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THE

NEW ENGLANDER.

No. LIV.

MAY, 1856.

ART. I.-IMMORTALITY: THE ARGUMENT FROM SCRIPTURE.

OUR previous Article* refers the whole question of man's immortality to the will of God. An argument from Nature is only our inference of that will from the disclosures of God in the material universe and in the consciousness of the human soul. In these, and especially in the latter, we find evidence of a God of wisdom, justice and goodness. From these attributes the inference is irresistible, to a Divine Will, ordaining endless existence to all to whom such an existence would be an endless progress in virtue and bliss. But in regard to those irrevocably moving toward an opposite moral destiny, the voice of nature, though unmistakably predicting a future life as a necessity of Divine justice and moral government, seems to some not so explicitly to assure immortality. Contrawise, rather, the very attributes of the Godhead, which guarantee to the good an everlasting being, might be regarded as necessarily dooming the wicked to ultimate annihilation; or at least as creating in behalf of that doctrine, so strong a presumption as to be entitled materially to modify and control our interpretation of the Scriptures.

Our argument thus far has been engaged in combating such

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a presumption; in showing the insufficiency of the grounds and the invalidity of the assumptions on which it rests; and that our ignorance of the moral system and economy under which we now are, ill entitles us to dogmatize in regard to that which is to be. The very same difficulties and mysteries embarrass the existence of evil in the present world, that are supposed to forbid its existence in the eternal future; and they require, as far as we can see, that the wicked should have never been at all, not less than that they should forever cease to be. Our ignorance of the law or principle which underlies the origin and continuance of evil, makes us incompetent to limit its scope and duration. But reasoning from the analogy of nature, we should infer from its present existence, spite of seeming mysteries and difficulties, its not improbable coëxistence with them hereafter.

Thus far the aim of our argument has been simply negative; to disabuse the question of alleged prejudgments of nature; to show that at least she has not decided it adversely to the doctrine of immortality. The position of this question before the tribunal of nature throws the burthen of proof on the deniers of the doctrine of immortality. Viewed in relation to an enduring moral system, the present actual existence of a moral being is a fact presumptive of its continued existence, and the denier is bound to show cause why it shall cease to be, i. e., he must show that the reasons of its present existence will cease, or that new forces and influences will arise that will overrule these reasons. In order to establish his thesis, it will not suffice him to present mere conjecture, or to meet hypothesis even with counter hypothesis; but, for a change in the economy, if not in the system of Divine Government, from what we now behold, we are entitled to claim clear and positive proof, evidence direct and unequivocal, to the point, that the reasons for the present existence of the wicked shall not be forever, or that mightier reasons will overrule these, and that no other exigency for that existence shall arise; an argument for which manifestly God's mind alone is adequate, requiring as it does the establishment of a universal negative. But if nature is incompetent to this argument, she is incompetent to prejudge the question, or even to create presumption adversely to immortality. Certainly she is not authorized to prescribe to Revelation what it shall teach in regard to it, much less to wrest by forced exegesis inspired declarations from their natural import.

We might have attempted more; there are not wanting the elements for constructing a positive argument from nature.

But happily, in the clearer light of revelation, we do not need it. Collated with that express testimony, it might perhaps seem to enfeeble what it would strengthen. We have supposed it requisite only to remove imagined presumptions and prejudg ments of nature, on which, we are confident, more than on scriptural interpretation, the denial of immortality ultimately reposes; and from which, we believe, more than any canon, philological or logical, of hermeneutics, a forced and erroneus exegesis has arisen. Apart from these, we think more than one interpretation of the teaching of the Scriptures on this theme would hardly have been thought of.

Let us then now take the case from the tribunal of nature, as of dubious or incompetent jurisdiction, and bear it up before the great white throne." We have its rescript. Let us with awe and humility interpret the record.

We now, therefore, interrogate the facts and teachings of the Scriptures in regard to the destiny of our race. We have in the Old Testament a God revealed-Jehovah, the infinitely wise, just and good; we have also disclosed, a moral government of the universe, a future judgment, a "resurrection to everlasting life, and to shame and everlasting contempt."* We hear it announced far back in the elder world, "The wicked, though he dies in his full strength, with his breasts full of milk and his bones moistened with marrow," yet "is reserved for the day of destruction, and shall be brought forth at the day of wrath,"+ that "God shall bring every work into judgment with every secret thing." We are told of those that walked with God, whom God took, and who in chariots of fire passed to the realms of the deathless; and also of the spirits of the dead that were disturbed by the unholy invocation of the children of evil, whose practice of necromancy indicated the general belief of the spiritual existence of the dead. A future life unquestionably, though indistinctly, loomed up before the human mind.

Still these ages of the old dispensation had but a twilight illumination of the realm beyond the grave. But in the fulness of times, came to our world one mightier than death-who broke for man the closures of Hades and brought to light (i. e., manifested clearly to man) not only life, but immortality. That he fully accomplished this by his instructions and his own mighty example and by the teachings of the spirit he sent forth, needs no proof to those to whom this argument can be addressed; viz: believers in revelation. Another life, a future

* Dan xii, 2.

Job xxi, 23, 24, 30.

+ Eccles. xii, 14.

realm and sphere of being, a universal resurrection, an eternal judgment, an everlasting doom beyond-that all these are familiar and explicit doctrines of his religion, of course we need not prove. Nor is it less clear, that he indubitably teaches the happy immortality of the righteous.

That the sacred oracle brings forward those of both classes of moral character, the good and the evil, to the day of judgment; that it there presents them alike,-brought, through whatever gulfs of being may intervene, with existence inextinct for the eternal award-admits of no controversy. From that throne of judgment their destinies diverge forever; the one class entering into life everlasting, the other going away into everlasting punishment. Of the life everlasting the award of the righteous there is no question but that it imports or implies endless existence. But that other awful term of doom, that makes the final phrase of the history of the children of sin that "everlasting punishment"-what shall it be? "What," would not the plain unprejudiced common-sense reader ask-" what shall it be but everlasting shame and sorrow?" It would seem it could hardly suggest or admit any other than the above import, unless under the force of hermeneutics that bring to the exegesis of it, a prejudgment, of what befits God's character, and of what inspiration must teach concerning the destiny of the lost.

Still there are minds in our times-minds too which we respect for sagacity, erudition and piety-that do take this term of doom in another sense. We raise no question of their candor or sincerity, but we cannot resist the impression that with them, though without their consciousness, natural theology is father to revealed; and that philosophy and prejudgment of what the Word of God must teach, have much to do with their interpreting what it does teach. They contend that everlasting punishment means, or at least is compatible with, annihilation. They maintain that everlasting punishment, even if everlasting be taken in the sense of endless, which they affirm can be questioned, does not of necessity imply everlasting existence; that its import may be satisfied by a punishment whose effects are everlasting, i. e., one from which there shall be no recovery.

They claim, moreover, that such a limitation of the term is necessary to reconcile it with other Scripture, where words significant of utter and total extinction of being are applied to the future destiny of the wicked, such as death, destruction, "everlasting destruction," perishing, perdition, and the like. They tell us, moreover, that Jesus Christ is presented in the Scrip

tures as the author of life; and that eternal life-by which they understand eternal existence-is promised by him to those only who believe in him; while death, or the negation of existence, is denounced as the doom of those who believe not; and, moreover, that the agent or instrument of future punishment, "fire," is one whose nature is to consume, not conserve in pain, so that, whether it is to be interpreted figuratively or literally, it is evidently designed to convey the idea of the utter destruction of its victim. Such are the grounds, philological and exegetical, upon which the argument for annihilation is defended, and on which, presumptions from nature being abandoned, it must be sustained, if all.

Now the simple question before us, we premise here, is, What is a fair interpretation of language? Not, what is suitable to our notions of God's nature or government; or what may arm the gospel with the most powerful incentives; or what may seem to us most safe or expedient to promulgate; or what most enhances the value of the soul. Such considerations we discard as alien to our present inquiry, and tending only to perturb the mind with influences having no connection with evidences of truth or falsehood. It is not ours, in determining a question of Divine doctrine, to inquire after what is safe or prudent to be taught, or what is requisite to give motive power to the gospel, or dignity to the human soul. These questions are God's; and we best seek their solution when we inquire, what is truth? what is God's teaching and God's arrangement? Let us not presume to be wiser than God, or to understand better than He, the true forces of the gospel. Nor again, let us permit the logical and philological import of language to be overruled by our fears for God's honor, or the integrity of his wisdom, justice, and benevolence. God will care for his own honor, and he knows perfectly what is congruous with his wisdom, justice, and goodness. God hath spoken! we have to do, simply, with the inquiry, What hath he said? God hath spoken to man. He has spoken then, according to the laws of human language, and is to be interpreted according to the laws of human speech. The question before us now, let us bear in mind then, is not one of philosophy, but purely of criticism, philologic and exegetical. It bears through awful deeps, it is true, but they are deeps beyond our philosophic soundings; and there is the more need, manifestly, that we follow in childlike trust and simplicity, the Divine voice.

Our present argument claims, that approached and interpreted in this spirit, the Scriptures do teach the immortal existence of the wicked, by direct, deliberate, formal declarations, as,

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