Letters and addresses from a few eminent advocates of the scriptural theology of conditional immortality
Read before a late convention of the young ministers' Christian union of the United States of America, with publisher's preface
Charles Preston
1891
http://www.creationismonline.com/TSK/Immortality.html
NOTE.
To Clergymen into whose hands this little volume may fall:
THE " Young Ministers' Christian Union " is an organization of nearly one hundred ministers, representing almost every evangelical denomination. It has annual and auxiliary conventions in the principal cities of New England, and elsewhere when desired, where themes connected with Eschatology are freely discussed and advocated. Any clergyman fulfilling its simple conditions can become a member " without any interference with his ecclesiastical relations." It has also an " honorary membership " for interested and thinking laymen. The constitution and by-laws may be had without charge, of the secretary, the Rev. Norman P. Cook, 643 Broadway, Chelsea, Massachusetts.
PREFACE.
IN presenting these interesting documents to the public, we believe we are adding a 'worthy contribution to the line of special religious thought concerning the race and futurity, which at present is agitating the minds of Christian scholars as at no other period in the long and well nigh exhausted history of the dispensation.
It is gratifying to those who have for years watched with untiring eyes the spread of this glorious light resplendent on the sacred page, to know that many who were bound by the subtle influence of the traditional dogma a decade and a half ago, are now rejoicing in the blessed truth of Life alone in the Redeemer; and we are persuaded that the time will soon come when many more who are now secretly committed to the views entertained in these pages, will not withhold them from the people for fear of being "involved in controversy."
The time has gone by when men were cast out of the synagogues for believing and teaching opinions not commonly accepted by the established institutions; and with this toleration — of the false as well as the true — there is afforded great opportunity for the promulgation of obscured and neglected verities. Reforms are never effected by silence, neither is the world ever prepared to " hear the word of the Lord."
But at any age God has not been without witnesses. From the time of our Blessed Lord, the " LIFE and " light of men," the whole truth was known among men through the days of the Holy Apostles and the Apostolic Fathers; and, passing by countless days of darkness and apostasy, in which no doubt were isolated testimonies to this Pentecostal doctrine, it is reechoed at the opening of the Reformation. [Luther's Works, vol. 2, fol. 107.] Since then the Church of England especially has taken a foremost stand in its revival, as such persons as Bishops Tillotson, Taylor, Watson, Warburton, Hurd, Law, Archbishop Thompson of York, and last, but not least; Archbishop Whately, have written upon the subject. Then, among the clergy, the Rev. C. A. Row, Pre-bender of St. Paul;* Rev. Thomas Davis, A. M., Vicar of Roundhay; Rev. M. A. Vicar, of Tipton; Rev. Samuel Minton, M. A., minister of Eaton Church; Rev. Henry S. Warleigh, rector of Archchurch, Tewkesbury; Rev. Reginald Courtney, rector of Thornton; Professor Swain-son, of Christ's College; Professor Barlow, of Trinity College, Dublin, and many others, have appeared as its advocates.
Bishop Newton wrote long years ago:—" Nothing can be more contrary to the divine nature and attributes, than for a God, all-wise, all-powerful, all-good, all-perfect, to bestow existence on any beings whose destiny he foresees and foreknows must terminate in wretchedness and misery, without recovery or remedy, without respite or end. God is love, and he would rather have not given life, than render that life a torment and a curse to all eternity. Imagine such a state of misery, you who may, but you can never seriously believe it, nor reconcile it to God and goodness." But restoration fails to readjust the matter; for it is without justice, and not the remedy prescribed by the Creator.
In our own land there are many Churchmen who prefer a reasonable " hypothesis " concerning man's nature to the pre Christian and anti-Christian, Platonic view, which lends support to the "two mischievous corollaries,—the doctrines of Eternal Torment and Universal Salvation." We will mention a few of the most prominent: the late George Z. Gray, Dean of the Cambridge Theological School; the Rev. W. R. Huntington, D. D., rector of Grace Church, New York, author of Conditional Immortality, a work much prized by all but limited in circulation; the Rev. Charles E. Barnes, of Boston; also a clergyman most popular and enterprising in the city of New York, who has openly declared this doctrine. This primitive teaching of the Church seems to be the voice of the Prayer Book. Says one who perhaps has given more time and taken more active interest in the recent revision of its Liturgy than any other man in the American Church:—" Instead of assuming the apologetic tone, I am bold to assert that were a believer in endless life only through Christ to undertake the compilation of a liturgy, such as should best set forth, under a devotional form, the truth he desired to teach, he could not frame one better adapted to the purpose than that which already exists under the name of The Common Prayer." Here,—as in the ending of nearly all its matchless prayers—eternal life, everlasting life, immortal life, is "THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD." Those who know the purpose for which the Son of God was manifested [1 John 3.8] cannot and will not believe in the Augustinian theory of "Infinite Cruelty." Holy Scripture everywhere affirms that the hopelessly impenitent will be irrevocably lost, will become extinct, will be " destroyed " forever. " There shall be a cleansed universe, and no crypts and caverns in it— literal nor metaphorical—in which misery and sin shall be preserved through endless ages." Said the Rev. Nelson P. Dame concerning an action taken by the Fredericksburg, Virginia, Council, in connection with the doctrine of the extinction of evil:—
"I submit a few specimen statements in Holy Scripture concerning the wicked. The wicked dies, shall die, shall surely die, shall be killed with death, shall have part in the second death; perish, shall perish utterly, shall perish forever; are destroyed, shall be destroyed utterly, be destroyed forever, are destructible body and soul (St. Matt. 10.28); shall consume away, shall be consumed, shall be burned up as chaff, be devoured as stubble fully dry; shall go to nothing; shall be not; shall be no more; and their name, remembrance, shall perish, be blotted out, shall rot, shall be covered with darkness, and be forgotten. "As for the transgressors, they shall perish together; and the end of the ungodly is, they shall be rooted nut at the last."—Psalm 37. 38. Coverdale Version.
There is not a word in the Hebrew, Greek or English languages which can express the idea of absolute, total destruction, extermination, extinction of being, which the Scriptures do not employ to describe the fate of the wicked after they shall have duly and fearfully suffered for their sins
The author of The Dream of S. Gerontius has vividly expressed the same thought:—
'Tis Death—
As though my very being had given way, As though I was no more a substance now, And could fall back on naught to be my stay, And turn no whither, but must needs decay And drop from out the universal frame Into that shapeless, scopeless, blank abyss, That utter nothingness of which I came."
Others take a similar view, believing that while many souls will be restored to God's favor, the incorrigibly wicked will become extinct, that Christ, untrammeled by the dominion of the prince of darkness, may become " all and in all." Satan, with a kingdom and subjects to all eternity, shall not triumph over Christ. We are therefore safe in asserting this to be the " doctrine of a multitude of learned members of the Church of England " and of the " Episcopal Church " in our own country. The Rev. William Preston, D. D., of Pittsburg; Rev. C. M. Butler, D. D., of Philadelphia; and Rev. J. D. Wilson, A. M., of Chicago, are to be classed among the first advocates of Conditionalism in the American Church.
In addition to what has been said upon Conditionalism in the English and American Churches, we notice further that a noble army of defenders of this faith has been raised up in the respective denominations of Protestant Christendom. Men like the
Rev. William Leask, D. D., late editor of The Rainbow, London.
Prof. C. F. Hudson, author of Debt and Grace.
Rev. John H. Pettingell, A. M., Homiletical Index,
Rev. John H. Pettingell, A. M., Theological Trilemma,
Rev. John H. Pettingell, A. M., Platonism versus Christianity,
Rev. John H. Pettingell, A. M., The Unspeakable Gift,
Rev. Dr. Gess, of Breslau.
Professors Stokes and Adams, of Cambridge.
Olshausen, Hermann Schultz, Sir James Stephen and Prof. Charles L. Ives, author of The Bible Doctrine of the Soul.
Rev. Drs. R. W. Dale, of Birmingham, Joseph Parker, of London, L. W. Bacon, of New Haven, Lyman Abbott, of Brooklyn, L. Summerbell, of Milford, N. J., A. M. Graham, of Cincinnati,
Rev. Charles H. Oliphant, translator of Petavel's Extinction of Evil.
Rev. T. S. Potwin, author of The Triumph of Life
Rev. W. J. Hobson, author of Conditional Immortality
Rev. Ch. Secretan;
Rev. Oscar Corcorda;
Rev. Charles Byse, of Brussels;
Rev. H. H. Dobney, of Maidstone, author of Future Punishment;
Rev. James H. Whitmore, author of The Doctrine of Immortality;
Rev. Horace L. Hastings; author of a masterly work entitled Pauline Theology;
Rev. George Storrs, author of Life Only in Christ, many years editor of The Bible Examiner, and the pioneer of this doctrine in America;
Rev. A. A. Phelps, a former editor of the Bible Banner;
Rev. Rufus Wendell, editor of The Students' Revised New Testament, and The Diacritical Edition of the Revised Bible
Rev. S. T. Frost, of Massachusetts.
These, with many in missionary lands, together with the important names of three of the most able writers on this subject, whose words are found elsewhere in these pages, besides scores of others which might be given, are faithful witnesses to the truth which alone displays both the mercy and justice of God. That this doctrine for which we contend, of Life Eternal only through Christ the Savior, is destined to prevail and to become the orthodox doctrine of the Christian Church, we have no more doubt than we have of the triumph of the Gospel itself. It is indeed the great central doctrine of the Gospel."—J. H. Pettingell, A. M., The Life Everlasting, page 77.
Evil is doomed. It cannot exist forever. Men are not immortal. As Bishop Jeremy Taylor said concerning Adam, " Immortality was not in his nature; " and all evidence goes to show that " God has not grown wiser" since creation.
This mortal nature is still in existence, and is that which shall on the morning of the general resurrection "put on immortality." Such shall be the peculiar and exclusive privilege of the faithful baptized. As by the sunlight of God's truth we trace the history of this doctrine—of life and immortality apart from spiritual union with God—through Papal apostasy, [See Luther's, Defense, Prop. 27.] Babylonian paganism, Egyptian darkness, to its announcement in Eden, " ye shall not surely die "—the traditional view will fade from sight among those who are in accord with the sympathy of God, " whose mercy endures forever,"* who are in fellowship with the Holy Spirit's teaching in the volume of inspiration, and who as the only solution of this great problem of immortality devoutly cherish " the likeliest belief."
Says a European author, who has extensively written upon the subject: " If we examine the writings of the earlier fathers, Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Hermas, Ignatius, Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus, and Clement of Alexandria, we find them all faithful to the apostolic doctrine of the final destruction of the wicked. The dogma of everlasting torment did not creep into the Church until she yielded to the influence of Platonic philosophy." Because of this undeniable fact, the doctrine of Conditional Immortality having been held by the Church as a heritage of apostolicity, its advocates claim that it was Catholic doctrine everywhere received—the faith of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, which distinguished it from the corrupt philosophy of "the temple of idols." ["All the first Fathers of the Church are Conditionalists."—Emanuel Petavel, D. D.] We maintain that this doctrine was that which essentially divided Christendom from Heathendom.
Before concluding, we wish to confess ourselves among an increasingly large number who charitably discredit the judgment of those who consider it of secondary importance that Life and Immortality are secured through our Blessed Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. In view of this fatal drift from Scylla to Charybdis, we, who see safety in the middle course, cannot remain silent. The discussion is not one of merely speculative importance. It concerns a fundamental motive of repentance; the reconciliation of the creed of Christendom with the character of Christ; the vindication of the Divine Benevolence in the creation and government of sentient beings; the harmonization of God's Word and works and the arrest of a tendency which, so surely as it enervates morality, will also undermine religion." —The Rev. Charles H. Oliphant, Introduction, Extinction of Evil, page 31.
The marvelous record which God has given of His Son should above all else be preached in all the world. [1 John 5.10]
We invite special attention to the two essays herein published—one a chapter from " Scripture Doctrine on the Heathen," by the Rev. Edward White, the other "classical authority"; and the other by Canon Constable of the English Church, which so far as we are aware, has never appeared in print on either side of the Atlantic.
Bespeaking both these and the accompanying letters a wide and careful reading, it is our earnest desire that a great multitude shall yet be brought to believe in this " First Doctrine of the Christian Church" — CONDITIONAL IMMORTALITY.
All Saints, 1891.
Received by the writer while Chairman of the Board of Education of the " Young Ministers' Christian Union."
Preface. The Publisher
1 There is no Immortality Out of Christ.
Rev. George R. Kramer,
2 Letter to the Young Ministers' Christian Union.
Rev. Emanuel Petavel, D. D.
3 Letter.
Rev. Edward White,
4 The New Testament Doctrine on the Heathen, Past, Present and Future.
Rev. Edward White,
5 Natural Immortality of the Soul.
Rev. Henry Constable, A. M,
6 Books and Authors upon the primitive " Martyr Faith," concerning Immortality,
By the REV. GEORGE R. KRAMER, Brooklyn, N. Y., Five Years
President of the Young Ministers' Christian Union.
ADAM was-not threatened with eternal life in misery, but death; not a spiritual death, for that is the state of sin—not the penalty. To make spiritual death the penalty, will make the Redeemer die a spiritual death as our substitute —which would be to make him dead in sins. An impossibility, for " in Him was no sin found." The sinner is already spiritually dead, but " the soul that sinned it shall die."
" Whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life."—John 3. 16.
" Ye will not come unto me that ye might have life."—John 5. 40.
"And this is the record, that God has given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son."—1 John 5.2.
"And the world passes away and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth forever."—1 John 2. 17.
" The Lord preserves all them that love him, but all the wicked will he destroy."—Psalms 145. 20.
This punishment will be everlasting. Paul called it " everlasting destruction "—not everlasting life in misery.
The wicked shall be raised from death and judged and die " the second death."
They shall be cast into the lake of fire, where there shall be " weeping and gnashing of teeth."
" The wicked shall perish and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs; they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away." —Psalms 37.20. So complete will be that consumption that, like the land of Idumea—Isa. 34.10—though not now burning, "the smoke thereof shall go up forever."
It will be an everlasting fire like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, which, according to Peter, reduced them to ashes. "An ensample unto those that after should live ungodly."—2 Peter 2. 6.
Jude calls this an " eternal fire," though they are not now burning. It will be an unquenchable fire. Eusebius speaks of unquenchable fire destroying the martyrs. So also in Jeremiah we read of such a fire burning the palaces of Jerusalem, though not now burning. Jer. 17. 27: "It shall devour the palaces of Jerusalem and it shall not be quenched." Not being quenched it devoured its object. Worms feed on the dead, and the expression "'the worm dies not " signifies that the corruption is eternal. See Isa. 66. 24.
"The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."—Rom. 6. 23. The words " Nephesh " for soul occurs 700 times in the Old Testament—the " Psuchee " in the New Testament 105 times, but not once called immortal. Immortal is used once in the Bible and applied to God, 1 Tim. 1. 1, 17. Immortality is used five times, Rom. 2. 7, where it is promised to them who seek it. 1 Cor. 15. 53, 54, where Saints put it on at the Resurrection. 1 Tim. 6. 16, applied to Christ. 2 Tim. 1. 10, Christ bringing it to light, which he did by His Resurrection.
In all the early Apostolic Fathers, Barnabas, Hermas, Clement, Polycarp, Ignatius, we read of no eternal life in torment. We read of life and death, and the destruction of the wicked one with all his works.
Rev. Edward Beecher in his " Scriptural Doctrine of Retribution" claims Irenaeus and also Justin Martyr as teaching the destruction of the wicked. Irenaeus the Martyr, and Bishop of Lyons, a great leader of the Orthodox Church in the second century, says, "He asked life of thee and thou gayest it him, even length of days forever and ever, indicating that it is the Father of all who imparts continuance forever and ever on those who are saved. For life does not arise from us, nor from our nature, but is bestowed according to the grace of God." Eternal life is in the Blessed Jesus. Read Psalms 16.11, "Thou wilt show me the path of life," in connection with Psalms 21.4: " He asked life of thee, and thou gayest it him, even length of days forever and ever."
May the Blessed Redeemer give us immortality at his coming. Let us trust Him who says, "I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Because I live ye shall live also." It is a thrilling thought that the Lord Jesus shall return to this earth. All events must fade in comparison with its grandeur. The pictures of the past, so shiningly attractive, when our Lord walked in Jerusalem, and talked and ate at Bethany with Mary and Martha and their brother Lazarus, when He spoke to the multitude by the Sea of Tiberius, when he made forever resplendent "The sinless years, That breathed beneath the Syrian blue," all of this is not equal to the scenes which gleam before us on the canvas of prophecy. Those days which have made "Galilee, sweet Galilee, Where Jesus loved so much to be," more splendid in its associations than all classic soil, and have left a charm like the richest drapery upon the banks and waves and sky of Gennesaret, were, after all, the days of his humiliation. Mt. Hermon, with its transfiguration wonders, is but a rift in the clouds, opening scenic effulgence which is to abide forever "when the Son of Man shall come in His glory."
The people of Galilee when He crossed the lake waited for his return. At last the vessel was seen bounding on the waters and they welcomed Him to their homes. Let us be like them. "AND IT CAME TO PASS THAT WHEN JESUS WAS RETURNED, THE PEOPLE GLADLY RECEIVED HIM, FOR THEY WERE ALL WAITING FOR HIM."—Our Faith and Hope.
OF LAUSANNE, Switzerland.
Lecturer at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. Author of "The Extinction of Evil," " God's Mercy in Punishment," "Le Problem de Immortality," etc.
REV. AND DEAR SIR:
I LEARN with the greatest interest that the annual meeting of the Young Ministers' Christian Union is to take place next month. My friends Mr. Ch. Byse and Mr. F. A. Freer, with whom I am working here, unite in best wishes and prayers for the blessing of God on your gathering.
The glorious doctrine of Life in Christ only seems to us all the more important when we consider the present state of the French speaking communities. It is somewhat melancholy to find that not a single leading name of the present generation in these countries has been converted to what is called Evangelicalism from either Roman Catholicism or the prevalent skepticism.
The Evangelical Churches explain this sad fact much too readily by speaking of the heart of man as being "desperately wicked; " but so it was in the time of Jeremiah, as also in the sixteenth century, when, however, the elite of the French theologians and thinkers embraced the cause of Reformation. We believe that the real reason of the failure of the present preaching in France is to be found in the theological system of Calvin, which was a great improvement upon Roman Catholicism, but is not suited to the needs of the present day.
As things stand now, France remains in a state of spiritual starvation, and we might say of her, with the prophet Hosea: " My people is perishing for lack of knowledge." This has been acknowledged by such men as Pastor Berzier of Paris, who recently said: "What we miss most of all is a healthy and powerful system of dogmatics."
The chief defect of traditional Calvinism is, as we believe, the result of the subtle poison of Platonism, which makes man naturally immortal and imperishable as God himself; and which is a great insult to our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who said, " I am the life," and "except ye eat the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves." Besides, it has led to the blasphemous and pernicious doctrine of eternal torments, the result of which has been that our foremost philosophical thinker, Professor Charles Secretan, who is at the same time a Christian believer, has declared in his great book on " Civilization and Belief " that the God of Calvinism is "hateful." By a sort of recoil from this doctrine most of our Pastors have glided into an enervating crypto-universal-ism, in fact they themselves do not know where they are. The sword of the evangelical preacher is blunted, and it needs to be sharpened anew. In other words, Christian dogmatics need to be readjusted on the basis of our belief, which furnishes a satisfactory solution of various problems, including that of retribution. Life is for us the sum total of our faculties; the man who in unison with Christ develops his natural talents will receive a larger sphere for their exercise, while he who being out of communion with Christ fails to develop these faculties will be deprived of them, and his personality will thus cease to exist. This is a tremendous but reasonable punishment, and the responsibility and odium of it rest upon the sinner himself.
On the other hand, in conformity with the Gospel, the Creator is represented as a Father, who to the last opens his arms to receive his repentant and returning prodigal son. The sufferings inflicted on the sinner, as thus viewed, have a pedagogic aim, they are premonitory of the punishment proper, which consists in the self-inflicted deprivation of life. There is therefore nothing in the Gospel to make us ashamed, but by the manifestation of the truth, we commend ourselves "and our preaching to every man's conscience in the sight of God."
Unfortunately we meet with the fate of many witnesses for the truth. The majority in our churches are still against us, but it is for us to look up to God alone whose Spirit encourages us to persevere, with the assurance that by the removal of a great stumbling block, Christ will be glorified and the way opened for the conversion of a multitude who are at present repelled by the traditional dogma. The cause of missions to the heathen will also be greatly advanced by the prevalence of what we believe to be the truth. On this point I would like to call your attention to a pamphlet just published by James Clarke & Co., 13 Fleet Street, London, under the title, "Scripture Doctrine on the Heathen as the Basis of Missionary Theology," by Edward White. The lectures were delivered as the "Merchants Lectures" in June last, and have given occasion for a sympathetic notice in the Christian World of 26th, September last.
It may also interest you to hear that one of your fellow-countrymen, the Rev. Ch. II. Oliphant, of Methuen, Mass., is about to publish a book entitled " The Extinction of Evil," which contains a translation of three essays of mine on these subjects. It is published by Ch. H. Woodman, of Boston.
It seems to me that we, you and ourselves, are piercing a tunnel which, like that through the St. Gotthard, is to open a communication through a mountain of superstition and prejudice. The tunnel is not yet completed, a thin wall of rock still remains to be pierced. Working on both sides, as it were, we may soon unite in a song of triumph when the work is achieved; meantime let us persevere, knowing that our "labor is not in vain in the Lord."
With best Christian regards, I remain,
Rev. and dear Sit,
Yours faithfully,
E. PETAVEL.
REV. CHARLES E. PRESTON.
Author of "Life in Christ"; Es-Chairman of the Congregational Union of Great Britain, and Professor of Homiletics at New College, London.
HILDAS MOUNT, HIGHWOOD HILL, NEAR LONDON, October 25, 1889.
DEAR MR. PRESTON:
I HAVE received your kind notification of the Christian Union Convention on November 19-21, and feel much honored by your request for a few brotherly words from the undersigned. Be pleased, therefore, to offer to the Brethren assembled, my cordial and respectful salutations in the name of that one Master and Lord, who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We are living in the "last days." This was true in the time of the Apostles. It must be nearer the end, now, of the reign of the Power of Darkness over the nations. And the action of this Power is more vehement and subtle every year. Christianity is being attacked in the name of National Religion, of History, of Criticism, of Science. But our Lord's words remain true to the end of the world:
Ye hypocrites, ye can distinguish the signs of Heaven, how is it that ye do not discern this time?
One tenth of the honest observation, investigation, and study, bestowed by scientific men on the development of natural science, if be, stowed on Holy Scripture, and the moral condition of man, would speedily result at least in an intellectual conviction of the truth of the Gospel of Christ. But there are few of the public teachers And writers of our time who devote much labor, or connected study, to the Holy Scripture except to criticize it out of the world. I take one principal cause to be the shocking neglect of Scripture Study in our Divinity Halls. Careful and connected exegesis of the truth as a whole is the last thing thought of in most of our Theological Colleges. Human lectures take the place of Divine Revelation. Then men easily come to think little of Holy Books of which they know little. At least this is widely true of England. Men are educated in blinkers, fastened on by the Church Authorities. Let us help to tear them off, or unfasten them. Let the Churches accept no teacher who cannot bring evidence of systematic, long, and sympathetic study of Holy Scripture, before he attempts to teach others. In looking back upon our testimony to Scripture Doctrine of Life in Christ, Immortality through the Divine Incarnation; and to that other Scripture Revelation that the Law of Continuity has place in Providence; so that the world's future is steadily to brighten into the Glory of Christ's Kingdom in the last days, I am only thankful to have been counted worthy to suffer shame for many a long year for this testimony. I think few men know quite as Well as I do, how widely in all lands these truths are now occupying men's minds, from the highest to the lowest. But they will never be popular,—they go dead against the philosophy, the tradition, the tastes of the " natural man " and of modern Corrupt Christianity.
We are living in an age precisely parallel to that in which Christ appeared. The " Scribes and Pharisees " are in power and everything about them is too long—Their faces are too long, their prayers are too long (Matt. vi.) their clothes are too long—(and much too fine in the Churches) and their purses are too long, for too many still make a "gain of godliness." But the Lord has many faithful witnesses—who now wear thorny crowns and are crucified with Christ; but whom he will acknowledge in that day. I beg to offer to you a copy of some "Merchants Lectures " of mine on the Scripture doctrine of the Heathen, from which I dare say you can select a page to sew on my " speech " to the Convention.
So, wishing you immense joy in your meeting, for your work and the mighty inspiration of the spirit of Love and Power, believe me, dear Mr. Preston, and you also dear brethren, yours in the blessed hope of life and immortality through Jesus Christ alone.
EDWARD WHITE.
By the REV. EDWARD WHITE, formerly Minister of St. Paul's Chapel, now of Allen St. Chapel, Kensington, London.
"The times of this ignorance God overlooked, but now commanded all men everywhere to repent, because He bath appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness," etc.—Acts 17. 30, 31.
THE generality of the Christian public in our busy age are possessed of too little exact information to attain even a fairly approximate notion of the history, condition, and magnitude of what is called, in religious circles, the heathen world; and this is probably one reason why many rest contented with the traditions concerning heathen destiny handed down by the still more uninstructed Christendom of former ages. One of the most recent and careful estimates of the present population of the globe—that of Major Bell—gives the following estimates of the present number of mankind, arranged under the head of religions:—Buddhists, 483,000,000; Nominal Christians, 353,000,000; Brahmans, 120,000,000; Mohammedans, 120,000,000; Parsees, 1,000,000; Jews, 8,000,000; miscellaneous barbarians, fetish worshippers, and atheists, 190,000,000; total, 1,275,000000. It may assist the imagination to realize what these numbers signify, to note that if from these many-colored throngs of mankind we select the inhabitants of India, who are reckoned at 280,000,000, and suppose them to be arranged in lines of thirty abreast, forming a column broad enough to fill the nave of an ordinary church, with a yard between the ranks in marching order, then that column of dark-skinned men would extend from the extreme western border of Afghanistan, all through the Russian and Turkish Empires, and across the continent of Europe to the Atlantic, shore-5,300 miles. And this prodigious array of living beings represents but one fleeting generation of the inhabitants of a single country under heaven. When statisticians speak of the population of China as 400,000,000 they intend an army of yellow men, women, and children which would be one-third greater in length than the Indian column just imagined. Starting with these figures, the student might pursue at his leisure the history of populations in the Four Continents and in Oceanica, so far back as any record remains to describe their numbers and character; and a long lifetime will still leave him impressed. with the truth that the inhabitants of the world have mounted up in their successive generations to totals which " no man can number;" while the present conditions of knowledge and conduct in the " heathen " give the best means of divining the quality of the " religions " of the generality of their ancestors.
The question is, Has the Infinite Being, the Creator of heaven and earth, made known to us, through Christ and His Apostles, anything concerning the state and prospects of these contemporary millions, and the destiny of their innumerable ancestors? In my youth I have heard highly-esteemed missionaries, such as Richard Knill, and John Williams, of Erromanga, speak distinctly thus, and without any qualification: "The heathen are perishing; shall we let them perish?" " The mighty tide of heathen souls is pouring down in one broad stream daily into the abyss of eternal death. Shall we do nothing to arrest its flow?" Both of these excellent and devoted men intended like Xavier, by the words perishing and death the endurance of eternal suffering in hell.
In the two preceding lectures, I have shown reason for the belief that such indiscriminate statements were not founded on the authority of Divine revelation; that they were the traditional expressions of missionary theology not founded on careful study of the Oracles of God, and that they have largely hindered both the believing interest in the missions of the Gospel at home, and the acceptance of Christianity abroad. Good men, however zealous, have no right to invent indiscriminate threatening, and put them into the mouth of the Almighty, especially when Divine justice and goodness have explicitly taught us what language we are to employ in instructing and evangelizing the nations of the world.
I think it has been shown in the two preceding discourses, (1) that the Scripture doctrine is, that while all redemption is through Christ alone, man's individual salvation depends on regeneration by the Spirit of God; and (2) that this regeneration by the Spirit, as is proved by Hebrew history, can take effect even on the simplest souls without any knowledge of Christ, and by the aid of the most elementary spiritual ideas; and (3) that on this basis it is not only lawful, but necessary, to believe in the regeneration and salvation of an immense number of good men and, women, and children, who may be vaguely classified as " heathen," who have enjoyed no revelation from God except that " outward witness for himself " in Nature and Providence of which Paul spoke to the Lycaonians, and that work of " law " in the Conscience which is God's witness within the soul of man, of which the same St. Paul speaks in his great Epistle to the Church of Rome. And in the last lecture I think it was proved by a careful induction of Scripture testimony respecting the recorded relations between the Almighty and many devout and God-fearing persons of nations outside the Jewish pale, that any indiscriminate habit of speaking of the heathen—that is, of the nations of the world—as going in their totality to perdition, is maintained without the sanction or example of one single shred of Divine revelation rightly interpreted. Why should it be thought that the gate of heaven was open only to people who lived in close contiguity to the Jewish nation? The God of the Jews was the God of the Gentiles also—that is, of all the nations; and He is able to "save to the uttermost," His own elect, all honest and obedient souls, born under whatsoever surrounding shadows of ignorance and error.
But to-day we shall enter further into the Divine Testimony, and shall bring forward evidence from the holy Scripture, and specially from the acts of the Apostles of Christ, that we are not compelled to restrict our hopes of the final salvation of multitudes of " heathen " mankind to the "perhaps comparatively small number " who in all ages have given signs, recognizable by missionaries, of the beginning of the new life under heathenish surroundings. I say " perhaps comparatively small number " because if we depend on induction of positive modern evidence, our contemporary missionary reports afford us but limited consolation in this direction.
Whether it be that many of the younger missionaries have been unable, from ignorance of the people's thoughts and language, to discern better elementary spiritual states; whether it be that the beginnings of all life are minute and mysterious, none more so than spiritual life; or whether it be that the marching orders which they took from headquarters rather discouraged them from regarding any of their " heathen " neighbors as other than the "enemies of God by wicked works," until converted by the " Gospel "—whatever version of that Gospel it may be—certain it is that ordinary missionary reports have taken little account of any men or women who are regarded as hopefully "accepted of God " before they have embraced Christianity. And this although, as we have seen, (1) all pre-Messianic goodness and piety might have been condemned as worthless on the same principle; and (2) although in the next place, much excuse for the rejection of what has been often offered to them as Christianity, might be found in the shocking perversion of the original message of Christ by some European theologies; which have persisted in assigning indefensible, non-natural senses to ninety-nine hundredths of the terminology on human destiny contained in the sacred Scriptures. Until the religion of Christ is proclaimed among the nations in vernacular words honestly and exactly corresponding with those simple terms used by the original apostles of the Gospel, and unmixed with unscriptural metaphysical additions—on the indestructible nature of the soul, or on any other subject—the heathen have not come under the full responsibility of rejecting the Divine Message; for there are some modern forms of so-called " Augustinian " Christianity proclaimed by Europeans and Americans in Asia and Africa, which it is perhaps to the credit of thoughtful and educated Hindus, 'Chinese, and other heathen, that they reject with horror, as impossible outcomes of Eternal Justice and Eternal Love. But wherever and whenever the Gospel is preached, as a demand for practical repentance from a wicked life, as the message of deliverance from sin and death eternal, and as "the gift of Everlasting Life " in "glory, honor, and immortality," the main objections of honest skepticism are found to be at once removed both in heathen and in Christian lands. The sense of sin is too deeply fixed in the universal conscience of man for the susceptible heathen not to welcome really glad tidings of deliverance from wrath to come, and of immediate pardon; and the love of life which is inherent in all creatures, is attracted in such God-led souls by the glorious hope of a God-given immortality, in a universe of which Jesus Christ is the Centre and the King.
But here it is necessary to avow clearly the conviction which many of us are compelled to entertain, from a special study of Holy Scripture on these lines—a conviction which is here expressed with as much consideration for the differing judgments of men, to some of whom as much reverence is due as consists with a pressing persuasion of the truth,—that the New Testament writers, as Christ's representatives, have sanctioned no declaration to the impenitent heathen of ultimate Universal Salvation, or universal purgatorial purification; but require from us, in proclaiming to them the Gospel, the most steadfast and alarming- declarations, in the name of the Eternal God, of positive infliction of tribulation and anguish, of judgment to come, of destruction awful and eternal, as the reason of our immediate repentance and faith in the Son of God. And it is our belief that one reason why the souls of wicked men are not in our day more often and more deeply moved to immediate repentance, both at home and abroad, is that no such definite and awful declaration of eternal judgment to come, as Paul delivered to trembling Felix, is set before mankind in a large proportion of the ordinary preaching of the Message of Heaven. Either men hold opinions on future punishment which their own minds shudder to apply distinctly to individuals, and their own tongues refuse to utter to the heathen; or, they hold secret persuasions or hopes as to universal salvation at last, which simply paralyze that ministry of terror, which is undoubtedly the appointed means of first awakening men to "flee from the wrath to come." It is quite true that fear, or terror of judgment to come, the fear of " indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish " (Romans, 2.) is an appeal partly to a feeling or emotion which men possess in common with the animals. You can frighten a horse or a dog, just as you can frighten a man, with the' fear of a dreadful punishment.
But, like all animal emotions, such fear is transitory in its operation. You cannot keep up a fright. It is also quite true that the new creating and purifying influences of the Gospel—faith, hope, love, joy, reason, conscience, loyalty—are all spiritual and permanent forces. But the fear of judgment to come is not wholly an animal emotion, it is not merely the dread of suffering, but the sense of sin, and of sin's deserts; and the "terror of the Lord " is closely associated with the action of conscience in the condemnation of a life of vice, and crime, and ungodly living. To attempt, therefore, to evangelize men, while dropping out of view the certainty, the justice, the reality, and the nearness of judgment to come, is to throw away an essential part of the armor of righteousness, and to encourage the inattention of the guiltiest part of the human race, the Felixes and Drusillas of the modern world. The threat of absolutely unending torment will seldom touch them, for they do not believe in its justice or its reality; the promise of universal salvation practically encourages them in their sin; but the tremendous menace of the Lord Jesus Christ of a " resurrection of eternal damnation" on account of the filthy and cruel "deeds done in the body " and of persistent impenitence—of being cast into the fire and plunged in the hopeless perdition of Gehenna, where "body and soul" shall be destroyed out of the universe forever,—this threatening, assuredly, will make Felix tremble; if men deliver it as if they believed it; and until men " tremble" they are little likely to repent, or to "flee for refuge" to the only Savior. The present state of what is absurdly called "popular opinion" on this- question is half fatal to missions. Oh, why will not our evangelists resolutely embrace the faith of St. Paul and St. John, and, as firmly and powerfully as they did, warn sinful heathen men of their remediless doom in the language which they used, and no other. Surely, a man may declare that the "gift of everlasting life" is at the very center of the Gospel; and the threatening of "everlasting destruction" "of body and soul in hell" is the tremendous reality which is set forth by Christ Himself (Matthew, 10. 28) before " every soul of man that doeth evil, whether Jew or Gentile."
But now I advance a step further, and opening the New Testament at the account of St. Paul's speech to the Athenian Areopagus (Acts, 17.), proceed to the question of the destiny of the previously unevangelized heathen. In this memorable speech the Apostle Paul, whose life and teaching chiefly established primitive Christianity, and chiefly re-established it at the Reformation, and must chiefly still re-make modern Christianity—the main expositor of the Gospel to educated humanity, a " debtor to the wise "—Paul here lays down in the clearest manner a principle which dashes in pieces at a blow Xavier's frightful Roman doctrine of the indiscriminate damnation of the unevangelized heathen, ancient or modern, a notion which has had far too wide a sway among even Evangelical Protestants, and has often half paralyzed the spirits of the most earnest missionaries.
Standing in Athens, surrounded by the marvels of Greek pagan art and worship, he surveys the past, and contrasts it with the present. He declares to the Athenians the unity of the human race—differing in color, culture, language and custom, but one in possession of a moral nature and intellectual capacity which separate them from the animals by an impassable gulf of superiority, as the Offspring of God. He declares to them the purpose of God in the division and settlement, the rise and fall of nations, and affirms that the main design of the Almighty in human history has been to excite mankind, by the spectacle of nature, the working of conscience, the operations of Providence, and the joys and sorrows of life, to seek after their Maker—their Maker so near, yet so much unrecognized and unknown—a design too much defeated in past ages by evil traditions, ungodly rulers, profane pagan sophists and poets, interested priesthoods, and idolatrous artists who had succeeded in spreading a veil over all nations (under the inspiration of a Power of Darkness now about to be cast out before the world's rightful Lord), so that even they, the men of Athens, the countrymen of Socrates and Plato, inhabited a city "full of idols," and had " forgotten the One Eternal God." It was in His name, and by a direct commission from Him, that he spoke to them at this crisis in the world's history, when the Son of God had just appeared, had lived and died, and risen again in attestation of His coming soon to " judge the world in righteousness "—whereof His resurrection was the pledge and assurance to mankind. But this declaration of judgment to come is preceded by the all-important statement, that the Supreme Judge of the world designed to make a marked difference in judgment between the generations who had lived in the comparative ignorance of the heathen ages, when men had been partly deceived into the reception of fabulous religions—and the present age, when He had sent forth the revelation of truth to all mankind. The times of this ignorance God winked at—overlooked—in the sense that He would not judge the ancient nations, bred in ignorance by their corrupted teachers, as He would judge those who now refuse to repent and obey the " commandment " of Heaven. This first statement prepared the way for the second, by neutralizing at once the tacit objection, that it would be unjust for God to judge severely the past generations who had been deceived by their teachers, and had been left so much to the light or twilight of nature. St. Paul explicitly affirms that God's judgment on heathen antiquity would take just account of the ignorance of the ancient nations.
It would be utterly unsafe to build on this remarkable statement of St. Paul the belief that none of the heathen who had departed from the Living God before Christ's advent were to be the subjects of eternal judgment. Their pagan ignorance was comparative; much of it, at least in the teachers, was wicked and willful; and, as we have shown in the first lecture, God had "not left Himself without witness," by the spectacle of nature, by the testimony of conscience, by the rise of eminent teachers of godliness among the nations themselves, and often through the floating germs of true traditions which filled the air in a world where, in one center or another, there had always been some preparatory Divine revelations. The language of the Old Testament Scriptures is completely irreconcilable with the notion that all the ancient nations were, in consequence of their " heathenism " destined in the mass either for perdition or for Paradise. The chief inventors of evil in the ancient world had earned the awful "wages of sin " just as fully as many in later ages. The first corrupters of the faith in God after the Flood, the tyrants and statesmen who organized degrading slaveries for the people, the inventors of lying myths to displace the Divine original traditions of godliness, the priesthoods who had traded in souls for gain, and founded the "mysteries of iniquity" which passed for religions, the philosophers whose atheistic naturalism and positivism sunk the earlier generations of men into a vile and filthy symbolism which at last found its lowest level in the worship of animals by mankind—it may well be that these Jeroboams of the early world, and the kings who supported them, these early priests of Baal, and the Jezebels who maintained them, were as deserving of the wrath of God as their modern analogues and imitators.
But there would certainly be merciful consideration for the victims of their gigantic wickedness, and unwilling ignorance would be forgiven and overlooked, to the extent of its unwillingness. What form this merciful treatment of ancient pagan idolaters might take St. Paul does not here indicate. But we can scarcely err in supposing that since their Judge is to be the Lord Jesus Christ, who declared that higher light would have had the effect of producing "repentance" even in Sodom and in Tyre, He will know how to confer the gracious opportunity of such knowledge and repentance in some state beyond for whatever masses of really ignorant heathen—for whom He died as well as for us—may seem the fitting objects of His mercy. No details are given, because the only object of St. Paul's declaration at Athens, was not to satisfy your curiosity, but to assure all heathen mankind, that while ignorant ages would be judged by one rule, ages and persons better instructed would be judged by another; so that no argument for impenitence could be safely drawn from any supposition of Divine injustice towards the generations foregone. And this revelation of the justice and mercy of God in general terms ought to be repeated by all missionaries to heathen nations now for the first time visited by the Gospel, so as to avoid the horrible mistake of Xavier in his dogmatic declarations to the Japanese that all their ancestors, and even the millions of departed children, were in a state of everlasting misery.
But now I conclude this lecture with an irrefragable confirmation of St. Paul's teaching respecting the merciful dealing of God with many of the departed multitudes of heathen mankind, by a consideration of St. Peter's famous passage on Christ's descent into Hades in his first epistle (iii. 18-22; iv. 1-6), which, as Dean Alford rightly declares, there is no more reason to set aside as obscure, or of dubious import, than any other passage in St. Peter's epistle. There is no critical objection to it, except the invalid one that it plainly contradicts one or two articles of the unscriptural missionary theology of some popular Protestantism.
The passage in question is as follows in the Revised Version: " Because Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God; being put to death in the flesh, but quickened (or made alive) in the Spirit; in which also He went and preached to the spirits in prison, which afore-time were disobedient, when the long suffering of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing." " Who shall give account unto him that is ready to judge the living and the dead; for unto this end were good tidings preached even to the dead, that they might be judged according to men in the flesh; but may live according to God in the spirit."
In these words, as was well understood in the days of primitive Christianity, St. Peter explicitly declares (he having the keys of the kingdom of heaven to open its mysteries, one of them being the "key of Hades and of Death "), that when Christ died in the flesh He was still alive in the spirit; and in the spirit went and preached glad tidings to the spirits of dead men in the prison of the abyss (the same word prison which in Revelation, 20.7, is applied to the subterranean place of detention of Satan during the millennium); spirits who had once, in the " old world," been disobedient in the days of Noah; it may be many of them dwelling in Paleolithic ages, as prehistoric men, over wide areas of the peopled earth, where no warning reached them. Here, then, is a plain apostolic statement, which in all early times was taken in its obvious sense, that the oldest of the ancient dead, as a beginning of the work, was evangelized by the spirit of the dead Savior during His descent into the prison of Hades. And the reason given for evangelizing them is, " that they might be judged by Jesus Christ," by the same rule, and the same Person, as others who had heard the Gospel on earth—that is, by the Gospel message itself, so that they might " live according to God in the spirit."
But this seems plainly to carry with it the principle, that since Jesus Christ is appointed to judge both the living and the dead, the 'dead must all hear of Him, specially if they have been cut off in their sins, or in a state of gross ignorance in religious truth. By these words a flood of light is thrown upon the Divine dealings with sinful multitudes of those who have died in heathen darkness or twilight. Every human soul survives, but survival is not immortality. It may be that no such ignorant soul reaches the crucial point of its probation (as Godet suggests on Luke 16.25), till it has come into contact here or beyond, with the knowledge of God as God of salvation. " He who does not believe in the Son has not life," but not to believe implies that one has been placed in a position to decide for or against Christ, or what Christ represents, and cannot be applied to those to whom this alternative has never been clearly proposed. It is here we should recall the Savior's declarations: "If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin." (John, 15. 22.) It does not follow that all would believe in Him there; for this is wide as the poles asunder from the doctrine of Universalism. The diamond of the Gospel " knew " who Christ was, seemingly, without being saved by Him. The "diamond believe and tremble." But this light of hope irradiates the heathen world, as a whole, with a wide luster of Divine mercy, for it shows us that multitudes who have died in " ignorance," and died in these " sins " of ignorance, having never heard an effectual call to repentance and pardon, will be visited with the Divine grace be-yond with better opportunities of repentance and faith, so as to swell the innumerable company of those who shall be redeemed by the blood of the Lamb to life everlasting. "The times of ignorance God winked at," overlooked, reserving His fierce indignation for those who were not ignorant, but presumptuous sinners; and so bringing to Himself a multitude that no man can number, of " every nation, and kindred, and people and tongue."
All this we may hold and teach without weakening in the slightest degree the awful message to be delivered to mankind living today—that whosoever hears and rejects the true Gospel of pardon and repentance now shall find no place of repentance in Hades, but shall be " punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord" at the Great Judgment. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation!" If ye believe not that I am He, ye shall die in your sins."
Meantime the duty of to-day is to sound the alarm, and proclaim the glad tidings with authority and determination throughout the world, " Repent and believe the Gospel, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." The times of ignorance God has overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent; because He hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom he Hath ordained. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned;" and then there remains nothing but a certain fearful looking for of judgment, and fiery indignation, which shall eat up the adversary. Here then is every stimulus to proclaim to all mankind the Gospel of repentance and everlasting life, and every conceivable motive is brought to bear upon all who hear it, to remember that for them " Today is the day of Salvation," and that the fool's " to-morrow " never comes.
The other chapters alluded to by the Author in the foregoing pages, should be read by those who are favored with these lines. SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE ON THE HEATHEN can be obtained of the Publishers, in London.
By the Rev. HENRY CONSTABLE, M. A.; Late Prebendary of Cork, Ireland. Author of " Hades," " The Duration and Nature of Future Punishment," etc.
IN connection with the great question of future punishment there is no point of greater—I may say, of equal importance, with that which you have asked me to lecture on—namely--the Natural Immortality of Man. The whole question of the future of the wicked hinges upon this point. What is meant by Man's Natural Immortality is, that all men, be they good or evil, believers or unbelievers, Christian or Heathen, must by the gift of God bestowed upon human nature at the creation of man, live forever.
If this were the case one or other of two views as to the future of the wicked must follow as a matter of course. If the wicked indeed can never find an end to their existence, they must either, with Augustine, live on in hell an endless life of agony, or they must, with Origen, after a period, more or less protracted, of suffering, be restored to the favor of God. Accordingly, both these schools, diametrically opposed to each other in their conclusion—agree on one grand premise. They both attribute an inalienable immortality to man. They both suppose that the soul of man can never die. While, in connection with this immortal soul through the resurrection, a like immortality will be hereafter bestowed upon the body. " Some things," says the Christian Father, Tertullian, one of the earliest advocates of the Augustinian theory, are known even by nature, as for instance, the immortality of the soul. I may use therefore the opinion of Plato, when he declares, " every soul is immortal." (11,220, Roberts, Ed.) And Origen says:—" Souls are immortal even as God Himself is eternal and immortal. For He made the rational nature, which he formed in his own image and likeness—incorruptible." (1,187, Roberts.) In the opinion of the inalienable immortality of the soul, connected with a great Scriptural truth, each of these opposite schools relies for the truth of its theory. Thus, the eternity of punishment is undoubtedly a doctrine of Scripture.
The Augustinian School unites this to its idea of man's immortality, and frames the terrible doctrine, at which all minds stand aghast —of myriads existing in agony as long as God Himself exists. Again,—the utter extinction of evil is another truth of Scripture. Origen united this with his notion of immortality, and produced the theory of universal restoration after long ages of suffering in hell.
The theory which we advocate takes to itself one of the main points of each of these rival systems, namely, that Scriptural truth which each beyond a doubt possesses. With Augustine we adopt the eternity of future punishment; with Origen we adopt the final extinction and blotting out of evil. These truths—contradicting each other in the systems of Augustine and Origen—harmonize in, and form ours. United, they form our Scriptural theory of " Everlasting Destruction," which, being the deprivation of everlasting life inflicted on the sinner as a punishment, is also an everlasting punishment. Eternal Death is at once an eternal punishment and the everlasting blotting out of evil from the universe of God.
In adopting one point from each of these systems, you will have perceived that we have dropped another. We have adopted the point in which they oppose each other; we have dropped that in which they are agreed, namely-the immortality of the sinner.
So here comes the grand question,—where did they get their doctrine of immortality? They cannot assume it as a truth, however convenient or essential it may be to each. They must prove its truth by fair and honest reasons before we will permit one or other of them to use it as a base for their system.
In arguing this point with them, we begin by allowing to the full all that can fairly be claimed. So far from this being a help to the error we oppose, it is the only effectual way to overthrow it. All serious error consists of truth mixed with falsehood. There has never been an error of any standing and permanence that has not had a very considerable admixture of truth. If you oppose the whole thing, and every part of it, you are opposing truth as well as error, and will probably fail. If you distinguish and separate the truth from the falsehood—allow the truth and claim it for your own—then hold up the falsehood in its bare naked light, it is at once seen to be an error and falls helpless to the ground.
Now in this question of the immortality of all men there is a very great deal of truth to lend the coloring of heaven to the falsehood we condemn. This admixture of truth is partly derived from Scripture; it also comes forth strong and in earnest out of the instincts and longings of the human heart.
Man was created some 6,000 years ago, and he was made an immortal, being. " Let us make man in our own image, after our likeness," said the Creator, when he took the dust of the earth, molded it with the human figure, formed its wondrous mechanism, and breathed into it the breath of life. (Gen. 1. 26, 27.) We do not speak, nor does Scripture speak, of one part only of human nature, the soul: we speak, as Scripture speaks, of the entire man—the living creature made of earth animated by the breath of life. We say that no creature made in the image of God could, while in that likeness, die. The Life of God stretching out into a boundless eternity, would find its true reflection in the endless life of the creature that was made like unto Him.
If we had any doubt upon this, Scripture would remove it. To Adam, made in God's likeness, it was said, "in the day thou eats, thou shalt die." (Gen. 2. 17.) Hence we gather that if Adam had not sinned neither would he have died. Paul teaches us the same truth when he says, "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." (Rom. 5. 12.) Hence we gather that if there had not been sin neither would there have been death.
We thus see one great original distinction made by God between man and all the lower creatures. These were made subject to death: man was not. The strength of the horse was ever but a fading thing. It had indeed its neck clothed with thunder; the glory of his nostrils was a thing of terror; he pawed the valley and went forth rejoicing in his strength: (Job 39.) but all this was to grow less and to diminish till once again the feebleness of opening life was reached, was passed, and the war horse returned to its dust again. Not so Man! He was made to live on forever. On that frame of dignity no trace of weakness was to come;—on that face of heavenly beauty no shadow of decay was to fall:—on that soul which swelled the muscles and beamed out through the eyes, destruction was never to lay its wasting hand. Years that could not be numbered; ten thousand times ten thousand of thousands were to roll by, and still no feebleness was to come to the limbs, no diminished freshness to the face of eternal youth. Events were to come and pass away in that end. less life:—occupation to fill every one of its innumerable hours, and still no lassitude, no weariness—such as now comes to man the child of toil, and tells him that the hour is coming, even to the strongest, when the "grasshopper shall be a burden, and the silver cord shall be loosed, and the pitcher shall be broken at the fountain " because the inevitable hour is closing in fast with its deep shadows, when " man goes to his long home, and the dust returns to its earth." Such was man.
Man is not -such now! Man sinned. The image of God was lost. The likeness of divinity was effaced. The immortal life vanished like a dissolving view. Man became subject to death. Sinful Man is not an immortal, but a mortal creature.
And yet—does there linger in our hearts any trace Of the old feeling that in unfallen Adam was the heart's vigorous pulse of Immortality? There does.
A child has gone forth in shame from a father's blessing, and a mother's love. Far away, in the haunts of vice, she has flung away the tenderness, the modesty, the purity, the beauty, of woman's character! But, does she never revert in sad thought to the home and the fireside from which she has been cut off? Ah, yes, she does. She is walking far away in the gas-light of the great city's street, but in thought she has strayed back to where a homestead casts a peaceful shadow from the pure autumnal moon, in thought she stands at its doorway where in innocence she had played and sang: in thought she longs to walk even feebly there, to rush in and ask to be its child once more.
Even such a feeling is in the human heart with reference to its old life in the Paradise of its father's house. We speak not of it as we feel it who have God's revelation of a future life in our hands. We speak of it as it exists in lands which have no revelation of it in their possession. Man has a longing for life. He does not like to die, and yet he sees all around him dying. He gazes on the face of death, and he sees no hope there. He sees corruption asserting its mastery, and he sees no hope there. He sees what was once the figure of a man reduced to earth no way distinguishable from the other earth around, and he sees no hope there. But, straightway he looks elsewhere. He hopes that something has escaped the corruption of the grave—the realm of death. That something he calls his soul. And so, the philosopher sits down in his study, and draws out a pleasing, plausible theory of the immortality of the soul: the poor Indian gazing on the rays of the western sun that come ruddy and glowing, blushing over the swellings of his vast prairie land, hopes—thinks—sometimes almost believes that " Admitted to yon equal sky, His faithful dog shall bear him company."
We may not jest at the Indian's fancy—at the cobweb woven by the philosopher's dream. It is the human heart, in its fall and its degradation, going back more or less consciously to the old home of Eden and its old life of immortality.
Nor is this grand idea vain! They were indeed but a few, compared with the many, who held it at all:—but a very few, compared with the great multitude, who held it with any steadfastness or strength. The common idea that the heathen world of the apostolic age as a rule believed in man's immortality, or in any future life of any kind, is as untrue as it is common. I will show you its untruth. In 1 Thess. 4.13, Paul is comforting the Thessalonian believers grieving at the death of their friends. His consolation is that their sorrow need not be excessive who had a hope in Christ of seeing their loved ones again. In thus comforting believers he tells us expressly that the heathen world around them had no hope of ever again beholding those who had died. " I would not have you to be ignorant (he says), concerning them that are asleep, that ye sorrow not, even as others (i.e., the Gentiles) who have no hope." While our teachers and preachers are telling us that belief in immortality was universal in the heathen world, Paul who knew that world well, tells us it had no faith in any future life, and no hope beyond the grave.
Again, what does Justin, a Christian Father and Martyr of the second century, say of heathen belief? These are his words: "they believe that there is nothing after death, but declare that those who die pass into insensibility." (P .56, Roberts's Ed.) And what does Tertullian say of the same? He says: " to the belief of the resurrection truth compels us that truth which God reveals, but the crowd derides, which supposes that nothing will survive after death." (11. 215, Roberts.) "The wise too," he adds, " join with the vulgar crowd in their opinion sometimes. There is nothing after death, according to the school of Epicurus." (2.216.) When you are told then that all the world firmly believed in the immortality of the soul you may tell the men who repeat this old falsehood that, on the authority of the Apostle Paul and the early Christian fathers, you know that the world has no such faith at all.
Their poets indeed sang of Elysian fields and Tartarus as themes to kindle a poet's fancy; but the bulk of heathen philosophers directed their ridicule and their reasoning against all such ideas, and the mass of mankind laughed at the notion of a future either of bliss or of pain. A few only—men beyond their faith and their day—men we are fain to think led by a spirit who may work outside of Covenant or Promise —clasped the grand idea of immortality to their heart of hearts, though with a sinking and an uncertainty that in time of trouble, when death came and looked them full in the face, made them fear that their grand idea was but a dream. But it was not—all of it—the good and glorious part of it—a dream. It had a foundation, not only in the longing of great minds, but in the purpose of that Father who made minds capable of this vast grasping thought. To that hope which hoped against hope,—to that instinct which taught where reason was dumb,—to that longing of noble hearts which rose up even amid the graveyards and the sepulchral urns, and monumental stones which spoke of mortality,—there was ever intended and there came at last a full and glorious reply from the God who had—from behind the cloud—watched the sad fortunes of his child since first he strayed, and purposed to bring him back.
Something of this kind was conveyed in the few dark words that in Eden spoke of hope from the moment that man sinned: " the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." (Gen. 2.15.) As the mortal who had just lost his immortality pondered over these mystic words, surely the thought came to the heart within, shall not the coming child give me back my Life?
More and more rolled out the scroll of prophecy, and still, as it rolled out and unfolded its wondrous page, came out God's purpose of blessing with respect to man; and a new, strange, heavenly light was seen to shine where to the dark heathen mind no light had ever shone;—and it shone upon the grave;—and belief began to see with somewhat of distinctness what the old promise of Eden meant, when words such as these burnt from Hosea's lips: " I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death; 0 death I will be thy plagues; 0 grave I will be thy destruction," (13.14.); or, words such as these from the great evangelical prophet: " 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.) At length came the last and the highest of all Heaven's Messengers. Good men had risen up and spoken the words of God. Angels had sped to and fro and shown their sympathy with man. But at last came the Virgin Child who was also The Lord from Heaven, the Eternal Son of the Father, taking on Him our nature that He might restore our nature to its first estate.
The highest of all messengers should have the highest of all messages to deliver,—and He had. What would be the highest best news that could reach a creature's ear, who was made immortal and had lost his immortality? It would be—Life —Eternal Life—the old first Life given back again!
Now Life was pre-eminently the Message, i.e., the Gospel, the Good News of Jesus Christ.
Read his words, especially as they are recorded by that Evangelist St. John, who leaned in Jesus's bosom and was nearest to his heart. Is it not ever of Life that he speaks, of Eternal Life, in his hands to give, of his bounty to bestow, offered back to man through the Redeemer's work and death? Tell me what else is the ever recurring burden of that noblest of our Gospels where the dark parable is almost laid aside for words of pellucid clearness.
Jesus stands near the grave of Lazarus and speaks to Martha, the sister of the dead.
She tells him that she believes in a resurrection in some far off time. He tells her to look at Him as that present resurrection power which is to destroy, so far as it is to be destroyed, the empire of the grave. " Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life; he that believeth in me though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever lives and believeth in me shall never die." (11.25.) Hear again what the Savior says of his sheep redeemed by Him: " My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of my hand." (10.27.) Hear again what He saith of them who feed on Him: "This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever." (6.51.)
Here is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Here is the good news brought by Him from heaven to earth. Our Immortality—the eternal life we lost by the first Adam's sin restored -to the believer's faith by Him on whom that faith is placed.
Fallen man immortal! Fallen man to live forever! Oh! No! That was the Devil's lie whispered in Eve's ear in Eden and by her believed to the destruction and death of her children. Impenitent and unbelieving men restored to immortality by Christ! No! That was not his teaching. Listen to Him as He spoke to the blind Pharisees: " Ye will not come to me that ye might have life." (5.40.) "I said therefore unto you that ye shall die in your sins; for if ye believe not that I am He ye shall die in your sins."
Or listen to Christ's great true Apostle Paul. Did Paul believe that all men had immortality? Did he believe that this was a condition inalienably attached to human nature by God's old art of creation so that neither sin, nor unbelief, nor wickedness could deprive him of it? Listen to his words, and reject them not. In Rom. 2. 6-7, he says, "God will render to every man according to his deeds: to them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory and honor and immortality—eternal life."
Men and Brethren,—what is the apostle's teaching here? He puts immortality before us,—not as a thing which we are all possessed of, whether we like it or not—but as a grand reward and gift to be realized through, and only through, a life of holy faith. Here is Paul's comment on his dear Master's words. The im-mortality he speaks of is the eternal life which Jesus gave to his people. Here was his gift—the fruit of the bitter travail of his soul. He asked life as man for Himself from God, and God gave Him a long life even forever and ever. But it was as the great representative Man that He asked and got this eternal life. When He asked it for Himself He asked it for His people. When He received it for Himself He received it for His people. " He gives to them eternal life."
Immortality! Glorious Thought! Great Possession of God! I We lost it in the first Adam. We may have it back again in the Second Adam.
We may have it back again with no further danger of its loss, in the endless life of God, for of those who shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and that resurrection which alone deserve the name of resurrection since it is the resurrection to the new eternal life,—of such Christ says—" neither can they die anymore; for they are equal unto the angels: and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection." (Luke 20.36.)
Here is the Gospel of Jesus Christ, long obscured by philosophical theories and human traditions, but now breaking out again upon us as it broke out upon a dark world in the first ages of the Gospel, bringing life and immortality to light; showing us how immortality is to be ours, not by virtue of our descent from a fallen parent who could not transmit to us what he had lost, but by virtue of our faith in Him who came to be head both to the redeemed race of man and give them who formed the new creation of God that which the old had forfeited. "As in Adam all die "—since they were all descended from him—all partakers of the nature into which the seeds of corruption had entered—so in Christ shall they all be made alive "—since they have received the second spiritual birth in Christ,—and are " begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead." (1 Pet. 1.3.) To all such Christ is the living head, and they the living members of his body As Adam is the head of a world that dies and fades away from earth, so is Christ the head of a new world that will never die, that will rise or be changed when the Lord from Heaven descends to call his people together—to give them this earth renewed to be their earth forever— and to rule over them the eternal King of an immortal race made immortal by Him.
Such was the Gospel proclaimed by Christ, and taught to the churches of the primitive time. Even now we have in our hands some precious writings which have come down to us from times when men had not learned to spoil Christianity by an admixture with philosophy.
In the writings of Clement the friend of Paul of Polycarp the disciple of John, and of others of that old time, we have no speech of that natural immortality of the soul which is proclaimed to us through pulpit and through press.
When they speak of Immortality they speak of it as a gift bestowed by God upon believers—as a grace breathed by Christ unto his church. But we have other writings which soar as far above those of Clement and Polycarp and Hermas as God's spirit above that of man. We have God's own, blessed, inspired word.
In that word from Genesis to Revelation—throughout its History, its Prophecy, its Gospels, its Epistles,—there is no text—no stray word which attributes immortality to fallen man. £1,000 has been offered for such a text, and no one in this age of Mammon has come forward to claim the prize. The sum might indeed be multiplied by tens, or by thousands, until the figures stretched out beyond man's calculation, for in all Scripture no such text is to be found. I have read my Bible many times over and have not seen it. So have hundreds and thousands of Bible students, but no such text has been seen by any of them. But there are—thanks to our Loving Father and our Dear Redeemer—hundreds of texts which tell me and you, dear Brethren—of immortality and eternal life to be had in, and through, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Books and authors upon the primitive, "martyr faith," concerning immortality.
|
No. |
Title |
Author |
|
1 |
Conditional immortality, |
Rev. J. W. Hobson. |
|
2 |
Conditional immortality, |
W. R. Huntington, D. D. |
|
3 |
Considerations on the theory of religion, |
Bishop Law. |
|
4 |
Christ our life, |
Prof. C. F. Hudson. |
|
5 |
Debt and grace, |
Prof. C. F. Hudson. |
|
6 |
Human destiny, |
Prof. C. F. Hudson. |
|
7 |
Destiny of the human race, |
Henry Dunn. |
|
8 |
Dialogues on future punishment, |
Rev. W. Glen Moncrieff. |
|
9 |
Doom of the wicked, |
Ami Bost. |
|
10 |
Duration of evil, |
John Sheppard. |
|
11 |
Ecclesiastical essays, |
Sir James Stephen. |
|
12 |
Endless sufferings not the doctrine of scripture, |
Rev. Thomas Davis, M. A. |
|
13 |
Evidence of evangelists and apostles on future punishment, |
Rev. Wm. Griffith. |
|
14 |
Eschatology, |
Rev. E. S. Stanley. |
|
15 |
Eternal life, |
Rev. Mr. De Burgh. |
|
16 |
Eternal death, |
Prof. Barlow. |
|
17 |
Fragment of autobiography, |
Rev. Samuel Minton, M. A. |
|
18 |
Three letters, |
Rev. Samuel Minton, M. A. |
|
19 |
Future punishment, |
Rev. H. H. Dobney. |
|
20 |
Future retribution, |
Rev. C. A. Row. |
|
21 |
Future state, |
Richard Whately, D. D. |
|
22 |
God's mercy in punishment, |
Emanuel Petavel, D. D. |
|
23 |
The problem of immortality, |
Emanuel Petavel, D. D. |
|
24 |
The struggle for eternal life, |
Emanuel Petavel, D. D. |
|
25 |
Hades, |
Rev. Henry Constable, M. A. |
|
26 |
Nature and duration of future punishment, |
Rev. Henry Constable, M. A. |
|
27 |
Immortality in Christ, |
Rev. W. Ker. |
|
28 |
Immortality; whence, and for whom? |
Rev. W. Ker. |
|
29 |
Life and death, |
Rev. J. Panton Ham. |
|
30 |
Life in Christ, |
Rev. Edward White. |
|
31 |
Life and death, |
Rev. Edward White. |
|
32 |
Life only in Christ, |
Rev. George Storrs. |
|
33 |
Our hope, |
Rev. E. A. Stockman. |
|
34 |
Pauline theology, |
Rev. H. L. Hastings. |
|
35 |
Platonism versus Christianity, |
Rev. J. H. Pettingell, A. M. |
|
36 |
The theological trilemma, |
Rev. J. H. Pettingell, A. M. |
|
37 |
The life everlasting, |
Rev. J. H. Pettingell, A. M. |
|
38 |
The unspeakable gift, |
Rev. J. H. Pettingell, A. M. |
|
39 |
Promise of life, |
Rev. J. B. Tinling, B. A. |
|
40 |
Reasonableness of Christianity, |
John Locke. |
|
41 |
Ruin and recovery of mankind, |
Isaac Watts, D. D. |
|
42 |
Sin and redemption, |
E. Menegoz. |
|
43 |
The bible doctrine of the soul, |
Prof. C. L. Ives. |
|
44 |
The doctrine of immortality, |
Rev. James H. Whitmore. |
|
45 |
The life everlasting. |
Rev. George R. Kramer; |
|
46 |
The perishing soul, |
Rev. John Deniston, M. A. |
|
47 |
The tripartite nature of man, |
Rev. J. B. Heard, M. A. |
|
48 |
The triumph of life, |
Rev. T. S. Potwin. |
|
49 |
The intermediate state, |
Henry Grew. |
Also other books and authors have aided in the revival of this apostolic faith once everywhere delivered to the saints.
ALMIGHTY God, give us grace that we may cast away the works of darkness, and put upon us the armor of light, now in the time of this mortal life, in which thy Son Jesus Christ came to visit us in great humility; that in the last day, when he shall come again in his glorious Majesty to judge both the quick and dead, we may rise to the life immortal, through him who lives and reigned with thee and the Holy Ghost, now and ever. Amen.
http://www.creationismonline.com/TSK/Immortality.html