., 140
• Augustine, 273

• Baptist Confession, 219
• Barnes, A., 117, 317
• Benson, 302, 303
• Bloomfield, 97, 147
• Buck, Chas., 47
• Bush, Geo., 43, 101
• Butler, Wm. A., 314

• Carmichael, A., 233
• Chaldee Paraphrase, 76
• Chapin, E. H., 335
• Cicero, 9, 273
• Clarke, A., 32, 36, 43, 86, 90, 140, 167, 257, 295
• Conant, T. J., 32
• Constable, H., 303, 340
• Crellius, J., 206
• Cruden, 294

• Dalton, 328
• Dobney, H. H., 8, 263, 328
• Douay Bible, 76

• Eusebius, 285

• Gesenius, 51
• Greenfield, 283, 292

• Ham, J. P., 331
• Hobbs, 9
• Hogg, James, 327
• Homer, 285
• Hudson, C. F., 278

• Kitto, 41

• Landis, R. W., 45, 58, 59, 61, 64, 73, 77, 89, 94, 105, 122, 162, 170, 172, 175, 203
• Law, Bishop, 205, 242
• Lee, Luther, 101, 140, 210, 274, 323
• Leeland, 333
• Liddell & Scott, 292
• Locke, John, 228, 328
• Longfellow, 224
• Luther, 76

• Mattison, H., 36
• Moncrieff, W. G., 326
• Muller, Dr., 233

• Newton, Bp., 318

• Olshausen, 49, 321

• Parkhurst, 51, 53, 102, 293
• Priestly, Dr., 206
• Pritchard, 328

• Robinson, 53, 293

• Saurin, 317
• Scott, Thos., 32
• Schrevelius, 292
• Schleusner, 293
• Seneca, 9
• Septuagint, 76
• Socrates, 9
• Smith, Sidney, 324
• Smith, Wm., 49
• Stuart, Moses, 8, 296
• Syriac Version, 76

• Taylor, I., 319
• Taylor, Dr. J., 51, 229
• Tillotson, Bp., 337
• Trench, 167
• Tyndale, Wm., 233

• Vincent, Thos., 301

• Wahl, 294
• Wakefield, 147
• Warburton, Bp., 324
• Watson, 70
• Watts, Isaac, 228
• Wesley, 70
• Wetstein, 285
• Whately, R., 333
• Whedon, D. D., 224

INDEX --OF-- THE PRINCIPAL TEXTS OF SCRIPTURE ILLUSTRATED OR EXPLAINED.

GENERAL INDEX.

• Abraham’s ancestors idolaters, 123
• Abel’s blood cried from the ground to God, 117
• Absent from the body, meaning of, 183
• Adam threatened with literal death, 228,
  • testimony of Locke, Watts, and Taylor, 228,
  • his condition in his creation, 229
• A dishonorable perversion, 53, 54
• Aion, meaning of, according to Greenfield, Schrevelius, Liddell and Scott, Parkhurst, Robinson, Schleusner, and Wahl, 292, 293
• Aionios, meaning of, 295
• Analogies of nature, 335
• Analogy between sleep and death, 235
• Anecdote of the reasoning powers of brutes, 327
• Annihilation impossible, 337
• Angels not the ancient prophets, 215
• An ancient case of modern spiritualism, 136
• Anastasis, meaning of, 231
• A clean universe at last, 311
• An illustration on future punishment, 315
• Anomalies of the present state, 336
• A spirit, or spiritual being, what, 27
• A spirit hath not flesh and bones, 95,
  • note by Bloomfield, 97
• A threefold death disproved, 219
• Attempt to understand the popular idea of a spirit, 326
• Athanasia, aphthartos, and aphtharsia, use and meaning of, 15, 19

• Bible views of future punishment produce the best effect, 319

• Can the soul be killed? 105
• Capacities of the soul, 330
• Christ the express image of God, 29, 30
• Christ, the first-fruits, first-begotten, and first-born, how, 143-145
• 364Christ first raised from the dead, exposition of Acts 26:23, 146
• Christ and the Sadducees 149
• Clarke on Gen. 2:7, 32,
  • on Heb. 12:22, 86,
  • his key to the words forever and ever, 295
• Comma, in its present form, when invented, 179
• Conant on Gen. 2:7; Isa. 2:22, 32
• Connection between our present and future being, testimony of Bishop Law, 205,
  • Crellius and Priestly, 206
• CriticismCriticism, a desperate case of, 176
• Cruden on the words eternal, everlasting, and forever, 294

• Day in Gen. 2:17, meaning of, 223
• Date of Samuel’s ministry, 128
• Date of Saul’s reign, 128
• Death a punishment, 272,
  • Augustine’s testimony, 273,
  • no relief to the sinner, 278
• Deeds done in the body only to be judged, 315
• David not ascended to Heaven, 239
• Departing and being with Christ, 199
• Death of Adam, the same that is threatened against the sinner, 299
• Departure and return of the soul, 100,
  • note by Luther Lee, 101,
  • by Prof. Bush, 101,
  • by Parkhurst, 102
• Destiny of the wicked: they shall be destroyed, 303,
  • shall perish, go to perdition, and be as though they had not been, 304,
  • their doom set forth in language that is not figurative, 305,
  • they are compared to the most inflammable substances, 305,
  • they shall be consumed and devoured by fire, 308

• Earthly house, what, 185
• Eternal torment threatened to no one, 289
• Eternal suffering not proportioned to the sins of a finite life, 313
• Eternal fire, Jude 7,
  • illustrated and explained, 286
• Everlasting fire, 270
• Everlasting punishment, 271
• Evil tendency of the doctrine of the destruction of the wicked, 338
• 365Expressions used to describe the final condition of the wicked, 303

• Future punishment eternal, 267,
  • it consists in death, 299

• Gathered to his people, meaning of, 120,
  • sees corruption, 124
• Ge-enna, the hell of Mark 9:43, 44,
  • meaning of, 283
• God not a God of the dead but of the living, meaning of, 153
• God’s dealings with his creatures, 312
• God a person, 28

• Hades and sheol, meaning of, 156,
  • use of the word sheol, 157,
  • who go there, and the duration of its dominion, 157,
  • its location, 158,
  • condition of the righteous there, 158,
  • general character of, 159,
  • no knowledge there, 160
• Hell, words so translated, 107
• Hinnom, valley of, a figure of the place of future punishment, 283
• Holam, Hebrew, corresponding to aion, defined by Gesenius, 294
• House from Heaven, what, 185

• Idumea, threatenings against, 290,
  • the language illustrates Rev. 14:11, 290
• Immortal and immortality, how often used in the Bible, 13-20
• Immortality assumed, 337
• Immaterial souls of brutes, 323,
  • the testimony of Bishop Warburton, 324
• Instinct not the only reasoning power possessed by brutes, 329
• In the body and out, 195
• Is Abraham in hell? 123

• Judgment, doctrine of, contradicted by the popular view, 63

• Katephagen, Rev. 20:9, defined by Stuart, 309
• Kolasis, Matt. 25:46, meaning of, 274

• Language of appearance, 136
• Lazarus carried to Abraham’s bosom, when? 169

• 366Matter cannot think, 324,
  • the proof rests with the skeptic, Sidney Smith’s testimony, 325,
  • W. G. Moncrieff’s testimony, 326
• Milton’s translation of Eccl. 3:21, 76
• Mind determined by sensation to belong to the lower animals, 328
• Moses and the prophets on the place and condition of the dead, 154
• Moses was raised from the dead, 142

• Nature sheds no light on the future state, 8
• Necromancy defined by Webster, 128
• Nephesh defined by Parkhurst, Taylor, and Gesenius, 51

• Origen’s restorationism, an enlarged purgatory, 316

• Parable, case of the rich man and Lazarus, a, 163,
  • how to be used, testimony of Clarke and Trench, 167
• Paradise, where situated, 173
• Paraphrase of Phil. 1:21-24, 209
• Paul’s departure, 213
• Personification used in the Bible, 117, 162
• Peter’s tabernacle, its putting off, 213
• Pharisees confess spirit, 97
• Plasso, definition of, 65
• Punctuation of Luke 23:43, 179
• Punishment for sins in hell not threatened, 314
• Punishment, degrees of, 276
• Purgatory, an invention to relieve the great wrong of conscious eternal misery, 316,
  • borrowed from Plato by Augustine, adopted by Rome, 316

• Reasons why the doctrine of future punishment should be agitated, 320
• Reformers adopted Augustine’s hell without his purgatory, 316
• Rebellion against God, not eternal, 311
• Resurrection proved by Christ, 151,
  • from what words translated, 231,
  • a prominent doctrine of the Bible, 234,
  • Clarke’s testimony, 257,
  • not impossible, 262,
  • objections against answered, 244-247,
  • 367object of the Christian’s hope, 250,
  • time of reward to the righteous, 252,
  • comfort of mourners, id.,
  • time when crowns of glory are to be given, 254,
  • basis of Scripture promises, 255,
  • inseparably connected with the coming of Christ, 256

• Samuel and the woman of Endor, 127
• Scott’s note on Gen. 2:7, 32
• Semeron, meaning of, 179
• Sense of right and wrong possessed to a degree by the lower animals, 328
• Separation from the love of God, 210
• Shame and everlasting contempt, Dan. 12:2, 268
• Sins in hell committed faster than God can punish, Benson, 302
• Sodom and Gomorrah turned into ashes by eternal fire, 287
• Soul and spirit, meaning of, 46,
  • times of their use in the Bible, 50-55
• Souls under the altar, 113,
  • note by Barnes, 117
• Spirit, how formed, 64,
  • returns to God, 56,
  • for what purpose? 62,
  • not conscious, 61,
  • committed to God, 77,
  • saved in the day of the Lord, 1 Cor. 5:5, 98
• Spirits of just men made perfect, 80,
  • spirits in prison, 87,
  • note by Clarke, 91
• State to which death reduces us, Law’s testimony, 242
• Tendency of the doctrine of eternal misery, testimony of Saurin and A. Barnes, 317,
  • it cannot be believed, testimony of Bp. Newton, 318

• The image of God, 21
• The breath of life, 31,
  • possessed by all animals, 33, 34
• The living soul, 36,
  • dead soul, 41,
  • applied to all orders of animals, 43
• The transfiguration, 137,
  • a miniature of the kingdom of God, 140,
  • no disembodied souls there, 141
• The rich man and Lazarus, 161
• The dead rise up to meet the king of Babylon and Pharaoh in sheol, 164, 165
• 368Thief on the cross, 172
• The inward man, what? 212
• The unjust reserved to Judgment, 215
• The death of Adam, 216,
  • his sentence, 218
• The dead as though they had not been, 236,
  • have no knowledge, id.,
  • not in Heaven nor hell, 237,
  • without a resurrection are perished, 240
• The Judgment a future event, 258,
  • objections answered, 259,
  • destroys the idea of the conscious-state theory, 262,
  • testimony of Dobney, 263
• The doctrine of the immortality of the soul leads to erroneous conclusions on future punishment, 266
• The wages of sin, 264
• The undying worm and quenchless fire, 279,
  • a figure borrowed from the Old Testament, 280,
  • testimony of Jeremiah, 280,
  • of David and Ezekiel, 281,
  • of Isaiah, 282
• The two deaths mentioned in Eze. 18:26, 299
• The wicked, how recompensed in the earth, 309
• The claims of philosophy, 322
• The soul immaterial, 323
• Them that sleep in Jesus brought with him, 212
• “Thou” and “thy,” meaning of in Gen. 3:19, 225
• Tormented forever and ever, Rev. 14:11, 288,
  • of whom spoken, 289
• Traduction vs. creationism, 69-71
• Trees represented as appointing a king over themselves, 162
• True spirit of inquiry, 11
• Tunes learned by birds, 328
• Tyndale’s pungent inquiry, 233

• Universal belief and inborn desire, 333
• Unquenchable fire, meaning of the word asbestos, 284

• Vincent’s description of hell, 301

• We fly away, Ps. 90:10, meaning of, 125-127
• White robes of Rev. 6:11, meaning of, 119
• Who knoweth? Eccl. 3:21, 72
• Word translated perceive, in 1 Sam. 28:14, 133

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