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 1 
 
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p 
 
 
THE BTBLE 
 
 VINDICATED AGAINST 
 
 Modern Theology; 
 
 OR, 
 
 TRUTH VS. TRADITION ; LIFE AND DEATH REALITIES ; THE 
 
 QUESTION OF QUESTIONS ANSWERED; ORTHODOXY 
 
 AGAINST ITSELF ; THE BIBLE NOT RESPONSIBLE 
 
 FOR THE OPINIONS OF THE SCHOOLS AND 
 
 DIVINITIES ; WHAT AM 1 1 AND 
 
 WHITHER AM I GOING? 
 
 A MASS OF TESTIMONY FROM VARIOUS SOURCES, 
 ANCIENT AND MODERN ; 
 
 KELATINO TO THE SUBJECTH OF LIKE AND DKiVTH ; MORTALITY AND IMHOKTALITY ; 
 
 MATTER ANU MINI) ; MATERIALISM AND IMMATKtvIALIHM ; TRIVILEOK AND UE8P0N8I- 
 
 UILITY ; THE UTER^VL AM) Hl'I RITUAL OR ALLEGORICAL ; UEHENNA, HELL, AND 
 
 THE OIUVE ; ETERNAL TORMENTS AND EVERLAHTINU IiESTUUCTION ; HUMAN 
 
 TBADiriON AND DIVINE KNOWLEDGE ; REHURRECTION AND JUDGMENT; 
 
 THE KINGDOM OK (iOD AND THE AGE TO COME, &C., &C., 
 
 COMI'ARED WITH MCRIITURK. 
 
 CONNECTED AND ARRANGED 
 BY A CHRISTADELPHIAN. 
 
 " Tho wages of sin is death." ' 
 
 " The deail know not anything. " 
 
 " Ktemal Life in the Gift of God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 TORONTO: 
 
 PRINTED BY HUNTBR, ROSE & CO., 25 WELLINGTON ST. WEST. 
 
 1876. 
 
H!>68 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The copiousness of the " Table of Contents " well nigh precludes the 
 rit'cessity of any preface to this Compilation, yet a word^or two may not 
 be oui of place. 
 
 Tlie work is more especially intended for that portion of the reading 
 public .'/ho have been accustomed from childhood upwards to regard the 
 Bible as a Revelation from Almighty God, and who cappose, in all sin- 
 cerity, that the Clergy of the various denominations of our day are en- 
 gaged in the great wurk of unfolding its celestial truths to mankind. 
 
 We bespeak a careful perusal of the Testimonies herein adduced at 
 the hands of such, so that after " Examination had," they may be the 
 better fitted to comply with the Apostolic injunction : " Prove all things, 
 hold fast that which is good." " To the Law and to the Testimony" is an 
 admonition as necessary to daj as when enunciated by the Hebrew Pro- 
 phet nearly 3,000 years ago, an J one which will remain in force so long 
 as Truth and Error co-exist in our world. 
 
 To " try the Spirits (or Teachers) whether they are of God " would 
 be but a solemn mockery to every earnest anxious mind apart from the 
 capacity so to do. That this collation of Testimonies may assii^t some 
 in giving heed, and rendering obedience to the Divine Commands, is the 
 sole .aim and earnest desire of 
 
 THE COMPILER. 
 
 li 
 ' (I 
 
 i. 
 
 P.S.— The "Errata LiHt " in hhis Edition is rather a formidablo one. It .iriBes not 
 from any remissnesH on the PrinterH* part, but from the presswre of buaineHB, conjoined 
 with poor health, under which the compiler's friend at the Capital laboured while 
 [•assinjf it through the Press. In future issues thin will be rectified. 
 
■« 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 MK. WOLLASTON'W SERMON. 
 
 Pidl. 
 Doctrines nf oriireti— of Tortuniaii and AtiiniHtinv Ilraveii ami Hell— I'mvatory—natural m- 
 morUlity iiowhtTe tauKlit in tho Dihle—a I'ajfan (lii(;trlnn oiiKTHfti'd u|)on the t'tirlxtian (a th 
 — tmniortnlity a free )(ift, tn lie lieHtowed iipini ciMKlition."- the \va({<'8 of nin Ik iletith ileath 
 a state iif iinconHciiuisiieHs- natural iniinditality not a doctrine of the Chnruli <>f England — 
 Elysium— TartariH— the AcheruHian Lake - Clement A'honaiforaa, Matthew xxv. 4(5— Evcf- 
 laHtinir punishment means Ktenial death -Klliott— man mortal— duty uf investit^tini; ami 
 proving this and all other doctrineN. 1-5 
 
 INTKODUCTION. 
 
 No apology needetl neamesH of the time of trouble dlstin^aiiHhlnn chanwtcrUtictt of men in 
 the last days— un-lK.llef- hltunlism— rntionallMtie infidelity -durabillly of the earth mherit- 
 ance of the meek— the way of life — arbitrary and inianthorizcd interpretation of Script\ire— 
 eternal torment not a doctrine of tho Church of Kn^land (.'hriMtadclphianx not the oriKlnaton 
 of the doctrine of human mortality Paul liefore Kelix the sect everywhere (t|K)ken against— 
 presumption — igiioranee- theological thraldom- mental indc|)cndenee--nceessity for invcstig- 
 Htlem — Luther— mental conscr\'ati»m- mental change obstacles to free investigation — the 
 wise shall understand- love of truth — Whately — Deity works by agents or nunisters human 
 agency — Philip and the Eunuch -the Waldcnses and Albigenscs -the truth sniMluod — 
 Apostacy— resuscitation In the latter days— I)r. Thomas, his mission his expositions of 
 Scripture doctrines, traditions, and commandments of men- Mr. Kobcrts— Canon King«ley 
 — Vlnet— Theophilus Trinal— " Edinlni'gh Review "—" Montreal Witness "—study of pro- 
 phecy—learning to unlearn -obstacles to the prevalence of the truth — modern persecution- 
 union and unity— Dr. Whitby— PCre Hyaeintho— the old Catholics -unity of fsilh-Dr. 
 Chalmers- man must dig for knowledge— rules for mrc'rprolatlon of the Scriptures rules 
 for studying the Scriptures — the Sr>phi8t and Thco-sophist the crisis - nip.mmon — search the 
 Scriptures — the Christatleiphians— iirove all things- hold fast that which is giMid. • 9-31 
 
 TESTIMONIES- ORIGIN OK THE UOOMA OF INHERENT IMMORTALITY. 
 
 General remarks- -Hudson's " Uoetrinu of a Future Life'— Writings of Or. Thomas and Robert 
 Roberts what IN man?- the two theories - rationalist and Scriptural Plato Pbilo the Jew 
 — Synesius- combination of the two theories dogma cf inherent immortality of heathen 
 origin -first taught by thcaneieiit Egyptians- rea.son for embalming mimunies -Rollin — Dio- 
 donis — Lempriere — Fenelon — .Metempsychosis. 32-87 
 
 ENORAFTMENT OF THE DOOMA UPON THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 -unauthorized, absurd. 
 
 -Origen — allegorical system of inteniretatioii- 
 
 " science Dr. Thomas -.M i I ner— Taylor Lewis a 
 
 Clemens Alexandrinus- 
 iind iierniclous— .ludaizers- men of false 
 
 knowledge of Plato and the Christian Religion the groat Aitostui-} lir. Clarke on Origen- 
 Si)anhcini - Mosheim — literal inten)retation— Honar — McCheyne- Smith— Chalmers -Cand- 
 lish -Ur. Wolfe— Elliott — Uro<Jk8-WiIgon— "Montreal Witness "- Luther -prophetic ExjiOHi- 
 tor. 37-M 
 
 Lanui'aue kithkk Litkkal on Fuhrativk- Mr. LonI- Milton the Ivaraites— Whitby, an Alle- 
 iforizer— literal interpretJition Bishop Russell— Justyn Martyr— Plato— Pwd Relief of 
 ancients as to origin, nature and destiny of man. 43-4S 
 
 DOGMAS OF THE WISE MEN OF ISRAEL. 
 Josephus— the Es-senes— the Satlducees— the Pharisees. 
 
 DOGMAS OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND ROMANS. 
 Pythagoras— Socrates— Plato — Epicurus— Zeno, the Stoic -tho Academict.. 
 
 48-60 
 
 00-51 
 
 Dogmas of the wise and prudent of the lOtI) centurj'- Dogmas of the theolugiana, identical with 
 those of Paganlsni—speoial teachings of some divinities— Pro. Bush. fil-iZ 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE UOOMA OK INIIKKKNT IMMoKTAI.ITY NOT ()K.\l.l!.VI,l-Y KKCKIVKU, NOH I.MI'M- 
 CITLY HKMKVKI) IIY ITS IIKATIIKN lMt()l'()UNl)KK.S. 
 
 I'Alil. 
 
 Ocncriil ReinarkR— IIiuIkoii— Iiitullut'tiiulity, the I'latniilHtH' |>r<i<i(<if iiuiiinrtality — tho viilifarof 
 n«> iicodiiiit Willi tht'in—Cleero — Ihu artfilmont iUHiit,lMf,vmK--vl«;\V!( of iiiiui ilvatl. tho uiij of 
 hill) — Cicuro— I'liiturch— AriMtotIc— Sciiocii — I'lliiy— ChrlHtiult'l|>liiiiii»--hii|>o In ri'Hinrectlon 
 — iiu'iitnl chiiiiK'o.i — KilwiinU- -\Viillii.Htim — Ari^hliiHhii|) Wlmtuly uii the heathen <l(>ifiiias of In- 
 herent liiiiii(irt4ility--uiihi^llif tli.'ivin ut iluuth— annihilation — oxi>eilleiu'y in iloi'irine. .i2-57 
 
 THE nous FRAUD. 
 
 Oibhon — iinelent syMtenis of relUiim with tho |iuo|ile true, with tho iihllosophert false, and with 
 tho HtutoHinan noeeitsiiry — Tiniaeu.s— neeensity of (Iccelvin;; theonninion ipeopli'— I'Info jiHtiflcs 
 such tt eourho — eeiisured hy (_'liryHi|(iPUi — Striilhi — the lirahmins -Sciievold — Vurro -rieerii — 
 I'oiniMinatus — the |iiiin.s friiiul |H)r|>etuuted under the reli^loun syMteiiwof Christendom — liud- 
 son- iHaae Watts — l!ish'>|i Ihirnett— Fitch — Uoneral romarkH — eannianliind lie p-verned with- 
 out the terror iiii'iiired llu'ou;;;i fear of oterniil torniciitsV— Uov. Dr. Tlnodore lJlaii|)--two 
 j-earH' warcli ui llohrow Old Testament and c\g\\t years' iiiveslii;atloniii(>reel\ Nev Testament 
 III vain for proof of do^jina of eternal torinenl--orthodox iritles. .'i7-00 
 
 THE DtMJMA OK THE NATI'KAL IMMORTALITY OK THE HUMAN SOUL NEITHER LOX- 
 CEDED NOR AlMJEl'TED UY ALL THAT roRTION OK MANKIND WHO HAVE 
 RECOUNIHED THE AUTHENTICITY AND DIVINE CHAIlAOTEii OK THE HOLY 
 SCRH'TURES. 
 
 Thct'hri.stian examiner— the Hebrews — the Arabians —ancient rock inscription on the Red Sea 
 — ileciphered l)y Kev. OharlaH Korslur— the nostril mystery— the resurreetion— theleariilML' of 
 tho worlil once Arable —Uerrinifton — Duniiia — Dr. Uarelay— inseriptioiis from L'ataeumbs of 
 Rome — Jewish Rabbles— Ariiobiuit — l>oiii)Kinatim — t'ouiieil of Lateran— (-'araiiza — Liithor Sir 
 Thomas More William Tyndale—.lus-tyn Martyr— Taylor in " The Voiee of the Church " — 
 Isaac Watts — Archdoucoii lilaekburn — Uishop 'Wats<)n--Uishop Tillotsoii -" Edinburgh Re- 
 view" Thomas U. MeAiilay — -Mowih Stewart — Rev. John Alexander (WW)) — fourth |>unipbraiie 
 — (Ifteeiith I'iiraphriuie — Rev. E. White— .lames IJ. .Mann and the Archl)isliop of (laiiterbury — 
 tlOO reward— 1 Vnr. xv. fil — nicelinj,' of .Methodist Preachers, Now York, IsTa— diseussion on 
 non-immortality— Ruv. Dr. True -a dcstnictloiiisi— Rev. Dr. Warren on otornal puiiisihinent 
 —Dr. Uiesler. CO-75 
 
 ADAM'S NATURE. 
 
 (ioneral renmiks — Adam created neither mortal nor Immortal— virtue of tho tree of life — Adam 
 prevented from eatin;,' thereof, and so |ierpetiiatiii^: nis life in sin — Arehbisliop Whalely — "Theo- 
 philus of Antiocli on lien, xxvii. — LaetiintiiM— Nemesiiis -NichoUnof .Methoiie — Neander — 
 Jeremy Taylor— Hudson— Dr. Tlioma.s— Robert Roberts— .lojni Milton on the creation and 
 generation of .Man — I'liysiolojfieal arifumeiit — Terlullian — Appoliiiariua — Aujjustinc— Jeroiiio 
 — Oret'ory of Nyssa— Aristotle's arjiiinienl — Dr. A illiani .Morris. 75-SS 
 
 MAN A3 A LIVINCi SOUL. 
 
 .Man as a physical being— Nephcsh Chayiah — meanin;( dellned— Adam — llvinn sou!— tree of 
 knowlodije — its attributes — the tree of the lives curative, l)ut prohibited — the natural ni.ui and 
 the living creatures of tlie air,e;irth and ^ei, all liviuvf s luU— all Hosh— Ruacli (>'hayini— sjiirit 
 of lives — ItraliMiinieal theolo;(y — all (piadrii|)eds and man created "very ({"od" — all from the 
 earth all animated \i\ tlie s:imc spirit -Life -Ruach Hlohini -.Neshoniet El — lireath of Cod — 
 all iK-rv.idinj;— pure lUiach Chaynii — tiie same in eoniblnation with the Neshenie of the ex- 
 panse — necessary to all life. aiunial and vej^otalde — le!it to all during tlieir living allotti'd siiau 
 — so that all have one breath — all are of the dust — all turn to ilust ai^ain- Modes in harmony 
 with true science— froo spirit— oxy;fen, nitrogen, and oloctricity. ^3-37 
 
 NEW THEORY OK LIKE. 
 
 Certain principles within all liviiiK' creatures common to all— (losli and blood— tlio blood is the 
 life — not abstractly, but relatively— lite io man not an ali.stnict principle— life either veu'ctable, 
 animal, or incornii>t'ble- cause of motion— anal.x sis of the b^iod the storehouse of urbanized 
 bodies — circulation — the lun^fs— their o!li.;i.— air cells two forces supplio 1 from the bhcd — 
 negative and |Hisiti\u — iliemicil decotupo^ilion — the 'irain oe^-oiaes iiwirnotic by inducti<m — 
 life— sound- vibratiou—thenurves solar li[f lit -siiilit— objctro-matf net ic action— |>ositive force 
 within lis, maKiietic sea without us— animal lire r.-siiits— Dr. T. 1... .N'ieliols— relation of fo(Ml 
 to animal life— rheiiiieal elements — iiiHucnee of s .ii oil charact r — man not tlivlne, iiut of the 
 earth, earthy. 57-9S 
 
 DESTRUCTIUILITY— DESTRUCTIONISM. 
 
 Hudson — the analoKncal ar);iimoiit -the rational argument — the psychulojfic;\l ar^inent — the 
 metaphysical ar>,'uiiieiit — .\ujrustiiie, his reasons lussiifiied for inherent nmnortality — his re- 
 traction— atiiiibilatiini— destruction— in<lestructiiiility—" tlie soul tliat sinnetb, it shall ilie 
 — iiitiiii({ibility of [lower — of streiiiftli — of sijfht— of bearing: — only relative inaiiifostations, 
 which cciwein death — waste and iletay in nature — ere.illoii ii it in vain- desij.;ii of tlie sp-<cio< 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 Vii 
 
 Pauk, 
 «cci'in|ili.«lifd ill tlii'KC' tlmt art |*Tf«'cU'(l— man Mitijcct t" niftliit niiiilcnii*, jtt (rt'c to fluMim! 
 to iiiiikL' lii« i'dIHii); ninl i li'ctl<iii Mire— tliffi'micf." in jinvllcjiis luiil iipiHirtiiiiltieH tciniiUtloii 
 mill trial — iirotwtidii fur wlie puriKiwd — Imt not lUTCKsary If iimii vrrateil ininii>rtal--lnim(ir- 
 talit.v coinlftiiinal — tlic ratiuiial uiidratinnaliMic arj^iumiit. 
 
 IMMATKUIALITY. 
 
 J'.\tha(.'«'rnH and Hi'crati?. — man i'.iini(irt«1l>foaiii»' ininiutcrial — Dr. Adam ('lark— Immateriality 
 "di'flmd— nmniiui .IifTiTMi.ii— Jiihn Aiianiifc— Ar(litiii«li<i|> Wliaft'l.v imrabic i>t LuzuniM and ttio 
 rirli ninn not litund, hut tl|airatiM', miuIn under thi' altar — iinnmti'riulity InviHildo and intani;- 
 ililt—lnimaUiriulNtH really niatfrialii'tM- matter and tlic>ii|;lit — Dr. Linkc — Dr. Lawri-noo — 
 Sir (IcorifoMnokcMzif .loliii Milton— Dr. Iti iK-rt Hall— .Mr.Cockrdft— I'Halni cxllx.4 Dr.Clial 
 nicpi — new Heavens and neweartli.H slate of inaterinliKni— eomnion eonce|illoii of HaradiHC lie- 
 yoiid deatli— mistaken idvao — dlnliciief in etiiereallian- matoriallMiii not iiecexNarily connected 
 witli Kin— object (if the prcHcnt dlMpennatlon to extin»te sin, not to Kwoep away matvrial- 
 iHiu. Uti-104 
 
 THIS EAHTH THK KllXKE DWELL.'NO-l'LACE OF THE REDEEMED. 
 
 Dr. fandllHli— iToniihe to Almiiinni of a certain land or territory, to lie fulfilled In the life or 
 u^^c to eoniU' tlie renewed earth In the resurrection, Ahrahani neiiiK ruiHed to iiicorruptlhlU 
 ity, receiveH jHjsse.-Mion of his everlairtintf inlicritanee, Canaan- Ahraliam's faith and lio|)e- 
 lllhle materiallHiii Dr. CaiidllshV |ien<oiiul ho|K' Ina. lx\.17-'i;j— kingdom mid reltfii of Chrl.st 
 ' Kcv. H. HarliiuiKli. 104-107 
 
 MIND AND MAn;;K. 
 
 MIND All 
 
 ivldlni; hi 
 
 Tlic K*-'«*''>'al uri;unieiitwliat are the dividing tiotinilarics^ ll«lit?- licat? electricity? Kpirit? 
 unity of nature- Uod the Hource of all- ilifferent elemciifH only difTerent fomis of the 
 same ctenial eMHUieo or flrst cause- electricity Doils- Kohert*- iiiodeni science Karuilay's 
 universal Niiirit of matter- matter only describes no ri«;»'cr of Creation- evolution of thouKht 
 — fhoujfhtdevelolicd by Imdn |Hiwer what is niatlerV inanimate matter- living matter the 
 formative power of the universe Ijy Dr. Tlioma^ indurated electricity- .Mr. Varley tlieearth 
 a I.eydeii Jar matter under Divine manipulation reason- |H.wer of the miniUo travel niciii- 
 liry power of ilrcamintf- aii.putation- eoiiseioucncss of lost limb influence of tlie iiorveN 
 sojiteiinial clianKc in matter eomiiosinif the Ixuly- mutation of atoni» retained identity fall- 
 acy of argument founded tlicrenn <(ualitipsof atoms ti-ansniixnililc oitsimilHtlnK jsiwer mind 
 the product of liviiij; brain attiiiity n<'i-e»sary- -alfinity iiii|)o,s.Mililo between matter and iniiiia- 
 tcriality- mind located in the biKly cannot be detacheil deficient brain master minds 
 mind or thiiU).''lit du|iendent on ni.iterial or^'anization elTects of bickiiess laiif;uor ennui - 
 internal Injuries Dr. Kichnioinl I'rof. Chapman Sir Astlcy Cooper ilifHcultic^ ii new- 
 liorn babe nlves no Inilication oi intellect or ciiiisciou.sness- diversity in men evidence of imn- 
 ininiortalily mystery -experience tlie bniin llie iiie<liuni of the -oul's manifestation I'rof. 
 Keiclienliacb exiKrimcnts in odulo^ry phantom aiijicarances oillc Hiiid 'I'rof. Moser li({ht 
 and darkness result of researches Mr. Karsteii experimenis invisible impressions rendered 
 visible by beinjf breathed u|Kpn hidden thiiiirs brought to li^'bt the breatbiiijr of the spirit - 
 sonsoriuin of the brain. 107-126 
 
 THE DOGMA (tF INHEKEXT IMMORTALITY I'UFFETH UP. 
 
 AriiobiuB mankind deceived and deluded \ain h<i|H).s- thcolojflans have contributed much to 
 t)ic inttation of human pride -exawemted value of the human soul Scripture estimate of 
 luaii individually and nationally -dust and a.shes small du.st of the balance- tlic bondajfc of 
 con'uirtion. 126-7 
 
 ETERNAL TORMENT. 
 
 h 
 
 m 
 
 Cieiieral remarks— the firavc a place of rest and re|)08c— in death men go down to the grave— 
 .lacob and .loscph soul and grave- no separation i.f soul ami binly iinllcated In Scripture- 
 David not os^'cnded to Heaven - dominion of death David's throne ami kingdom to beset up 
 under him whose right it is Dr. Candllsh Isa. Iv. :i. I'salm xlix. 14. ir> I'alvinistic vimlic- 
 tivcnc.ss (!(Ki more merciful to man than man Eternal ilcatli and Eternal life does extinc- 
 tion involve failure as regards Ood's purpose? the (luict rest of the grave preferable to 
 eternal torment in the theological hell picture of hell by Uev. .1. Fnriie.ss the lever of popu- 
 lar religion Chcever's Picture of Hell contradictory teachings Dr. Chalmers- Hell a state 
 of condition, not a locality also Ulshauscn Coliridge Martiiiean the ojiposite view - 
 Dwight's theology -the sinner in hell eternally sinning Gregory the Creat liaxter T. V'. 
 Pipst McCo.sh -the sinner in hell at war with God eternally and ince.-i.santly -Isa. Ivii. 16.— 
 John Forstor takes issue with McCosh Hudson theologian.s not agreed Augustine- the 
 damned no power to sin- Acquiiia- aiievil will iiunishment only- Archbishop King -sin ataii 
 end, and no possibility of sinning ill hell- Dr. Williams SHcdenborg- sinners in hell re- 
 strained from sinning Archbi.shop King sinners will prefer remaining in hell to lieing re- 
 moved— Theodicies- Isaac Taylor Wesley and Methodism Archbishop Whately restoratioii- 
 ism— no reversal of final doom of the wicked— death and life- death the doom of the wicked 
 Isa. Ixvi. 21- the fire and worm and their effect -the immaterial soul cannot Ik- destroyed, or 
 sufTer by material fire— the la.st enemy- Scripture teacliing— Uishiip Watson-endless torment 
 irreconcilcable with the goodness of Ood Jeremy Taylor -re>(K)n8ibility--lovu and mercy of 
 God irrcconcileablc with the dogmas of the Schoolmen. 128-143 
 
Vlll 
 
 . CONTENTS. 
 
 NO SYMPATHY IN TflK IIKAVEN OF THK THECLOGIAN8. 
 
 Paoi 
 
 (•t'liorni rumarkH - AHth ScoUlxh paraplinutu wouh of tlio wicked Ncandal to roll|/iun -Auiitii- 
 nw ImpiiliiOHii ul tlio roiluumoil In lioitvoii tiiihumud hy witiiuiwiii^r tlio iik"»Iuh i>f tho wivkod 
 in hull I'uter boinbanl tliu Niifht will imt HiiiiUi tliu rlk'litvuuN with Horrnw, hut liituxicatu 
 thuiii with Joy (jiionitedt (luiiliti all Mviii|i«thy with the Icmt ArchhlHhop KlnK-n xlnnor'H 
 ruin may uontcr ruitl ha|i|>inu«H im thu retluemed -Ui'ihop lliipkinM thu tonnoiita <>( tho 
 wlckod In hull will CDiifur hlKhuHt pluaHuni on thu hluHNeil oxtlnutloii of thu nr«N <; hell 
 Would uliMvuru thu IlKht of huavon— Dr. Twime-no Huch UiiiiK In UcmI aa JiMtiue towarda IIU 
 cronturuH Calvin-liaylu irunurui rumarkH- thu aifony of (althMoMiH Stuart llludwiu •niallK- 
 naiit vluwN of (lod John romtur inyxtiTioiiH uninoiiiy- (linliuliuf in «t«rnul niiBury Itoyiiu 
 mun JuNtlHud in lioldlnK for or aKainal tluMloKnm .lonathnn l-:<lwardH- (Kikhani'-uxtraonl- 
 Inarylogiu Luthur -prontitutlon of faith -Kr. Arnold— lual witlumt kuowlutiKu blind faith 
 —Watts on ruprohation-HirJauiua UUiphunn disaatrouH uffcutti of thu doifina of eturnul tor- 
 munt on truu ruliKiun- (/'oluridKu diMclniniit ivll iilua of durivhiK happlnuM from thu wouh of 
 (ithorM — Dr. KipplM tfu»uriil runiarki* -Mr. llolwrtM on tliu duntiny of thu wiukud— popular 
 vluwa— deplorablu ruHiiltx tuouhinui of Scripturu- the wivkud xhail (turinh- tho waKtw of Rln 
 la duath -uvurlaatiiiK duMtructlon hull - Kzukiul xxxli. 'J7 hull HyuonyniouH with gravu— 
 Shcol lladus ~ Ouhunnu- I'oKan b|>uculati(inH--undyiiiK worm and um|uuni;hnhlo Pro — Nvni- 
 bolical oxpruHHlonH -Jur. vii. 'JO., uh. xvli. 'J7 uon^iunnmtlon of (iod'H pur|HiHu triumph of 
 Oud'H luvu- death and duHlruialon "uvurlii.stinir"iluflnud Kjnnbollcal and literal Dr. Wil- 
 liam MurrlH-wonuH of uorruptlon coUHumiM); flru (iuhunna duflnod— Moloch worHhlp -CK>- 
 hunna nut a ty|io of thu orthodox hull, hut rnthor typical of utter anil flnol duxtruction Dr. 
 Whlthy Ooniorrha (Ires not eturnul -duntructlon |iun>utual' Juwinh KuIiIiIuh— malignant 
 views of curtain theoloKlanx. 143-1(IU 
 
 UKSL'KHKCTION. 
 
 Gui.oral romarkH- Mr. RobertM— what in Duath ?-whal Is Life 7— orjfanlourocuwie'*— brain—air— 
 food de|)onduncu of life on HUch nmlunal atronclu.s - exiwrionco -Dr. Thomas on duath— mafc- 
 nutic vibration thu uauHe of all vital phunoniena -cumiution thuroof— death - eluclro forcuN uf 
 animal IxNlici* cnniiurvativu of theui reciprocal action ceiMtatlon uf uluctro chemical action— 
 corrunflon -Mowing tu tho flush- tho wicked miiht lie ralHud from thu dead to reap corruption 
 to (lie la to return to thu dust -If a man die shall he live ■\ffainV death not un eturnal sluup, 
 etttrnal life conditional— what wo nuiHt do to obtain eternal life- an iuHanu cry niuturiallHm — 
 us:i«i.cu of thu HonI -finite nature of man- Inability, lndu|N3ndent of r^.vulutlon, to (lenetrate 
 thu future abstract materlaliHui— oturnul life tho reward of character -lerinH of thu Uospul — 
 the K len sentence not the second death wlmt <lo wc need to be saved fniui ? - the waKus of 
 sin -foundation of the Oos|iel re|)cntaiice and romiH.Hlon uf sIuh- baptism funeral remnrks- 
 Dr. C'andlish prondsu of territory to Abraham to Ihj fulfilled luter resurrection- -Umi not the 
 Uod of thu (lend, but of thu hvini; Abraliiun nuist be raised front the dead to inherit tlie 
 promises— Hannah's prayer -Old TesUununt teachinic resjitctlnn resurrection - New Testament 
 teiu;hin({ riw|H!Cting resurruction— the rite of baptism an ernolum of resurrection burled with 
 Christ. 1(W-17« 
 
 THE EARLY FATHEIIS. 
 
 .Mankind largely indubteil to them for the doirnia of Inhurent immortallty- 
 actcr of their tcacliiii;,'s Mr. C'luuidlcr's oiilnioii. 
 
 ' THK CONFLICT or AUES. 
 
 contradictory char- 
 
 177-178 
 
 Luther— Polycarp, St. .I>ihn and Iren.eus— llcv. Alex. I'irie — L»r. iVhitby-lpiatius -Paplas— 
 Justyn Martyr- ei)istle of tho (Jhurcho of Vieune uiid Lyons -Jewish Kivbbies— Dr. Oieslor — 
 Henry Dauu Ward on creeds -liishop Hun.shaw on Dr. Whitby's aile;(oriKint( principle— Mr. 
 Kolicrts luuiuui nature es.sentially mortal a l<in)(inK fi>r immortality no jiroof that man pos- 
 sesses it, but tile contrary bunker, iio proof of lepletion, yet no instinct in nature without an 
 object on wliich it acts-whiit a man scotli,why doth he yet hope for'?— what is inunortality?— 
 life nut a thinking hidividual power man has to deal with '..ystury, which nature refuses to 
 
 explain — Scripture or revelation the only source of eidi(,'lit*,nmont man dieth and wasteth 
 
 away, and whore is he? — tho doctrine of resurrection Tertullian— Hudson— llomans Ix. 30 ; 
 Psalms xxxix. 10 - general remarks Dr. George Wilson thoutjhts on resurrection — ultimate 
 resolution of man at deiitli into oriiiinal elements^ -the .-.uino elements used over and overajfuin 
 m buildintr up successive organ izations, uuinial and vegetable -germ theory— detumiining aud 
 individualizing (lower- pcr.siinal i>lentily—decom|s)sitiou -human remains taken up by an 
 apple tree- who ate KoKcr Williams'^ Dr. Thoma-s- what is the germ of tho mortal uody ?— 
 how are the dead raised ii|)? -ArclibisUop Wliately—chango of organic bodies -identical jiar- 
 ticles— .sameness of Imdies — vile body -common sense — Paul and the Tlies-salonians — Jesus and 
 tlie Sadducees— resurrection and judf,nnenl death a .sleep— no consciuusn ss or time in the 
 grave- -Luther— Dr. Thomiu*— eU.rnal life— wh»». is Hush "f— flesh and spirit -flesh a wind that 
 po.s.suth away— spirit a wind that pa.s.seth not away -the human organism— the line lictwccn 
 in.-<tinct and reason— extract from Dr. Thomas' will —Archbishop Whutcly— Moses on rewards 
 and punishments- -the word "soul" as tran.^latud in the Old Testament misleads -"soul" means 
 "life" or "spirit," or " breath "—life and innnort-'ity— Mr. HolierU. 17b-'202 
 
 RESURRECTION AND CLAS.SIF1CAT10N OF THE DEAD. 
 
 Design of resurrection— Gug and Magog power- 
 kind — classification indicated. 
 
 -tho mlUcnnium- 
 
 Dlvinc knowledge classiflan man- 
 
 •202-30» 
 
CONTKNTS. 
 
 \% 
 
 HKHi'UNHIlilLITY AND Jl DOMKNT. 
 
 Civm^rBl rpKiarkh Mr. HotivrU timimon idos ol jiuliftiiciit lu-nDii'im- I'nimno iKirimriaim - 
 liliiitK the llli.lc ut Imiir witli iHiiniliir rvll|cl<>i> iiiin'ufioiialili' to lihiiKtln' l>nitli<li claKi < >f num 
 to liulivliliiitl utx'iiiinl ri-i(|Hiii<tililllt.v and caitarlt) aiiK'iiiiliilit.N to Jiiil;;iiii'iit tlic miiIi'Iivo 
 ii|H)ii Ailani (IihI'm iikhIk of oiivratioii In rufurviici' to iiiaii foiimlvil on iiriiii'i|>lcs of iK'niMtiin'c 
 niid nivrc.v KoiiiaiiH iv.l.'i iiiiu AcIh xvli. ;10 (IckU'cnIii |iiiiiis|ini«'Mt tlii'iallor Alintlmiii the 
 law of faith tliu taw of riulitttoiiHiiDiiN liv faith n'KiirriTtloiial r(w|HiiiHlliilllv .IchIhIi rr>|>oii- 
 slliillty n'N|HMHll>llll.v atuu'huil to nntloiiN In contact with thr.lcwft l)i. Tlioniax on rciirrct^ 
 tloii III " AnnxtHMlH" rcNiirructloii of Chrltit—thu iluath Htato u jiortlon ••( iiiiniklnd Hlrcp a 
 a |)«r|iotual i<liu|i a |iortloii riw thu rl|{htt)oiiH tholnhcrltanct' of the iiii'ck < ild Totanit'iit 
 tcachinK ax to cortnln of till- dtiHil l'«lah xxvi. U. an to cortjilii nthrr<'f tin- diiid, l«a. wvl. 
 19- oxyvtiii, li.vdroKuii, uiiil uli>i-triL'll> tluidH wliat t-onstltutcN ruHtirn'itloii the H'i>rd tra- 
 dition of tho ht-athcn ruHiirreotioii an ln)|)ortuiit and indls|n)nHulile t'lciiiciit of orni'li'x nf hcity 
 — Paul'N anruniunt protrruNNlvc HtiiKUH In r«isiirro<.'tlon nmrnl Kt'^'tailorv order of develiiinivnt 
 In Rtrii't uiinfonnlty with the luu- of iiaturu analogy deftned reMurnrtinii of I'linjul 
 dramatically exhihited rcMtonitlini of Identity the dead, lilHtorieul clniriute.N, reeor.led in 
 the iMMik of the hiiiy's ronionihmiicc tlie Mcroll of record IhiIiij,' the hrivl ^Ik><i of spliji that 
 flIU thu uiiiverM.' roniurkahlu elTect of li^htninK whutMiie\er ilotli iiinKi' iimnifcNt is tin' ll^ht 
 —Paul and Home iinioii); 'lie t'oriiilhiaiiH the Heed irrnin iiniilciKy Tcrtnlliiin on resiirivctlon 
 -thu |itirtH)H<> of IKilty the IlKhl of truth iiinkeH ruH|M>ii-<ilile ilinei of iLriionuivu the oU'd- 
 ienco of faith KaintH und ulnuuni thu rli;htuuUH, thu unKixHy and thu Hiiinur. 20A-2!M( 
 
 OK TIIK NKCKS81TY <»K TIIK KKION i»K CllltlsT. 
 
 Thu nmhop of l,oni|on i>n the state of Lonilcm rcil^loua wicicty iinportiiiu'i <>f thin qiustion 
 nilHtaken poimlar conceptloim of the Kliiu'doni iif (JihI the necessity nf m « KoverniiKnl In 
 thu earth lUmoliitisTn and revoliiti<iii excuss i>f liU^rty tyranny of thu lowest niiiids- 
 crowdiii); of populatlun in towiiH mid cities, and consucpiciit natioimi niiserj' fniiiire of men of 
 Nclulieu 111 rcniedv the uvIIh that iittllct huninnlty thu world advaiiclii)f to some iinkiMHn point 
 
 the lil}:li('st point of civll!/Htl thu lowest point of (iodlilie^s tile liutln ol l.u an. I .kulh 
 
 - IfritidinK eharactur of tho iiiannfa"turlii(( interuHtg thu futiiru iKtrnniouiit in the minds uf 
 Hlnti'Hiiiun the kliiKdnm of Messiah. 23t>-2;jl» 
 
 nol'KM-MHNKSS i)V THE PRESKNT 8TATK OK THlNdS. 
 
 What .loHUH will accoinpllHh nationally— the kingdom of 0ml, thu key of nrnphucy thu njiostOHy 
 and niyHtiflcatlon Intiillcctiial slavery resiieclulile su|H!rstltlon futility of orthodov efforts 
 to hriiiK niaiikiiid into harmony with IMvtiie wisdom the sin |Mi\ver to lie lirokcn liy the 
 Linn rf the lrll)e of Jiidali stat*' of the worhl when under the inillennml rv'u^i of Cliri-l the 
 kintrdom of men the eniiHnmination predetermhiu<l jiri vailin^f iKiioranco respeitinir the 
 Divine piirpoHu the |inriHise dt^lmed the iiiilleiinial familv of nations a hivine moiiaicliy of 
 uverlaHtlnif <<>litinuanru rusii ts of the I'stalilishment of this |>iviiie civiliialiciii popular in- 
 credulity as tn thu (!ns|)ul hcIiiiiic the kingdom of Jesus Ih loners tu the fulnesM of the ap- 
 pointed " Times of thu Uuntlles." i;^:)-24« 
 
 THE KINGDOM OK GOD THE KINAF, INSTHI'MENTM.ITY 
 
 OK HUMAN KKDKMniON. 
 
 IN TItE CHEAT .St HEME 
 
 PuriMisein all Ood'H iIoIiiks the kinudom of GihI an inslruniunlality In the aceoniplisliniont ' i 
 thai purpose ilie -nlijn^riitinn ol'al! ein'inics im|H'rfection, inei|iiailty .nid faililiilitv of hnman 
 Institutions liieakiii({ the oppressor .luru.suiem the centre of iiiiiiiliteiimint. the Japital city 
 of the Oreat Kinj;, aiid metropolis of the whole eartli the future '.{lory of Zlon. ,'e..i.'i:iph- 
 icai Zion- the happiness of the nations annual pilK'riinai>us of nuti'ins to .lernsalein, 
 to do honiai,'e to thu Great Kinn Nynopsis of 15th of Ist (JorinthiunH materialism of .Scrip- 
 turo. 24tt--^.'i.'i 
 
 THE BAPTISTS OF l«iO ON THE KINGDOM AND CoMlXt; oK CIIKIST. 
 
 John Hunyan declaration of principles- second cimimr of (,'lirist order in resurrciti'H leflnod 
 — kiiUfthim 'if God on earth its univur-tai character tlic throiiu of David. :j.')5--j/i« 
 
 MEDIATOH.SIIIP. 
 
 I f 'J 
 
 General remarks contradictory stitcmentN cif Haptist ministers address of the rn'sideiit of the 
 l'oiity|M)cd Itaiitist Cidleifu, En'.;laii(l extraordinary deliverance 'in fuKilnieiit of pro;.lu cy 
 Dr. Thomas the law of Moses the modi of itscomnninicatioii meiliatorship proposui li\ the 
 people itH acceptance of Deity Moses tiie first mediator afterwards the hi(,'li priest media- 
 torship eonfiiic<l to Israel mediatorship thrcpiixh Israel impracticalile at present on the tiosisof 
 the Mosaic law l.smel in dispersion, the land in desolation, ami .lernsiieni tioddeh under 
 foot of the (Jcntiles redemption awaits Israel nationally, hut anifcr and distress all the world 
 besides-esejipu and bafuty only throujfh faith and ohediencc the <ios|iel access to .leliovali 
 by Jew and Gentile only through Jesiis His Son future cmendatiim of the Mo.siiic law de- 
 scent of the spirit on Jesus -results of the urchanircl voice and the trunipof Uod resmroction 
 
 Annatretldon inautnirfttiou of Jehovah's Kin({ on Zion ruap|)earanee of thu inediatorshipin 
 rael— thu then condition of Israel and thu nations -onlur of thiiiK's t«?rrustrial In tho nifc 
 
 Israel 
 to como. 
 
 •J56-'2«I 
 
 i 
 
 
X Cf)XTENTS. 
 
 RKV. UK. LKASK, Ol' LONDON, r.IGLAND. ON' IMMORTALITY. 
 
 P\OB. 
 
 Til J " Raiiiliow"— man lia^ uc imtural immi)rtalit\ -'iiu|>ort of Sciiiituro turiiiH — Surijiture tcsti- 
 nioiiio^ -urifumont— ruiiuirks by Toronto oUitor. 201-2fi9 
 
 KLPIS ISRAEL ON THE CONSTITUTIOX OF MAN. 
 
 Letter til Dr. Thoiua.s frun curtain partius in Olasjfow, Scotlanil, in Is'iO, res|H!ctini{ the natniu 
 of man as sot, forth ill tlio l)oi)l< untitluil " EI|)iH Isniul " -qnotalions— i-'ply by Ij;-. Tlimnas 
 constitution of man -ulumental i)rinciple8 -iloflnition of tornis -motion t!u! effect of two forces 
 —life— soul -blool .Slieol the (frave -Axiom in psycholoj^y- the vitalizinif principle -chem- 
 ical decomposition -prenatal child life -spontaneous life-Mr. Crosse's insects -vlcanix C'ro»«i'' 
 -accidental discovery — .Mr.Crosse denoimcud by the rclijxioua world— stnmblini^ on a (jreat fact 
 —the Runch form;itivo and life enkindlin)i; -Ood employs means— establishment of Ills laws- 
 re-creation throuvrh resurrection —all in harmony with law -resurrection demonstrated —im 
 materialism the three elements -the flesh— modern science— matter and mind— living matter 
 capable of thinkiii;;- -imorjianized matter incapable of thought -the powers of the brain— th 
 powor of the railw;iy locomotive hitelhi^ent ifuidance necessary — popular theolof^y invests the 
 lowest races of men, ;\nil most brutish siMJciniens of humanity with a portion of the Divin ^ 
 Essence- -/{urtcA as t IV! substnitum of all knowledge defined -the thinkinjf of the Spirit— a 
 Divine suDcndditioii to tlio thinkin;; of the Hesh-asfencv of the truth -definition of the 
 word "spirit." 265-278 
 
 MIND AND MATTER. 
 
 Atonii <m— Dr. Thomas— his definition of atoms -free spirit Pro.Tyii bit- aliej^'eil attributes \m- 
 piilil to matter -Matthew iii. !). and Luke iii. 8. - ircnera! rcnia'-ks -the Book o; Creation 
 aiii! the liiok of llcv 'lation -hnv they should be studied— the iiaturali.st and tlie thuoloifian— 
 '• Scientilli' American " Candle flames and stroalvs of cioud — scientiflc deliverance of i'mfcssor 
 Tyiidall not new -pliilo.-ophy of ancient India Demoeritus— Lucretius (.'an:ido — I'araday - 
 aoianio IJiiildliiiiii -where dies the flame of a lamp tfo when it is blown out? -Na};i\aeiiaaii ', 
 kiiiH Meliiida the liOiidon " Olobe," and London " Spectator " on Professor Tyndal! -genorul 
 remarks God the Creator of all -the potter and the clay -true science in harmony with the 
 liiblc -tli • thcolo;rinis responsible for apjiarcnt discrepancies and ineuiisistencies — creative 
 powir 'I', iidall's defence -Sir Isaac Newton Dr. Conquest's edition of the Bible— his deflni 
 tioii of 'Mviinr soul"— Ad-Amred clay— impressive character of Scripture declarations respect 
 nn{ creati.il— all tliin;.;s out of Deity, b.N Him, and through Him— interesting experiments by 
 Dr. Browii-Se(|Uavd—niu;ieular action of the body and rhythmical movements of the heart 
 aliei doalli -uxtraiirdinary manifestations of apparent life in a dead body— excitement a dis- 
 ea.se of moilern sociity -literal interpretation— "Montreal Witness " — reforinatiim wanted- 
 hollinvncss and super!'. iality of modern pri)fes.sors of religion -personal earnest study of the 
 Scriptures a neces.sity. 276-292 
 
 WHAT MUST WE DO TO BE SAVED? 
 
 Tlie wn of salvation— invitation to all —submission to Divine requirements d"m(ind''il — poiinlar 
 deiusioiis— Word of (Jod made of none effect— necessity of faith- nature of the gospel- -beauty 
 of til.. Divine arran>,'emeiit- i)hiloso])liy of belief— danger of Latitudinarianism— poverty of 
 moralists -foolisbiivs of the " wise "—the narrow way— baptism, its essentiality as a means of 
 salvation -the Christian life— the Lord's Supper— first day of the week— value of the truth. 292-30 
 
ERRATA 
 
 The Iteader will plea«e make the fcUowi^.g correction, :- 
 
 H««c 
 
 15, 19tli Ime from tup, for "worth," r.a.l 
 
 " 15, nth 
 " 44, mh 
 " 51, 17th 
 " 58, ISth 
 " 04, 7th 
 " 73, Ifith 
 " 74, 23r<l 
 " 89, 17th 
 " 89, 2l8t 
 " 126, Mni 
 " U6, 22ml 
 " 'iH, 10th 
 " 100, nth 
 ' 177, fith 
 " 182, 4th 
 " 183, 17th 
 " 189. an! 
 " 191, 21st 
 ' 196, 15th 
 ' 213, 11th 
 ' 234, 3rd 
 ' 252, last 
 ' 254, 23rd 
 25.-1, 18th 
 257, I7th ' 
 •.iBl, !)th 
 J61,ltotline * 
 266, 11th 
 268, 17th " 
 273, 20tli 
 28:-,, 8th •■ 
 
 bottom for " hither." read "thither," 
 " "action." " ";ixi,mi." 
 " '"Hert "lhe"hef..ro"i,iMeteenth." 
 top, omit " not" hefore "expedient." 
 bottom, for "cah.minate, • read " eah.mi.iate." 
 
 "•'''*<i''ctioniMt, Me.striictionist. 
 
 " " then " after " it," read " there." 
 H> " "eartliU." read "earthy." 
 
 " "eases," " " eeases." 
 
 " "loolviiijf, Idclvin^;." 
 
 '^ ''eath," " "torment." 
 
 insert " tlie" before " heathen." 
 f or " stranarely , " read ' ' stroiitj ly . " 
 iM.sert "a" before "future" 
 for "Giesleff," read "Gii-.sier." 
 " " commontator," read " commentator, 
 bottom, f.ir " 1822," read " I8«t! " 
 '"P " " earthly," read earthy • 
 bottom, in.sort "and tlie dead " aft,-, ■' r,i,\r\. " 
 top, in.scrt quotation mark.s ("), lK.forc •' David " 
 '"'"'^"'' " ), after "mind." 
 
 'Z. " " '"•• " "truth." 
 
 for " tlieni," read "then." 
 bottom, for •• Christ's," re;ul " Chri.st." 
 top, insert "C." after "Testan.en-." 
 
 t"T " ii.ap,,roaehable," rea.l " unapproachablo.' 
 
 a'l-^tifled," read ".sanctified." 
 
 " "Ruaeb, 'Ruacl'" 
 
 l)ottom, after "e|.istie," in.^ert a " C." 
 " "ore," insert " .so." 
 ( sliould bo after ".rol,," and before "ul.ap.' 
 
 A' 
 
 't 
 
A CLERGYMAN 
 
 ON 
 
 THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL 
 
 E 
 
 ■<■: 
 
 An Australian paper, the Daily Telegraph, forwarded to England last 
 spring (1873), contained a very full report of a sermon delivered by a 
 Church of England clergyman, which may be characterized as the 
 most extraordinary sermon preached or published by an orthodox 
 clergyman in modern times. It appears to be one of a series, all of 
 which, judging from this specimen, would be well worth perusing. 
 Such a sermon, from such a source, indicates, first, the wide-spread 
 dissatisfaction existing in the thinking religious mind of Protestantism, 
 in reference to the doctrine of eternal torments ; and, secondly, the in- 
 fluence which the proclamation of the Truth, in its primitive, apostolic 
 simplicity, is exerting, albeit its promulgation, in this age, is limited to 
 the efforts of a very few persons, in comparatively humble position, and 
 other agencies of the most unpretending character. 
 
 The following is a report of the sermon, which is here reproduced 
 entire, together with the prefatory remarks of the JJailif 'lele<jraph : 
 
 •' Yesterday morning, the Rev. H. N. Wolhvston, in Trinity Church, 
 East Melbourne, preached the fourth of his course of sermons on the 
 future punishment of the vicked. The church was more than usually 
 crowded. As the subject is one much discussed at present, both in, 
 and outside, the religious vorld, we {Dailij Tele(jraph) publish the sermon 
 fully, Mr. Wollaston having kindly, at our request, permitted the use 
 of his manuscript for that purpose. 
 
 " The text was Romans vi. 23 ; ' The wages of sin is death, but the gift 
 of God is eternal life, though Jesus Christ, our Lord.' Mr. Wollaston 
 said: — 
 
 " The doctrine of the eternal life of pain and suffering for the lost of 
 the human family, as the punishment for their sin, is based entirely 
 upon the belief that the human soul is created immortal, incapable of 
 death and destruction, which is the common belief, and is accepted 
 without question or enquiry as a doctrine of God, taught in Holy 
 Scripture ; and the inevitable consequence is that only two alternatives 
 are left to us as to the future destiny of the body and soul of a sinner, 
 
 
*2 
 
 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 after death and judgment, since, according to this theory, man must 
 live on forever — and Scripture declares there are only two places for all 
 mer hereafter, heaven and hell, and only two states, happiness and 
 misery — it follows, that one of two things must happen to him. If he 
 die in his sin unsaved, either he must be forgiven, and restored to 
 God's love, and favour, and heaven, after paying the penalty of his sin, 
 by a just and adequate punishment in hell, which is the doctrine of 
 Origen, the Christian Platonist, and of the modern Universalist ; or he 
 must live on an eternal life of pain f"id suffering, and consequently, 
 never die, which is the doctrine of TertuUian and Augustine, and of 
 a large majority of Protestant Christians. No other alternative can 
 possibly be conceived of by the believer in the natural inherent im- 
 mortality of the human soul ; and, as a matter of fact, we find, that 
 while most men believe or profess to believe, in Augustine's endless life 
 of pain in hell, many whose whole souls revolt against its terrible and 
 appalling character, in their natural revulsion of feeling, fall back upon 
 Origen's purgatory and his theory of ultimate restoration to God. 
 Both support their belief by a forced interpretation of some two or 
 three texts of Scripture, which they suppose favour their views, and 
 both are compelled by their theory of the soul's inalienable immortality 
 to reject a third view of this subject, which is, in reality, the only doctrine, 
 concerning the destiny of the lost sinner taught in God's word ; and 
 which teaches it plainly, persistently, and dogmatically, in a hundred 
 passages of the sacred volume. Now it may startle some of you, when 
 I affirm, without any fear of contradiction, that this popular and common 
 belief in the natural immortality of the human soul, is not supported 
 by a single text, or a single line or word, in the whole Bible, from the 
 first of Genesis to the last of Revelations ; and moreover, that it is 
 essentially a Pagan doctrine, introduced in the early days of Christianity 
 into the theology f>f the Church by learned Christian writers and preach- 
 ers, who borrowed it from the great heathen philosopher, Plato, and 
 whose disciples they were ] and is therefore, the doctrine of men, and 
 not of God. But I will go farther than this, and say advisedly, that 
 we have overwhelming evidence in the pages of Holy Writ, that the 
 human soul is not by creation and nature immortal, that it is not the 
 condition of his being, that man should live for ever either in heaven 
 or hell. 
 
 " ' In the first place we are distinctly told, what our reason sufficiently 
 attests, that God, the self-existent Creator, the eternal, immortal, and 
 invisible Jehovah, is the only possessor, as He is the only source and 
 dispenser, of eternal life, or immortality. And here I may remark, that 
 many persons seem to entertain the strange notion that eternal life and 
 immortality are not convertible terms, that they do not mean the same 
 thing ; but I ask why 1 Immortal means deathless, an immortal life 
 is deathless life; and a deathless life is a life that shall never die, 
 which lasts forever, and, therefore, it is an " eternal " life, an everlasting 
 life. Hence to attempt to attribute a meaning to one of these terms 
 which the other will not bear, is only playing upon words, a distinction 
 
A CLERGYMAN ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 3 
 
 without a difference, a mere quibble of speech. " Immortality " and 
 " eternal life " are identically the same thing. 
 
 " ' But to resume. St. Paul in I Tim. vi. thus speaks of God : " He is 
 the blessed and only Potentate, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords, who 
 only hath immortality." And if God, the Creator, only hath it, how 
 can man, the creature possess it 1 Man might have had it, in Eden, but 
 he lost all claim to it in his fall, and all men lost it in him ; that fall, so 
 far as his future life was concerned, brought him down to the level of 
 the brute. God said, " Eat of that forbidden tree and thoushalt die," 
 he did eat, and did die, body and soul ; he forfeited eternal life, immor- 
 tality, and this is no mere fancy or theory ; for we are told distinctly 
 that, after they had sinned, lest Adam and Eve should put forth their 
 hands and take of the tree of life and eat, and live forever, the Lord 
 God drove them out of the garden, and placed at its entrance, cherubim 
 with flaming swords, turning every way to keep or guard the road to the 
 tree of life. We are all then, by birth and nature, mortal, not immortal ; 
 in a state of death, and not of life ; of eternal death, not of eternal life. 
 But the text before us, which is only one of a multitude tells us that 
 we may attain to immortality, may recover our forfeited life eternal ; 
 and it tells us, moreover, how that blessing may be acquired. " The 
 wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, through Jesus 
 Clirist our Lord." 
 
 " ' So that Immortality is a free gift of God to all those who believe in 
 His Son Jesus Christ, and serve Him ; and to none others. The great 
 scheme of human redemption, by the voluntary and vicarious sacrifice 
 of Himself by the Son of God upon the cross, as an atonement for sin, 
 whereby men could recover the love and favour of God, and attain to 
 immortality, was not known under the old dispensation of Moses. It 
 was Christ who revealed that ; and who, according to the Apostle 
 " brought life and immortality to light through the gospel," not through 
 the law ; and hence he says that those who, by patient continuance in well- 
 doing, seek for glory, honour, immortality, shall find eternal life " ; and if 
 we are to seek it, how can we possess it by nature ? And brethren, the 
 multitude of passages in the New Testament which speak of death, and 
 not of life, as being the normal condition of fallen man, and the fate of 
 the lost hereafter, prove to demonstration, that the doctrine of man's 
 natural immortality is a pure human fiction. To quote them all at present 
 would be to occupy a great deal of your time. I will, therefore, read 
 only a few ; — " He that hath not the Son, hath not life ; " '• Sin, when it 
 is conceived bringeth forth death ; " " The gospel is ( to the unbeliever) 
 the savour of death unto death ; " ** If ye shall walk after the flesh ye shall 
 die ; " " To be carnally minded is death j " " The end of these things is 
 death ; " " If a man keep my sayings he shall never see death ; " " He that 
 believeth on me shall never die ; " ** The ungodly bringeth forth fruit 
 unto death'.' But enough. It is death, always death and never life ; 
 mortality of soul and body, and not immortality, which is declared to 
 be, in God's Word, the spiritual condition of every man by nature ; and 
 that immortality is the special work of grace, the free and merciful gift 
 
 V 
 
 ,!"■ 
 
THE BIBLE VINDICATED AOAIiNST MODERN THEOL(JGY. 
 
 \\n 
 
 of God to the believer in his Son Jesus Christ, who forsakes his sins 
 and serves Him ; and that he and he alone can possess immortality. 
 " The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life, througit 
 Jesus Christ our Lord." There is not any one doctrine in the New 
 Testament more clearly revealed, or more frequently or more authori- 
 tatively taught by Jesus Christ and His Apostles, than this ; that man 
 is not, by creation and nature, immortal and incapable of death and do- 
 struction, but is mortal and perishable ; and, therefore, the conmiuii 
 and popular notion that the soul cannot die as well as the body, but 
 must of necessity, live forever in heaven or hell, is totally opposed to 
 the teaching of the Word of God, and is unworthy of a place in the 
 Christian's creed. And I may just add, as confirming this view of the 
 question, that the Church of England, whatever many of her divines 
 may teach to the contrary, does not hold the natural immortality of 
 man, as one of her doctrines ; for in the collect for the first Sunday in 
 Advent, she teaches us to pray that when our Lord Jesus Christ shall 
 come a second time " to judge the quick and the dead, we may rise to 
 the life immortal.'' Wow if the writer of that collect (one of our 
 Reformers probably) believed in the Pagan doctrine of immortality, Is 
 it not strange that he should have put such words into our mouths as 
 these 1 For if we are by nature immortal and can never die, we surely 
 require no prayer to God that we may become immortal, if that life is 
 already ours. The writer clearly regarded this immortal lif^ as a 
 great spiritual boon and blessing which we have not by nati e, and 
 which God will only give, as an act of grace, for the sake of His Son 
 Jesus Christ, to those who believe on hiim. And no at, brethren, we 
 come to make an important and necessary enquiry. If the doctrine 
 that the soul of man is by creation and nature immortal, is not foi^nd 
 in the Bible, and upon which alone, as I have shown, the belief of an 
 eternal life of pain and suffering for the lost is based, where did it come 
 from 1 How came it to be introduced into Ciiristian theology 1 I find 
 no diflSculty in answering these questions. We easily trace its origin 
 to Plato, the great heathen sage, who lived 400 years before Christ, 
 and whose philosophy has coloured and influenced the theology of the 
 Christian church in all ages, even from Apostolic times, and who had 
 for his disciples, the most able and influential of the Christian Fathers, 
 whose writings and preachings have, to a great extent, moulded the 
 faith of Christendom. Plato, sometimes called the " divine Plato," al- 
 though a Pagan, from the wonderful resemblance of some of his views 
 of God and man, to those revealed in the Bible. Plato taught that the 
 human soul could not die or be destroyed, that it was, in its very nature, 
 immortal, and must live on forever ! He held also, that for the good in 
 this world, there was, hereafter, an eternal abode of happiness, or 
 Elysium ; and for the very wicked — the worst of mankind — a place of 
 eternal pain and sufiering, v/ith its streams of fire, called Tartarus, 
 whence none could ever, throughout eternity, come forth again. He 
 also taught that there was a medium place, a purgatory which he called 
 the Acherusian Lake, into which all those too bad for Elysium, but not 
 
A CLERGYMAN ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 bad enough for Tartarus, were cast at death, and from which they issuod 
 forth again into upper air, after a purgative and refining process in the 
 fire.^ And this you will observe in all its features — its Elysium, its 
 Tartarus, its Purgatory, is precisely a doctrine of the present day. 
 We see then in the philosophy of Plato, who died four centuries 
 before Christ was born, the origin and almost counterpart of the popu- 
 lar belief of the inherent immortality of the soul, and of the two-fold 
 dogma based upon it — that everyone dying in sin, must either go to 
 purgatory to expiate his guilt there, and then be restored to God's love 
 and favour, or he must live on for ever and ever in torment and anguish 
 in hell. The first Christian writer who advocated this latter doctrine 
 was Clement Athenagoras, a Greek by birth, who settled at Alexandria, 
 and died about A.D. 200 ; almost contemporary with whom was Tatian, 
 in Mesopotamia, and he was followed some thirty years later by the 
 famous Tertullian, the " fierce African theologian," as he has been called. 
 These views were opposed some thirty years after Tertullian, by the 
 great Origen, who maintained the ultimate restoration and salvation of 
 all men, and not only of men, but of devils also. This theory cT 
 Origen's however, did not take very deep root, and in some 150 years 
 after his death, was well-nigh regarded as a heresy, when Augustine, 
 the celebrated Bishop of Hippo, in Africa, rose up in all his mighty 
 power, and crushed it out of the Christian Church altogether by his writ- 
 ings, preaching and authouty, for more than 1 200 years, when it re- 
 appeared in its present form of Universalism in these latter days. Au- 
 gustine, an ardent disciple of Plato, adopted, like Tertullian, the com- 
 plex Platonic theory of the immortality of the soul, of everlasting tor- 
 ment in Tartarus, or hell, as the punishment of the wicked ; and of a 
 middle place, or purgatory ; and this as we know, remained an article 
 of the Christian faith for very many centuries, until the Reformation, 
 when the Protestant churches discarded the purgatory of Augustine 
 and Plato ; but perpetuated Plato's and Augustine's hell, which is to 
 this hour, the teaching of many divines, and a belief of the majority of 
 the members of the Protestant churches. 
 
 " ' Such is the origin and history of the popular doctrines of the Im- 
 mortality of the soul, and of an eternal life of pain and agony for the 
 impenitent and unconverted after death. But I must call your atten- 
 tion to another important fact. Athenagoras, the first Christian writer 
 who advocated this dogma, as I said, died about A. D. 200. There are 
 still extant, books, or portions of books, written by seven well known 
 Christian fathers who lived before Athenagoras, namely : Barnabas, 
 (Paul's companion), Clement (of Rome, mentioned by Paul in Rom. 
 xvi.), Hermas, Ignatius, Polycarp (disciple of St. John), Justin Martyr, 
 and Theophilus of Antioch ; there were also two others, his contempo- 
 raries, Irenseus and Clement, of Alexandria. Barnabas, the eldest of 
 these, died about A. D. 90, or some fifty years only after the death of 
 Christ ; and it is very singular (if this doctrine were true), that not one 
 of these writings should contain the Augustinian theory of an eternal 
 life of torment in hell for the lost sinner. It is scarcely credible 
 
 ? 
 
 f 
 
 i; 
 
 I 'rl 
 
 
 i <?; .u J 
 
6 
 
 THE BIBLE VlNDICATl D AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 II 
 
 \ i! 
 
 that these eminent confessors, half of whom were martyrs to the faith, 
 would not have referred to this dreadful truth, if it had been, in their 
 day, the doctrine of the Christian church ; and the conclusion we shcoild 
 naturally draw from this remarkable omission, would certainly be tiiat 
 no such tenet was known to them ; that it was introduced into Christian 
 theology subsequent to their times ; and as a matter of fact, we find no 
 trace of this doctrine until 200 years after Christ, I have already 
 proved to you by quotations from the Book of Common Prayer, tliat 
 the articles, creeds, and formularies of the Church of England are en- 
 tirely in favour of the view which I have taken of the condition of the 
 lost, so far as they refer to it at all, which, however, is only incidentally. 
 In my last sermon, I showed you that this terrible Pagan doctrine 
 which Tertullian and Augustine succeeded in imposing on the Christian 
 church, through the influence of their great names, vast learning, and 
 fiery zeal and eloquence, receives no support whatever from the Word 
 of God ; and that there is not one text fairly quoted and honestly inter- 
 preted which contains any such tenet as this, from Genesis to Revelation. 
 The Old Testament does not once refer to it ; we may, therefore, safely 
 assume that it was unknown to the authois of these ancient books. In 
 the New Testament there are twenty-one epistles, written by five of 
 Christ's apostles, none of them speak of, or refer to,this frightful doctrine, 
 still less preach or teach it for the obvious '•eason that they did not be- 
 lieve in it ; for if such had been the habit of the early Christian church, 
 or they had been taught it by their master, it is inconceivable that it 
 should have been excluded from the twenty-one epistles which contain the 
 doctrinal portions of the Gospel, the dogmas of the Christian faith ; and 
 as I pointed out to you last Sunday, there are only two passages in the 
 whole of the four gospels which contain the teaching of Christ H nself 
 and which are always quoted as stock texts by advocates of the Augus- 
 tinian theory, which can by any possibility be tortured and twisted into 
 a crutch to support this view of eternal punishment — Mark ix, 43, and 
 Matthew xxiv, 46 — both of whicli texts, I believe, and hope, I then 
 satisfactorily disposed of, by showing you, that fairly and critically ex- 
 amined and interpreted, they were in perfect harmony with the universal 
 testimony of the Bible ; that the sinner's future doom is not life, but 
 death ; mortality, and not immortality ; not an endless life of pain, but 
 the extinction of life ; not everlasting existence, but everlasting des- 
 truction : that " the wages of sin is death ;" that if you or I die in our 
 sin impenitent, unsanctified, unsaved, we shall be raised again from the 
 dead at the last day, by our Great Judge, and having received from Him 
 the reward of our deeds, and endured a perfectly just and equitable 
 amount of suffering for our sins here, — the " many stripes," or the " few 
 stripes," as God's Omniscience alone can know that we have righteously 
 deserved — we shall be consigned as mortal children of Adam, to eternal 
 death ; we shall, in our Lord's own words, be literally destroyed, both 
 body and soul in " sheol," an " everlasting death," which will be our 
 " everlasting punishment;" which, in Apostolic words, is " everlasting 
 destruction from the presence of the Lord and our fellow men." Such is 
 
A CLEUGYMAN ON THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL. 
 
 the uniform teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ and His Apostles, as 
 well as that of the Church of England, concerning the future destiny of 
 the children of this world, of the ungodly and unconverted ; whilst the 
 children of God, the penitent and believing, the sanctified and regener- 
 ated, having, by faith in the Saviour of sinners, attained to immortality, 
 as a free gift of God's love and goodness, will enjoy an eternal, never 
 ending life of peace, rest, joy, and blessedness with Christ and His saints 
 and angels in a glorious heaven. This is God's own word, " The wages 
 of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord." The only portion of the Bible I have not mentioned is the 
 Apocalypse, or Revelation of John, and in that book there is one pas- 
 sage which is always quoted in connection with those two texts referred 
 to in the gospels, to prove the eternal duration of the sinners' sufferings 
 in hell — (Chap. xiv. 10, 11). "If any man worship the beast and his 
 image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same 
 shall be tormented with fire and brimstone, and the smoke of their 
 torment ascendeth for ever and ever." Now, in the first place, it is not 
 by any means clear that this passage refers to the future punishment of 
 sinners at all. Elliott, the prophetic writer, a great authority, thinks it 
 docs not ; but in the second place, whether it does or not, we cannot 
 put a literal interpretation and base so awfully important a dogma as 
 that of the consignment of a human soul to an eternal life of agony in 
 hell, upon a single prophetic utterance found in a book which is con- 
 fessedly the most obscure, figurative, mysterious and difficult ever 
 written ; a book so crowded with allegory and flowing imagery, fore- 
 shadowing future events, that no one can venture to dogmatize upon the 
 meaning of its contents. 
 
 " 'I shall (D.V.) conclude my remarks on this important subject next 
 Sunday, and will now only add a few words of warning and advice to 
 what I have said already, and I say, first, do not be afraid of this 
 subject. Do not fear to investigate it for your selves. Do not be 
 deterred from ascertaining the truth or error of this or any other doctrine, 
 preached from this, or any other pulpit, as the teaching of God, by the 
 idea that you aie meddling with matters that do not concern you, and 
 that they are best left alone ; that it is dangerous to look too closely into 
 the mysteries of godliness, or that your faith may be unsettled in the doing 
 of it and so forth. Listen not to these voices, for they are not wise. It is 
 your business. It (ioes concern you. Itis?io< best left alone. It is 7io< danger- 
 ous to look into it. On the contrary, in these days of abounding and pro- 
 gressive infidelity, it becomes a positive and sacred duty that you should 
 search the Scriptures earnestly, carefully, deliberately, to see if these 
 things are so, or not ; that you may be prepared to repel, as our Master 
 did, the assaults of the enemy upon your faith, in His own words : — 
 " It is written." You are bound, as Christian men and women, to speak 
 with certainty as to your own convictions of what the Word of God 
 teaches, and thus be always ready to " give to others a reason for the 
 hope that is in you." The well-known saying of Chillingworth, that the 
 " Bible, and the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants, " is a hack- 
 
 I 
 
 ■ W' f 
 
 f 
 
 !l1l 
 
 Mi 
 
 Si 
 
 ■M\ 
 
^ 
 
 THE niBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 1 
 
 ncycd, but a wine and a true one ; " and our sixth article of religion - 
 siiys : " Holy scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation, so 
 that whatsoever is not read therein, or may be proved thereby, is not to 
 be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of 
 Christian faith ; " therefore it is your duty and your interest to exercise 
 the reason, and understanding, and talents which God has given you, to 
 convince yourselves of the truth in His word, and not to take it from 
 the lips of other men on trust ; and sure I am, that if you have faith 
 in God, and approa'ch the study of the Scriptures in a humble, earnest, 
 and teachable, and prayerful spirit. He will direct your hearts and un- 
 derstanding aright to sec the truth as it is in Jesus, and to maintain it 
 unto the end. That Word " which has God for its author, truth for it? 
 matter, and salvation for its end," can never suffer by examination nor 
 can it be destroyed or neutralized by the heresies of man, " for the 
 Word of our God shall stand for ever," and this is His Word : " The 
 wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord." Amen."* 
 
mTKODUOTION. 
 
 In an age of enquiry and of religious activity, such aa tlie present, no 
 apology can be required or tendered, for the re-publication, in Canada, 
 «»f such a highly interesting and important discourse as the sermon of 
 Mr. Wollaston, preached in Australia a few months ago ; and the cor- 
 roborative and supplementary testimony therewith submitted in the 
 following comi)ilation. The sermon and testimony are specially cal- 
 culated to incite thought and reflection, as well as to stimulate and en- 
 courage the inveotigation of Bible truth. Various reasons conduce to 
 this republication. We live in a wonderful age. If we read the sa- 
 cred oracles aright (and all the leading commentators are agreed that 
 the prophetic epochal numbers of Daniel and John are filled up), the 
 world is on the eve of a great crisis, the greatest hitherto in the history 
 of our race — the time of trouble foretold by Daniel, as being unpar- 
 alleled up to that time, since the world began. It is plain to every man 
 who will make use of his eyes and his ears, that abounding iniquity 
 prevails ; that the indications given by Paul to Timothy of what should 
 occur in the perilous times of the last days of Judah's commonwealth, 
 are in full force and manifestation in these latter days, " men " being 
 " lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, dis- 
 obedient to parents, unthankful, unholj', without natural affection, 
 truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of thostj that 
 are good, trjvitors, heady, highminded, lovers of pleasure more than 
 lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power 
 thereof" (II Tim. iii. 2-4). It is also plain that there is a powerful up- 
 heaving, and a great shaking process going on in the religious world of 
 Christendom, and a general loosening of those ties by which religious 
 sects have hitherto been held together. This latter state of things does 
 not exist to the same extent in Canada, that it does in England, ad- 
 mittedly the centre of the religious enlightenment [and civilization of 
 Christendom. In that country, scepticism as regards things religious 
 is making rapid strides over the land, and men in thousands are 
 weekly casting off th'e trammels of the various religious systems. 
 I'he movement is not confined to the State Church, it extends also to 
 Dissent. This defection has an outlet in opposite directions. It goes 
 off, on the one hand inflated with a zeal destitute of knowledge, in the 
 direction of a sensuous formality, adopting by way of external embell- 
 ishment emblems of the .symbolical worship established in the wilder- 
 ness of the Exodus, as the national religon of a peculiar people, for a 
 special purpose, having aims and objects signified through the types and 
 
10 THK RIBLK VINDICATKD A(»AINST MODERN THEOLCMJY. 
 
 shariows of a law which was aftorwanls nailed to the cross, abolisheil, 
 an(| taken out of the way at the crucifixion of Christ, and with which, 
 in its symbolography, in whole, or in part, as an external ritualism, thf 
 world of Christendom, being Gentile, has nothing whatever to do. 
 
 The outlet on the other han<l, is in the direction of Kationalistic 
 Infidelity, and a brutish, stolid indifference. If, when a change takes 
 place in a man's religious views or convictions, the change bo not for the 
 better, it nuist be for the worse. Tt is important then that his atten- 
 tion should be directed to the Way of r^ife — to a study anew of the 
 Bible, containing as it does a revelation of God's will and God's pur- 
 pose in reference to this earth, and the race of men whom Ho hath 
 placed upon it. Ho will there find (Isa. xlv. 18) that (Jod "created 
 not the enrth in vain, but formed it to bo inhnhiteil," that a part of 
 (.'hrist's mission on His return consists (Isa. xlix. 8) in "establishing 
 the earth, in causing the de.solate places to be inhabited." And that 
 consequently (Eccl. i. 4) while "one generation goeth and another 
 tomcth, the earth remaineth for ever," that the {)urpo8e of God as de- 
 clared (Eph. i. 9, 10, Emphatic Diaglott) is announced in His " having 
 made known to us the secret of His will, according to His own benevo- 
 lent design, which He previously purposed in Himself in regard to an 
 administration of the fullness of the appointed times, to re-unite all 
 things under one head, even under the Anointed One ; the things 
 in the heavens and the things in the earth, — under Him." That 
 Christ came to redeem man from death consequent on the fall, and 
 to bestow eternal life on certain conditions made known to us — that 
 this salvation is free — that God out of the present state of probation 
 of sin and suffering, is evolving a glorious destiny for our race, com- 
 mencing under the Millennial Reign of Christ on earth, and extending 
 into the Olahm, or Hidden Period beyond, when God the Father shall 
 be all and in all. 
 
 To such an one groping for light, and staggered at the things 
 which, through a pernicious, arbitrary, and unauthorised system of in- 
 terpretation the Bible is represented as teaching, the following col- 
 lection of testimony on the momentous subjects of Life, Death, Re- 
 surrection and Immortality, may be of service, may serve as a directive 
 finger-post, pointing out to the weary and despairing wanderer, here and 
 there, the way of life as taught in the Scriptures, properly understood, 
 and leading hin) to the investigation of that fountain of truth, the Word 
 of Him who is the source of all light and all life ! 
 
 The most important feature, however, in the present religious move- 
 ment in England, is that having reference to established doctrines. In 
 this direction doubt and dissatisfaction exist on every hand, and this 
 chiefly in reference to two of the leading doctrines of Christendom, namely 
 that of the natural immortality of the human soul, and eternal torments. 
 Mr. Wollaston, the author of the foregoing .sermon, and who shouhl 
 know, boldly declares that these dogmas were not originally doctrines 
 of the Church of England, and that her liturgy recognises a future life 
 only through a resurrection from the dead. This will surely be new 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 II 
 
 H 
 
 S. Warleigh, ''ec- 
 a pamphlet recently 
 
 and astounding information to many. The Rev. 
 tor at Ashchurch, near Tewkesbury, England, in 
 published maintains that in 1562, the Synod of the C)iurcli met in Con- 
 vocation, expunged from the "Articles" the following declaration whicii 
 had been adopted and inserted among them only ten years previously, 
 viz : — "The souls of them that depart this life, do neither depart with 
 their bodies, nor sleep idly. They which say that the souls of such us 
 depart hence do sleep, being without all sense, feeling, or perceiving 
 until the day of judgment, or affirm that the souls die with their bodies, 
 and at the last day shall be raised up with the same, do utterly dissent 
 from the right belief declared to us in the Holy Scripture," This do- 
 claration having been inserted in the " Articles" of the Church of Eng- 
 land so late only as l''3r)2, and expunged in 15G2, it is clear, that as :i 
 church, that church only, held the current popular views respecting 
 immortality and eternal torment, for the space of ten years. Mr. War- 
 leigh also informs us that in the case of Wilson vn. Fendall, in 1864, 
 the Lord Chancellor of England gave judgment that the doctrine of 
 eternal torment was not the doctrine of the Church of England. 
 
 It was stated in the English newspapers in 1 865, that of all the ser- 
 mons preached in St. Paul's Cathedral, London, by clergymen from all 
 parts of England, in 1864, the greater number were on the subjects of 
 tile Nature of Man, the State of the Dead, and Eternal Torment. The 
 I'elagian and Augustinian C(jntroversy has not been settled. Hudson 
 says that the Church still inherits the questions raised by this con- 
 troversy. The " conflict of ages " has not yet been determined. On the 
 contrary, it would appear to be breaking out anew. A vast amount of 
 energy, learning and talent have been expended in this controversy. 
 Mr. Wollaston is the first clergyman in the present day who has boldly 
 and unequivocally come out against the doctrines or dogmas in question. 
 Possessing his sermon and the testimonies contained in the following 
 compilation, together with the Bible, by which to test the whole as in 
 the crucible of truth, the general reader acquainted with orthodox 
 views, opinions and theology, has the whole matter, as it were, in a nut- 
 shell ; and if he be honest, candid, earnest and independent, cannot 
 fail to arrive at correct conclusions. 
 
 Christadelphians, though few in number and feeble in power, have 
 contributed their shave of expository matter on the all important sub- 
 jects of Life, Death, Resurrection and Immortality ; and have aided 
 materially in stimulating the investigation now going on in reference 
 to these momentous dogmas ; and, while they shrink from no responsibil- 
 ity attaching to their position in the sight of men, they deny that the 
 doctrine of man's entire mortality, or non-immortality ; of the unconsci- 
 ous state of the dead, and the rejection of the dogma of eternal torment, 
 originated with them. The reader of this compilation will perceive 
 that these dogmas were called in question and rejected by eminent 
 men in the different ages of the Christian era, many centuries before 
 Dr. Thomas was born. Religious teachers who are so ready to charge 
 Christadephians with being the originators and inventors of what they 
 
 
12 THE niBLE VINniCATED AGAINST MODEKN THKOLOCIY. 
 
 call heresy, would do well to bear this in mind, and also to remember 
 the ninth commandment. 
 
 Christadelphians receive, hold, and teach, in all its glorious breadth 
 and fulness, the declaration of Paul before P'elix (Acts xxiv. 14) : " But 
 this I confess unto thee, that after the way which tlmj call heresji so 
 worship I the God of my fathers, hklikving all things which are 
 wimTKN IN THE LAW AND IN THE PROPHETS ; and have hope toward 
 (}od, which they themselves also allow, that there shall be a resurrec- 
 tion of THE DEAD ; both of the just and the unjust." Paul belonged 
 to the sect " everywhere spoken against," and Christadelphians are 
 quite content to be found in his company. They also naturally hail 
 and welcome Mr. Wollaston as a co-labourer to the extent of the dogm-vs 
 above named ; not knowing, in America at least, what his views may 
 be on other importan'.- and essential Scripture doctrines inseparably 
 connected with " the great salvation." 
 
 Whatever reception may be extended to the following compilation 
 by the prejudiced and the narrow-minded, the honest earnest enquirer 
 must see and feel the urgent necessity existing for more light in reference 
 to religious doctrine, and will gladly welcome every contribution to- 
 wards this end, no matter from what quarter it may come. Some may 
 deem it presumptuous on the part of a mere layman to meddle with 
 such matters, forgetting that every one must give account of himself 
 and herself to God ; and that there is no mediator between God and 
 man, save only the One mediate, the man Christ Jesus. The Bible 
 recognises no such partial or exclusive discrimination. On the contrary 
 the Spirit (in Jeremiah, xxiii. 28) says: " He that hath My word, let him 
 speak My word faithfully ; and again, (in Revelations xxii. 17) "Let 
 him that heareth (understandeth) say come." 
 
 Others contend that, as in matters political, so should it be in spiritual 
 matters — that majorities should rule,, and that it evinces great presump- 
 tion on the part of a minority to question the religious belief of a 
 majority. Neither sacred nor profane history, however, teaches us 
 that majorities have always been in the right. They teach quite 
 the reverse. 
 
 Truth has always been in the minority, is so now and will so continue 
 to be, until He who is the Truth shall come and destroy the " face of 
 the covering that is cast over all people and the vail that is spread over 
 all nations," so that " the Gentiles shall come unto Him from the ends 
 of the earth, and shall say, Surely our fathers have inherited vanity, lies, 
 and things wherein there is no profit" (Isa. xxv. 7. ; Jer. xvi. 19). 
 
 It cannot be denied ; that, notwithstanding the religious activity of 
 the present day, a deplorable and inexcusable amount of indifference 
 and ignorance generally prevails in reference to the true doctrines of 
 Scripture. Many refuse to investigate through fear of consequences, 
 and a lamentable lack of moral courage and fortitude. They deem it 
 great presumption on the part of any one man or body of men to ex- 
 press a doubt ns to the entire scripturality of the prevailing doctrines 
 and sentiments of Christendom, and are amazed when informed that 
 
INTllODUCTION. 
 
 13 
 
 eminent men in all ages have questioned, combatted, and protested 
 against those doctrines and sentiments. It is no uncommon thing to 
 hear persons, otherwise intelligent, say, in reference to their religious be- 
 lief, "I would not dare to think that 1 am wrong." 
 
 Situated as men are, and considering the circumstances and influences 
 by which they are surrounded in the present day, it is quite obvious 
 that the first step in the direction of free and untrammelled investiga- 
 tion, and consequent emancipation from the theological thraldom in 
 which they are so firmly held is a step, a movement of great moment, 
 involving the exercise of an amount of moral courage and mental in- 
 dependence rarely to bo njet with in this utilitarian age. An attentive 
 perusal of Mr. Wollaston's sermon and the accompanying testimonies 
 will convince any thinking man or woman that this step must be 
 taken by all who would attain to life and immortality in the kingdom 
 of God. 
 
 No doubt, the feeling which Luther describes, on his own part, has, 
 in a greater or lesser degree been experienced by every one who, from 
 conscientious convictions of Divine Truth, has been compelled "to with- 
 draw from the respective systems of faith in which he or she may have 
 been brought up, and by a solemn act, the most solemn in the power of 
 man to perform, to separate himself, or herself, religiously, from father, 
 mother, husband, wife, brother, sister, son and daughter, relatives more 
 remote of kin, friends, acquaintances, neighbours and teachers, 
 
 Luther, in reference to his own position, says : — 
 
 " You must feei yourself in some measure awed in the presence of a 
 succession of learned men, and by the consent of many ages, during 
 which nourished scholars so conversant in sacred literature, and so many 
 illustrious martyrs. To all this must be added the more modern theolo- 
 gians, universities, bishops and popes. On tiieir side are arrayed learn- 
 ing, genius, numbers, dignity, station, power, sanctity and what not. 
 On mine, Wickliffe and Laurentius, Valla, and, though you forget to 
 mention him, Augustine also. Then comes Luther, a mean man, born 
 but yesterday, supported only by a few friends, who have neither learn- 
 ing, nor greatness, nor genius, nor sanctity, nor miracles. What are 
 they ] I confess it is with reason that you pause in such a presence as 
 this. For ten years I hesitated myself. Could 1 believe that this strong- 
 hold which had triumphed over so many assaults, would fall at last '< I 
 call God to witness that I should have persisted in my fears, and 
 should have hesitated until now, if truth had not compelled me to speak. 
 You may well believe that my heart is not rock ; and if it were, yet so 
 many are the waves and storms which have beaten upon it, that it must 
 have yielded when the whole weight of this authority came thundering 
 on my head, like a deluge ready to overwhelm me." 
 
 The same feelings are expressed by him at a later date, as follows : — 
 
 " Oh, what pain it has cost me though the Scripture is on my side, to 
 defend myself to my own heart, for having dared singly to resist the 
 Pope, and to denounce him as Antichrist. What have been the afflic- 
 tions of my bosom ! How often, in the bitterness of my soul have I 
 
./• 
 
 14 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 pressed myself with the arguments of my opponents. A rt thou alone 
 wise ? Are all others in error ? Have they been mistaken for so long 
 a time ? What if you are yourself mistaken, and are dragging with 
 you so many souls to condemnation 1 Thus did I reason with myself, 
 till Jesus Christ, by His own infallible word, tranquillized my heart, and 
 sustained it against this argument, as a reef of rocks thrown up against 
 the waves, laughs at all their fury." 
 
 Others object entirely to any change of view in relation to matters of 
 faith and doctrine, no matter what degree of latitude they may claim 
 for themselves in other respects. A wise man, however, will not hesi- 
 tate to change his opinions and views as to faith and doctrine when he 
 perceives a valid reason for doing so. With respect to change of views, 
 an eminent writer says : " Mental conservatism, like arsenic, preserves 
 form, but is inimical to life and progress ; the man who never changes 
 his opinions (if such an anomaly exist) is a mere intellectual mummy. 
 Man, in his intellectual, as in his physical entity, is an imperfect being, 
 and that which is imperfect is mutable." — Edward's Essay on the Divine 
 Poiver. 
 
 The following extract, taken from a newspaper some years ago, is to 
 the point, although slightly in the sensational vein : 
 
 " The other day we heard a pompous and very self-satisfied gentleman 
 exclaim, in a rather loud tone of voice, to a weak, negative-looking in- 
 dividual : ' I am no weathercock, sir ! what I believe once, I believe 
 always, I never change my opinion. What you see me once, you see 
 me always.' We set that pompous gentleman down as one born out of 
 due season. He belonged to the age of the Ptolemies, and should have 
 been mummified three thousand years ago. According to his own con- 
 fession, he knows no more now than when he was a boy. There are 
 several more of this belated kind of gentleman among us, who have 
 never learned anything since they left the primary school. They are 
 always right and everybody else always wrong. They are snags in the 
 river of life, and will not move on themselves, nor permit, if they can 
 help it, anybody else to move on. 
 
 " Dr. Johnson once said : ' When a man changes his opinion, he 
 only acknowledges that he is wiser to-day than he was ye.'itciaay.' We 
 humbly bow to the gentleman's decision. He, who on 'Tuesday believes 
 on all subjects precisely as he did on Monday, has lost a day. 
 
 " If Watt and Fulton had been unchangeable we might never have 
 known the luxury of river and ocean steamers. If Huskisson and 
 Stephenson had not been weathercocks we inight still be travelling in 
 stage-coaches. If Daguerre had learned only what he had been first 
 taught, we might yet have been charged thirty or forty dollars for an 
 ordinary miniature portrait of a friend or relative. If Col. Hoe had 
 never changed his opinions we might still have been working on the old 
 obsolete printing presses, at the rate of two hundred impressions an 
 hour, instead of as now (1862) 25,000 an hour. 
 
 "We, therefore, advocate all changes, whether of faith or practice, 
 that improve upon those that have gone before, and that promise to in- 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 16 
 
 crease the happiness, enlighten the minds, and elevate the morals of the 
 human race." — Morning IStar, July 31, 1862. 
 
 It is not unusual, however, to find many who are quite willing to re- 
 cognise the necessity existing for change of ojiinion, and progressivo 
 improvement in relation to matters affecting the life that now is, but 
 who, at the same time, are firmly opposed to any and all change or ad- 
 vance in religious opinion, or tenets of faith. These individuals conjure 
 up all sorts of obstacles, and suffer themselves to be influenced by all 
 kinds of imaginary difficulties, rather than boldly divest themselves ot 
 hereditary prejudices, and preconceived opinions, and honestly come to the 
 investigation of scripture truth, on the true basis of scripture teaching, 
 and according to the true scriptural principles of interpretation. 
 
 With many others, the great stumbling block in the way of a free, 
 untrammelled investigation of sacred truth, consists in a cherished 
 veneration for the teachings of fond, affectionate, and, it may be, pious 
 parents. When a man comes to understand the teaching of scripture in 
 its own true light ; when he apprehends something of the plan and pur- 
 pose of Deity ; and entertains just conceptions of the import of the 
 worth and design of these " Times of the Gentiles," in which we live, 
 now^ drawing to a close ; and of the nature of the apostasy from Apos- 
 tolic faith and practice prevailing on every hand, he will be able to per- 
 ceive, that, while our parents may have been honest, pious and sincere 
 in their religious opinions, they may still have been the subjects of the 
 strong delusion predicted by Paul ; and like Israel of old may have had 
 " a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge," or as Paul himself 
 prior to his conversion, " zealous towards God," while " persecuting unto 
 the death," the followers of the lowly Nazarene, binding and delivering 
 into prisons both men and women holding the One Faith of the Gospel. 
 We shall not, however, be held responsible for the religious opinions of 
 our fathers, neither should we allow them, whether dead or living, no 
 matter how much we may honour and revere their memories, or their 
 persons, in all other respects, to stand in the way of our reception of the 
 truth, when presented to us, as it is in Jesus. It is no unusual thing to 
 hear fathers and mothers declare, that if their departed offspring are not 
 in the heaven of their hope, they have no desire to go there. In like 
 manner also children declare that if they are not to join their parents 
 iu the heaven of their conjecture, they do not wish to be conveyed 
 hither. This is putting the flesh above the spirit, and ignoring the say- 
 ing of Jesus (Matt, x, 37) : " He that loveth father or mother more 
 than Me, is not worthy of Me ; and he that loveth son or daughter more 
 than Me is not worthy of Me." 
 
 A characteristic of the time of the end, as indicated in vision to 
 Daniel is, that the wise shall understand ; and Habakkuk declares that 
 at the end the vision shall speak. Unquestionably light is being shed 
 upon the truth in our day, light which our fathers had not. He it our 
 duty to see that in many cases, our fathers do not rise in judgment 
 against us, on the ground that they would have valued the privileges 
 we enjoy more than we do. Our great aim should be to place ourselves 
 
 
 
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 t 
 
 'rf "Hi 
 
 i;!'! 
 
16 
 
 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 t i 
 
 
 
 !'li 
 
 in harmony with the truth and the mind of Deity, as revealed in His 
 word; to cherish a practical love and regard for the Truth, regardless 
 of consequences or results, in so far as preconceived opinions, or mere 
 denominational religious sentiment, is concerned. In this connection, 
 hear what Archbishop Whately says : — 
 
 " It is one thing to wish to have truth on our side, and another thing to 
 wish sincerely to be on the side of truth. There is no genuine love of 
 truth implied in the former. Truth is a powerful auxiliary, such as 
 every one wishes to have on his side ; every one is rejoiced to find, and 
 therefore seldom fails to find, that the principles he is disposed to 
 adopt — the notions he is inclined to defend, may be maintained as true. 
 A determination to obey the truth, and to follow wheresoever she may 
 lead, is not so common. In this consists the genuine love of truth ; and 
 this can be realized in practice only, by postponing all other questions 
 to that which ought ever to come foremost. * What is the truth 1 ' " 
 
 Another eminent writer says : " While we are not to be wise above 
 that which is written ; we ought to be wise up to that which is written. 
 If Israel could say : ' secret things belong unto the Lord, but the things 
 that are revealed, unto us and our children,' surely those to whom the 
 word has come, may use the same language. Men are ignoi'ant of much 
 that is revealed, because they put a false construction on the language of 
 Scripture." 
 
 The reader of the following compilation will have no difiiculty in 
 perceiving how this has come to pass ; or how it has happened, that we, 
 in this age, are enveloped in the folds of the grep.c apostasy from 
 apostolic faith and practice which commenced to wi.. inthe day of 
 Paul, and continues in full manifestation until the advent of Messiah 
 in power and great glory, when He shall consume it with the spirit of 
 His mouth and destroy it with the brightness of His coming. (II 
 Thess. ii. 8.) 
 
 Deity works by means of agents or ministers. He makes use of 
 angels and men in carrying out His designs and purposes. In reference 
 to His truth, and the proclamation of the Gospel He makes use of 
 human agency. In the Acts of the Apostles we have an interesting 
 narrative of a man who was of great authority under a Queen of the 
 Ethiopians, who had come up to Jerusalem, to worship, and returning 
 home through the desert, sat in his chariot reading the book of the 
 Prophet Isaiah. The Spirit ordered Philip the Apostle to draw near 
 and join the chariot, which he did, and enquired of the eunuch, " un- 
 derstandest thou what thou readest 1 " and the answer is remarkable ; 
 *' How can I except some man should guide me V Philip joined him 
 in the chariot, opened his mouth, and, beginning at the Scripture which 
 the eunuch was reading, preached unto him Jesus. While men are 
 taught of God, by His truth, without which mankind could have no 
 knowledge of Him, He nevertheless, makes use of men as instrument- 
 alities for this purpose. 
 
 During the long night of the dark ages, there is every reason to be- 
 lieve that God had a people, witnesses for His truth, among the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 17 
 
 > 
 
 itn 
 
 Ih 
 re 
 Lo 
 
 it- 
 
 Waldenses, Albigenses and Huguenots, inhabiting the valleys and moun- 
 tains of Europe. But they were at last subdued and put to death under 
 the iron heel of a despotic tyranny, after suffering persecutions and 
 cruelties unparalleled in the history of any people, excepting, i)erhaps, 
 in the case of the Jews. Are the witnesses of God's truth to remain 
 dead and inactive 1 Is there to be no revival of His truth and people 
 in the latter days 1 If Christ is coming, is there to be a people prepared 
 to meet Him, living at His approach ? We are distinctly told (I. Cor. 
 XV. chap. ; I, Thess. iv. 15 ; Isa. xxv. 9 ; xxvi. 8, 9 ; Heb. ix. 28, itc.) 
 that at His coming, there will exist a living people, looking and wait- 
 ing for Him. If at His coming, as shown in Isa. Ix. 2. darkness shall 
 cover the earth and gross darkness the people ! and if the state of 
 things be such at that time, as to lead Christ in the spirit of prophetic 
 vision to ask (Luke xviii. 8) " When the Son of man cometh, shall He 
 find faith on the earth." If this be the condition of things generally at 
 His coming, then it follows that there must be a special preparation of 
 a people to receive Him, a living people waiting and watching for His 
 advent. This people must, therefore, be developed, through the truth 
 understood, believed and obeyed, and by this means taken o\it from 
 the state of things existing around them, (Acts xv. 14 ; I. Cor. vi. 17, 18). 
 As the apostasy came by man, so, judging from what we know of God's 
 arrangements, and workings in the past, in reference to His truth, 
 would we be led to expect, that the resuscitation of His truth in the 
 end of the Times of the Gentiles would be accomplished through human 
 agency, for faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God, 
 preached to men in its own unadulterated purity, free from the doctrines, 
 traditions and commandments of men. We believe that, in the Provi- 
 dence of God, and in furtherance of His benign and glorious purpose, 
 a man has been raised up for this work in these latter days — a man re- 
 markable in many respects, having a remarkable personal history, and 
 peculiarly fitted for such a mission — a man of whom the world knows 
 little or nothing, and cares less — John Thomas, an English physician, 
 of whose writings on the all-important subjects of Life, Death, Kesuriec- 
 tion and Immortality, a very free use has been made in the following 
 compilation, as the reader will perceive, and to whom, under God, the 
 compiler acknowledges his own indebtedness and gratitude, for the 
 amount of knowledge he possesses of the plan, purpose, and promises of 
 God; the scheme and way, and mode of salvation, and the consum- 
 mation of t,hat salvation, at the manifestation of the glory, now hidden 
 from mortal view, tha't is hereafter, and shortly, to be revealed. For 
 without the labours and expositions of Dr. Thomas, the Bible, humanly 
 speaking, would have remained to us of this age, a sealed book. Sealed 
 to all intents and purposes, to us Gentiles, as it was to Israel of old, as 
 stated in Isa. xxix. 10, 12, " For the Lord hath poured out upon you the 
 spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes : the prophets and your 
 rulers, the seers hath he covered, and the vision of all is become unto 
 you as the words of a book that is sealed, which men deliver to one 
 that is learned, saying, Read this I pray thee ; and he saith, I caunot, 
 2 
 
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18 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOOY. 
 
 I 
 
 i .- 
 
 for it 13 sealed; and the book is delivered to him that is not learned, 
 saying, Read this, I pray thee, and he saith, / am not learned." So that 
 to the learned, and the unlearned, while they steadfastly shut their eyes 
 to the true interpretation of the Bible, it remains a sealed book. 
 
 Dr. Thomas made no pretensions, laid no claim to the discovery or 
 introduction of anj' new light or revelation. He merely claimed, by 
 the exercise of the faculties with which God had endowed him, and free 
 from all hereditary prejudices, preconceived opinions, and foregone con- 
 clusions in reference to scripture teaching, in the investigation and ex- 
 amination of Bible truth, and the rejection and removal from the true 
 doctrines of the Gospel of the accumulated rubbish of seventeen hun- 
 dred years ; the doctrines, traditions and commandments of men, by 
 which, in all ages, the word of God has been made void ; to present 
 anew to men, in all its pristine purity, the ancient apostolic gospel, 
 faith, hope, and practice as taught by Christ and His Apostles, Moses 
 and the Prophets. And in so far as the writings of Dr. Thomas and 
 Mr. Roberts have been quoted, or the comments of the compiler here 
 and there added, in the following compilation, the one desire uppermost 
 in his mind has been to quote or say nothing from the Christadelphian 
 stand-point, that is not essentially and entirely in harmony with the 
 Law and the Testimony. The reader is earnestly enjoined to search 
 and prove from the Scriptures whether this be so — to judge hon- 
 estly and candidly however — to judge, in short, righteous judgment, 
 he must use as a test the Law and the Testimony, not human tradi- 
 tion. 
 
 The revelation from Deity, contained in the Bible, was given at long 
 intervals of time — by instalments so to speak. Deity requires not to 
 do things in a hurry, seeing that all agencies are His, and that He 
 knows and sees the end from the beginning. In like manner, during 
 the last eighteen hundred years, there have been at intervals great 
 movements, or what may, perhaps, be termed epochal upheavings in the 
 80-v.alled religious world of Christendom. Notably the movement, at 
 the Reformation, was one deeply involving the religious freedom and 
 civil liberties of man. This too, it may be remarked, was brought 
 about by hun).an agency. Eminent writers, men of note and observa- 
 tion among the clergy, and the conductors of the secular press, feel and 
 believe that v?e are on the eve of another momentous movement of a 
 religious character. Some years ago, the Rev. Charles Kingsley, a 
 preacher and writer of note in England, preached a sermon in London, 
 at which were present representatives of all classes of English 
 h'oh a.'ir' 'earned society, from the text, Heb. xii, 26, 27 : "Yet once 
 ike not the earth only but also heaven. And this word, yet 
 ■:n>nirieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as 
 ...j,c i.r*) made, that those things which cannot be shaken may 
 ' .16 course of his sermon, which was a remarkable one, Mr. 
 ■ K d it as his belief that we are on the eve of one of the 
 greatest religious revolutions that the world has ever seen, when doc- 
 trines, which have been received and held for sixteen hundred years, 
 
 HA 
 
 .■•»>■:, r 
 Kiiigbi 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 19 
 
 will be cast off and rejected, in the same manner as certain other doc- 
 trines and usages were disposed of at the time of the Reformation. 
 
 Vinet says : " Even now, after eighteen centuries of Christianity, we 
 may be involved in some enormous error, of which the Christianity of 
 the future will be ashamed." 
 
 In the memorials of Theophilus Trinal the following passage occurs : 
 " A new speaker of truth is an angel sent by God to trouble the waters 
 of thought ; and after the troubling, there is healing for those who first 
 step in. For some few years or generations, the waters retain their 
 efficacy, but then again need a new troubling by some prophet or wise 
 man. When Christ came He permanently troubled the waters of the 
 world's life, yet ever and anon there have needed to be more troubling." 
 
 A writer in the Edinburgh Review, says : — 
 
 " It is unquestionable that political speculations are now largely 
 turned from the dramatic, dynastic, and personal interests of history, to 
 the life of nations. Our fathers' generation, and our own have been 
 marked by changes so vast and rapid as to strike the least imaginative 
 minds with an anxious sense of temporal instability, and to fill the most 
 imaginative with solemn instincts of an undeveloped Providence, and dim 
 visimis of a future, which no theories of the schools, nor of the churches 
 will contain." Combined with a considerable amount of instinctive pre- 
 science, the foregoing evinces a lack of scripture discernment. If men 
 would only give due heed to the plain teachings of Scripture, and inter- 
 pret its language on the same principles which they apply to the inter- 
 pretation of all other books and language, namely the evident meaning 
 according to the grammatical construction there would be no need of 
 talking mysteriously about an " undeveloped Providence," and " dim 
 visions of a future," because the Scriptures reveal, in unmistakable lan- 
 guage, the things pertaining to the future, and the development of God's 
 plan and purpose in reference to this earth, and the race of men whom 
 He hath placed upon it, as the reader will clearly perceive from the fol- 
 lowing compilation. The whole difficulty arises from the application of 
 the spiritualistic and allegorizing principles to the interpretation of 
 Scripture, instead of the literal and figurative, the only true basis of 
 interpretation of all language, that of Scripture included. 
 
 The following, from an editorial article in the Montreal Witness, 
 some years ago, shows how, in one direction the allegorizing principle 
 has been most pernicious in its results, namely, with reference to God's 
 interference in the affairs of men. The writer says : 
 
 " While we are commanded to make the word of God* the man of our 
 counsel,' to take it for ' a lamp to our path,' and to appreciate it more 
 than gold, or honey from the comb, we are also enjoined to study and 
 admire His works. The naturalist, the physiologist, the anatomist, 
 the astronomer, and the geologist, are imitating Moses, and David, and 
 Solomon, if they conduct their researches into the wonderful works of 
 God with a similar spirit of adoring piety. Nor is the study of God's 
 exhibitions ofwisdom and goodness to be confined to His words and His 
 works of creation, His works of providence are no less to occupy our 
 
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 (1 
 
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20 
 
 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 
 reverential attention. A large portion of the Psalms and prophetical 
 books are occupied with God's providential dealings with his chosen 
 people and the nations around. These utterances of inspiration shew 
 clearly, not only the lawfulness, but the duty, of trying to understand 
 God's dealings with men in providence, and also shew, not Dnly the im- 
 perative duty, but the unspeakable importance, of studying God's ways 
 as well as His works ; and they who do so — who, like Dr. Arnold, ex 
 amine the daily papers with a sense of awe and reverence, as if they 
 were perusing a supplementary book of the Bible, to ascertain what God 
 is doing in the earth — are neither fools nor fanatics. 
 
 "It is expressly said in praise of one of the tribes of Israel (I Chron. xii. 
 32) that it had men of understanding to know the times, and our Sav- 
 iour specially denounces those who observe the signs of the weather, 
 but shut their eyes to the signs of the times. 
 
 " At the time of the Reformation, and long after, it was a prominent 
 part of the teachings of the pulpit to describe and explain what God 
 wasdoing in the earth, and what were the dutiesof hearers with reference 
 to actual events. It ivas left to a later and less vigorous age, so to subli- 
 mate the preacher's office that he would not be at liberty to apply the lessons of 
 Scripture to passing events, or in view of them to teach his hearers what 
 were their duties to their country, or to their race." — Montreal Witness, 
 nth July, 1872. 
 
 Mankind, in the present day, in reference to the Truth, have two 
 difficulties to contend with. At the very outset, in his investigation 
 and researches after truth, especially scripture truth, the earnest 
 serious enquirer finds not only that he has much to learn, but that, first 
 of all, he has a still more arduous task to accomplish ; and that is to 
 unlearn what he has previously been trained up in. A writer of 
 mark describes the process in the following terse language. He says : 
 
 " The most difficult department of learning is learning to unlearn. 
 Drav/ing a mistake or a prejudice out of the head is as painful as draw- 
 ing a tooth, and the patient never thanks the operator. No man likes 
 to admit that his favourite opinion, perhaps the only child of his mind, 
 is an illegitimate one ! Sluggish intellects are ever the most obstin- 
 ate, for that which it costs so much to acquire, it costs as much to give 
 up. And the older we get, the more closely we cling to errors, and 
 those weeds are the hardest to eradicate that have had most time to 
 root themselves. There are thousands who sigh for the suppressed In- 
 quisition whenever a political or religious Galileo promulgates any truth 
 that threatens to interfere with established falsehood." 
 
 A writer in the " Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come," for 
 1856, over the signature of "Observer," enumerates as among the ob- 
 stacles to the prevalence of Truth, the following: — 
 
 " 1. Prejudice. — The judgment is often formed without light, without 
 evidence. And should the truth be presented to a mind thus pre- 
 occupied, before it can obtain a lodgment there, it has an obstacle to 
 encounter and remove of a very formidable magnitude. The strength 
 of prejudice is amazing. Though assailed by reason and argument, and 
 
intr(jd(;ction. 
 
 21 
 
 for 
 le ob- 
 
 revelation, it remains as deeply rooted and vigorous as ever. Nay, it 
 is frequently nourished l>y tiie very efforts which are made for its de- 
 struction (after the manner of certain noxious weeds and thistles). 
 
 " 2. Pride nf Opinion. — When a man has formed an opinion and com- 
 mitted himself to its support, his mind is fortified against the reception 
 of evidence, showing that his opinion is false. Though he may feel 
 himself unable to answer the nhjeotions which arc urged against his 
 views, he still clings to them with the most obstinate tenacity. His 
 pride of opinion revolts at the thought of a change. It would be to 
 him a weakness, a degradation to which he cannot submit. 
 
 " 3. Authority. — There are but few minds which think for themselves 
 and form their opinions independent of others. Whether they will ac- 
 knowledge it or not, almost every man has his Magnus Apollo, to whom 
 he listens as to an oracle. And whatever changes the responses 
 of his oracle may undergo, he changes with it, and echoes its 
 latest dicta. 
 
 " 4. Education. — When the mind is in its forming state, it takes read- 
 ily the impressions which are made upon.it, atid retains them in after 
 life in all their distinctness and vigour. Hence erroneous impressions 
 early made are apt to be enduring. And it is here that truth meets 
 the firmest resistance. 
 
 " 5 Interest. — What multitudes are governed by calculations of profit 
 or loss, in forming their opinions ; and, by habitually acting upon these 
 sordid principles, are given over to believe a lie ! 
 
 " 6. Personal Attachments. — Man is a social being, and has his favour- 
 ites, who insensibly exercise a control in the formation of his opinions." 
 
 " 7. Personal Aversions. — When truth comes from the lips of those 
 we hate, the resistance to it is far greater than if it proceeded from a 
 different source. This is an old spirit. ' Can any thing good come out 
 of Nazareth 1 ' 
 
 "8. Consciousness of Error. — This often prevents men from coming to 
 the light, lest their deeds should be reproved. They love darkness 
 rather than light, because their deeds are evil. And though conscious 
 of their error, they are not willing to confess and forsake it. 
 
 " 9. The Dread of Ridicule. — How many are prevented from entertain- 
 ing the truth, because it will expose them to the ridicule of their com- 
 panions ; they would rather endure the pangs of a wounded conscience, 
 than the scoffs of the wicked. 
 
 " 10. Example. — ' Have any of the Pharisees believed on him ? ' The 
 force of example is great ; and truth has often to make its way in the 
 face of the opposing multitude. From these obstacles to its prevalence 
 — and many, very many more could bo given, is it marvellous that so 
 few embrace it 1 The wonder is rather, that it should make any pro- 
 gress amid such opposition." — " Observer" in " Herald of the Kingdom 
 and Age to Come," 1856. 
 
 True, we live in an age when men and women can no longer, on ac- 
 count of their religious opinions, be dragged to prison, to the rack, the 
 gibbet, or the stake. Religious persecution cannot lay its clutches on 
 
 I* ' I 
 
 m 
 
 m il 
 
 m 
 
 
22 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ill 
 
 I i 
 
 i 
 
 ,, . 
 
 the bodies of men ; it can, and does, however, take hold of character, 
 and hesitates not to apply to themostconscientious, in the most relentless 
 manner, the paint-brush of heartless calumny, whenever it becomes 
 known that a change in religious opinion has taken place. Some years 
 ago, a very able article appeared in the London Times, on the subject of 
 modern persecution of character, in which the writer maintained that 
 this modern persecution which covertly attacks character, is much more 
 dastardly and contemptible, than the bold persecution of ancient times, 
 which openly and bodily attacked a man and burned him at the stake 
 in the broad light of day ; that the unjust aspersion of character for 
 opinions' sake, and the vindictive maligning of reputation, incurred, in 
 this professedly tolerant age, by all who dare think for themselves in 
 religious matters ; who dare, under conscientious convictions of Divine 
 truth, raise themselves out of the theological grooves, or extricate them- 
 selves from the sectarian ruts, in which so many perish — to affix the 
 black mark, for such a reason, to the good name of man or woman, ami 
 so place them under the social, ban, is far more cruel and cowardly, than 
 the open, undisguised atrocities, perpetrated by the persecutors of 
 ancient times. 
 
 Much is said in the present day, on the subject of union — union in 
 different directions, of the larger bodies in the religious world of Chris- 
 tendom. This cry for union may be taken to indicate several things. 
 It may betoken a sense of innate weakness — weakness in doctrine, in 
 finances, in power as respects the pastorate, the congregation, or tlie 
 denomination. In any case, the cry forbodes no good to the world, 
 and should union of the religious bodies to any extent take place, 
 there can exist no doubt but that it will prove highly detrimental to the 
 freedom of religious thought, and the free discussion of religious doc- 
 trines ; and will tend to lull men more and more into a cold carnal indif- 
 ference as to matters of faith and doctrine, or drive them at once into the 
 fatal embraces of an atheistic infidelity. 
 
 Occasionally too, a low wail may be heard, a sigh for unity — the 
 wailer forgetting that, under existing circumstances, unity is impossible, 
 that is, among the denominations. The Bible, the only standard of 
 truth and of unity, convicts them all of holding and teaching doctrines 
 nowhere taught therein ; and this arises in great measure, as the reader 
 will perceive from the following compilation, because of the acceptance, 
 by Christendom, of an unsound, and an unauthorized interpretation of 
 Scripture. The religious world of the present time accepts the allegor- 
 izing principle of interpretation introduced by Origen in the third cen- 
 tury, according to whicli Di*; Clarke says : " The sacred writings may 
 be obliged to say anything, Gvevy thing, ov nothing, according to the. fancy, 
 peculiar creed, or caprice, of the interpreter," and a " New Hypothesis " 
 of Dr. "Whitby, introduced late in the seventeenth century, of which 
 Mr. Taylor, in " The Voice of the Church," says : " It is an occurrence 
 without a parallel in the history of theology, that a theory without an- 
 tiquity, without support from the plain literal sense of Scripture, a 
 theory named by the originator at its birth ' New,' and hypothetical. 
 
INTROnUCTION. 
 
 23 
 
 and which impugns tlie faith of the Church for more than sixteen hun- 
 dre<l years, has come to be at this time almost universally received and 
 taught among all classes as a part of the Christian faith." 
 
 In order to attain to unity there must be a return to primitive apos- 
 tolic Christianity, and this unity must be founded on what the Apostl* 
 styles " the unity of the faith " and " the unity of the spirit," and 
 which he describes as a sevenfold unity — embracing the One Body, Ono 
 Spirit, One Hope, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, One God, One 
 Father (Eph. iv. 3, 6, 12). The Bible properly interpreted and under- 
 stood teaches one only set series of doctrines, and these all cluster 
 around, and harmonize with the great plan and purpose of Deity in re- 
 lation to this planet and the race of men by whom it is inhabited. 
 
 While the cry for unity is hushed, and the cry for union raised, in 
 quarters where different action might have been exptjcted, the cry for 
 union is rnised under circumstances which induce suspicion as to the 
 considerations of mere temporal prosperity which instigate cand inHuence 
 this cry ; the cry for unity comes publicly from quarters whence least 
 expected, as the following taken from a leading secular Canadian news- 
 paper will show : — 
 
 " Unity rather than union. It is quite possible that much good 
 may come of the great Protestant (Ecumenical Council now in session 
 in New York. It would be vain to attempt to make believe, that it 
 will, to any great extent, rub off sectarian angles, and promote a real 
 
 unitj' among the various denominations which are 
 
 taking 
 
 part in it. 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher boldly proclaims his faith in the exceeding useful- 
 ness of sects, and where Henry Ward Beecher leads, there will not be 
 wanting numerous followers. On the other hand a very significant note 
 has been sounded by Pere Hyacinthe, and the 'Old Catholics.' In- 
 vited to be present at the ' Evangelical Alliance ' meeting, the old Cath- 
 olic leaders sent a letter explaining their objects, which was read by Dr. 
 Schaff. 
 
 " Pere Hyacinthe also sent a brief note, of which the following is an 
 abstract. Referring to the recognised aims of the association, he says : 
 
 "' My ambition, I confess, is still higher. Where you are satisfied 
 with an alliance, I would desire an orcjank and vital unity. I believe this 
 unity to be in the fvturc destinies of the Christian Church, becaiise I discover 
 it in its iirimitire tradition, and above all, it is in the will of its Divine 
 Fotmder. If, like that weakened church of the Apocalypse, all Christi- 
 anity were not fallen from its first love, it would not be so difficult for 
 it to realize, or even, alas," to conceive, the joyous mystery of its unity — 
 Signed " Hyacinthe Loyson.' 
 
 " We venture to say," continues the Mail, " that the thought so 
 forcibly expressed by Pere Hyacinthe, has infinitely more of the true 
 ring about it, than the hundreds of folios of speculative theology, aiming 
 only at ' Alliance,' which have been already read at the .several sessions 
 of the Conference. 
 
 " The old Catholics are, as a body, equally emphatic on the same 
 point. They say ; ' we hope and strive for the restoration of the unity 
 
 i;( 
 
 
 
 
 g 
 
 i' 
 
 KHtfc 
 
 
 
 'T 
 
 .4 
 
 ■I 
 
 rw 
 
 !■( ■ 
 
 i 
 
 iS' 
 
 
 *>• 9 J 
 
 J. 
 
 
^B 
 
 24 
 
 TIIH HFHI,K VINDICATED AdAINST MODEUN THEOLOGY. 
 
 iM 
 
 I 
 
 t 
 
 of tlu! Cliiistian Church.' Ami a{,'Hin, ' Iti order tliat the wurk of tlio 
 foiiiiihitioii of ii siiigh; Church of Christ -ihoulil become an ('.stahlisht'd 
 fact, every itidividual Clirirttian creed must cutif off n-erijlliiiicj ir/iich hnn 
 been iiUrixluced hi/ men, and restore that discipline and thosi; rules which 
 rest upon the foundation which Christ the Lord laid, and which meets 
 the just reijuirements of the diif(;rent nations, and of the aj<e." 
 
 "These words would sound strange to Henry Ward IJeechei-, and 
 many other members of the ' Alliance.' They are the germs, however, 
 
 of a ureat idea — of that 
 
 great 
 
 idea which wjis before the Saviour of 
 
 mankind himself, when Ife uttered His remarkable prayer in favour of 
 the unity of all His followers. Thrown upon so large a body of tliink- 
 ers, as tlu! men who compose the pn-sent religious gatht;ring at New 
 York, they can hardly fail to be productive; of good." — Toronto Daily 
 ''Mui/" Odoher 11, hs73. 
 
 To which may be added, tiiat this is exactly what Christadelphiaiis 
 aim at, but in a different way from what the Old Catholics propose. In- 
 stead of trying to revcamp and revivify the weakened and apostate suc- 
 cessors of the " weakened churches of the Apocalyp.se," and attempting 
 to make that straight which the word of Deity calls crooked, Christadel- 
 phians come out bodily and separate themselves, and build anew upon 
 the foundation of apostles and prophets direct, Jesus Christ, Himself, 
 being the chief corniu'. 
 
 Dr Chalmers says : " A time will come when God's own truth, ex- 
 pressed in God's own language, will form the universal creed of intelli- 
 gent, and harmonized, and happy Christendom — when men's faith and 
 th(!ir affections will come into more direct contact with heaven's original 
 revelation ; and the spirit of good-will to man, which prompted heaven's 
 message, will be felt in all its freshness and power — when the uproar of 
 controversy is stilled, and its harsh and jarring discords have died away 
 into everlasting silence." 
 
 Disclaiming all intention or desire of misjudging or misrepresenting 
 this great man, it plainly appears that in penning the foregoing extract 
 he must liave had in view a twofold course of procedure by which the 
 unity to which he refer,<, could or wouhl be attained ; first, i3y an intelli- 
 gent enlightenment of the intellect and the understanding of men through 
 the knowledge of God, as contained in the Scriptures of Truth ; and 
 secondly, by the emenclation of those errors in our translation of the 
 Scriptures, so generally admitted ; the correction of the present un- 
 authorized and arbitrary interpretation, through which Divine truth is 
 now filtered ; and the removal from the tloctrines and ordinances of the 
 gospel of the doctrines, traditions, and commandments of men, by which 
 the word of God has been obscured and made void in this age, as in 
 former ages. This would seem to be the only way in which men can 
 "come into more direct contact with heaven's original revelation." In 
 this way men anil women can, now, if they so desire and determine, 
 partake of those stores of knowledge and wisdom contained in the 
 sacred oracles, read aright in the light of their own interpretation ; and 
 become wise unto salvation. " Wisdom crieth without, she uttereth her 
 
INTRODUfTION. 
 
 tft 
 
 al 
 
 's 
 
 In 
 
 voice in tlio stioob: ; saying, ' My son, if tlioii wilt /wv/rc my wunLs, 
 and hide my commuodmentH vith thee ; so tlint thou inrlim thino ear 
 unto ii'isiliiin, and apidi/ i,hiiie hi'urt to understamUng ■ yea, if thou I'ria^t 
 aftiT /:itnirled(je., and li/h';<t up thv voico for nndnstand buj ; if thou s< iiy.it 
 her as silver, and searrhest for her as for hid treasures ; then i^halt thou 
 ii»dersland the fear of the hml, ainl find the knowledge of (fod." And 
 again, " Ilapjjy is the man that /utia//* wisdom, ami \\w man that ijitteth 
 understamling." Also, "The/^'tr of the Lord is the heginiiin;) of irisdinn, 
 and the kmirkdije of the holij is nnderstntidinfi." Further, "The wm-ds 
 of the Iit)rd are pure words ; as silver tri id in a furnace of earth, puri- 
 fied seven times." "They arc ail plain to him that understandeth, and 
 right to them that find knowledge." " Many shall \w purified, ami 
 made white, and tried ; but the wicked shall do wickedly ; and none of 
 the wicked shall understand ; hut the wise shdl understand.'' " The holy 
 Scriptures are able to make thee wiae unto .salvation through faith which 
 is in Christ Jesus." "Faith cometh by hearing." "Counsel in the 
 heart of man is like deep water ; but a man of understanding will draw 
 it out " (Prov. i. 20 ; ii. I, G ; iii. 1:} ; ix. 10 ; Ps. xii. G ; Prov. viii. 9 ; 
 Dan. xii. 10; II. Tim. iii. 15 ; Prov. xx. 5). 
 
 In this connection an eminent writer says : — 
 
 •'Mankind are condemned to dig for knowledge as for hid treasure, 
 if they would acquire it. This is a law to which there are only rare 
 exceptions, as it may please (iod. Even His own prophets had to dig 
 in the fields of one another for treasure not specially or personally re- 
 vealed by the Spirit. Witness the case of Daniel's study of Jeremiah 
 (Dan. ix. 2). The only depository concerning (iod and His truth is the 
 Scriptcires, and into that mine men do not dig. Men c, nnot know what 
 the Scriptures teach unless they .study them, tmd sludij them apnii from 
 tradition. The difficulty in this age, as in all ages, has been, that men 
 have allowed the thinkings of the flesh to predominate — and tradition 
 to rule their minds. 
 
 The Bible convicts men of folly who are ignorant of its teachings, 
 and holds them to be fools, if, still knowing what thc^y teach, they do 
 nc , believe it. Hence the ancient world, whose wisdom was the philo- 
 sophy of the Greeks, and the traditions of the " wise men" and " scribes " 
 of Judah, was a world of fools. The reason is, that man's thoughts 
 have always been antagonistic to God's thoughts and His way. The 
 Spirit, in Isaiah. Iv 8, D, declares : " My thoughts are not your 
 thoughts, nor my ways your ways : saith the Lord. For as the heavens 
 are higher than the earth, so are my ways highei- than your ways, and 
 my thoughts than your thoughts." These thoughts are the thinkings 
 of the Spirit and constitute the " wisdom that is from above." No man 
 knows this intuitively. He must study God's book of wisdom, the 
 Bible, to find it out. Ignorant of this he is not competent to utter a 
 respectable opinion on the truth. Does one man understand the mind 
 of another, or his views, before he makes them known, or before he ob- 
 tains information of what they are. Let the reader then be rational ; 
 let him honestly read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the word of 
 
 
 i. 
 
 
II 'I 
 
 !ii'; 
 
 26 
 
 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 truth ; and then deliver his conclusion from the premises, and his 
 opinions will be entitled to a respectful attention from his fellow men. 
 Let him bear in mind the warning injunction of the Apostle (I Cor. iii. 
 18): "Let no man deceive himself. If any man among you think 
 that he is wise in this age, let him become a fool, that he may become 
 wise ; for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God." For it is 
 written in the Psalms : " Jehovah knows the thoughts of the wise that 
 they are vain ; therefore let no one glory in man." 
 
 Dr. Chalmers says : " Prophetic interpretation is not a thing of ram- 
 bling ingenuity, but of accurate investigation, possessing within itself a thou- 
 mud cmredions of error and confirmations uf truth." 
 
 Tha following " rules of interpretation, and directions for investigat- 
 ing the Scriptures," have been found of great service by many, and be- 
 ing based on correct principles, are here submiUed for the benefit of 
 the reader and earhest enquirer : 
 
 " First. — Let the Bible define and explain its own terms, figures and 
 symbols. 
 
 "Second. — Give every passage a literal construction, unless its own 
 connection and phraseology render such a course absurd by bringing it 
 into collision with truths elsewhere established by positive language. 
 
 " Third. — The proper connection of every given passage is not al- 
 ways that with which it stands immediately connected, but those bearing 
 on the same subject found recorded anywhere in the Scriptures. Select 
 all these texts from where they stand, put them together, and you will 
 have all the truth revealed on that subject. 
 
 " Fourth. — All passages belonging to any particular subject ni.isc ^vr 
 tain one or more of the peculiar features of that subject, by wii.oh 
 may be identified as belonging to that subject. 
 
 " Fifth. — The truth in relation to any doctrine must be established 
 by those passages which speak of it in positive and unequivocal lan- 
 guage, and those texts belonging to the same subject, but which only 
 admit of inferential testimony, no inference should be drawn from them 
 at variance with the truths already established by positive texts. 
 
 " Sixth. — No doctrine should be predicated upon mere inference. 
 Neither upon one isolated text of Scripture. Any true doctrine will be 
 found interspersed through the whole Bible." 
 
 RULES FOR STUDYING THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 " First. — In any doctrine taught by types or shadows, the anti-type 
 must always correspond with the type and the ' shadow with the sul»- 
 stance' (although the very image of the things is not required). 
 
 " Second. — In studying the Scriptures consider that the New Testa- 
 ment is a commentary on (and supplement to) the Old. 
 
 " Third. — Never be afraid of results to which you may be drawn by 
 your investigations, as this will inevitably bias your mind, and dis- 
 qualify you to arrive at ultimate truth. 
 
 " Fourth. — Investigate everything you believe ; if it be the truth it 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 27 
 
 cannot be injured thereby ; if error, the^ sooner it is corrected the 
 better. 
 
 " Fifth. — Pursue the course with as much independence as if you 
 were the only one concerned. 
 
 " Sixth. — Rely on no authority less than divine, in so momentous an 
 undertaking." 
 
 " PROVE ALL THINGS, HOLD FAST THAT WHICH IS GOOD." 
 
 (From tlie " Herald of the Kingdom and Age to Come.") 
 
 These rules and directions must commend themselves to the good and 
 honest-hearted everywhere. Others, however, may not acquiesce in 
 their acceptance because they make no provision for the theories of 
 the schools — the doctrines, traditions and commandments of men, of 
 which so many are deepy enamoured. The Scriptures teach us that 
 there has been a turning of things upside down, and we plainly see, 
 on every hand, that truth has come to be looked upon as error, and, 
 error as truth. While the onus of believing and doing — of faith and 
 obedience — is thrown upon man, the lesson conveyed in the parable of 
 the Sower (Luke viii. 5-16), in regard to disposition, good soil, retains 
 all its force. The great difficulty now-a-days, is not so much in regard 
 to the lack of ability as to a lack of willingness or disposition to hear 
 the truth. 
 
 In connection with the parable of the Sower, Christ (Matt. xiii. 14- 
 15) applied to the Jews of His day, the language applied by the Spirit 
 through Isaiah (vi. 9), to Israel of old. He says ; — " In them is 
 fulfilled the prophecy of Esaias, which saith. By hearing ye shall hear 
 and shall not understand, and seeing ye shall see, and shall not per- 
 ceive ; for this people's heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of 
 hearing, and their eyes they have closed ; lost at any time they should 
 see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and should understand 
 with their heart, and should be converted and I should heal them, Bxd 
 blessed are your eyes {my disciples), for they SEE, and your ears, for they 
 
 HEAR." 
 
 There is no reason to suppose that the disciples of Jesus were men of 
 transcendent mental abilities. Henry Ward Beecher, who considers 
 himself good authority, is credited with stating, that in this respect 
 Jesus made choice of poor materials ; we must believe, that being of good 
 and honest hearts, of the Nathaniel .stamp, " Israelites indeed, in whom 
 there was no guile," they were in all respects suited to His purpose ; 
 and that having the whole nation of the Jews to choose from He select- 
 ed men in every respect qualified for the high office afterwards con- 
 ferred upon them, the highest that could be bestowed upon mortal man, 
 namely that of faithful ministers and ambas.sadors of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, duly commissioned by Him with the approbation of His Father, 
 un ier powers delegated by the Holy Spirit to make known unto all 
 nations, the glad tidings of great joy ; of life and immortality through 
 faith that is in Christ Jesus. 
 
 
 
 1J; 
 
 -■■^TPl 
 
 
 9: A 
 
28 THE 3IHLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 l|' i 
 
 Hundreds of men and women, of good and honest hearts, of ordin- 
 ary abilities and attainments have, in the present day, through the re- 
 jection of human tradition, the reception and underdtanding of the truth, 
 in its scriptural acceptation and import, given up their old ideas regard- 
 ing the immortality of the soul, and eternal torments, together with 
 their pre-conceived opinions and prejudices concerning the fundamen- 
 tal doctrines of the one faith of the gospel — the first principles of the 
 doctrine of Christ, — and have accepted in lieu thereof, in all its length 
 and breadth and fulness, the truth as it is in Jesus, Himself " the Way, 
 tlie Truth, and the Life " — looking for life and immortality in the one 
 only way of God's appointment, namely through death and resurrection, 
 and after sustaining the scrutiny of the great assize, being invested, 
 clothed upon, with glory, honour, immortality, eternal life ! 
 
 To many, or all such, the testimonies contained in the following 
 compilation will not be new ; although even in their case the collection, 
 within the present limits, of such a mass of testimony, otherwise scat- 
 tered over such an extensive field, may be found convenient in many 
 circumstances in which they may find themselves placed with reference 
 to the sophist, especially the theo-sophist. While the Bible is the man 
 of their counsel, a light to their feet, and a lamp to their path, and 
 while with all reasonable men the Bible arguments should be all-suffi ■ 
 cient in reference to Bible-doctrines, still it is frequently necessary to be 
 prepared to meet the sophist on his own ground — or rather on the 
 ground of true science — the ground of the sophist generally being that 
 of science falsely so called. 
 
 To the general reader, who may never have given his attention to 
 the things referred to in the following papers ; and especially to the 
 serious enquirer ; the man who is dissatisfied with the present order of 
 things, and eagerly anxious to know the better way, the following com- 
 pilation, elucidative of Mr. Wollaston's sermon, and other matters not 
 mentioned by him, cannot fail of being of great service. In this com- 
 pilation an attempt has been made to arrange the matter thus collected 
 in a somewhat methodical and systematic manner, although this has not 
 always been easy of accomplishment, from the digressive character of 
 many of the quotations. Rather however, than do injustice to any of 
 the authors quoted, through curtailment, the extracts generally are 
 given at some length, in order to indicate fairly the drift of the writers' 
 minds in reference to the subjects treated of. The reader will also per- 
 ceive that these extracts contain expressions and phrases of a theological 
 character, which Christadelphians do not, and cannot, in the light of 
 Scripture, approve or endorse. 
 
 The compiler has endeavoured from Scripture and human testimony, 
 to set forth clearly, the Way of Life, as contained in the Bible, as held 
 and taught in the apostolic age, and subsequently by the church of 
 Christ in all ages j which church, after the first and second centuries 
 consisted of a persecuted few, " earnestly contending for the faith once 
 for all delivered to the saints." 
 
 A mass of testimony, not always within the reach of the general 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 29 
 
 reader, has been introduced, bearing upon the origin of the dogma of 
 the natural immortality of the human soul, and the cognate dogma of 
 eternal torments, also in reference to the long continued controversy 
 respecting them, including also a sufficient amount of testimony to shew, 
 that the doctrines of Scripture have too often been made subservient to 
 the exigencies of statecraft and priestcraft, and the selfish aims of 
 princes, kings and legislators. 
 
 While believing, in its fullest acceptation, the declaration of Paul, 
 that the Scriptures are able to make men wise unto salvation, it must 
 be admitted that the great mass of mankind know little of, and care 
 less for, the teachings of the Bible. They are quite content to accept the 
 state or system of religious opinion, into which they happen to be born, 
 without question or examination, and to believe that, in this respect, 
 " whatever is, is right." In the case of the great majority of the men and 
 women of Christendom, their prejudices, preconceived opinions, and 
 foregone conclusions are so deeply rooted, and their faith in the tra- 
 ditions of their fathers so firmly establishe<l, as to entirely exclude the 
 light of divine truth, as shed forth from the sacred oracles, properly 
 understood, and interpreted in the light of their own teaching. 
 
 It must be clear Lo the reader of Mr. Wollaston's sermon and the fol- 
 lowing compilation, that the erroneous conceptions at present, and in 
 past ages, entertained respecting the nature of man, and the way of 
 life, have had much to do in bringing about that want of unity in faith 
 so generally prevalent, and which thinking men here and there perceive 
 and deplore. And these conceptions, as already shewn, are due to a 
 pernicious system of interpretation. Whosoever readeth the Scriptures 
 aright can find neither place, nor necessity, nor authority, for the dog- 
 mas of inherent immortality and eternal torment. The origin of these 
 dogmas, and the manner of their engraftment on the Christian system, 
 are shewn in the following compilation. It is also hoped that imi>er- 
 fectly as the work may be done, sufficient matter has been adduced to 
 aid men and women in correcting those false conceptions of faith and 
 doctrine, and to stimulate them in the great and important work of eman- 
 cipating themselves from the oppressive and galling bondage imposed 
 upon the world of Christendom through the doctrines, traditions and 
 commandments of men. 
 
 Besides the matter collected, bearing on the dogmas in question, a 
 large amount of testimony is submitted in reference to the destiny of 
 this earth, and this race of men who inhabit it ; also of God's way of 
 life, the Great Salvation, and the mode of attaining thereunto. Testi- 
 mony also of an important character respecting the great crisis now 
 close at hand, is also given. 
 
 This is the crisis of the world's history — Daniel's time of trouble, and 
 its consideration affords strong reasons for the study, investigation, and 
 acceptance of the Truth ere the door is shut. Men instinctively feel 
 that a time of calamity and distress is at hand. This feeling presses 
 strongly on men of -mere political prescience and forecast, although they 
 cannot define the nature of the struggle between nations that is close at 
 
 >*ii 
 
 ^■:■■ 
 
 '■li 
 
 11 
 
 
 ii 
 
30 
 
 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ' 
 
 hand. The Bible properly understood leaves us not in ignorance of the 
 nature of the events most momentous in their character, now impend- 
 ing. The Bible teaching with reference to Life, Death, Resurrection, 
 Judgment, Immortality, the Kingdom of God, or millennial reign of 
 Christ, and the duty devolving upon us, or what we must do to be 
 saved, is very clearly set forth in the following compilation. Here and 
 there, where deemed necessary or desirable, the compiler has inserted 
 affirmative or explanatory remarks, which he trusts the reader may ap- 
 preciate and profit by. 
 
 The learned men of the school?, the reader must admit, have succeeded 
 in rendering the important subjects herein treated of, unintelligible, 
 either to ordinary or metaphysical minds, and in involving the doctrines 
 of the gospel in inextricable confusion. Surely, an unlearned man, re- 
 lying on the light of Scripture and human exposition in harmony with 
 Scripture, may hope to succeed in making them plain, to simple, un- 
 sophisticated men and women, of good and honest hearts. 
 
 We live in an age of mammon. The love of riches is one of the 
 characteristics of our day. Many sacrifice everything to the accumula- 
 tion of wealth. They comport themselves and are esteemed and lauded 
 iiy the world in proportion to their affluence, or the display of wealth 
 they can make. Let the reader, however, attend to the words of the 
 .spirit in Jeremiah (ix. 23, 24) ; " Thus saith the Lord, Let not the 
 wise man glory in his wisdom, neither let the mighty man gloiy in his 
 might, let not the rich man glory in his riches ; but let him that glories, 
 glory in this, that he wider siandeth and hiotveth Me, that I am the Lord 
 which exercise loving-kindness, judgment and righteousness, in the earth 
 for in these things I delight, saith the Lord." 
 
 Let not the reader rest satisfied with human testimony, but search the 
 Scriptures to see whether these things are so. Take the word of no 
 man, unless it can bear to be tested by the law and the testimony. The 
 'lereans of old acted thus with reference to the teachings of inspired 
 men, how much more necessary is it, to act so now, when there is no 
 open vision, no inspiration apart from that which proceeds from the en- 
 lightenment of the mind through a knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. 
 This is the course of procedure which Christadeiphians have adopted 
 and act upon. This is what they ask of their fellow men, and which 
 they would press with all the urgency which language admits of. They 
 desire to learn and to hold the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but 
 the truth. And the measure which they mete out to others, in this re- 
 spect, they are willing to have meted out to them. All that they desire, 
 urge, and enjoin is, that men and women should undertake to think for 
 themselves, and to commence an independent, candid, honest, intelli- 
 gent, rational, investigation of the Bible. "Search the Scriptures," 
 said Jesus, " for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and these are 
 they which testify of Me." If this be done honestly, carefully, candidly, 
 deliberately, diligently, and prayerfully, faith and obedience will follow 
 in due course, as the inevitable result of the truth believed, that is 
 union with Christ, through water immersion into the glorious Name, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 81 
 
 predicated upon the one faith of the gospel, then by a c<jntinuance in 
 well-doing, pressing toward the mark for the prize of the high calling in 
 Christ Jesus, seeking, and in due time obtaining, glory, honour, immor- 
 tality, and eternal life. Let not the reader lean to his own understand- 
 ing, but relying faithfully on the mercy, favour, and love of God, let 
 him endeavour to realize the true import of the declaration of Jesus ; 
 " The words I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." Rt-- 
 member that when a ;Paul planted, and an Apollos watered, the in- 
 crease was of God. " Prove all things— Mold fast that which is good." 
 " The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
 A Christadelphian. 
 
 ■'! ■■ 1 
 . ! ) '■ 
 
 •.)0,. I 
 
 I- , 
 
 ( ' 
 
 ■ li- K 
 
,r^ 
 
 i'.\ ' ■ ■ I 'I 
 
 TESTIMO]:^IES, 
 
 From human sources, ancient and modern, with reference to the hea- 
 then origin of the dogma of natural or inherent immortality in man ; 
 the engraftment of that dogma upon the Christian system at a very 
 early period in the history of the church ; the Hebrew doctrine of a 
 future life, only through a resurrpo^'on from the dead ; the conflict waged, 
 more or less violently, in l a .fcween the advocates and opponents 
 
 of the doctrine of the natuvai , -uc .\lity of the human soul, and the 
 cognate dogma of eternal tojment; ; showing also that those dogmas 
 were never generally accepter* . nor acqaiesced in, together with copious 
 extracts, and explanatory y. aiiU,''", exl'i^'*ing Christadelphian views 
 of the scripture doctrines of Lite, Deu ],, Re-. ^' rec''on, Judgment, Eternal 
 Life, and the Kingdom of God, or milleniilai lei^u of Christ upon earth, 
 as taught in Moses and the Prophets, and by Christ and his Apostles. 
 
 Before proceeding to the quotation of testimony, the compilei begs to 
 state, that having largely availed himself of the labours of Mr. Hudson, 
 as contained in his work, " Debt and Grace, as related to the Doctrine 
 of a Future Life," and feeling indebted to this author for much matter 
 placed within his reach, which, otherwise, might have been inaccessible, 
 and although differing from Mr. Hudson in reference to many of his 
 inferences, as well as in regard to his main conclusions, he considers 
 that he cannot do better for the reader, than by transcribing Mr. Hudson's 
 opening remarks, as an introduction to what follows, recommending to 
 the anxious enquirer a perusal of Mr. Hudson's book, in which will be 
 found much interesting matter relating to Life, Death, Resurrection, 
 and Immortality, although lacking the more complete scriptural fulness, 
 distinctiveness and direct, personal, practical character of the writings 
 of Dr. Thomas and Mr. Roberts, both Christadelphians, which Mr. 
 Hudson was not. His work, nevertheless, contains much important 
 matter which, the casual, or even the general reader does not come in 
 contact with, and which will surprise and astonish many — Compiler. 
 
 Mr. Hudson commences his interesting work, by asking, in the 
 language of the psalmist : 
 
 " What is man that thou art mindful of him ? " What is man in his 
 essential nature 'i And what is his relation to God, to His govern- 
 ment, and to an eternal'world ? What principles of justice and honour, 
 of goodness and grace, determine the relations of God to man 1 What 
 does God owe to man, and what does man owe to God 1 What claim 
 of human character entitles man, or what demand of divine law appoints 
 him, to existence without end ? Is immortality God's debt or His 
 

 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 33 
 
 gift? 
 
 Or may it be either t And if a debt, is it due to man's nature, 
 or to his conduct, good or bad 1 Whence does eternity become man's 
 own 1 
 
 " What is man 1 Respecting his nature and constitution there are 
 various questions not essential, yet very important, to be answered. Is 
 the human personality simple or complex 1 What are the mental re- 
 lations of soul and body 1 Is immortality a native vigour of man's being, 
 or a life to be sustained by adventitious aids 1 What is the divine im 
 age in which man was created 1 Is it still retained or was it lost in the 
 fall 1 Man was made a little lower than the angels ; what is now the 
 rank and order of his being 1 What is the dignity of man, either in 
 his proper nature or in the character he may form? Does it compel him 
 to become either angel or fiend, or is it peculiar to himself as man ? 
 
 " These questions are all asked in one other — Is man's immortality 
 contingent, or absolute 1 Was man created strictly immortal, or as a 
 candidate for immortality ? Is this his destiny, or his privilege ? Is it 
 the stamp of his very being, or is it the sign of his maturity ? Is it the 
 retribution either of holiness or of sin, or is it the gift of divine favour 1 
 Is it of law, either .in the economy of natural or moral government 1 
 Or is it of grace, and never to be charged as debt, though the offered 
 boon should be refused and come to naught ? And if it be of grace, 
 and be so regarded by men, is eternal life more likely to be rejected 
 and scorned, or redeeming love to be abused, or are the ranks of the 
 blessed likely to be less full, or later filled, or God's plans to be frus- 
 trated, and the harmony n the world to be deranged ? 
 
 " Postponing the discajsion of these fears until the truth shall be de- 
 termined, we propose first to show that the dignity of man is not im- 
 paired, but enhanced, when we regard him as invited , not compelled, to 
 be immortal." 
 
 Mr. Hudson proceeds to rest the discussion on the basis of two 
 theories, the Rationalist, and the Christian, or Scriptural. Of the for- 
 mer he remarks : — 
 
 " We here reckon as Rationalists, not only those modern Neologists who 
 reject an alleged revelation of Immortality, but all who rest the soul's 
 Immortality upon metaphysical or logical proofs, as if they were sufii- 
 cient without a revelation. The Rationalist theory seeks a general law 
 of human Immortality — a necessity or nature of things, as distinct from 
 the free methods of Divine action. It subordinates the moral argument 
 for an after life to the ontological. It regards the former as valid, only 
 to show the condition of the individual in the immortality which he 
 shares with the race. It infers the after life from an essence or a nature, 
 rather than from a chiracter. 
 
 " This theory, preferring the laws of nature to the assurances of its 
 Author, consistently seeks man's digpity in what he must be ; that is, in 
 a destiny. In the estimation of the advocates of this theory, the adorn 
 ments of virtue and holiness, and the attainment of heavenly glory, 
 may enhance this dignity : but they do not constitute it. It may be 
 tarnished by vice and sin, or obscured by the darkness of an eternal 
 3 
 
 M 
 
 I? 
 
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 m 
 
 (.. '■■i'5''i 
 
 '^ '': l 
 
 i 
 
34 
 
 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODEKN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ill 
 
 ;i; 
 
 t 
 
 doom ; but it is not destroyed. If man cannot altogether die, though 
 his powers be ever so much impaired ; yet, as a moral being, he retains 
 an imperishable dignity. If the first man was " a son of God," so are 
 all men ; and they even claim the honour, however remote theiii descent 
 from the Common Father, and how far soever removed from likeness to 
 Him. They may be bankrupt in virtue ; still they are rich in the in- 
 heritance of ages. They may be decrepit with vice ; but the centuries 
 of their being are countless. They may be hoary with guilt ; but He 
 who made them shall not outlive them. Their being may be worthless 
 and worse to themselves ; but they are immortal ; and however mean 
 the place they hold in the universe, they may not be dispossessed of it 
 even by the " King of Kings." 
 
 The early history of the Rationalistic theory is evidently Platonic. 
 Plato himself regarded the soul as not only immortal, but a divine 
 essence ; and because divine, it was pre-existent and eternal. And the Jew 
 Philo, speaking in the manner of Plato of the idea of man, says that 
 the breath of life was nothing less than the breath of God, and that the 
 soul of man was produced from nothing created, but from the Father 
 and Ruler of all. This view was first tolerated in the Christian church 
 in the person of a remarkable man in the fifth century, Synesius. His 
 personal history is interesting for the struggles he endured in exchang- 
 ing some of his philosophic views for the faith of Christ. Bred in the 
 Platonic school, but by his natural temper an Eclectic, he had been 
 attracted by the peculiar virtues of the Christians. While yet far from 
 Christ, he sought relief from the bondage of sin in prayer. But he 
 looked for the cause of his bondage, in a foreign element — the gross 
 earthly matter by which the heavenly essence was detained as in a 
 prison, and not in any corruption of the inward nature. He prayed, 
 not to Him who appeared in lowliness as a redeemer from death, but 
 to the " purifying God," enthroned on high .... By severe duties 
 and trials, he was brought at length to hear the glowing words of 
 Chrysostom and to the profession of Christ in baptism. 
 
 For hi.s amiable qualities, and the hopes of his usefulness, he was 
 offered the Bishopric of Ptolemais, in Cyrene, which he accepted with 
 great reluctance, avowing his dissent from several of the chai-acteristic 
 doctrines of the Christians. " I shall never be able to persuade myself " 
 said he " that my soul is younger than my body ; or to say that the 
 world and all things in it will perish. As to the Resurrection of which 
 so much is said, I regard it as a sacred doctrine,one of the secret things ; I 
 am far from approving the common opinions concerning it." An able 
 writer says of Synesius : — " The old aristocratic intellectualism of the 
 heathen world reigns in him to the last ; but a kind heart often gets the 
 better of philosophic pride, and he has much more of the Christian in 
 him than the name." — Neo-Platonism in British Qxmrterly Review, 1853. 
 
 " But even Synesius seems to confess, for once, the paramount im- 
 portance of the redemption, and, in one of his letters, to assert this as 
 the ground of man's dignity. ' Man,' he says, ' is a creature of high 
 worth ; and he is such because Christ was crucified for him.' And here 
 
TESTIMONIKS, 
 
 35 
 
 of 
 
 we are 1 r Id to say, that throughout the Scriptures, the dignity of man 
 is based on the work of Christ, and nothing else. It was lost from the 
 moment of the Fall. Man's glory then (leparted. The race became 
 culprit, under sentence of death. The common opinion that in the 
 absence of a redemption the race would have utterly perished in Adam, 
 is a concession that man's whole being and all its glory are due to Christ ; 
 and it is simply consistent to say, that his immortality was from the 
 first contintjent, and not abwluie, and that out of Christ, he still has no 
 immortality. 
 
 "The characteristic of this (the Christian theory) is, that it finds 
 man's uignity in what he may l)e. His immortal life, in the light of 
 this theory, is not a destiny, but a privilege. It may have been also a 
 birthright ; but, once forfeited it is due to Him by whom it is recovered. 
 Whatever the Divine Image may have signified, it claimed the attention 
 and regard of God no longer than it was cherished by man. Did it 
 denote holiness 1 It was lost in the act of sin. Was it a capacity for 
 holiness — a moral and responsible nature : It was worthless when 
 man became immoral and sinful. Was it lordship and dominion 
 over the earth t Every child of Adam has come into the world 
 to suffer, because this dominion was impaired or but partly re- 
 gained. Whenever the Bible speaks of Redemption, it finds the occasion 
 of it in no high quality of man ; he is never described as a lost child of 
 wealth, or as a captive prince ; but ever as beggarly, poor, and vile. 
 His only star of destiny was the sentence of death. Not destiny, but 
 deliverance from it, gives him dignity. The Gospel offers him everything 
 and invites — with all the earnestness of Divine Love, it urges — his ac- 
 ceptance. But it obtrudes upon him nothing ; it compels no other 
 choice than that which denotes the most perfect freedom — the choice of 
 all things, or of nothing, and of the attendant glory or shame. And it 
 is the highest dignity of man, that, though he has once lost all, he may 
 now, by free adoption, and a new birth, come to a boundless estate, a 
 lieavenly inheritance : where the good fortune of one shall not dispossess 
 another, but each one may be joint heir with the first born, the heir of 
 ill " 
 
 " Combination of the two theories — the Rationalist and the Chris- 
 tian." 
 
 " What was wanting in the doctrine of Immortality by nature, could 
 certainly bo supplied by the Gospel. And the doctrine of immortal life 
 as a gratuity to be accepted, seemed, in the view of the men of that 
 time, capable of philosophic improvement. Hence it was natural that 
 some views of the early Christians and of the philosophers of their day 
 should be interchanged. In the spirit of a patronizing Eclecticism, the 
 latter, admiring the virtues and embracing the hopes of Christianity, 
 were ready to defend it by their own modes of argument. And they 
 were willing that man's supposed inherent worth should be enhanced by 
 a closer union with the Incarnate Divine Word. The Christians in their 
 turn, were pleased with the weapons offered them to parry the assaults 
 of the sceptic ; too often, perhaps, they hesitated to venture man's 
 
 «|: 
 
 ■•** 
 
 i: 
 
 If!:' 
 
 . *'! 
 
 
I 
 
 36 
 
 THE 15I1JI.K VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 entire dignity on the work of a crucified Nazarene. The philosopher 
 could welcome the assurance of an Immortality which he liad deemed 
 rational ; the Christian could accept a rational defence of what might 
 otherwise appear an implicit, and blind faith. The union of the two 
 doctrines would be assisted by the proneness of man to rest in second 
 causes, and to derive the weightiest results from ' some nature of things.' 
 Why should not all created powers — all laws of being, contribute to si> 
 great a work as the endless life of a human soul 1 Why need this de- 
 pend, either in fact or in argument, upon the resurrection of a human 
 form in Palestine, or upon the attestation of that fact, and of the pro- 
 mise that He who had risen from the dead, should, at the last day, ap- 
 pear as judge of both the quick and the dead t 
 
 "By a process so gradual, that it is marked only by an occasional 
 shudder at the remote consequence, and an occasional sigh at the 
 beclouded glory of Christ, Immortality and Eternal Life came to 
 mean two different things. The former became a natural endowment, 
 the birthright of every human soul. The latter denoted ratJier an 
 eternal happiness, and this alone was the especial gift of God, through 
 Christ. The one was made a law of nature, the other a superaddeil 
 grace. The Christian sche'De of man's dignity, instead of supplanting 
 the rationalist, was built upon it. The new wine was put into old 
 bottles ; the new cloth was put upon the old garment." 
 
 The following testimonies, or evidences, will indicate, to the careful, 
 thinking, reader, how this came about : — 
 
 As to the origin of the dogma of inherent Immortality in man : — 
 
 " The Egyptians are the first of mankind, who taught the Immortality 
 of the soul. They believed that on the dissolution of the body the soul 
 immediately entered some other animal, and after using, as a vehicle, 
 every species of terrestrial, aquatic, and winged creature, it finally en- 
 tered a second time into a human body" — Larcher's translation of Hero- 
 dotus. 
 
 Gibbon, the celebrated historian, says : — 
 
 " The Egyptian mummies were embalmed, and their pyramids con- 
 structed, with a view to preserve the ancient mansion of the soul during 
 a period of three thousand years, when they supposed it would be re- 
 occupied by the soul ! The intermediate state of the soul it is hard to 
 decide, and those who most believed in her immortality were at a loss 
 to understand how she could think or act without the agency of the 
 organs of sense." 
 
 RoUin, in his Ancient History, Bpok 1st Part 2d, says : — 
 
 " That Egypt was ever considered by the ancients as the most re- 
 nowned school for wisdom and politics, and the source whence most 
 arts and sciences were derived ; that Greece was so sensible of this, 
 that its most illustrious men, as Homer, Pythagoras, Plato, even its 
 great legislators, Lycurgus and Solon, with many others whom it is 
 needless to mention, travelled into Egypt to complete their studies, and 
 draw from that fountain whatever was most rare and valuable in every 
 kind of learning." 
 
TESTIMONIKS. 
 
 .S7 
 
 fe- 
 
 lis, 
 
 (its 
 
 is 
 
 Ind 
 
 Diodorus, Book 1st, page 88 says : — 
 
 " It is to Egypt that Pythagoras owed his favourite doctrine of metem- 
 psychosis, or transmigration of souls." 
 
 Lempriere, in his classical dictionary, speaking of Pythagoras, says : — 
 
 " More strenuously to support his chimerical system, he declared that 
 he recollected the different bodies which he animatetl before that of the 
 son of Mnesarchus. He remembered to have been Arthaldes, the son 
 of Mercury, to have assisted the Greeks during the Trojan war, in the 
 character of Euphor})US, to have been Hermontinus, afterwards a fish(;r- 
 man, and last of all Pythagoras. 
 
 " This man Pythagoras, who is styled the Prince of Philoso])her8, is 
 said to have taught his disciples at Athens, that every man is immortal 
 because immaterial, and for teaching this and kindred doctrines, he was 
 condemned to drink the poison of hemlock, shewing that the doctrine 
 was not popular then, as some imagine." 
 
 Fenelon, in his " Lives ot the Ancient Philosophers," has these words : — 
 
 " Socrates greatly improved the philosophy taught by Pythagoras 
 and others. He taught that every man is Immortal because Immaterial." 
 
 In a note appended to Dacien's translation of " Plato's Dialogue on 
 the Immortality of the Soul," the following occurs : — 
 
 " Plato supposed the human soul to be an emanation from the 
 Divinity, and that after purification by various transmigrations, it was 
 again re-absorbed into the Divine essence. 
 
 " Plato also held the Pythagorean doctrine of the soul's eternity ; for 
 that " the immortal is definite in number, and it is impossible that 
 there should be more than there actually are j so that whatever be the 
 number of souls, they must have existed from eternity." 
 
 It may be stated, that in England and other portions of Europe, l)e- 
 lievers in the transmigration of souls are to be met with here and there. 
 The following paragraph went the rounds of the newspapers in the 
 autumn of 1873 : — 
 
 METEMPSYCHOSIS. 
 
 " A lady," says the Cmirt Journal " is about to publish a book con- 
 taining the details of a doctrine resembling the metempsychosis, or 
 transmigration of souls, of the Ancients. According to this author, a 
 soul released by death, wanders about through space for any number of 
 years, until it is to be embodied again. The duration of these wander- 
 ings depends upon the conduct of the wanderers before death. The 
 more wicked a soul is, the longer it has to travel. The author herself 
 is informed by a communication from a former female attendant, that 
 more than three thousand years before Christ, she was an Abyssinian 
 Princess, and a very ugly and disagreeable one too." — Toronto " Mail," 
 Aug. 2oth, 1873. 
 
 ENGRAFTMENT OF THE DOGMA UPON THE CHRISTIAN SYSTEM. 
 
 " Clemens AlexandrinuB, Origenand others, of the 'Fathers,' as they 
 are called, attempted to accommodate the truths of revelation to ' the 
 \visdom of the world, ' or philosophy of the Greeks. This is highly 
 
 
 .4*' 
 
 M 
 
88 
 
 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AdAIN.ST MODEBN TIIEOLOOY. 
 
 ■'i ) 
 
 H 
 
 I 
 U 
 
 
 .1: 
 ill- 
 
 commended by Clemens in the first and sixtii Vmoks of his Stronuiia, 
 in which he represents that h knowhulgi; of it is ahno.st indiHpcnsalih- 
 to an understanding of the Gospel, and t'xhil)its it as a revelation from 
 God, and a law and rule of justification to the ({entiles, as the scriptiucft 
 of the Prophets were to tlie Ifiraelites under the law. ' We cannot 
 err,' says he,' in saying that all things that are necessary and useful to 
 life, come from God, and especially that the philosophy gi"eii to the 
 Greeks, as a peculiar covenant, is the foundation of that of Christ ' 
 {Book G. p. G48). ' The law to the Jews ; but philosophy to the Greeks 
 until the advent of Christ, when all were called into the church by the 
 teaching of faith,' (jh 050.; 'Before the advent of Christ philosophy 
 WHS necessary to the Greeks, in order to justification, and still subserves 
 the piety of those who found their faitli on demonstration ; for it led 
 the Gentiles to Christ, as the law did the Ilc^brews, and prepared 
 the way for that which is perfected under Him ' {Jjiiak \sl. p. 282). 
 
 " Origen, the disciple of Clemens, adopted this theory, and followed 
 it in his speculations, treating the dogmas of the Greek philosophy us 
 a key to the history and doctrines of the Scriptures, and employing 
 them to solve the mysteries of the Divine admiiustration. lie intnjducfd, 
 accordingly, into his theology a great number of false, absurd and 
 impious controversies and dogmas, which obscured, adulterated, or set 
 aside the truth, and formed emphatically, another gospel ; and he was 
 followed by a vast crowd of disciples and imitators. (See Moshem's 
 Christianity, pp. G04- — G29. and Dupin's BihUotliequc, Book l,pp 190 — 224.) 
 
 " Thus within a little more than a century of the death of the last 
 apostle, did the ministers of the church begin to neglect and depreciate 
 the Scriptures, and to adopt that wisdom by which the world knew not 
 God, as a more efficacious instrument of leading them to salvation" 
 (Lord's Ejposition of the Apocalypse, p. 112). 
 
 " It was not a hundred years after John's death, ])ut contemporary 
 with the apostles' ministry, that these preachers of another Jesus and 
 another gospel began their work of corrupting the simplicity that is in 
 Christ. They gave the apostles much trouble, being the Judaisers on 
 the one hand, and the men of false science on the other, the former en- 
 joining circumcision and the observance of the law as well as belief of 
 the gospel and baptism for salvation ; the latter overthrowing the faith, 
 by commingling it with the dogmas of the Greeks about immortal souls, 
 elysium, tartarus, and a host of similar absurdities too tedious to men- 
 tion. It was to correct the errors coming in like a flood upon the 
 churches from these two sources, that the New Testament epistles were 
 wntten. Had men continued faithful and mindful of that ' certain word' 
 which was first delivered to them, the four testimonie.g, Acts, and Apoc- 
 alypee, with Moses and the Prophets, would have been amply sufficient 
 to ' make wise unto salvation ; ' but seeing the errors had taken root, 
 and exist in great force until this day, the epistles are indispensable to 
 our emancipation from their dominion" — " Herald of the Kingdom and 
 Age to Come "for 1853, ^:|p. 44, 45. 
 
 Again, Clemens Alexandrinus, a disciple of Pantaeus, A. D., 192, 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 :V.i 
 
 who besides tho office of Catechist, fillecl also that of a Pivshyter in 
 the church in Ahixandria, tells us what his c«»ur.se of instruction was — 
 he says : 
 
 " As the husbandman first waters the soil, and then casts in the seed, 
 so tho notions which I derive out of the writings of the (ientiles serve 
 first to water and soften the earthy i)arts of the soul, that tlm spiritual 
 seed may the l)etter be cast in, and take vital root in the minds of m«'n." 
 Well may Dr. Thomas observe that this was putting the He.«h above the 
 spirit ; and Milner justly remarks upon this, " that tho apostles neither 
 placed Gentilo philosophy in the foundation, nor believed that it would 
 at all assist in raising the superstructure of Christianity." " On the con- 
 trary," remarks Dr. Thomas, " they looked on tho philoso[)hical religion 
 of their own time as so much rubbish, but in all ages the blandishments 
 of mere reason deceive us." 
 
 The general reader who has never devoted any consideration to this 
 subject, will, no doubt, be greatly surprised at tho foregoing statement, 
 as to the relative positions assigned by the great teacher, Clement, to 
 the traditions of tnen, and the doctrines of the Gospel. All, however, 
 who are conversant with the general course of instruction followed at 
 nearly all schools of divinity, are aware that the foundation is laid d(!op 
 in heathen mythology and heathen philosophy, upon w' ich are biult 
 the professed doctrines and teachings of Christ and His apostles ; 
 Moses and the Prophets being generally, almost, or altogether, ignored. 
 In proof of this, reference is made to the following extract : — 
 
 Taylor Lewis, LL.D., Professor of Greek in the New York City 
 University, has edited a book entitled " Plato, against the Atheists," and 
 in the preface to that work, he says : — 
 
 " Our object is to recommend Plato to the student or reader by every 
 means through which attention could be drawn to our favourite author ; 
 believing that in no other way could we render a better service to 
 th(5 cause of true philosophy and reliijion ! We believe that in this age 
 there is a peculiar call for a deeper knowledge of Plato ! We speak 
 with confidence on this point. The young man who is an enthusiastic 
 student of Plato can never be a sciolist in regard to education ; a quack 
 in literature ; a demagogue in politics ; or an Infiikl in religion. Our 
 main object, then, is to recommend this noble philosopher to the present 
 generation of educated young men, especially to our theolof/ians." 
 
 History, and especially ecclesiastical history, read aright, in the light 
 of the sacred oracles, clearly shews, that about the year A. D. 200, the 
 leaven of apostasy which had commenced to work in Paul's day, had 
 made great and rapid development. The messages of the Spirit, by 
 John, to the Seven Churches, or Ecclesias, of Asia Minor, reveal the pro- 
 cess of declension from the " One Faith," a prominent element of which 
 faith was, a Future Life by a Resurrection from tlie dead, and the award 
 of eternal life as the gift of God, through Jesus Christ, to all passing 
 the scrutiny of the Judgment. And it unmistakably appears, that the 
 development of the apostasy was greatly accelerated by the engrafting 
 upon the doctrines of the Gospel, of the ancient philosophy of Egj^t 
 
 
 ..J., hi 
 
 
 
 p 
 
 l\:, 
 
\f- 
 
 I 
 
 40 
 
 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 and Greece, together with the traditions of the Jewish scribes, by which 
 Israel had in all ages nearly made void the Word of God(C). 
 
 It is not surprising, therefore, to find Origen, a renowned religious 
 teacher of that time, giving to the apostasy a distinct form, and a sort of 
 systematic consistency. Of him it is said that he taught that " the 
 Scriptures were of little use if we understand them as they are written ;" 
 that " words in many parts of the Bible convey no meaning at all ;" that 
 " the Scriptures are full of mysteries, and have a three-fold sense, viz. A 
 literal, a moral, and a mystical, and that the literal sense was worthless." 
 
 " He also taught the pre-existence of human souls previous to the 
 Creation, and perhaps from eternity ; their condemnation to animate 
 mortal bodies, in order to expiate faults committed in their pre-existent 
 state ; a spiritual, or ethereal resurrection of the body ; the universal 
 restoration of the wicked after a limited punishment and probation." 
 Dr. Clark says of Origen, that, according to his plan of interpretation, 
 " The sacred writings may be obliged to say anything, everything, or 
 nothing, according to the fancy, peculiar creed, or caprice, of the inter- 
 preter." 
 
 Spanhevm says " that Origen inclined to allegory, and fell into several 
 doctrinal errors, which afterwards supplied fuel for the fires of discord, 
 and produced deplorable effects in the church." Mosheim observes that 
 " by an unhappy method of interpretation, Origen opened a secure re- 
 treat for all sorts of errors." Milner declared that " no man, not alto- 
 gether unsound and hypocritical, ever injured the Church of Christ 
 more than Origen did. From the fanciful mode of allegory introduced 
 by him, uncontrolled by scriptural rule and order, arose a vitiated 
 method of commenting on the Scriptures. The learned alone were 
 looked to as guides implicitly to be followed, and the vulgar, when the 
 literal sense was hissed off the stage, had nothing to do but to follow the 
 learned. All his philosophy was takeji from the ideas of Plato." Por- 
 phyry says that Origen " continually perused Plato, Numenius, and the 
 rest of the Pythagoreans ; and that from all these masters he borrowed 
 the Grecian manner of allegorical interpretation, and applied it to the 
 Jewish Scriptures." 
 
 It is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that the allegorizing 
 principle has maintained its ground from the days of Origen until our 
 own time, and that it is in full blast at the present day — notwithstand- 
 ing the strong advocacy and support rendered to the literal interpreta- 
 tion o*" Scripture in nearly all the centuries of the Christian era. Not- 
 ably among these, in modern times, we find the Bonars, McCheynes, 
 Smiths and others in the Church of Scotland ; Chalmers, Candlish and 
 others in the Free Church of Scotland; Dr. Wolfe, Mr. Elliott, Brooks 
 and a host of others in the Church of England. Mr. Wilson and others 
 in the Baptist Church of Canada. And among that wonderful class of 
 laymen in the Highlands of Scotland, known as Na Daoine, emphatically 
 " The men," the literal interpretation was always held in great repute. 
 
 These men were generally ranged against all of the clergy who held 
 to the allegorical interpretation (C). 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 41 
 
 Dr. Wolfe, a minister of the Church of England, a celebrated oriental 
 linguist, says : — 
 
 " The greater part of the Christian Church has swerved from the 
 plain sense of Scripture, and turned to the phantomizing system of the 
 Buddhists, who believe that the future happiness of mankind will con- 
 sist in moving about in the air. These blinded minds suppose that when 
 they read '■Jews,' they must understand 'Gentiles;' and when they 
 read ' Jerusalem ' they must substitute the ' Church.' And if it is said : 
 Emih it means sky ; and for the Coming of the Lord, they must under- 
 stand the progress of missionary societies ; and going up to the mountain of 
 the Lord's house, signifies a grand meeting of religious sectaries." 
 
 In an article in the Montreal fFitness, some years ago, contending for 
 the literal interpretation in reference to the signs of the times in which 
 we live, the following occurs : "At the time of the Reformation and 
 long after, it was a prominent part of the teachings of the pulpit to des- 
 cribe and to explain what God was doing in the world, and what were 
 the duties of hearers with reference to actual events. It was reserved 
 to a later and less vigorous age, so to sublimate the preacher's office, 
 that he would not be at liberty to apply the lessons of Scripture to 
 passing events, or in view of them to teach his hearers what were their 
 duties to their country and their race." 
 
 Luther contended for the literal interpretation. In a letter to a friend 
 he says : — 
 
 *' You say it may be interpreted thus, it may also be understood thus, 
 it may also be answered thus, it may also be literally interpreted thus, it 
 may also be mystically interpreted thus ; — away with all these may h's. 
 These, my friend Catharinus, are all refuges of lies, mere loop-holes of 
 escape, and evidently go to confirm the truths I maintain. Speak thus : 
 ' This is the meaning of the passage, and it cannot be understood other- 
 wise.' You will thus keep to one simple and uniform sense of Scrip- 
 ture, as I always do, and always have done. This way of proceeding, 
 is to be a divine ; the former a sophist. For you know in every contro- 
 verted subject we must abide by the literal sense, which is uniform 
 throughout the whole Scriptures." 
 
 The Church of Scotland sent a mission or committee in 1839, con- 
 sisting of Rev. Dr. Smith, and Messrs McCheyne and Bonar, to ex- 
 amine and report on the condition of the Jews. In their narrative of 
 the mission, they declare (page 193) that a missionary to the Jews 
 should hold the literal interpretation of Scripture, both in order to give 
 him hope and perseverance, and to fit him for reasoning with the Jews. 
 And surely if this qualification be proper and necessary as regards tlio 
 Jews it must be equally so as regards the Gentiles, seeing there is only 
 one and the same salvation for both Jew and Gentile. 
 
 With reference to the literal interpretation of Scripture, a writer in 
 the Prophetic Expositor, says : — 
 
 " The great question which, after fourteen hundred years, is again 
 brought into public and open issue before the whole church concerning 
 the literal accomplishment of every jot and tittle of the Law and the 
 
 1^' i^:f f 
 
 U: 
 
42 
 
 THE BIRLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY, 
 
 
 ii 
 
 Prophets, is a question of such vast importanco — touching, as it doth, 
 the veracity of God, the integrity of faitli, the object of hope, and almost 
 every other subject of the intercourse between God and man — that I have 
 meditated very much in my own mind, how the merits of such a ques- 
 tion might best be brought before the eyes of men, and an impartial 
 judgment obtained for it. It is a question purely of interpretation, re- 
 solving itself into this simple issue, whether God's Word is to be inter- 
 preted after the same manner and by the same rules as the word of any 
 man ; whether the Holy Scriptures are to be understood according to the 
 way of understanding any other book, by the natural meaning of the 
 words, similitudes, metaphors, and other figures employed therein. We, 
 who stand up for literal interpretation, hold that it ought to be so inter- 
 preted and understood ; and only with the more diligent and exact study of 
 the language, because it is the Word of God. Therefore we would ex- 
 amine every jot and tittle, because we know that ' one jot or tittle shall 
 not pass away from the prophets, until all be fulfilled.' A figure of 
 speech we hold should be treated as a figure of speech is elsewhere 
 treated ; an emblem as an emblem ; a symbol as a symbol ; all in order 
 to come at the real thing which the word seeketh to express. That 
 real thing may be a truth concerning God's own being, which is not 
 visible ; or it may be concerning God's image in the flesh — that is 
 Christ— which is visible ; or concerning our own body, which is visible ; 
 or concerning the destinies of nations upon the earth, and of the earth 
 itself, which are likewise visible. But of whatever kind it is the only 
 way, we maintain, by which the real thing intended to be made known, 
 can be known, is through the exact, honest, and common-sense inter- 
 pretation of the words in which it is made known. We do not mean 
 to say, that when the real truth of the words hath been arrived at, we 
 ai'e then arrived at the ultimate end of God ; which, to an intelligent 
 and responsible creature, cannot be in the mere understanding of a fact, 
 but must rise into the apprehension of the purpose God hath in com- 
 municating the same unto men ; or rather embracing men, and through 
 men returning again unto Himself. It is therefore, an error to impute 
 to us, who stand for the literal interpretation of God's Word, the fault 
 of stopping short when we have arrived at the knowledge of the visible 
 or historical thing therein conveyed ; which, indeed, we prize only as the 
 ground upon which to stand, and from which to demonstrate the being 
 and the purpose of God to His fallen and responsible and redeemed 
 creatures. Far be it from us to object to the raising of every good 
 doctrine, and the enforcing of every spiritual truth, upon the basis of 
 every historical revelation of God. Nay, we are zealous for understand- 
 ing the thing declared concerning men, and nations, and the church, for 
 this very reason, that being firmly persuaded of the ' truth thereof,' we 
 would use them ' for doctrine, for reproof, for correction and for in- 
 struction in righteousness.' It must V 3 some such mistake concerning 
 our purpose and design in literal interpretation, which moveth any 
 honest hearted believer in God's Word to quarrel with us, to discounten- 
 ance us, or to mistrust us, in our well meant endeavours to arrive at the 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 43 
 
 real thing which God intendeth to declare, and to use it for the end for 
 which He hath declared that He caused it to lie written. 
 
 " To suppose, with Origen and his followers, that there are subtle and 
 recondite senses in the text of Holy Writ, is not only to degrade the un- 
 derstanding of men, as we see it degraded in the Rabbinical writers, 
 and to introduce those Gnostic aberrations which misled the Christian 
 Church in primitive ages ; but it is really to strike at a higher mark, 
 even at God Himself ; and to suppose, that in revealing His mind to 
 man, he adopted a cypher which a few might attain iint(j by erudition, 
 or obtain the secret of by revelation, but which from the many sluiuld 
 be for ever hidden, or, at least till some of the illuminated ones should 
 disclose to them the matter. This is the very basis of the papal tenet ; 
 most hateful to God, and pernicious to man, that the Scriptures are not 
 to be interpreted by the people for themselves, but only through the 
 medium of the Church. For if it be true that there are other principles 
 of interpretation, than those which the common good sense of men 
 wouW, by natural sagacity and ingenuity, guide them to, then those 
 methods must be attained by some uncommon means ; and those only 
 who have attained them can be allowed to interpret the writing unto 
 the rest. Call those initiated ones the Church, or the assembled coun 
 cils of the learned of the Church, and you have the papal tenet, which 
 Protestants profess so strongly to object to, in all its perfection. But 
 if as all Protestants profess to believe, the Scriptures are to be given in 
 their mother tongue, according to the best translation which can be 
 made thereof by the learned ; then have we done a great injury both to 
 God and man, unless we believe that God wrote for the understanding 
 of common men ; and that common men by the right use of their un- 
 derstanding, are able to comprehend Him. While thus we speak, we ' 
 do no injury to the truth that 'the natural man apprehendeth not the 
 things of the Spirit, which are spiritually discerned ;' for such spiritual 
 discernment never cometh but through the revelation of the Word. It 
 hath been lost by the fallen and rebellious will of man, and can not 
 otherwise be attained save by a communication from God, spoken by 
 the mouth of accidental messengers, or written in their inspired books ; 
 and he who withdraweth himself from the hearing, or from the reading 
 of the same, need not expect spiritual discernment, but will walk in 
 that ignorance of God, wherein men, all men, are naturally found." 
 — From the " Prophetic Expositor " in the Herald of the Kingdom. 
 
 LANGUAGE EITHER LITERAL OR FIGURATIVE. 
 
 " Mr. Lord, an eminent philologist, says ; ' That language neither ever 
 has nor can have, any other meaning than that which is either literal or 
 figurative.' 
 
 " We have already defined the literal meaning of language to be that 
 which mankind, by general consent, have agreed shall be the true and 
 only meaning of certain words and sentences, as representatives of 
 sounds and ideas ; and the figurative meaning of language to be that 
 meaning which it acquires by being borrowed from object?, &c., to which 
 
 f:\ 
 
 > )l 
 
44 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 men have agreed it shall .belong, and used to describe objects, &c., to 
 which it does not conventionally belong. Words are used to represent 
 the thoughts of the mind. Those words alone or connected together 
 in a certain order so as to express a single idea or ideas, in their relation 
 to one another, compose language. Those words, alone or connected, 
 cannot have any but thiat meaning which mankind have agreed to 
 attach to them, or that meaning which they have when borrowed from 
 one object, &c., to describe another object, &c." 
 
 " But closely analyzing the words as used in the latter case, we shall 
 find that even then they do not undergo any change in their meaning. 
 They retain that meaning which men have agreed shall be their only 
 true meaning under all circumstances. When it is said in consequence 
 of Jehovah's blessinj^ upon the earth that' The little hills rejoice on 
 every side,' we know that the little hills did not rejoice. They did 
 nothing at all. Still the word rtyoice does not lose its meaning. The 
 only change that really takes place is an imaginary one in the object 
 itself. The hills are, by an act of the imagination, converted into an in- 
 telligent being, and then described in language appropriate to that being 
 When our Saviour says, ' Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy- 
 laden,' he does not mean those who toil for a mere earthly livelihood, but 
 sinful beings, distressed on account of their deplorable condition and 
 danger. Still, the words, ' weary ' and ' heavy laden ' do not lose their 
 meaning. By an act of the imagination the sinner is viewed as a 
 labourer, and then language used to describe him, which is truly aj)- 
 propriate to describe a labourer. Thus should all the language that is 
 called figurative be examined, the figure will be found to consist, not in 
 •a change in the meaning of the words, but in the view taken of the 
 object described. So that language has but one meaning, and that a 
 literal one, or that which mankind have agieed shall belong to it. This 
 action is universally applied to all mere literary productions, in all lan- 
 guages, in all parts of the world. Just so far as mankind depart from 
 it, they unsettle the laws of language, and '.-ender doubtful the meaning 
 of any word or sentence. When, however, men come to the investiga- 
 tion of the meaning of the Word of God, they no longer regard uni- 
 versal usage. By some strange hallucination they proceed as though 
 Bible language were something diff"erent from human ; and having no 
 key to its meaning, they launch out upon the sea of obscurity in the 
 bark of the imagination, with no better helmsman than a fickle cap- 
 rice" — Ibid. 
 
 Treating of the mystification of Scripture doctrine by the theologians, 
 Milton says : — 
 
 " If, then Scriptures be in themselves so perspicuous, and sufficient 
 of themselves to make men wise unto salvation through faith, and that 
 the man of God may be thoroughly furnished unto all good works, 
 through what infatuation is it that even protestant divines persist 
 in darkening the most momentous truths of religion by intricate com- 
 ments, on the plea that such an explanation is necessary ; stringing to- 
 gether all the useless technicalities, and empty distinctions of scholastic 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 45 
 
 barbarism for the purpose of elucidating thos«! Scriptures, which they are 
 continually extolling as models of plaiimess 1 As if Scripture, which pos- 
 sesses in itself the clearest light, and is sufficient for its own explanation, 
 especially in matters of faith and holiness, required to have the sim- 
 plicity of its divine truths more fully developed, and placed in a more 
 distinct view, by illustrations drawn from the abstract of human 
 science, falsely so called." 
 
 Luther says : — " He who says that a theologian unacquainted with 
 logic, is a heretic and empiric, makes an heretical and em]nrical asser- 
 tion. There is no form of reasoning, or syllogism, suited to the things 
 of God." 
 
 " At a conference, or convocation, summoned by the Emperor Constan- 
 tine about the year A.D. 325, at which were present a great number of 
 clerical dignitaries, an assemblage which afterwards became famed in 
 history as the celebrated Council of Nice, while much disputation and 
 reasoning were being carried on by the clergy, it is related that one of the 
 laity, who was a man of unsophisticated understanding, reproved these 
 reasoners, telling them ' that Christ and His Apostles did not teach us 
 the dialectic art, nor vain subtleties, but single mindedness, which is 
 preserved by faith and good works.' " 
 
 The committee of the Church of Scotland sent to Palestine in 1839, 
 in the narrative of their mission, speaking of the literal interpretation 
 of Scripture, mention a sect of the Jews who hold, and contend for the 
 literal interpretation. They say :— " The Karaites, or Jews who keep 
 by the text of the Word of Gou, and reject traditions, abound most in 
 the Crimea. They have no literature of their own. In the Crimea 
 and Turkey they arc said to repeat their prayers in Turkish. Their 
 prayer-book is a beautiful compilation, being taken almost entirely from 
 Scripture, with some hymns ! And they do not omit any book of the 
 Bible in the Scriptures, as some have asserted. The other Jews hate 
 this sect more than they hate the Gentiles " (p. 247). This amiable 
 feeling exists elsewhere. The other Gentiles hate the few Gentiles, in 
 this day, who contend for the literal interpretation, more than they 
 hate the Jews or Infidels(C). 
 
 Treating of the literal and spiritual interpretations of Scripture, Dr. 
 Thomas says : — 
 
 " Students of the Scriptures should bear in mind at all times, that 
 there can be no foundation v/hatcvcr, for a spiritual meaning to any- 
 thing that has not first of all a literal fulfilment ; for if God's promises 
 are not literally true, neither can they be spiritually true. ' That which 
 is spiritual was not first, but that which is natural, and afterward that 
 which is spiritual.' This, though spoken by Paul of flesh-body, and 
 spirit-body, is true also of speech, world, Jew, Christ, temple, Jerusalem, 
 Babylon, and so forth. The literal first and then the spiritual. And 
 see that you have a spiritual discernment of each ; thp.t you do not con- 
 found prophecies which refer to the literal with those that pertain only 
 to the spiritual, and vice versa. The first man was the literal Adam ; 
 Jesus was the spiritual Adam ; yet both these Adams were literal or 
 real men, of whom the second was developed from the first." 
 
 m 
 
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 • J, 
 
 
 A' 
 
 >♦#" 
 
 
%8 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 !i 
 
 In opposition to this wholesome mode of interpreting Scripture, a 
 system, be it remembered, not so absurdly literal as to exclude the re- 
 cognised department of figurative language, but fully appreciating the 
 predominance of the figurative in the language of Scripture, and ex- 
 pounding it on the basis of the literal, in making Scripture its own in- 
 terpreter, in opposition to this system, it is recorded of one Dr. 
 VVhitby,''an English theologian, who lived in the seventeenth century, 
 that he applied his great abilities to a re- vamping and re-furbishing of 
 the allegorizing system of Origen, which we have seen produced such 
 disaster in the Church(O). 
 
 Bishop Russell gives the following summary of Whitby's teachings, 
 and our limits will not admit of any more lengthened notice. He 
 says : — 
 
 " Modern divines ha^e concurred in the use of certain professional terms, 
 which undoubtedly owe their reception to a feeling of convenience, rather 
 than to the authority of sound criticism. For example, the phrase 
 ' coming of Christ,' which in former times conveyed the most exalted 
 ideas in regard to the destiny of the world, is conventionally employed 
 in our days to mean the hour of every individual's death. The first 
 resurrection again, according to Whitby and his followers, implies nothing 
 more solemn than the conversion of the Jews ; the reign of the saints 
 with the Redeemer a thousand years on earth, denotes simply the re- 
 vival of evangelical doctrine ; and by the rest of the dead, we are to 
 understand a generation of bad men who are to be born about the end 
 of the millennium, and to annoy the congregation of the faithful." 
 
 The committee from the Church of Scotland, in their narrative of 
 the mission to the Jews (page 245) state that : " The Jews feel their 
 dispersion to be literal ; and therefore if you explain unfulfilled pro- 
 phecy by saying it is spiritual (or allegorical), they reckon you a kind 
 of infidel. If you say that a ' wolf does not mean a ' wolf,' but a 
 bad man, that Zion means the Church, and ' redeeming Israel,' not re- 
 deeming Israel, but something else, and yet try to convince them of 
 the truth of Christianity from the Bible, they think that you yourself 
 do not believe the Bible." 
 
 Much more might be quoted in this connection but quite sufficient 
 has been given for the present to. afford the reader some idea of the fear- 
 ful injury inflicted on mankind through the introduction of the allegoriz- 
 ing principle, by Origen. 
 
 " Of Justin Martyr, one of the Fathers who had been a Platonist, it 
 is said that when he wrote his first apology for Christianity, and which 
 was occasioned by the persecutions against the early Christians which 
 commenced about the year A. D. 138, he still wore the philosopher's 
 pallium, or cloak, and bore the name of 'the Philosopher.' He hoped 
 in the salvation of upright heathens, such as Socrates, by their virtual 
 faith in Christ, as the source of all divine illumination. He claimed for 
 the truths of philosophy and Christianity a common source, ascribing 
 the former to a diffused traditional revelation from God." 
 , The following statement is very important, in relation to the testi- 
 monies concerning the origin of the dogma of inherent immortality : — 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 47 
 
 " It is a favourite argument with him (Justin Martyr) that tlie Grec^k 
 Sages were indebted to the JeAVs, the chosen people, for doctrines whicli 
 they held in common with Christians." 
 
 Thus in his " exhortation to the Greeks " he alleges that Plato re- 
 ceived from the Hebrew prophets his doctrine of the punishment of the 
 sf)ul in a future body, which he regards as involving the doctrine of a 
 resurrection. In the same treatise he names as truths luld in common 
 by the philosophers and the Christians, " the doctrines of tlie divine ori- 
 gin of the world, and creation of man, of the soul's immortality, and 
 of judgment after this life." 
 
 It is not only possible, but exceedingly probable, that the ancient 
 heathen doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul, may have 
 arisen from vague notions based upon imperfect infoimation acquired 
 by their " wise men," respecting the grand distinctive Hebrew doctrine 
 of a future life by a resurrection from the dead. Holy Writ assures us 
 that man cannot find out God. Neither can he of himself fathom, nor 
 attain to a knowledge of his ways. It would be strange indeed, if from 
 an imperfect knowledge of the future life through resurrection, dimly 
 shadowed forth in the Old Testament, the heathen philosophers of 
 Egypt should have constructed the dogma of inherent immortality in 
 man, and that afterwards, through this very dogma, based upon a per- 
 version of the Hebrew doctrine of resurrectiori, ancient and modern 
 Jews in multitudes, as well as Gentiles, should have been led astray 
 through the influence of that reciprocal action attributed to error in all 
 ages. 
 
 In the days of Christ the Jews were deeply tainted with the perverted 
 tenets of Egyptian and Grecian philosophy. "Christ, quoting Isaiah 
 (Matthew xv. 0), charges them with teaching for doctrines the com- 
 mandments of men. Paul before Agrippa asks : — " Why should it be 
 thought incredible with you that God should raise the dead 1 " And 
 there can be no doubt that the fifteenth chapter of first Corinthians 
 was written to correct their views concerning the dogmas of Plato and 
 otherS; as well as to combat the views of the Sadducees, who denied the 
 resurrection altogether(C). 
 
 Dr. John Thomas, an English physician, afterwards of New York, 
 lately deceased, who in his lifetime devoted much time to the study 
 and investigation of this subject, summarizes in the following manner 
 the belief of the ancients respecting the origin, nature, and destiny of 
 man : — 
 
 " 1. The Oriental, or Gentile philosophers of Asia, taught that the 
 earth, originally dark, was constituted and populated with men, and the 
 lower animals by one Demiurgus, a deity of subordinate nature and 
 rank to the Supreme Being, whom they styled Buthos, and who inhabits 
 the ' Aioon Pleroma,' or ' everlasting region of light.' 
 
 " 2. They taught that after he had formed men, Demiurgus communi- 
 cated to them ' particles of the divine essence ;' which particles are the 
 immortal souls of a kindred nature to the Deity, and without which, though 
 living men, they would have remained destitute of reason, and un- 
 instructed, except in what relates to mere aiiimal life. 
 
 i 
 
m 
 
 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ■, 
 
 " 3. They maintained, that while he continued in this world, man 
 was compounded of TWO PRiNCirLES, acting in direct opposition to each 
 other ; tlie one an earthly, corrupt and vitiated body ; and the other a 
 divine soul, derived from the region of purity and light. 
 
 " 4. That this pure, intelligent, ethereal, and immortal soul, being 
 through its connection with the corrupt and vitiated body, confined .as 
 it were, within a prison of matter, was constantly exposed to the danger 
 of 3vil propensity, from the impulse and contagion ot the vitiated mass 
 by which it was enveloped. 
 
 " 5. That to extricate these immoi'tal souls from the evil matter in 
 which they were confined, Buthos, the Supreme God, sent inspired 
 teachers into the world, much to the displeasure of Demiurgus, and his 
 associate genii, who had rebelled against Him. These divine particles 
 of the Deity, which listened to the calls of Buthos by His messengers, 
 they supposed to be directly borne away on the dissolution of their 
 bodies, pure, .-ithereal, and disengaged from everything gross or material, 
 to the immediate residence of God Himself. 
 
 "G. That these ethereal and immortal particles of the Deity, which 
 would not listen to the admonition of their kindred essence, were denied 
 the hope of exaltation to the skies, and could only expect at death to 
 migrate into new bodies, either of reptiles, beasts, or men, as might he 
 best suited to their basn, sluggish and degraded condition. 
 
 " 7. That when the work of setting free all those souls should be 
 accomplished, so that none of them should be lost, but all restored to 
 the Divine Essence, from which they originally emanated, Buthos, they 
 supposed, would dissolve the fabric of this lower world. 
 
 " Such," says Dr. Thomas, " was the creed of the magicians, astro- 
 logers, sorcerers, and Chaldeans of the ancient Oriental world. It was 
 a part of the wisdom of the princes of that age which God has proved 
 to be vain and foolish, it was the parent symbol of western lore ; in 
 other words it gave birth to ' Jewish fables,' and Grecian philosophy. 
 The science of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, ' falsely so called,' was 
 transferred to the Isles of the Gentiles by the Greeks. On the north, 
 south, east, and west of Israel's land, the people ' dwelt in the shadow 
 of death, and walked in darkness.' Their teachers, notwithstanding 
 their * wisdom and understanding,' their science and philosophy, were 
 ' blind leaders of the blind.' They knew nothing as they ought. Their 
 notions about God, souls, immortality, religion, were consummate 
 foolishness, as the Word of God declares. Paul refers to them when he 
 says, ' Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain de- 
 ceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and 
 not after Christ "—(Col. ii. 8). 
 
 "DOGMAS OF THE WISE MEN OF ISRAEL." 
 
 " The principal sects of Philosophy among the Jews were the Essenes, 
 the Sadducees, and the Pharisees. 
 
 "1. Of the Essenes, Josephus says, that * their doctrine is this, that 
 bodies are corruptible, and that the matter they are made of is not 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
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 permanent, but that the souls are immortal, and continue for ever ; and 
 that they come out of the most subtle air, and are united to their bodies 
 as to prisons into which they are drawn as by a certain natural excite- 
 ment ; but that when they are set free from the bonds of the flesh, they 
 then, as released from a long bondage, rejoice and mount upward ; 
 while they allot to bad souls a dark and tempestuous den, full of never- 
 ceasing punishment, which is built on this first supposition that souls are 
 immortar— (Book 2. C. 8. 11). 
 
 " 2. Of the Sadducees, he says : — ' The doctrine of the Sadducees is 
 this, that souls die with their bodies' (Book 18. C. 1. 4). 'They also 
 take away the belief of the punishments and rewards in Hades ' (War, 
 B. Q. C. 8. 14), added to this Luke says (chap. xx. 27), 'The Saddu- 
 cees deny that there is any resurrjction ; also in Acts xxiii. 8, he re- 
 marks in addition, that 'they say there is neither angel nor spirit* 
 
 " 3. Of the Pharisees, he saith, ' they believe that souls have an 
 immortal vigour in them, and that under the earth there will be re- 
 wards or punishments according as they have lived virtuously or 
 viciously in this life ', and the vicious are to be retained in an everlast- 
 ing prison, but that the virtuous shall shall have power to revive and live 
 afjain ' — (Antiquities, B. 18. C. 1 — 3). 
 
 " In another place he says, ' they say that all the souls are incorrup- 
 tible, that the souls of good men only are removed into other bodies, 
 but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment ' — (War. 
 B. Q.C. 14). 
 
 " From the testimony of this historian, it would seem that three dis- 
 tinct opinions prevailed among the Jews concerning souls. The first, 
 that it was immortal, or deathless ; the second, that it was incorruptible, 
 or had an imperishable vigour in it, by which it revived, and lived again ; 
 and the third, that it was neither immortal nor incorruptible, but 
 perished with the body." 
 
 The Essenes, who taught the immortality of the soul, concluded that 
 it re-ascended to the celestial regions of light and purity immediately 
 on the dissolution of the body, and hence the resurrection did not enter 
 into their system, for resurrection has reference only to body. This is 
 obvious, seeing that resurrection signifies to rise again. It is, therefore, 
 affirmed of that which previously arose from the dust at creation, 
 and returned to the dust at death, and shall come forth from the dust a 
 second time a new creation ; this, as ^ we all know is a substantial 
 man, who was fashioned from the dust by the Spirit of God. 
 
 " The writings of Moses do not speak in unveiled language of the 
 resurrection. It is not surprising, therefore, that the Sadducees 
 should deny it ; for the Mosaic doctrine of eternal life requires a 
 spiritual investigation to discern it. The written law they contended 
 was to be interpreted without regard to figures or types, and it was 
 this law only they admitted as authority. The Prophets and the 
 Psalms were of no consideration with them. Being men of carnal 
 minds, and rejecting the light of these testimonies, they could not dis- 
 cover where Moses taught the doctrines, therefore they boldly avowed 
 4 
 
 i 
 
 I 
 
 'r 5: 
 
 ijii 
 
 "'« 
 
 ^1 
 
 II 
 

 50 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY, 
 
 the dogmas of the Stoics and Epicureans, which are summarily express- 
 ed in tne saying ; ' let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die.' " 
 
 Two sects of philosophy, then in Israel, rejected from their systems, 
 the resurrection of a mortal body to immortality, the one inferentially ; 
 the other avowedly. The Essenes taught dogmas which subverted the 
 faith of their followers in a resurrection ; while the Sadducees denied 
 immortality of soul, resurrection, future state, angels or spirits at one 
 sweep, as untaught in the Mosaic Law. The opinions of the Pharisees 
 however, were opposed to these conclusions. From the history of Jo- 
 sephus we do not learn what the Pharisees considered the essence of 
 the soul of man to be. 
 
 The Essenes regarded it as an emanation from the most subtle air ; 
 but we have no reason to believe that this was the Pharisaic notion. 
 The nearest we can come to their view is, that they regard it as the 
 germ of the body ; that in this germ there was an imperishable vig- 
 our, which did not, however, amount to life itself, in active manifest- 
 ation. The diverse dogmas of the Sadduce. s and Pharisees may be 
 illustrated by Paul's metaphor of a grain of corn. The implanted naked 
 grain consists of a body, and a seed bud, or germ. If set in the earth 
 and it remain there without vegetating, the seed body and its germ 
 would both be destroyed. This illustrates the opinion of the Sad- 
 ducees. 
 
 But if there be vigour in the germ, though the seed body die, the 
 bud will put forth, germinate and acquire a new body, and thus the 
 seed revives and lives again. This seems to have been the idea of the 
 Pharisees in relation to the revival of the souls of virtuous men. 
 
 "DOGMAS OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS AND ROMANS." 
 
 " 1. Pythagoras was the first man who styled himself a philosopher^ 
 which signifies, a lover of wisdom. He flourished about 550 years be- 
 fore Christ. He spent about twenty five years in Egypt, which in that 
 age, was renowned for its ' science falsely so called.' From this source 
 he learned that the souls of all mankind lived in some pre-existent 
 state, and that for the sins committed there, some souls were sent into 
 human bodies, and others into brutes, to be punished, and purified from 
 sin. As to the essence of these souls, he taught that they were an em- 
 anation from the substance of God, who was the mover and soul of the 
 world. 
 
 " 2. Socrates lived 400 years before Christ. He taught that sovls 
 were immortal because immaterial. 
 
 " 3. Plato flourished 348 years before Christ. He affirmed that there 
 was a certain invincible malignity and corruption in matter insuperable 
 by the power of God ; that man's soul is a particle of the divine essence ; 
 and therefore immortal ; and that evil must necessarily exist from the 
 union of matter and soul in the same person. Demons, he said, were an 
 order of beings inferior to the Deity, but superior to men, and that they 
 governed the world. Some of them he views as mediators, ' carrymg 
 men's prayers to God, and His answers to men.' ,,.,,, ,, ,, , 
 
TKSTIMONIES. 
 
 51 
 
 iovis 
 
 here 
 
 (able 
 
 Ince ; 
 
 the 
 
 re an 
 
 [they 
 
 " 4. Opposed to these opinions, were those of Epicurus, who taught 
 that the soul is mortal ; and of Zeno, the Stoic, who supposed that the 
 existence of the soul was limited to a certain period of time. 
 
 " 5. The Academics despaired of finding the truth in such a variety 
 of opinions, and therefore came to the conclusion, that it was unc(M"taiii 
 whether the gods existed or not ; and whether the soul was mortal oi- 
 immortal. This illustrates the saying of the apostle, that ' the world by 
 wisdom knew not God.' Their ' wisdom and understanding' could not 
 elaborate the truth concerning the Divine Nature and constitution of 
 man. Not knowing the Scriptures, or catching only indistinct reports 
 of what they contained, they could form no definite conceptions of these 
 matters, which are too high for the finite and grovelling faculties of ani- 
 mal man. The revelation of God can alone remove the veil ; and this 
 being so incompatible with the things which ' man's wisdom teacheth,' 
 they rejected it as foolishness,' or corrupted it in endeavouring to 
 harmonize it with their own hypotheses. 
 
 " But as absurd as we may esteem the vagaries of the ' vain philo- 
 sophy ' and ' science ' of the ancients, thetheological opinions of our 
 contemporaries, being, in truth, the offspring of the ' wisdom of the 
 wise and the understanding of the prudent' men of Persia, Egypt, 
 Syria, Chaldea, Greece and Rome — the ligfit of paganism, and Hebra- 
 istic heresy, which shone with a faintness that only made conspicuous 
 a darkness which might be felt — the opinions, I say, of the moderns, 
 being only a transmutation of ancient pagan dogmas in the crucibles of 
 the schools, are not less objectionable when tried by reason. Scripture, 
 and common sense. 
 
 " That your memories may be refreshed, and that by comparison, 
 you may be enabled to prove the truth of this remark, we present you 
 with a summary of the opinions of our * wise ' and ' prudent ' doctors on 
 these important topics. ^ 
 
 " DOGMAS OF THE * WISE ' AND 'PRUDENT ' OF NINETEENTH CENTURY." 
 
 " 1. Theologians teach that man is a trinity of principles, or three 
 beings in one man, a body, a living soul, and a living spirit. That the 
 body is corruptible, because material ; and that in this body is contained 
 the soul and the spirit ; the one being the animal soul, and the other the 
 rational soul. This is the Oriental dogma of the tico principles. 
 
 " 2. They teach that man was created immortal, and that his immor- 
 tality consists in the possession of the rational soul, which they say is a 
 particle that emanated from the Divine essence, immaterial, and of a 
 kindred nature to the Deity, and, therefore, immortal. This also was 
 the opinion of the pagans. 
 
 " 3. That, as the Deity is unembodied or immaterial, and as the soul 
 existed in Him before it transmigrated into man, so it can retransmi- 
 grate from man to God, or, into other men ; and thus exist, either as a 
 disembodied spirit, or a demon in the evil bodies of the wicked. These 
 were the notions of Pythagoras and the Egyptian priests. 
 
 " 4. They teach that death dissolves the union between the immortal 
 
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 51. 1 
 
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I* 
 
 li 
 
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 ii'ii 
 
 tion, goo^^«^"^' ^° . , 1 „n,ilfi do not enter into 
 
 mansion, of the h-Rl' »' W"^;° to paradi»., """^y'^ Z oal» go, 
 
 it the i^terjnedmte state or ^^^^ , to ,^^*^^\^ J,endering 
 
 warded and punished to a cie^ imputation "^ ^^^^e t^^^^ 
 
 hypothesis to save them trom tradition. Hence ^ney 
 
 '"ToroTt" im-rLf- h Ae•^tte:r?Jdlfada, tLt 
 reunion oi i^n« , resurrection to Uie. 
 
 with which It wi" . .^g gggence 
 
 " ^^^^^ ^K ^.nme^o respectable from age, hat ^t has com ^^^^^^^ 
 
TKSTIMONIKS. 
 
 53 
 
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 ■is- 
 
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 bile 
 ft im- 
 
 mortality of the soul and eternal punishment in tarturus, did not place 
 much reliance on their own teachings ; stating that at the near approach 
 of death, and under the pressure of suddoti calamity, their hopes founded 
 on the natural immortality of man, and a life beyond the grave, failt'd 
 to sustain them in the practice of virtue ; that this dogma did not, at 
 first, nor for some time after its introduction into Greece by the Pytha- 
 goreans, meet with anything like a general reception at the hands of 
 mankind ; and that it was only through its incorporation with the 
 Christian system, as it existed at that time, that its acceptance subse- 
 quently became at all general, although the dogma was never universally 
 received or accepted. 
 
 And not only so, but the extraordinary fact is brought out, that even 
 their immortality was conditional, not so much on individual effort, as 
 on natural endowment, being contingent upon the individual possession 
 of certain qualities of mind and reason (C). Hudson says : — 
 
 " The Platonists sought the proof of man's itumortality in man's in- 
 tellectual nature. It was not the stern heroism of virtue, but rather 
 mind and reason that (with them) allied man to Deity j with them the 
 capacity of knowledge was a divine thing. Not to say that this was the 
 original error of mankind, desiring to be ' as Gods, knowing good and 
 evil,' it is certain that with the latter Platonists, the argument became 
 an occasion for haughty and supercilious pride. He was most assuredly 
 divine (in their estimation) who gave most evident proofs of intellect, 
 and the common herd of men wera (in their eyes) simple and brutish. 
 They were of no account in their estimate of humanity. The philosophic 
 were of high caste; and philosophy knew of no redemption for the un- 
 thinking. 
 
 " But the Platonic argument itself was as unsatisfying as it was flat- 
 tering. No one could have prized it more than Cicero ; but he says : ' I 
 have read Plato's book (the Phaedo) over again and again ; but I know 
 not how it comes to pass, so long as I am reading, I agree with it ; but 
 no sooner is the book out of my hands, than I begin to doubt whether 
 man is immortal 1 ' 
 
 " In the mind of Socrates duty was paramount ; and with this was 
 connected a more definite notion of the personality of God and man. 
 He held that the human soul was indeed derived from God, as a spark 
 of divinity ; but that it then ceased to be a part of God. It was, he 
 held, a divine being, or similar to God. In respect of its reason and 
 invisible energy, he said it approximated to the divine, and was, there- 
 fore, immortal. But that by its freedom of will, it might forsake its 
 allegiance to God. He held that there was a future reward for the 
 good and punishment for the bad. He says, ' Those who appear to be 
 incurable through the magnitude of their offences, either from having 
 committed many and great sacrileges, or many unjust and lawless mur- 
 ders, or other similar crimes, these a suitable destiny hurls into tartarus, 
 whence t y never come forth.' ' Those who can be cured are sub- 
 jected to the needful punishments.' ' Those who have lived an eminently 
 holy life are set free from hades and dwell on the upper parts of the 
 
 I ;■ 
 
 ' M ' 
 1 1. 
 
 ■' Hi 
 
 'Wh 
 
54 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ■ M 
 
 earth.' 'This was the culmination of the hope of the ancients.' He 
 proceeds : ' To affirm positively that these things are exactly as I have 
 described them, does not become a man of sense. That, however, either 
 this, or something of the kind takes place with regard to our souls and 
 their habitations — since the soul is certainly immortal — this appears to 
 me most fitting to be believed, and worthy the hazard for one who 
 trusts in its reality ; for the hazard is noble and it is right to allure our- 
 selves with such things, as with enchantments.' Afterwards, how- 
 ever, he betrays the wishful nature of his hope when he says , ' Though 
 I should be mistaken, I gain at least thus much, that the expectation 
 makes me less uneasy while I live, and my error will die with me.' 
 And he concludes his defence before his judges with this remark : ' I 
 am going out of the world, and you are to continue in it ; but which of 
 us has the better part, is a secret to every one but God.' 
 
 " On the authority of Plutarch, Aristotle is said to have held the 
 dogma of the Immortality of the soul, whereas in the Nichomachean 
 Ethics, Aristotle uses the following language : ' There seems to occur to 
 the dead man something both good and evil, just as to a living man, 
 though he has no perception of it ; such as honour or disgrace, or the for- 
 tunes or misfortunes of friends.' And again, ' Death is most dreadful, 
 for it is the end ; and beyond it there seems to bo for the dead man 
 nothing more, either good or bad.' 
 
 " Seneca, writing to one bereaved, says : ' Death is the relief and end of 
 all pain, beyond which our evils do not pass. It restores us to the 
 same tranquillity in which we were before our birth.' And in another 
 letter he says : ' I was pleasing myself with enquiring, yet believing in 
 the immortality of the soul. I could easily fall in with the opinions of 
 great men, promising, rather than proving, a most desirable thing. I 
 gave myself up to the splendid illusion. I began to weary of myself; 
 and to despise the remnant of my happy life, ready to enter upon that 
 unbounded time — the possession of a whole eternity — when suddenly 
 I was interrupted by the receipt of your letter, and lost so fine a dream.' 
 
 " Pliny says : ' The vanity of man, and his insatiable longing after 
 existence, have led him to dream of a life after death. A being full of 
 contradictions, he is the most wretched of creatures, since the other 
 creatures have no wants transcending the bounds of their nature. Man 
 is full of desires and wants that reach to infinity, and can never be sat- 
 isfied. His nature is a lie ; uniting the greatest poverty with the greatest 
 pride. Among these two great evils, the best thing God has bestowed 
 on man is the power of taking his own life.' " 
 
 In reference to the foregoing, Mr. Hudson, justly observes : — that 
 " this last witness suggests the true state of the case. Man had long 
 waited for palpable proof of an after life of the dead, so that Christ, as 
 the first born from the dead, was indeed, * the desire of all nations ' 
 (seeing that He brought life and immortality to light through the Gos- 
 pel). Just liS now, eighteen centuries after that resurrection; men are 
 growing weary of faith in it, and eagerly Jcatch at audible indications 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 iiO 
 
 of life among the dead. But men's faith failed then, as it is likely to 
 fail again." — Hudson, Future Life. pp. 78, ?9. 
 
 It is unnecessary to cite further testimony in reference to this matter. 
 It has been shown clearly, from their own evidence, that however much, 
 in their lifetime, they may iiave contributed to the promulgation of the 
 dogma of natural immortality in man, and its establishment in the 
 popular mind, Cicero, Socrates, Seneca, an I Pliny, four of the most 
 eminent heathen philosophers, died in unbelief — died firmly believing 
 that there was no future life for man — that he is not, by nature endowed 
 with immortality. And when Christadelphians are unjustly reproached 
 with being on a par with those heathen philosophers and modem 
 atheists, atheistic materialists and infidels, let it be remembered that the 
 Christadelphian belief in the Scripture doctrine of Eternal Life through 
 a resurrection from the death-state, makes all the difference. Those be- 
 lieve that man dies never to live again. Christadelphians believe that 
 man dies — ceases to exist, and that the responsible classes, who have 
 been rendered amenable to judgment, through the light of the truth, 
 and the privileges of the Gospel, shall rise again at the sound of the 
 last trump ; when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and 
 shall come forth out of their graves ; they that have done good to the 
 resurrection of life; they that have done evil, to the resurrection of 
 condemnation. A vast, a wonderful difference, indeed ! 
 
 But the contradictions alleged to exist in the writings of many of the 
 ancient heathen philosophers, may be accounted for, from the changes 
 which the minds of thinking, progressive men, whether in more pro- 
 minent, or more humble spheres of life, undergo, from conscientious 
 convictions of new truth, or truth, at least new to them — so that it is 
 quite possible for a man to contradict at one period of his life, what he 
 may have said and written at a former period. Indeed men who thus 
 act are to be commended, for if the change be very marked it requires 
 the exercise of no small amount of mental independence, and moral 
 courage. 
 
 Too little consideration, and too little latitude are allowed for mental 
 change, more especially in matters of faith — mental change so necessary, 
 and so conducive to mental health (C). 
 
 Edwards, in his " Essays on the Divine Power," says, that " mental 
 conservatism, like arsenic, preserves form, but is inimical to life and 
 progress. The man who never changes his opinions (if such an anomaly 
 exist) is a mere intellectual mummy. Man, in his intellectual, as in 
 his physical entity, is an imperfect being ; and that which is imperfect 
 is mutable." 
 
 Mr. Wollaston's sermon may be taken aj; an illustration of thi^ ex 
 planation of the charge of contradictory teaching, for we must infer that 
 at one time h'^ held views diametrically opposite to those therein in- 
 culcated. And this unquestionably is the case with aU, or nearly all, 
 who, in these days hold similar views in relation to the nature of man. 
 The compiler of these pagec, trained, after the straitest manner of the 
 sect, a Presbyterian, can certify to this. 
 
 m 
 
 
 
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 i! 
 
 
a r^SBP 
 
 ^S 
 
 56 
 
 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 t'l 
 
 Archbishop Whately seems to tliink that not only did many of the 
 heathen philosophers die in doubt and in unbelief of their own teach- 
 ings, respecting the natural immortality of man, but that the dogma 
 did not take such deep root in the popular mind, as we are sometimes 
 led to imagine. 
 
 He says : — 
 
 ♦' It does not appear however, that they (the heathen philosophers, the 
 originators of the dogma of inherent immortality) had much success in 
 impressing their doctrine on the great mass of the people ; for though a 
 state of rewards and punishments was commonly talked of among them, 
 it seems to have been regarded as little more than an amusing fable. 
 It does not appear, from the account of their own writers, that men's 
 lives were ever influenced by any such belief. On the contrary, we find 
 them in speeches publicly delivered, and now extant, ridiculing the very 
 notion of any one's seriously believing the doctrine — and, when they 
 found death seemingly unavoidable and near at hand, as in the case of a 
 very destructive pestilence, we are told that those of them who had 
 been the most devout worshippers of their gods, and had applied to 
 them with various superstitious ceremonies for deliverance from the 
 plague, finding that the disease still raged, and that they had little_ 
 chance of escaping it, at once cast ofl" all thoughts of religion ; and re 
 solving to enjoy life while it lasted, gave a loose rein to all their viciou 
 inclinations. This shows that those who had the firmest faitu in the 
 power of their gods, looked to them for temporal deliverance only, and 
 for their preservation in this life, and had not only, no belief, but no 
 suspicion even, that these Beings had any power to reward and punish 
 beyond the grave ; — that there was any truth in the popular tales re- 
 specting a future state. The lamentation of a Greek Poet over his 
 friend, which I subjoin, strikingly illustrates what I have been say- 
 ing:— , . ': 
 
 ' The meanest herb we trample in the field, ■> . .^ 
 
 Or ill the garden nurture, when its leaf 
 „ In Atitumn dies, forebodes another Spring, '^j 
 
 'I / And from brief slumber wakes to Ufe again, • 
 
 :,;.:_■ j. Man wakes no more, man peerless, valiant, wise, ,.,, , , 
 
 ■ ' ' Once chilled to death, sleeps hopeless in the dust. 
 
 Along, unbroken, never ending-sleep.' ■ '|'>' 
 
 —Moschus, Translated by Oisborne. • . i "■ • 
 
 " It may be thought, however, by some, that the wisest of the heathen 
 philosophers, though they did not hold the notions of the vulgar as to 
 the particulars of a future state of rewards and punishments, yet had 
 convinced themselves (as in their writings they profess), of the immor- 
 tality of the soul. And it is true that they had in a certain sense ; but 
 in such a sense as, in fact, makes the dogma amount to nothing at all. 
 They imagined that the souls of men and of all other animals were not 
 created by God, but were themselves parts of the divine mind, from 
 which they were separated, when united with bodies ; so that the soul, 
 according to this notion, was immortal both ways; that is, not only was 
 it to have no end, but had no beginning ; and was to return after death 
 
TESTIMONIES, 
 
 57 
 
 into the same condition in which it was before our birth ; a state withmt 
 any distinct personal existence, or consciousness. ' It was the substance of 
 ivhich the soul is composed, that (according to this doctrine) was eternal, 
 rather than the soul itself; which, as a distinct being, was swallowed 
 up and put an end to. Now, it would be ridiculous to speak of any 
 consolation, or any moral restraint, or any other effect whatever, spring- 
 ing from the belief of such a future state as this, which consists in be- 
 coming after death, the same as we were before birth. To all practicixl 
 purposes, this is the same thing as Annihilation." 
 
 " Among the heathen philosophers, Plato "las been apperled to, as 
 having believed in a future state of reward and punishment, on the 
 ground that the passages in his works in which he inculcates the doctrine 
 are rmich more numerous than those in which he expresses his doubts of 
 it. I cannot undertake to say that such is not the case ; for this arith- 
 metical mode (as it may be called) of ascertaining a w^ritcr's sentiraent^, 
 by counting the passages on opposite sides, is one which had never oc- 
 curred to me ; nor do I think it is likely to be generally adopted. It", 
 for instance, an author were to write ten volumes in defence of Christi 
 anity, and two or three times to express his suspicion that the whole is" 
 a tissue of fables, I believe few of his readers would feel any doubt as to 
 his real sentiments. When a writer is at variance with himself, it is 
 usual to judge from the nature of the subject, and the circumstances of 
 the case, ivhich is likely to be his real persuasion, and which the one he 
 may think it decorous, or politically expedient to profess." 
 
 Again : " It may be said of the ancient Heathen, that they did but 
 conjecture, without proof, respecting a future state. And there is tliis 
 remarkable circumstance to be noticed in addition ; that those who 
 taught the doctrine (as the ancient heathen lawgivers themselves did 
 from a persuasion of its importance for men's conduct) do not seem 
 themselves to have believed what they taught, but to have thought 
 merely of the expediency of inculcating this belief on the vulgar " — 
 IVhately's Future State, pp. 24—27, 30—34. 
 
 The allusion, by Archbishop Whately, in the last cited passage, to 
 what the ancient heathen deemed the expediency of inculcating on the 
 common people, doctrines which the teachers did not, themselves believe, 
 is also noticed by Mr. Hudson under the caption of 
 
 "*■''■ ■' '"'' ' ■ PIOUS FRAUD. ' 
 
 He says, quoting Gibbon, the historian, that " the ancient systems of 
 religion were ' with the people equally true, with the philosophers 
 equally false, and with the statesman equally necessary.' ' The Pious 
 Fraud, 'so often charged upon Christianity, was, in fact, a part of the 
 heathen establishment. This was the ' double doctrine,' the esoteric 
 and exoteric faith of which the former might be safely imparted to the 
 wise men, but the populace must be instructed in the latter, 
 
 " Thus Timaeus is represented by Plato as saying : ' For as we some- 
 times cure the body with unwholesome remedies, when such as are most 
 wholesome have no effect ; so we restrain those minds by false relations, 
 
 if si 1 
 
 4*- 
 
 
 
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 58 
 
 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN tHEO'.OGY. 
 
 ; 
 
 which will not be persuaded by the truth. There is a necessity there- ■ 
 fore, of instilling the dread of those strange (eternaH) punishments.' 
 
 " Plato, in a passage, in his 'Republic,' contains an explicit, though 
 guarded sanction of the Pious Fraud. ' If falsehood be indeed of no 
 service to the Gods, yet useful to men in the form of a drug, it is plain 
 that such a thing should be touched only by physicians, but not med- 
 dled with by private persons. To the Governors of the state then (if 
 to any) it especially belongs to speak falsely, for the good of the state, 
 whereas, for all the rest, tliey must venture on no such thing.' Plato is 
 also censured by Chrysippus, as not wisely deterring men from injustice 
 by frightful stories of ' future punishment.' And Strabo confirms the 
 charge, in saying that the Brahmins had ' invented fables in the man- 
 ner of Plato, concerning the immortality of the soul, and a future pun- 
 ishment in the shades below, and other things of the same nature.' It 
 is stated in Roman History, that Scsevola declared ' that societies should 
 be deceived in religion.' And Varro, ' that there are many truths which 
 it is not expedient that the vulgar should know ; and many falsehoods 
 which yet it is not expedient for the people to know as truths.' Cicero, 
 on the authority of Plato, thought that not to deceive for the public 
 good, was a wickedness. 
 
 " Pomponatus held with Plato, that ' the legislator, intent on public 
 good, may establish the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, that 
 thus seeking the common weal, ratJier than truth, he may draw mankind 
 to virtue.' 
 
 " We have given," says Mr. Hudson, " this detailed proof of the ' double 
 doctrine ' of the Ancients for two reasons ; first, to shew that the ' Pious 
 Fraud " is not of Christian origin ; though it did begin to corrupt 
 Christianity when evil began to be deemed eternal. And secondly, be- 
 cause it bears upon the question, * What was the popular faith respect- 
 ing an after life 1 ' "—Hudson's Future Life, pp. 276, 279. 
 
 We see then, that under the religious systems of the ancient heathen, 
 much of what is justly termed " Pious Fraud," Avas practised upon ^the 
 people. Teachers, who, themselves doubted the dogma of future pun- 
 ishment, in league with the rulers and lawgivers of the state, made use 
 of this doctrine to terrify the people and keep them in order, for the 
 public good. And although the " Pious Fraud " was, as Mr. Hudson 
 shows, of heathen origin, will the candid reader say that it has not been 
 perpetuated under the religious system of Christendom, and extended 
 to the times in which we live 1 One or two illustrations may suffice — 
 (C). Mr. Hudson, Future Life, p. 352 says : — 
 
 " Isaac Watts deserves praise for his exposure of a flagrant instance of 
 Pious Fraud by Thomas Burnet, who had advised a preacher, in sly 
 Latin, ' to use the common doctrine and the common language/ concern- 
 ing future punishment, whether he thought them eternal or not. 
 
 " Fitch in his Review of Tyler, on Future Punishment, gives the follow- 
 ing translation of one of the early ' Fathers, ' in reference to eternal 
 torments : — 
 
 " Allowing our tenets to be as false and groundless presumptions as • 
 
 tha 
 gui 
 
 witl 
 
 StU([ 
 
 waa 
 Mai 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 59 
 
 you would have them, yet I must tell you they are presumptions the 
 world cannot well be without. If they are follies, they are follies of 
 great use, because the believers of them what under the dread of eternal 
 pain, and the hope of eternal pleasure, are under the strongest obliga- 
 tions to become the best of men.' " 
 
 Of the numerous objections so strenuously urged against the Scripture 
 doctrine of man's entire mortality, soul, body, ai) i spirit, none is more 
 frequently urged now-a-days than this : — " If the soul of man is not im- 
 mortal, and there be no eternal torments, how are rulers, governors, and 
 magistrates to keep mankind in order 'i " This question we will not 
 here discuss, but will rather leave with the thoughtful reader, the follow- 
 ing more important queries : — 
 
 If Eternal Life be the free gift of God, and Immortality a thing to be 
 invested with through Jesus Christ, how am I to attain thereunto 1 
 And in holding that man is immortal and cannot die, in the face of the 
 declarations of Holy Writ to the contrary, do I impugn the veracity of 
 Deity, and the teachings of His word, which declare that " He only hath 
 immortality V An honest, conscientious consideration of these two 
 questions leaves no room for the introduction of the " pious fraud," or 
 the "double doctrine," invented as we see, by the heathen phil- 
 osphers, and continued under the Christian system to the sad det- 
 riment of millions of our race(C). 
 
 The following remarkable circumstance is related by Judge Halsted, 
 Ex-Chancellor of the State of New Jersey, in his " Theology of the 
 Bible." 
 
 " The Rev. Dr. Theodore Clapp, in his autobiography, says he had 
 preached at New Orleans a zealous sermon for endless punishment ; 
 that after the sermon Judge W., who, says he, was an eminent scholar, 
 and had studied for the ministry, but relinquished his purpose, because 
 he could not find the doctrine of endless punishment and kindred 
 dogmas, asked him to make a list of texts in the Hebrew or Greek on 
 which he relied for the doctrine. The Doctor then ;ives a detailed 
 account of his studies in search of texts to give the judge ; that he be- 
 gan with the Old Testament in the Hebrew ; and prosecuted his study 
 during that and the succeeding year ; and yet he was unable to find 
 therein so much as an allusion to any suffering after death ; that in the 
 dictionary of the Hebrew language he could not discover a word signi- 
 fying hell, or a place of punishment in a future state ; that he could not 
 find a single text, in any form of phraseology, which holds out threats 
 of retribution beyond the grave ; that to his utter astonishment it 
 turned out that orthodox critics of the greatest celebrity were perfectly fam- 
 iliar with these fads ; that he was compelled to confess to the judge 
 that he could not produce any Hebrew text ; but that still he was san- 
 guine that the New Testament would furnish what he had sought for 
 without success in Moses and the Prophets ; that he prosecuted his 
 study of the Greek of the New Testament eight years ; that the result 
 was that he could not name a portion of it from the first verse in 
 Matthew to the last of Revelation, which fairly interpreted, affirms that 
 
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 00 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 a part of mankind will be eternally miserable. The Doctor concludes 
 by saying that it is an important and most instructive fact, that he was 
 brought into his present state of mind (the repudiation of the dogma 
 of eternal torments), by the Bible only — a state of mind running 
 counter to all the prejudices of his early life, parental precept, of school, 
 theological seminary and professional caste." 
 
 The foregoing is inserted under this head because of the words itali- 
 cized, namely the extraordinary statement of Dr. Clapp, that in his in- 
 vestigations he discovered that orthodox critics of the greatest celebrity 
 were perfectly familiar with the fact, that the Bible, in the original 
 languages contains no such doctrine as eternal torment, and yet en- 
 courage the preaching of such a doctrine to the people. If this does not 
 constitute " pious fraud," no matter what the motives may be, pray, 
 reader, by what language can such action or conduct be designated '?(C). 
 
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 4 till 
 
 THE DOGMA OF THE NATURAL IMMORTALITY OF THE HITMAN SOUL, 
 NEITHER CONCEDED NOR ACCEPTED BY ALL OF THAT PORTION 
 OF MANKIND WHO HAVE RECOGNISED THE AUTHENTICITY AND DI- 
 VINE CHARACTER OF THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. 
 
 In the discussion of this subject, no assertion is more generally, more 
 confidently, or more recklessly made than this : — " That all mankind, 
 heathen and Christian alike, believe in the natural immortality of tlie 
 soul of man, therefore the dogma must be true." It has already been 
 shewn that, iii so far as regards the ancient heathen, the assertion is not 
 true. And it is now proposed to show by indubitable testimony, that, 
 with reference to professing Christians in all ages, the assertion is un- 
 true, and contrary to the facts of history. We shall commence with 
 the following, taken from Tfie Christian Examiner (England) vol. 2. pp. 
 204, 205, &c. 
 
 " It is affirmed by many that there is a common sentiment of all mankind 
 in favour of the constitutional immortality of man. We pause not now, 
 to remark on the kind of immortality and soul-nature asserted by the 
 ancient speculators on this subject, viz. — their pre-existence, and trans- 
 migration theories, which we presume, the advocates of natural im- 
 mortality will not be willing to accept as they ought consistently to do, 
 when they appeal to the opinions of the ancient philosophers, in evi- 
 dence of their theory. This we pass by for the sake of the assumption 
 that all mankind have ever accepted tJie doctrine of natural human 
 immortality. Certain philosophers of Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Greece, 
 and Rome, who, by the way, ought not to be regarded as so many 
 independent testimonies, taught this opinion without doubt, but that it 
 was the common opinion in all even in these countries, is by no means 
 true. 
 
 " Socrates, the intellectual champion of the immortality of the soul 
 
 (Phsedo, 68) asks : ' Can this soul of ours being such, and of such a 
 
 nature, when separated from the body, be immediately dispersed and 
 
 destroyed, as most men assert ? ' According to Socrates, then, ' most men,' 
 
 roc 
 181 
 Br 
 sui 
 
 th« 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 61 
 
 in his day asserted the destruction of the soul in death. Socrates knew 
 that no such common consent existed, and hence the necessity of his 
 elaborate argument to produce that consent. But why in the enu- 
 meration of the opinions of mankind should the Hebrews and Ara- 
 bians be omitted 1 Both these people had their philosophic sects, 
 as the Pharisee among the former, who subscribed to the oriental con- 
 ceit of the soul's separate state and immortality ; but the faith of the 
 people generally was not identical with that of their speculative school- 
 men. When Phariseeism flourished among the Hebrews, which was not 
 even known till after the Babylonish Captivity, then this Hebrew faith in 
 the non-immortality of man was pushed, in some cases, as is natural to an 
 extreme, even to the denial of any kind of spiritual existence and any 
 future life at all ; as in the Babylonish fancies of the newly importetl 
 philosophy, Sadduceeism." 
 
 We have alluded also to Arabia, as furnishing another exception 
 to the assertion of a common consent among mankind. Dr. Good 
 •says :— 
 
 "If we turn from Persia, Egypt, and Hindostan to Arabia, to the 
 fragrant groves and learned shades of Dedan and Yemen, from which 
 it is certain that Persia, and, highly probable, that Hindostan, derived 
 its first polite literature, we shall find the entire subject of the immor- 
 tality of the soul, left in as blank and, barren a silence as the deserts 
 by which they are surrounded ; or, if touched upon, only touched upon 
 to betray doubt, and sometimes disbelief, in such a doctrine. Ecclesi 
 astical historians have marked the fact, that the philosophers of Arabia 
 denied the natural immortality of man, and tell us that Origen was 
 sent thither to teach them the Pythagorean philosophy of immortal 
 soulism. Here are then considerable exceptions to the alleged com- 
 mon consent of mankind, and, consequently, such as it is, it falls to the 
 ground." 
 
 For further proof that the ancient Arabians did not believe in any 
 present immortality, or possibility of a separate existence, of either 
 soul or spirit after death, reference is made, in the remainder of the ar- 
 ticle, which I curtail, to an inscription found engraven on the face of a 
 rock 215 mileb east of Aden, on the Red Sea, and which was copied, in 
 1829, by Lieutenant Wellsted and Captains El wen and Moresby of the 
 British ships " Benares " a«d " Pallinurus," while engaged in making a 
 survey of the Red Sea. So difficult, however, were the characters, com- 
 posing the inscription, to decipher, that they baffled the skill of the best 
 antiquarians, who could not make out the first two words. In this state 
 they remained for years, till quite recently, the Rev. Charles Forster, of 
 Stisted, Essex, England, has succeeded in giving a translation of this 
 primeval poem, in his " Historical Geography of Arabia," from which 
 the following item, expressive of the faith of this ancient people, who 
 inhabited the district of south-western Arabia, known in the Bible as 
 Sheba, and now called Yemen and Hadramant : — " Over us presided 
 kings, far removed from baseness, and stern chastisers of reprobate and 
 wicked men. They noted down for us, according to the doctrine of 
 
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62 
 
 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 I 
 
 Heber, good judgments, written in a book to be kept ; and we pro- 
 claimed our belief in miracles, in the resurrection, in the return unto the 
 nostrils, of the breath of life." The literal rendering runs thus : " And 
 we proclaimed our belief in mysteries ; in the miracle-mystery ; in the 
 resurrection-mystery, in the nostril-mystery." 
 
 Mr. Forster expresses himself as having been perplexed for some time 
 with the last phrase, Mie "nostril-mystery." "But having," he says, 
 " weighed the meaning more thoughtfully, the sense of the Adite poet 
 broke in upon me in all its fulness, when I remembered that it is by the 
 nostrils and the h-eath of the nostrils that God Himself, in Scripture, de- 
 fines the life in man ; that, at his creation, the Lord God breathed into 
 his nostrils the breath of life ; and (hence) man became a living soul ; that 
 at the Deluge, the same language occurs, in describing his destruction. 
 * And every man, all in whose nostrils was the breath of life, died ; ' that 
 when Isaiah would describe the nothingness of the life of man, his ex- 
 hortation is, 'Cease ye from man, ivlvose breath is 'in his nostrils;' that 
 when Jeremiah speaks of deatli, his language is ; '' The breath of our nos- 
 trils was taken ; ' and when Job defines his own life, his wprds are 
 these : ' All the ivhite my breath is in me, and the Spirit (or breath) of 
 God is in my nostrils' (Gen. ii. 7 ; vii. 22 ; Isa. ii. 22 ; Lam. iv. 20 ; Job 
 xxvii. 3). How simple and patriarchal this faith, and how closely it re- 
 sembles the style of Job and Moses." 
 
 The importance of the attitude attributed to Arabia in respect of 
 these dogmas, will be admitted, when we come to know that, as Mr. 
 Hudson has it (Future Life, p. 344) : " the learning of the world was 
 once Arabic ; and Christendom owed to the sons of Ishmael debts of 
 literature and theology, which are not yet discharged. An able writer 
 remarks, upon the times of which we are speaking : ' The works of 
 many of the most distinguished Moorish authors became the text books 
 of the Christian schools. The works of their leading authors, on logic 
 and metaphysics, were studied in the Sorbonne.' ' Their scholasticism,' 
 says Mr. Berrington, ' was the genuine philosophy of the Arabian schools 
 in the common questions of human research, and accommodated, in 
 those of theology, to the specific objects of the Christian Code.' ' Surprised 
 we must be,' observes Denina, 'when we learn that our ancestors derived 
 from those very Mahommedans, whom they perpetually reviled, the 
 greater part of the doctrine which, during many ages, was taught in the 
 Christian schools.' " 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Barclay, in his book," The City of the Great King," 
 p. 456., gives a copy of an old Greek inscription from a rock in the 
 cave of Pelagius, near the top of Mount Olivet, claimed by tlie Jews to 
 have been that of Huldah the Prophetess, the translation of which is 
 as follows ; " Put thy faith in God, Domitela, NO human creature is 
 
 IMMORTAL." 
 
 Inscriptions from tombsof the early Christains who suffered martydora, 
 and were buried in the catacombs of Rome, shew most unmistakeably 
 that their faith in a Future Life, did not consist in the natural immortal- 
 ity of man, but through a resurrection from the dead. Extracted chiefly 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 63 
 
 from the " National Magazine," for 1854. " In Christ, Martyrius lived 
 ninety one years. He chose this spot in life. In peace." " He sleeps 
 in the peace of the Lord." " Arethusa in God." " The sleeping place 
 
 of Elpis.' " Victoria sleeps." " Here lies Paulina, in the peace of 
 the blessed. Pacuta, to whom she was nurse, buried her. An 
 amiable and holy person. In Christ." " Here lies Gordianus, Deputy 
 of Gaul, who was murdered with all their family for their faith. They 
 rest in peace. Theophila his handmaid set up this." "In the time 
 of the Emperor Adrian, Marius, a young military officer, who had 
 lived long enough, when with his blood he gave up his life for Christ. 
 At length he rested in peace." " You well deserving one, lie in peace — 
 in sleep — youtvillarise — a temporary rest is grante d you." The phraseology 
 here used has evident reference to that of the New Testament, sleeping 
 in Christ, and the quiet rest of the grave, described in the Old Testa- 
 ment. 
 
 The Jewish Rabbles indicate their non-belief in the dogma of in- 
 herent immortality in their frequent references to the " second death." 
 
 Rabbi Jalkut Rubeni says : " Every thief, or robber of his neigh- 
 bour's goods, shall fall by his iniquities, that he may die the second 
 death.' ' Let Reuben live, and not die the second death 1 by which the 
 ungodly die in the world to come.' * They shall die the second death, 
 and shall not live in the world to come." 
 
 Rabbi Eliezer says ; " Every idolator who says that there is another 
 God besides me, I will slay with the second death, from which no one 
 can come to life again." 
 
 Abarbinet, one of the most learned of the Hebrew Rabbles is said to 
 have stated thus : — " The wicked in their life-time are calle<i dead, and 
 their soul is to be destroyed with the ignoring ot the body, and will 
 not have immortality in eternity." 
 
 Mainonides denied the immortality of the soul, but speaks of the 
 righteous as living for ever. 
 
 Rabbi Nachmanides speaks of what he calls the third excision, by 
 which the body is cut off in this life, and the soul in the life to come, 
 agreeing with Maimonides in the general view, as did also the following 
 Rabbles, viz, : — ±5echai, Kimchi, Jehuda bar-Elai, Solomon Jarchi, 
 Joseph Albo, Manasseh Ben Israel, and perhaps also Rabbi Gerthom, 
 (A.D. 2v)0.) In reference to the foregoing Mr. Hudson says that " these 
 examples plainly warrant the remarks of Hammond on the phrase 
 second death, that it seems to be taken from the Jews who use it prover- 
 
 haXly for final utter irreversible destruction It seems to 
 
 denote such a death from which there is no release." — Hudson' s Future Life 
 —Page 179. 
 
 Amobius, who lived in the third century, arguing against the im- 
 mortality of the soul, asks, "who does not see that what is immortal and 
 uucompounded can feel no pain, and that which feels pain cannot be 
 immortal ? For souls are of middle nature, as Christ has discovered to 
 us, and such that they can die if they know not God, or be delivered 
 from death if they embrace his gifts and favours 1 " 
 
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 64 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
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 He proceeds with keen satire, and with lively description, to re- 
 fute the arguments then and now current for the soul's immortality. Is 
 man, he asks, divine 1 Why is he half animal t Is the soul a thing of 
 reason 1 Let man show himself rational. Are souls indeed a divine and 
 royal offspring 1 ' how unroyally they behave.' 
 
 Pomponatus, an eminent Peripatetic, who lived in the fifteenth 
 century, while holding the ethics of Aristotle, avowed that immortality 
 must be taught in another school. He evidently believed that immor- 
 tality was to be conferred, because he says ; " If the good man is already 
 recompensed, where is his claim to an after life, and where, out of the 
 Scriptures is his proof of it." 
 
 The following extract from a canon passed by the Council of Lateran, 
 shews that there was a class at that time who did not believe in in- 
 lierent immortality." 
 
 " Some have dared to assert concerning the nature of the reasonable 
 soul, that it is mortal ; we do condemn and reprobate all such seeing 
 tlie soul is immortal ; and we strictly inhibit all from dogmatizing 
 otherwise.' — Caranza P. 412, 168. 
 
 Mr. Hudson says, that "The church was now (A.D. 1500 to 1600,) 
 fully committed to a philosophic faith ; and bent her energies to the 
 harmonizing of faith and reason upon that basis. Of reasoning such as 
 it was she had plenty ; the faith must be created by authority. Leo 
 the Tenth issued his bull instructing the philosophers not to teach the 
 mortality of the soul. The distinctions which had been made between 
 the deductions of reason and the decrees of the church incurred censure, 
 and was declared untenable by the Lateran Council ; A. D. 1513, when 
 also the proper immortality of the soul was made an article of faith." 
 
 " The attempt to reduce the glorious hope of Immortality to a dogma 
 by an edict was met by Luther with a vigorous recalcitration ; and in 
 language more energatic than polite, he rejected the dogma of man's in- 
 herent immortality." 
 
 " Sir Thomas More wrote against the views of Luther, which brought 
 a reply from William Tyndale, the Reformer, author of an early edition 
 of the Bible, and who suffered martyrdom for his faith, he says ; * And 
 ye, in putting their souls in heaven, and hell, and purgatory, (for which 
 Sir William contended) destroy the arguments wherewith Christ and 
 
 Paul prove the Resurrection If the souls be in heaven, tell 
 
 me why they be not in as good case as the angels be, and then what 
 cause is there of the Resurrection 1 " 
 
 T'^h is quite in the strain of Justin Martyr, one of the early Fathers. 
 He says ; " If you meet with some who are called Christians, who dare 
 caluminate the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and who say that 
 there is no resurrection of the dead, but that at death their souls are 
 received up into heaven, do not regard them as Christians." Irenseus also 
 censures the dogma, he says ; " How shall they not be confounded, who 
 say that the hinderworld (Inferos) is this world of ours ; and that their 
 inner man on leaving the body here, ascends to the supercelestial place.' 
 ^Hudson Future Life, irnTifjTt!!! yot^j li rijF..?! 
 
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 Taylor, in his " Voice of the Church," quotes, from the celebrated 
 (ierman philosopher, Miiller, this passage :— " The Christian faith in 
 immortality is indissolubly connected with the promise of a future re- 
 surrection of the dead, and this we abundantly prove elsewhere." 
 
 Bishop Tillotson (Sermons, Vol. 2, 1774) says : " The immortality of 
 the soul is rather supposed or taken for granted, than expressly revealed 
 in the Hible." 
 
 Bishop Watson, also Church of England, in his Institute.s, Vol. 2, 
 page 250, says : "That the soul is ?m/ur«% immortal, is contradicted by 
 Scripture, which makes our immortality a gift dependant on the 
 Giver." ^ , 
 
 Kev. Isaac Watts says : " There is not one place of Scriptuie thut 
 occurs to me where the word death, as it was first threatened in the law of 
 innocency, necessarily signifies a certain miserable immortality of the 
 soul either to Adam, the actual sinner, or to his posterity." — Kuin and 
 Recovery of Mankind, Q. 11, 8. 3. 
 
 Archdeacon Blackburn, of the Church of England, says :— " The more 
 any man is convinced of the immortality of the soul, from the principles 
 of Aristotle or Descartes, the less will he concern himself about the 
 Gospel account of futurity." Again he says : — " All those finespun 
 notions of the immortality of the soul, and all the artificial deductions 
 from that pinciple, teach nothing but the art of blowing scholastic bubbles." 
 
 Such is the deliverance of a man of note, in his day, who evidently 
 understands whereof he speaks, and who is not afraid to express his 
 opinion. I am not aware that any Christadelphian ever uttered more 
 severe language concerning the dogma in question. 
 
 In an article in the Edinburgh Review, October, 1867, Macaulay, the 
 historian, says : — 
 
 " As to the other great question — the question what becomes of man 
 after death — we do not see that a highly educated European, left to his 
 unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the right than a Blackfoot In- 
 dian. Not a single one of the many sciences in which we surpass the 
 Blackfoot Indians, can throw the smallest light on the state of the soul 
 after the animal life is extinct. In truth, all the philosophers, ancient 
 and modern, who have attempted, without the light of Revelation, to 
 prove the immortality of man, from Plato down to Franklin, appear to 
 us to have failed deplorably." 
 
 If this be true, and that the Scriptures contain no foundation for the 
 dogma of natural immortality, what becomes of the dogma ■? It has 
 been shewn that mankind are indebted to the heathen philosophers for 
 its inception, and away from Revelation, their speculations could only 
 have been guess work. 
 
 Moses Stewart, speaking about the Doctrine of a F ,ure Life remarks: 
 " The light of nature can never scatter the darkness in question. Tliis 
 light has never yet sufficed to make even the question clear to any por- 
 tion of our benighted race whether the soul of man be immortal ? . . . 
 If there be any satisfactory light then, on the momentous question of a 
 future state, it must be sought from the Word of God. After all the 
 5 
 
 
, , VINDICATED A0AW9T MODERN THEOtOOV. 
 AA THE BIBLE VINDH^Aini' 
 
 in a satisfactory manner. . 
 
 h 1 
 
 4 
 
 li 1 
 
 dissenting mxmste wbo res;^^ ^^^ Oriental ^earnmg who ^.l .^^^^ 
 
 person «? ^f ^f tirlplace of . Shakespeare Th^^ 
 academy a\ine "' / Q^plet mg his thirtietn y«-". said to have 
 who died in 1765. befo'-e «^^^^^ ^^^ Scriptures whicj^s sa ^^^ ^^^ 
 taste for tV^^«*^^^y,°,3yment. Mr. Alexander wrote ag ^^^^ 
 
 ^/^^ 'VSCt imKtality, and Pj-«,Vtbn ^^^^^^^ «^ 
 
 dogma of inhtren through a Vesurrection orally sup- 
 
 Scriptures place it. nameiy, a^^^^^^^ *^^^\ «Lhas 2 Oor. v.; 
 
 disposes in ^masterly ma^ne ^^ ^^^^ «ch as ^^^^^^ 
 
 posed to i"di«*%,^fi%''^"3%nd the Thief on the ^ 
 Lm. viii., 2, 3 ; Ph l^ ^. ^«|^ Resurrection, and m re eren ^^^^^ 
 „.uch attention to t^^«, jt"",upport of the H^j;*;^;"!^,^ a outline of 
 passages usually q^^ted n s pp ^^ ^^^ ^ ^^£' tUt tbe texts 
 
 Lme general observations in ,^J ^^^^^^^ ^^^Tan intermediate 
 
 Clirist's Mission ; b« ;*y« • ^^^ ^y the advocates f^^'^^^^; ^rged as 
 which have b^en-^ft^^^^^^^ 
 
 state do not ^^^^ .^^^^ t^is point, because of ^^J^" J^^^ye^Messiah left the 
 proofs in confirmation ot F ^^^^^ g^^d tbat the^J^ ^^ ^^. 
 
 iFrom reading these sacreau ^^^ ^^^^y time wnei 
 
 U the whde B'o^^'^it world; both """S '"ii^^tle^i "«' «« » 
 
 without respect of persons, J ^ ^^^^^ion, f ^^^^^ .v^^ „ot that the 
 that the same Jesus belore ^^^.^^ to them, n 
 
 Uples with the pr^^seo^ii^^ ^^^^ %ift^r'y,^ the man- 
 gates of heaven should oe op ^^^^^ ^f His glory, ^^_ 
 f hould then be P^^^f^^'^^e for them, but f *t He HimseU w 
 Bions he wa. g«»^J,^? P^to raise the dead ««d recei^ a^^ ^^^^ 
 turn after an in<ie?!'\t«t where He was there they f^^f ?;/ V truth of 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 07 
 
 )U8 
 
 fer, 
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 His 
 
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 the Judge and Saviour of mankind, who should appear agnin to judge 
 (or rule) the whole world in righteousneas ; and exhorting men to re- 
 pent and forsake their sins, that they might have confidence and not be 
 ashamed before Him at His coming. What now, must we imagine to 
 have been the sentiments of men, thus instructed and instructing others, 
 who knew and spoke of nothing — but that which is to be revealed at the 
 coming of Christ ; and expected salvation from no other name or power 
 but His 1 What departure can they be supposed to desire and long for, 
 or what going out of the body could they have in view, when mentioned 
 in connection with the ^oing to, or being with Christ, but that which 
 was to take place at His coming ? Had they any other or better hope 
 than that which they derived from the Gospel, or any sources of intel- 
 ligence besides the promises of Christ 1 And is anything more likely 
 than that they should have these promises continually in view, and 
 speak and write agreeably to such information 1 Can it then be right 
 when we interpret the Scriptures, to build a new doctrine on one, two 
 or three dubious passages, and not rather explain them by the constant 
 tenor and scope of the other parts of these writings, especially when 
 such explanations are clear and easy, and imply nothing inconsistent 
 with the design and continuation of the whole 1 And is it a small ad- 
 vantage by this method to remove difficulties which have perplexed the 
 minds of many, to reconcile the Scriptures with themselves, and to 
 make them speak one consistent uniform language 1 " 
 
 Writing about the theory that Christ's coming to Judgment takes 
 place at the death of each individual, Mr. Alexander says : " This notion 
 which Christians have adopted is more conformable to the poetic des- 
 criptions of the tribunals in Tartarus, where the judges are represented 
 as sitting continually to take cognizance of every new ghost that arrives, 
 than to the representations and language of the New Testament." 
 
 On the subject of death he says : "Death is not represented in Scrip- 
 ture as a matter of favour to good men, which they may long for and 
 embrace with joy (which it would indeed be, if it were an immediate 
 opening to heaven and the pangs of a few hours led up directly to the 
 gates of eternal bliss), but a constitution to which God has been pleased 
 to ap'point mankind, because of sin and their imperfect nature, and 
 from which good men are at length delivered, by the mercy of God, and 
 the ministry of Jesus Christ. 
 
 " The time which passes between death and resurrection may be very 
 short ; and though it should be some ages longer than we apprehend ; 
 yet to them that sleep and are unconscious of what passes, it will appear 
 less than a moment ; and the same instant which separates them from 
 this mortal life, must, to their thought and apprehension, be that which 
 unites them for ever to their Saviour and their God. 
 
 "This is not a scheme which recommends itself by its agreeableness 
 to our inclinations, but which, if true, must make its way, only by its 
 own evidence, and the necessity of the case." 
 
 Mr. Alexander points out that the reason why people are so " ready 
 to look with displeasure, upon a scheme which deprives us of these flat- 
 
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»nATNHT MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 «ring notion, o. P-triSete!;'':— ed i— '^^ 
 Sand enjoyment J^^^f "\,d an -t^t^TcS w sS a. he 
 immortality a. our ^rnr gn ^^^ ^^ j^^^, ^, ,,7,,™ from our 
 
 "nature, -oXX'-ZuCJ^<''y^^^'f^:rZuuf^^^\^^' "' - 
 approves. Vet it wuui mature of tnwgs> '"' pi.ovulence, 
 
 Seiudices and wishes to the^rea ^^^^ ««"«^^^l^^^^"flc Scriptures, 
 
 we confine o^rseWe^^^ ^'^,;^^a ^^l ^^ ,^ , Ught >. -h U y .^. ^^^^ , ^ 
 forming o"^: «me.u ^^^ eommg of ^l 1^^ J ^ ^f inmiortality, 
 
 if it appear ^l^J^ ^^^^^ on all the ng^^t^?"t!S for our expectation 
 
 ;Uee for the h0Pe;t ta ^^^^^^^ J^^„. y, ;,,.■ ^^ „, 
 
 iudgmcnt of God "»"' , ,1,^4 state "P°" ""'';" . and inactivity, 
 ' Speak'"8 °t *" ""'" tU a sUto of perfect ■«■»"""« ^',Vry of our 
 Mr. Alexander says : 1 ' « "^ „s.,.t condition, "" ""^J; '^„a en- 
 
 ? ^"1 rjSnkTr Cy of tlie pleasing ca,««tie, for ^^ti^^ 
 former transacuon^, . ^^^ere is he 1 ,,■"*^.>. -rue work which 
 
 joyment, " Man diet ani w ^.^ ^/'ouf/W;^ I'em/. ^^ ^^ ^he day and 
 
 leturndh ^^ /"■\^'""";;;^„Uon, which employed the labours « ^^. ^^^^ 
 
 engaged l^s whole attent_u^^n ^^^^^ ^^ j J the ingenious, are 
 
 the meditations of the n ^^^^ ^1*'^^''' ,ilv deprived of all 
 
 wise, the ^^-'^'•'^^'^^'[.Ts^^^^^^^^^ for ^^-^• 
 
 heard no more, ^^''rl.^? < luher have they ^'^^'^Xv! committed to 
 commerce with the hvnig, , r^^i^^j^ ^o^f J'^J ^^.o gave it.' 
 
 in<myihmgil^f;-/^ - f [,^ ,, .pint -2^^^^^-^.^ «- ^^^' 
 the ground 'and th^ ^^ ^^^ ^; ,, ia.e, on^ ^-^^^'^^^ ^^^. i, over, 
 r/ie r merfior?/ a'so i>i J ' ''unnina. and executing ^^'^'^^ f^„..vpa. 
 perished. The t^^e of P^ann^^^^^^^^ ^^^^ ^lon arej^e^J ^y^^^t ^^ ^^^^^ 
 
 W the very talent ^^^^^^^^^ ^wn or others ^^^^^'^^^,^ there is no 
 « What we do to lifter o ^^ ^^^^^^^^ ^^,,i deatn ^ 
 
 while life continuesfor tn^U^ j^ ^^^. ^^^ i, ^Tabo'u 'ancUnvention ; 
 counsel ; the noise and turn ^^^^^^^^^ ^^ 'nick enterprising 
 
 quietness obtains There ^ ^^^^^ ^thel^g- oHhe eloquent is 
 the ^^t!^\- tho niudent is taken away ; t^^ f Sty is brought low. 
 thought ot the f "^^;' ti, and vigour of the m»g";> ^ rejoiced, 
 
 become mute the ^trengt'^ ^.^^ ^^'''1"^' e ^s if they had 
 
 These accomplishments ot ^/^^^^ ^^,, and success, f^^^^ . the au- 
 
 L which Pa-f^-- -Cof Vouth, tl- .fi^Xst^^^^^^^^^^^^^ ^^1; 
 never beui. The swee i^ties ot the undersia s ^^^^^^ 
 
 thority of age, ^^^ ^^^^v 'rt2e--are vanished and ^ost^ ^^^^ 
 
 wisdom, generosity am ^^^^le powers o & ^^ 
 
 le hope to live ^9^'^\^'i'-Z in death, yet this ^f'^^^f. ^^\,eh a nature 
 
 as to lessen tnose um^ , 
 
 suggests to us. 
 
TKSTIMONIKS. 
 
 nt 13 
 low. 
 
 iced, 
 bad 
 ie avi- 
 leart, 
 
 \ougb 
 and 
 
 cU we 
 
 latvivo! 
 
 Lurally 
 
 " The reviving prospect of Immortality, and that glorious hope of a 
 resurrection which is promised in the Gospel, as it is a powerful anti- 
 dote against despair, and dispels the gloomy comfortless thought of 
 losing ourselves in death, and sinking into everlastlnri ohUruon, so it fur- 
 nishes an argument which ought to influence us beyond any other indus- 
 try and carefulness ; for upon our present condition depend, not only 
 the ease and enjoyment of tliis life, but our expectations of another, and 
 the hope of that blessedness with which it is accompanied. 
 
 "The grave presents no scene of trial and imprisonment, gives no place 
 of repentance to the wicked, nor advancement of goodness to the right- 
 eous. The exvircise of justice, charity, and temperance, and of piety, 
 resignation and trust in God, is excluded. These are the virtues of the 
 living, for the dead praise not God, nor trust in Him ; they perform no 
 works of liberality or beneficence, nor improve in the graces of the 
 Christian character. Life is appointed us for action, for the employment 
 of our faculties, and the exertion of those dispositions and habits by 
 which our state hereafter must be determined." 
 
 Mr. Andrews well observes, that " as the natural sequel to these dis- 
 criminating remarks, the author concludes by pointing out that the 
 preparation for another life is not the work of a moment ; death-bed 
 repentances were not in favour with him ; 'we are grossly deceived,' 
 says Mr. Alexander, ' if we think we can become fit for eternal happi- 
 ness within the compass of a few moments, or expect to secure ourselves 
 and gain the favour of our Maker, by the short preparation and repent- 
 ance of a departing hour. We must live to God, and lead an heavenly 
 
 life ' We must form the habits of goodness and holiness, in order 
 
 to spend a happy eternity in the presence of God, and the company of 
 holy and righteous beings. To day, then, while it is called to-day, let 
 us lay hold upon life, and improve the blessings which are put into our 
 hands, that we may die the death of the righteous, and that our latter 
 end may be like theirs," 
 
 It has been found impossible to curtail these extracts from the writ- 
 ings of yr. Alexander, expressing as they do, in such Scriptural 
 langiipge, the sentiments of a noble, truly pious, and independent mind, 
 setting forth in such comprehensive language, one hundred years ago, 
 the exact views entertained by Christadelphians now, in reference to 
 the present life, death, resurrection, and the life to come. No one who 
 values Scripture teaching on these important subjects can fail to regret 
 that the talented author was cut down at such an early age. 
 
 Mr. Alexander's vigorous, clear and comprehensive style, reminds 
 one forcibly of the terse emphatic language used in the composition of 
 those beautiful and affecting verses composing the fourth Scriptural 
 Paraphrase attached to the Scottish version of the Psalms of David, be- 
 ing "Translations and Paraphrases, in verse, of several passages of Scrip 
 ture, collected and prepared by a Committee of the General Assembly 
 of the Church of Scotland, and appointed to be sung in Churches." — 
 Job. iii., 17—20. 
 
 " How still and peaceful is the grave ; 
 Wuere life's vain tumults past, 
 
 ,<i(? 
 
 •<y 
 
 
 
Hi!' 
 
 70 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 L 
 
 I? 
 
 Th' appointed houBe by Heav'n's decree, 
 
 Receives us all at last. 
 The wicked there from troubling cease, 
 
 Their passions rage no more ; 
 And there tlie weary pilgrim rests 
 
 From all the toils he bore. 
 There rent the pris'ners now releaa'd 
 
 From slavery's sad abode ; 
 J^o more they hear th' oppressor's voice, 
 . i Or dread the tyrant's rod. 
 
 There servants, masters, small and great. 
 
 Partake the aame repf)8e ; 
 And there in peace, the ashes mix 
 
 Of those who once were foes. 
 All levell'd by the hand of death 
 
 Lie decpinij in the Tomb ; 
 Till God in judgment calls them forth, 
 
 To meet their final doom." 
 
 And the last four verses of the fifteenth Paraphrase founded on Eccl. ix., 
 5, G— 10: 
 
 " The living know that they must die ; 
 But all the dead forgotten lie : 
 Their memory and their name is gone, 
 Alike unknowing and iinknown. 
 Their Hatred and their Love is lost, 
 , Their envy buried in the dust ; 
 
 They have no share in all that's done 
 
 Beneath the circuit of the sun. 
 
 Then what thy thoughts design to do 
 
 Still let Uiy hands with might pursiie ; 
 
 Since no device or work is found, . 
 
 Nor wisdom underneath the ground. 
 
 In the cold grave, to which we haste, 
 
 There are no acts of pardon past ; , 
 
 But fixed the doom of all remains, 
 
 And everlasting silence reigns." 
 
 Do the people who so often in their public services and in their private 
 devotions, sing these touching stanzas, who have been repeating them 
 from the days of lisping childhood, to the years of manhood and woman- 
 hood, and extreme old age, ever bestow a thought on the plainness of 
 the language therein employed, and the prominence therein given, with- 
 out any ambiguity to the Scripture doctrine of man's entire mortality ? 
 And the unconscious sleep of death 1 Surely, if they did they could not 
 continue to hold the dogma of inherent immortality, or a never-dying 
 soul, in nictn ; or speak in such harsh and uncharitable terms of Christa- 
 delphians who endorse the language, doctrine, sentiment and expression 
 contained in the verses just quoted. 
 
 In the present day the dogma of natural immortality in man is re- 
 ceiving very extensive rejection. In England, wliich may be considered 
 the centre of religions, enlightenment at present, I am led to believe 
 
of 
 ith- 
 
 not 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 71 
 
 that hundreds of ministers, churchmen and dissenters, reject the dogma 
 unequivocally, while the views of many others are somewhat modified by 
 certain notions they hold concerning " Hades." The reaction takes its 
 rise there principally from the agitation in Britain as elsewhere, respect- 
 ing the cognate dogma of Eternal Torments, which is now moving the 
 religious world to its very foundation. It was stated in the public 
 papers that of the Sermons preached during the year, 1864, in St. Paul's 
 Cathedral, London, by leading ministers from all parts of England, the 
 greater portion were on the subject of Eternal Torments. It is stated 
 also, thii* '" re are several religious periodicals in England, at present 
 dt'Vi'i. .', in great part, to the discussion of what they style, " No life out 
 ol hrist," and "No immortality out of Christ." This very designation 
 of the subject implies much, and virtually, no matter how greatly modi- 
 fied or confused, or Heclouded the doctrine in their hands may be, it 
 virtually con<. ic md admits man's mortality by nature. It would also 
 appear that, in many localities, the ministers holding these views with 
 all their modifications are in advance of popular knowledge and public 
 sentiment in relation to the dogma in ijuestion. From an English period- 
 ical for 187^ I extract the following: — 
 
 "Tho H' V-. IL White, who teaches no immortality out of Christ, 
 and finds li.-.I- doctrine a great barrier to himself and other ministers 
 who believe with him, writes to the Nonarrformid appealing to such of 
 its ' readers who may be Deacons of Churches destitute of Pastors,' to 
 use their influence to obtain a hearing (with a view to appointment) of 
 ' A few able and worthy ministers of the Baptist and Independent per- 
 suasions, who are at this moment deprived of opportunities of exercis- 
 ing a settled ministry, through the circumstance thut they have embraced the 
 doctrine of immortality in Christ alone.' ' How long,' he enquires, ' will the 
 churches continue to make a test of the dogma of eternal misery, which 
 so few in private seem earnestly to believe ? ' Surely the names of some 
 of ik". very leading men amongst us who make no secret of their faith on 
 the question of natural immortality, might shew the elective bodies, that 
 it will not be possible much longer to exclude from pastorates, good men 
 who dispute that doctrine, or to maintain, as one of the articles of trust 
 deeds, the assertion of it." 
 
 A remarkable feature in relation to the subject of the inherent Im- 
 mortality of the soul is the amazing readiness with which many advo- 
 cates of the dogma, who have never bestowed a moment's consideration 
 upjt' it in the scriptural aspect, nevertheless, rush to its defence, and the 
 facility with which they proceed to quote Scripture, in copious measure 
 in its support. Such per.-,ons imagine that it is one of the easiest things 
 in the world to prove, not merely in the light of nature, reason and 
 analogy, but also in the light of Scripture. Learned men, however, of 
 good and honest hearts, conscientious, merciful, and of teachable dispo- 
 sitions, who have taken to the study of the Scriptures before their heads 
 were crammed and their minds poisoned by heathen philosophy, sophis- 
 try and science, falsely so called, are more cautious, and do not find the 
 task so easy, as we see in the case of Rev. Theodore Clapp (C). 
 
 
 f" 
 
riir"i«iiiiiiMiiiin 
 
 TlIK miU.K VINM)l('ATKI) AOAINHT MOHKIIN THHOLOOY. 
 
 t 
 
 Tho fdllowinj; incident, which 1 quote from an EngUsh poriodical, 
 ilhistratos in a reniaiknhlo and curions manner, what I mean : " Somn- 
 timo ago, in a ])iii)('r published in the South of England, a Reward of 
 XlOO sterling (fr)00) was offered to any person who should prodijce a 
 single passage of Scripture proving the Immortality of the soul. An 
 old man who had been among the pastors all his life, in the capacity of 
 gardener and servant, but who had jiist been thrown out of employment 
 by the death of his last employer, and who had also come to the conclu- 
 sion that they were wrong upon this question, presumed upon his clerical 
 associations so far, as to address a letter, substantially to the following 
 effect, to the Archbisliop of Canterbury : — 
 
 "Maldon, March 11th, 1867. 
 
 " ARCTiBTSTiriP — I believe, from what I hav(^ heard, that you are very 
 kind to the poor, and willing to help the needy. Upon tliis considera- 
 tion 1 take the liberty to apply to you. 1 do not ask you for any money, 
 though I greatly need that at present. I was church clerk at Hulphan, 
 in Essex, in 1821 ; I was domestic servant to liev. Asko, of Orseth, in 
 1824 ; I was servant to the Rev. Mr. Smith, of West Tilbury, in 1825 ; 
 I was church clerk of Childerditch, in 1830 ; I was servant to the Rev. 
 Robinson, in 1832 ; I have been servant to Dr. Robinson, at Great 
 ^Varley Rectory above thirty years. 
 
 "I have had a very large family to provide for ; but the doctor dying 
 in 1800, has thrown me out of employment, and I am now considered 
 too old to obtain a situation. Under these distressing circumstances I 
 shall feel very grateful if you will take the trouble to help me in tlie 
 matter I have to apply to you about. I believe that you will if you can. 
 
 " There is £100 offered to any one who can show any passage of Scrip- 
 ture to prove that man is Immortal, or has an Immortal Soul. Can you 
 tell me where to find such a passage 1 I assure you if I can get the 
 .£100, it will be of great service to me. An answer will greatly oblige 
 
 •' Your humble servant, 
 
 "James Barhett Mann." 
 
 The ARCHmsHor's Reply. 
 
 I 
 
 In a few days the Archbishop's chaplain wrote to Mr. Mann, to say 
 that his letter had been received, and that his lordship suggested 1 Cor. 
 XV. 54, " This 7))(y)-fal wuMjnit on Imnuyrtolifi/," as a likely passage to secure 
 the reward I ! "I was satisfied" says Mr. Mann, " that he had done the 
 best he could for me." 
 
 Let this incident in the life of this learned man, and the result of 
 Mr. Mann's application act as a caution to such as are so ready to rush, 
 lull of zeal, without knowledge, to defend by Scripture a dogma which 
 men of the first minds, and of stern, unbending integrity and piety, 
 <leclare to have no foundation in the sacred oracles. The Archbishop 
 of Canterbury, the highest personal ecclesiastical authority in J^ngland, 
 after a delay of some days, replies to Mr. Mann's urgent request, by 
 pointing oiit to him a passage, which above all others in the Bible 
 
';f*^l 
 
 TKSTIMONIKS. 
 
 7.S 
 
 prov(!8 tho inlieretit morfalih/ ot man, and that there is no iminortuhty 
 for any until tlic rcsuirection, when the trumpet shall sound, and the 
 dead in Christ being raisful to lif(», shall stand before the judgment seat, 
 with the saii'ts living at the time of His a))pearing, and having jjassed 
 the scrutiny of the Grand Inquest, shall have been changed in the 
 twinkling of an eye, from the mortal to the immortal spirit nature, by 
 ihi' putting mi, by this Mortal, of Immortality, and by this Corruptible 
 of Incorniptibility. Now what are we justly to infer from Mr. Mann's 
 narrative 1 simply this, that this learned man high in authority in the 
 Chnrrh could not find a passage in the whole Bible proving man's na- 
 tural Immortality, or that man has an immortal soul. The pas.sage he 
 sent to Mr. Mann, proves that man is mortal now, but that when 
 invested with eternal life, the gift of God, to be conferred hereafter, he 
 shall hemme immortal. 
 
 On tliis side the Atlantic this subject is creating some excitement and 
 di.scussiop, and light is at length beginning to dawn on some of the 
 clergy in reference to tlie nature of man and the question of eternal 
 torments. 
 
 In the Toronto Daily Glohr, of January 3rd, 1873, the following ac 
 count appears of a meeting of Methodist ministers lield in the City of 
 New York, a few days previously : 
 
 " At a regular Monday morning meeting of the Methodist preachers 
 of New York, held in the Mission Rooms, at Broadway and Eleventh 
 streets, the subject for discussion wtis Annihilation, and the Rev. Mr. 
 Terry, of Poughkeej)sie, o|)ened with a written essay in sup))ort of the 
 Orthodox Methodist opini(»ns in relation to the eternal character of the 
 Future Punishment of tho wicked. * * 
 
 '' At the conclusion of Mr. Terry's remarks, Dr. Crawford called upon 
 the Rev. Dr. True. The latter was for many years a professor in the 
 Wesleyan University of New York, and has one of the most scholarly 
 minds in the church. The call having been repeated by many voices, he 
 came forward, having in his hand an essay, which he said he would not 
 read, but give a brief statement of his views. 
 
 " lie was not, he said, an annihilationist, but a distinctionist. He 
 di<l not believe that God would cause matter which he had crea<,ed to 
 cease to exist, but that the pexialty of the incorrigibly wicked would 
 prove to be the destruction of his conscious existence — the total cessation 
 of all his functions. Man was made naturally immortal, and designed 
 to live for ever. (Dr. True falls into error here, in stating that man was 
 created Immortal, because that \^ *!^«"li is Immortal cannot die. See testi 
 mony as to the nature of Adam. -» ompiler.) The j)enalty of the law, 
 was the destruction of this Immortality. (The penalty of the law, was 
 death thi-ough dissolution of the organism, man, and its resolution into 
 dust — C.) At three great epoclis in the history of the race, there ^ere 
 three gi-eat men, through whom the law was given to man, — Adam, 
 Moses and Christ. With the law the penalty would have been given, 
 and if the penalty of et^^rnal punishment is not found and given by 
 them, it should not 'oe looked for in parables, figures, or in the definition 
 
 f 'i 
 
 •'■. ' \'fm 
 

 
 
 !' J: 2 » 
 
 74 
 
 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 I 
 
 of words. God gave a penalty to each. To Adam, or representative, 
 he said ' In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.' This Is 
 physical death, for Adam was not damned. This is not a damned world 
 in which we live, and in which you preach repentance and the hope of 
 eternal life. Death passed upon Adam and upon all his race, for all 
 have sinned ; but through the intercession of Christ judgment has been 
 postponed. I cannot be objected to thus far in my theology." 
 
 Rev. Mr. Cuny did object, and some confusion here arose, When 
 quiet was restored, Rev. Dr. True proceeded : " By the mediation of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ, the stroke of the law was prevented (rather a way of 
 escape from the effect of the strokes of the law, death, was opened up, 
 Christ himself the Way, being the first fruits from the dead — Com). God 
 said to Adam, ' In the day thou sinnest, thou shalt surely die.' If He 
 had meant other than physical death — if he had meant, ' Thou shalt con- 
 tinue to live in sin, and misery, and despair for ever,' that was the time. 
 Pass to the time of Moses. God warned against a violation of His law 
 by the people, ' lest they die.' ' I set before you life and death.' No 
 eternal death was decreed through Moses. * * i agree 
 
 with the received views of the church as to the state of the soul up to 
 the time of Judgment. I am heretical (as brother Corbett says) only 
 on the question of the final disposition of the sinner. Dr. Warren, Pr.j- 
 sident of the Methodist Theological Seminary in Massachusetts, said in 
 a sermon which I heard him deliver, that tliere was scarcely a whisper 
 ' of Eternal Punishment' up to the sermon on the Mount, Scarcely a 
 whisper on so important a subject ! I go furcher and say, ihere was not 
 a whisper up to that time, nor in the sermon on the Mount. If you 
 can find it then I will receive it. If it were there it would be in con- 
 flict with God's justice, for it would be an ex post facto lav\ The issues 
 there employed denote rapid and complete destruction. ' T'le worm which 
 dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched,' may gnaw and burn for 
 ever, but each victim is utterly consumed. JohVi. Wesley who was a wise 
 man, considering he lived a hundred years ago, believed that the fire of 
 hell was material fire. You say he was wrong. I say he was right, but 
 that he made a mistake in supposing that that fire didn't burn (con- 
 sume). In neither Adam, Moses, nor Christ, do we find authority for 
 the doctrine of ' Eternal Punishment.' The Apostles did not teach it. 
 The Fathers of the Church in the first century neither advanced nor sug- 
 gested it It was first promulgated in the year 131 ; till than the Chris- 
 tians had been constantly looking for the coming of Christ, and the 
 destruction of their persecutors." 
 
 The following extract should have been inserted earlier, it will an- 
 swer here however : — " The prevailing belief among Christians in the 
 ?^cond century, in re., ud to the state of the dead, is thus set forth by 
 Dr. Giesler : — 
 
 " Till then (that is till ' the first resurrection '), the souls of the de- 
 parted were to be kept in the underworld {Sheol or Hadenj the recep- 
 tacle of dead bodies, and the opinion that they should be taken up to 
 heaven immediately after death was considered a Gnostic heresy." — 
 Ecd. History, Vol. 1. p. 167. 
 
 c 
 a 
 
mm. 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 75 
 
 " I am credibly informed that the unconscious state of the dead is ad- 
 mitted and proclaimed from pulpits in Montreal, Toronto and other 
 places in Canada. Mixed up in some cases with certain views concern- 
 ing ' Hades,' which is held to be something different from the Hebrew 
 ' Sheol,' or the English ' Grave.' I am also led to believe that in a 
 Town in the North-west Peninsula of Ontario, a visiting Presbyterian 
 minister in 1873, used words in his sermon to the following effect : — 
 
 " When we die, there is nothing more of us until the Resurrection. 
 Then, the dust of God's people being precious in his sight. He will raise 
 them up from the dead, endow them with life and fashion their vile 
 
 bodies like unto the glorious Body of Christ." 
 
 * 
 
 * 
 
 Adam's nature. 
 
 
 .0 
 
 A great amount of mystery and mystification has been imposed upon 
 mankind in reference to the Nature of Adam, when he came forth fresh 
 from the hand of his Creator. The statement contained in Gen. iii, 22, 
 should be sufficient in the judgment of all honest, candid, and reasonable 
 men, to decide this matter : " And the Lord God (Hebrew, Elohim) said. 
 Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil : and 
 now, lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life, and eat, 
 and live for ever : therefore, the Lord God sent him forth from the 
 garden of Eden, to till the ground whence he was taken. So he drove 
 out the man ; and he placed at the east of the garden of Edeu Cherubims, 
 and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the 
 tree of life." We here see plainly, that in the Divine arrangements in 
 force at that early period in the history of our race, a certain tree in the 
 garden, the tree of life, was endowed with the property or virtue of con- 
 ferring on the partaker of its fruit, immortality or evidently eternal life ; 
 in a certain possible contingency, so to speak, as for instance in the 
 event of Adam having succeeded in mai'itaining inviolate the Eden 
 law ; but having transgressed it, and having become amenable to the 
 threatened penalty, God in His Mercy, as we have every right to infer 
 from the record, having no desire to perpetuate man's existence in 
 misery, removed him beyond the reach of the tree of life, so that he 
 might not have access thereto, " and eat and live for ever." This is ex- 
 ceedingly plain and emphatic, how h that men cannot see its evident 
 and only meaning 1 I beg to submit a few testimonies in relation to 
 this question, which has an important bearing on the subjects now un- 
 der discussion, because it lies at the very foundation of those views re- 
 specting the nature of man, which we hold to be diametrically opposed 
 to the teachings of the sacred oracles. — (C.) 
 
 Archbishop Whately say- " There is nothing improbable in the sup- 
 position, that the Tree of Life was endued with the virtue of fortifying 
 the constitution agamst the decays of age ; and that it is not at all in- 
 credible that the Creator may have bestowed on some fruit such a 
 virtue." 
 
 Theopbilus, of Antioch, discoursing on this subject, cites Gen. ii. 7. 
 
 n 
 
7() 
 
 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODEUN THEOLOGY. 
 
 u 
 
 i, 
 
 
 : 
 
 ! 
 
 i 11:: 
 
 "And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed 
 into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." On 
 this he remarks, " Whence the soul is called by many immortal." " Man 
 was placed on probation, that growing and finally attaining unto per- 
 fection, and being manifest as a God, he might thus ascend to heaven 
 in the possession of eternity — for man had been made intermediate ; 
 neither absolutely mortal, nor altogether immortal, but capable of either. 
 Death was a merciful provision ; God bestowed it as a great 
 blessing upon the man, that he might not remain for all time in sin ; 
 Death is reconstructive. Just as a vessel, if, when finished, 
 it has some blemish, is recast and made over, so as to be new and whole, 
 death does the same for the man , for he is after a sort, broken in pieces, 
 that* in the resurrection he appear sound ; by which I mean, pure, just 
 and immortal." (Book 2, c. 19, 26.) And again, "some one will ask, 
 ' Was Adam by nature mortal?' 'By no means.' 'ImmortaH' 'Not 
 thus either.' ' What then — nothing at alH ' I answer, neither mortal, 
 nor immortal ; for if the Creator had made him from the first, immor- 
 tal, He would have made him a God. If mortal, then God would appear 
 as the author of death. He made him then capable of becoming either ; 
 so that by keeping the command of God he might attain Immortality as 
 his reward and become a God. But if he should turn to mortal things 
 and disobey God, he would be, himself, the author of his own death. 
 For God made man free and with power of self-control." 
 
 Lactantius says : " The other animals look downward, because they 
 are of the earth, not having immortality, which is from heaven ; but 
 man stands erect and looks upward, because Immortality is offered him, 
 though it comes not unless given from God. For there would be no 
 difference between the just and the unjust, if every man that is born 
 were made immortal. Immortality, therefore, is not a law of our nature, 
 but the wages and reward of virtue. . . . For this reason, God 
 seeks to be worshipped and honoured by man, as Father, that he may 
 attain virtue and wisdom, which alone impart Immortality." 
 
 In the fifth century, the same view is stated by Nemesius. who, from 
 a Neo-Platonist, became bishop of Emesa. He says : " Since the soul 
 is not yet known in its essence, it is not suitable to determine respect- 
 ing its energy. The Hebrews say that originally man was made evi- 
 dently neither mortal nor immortal ; but on the confines of either na- 
 ture ; so that if he should yield to the bodily affections, he should share 
 also the changes of the body ; but if he should prefer the nobler affec- 
 tions of the soul, he should be deemed worthy of immortality." 
 
 And Nicholas, of Methone, so late as the twelfth century, whom 
 Neander, the historian, regards as the most learned theologian of his 
 age, speaks as follows : — " It is not every soul that neither perishes nor 
 dies, but only the rational, truly spiritual and divine soul, which is made 
 perfect through virtue by participating in the grace of God. For the soul 
 of irrational beings, and still more of plants, may perish with the things 
 which they inhabit, because they cannot be separated from the bodies 
 which they are composed of, and may be dissolved into their original 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 77 
 
 elements When anything created is eternal, it is so, 
 
 not by itself, nor in itself, nor for itself, but by the goodness of God j 
 for all that is made and created has a beginning, and retains its existence 
 only through the goodness of the Creator." 
 
 The same doctrine is contained and advanced in these words of 
 Jeremy Taylor : " Whatsoever had a beginning, can also have an ending, 
 and it shall die, unless it be daily watered from the stream flowing from 
 the fountain of life, and refreshed with the dew of heaven and the wells 
 of God ; and, therefore God had prepared a tree in Paradise, to have 
 supported Adam in his artificial immortalitj'. Immortality was not in his 
 nature, but in the hands and parts, in the favour and superadditions of 
 God." 
 
 "Such," says Mr. Hudson, " was the view of the most cultured and 
 philosophic minds, abandoning their old hope of immortality in the 
 soul's inherent nature. But this doctrine of man's middle nature was 
 gradually disparted and corrupted, to em\ in the modern doctrine of 
 man's united nature, of body mortal and soul immortal, each in the abso- 
 lute sense. This notion seems to have been matured as early as the time 
 ofPelagius, against whose view of physical death as natural the Synod of 
 Carthage framed its caflon in the twelfth century. Upon which the 
 scholiast Balsamon comments thus : applying to the body only what 
 former writers had asserted of man's entire being ; God made man 
 neither mortal nor immortal ; but midway between greatness and hu- 
 mility ; and having made him master of himself, with power of free-will, 
 he left him to choose either virtue or vice, and to receive either Immor- 
 tality or mortality." 
 
 " Such," says Mr. Hudson, " has been, until recent times, the doc- 
 trine of the Church, Protestant as well as Catholic." — Hudson- Future, 
 Life, ipTp. 309-311. 
 
 In answer to the question, " suppose man had become obedient to tlie 
 Eden law, would he have died, seeing that his nature was terminable of 
 itself ? " Dr. Thomas says, " To this we reply yes, and no. Ves, if 
 Jehovah Elohim had left him in statu quo ; No, if he had sent him to eat 
 of the tree of the Two Lives, to which he denied him access because of 
 transgression. Had he continued obedient, he would, doubtless, have 
 beeh admitted to this tree, that in eating thereof he might have been 
 ' changed,' like Enoch, ' in the twinkling of an eye,' though, not like 
 him, remov(|i from earth undefiled by sin." 
 
 Mr. Roberts says : " Adam was neither mortal nor immortal, so far 
 as declared destiny was concerned ; he was in that state in which death 
 would come with disobedience." 
 
 John Milton, author of " Paradise Lost," on the constitution of man. 
 
 " The visible creation comprises the material universe, and all that is 
 contained therein ; and more especially the human race. The creation of 
 the world in general, and of its individual parts, is related in Gen. i. It 
 is also describe 1 in Job xxvi. 7, &c., and chap. xxxviiL, and in various 
 passages of the Psalms and Prophets — Psalm xifyiii. 6-9 ; Ps. civ. ; Ps. 
 cxlviii. 6; Prov. viii. 26, &c. ; Amos iv. 13 ; 2 Peter iii. 5. Previ- 
 
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78 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
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 ously, however, to the creation of man, as if to indicate the superior im- 
 portance of the work, the Deity speaks like a man deliberating : Gen. i. 
 26. ' God said, let us make man in our own imoge, after our own like- 
 jiess.' So that it was not the body alone that was then made, but the 
 soul of man also (in which our likeness to God principally consists) ; which 
 precludes ua from attributing pre-existence to the soul which wo^ then formed — 
 a groundless notion sometimes entertained, but refuted by Gen. ii. 7 ; 
 ' God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nos- 
 trils the brea^h of life ; thus man became a living soul.' Job xxxii. 8 : 
 ' There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth 
 him understanding.' Nor did God merely breathe that spirit into 
 man, but moulded it in each individual, and infused it throughout, en- 
 duing and embellishing it with its proper faculties. Zech. xii. 1. * He 
 formed the spirit of man within him.'" 
 
 We may understand from other passages of Scripture, that when 
 God infused the breath of life into man, what man thereby received 
 was not a portion of God's essence, or a participation of the divine na- 
 ture, but that meaijure of the Divine virtue or influence, which was com- 
 mensurate to the capabilities of the recipient. For it appears from 
 Psalm civ. 29-30, that he infused the breath of life into other beings 
 
 also ; " Thou takest away their breath, they die Thou 
 
 sendeth forth Thy Spirit, they are created." Whence we learn that 
 every living thing receives animation from one and the same source of 
 life and breath ; inasmuch as when God takes back to Himself that 
 spirit, or breath of life, they cease to exist. Eccl. iii. 19. " They have 
 all one breath." Nor has the word spirit any other meaning in the sacred 
 writings, but that breath of life which we inspire, or the vital, or sensi- 
 tive, or rational faculty, or some action or affection belonging to those 
 faculties. 
 
 Man having been created after this manner, it is said, as a conse- 
 quence, that man became a " living soul ; " whence, it may be inferred, 
 (unless we had rather take the heathen writers for our teachers respect- 
 ing the nature of the soul,) that man is a living being, intrinsically and 
 properly one individual, not compound or separable — not, accord- 
 ing to the common opinion, made up and framed of two distinct and 
 different natures, as of soul and body, but that the whole man is soul, 
 and the soul man — that is to say, a body, or individual substance, ani- 
 mated, sensitive and rational ; and that the breath of life was neither a 
 part of the Divine essence, nor was it the soul itself, but as it were, 
 the inspiration of some Divine virtue fitted for the exercise of life and 
 reason, and infused into the organic body ; for man himself, the whole 
 man, when finally created, is called in express terms, a " living soul " — 
 (The reader will not fail to remark how plain the language of Gen. ii, 
 7, is : " The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and 
 breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man (no*" the breath) be- 
 came a " living soul," (or " being," as Dr. Conquest, in his edition of the 
 Bible, hath it) — so that the living soul consisted of the " dust " or "clay " 
 man, and the breath of life, in combination, and must therefore be a 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 70 
 
 a very different thing fntm tliat immaterial entity, of wyiich our natural 
 immortality friends have so much to say— (Compiler.) Hence the 
 word used in Genesis to signify soul, is interpreted by the Apostle, I 
 Cor. XV. 45, " Animal." Again, all the attributes of the body are 
 assigned in common to the soul ; the Imich, Lev. v. 2, " If a soul touch any 
 unclean thing " ; the act of eating, Lev. vii. 18, 20, " The soul that eatefli 
 of it shall bear his ini(i[uity ; — " The soul that eateth of the flesh " ; and in 
 other places hunger — Prov. xiii, 25 : — Prov. xxxii. 7, " To the hungry soul 
 ever)' bitter thing is sweet ; " thirst, Prov. xv. 25, " as cold waters to a 
 thirsty soul; Isaiah xxix, 8 — capture, Sam. xxiv. 11, " Thou Aww/es/ my 
 soul to take it;"— Ps. vii. 5, "Let the enemy persecute my soul, and take it.' 
 
 Where we speak of the body as a mere senseless stock, there the soul 
 must be understood as signifying either the spirit, or its secondary- 
 faculties, the vital or secondary faculty for instance. Thus it is as often 
 distinguished from the spirit, as from the body itself. Luke i. 40, 
 47; 1 Thess v. 23, " Your whole spirit and soul and body — Heb. iv. 
 12, " To the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." But that the spirit 
 of man should be separate from the body, so as to have a perfect ami 
 intelligent existence independently of it, is nowhere said in Scripture, 
 and the doctrine is evidently at variance both with nature and reason ; 
 as will bo shown more fully hereafter. For the word " soul " is applied 
 to every kind of living being ; Gen. i. 30, " Every beast of the earth 
 wherein there is life," (" Hebrew, a " living soul.") Gen. vii 22, " All in 
 whose nostrils was the breath of life, (Hebrew, living soul,) of all that 
 was in the dry land died ; yet it is never inferred from these expressions 
 that the soul exists separate from the body in any of the brute creation." 
 — Dr. Adam Clarke in his Notes on Gen. i. 24, says " That the words 
 ' living soul,' is a general term to express all creatures endowed with 
 animal life, in any of its infinitely varied gradations, from the half- 
 reasoning elephant down to the polypus, which seems equally to share 
 the animal and vegetable life." 
 
 ' On the seventh day God ceased from his work, and ended the whole 
 business of creation " ; Gen. ii. 23. 
 
 It would seem, therefore, that the human soul is not created daily by 
 the immediate act of God, but propagated from father to son in a natural 
 order ; which was considered the more probable opinion by Tertullian, 
 and Appolinarius, as well as by Augustine, and the whole western church 
 in the time of Jerome, as he himself testified ; Tom. 2, Epist. 82, and 
 Gregory of Nyssa in his treatise " On the Soul." God would in fact have 
 left his creation imperfect, and a vast, not to say a servile task, would 
 yet remain to be performed, without ever allowing time for rest on each 
 successive Sabbath, if he still continued to create as many souls daily, as 
 there are bodies multiplied throughout the whole world, at the bidding 
 of what is not seldom the flagitious wantonness of man. Nor is there 
 any reason to suppose that the influence of the Divine blessing is less 
 efficacious in imparting to man the power of producing after his kind 
 than to the other parts of animated nature : Gen. i. 22-28. Thus it 
 was from one of the ribs of the man that God made the mother of all 
 
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 mankind, without the necessity of infusing the breath of life a second 
 time, Gen. ii. 22 ; and Adam himself begat a son in his own likeness 
 after his image, Gen. 5, 3. Thus, 1 Cor. 16-49. " As we have borne 
 the image of the earth " ; " and this not only in the body, but in the soul, 
 as it was chiefly with respect to the soul that Adam was made in the 
 Divine im^e. So, Gen. xvi. 26. " All the soulc which came with 
 Jacob into Egypt, which came out of his loins." Heb. vii, 10, " Levi 
 was in the loins of Abraham" ; whence in Scripture an offspring is 
 called seed, and Christ is denominated "the seed of the woman." Gen. 
 xvii. 17, "1 .will be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee." 1 
 Cor. XV. 44-46, " It is sown a natural body. . . . that was not first 
 which is spiritual but that which is natural." 
 
 But besides the testimony of revelation, some arguments from reason 
 may be alleged in confirmation of this doctrine. Whoever is born, or 
 shapen, and conceived in sin, (as we all are, not David only. Psalm li, 5,) 
 if he receive his soul immediately fnm God, cannot but receive it from 
 him shapen in sin ; for to be generated and conceived means nothing else 
 than to receive a soul in conjunction with the body. If we receive the 
 soul immediately from God it must be pure, for who in such a case will 
 venture to call it impure ) But if it be pure, how are we conceived 
 in sin in consequence of receiving a pure soul which would rather have 
 the effect of cleansing the impurities of the body ; or with what justice 
 is the pure soul charged with the sin of the body ? 
 
 But it is contended, God does not create souls impure, but only 
 impaired it. their natUT-^;, and destitute of original righteousness. I 
 answer, that to create pure souls destitute of original righteousness, — 
 to send tnem into contaminated and impure bodies, — to deliver them up 
 in their innocence and helplessness to the prison house of the body, us 
 to an enemy, with understanding blinded and with will enslaved — in 
 other words, wholly deprived of sufficient strength for resisting the 
 vicious propensities of the body — to create souls thus circumstanced, 
 would argue as much injustice, as to have created them impure, would 
 have argued impurity ; it would have argued as much injustice as tu 
 have created the first man, Adam himself, impaired in his nature, and 
 destitute of original righteousness. 
 
 Again if sin be communicated by generation, and transmitted from 
 father to son, it follows that what is the original subject of sin, namely, 
 the rational soul, must be propagated in the same manner ; for that it is 
 from the soul that all sin in the first instance proceeds, will not be denied. 
 Lastly, on what principle of justice can sin be imputed through Adam 
 to that soul which was never either in Adam, or deiived from Adam ? 
 In confirmation of which, Aristotle's argument may be added, the truth 
 of which is, in my opinion, indisputable. If the soul be equally diffused 
 through any given whole, and throughout every part of the whole, how 
 can the human seed, the noblest and most intimate part of all the bod^, 
 be imagined destitute of the sonl of the parents, or at least of the father, 
 when communicated to the son by the la'vs of generation 1 
 
 It was probably by some such considerations as these, tltat Augustine 
 
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TESTIMONIES. 
 
 81 
 
 was led to confess that he could neither discover by study nor prayer 
 nor any process of reasoning, how the doctrine of original sin could be 
 defended on the sup})osition of the ci-eation of souls. The texts which, 
 are usually advanced, Eccles. xii. 7 ; Isa. Ivii, 16 ; Zech. xii. 1 ; certainly 
 indicate that nobler origin of the soul implied in its being breathed from 
 the mouth of God ; but they no more prove that each soul is severally 
 and immediately created by the Deity, than certain other texts, which 
 might be quoted, prove that each individual body is formed in the womb 
 by the immediate hand of God. Job x. 8-10, " Thine hands have made 
 me. . . hast thou not poured me out as milk r Psalm xxxiii, 
 15. "Did not he that made me in the womb, make him ? " Isa. Ivi. 24, 
 ** Thus saith Jehovah, . . he that formed thee from the womb." 
 Acts xvli. 26, " He hath made of one blood all nations of men." We are 
 not to infer from these passages, that natural causes do not contribute 
 their ordinaiy eflScacy for the propagation of the Vjody ; nor on the other 
 hand, that the soul is not received by traduction from the father, because 
 at the time of death it again betakes itself to different elements than the 
 body, in conformity with its own origin. 
 
 With regard to the passage, Heb. xii. 9, where " the fathers of the 
 flesh" are opposed to the " father of spirits," I answer, that it is to be un- 
 derstood in a theological, not in a physical sense, as if the father of the 
 body were opposed to the father of the soul ; iov flesh is taken neither in 
 this passage, nor probably anywhere else for the body without the soul ; 
 norjthe '* father of spirits" for the father of the soul, in respect of the 
 generation; but the "father of the flesli" here means nothing else than 
 the earthly or natural father, whose offspring are begotten in sin ; "the 
 father of spirits" is either the heavenly father, who in the beginning 
 created all spirits, angels as well as the human race, or the spiritutJ 
 father, who bestows a second birth on the faithful ; according to John iii. 
 6, " That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is bom of the 
 'jpirit is spirit." The argument, too, will proceed better ,if the whole be 
 understood as refening to edification and con-ection, not to generation ; 
 for the point in question is not from what source each individual origin- 
 ated, or what part of him thence originated, but who had proved most- 
 successful in the employment of chastisement and instruction. By parity 
 of reasoning, the apostle might exhort the converts to bear with his i-e- 
 buke, on the groimd that he was their sp 'ritual father. God is as tndy 
 the father of the flesh as ' of the spirik of the flesh,' Numb, xv i. 22, 
 but this is not the sense intended here, and all arguments are weak 
 which ait> deduced frem passages of Scripture originally relating to a 
 different subject. 
 
 " With regard to the soul of Christ, it will be sufficient to answer that 
 its generation was supernatural, and therefore cannot be cited as an argu- 
 ment in the discussion of this controversy. Nevertheless, oven he is 
 called * the seed of the woman.' ' The seed of David according to the 
 flesh,' that is, undoubtedly, according to his human nature." 
 
 " There seems, therefore, no reason why the soul of man should be 
 made an exception to the general law of creation. For, as has been 
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 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 shown before, God breathed the breath of life into the other living 
 beings, and blended it bo intimately with matter, that the projtagation 
 and production of the huinan form wei-e analagouB to those of other 
 forms, and the proi)er effect of that power which had been commu- 
 nicated to matter by the Deity." — Froia tlie " Herald of the Kinijdorn and 
 Age to C(me,"fm- 1855, jyp. 164-167. 
 
 The foregoing is so imiH>rtant, and ho much to the point, that, for the 
 sake of the reader, I have not felt at liberty to curtail it. 
 
 Dr. William Morris, of Philadelphia, in his book, entitled •' What is 
 Man 1" says: "Man, the luce of Adam is born of 'corruptible seed.' 
 The apostle Peter contiusts the spiiitual generation of ' the children of 
 God,' with the natural or psychical generation of 'the children of men.' 
 Concerning those who rve born of the spii-it he says : ' Being born again, 
 not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible.' — 1 Peter, i. 23. And in 
 this way he indicates the truth, that the children of men are born of 
 ' coiTuptible seed.' . . The souls of the oflspring of man, are 
 derived from man. They are generated by the paternal parentage ; as 
 it is written ; ' And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob, 
 were seventy souls.' — Exod. i. 5. And concerning Levi, it is said by Paul, 
 that he was in the loins of his forefather Abraham, whc^n Melchizedeck 
 met him.' — Heb. vii. 9. Such is the uniform testimony of the Word of 
 God ; and by the modern discoveries of science in the department of 
 physiology, men are now beginning to underataud that which has been 
 taught from the first in every department of the inspired book. The 
 truth that the children of men were born of corruptible seed, was pro- 
 perly understood in ancient times, and was confessed by Job in these 
 words : ' I have said to cormption, Thou art my father.' — Job xvii. 14. 
 The microscopic germ in which the man is originated, and from which 
 he is bom, contains within its mysterious minuteueso, the vital and active 
 principle that is essentially the future man. By virtue of the laws of 
 Psychical Evolution, this soul becomes evolved and embodied in the 
 process of gestation, and in due time a child is born, and is progressively 
 manifested in the babe, the youth and the man. And he must be a 
 puerile thiidcer, who could suppose that 'the human body is produced in 
 the womb, without the presence and formative activities of this vital prin- 
 ciple J and that the entrance of the material atmosphere into the lungs of 
 the new-born babe, is that whereby the babe is endowed with an imriui- 
 ieritU and immortal soul.' And he must be an inconsiderate man, who 
 could believe and say, that ' the Lord God creates by a new and sepa- 
 rate act of creation, a soul for every child that is begotten, and conceived, 
 and born, and that in this way the Holy Creator co-operates ; even with 
 the incontinence of ' the adulterer and the harlot ! ' And he must be a 
 teacher of strange doctrines, ' who can believe and teach that an immor- 
 tal sold pi-oceeds fi tva. God by way of Emanation — a jKirtion of the life 
 of the Lord God, and coming down from heaven, comes into the world 
 in every living child that is born ; and from the dawn of reason, at least, 
 that soul — that portion of the Lord God — becomes a sinful soul, es- 
 tranged from God and from his holiness ; havmg a heart and mind that 
 
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TESTIMONIES. 
 
 88 
 
 is at enmity to God ; and being obnoxioua to His wrath, will, acconling to 
 this doctiine, be hated and tortured of God, with inconceivable torture 
 ♦"or evermore !" 
 
 la connection with the two last extracts, I quote at some length from 
 the writings of Dr. Thomas, on ' Man as a Living Soul," and a "New 
 Theory of Animal Life," to which I invite the especial attention of the 
 readfer, and his careful examination in the light of Scripture and true sci- 
 ence. I give the Greek and Hebrew quotations as I find them in the 
 English characters : 
 
 *' MAN AS A LIVING SOUL." * 
 
 " 1. — We purpose now to present a synopsis, as it were, of the truth 
 in relation to man as a physical being, as we find it displayed in the 
 Holy Scripture, and confirmed by experiment an<l observation of the 
 natural laws, in contradistinction to the Plato- Hymenean hypothesis 
 of ancient and modern days. 
 
 '• 2. — In the beginning, the Word spoke by the Elohim, and by the 
 Spirit created all tilings which constitute this terrestrial system through 
 and for Christ— di auto kai eis wdton. 
 
 " 3 — In this Word was life, spirit, or energy, which moulded the 
 substance of man into the image, after the likeness, or form of the 
 Elohim. 
 
 " 4 — The highest of the Elohim, ctyled Yahweh-Elohim, organized 
 the dust of the ground, and fashioned it into the Human Forin ; i\nd 
 breathed into the nostrils the breath of lives, and it became A living 
 CREATURE of the species ' Man.' 
 
 " 5. — The living creature in the words of Moses is styled nephesh 
 chayiah. Nephesh signifies creninre, also life, soul or breathimj frame, 
 from the verb to breathe ; Chayiah is living — the participle of the verb 
 to live. Nephesh chayiah is the (jenus which includes all species of living 
 creati;res, namely, Adam, man ; bem^, beast of the field ; chitu, wild beast, 
 remesh, reptile ; and ouph fowl ; etc. In the common version of the 
 Scriptures, it is rendered living soul ; and under this form of express- 
 ion, the Scriptures speak of all flesh which breathe in air, earth, and sea. 
 
 " 6 — This living soul, body of life, or breathing frame, styled man, 
 was placed in a garden, where his Creator set before him death and 
 unending life, as expressed in the attributes of the Tree of Knowledge 
 and the Tree of the Lives, that is of himself and wife. As the fruit of 
 the Tree of knowledge was forbidden uniler penalty of loss of life, death 
 would be the result of eating thereof ; therefore he was forbiilden to 
 touch it ; and as the fruit of the Tree of the Lives was curative, and 
 impartative of endless life, he was placed beyond its reach, lest he should 
 inflict upon himself and his posterity immortality in "a state of sin. 
 
 "jr. — We have in effect said, that the natural man — nephesh chayiah, 
 Adam — has no abstract essence within, which gives him pre-eminence 
 over the living creature of the air, earth, and sea ; for Moses terms them 
 all living souls, breathing the breath of lives. Thus, in Gen. i 20, the 
 
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 THK BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOUXJY. 
 
 reading is literally, ' and the Elohim said, the waters Hhull produce 
 abundantly the reptile living soul, (or creature — sheretz cliayiah nephesh) ' 
 — and in verse 21, 'every living soul or creature — nephe^li cluti/iah — 
 after its kind, cattle and creeping thing, and beast of the earth,' &c. ; 
 and in verse 30, ' and to every thing creeping upoa the earth, which 
 has in it living breath or soul — uleket rumesh ol tardz usher bii nephesh 
 c/uiyiah.' In the common version »wi/)/M;A7i c/ttt///«/i is rendered 'life.' Also 
 Gen. ii, 19, the animals are brought to Adam, 'and whatsoever he 
 named the living soul, or creature — nephesh chuyiah — that was the name 
 of it.' 
 
 From thesf passages, it is clear, that in the Mosaic sense of " living 
 souls," all He '\ whether of men or quadrupeds, are -upon equality as far 
 as relates to everything deducible from that phrase ; all living creatures 
 are souls ; and he that denies it in the face of these testimonies, is be- 
 yond the reach of evidence. 
 
 " 8. — Quadrupeds and men are not only ' living souls,' but their 
 * souls ' are vivified l)y the same breath and spirit. In proof of this 
 we remark that the Breath of Lives, — neslu met chayim — is said to be in 
 animals as well as in man. Thus, in Gen. vi. 17, God says, ' I bring a 
 flood of waters upon the earth, to destroy (dl flesh wherein hniach cluii/im 
 — Spirit of Lives.' Also in chapter vii. 15, ' they went in to Noah in- 
 to the Ark, two and two of all flesh in which is ' spirit of lives ; ' and in 
 verse 21, ' And all flesh died tliat moved upon the earth, both of fowl 
 and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing, and every man, 
 all in whose nostrils was neshemvt nuich cluiyim, Breath of Spirit of 
 Lives.' 
 
 It was the neshevict chayim with which God is said to have inflated 
 the nostrils of Adam ; if, therefore, this be the " Divine essence," or 
 Immortal Soul, which was breathed into man, then all other animals 
 have immortal souls likewise ; for they all received " Breath of Spirit of 
 Lives," in common with man. 
 
 " 9. — From these premises, it is obvious, that the argument for the 
 inherent immortality of sinful flesh, or an immortal soul in man derived 
 hereditarily from the first sinner, predicated on the inspiration of his 
 nostrils with the ' breath of lives ' — by the Spirit — Creator, and 
 the consequent application to him of the phrase ' living soul,' if 
 admitted, proves too much, and therefore, nothing to the purpose ; jforif 
 man is proved to be immortal upon such grounds as these, then all 
 quadrupeds are immortal, which none but disciples of the Brahm.inical 
 "Theology would be disposed to admit. 
 
 " 10. — All quadrupeds and man were created ' very good.' They all 
 emerged from their common mother earth ; they were all animated by 
 the same Spirit ; and were all formed, that they might be living breath- 
 ing frames, creatures, or souls, though of different species ; and in God 
 live and move, and ha\ e their continued being. 
 
 " 11. -By a figure in which the container is put for the contained 
 nephesh ' breathing frame', is put for neshemet i-uach cliayim, which when 
 in action, the frame respires. Hence nephesh signifies ' life,' also ' breath,' 
 
 fli 
 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 85 
 
 and * soul ' — Life, or that combination of principles in man and quad- 
 rupeds caudng motinn of and in their frames. One of these principle- is 
 that which in (Jen. i. 2, is styled Jiuach Elohivi, or the spirit of Him 
 ' who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can 
 approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see, and which, in 
 obedience to the creating word, first caused a motion upon the waters, 
 and afterward disengaged the light, evolved the expanse, aggregated the 
 waters, produced vegetation, manifested the celestial universe, vitalized 
 the breathing frames of the dry land, expanse ai'.d seas, and created man 
 in Ike image and likeness of Elohim. Tliis Ruiich, or spirit, is neither the 
 uncreated one who dwells in light, nor the Elohim, his co-workers, who 
 co-operated in the elaboration of tlie natural world ; it was the instru- 
 mental p7inciple by which they executed the commission of the glorious 
 INCREATE to erect this earthly House, and furnished it with the living 
 souls of quadrupeds and men. 
 
 " 12. — In Dan. iv. 8, this Rimch is styled ' the Spirit of the 
 Heavens,' S/iemaijiah, or the Elohim. ^ Alljiesh' is used by Moses for 
 all living creatures, including men. It is this ' Ruach ' or spirit, together 
 with the ' Nesheme * or breath, which keeps them all from perishing, or 
 returning to the dust. Thus, in Job xxxiv. 14, it reads, without the 
 pointing, Amishim aiiu le buruhu unesk-'metu aliii iaseph, dr., which is, 
 ' if He set His heart against him, Ho will withdraw to Himself His 
 spirit and His breath; all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn 
 again to dust,' In Job xxxvii. 10, 'by the breath of God — Neshemet 
 El — frost, is given.' Speaking of the reptiles and beasts, David saith, 
 in Psalm civ. 29, ' Thou withdrawest their breath, ruhem, they die ; 
 and to their dust they return. Thou sendest forth Thy spirit, ruheck 
 — they are created ; ' and in Psalm cxxxix. 7, ' whither shall I fly 
 from Thy spirit — meruheck 1 ' 
 
 "13. — From these texts we learn that the Ruach or Spirit, is all 
 pervading. It is in heaven, in sheol, or the dust of the deepest hol- 
 low, in the uttermost parts of the sea, in the darkness, in the light, 
 and in all things animate and without life — it is an universal princi- 
 ple, in the broadest, or rather in an illimitable sense. It is the sub- 
 stratum of all motion, whether manifested in the diurnal and ellip- 
 soidal revolutions of the planets, in the flux or reflux of the sea, in tlie 
 storms and tempest" ')f the expanse, or in the organism of reptiles, cat- 
 tle, beasts, fish, fowib, vegetables, or men. The atmospheric expanse is 
 charged with it ; but it is not the air ; plants and animals, bipedal and 
 quadrupedal; breathe it, but it is not their breath ; yet without it, though 
 filled with air, they would die." 
 
 " 14. — We also learn, that the Nesheme, or breath of God, contains the 
 Ruach or spirit, but the Ruach does not contain the Neshemeh. Hence the 
 reason why it is written that Jehovah Elohim breathed into man's nos- 
 trils the Neshemet Chayim, instead of the Ruach (^yim. To have vivi- 
 fied man with pure Ruach Chayim or spirit of lives, would have made him 
 incorruptible and immortal, had the human nature as such been suited 
 to its action, which, however, it was not. This is apparent from the 
 
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 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOOY. 
 
 position of the Tree of the Lives being mfde for the purpose of changing 
 if occasion should require, the sanguineous constitution of the two 
 living souls whom Jehovah Elohim hacl created to one more adapted to 
 the action of tlie Spirit. Pure Rimch Chayim, instead of causing man and 
 quadrupeds t«j become living creatures merely, would have constituted 
 them ever-living souls, or if intensified in its action, would have 
 destroyed them in the twinkling of an eye. But the Nesheme of the 
 expanse, or breath of heaven was caused to expand the breathing frames 
 of all animals ; they were inflated with it ; and because it contains tho 
 Spiiit of Lives, it is styled in Gen. vil 21, Nesliemeh liuach Chayim — 
 breath of the Spirit of Lives. 
 
 " 15. — From the premi-ses before us, we perceive that the spirit and 
 the breath, which, in combination, all living creatures and vegetables 
 require, are styled God's Breath and Spirit. This wonderful compoumi, 
 was combined in its due and relative proportions, on the first and second 
 days of creation. The uncombined Kuach Elohim or ' Spirit of God,' 
 it was, which caused the motion of the waters before the light appeared 
 (Gen. i. 2) ; but by the end of the second day it had commingled with 
 the expanse, by which the air or nesheme was vitalized, or became life- 
 imparting or life-sustaining. This Neshemeh in its mechanical atmos 
 pheric combination forms no integral part of animal and vegetable struc- 
 tures, though without it they die, and return to the dust. It is lent to 
 them for the defined period of their living existence. It is, though lent 
 to them, God's breath, and the Kuach still His spirit ; nevertheless, to 
 distinguish them from the expanse of the air and spirit in the aggre- 
 gate, they are sometimes styled * the spirit of man,' and ' the spirit of 
 the beast,' and 'their breath.' Thus, in Eccl. iii. 19, it reads, 'they 
 have all owg Irreath or spirit; so that man hath no pre-eminence over a 
 beast, for all is vapour. All go unto one place, all are of the dust, 
 and all turn to dust again. Who knoweth the spirit of the sons of 
 Adam, liuach beni heahdam, which exalts itself to the highest, and tlie 
 spirit of a beast which inclines to the earth.' And it is in this sense, 
 namely, that of supplying to every living creature or soul, ' spirit ' and 
 ' breath,' that Jehovali Elohim is styled ' Elohimjtof the Spirits of all 
 flesh.' — Numb, xxvii. 15. 
 
 " 16. — Thus, accurately is the narration of Moses, in harmony with 
 the most recent discoveries of our day. Modern science, which is the 
 knowledge of truth and fact reduced to system, has unfolded to us the 
 constituents of the Neshemeh, and most interesting and important facts 
 connected with the Kuach. As we have said, the Kuach does not contain 
 the Neshemeh, but the Neshemeh contains it. Tho Neshemeh is the at- 
 mosphere expanded between earth and the pure magnetic ether which 
 fills all space. It is a compound body, consisting, when pure, of nitro- 
 gen and oxygen, in proportion of seventy-nine of the former, and twenty- 
 one of the latter in one hundred parts. These are considered as simple 
 bodies, because they have not yet been decomposed ; though it is pro- 
 bable they have a substratum or base, which may be the Kuach." 
 While compiling these pages I notice that an eminent chemist, in 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 H7 
 
 Europe, has succoedod, or fully \\o\wh to snccoed, in decomposing 
 Nitrogen. 
 
 " 17.— The liuach or spirit, may exist ' free,' or combined with the 
 elementary principle of the Neshemeh. Uncomhined, it is that wonder- 
 ful fluid, whose explosions are heard inthethunder, whose fiery holts over- 
 throw the loftiest towers, rive the sturdy monarch of the woods, and gives ' 
 polarity to light, the needle, and tlu^ brain. These three combined, the 
 oxygen, nitrogen, and electricity, constitute the breath and spiiit of the 
 lives of all Ood's living souls. In the next section wo shall speak of life 
 as the result of the decomposition of the Neshemeh, and of the combina- 
 tion of the oxygen and liuach with the carbon, hydrogen and iron of the 
 blood." 
 
 NEW THEORY OF ANIMAL LIFE. 
 
 m 
 
 " 1. — To these external agents there are certain principles within all 
 living creatures, which sustain a fixed and ai)propriate relationship. 
 The light to the eye, and the eye to the light ; so also the breath and 
 spirit of Ood to the constituents of blood, and the blnod to them. 
 These acting and re-acting upon each other in the lungs of all breathing 
 frames according to certain laws, cause that motion throughout their 
 structures which we term life." A f(jw passages of Scripture will throw 
 some light upon this part of our subject. 
 
 " 2. ' Flesh with the blood thereof, henephethu, which is the blood there- 
 of, shall ye not eat." This teaches us that blood is the nephesh, or life 
 of the flesh ; hence it continues, ' A.nd surely your blood for your lives, 
 l/ih n('plie.sh tikam will I require.'— Gen. ix. 11. We often find life put 
 for blood, and blood for life, as elsewhere in the context. * Be sure that 
 thou eat not the blood, for the blood is the life, nepheah ; and thou 
 mayest not eat the life wpliesh with the flesh.' — Deut. xii. 23. But 
 an objector might say, that if the blood be the life then so long as it is 
 in the body, the body ought to live, when on the contrary it dies with 
 the blood in it. Truth, however, Moses does not teach the dogma of an 
 ahMrad vital principle ; but life resultant and consequent upon the com- 
 bination of certain elements. The blood abstractly considered is not 
 life ; but relatively it is the * life of the flesh.' The following text how- 
 ever, will show the sense in which the phrase ' the blood is the life ' is 
 used. ' I will set my face against that soul that eateth blood. For the 
 life of the flesh is IN the blood itnelf. I have given it to you upon the 
 altar to make a covering for your lives, neptlmsetikim ; for it is the blocnl 
 that atones for the soul, henrphesli. Whoever catcheth any fowl that 
 may be eaten, he shall even pour out the blo(jd thereof, and cov(r it vilh 
 dvst. For it is the life of all flesh ; the blood of it is for the life thereof. 
 Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh ; for the life of all flesh is 
 the blood thereof — Lev. x\ni. 11 — 14. 
 
 "3. Physiologists have erred in assuming that life in man is an 
 abstract principle. All the phenomena of life are common to men and 
 quadrupeds ; hence the cause producing them is identical in all species. 
 Life is either animal, vegetable, or incorruptible. I say incorruptible, 
 
.m 
 
 88 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLO(»Y. 
 
 as indicativu of that life which spiritual liodios will be cndowRd with. 
 It might with equal propriety be styled spiritual, but in this place, we 
 use not the term ' Spiritual,' because it might then be confounded with 
 that mural life a man possesst^s, when he passes from the sentence of 
 death under the sentence of justification unto Life Eternal. At present 
 we have to do with Animal or Natural Life, which is all the life the 
 fleshly sons of the first Adam can boast of. It is a result, the existence 
 of >vhich is determined by motion. If it be doubtful whether a man be 
 living or dead, we cause a strong light to fall upon the retina ; if the 
 iris contract, we say he is alive, because he moves ; or, if in holding a 
 mirror before the mouth, it becomes dimmed by moisture, he is said to be 
 living, for the condensed breath indicates respiration, which is motion ; 
 but if none of these signs be present, we say he is dead for he has ceased 
 to move. The cause of motion in animal bodies is the neplieslt or life of 
 the flesh. Blood is composed of many ingredients, but none of them 
 separately from the rest is the life or motive pouter of the flesh ; nor in- 
 deed are they in the aggregate when access is denied to the Kuach and 
 Neshemeh, or ' breath, of the spirit of lives, which constitute the circumam- 
 bient air. 
 
 " 4. As we have given the composition of ' the breath of lives,' it may 
 not be out of place to present the reader with an Analysis of the blood, 
 as exhibited by Lecanu in the An. de Che. et de Ph. xviii. 308. He 
 will then be able to see how impossible for one, more, or even all the 
 constituents thereof, when insulated to be the cause of motion in 
 animal bodies. But to the Analysis. In 1000 parts of blood there are 
 of: — 
 
 Water, which is compounded of Oxygen and Hydrogen . . 
 
 Fibrin " " 
 
 Colouring Matter " " " .. 
 
 Albumen " " " " .. 
 
 CiTstalline Fatty Matter " «' .. 
 
 Oily Matter " " " . 
 
 Extractive Matter, Soluble in Water and Alcohol " 
 
 Albumen Combined with Soda " " .. 
 
 Chloride of Sodium (Common Soda) 
 
 Chloride of Potassium 
 
 Carbonates 
 
 Phosphates 
 
 Sulphate of Potass and Soda 
 
 Carbonates of Lime and Magnesia 
 
 Phosphates of Lime 
 
 Magnesia and Iron ' 
 
 Sequioxi«le of Iron 
 
 Loss in the Analysis . — 
 
 780.145 
 2.100 
 
 133.000 
 G5.090 
 2.430 
 1.310 
 1.790 
 1.265 
 
 8.370 
 
 2.100 
 2.400 
 
 1000.000 
 These are the materials to be acted upon by the Neshemeh and 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 8i) 
 
 Ruach, ' Breath,' and ' Spirit ' of God. How they combine to produce 
 life or organic movements in animal bodies, will appear in subsequent 
 paragraphs. 
 
 " 5. It has been said by physiologists, that the blood is the store- 
 house of organized bodies. It is doubtless, from the fact, that because 
 all the organs of the living creature derive their appropriate excretions 
 from the blood as the raw material common to them all, that its analysis 
 exhibits such a number and variety of ingredients. These organic pro- 
 ducts, such as the bile, gastric and pancreatic juices, saliva, tears, mu- 
 cous, perspiration, etc., being fluid, point out the necessity of a supera- 
 bundant proportion of water over that which is necessary to its own 
 fluidity as one of its components. Hence a reason why nearly 800 parts 
 of 1000 consist of water, which is still further electrolyzable into Oxygen 
 and Hydrogen gases. Bones, muscles, integuments, membranes, and 
 tissues of all varieties are likewise deposited in the renewal of the con- 
 tinual waste to which the flesh is subject. Hence the fibrin, its albumen, 
 its fatty and oily matter, earths, and earthly salts. 
 
 " 6. But the blood must not only contain the supplies for the use and 
 nourishment of the body ; it must ebb and flow throughout the system. 
 That which causes it to circulate is tlic life in tlie blood ; while this cir- 
 culation continues the man lives ; when it cases, he dies. Draw the blood 
 from a man's vessels, and although it is still perfect blood, it soon loses 
 its fluidity ; it becomes solid, and therefore useless. It coagulates when 
 in repose. What is it, then, by which its motion ami consequent fluidity 
 is maintained in the vascular system of all animals, both bipeds and 
 quadrupeds 1 Let us see. 
 
 " 7. — The lungs, which are common to all breathing frames, are tlie 
 internal organs of respiration. They consist of tubes, which are divided 
 and subdivided to great minuteness ; and these minute tubes terminate 
 in little vesicles or air cells. Upon these cells are distributed the 
 capillary, or hair-like extremities of the pulmonary arteries, which 
 bring the blood, loaded with chyle and carbon, from the heart ; for the 
 thoracic duct pours into the left subclavian vein the milky fluid pre- 
 cipitated by the action of the bile upon the chymous mass in the duo- 
 denum, from whence it is absorbed by millions of lacteal apertures. At 
 the termination of these capillary arteries on the air cells, equally at- 
 tenuated tubes are seen, by which the vitalized blood is reconveyed fnnu 
 the cells to the heart. These increase and diminish in number until 
 they are lost in the four pulmonary veins. Thus we behold the mechan- 
 ism by which provision is made for the continuity of the blood within, 
 and * the breath of the spirit of lives,' or the air from without the bodies 
 of all breathing frames. Let us now examine what takes place there. 
 
 "8. — The membrane which forms the air cells has two surfaces — the 
 one mucous, and the other sermis. Exteriorly it is serous, on the inner 
 side mucous, hence it is a muco-serous membrane. The surfaces of these 
 cells are excretory of different kinds of matter, from which two forces (tf 
 divers kinds are continually elaborated. The arrangement of surfaces 
 answers to that of the different metallic surfaces of a galvanic battery, 
 which also maintains two forces of a like nature with the membranes. 
 
 i 
 
!»0 THE UIULE VINDFCATRD AOAINST MODKUN TIlEOLOfJY. 
 
 I 
 
 « "I 
 
 s 
 
 "ThoHo two forces aro siipplied fromtho bloo<l, fr<»m which th« iiiucuh 
 and 8<»rum are «xcret««l by the capillary glands. The serum is more or 
 less acid, and, therefore, styled negative matter, while the mucous is more 
 or less alkaline and, therefore, termetl pnititive matter. From tlw 
 negative matter or serum issues a force of an opposite denomination, 
 namely, the po»itire, while from the pmitive, matter or mucous a negative 
 force is given off. This is tnie of all the muco serous membranes of the 
 body. 
 
 " 9. Every air cell, then, is a muco-serous bladder, capablo of elabora- 
 ting a ]>oni.tive force. The wall of each cell is a negative electrode 
 within and a positive one without, the papillary glands of whose sur- 
 laces are united by nervous filaments. It is in these cells the excita 
 tion ensues by which the machinery of the body is set in motion. 
 
 " 10. The positive force is evolved in the metallic battery by chemical 
 decomposition, which is effected by the relative innutu forces peculiar 
 to the matter to act and be acted upon. All bodies have inherent posi- 
 tive and negative qualities, and are positive or negative in relation to 
 each other. The positive force is also generated from the air cells upon 
 the same principle. In this process oxygen disappears. It unites with 
 the hydrogen of the water and the carbon of the blood, and carbonic acid 
 and vapour are given off. This part of the process changes the colour 
 of the blood from a dark purple to a florid red, the former being venous 
 and the latter being arterial. The purple colour deptjnds on the excess 
 of carbon, but whether of free carbon, or in what combination, chemists 
 are not agreed. The water of the blood is decomposed or electrolyzed. 
 The hydrogen is given off at the negative or mucous electrode, and 
 unites electrically with a portion of the oxygen of the air in the vesicle 
 and forms water, which is resi)ired as the moisture of the breath. The 
 oxygen of the electrolyte unites with the iron of the blood, and forms 
 with the ruach, or magnetic principle, an electro-magnetic sesqui-oxyde, 
 while the carbon, which is probably united in some way with the iron in 
 venous blood, unites with another portion of the oxygen of the air, 
 forming carbonic acid, which, in conjunction with nitrogen, are also 
 respired with the vapour of the breath. These decompositions result 
 fr6m the attraction of bodies in opposite electrical states for each other ; 
 their primitive relations are disturbed and new ones formed, by which 
 a inbrating force is generated, which is tninsmitted from the pulmonary 
 vessels to the several organs by the nerves. These organs are rendered 
 magnetic upon t)\e same principle tiiat steel is magnetized by a current 
 of voltaic electricity when inserted in the axis of a helix formed by the 
 conducting wire. {See Turner's Cfiemistry, page 114, fig. 2G.) The 
 matter of which these organs are composed differs in its constitution 
 and disposition of parts, as is very apparent from the slightest glance — 
 brain, heart, liver, lungs, and kidney being as different as things the 
 most unlike. The brain is highly phosphoric, containing, in persons of 
 sound intellect, from two to two and a-half per cent, of phosphorus. 
 Besides this, much iron is always circulating through its vessel?, which 
 has itself acquired electro-magnetic properties at the vesicles of the 
 
TKHTIMONIFH. 
 
 91 
 
 8 
 
 ion 
 e — 
 the 
 of 
 
 TUB. 
 
 hich 
 the 
 
 lungs. TI1U.S tln! Wrain, in common with the rc-st of i\w orpinB, h«>conn'H 
 iiuujHel'ic. 1)1/ ituliiitiiiii ; hut (;ii|mhh! of H higluT lucidity tlmn they, 
 iM'cuuMf of" its |tli()Hi)lioric couHtitutiou. Now, it Ih tlie projMTty of 
 nmgnctizod fliscs, &c., to nssumn poliinty, positive mid npf?ativ«* ; Ihmk'c 
 the hrain, heart, »Vc., have thoir n(!gativ«' and ixmitive poles. Tin- 
 brai'i has five principal ones, tin; heart five, itc. The poles are magnetic 
 centres formed hy the action f»f the two magnetic forces, and these l>y 
 their vibrafmm endue every molecule of our bodies with sensation and 
 motion, which we term LiFK. 
 
 " W.—Simwl, which is magnetic vibration causiul by percussion of the 
 air, and anlnr lu/lu, which is also magnetic vibration, but excitinl by the 
 electrical forces of the sun's ])hosphorescent atmosphere, are two of the 
 external excitjints of sensation in tin; great central pole of the ))rain ; 
 tuese sensations generate impul.s»'s to the convolutions, which are 
 defiected to the centre, and from thence find ('xprossion in word and 
 deed. Vibration, sensation, impulse, action, are related to each other 
 as cause and effect. But without the nerves, which originate from the 
 cerebrum, medulla oblongata, -ind spinal column, these iniptilses would 
 be fruitless. They are like the button-wires of an cilectro-magnetic 
 vibrating machine, the threads of communication between the cerebral 
 armature and the organs to be avX in moti(»n, such as the t(mgue, the 
 eyes, the mouth, the limbs, (tc. They vibrate from the brain's centre 
 to the extremest points, as those of the senses do from the circum- 
 ference to the centre, and reflexively by the radient striie to every pole 
 of the phrenal convolutions. 
 
 "12. J'aradoxical as it may seem, we do not see with our eyes, 
 but with the magnetic j)oles of the anterior lobes of the brain. The eye 
 is the Camera, on the walls of which the solar light delineates the objects 
 of the world without. That wc; can see without our eyes, is proved by 
 the fact, that M'e see distinctly in our dreams, and in the clairvoyant 
 state. 
 
 " 13. This internal sight is attributable to the inherent phosphores- 
 cence of the brain luminonsly excited by the vibration of the magnetic 
 ether. 
 
 " 14. As we have said, solar light is magnetic and vibratory. It falls 
 upon the retinae, which are expansions of the optic nerves. By these its 
 vibrations are transmitted to the thalami, from whence«the brain per- 
 ceives the landscape on the retinae, not inverted, but as it really is. 
 
 " 16. If these external vibrations of the ether can be communicated 
 to the brain through any other channel it can perceive without the eyes ; 
 but as these are not, and cannot Ije imparted under ordinary circumstances, 
 the eyes are indispensable appendages to the body. 
 
 *• 16. Thus, by the electro-magnetic action, elal)orated in the vesicles 
 of the lungs, a relation is establie.hed between the positive force within 
 us, and that magnetic sea without us, namely, ' the spirit of the atmos- 
 phere,' in Scripture styled the Spirit of God, in which ' we live and move, 
 and have our being.' From these premises then, our conclusion is, that 
 Life is the result of electro magnetic vibrations in mganized bfjdies." 
 
 fc% ■ 1. 
 
 
92 THK lUFJLK VINPICATrO AGAINST MOUKRN THEOLOGY. 
 
 >t 
 
 ! Ill 
 
 i ! 
 
 "This is ANhMAL LiFK, bipt'diil jukI (|Ujulrii|)»Hliil, and all the life that 
 unv one can boast of in thepreyent state ofgooil and evil. — Chriskuld- 
 ph'iaii, IS7Q, pp. I G 1-1 70. 
 
 I submit, with all n'spi-ct and confidence, that the foregoing extracts, 
 which I have given in t'till, constitute an admirable st-rmon, illustrative 
 and explanatory, in the light of true science, of the declaration of the 
 Psalmist, " for 1 i\m fearful hj and mnnlerfullfi niadf." — I's. cxxxix. 14. 
 And I further submit, in this connection, that we an* enabled to attain 
 to higher, clearer, and more enlarged conceptions of the power, goodness, 
 and creative t'liergy of l.V'ity, from the rcflt^ction that, out of dead, in- 
 animate matter, he formed and fashioned the wonderful organization, 
 Man, than we can by any possibility derive from any conUimplation of 
 the theory, that all mankind are mere scintillations from the Divine 
 essence ! for in that case there would, indeed, exist little cause for won- 
 derment. The amazement would consist in the idea, that from such a 
 pure and holy source, such a sinful race could emanate. — (C.) 
 
 Dr. T. L. Nichols, of Great Malvern, England, in a little work on 
 " Diet," says : " Man, like all the animals to which he is supposed by our 
 philosophers to be so nearly related, requires food to supply matter for 
 the growth of the body in childhood, and to make up for its daily loss 
 of substance by the exercise of nujscles, by the action of the nerves, by 
 the evolution of animal heat, and all the processes of life, and thought, 
 and feeling, action and emotion, which is also action, cause, change of 
 the forms of matter — waste — the formation of a debris, which must be 
 expelled from the system. At every breath we exhale carbonic acid, 
 thus losing a certain weight of carbon. Every moment from our lungs 
 and the myriad pores of our skin, we throw off watery vapour — oxygen 
 and hydrogen. Considerable quantities of solid and liquid matter, the 
 waste of life, also pass t)tf daily by other outlets. All this waste matter, 
 carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sodium calcium, potassium, phosphorus, &c., 
 must be restored to the system vlay by day, and so all animals eat and, 
 drink ; take in the mutter which makes bone, muscle, brain, nerves, Jill 
 the organs and tissues of the body. With this matter we support life, 
 warmth, activity, energy — all that we call health or the enjoyment of 
 life. 
 
 " Animals get the matter whicli supports life primarily from the veg- 
 etable kingdo/n. The lamb eats grass, the wolf eats the lamb, the 
 wolf in turn is eaten by his fellow, or by birds, insects or worms. The 
 animal kingdom rests on the vegetable, as the vegetable r'^sts on the 
 mineral kingdom, drawing its sustenance from the earth and air. 
 
 " The elements of all food for men and animals are few and simple, 
 chiefly carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen. Carbon forms the solid 
 bulk of wood, seeds, fruits, oil, &c. Hydrogen, a gas, combined with 
 oxygen, another gas, to form water, and with carbon and oxygen to 
 form oil, starch, sugar, &c. Nitrogen, also an atmospheric gas, enters 
 into the composition of vegetables, seeds, fruit, eggs, fish and flesh. 
 Lime, soda, potash, magnesia, phosphorous, sulphur, which enter into 
 composition of the blood, and are furnished by it to the brain, nerves, 
 
TESTIMONIKS. 
 
 98 
 
 te, 
 of 
 
 he 
 ihe 
 
 le, 
 
 lid 
 
 ith 
 
 to 
 
 (jrs 
 
 .sh. 
 
 ito 
 
 es, 
 
 bones and muscles, ar«5 found in vegetables, and secondarily in animal 
 substances, as milk, eggs, Hesb." 
 
 " Tlie primary elements of food, carbon, bydrogen, nitrogen, &c., :iro 
 the same wherever they exist, or from whatever sources they are 
 drawn. Thus every portion of an ox or a sbeep — bone, sinew, muscle, 
 nerves, fat, skin, horns, hair, — is made from grass, grain, turnii)S, thijir 
 ordinary food. The blood of (;very animal, carrying IIk; mattcu- which 
 builds up and sustains ever_y organ of tho body, contains the same 
 elements, and nearly in the same proportions. Milk, on which every 
 young mammal is first fed, is formed from ♦lie blood -it is in fact blood 
 freed from its imjmrities ; its fibrinc; changed to caseine. Milk has 
 flf'sh-forming, bone-forming, nerve-forming, and heat-producing materials 
 in the exact proportions retpiired by each young mannnal, all stilecUid 
 and provided in a manner not tfasily explicable on the theory of nat- 
 ural selection. In a similar way the bodies (;f atiimals ; but whether 
 we eat milk, or l)ntter, or cheese, or a beef-steak, or mutton chop, wo 
 eat grass at second hand. ' All Jlexh is f/mss.' The (!ggs of fowls are 
 like milk in composition, and furnish the matter from which are formc.'d 
 the bones, riesh, nerves, feathers of the chicken as it comes from the 
 shell. The egg is formed from the l)lood of the fowl, and this blood is 
 made of the grains on which it is fed." 
 
 " Man finds his food in a wide range of the vegetable and animal 
 kingdoms." Dr. Nichols proceeds to enumerate these, and then con- 
 tinues : " All these articles contain the elements of human food mingled 
 in varied proportions, and several of them contain these elements in 
 almost the exact proportions required to sustain the human body in its 
 most perfect condition." 
 
 It seems now to be admitted by the foremost physiological chemists 
 that the peculiarities of the soil in particular countries, drawn from the 
 soil not only through the cereal and vegetable productions used for the 
 sustenance of the people, but also by the sheep and cattle furnishing 
 their beef and mutton, exert a direct influence on the general character, 
 physical and moral, of the inhabitants of .such countries — so that man 
 in every respect is " of the earth earthy." — (C.) 
 
 DESTRUCTIRILITY — DESTRUCTIONISM. 
 
 In compiling the testimonies herein submitted, the intention is not to 
 enter argumentatively upon the general suliject in any of its phases. 
 The limits of this pamphlet effectually prevent this. It may be well 
 however, to notice, what is called the analogical argument, ])ecause it is 
 much resorted to by certain sophists in their advocacy of the natural im- 
 mortality of the human soul, and its consequent indestructibility. 
 Hudson devotes some space in chapter six to the rational argument, 
 under which general head he places the metaphysical argument, the 
 psychological argument, the analogical argument, and the moral argu- 
 ment. 
 
 Commenting upon the metaphysical argument he says : — " The 
 
 m 
 
 
 m 
 
 if 
 
 t\^\ 
 
94 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 .{■ 
 
 attempt to prova the soul immortal from its very nature, is supposed to 
 be so generally abandoned, and as worthy only of the schoolmen, that 
 an examination of it in any form may seem gratuitous or invidious. We 
 shall examine it nevertheless for three reasons : — Ist. Because the 
 subtlety of this argument often attracts the most acute minds ; 2nd. 
 because its traditional force in the community is not yet spent ; 3rd. 
 a fair view of the subject may correct the error produced by re- 
 action. Augustine, shortly before his conversion to Christianity, wrote 
 a book of sixteen reasons for the immortality of the soul. Afterward, 
 in his ' Retractions,' he speaks of that book as obscure and perplexed, 
 so that he himself oould scarcely comprehend it ; but we are sur- 
 prised that he did not abandon and condemn the whole argument. We 
 can explain — by adverting to the original arguments, which still pleased 
 many converted philosophers, as much, as they had been admired by 
 pagan Cicero. 
 
 Discussing the psychological argument he quotes Plato, thus : — 
 " There is a certain abstract beauty and goodness and magnitude in 
 nature ; and so of all other things : which if you grant me and allow 
 that they do exist, I hope that I shall be able from these to explain the 
 cause to you, and to discover that the soul is immortal." 
 
 With reference to the analogical argument we all know with what 
 intense satisfaction and exultant glee the wily sophist beholds the total 
 and helpless discomfiture of his poor, simple-minded, unlearned, but 
 honest, opponent, when he triumphantly shews him that the elements 
 of nature are indestructible, therefore the soul of man is, by nature im- 
 mortal. "In reply therefore," says Hudson, to to the trite saying that 
 all analogy is against the annihilation, or destruction of the soul, since 
 all apparent destruction in nature, is only a change of form — there are 
 several things to be said. "'1st. The apparant annihilation of the brute 
 soul furnishes no analogy, because it is a similar case. 2nd. Until the 
 simplex or compounded nature of the soul is proven past all doubt, we 
 may suppose it to be destroyed by derangement and dissolution. 3rd. 
 Granting that it can be destroyed only by annihilation, then every case 
 of a thing destroyed by derangement or disintegration, is strictly an- 
 alogous. Not to insist upon the fact that the terms ' destruction ' and 
 ' annihilation ' are often used interchangeably, things are variously 
 destroyed or put an end to, according to their nature. The methods of 
 destruci-ion are manifold ; the practical result is the same ; the thing 
 destroyed is no longer what it was, but as such a thing, has ceased to 
 be — and in relation to this result, every mode of destruction is anal- 
 agous to every other mode." 
 
 In this Forest Country we all know how little is left after burning of 
 the towering giant trees that thickly studded a ten acre chopping. 
 Through the contact of fire the watery and gaseous particles are set free 
 in the atmosphere — a few bushels of ashes only remain. If these be 
 scattered, they quickly decompose through the action of the elements, 
 fertilize the soil, and disappear in the crops or herbage — and the atmos- 
 phere, to be again used in building up other organisms in the animal 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 95 
 
 and vegetable world. Everyone, even a child, knows that when you so 
 burn up the forest it no longer remains ; but the sophist would have us 
 believe that it is all there, because he says, " You know none of the 
 elements of nature are destructible." What a mockery of man's in- 
 telligence ! When you destroy by fire a house, a ship, a waggon, a 
 table, a chair, it no longer exists in such organized form. Yet persons 
 of very limited intelligence know quite well that not one of the con- 
 stituent elements composing the timber used in the construction of 
 those articles has been lost or destroyed. They have all disa})peared in 
 the atmosphere, that great reservoir of life ; but never again will th^ 
 identical atoms of those elements, combined or free from all others, 
 compose or be used in the formation of a similar house, ship, waggon, 
 table, or chair. 
 
 The metaphysicians, however, tell us that because the elements of 
 which the soul is composed are indestructible, the soul is immortal, and 
 cannot therefore die ; that the elements composing the mind of man are 
 eternal, therefore thought cannot come to an end ; thus flatly contradicting 
 Scripture, which emphatically declares that " The soul that siuneth 
 shall die," (Ezek. xviii., 4.) ; and that in the day of a man's death " his 
 thoughts perish," (Ps. cxlvi., 4.) As well might they assert the power 
 generated by the union of fire and water in the boiler of the locomotive 
 should retain a distinct tangibility when the fire has gone out and the 
 boiler run dry j or, as a writer of note has observed, as well might' they 
 assert that the strength of a strong man's right arm should remain an 
 entity after that arm has been shot off by a cannon ball ; or that the 
 sight retains its hold on external nature, after the eyeballs have been 
 irrecoverably destroyed ; or the faculty of hearing when impenetrable 
 deafness has set in ; or the musical accents of the voice when the 
 tongue has been paralyzed into perpetual dumbness. All these mani- 
 festations relatively are but the result of certain causes, the powers in- 
 herent in certain organs, and, when the cause ceases to operate, the 
 result comes to an end. So, when in death the connection of elemen- 
 tary principles which combine to form this wonderful human frame, re- 
 sulting in Life, is broken or ceases to act, Man dies and turiis into dust. 
 (C.) But to return : . 
 
 Hudson, in further discussing the analogical argument, says, " But 
 the argument from analogy reaches further than the meaning of words. 
 All things are, in fact, destroyed, that have either accomplisher' a tem- 
 porary purpose or have failed in their proper design. A large part of- 
 the visible world is thus decaying. Many things exist only to be con- 
 sumed, and are of use only as they perish. Many things are worn 
 away by use, and are gone. Many things are abortive and come to 
 nought. Thus the fashion of the world passeth away." 
 
 " Among living things we find striking analogies for the immortality 
 of a class (only) of the human species. The vegetable and animal 
 world teem with the germs of life of which a part only are matured. 
 Every individual acorn is adapted to produce a mighty oak ; yet most 
 acorns are consumed as food, many decay as they fall, a few find root 
 
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 96 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODEllN THEOLOGY. 
 
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 I 
 
 
 and germinate ; these are decimated in their turn, and a few only grow up 
 to be the strength and the glory of their species. And the same law holds 
 good in all kinds both of vegetable and animal life, the difference being 
 only in the ratio of the whole number of germs to those that are 
 matured, and in the stage of progress at which the decimation and des- 
 truction takes place. 
 
 But if we were to judge of the acorn by its adaptation, we should say 
 that the creative purpose will be frustrated, and the earth defrauded if 
 it does not become an oaL. If we count the myriads that perish we 
 should say that God had overdone His work, and his skill and power 
 are wasted. We must qualify the common remark that nothing is 
 created in vain. What has been called the law of divine parsimony 
 seems to be overruled by a higher law of the divine bounty. The seeds of 
 varied life are sown broad-cast by winds and waves, and all moving 
 things, so that no place may lack in what it can produce. The lavish 
 abundance ensures the munificent designs of God, and, therefore, is not 
 in vain." 
 
 "Now, in Christ's parable of the sower (Math. xiii. 3, 23), the 
 analogy is applied to the destiny of the human species. The seeds that 
 fall by the way side, or in stony places, or among thorns, are made to 
 illustrate the end of various classes of men. Those who fail of eternal 
 life may seem to have been created in vain ; but the purpose of the race 
 is accomplished in those who bring the fruit of the divine word to 
 maturity ; and here we find ourselves confronted with what may be 
 called the cosmical argument for the immortality of the good alone, that 
 is the argument from the economy of the world, which Aquinas, the 
 ablest of the schoolmen, has unwittingly expressed thus : ' Nothing for- 
 bids that a portion, either of angels or of men, should perish for ever, 
 because the purpose of the divine mind is accomplished in those who 
 are saved.' 
 
 "But here we meet the objection thot the soul of man is of especial 
 worth, and may warrant an exception to the general rule that all should 
 be saved. We reply, a true analogy would make the probation of man- 
 kind, not an exception to the rule, but the highest example of it. The 
 law of selection in the case of man is different, the end is the same. 
 The vegetable lifeling is the sport of chance. The animal, with its 
 spontaneity, can help and provide for itself ; subject, however, to many 
 dangers which it cannot avert, and to man's dominion. Man, by his 
 free will, is elevated to a higher rank, beyond the reach of fate, but not 
 of hazard. Indeed, the nations of men who have not heard the Word 
 of Life are scarcely beyond the reach of fate, though strictly as moral 
 beings they are salvable, and perish through unbelief in Him who is 
 * not far from every one of them.' Those who dwell in Christendom 
 stand higher than they, and may fall farther. Yet the design of the 
 species is accomplished in those who are perfected, and who shall never 
 perish, because moral perfectness is an end in itself, and when attained 
 may be ever maintained. Man, as a race, is still subject to the sifting 
 analogies that underlie him. As free, he is called upon to choose for 
 
'^m 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 97 
 
 himself ; to make his calling and election sure, to acquit himself as a 
 man. Failing of this he is rejected, or reprobate, as refuse and worth- 
 less. He is likened to tares, to the useless produce of the fisher's net, 
 to the field of briars and thorns, whose end is to be burned. Con- 
 demned as morally unworthy, his reprobation has a higher ethical sig- 
 nificance, while its literal import remains. 
 
 " And what we have just said of the sifting of the human race 
 suggests some considerations respecting the difference in men's privi- 
 leges and opportunities, and the great difficulties and hardships through 
 which many must escape death and attain life. If man is created 
 absolutely immortal, subject to the alternative of eternal happiness or 
 eternal misery, he seems to have hardly a fair trial here. We should 
 suppose that, instead of being exposed to any dangerous temptations, 
 the Heavenly Father, who has furnished every motive to virtue, 
 would have allowed no motive to sin ; and we need not wonder if such 
 fair trial for so fearful an alternative is sought in some pre-existent 
 state. But if we suppose that man is put on probation, not to escape 
 an infinite evil, but to attain an infinite good, then the difficulties that 
 beset his course are justified at once ; the greatest variety of conditions 
 among men, encouraging or disheartening them in striving for a most 
 glorious prize, do not at all impugn God's justice, or denote any depar- 
 ture from the principles of honour and right, they only mark the dis- 
 tinctions of Divine grace. And then all analogy confirms the notion of 
 such an ordeal, since every form of life and growth is a struggle with 
 difficulties — a war against opposing obstacles. All tnie life is activity, 
 and activity is effort; it is only in keeping with the scheme of the 
 created world, that the highest blessing should be offered on the con- 
 dition of the highest activity — the working out of our own salvation 
 with fear and trembling, with the contingency of an eternal loss of the 
 offered boon in a proper death. 
 
 " But a just analysis will sustain not only the fact of a conditional 
 immortality, and the justice of it, but perhaps also a philosophy of it. 
 Here we must distinguish between the rational argument and the 
 rationalistic. The latter seeks proof of an after life in a nature of 
 things, and will only accept a known law, which must be either a 
 physical law or something equivalent. Hence analogies which are not 
 resemblances will not satisfy it. It cannot accept of a reason for Im- 
 mortality in lieu of a cattse of immortality. But the truly rational argu- 
 ment can do this, in a just faith that the reason and the cause are 
 somehow in God's providence connected, and the analogies support the 
 faith. As in the animal creation every instinctive impulse to furnish a 
 home, or to provide for a future stage of life, is attended with a corres- 
 ponding constitutional faculty, so the moral sentiment of an after life 
 may, by the law of Christian faith, take hold upon the very essence of 
 the future life. The transformation of insects not only gives an argu- 
 ment for the resurrection, but the exceptions from the rule support the 
 notion of differences in the nature and results of the resurrection in the 
 human species. An injury inflicted on the chrysalis produces a defect 
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 98 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 in the future fly ; and in many species the greater number of cymphn 
 perish in their own pupae. So an injury done to the moral constitu- 
 tion may render the future life an abortion. The stronger and more 
 enterprising natures of men supplant the weaker and idler ; and wisdom 
 and virtue are ever mightier than brute force. And although we can- 
 not discover in all these cases by what connecting links the result is 
 brought about, yet the analogy is here, and in a hundred other cases, 
 complete, indicating that each human soul may live as long and no 
 longer than it should." — Hudson's ''Future Life," p.p. 227, 241. 
 
 IMMATERIALITY. 
 
 No one who has devoted any consideration to the question of Inherent 
 Immortality in man, can have failed to discover how impossible it is to 
 discuss the subject without the introduction of the cognate dogma of the 
 immateriality of the human soul. In fact, the advocates of the former 
 dogma base their assertion of natural immortality in man, on the alleged 
 immateriality of the soul. In a previous portion of this compilation, we 
 found that the heathen philosophers, Pythagoras and Socrates, held that 
 the soul of man was immortal because iinvnateriol. And in these latter 
 days a leading theologian. Dr. Adam Clark, summarizes the dogma in 
 almost the exact language of Socrates. " The soul of man is immaterial 
 and immortal, and can subsist independent of the b dy." 
 
 In the "Gospel Banner "for 1858, I find the following by some 
 writer, whose name is not given : — 
 
 " Immateriality is but another name for nonentity — it is the negative 
 of all things and beings — of all existence. There is not one particle of 
 proof to be advanced to establish its existence. It hae no way to mani- 
 fest itself to any intelligence in heaven or on earth — neither angels nor 
 men could possibly conceive of such a substance, being, or thing. It 
 possesses no property or power by which to make itself manifest to any 
 intelligent being in the universe. Reason and analogy never scan it, or 
 even conceive of it. Revelation never reveals it, nor do any of our 
 senses witness its existence. It cannot be seen, felt, heard, tested, or 
 smelled, even by the strongest organs, or by the most acute sensibilities. 
 It is neither liquid nor solid, soft nor hard. It can neither extend nor 
 contract. In short, it can exert no influence whatever — it can neither 
 act, nor be acted upon. And even if it does exist, it can be of no pos- 
 sible use. It possesses no one desirable property, faculty or use, yet 
 strange to say, immateriality is the modern Christian's God, his antici- 
 pated heaven, his immortal self, his " all." 
 
 Thomas Jefferson, the framer of the American Declaration of Inde- 
 pendence, in a letter to John Adams, in 1820, says : " When once we 
 quit the basis of sensation, all is to the wind. To talk of immaterial 
 existence is to talk of nothing. To say that God, angels, and the human 
 soul are immaterial, is to say that they are nothing. At what age of 
 the Church this heresy of immaterialism crept in I do not know ; but a 
 heresy it certainly is---Jesus taught nothing of it." 
 
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TESTIMONIES. 
 
 99 
 
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 The following from Archbishop Whately has a wider scope and refer- 
 ence than the mere discussion of the question of Immateriality, of which 
 the reader will please take notice. He says : ** Those who believe that 
 the soul, when separated from the body by death, retains its activity 
 and consciousness, and sensibility to pleasure and pain, and that it 
 enters immediately on a state of enjoyment or of suffering, appeal to 
 several passages of Scripture, which appear to favour this doctrine, 
 though without expresssly declaring it ; among which is the parable of 
 the rich man and Lazarus ; the former of whom is represented as being 
 in a state of torment ; although the end of the world is plainly supposed 
 not to have arrived, since he is described as entreating Lazarus to \\ am 
 his surviving brethren, ' lest they also come into this place of torment.' 
 
 " And if all that is here told were to be considered as a narrative of 
 a matter of fact which actually took place, it would be perfectly decisive. 
 But all allow that the narrative is a parable, that is, a fictitious tale, 
 framed in order to teach or illustrate some doctrine ; and although such 
 a tale may chance to agree in every point with matter ot fact — with 
 events which actually take place, — there is no neccessity that it should. 
 The only truth that is essential in a parable, is the truth of the moral 
 or doctrine conveyed by it. Many, accordingly, of our Lord's parables 
 are not, though many are — exactly correspondent with facts which 
 actually occur. For instance, in the parable of the Sower, the account 
 of the different success of the seed which fell on the trodden wayside, in 
 the rocky ground, among thorns, and on good land, agrees literally with 
 what actually takes place daily ; though no particular sower is intended 
 even here ; the object is to illustrate the different reception of the Gos- 
 pel by men of different characters. On the other hand, in the parable 
 of the good Samaritan —in that of the king who destroyed the ungrate- 
 ful guests who refused to come to his feast — of the husbandmen who 
 killed the servants and the son of the lord of the vineyard — and in 
 many others — there is no reason to believe that any such events did 
 ever actually take place ; it is enough for the object of the parable, that 
 it is conceivable they might take place ; and that we should be able to 
 derive instruction from considering how men would be likelij to act, or how 
 they ought to act, supposing such circumstances should actually occur. 
 
 " The parable, therefore, of the rich man and Lazarus, is nut, I think, 
 decisive of the point in question. It seems to imply indeed , very plainly, 
 that there is a future state of reward and punishment (a doctrine, how- 
 ever, which most of Christ's hearers had no doubt of) ; and also that 
 those who have been devoted to the good things and enjoyments of this 
 world, will have no share in those of the world to come, and will regn-t, 
 when it is too late, their not Living laid up for themselves treasure in 
 heaven. This appears to have been the general moral design of tlie 
 parable, in the detail of which many things are spoken figuratively, to 
 give force and liveliness to the description, which are plain enough 
 when figuratively understood, but could not have been meant, of course, 
 to be taken literally, as, for instance, where the rich man is i-epresented 
 as holding discourse with Abraham, and entreating a drop of water to 
 
 
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 100 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOOY. 
 
 cool his tongue, be^AUse he is tormented in flames ; which is a lively 
 figurative description of the future misery of the wicked, and is so em- 
 ployed by our Lord in other places ; all which corresponds exactly with 
 what would be said and done supposing such circumstances were actually 
 and literally to occur ; but does not imply that the fact is literally such 
 as the parable describes. Indeed, the very circumstances of the tortur- 
 ing Jlames imply literally the presence of the body ; and therefore can- 
 not be literally true of a state in which the soul is separate from the 
 body. 
 
 " It may be said that, as our Lord must have known what is the actual 
 state of the departed, He might have been expected on such an occa- 
 sion as this to reveal it. That he did not, however, in fact, give a liter- 
 ally true account of their state, is plain from what has just been said ; 
 nor does it appear to have been his design generally, to reveal all that 
 He was able to reveal. 
 
 " The same view, I think, may be taken of the vision presented to the 
 Apostle John (in the Bevelations) of the souls of those who had suffered 
 martyrdom for the Christian faith, calling upon God to avenge His 
 Church, even as the blood of Abel is said, in Genesis, to cry to the Lord. 
 We may collect from this that a notice was intended to be given to 
 John (by the Spirit — C.) of the severe and bloody persecutions of the 
 Christians, v iiich took place not long after, and an assurance that God 
 Would give deliverance to His Church, and that those who had suffered 
 in the cause of Christ, should be highly exalted and everlastingly 
 rewarded by Him. But many of the circumstances of the vision are 
 evidently such as can only be understood figuratively, as the white robes 
 of the martyrs, which denote their being justified and accounted pure 
 before God, through the blood of Christ, so that I think we cannot from 
 this passage conclude, with any certainty, that these martyrs, or any 
 other Christians, enter into a state of reward or punishment immediately 
 after death. Indeed, if it were but recollected that nothing but material 
 bodily substance can be an object of sight, it would be plain that all the 
 passages in which a departed soul is spoken of as appearing to the eyes, 
 so far from proving even the existence of a soul in a separate state from 
 the body, and unconnected with any material substance, would, if they 
 were to be understood literally, prove the direct contrary — that the per- 
 sons so spoken of as visibly appearing, actually had bodies at the time." 
 
 In afoot note to the foregoing, at page 59 " Future state " Dr. Whately 
 further adds : — " It is remarkable that a great part of mankind, and 
 these not least, who profess to hold, not only the distinct nature of the 
 soul from any material substance, but even its power of continuing 
 active and conscious when disunited from matter, are nevertheless alto- 
 gether materialists, and mean by a spirit, only some thin and delicate 
 kind of matter like a cloud, or ray of hght, &c., which is an object of the 
 senses. 
 
 " This is plainly the case, not only with those who believe in the common 
 stories of ghosts (that is spirits) appearing and speaking, but also with 
 those who, although they disbelieve these accounts, yet perceive nothing 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 101 
 
 the 
 
 the 
 
 ling 
 
 contradictory and inconceiveable in the idea of the appearing of a ipirit, 
 which, of course, would be to them words without meaning, if they un- 
 derstood by ' spirit ' something which does not consist of matter, and 
 consequently cannot have (as a visible object must have^ shape, height, 
 colour, &c.,) whatever is actually seen or presented to any of the 
 senses, whether naturally or supematurally, must, of course b « mr Cerial." 
 
 An aged gentleman once informed tlie compiler, that if the Apostle 
 Paul came down from heaven (where, by the way, he is not) and stated 
 to him that there is such a thing as materialism, he would not believe 
 him. In the foregoing extract Archbishop Whately makes it appear 
 very clearly, that not only can there be no such thing as what is called 
 immateriality, but that really those who contend for the Immateriality of 
 the soul and spirit of man, are themselves actually materialists, and this 
 accords with the testimony uf all wise and candid men who have tlio- 
 roughly investigated this subject. 1 do not mean laiidol materialists 
 who do not believe in any future state. 
 
 Dr. Locke, in his remarks to the Bishop of Worcester, says : — 
 
 " It is as difficult to conceive how any created substance should think 
 
 and feel as it is that our brain should think and feel Bat 
 
 it is further urged that we cannot conceive how matter can think. I 
 grant it ; but to argue from thence, that God, therefore, cannot give to 
 matter a faculty of thinking, is to say that the omnipotence of God is 
 limited to a narrow compass, because man's understanding is so — and 
 brings down God's infinite power to the size of our capacity. I cannot 
 conceive how matter should think. What is the consequence 1 There- 
 fore God cannot give it a power to think. Let this stand for a good 
 reason, and then proceed witli the other cases by the same rule. You 
 cannot conceive how matter can attract matter at any distance, much 
 less at a distance of 1,000,000 miles, are you therefore prepared to say 
 that God cannot give it such powers ? " 
 
 Dr. Lawrence in his lectures on man, says : — 
 
 " Shall I be told that thought is inconsistent with matter ; that wt 
 cannot conceive how medullary substance can perceive, remember, 
 judge, reason 1 I acknowledge that we are entirely ignorant how the parts 
 of the brain accomplish these purposes — as we are how the liver secretes 
 bile, how the muscles contract, or how any other living purpose is 
 effected — as we are how heavy bodies are attracted to the earth, how 
 iron is drawn to the magnet — or how two salts decompose each 
 other." 
 
 In Sir George M'Kenzie's observations on the " Principles of Educa- 
 tion," 1836, are found some excellent remarks on man ; he says : 
 
 " We may feel an eagerness to dive into the mysteries of creation ; 
 but we may rest assured that whatever power is denied us, is denied to 
 lis because it is for our good. . . . If it has pleased God to form body 
 and soul of what we call by the imaginary term matter, what is that to 
 us. He made both soul and body, and He can destroy them both." 
 
 Milton, though a great idealist, seems to have had very consistent 
 ideas on this subiect. In his treatise on " Christian Doctrine," book 
 
) 
 
 
 102 THK BIBI-E ViNDICATED AGAINST MODKRN THKOLOOT. 
 
 1, chap. 7, translated by Dr. Sumner, Bishop of Winchester, already 
 quoted, he says : — 
 
 " Man is a living being, intrinsically and properly one and individual, 
 nut conformed or Be](arable, not acconling to the common opinion made 
 up, and framed of two distinct and different natures, as of soul and 
 body — but that the whole man is soul, and the soul man ; that is to say, 
 a l)ody or substance indivi<lual, animated, sensitive and rational ; and 
 that the breath of life was neither a part of the Divine essence, nor the 
 soul itself." 
 
 The learned and eloquent Dr. Robert Hall, in a letter to the Baptist 
 church, of which he was pastor, Dec. 9th, 1820, says ; — 
 
 " My opinion is, that the nature of man is simple and uniform ; that 
 the thinking powers and faculties are tfte result of a certain organization of 
 matter ; and that after death he ceases to be conscious until the resur- 
 rection." 
 
 Mr. Cockroft, from whose lecture " On Man," I have taken the last 
 ievf quotations in this connection, says : — 
 
 ** We conclude, then, that matter organized as we behold it in man, 
 and endowed with the breath of life, is capable not only of exhibiting 
 emotions or feelings, but also moral and intellectual manifestations. 
 And when the brain, which is the seat or organ of the mind, or memory, 
 (for what is the mind but memory Y) becomes decomposed and resolved 
 into its primitive elements, the mind becomes extinct." See Psalm cxlix. 
 4 (in the day of a man's death) " his breath goeth forth, he returneth to 
 his earth, in that very day his THOUGHTS perish." 
 
 The objection which many entertain to what, by way of reproach, 
 they term " Materialism," although the Bible is full of it, seems to be 
 founded on the extraordinary idea that Materialism is necessarily con- 
 ni'cterl, or tainted, with sin. Rev. Dr. Chalmers, of the Free Church 
 of Scotland, the greatest mind perhaps that Scotland ever produced, 
 completely disposes of this absurd theory. In a sermon on the New 
 Heavens and the New Earth, he says : — 
 
 "That i'l Uip New Economy, for the accommodation of the blessed, 
 there will be Materialism, not merely New Heavens but also a New 
 
 Earth That we know, historically, that a solid Material 
 
 earth may form the dwelling place of sinless beings in full converse and 
 
 friendship with Deity For we read that God framed an 
 
 apparatus of materialism, which, on His own surveying, He pronounced 
 to be 'all verygood.'" Dr. Chalmers then proceeds to enumerate the sub- 
 stantial realities by which man, in Paradise, was surrounded, and the 
 heavenly privileges he there enjoyed, and adds : 
 
 " This may serve to rectify an imagination, of which, we think, all 
 must be conscious — as if the grossness of materialism was only for those 
 who had degenerated into the grossness of sin, and that when a spirit- 
 ualising process had purged away all our corruption, then, by the step- 
 ping-stones of a death and a resurrection, we should be borne away to 
 some ethereal region, where sense and body, and all in the shape either 
 of audible sound or of tangible substance, were unknown 
 
TKSTIMONIK8. 
 
 103 
 
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 The common imagination that we have of Paradise on the other side of 
 death, is that of a lofty aerial region, where the inmates float in ether, 
 or are mysteriously suspended upoti nothing — where all the warm and 
 sensible accompaniments which give such an expression of strength, and 
 life, and colouring to our present habitation are attenuated into a sort of 
 spiritual element, and certain unearthly ecstacies, with which it is felt 
 impossible to sympathize. The holders of this imagination forget all 
 the while that there is really no essential connection between material- 
 ism and sir. — that the world which we now inhabit hid all the ampli- 
 tude and solidity of its present Materialism before sin entered into it — 
 that Ood so far, on that account, from looking slightly upon it, after it 
 had received the last touch of His creative hand, reviewed the earth, 
 and the waters, and the firmament, and all the green herbage, with 
 the living creatures, and the man whom he had raised in dominion 
 over them, and He saw everything that he had made, and behold it was 
 all very good. They forget that on the birth of Materialism, when it 
 stood out in the freshness of those glories which the Great Architect 
 of Nature had impressed upon it, that then ' the morning stars sang 
 together, and all the sons of Ood shouted for joy.' They forget the 
 appeals that are made everywhere in the Bible to this material work- 
 manship — and how from the face of these visible heavens, and the gar- 
 niture of this earth that we tread upon, the greatness and the goodness 
 of God are reflected on the view of His worshippers. No, my brethren, 
 the object of the administration we sit under, is to extirpate sin, but 
 
 it is not to sweep away materialism A great step is 
 
 gained, simply by dissolving the alliance that exists in the minds of 
 many between the two ideas of sin and materialism ; or proving that 
 when once sin is done away, it consists with all we know of God s ad- 
 ministration that Materialism shall be perpeiiMted in the full bloom and vigour 
 of Immortality. 
 
 " There is much of the innocent and much of the inspiring, and mucL 
 to aflect and elevate the heart, in the scenes and the contemplations of 
 materialism — and we do hail the information of our text, .... 
 that the earth will be . . . decked out anew in all the graces of its 
 unfading verdure, and of its unbounded variety — that in addition to 
 our direct and personal view of the Deity, when He comes down to 
 tabernacle with men, we shall also have the reflection of Him in a lovely 
 mirror of His own workmanship — and that instead of being transported 
 to some abode of dimness and mystery, so remote from human experi- 
 ence, as to be beyond all comprehension, we shall walk for ever in 
 a land replenished with those sensible delights, and those sensible 
 glories, which, we doubt not, will be most profusely scattered over the 
 new heavens and the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness — and 
 between which and our present world the dissimilarity will not so much 
 consist in the substitution of spirit for matter, as in the substitution of 
 righteousness for sin." 
 
 Rev. Dr. Candlish, another eminent man (recently deceased) in the 
 Free Church of Scotland, discussing the promise of Territory made to 
 
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104 TIIR niRLE VINDICATED AOAINBT MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 II 
 
 '.? •> 
 
 Abnduun, and tho oortainly of itii literal and absolute fulfilinent, )>e- 
 oause batted upon the veracitv (and also the pukpobr, — cumpilkr,) of 
 Ood ; as woU as the time when the fulfilment is to ho accomplishud, 
 clearly indicates tlie views he held concerning the dogma of heathon 
 immateriality, and the fiible doctrine of materialism. 
 
 The future rewnrd which both he and Dr. Chalmers looked for, con- 
 sisted in a statu of things which they hoped and expected to bo inaugur- 
 ated on this earth, renewed ; a state of real, actual, tangible and sub- 
 stantial materialfsm ; a state of things which an immaterial soul, did 
 such an anomaly exist, could neither realize, appreciate, or enjoy. 
 Surely no Free Churchman can refuse to accept of the teachings of two 
 such eminent leaders of their denomination on tho points here olaborattMl 
 by them, notwithstanding, that so far as they go, thev may be in accord 
 Mrith what Christadelphians claim to be the teaching of Scripture. 
 While bearing directly on a tangible arrnngomont of thini,'s in the world 
 and the life to come, tho reader will observe that tho extracts from Drs. 
 Chalmers and Candlish, embrace othor important matters, to which his 
 attention is specially inviUnl. 
 
 " THE EARTH THE FUTURK DWELL! N(1-PLACE OF THE REDEEMED." 
 
 {By Rtv. Dr. Candlish, of the Free Church of Scotland.) 
 
 " Let it be well remembered and considered that the only hope con- 
 nected with the future world, which Abraham had, was bound up in the 
 promise that ho was himself personally to inherit the land. When Im 
 went out at the call of God, not knowing whither he wont, it was 
 upon the faith of his receiving an inheritance. When he came into 
 Canaan he was expressly told that this was the country destined to bo 
 his inheritance. But he was also told that while his descendants, four 
 hundred years after, would possess the land he was to have no inherit- 
 ance in it this side the grave. ' He was to go to his fathers in peace, 
 and be buried in a good old age.' (Gen. xv. 15.) Still he had the out- 
 standing promise that he himself personally was to inherit the land. 
 He believed, and continued to believe, tho promise. But he learned to 
 interpret it as a promise to be fulfilled, not in the life that now is, 
 but in the life that is to come. ' For he knew that though he was to 
 die before he obtained possession of the land, — and so far God might 
 seem to fail in fulfilling the promise, on the faith of which he had called 
 him out of Charran, — still that God was able to raise him from the dead,. 
 and to fulfil the promise in the resurrection state, or in other words, in 
 the world to come. He acquiesced in that arrangement. He was re- 
 conciled to it He reposed in it. He would mllingly consent to tho 
 postponement of the promise, so that he should have his inheritance in 
 the new heavens and new earth, rather than in this Canaan, as it now 
 subsists, where, at the best, all is vanity. 
 
 " Still, let it be observed, it is the promise of that very earthly Canaan^ 
 
 which alone is the foundation of Abraham's hope for eternity. There is 
 
 rno trace, no hint, in all the Patriarch's history, of any other promise 
 
TEHTIMONIE8. 
 
 10.> 
 
 in 
 
 iW 
 
 is 
 
 whatever, relating to the world to come. It is scarcely possible to en- 
 tertain a doubt on this point. What Abraham wiis taught to expet t, 
 wae tho inheritance of the very soil on which hu trod, for so many Iniit; 
 years of pilgrimage, as a mere stranger and sojourner. It was to be hin 
 at last. Nor was it to belong to him in any remote and indirect senso 
 merely, — and as he might be held to be represented by a nation, that 
 after all, never got full and absolute ponsession of it — ' for the IsraeliteH, 
 at the best, were but tenants in the land — tenants at will, upon their 
 good behaviour, as God expressly testifies, using the very expression, 
 ' The laud is mine ; for ye are strangers and sojourners with rao.' (Lt'.v. 
 XXV. 23.) It was to himself personally that tho land was to be given m 
 an inheritance — to himself as an individual l>eliever, and as it wen; in 
 his own right. That very land was to be his inheritance. But when t 
 Not in this state of being, in which man is himself mnrlal, and the ground 
 is cursed for man's sake. But in that other state of being in which this 
 mortal has put on immortality, and the face of the earth is renewe>l. 
 (Although the fertility of the earth will be greatly increased during tli*^ 
 thousand years : Ps. Ixvii. C ; Ezel. xxvi. 27 ; yet the complete renewal 
 of the earth, and the removal of the curse consequent on man's tran- 
 gression, would seem to be concurrent with the abolition of sin and 
 death after the expiration of the thousand years : 1 Cor. xv. 24, 25 ; 
 Rev. xxi. 3-5.) 
 
 " Yes ! it is when death is swallowed up in victory — it is when tlif 
 dead in Christ are raised — it is when this globe already baptized with 
 water, has undergone its final baptism by fire — it is then that t)ie 
 Patriarch is to possess that land — (" see note above — this purification l>.v 
 fire takes place at the time of the removal of the curse — when the eart li 
 shall be fitted up anew as the eternal dwelling place of the righteous of 
 every age, and kindred and tongue and nation.) "And then at last in 
 the possession of it — being himself raised incorruptible, and receiving 
 his portion in the renovated earth — receiving it, moreover, for an ever- 
 lasting inheritance — then is he to reap the reward of all his work of 
 faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope here below, in God's open 
 acknowledgement of him as a son, and therefore an heir — an heir of 
 God, and joint heir with Christ — as well as in tho full enjoyment of 
 God throughout the ages of eternity." 
 
 " Such, it would seem, was Abraham's high and heavenly hope — a 
 hope heavenly in one sense, as having respect to the world to come — 
 the heavenly or resurrection state ; and yet in another sense, having a 
 substantial local habitation and a name in the new earth, in which, as 
 in the new heavens, righteousness shall dwell." (The new heavens and 
 the new earth is a phrase signifiying a new civil, ecclesiastical and spiritual 
 constitution of Israel and the nations, which will continue for one 
 thousand years, and is then to be succeeded by another, which shall be 
 unchangeable. — Dr. Thomas.) 
 
 " And now, does not this hope give a peculiar and precious meaning 
 to Abraham's determination that Sarah shall not be buried in a strange, 
 or in a hired, or even in a lent, or gifted tomb, but in a sepulchre, most 
 
106 THE BI8LE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Ni 
 ;|i, 
 
 lit 
 
 "til 
 
 
 strictly and absolutely his own. He is taking infeoftment in his inheri- 
 tance. It belongs not to him living. But it belongs to him and to his, 
 when dead — while he is alive in this world, he has no interest in the 
 land, but to walk in it as a stranger and pilgrim — to walk before God 
 and be perfect. But death gives to him, and to his a title to it ; and he 
 will vindicate that title for his dead. Living he can but use it, as the 
 strange country of his pilgrimage ; but when dead he claims all a pro- 
 prietor's right in it, and his kindred dust is entitled to repose in it as a 
 home. "—•('• Herald of the Kingdom and Age to come." 1853. P. 10.) 
 
 Dr. Candlish further discusses this promise, but 'n a phase more 
 strictly appertaining to the subject of Resurrection, and which will ap- 
 pear under that head. His concluding paragraph however, having 
 special reference to Bible Materialism, I transcribe here. — (C.) 
 
 He says : — '* There may be a risk of making the eternal state, in our 
 conception of it, too gross and material ; but there is danger also in the 
 dreamy and ideal spiritualizing which would refine away all matter, and 
 which ultimately comes very near the notion of absorption into the 
 infinite spirit. 
 
 " The personal reality of hope, as well as the personal responsibility of 
 sense, is turneddnto a dim abstraction. But the resurrection of the body, 
 and the renewal of the earth realized as events still to come, stamp a 
 present value and importance upon both ; and the reflection that the 
 very body I now wear is to rise again, and the very earth on which I 
 tread is to be my habitation liereafter, arrests me when I am tempted to 
 make my body the instrument or the earth the scene of aught that 
 would but ill accord with the glorious fualiion of the one or the renewed 
 face of the other." 
 
 Surely no more emphatic language is required to convince us that 
 neither of these great men entertained any hope of going at death to the 
 heaven of the theologians " beyond the bounds of time and space," but 
 that in this respect at least, their hopes were founded on very correct 
 conceptions of the teachings of Scripture. Christ tells us (Matt. v. 5.) 
 that "the meek shall inherit the earth." The Preacher informs us 
 (Eccl. i. 4.) that " one generation goeth and another cometh, but the 
 earth remaineth for ever." 
 
 The spirit through Isaiah, in setting forth the Mission of Messiah, 
 intimates that one of the things He shall accomplish is " to establish the 
 earth, and to cause the (present) desolate heritages to be inhabited." 
 (Isa. xlix. 8.) 
 
 Likewise the Psalmist (Ps. cxiv. 16,)infonns us that the "heavens,even 
 the heavens, are the Lord's ; but the earth hath he given to the, children 
 of men " (the race of Adam). And the spirit in Isaiah, foreshewing the 
 new heavens and new earth, to which Peter, in the text to Dr. Chalmer's 
 sermon, plainly refers, uses the following language : — (Isa. Ixv. 17 — 23.) 
 " For behold I create new heavens, and a new earth j and the former 
 shall .' ot be remembered, nor come into mind. But be ye glad and re- 
 joice for ever in that which I create ; for behold, I create Jerusalem a 
 rejoicing, and her people a joy. And I will rejoice in Jerusalem, and 
 
 a 
 
 II 
 it 
 
the 
 
 sr's 
 
 re- 
 ma 
 ind 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 f!:t i 
 
 107 
 
 joy in my people ; and the voice of weeping shall be no more heard in 
 her, nor the voice of crying. There shall be no more thence an infant 
 of (lays " (that infant mortality so characteristic of the time in which we 
 live, and so indicative of the utter ignorance now prevailing respecting 
 those laws instituted by God, for man's physical well-being). •* Nor an 
 old man that hath not filled his days, for the child (Henderson, a 
 Scottish Commentator, says "that the man dying at the age of an hundred 
 years, shall be esteemed a child, so great will be the longevity of man in 
 the age to come ") shall die an hundred years old ; but the sinner being 
 an hundred years old shall be accursed. And they (Israel) shall build 
 hmises and inhabit them ; and they shall plant vineyards and eat the fruit 
 of them," Ac, &c. 
 
 " Thy people shall be- all righteous," for a King (Jehovah's 
 Anointed) shall rule in righteousness, and princes decree judgment. 
 " The people shall inherit the land for ever" (Isa. Ix. 21 ; xiv. 1) The 
 apoHtle Paul also sets forth so clearly the nature and tangible substan- 
 tiality of Christ's Kingdom and Reign in Ist Cor. xv. that it is wonder- 
 ful how men can mistake his meaning, and the purport of the whole 
 tenor of Scripture, and find any place in the arrangements of God for 
 immaterial human entities, such as men contend for. — (C.) 
 
 The Rev. H. Harbaugh, in his " Heaven," page 61, says : — 
 
 " There seems something undesirable, if not repugnant m our hopes, 
 in the idea that at death we are to be launched forth into a world with 
 no other material substratum but ether, or something still more subtle 
 or refined. It grates on the feelings of one familiar with Scripture re- 
 presentation of heaven, and sounds wild and unnatural to a deeply pious 
 Christian consciousness." 
 
 " We should bring our religious conceptions into definite alliance 
 with the real world, and with nature, and break up a little of those 
 vague and powerless notions which place our religious expectations at a 
 dim remoteness from whatever is substantial and effective. Let us 
 rather persuade ourselves that the future and unseen world, with all its 
 momentous transactions, is as simply natural and true, as is this world 
 of land and water, trees and houses, with which we now have to do." — 
 " Physical. Theory of Another mrld," c. 17. 
 
 MINI) AND MATTEU, 
 
 {A contimuttion of the preceding subject : Immateriality and Materialism.) 
 
 " It is contended that matter cannot think, and that as man thinks 
 there must be some immaterial essence in him that performs the think- 
 ing, and that, being immaterial, this essence must be indestructible, and 
 therefore immortal. Stated in this curt and peremptory way, there seems, 
 at first sight, to be strength in the argument, but a little thought will 
 reveal the weakness of it. It is quite correct to assume that matter can 
 not think f Of course it is evident enough that stones, wood, iron and 
 inanimate substances in general are incapable of thought. No one 
 
 -i-' 
 
 l|f 
 
 it' 
 
 ■4: 
 
 
 1 
 
 5 
 
 Hi'i 
 
 ■> 
 
 1- 
 
 4- 
 
 
108 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ^^ ■{ 
 
 
 would be so foolish as to assert the contrary, but is it true universally 
 that matter or substance in every form and condition is incapable of 
 evolving mental powers ? To assert this would require the assertor to 
 be able in the first place to define where the empire of what is called 
 matter etids, and to prove that he was so familiar with every part of its 
 domain, as to be able to say with authority, that thought was an impossi- 
 bility in it. What are the boundaries dividing that department of nature 
 styled 'matter,' from that which is supposed to be the province of 
 ' mind V Earth, stones, iron and wood, would come into the category 
 of matter, without a question, but what about smoke 1 It may be 
 replied that smoke, though impalpable to the touch, is but a diffuse form 
 of matter, and as it will not be contended that smoke is an accessory to 
 thought, except by the liberty of a metaphor, we may allow the answer 
 to go — but what about light and heat, which can be evolved from the 
 gross forms of matter first mentioned 1 Light and heat can hardly be 
 brought within any of the ordinary definitions of matter, and yet they 
 have a most intimate relation to matter in its most tangible form. 
 Nothing can exceed light in its subtlety and impenetrability. Is it 
 within or without the empire of matter 1 It would puzzle the most 
 methodical metaphysician to say. And if perplexed with light, what 
 would he do with electricity, a power more uncontrollable than any 
 other force in Nature ; a principle existing in everything, yet impalpable 
 to the senses, except in its effect— invisible, immaterial, omnipotent iu 
 its operations, and essential to the very existence of every form of matter. 
 Is this part of the ' matter,' from which the argument in question 
 excludes the possibility of mental phenomenon 1 If so what is that which 
 is not matter 1 It will not do to say ' spirit,' if we are to take our 
 notions of spirit from the Bible, for the Spirit came upon the Apostles on 
 the day of Pentecost, * like a mighty rushing wind,* and made the place 
 shake, shewing it to be capable of mechanical momentum, and therefore 
 as much on the list of material forces, as light, heat and electricity. Com- 
 ing upon Samson, it energized his muscles to the snapping of ropes like 
 threads (Judges xv. 14), and inhaled by ^hc nostrils of man and beast, 
 it gives physical life. (Psalm civ. 30.) 
 
 " It is evident that there would be great difficulty iu arriving at such 
 a definition of matter as would sustain the argument under consideration. 
 In fact it is an impossibility. It is only an arbitrary system of thought 
 that has created the distinctions implied in the terms of metaphysics. 
 Nature, that is universal existence, is one ; it is ♦'.he elaboration of one 
 primitive power ; it is not made up of two antagonistic and incompati 
 ble elements, God is the source of all. In Him everything exists, out 
 of Him everything is evolved. Different elements and substances ar( 
 but different forms of the same Eternal Essence or First Cause — 
 described in the Bible as * spirit,' which God ia, and in scientific lan- 
 guage as electricity." 
 
 Exception having been taken by some theologians to this last expres- 
 sion, Mr. Roberts, in his •' Defence" 1868, page 17, quotes from " Electri- 
 cal Psychology," by Dods, p. p. 51 — 53, the following extracts : — 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 109 
 
 n. 
 ht 
 
 3S. 
 
 es- 
 iri- 
 
 " Electricity actuates the whole frame of Nature and produces all the 
 phenomena that transpire throughout the realms of unbounded space. It 
 is the most powerful and subtle agent employed by the Creator in the 
 government of the universe, and in carrying on the multifarious opera- 
 tions of nature. Making a slight variation in the language of the poet, 
 I may with propriety say ; 
 
 " ' It warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze. 
 Glows in the stars and blossoms in the trees ; 
 Lives through all life, extends through all extent, 
 Spreads undivided, operates unspent ; 
 Breathes in our lives, informs on every part, 
 As full, as perfect, in a hair, as heart ; 
 Aa full, as perfect, in vile man that mourns. 
 As the rapt seraph, that adores and bums. 
 It claims all, hign and low, all, great and small. 
 It fills, it bounds, connects and equals all.' 
 
 " It is immaterial to what part of this globe and its surrounding ele- 
 ments we turn our attention, electricity is there. Wherever, we witness 
 convulsions in nature, the workings of the mighty unseen power are 
 there. It writes its path in lightning on the sullen brow of the dark cloud, 
 and breathes out rolling thunder. Though cold and invisible in itsequalized 
 and slumbering state, yet it is the cause of light and heat which it creates 
 by the inconceivable rapidity of its motion and friction on other particles 
 of matter. It is the cause of evaporation from basined oceans and sil- 
 very lakes, from majestic rivers and rolling streams, and from the com- 
 mon humidity of the earth. It forms aerial conductors in the heavens, 
 though which this moisture in vapoury oceans is borne to the highest 
 portions of our globe, and stored up in magazines of snow and rain. It 
 is electricity, that by its coldness condenses the storm, and opens these 
 various magazines in mild beauty, or awful terror, on the world. 
 
 " It is electricity, that, by the production of heat, rarifies the air, gives 
 wings to the wind, and directs their course. It is this unseen agent 
 that causes the gentle zephyrs of heaven to lave the human brow with 
 a touch of delight — that moves the stormy gale — that arms the sweep- 
 ing hurricane with power — that gives to the roaring tornado all its 
 dreadful eloquence of vengeance and terror, and clothes the mid-day 
 sun in light. It gives us the soft pleasing touches of the evening 
 twilight, and the crimson blushes of the rising moon. It is electricity, 
 that by its effects of light and heat, produces the blossoms of Spring, the 
 fruits of Summer, the laden bounties of Autumn, and moves on the vast 
 mass of vegetation in all the varieties and blended beauties of Creation. 
 It bids Winter close the varied scene. It is electricity, that by its most 
 awful impressions causes the earthquake to awake from its tartarean 
 den, to speak its rumbling thunder, convulse the globe, and mark out 
 its path of ruin." So far, Mr. Dods on the characteristics of this won- 
 derful agent. 
 
 In reply to the ca\'ils of a clerical antagonist, who stigmatized as 
 blasphemy " any atten^pt to shew that the Spirit of God — his free 
 Spirit — has anything to do with electricity," Mr. Roberts justly com- 
 ments as follows : " Mr. B. is petrified at the suggestion that the Spirit 
 
 Mi 
 
 m 
 
 :tlit 
 
Wr 
 
 Hi 
 
 l\ 
 
 110 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 of God should be discoverable in scientific research, and stunned at the 
 ' blasphemy ' of the supposition that electricity should be that Spirit in 
 its free, or universal form. One would almost imagine that Mr. B. dis- 
 believed that God had any thing to do with the universe. He waxes 
 loftily indignant at the ascription of its powers to God. He denounces 
 as blasphemy the simple and believing application of God's testimony 
 concerning Himself. Does he deny the statement of Scripture that the 
 Spirit of God is everywhere 1 Concerning which we read * If He, 
 (God) gather unto Himself His Spirit and His breath, all flesh shall 
 perish together, and man shall turn again to dust.' (Ps. li. 12 ; Ps. 
 139 ; Job. xxiv. 14.) If his Spirit is everywhere, is it not eveiy where 1 
 and being everywhere ie it not a reality 1 How can it be anything if it 
 is nothing 1 and if it is lot nothing, but something, ought it not to be 
 discoverable 1 
 
 " Men have observed, considered, tested, compared and investigated, 
 and have discovered a universal Spirit. This they have called electricity. 
 Mr. B. denies this is the Spirit of God. If not God's, whose is it 1 
 Does he set himself above Faraday, the great Electrical discoverer of 
 the day ? Mr. Faraday calls it ' the universal spirit of matter.' 
 
 "If Mr. B. can imagine a loftier mission, a greater power, a more uni- 
 versal omniscience (pardon the phrase) than electricians have found to 
 attach to the inscrutable element they term electricity, he is certainly 
 gifted beyond the ordinary run of mortals. The declarations of the 
 Scriptures concerning the Spirit of God are so identical with the por- 
 traiture of electricity by modern science, .t there can be no doubt as 
 to the synonymity of the two things. There is just one element in the 
 case that science has not reached and fiever can reach, and which made 
 revelation a necessity. It never could find out the Supreme Intelligence 
 that originates and controls universal power, or divine the future mani- 
 festations of that power in the destiny of man. It could not discover 
 the relation in which created man stands to the inscrutable Creator. 
 It can discover no means of laying hold of this universal element, as God 
 does, when it pleases Him, so as to use it as an instrument of power. 
 They cannot make it ' Holy Spirit.' It only becomes this when wielded 
 by the will of the Almighty. All it has done is to discover that what 
 the Scriptures revealed before it could be known experimentally, is 
 true, viz : that there is a universal spirit by which every thing is up- 
 held and controlled. This is all. It but discloses omnipotence around 
 us. It but leaves us helpless in its presence as before. Here Revela- 
 tion gloriously joins hands with Nature, and unfolds the counsel of the 
 Eternal Mind, which is at the other end, as it were, of this universal 
 telegraphy. The man who can discover ' blasphemy ' in such a splendid 
 conjunction of truth, must have a mind strangely warped indeed." Cora 
 menting further, Mr. Roberts says : — 
 
 " The word ' matter ', only describes an aspect of Creation, as pre- 
 sented to finite sense ; it does not touch the essence of the thing, though 
 intended so to do, by the short-sighted, because inexperienced and un- 
 observant system which invented it. 
 
Ifcl 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 ■^' m 
 
 " But if difficult to fix the limits of unsentient matter, there is another 
 difficulty which is equally fatal to the argument, namely, the difficulty 
 of defining the process which is expressed by the word * think.' It 
 would be necessary to define this process before it would be legitimate 
 to argue that every form of matter is incapable of it ; for unless defined, 
 how could we say when and where it was possible or not possible. 
 To say that matter cannot think is virtually to allege that the nature of 
 thought is so and so, and the nature of matter so and so, in consequence 
 of which they have no mutual relation. We have seen the impossibility 
 of taking this ground with regard to * matter.' Who shall define the 
 modm operandi of thought 1 Impossible, except in general terms, and 
 these general terms destroy the argument now under review. Thought 
 is a power developed by brain organization, and consists of impressions 
 made upon that delicate organ through the medium of the senses, and 
 afterwards classified and arranged by a function pertaining, in different 
 degrees, to brain in human form, known as reason. This proposition 
 accepted destroys the metaphysical argument, since it affirms what the 
 argument denies, namely, that the matter of the brain electrically energized 
 is capable of evolving thought. 
 
 " The whole argument is based on a fallacy. It assumes complete 
 knowledge of 'Nature's capabilities, which is beyond human ken. 
 Who knows what matter is essentially 1 Chemists can tell the number 
 and proportion of elementary gases which enter into any compound ; 
 but who understands the essential nature of any one of these elements 
 separately 1 ' The more learned our great minds become, the more diffi- 
 dent do they become on this subject. They hesitate to be certain about 
 almost anything tn which the secrets of nature are involved. None but 
 the ignorant or the superficial would be so uuAvise as to draw the line 
 fixing the limit of the possible. What is nature ] The Sphere* of 
 Omnipotence. The arena of God's operations. Shall we say that any- 
 thing is impossible with God 1 True, inanimate matter, such as iron 
 or stone, cannot think ; but we know experimentally that there is such 
 a thing as ' living matter ', and that living matter is sentient and think- 
 ing by virtue of its organization, which is only another phrase for its 
 divine endowment. This is a matter of experience, illustrated in degrees 
 in every department of the animal kingdom." —-Twelve Lectures, pp. 
 30-32. 
 
 I cannot here refrain from quoting a scrap by Dr. Thomas, foiuid 
 among his papers after his death, on " The Formative Power of the 
 Universe, ' because it not only bears strongly on the subject of" matter 
 and mind," but as conveying Scriptural ideas of the Uncreate Deity, 
 and the Manifestation of His Creative Power, he says : — 
 
 " 1. There is a Formative Power pervading the Universe. 
 
 " 2. That Formative Power is intelligently applied. 
 
 . " 3. The Power is ' spirit,' and so called because it proceeds from, 
 emanates, irradiates, or is breathed forth from the Omnipotent Intel- 
 ligence, according to whose wisdom and knowledge it finds expression. 
 
 
 ■1^ ri 
 
 *ii 
 
,1 
 
 ! 
 
 •i ' 
 
 
 il 
 
 112 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY, 
 
 " 4. Formative Spirit is power producing forms in general and liv- 
 ing forms in particular. 
 
 " 5. The Omnipotent Intelligence is otyled in Hebrew, ail, that ia 
 POWER ; in vulgar English, God or the Good One. 
 
 " 6. Of this absolute power with whom nothing is impossible, it is testi- 
 fied that He 'only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man 
 can approach unto, whom no man hath seen nor can see.' — 1 Tim. vi. 16. 
 
 " 7. The universally diflfused spirit, invisible absolute power is 
 styled 'free spirit,' — Ps. li. 12 ; cxxxix. 7 ;in which ' we live and move 
 and have our being,' and receive ' life and breath and all things.' — Acts 
 xvii. 25, 28. 
 
 " 8. The philosophical names for ' free spirit,* in its physical relations, 
 are ' electricity,' ' electro magnetism,' ' galvanism,' ' nervous fluid,' ' vital 
 power,' and so forth, its common name is ' lightning.^ 
 
 " 9. Absolute power — from whose incorruptible substance or hypo- 
 stasis free spirit radiates — is before all existing things. This self exist- 
 ing, incorruptible substance is essentially spirit — spirit substance, a con- 
 centration and condensation into ONE BODY of all the attributes, intel- 
 lectual moral, and physical, of Omnipotence. ' All things are out of 
 Deity.' — 1 Cor. viii. 6. 
 
 "10. All things being Ek Theos, out of Deity, they were not made 
 out of nothing. The sun, moon and stars, together with all things per- 
 taining to each, were made out of something, and that something was 
 the radiant effluence of His substance, or free spirit, which pervades un- 
 bounded space. 
 
 "11. Free spirit being the substratum of the universe, and to speak 
 pliilosophically, moving in ' Magnetic Curves,' around the foci of ellipses, 
 it arranged itself into globes circulating through boundless space in 
 elliptical orbits. 
 
 " 12. The celestial bodies and their contents, originally vesicular and 
 nebulous, being organic indurations of electricity, as already defined, all their 
 atoms are endowed with the physical properties of free spirit, which is 
 therefore, the essential principle of what is termed * the attraction of 
 gravitation,' ' the centrifugal force,' ' cohesive attraction,' and ' chemical 
 affinity.' 
 
 "13. By free spirit all created things are connected with the centre of 
 t) e universe, which is ' light that no man can approach unto,' 'so that 
 not even a sparrow falls to the ground without the Father' — Matt. x. 
 29, ' who is not far from every one of us.' — Acts xvii. 27. 
 
 " 14. Ruach Ail, ' the spirit of power hath made me, and Nishmath 
 Shaddai, the breath of mighty ones hath given me life.' — Job. xxx. 4. 
 ' Py Nishmath Ail, breath of power (the air) frost is given, and the 
 '^rtadth of waters straitened.' ' By His spirit he hath garnished the 
 nfs vons.' — .Job. xxvi. 13. ' His angels mighty in strength, execute his 
 
 amandments, hearkening unto the voice of his word.' — Psalm ciii. 
 fc 'By the word of Jehovah were the heavens made; and all the 
 host of them by the breath of his mouth.' — Psalm xxxiii. 6. ' If the 
 Almighty set his heart against man, if He gather unto Himself Hia 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 113 
 
 Spirit and His Breath, all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn 
 again into dust.'— Job. xxxiv. 14. 
 
 " If). Electrical spirit being the mental principle of all created things, 
 all things are resolvable ultimately into it. The nucleus of the universe 
 is spirit, and all things of which the Universe consists are the visible 
 expression of the intellectual architypes of Deity. Hence (the imag« s 
 of the things termed man, horse, tree, mountain, and so forth, existed 
 in the mind of Deity, before such things so named existed in the Uni- 
 verse. 
 
 " 17. Electricity divinely manipulated and incorporated with dust, 
 itself an electrical product, assumed the form of the divine image and 
 likeness, and stood erect, a living natural body, or man. 
 
 "18. Man and animals generally are all electrical bodies, differing 
 from themselves only in form and organization ; hence it is written, ' We 
 have all one spirit (Ruach), so that man hath no pre-eminence above 
 a beast, for all is vanity' — Eccl. iii. 14. Hence ' flesh ' is defined to be 
 ' spirit that passeth away, and cometh not again.' 
 
 " 19. Electricity is generally admitted to be a material substance, 
 whose diversified phenomena are referable to the peculiarity of the or- 
 ganization through which it manifests itself. Thus tJwught is developed 
 through brain, when electrically excited by the electrical impressions 
 impinging upon it through the senses. 
 
 " 20. Man and all other animals in their creation, being electrical 
 bodies in electrical excitation, or ' living souls,' are continued in life by 
 internal development of electrical force, through the chemical decompo- 
 sition effected in the processes of digestion and respiration." 
 
 While Dr. Thomas was engaged in elaborating the foregoing, based, 
 as it is, upon his profound knowledge and clear understanding, of the 
 sacred record, his proficiency in true science, and his intimate acquaint- 
 ance, as a duly qualified English physician, with the constitution of man, 
 in its varied manifestations, anatomical, physiological, phrenological and 
 psychological ; another man of eminent scientific attainments, Mr. Var- 
 ley, the distinguished electrician-in chief of the Atlantic Cable Telegraph 
 Company, was busily engaged in conducting a series of interesting ex- 
 periments in the vast domain of electricity, of which so little is known. 
 The result of his investigations is summed up in a few words, namely, 
 " that the earth itself is an enormous Leyden Jar, which only requires 
 charging to a very moderate degree, to be equal to the production of 
 the most terrific explosive effects." This I take to signify, that as a 
 chemist, by subjecting a stone from the pavement to certain chemical 
 influences, can disintegrate and decompose it, so that not a trace of it 
 remains; so by the exercise of Divine Power, in the withdrawal of 
 those laws which bind the earth together, Deity could by reducing it to 
 its original constituent elements, so effectually destroy its tangibility, 
 that no vestige of it could be found in space. Essentially there is little 
 or no difference between the '' indurated electricity'' of Dr. Thomas, 
 and the partly charged Leyden Jar of Mr. Varley. The researches of 
 both teach us plainly, that the connection between matter and mind, and 
 
 (! 
 
114 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 
 f M 
 
 matter and spirit, is much closer, and the distinction between them much 
 less clearly defined, than men dream of. And that there is nothing 
 easier to Omnipotence than so to manipulate what we call matter, as to 
 confer upon it " natural vitality, and to endow it with the powers of 
 thought and reason." — (C.) 
 
 " It is argued that the i)08session of ' reason ' is evidence of the exist- 
 ence of an immortal and immaterial soul in man ; but the logic of this 
 argument is difficult of discovery. Reason is unquestionably a wonder- 
 ful attribute, and an extraordinary function of the mental machinery, 
 but how can it be held to prove the existence of a something beyond 
 knowledge or comprehension, since there can be no known connection 
 between that which is incompreheri.sible and that which is unknown 1 
 To say that we have an inde.structible soul because we have reasonable 
 faculty, is to repeat the mistake of our forefathers of the last generation, 
 who referred the achievements of machinery to satanic agency, because 
 in their ignorance they were unable to account for them in any other 
 way. We may be unable to understand how it is, that reason is evolved 
 by the organization with which God has endowed us, but we are com- 
 pelled to recognise the self-evident fact. 
 
 " Again, it is argued, that the power of the mind to ' travel,' while the 
 body remains quiescent, is proof of its immaterial, and therefore, im- 
 mortal nature. Let us see. What is this ' travelling' of the mind 1 Does 
 the mind traverse actual space and witness realities 1 A man has been 
 in America, has seen many sights and returns home ; occasionally he 
 sees those sights over again ; the impressions made on the sensorium of 
 the brain through the organs of sight and hearing while in America, are 
 revived so distinctly, that he can actually ' fancy himself in the place 
 he has left ' so many thousands of miles behind. Surely no one will 
 contend that each time his reverie comes upon him, his mind actually 
 goes out of his body and transfers itself actually to the place thought of? 
 If this is contended, it ought also to be allowed that the man, when so 
 spiritually transferred, should witness ivhat is achuiUy transpiring in the 
 country at the time of his spiritual presence, and that therefore, we might 
 dispense with the post and the telegraph as clumsy contrivances for 
 getting the news, compared with the facility and despatch of spiritual- 
 ography. But this will not be contended. As well might we say that 
 the places and persons we see in our dreams have a real existence. 
 
 " In both cases the phenomenon is the result of a process that takes 
 place within the brain. Memory treasures impressions received, and re- 
 produces them as occasion occurs — clear, calm, and coherent, if the brain 
 be in a healthy condition ; confused, disjointed, and aberrated, if the 
 brain be disordered, whether ' in sleep' or out of it. In no case does 
 reverie involve an actual transit of the mind from one place to another, 
 and hence the ' travelling ' argument falls to the ground. If a man 
 could go to China while his body remained in Britain, and see the 
 country and the people as they really are, there might be something 
 worthy of consideration, though even then it would not prove the im- 
 mortality of the soul, but only the wonderful power of the brain while a 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 115 
 
 living instrument, in acting at long distances, through an electrical 
 atmosphere. 
 
 " The power of dreaming is cited as another fact favourable to the 
 popular doctrine ; but here again the argument fails because dreaming 
 is invariably connected with the liviny brain. Besides who ever dreams a 
 sensible dream "i Dreams, in general, are a confused and illogical jum- 
 ble of facts which have, at one time or other, been stowed away in the 
 warehouse of the brain ; and if they prove anything concerning a 
 thinking spirit independent of the body, they prove that that spirit 
 loses its power in exact proportion to its separation from the assistance 
 of the body ; and that, therefore, without the body, it would be power- 
 less. 
 
 " It is next contended, that the spirituality of man's nature is proved 
 by the feet that though he may be deprived of a limb, he retains a con- 
 sciousness of that limb, sometimes even feeling pain in it. The argu- 
 ment is, that if the man is conscious of a part of himself, when the ma- 
 terial organ of that part is wanting, so will he be conscious of his entire be- 
 ing when the whole body shall be wanting. This looks very plausible, but 
 let us examine it. Why is a man conscious of an absent member t Be- 
 cause the independent nerves of that member remain in the system from the 
 point of disseverment up to their place in the brain ; so that although the 
 hand or foot may be absent, the brain goes on to feel as if they were 
 present because the nerves that produce the sensation of their presence, 
 are still active at the brain centre. But if, when you cut off a leg, you 
 could also remove the entire nerves of the leg from the point of ampu- 
 tation up to their roots in the brain, and still preserve a consciousness 
 of the severed member, then the argument for immateriality of nature 
 would have something like a foundation. 
 
 " But the most powerful natural argument in favour of the popular 
 doctrine has yet to be noticed. It is the one mainly relied upon by all 
 its great advocates. It is this : it is an ascertained fact in physiology, 
 that the substance of our bodies undergoes an entire change every seven 
 years ; that is, there is a gradual process of substitution going on, by 
 which atom after atom is expelled from the body as its vital qualities 
 are worn out, and its place filled up by new material from the blood ; 
 so that at the end of the period mentioned the body is made up of en- 
 tirely new substance. Yet, notwithstanding this constant mutation of 
 the material atoms of the body, and this periodical change of its entire 
 substance, memory and .iersonal identity remain unaffected to the close 
 of life. An old man feels that he is the same person at eighty, that he 
 was at ten, although at eighty, he has not a single particle of the mat- 
 ter which composed his body when a boy ; and the argument is, that 
 the thinking faculty and power of consciousness must be the attri- 
 bute of some immaterial principle residing in the body. Now this has 
 all the appearance of an unanswerable argument. However, we shall 
 find that it is not so formidable as it sei^,m3. The question to be con- 
 sidered is — whether this fact of continuous identity and atomic change, 
 can be explained in accordance with the view which regards the mind 
 
 »v^ 
 
116 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLCXJY. 
 
 \ . 
 
 ( * 
 
 r M 
 
 as a property of living brain substance. We shall maintain that it can ; 
 because we find from experience that the qualities resulting from any or- 
 ganic combination af atoms, are transmissable to other atoms which may take 
 their place as organic constituents — see, as regards this assimilating 
 power, the extract from Dr. Wilson's Lecture on Resurrection — (C), 
 An atom, as it exists in food, has no power of sensation ; but let it 
 be assimilated by the blood, and incorporated with any of the nerves, 
 and it possesses a vital power which formerly it did not have. It l>e- 
 comes part of the organization, and feels, whether in man or animal. 
 Why 1 Because it takes up and perpetuates the organic power which 
 its predecessor left behind. On this principle we find that the mark of 
 a scar will be continued in the flesh through life ; and so also with dis- 
 colourations of the skin, which exist in some persons from congenital 
 causes. This perpetuation of physical disfigurement could not take 
 place if it were not for the fact alluded to. Now if we apply this prin- 
 ciple to the brain, we have a complete solution of the apparent difficulty 
 on which the argument in question is founded. Mind is the prodwt of 
 the living brain, and per sonalidentity tlie mm of its impressions. This will 
 not be questioned by the student of human nature, though it may not 
 be understood. Mental impression is a fact, though a mystery, alike in 
 men and animals ; and facts are the things that wise men have to deal 
 with. It is impossible to explain, or even to comprehend, the process 
 by which thought is begotten in the tissues of the brain ; but chat the 
 process transpires, will not be denied by those who have observed and 
 cogitated. We are conscious of the process, and feel the result in the 
 possession of separate individuality — the power of contemplating all 
 other persons and things objectively. Now in order to perpetuate this 
 result, all that is necessary is to preserve the action of the organ evol- 
 ving it — the brain — by means of nutrition. This of course, involves the 
 introduction of fresh material into its structure, but it does not imply 
 an invasion of the unique process going on in it, which the argument 
 in question supposes ; the process conquers the material, and converts 
 it to its own uses, and not the material, the process. Who ever heard 
 of a man's bone turning to wheat from the eating of flour 1 The nutrit- 
 ive apparatus assimilates, which is, in fact, the answer to the argument. 
 " The new material entering the brain is assimilated to its existing con- 
 dition ; and thus, although the atoms come and go for a lifetime, the 
 condition remains substantially unaltered, being sustained by the new 
 material, much as a fire is kept up by fuel. If, then, we are asked, 
 how a man at eighty feels himself to be the same person that he was at 
 ten, though his entire substance is changed, we reply, those brain impres- 
 sions that enable him to feel that he is himself, have been kept up all along, 
 though modified by the circumstances and conditions through which 
 he has passed. The process of change is so slow, that the new atoms 
 take on the organic qualities of the old, as they are incorporated 
 with the brain, and sustain the general result of the brain's action in 
 preserving its continuous function unimpaired. If cases could be 
 cited in which the identity survived the destruction of the brain, the plea 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 Mf 
 
 for immateriality would bo unanswerable, but so long as it is only to be 
 found in connection with a perpetuated brain urgunizaiian, we are com- 
 pelled to reject every theory which ignores this essential and significant 
 fact. 
 
 " Thus, it will be observed, that none of the ' natural ' arguments 
 usually advanced in support of the immateriality and immortality of 
 the soul, are really logical. Each of them falls through when tho- 
 roughly tested. The evidence of the other side of the question will be 
 found to stand in a very different position. At the very outset, we are 
 confronted with the difficulty of conceiving how immateriality can 
 inhere in a material organization. Cohesion and conglomeration require 
 affinity as their first condition, but in this case affinity is entirely want- 
 ing. What connection can exist between ' matter ' and the immaterial 
 principle of popular belief 1 They are not in the nature of things sus- 
 ceptible of combination. Yet in the face of this difficulty, wo find that 
 the mind is located in the body. It is not a loose ethereal thing, capable 
 of detachment from the material person. It is inexorably fixed in the 
 bodily framework, and never leaves it while life continue?. If we enquire 
 in what portion of the body it is specially located, we instinctively answer 
 that it is not in the hand, nor in the foot, nor in the stomach, nor in any 
 part of the trunk of the body. Our consciousness unerringly tells us that 
 is in the head. We feel as a matter of experience, that the mind cohabits 
 with the substance of the brain. Extending our observation externally, 
 we never discover mind without a corresponding development of brain. 
 Deficient brain is always to manifest deficient reason, and vice versa. 
 Master minds in science and literature have large and deeply convoluted 
 cerebrums. These are facts that cannot be impugned. But how are 
 we to explain them consistently with the theory which pronounces mind 
 to be the attribute of an Immaterial Essence 1 That theory requires 
 that mind be exhibited independent of either quantity or quality of 
 organization. The facts in question are opposed to the theory, and the 
 theory must therefore be dismissed in deference to the facts. 
 
 " Again, if the mind were immaterial, its functions would be unaf- 
 fected by the conditions of the body. Thinking and feeling would never 
 abate in vigour or vivacity — we should always be serene and clear- 
 headed — always ready for the ' study,' whatever might be the state of 
 the bodily machinery, whereas we know that the opposiio is the case. 
 . Sickness or overwork will exhaust the mental energies, and make the 
 mind a blank. Languor and dulness of spirits are of common experi- 
 ence. We" can all testify to days of fretful ennui, in which the mind has 
 refused to perform its lively office, and we can remember too, the 
 uneasy pillow when horrible visions have scared us. This never hap- 
 pens in a good state of health, but always when the material organiza- 
 tion is out of order. How is this "i Does it not tell against the theory 
 which represents the mind as an immaterial, incorruptible, and imperish- 
 able thing 1 The mind is the offspring of the brain, and is therefore 
 affected by all its passing disorders." 
 
 Let us carry the process further. Let the brain be internally 
 
 
 i '^^ y 
 
118 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 f 
 
 injured, and we then perceive a most signal refutation of the popular 
 idea, the mind vanishes altoyether. We make the following extract from the 
 American Advent Review, in illustration : — 
 
 " Richmond mentions the case of a woman whose brain was exposed 
 in consequence of the removal of a considerable part of its bony covering 
 by disease. He says, " I repeatedly made a pressure on the brain, and 
 each time suspended all feeling and all intellect, which were immediately 
 restored when the pressure was withdrawn.' The same writer mentions 
 another case. He says, ' There was a man who had been trepanned, 
 and who perceived his intellectual faculties failing and his existence 
 drawing to a close, every time the effused blood collected upon the 
 brain so as to produce pressure.' " 
 
 Professor Chapman, in one of his Lectures says, " I saw an individual 
 with his skull perforated, and the brain exposed, who was accustomed 
 to submit his brain to bo experimented upon by pressure, and who was 
 exhibited by the late Professor Weston to his class ; his intellectual and 
 moral faculties disappeared on the application of pressure to the brain. 
 They were held under the thumb as it were, and restored at pleasure to 
 their full activity by discontinuing the pressure. 
 
 " But of all facts the following related by Sir Astley Cooper, in his 
 Surgical Lectures, is the most remarkable : ' A man of the name of 
 Jones received an injury on his head while on board a vessel in the 
 Mediterranean, which rendered him insensible. The vessel soon after 
 made Gibraltar, where Jones was placed in the hospital, and remained 
 several months in the same insensible state. He was then carried on 
 board the Dolphin frigate to Deptford, and from thence was sent to St. 
 Thomas's Hospital, London. He lay constantly on his back and 
 breathed with difficulty. When hungry or thirsty, he moved his lips 
 or tongue. Mr. Clyne, the Surgeon, found a portion of the skull de- 
 pressed, trepanned him, and removed the depressed portion. Immedia- 
 tely after the operation, the motion of his fingers, occasioned by the 
 beating of the pulse, ceased, and in three hours he sat up in bed, sensation 
 and volition returned, and in four days he got up out of his bed and 
 conversed. The last thing he remembered was the occurrence of taking 
 a prize in the Mediterranean. From tht moment of the accident, thirteen 
 months and a few days before oblivion had come over him, all recollection, 
 ceased. Yet on removing a small portion of bone which pressed upon 
 the brain, he was restored to the full possession of the powers of his 
 mind and body.' 
 
 " How are such cases to be explained in accordance with the popular 
 theory of the mind ? If a derangement of the material organization 
 suspend mental operation, obviously the mind is not the attribute of a 
 principle existing in us independently of that organization. The facts 
 cited shew that thinking is dependent upon the function of the brain, 
 and cannot therefore be the action of an immaterial principle, which 
 could never be affected by any material condition whatever. 
 
 "There are other difficulties. If the mind be a spark from God — if 
 it be a part of the Deity Himself, transfused into material organizations 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 119 
 
 (iintl this is the view contended for, by believers in the immortiility of 
 the soul), our faculties oughr to spring forth into nmturity at birth. 
 IJow then shall we explain infantile inanity ] A new born babe has not 
 u spark of intellect, or a glimmer of consciousness. According to 
 popular beli'i', it ought to possess both in full measure, because ot the 
 immatf.rial tliiuking principle. Why, then, does it not think 1 Mani- 
 festly the theory is wrong. No one can carry his memory back to his 
 birth. Ho can remember when he was three years old ; only in a few 
 cases can he recall an earlier date, yet if popular belief were correct, 
 memmy ought to be contemporaneotis with life from its very first immient. 
 
 " Again, if all men partake alike of this divine thinking essence, 
 which they are supposed to have inherited from Adam, or received in- 
 dividually at birth, why do they not manifest the same degree of in- 
 telligence and shew the same disposition ? Why is there such an intinile 
 diversity among men ? Why is one man shrewd, while another is dull 
 and doltish 1 One vicious and depraved, while a fourth is high souled 
 and virtuous? Some good, others bad ( Some kind, others harsh and 
 inconsiderate 1 Some docile and gentle, while others are fierce and un- 
 tractable, and so on? There ought to be uniformity of manifestation, if 
 there be uniformity of power. 
 
 " These then are so many obstacles in the way of the doctrine which 
 constitutes the very foundation of all popular religion. They disprove 
 that man is a material entity, capable of disembodied existence. They 
 shew him to be a compound — a creature of liviny organization — a being 
 created from the dust of the ground, vivified with life from God, and en- 
 nobled with qualities which constitute him ' the image of God ; ' but 
 nevertheless mortal in constitution. Why should there be so much in- 
 veterate opposition to this view ? Is not all material evidence in its 
 favour ? If there are mysteries in it, there is none the less obviousness. 
 Mystery is no ground of disbelief. This is shewn in the universal 
 credence accorded to the much more mysterious doctrine of the immor- 
 tality of the soul. If it come to that, we are surrounded with mystery. 
 We can only approximate to truth ; the liow of any organic process is 
 utterly beyond comprehension ; yet this does not prevent us in most 
 matters from recognising the result in its proper subordinate relation- 
 ship. Though we are unable to understand the mode in which nerve 
 communicates sensation, muscle generates strength, blood supplies life, 
 tfec, we do not deny that these agencies are the proximate causes of the 
 results developed, whether in man or animals. Now, why should there 
 be an exception in the case of thought ? What we know of it is all 
 connected with physical organization. We have no experience of 
 human mind, apart from human brain. In fact we have no experience 
 of any human faculty apart from its material manifestation ; and in 
 ordinary sensible thinking, the various living powers of man, are seen 
 and practically acknowledged to be the properties of the numerous 
 organs which collectively compose himself. If he sees, he has an eve 
 to see ; if he hears, he has an ear to hear ; and without these organs, he 
 can neither see nor hear ; and in proportion as these organs are per- 
 
120 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 f f 
 
 -ii 
 
 'I 
 
 1 
 
 i'ectly formed, is there perfect sight or hearing. Wliy should not this 
 principle bo applied to the mind? The parallel is complete, Man 
 thinks, and he has a brain to think with ; and in proportion as the 
 brain is properly organized and developed, does he think comprehen- 
 sively and well. If it be large, there is power and scope of mind ; if 
 small there is mediocrity ; if below par, there is intellectual deficiency, 
 as illustrated in the case of idiots. These are facts apart altogether from 
 the modern science of phrenology; and their tendency is unmistake- 
 able. They prove the connection of mind with living brain substance, 
 however mysterious that connection may be and overturn the theory of 
 metaphysical abstraction. Some say ' No,' to all this : ' the brain is 
 simply the medium of the soul's maii'festation ; deficiency of intellect, 
 and other mental irregularities are the result of imperfection in the 
 niediumship ;' but here again gratuico.:.3 t'leory is introduced. The an- 
 swer begs the question. // assumes the very point at issue, viz : The 
 existence of a thinking abstraction to manifest itself This kind of 
 argument would not be admitted in the consideration of any other 
 question. But suppose we accept the explanation, it avails nothing for 
 the popular theory ; for if the soul cannot manifest itself —cannot reason, 
 reflect, he conscious, love, hate, &c., — without a material 'medium,' 
 what is its value as a thinking agent — when witho atthat medium ; that is, 
 when the body is in the grave ? The explanation, however, cannot be 
 accepted. It is the ingenious suggestion of a philosophy which in in 
 straits to preserve itself from confusion. How much vispv to recognise 
 the fact which presents itself to our actual experienc: iia".ely, <iiat all 
 our conscious as well as unconscious powers as living bom ■ are the re- 
 sult of a conjunction between the life power of God, and the substance 
 of our organization, and do nut exist apart from that connection in 
 which they are developed." — Twelve Lectures, pp. 34 — 39. 
 
 The following extracts from an able article by Dr. Thomas, on " Odo- 
 logy>" in reply to, and in explanation and refutation of the pretensions 
 of so-called " spiritualism, ' are much to the point in this relation, and 
 will be perused with interest. He says : 
 
 " Professor Reichenbach, in his experiment on certain crystals and 
 persons, through the medium of highly sensitive individuals, has ascer- 
 tained that a fluid of a blue and yellow colour, more subtle than elec- 
 tricity, is thrown off from the poles of the crystals, and from the ends of 
 the fingers. It is not visible to persons in a normal state of the nervous 
 system, which is adapted only to the perception of ordinary phenomena ; 
 but when the brain is exalted beyond what is usual, though short of 
 actual insanity, things invisible to others are perceived, pertaining to 
 this highly attenuated or rarified exhalation, which is probably the 
 electro-magnetic fluid reduced to an aura by the peculiar atomic or- 
 ganization of the bodies from which it is given off. On this fluid Reich- 
 enbach has bestowed the name of O D ; t suppose for the same reason 
 that Dr. Faraday styles the electrical poles ekdrods (electrodes) from 
 electron, amber, (by "^he friction of which electricity was first artificially 
 discerned,) and. orfos, a way — the poles being regarded rceroly as the doors 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 11^ 
 
 or ways by which electricity passes. The od is the boundary of the de- 
 composing matter in the direction of the electric currei-t. Reichenbach's 
 fluid passes off at the ods or poles, and as he regards it as something else 
 than electricity, magnetism, or galvanism, he calls it by another name 
 even, the Greco chemical term for the extremity from which it exhales. 
 
 " I have styled this article Odolofjy (from logos, a discourse, and od) or 
 discourse upon (>d. Not that I am going to discuss the subject of Od, 
 Reichenbachically ; but believing that the phenomena (of so-called 
 Spiritualism) referred to, are odistic, if anything, I hjive chosen to de- 
 nominate what I have to say upon the subject by Odology, rather than 
 by Pneumatology, Psychology, or any other word which concedes the 
 unproved and unproveable affirmation of the existence of supposed dead 
 men's ghosts disembodiedly. 
 
 "The Electro-magnetic Od is constantly passing off from the elec- 
 trodes, or poles, of animal bodies and certain crystals. It is probable 
 that our bodies are enveloped with a halo of it, for everything has its 
 halo according to the following testimony : ' It is well known,' says 
 Mr. (riiffiths, ' that around and adhering to all surfaces there is a Imlo 
 of demi-transparent light, seen only, however, when the object for experi- 
 ment is in a certain position with regard to the eye, and the light which 
 fails upon it. This halo is not dependent on any peculiarity of colour 
 or material, for it encompasses every object in nature, whether it belong 
 to the animal, vegetable, or mineral kingdom ; whether it be square or 
 round, black or white, opaque or transparent, solid or fluid,' — Silliman^s 
 Jaarnal, Jany., 1840. 
 
 " The halo of our bodies, it is probable, consists of Reichenbach's odic 
 fluid, the colour of v/hich is visible to those who are highly odic, or in 
 a state in which the od is abundantly generated. It is of a delicate blue 
 when given off" from the positive electrode, and yellow from the negative 
 pole of crystal. From the finger tips of a male subject, it exhales of a 
 blue colour about an inch long ; but, from those of a female, the jet is 
 inconsiderable, imparting, as it were, a luminousness to their extremities. 
 
 " From grave-yards this odic exhalation is abundant. It has been 
 seen to cover a necropolis to a depth of four feet, as a lambent blue haze. 
 This is doubtless the fluid generated by the decomposing animal matter 
 beneath the sod. Like phantom-ships at sea, produced by refraction of 
 the light reflected on the firmament from real ships, phantom appear- 
 ances are sometimes seen by sensitive nervous systems, produced by re- 
 fraction of the odic rays in and upon the mirror formed by the mag- 
 netic halo of the earth, which emanate from the fo^-ms corrupting in the 
 dust thereof. These phantoms (in Greek styled phantasma, according 
 to Griesbach) are called ' separate ' or ' disembodied sjnrits', by the ignor- 
 ant and superstitious, under the supposition that they are the real men 
 and women — boys and girls, who used to enact life's follies in the flesh I 
 They are no doubt, as real as phantom-ships ; and as awfully mysterious 
 to the unphilosophical and scripturally unenlightened, as they are to the 
 untutored barbarians of the forecastle. But real as the phantom ship 
 spectres are, who would be so crazy as to maintain that they are the 
 
 i^ 
 
»PW 
 
 
 ■I ;.^ 
 
 ■*«.),:. 
 
 122 THIi BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 souls or spirits of the ships which gave them motion over the dark blue 
 sea ? or that they are the disembodied ghosts of the vessels caught up to 
 the third heavens ! Yet this would be just as rational, as the psycho- 
 logical theosophisms of the schools, pulpits, and ' circles,' about souls, 
 ghosts, and spirit worlds. 
 
 " There are a few discoveries in electrical science worth knowing in 
 connection with this subject. Professor Moser, as the result of his 
 researches in Thermography, remarks that 'all bodies radiate light, 
 even in complete darkness.' Again, he says * the rays of this light act as 
 ordinary light ; ' and that ' two bodies constantly impress their image 
 on each other, even in complete darkness.' Thermographic experiments 
 prove these principles, and lead him to the conclusion that there is 
 latent light in certain vapours as well as latent heat. The ordinary con- 
 dition of the human brain, and organs supplied by its nerves, is that of 
 adaptation to the common exterior aspect of imponderable matters, such 
 as light, heat, the grosser forms of electricity, sound, &c. But there is 
 a more exalted or refined perception of these things, which the animal 
 organization, of its own power, however intensified by inherent excita- 
 tion, cannot attain to. Our perception of the latent imponderables, latent 
 light, latent heat, latent electricity or od, latent sounds, &c., may be 
 rendered more acute than ordinary ; but it can never rise to the highest 
 penetration, which is possible, without the superaddition of something 
 which the animal nature possesses only to a very limited degree. This 
 something is the Spirit of God witJmit measure. All living animals have 
 it in some degree ; for ' in God ' they ' live and move and have their 
 being ; ' and if He were to gather unto Himself His Spirit and His breath, 
 all flesh, shall perish together, and man shall turn again unto dust. 
 This minimum possession of God's Spirit, possessed by quadrupeds and 
 man, is just sufficient for the purposes of that peculiar constitution of 
 things we call 'this life;' but for the physical perception of things 
 visible to beings of a more refined organization than ours, the sight of 
 which will be vouchsafed at a future time, called the ' world to come,' 
 the present amount of Spirit is not sufficient. This can do for man 
 what is proved, and what may yet be proved ; but not what is ran- 
 domly affirmed. He is not ordinarily in harmony with the latent im- 
 ponderables ; but God is intensely and completely so. Hence ' the dark- 
 ness and the light are both alike to him.' If a man were imprisoned in 
 darkness a thousand feet below the earth's surface, God would see him 
 as distinctly as we see each other above ground in the light of noon-day. 
 Men profess to believe this ; but upon what principle is it that God sees 
 thus in darkness ? Because His nature, every atom of which is, as it 
 were, condensed lightning, glowing with such an intensity, that its radi- 
 ation is felt throughout the boundless universe, penetrating through all 
 substances, and developing life and motion in all things, from the 
 minutest animalcule to the globe of the vastest magnitude. Hence 
 He is called ' light, -and ' a consuming fire.' The rays from His presence 
 called Spirit, diluted with the grosser menstrua of the earth's products, 
 place Him in inner relation to the imponderables, which are but one and 
 
 hie. 
 
«1 
 
 .<i<j! testimonies. 
 
 123 
 
 the same principle, variously developed by the media through which it 
 passes into the receptacle whence it came. Thus, for instance, the most 
 subtle principle of the earth's halo is spirit, which is called by different 
 names, such as electricity, magnetism, &c. This halo is its reservoir, as 
 it were. It is diluted with atmospheric air. We breathe it. It per 
 vades every atom of our bodies ; and having enabled our organization to 
 perform its functions, it exhales from the electrodes of our system as Od 
 into i\if reservoir, whence we derive it by breathing. Thus a circle or 
 circuit exists of the external atomic form — changing fluid, internal trans- 
 formed matter, and nervous current, closing the circuit by Od (latent 
 light radiating in darkness) exhaling into the outer fluid." 
 
 " Now this outer reservoir of fluid may be regarded as a highly pol- 
 ished and extremely sensitive mirror, in which can be excited latent 
 odic spectres, which become visible sometimes to those whose brains are 
 subjected to odic exaltation. The spectral impression may emanate from 
 corrupting bodies, mineral or other substances, and from living brains 
 acting upon other living brains. Reichenbach's grave-yard experi- 
 ments have demonstrated the first ; thermo-electrography the second, 
 and animal magnetism, in all its varieties, the third. 
 
 " We may adduce here a philosophical experiment illustrative of 
 what we mean by latent spectral impressions. Take a piece of polished 
 ^•netal, glass, or japanned tin, the temperature of which is low, and hav- 
 ing laid upon it a wafer, coin or any other such object, breathe upon the 
 surface, allow the breath entirely to disappear, then toss the object off" 
 the surface and examine it minutely, no trace of anything is visible, yet a 
 spectral impression exists on that surface, which may be evoked bi/ 
 breathing upon it. A form resembling the object at once appears, and what 
 is very remarkable, it may be called forth many times in succession, and 
 even at the end of months. Other instances of the kind have been subse- 
 quently described by M. Moser. — Draper's Text Book of Chemistry, 
 p. 97. 
 
 " M. Karsten placed a coin on a piece of plate glass, which being sup- 
 ported by a plate of metal not insulated, and the sparks from the con- 
 ductor of an electrifying machine were made to strike on the coin, 
 thereby causing them to pass simultaneously through the coin and the 
 metallic plate, after one hundred turns of the machine, the coin was 
 removed, the glass plate appeared perfectly unaltered, (the ghost was 
 invisible) but when breathed upon, a perfect impression of the coin in its 
 most minute details became visible. 
 
 " M. Kp.rsten says the impression is not produced by traces of the elec- 
 tric fluid remaining adherent to the glass plate ; because the impression 
 still remains with great distinctness after all traces of electricity have 
 disappeared, after the glass has been wiped with a handkerchief. And 
 again, these impressions are neither destroyed nor even weakened by 
 passing a stream of the opposite electricity over them. — Fisher's Pho- 
 togenic Manipulation. Part 2, pp. 39, 42, 46. 
 
 " From these experiments we see that a thing may exist and yet be invisi- 
 ble. Furthermore, that by breathing upon the thing impressed, things hidden 
 
 U 
 
ill': it 
 
 
 
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 124 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEypLOGT. 
 
 may be manifested, thirdly, that this can be eflfected at the end of months ; 
 and fourthly, that unseen, but real impressions of words and figures, can he 
 made on surfaces by electricity, and afterwards made visible by breathing. 
 These principles are scientific demonstrations. And pray what is science 1 
 It is knowledge. Human knowledge or science, when it is really know- 
 ledge consists of the little men have discovered — the few general facts they 
 have found obtaining in the universe, and more especially in this terrestrial 
 system in relation to the earth, its substances and man upon it. Men know 
 but little of the laws to which God has subjected this earth and the things 
 belonging to it, compared with what remains to be discovered or revealed. 
 The most scientific of men are comparatively very ignorant. Their know- 
 ledge of general facts is exceedingly limited, and their reasonings upon 
 them, and their deductions very often, more often than otherwise, 
 remarkably illogical, and singularly absurd. The wisest among them 
 are free to confess this. And if the wise be fools in science, how grossly 
 ignorant and foolish must the multitude be, which troubles not itself 
 with general facts, right reason, or scientific principles at all ! And yet 
 it is the ignorant who undertake to draw conclusions from data the 
 most recondite, and pronounce the Bible a cheat, if it teach not accord- 
 ing to what they have predetermined it ought tc teach. But after all 
 the multitude is not so much to blame as their guides. The theo- 
 sophist reasons out from insufficient data a crude theory which pleases 
 his fleshly mind, and then goes to the Bible to cull sounding epithets to 
 sanctify it ; instead of allowing God's Holy Word to teach him as a babe, 
 and then to prove all things by its rule. This procedure is emphatically 
 the folly of our age. All classes are guilty of it, and, in consequence, 
 rush headlong to the adoption of theories which destroy the truth and 
 stultify themselves. 
 
 " General facts are the laws by and through which God sustains all 
 things and operates upon them. By these laws a relationship is estab- 
 lished between Him and man, who is subjected to their operation in 
 common with minerals and vegetables. Thus, electricity acts uniformly, 
 whatever the nature of the thing acted upon ; the products of that action 
 vary according to the medium through which it acts. Like electricities 
 repel and unlike ones attract, whether minerals, vegetables, clouds, or 
 animal substances, be the subject of their power. 
 
 " When God speaks to man. He speaks electrically, that is by His 
 Spirit, for electricity is the term science has bestowed upon what the 
 Bible styles spirit. All physical phenomena are produced by the spirit act- 
 ing according to laws peculiar to it, a very few of which are found scat- 
 tered about in works of science. When the Creator wills to speak, He does 
 it by the same spirit that shivers the sturdy oak, or rends the rocks 
 asunder. Sometimes He communicates His mind by making direct 
 spectral impressions on the magnetic mirror of the brain. In this case 
 a man in his sleep sees objects and hears sounds that have no real exis- 
 tence, but are representatives of realities, past, present, or future. These 
 are the dreams and visions of the prophets. Sometimes He speaks media- 
 tely but still electrically, as through Jesug Christ and His Apostles, whose 
 
TESTIMONIES. / 
 
 125 
 
 or 
 
 lose 
 
 method we will look into briefly in connection with the principles 
 brought out in M. Karsten and Dr. Draper's experiments." 
 
 " Things, ideas, or images may exist on the brain's tablet or sensorium, 
 and yet be invisible ; that is, not be recollected by the individual who 
 received them ; and consequently invisible to all other persons, from his 
 inability to utter them. Though thus invisible, the ideas are neverthe- 
 less existent and actually present within. They exist, however, in the 
 state of latent spectral impressions, and in order to be evoked or made 
 visible, they need to be breathed upon by the same principle that im- 
 pressed them upon the sensorium. Now the sensoria, or magnetic 
 mirrors, or minds of the apostles had been prepared — Luke i. 17, or 
 highly polished (to speak artistically), by the process they had under- 
 gone by the ministry of John the Baptizer. They were in that state 
 which is represented by the polished metal, or glass, in Dr. Draper's 
 experiment, ready for the coin to be impressed upon it. Jesus came, the 
 medium through which the Father operated in word and deed — John v. 
 30. He spoke the words, laying them so to speak, like coins upon the 
 polished tables of their hearts ; while the Father who performed the 
 miracles, passed, by their effect, the electricity of His Spirit, as it were, 
 through the words and their sensoria, stamping impressions there after 
 the illustrafion of M. Karsten's experiment with the electrifying ma- 
 chine. ' I can of mine ownself do nothing,' said the Lord Jesus ; * but 
 the Father is in Me. The words that I speak unto you, I speak not of 
 Myself ; but the Father that dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.' 
 This proves what we have said : that Jesus was the Father's medium, 
 through whom, by His Spirit, He operated on men's minds by words 
 confirmed by miracles, in strict accordance with the laws illustrated by 
 the experiments before us. 
 
 " The Apostles saw and heard many things during their attendance on 
 the instructions of the Great Teacher, which continued to the end of 
 months, as hidden spectral impressions upon their sensoria, but which 
 were afterwards evoked in Ifces of living light. They saw Jesus ride 
 into Jerusalem on an ass' colt, as predicted by Zechariah. But one of 
 them referring to it says, ' These things understood not His disciples at 
 the first, hit when Jesus was glorified, then remembered they that these 
 things were written of Him, and that they had done these things unto 
 Him.' — John xii. 16. They knew what was written in the prophet, 
 and they saw what the people did on the occasion referred to, but their 
 knowledge was a latent spectre until made manifest some time after at 
 the glorification of Jesus. But what happened then by which these 
 latent spectral impressions were evoked 1 The Spirit was breathed upon 
 them after the illustration contained in Dr. Draper's experiment. But 
 why were they not evoked before Jesus was glorified ? For the reason 
 assigned by John, in speaking of the gift of the Spirit — * The Holy 
 Spirit,' says he, ' was not yet given ; because tliat Jesus was not yet glo- 
 rified' — John viii. 39. Speaking of His teachings, Jesus said to 
 thorn, ' These things have I told you, that when the time sJmU come, ye may 
 remember that I told you of them. When the Spirit of the truth 
 
i J. 
 
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 I 
 
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 I' 
 
 126 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 is come, it will guide you into all truth ; It shall glorify Me' — John xvi. 
 4, 13, 14. The glorification in this sense, was the receiving things con- 
 cerning Jesus, and showing them to the Apostles — looking the impres- 
 sions already existing, and communicating new ones, as evinced in their 
 writings. In this way they were glorified as well as Jesus ; for receiving 
 the Spirit of the truth it became in them as a fountain of living streams ; 
 thus whom Fe justified, them He also glorified — Rom. viii. 39. The 
 Lord Jesus was glorified in a certain sense, after His resurrection, be- 
 fore He was received up into glory ; and therefore before He ascended, 
 He gave a measure of the Spirit to his Apostles, not a full charge as on 
 Pentecost, but a sufficient charge, so to speak, to evoke the hidden spec- 
 ti"al impressions, tae effect of which electrification is seen in their words 
 and actior bv ' '^^he Ascension and Pentecost, compared with those 
 
 before the o. u or In bringing out these impressions, He proceeded 
 as in Karsten /i^ J'\j.jer'B experiments with the coins; for the Apostle 
 says, ' He breathed upon them and said, Receive ye Holy Spirit ;' and 
 from that day ■' '":^ had au^^iiority to remit sin." — "Odology," by Dr. Thomas, 
 pp. 8-16. 
 
 ARNOBIUS.- iHli . OGMA PUFFETH UP. 
 
 Arnobius, arguing the mortality of man, says : " Wherefore, we should 
 not be deceived or deluded with vain hopes, by that which a new class 
 of men elated with an extravagant opinion of themselves tell us ; that 
 souls are immortal next in rank to tJie Supreme God, derived from Him as 
 Creator and Father, divine, wise, inspired with knowledge, and free from 
 stain ox gross matter." 
 
 Theologians have done much to inflate the natural pride, haughtiness, 
 and vanity of man, by attributing to the soul inherent immortality, and 
 a real value which the Bible nowhere places upon it. It is quite a com- 
 mon thing to hear from the pulpit statements repi'esenting that figures 
 fail in computing the value of one soul ; that if it were possible to con- 
 tinue the multiplication of figures for milliolls of years, they would then 
 fall infinitely short of any approximation, on any intrinsic basis, of the va- 
 lue of the human soul. Men in modern times, have adopted the extravagant 
 and arrogant language attributed by the Spirit in Isaiah to the proud king 
 of Babylon, the representative capitalization of that imperious nation : 
 " How art thou fallen from heaven, Lucifer, son of the morning ! how 
 art thou cut down to the ground, thou which didst weaken the nations ! 
 For thou hast said in thine heart I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt 
 my throne above the stars of God ; I will sit also upon the mount of the 
 congregation, in the sides of the north ; I will ascend above the height 
 of the clouds, I will be like the Most High" — Isa. iv. 12-14. 
 
 The men who, in Old and New Testament times, attained to the clear- 
 est ideas of God, Creator, Father, Sovereign Ruler, Preserver, and Re- 
 deemer, must surel}' have acquired correct views and just conceptions of 
 man, the creature. Their utterances, therefore, concerning man, should 
 have due weight with us. What then do we find t And how do they 
 speak of man individually and racially, fearfully and wonderfully organ- 
 
 art, 
 
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 Uar- 
 
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 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 127 
 
 ized though he be 'i They speak in most cle[»reciative tones of themeelves 
 and the race. This is pathetically set forth in the following passages : 
 " Man that is bom of a woman is of few days and fnll of ti'ouble. He 
 Cometh forth as a flower, and is cut down, he fleeth also as a shadow and 
 continueth not" — Job xiv. 1-2. " I have said to corruption thou art my 
 father, to the worm thou art my mother and my sister.". — ch. xvii. 14. 
 "The worm shall feed sweetly on him, he shall be no more remem- 
 bered ; and wickedness (in him) shall be broken as a tree" — ch xxiv. 19, 
 20. The result of Job's wonderful pei-sonal experience is recorded in 
 chapxlii. verses 5 and 6 : " I have heard of Thee (Jehovah) by the bearing 
 of the ear ; but now mine eye seeth Thee ; wherefore, I abhor myself, 
 and repent in dust and ashes." We meet with similar language in the 
 Psalms: "I am a worm and no man" — Ps. xxii. 6. Although the ex- 
 pression applies undoubtedly to Messiah, it applies by virtue of His 
 humanity— His relation — to our race. Another passage, Ps. xxxviii. 7, 
 unquestionably also applies in the spiritual sense to Christ : " For my 
 loins are filled with a loathsome disease ; and there is no soundness in 
 my flesh." This is the disease of sin which He inherited in His flesh, 
 being a son of Adam by His mother Mary. The Sjnrit addressing Israel 
 collectively, through Isaiah, in reference to national restoration and res- 
 titution, uses the following emphatic language, the very reverse of that 
 used by the Babylonians already quotec : " Fear not thou worm, Jacob." 
 — Isa, xli. 14. Behold also, the estimate which Abraham, the friend of 
 God, the father of the faithful, formed of himself : " Behold, now, I 
 have taken upon me to speak to the Lord, which am but dust and ashes." 
 — Gen. xviii. 27. Balaam, under the influence of Divine inspiration, 
 asks : " Who can count the dtist of Jacob, and the number of the fourth 
 part of Israel?" — Numb, xxiii. 10. "He (God) knoweth our frame ; 
 He remembereth that we are dust * As for man his days are as grass ; as 
 ii flower of the field so he perisheth. For the wind (spirit) passeth over 
 it, and it is gone, and the place thereof shall know it no more." — Ps. ciii. 
 14-16. " All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of 
 the field : the grass withereth, the flower fadeth, because the spirit of 
 of the Lord bloweth upon it. Surely the people is g^'oss." — Isa. xl. 6-7. 
 " Behold the nations are as drop of a bucket, and are counted as tlie 
 small dust of the balance ; V^ehold, he taketh up the isles as a very small 
 tiling. All nations before Him are as nothing ; and they are counted to Hirn 
 Jess than nothing and vanity" — verses 15-16. Paul (Rom. viii. 21), re- 
 jiresents mankind as held in the bondage of corruption, and he himself, 
 although a subject of inspiration, and a chosen vessel of Jehovah's, be- 
 wails his own vileness and unworthiness in such language'as this : " O, 
 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from this body of death?" 
 Surely in all this language, so strikingly descriptive of man, there is no- 
 thing to warrant the univeraal deification of man by the ancient heathen, 
 nor the high flowing language applied descriptively to man in modern 
 theology. In the beginning man was fully and faithfully described by 
 his Maker in the following concise and emphatic language.- " Dust thou 
 art, and unto dust shall thou return." — Compiler. 
 
 a' 
 
128 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ETERNAL TORMENT. 
 
 r. 
 
 S' 
 
 If it be impossible to discuss the question of the nature of man, or 
 Inherent Immortality, without the introduction of the elements of im- 
 materiality and Materialism, matter and mind ; much less possible is it to 
 do so, without involving the cognate dogma of Eternal Torment. So 
 closely connected is the latter with the first named, that the one hangs 
 upon the other ; the one having originated from the other, and each 
 mutually contributing, in the minds of men, to the perpetuation of 
 the other. 
 
 How very differently do the advocates of eternal torments represent 
 the state of the dead, the wicked dead, from the description i given in 
 the Sacred Oracles, of the solemn silence of the grave, " where the 
 wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest " — where the slum- 
 bering repose of the departed, resting in the sleep of death (unconscious- 
 ness, or an entire cessation of being or existence), is undisturbed and 
 unbroken. Job, iii. 20-22, speaks of the miserable and bitter in soul 
 as longing for death, seeking it eagerly, rejoicing exceedingly, and 
 glad, when they can find the grave I Jacob, (Gen. xxxvii. 34-35,) in 
 his agony of mind, over the loss of his much loved son Joseph, when he 
 believed him to have been destroyed by wild beasts, refused to be com- 
 forted, and said : " I will go down into the grave unto my son, mourn- 
 ing." Jacob could only have looked upon the grave as Job did, and as 
 it is generally in Scripture represented, as a place of calm repose and 
 quiet rest. It will not do here to separate the soul, as a living entity, 
 from the body. The Scriptures indicate no such separation. If the 
 soul be the man, and the body the shell, if the soul goes to torment, and 
 the shell-body — the inanimate clay — tabernacle only, to the grave, then 
 what a mockery to speak; in the language of Scripture, of the grave as 
 a place of rest for the '^wicked" and the "weary;" and how greatly 
 mistaken must Job and Jacob have been. So also must have been 
 David (Psalm, xlix. 15), when he says, contrasting his own future, 
 in the light of the resurrection, with the destiny of the rich and 
 prosperous wicked ; " But God will redeem my soul from the power of 
 the grave, for He shall receive me." This is evidently in allusion to 
 what David says (Psalm xvii. 15), " As for me, I will behold thy face in 
 righteousness ; I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness." 
 These expressions, moreover, are in entire harmony with what the 
 Spirit, through David, enunciated concerning the Messiah. Psalm xvi. 
 10, quoted by Peter at the memorable gathering on the day of Pente- 
 cost ; " For Thou wilt not leave my soul in {Sheol, Hades, or) the grave, 
 neither wilt thou suffer Thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt 
 shew me the path of life." Peter told his hearers on the day of Pente- 
 cost (Acts ii. 34) that David had not then ascended into heaven, but 
 (verse 29) was both dead and buried, his sepulchre being extant 
 at that day. From these passages we learn that the souls of David 
 and of Christ went to t/ie grave, also that through the grave is the 
 "path of hfe," this being in accordance with Paul's statement (1 Cor. xv. 
 
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 TESTIMONIES. 
 
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 129 
 
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 Lhe 
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 20) where he represents " Christ risen from the decul, and becoine the 
 first fruits of them that slept." Also with Christ's own declaration to 
 John (Rev. i. 5), where He styles Himself, not His bodi^, the first begot- 
 ten of the dead. — See also Romans vi. 9, " Knowing that Christ being 
 raised from the dead, dieth no more, death hath no more dominion aver 
 Him." The language of the angel to the women, at the tomb of Jesus, 
 is remarkable and emphatic (Math, xxviii. 6) : " He is not here, H«* 
 is risen. Come, see the place where the Lord (not His Body) lay." I 
 need not multiply quotations. These shew clearly that the individual 
 entity, soul and body, goes to the grave. A few more words, however, 
 in reference to David. Deity through Nathan the prophet (2 Sam. vii. 
 8-17), made a covenant with David. This covenant, among other 
 things included, (1st.) The raising up of a Son (Christ, see Heb. i. 5} 
 who (2) should establish David's throne and Kingdom, (3) in David's- 
 presence, (4) afier David should sleep with his fathers. In David's last 
 words (2 Sam. xxiii. 5), he alludes to this covenant, and styles it " all 
 his salvation and all his desire," although humanly speaking at that time 
 appearances were against its realization. The sovereignty of David's 
 house came to an end with the reign of Zedekiah, tlie last reigning 
 prince of David's line, who was carried captive into Babylon and cruelly 
 treated — (2 Kings xxv. 7). Some time before this took place, the 
 prophet Ezekiel was sent by God, to Zedekiah with this remarkable 
 message — (Ezekiel xxi. 25-27) : " And thou, profane wicked prince of 
 Israel, whose day is come, when iniquity shall have an end, thus saith 
 the Lord God : Remove the diadem, and take off the crown ; this shall 
 not be the same ; exalt him that is low and abase him that is high. I 
 will overturn, overturn, overturn, it ; and it (the Jewish Monarchy) shall 
 be no more, UNTIL He come whose right (as Prince Royal of Judah) it 
 is, and I will give it Him." The Jewish nation has had three notable 
 overturnings, first by the Babylonians, second by Antiochus Epiphanes, 
 and thirdly by the Romans under Titus. At the conference held at 
 Jerusalem (Acts xv), James, endorsing a previous speech of Simeon's 
 declares (verse xiv) the purpose of God, in sending the Gospel 
 to the Gentiles, to be, the taking out from among them, of a people for 
 His name, which has been the work of the last 1800 years, and that 
 after this work is accomplished, Christ will return, in accordance with 
 the prophecy of the Spirit by Amos, " to build again the tabernacle of 
 David, which is fallen down ; to build again the ruins thereof and to 
 set it up." The first part of Christ's work according to the Scriptures, 
 at His coming, is to raise His sleeping saints, David among the number. 
 "For, just as Dr. Candlish contends, that Abraham must be raised from 
 the dead to inherit the Land of Promise, — the Land of Canaan, — so must 
 David be raised from the dead in order to the fulfilment of the promise by 
 Nathan, that Christ, David's son and David's Lord, shall establish on 
 earth David's throne and David's kingdom, in David's presence. The 
 spirit through Isaiah (chap. Iv. 3,) invites men thus : " Incline your 
 ear and come unto me. hear and your soul shall live (the soul that has 
 been dead 1) ; and I will make an everlasting covenant with you, even 
 9 
 
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 130 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 the sure mercies of David," (or the mercies made sure to David). And in 
 Acts xiii. 34, Paul shews that these are confirmed and guaranteed, by 
 the resurrection of Christ ; as Peter on Pentecost shews (Acts ii. 30), that 
 God raised up Christ to sit on David's throne, as promised by the angel 
 to Mary TLuke i. 32-33). In the light of these testimonies we can 
 have no aoubt, as to what David means in saying, " But God will 
 redeem my s(nd (my life, me, myself) from the power of the grave, for 
 He will receive me" (or as Judge Halstead has it, send for, or fetch me, 
 bring me up, by a resurrection from the dead). 
 
 What clearer views can we have of the state of the dead, and the con- 
 trast between the destinies of the righteous and the wicked, than we 
 !iave in this 49th Psalm, verse 14, " Like sheep they (the wicked rich) 
 are laid in the grave ; death shall feed (pasture) on them ; and the "))- 
 right shall have dominion over them in the morning." Halstead says, 
 tread with the feet over them ; the idea being that when the righteous 
 are raised out of their graves in the morning of the resurrection, th is 
 class of the wicked remain in their graves, and are so trampled under 
 the feet of the righteous as also recorded or foretold in Malachi iv. 3 : 
 " And ye shall tread down the wicked ; for they shall be ashes (dust ?) 
 under the soles of your feet in " that day. And their beauty shall con- 
 sume in the grave from their dwelling. — Verse xix. The wicked rich 
 " shall go to the generation of his fathers (to the grave,) they shall never 
 see light. Man that is in honour and understandeth not, is like the beasts 
 that perish." For an excellent rendering of this Psalm founded on th e 
 Hebrew, Greek, Latin and Italian, I beg to refer the reader to Judge 
 Halstead's Theology of the Bible, pp. 132-143. 
 
 In all ages the prosperous rich, and even the wicked rich have been 
 objects of envy and dislike to large portions of mankind — and the self- 
 righteous and " unco guid " would give " sinners " no place in the eart >, 
 did they but possess the power. As, however, they do not, and cannot 
 prevent the sun from shining, and the rain from falling on the wicked 
 as well as the righteous, their implacability and vindictiveness assume 
 another direction, and they joyfully consign, so far as they can, millions 
 on n^Uions of unhappy, unfortunate men, women and children, yea even 
 infants of a " span long," to the intense, acute, burning torments of an 
 endless hell of fire and brimstone, concerning which the most dreadful 
 and terrific descriptions have been given, that the unlicensed imagination 
 of man can possibly conceive — and concerning which the Bible is as 
 silent as the grave. God, however, is more merciful than man — mo re 
 merciful than man is to his fellow-man. He causes His tun to shine and 
 His rain to fall alike on the evil and the good — their crops germinate, 
 grow and ripen, their flocks and herds increase, their vineyards and 
 orchards yield their fruit alike to all appearance. In other portions of 
 this compilation it is clearly shewn from the Scriptures, that what God 
 sets before men is Death and Life. Eternal Death and Eternal Life. 
 Eternal life based upon principles of eternal love and infinite mercy, 
 and offered to man upon conditions — conditions with which it is in the 
 power of man to comply. " He that believeth and is baptized, shall be 
 
te. 
 
 he 
 be 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 131 
 
 saved, he that believeth not, shall be condemned "—shall be beatt-ii 
 with many or few stripes — awarded degrees of punishment, commen- 
 surate, in the eyes of unerring justice with the heinousness of his sins — 
 the things done in body, whether good or bad — resulting in the second 
 ileath. Thus is it set forth in reference to those who have come under 
 responsibility through the light of the gospel. We learn from the 
 Scriptures that the numerous class who never had the glad tidings made 
 known to them, "who have sinned without law, shall perish without 
 law," their end being extinction of existence or destruction. 
 
 The advocates of Eternal Torments contend that the mere loss of 
 eternal life does not constitute adequate punishment for the sins of men, 
 because that man although a finite being, a mere worm of the dust, can, 
 and does commit infinite sin, requiring infinite, unending punishment 
 in the niost exquisite excruciating torment. They contend that if deatli, 
 unconsciousness, cessation of existence, or extinction of being, be the 
 destiny of such a large portion of the human race, and if resurrection be 
 limited to the class already described as responsible, and if Immortality be 
 confined to the righteous only, then that " humanity is a gigantic failure, 
 utterly discreditable to its author " — compiler. 
 
 Well, may Mr. Roberts in his " Defence," page 89, " ask in the name 
 of eternal goodness, on which side does the greatest failure of beneficence 
 He (if we may speak of ' failure ' in relation to any of the schemes of 
 the Almighty) ] on the side of that view which represents the wicked 
 as a vapour of the moment, destined to disappear before the rising of 
 the Sun of Righteousness, leaving the universe tranquil, holy and blessed ; 
 or that which teaches their destiny to be an endless existence of agony 
 and infamy 1 
 
 " Advocates of Eternal Torments in a spirit of what they mistake for 
 sarcasm, say ; ' He (God) brings into existence innumerable millions 
 ot beings, with natural powers capable of splendid development, and 
 of noble utility. But the stream happens to be poisoned at the fountain 
 head, and all its ramifications are filled with corruption, and end in 
 " death." A divine Purifier is dispatched to the mournful scene, and a 
 little amelioration ensues. But the great bulk of the race has no chance 
 of salvation, because they never hear of a Saviour. After a few years of 
 sliameful error, outrageous idolatry, enervating poverty, filthiness of 
 life, barbaric injustice and cruelty, all combining to involve them in the 
 most deplorable physical, intellectual and moral degradation, these 
 countless millions sink at last into a nonentity, out of which they are 
 never to emerge." Mr. Roberts' (page 90) replies ; " The writer of the 
 foregoing extract thinks this is shocking. What can he think of his 
 own view of the matter when placed fairly before him ; ' God has 
 brought into existence countless millions of beings, without the smallest 
 opportunity of their being other than sinful, degraded and miserable ; 
 and in this helpless state of theirs, for which they are not responsible, their 
 destiny is to be consigned, after death, to a state of auguish and suffering, 
 far exceeding mortal conception, and a state to which there is no 
 alleviation, and no prospect of end, but which shall last without in- 
 terruption throughout the endless ages of eternity. 
 
 
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 132 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AOAINST MODEHN THEOLOGY. 
 
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 " Is not this shocking, beyond the power of the mind to endure 1 If 
 ' failure ' is to be the description of ' annihilation,' what word is terrible 
 enough to describe an upshot worse than ten thousand ' failures '( ' If 
 the merits of the two systems are to be tried on grounds like thesf ' " 
 dogma of eternal torments cannot sukvive the process for a . 
 moment. 
 
 "The other view which the advocates of eternal torments condemn 
 with such asperity, shines with a brilliant light ; for what is iti Will 
 the human race in the light of it be a failure ? Far from it ; for from 
 among the corrupt masses of sinful population that crowd the globe, Ood 
 is slowly developing a family, who shall be purified, and made grateful 
 at the experience of evil, and wiio, though relatively, to the several gen- 
 erations, ' a little flock,' will, at the muster on Christ's return, be ' a mul- 
 titude that no man can number,' rejoicing in the power of an endless 
 life ; the ranks of these will be recruited in vast numbers, in the age to 
 come, when mankind will be under the guidance of a Divine govern- 
 ment, and the people all righteous, led into the ways of righteousness 
 and peace, to find, at the close of the thousand years, the*8weet fruits 
 of obedience, in life and joy for evermore. The culmination held up to 
 view, by revelation, shews teeming millions of Immortals on e 4i, 
 whose existence will not be a ' failure,' but a glory for ever. ' E\ t- 
 ing joy shall be upon their heads, they shall obtain joy and gladnc 
 sorrow and sighing shall flee away ! ' 
 
 " But it may be asked what of the untold millions that have passed 
 away 1 The answer is, they are not immured in a malignant hell ; they 
 are not given over to eternal torments j they are not consigned to the 
 unutteiable woe, which many delight to picture in tints of blue, red, and 
 black. They have ceased to be ; they are destroyed ; they are not ; 
 they have vanislied as a dream ; they are like the storm t'-at is past ; 
 the nightmare that has flown before the return of morning light ; the 
 chaos that has given way before the work of arrangement, and up- 
 building. There is no more pain, no more death, no more curse. Old 
 things have passed away ; all things are become new." 
 
 " Some advocates of eternal torments go so far as to say that they see 
 not a single attribute in God worthy of respect in the light of these 
 doctrines. They see no power in making us, no love in extricating our 
 helpless race from the consequences of disobedience, no glory in the 
 grace to be brought at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The theology of 
 the Schools has blinded their eyes. What, if it be that the operations 
 of Wisdom require the Almighty to permit 999 out of every thousand 
 human beings to go out of existence 1 Are we not the clay in the hands 
 of the Potter % All nations before Him are as nothing. Is it so much 
 reflection on His wisdom that He should suff'er sinners to perish, as the 
 dogma that He should torture them for ever? No well-balanced mind 
 will falter in its verdict. The advocates of eternal torment represent a 
 system in which Paganism, dressed up in words and phrases borrowed 
 from the New Testament, is palmed upon the world, as the genuine faith 
 
 he gospel." 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 133 
 
 And to what length a perverted imagination can extend, wlien it 
 gets free scope, let the following picture of hell, by the Rev. J. Furness, 
 shew : — 
 
 " Listen to the tremendous, the horrible uproar of millions and inil- 
 lions of tormented creatures, mad with the fury of hell. Oh, the 
 screams of fear, the groanings of horror, the yells of rage, tl>e cries of 
 pain, the shouts of agony, tiio shrieks of despair, from millions on mil- 
 lions. There you hear them roaring like lions, hissing like serpents, 
 howling like dogs, and wailing like dragons. There you hear the gnash- 
 ing of teeth, and the fearful blasphemies of the devils. Above all you 
 hear the roarings of the thunders of God's anger, which shake hell to 
 its foundations. But there is another sound. There is in hell a sound 
 like that of many waters ; it is as if all the rivers and oceans in the 
 world, were pouring themselves with a great splash down on the floor of 
 hell. Is it then, really the sound of winters ? It is. Are the rivers 
 and oceans of earth pouring themselves into hell ? No. What is it 
 then 1 It is the sound of oceans of tears running down from countless 
 millions of eyes. They cry for (>■ v and ever. They cry because the 
 sulphurous smoke torments theii eyes. They cry bficauso they are in 
 darkness. They cry because they have lost the beautiful heaven. They 
 cry because the sharp fire burns them." 
 
 The third dungeon, the lowest depth of hell is described as follows : — 
 
 "The roof is red-hot ; the walls are red; the floor is like a thick 
 sheet of red-hot iron. See ! On the middle of that floor stands a girl — 
 she looks about sixteen years old. Her feet are bare ; she has neither 
 shoes nor stockings on her feet ; her bare feet stand on the red-hot burn- 
 ing floor. The door of this room has never been opened since she first 
 set her foot on the red-hot floor. Now she sees that the door is open- 
 ing. She rushes forward. She has gone down on her knees on the red- 
 hot floor. Listen! She speaks. She says: 'I have been standing with 
 my bare feet on this red-hot floor for years. Day and night ray only 
 standing place has been this red-hot floor. Sleep never came on for a 
 moment, that I might forget this horrible burning floor. Look ', she 
 says, ' at my burnt and bleeding feet. Let me go off" this burning floor 
 for one moment. Only one single, short moment. Oh ! that in this 
 endless eternity of years I might forget the pain only for one single 
 moment.' The Devil answers her question, ' Do you ask for one moment 
 to forget your pain 1 No ! not for one single moment during the never 
 ending eternity of years shall you ever leave this red-hot floor." 
 
 How dreadful ! what a blasphemous libel on a God of love. A God 
 who " so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that who- 
 soever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life " — 
 whose every action towards our race has been based on love. " And 
 yet," says Mr. Roberts, " this doctrine of eternal torment is the lever 
 of popular religion, nothing could be done without hell and the 
 devil. They are brought to the fore-front in all earnest agitation of 
 popular theology. This is only a logical result ; for if they are true, 
 they are necessarily the most important matters that can be pressed upon 
 human attention." 
 
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 134 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 But to our extracts. As a counterpart to the description of hell by 
 Mr. Furness, I insert, from " Cheever's Powers of the World to Come,"^ 
 the following description of what he calls endless death, so diametrically 
 opposite to anything found in the Bible from beginning to end. He 
 says : 
 
 " The power of an endless death ! Amazing and infinitely dreadful 
 expression ! Yet this hath eternal life its infinite and opposite extreme. 
 Death ! .... Its shadow covers the world, darkens it, and fills 
 all hearts with gloomy fears and forebodings. All their lifetime, 
 through fear of death, men are subject unto bondage. Its shadow is 
 here, but its substance and its power, are the power of an endless life, life in 
 death, death in life, conflicting fw ever There is a tre- 
 mendous emphasis in the declaration that sin, when it is finished, 
 bringeth forth death. When sin is finished, the whole being is alive 
 with it, in a living, positive, active death, perfect, unmingled, unallevi- 
 ated. It is absolute evil, unbalanced, unmodified, unmitigated. Per- 
 fection in sin is the negation of all good, and the active despotism of 
 
 all evil. Neither of these can be without the other As 
 
 the happiness of heaven consists in the knowledge of good, so the misery 
 of hell consists in the knowledge of evil. In both directions the mea- 
 sure is infinite. Approximation towards God, in his knowledge, like- 
 ness and love, is the rule in heaven ; distance from Him and enmity 
 against Him, is the rule in hell — and there is no half way, but a perfec- 
 tion in both extremes There are tremendous images. 
 
 The shock of furious armies, the crash of falling avalanches, mountains 
 overwhelming cities, volcanoes in action, herds of wild beasts confined 
 and roaring in the dungeons of the Coliseum, making the whole struc- 
 ture quake with their bellowings, then all at once let loose, and with a 
 fierce conflict of hunger and rage grappling with one another ; the ele- 
 ments in wild affright and uproar ; earthquakes, conflagrations, floods, 
 pestilences, Avars ; all these are dire images of terror, ruin, desolation, 
 destruction. But all these, and even the stars dropping from heaven, 
 as when a fig-tree casteth her untimely figs, and the whole universe 
 beaten together in chaos, or shrivelling as a parched scroll, all these 
 come short of any representation of eternal death ; they all fail ; they 
 are merely transitory syllables. The moral death is unapproachable by 
 any sfich representation." 
 
 Truly may Mr. Hudson ask : " What more than this could the adver 
 sary do or desire if he were a God ? " 
 
 While some thus contend for the literality of hell as an actual locality, 
 and that the wicked shall be endowed with unending eternal life to suf- 
 fer in it throughout endless ages, otherscontend that hell is a state or con- 
 dition of mind and morals. Dr. Chalmers, in his sermon on " Heaven a 
 Character, and not a Locality," says : " We hold that it would purge 
 theology of many of its errors, and that it would guide and enlighten the 
 practical Christianity of many honest enquirers, if the moral character 
 of lieaven and hell were more distinctly recognised, and held a more 
 prominent place in the regard and contemplations of men." 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 135 
 
 Olshausen, too, speaking of the punishment of hell, says : — 
 
 " The punishment here spoken of is not arbitrary or positive ; the 
 punishment of lovelessness is association with the loveless alone, in that 
 state of discord in the external as well as the internal life, which con- 
 stantly proceeds from the absence of love." — Comments on Math. xxv. 
 46. 
 
 Coleridge remarks, by way of supposition : " Why need we talk of a 
 fiery hell 1 If the will, which is the law of our nature, were withdrawn 
 from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could 
 equal, for a ' spiritual being,' what we should then feel from the anarchy 
 of our powers. It would be conscious madness —a horrid thought." — Table 
 Talk, 1830. 
 
 And so Martineau : — " In many a hospital of mental disease (as it is 
 called,) you have doubtless seen a melancholy being pacing to and fro 
 with rapid strides, and lost to everything around, wringing his hands in 
 incommunicable suffering, and letting fall a low mutter, rising quickly 
 into a shrill cry, his features cut with the graver of sharp anguish, his 
 eye-lids drooping (for he never sleeps) and showering ever scalding tears. 
 It is the maniac of remorse, possibly indeed, made wretched by merely 
 imaginary crimes ; but just as possibly maddened by too true a recol- 
 lection, and what the world would esteem too scrupulous a conscience. 
 Listen to him, and you will often be surprised to find how seemingly 
 slight are the offences, injuries, perhaps, of mere unripened thought, 
 which feed the fires, and whirl the lash of this incipient woe. lie is 
 he dread type of Hell." — Endeavours after the Christian Life, pp. 216, 217. 
 
 Hear again the opposite view set forth." 
 
 Dwight in sermon 107 "Theology," says — " God may punish sin 
 so long as it exists. He who sins through this life, may evidently sin 
 through another such period, and another and another without end. 
 That, while we continue to sin, God may justly punish us, if He can 
 justly punish us at all, is equally evident. . . . The Scrijjiures 
 reach us that sinners who die in impenitence will not cease to sin 
 throughout eternity. , . . The supposition that their sufferings in 
 the future world will be complete, involves in it, as a consequence, that 
 they will continue to sin — (No such statement in the whole liook, 
 (;oMPiLER.) If they were to become penitent and virtuous, they would 
 of course possess many enjoyments, and these of a very impoitant 
 nature " (not much room for enjoyment in the picture drawn by Mr. 
 Furness. ,CoM. ) — 
 
 Gregory the Great, a famous theologian of the sixth century, arguing 
 for the eternity of torment says : " It belongs to the Divine justice 
 that they should never be without punishment, who, in this life nover 
 wished to be without sin." And again, "It is objected that a sin that 
 has had an end should not be punished endlessly. The Omnipotent 
 God is just forsooth, and what was not of eternal perpetration, should 
 not be punished with eternal torment. It might be so, if the Just and 
 Righteous Judge at His coming, should weigh the deeds of men and 
 not their hearts. But the workers of iniquity have ceased to sin 
 
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 136 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 simply because they have ceased to live ; since they would be glad to 
 live for ever, that they might for ever sin. For they desire more to 
 sin than to live, and wish to live always, just in order that they may 
 sin alway. Therefore; as God is just they should never want for 
 penalty, in whose heart it was in this life never to want for sin ; and 
 no limit of retribution isdue to him who desired uu limit of his guilt. ' 
 
 This is special pleading against the sinner with a vengeance. 
 
 The reader will observe too that here eternal torment is based on the 
 sin committed in this life, whereas in the preceding extract eternal 
 torment is based on eternal sinning. — (C.) 
 
 Another, Baxter, in his sermon on Math. xxv,46, says : 
 
 " I would ask you, do you not know that you and all men must die t 
 and would you not be content to suffer a terrible degree of misery 
 everlastingly, rather than die 1 Whatsoever men may say, it is certain 
 they would. Though not to live to us is better than to live in hell, 
 yet men would live in very great misery rather than not live at all if 
 they had their choice." 
 
 In " The Unreasonableness of Infidelity," Part 1st. Book 20, sec. 31, 
 the following passage occurs ; " Not only according to the Schoolmen, 
 but to Augustine also, even according to the truth itself, it is more 
 desirable to be than not to be at all." And Dr. Gordon Hall's Memoir 
 page 95, says ; 
 
 "So dreadful do 1 consider annihilation that I would rather live in 
 pain than not live at all." 
 
 The eternity of suffering and the justice of it are thus argued an d 
 insisted upon by T. M. Post in the " New Englander," 1858, page 133 : 
 
 " If, in his impenitent state the punished offender is adding perpetually 
 to his sin, does not each moment of that penal woe claim the moment 
 next following also, as due to retribution ] and this must be the case 
 immortally with a soul immortally sinning. Ever persisting guilt will 
 require ever persisting punishment, and thus justice may forever for- 
 bid its escape into naught. The only escape from this eternal necessity 
 of justice, binding it to existence, would seem to be in making justice 
 contemporary with crime, or in inflicting it on souls bereft of moral 
 consciousness, and thus incapable of continued sin, both of whicii 
 expedients would seem to be foreign to the idea of ^iunishment, and 
 certainly unsupported by the analogies of the present life." 
 
 McCosh, in his " Divine Government," American Edition, pp. 403, 
 404, draws the following fearful picture of the sinner in hell. " Fixed, 
 like Mazeppa, on a courser over which he has no control, he would feel 
 a kind of ecstacy in the very wildness of his careering. Not only so, 
 but acquiring courage from despair, he may proceed the length of mak- 
 ing war with the Judge, (what is, with God. — Compiler). 
 
 " Since he cannot flee from him, he will perhaps affect to condemn him, 
 or impugn the authority of his law." 
 
 ' Souls who dare look the Omni^)otent tyrant ia- 
 HIh Everlasting face, and tell him that 
 His evil ia not good ! ! ! ' Byron'i Cain. 
 
TESimONIES. 
 
 137 
 
 " But this is by no rr eans so easy a work, for meanwhile God has a wit- 
 ness in every man's bosom. There must be some way of deluding this 
 witness before so bold a step can be taken. The spirit will now try to 
 make the conscience condemn the Judge as being harsh and relentless. 
 Strange and paradoxical as it may appear, it will, to some extent, be 
 successful. It will picture to the conscience condemnation as a dark 
 deed of tyranny and revenge committed by God ; and heMeving or trying 
 to believe tluit God is r{ialignant, it will view Him with the feelings which 
 malignity should inspire. And now the soul will not only be angry with 
 God, but ivill feel as if it did right to be angry, and the war which it car- 
 ries on will not only be that of the passions, but of an evil conscience. . . 
 The war, too, ivill now be incessant. If it were merely that of the pas- 
 sions, there might be cessation, and gaps and intervals ; but being that 
 of a troubled conscience, as well as of a disordered heart, it becomes a 
 constant and everlasting warfare, ivithoiit respite and withmit end." 
 
 To such a pitch of fervour and furor can men work themselves up, in 
 support of a cherished dogma — a do;ima which finds no place in the 
 Divine mind, will, or plan, as revealed to man. Surely there can be no 
 difficulty nor uncharitableness here, in fixing the only harshness, malig- 
 nity and revenge in the case on the writers of the foregoing dreadful 
 utterances. 
 
 The following declaration by the Spirit through Isaiah, disposes sum- 
 marily of the whole matter, shewing most conclusively that man's organi- 
 zation could not hold out in the manner indicated by the sanguinary 
 McCosh : — chap. 57, 16, " I will not contend for ever, neither will T be 
 always wroth ; for the Spirit should fail before me, and the souls which 
 I have made." — Compiler. 
 
 John Foster takes issue with the ideas enunciated by McCosh. He 
 says : — " The allegation of eternal sinfulness is of no avail in vindication 
 of the doctrine, because the firs-t consignment to the dreadful state, 
 necessitates a continuance of the criminality, the doctrine teaching that 
 it is of the essence, and is an awful aggravation of the original consign- 
 ment — that it dooms the condemned to maintain the criminal spirit 
 unchanged forever. The doom to sin as well as to suffer, and accord- 
 ing to the argument, to sin, in order to siijfer, is inflicted, as the punish- 
 ment of the sin committed in the mortal state. Virtually therefore, the 
 eternal punishment is the punishment of the sins of time." 
 
 Upon these two extracts, Mr. Hudson remarks: — " But we may add, 
 in each of these representations, the ' law of nature ' which un<lerlies tlie 
 argument, and which is supposed to be a law of human natux'e, appears 
 as undermining and deranging that nature. The beings here described 
 have ceased, not only to be responsible, but to be human. They are 
 maniacs. And in whatever faculty of the soul, the law of nature is sup- 
 posed to work eternal retribution, it will be found to have ciianged 
 humanity into a monstrosity. According to this view the door of mercy 
 is shut against the lost absolutely and for ever. The final judgment is 
 strictly an irrevocable sentence against them. If they should repent, 
 they would still be utterly and hopelessly lost And the 
 
 
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 138 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 subject of the eternal punishment here described, is no longer a respon- 
 sible being ; is not a person, but a thing. And if the justice of the doom 
 cannot be made out by some infinitude of guilt in this life, then the 
 blasphemy of the terrible epic just quoted is not blasphemy. If, on the 
 other hand, the guilt of a creature which does not end in innocence can- 
 not end in death, then we have a necessity which God himself must de- 
 plore, and the wail of the world of despair is echoed back from tlie 
 dwelling-place of the Most High." 
 
 Who, 1 would ask, in this connection, is prepared to charge God with 
 imperfection of purpose, or lack of power to execute His high behests ? 
 (C.) 
 
 But we find that the theologians are not all agreed as to this terrible 
 destiny, which has been chalked out for man, by man. We find that 
 numerous theologians deny the perpetual commission of sin among the 
 lost, so that like questions of human origin and invention, this too, has 
 its two sides, its advocates and opponents. 
 
 Thus, Augustine, speaking of the two kingdoms, of the blessed and 
 the damned, says : " The former (the blessed) can have no will to sin ; 
 and the latter (the damned) can have no power." Aquinas, asserting the 
 day of judgment to be a final consummation of good and evil, says : 
 "Good will among the blessed will not be merit, but reward ; and evil 
 will among the damned will not be demerit, but punishment only." 
 Lombard tells us that, others confess this evil will to be sin, but they 
 held that it deserves no punishment ; for among the lost there is no 
 scope for desert. And he concludes that " their evil will is un aggrava- 
 tion of their penalty ; by which, however, they merit nothing, because 
 no one acquires merit, save in this life." 
 
 Archbishop King, in his " Origin of Evil," treating of future punish - 
 ments, says : " Sin will be at an end, and the very possibility of sinning, be- 
 fore they shall be inflicted." 
 
 Dr. Willard, in commentin,^ on the Assembly Catechism, question 19, 
 notices the dispute, whether the lost contract new guilt, witli the remark : 
 '' There is much pleaded on both sides, but I will leave it in medio." (A 
 wise resolution truly — C.) 
 
 Swedenborg says : " They (the unrepentant) are cast into hell, where 
 they are compelled, by punishments, not to sin ; but punishments do not 
 take away the will, the intention, and consequent thought of evil ; they 
 only take away the act." Again, " Those who had punished and tor- 
 mented others, are, in their turn, punished and tormented by others ; 
 and this continues until at length their desire abates from fear of pun- 
 ishment." Again, " He, after death, will be chastised and punished ; 
 which will be continued until through fear of punishment, he commit 
 evil no longer, although even then, he can never be induced to do good, 
 from the love of good." 
 
 Others go so far as to assert that " the wicked in hell will, labouring 
 under a sort of happy delusion, prefer remaining there, r.ather than ac- 
 cept deliverance." 
 
 Archbishop King says : " The Divine goodness ic not to be charged 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 139 
 
 with cruelty for letting them continue in that existence though it be very 
 miserable, when they themselves will not have it removed ; or for not 
 altering their condition, which they utterly refuse to have altered. It 
 is better for them, indeed, not to be, than to be ; but only in the opinion 
 of wise men, to which they do not assent." 
 
 For these extracts under this head, I am indebted chiefly to Hudson, 
 who makes use of them in discussing at very considerable length, a 
 series of " Theodicies," or what are called " Vindications of the Divine 
 justice," that is to say ; theories which men of dark and cruel minds 
 have invented, upon, or by, which they attempt, in divers ways, to justify 
 the malignity and vindictiveness, which, in their doctrines, they have 
 imputed to Deity, whose whole course of action towards the human 
 family, as already shewn, has been based upon principles of Immutable 
 love, mercy and justice. I have not made these quotations for purposes 
 of argumeit, but to indicate to the general reader in the first place, the 
 nature of the writings and the vindictive character of the men, who have 
 been foremost in defending a dogma, for the origin of which, mankind 
 are indebted to heathen mythology, but which has been taken up, an<i 
 as we see, hammered into all shapes, by the theologians on the anvils of 
 the schools ; in the second place to shew the lengths to which men of 
 great natural abilities and extensive learning are prepared to go, and the 
 degree of ingenuity and sophistry they are ready to exercise in defence 
 of a dogma nowhere taught in Scripture, but involving, so far as their 
 power, and hopes and wishes can, the unutterable and endless suffering 
 of countless millions of unfortunate men, women and children ; and 
 thirdly, that there has, in all ages, been a class of minds more nol)le, 
 humane, benevolent and merciful, having clearer conceptions of the 
 loving kindness, forbearance, and long-suffering of God, and who, on 
 all occasions joined issue with the malignants, protesting against their 
 sanguinary dogmas. 
 
 The proper answer to all such libels on the benevolent attributes of 
 Deity, is to be found in a thorough knowledge and understanding of the 
 sacred oracles, wherein Deity hath revealed His plan and purpose con- 
 cerning our race, and this earth which we inhabit ; the consequences of 
 the fall ; the present nature and mortality of man ; and the destiny in 
 reserve for such as comply with the conditions of salvation ; even life 
 that shall never end. To such, before the light of the truth of the Gos- 
 pel, the haze enshrouding the elaboration of the " Theodicies," disappears, 
 as the summer mist before the rising sun. I quote a passage from Isaac 
 Taylor, on " Wesley and Methodism," which is much to the point in 
 this relation — Compiler. He says : — 
 
 "When once this question of the after-life has been opened, and wluai 
 it shall have come into the hands of well informed Biblical interprettis, 
 a controversy will ensue, in the progress of which, it will be discovered 
 that, with unobservant eyes, we and our predecessors have been walking 
 up and down, and running hither and thither, among dim notices and 
 indications of the future destinies of the human family, so as to have 
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140 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
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 the Bible, open and free to our use. Those who, through a course of 
 years, have been used to read the Scriptures unshackled by systems, are 
 bound to no conventional mode of belief, such readers must have felt an 
 impatience in waiting — not for the arrival of a new revelation from 
 heaven, but of an ample and unfettered interpretation of that which has 
 so long been in our hands." 
 
 May it be the fate of the reader to realize, and that speedily, how true 
 and how important are these words. The circumstances indicated, and 
 evidently desired by Mr. Taylor, are upon us, and in a feeble way, it 
 may be, the compiler of these pages, and others, are doing their best to 
 point out what the Bible, unfettered by systems, by the schools and 
 divinities, and by the doctrines, traditions and commandments of men, 
 plainly teaches. Bishop Duffield relates of- !Sir Isaac Newton, that he 
 was in the habit of saying, that towards the time of the end, a body of 
 men should arise who would contend for the literal inteipretation of 
 Scripture, amid much opposition and much commotion. These men, 
 though few in number, are at work, and they know something already 
 of the " opposition" and " commotion." — (Compiler). 
 
 The following somewhat lengthly extract from Archbishop Whately, 
 is considered most appropriate for insertion here. 
 
 Eeferring to what is called Restorationism, Dr. Whately says : " On 
 the whole, then the Scriptures do not, I think, afford us any ground for 
 expecting, that those who shall be condemned at the last day, for having 
 wilfully rejected, or rebelled against their Lord, will be finally delivered : 
 — that their doom will ever be reversed. 
 
 " What that doom will be, whether the terms in which it is commonly 
 spoken of in Scripture, — ' death,' ' destruction,' ' perishing,' &c., are to 
 be understood figuratively, as denoting immortal life in a state of misery, 
 or more literally, as denoting a final extinction of existence — this is quite 
 a different question. It is certain that the words ' life,' ' eternal life,' 
 ' immortality,' &c., are always applied to the condition of those, and 
 those only, who shall, at the last day, be approved as ' good' and faithful 
 servants,' who are to ' enter into the joy of their Lord.' 
 
 " ' Life,' as applied to their condition, is usually understood to mean 
 ' happy life,' and that there will be a happy life, we are indeed plainly 
 taught ; but I do not think we are anywhere taught that the word ' life,' 
 does of itself necessarily imply happiness. If so indeed, it would be a 
 mere tautology to speak of a ' happy life ; ' and a contradiction to speak 
 of a ' miserable life ;' which we know is not the case according to tlie 
 usage of any language. In all ages and countries, ' life,' and the words 
 Answering to it in other languages, have always been applied in ordinary 
 discourses, to a wretched life, no less than to a happy one. Life, there- 
 fore, in the received sense of the word, would apply equally to the con- 
 dition of the blest and of the condemned, supposing these last to be 
 destined to continue for ever living in a state of misery. And yet, to 
 their condition the words ' life ' and ' immortality,' are never applied in 
 Scripture. If therefore, we suppose the hearers of Jesus and His Apostles 
 to have understood, as nearly as possible in the ordinary sense, the 
 
I" 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 141 
 
 words employed, they musfc naturally have conceived them to mean ( if 
 they were taught nothing to the contrary), that the condemned were 
 really and literally to be ' destroyed,' and cease to exist ; not that they 
 were to exist for ever in a state of wretchedness. For they are never 
 spoken of as being kept alive, but a^ forfeiting life ; as for instance, ' Ye 
 will not come unto Me that ye may have life ;' ' He that hath the Son, 
 hath life ; and he that hath not the Son of God, hath not life.' And 
 again, ' perdition,' * death,' * destruction,' are employed in numerous pas- 
 sages to express the doom of the condemned. All which expressions 
 would, as I have said, be naturally taken in their usual and obvious 
 sense, if nothing were taught to the contrary. 
 
 " That these expressions, however, are to be understood, not in their 
 ordinary sense, but figuratively, to signify an Immortality of suffer- 
 ing, is inferred, by a large proportion of Christians, from some other 
 passages ; as where our Lord speaks of ' everlasting punishment,' ' ever- 
 lasting fire,' and being cast into hell where their worm dieth not and the 
 fire is not quenched. 
 
 " This last expression of His, is taken from the Book of the Prophet 
 Isaiah (lxvi.24,) who speaks of ' the carcasses "f the men who have trans- 
 gressed, whose worm shall not die, neither shall their fire be quenched ; 
 and they shall be an abhorring unto all flesh ; ' describing, evidently 
 the kind of doom inflicted bv the Eastern nations on the vilest offenders, 
 who were not only slain, but their bodies deprived of the rites of burial, 
 and either burned to ashes (which, among them, was regarded as a great 
 indignity), or left to moulder above ground and be devoured by worms. 
 
 "From such passages as these it has been inferred, that the suff'erings, 
 and consequently, the life, of the condemned, is never to have an end. 
 And the expressions will bear that sense ; which would, perhaps, be their 
 most obvious and natural meaning, if these expressions were the only 
 ones on the subject that are to be found in Scripture. But they will 
 also bear another sense; which, if not more probable in itself, is certainly 
 more reconcileable with the ordinary meaning of the words ' destruc- 
 tion ' &c., which so often occur. The expressions of 'eternal punish- 
 ment,' ' unquenchable fire ' &c., may mean merely that there is to be no 
 deliverance — no revival— no restoration — of the condemned. Death, 
 simply, does not shut out the hope of being brought to life again ; ' eter- 
 nal death ' does. * Fire,' may be quenched before it has entirely con- 
 sumed what it is burning ; ' unquenchable fire ' would seem most natur- 
 ally to mean that which destroys it utterly." 
 
 " It may be said, indeed, that supposing man's soul to be an Imma- 
 terial Being, it cannot be consumed and destroijed by literal material fire, 
 or worms. That is true ; but no more can it miffer from these. We all 
 know that no fire, literally so-called, can give us any pain, unless it reach 
 our bodies. The 'fire,' therefore, and the worm that are spoken ot 
 must, at any rate, it would seem, be something figuratively so-called ; — 
 something that is to the soul what worms anil fire are to a body. And 
 as the effect of worms or fire is, not to preserve the body they prey upon, 
 but to consume, destroy, and put an end to it, it would follow, if the 
 
 I 
 
 
 } 'J. 
 
 ill-Si^ 
 
«« < 
 
 <i It' 
 
 ill 
 
 
 m 
 
 BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ■correspondence hold good, that the fire, figuratively so-called, which is 
 prepared for the condemned, is something that is really to destroy, and 
 put an end to them ; and is called ' everlasting,' or * unquenchable ' 
 fire, to denote that they are not to be saved from it, but that their de- 
 struction is to be Jinal. So in the parable of the tares, our Lord de- 
 scribes Himself as saying, ' gather ye first the tares, and bind them in 
 bundles to burn them ; but gather the wheat i7ito my garner ; ' as if to de- 
 note that the one is to be (as we know is the practice of the husband- 
 man), carefully preserved, and the other completely put an and to." 
 
 " We must not indeed (as I have already said) venture to conclude 
 at once, from our conviction of the Divine goodness and power, that evil 
 will ever cease to exist ; since we know not how to explain the existence 
 of any evil at all. We can only say there is some unknown cause for it ; 
 and that it is a foolish presumption to think of assigning a limit to the 
 effects of an unknown cause, except where revelation guides us. But 
 when we are told that Christ is to 'reign till He shall have put all 
 things under his feet,' and that ' the last enemy that shall be destroyed 
 is death ', this does afibrd (as I have already observed) some ground for 
 expecting the ultimate extinction of evil and of suffering, by the total 
 destruction of such as are incapable of good and of happiness. If 
 ' eternal death ' means Hnal death — death without any revival — we can 
 understand what is meant by ' Death being the last enemy destroyed', 
 namely, that none thenceforth are to be subjected to it. But if ' Death ' 
 be understood to mean everlasting life in misery, then it would appear 
 that death is never to be destroyed at all ; since although no one should 
 be henceforth sentenced to it, it would still be going on as a continual in- 
 forever. 
 On the whole, therefore, I think we are not warranted in conclud- 
 ing (as some have done) so positively concerning this question, as to make 
 it a point of Christian faith to interpret figuratively, and not literally, 
 the ' death ' and * destruction ' spoken of in Scripture as the doom of the 
 condemned ; and to insist on the belief that they are to be kept alive 
 for ever." 
 
 " There are persons, I believe, who do not like to hear this question 
 as of one that is left undecided by Scripture. Some would wish that 
 the final extinction of the condemned should be positively declared, be- 
 cause they wish to believe that doctrine true ; and some again, from 
 thinking it a dangerous doctrine, wish to have the opposite one posi- 
 tively declared. But all such wishes are quite foreign from the subject. 
 In judging of the sense of Scripture, we should be careful to guard 
 against the error of suffering our wishes to bias the mind. If indeed, 
 we had to devise a religion for ourselves, we might indulge our wishes 
 as to what is desirable, or our conjectures, or our judgment, as to what 
 may seem advisable. But when we have before us Scripture-revela- 
 tions on any subject, it is for us to endeavour to make out what it is 
 that Scripture teaches, and what it does not teach. We may wonder 
 perhaps, why Scripture has taught us so and so, or why it has withheld 
 such and such ^knowledge, or why it has not more distinctly revealed 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 143 
 
 this or that ; but if we presume to interpret Scripture according to our 
 own inclinations or judgments, or to speak positively on points which 
 Scripture has left doubtful, because wc think it advisable that all such 
 doubts should be removed, it is plain that this is, not to make Scriptun' 
 our (juide, but to make ourselves the guide of Scripture." — Future State, j)p. 
 180—186. 
 
 Bishop Newton says ; — " Imagine a creature, nay, imagine number- 
 less creatures produced out of nothing .... delivered over to 
 torments of endless ages, without the least hope or possibility of relax- 
 ation or redemption. Imagine it you may, but you can never seriously 
 believe it, nor reconcile it to God and goodness." — Dissertations. 
 No. 60. 
 
 Horace Welby in " Life, Death and Futurity," says : — " The doctrines 
 respecting future punishments have been much controverted in all ages 
 of the Church; and even those who acknowledge * everlasting punish 
 ment,' maintain that everlasting signifies only to the end of its proper 
 period."' Jeremy Taylor has this emphatic passage upon the unsatis- 
 factoriness of the primitive doctors upon this head : — " Concerning this 
 doctrine of theirs, so severe, and yet so moderated, there is less to be ob- 
 jected to than against the supposed fancy of Origen (who was charged 
 with saying, the pains of the damned should cease, and that they shall 
 return into joys, and back again to hell, by an eternal revolution) j for 
 it is a strange consideration to suppose an eternal torment to those to 
 whomit wasnever threatened, to those who never heard of Christ, to those 
 that lived probably well, to heathens of good lives, to ignorant and un- 
 taught people, to people surprised in a single crime, to men that die 
 young in their natural follies and foolish lusts, to them that fall in a 
 sudden gaiety and excessive joy, to all alike ; to all infinite and eternal, 
 even to unwarned people ; and that this should be inflicted by God, 
 who infinitely loves His creatures, who gave His well-beloved Son to 
 die for them, who pardons easily, and pities readily, and excuses much, 
 and delights in our boing saved, and would not have us to die, and takes 
 little things in exchange for great ; it is certain that God's mercies are 
 infinite, and it is also certain that the matter of eternal torments can 
 not truly be understood ; and when the Schoolmen go about to recon- 
 cile the Divine justice to that severity, and consider why God punishes 
 eternally a temporal sin, or u state of evil, they speak variously, and 
 uncertainly, and unsatisfactorily." — Tivijlor's " Christ s Advent to Judg- 
 ment." Sermon. 3. 
 
 NO SYMPATHY IN THE HEAVEN OF THEOLOGIANS. 
 
 In intimate relation with the foregoing extracts respecting the dog- 
 ma of Eternal Torment, the following have been selected, bearing upon 
 the same subject, but indicating, if that were possible, in more palpable 
 terms, the true character of the stern advocates of unending suffering, 
 inasmuch as they clearly show that these men have banished from their 
 heaven, all traces of sensibility and compassion, and everything per- 
 

 
 144 THE BIBLK VINDICATED AGAINST MODKUN THEOLOGY. 
 
 taining to those attributes, which in all ages and countries have been 
 held to ennoble mankind and to adorn our common humanity — mercy, 
 love, and sympathy, as enjoined in the Scriptures. And this notwith- 
 Btanding their professed adoration of the attribute of love on the part 
 of God toward our fallen and sinful race ; and notwithstanding that 
 they sing of the man of Jehovah's right hand, the Son of His love, who 
 is now in heaven, set down with the Father on His throne, in the 
 following language : — 
 
 " Where high the heavenly temple stands, 
 The house of (rod not made with hands, 
 A Great High Priest our Nature wears, 
 The guardian of mankind appears. 
 He who for men their surety stood, 
 And poured on earth His precious blood, 
 Pursues in heaven His mighty plan, 
 The Saviour and the /"riend o/ man. 
 Though ow ascended up on high, 
 He bends on earth a brother's eye, * 
 
 Partaker of the human name, 
 He knows the frailty of our frame. 
 Our fellow-sufferer yet retains 
 A felloio-feeliMj of our pains, 
 And still remembers in the skies. 
 His tears, His a;jonies, and cries. 
 In ev'ry pant/ (hat rends the heart, 
 
 The Man of Sorrows had a part, ... 
 
 He symputhizes with our grief, 
 And to the sufferer sends relief." 
 
 58th Paraphrase, 
 
 Hudson truly remarks, "that there can be no greater occasion of scan- 
 dal to religion, than the notion that the bliss of the saved is enhanced 
 by consideration of the woes of the damned. The doctrine, however, 
 appears in its boldest form among the Schoolmen. Thus Aquinas : 
 * That the bliss of the saved may please them more, and they render 
 more abundant thanks to God for it, they are permitted to gaze upon 
 the punishment of the wicked.' And Peter Lombard : ' The elect will 
 come forth to behold the torments of the ungodly, and at this spectacle 
 they icill not be smitten with sorrow ; on the contrary, while they see the- un- 
 speakable suffering of the ungodly, they, intoxicated with joy, will thank God 
 for their own salvation.* All sympathy with the lost is denied by Quen- 
 stedt. The difficulties on this score are admitted by another writer. 
 Archbishop King, in his ' Origin of Evil,' he says : ' Yet another, a 
 nearer, and much more affecting consideration, namely, that all this is 
 the misery which they, (the redeemed) themselves were exposed to, and 
 were in imminent danger of incurring, in this view why may not the sense 
 of their otvn escape so far overcome the sense of another's ruin, as quite to ex- 
 tinguish the pain that usxially attends the idea of it, and even render it pro- 
 ductive of some real happiness.' " 
 
 The same view is combined with the previous theories by Bishop 
 Hopkins, thus : " The smoke of their torment shall ascend up in the 
 sight of the blessed for ever and ever, and serve, as a moit clear glass 
 always hefofre their eyes, to give them a constant, bright, and most affecting view. 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 145 
 
 . . This display of the divine character and glory will be in favour 
 of the redeemed, and most entertaining, and give (he highest pleasure to 
 those who love God, and raise their happiness to ineffable heights. Should 
 this eternal punishment cease, and this fire be extinguished, it would in a 
 great measure obscure the light of heaven and put an end to a great part of 
 the happiness and glory of the blessed." 
 
 Dr. Twisso, Prolocutor of the Westminster A-ssembly, says of the 
 punishments of the lost : " These judgments of God are tremendous, I 
 confess ; but they are not to be brought before the tribunal of human 
 reason and justice, nor examined and discussed by the rules of our rea- 
 son and equity, especially as it is lawful for God to treat a creature, 
 however innocent, in whatever manner He pleases ; whether it seem 
 good to God to annihilate him, or to inflict upon him any torture what- 
 ever." And again, making a distinction between justice ordained and 
 justice absolute, he says : " There is no sueh thing in God as justice properly 
 so called ill respect to His creatures ; that is by which He is bound to them. 
 But that which is called the justice of God in respect to creatures is 
 only his fidelity which supposes a promise. ... I acknowledge no 
 other justice in God, than that by which he wisely orders all things to 
 effect His own purposes." 
 
 Calvin, himself, speaking of the fall of Adam as involving so many 
 nations with their infant children in eternal death, allows this expres- 
 sion : "A horrible decree, I confess ; on which one can only say that such 
 was the Will of God, and think those who are so loquacious on everj' 
 other point, must here be struck dumb." 
 
 Bayle, a French writer, makes use of the following extraordinary 
 language : " To be a sinner is worse than to be condemned to the pun- 
 ishments of hell, according to Arminius, because he says ; ' that 'is op- 
 posed to a Divine good, this to a human.' Wherefore, it is better to be 
 pious, and at the same time to be damned ; than to be without jjiety and 
 without penalty." 
 
 To show that this manner of discourse has come down to our own 
 times, I may here mention what was related to me some years ago, of a 
 Presbyterian minister in a western county in Ontario, by a gentleman 
 who then and up to the period of his death held an important official 
 position. In a sermon, describing the glories of the New Jerusalem, 
 and the felicity of the righteous, this minister said : "The happiness of 
 the redeemed in heaven will be enhanced, by beholding the agonies of 
 the damned in hell, throughout endless ages." And lest his hearers 
 might mistake his meaning he repeated the expression with all the em- 
 phasis at his command. My informant never entered that minister's 
 church again, although he and the minister were intimate neighbours for 
 years. But strange to relate, on the death of this gentleman, the same 
 minister oflSciated at his funeral. Both are now at rest, in the quiet re- 
 pose of the grave. 
 
 Reader, what think you of the religious doctrines and systems that 
 induce and warrant men to attribute such vindictive malignity to a 
 merciful Deity 1 And to so limit the resources of Omnipotence, as to 
 10 
 
 i« 
 
 

 
 146 THE BIBIiE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 imply, in unmisUkoable terms, that His infinite power and wisdom art; 
 inaidequate to furnish the elements of perfect happiness, and joy unal- 
 loyed to the redeemed, but that their future felicity will, to a great ox- 
 tent, depend upon the privilege of feasting their eyes on the misery, and 
 regaling their cars with the shrieks and agonizing cries of tiie lost, suf- 
 fering the most acute torture that the most intensified sonsibiUty can 
 feel, or the combined influences of fire and brimstone can inflict. Mow 
 different from what is set forth in the Bible ; •' Eye hath not seen, nor 
 ear heard, neither have -jntered into the heart of man, the things which 
 God hath prepared for them that love Him." " Behold the tabernacle of 
 God is with men, and Ho will dwell with them, and they shall be His 
 people, and God himself shall bo with them, and bo their God, and God 
 shall wipe away all tears from their eyes ; and there sluill be no mnrr 
 death, neitlier smrow, nor crying, neither shall t/iere be any more paiii, for 
 (or because) the jonner things are passed away." — 1 Cor. ii. 9 ; Kov. 
 xxi. 3, 4. — " In Thy presence m fulness of joy, at Thy right hand wo plea 
 su res for evermore." — Ps. xvi. 11. " The redeemed of the Lord shall 
 come unto Zion, everlasting joy shall be upon their head ; they shall 
 obtain gladness and joy; sorrow and mourning shall flee away." — Isa. li. 
 11. (C.) 
 
 Eminent thinkers, here and there among the sects, have endeavoured 
 to modify, or mitigate these dreadful doctrines, not always successfully 
 however. The mental struggles which many of these men had to en- 
 dure in this relation, are well styled by Hudson, " The agony of Faith." 
 Moses Stuart, one of this number, says : — 
 
 " If parents, husbands, wives, brothers, sisters, must see those dear 
 as their own life, perish at last, while they themselves are saved, 
 heaven in mercy will either extinguish their social susceptibilities, or 
 else give them such a sweet and overflowing sense of the justice and 
 goodness of God, as shall not permit the joys of the blessed to be mar- 
 red, nor the songs of the redeemed to be interrupted, with sighs of 
 sympathetic sorrow. Haw this will or can be done, we may never 
 know in the present world ; nay, we may have many a distressing 
 hour, while enquiring how it can be done, unless our very nature itself 
 is wholly changed." 
 
 " Another example," says Hudson, " is found in a late discussion of 
 the Armenian scheme. To the objection that God 'is liable t be m 
 feated in all His designs, and to be as miserable as h«' 1' -volent,' 
 and that this ' is infinitely the gloomiest idea that er thrown 
 
 upon the world ; that it was gloomier than hell it it is replied 
 
 by Bledsoe : ' True, there might be a gloomier speci. in tV uni- 
 verse than hell itself; and for this very reason it is as wo ha • seen, 
 that God has ordained hell itself, that such gloomier spectu . may 
 never appear in the universe to darken His transcendant and eternal 
 glories. It is on this principle that we reconcile the goodness of God 
 with the awful spectacle '^f a world lying in ruins, and with the still 
 more awful spectacle of an eternal hell beyond the grave.' " — Bledsoe, 
 Theodicy, pp. 216, 217. 
 
TEHTIMUNIKS. 
 
 147 
 
 John Poster, also quoted by Hudson, writing to Dr. Harris, says : 
 "I hope, indeed raay assume, that you are a man of cheerful tem- 
 perament ; but are you not sometimes invaded by the darkest visions 
 and reHectiotiH, whih) ousting your view over the scene of human exist- 
 once, from tlu) b(f^nniiij< to this hour ? To m*; it appej» most mys- 
 sterious and awful economy, overspread by a lurid an . u.^adful shade, 
 i pray for the piety to maintain a humble submission of thought and 
 leeling to the wise and righteous Disposer of all existence. . . 
 And it would be a tnuisccndantly direful contemplation if I belicvoi] 
 the doctrine of the eternity of future misery. It amazes me to imagine 
 how thoughtful and b(3nevolent men believing that doctrine, can endure 
 
 the sight of the present world and the history of the past 
 
 1 am, without pretending to any extraordinary depth of feeling, 
 amazed to conceive what they do with their sensibility, and in what 
 manner they maintain a firm assurance of the Divine goodness and jus- 
 tice." And, in another letter, he says; "Under the light (or darkness) 
 of this doctrine (eternal torment) how inconceivably mysterious a«id 
 awful is the whole economy of this human world ! The immensely greater 
 number of the race hitherto, through all ages and regions, passing a 
 short life under no illuminating, transforming influence of their Creator ; 
 ninety-nine in a hundred of them, having never even received any au- 
 tiienticated message from heaven ; passing off the world in a state unfit 
 for a spiritual, heaveidy and happy kingdom elsewhere ; and all destined 
 to everlasting misery. The thoughtful spirit has a question silently 
 suggested to it of a far more emphatic import, than that of him whoex- 
 claimed, ' Hast Thou made all men in vam 1 ' " 
 
 Another, Bayne, in his " Christian Life," p. 336, takes John Foster 
 to task after the following manner : — 
 
 " If John Foster, or any other man deliberately and honestly conceive 
 it irreconcil cable with infinite love that God should condemn the wicked 
 to everlasting punishment, we see not how he can accept the fact with- 
 out blasphemy. If a man's reason gazing earnestly and reverently, 
 with lively consciousness of its own faint and glimmering vision, and 
 full thought of the compass and weight of infinite love guiding infinite 
 power, is yet unable, we say not to justify, but to believe, in the possible 
 justice of eternal torments, we see not hqw he c^n accept the doctrine. 
 It is not lawful for any man taking the sentence, ' Ood is love,' to use it as a 
 fiery rod, though it were of celestial gold, wherewith to sear the eyeballs 
 of reason. One man considering long, and searching Scripture, can, 
 with no outrage on his moral being, embrace in one view, the courts of 
 eternal joy, and the prison of eternal darkness, and believe uncon- 
 strainedly, that the king who sits over both is love ; such an one we be- 
 lieve was Jonathan Edwards. But another man cannot do so, and if 
 he is honest and reverent as the last, who is there on earth that can ac- 
 cuse him 1" 
 
 This sort of logic has been most fatal to the Truth. If God has 
 clearly set forth in His word that Eternal torment is the destiny of the 
 v/icked, then our duty obviously is to believe Him. Not to do sq, or 
 
 ^\ 
 
 m 
 

 
 
 14-8 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY, 
 
 to doubt His word is a sin. On the other hand, if He has neither de- 
 signed nor indicated any such destiny for the wicked, then to impute 
 to Him what He never designed nor intended, and to charge Him with 
 action which can only be founded on principles of malignity and hatred, 
 in the face of the repeated declarations in the Scriptures ascribing His 
 actions towards our race to the impulses of infinite love — then indeed it 
 must be a most heinous sin, not only to disbelieve what He says, but to 
 ascribe to Him action and conduct based on principles of cruelty, male- 
 volence and revenge such as have been devised for, attributed to, and 
 worthy only, of the gods of heathen, whose dwellings, the Psalmist in- 
 forms us, were the habitations of cruelty. We cannot safely blow hot and 
 cold in matters of faith. The gospel is not yea and nay, but in Christ 
 Jesus, yea only — (compiler). 
 
 Hudson says that " Jonathan Edwards doubtless believed uncon- 
 strainedly as a divine, as almost any one may do in the way of specula- 
 tion, saying that the judge of all the earth will certainly do right even 
 if some of His creatures should suffer for ever. Bi't as a man Jonathan 
 Eilwards suffered intensely under the burden of his faith, often walking 
 his room for hours together, with tears of grief, in view of the supposed 
 destiny that awaited his fellow men, yet out of Christ." 
 
 Hudson also quotes Ockliam as saying, that " There is no evil but as 
 it is prohibited by God, and which cannot be made good, if commanded 
 by God. ... If God had commanded His creature to hate Him- 
 self, the hatred of God would be the duty of man." 
 
 " Of this deplorable theology," says Hudson, " we see traces in the 
 assertion of the great reformer Luther, that it is the highest degree of 
 faith to believe that He is merciful who saves so few, and reprobates 
 so many ; to believe Him just who, of His own will, makes us neces- 
 sarily damnable ; so that He should seem as Erasmus says, to delight 
 in the torments of the lost, and more worthy to be hated than loved," — 
 which Luther endeavours to justify by saying: "'If you are pleased 
 when God crowns the undeserving, you ought not to be displeased 
 though he should damn those who deserve it not.' " 
 
 Hudson properly remarks, "that these strong expressions of Luther's 
 may be taken as an instance of the ' Prostitution of Faith,' but in his 
 case formal, and not real, vindicating, as he did, the distinctions of 
 right and wrong against the indulgences and corrui)tions of his age." 
 Dr. Arnold, however, justly observes with reference to the tendency 
 exhibited in the above extract, " that faith without reason is not properly 
 faith, but mere power-worship ; and power-worship may be devil-wor 
 ship ; for it is reason which entertains the idea of God, — an idea 
 essentially made up of truth and goodness, no less than of power." 
 
 This seems to have the ring of comtnon sense about it, and I would 
 add, that if men and women exercised their reason to a much greater 
 extent than they now do, in reference to the doctrines and teachings of 
 the Bible, a very different state of things religious would prevail. 
 Religionists would not be so open to the charge which Paul preferred 
 against the Jews of his day, of having " a zeal of God, but not accord- 
 
 mm 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 149 
 
 ing to knowledge." Everybody, however, knows full well that although 
 the attribute of reason may be held as the highest pertaining to man's 
 mental organization, and as that which pre-eminently distinguishes him 
 from the brute creation, yet that the exercise of this faculty is greatly 
 discouraged, in nianj cases prohibited, in the investigation of Divine 
 Truth ; and a blind faith substituted in lieu thereof, notwithstanding 
 that the Eternal Spirit, through Isaiah, (chap. i. 18,) addresses sinners 
 in these words ; " Come now, let us reason together." 
 
 Watts, in the "Ruin and Recovery of Mankind," truly says: — 
 " When I hear men talk of the doctrine of reprobation with a special 
 gust and relish, as a favourite article, I cannot but suspect their good 
 temper, and question whether they love their neighbours as them- 
 selves." And Hudson truly observes, that "by the quality of our love 
 to man, will the nature of our theology be largely determined." 
 
 Sir James Stephens, in his essays in " Ecclesiastical Biography," 
 says : — " The real, though often unavowed ground of the doubts which 
 are overclouding the spirits of so many of the nominal disciples of Christ, 
 is the hopeless dejection with which they contemplate that part of the 
 Christian scheme which is supposed to consign the vast majority of our 
 race to a future state, in which woe, indescribable in amount, is also 
 eternal in duration. From this doctrine the hearts of men turn aside, 
 not only with an intuitive horror, but with an invincible incredulity ; 
 and of those who believe that it really proceeded from the lips of Cl^rist 
 Himself, many are sorely tempted by it, either to doubt the Divu^o 
 authority of His wor<ls, or to destroy their meaning by conjectural 
 evasions of their force." 
 
 Coleridge, in " Aids to Reflection," p. 332, disclaims, on his own 
 part, the idea of his future happiness being enhanced by the knowledge 
 that others of his fellow men were undergoing the pains of eternal tor- 
 ment, in the following manner : — " I, at least, find it impossible, with 
 my present human feelings, not to imagine otherwise, than that even in 
 heaven it would be a fearful thing to know, that in order to my eleva- 
 tion to a lot infinitely more desirable than by nature it would have been, 
 the lot of so vast a multitude had been rendered infinitely more 
 calamitous ; and that my felicity had been purchased by the everlasting 
 misery of the majority of my fellow men, who, if no redemption ha<l 
 been provided, after inheriting the pains and pleasures of earthly exist- 
 ence during the numbered hours, and the few and evil — evil yet few — 
 days of the years of their mortal life, would have fallen asleep to wake 
 no more, would have r- ink into the dreamless sleep of the grave, and 
 have been as the murmur and the plaint, and the exulting swell, and 
 the sharp scream, which the unequal gust of yesterday snatched from 
 the strings of a wind harp ! " 
 
 Coleridge here approacliesthe sentiment of Job, (chap.x. 19), "I should 
 have been as though I had not been." He seems to think that had no 
 redemption been provided, mankind would have slept the sleep of per- 
 petual death ; but now seeing that reconciliation and intercession have 
 been effectually made, all mankind have been endowed with immortal 
 
m 
 
 1 
 
 |r 
 
 150 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 souls that can never die. The teaching of Scripture is that salvation 
 secures immortality to those only who accept of it on the terms dictated 
 by Deity, and in the way only of His own appointment. " The wages 
 of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ 
 our Lord." 
 
 The united testimony of observant men in all ages, concurs in shew- 
 ing that the dogma of eternal torment has been most productive of in- 
 fidelity. Humane, thinking men have been shocked and staggered at 
 the ascription to Deity of such dreadful attributes. I quote the follow- 
 ing a8 an illustration, merely remarking that that eminent scholar and 
 remarkable man, Dr. Wolfe, charges that the spiritualizing system so 
 much in vogue, and the doctrine of eternal torments have made more 
 infidels than ever did Diderot, Voltaire and Tom Paine. — (C.) 
 
 " There is a tradition," says Dr. Kippis, writing of the scepticism of a 
 former Earl of Shaftesbury, " that amongst the difficulties which occurred 
 to him in respect to the truth of the Christian revelation, he was startled 
 at the idea of its containing the doctrine of the eternity of hell-torments ; 
 that he consulted some eminent churchmen whether the New Testament 
 positively asserted that doctrine ; and that upon being assured that it 
 did, he declared himself incapable of assenting to a system of religion 
 which maintained a tenet so repugnant to all his views of the great 
 government of the universe." 
 
 Mr. Hudson devotes much time, space, and industry to the discussion 
 of concomitant dogmas and doctrines arising out of the dogma of in- 
 herent Immortality in man, and its cognate dogma of Eternal torment, 
 as elaborated and held in ancient and modern times — such as Dualism, 
 or the two principles of good and evil ; the origin and eternity of evil ; 
 the eternal necessity of evil ; the historical eternity of sin ; eternal sin- 
 fulness, &c. Space, however, will not permit any further reference to 
 these topics, which, being based upon entirely false conceptions of God and 
 xr^an ; of the great salvation provided by Deity, and the mode of attain- 
 ing thereunto ; would be unprofitable to the general reader, and could 
 only launch him into a mist of transcendental chaos, and an inextricable 
 tangle of polemical confusion. The result of this war of words, this . 
 darkening of Divine kn(.wledge by a multiplicity of words destitute of 
 heavenly wisdom, has been most disastrous to our race. No thinking, 
 honest man, who is able and willing to divest himself of ingrained pre- 
 judices and preconceived opinions ; who will dispassionately investigate 
 and study the history of the apostacy from the One Faith of the gospel 
 which commenced in the days of the Apostles, in the light of the allu- 
 sions thereto of Paul, Peter, Jude and John ; together with the mes- 
 sages to the Seven Churches of Asia Minor, can fail to see (2. Thess. 
 chap, ii.) that the early perversion of the doctrine of Christ brought 
 about the great delusion under which the world has come, and which is 
 only to be wholly removed at the advent of Christ. The system of 
 things referred to in H Thess. chap, ii, the reader will see, commenced 
 in the days ot Paul and continues until Christ shall come, and which " He 
 shall consume with the spirit of His mouth, and destroy with the bright- 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 151 
 
 ness of His coming" ; for He (Christ) will destroy in this mountain (Zion 
 the hill of His holiness, Ps. ii. 6.) the face of the covering cast over all 
 people, and the vail that is over all nations," even such a vail, prevent- 
 ing the shining of the glorious light of the Gospel, among the Gentiles, 
 as Paul informs us, was spread over the mind of Israel, in his day, when 
 Moses was read (II Cor. iii. 15-16), and which continues to this day, 
 and will until removed as above set forth by Jesus Messiah, when He 
 appears. This is the state of things described in the Scriptures, as re- 
 sulting from the apostacy which began in the Primitive Church in apostolic 
 times, and which continues until dispelled by the glorious rising of the 
 Sun of Righteousness with healing in His beams, and whose mission it 
 only is to expel this moral darkness. 
 
 At present the command of the Spirit is to come out from among 
 them, and to be separate, so that men and women may become sons and 
 daughters of Deity (II Cor. vi. 17-18). 
 
 The reader — I mean the general orthodox reader, who has read thus 
 far, will, no doubt, be anxious to know more fully, what is the destiny 
 of the wicked, if it be true that they are not doomed to eternal torment 
 in hell, and especially if hell oe not the place which they have been 
 taught to believe it is. This is but reasonable, and the Bible does not 
 leave us in ignorance of what so intimately affects the future condition 
 of the greater portion of the human family. Space, however, does not 
 admit of the treatment of this matter at any great length. I therefore 
 prefer quoting an extract or two from writers of known ability, who 
 have devoted much attention to this subject, in which incidentally, some 
 light is thrown upon the true meaning of some of the theological words 
 so much misused at the present day — enough merely to increase the 
 desire of the earnest, honest and conscientious reader, for more light, 
 which is abundantly shed forth in the Holy Oracles, for all who are 
 inclined to come to it, receive it, and be guided by it — aided mayhap, 
 by what is herein set forth, from so many different sources. 
 
 Mr Roberts, in " Twelve Lectures," says : — " The destiny of the 
 wicked demands some attention at our hands. If we seek for informa- 
 tion at the religious systems which are popular to-day, we shall be told 
 of an unfathomable abyss of fire, filled with malignant spirits, in horrid 
 shape, in which are reserved the most exquisite torments for these hajv 
 less beings who are to be consigned to its terrible custody. We shall 
 be shown a lurid picture of fire-inflicted torture, and shall hear cursed 
 fiends mocking the damned ; men and women shrieking in eternal 
 agony ; a revelry of infernal sounds arising from a weltering ocean of 
 blackness, fire, and horrible confusion ; and we shall be told that God in 
 His eternal counsels of wisdom and mercy, has decreed the perpetual 
 continuance of this awful triumph of devilry ! Do we believe this 
 savage doctrine 1 Thousands there are who say they do, and many 
 doubtless believe they do ; but no man of real intelligence and goodness 
 of nature, can calmly sit down and think it over, without feeling that it 
 can not be true. No amount of theorizing can persuade him that God 
 is the merciful Being of order and harmony brought before us in the 
 
 
 
 i.l;- 
 

 
 
 I'i 
 
 
 V 
 
 162 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Bible, if He is told that with all His foreknowledge and Omnipotence, 
 He is to permit nine-tenths of the human race to be consigned to an 
 eternal existennce of blaspheming torture indescribable. Rather than 
 believe it he will reject the Bible altogether, and even dispense with 
 God from his creed, and take refuge in the calm, if cheerless, doctrine of 
 Rationalism. This is what many are driven to, in unfortunate ignor- 
 ance of the fact, that the doctrine is a Pagan fiction. But let it be 
 known for the comfort of all who have been perplexed with the awful 
 dogma, and have yet hesitated to renounce it, in fear of also casting 
 aside the Word of God, that it is as thoroughly unscriptural as it is fer- 
 ociously inhuman. The whole teaching of the Bible in regard to the 
 destiny of the wicked, is summed up in four words from the thirty- 
 seventh Psalm, verse xx : " The wicked shall rEUiSH." Paul gives 
 the explanation in (Rom. vi. 23) ; " The wages of Sin is Death." Death, 
 the extinction of being, is the natural predetermined issue of a sinful 
 course. "He that soweth to the flesh, shall of the flesh reap corrup- 
 tion," (Gal. vi. 8,) and that this is equivalent to death is evident from 
 Rom. viii. 13 : " If ye live after the flesh ye shall die." Corruption 
 results in death, so that the one is equal to the other. It may be said 
 that as the righteous die a natural death as well as the wicked, it must 
 be soine other than physical death that is meant in this statement. The 
 answer is, that although the reference is not to the death which closes a 
 man's natural career, yet it is to a death which is no less real, and no 
 less destructive, namely, the second death, which occurs at the resur- 
 tion, and which operates to the same rosult. 
 
 The unjust are to be resuscitated for judicial arraignment, and their 
 sentence is, that after the infliction of such punishment as may be 
 merited, they shall, a second time, by violent and divinely wielded 
 agency, be destroyed in death. To this Jesus refers, when He says :— 
 ' He that loseth his life for my sake and* the gospel's, the same shall 
 save it ; ' but he that (in the present life) saveth his life, shall, (at the res- 
 urrection) LOSE IT,' (in the second death). All the phraseology of 
 Scripture is singularly emphatic, uniformly pointing to one end, as the 
 final lot of the wicked. For instance we read in Malachi iv. 1. * Behold 
 the day cometh that shall burn as an oven, and all the proud, yea,and all 
 that do wickedly, shall be stubble ; and the day that cometh shall burn 
 them up, saith the Lord of Hosts, that it shall leave them neither 
 ROOT NOR BRANCH.' Again we find Paul saying, in II. Thess i. 9. 
 ' They shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of 
 the Lord and the glory of His power.' Solomon on the same subject, 
 uses the following language : — ' As the whirlwind passeth, so is the 
 WICKED NO MORE ; but the righteous is an everlasting foundation. (Prov. 
 x. 25.) And again, Prov. ii. 22. ' The wicked shall be cut off from the 
 earth, and the tiansgressors shall be rooted out of it.' Zophar gives the 
 following emphatic testimony : — ' Knowest thou not this of old — since 
 man was placed upon earth — that the triumph of the wicked is short, 
 and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment 1 Though his excellency 
 mount up to the heavens, and his head reach above the clouds, yet, HE 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 158 
 
 SHALL PERISH LIKE HIS OWN DUNG. They that have seen him shall say, 
 where is he 1 He shall Jiy away as a dream, and sluill not be found, yea, 
 he shall he chased away as a vision of the night.' — Job. xx. 4-8. David 
 employs the following emphatic figure to the same purport : ' The wic- 
 ked shall perish. The enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs ; 
 they shall consume ; into smoke shall they consume away.' Psalm 
 xxxvii, 20. (and Psalm xlix. 6. quoted on a previous page. ) And of 
 their final state we read in Isaiah xxvi.l4 : — 'They are dead, they shall 
 not live, they are deceased, they sliall not rise ; therefore hast thou visited 
 and DESTROYED them and made all their memory to perish.'' 
 
 " The teaching of these testimonies requires no elucidation, it is 
 enunciated with an emphasis of language that leaves no room for com- 
 ment. Tt is that ' the righteous shall be had in everlasting remem- 
 brance, but the name of the wicked shall rot.' It is that the wicked who 
 are an offence to God, and an affliction to themselves, and of no use to 
 anybody, shall be put aside and consigned to a painless oblivion, in 
 which their very name will be forgotten. Yet the wicked do not 
 escape punishment." 
 
 " It may seem to the reader that the word ' hell,' as employed in the 
 Bible presents an obstacle to the views here advanced. If the original 
 word carried with it the idea represented to the popular mind by its 
 short, pithy, saxon equivalent, the views of orthodoxy would be capable 
 of unanswerable demonstration, for the word is frequent enough, and is 
 used in connection with the destiny of the wicked ! But the case 
 stands otherwise. The original word has no affinity with its modern use. 
 One does not require to be a scholar to see this. A due familiarity 
 with the English Bible will carry conviction on the point, though con- 
 viction is undoubtedly strengthened by a knowledge of the original. 
 What, for instance, has the orthodox believer or advocate of eternal 
 torments to say to the following 1 — ' And they ( Mesheck, Tubal, and 
 all their multitude) shall not lie with the mighty that are fallen of the 
 uncircumcised which are gone down to hell with their weapons 
 OF WAR ; and they have laid their swords binder their head.' Ezekiel 
 xxxii. 27. 
 
 " Do men's immortal souls take swords and guns with them when they 
 * go to hell ' 1 The hell of the Bible Is a place to which military ac- 
 coutrements may accompany the wearer 1 The nature and locality of 
 this hell may be gathered from a statement only four verses before tlie 
 passage above quoted. * Asshur is there with all her company, his 
 graves are about him, all of them slain, fallen by the sword, whose graves 
 are set in the sides of the pit, and her company is round about her (jrave 1 
 The reference is to the eastern mode of sepulture in which a pit or cave 
 was used for burial, the bodies of the dead being deposited in niches cut 
 in the wall. As a mark of military honour, soldiers were buried with 
 their weapons, the sword being laid under their head. ' T' y went 
 down to hell with their weapons of war.' It will be perceived that 
 ' hell ' is synonymous with grave. This is proved so far at least as the 
 Old Testament is concerned. The original word is * sheol,' which means 
 
m 
 
 \Mfi 
 
 154 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 nothing more than a concealed or 'covered place, and therefore an ap- 
 propriate designation for the grave, in which a man is for ever concealed 
 from view. It will be found that every use of the word hell in the Old 
 Testament will fall under this general explanation. As regards the 
 New Testament, there is the same simplicity and absence of difficulty in 
 the use of the word ' hell.' The original word is of course, different, 
 being Greek instead of Hebrew ; it is in nearly all cases, ' Hades.* 
 That this is equal to the Hebrew word Sheol, is evident from its use as 
 an equivalent for it in the Septuagint (Greek) translation of the Hebrew 
 Scriptures ; and also in its use by the writers of the New Testament, 
 where Sfieol occurs in the Hebrew. For instance in David's prophecy 
 of the resurrection of Christ, cited by Peter on the day of Pentecost 
 (thou will not leave my soul in hell, C.V.), the word in Hebrew is Sheol, 
 and in Greek, Hades. In this instance ' hell ' simply and literally means 
 the grave, in view of which we see the point of the prediction brought to 
 bear by Peter. Understood as the orthodox * hell,' there is no point in 
 it all ; for resurrection of the body has no point of connection with the 
 escape of a so-called immortal soul from the abyss of popular supersti- 
 tion. A similar consideration arises up, I Cor. xv. 55 : 'Oh grave 
 (Hades) where is thy victory ? ' This is the exclamation of the 
 righteous in reference to resurrection, as any one may see on consulting 
 the context. Our translators perceiving this, instead of rendering Hades 
 by ' hell,' have given us the more suitable word ' grave ; ' but if ' Hades : 
 may be translated * grave ' here, why not everywhere else 1 " 
 
 " There is another word translated ' hell,' which does not mean the 
 ' grave,' but which at the same time affords as little countenance to 
 orthodox belief as * Hades.' This is Gehenna. It occurs in the following 
 passages : — Math. |v. 22, ^9, 30 ; ch. x. 28 ; ch. xviii. 9 ; ch. xxiii. 
 15, 33 ; Mark ix. 43, 46, 47 ; Luke xii. 6 ; James iii. 6. The 
 word ought not to be translated at all. It is a proper name, and like 
 all other proper names should have been transferred to the English 
 version without alteration beyond the process known as angli- 
 cization. It is a Greek compound, signifying the valley of the son 
 of Hinnom. Calmet, in his Bible Dictionary defining it, has the follow- 
 ing : * Gehenna or Gehennom, or valley of Hennom, or valley of the son 
 of Hennom ; (see Joshua xv. 8 ; II. Kings xxiii. 10) ; a valley adjacent 
 to Jerusalem, through which the southern limit of the tribe of Benjamin 
 passed.' He states that it was used in ancient times by the idolatrous 
 Jews, to conduct the worship of Moloch, and offer their children to 
 the heathen gods. Josiah, in his zeal for the abolition of idolatry, re- 
 solved to give the valley over to pollution, and commanded the deposit 
 of the filth of the city in it. It became the receptacle of much pollution. 
 Carcasses of men and beasts were thrown into it, and fires were kept 
 perpetually burning to consume the rubbish and prevent pestilence. In 
 the days of Jesus it was the highest mark of social ignominy that the 
 Council of the Jews could inflict, to order a man to be burned in 
 
 • Gehenna. In one of Jeremiah's prophecies of Jewish restoration, the 
 
 • obliteration of this valley of dishonour is predicted in the following 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 155 
 
 words ; ' And the whole valley of the dead bodies, and of the ashes, and 
 all the fields unto the brook of Kedron, unto the corner of the horse gate, 
 toward the east sh^.ll be holy unto the lord.' — Jer. xxxi. 40. On 
 what pretence is Gehenna translated * hell,' and thus made to favour 
 popular delusion ? Simply because our translators think that ancient 
 Gehenna was a tjrpe of the • hell ' of their creed. 
 
 " This is altogether an assumption. It is the assumption upon which 
 Calmet's remarks are based, notwithstanding his knowledge of the sub- 
 ject. He was of the orthodox school, and makes the common orthodox 
 mistake of begging the quescion, to begin with. Let orthodox hell be 
 proved first, before Gehenna is used in the argument. If it is a type of 
 anything, is it not rather a type of the judgment revealed, and not of 
 one imagined 1 Orthodox hell is a mere imagination based upon Pagan 
 speculations on futurity. The judgment revealed is one related to the 
 i*ame locality, and one that will take the same form as regards circum- 
 stance and result. ' They (who come to worship at Jerusalem in the 
 future age, verges 20, 23), shall go forth, and look upon the carcasses 
 of th/i men that have trangressed gainst Me ; for their worm shall not 
 die, neither shall their fire be quenched ; and they shall be an abhorring 
 unto all tlesh.' — Isa Ixvi. 24. The reader will observe a similarity 
 between these words and the words of Christ in Math. ix. 44 — 48 ; 
 ' where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched.' The words 
 are frequently quoted in support of the orthodox theory of eternal 
 torments, but they really bear in the contrary direction. 
 
 " In the first place, the undying worm and the unquenchable fire 
 must be admitted to be symbolical expressions. The worm is an agent 
 of corruption, ending in death or annihilation. Fire is a means to the 
 same end, but by a more summary process. When, therefore, they are 
 said to be unarrestable in their action, it must be taken to indicate that 
 destruction will be accomplished without remedy. The expression can- 
 not mean immortal worms, and absolutely inextinguishable fire. A 
 limited sense to an apparently absolute expression, is frequently exempli- 
 fied throughout the Scriptures. In Jeremiah vii. 20, Jehovah says ; 
 * His anger should be poured out upon Jerusalem, and should burn, and 
 should not be quenched.' He says also in Jer. xvii. 27, ' I will kindle 
 a fire in the gates of Jerusalem, and it shall burn the palaces thereof, 
 and it shall not be quenched.'' This did not mean that the fire with re- 
 ference to itself, should never go out, but that in relation to the object 
 of its operation, it should not be quenched until the operation was 
 accomplished. A fire was kindled in Jerusalem, and it only went out 
 when Jerusalem was burned to the ground. So also God's anger burned 
 against Israel, until it burned them out of the land, driving them out of 
 His sight ; but Isaiah speaks of a time when His anger will cease in the 
 destruction of the enemy. (Ch. x. 25.) The same principle is illus- 
 trated in the 21st chapter of Ezekiel, verses 3 — 6, where Jehovah states 
 that His ' sword will go forth out of His sheath against all flesh, and 
 shall not return again,' It is not necessary to say that in the consum- 
 mation of God's purpose, His loving kindness will triumph over all ex- 
 
 ?! 
 
 \i 
 
S; 
 
 156 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 hi!: .*« 
 
 ■i;! 
 
 hibitions of anger which had for their object the extirpation of evil. In 
 the absohite sense therefore, His sword of vengeance will return to its 
 sheath, but not in the sense of failing to accomplish its purpose. So 
 the worm that preys upon the wicked will disappear from the face of 
 the earth, when the last enemy, death, is destroyed, and the fire that 
 consumes their corrupt remains, will die out with the fuel it feeds on ; 
 but in relation to the wicked themselves, the worm dieth not, and the 
 fire is not quenched. The expressions were borrowed from Gehenna, 
 will 10 the flame was fed, and the worm sustained continually, by the 
 putrid accumulations of the valley. 
 
 *' The statement in Math. xxv. 46, is equally unavailing for the 
 popular doctrine. ' These shall go away into everlasting punishment, 
 and the righteous into life eternal.' Even taken as it stands in the 
 English version, this does not define the nature of the punishment which 
 is to fall on the wicked, but only affirms its perpetuity. The nature of 
 it is elsewhere described as 'Death,' and 'Destruction.' But 
 
 viewing 
 
 ■ i -3; 
 
 the word aionian (translated ' Everlasting,') as expressing the idea of 
 hdonging to the age, the statement only proves that at the resurrection, 
 the wicked will be punished with the punishment clmracteristically 2^er- 
 taining to the age of Christ's advent, which Paul declares to be everlast- 
 ing destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His 
 power.' — II Thess. i. 9. And that the righteous will receive the life 
 related to the same dispensation which Paul declares to be immortality — 
 1 Cor. XV. 53. It is usual to quote a statement from the Apocalypse 
 (Rev. xiv. 11 ; ch. xx. 10), in evident indifference to the fact, that as 
 part of a symbolical vision, it is not to be received in the literal sense, 
 but to be construed mystically, in harmony with the principle of inter- 
 pretation supplied in the vision. If apocalyptic torment * for ever and 
 ever ' is literal, then the beast, the woman with the golden cup, the 
 lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, are literal also. Is the orthodox 
 believer prepared for this ? Surely Christ is not in the shape of a seven 
 horned lamb ; surely the false church is not a literal prostitute ; or the 
 persecutor of the Church a literal wild boar of the woods. If these are 
 symbolical, the things affirmed of them are symbolical also, and torment, 
 (or judicial infliction, for this is the idea of the Greak word) ' for ever 
 and ever ' is the symbol of the complete and resistless and final triumph 
 of God's destroying judgment over the things represented." — Twelve 
 Lectures, pp. 68 — 74. 
 
 Dr. William Morris, of Philadelphia, in his work, " What is man'' 
 quoting Isaiah Ixvi. 24, says : " To this predictive passage, the Lord re- 
 fers, in Mark ix. 48, and if the words of this passage prove the immor- 
 tality of anything, it must be the immortality of loathsome worms, bred 
 out of putrefaction, and of dead carcasses rotting in the sun, preyed upon 
 by voracious worms, and being dissipated in noxious vapours by the 
 flaming fire. Many ecclesiastical teachers may be slow to believe, that 
 the carcasses mentioned in Isa. Ixvi. 24, mean ' dead bodies,' and that 
 the worm mentioned means a loathsome, crawling worm ; for it is evident 
 that in many respects, they are * slow of heart to believe ALL that the 
 prophets have spoken.' 
 
m 
 
 TESTIMONIKS. 
 
 157 
 
 " When the Lord addressed his disciples as recorded in Mark ix. 43- 
 48, he used proverbial language, derived from historic and prophetic 
 facts. ... By the impressive figures of speech he employed, he 
 slii>\ved and illustrated the certain and ignominious and destructive doom 
 of all false Christians and apostates at the Judgment of the Great Day ; 
 and he has shewn that they shall bo cast into that Gehenna, of which 
 tlu' topographic and historic Gehenna is a moat significant type, and that 
 then by the consuming activity of their own remorse, bred out of their 
 own moral putresence, ancj by the fire of Divine wrath they shall be 
 ignominiously and utterly destroyed. For God is able to destroy both 
 soul and body in Gehenna. Men may not believe this, but it is the 
 word of Him who is the Truth"— iniat is Man, pp. 92, 93. 
 
 In the alphabetical appendix to the " Emphatic Diaglott Greek and 
 English edition of the New Testament, I find the following, under the 
 word Gehenna : — 
 
 " Gehenna, the Greek word translated hell in the common version, 
 occurs twelve times, It is the Grecian mode of spelling the Hebrew 
 words which are translated 'The valley of Hinnom.' This valley was 
 also called Tophet, a detestation, an abomination. Into this place were 
 cast all 'kinds of filth,' with the carcasses of beasts, and the unburied 
 bodies of criminals who had been executed. Continual fires were kept 
 up to consume these. Sennacherib's army of 185,000 men were slain 
 here in one night. Here children were also burnt to death in sacrifice 
 to Moloch. Gehenna, then as occurring in the New Testament, symbol- 
 izes ' Death' and utter ' Destniction,' but in no place signifies a place of 
 eternal torment." 
 
 The following, from " The Messenger of the Churches," is well worthy 
 of careful perusal in this connection : — 
 
 " There is, perhaps, no word in Scripture, which in the mouths^ of the 
 pious and profane, is used in a more perverted sense than the term 
 ' Heil.' To the most of the inhabitants of Christendom (so called), the 
 word ' Hell,' represents the idea of the most horrid spectacle possible to 
 imagine — a lake of fire stretching far and wide, teemijig with human 
 beings of all ages, thick as the scattered leaves of autumn, tossing in 
 agony the most intense, wailing in pitiless despair, and uttering, in bit- 
 terest tones, blasphemies the most hideous and revolting ; and all this 
 existing for ever and ever, without the possibility of a moment's cessa- 
 tion ! Happy thought it is, that such ideas and such scenes have their 
 oriii;in in heathen wisdom, and are unwarranted by the word of Him, 
 whose ' tender mercies are over all His works.' The terms in Scripture 
 rendered ' Hell,' are ' Sheol' in the Old Testament, and * Hades' and 
 ' Gehenna' in the New Testament. In the present paper we shall con- 
 fine our remarks to the term ' Gehenna.' This word occurs twelve times 
 in the New Testament, namely. Math., v. 22, 29, 30 ; ch. xviii. 6. j ch. 
 xxiii. 15, 33 ; Mark ix. 4.!, 44, 47 ; Luke xii. 5 ; James iii. 6." 
 
 " Like most, if not all, (ther words, the term in question is used, in 
 the New Testament, boti. mo. primary and secondary sense, or with a 
 likral axiA figurative signific; tion and as the figurative sense can only be 
 
 I 
 
 ," i: 
 
 i»n 
 
 i 
 
 1» 
 
t', I 
 
 M. 
 
 158 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 correctly apprehended, when there is a knowledge of the literal, it is 
 necessary that in the present instance we ascertain the root and literal 
 import of the word 'Gehenna,' which in our English version of the 
 Scriptures is thus uniformly rendered ' hell' 
 
 " Gehenna literally signifies ' Valley of Hinnom,' and designates a 
 ' narrow valley skirting Jerusalem on the south, running westward from 
 the valley of Jehoshaphat under Mount Zion. Here the Israelites estab- 
 lished the idolatrous worship of Moloch, to whom they burnt infants in 
 sacrifice.' — Robinson's Greek Lexicon. It ^vas also called Tophct from 
 a Hebrew word signifying a drum, because a loud noise was made by 
 these instruments to drown the shrieks of the children, consumed by 
 slow torments in the idolatrous fires. (Read II Kings xxiii. 10 ; Jer. vii, 
 31, 32 ; ch, xix. 13 ; ch. xxxii. 32, 35.). 
 
 *' After the captivity, the Jews regarded this spot with abhorrence, 
 on account of the abominations that had been practised there, and 
 following the example of Josiah (II Kings xxiii. 10) they threw into it all 
 the filth of the city, the carcasses of animals and dead bodies of male- 
 factors. To prevent the pestilential exhalations which those would 
 occasion, if left to putrify, large fires were kept continually burning. 
 These lurid fires blazing night and day at the bottom of a frightful glen, 
 was one of the most appalling and terrific sights a Jew could conceive. 
 It was called the ' Gehenna of fire.' Josiah, commanded all the carrion 
 of the city of Jerusalem to be carried into the valley and burnt there ; 
 that it might not annoy the city ; thither says David Chimci, were carried 
 all the filth and unburied carcasses to be burned. The Sanhedrim of 
 the Jews, for some offences, sentenced the bodies of offenders to lie 
 unburied in that valley, to burn with the carrion cast there, which 
 among the Jews was counted a great disgrace, and for offences most 
 criminjil, they buried alive in that valley. — Phcenix. 
 
 " The fire of Gehenna was therefore an object familiar to those whom 
 our Lord addressed ; and ' to be cast into Gehenna,' would obviously im- 
 ply, in their minds, death associated with all that is loathsome and de- 
 grading. 
 
 " The first instance in which the term Gehenna occurs in the New 
 Testament, is Math. v. 22, where it represents the highest punishment 
 inflicted by the highest court in Jerusalem, contrasted with the minor 
 sentence by the judgment, or by the council. Whosoever is angry with his 
 brother without a cause, fehall be in danger of the judgment and whoso- 
 ever shall say to his brother Raca, shall be in danger of the council ; 
 but whosoever shall say, thou fool ! shall be in danger of the Gehenna 
 of Fire. 
 
 " To understand the force of this passage, it is necessary to keep in 
 mind that in the Jewish Law it is stated, that he who calls his brother 
 * slave,' shall be excommunicated ; that he who calls him * bastard,' 
 shall be beaten with forty stripes ; while if he call him ' wicked' (that 
 is fool or apostate) he may be tried for his life ; which was also called 
 being thrust down into Hell, or tossed into Gehenna. 
 
 " Further, it should be recollected that there were three courts among 
 

 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 159 
 
 the Jews, the Court of the Twenty-Three, the Court of the Sanhedrim, 
 and the Supreme Court of Jerusalem, each of which took cognizance of 
 crimes, according to the degree of guilt involved ] these were the 
 tribunals to which our Lord referred. — " Interpreter, vol. 2. page, 104. 
 
 " It would, therefore, appear that in this case our Lord was not speak- 
 ing of punishments in the future age, but was simply referring to the 
 actual ' Valley of Hinnom,' with which his hearers were thoroughly 
 familiar." 
 
 " In Mark ix. 45-47, the contrast between 'entering into life' 'entering 
 into the Kingdom of God,' and being ' cast into Gehenna,' certainly 
 warrants the inference that our Lord is there referring to the punish- 
 ment that awaits the ungodly. Such aJKo I take to be the case in Matt. 
 V. 29-30 ; ch. xxiii. 28 ; Luke, xii. 5. Still there is nothing to sanction 
 the common use that is made of this language — nothing to authorise 
 the assumption that the undying worm, and the unquenchable lire of 
 Gehenna, represent increasing remorse, and unending torment, either in 
 material or metaphysical tlame. * This,' it has been truly said, ' is not 
 only to put our fancies in the place of revealed truth, it is directly to con- 
 tradict Scripture,' for the very words in question are but a quotation from 
 Isaiah, who distinctly applies them, not to human beings, but to dead 
 ' carcasses,' — Isa. Ixvi 24. No supposed good that may arise from ter- 
 rifying sinners (even if they were commonly alarmed by such state- 
 ments) can, for a moment, justify (statements or) interpretations of this 
 character. 
 
 " When rightly viewed, the language of our Lord in these references 
 to Gehenna, so far from intimating deathless being in torment, as the 
 doom of the wicked, expresses, in the strongest possible terms, their utter 
 destruction : and it is in strict harmony with all other threatenings in 
 the Scriptures, regarding the final doom of the ungodly. They ' shall 
 DIE ' — ' be BURNED UP with unquenchable fire ' — ' be consumed like the 
 fat of lambs ' — '* fit only to be taken and destroyed ' — ' they shall 
 utterly PERISH in their own corruption.' An awful doom indeed ! " 
 
 " How sad that any one who has listened to the pleadings of Jehovah's 
 love, to be reconciled to Him by the death of His Son, and believe the 
 good news concerning His Kingdom, should spurn His grace, and go 
 down to the blackness of darkness forever ! 
 
 " With the afore-mentioned facts regarding the ' Valley of Hinnom,' 
 and its associations before our mind, the language of our Lord regard- 
 ing the Scribes and Pharisees in Math, xxiii. 15, when he said they 
 made their proselytes ' two-fold more the children of Gehenna than 
 themselves,' must appear very forcibly to express the thorough corrupt- 
 ness of their character ; and is parallel to the comparison in verse 27, 
 ' whited sepulchres' — ' f'xU of dead men's bones and all uncleanness.' 
 
 " In a similar light, £ o, would I view the language of James, (ch. iii. 
 6,) regarding an evil tongue, when he says, ' it is set on fire of Gehenna.' 
 So mischievous and corrupting are its workings, that he compares the 
 svil propensities which set it in motion, and supply its missiles, to the 
 lurid and loathsome fires of Gehenna, which are sustained by corrup- 
 tion.'' — Messenger of the Churches. 1863. 
 

 ^r 
 
 <; 
 
 1 
 
 'ui: ' 
 
 IGO THE UIULE VINDICATED AOAINBT MODEllN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Dr. Whitby, notwithstanding his oxtromo allof^orizing tt- ndencies, re- 
 frrrinj; to the dostruction.of SoJoin and Oomorrhii, (Judo vii.) says : " I 
 coiK'civo thattlioy (tho inhabitants of those cities) are said to suflferthe 
 ' vengeance of eternal fire,' not because their souls are at present pun- 
 ished in hell fire, but ' because tliey and their cities perished by that fire 
 froin heaven, which brought a perpetual and irreparable destruction 
 upon them.' Benson e;iplain8 it to be : 'A fire which burned initil it 
 utterly consumed them, Hammond gives the same meatiing, also 
 Episcopius." Ihidson, Future Life, p. 202, 203. 
 
 Rabbi Simon Ben Lakish does not believe in a future hell, but 
 strangely contends for a literal burning up of the wicked. He says : — 
 
 '* There will be in the future no Gehenna (hell), but tlie Holy, 
 Blessed God will bring out the sun from its tabernacle, and will punish 
 the iingodly therewith, but sanctify tho righteous. As it is written in 
 Maliichi iv. 1 : ' For behold the day cometh which shall burn as an 
 oven, and all the proud, together with all that do wickedly, shall be as 
 stubble, and the coming day shall burn them up.' " 
 
 Kabbi Johanan say.s : " If He (God) be angry with mo, His wrath is 
 eternal ; it He bind mo. His bands are eternal ; if He slay me, His slaij- 
 i)i<f is ctermil." Here the destructibility of the soul is clearly set forth. 
 
 Some one says : " Heat is generated by combustion, and the fire is 
 kept alive by constant feeding it with fuel. What becomes of tho heat 
 when the fire burns out 'i " 
 
 Dr. Harris, however, refers to certain theologians, who contend, from 
 Mark ix. 49 : " that God will so constitute the fire of hell, that it shall 
 not begin to decompose the bodies of the damned. However it may 
 toiture, it shall not be a consuming fire ; but it shall be conservative in its 
 (piiility and effects ; even as ' salt ' is conservative when applied to the 
 ttesh of animals recently slain. And God will thus constitute the fire of 
 hell, to preserve the bodies of the damned ; for the express purpose if 
 insuriiuf the extreme of unceasing and endless tortures in the experience of the 
 damned, us the oljects of his unappeasable wrath ! ! ! " So determined are 
 some good men to see their fellow mcni suffer endless agony. 
 
 llESURHEd'ION. 
 
 It may reasonably be inferred from what has been set forth in the 
 preceding pages from so many sources, that the candid, honest and 
 intelligent reader, must, by this time, be thoroughly convinced, that 
 man does not possess inherent Immortality ; that he is mortal ; that the 
 wanes of sin is death ; that death hath passed upon all men, because all 
 have sinned ; that death is extinction of being ; that when a man dies 
 he ceases to live ; that the dogma of eternal torment is untrue, and 
 is not taught in Scripture, but rather of heathen origin ; that the final 
 doom of such of the wicked, as by reason of privileges, have become 
 amenable to judgment, is the second death, from whiclx there is no 
 awaking — no revival. 
 
 The destiny of the wicked having been very clearly and very Scrip- 
 turally set forth^ the reader, if he have not hitherto given much heed or 
 
TKSTFMONIKS. 
 
 Kil 
 
 attention to thofto momontous mattors, will naturally {mil do.sirous to 
 know something of the glorious future, an<l that Kternal Life, the gift of 
 <>0(1, through Jesus Christ, ottered to man, in tiu! Sacreil f)racle8, and 
 reserved in heaven for the righteous ; md the mode; hy which only num 
 and women can attain thereunto. A knowledges of thi! destiny of the 
 wicked, or the way of death, is most important ; hut far more impor- 
 tant for man is a true knowledge of the way of life, and if possihlo, of 
 «till :,'reater importance is it to obtain an entrance tb< , 'inat. 
 
 Pi'rhai)s, before procee<Iing to adduce testimony • r'.eronce to the 
 
 Bible doctrine of resurrection, it may be well to furnish tlu; reader with 
 
 %Min; further matter on the subject of death and life, from the pens of 
 
 the lat(^ Dr. Thomas and Mr. Roberts, two of the most competent 
 
 writers on these topics in modern times — Com I'll, kk. 
 
 Mr. Itoberts says : — " Wlmt is death ? It /.s thi' op/ioslfe of life. The 
 idea of death is derived from ex{)erience of life, for death is the word 
 that describes the interruption of life. In order, therefore, to under 
 ■stand death, we must h.ave a definite conception of life. Of tliis we do 
 know something, since it is a matter of positive! ex[)erience. All we 
 have to do is to bring our knowledge to bear, which tiie majority of 
 people have great difficulty in doing. Their minds are so preoccupied 
 with established theories, that t\wy are blind to the facts under their 
 immediate cognizance. 
 
 " Throwing metaphysics aside, what is life iis known expcsrimentally ? 
 It is the aggregate result of the organic processes transpiring within the 
 liuman structure — in respiration, circulation of the blood, digestion, &c. 
 The lungs, the heart, and the stomach, conspire to generate and sustain 
 vitality, and to impart activity to the various faculties of which we are 
 composed. Apart from this busy organism, life is unmanifesttsd, whethiir 
 as regards man or beast. Shock the brain and insensibility ensues ; 
 take awa)^ the air, and you produce suffocation ; cut off the supply of 
 food, and death occurs. Conld these effects be produced if life did not 
 depend on the causes interfered with? If life and function were the ab- 
 stract attributes of an immaterial element pervading the physical organi- 
 zation, would they not l)e manifested independently of material condi- 
 tion \ All positive, as well as negative, experience contributes to the 
 same result, shewing human life with its mysterious phenomena of 
 thought and feeling, to be the result of harmojiy in the working of the 
 complicated machinery of which we are ' so fearfully and wonderfully 
 made.' Thus we exist, lliera was a time tvhen ice did not exist. This 
 is most important, as shewing the possibility of non-existence in rela- 
 tion to man, lor what has been, can be again. The question then is, 
 shall this state of non-existence again supervene t The answer is readily 
 obtainable. Since human existence depends on material organic func- 
 tion, non-existence must ensue upon the interruption of that function. 
 The whole matter is therefore reduced to a question of experience. 
 
 " By experience we know that this interruption does t^ke place, and 
 that man in consequence dies. Death comes to him and exactly undoes 
 what birth did for him. The one gives him existence, the other takes 
 11 
 
i,i ' 
 
 1. '' 
 
 162 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Mi 
 V' 
 
 il'lS 
 
 it away. ' Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return,' is realized 
 in every man's experience. In the course of nature his being vanishes 
 from creation, and all his qualities submerge in death, for the simple 
 reason that the organism that developes them then stops its working." — 
 Tivdve Lectures, p. 47. 
 
 Dr. Thomas, in the series of articles from which I have already s<> 
 largely quoted, treating of " Natural Death and Corruption, the penalty 
 of the Transgression of the First Man, says : — 
 
 " 1. — Magnetic vibration, originated by electro-chemical action in the 
 pulmonary vesicles, V)eing the cause of all vital phenomena in organized 
 bodies, the cessation of that action causing the vibration to stop, puts 
 an end to all motion, even to that of the ultimate molecules of the body, 
 and tht, subject is said to be dead. Death, then, is the cessation of ehr- 
 tro-raaqnciic vibration. This is consequent upon the interruption of the 
 wonted communication between the blood and Neshemeh and Ruach of 
 the atmosphere. The animal machinery becomes impaired ; its mole- 
 cular organization fails to evolve the electrical forces ; the pulsation of 
 the heart becomes feeble, and consequently the circulation flows slug- 
 gishly. Hence the lungs become congestive, and the breathing difficult. 
 The pulse beats slower, and the respiration is shorter and quicker than 
 in the full vigour of life. These circumstances combined diminish the 
 quantity of ail-, impede tlie chemical action, and decrease the intensity 
 and quantity of the electro -magnetism of the blood ; thus decay is super 
 induced, and this terminates in the cessation of all action in the vesicles, 
 even as the interruption of chemical decomposition in the galvanic 
 trough puts an end to all vibration in the armature of the machine. 
 
 " 2. — The electro-positive and the electro-negative forces of animal 
 bodies are conservative of them ; that is, so long as they continue to be 
 elaborated, they are prevented from returning to their ultimate constit- 
 uents, but when electro-chemical action in the air and blood in the pul- 
 monary vesicles is stopped, corruption takes place, and the body is re- 
 solved into gases, and its original earth. This is a practical illustration 
 of the text, ' If He withdraw, or gather to Himself, His liuhe, spirit, 
 and His Neshemeh, or breath, all flesh shall perish together, and man 
 shall turn again to dust.'— Job xxxiv, 14. 
 
 " Hence the necessity of mtiintaining a reciprocal action between the 
 ' breath of lives ' and the blood, for the continuance of life in all (.)r- 
 ganized bodies. The duration of this reciprocity is fixed in man to 
 three score years and ten ; in other animals to diff"erent periods. It wjts 
 to this the Yahweh Elohim had reference, when He said concerni?!^ tde 
 Antediluvians ' My spiritshall not always strive- with man, for that he 
 is also flesh ; yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.' — Cren. 
 vi. 3. It is a strife with the flesh which leads naturally to decomposi- 
 tion, and which is counteracted only by the life-perpetuating energy of 
 the spirit in the air we breathe 
 
 " 3. — When the electro -magnetic vibration ceases, because chemical 
 action no longer occurs in the vesicles of the lungs, the latent forces, 
 which are inherent qualities of the acid and alkaline matter of organized 
 
m 
 
 TESTIMONIES, 
 
 163 
 
 animal bodies, seek, under the influence of air, moisture, and a moder- 
 ate temperature, to be eliminated. The action of a warm moist air 
 upon the bodies of the dead is established primarily upon the cuticle, 
 which feels clammy, of a clayey coldness, and by a little friction separ- 
 ates from the rete mucosum and true skin beneath. It assumes a 
 greenish appearance, and in process of time, the hydrogen, carbon, 
 sulphur, and phosphoius, of the soft parts, combine with the oxygen 
 and nitrogen of the air, and form water, ammonia, carbonic acid, and 
 sulphuretted, phosphuretted and carburetted hydrogen gases. These 
 are the principal products into which animal matter is resolved after 
 death ; and this process, by which the original texture disapjiears — 
 which is purely chemical, is in Scripture termed corruption. 
 
 "4. — ' He that soweth to his flesh,' saith the Apostle, 'shall of the 
 flesh reap corruption,' But the righteous and the wicked all reap 
 corruption after death. True, and therefore Paul must allude to a 
 reaping corruption in an especial sense, that is Avhen the wicked shall 
 alone be suV)iected to it. The Scripture saith, that under the sounding 
 of the seventh trumpet the righteous and unjust shall be separated from 
 the wicked dead, and that a thousand years after, many of these shall 
 arise to judgment. Then is the time to reap according to that which 
 lias been sown. This is the time to which Paul alludes when he saith, 
 ' in due season we shall reap ' — life everlasting when Messiah comes, if 
 the righteous faint not; and corruption of thf flesh to those who sow to 
 t he lusts thereof, to others also when ' the end ' shall come. 
 
 " 5. — Thus saith the Apostle, corruption of the. flesh shall he to those who 
 sow to the flesh ivhai the time to reap shall come. But, unless the wicked 
 are raised corruptible, they cannot reap corruption of the flesh ; for in- 
 corruptible flesh is incapable of resolution into the products of putrefac- 
 tion. If the wicked are to be raised immortal, as is generally supposed, 
 they must rise with incorruptible bodies, for none but incorruptible 
 bodies can be deathless or immortal j and they can neither feel pain nor 
 reap corruption 
 
 "11. — We are instructed by the Scriptures, that to die is to return 
 to the dust, which harmonizes with our philosophical conclusion. We 
 hold to this, because it is sustained by the word of God, and not to the 
 word, because it is confirmed ])y the physical laws ; truth is ours, where- 
 ever found, in the works or word of the living God. Eeason, science, 
 and the word all harmonize in the conclusions before us. Adam was 
 subjected to death and corru[ition in the sense we have explained ; but 
 whether for a limited or unlimited period, is a question which cannot 
 be resolved by any consideration annexed to the Eden Law ; a resurrec- 
 tion to life and judgment must be argued from other premises than 
 these. 
 
 " 12. — ' If a man die shall he live again ' ? This is a very interesting 
 question, and one that can only be illuminated by the light of revelation. 
 We have seen what the Scripture saith, that ' a man hath no pre- 
 eminence over a beast ;' his life, his breath, his spirit, are all the same 
 with God's inferior creatures, which He hath made. He pronounced 
 
 I M 
 I « 
 

 FH^li:; 
 
 
 !;:;! 
 
 '!> 
 
 164 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 them ' very good ' as well as man ; but, whether man sha'l come to life 
 again after coasing to be, unassisted reason cannot discover. 
 
 " There is no essence in man more than in any other creature upon 
 which can be predicated a future life, but every thing to lead us to the 
 opposite conclusion. The animal man has attempted to answer the 
 (}uestion, and hath proclaimed that ' death is an eternal sleep.' This is 
 all he can make of man's destiny, as predicated upon his physical con- 
 stitution. Death would have been eternal sleep, if, when Adam fell, 
 God had abandoned this race to the Eden Law of Death ; or had the 
 second Adam not risen from the dead, death would have been an un- 
 disturljed sleep until a sinless one could be found, who by a resurrection 
 from the dead should become a linng sacrifice for sin. But what could 
 un(!nlightened reason elaborate of this 1 These belong to the ' deep 
 things of God,' which the spirit of God alone was acquainted with, and 
 could, therefore, alone reveal. Then, to inspiration we appeal." 
 
 Section 9, paragraph 10. — "Eternal Life has been the hope of all those 
 who have walked with God in all past ages and generations, since the 
 fall. In walking with God, they have trod the same path, and journeyed 
 along the same road, which is the only ' way that leadeth unto eternal 
 life.' The entrance upon this way is straight, and its passage narrow, and 
 thougn it leads to glory, honoi;!-, ijicorruptibility and life, there are few 
 that find it. Iklief in the testimony of God, and obedience to His com- 
 mandments are the grand characteristics of ' His way ' in its successive 
 manifestations in all time. Dispensations have varied ; but these lead- 
 ing principles have always remained the same. ' These are written that 
 ye may believe,' and ' blessed are they that do Flis commandments, that 
 they may have a right to the Tree of Life, which is in the midst of the 
 
 am 
 
 the 
 
 way. 
 
 the 
 
 truth, 
 no man 
 
 and the 
 entereth 
 
 Paradise of God.' ' I,' says Jesus, 
 life ' — ' I am the resurrection '- ' I am the door, and 
 but by me.' " 
 Section 10, paragraph 1. — " What we must do to obtain eternal 
 
 LIFE." 
 
 " The Scripture not only teaches what the animal man is as a physical 
 and moral being, but what he may become. It shews that he has ' no 
 good thing in him' ; that he has no pre-emiii(Mice over other animals 
 more than the perfection of his organization confers upon him ; and thnt 
 therefore, he is destitute of inherent holiness, righteousness, immortahty, 
 • honour and glory. Ho is a humbled creature, made subject to vanity, 
 and at enmity against God and His laws. 
 
 " 2.-^These things being abundantly demonstrated both in the works 
 and word of God, the future destiny of man tts predicoJile upon tlie cou- 
 Mitutioii of his luiturc, is that of an eternsl cessation of his existence from 
 tiio time he shall have mingled with his parent dust. This is the con- 
 clusion to which revelation and science will conduct every disciple of 
 truth, who is independent of prejudice and party, and who ha.s the 
 courage to confess her in the face of ignorance, bigotry and persecu- 
 tion. 
 
 " 3, — An insane cry has been raised by party leaders, who, (in the words 
 
Mf 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 165 
 
 of Quintillian) ' condemn what they do not understand,' against what 
 they style ' materialism.' In the language of a celebrated writer, we 
 would say that ' this question of materialism is one of the most vain, 
 trivial, and uninteresting that ever engaged the human intellect ; and 
 nothing can be more unphilosophical, and more truly detrimental to the 
 interests of morality and religion, than the unfounded clamour, or cant, 
 shall I call it, which has been poured forth from the periodical journals 
 about the danger attending it. A manly intellect, instead of bowing before 
 prejudice, loould dissipate it, by showing that the question is altogether 
 an illusion, and that, adopt what opinion we may concerning the sub- 
 stance of the mind, every attribute belonging to it must remain unaltered 
 and unimpaired. 
 
 " 4. — After speculating upon what may be discovered concerning the 
 ' essence of the soul,' by observation and reflection, or consciousness, the 
 -ame author remarks ; 'Observation, therefore, reveals ai little in re- 
 gard to the sul)6tance of the mind, as does reflection on consciousness ; 
 and as no othe* modes of arriving at certain knowledge are open to 
 man, the solution of the question appears to ])e placed completely beyond 
 his reach. In shoil, to use an observation of another writer, nature has 
 given man faculties fitted to observe phenomena as they at present exist, 
 and the relations subsisting between them ; but has denied to him powers 
 to discover as a matter of direct perception, either the beginning or the 
 end, or the essence of anything under the sun ; we may amuse our 
 imagination with conjectures, but will never arrive at truth, 
 when we stray into these interdicted regions.' ' The solution,' con- 
 tinues the first writer, ' is therefore not only unimportant, but it is 
 impossible, and this leads me to observe, that no idea van be iw'e erroneous 
 than that ivhich supposes the dignitij and future destiny af rruin as an im- 
 mmial being to depend of necessitij on the substance of tohich he is made.' 
 We have here the candid confession that, by the unaided efforts of the 
 human intellect, it is impossible to find out whether the soul be of an 
 immortal nature. But from Avhat we have seen in this essay, we can 
 with certainty affirm, that man has no immortal jtrinciple in Ids nature. 
 Modern philosophers are aware of this, but they fear to confess the 
 truth, lest thoy should be ]>randcd with the name of materialist ; and 
 furthermore, if they avow the conviction of their minds, they know not 
 what answer to give to the enquiry ' ff man have no pre-eminence over a 
 beast does he die as the beasts whieh perish ' / 
 
 " Abstract materialism li^ads to tliis conclusion, and they are at a loss 
 how to grapple with the difficulty. But not so the scribe who is in- 
 structed fo]' the kingdom of heaven. He can answer it with ease. 
 
 " 5. — The grand ti'uth of God's word is, tliut glorij, honour, inccrrupti- 
 bility, and life are the reirard of a character formed in harmomj vitli the 
 commandments delivered to men in the several dispensations of time under 
 which they lire. They are the reward of a good character ; a character 
 which shall be pronounced l)y the Judge ' without spot or wrinkle, or 
 any such thing ; but which shall be holy and without blemish.' If 
 glory, honour and eternal life be worth the sacrifice of everything on 
 
 I- 
 
 t 
 
166 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAIxVST MODEllN THEOLOGY. 
 
 u 
 
 !' 1 
 
 earth to obtain, then the inducement to a holy, righteous and unblem- 
 ished life in Jesus Christ is found in these, transcendantly powerful. 
 Carnal and blind are they who say that this doctrine is demoralizing ! 
 We know no language strong enough to express the sense we entertain 
 of the ignorance and perverseness of such cavillers. What stronger in- 
 ducement to goodness and virtue could the philanthropy of God propose, 
 than an unending, pleasurable and delightful existence with Christ 1 If 
 such a consideration will not lead men to * repentance unto life,' we are 
 at a loss to conceive what will. ' Fear,' says one of these terrorists, 
 ' will do it.' But ' cowards ' have no fraternity with the heroes of the 
 faith ; the Scripture condemns them to the second death ! Fear never 
 made a genuine Christian yet ; no, nor never will. The sons of God 
 are freemen, whom the truth has freed from all slavish fears. They 
 love God with a perfect love, because they believe that He first loved 
 them. 
 
 " 6. — During the time between the Ascension and Future Advent of 
 Jesus, the terms upon which Immortality, &c., are offered^to men are con- 
 tained in the Gospel, and in that only. When born into the existing 
 world, wo come under the curse and sentence of death ; or as 
 the Apostle saith, we are ' made subject to vanity not wiUingli/.' It 
 is in this sense that the world of mankind, is said to be condemned 
 already. ' He that believeth not,' whether the faithlessness be predi- 
 cated on physical or circumstantial disability matters not, all unbelievers 
 are ' condemned already.' — John iii. 18. Because of this congenital 
 condemnation it is that we suffer evil from our birth, die and return to 
 the ground from which we originally came ; but, well would it be for 
 multitudes, if the condemnation which rests upon them did not trans- 
 cend this. The sentence under which we are involuntarily born has no 
 reference to the Second Death ; it subjects mortals only to present 
 evil, and to a return to the dust, which is final and eternal, to those 
 who die in ' times of ignorance.' Were there no other sentence than 
 this pronounced upon mankind, there would be no Second Death, which 
 is the penalty, not of the Eden law, but for the trangression of subse- 
 quent ones. And here I would make one remai-k for the reflection of our 
 Universalist friends, namely : had there been no other sentence prormdgated 
 than that in Eden, and had the irord of Christ been simply and solely, ' all 
 shall be saved,' then the dogma, that to the extent to which all men die m 
 Adam, to the same extent shall all men be made alive in Christ, would Juive 
 been true. But, on the assumption that he that believeth, means ' all,' 
 there is still a sentence of condemnation pronounced against unbelieving 
 mortals, which restricts the ' all ' to a portion of mankind, and con- 
 demns the rest. ' He that believeth not (the Gospel) shall be con- 
 demned.' 
 
 " 7. — Here, then, are two sentences of condemnation, to which, if a 
 man become obnoxious, he may be said to be doubly damned. He is 
 condemned to the first death because ho is born of the flesh ; and he 
 is condemned to the second death if he believe not the Gospel ; 
 but let the reader bear in mind, that no mortal son of Adam is obnoxious 
 
' TESTIMONIES. 
 
 1(37 
 
 t" the Second Death because he is horn of the flesh; but being born of the 
 flesh involuntarily, he becomes liable to it by rejecting the Gospel of J esus 
 Christ — and this is the ground of the Second Condemnation, * that light 
 has come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light, be- 
 cause their deeds are evil.' — John iii. 19. 
 
 "8. — What then do men need to be saved from — First, from ignorance 
 of God's way ; second, from moral perversion ; third, from the evils of 
 the present life, in body and estate ; and fourth, from the dissolution of 
 the grave. The * Light' which God has revealed in the Scriptures will 
 save them from ignorance and its bequests, which are superstition, fear, 
 bigotry, unbelief, tkc. ; ' repentance and remission of sins in the name of 
 Jesus,' will rectify their conscience ; and a ' resurrection unto life,' or a 
 transformation, will deliver them from ' all the ills that flesh is heir to,' 
 and restore them to a being which shall end jio more. 
 
 " 9. — The wages of sin is death.' Wages are paid onlyjto those who 
 labour ; those who in their toil ' sow to the flesh,' will be paid for 
 the labour they perform ; and the pay for this kind of labour is ' corrup- 
 tion,' or ' death unto death — death ending in corruption, ' as the Apostle 
 saith, ' shall of the flesh reap corruption,' and of such he says in another 
 place, ' whose end is destruction ;' so that ' death,' ' corruption,' and 
 • destruction,' are the ' wages of sin,' which every one is fairly entitled 
 to ' who loves darkness rather than light,' and refuses to accept the Gos- 
 pel of Jesus Christ. We need to be delivered from our sins, and from 
 a resurrection unto a second death and corruption, which shall be con- 
 summated in a fiery destruction, constituting the destiny of unbelievers, 
 cowai'ds, abominable characters, and whosoever loves mid invents a lie. 
 
 " 10. — JVhat must we do to be saved from all these things? The answer 
 is contained in the saying of the King of Israel to his Ambassadors to 
 the nations : ' He that believeth the Gospel and is Bapitzed, 
 SHALL be Saved ;' and ' observe all things whatsoever / Imve com- 
 manded you.' What is the Gospel to be believed 1 ' Repentance, remission 
 of sins and eternal life through the name of Jesus Christ.' These are 
 the glad tidings, but on what premises are they predicated 1 Upon the 
 testimony of Moses and the prophets, that in the fulness of time a Puri- 
 fication Sacrifice should be manifested, styled tho Messiah, ' who .should 
 be cut off" but not for Himself, who should be ' a man of sorrows and ac- 
 quainted with grief ; who should be ' despised ;' one upon whom the 
 iniquity of all should be laid ; who should be stricken for the transgression 
 of Israel ; who should make his grave with the wickeil and the rich man 
 in His death ; whose body should not be permitttjd to see corruption ; 
 who should i.s. I'ud to the right hand of the Majt'.sty in tlie heavens, and 
 who should SJ-. there until His enemies should be subjected, and until 
 the time of the restoration of the Jewish state and throne of David 
 should arrive. 
 
 " 11. — These glad tidings arc also predicated upon the demonstration, 
 that Jesus of Nazareth is the personage ; in other words, that Jes^is is 
 the anointed One, the i^on of the lining Gi>d. This is the 'foundation' of 
 the Gospel, but not the Gospel itself, when taken abstractly from the 
 
 II' 
 If 
 
 It 
 
 

 o 
 
 I*' r 
 
 
 M^' 
 
 108 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 testimony of the prophets. Having laid this foundation, Paul preached' 
 that Jesus died for our sins, and rose again from the dead, as had beon 
 foretold concerning Him in the ancient oracles of God, where, as Jesus 
 Himself said, it is also written, that * repentance and remission of sins 
 should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.' 
 Does the reader, then, believe on the testimony of the prophets and 
 apDStles, that Jesus of Narazeth is the anointed prophet, priest, king, 
 and Son of the living God ; that He was sacrificed for sin ; that His blood 
 cleanses from all sin ; that He was buried ; that He rose from the dead 
 on the third day ; that He ascended to heaven ; and that He will in like 
 manner come again to raise the dead and rule the world in righteous- 
 ness — does he believe these things 1 Then he believes that repentance, 
 remission of sins, and eternal life are through the name of Jesus — he 
 believes the Gospel. 
 
 " 12. — But if thou art a believer of the Gospel, reader, be mindful 
 of the words of Him who will judge you in the last day by the words of 
 His own mouth ; He does not say simply and alone, ' He that believeth 
 the Gospel shall be saved ; ' no, let heaven and earth be witness ; He 
 says : ' He that believeth AND IS BAPTISED, shall be saved,' and at 
 your peril, detract from the letter or spirit of the word. After reading 
 this, if thou believest, askest thou what thou must do to obtain 're 
 pentance and remission of sins through the name of Jesus 1 ' For what 
 purpose thinkest thou, the Apostles commanded men to ' be baptised in 
 the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost,' if it were not that they 
 might obtain forgiveness of sins ' through the name of Jesus 1 ' !''(//• 
 Heart is purified by faith. Your state is changed by Baptism. Hear the 
 words of the Apostle then, and understand : ' Repent and be BArxiSED 
 
 IN THE NAME OF JeSUS FOR THE REAIISSION OF SINS.' 
 
 " 13. — On the supposition that you have believed the Gospel and been 
 baptised in the name of Jesus for the remission of sins, do you now en- 
 quire what you must do to obtahi the 'glory, honour, incorruptiljility, 
 and life ' of the future age 1 The enqniry is appropriate and M(41- 
 timed, for rest assured that you may have believed the Gospel, and have 
 most scripturally obeyed it, but unless you hold fast your begun confi- 
 dence unshaken to the end, unless you persevere in well-doing, you had 
 better never have known the truth. ' Save yourselves,' says Jesus, ' Ijy 
 your perseverance,' to which Paul, by whose gospel you will be judged, 
 adds, ' God will render to every man according to his deeds ; to them 
 who, by patient continuance in well doing, SEEK FOR GLORY, and 
 honour, and incorruptibility ; ETERNAL life.' Can you continue in well 
 doing unless you begin to do well '? Can you ' seek for ' a thing Avhich 
 you pretend to already possess 1 No, ' God only hath immortality — 
 with Him is ' the fmntain of life ' ; and all the intelligences of His ))ouiid- 
 less dominion, who may have this as a quality of their being, have de- 
 rived it from Him as a recompense for their faithful oue«.lience in a pre- 
 vi(jus state. Are you not desirous of attaining to the glory, lii;)nour, 
 and tranquil flignity of these celestials ■ Would you not be ravished 
 with delight in the possession of an angelic nature, an undefiled aini 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 169' 
 
 incorruptible inheritance, and an eternal relation to all worlds ? Strive 
 then, that you may be ' accounted worthy to attain to that age,' 
 ' through a resurrection from among the dead,' when yon shall ' die no 
 more,' and be equal to the " angels of God." — Luke xx. 36. — Dr. Thomas, 
 in Christadelphian, 1870, pp. 193, 197, 200, 225, 230, 
 
 These ext'-acts have extended to a greater length than anticipated, but 
 the discussion of the question of Death and Life is so important that it 
 has been found impossible, in justice to the subject and the reader, to 
 curtail the argument. Moreover, the whole matter so ably elaborait d 
 by Dr. Thomas, has an important bearing on the doctrine of resurrec- 
 tion ; and if the reader have not, until now, or if he have, applied him- 
 self to the study of this question of death and life ; the destiny of the 
 wicked ; the future life of the righteous ; and the importance of resur- 
 rection in the development of God's purpose on this earth, he surely will 
 not regret the space and time devoted to the better understanding of 
 what God sets before all men to whom the Gospel invitation comes : 
 "Life and good; and Death and evil." — Deut. xxx. 15. But to pro- 
 ceed : — 
 
 The Bible doctrine of a future life, is life by and through a re.surrec- 
 tion from the dead ; and the doctrine of a Eesni rection is emphaticaily a 
 Hebrew doctrine. Although it is unquestionably true that Christ, when 
 as the first-born from the dead, he abolished the power of death, and 
 burst asunder the bonds of A\e grave, brought life and immortality to 
 light in the Gospel, clearly showing to all subsequent generations of men 
 the mode by which the righteous dead are restored to life and reward — 
 in a manner, respecting which Old Testament saints had no knowledge ; 
 yet, it is evident that the faith of the saints of patriarchal and prophetic 
 times, was based on the assurance of a Resurrection. 
 
 They did not know, so far as we can judge, Jmv this would be accom- 
 plished. This was manifested by Jesus in His own death and resurrec- 
 tion, and afterwards taught by His disciples, and made further known by 
 Him through His servant, John. 
 
 In Gen. xiii. 14-18, we have the first intimation of the promise of 
 territory made to Abraham. In the fifteenth chapter he manifests a de- 
 sire to have an assurance from Deity that he would inherit the land. 
 He is directed to prepare a sacrifice ; " and when the sun was going 
 down a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and lo, an horror of great darkness 
 fell upon himJ^ (verse 12.) He was informed of certain things that 
 would befall his descendants ; that he would go to his fathers in peace, 
 and be buried in a good old age. In chapter seventeenth God enters 
 into covenant with Abraham, giving him the land of Canaan for an 
 everlasting possession. Clearly Abraham could only understand 
 that he would inherit tliis land by a rcisurrection from the dead. Read 
 in connection Acts. vii. 5 ; Gal. iii. 17 ; Heb. xi. 8 — 10, 13 ; alsoExod. iii. 
 6 ; and Math. xxii. 31, 32 ; the doctrine of resurrection being the subject 
 under discussion, and not, as is generally supposed, the immortality, of 
 the soul. 
 
 Dr. Candlish takes this view of the subject. I have already given 
 
 » si 
 
 \ 
 
 'I 
 
M 
 
 (I i h 
 
 170 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 * ' 
 
 N 
 
 1 ' '■■ 
 
 an extract from the writings of this celebrated man, wherein he 
 argues the certainty of the fulfilment of the promise to Abraham, because 
 based upon the veracity of God. — Compiler. In reference to the time 
 when it shall take place he says ; — 
 
 "Still farther, the Apostle's reasoning would lead us to place the ful- 
 filment of the promise to Abraham now before us, after the remrrection, 
 for he says, ' wherefore,' by reason, or in consequence, of this promise, 
 God is not ashamed to be called their God' — it is because He has some 
 great thing in store for them — something worthy of Himself to be- 
 stow. Something corresponding to so near a connection as is implied 
 in His being ' their God ; ' and their being His people. His sons, and 
 therefore His heirs. 
 
 " But, according to our Lord, this same title, ' God of Abraham, God 
 of Isaac, and God of Jacob,' conveys also a. promise of the Restiirection, 
 It is only of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, not dead, but living, that He is, 
 
 or can be, the God. The promise was secured to them, 
 
 not as disembodied spirits, but as living men in the body ; since God 
 is not the God of the dead. He never assumed this name, or gave any 
 of the pledges or promises which it implies, in relation to the dead, or 
 disembodied spirits. He is the God of the living, it is with the living, 
 witl). men alive in the body, that He has to do ; such is the import of 
 our Lord's argument. God was not merely the God of Abraham while he 
 sojourned as a pilgrim upon the land ; He is his God still. But this can- 
 not mean that He is the God of Abraham's disembodied soul only, for 
 He never constituted himself the God of Abraham in that sense. It 
 was of Abraham in the body, that He condescended to become the God ; 
 that is, of Abraham in the body, that He is the God still ; and it is to 
 Abraham in the body yiat he is pledged to make good all that that 
 name denotes. Abraham must, therefore, yet live in the body to receive 
 the fulfilment of the promise which God gave him in the body, and in 
 respect of which He sayS; not I was, hit lam, the God of Abraham." 
 
 This is truly a wonderful production from a clerical source. Such 
 language in the mouth of a Christadelphian is characterized by the 
 brethren of Dr. Candlish as pure nonsense, gross carnality, and ram- 
 pant infidelity. The most casual examination of the language before us, 
 shows the scripturality of Dr. Candlish's deliverance on this subject. 
 From it we may also infer how his great mind must have been fettered 
 by the theological terms which he uses. And further, we may learn 
 fr(jm it, that wliatever may have been the true meaning which Dr. 
 Candlish attached to the term, " disembodied spirits," that he could 
 not have understood these spirits as still retaining consciousness, much 
 less as being in the presence of God in heaven. Because if they are there 
 as represented by the theologians, in full possession of the perfectly de- 
 veloped faculties attributed to the immortal soul, when freed from the 
 clay prison-house of the body, experiencing a constantly increasing ex- 
 pansion of its powers, and these attuned to the service of Deity, surely 
 in that case he could not say that God is not the God of such. He says 
 distinctly that God is not the God of the disembodied spirits oi Abraham, 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 171 
 
 Isaac and Jacob, that is, that He is not tho God of these fathers of 
 Israel dead, but their God as they shall live in the resurrection. This is 
 all that Christadelphians claim, in this respect. — (C.) 
 
 Hannah in that beautiful prayer, so full of prophetic utternnce (I. 
 Sam. ii. 6.) must have had some conception of resurrection, when she 
 says (ver. 6.) " The Lord killeth and maketh alive. He bringeth down 
 to the grave, and bringeth up." So Job xix. 25, 2G : — " For I 
 know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter 
 day upon the earth ; and though after my skin worms destroy this 
 body, yet in my flesh shall I see God." David's hope of resurrection 
 has been already noticed. Isaiah, in the spirit of prophetic vision, 
 utters the following, ch. xxv. 8 : — '* He, (Messiah) will swallow up 
 death in victory." And in ch. xxvi. 19 : — "Thy (righteous) dead shall 
 live ; with my dead body shall they arise ; awake and sing ye that 
 dwell in dust ; for thy dow is as the dew of herbs ; and tlhc earth shall cast 
 out the dead." While at verse 14, it is said of another class (the wic- 
 ked) : — *' They are dead, they ahall not live, they are deceased, they 
 shall not rise ; therefore hast thou visited and destroyed them, and 
 made all their memory to perish." And in Dan. xii. 3, resurrection is 
 plainly foretold in connection with other notable events simultaneously 
 occurring : — " At that time shall Michael (Messiah) stand up, the Great 
 Prince, that standeth for the children of thy people (Israel) ; and there 
 shall be a time of trouble, such as never was since there was a nation, 
 even to that same time ; and at that time thy people shall be delivered 
 every one that shall be found written in the book," And many of them 
 that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life 
 and some to everlasting shame and contempt (or as some contend more 
 correctly rendered, the shame and contempt of th^Olam, Aion ox age — the 
 Messianic Age). The resurrection takes place at a time when the nat- 
 ions <are in trouble, in uproar and conflict ; and when deliverance is 
 vouchsafed to Israel nationally — thus agreeing with what was shown to 
 John (Rev xi. 18) when Christ shall have taken to Him His great 
 power, and reigning in the earth : — " The nations were angry, and Thy 
 wrath is come, and the time of the dead, that they should be judged, and 
 that Thou sholudest give reward to Thy servants the prophets, and to 
 the saints, and them that fear thy name, small and great." We have 
 the same intimation of calamity and judgment set forth in Isaiah in con- 
 nection with the passages just quoted (ch. xxvi. 20-21) : — "Come, my 
 people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy door about thee ; 
 hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the the indignation he 
 overpast'; for behold the Lord cometh out of His place io inmish the in- 
 habitants of the earth for their iniquity ; the earth also shall disclose 
 her blood, and shall no more cover her slain." One point stands out 
 conspicuously clear in these passages. It is this ; that the advent of 
 Christ, and tho resurrection of the dead, take place at a time of great 
 commotion, tumult and war among the nations. An interesting ques- 
 tion here occurs, — are we near this crisis? 
 
 The following passage occurs in Hosea xiii. 14 : — " I (Messiah) will 
 
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 172 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ransom them (Israel, after the flesh, and Israel after the spirit, whose 
 helper Ho then will be, verse 9) from the power of the gi-avt; ; I will 
 redeem them from death ; O death, 1 will be thy plague, grave, I 
 will be thy destruction ! ! " These passages, with many others which 
 might be quoted, distinctly indicate that ,the doctrine of resurrection 
 was held, it may be to some extent dimly, in Old Testament times. 
 
 Summing up a lengthy and important article on Resurrection and 
 Immortality, as tauglit in Moses and the prophets, Dr. Thomas 
 says :— 
 
 "They all refuse to testify to the existence of an 'immortal soul' 
 in sin's flesh. While they speak of ' soul ' they testify that ' the 
 soul that sinneth, it shall die.' ' He kept not back their soul from 
 (hath.' ' Hear and your soul shall live,' which teaches, by implication, 
 that it was previously dead ; and ' That soid will I destroy/ from among 
 his people, which teaches its destructibility — a quality of soul, the op- 
 posite to immortality ; the basis of which is indcstrudibilUy. Of Mes- 
 siah, the prophets say : ' If Thou, Jehovah, shall make a trespass-oft er- 
 ing of his soul' ' Ho exposed his soul to death.' ' Thou wilt not leave,' 
 saith the spirit, * my soid in the grave ' — and ' God will redeem nvj soul 
 from the grave.' Thus the prophets speak of ' soul,' showing thereby 
 that they regarded it as mortal and destructible ; and in death the 
 tenant of the grave, from which it is redeemable through resurndion 
 alone." '^Herald of the Kingdom ami the Age to Come" for 1857, p. 
 103. 
 
 In the New Testament the doctrine of resurrection and future life 
 only, through a resurrection, are most clearly set forth. In Math. v. 
 5, we are told that " the meek shall inherit the earth." Abrahaui was 
 shown by the deep sleep, and the horrorof great darkness that fell upon 
 him, that he was to inherit the land after passing through the death 
 state, and the darkness of the grave. So the words here quoted im- 
 ply that the meek must live again, by resurrection, to inherit the 
 earth with Abraham, the "heir of the world." — Rom. iv. 13, and 
 " Christ the heir of all things." — Heb. i. 2. The Apostle Paul places the 
 future existence of the saints entirely upon the fact of a resurrection. 
 1 Cor. XV. 16-18. "For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ 
 raised ; and if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain ; you are yet in 
 your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ ARE perished." 
 Theie is no ambiguity of language here. If there be no resurrection 
 there is no future life — not even for them who are fallen asleep in 
 Christ. Strange that men can overlook, or twist out of all shape, the 
 plain meaning of these words — words so entirely in harmony with the 
 teachhig of Jesus — Luke xiv. 14: "And thou shalt be blessed; for 
 they (the poor) cannot recompense thee ; for thou shalt be recompen- 
 sed at the resurrection of the just." And again — John v. 28, 29 : " Mar- 
 vel not, for tlie hour is coming, in thewhich all that are ir the graves 
 shall hear His voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good to 
 the resurrection of life ; and they that have done evil to the resurrec- 
 tion of condemnation." Jesus said unto Martha — John xi. 23, 24 : 
 
I TESTIMONIliS. 
 
 173 
 
 " Thy brother shall rise again." Martha said ntito Him, " I know that 
 he shall rise in the resurrection at the last day." Jesus said unto her, 
 " I am the resurrection and the life." \\'() have aliindy seen that while 
 the Pharisees among the Jews l)elieved in re.surreclion, the Sadducees 
 denied it. So we find Paulbefore Ananias- -Acts xxiv. 18, asserting the 
 liclief of his prosecutors in " a resurrection bolli of the just and unjust ; " 
 wh\U we find him l)efore Agrippa demanding of them, " Why 
 should it be thought a thing incredil)le that God should raise the 
 dead /* " So important is this doctrine of resurrection, that the rite 
 of Scriptural Baptism (total immersion) contains in itself the sym- 
 hn\ of death and resurrection, in addition to the type of puri- 
 fication, the sanctifying and cleansing that is accomplished with 
 (he washing of water by the Word. — Ephesians v. 26. " Know ye 
 not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ, were baptized 
 into His death ? Therefore we are buried with him, hi/ baptism into denth ; 
 that like as Christ was raised up froni the dead by the glory of the 
 Father, even so wo also should walk in nowncirs of life. For if we have 
 been planted in the likeness of His death, we shall l)e also in the likeness 
 of His resurrection — Rom. G, 3-5. A most important and comprehensive 
 figure, which common sense informs us, the rite by total immersion only, 
 can contain. The importance of the figure is set forth 1 Peter 3,21; 
 " The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us, bij th' 
 resnrrt'ifion of Jesus Christ." Letthe reader carefully read the whole of the 
 fifteenth chapter of first Corinthians, in the light of Luke xiv. It, as 
 being the time of recompense, which doctrine we also find in Isaiah, 
 xl. 10 : "Behold the Lord God (Jesus-Messiah) will come against the 
 strong, and His arm shall rule for him ; behold his reward is with him, 
 and recompense for His work (margin) before him." This fifteenth 
 chapter should convince every unprejudiced, honest-minded man and 
 woman, reading it according to the sense of the language therein em- 
 ])loyed, grammatically construed, that there is no future life for any of 
 our race (saving Enoch and Elias and the living at Christ's appearing) 
 except by and through a resurrection of the dead ; that there is no re- 
 surrection until Christ comes, and no immortality until after judgment, 
 clearly indicating that the resurrected shall stand in the Grand Assize in 
 a mortal body, to receive in that body (2 Cor., v. 10) according to the 
 things done, whether good or bad, even the recompense of reward, 
 eternal life to the righteous, punishment commensurate in the eyes ot 
 unerring justice, with the sins committed, for the wicked, or the unjust 
 and ungodly, terminating in eternal death. This is what Paul had an 
 eye to when he addressed the Phillippians (ch. iii. 8-11): "Yea, doubt- 
 less, and I count all things loss, for the excellency of the knowledge of 
 Jesus Christ my Lord ; for whom 1 have suffered the loss of all things, 
 and do count them but dross, that I may win Christ and be found in 
 him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that 
 which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God 
 by faith, that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and 
 the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death ; 
 
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174 THE BIBLK VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 
 if by any means / might attain unto a remrreclion from amovg the 
 dead:' 
 
 So also in his letter to Timothy ( Tim. iv. 7. 8.) : " I have fought a 
 good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith ; hencefortli 
 there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord the 
 righteous judge SHALL GIVE ME AT THAT DAY ; and not to me only, but 
 unto all them also that love His appearing, when He shall return from 
 heaven, whence also we look for Him, and shall change (or transform) 
 our vile body that it may be like unto His glorious body, according to 
 the working whereby He is able to subdue all things to Himself," that is 
 })y His mighty power, by which this mortal body shall piU on im- 
 mortality — Phil, iii, 20, 21 ; I Cor. xv, 53. All harmonizing with tlif* 
 grounds of consolation and hope, addressed by Paul (1 Thes. iv. 13- 
 1 7) to the ThesEalonian ecclesia : " But 1 would not have you to Ix' ig- 
 norant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not, 
 even as others which have no hope. For if wo believe that Jesus died 
 and rose again, even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring 
 with Him. For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we 
 which are alive and remain unto the coming of the Lord, shall not pre- 
 vent tbem that are asleep ; for the Lord himself shall descend from hea- 
 ven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and the trump of 
 God, and the dead in Christ shall rise first." Also with Rev. chap, xx, 
 setting forth the resurrection of the dead, and the establishment of the 
 millennial kingdom, the reign of Christ and His Saints, as set forth in the 
 song of the redeemed (Rev. v. 9, 10): " And they sung a new song, 
 saying : Thou art w^o^^ay to take -he book, and to open the seals there- 
 of; for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood, out 
 of every kindred, and tongue, and people, and nation ; and hast made 
 us unto our God kings and priests ; and we shall reign on the 
 EARTH."— (Compiler.) 
 
 Summing up another interesting and lengthy article on " The Teach- 
 ings of Jesus and His Apostles in relation to Immortality," Dr. Thomas 
 says :— 
 
 The second Adam was never a ghost-man of the Plato stamp. 
 He was once a living soul, or a soul and body as we ; but such no longer ; 
 he is now, says Paul, a spirit body, or life imparting spirit ' I am, 
 said Jesus, speaking by the spirit, the way, the truth, the resurrection 
 and the life.' He brought Life and Immortality to light through the 
 Gospel He and His disciples preached, and that Gospel says nothing 
 about immortal soulism. On the contrary, He taught that the way to 
 God's kingdom and glory, is to follow in the steps of His faith and obe- 
 dience ; to believe the truth as it is in Him j to be resurrected by Him; 
 and to live by Him. When He preached the gospel of life and immor- 
 tality he used to say : ' He that believes into the Son hath Aionian life,' 
 in the sense of having a 'right to it,' Rev. xxii. 14 ; John iii. 36, and 
 again, ' He that understands my word, and believes Him that sent Me, 
 bath Aionian life, and shall never come into condemnation, but hath 
 passed out of death unto life.' * Verily the hour comes, and now is, 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 175 
 
 when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that 
 hear shall live.' They shall come forth from their graves, they that 
 have practised good things for a resurrection of life ; but they who have 
 committed evil deeds for a resurrection of 'judgment.' — John v. 24-29." 
 
 " This doctrine indicates, that a right must first be obtained to the life 
 of Messiah's Aion, that it is obtainable by the obedience of an enlight- 
 ened faith ; that in obeying, a constitutional transfer of the believer 
 ensues, by which he comes under a sentence of life ; that the practice in 
 the present life of what God shall deem good things, will entitle to the 
 realization of the acquired right ; that the dead are in no sense alive till 
 they hear the Son's voice calling them ; for they that hear, SHALL live ; 
 that the dead who are then to live, whether good or bad, are not to come 
 from the skies, but from tfmr graves ; and that reward for good and pun- 
 ishment for evil, is after resurrection. Now, according to the doctrine 
 of life and incorruptibility Jesus preached, it is not for every soul or 
 body of Adam's race that immortality is provided ; but only for an elec- 
 tion therefrom. Jesus teaches this in saying ;' That this is the Father's 
 will who hath sent Me, that all that He Itath given to Me, I shall not lose of 
 it, but shall raise it up at the last day.' ' And this is the Will of Him 
 that sent Me, that every one comprehending the Son, and believing into 
 Him, may have the life of the Aion ; and I will raise him up at the la.st 
 day.' ' It is written in the prophets, and tfiey shall be all taught of God. 
 Every one, therefore, having heard from the Father, and having learned, 
 comes to Me.' ' I am the living bread which descended out of the heaven ; 
 if any one eat of this bread he shall live in the Aion, and the bread which 
 I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.' 
 ' Verily I say unto you, except ye eat of the flesh of the Son of Man, and 
 drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves.'' ' He that eateth My 
 flesh and drinks My blood dwells in Me, and I in him.' that is ' by faitli' 
 — Eph. iii. 17. 'As the living Father hath sent Me, and I live through 
 the Father, he also that eateth Me, he shall live through Me. He that 
 eateth this bread shall live in the Aion.' — John vi. 
 
 " Such doctrine as this is utterly subversive of the dogma which assigns 
 to every son of Adam, an immortal soul as an hereditary element of his 
 nature. Jesus taught His contemporaries that ' they had not life in 
 them,' and that to obtain it they must feed upon Him. ' The words that 
 I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life.' ' He that believeth 
 not into the Son, sluill not see life.' 
 
 " Here then is a great truth. They who attain ' the Life and Incorrup- 
 tibility of Messiah's Aion, are tliese who are taught o,' God. This is the duo- 
 trine of the Spirit by Isaiah, Jeremiah and Jesus. — Isa. liv. 11-13 ; Jer. 
 xxxi. 33 ; John vi. 44-45. The converse of this is that, they '.^rho are nut 
 taught of God, shall not attain to the life and incorrupcibilttj of the Aion. 
 If either of these propositions be admitted, the other is necessarily true. 
 How important then, to know assuredly what is taught of God, that we 
 may place ourselves under the teaching ; that we may learn of the Father 
 the words of Aionian life ; that we may understand, do, and live in Mes- 
 aiah'sAion, and that beyond. ^Men are alienated from ihe life of God, throuyk 
 
 i 
 
lia 
 
 M 
 
 H't 
 
 irO THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 the ignorance that is in them.* — Eph. iv. 18. What a condemnation then, is 
 ignorance of the words of life and incorruptibility. It consigns men to 
 death and corruption. Lot us therefore eschew ignorance ; and the teach- 
 ings of all pretenders, who would keep us in ignorance of Qod'a teaching, 
 or who would discourage the broadest and fullest investigation of the 
 Scriptures of Truth. Beware of all who would turn you aside from Moses 
 and the Prophets, for the New Testament writers rightly commend them ; 
 and exhort us ' to be mindful of the word spoken by them,' and when we 
 speak, to ' speak according to them.' " — I Peter, iv, 11 ; II Peter, iii. 2. 
 — (' Herald 1857, m 128, 129.) 
 
 Dr. Thomas, in tne foregoing extract speaks of an election to eternal 
 life. Let not the reader be dismayed at this. The Apostle Paul teaches 
 us that this election is based on the foreknowledge of God — that it is 
 an election of, or by faith, and in complete harmony with the formula 
 of The Great King : " lie that helieveth, and is baptized, shall be saved ; 
 he that believeth not shall be condemned." — Mark, xvi. 16. This is the 
 basis, as regards man, of the doctrine of salvation (or eternal life, justi- 
 fication and redemption from death,) by faith. What are we to believe 
 then, as a pre-requisite, or qualification for baptism 1 — " When the 
 Samaritans believed Philip, preaching the things concerning the King- 
 dom of God, and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptised, both 
 men and women," — Acts, viii. 12. " As many of you as have been bap- 
 tized into Christ, have put on Christ, and if ye be Christ's then are ye 
 Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise." — Gal. iii, 27-29. 
 Paul further tells us ; " that faith cometh by h^iaring, and hearing by the 
 word of God." — Rom. x. 17. In order to become children of Abraham 
 by faith, we must partake of the true circumcision, not that which is 
 outward in the flesh, but the circumcision which is of the heart, spiritual, 
 not literal, whose praise is not of men but of God." — Rom. ii. 28, 29. And 
 this is only attainable through being placed constitutionally in Him who 
 is the head of all principality and power, who magnified the law and 
 made it honourable, and who, in this respect was circumcised according 
 to the law ; " In whom," says Paul, addressing the Colossian believers, 
 " ye are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands, in putting 
 (iff the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ, buried 
 with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him through the 
 faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead." — 
 Col. ii. 10, 11. From this it will be seen that there is no place here for 
 infant sprinkling, and that neither is it tir.c that circumcision has been 
 superseded by that invention of man. The true circumcision remains in 
 full force; and as the sign of circumcision (Rom. iv. 11), given to Abra- 
 liam, constituted a door of admission to the privileges pertaining to 
 Abrahrm, and his posterity, according to the flesh, so does the troe circum- 
 cision constitute a door to the adoption tliat is in Christ Jesus, whereby 
 the believer becomes a son of Dei^v, and joint heir with Christ. — Com- 
 piler). 
 
 THE EARLY FATHERS* 
 
 Next in chronological order to the Scriptures comes the testimony of 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 177 
 
 some of the men known as " The Early Christian Fathers," the men who 
 followed close after the Apostolic age, and to whom, as wo have already 
 seen, mankind is largely indebted for the dogma of inherent immortality. 
 Many of these Fathers have recorded their testimony in favour of tlie 
 Scripture doctrine of future life, only through a resurrection from the 
 dead. Before proceeding to quote their testimony however, it may be 
 observed, that, as we have found to he the case with reference to the 
 ancient heathen philosophers, so do we find it charged with respect to 
 the writings of these " Fathers." They are charged with being contra 
 <lictory and inconsistent in their teaching. I do not undertake the task 
 of reconciling these alleged contradictions. What has been said con- 
 cerning the ancient philosophers, may, in this respect, apply to the 
 " Fathers." Nothing can be more natural or more probable, than that 
 many of these " Fathers," such as Justyn Martyr and others, who, on 
 their smergence from heathenism, and their conversion, such as it may 
 have been, to Christianity, may have been strongly imbued with the 
 dogina of man's natural immortality ; and that on their becoming more 
 conversant with the teachings of Scripture, and especially the doctrine 
 of a future life through death and resurrection, they should, in after life, 
 hiild and teach views respecting the nature of man and eternal life, very 
 dissimilar from those held and promulgated by them in previous years. 
 The testimony of the Fathers herein .submitted is taken from the writ- 
 ings of men of unquestioned honesty and candour, and it will be for the 
 reader to judge of the whole testimony, and say what value he places 
 upon it. Mr. Hudson devotes some space to .ai explanation of the al- 
 lowed contradictory character of the writings of the "Early Fathers," ami 
 Archbishop Whately deals with them in a more summary manner. — 
 Compiler. 
 
 The following is very severe : — 
 
 Concerning these gentlemen (" The Fathers "), who are regarded by 
 some as the great lights of Christianity, Mr. Chandler says : — " It is 
 infinite, it is endless labour, to consult all that the Fathers have written, 
 and when we have consulted them, what one controversy have they 
 rationally decide' ^ How few texts of Scripture have they critically 
 settled the sense and meaning of 1 How often do they differ from one 
 another, and in how many instances from themselves 1 Those who read 
 them greatly diff'er in their interpretations of them, and men of the 
 most contrary sentiments all claim them for their own. Athanasians 
 and Arians all appeal to the Fathers, and support their principles by 
 f[Uotation8 from them. And are these the venerable gentlemen whose 
 writings are to be set up in opposition to the Scriptures 1 Are creeds 
 of their dictating to be submitted to as the only criterion of orthodoxy ? 
 or esteemed as standards to distinguish between truth and error ? Away 
 with this folly and superstition ! The creeds of the Fathers and Coun- 
 cils are but human creeds, that have the marks in them of human frailty 
 and ignorance."- Introduction to the " Histwy of the Inquisition." 
 
 And of a later period another writer says : — " All the world knows 
 the dreadful cruelties committed in these unhappy centuries ; they main- 
 12 
 
 l! 
 
 If 
 

 ,1 
 
 
 I'' -J ■ 
 
 ; f 
 
 : i 
 
 :; t 
 
 i i 
 
 i!;»i 
 
 i!i 
 
 iv^ 
 
 ii 
 
 178 THE BIBLK VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOOY. 
 
 tained sieges in their monasteries ; they battled in their councils ; they 
 treated with the utmost cruelty all wliom they but suspected to favour 
 opinions, which too often proved to be auch as nobody understood, not 
 even those that defended them with the greatest zeal and obstinacy. 
 ' These,' says Barbeyrac, ' are the great lights of the Church 1 These 
 are the Holy Fathers whom we must take for men of true piety and 
 knowledge ! " — Echard, " Roman History," in Uerald of the Kingdom, 
 1863, p. 22, 23. 
 
 THE CONFLICT. 
 
 There seems to have existed in the world from time immemorial, a 
 conflict respecting the nature of man, and the cognate dogmas of future 
 punishment, and eternal t( rment. This subject \kis at the root of what 
 is designated " The Conft 't of Ages," which has never been settled. 
 Luther was no stranger to this conflict, and of its intense character 
 with him, we may judge when he says : — " This off'ends most of all, that 
 ' common sense ' or ' right reason,' that God of his own mere will aban- 
 dons, hardens, damns men, as if He who is declared to be of so great 
 mercy and goodness, were pleased with so great and eternal sins and 
 torments of His miserable creatures. Unjust, cruel, intolerable, has it 
 appeared thus to think of God ; whence so many and so great men, for 
 
 so many centuries, have stumbled." " And who would 
 
 not be blinded ? I, myself, stumbled, not once alone, even to the 
 
 depths, the abyss of despair How men have sweat and 
 
 toiled to vindicate the goodness of God, and to impugn the will of man ; 
 they have made distinctions between God's ordained and His abso- 
 lute will ; between necessity of consequence and the consequent, and 
 many others like these. But nothing is gained by them except to 
 impose on simple people by empty words, and the oppositions of science, 
 falsely so-called. That thorn still remains fixed deep in the hearts of 
 men, both simple and learned, whenever they think seriously on the 
 subject, so that they must feel the difficulties we do, if they believe 
 the Foreknowledge and the Omnipotence of God." — Hudson, *^ Future 
 State," p. 347. 
 
 THE TE.STIMONY OF POLYCARP, A.D., 108. 
 
 " In his last words Poly carp i)rayed for ' resurrection to eternal life, 
 both soul and body in the incorruption of the Holy Spirit,' — that is, he 
 looked for life after resurrection of soul and resurrection of body, that 
 they both, then, might become incorruptible by the Holy Spirit, in 
 accordance with Paul's teaching ( 1 Cor. xv. 53) : ' For this corruptible 
 must put on incorruption. and tliis mortal must put on immortality.' " 
 
 The following, concerning Polycarp, is of much interest in relation to 
 his testimony : " Irenrous was a pupil to, and trained up under Uie 
 tutorage of Polycarp and Papias, both of whom were disciples of John 
 the Revelator. The words and memory of Polycarp were deeply 
 engraven upon the mind of Irenaeus, and by him preserved fresh and 
 lively to his dying day. His language on this point is important, both 
 
 Ml 
 
TESTIMONIKS. 
 
 171> 
 
 for its interest, and because it confirms his testimony. Writing to 
 Florinus, he says : — ' When I was very young I saw you in the Lower 
 Asia with Polycarp, J can remember circumstances nt" that time better 
 than those which have happened more recently ; insimuich that I can 
 tell the place in which the blessed Polycarp sat and taught ; antl his 
 going out and coming in ; the manner of his life ; the form of his person, 
 and the discourses he made to the people ; and how he related his con- 
 versation with John and others who had seen the Lord ; and how he 
 related their sayings, and the things which they heard of them concern- 
 ing the Lord ; l>oth concerning His miracles and doctiiiK'. ii.s he had 
 received them from the eye witnesses of the Lord of Life, all of which 
 Polycarp related according to the Scriptures. ' " 
 
 Something h\8 already been advanced in previous pages concerning 
 the redemptio < from the grave of the souls of the righteous. l)ut in con- 
 nection with the testimony of Polycarp, the following I'rom '• Taylor's 
 Voice of the Church " is submitted : — 
 
 "Rev. Alexander Pirie, of Newhurg, Scotland, A. D. 1700, was a 
 staunch Millenarian. He wrote on the subject, and we give tli»' follow- 
 ing argument from him. He says : ' It has been argued by Dr. Whitby 
 and his numerous followers, that a proper and litervl resurrection is 
 never in the whole New Testament expressed or represented by the 
 living of the soul, but by the living, raising, and resuscitation of the 
 dead — the raising of the bodies of the saints — of them that slept in the 
 dust or in their graves. A very confident .assertion this ! Let us see 
 whether it be just or not. In Peter's sermon on the day of Pentecost, 
 Acts ii. 27, 31, we find the resurrection jf Christ expressed in the very 
 words employed by David for that purp^^so : ' Thou wilt not leave ray 
 soul in hades (the grave), neither wilt tlioii sutt'er thine holy one to see 
 corruption.' This, says Peter, David as a prophet spake of the resurrec- 
 tion of Christ, that His soul was not left in Hades, neither did His tlesh 
 see corruption. Now it will be allowed that the clauses of this verse, 
 or distich of David, are parallel and syn(jnymous, expressing the same 
 thing in different words. Consequently the * hell ' or « hades ' in the 
 first line is the sauje as the place of corruption in tlie second, and the 
 soul in the one corresponds with the flesli in the other. Here then it is 
 evident that the soul of our Lord is said to live again, or to be raised 
 from the dead, and also that the resurrection of the soul includes the 
 resurrection of the body ; so that it is a mutter of inditfereiioe whether 
 you say the soul or the body rose, .^ince the one can neither die nor rise 
 again without the other — only to die and to live again are more immedi- 
 ately and properly applied to the soul or life, than to the body, for rea- 
 sons formerly given. 
 
 " Two consequences necessarily follow : — 1st. The above remark of 
 Dr. Whitby is unfounded in truth. Here is a proper and literal resur- 
 rection expressed in the New Testament, by the living again of the soul, 
 and as the resurrection of the first-born from the dead is so expressed, 
 was it not proper to express the resurrection of His younger brethren in 
 the same terms ? Yea, might we not have expected that John as a 
 
 
^ 
 
 , A. 
 
 .t'l 
 
 i : 1 
 
 ,5 
 
 180 THK BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINbT MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 prophet would use th« language common to all the ancient prophets ) 
 2nd. When wo hear tlohn saying, ' I saw the souls of them that were 
 beheaded, &c.,and they lived and reigned with Christ,' we must neces- 
 sarily understand this as spoken of their re-animated and risen bodies, 
 because Peter has taucrht us to explain the resurrection of the soul of 
 Christ, the Lord and head of the resurrection. Beside this, how could, 
 John see a soul separated from the body 1 " —/'os/AMmoJts IVrnks, pub- 
 lished 1805. 
 
 TESTIMONY OF KiNATIUR, A.D. 100. 
 
 Speaking of martyrdom by wild beasts, which he apprehended and 
 desired, he says : " If I suffer thus, I shall then become the free man 
 of Christ, o/m/ s/wt// me /ree," evidently meaning in the first resurrection. 
 
 TBSTIMONY OF PAPIAS, A.D, 116. 
 
 Speaking of the Millennium, he says : " That there will be a certain 
 thousand years ajter tlie restirrecUon ■>/ tfie DEAD, when the Kingdom of 
 Christ will be established visibly on this earth." 
 
 TESTIMONY OF JUSTYN MARTYR, A.D. 150. 
 
 In his dialogue with Trypho, lie says : " If therefore, you fall in 
 with certain who are called Christians, who confess not this truth, but 
 dare to blaspheme the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in that 
 they say that there is no resurrection of the dead, but that immeiliately 
 when they die, they are received up into heaven,' avoid them and esteem 
 them not Christians." 
 
 TESTIMONY OF IREN^US, A.D. 178. 
 
 Treating of the promise of the land to Abraham, he says : " Thus, 
 therefore, as God promised to him the inheritance of the earth, and he 
 received it not during the whole time he lived in it, it is necessary that 
 he should receive it together with his seed, that is, with such of them 
 as fear God and believe in Him, in the resurrection of the just." Ireuaous, 
 like Justyn, calls these ' heretics ' who expected the glorification of the 
 saints immediately at death, and before their resurrection. 
 
 Hyppolytus, A.D. 220, and Melito, A.D. 177, and Tertullian, A.D. 
 200, Nepos, 250, Lactantius, A.D. 300, and many other names men- 
 tioned by Mr. Taylor in his " Voice of the Church," pp. 86, 87, all 
 looked for future life only by resurrection, and resurrection after the 
 advent of Christ. About iS.D. 250, Origen's teachings on the allegorizing 
 principle, began to displace the <loctrines of the Bible as held by the 
 early Christians respecting the coming of Christ and Resurrection. 
 
 THE EPISTLE OF THE CHURCHES OF VIENNE AND LYONS, A.D. 177. 
 
 This epistle which Eusebius has inserted at length in his ecclesiastical 
 history, was written about A.D. 177 to the Churches in Asia and Phrygia. 
 Professor Stuart thinks that not improbably it was written by Irenaeus. 
 After describing the tortures and modes of martyrdom of the Christians 
 during their persecution under Marcus Aurelius, the letter proceeds to 
 narrate the death of Ponticus, a youth of fifteen, and Blandina, a Christian 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 IHl 
 
 lady, and says : " The bodies of the martyrs having been contumoliously 
 treated and exposed for »\x days, were burned and reduced to afihes, 
 and scattered by the wicked into the Rhone, that not the least particle 
 of them might appear on the earth anymore. And they did these things 
 as if they could ])rovail against God, and prevent their resurrection, and 
 that they might deter others, as they said from the hope of a ' future 
 life relying on which they introduced a strange and new religion, and 
 despise the most excruciating tortures, and die with joy. Now let us 
 see if they will rise again, and if their C>od can help them and deliver 
 them out of our hands.' " 
 
 Upon this Mr. Taylor justly remarks : "Here from the lips of their 
 enemies we have evidence of the practical bearing of the doctrine of the 
 resurrection as held by the primitive martyrs. Mr. Faber remarks on 
 this point, * That the doctrine of the literal resuviection of the martyrH 
 certaiidy prevailed to a considerable extent throughout the early Church, 
 and often animated the primitive believers to seal the truth with their 
 blood.' 
 
 TESTIMONY OK JEWISH KABKI.S. 
 
 " The celebrated Spanish llabbi, Abraham Aben Ezra, who died in 
 1 1 74, and whose commentaries are so highly valued as to win for him th« 
 title of * wise, great and admirable,' is said to have looked for the end, re- 
 surrection, and restitution, at the expiration of the 0000 years. Beii-Isr.U'l 
 Menasse,a Portuguese Rabbi of the sect of the Pharisees, who died in I GOO, 
 thus expresses his own faith, and also speaks of Aben Ezra. He saya ; ' As 
 for my opinion, I think that after six thousand years, all things by the re- 
 surrection shall be renovated and return to a better condition.' He then 
 adds that * this, out of doubt, is the opinion of the most learned Aben 
 Ezra/ who looked for it in the new earth of Isa. Ixv. 17 ; and Moses 
 Mairaonides, a Spanish liabbi, called the ' Eagle of the Doctors,' held 
 and taught similar views. He died about A.D. 1201. Cunninghame 
 says that Isaac Abarbanel, Saadias Gaon, Solomon Jarchi Hannneel, 
 Bechay Laban, Ben Nachinan, Rasbi, and Ben Abraham, all Jewish 
 Rabbis, adopt the year — day theory, which looks for the resurrection 
 and millennium at the end of 6000 years. 
 
 " The Catechisms and Liturgies of the Jewish faith, ancient and 
 modern, recognise in a prominent degree the doctrine of resurrection, 
 which is named continually, ' Blessed be the Lord our God who nviseth 
 up the dead.' 
 
 " The thirteenth article of the creed of the Beth-Elohim synagogue of 
 Charleston, South Carolina, is : ' We believe that the soul is immortal, 
 and that we shall be accountaVjIe for our actions in the life to come.' 
 Upon this the Editor of the Occw/t-n/, a Jewish Periodical, remarks : ' It 
 is certainly not what we have a right to expect from a .lewish divine, 
 who professes to teach religion as he found it. Our creed is " I believe 
 with a perfect faitl^ that there will be a Revival of the Dead, at the time 
 it may be the pleasure of the Creator, whose name be blessed, and whose 
 memorial be exalted for ever.' 
 
 " When Dr. Wolfe was in Thibet, he was told that one of the chiefs 
 
 li 
 
 f ** 
 
ii.i 
 
 
 182 THK HIULK VINDU ATKI) AOAINsT MODKUN THKOL()(}V. 
 
 <)!' tlif Jt'ws wliiim he met there had aaid, — ' When yon Hhall st-e corn 
 growing upon my grave, then the day of resurrection is nigh at liand.' 
 
 " The |in'vaihng belief among Christians in the second century in re- 
 gard to the sUite of the dead, is thus set forth l)y Dr. (liesleg : — 'Till 
 then (that is, till the first resurrection) the souls of the departed were 
 to he kept in the underworld, Sheol or Uotli-s (the receptacle of deail 
 l»o«lie8) and the opinion that they should l>e taken up to heaven im- 
 mediately after death, was considered a CJnostic heresy.' " — Eolesiastioi/ 
 Hishry, vol. 1. p. 167. 
 
 Special attention is invited to the ft)llowing observations from Henry 
 Dana Ward, quoted by Mr. Taylor, lie says: — " The earliest creed.-*, 
 and all creeds of all denominations in Christendom from the Apostles, to 
 this day, recognise no other miileiuiium than that of a glorious one on 
 the earth, at the coming of the Lord, and the resurrection of the dead — 
 whether Greek, or Roman, Apostolic, or Apostolic Reformed, Lutheran, 
 Episcopal, Presbyterian, Independent, Congre/jationnlist, or by what- 
 ever name any ihun;h may l)e called " — again he says : — " For it must be 
 confessed, l)y intelligent divines, that the popular doctrine of the millen- 
 nium, is a modern one totally unknown to the primitive and martyr 
 Church ; k) modern that it has never a place in the formula of any 
 church, (ireek. Catholic, Roman, or Protestant; but all their creeds in- 
 volve the contrary. 
 
 " Consider furtlujr," he says, " that neither Peter nor Paul, nor Clem- 
 ent, nor Justyn. nor Cyprian, nor Cyril, nor Jerome, nor any other 
 Fatlu r, or eminent man, in the Primitive Church, received or admitted 
 the doctrine of the Millennium for one moment, except it was in the 
 coming of the Lord Jesus with the Resurrection of the dead ; that 
 neither the Greek, Latin, nor Lutheran, nor any one of the Re- 
 formed churches does now, or ever at r.ny time has acknowledged the 
 doctrine of a mill* nium in this world, by creeds, confessions, or approved 
 standards of fait • ; and further, that never a man (whose writings 
 have been enough esteemed to be preserved in the world) came forth 
 to preach the doctrine of ' peace and safety,^ to the world, and a spiritual 
 millennium to the race of the first Adam, without any resurrection, until 
 Daniel Whitby, D.D., who died A.D. 1720. And then if we do not 
 pause with wonder, and with astonishment, and with fear, at the strong 
 delusion that has gt)ne over the Piotestant churches, and if we do not 
 withdraw intuitively from this ' Nev Light ' doctrine, and enquire for the 
 good old paths our fathers trod, and to the true millennium, through Jesus 
 and the resurrection, no word or exhortation from this humble source 
 could move or persuade us. However, this I shall say and challenge 
 contradiction, that Dr. Whitby's name is the first and earliest that I 
 have seen quoted in support of the doctrine, among the writers and 
 orators of a spiritual millennium before the Lord's appearing, and Dr. 
 Whitby gives credit to no other man for the discovery, but puts it 
 roundly forth as his own opinion singly. And now one hundred years 
 have barely gone by, since he was gathered to his fathers, and so firmly 
 planted has this new faith become in all the churches of America, that 
 
TK8TIMONI1--S. 
 
 1«8 
 
 nover a roIigiouH newspaper of high standing with its own sect, can 
 eaHily ho found to admit an article into their columns, Imldly ipu'stion- 
 \w^ this proud Philistine who has seized the ark of our faith, and iu>w 
 defies the hope of Israel. This state of things calls for mourning, ns well 
 as indignation, that in a ninyle centuri/, an innovation so hold in departure 
 from the primitive faith and confessions of all churches, should have 
 silently entrenched itself in the heart of all denominations following the 
 Reformers ; which innovation these very Ketormors expressly condemn 
 and brand, as opposed to the Scriptures." — " Histonj and Doctrine of 
 Millfnialkm." pp. AS-SU. 
 
 Again Bishop Henshaw says of Dr. Whitby's allegorizing principle : 
 — " The fact is, that the commonly received opinion of a spiritual mil- 
 lenium consisting in a universal triumph of the fiospel, and conversion 
 of all nations for a thousand yean* before the coming of Christ, i.s a 
 novel doctrine, unknown to the Church for the npuce of IGOO ymm. So far 
 as we have been able to investigate its history, it was first advanced by 
 the Rev. Dr. Whitby, the Commontator, and afterwards by Hammond, 
 Scott, Dwight, Hongiie, and others, and has been received without care- 
 ful examination by the majority of Evangelical divines in the prestint 
 day. But we may safely challenge its advocates to produce one dis- 
 tinguished writer in its favour who lived before the comfn."ncement of the 
 eighteenth century. If antiquity is to be considered any test of truth, the 
 advocates of the Pre-millenial Advent and Personal Reign of Christ with 
 the saints upon earth, need have no fears of the result of a comparison of 
 authorities with the supporters of the opposite theory." — Hensfiaw on 
 *' Secoml Advent," p. 116. 
 
 The following from Mr. lioberts' " Twelve Lectures," is well worthy 
 of insertion here. He says : — 
 
 " Having shewn human nature to be essentially mortal in its constitu- 
 tion, and death in relation to it, to be the destruction of its existence, 
 and the consequent obliteration of all its manifested powers, it is incum- 
 bent to anticipate enquiry by saying something as to the true relation 
 of a future life to our perishing race. Many rashly jump to the conclu- 
 sion that the position assumed in proving the natural mortality of man. 
 and the unconscious state of the dead, involves a denial of future retri- 
 bution altogether, and even the rejection of the existence of God. It 
 certainly leads to a modification of popular views on these subjects, but 
 is by no means so destructive in its results as represented. In any case, 
 these results are borne out by the testimony of the Bible ; so that no 
 devout mind need be troubled at having to commit himself to them. 
 
 " It is proposed here to consider the true doctrine of immortality as 
 brought before us in the Word of God. Is such a God-like inheritance 
 attainable by mortal man 1 If so, how ? Is the whole race destined to 
 possess it, or only a selected class? If a selected class only, on what prin- 
 ciple are they developed or chosen 1 These are the questions that de- 
 mand our consideration. Let us note, to begin with, that there is a 
 natural aspiration in the human breast for immortality. The lowest 
 forms of human nature, such as idiots and the lower types of human life, 
 
 if 
 
 IS 
 
184 THE HIHLE VINDICATKU AiJAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 !!' 
 
 •I', 
 
 ■I. ' 
 
 I I ■ i 
 
 11 
 
 .i»« 
 
 may be destitute of it, but where human nature has develuped to any- 
 thing like its natural standard, there is this craving after the perfect and 
 thu unending. We seem mentally constituted for them. Death conies 
 as an unnatural event in our experience. We dislike it ; we dread it , 
 we would fly far from it if we could ; we long for immortality ; we desire 
 to be beyond the reach of the great enemy ; we aspire to live for ever. 
 It is customary to reason upon this fact as a proof that we actually pos- 
 sess the immortal in our nature. This is the principal argument used 
 by Plato, who may be said to be the father of the doctrine of the immor- 
 tality of the soul. The argument is gladly re-echoed by his disciples 
 in the present day. It is astonishing that its logic should have pasi^rd 
 unquestioned by so many, so long. Such a style of reasoning, auoptt'd 
 in the case of any other instinct or desire, would bo justly scouted. 
 Fancy a hungry man being told that his cravings were proof of repletion. 
 The reasoning turns just the other way. If we desire a thing, our desire 
 is evidence tnat we are yet without the object of desire ; for, as Paul 
 says, ' What a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for 1 ' If we experience 
 a longing for immortality, so far from such a feeling proving to us tliat 
 immortality is our peculiar gift, it testifies that wo are destitute ot it, 
 and destroys the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. Yet the ex- 
 istence of such a desire proves a great deal in its own place. No instinct 
 or desire exists in nature without an object on which it acts. Are we 
 hungry ] There is food to be eaten. Are we curious ? There are things 
 to be seen and known. Have we benevolence ? There is benefit to be 
 conferred, need to be supplied, and suffering to be alleviated. Have we 
 conscience 1 There is right and wrong. Have we marvellousness i 
 There is incomprehensibility in heaven above, and in earth beneath. 
 Have we veneration ? There is God to adore. And so on, with every 
 feeling throughout sentient nature. Now, on this irrefragable principle, 
 the spontaneous and universal craving in the human breast for immor- 
 tality and perfection, proves the existence of the conditions required, 
 and the possibility of their attainment ; and though we may be as ignorant 
 as the Hottentots of the ' where,' ' when,' , how,' &c., relating to it, the 
 general proof remains irrefutable. Still, we must use proper discrimi- 
 nation as to its logical extent. It does not prove the necessary and 
 inevitable attainment of immortality by any; for the existence of a de 
 sire is no guarantee of its gratification. A man of great alimentary 
 capacity may be in circumstances where food cannot be obtained. He 
 m'^y be shut up in a Hartley Colliery, and death is the consequence. 
 His alimentivencss points to food as its proper object, but does not in- 
 sure possession of it ; t/uit is a question of proper circumstances. The 
 logical deduction from this longing for immortality is, that as God would 
 never have implanted in man an instinct which it was impossible to 
 gratify, immortality and perfection are attainable conditions ; but that 
 the gratification of a desire being dependant upon proper relative circum- 
 stances, these conditions me not the necessary and inevitable attainment 
 of any. This cuts betwen the orthodox believer and the infidel, refuting 
 
TE8TIMONIK8. 
 
 lb.) 
 
 the immortal-soulism of the one, and demulishing the heartless nssiitu| • 
 tiuii uf the other. 
 
 " Wliat is immortality ? we can best comprehend a thing hy contract. 
 On this principle let us consider mortality for a moment, from which 
 the idea of im (not) mortality is found. The woril comes from the lutin 
 word ' iiivrs,' death, and signifies deathlessness. To say of any thing 
 that it is mortid, is to attirm that it is limited in its power of duration, 
 owing to inherent tendency to dissolution. We say of a man, that 
 he is mortal — and so he is. We behold him «laily perishiiii;. 
 He comes into existence as an organized being, inheriting all 
 the qualities of the organizations from which his nature is derived ; but 
 however noble these qualities may be, however lofty the genius, how- 
 ever farseeing the intellect, however genial the friendship, however 
 lovely the character, the hand of ileath stays not ; the law »if sin work- 
 ing in his members operates to a predetermined conclusion. Life is 
 withdrawn ; and he sinks to the oblivion from which he emerged. rhi.>i 
 is the mortality of human existence — the destruction of the noblest 
 being that moves in sublunary creation. Popular theory urges another 
 view. It says that the mortality of common experience is related to 
 condition, not to being ; that it changes a man's place of existence but 
 does not ilestroy himself. This idea arises from an error of a subtle 
 nature— an error concerning life. It is not an error to affirm the indes- 
 tructibility of life in tlu; abstract, because as an element of ' nature,' it is 
 an imperishable thing, constjtntly irrailiating from the source of all life 
 and power. The same thing is also true of matter in any form ; it is 
 indestructible in its essential elements. The error consists in nigarding 
 life as a thinking individual power in its abstract condition. So far 
 as we can comprehend it in relation to man, the very opposite of this is 
 tme ; it (spirit or abstract life) is the universal pabulum of consciou.s 
 existence — the basis from which individual thinking phenomena are 
 evolved by organization. Unorganized it does not present any evidence 
 of conscious faculty. That power, so to speak, is latent in the vast oceati 
 of life power, that springs from the Great Eternal Fountain, and can 
 only be developed by what men have been pleaseil to call 'organization.' 
 The thing may seem a mystery, but certaiidy not more so than the 
 metaphysical view which attempts to explain a mystery by a greater 
 mystery still. Mystery or no mystery, it is the teachiug of experience, 
 and the declaration of the Word of God. . . . 
 
 "That man having strong instinctive desires for Immortality and perfec- 
 tion, should yet be subject to sin and death, and surrounded with imper- 
 fection, disorder, and misery, requires explanation. This explanation, 
 nature refuses to furnish. If we look upon the condition of men as a 
 natural accident, we have an impenetrable mystery to <leal with, we have 
 to account on natural principles for the fact, that, while nature establishes 
 the strictest correspondence between instinct and condition in the case 
 of every other species throughout her wide domain, she refuses this hap 
 piness-producing adaptation in the case of her noblest production — man 
 — leaving him to the wretchedness of disappointed noble aspiration. 
 
IMI: 
 
 .'•l t 
 
 
 186 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AOAINS'; MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 This it is simply impossible to do. Unaided by revelation, human con- 
 dition and destiny must for ever remain an insoluble enigma. 
 
 " As the Scriptures are the only source whence we derive any rational 
 account of the present mortal and afflicted condition of mankind, so 
 do they constitute the only revelation of his future destiny. Job 
 asks, * If a man die, shall he live again ? ' This is the question which 
 it is the special function of the Bible to answer. From no other source 
 can we procure an answer. If we speculate upon it as a philosophical 
 problem, we land in the dark. There is no process in nature from 
 which we can reason on this subject. There is no real parallel to 
 resurrection. A seed deposited in the ground, springs again and renews 
 its existeice ; but this is the law of its nature. The power to spring 
 again is part of itself. Not so with man. To use the words of Job (chap, 
 xiv. 7-10) : ' There is hope of a tree if it be cut down that it will sprout 
 again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root 
 thereof wax old in !.he earth, and the stock Ihereof die in the ground, 
 yet through the scent of water, it will bud and bring forth boughs like 
 a plant. But man dieth and wasteth away ; yea man giveth up tlie gJiost, 
 aiid where is he?' 
 
 " Where is he ? The answer is a simple one ; he is nowhere. The 
 dust has returned to the earth as it was, and his life-spirit has 
 returned to God who gave it ; and though both dust and life continue 
 to exist as separate elements, the MAN who resulted from their combina- 
 tion has ceased to be ; and if he ever live again, it will be the result of 
 a fresh creative effort on the part of the Almighty. 
 
 " That he will live again is one of the blessed truths of the word of 
 God. ' Since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of 
 the dead.' — I Cor. xv. 21. It was the peculiar mission of Christ to bring 
 this great truth to light. He proclaimed Himself the resurrection and 
 the life (John xi. 25), adding, ' He that believebh on Me though he ivere 
 dead yet shall he live.' He came not simply to infuse spiritual vigour 
 into the deadened moral natures of men, but to open a way of deliver- 
 ance from the physical law of death which is sweeping them into the 
 grave^ and keeping them there. He came in fact, to raise the bodies of 
 mfn, which are the men themselves — from the pit of corruption, and to 
 endow them, if accepted, with incorruptibility and immortality. 
 
 " Paul says, ' He will change our vile bodies, and fashion them like anto 
 His glorious body.' — Phil. iii. 21. This is connected with the resurrec- 
 tion, for Jesus Himself says. ' This is the Father's Will who hath sent 
 Me, that of all which He hath given Me, I should lose nothing, but 
 should raise it up again at the last day ' — John vi. 39. Thus life and im- 
 mortality are said to have been 'brought to light by Jesus Christ, through 
 the gospel' — 2 Tim. i. 10. In fact, without knowing the sacrificial 
 aspect of Christ's character as the Saviour of the world from sin, and as 
 the Reconciler of the world to God, from whom all men have gone 
 astray, it may safely be said that the principal and ultimate object of 
 His mission was to offer men everlasting life. And this eternal life 
 He confers through resurrection, upon such as shall have complied with 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 187 
 
 ' He that BELIRVETH the 
 -Twelve Lectures, pp. 76-82. 
 
 Gospel and is 
 
 the conditions imposed. 
 hkVUZVA) shall be snced.'"- 
 
 From the foregoing it will be seen tliat resurrection is, or rather will 
 be, the result of Divine Power, and surely in this age of Bibles it is not 
 neces-sary to remind the reader of the declaration of the Apostle, that 
 with God all things are possible. In addressing the ecclesia at Corinth, 
 Paul, speaking of Christ, says ; " For tliough He was crucified througli 
 Aieakness, yet He liveth by the POWER OF GOD. For we also are weak 
 in Him, but we shall live with Him by the power of god.' — I Cor. xiii. 
 4.-(C.) 
 
 TertuUian says : " As you might be said to })e nothing, before you 
 were in being, to just such a nothing will yon return when you cease to 
 he. Why then, can you not be recalled from this second nothing, as you 
 think it, by the same Almighty Word which called you from your 
 first ] .... Be pleased now, if you can, to solve the mode of 
 your Creation; and then demand the manner of your resurrection. . 
 Whatever element has your body in destroying, in abolishing, in annihi- 
 lating, it shall deliver up the pledge, and return you whole. For what 
 you deem pure nothing is as much at the Divine Word, as the whole 
 creation." 
 
 Commenting on this, Hudson, in his " Doctrine of a Future Life," page 
 249, says: "Here the difficulty of a re-creation seems to be felt, and the 
 thing destroyed is conceived as still in some sense subsisting— all how- 
 ever, is referred to the CREATIVE POWER, as if it retained its hold upon 
 the vanished being. The theory conies to this, that the apparently de- 
 stroyed being still subsists in God, and may be reproduced by Him. 
 We sometimes meet wi^h a similar interpretation of the passage ; * For ye 
 are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God.' And a strict render- 
 ing of the words ; ' In Him we live, and move, and have our being,' 
 might be taken as a statement of the same view." — Hudson's " Fulurr 
 Ufe," p. 249. 
 
 To which may be added, that an understanding of the passage, Rom. 
 xi. 36 ; as rendered in the Emphatic Diaglott New Testament sheds a 
 flood of light on the foregoing : " For out of Him, and through Him, and 
 for Him are all things " ; also the passage in Psalm xxxix. 16, whether 
 referring to Jesus or David, or in a primary or secondarj' sense, to either 
 or both : "Thine eyes did see my substance ; yet being imperfect ; and 
 in thy book all my members were written, what day they should be 
 fixshioned (margin), ivhen as yet there was none of them.''' If then, in the 
 Divine mind, the members of the body here referred to, were all written, 
 when as yet there was none of them, why may not the same thing exist 
 in reference to the resurrection-body 1 
 
 Nothing is more common now-a-days, on the part of the great 
 majority of people, than to question the Omnipotence of Deity when- 
 ever the subject of resurrection according to the Scriptures, is mooted. 
 It is conceded on all hands that the result of corruption in the article 
 of death, is the resolution of the body into the elementary, organic, or 
 chemical principles which enter into its composition, and that, on being 
 
 !• 
 
 ( 
 
 :i\ 
 
till! 
 
 188 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 St, {'fill ^ 
 
 set free in the process of decomposition, these return into the great 
 reservoir of nature, thence to be again drawn and re-used indefinitely, 
 in building up other organizations, it may be, of the animal or vegetable 
 world, or both. The very same persons who can see no difficulty in the 
 reconstruction of the decomposed body, the mere clay tabernacle : or the 
 retention of its identity, provided that you admit with them, that tlie 
 soul exists in a separate state, intorpose all sorts of objections and in- 
 troduce all manner of difficulties, when the subject is treated in the 
 strictly Scriptural aspect, to wit : tlie resurrection of a dead, decomposed 
 man, from a state of absolute non-existence, the only definition of deatli 
 recognised in the oracles of Deity. They hesitate not to question the 
 power of Deity to call from the dead, and to re-fashion, with all the 
 characteristics of personal identity, the multitudes ordained to eternal 
 life, who sleep in the dust of the earth, unless the very same dust, and 
 the identical atoms of organic matter which pertained to their former 
 organization can be brought together and used in the reconstruction of 
 the original bodies, respectively ; and this they aver to be an impos- 
 sibility, seeing that those elementary atoms may have been used over 
 and over again in building up innumerable organizations, and that some 
 or all of the particles or atoms so used may, at the moment of resurrec- 
 tion, be employed in organisms then existing — animal and vegetablt^ ; 
 they therefore, muster courage enough to say that the thing is impossi- 
 ble, giving the lie direct to the declaration of the Spirit, through the 
 Apostle, that with God all things are possible. 
 
 To show, however, by analogy (without at all insisting that this is 
 the manner or mode) that a resurrection from the death state of total 
 unconsciousness is possible, and that the same organic elements or atoms 
 of matter pertaining to the former organism, need not necessarily be 
 used in reconstructing the resurrection man, or organization ; that in 
 fact and in truth, " any other clttst will do." I submit the following ex- 
 tract from " Thoughts on Resurrection," being an address delivered by 
 the late Professor George Wilson, of Edinburgh (brother of Professor 
 Daniel Wilson, of Toronto University), at a meeting of medical stu- 
 dents. — Compiler. 
 
 He says : " In endeavouring to realize the resurrection to ourselves, 
 not as a mystery which fivith alone ean receive, but as a physical truth 
 which the intellect can, to some extent, grasp, we encounter two diffi- 
 culties ; the one of these is very obvious — namely : the total resolution 
 of our bodies after death, into their ultimate elements ; the second is 
 less obvious, but in reality, more perplexing : namely, that it is mani- 
 festly a law of nature, that is, of God, that the same matter shall be 
 used over and over again in the sustenance of successive generations ot 
 living beings, so that as should seem, instead of virgin matter being 
 continually brought from the deeper strata of the globe, to be used once, 
 and never again, in clothing an organism, a certain comparatively small 
 amount of superficient matter circulates again and again through indi- 
 vidual after individual. But if the same matter has formed the bodies 
 
f 
 
 TESTTMONIES. 
 
 189 
 
 tit 
 
 of two individuals in different generations, how shall each be provided 
 with a separate body at the resurrection ? 
 
 " Now on this point I would remark, that from St. Paul's statement 
 in the xv. chap, of 1st Corrinthians, we may infer that the resurrection- 
 body will bear such a relation to the present body as a tree does to its 
 sted. The spiritual body will be identical with the earthly body in the 
 same way that an oak is identical with an acorn, of which it is the evo- 
 lution, and to which it is indebted for its being an oak, and not a vine 
 or an elm. In some such way, — for I do not at all wish to press the 
 analogy too far — our future bodies shall be the same as our present 
 bodies and yet different; audit is only in such a sense we can look for 
 identity. 
 
 " Further, the individuality of a seed, or of a human germ, required 
 for its manifestation only a minute quantity of matter. Let me state 
 the fact in reference to a vegetable embryo ; the statement, mutatis mn 
 taiuUs, will apply generally to the embryo of man. The microscopic re- 
 st-arches then of modern physiology have shewn us that an exceedingly 
 small amount of ponderable matter condenses, and as it were concen- 
 trates in itself the individuality of every germ, vegetable or animal. In 
 other words, the determining poiver, which determines if that germ deve- 
 lopes into mat\ire existence, makes it infallibly develope into an oak, 
 into a vine, into an elm, or into a butterfly, into a humming bird, into 
 an eagle, as the case may be : — this determining power, which consti- 
 tui.es the individuality and continuous identity of tlie mature organism, 
 is originally located in a microscopic atom of matter. 
 
 "The moment that germ l)egins to develop, it exchanges those primary 
 imrticles for others, not merely, remember, adding others to itself, but 
 giving away, as it were, its original self piecemeal, whilst by a process ut- 
 terly mysterious, the individualizing pmer is transferred to the new par- 
 ticles, so that months after the grain of wheat is dead and gone, a blade 
 and stem, taking their characters from it, grow green and ripen, and 
 tinally produce grains identical with the perished one. 
 
 " I would accordingly remind you, that in speculating on the physical 
 nature of the resurrection, it is not necessary to think of our personal iden- 
 fitif as essentially linked with more Hum an almost infinitessimal quantity of 
 matter. 
 
 " It needed all the bulk and weight of matter which have been added 
 Itetween spring and autumn to secure one single fruitful grain upon the 
 nodding spike of wheat. But the life at the beginning and end of the 
 cycle have been embodied in the narrow compass of a grain, and the in- 
 ner essential life of that reposes in a central citadel so small that it can 
 hardly be seen, and cannot at all be touched, analyzed, or weighed. 
 Give to each of us such a cell as the bodily citadel of man's soul and we 
 need no more." — From a notice of Dr. Wilson's Work, " Beligio Chemici." 
 in the Edinburgh Witness, of June 1 7th, 1 822. 
 
 The following paragraph, which went the round of the newspapers 
 some y«ars ago, illustrates in a remarkable manner, the fact of organic 
 
r s ' 
 
 190 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODEttX THEOLOGY. 
 
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 1;| 
 
 IM' 
 
 
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 H : 
 
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 matter being used over and over again in building up different organ- 
 isms, 'Miimaland vegetable. 
 
 " Ninety years after his death, in 1771, steps were taken to erect 
 some suitable monunient to the memory of Roger Williams, but the 
 storms of the Revolution came on, and the work was forgotten. But 
 recently the work has been agitated anew. Williams may y»it at least 
 have some outward sii^n to maik his greatness and perpetuate his name. 
 During a period of 183 years, nul even a rough stone has been set up to 
 mark the grave of the founder of Rhodo Island, till the precise locality 
 of the grave had been almost forgotten, and could only be ascertained 
 by the most careful investigation. Suffice it to say, however, that the 
 spot was found, and the exhumation made a while ago, although there 
 was little to exhume. On scraping oif the turf from the ground, the 
 Jim outline of seven graves contained within less than one square rod, 
 revealed the burial-ground of Roger Williams. In colonial times, each 
 family had its own burial-ground, which was usually near the family re- 
 sidence. Three of these seven were those of children, the remaining four, 
 adults. The easterly grave was identified as that of Mr Williams. 
 
 " In digging down the ' charnel house,' it was found that everything 
 had passed into oblivion. The shape of the coffin could only be traced 
 by a black line of carbonaceous matter, the thickness of the edges of 
 the coffin, with the ends distinctly defined. The rusted remains of the 
 hinges and nails, witli a few fragments of wood, and a single round 
 knob, was all that could be gathered from the grave. In the grave 
 of the wife there was not a trace of anything save a lock of braided 
 hair that had survived the lapse of 280 years. Near the grave stood 
 a venerable apple tree, but when, and by whom, planted, is not 
 known. 
 
 " This tree has sent two uf its main roots into the graves of Mr. and 
 Mrs. Williams. The largest root has pushed its way through the earth 
 till it xsached the precise spot occupied by the skull ':f Roger Williams. 
 There making a turn, as if going round the skull, it followed the direc- 
 tion of the backbone to the hips. Here it divided into two branches, 
 sending one along each leg to the heel, where they both turned upward 
 to the toes. One of these roots formed a sliglit crook at the knee, which 
 made the whole bear a close resemblance to a human form. This sin- 
 gular root is preserved with great care, not only as an illustration of a 
 great principle in vegetation, but for its historic association. There were 
 the graves emptied of every particle of human dust ! Not a trace of any- 
 thing was left ! 
 
 "It is known to chemistry that all flesh and the gelatinous matter 
 giving consistency to the bones, are resolved into carbonic acid gas, 
 water and air, while the solid lime dust usually remains. But in this 
 case, even the phosphates of lime of the bones of both graves, was gone. 
 There stood the ' guilty apple tree,' as was said at the time, caught in 
 the very act of * robbing the grave..' To explain the phenomenon is not 
 the design of this article. Such an explanation could be given, and 
 many other similar eases euuld be adduced. But this fact must be 
 
f 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 191 
 
 admitted ; the organic matter of Roger Williams had been transmitted 
 into the apple tree ; it had passed into the woody fibre, and was capable 
 of propelling a steam engine ; it had bloomed into the apple blossoms, 
 and was pleasant to the eyo ; and more, it had gone into the fruit fron. 
 year to year ; so that the question might be asked — ' who ate Roger 
 Williams ] ' " 
 
 The following is from an article in the Christaddphian, by Dr. Thomas: 
 he says : — " From the pliraseology of the sentence passed upon Adam, 
 it is clear that the germ of the body is its earthly particles ; all the rest 
 of it is gaseous or aeriform ; which, in tire process of corruption, is 
 mingled with the air and soil, and by its action on the radicles and 
 leaves of vegetables, contributes to their growth and sustentation ; 
 ' Out of the giound wast thou taken, for dust tluni art, and unto dust sJmlt thou 
 return.^ — Gen. iii. 19. Thus spoke the Lord to our earthly progenitor. 
 He declared him to be dust, and that he should become dust again ; that 
 he should return to his original earthiness. The answer to the question, 
 ' What is the germ of tlie mortal body ? ' is found in this historical fact, the 
 dust of the ground or earth, was that out of which man was originally 
 formed, as it is written, ' The Lord God formed man of the dust of the 
 ground.' It was from this the first animal, man, first arose to life ; it 
 is from this, also, the particles of earthly matter into which he is 
 resolved by corruption, that he may arise again to a second and 
 unending life. 
 
 " But some will say : — ' How are the dead raised up ? How can the 
 dust of the dead become living men ? ' The answer to this question is 
 contained in Rom. viii. 11, where it is written ; ' If the Spirit of Him 
 that raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you. He that raised up Christ 
 from the dead shall also make alive your mortal bodies, by His Spirit 
 that dwelleth in you.' All things are possible with God. If God could 
 of the stones raise up children to Abraham ; or of five loaves and two 
 fishes feed five thousand persons. He can, doubtless, by His Spirit, 
 re animate the dust of the dead in all their personal identity. The ani- 
 mal man has been compared to the naked grain when planted in tiie 
 earth ; but the analogy is defective in this, that while the grain con- 
 tains a living germ, the living princi[)le of the mortal body is not within 
 itself, but imparted to it by the Spirit of God at the Instcant of its resur- 
 rection to animal life. The Pluirisees erred in supposing that an incor- 
 ruptible semi-conscious principle of life was innate to the flesh. The 
 life of the germ of the mortal body resides not in the particles thereof, 
 but in Jesus, who is the Resurrection and the Life. The incorruptible 
 and vital principle is with Him. Men can ' kill the body ' ; they can 
 deprive it of life ; but the life itself they can not destroy. That life is 
 beyond their reach. They may reduce the body to dust and ashes, and 
 scatter it to the winds, but the life which shall re-animate that dust is 
 infinitely above their control. It is hid ; it is hid in God, not in the 
 germ of dust, but with Christ ; as it is written : ' Our life is hid with 
 Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall appear, then shall 
 we also appear with Him in glory.' — Col. iii. 4." — 
 
 I)r. Thomas, I'n Christadelphian, 1870, pp. 70. 
 

 !' 
 
 
 
 
 i' "" 
 
 
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 wl 
 
 ':!'' 
 
 ■|il 
 
 192 THK BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Archbishop Whately treats the subject much in the same manner, and 
 to the same purport. He says : — 
 
 "There was an objection urged against the doctrine of the 
 resurrection of the dead taught by the Apostle Paul, by some of those 
 whom he was opposing. 'Some men will say, How are the dead raised 
 up ? And with what body do they come 1 ' And it is probable that 
 many of these persons were not such as denied afuhire state altogether, 
 but only the resurrection of the body. They had, perhaps, satisfied them- 
 selves of the immortality of the soul by philosophical arguments, such as 
 are to be met with in ancient and also in modern writers. I must say 
 they appear to me far from satisfactory. Such as they are, however, 
 many persons have been convinced by these arguments, and among 
 others, I imagine, some of those against whom the Apostle is writing ; 
 who, perhaps, on [this account were the more unwilling to receive the 
 doctrine of the resurrection of the body, because that certainly could not 
 bo made out by any course of reasoning. For there always have been, 
 as there are now, not a few, who seem to measure the power of God by 
 the standard of their own minds ; and are loath to admit, even on the 
 authority of His assurance, the truth of anything which they cannot ex- 
 plain. Such persons would be very likely to start the objection — ' How 
 are the dead raised up, and with what body do they come 1 ' ' We see,' 
 they might say, ' the decay and corruption of the body before our eyes : 
 Are the same particles of matter which moulder and crumble into lust, 
 to be brought together again at the resurrection ? or, if not, how oan it 
 be the same body, which a man quits at his death, and with which he is 
 to be raised up ] And with what body do they come ? ' And whatever 
 answer might be given, they thought, no doubt, that insuperable objec- 
 tions might be raised against it. The Apostle reproaches them with folly, 
 in starting a difficulty no greater than that which lies against many of the 
 ordinary operations of nature, which we daily witness j as, for instance, 
 the growth of a plant from the seed. 
 
 "It is not a little remarkable that the prevailing opinion should be 
 (as I believe it is), that the very same particles of bodily substance which 
 are laid in the grave, or otherwise disposed of, are to be re-assembled and 
 re-united at the resurrection ; so as to form, as is supposed, the sa;me 
 body in which the soul resided before death ; and that Scripture teaches 
 us to believe this. Paul's words, however, express almost as strongly as 
 words can, the direct contrary. The illustration which he employs is 
 that of seid sown ; an illustration, which, though he cannot be required 
 to agree in every point with the case it is brought to illustrate, yet affords 
 a presumption at least, that the two cases agree as far as there is no rea- 
 son against it. Now we know that a plant raised from a seed is a very* 
 different thing from the seed it springs from, both in form, in size, and 
 in most of its properties. The seed itself is completely destroyed as to 
 its structure, and, as chemists call it, decomposed; while the young plant 
 is nourished and its substance formed, chiefly, at least, from the earth, 
 the air, and the rains ; so that if any of the particles of matter which 
 were in the seed remain in the plant when fully developed (which is ne- 
 
<*■': 
 
 TESTIMONIES, 
 
 193 
 
 ches 
 yas 
 jrs is 
 ired 
 'ords 
 
 rea- 
 verj' 
 
 and 
 as to 
 plant 
 farth, 
 ^hich 
 is ne- 
 
 cessarily a matter of uncertainty), they must bear an immensely small 
 proportion to the whole. We are not, indeed, authorized to conclude 
 that all these circumstances must correspond with what shall take place 
 at the resurrection, merely from the Apostle having used this illustra 
 tion ; but he himself calls our attention to that very point : ' That which 
 thou sowest is not quickened (that is, made alive) except it die.* Here 
 we have him expressly reminding us that a grain of corn, when sown, 
 (lies, that is, is dissolved, and its structure destroyed, never to be re- 
 !<tored ; which is the very illustration used by our Lord also, in speak- 
 ing of the same subject : 'Verily I say unto you, except a corn of wheat 
 tall into the ground and die, it remaineth alone ; but, if it die, it bring- 
 fth forth much fruit.' We are reminded, also, that it is not a plant that 
 is sown, but a seed ; and that we raise from it, not the same thing 
 that was sown, but a plant, which is very different ; * thou sowest not tliat 
 body that shall be ; but bare grain (that is, a mere seed) it may chance 
 of wheat or of some other grain ; but God givath it a body, as it hath 
 pleased him ; and to every seed its own body.' 
 
 " It is indeed admitted, that, according to Paul's expression, we shall 
 all be changed ; that we shall have bodies considerably different from 
 what we now have ; but still many persons cling to the idea, that all 
 the same particles of matter which belong to our bodies now, must be 
 brought together and re-united ; a notion not authorized by Scripture, 
 and liable to many objections, hard to be answered ; which therefore are 
 likely to be the means of shaking a man's faith in the whole doctrine. 
 The opinion is indeed, in itself, so harmless, however groundless, that I 
 would not have occupied your time with arguments against it, were it 
 not that it leaves an opening for the cavils of irreligious scoflFers. If a 
 man who has taken up the persuasion that this notion is an essential 
 part of the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, happens to meet 
 with unbelievers who raise (as may easily be done) insuperable objections 
 against it, and turn it into ridicule, the consequence will be, that he will 
 be perplexed with doubt respecting the doctrine of the resurrection itself, 
 and will be in danger of making shipwreck of his faith. And thus it may 
 chance to be of the highest practical consequence to think lightly on a 
 point which has, in itself, no practical tendency. 
 
 " Let it be remembered, then, that even for a hody to be the same, it 
 is not at all necessary that it should consist of the same particles of 
 matter. Our bodies, we know, are undergoing during life, a constant 
 change of substance from continual waste and continual renewal ; and 
 anatomists, who have carefully studied the structure of the human frame, 
 have proved that this perpetual change — this system of loss and supply 
 extends even to the most solid parts of the body, the bones ; which, as 
 well as the rest, are gradually worn away and repaired ; so that there 
 is every reason to conclude that all the particles of matter which com- 
 pose our bodies are changed several times during our life \ and that no 
 one living body has any particle of the same substance now remaining 
 in it, which it had several years ago. Why then should it be supposed 
 that the same identical particles of matter which belonged to any one's 
 13 
 
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 "l.t 
 
 UK. ' 
 
 \w4: I 
 
 
 *«•« 
 
 It:; 
 
 194 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AOAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 body at bis death, must be brought together at his rcsurrectiou, in order 
 to make the same body ; when even during his lifetime the same parti- 
 cles did not remain, but were changed several times over 1 
 
 " Nor again, is it necessary, in order to constitute the same person 
 (whether we call it the same body or not), that the l)ody should be the 
 same in form, in magnitude, or in any of its qualities. This must be 
 evident to any one who does but reflect, that he calls himself the same 
 person who sume years ago was a child. Every one who eays that so 
 many years ago he was an infant, knows well that an infant is extremely 
 different, in body and mind, from a grown man ; and yet implies by the 
 very expression, that he is the same person : since otherwise he could not 
 say that he wa» that infant. 
 
 " What it is that constitutes a man one and the same person, through 
 all periods of his life, I shall not undertake to explain ; but it is plain 
 enough what it is not ; it is plain that it is not resemblance of any quali- 
 ties either of body or mind. Likeness or unlikeuess has nothing to do 
 with it. The same person who was an infant, and is a man, is not 
 called the SAME person from any resemblance between an infant and a 
 man. 
 
 " With respect to the sameness of our bodies, it seems clear enough that 
 a man's body is called /u«, from its union with his soul (or his life — him- 
 self — compiler), and the mutual influence of the one upon the other. 
 Any one of his limbs he calls a part of his body, or part of himself, on ac- 
 count of its connection with the n-nt of the body and with the mind. If 
 the limb were cut oft", he would no longer call it, properly, a part of his 
 body, but would say that it was so and so, and is no longer. And his 
 whole body is considered as the same, and as his from year to year, not 
 from its consisting of the same particles of matter (which it does not),, 
 but from its belonging to the same soul (or person — compiler), and con- 
 veying feelings and perceptions to the same mind, and obeying the 
 directions of the same will ; so that if, at the Resurrection, we are 
 clothed with bodies which we, in this way, perceive to belong to us, and 
 to be ours, it signifies nothing, of what particles of bodily substance they 
 are composed. 
 
 " Some, I believe, cling to the notion that the same bodily particles 
 must be reunited at the Resurrection, from an impression that other- 
 wise it could not be called ' a resurrection of the body.' I find do fai'Jt 
 with them for believing this ; and if they insist that the phrase * resur- 
 rection of the body,' ought not to be used except to express this sense, 
 though I do not agree with them, it would be foreign to the present pur- 
 pose to discuss that question, since the interpretation of Scripture is not 
 concerned in it ; for throughout Scripture, the phrase ' resurrection of 
 the body,' or ' resurrection of the flesh,' nowhere occurs. The Scriptures 
 only speak of man's resurrection from the dead — of his ' vile body ' 
 being ' changed,' of his ' being clothed upon,' &c. The other phrases 
 were introduced into the early creeds for the purpose of opposing those 
 ancient heretics who explained away the resurrection as a mere figure (II 
 Tim., ii. 18), or held the immortality of the soul apart from the body. 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 195 
 
 vlt 
 
 of 
 
 [•es 
 
 y' 
 
 II 
 
 " In fact, if men would apply, on these sultjects, the same principles 
 of common sense with which they judge of many of the affairs of human 
 life, they would escape many difficulties, and find that there is no neces- 
 sity, in such a case as this, for holding a doctrine open to powerful ob- 
 jections. If any one's house, for instance, were destroyed, and another 
 man promised to rebuild it for him, he would not be considered us fail- 
 ing in his promise because he did not put together all the former ma- 
 terials. If the materials were equally good, and if the man were put in 
 possession of a house not less commodious and beautiful than he had be- 
 fore, that would be to all practical purposes sufficient. It would be 
 thought idle caviling to contend that this was not, strictly spi'jiking, a 
 rebuilding of the same house, but the building of a different one ; be- 
 cause the materials were new ; and that, therefore, the promise was not 
 fulfilled. No one would attend to such a frivolous distinction, when all 
 practical purposes were completely answered." — " IVhately's Future Slate," 
 pp. 94-101. 
 
 Discussing the subject of Resurrection elsewhere, Dr. Whately says : 
 — '" It is conceivable, however, that the whole of the body may not be 
 dissolved, that some portion of it, perhaps many times less than the 
 smallest grain of dust, may be exempted from the general decay, 
 may be, however minute, very curiously organized (for these terms (freaf 
 and small are only comparative), may be the really essential part of the 
 body, so as to be properly called, by itself, the body — and may remain 
 in a torpid state, like a seed, ready to be again connected with the soul 
 (or life). All this, however, is merely a string of suppositions, of which 
 we can only say, that there is no one of them, as far as we can judge, 
 that is in itself impossible. For nothing of the kind is revealed, nor does 
 it appear that the sacred writers were commissioned to make known to 
 their converts, the conscious and hap[»y state (supposing there is such a 
 state) of their departed friends. 
 
 " The Apostle Paul, for instance, in comforting the Thessalonians con- 
 cerning their deceased brethren, does not make any mention of their 
 being at that time actually in a state of enjoyment, but alludes only to the 
 joyful resurrection that awaited them ; ' 1 would not have you to be ignor- 
 ant, brethren, concerning them which are asleep, that ye sorrow not even 
 as the rest who have no hope. For if we believe that Jesus died and rose 
 again, even so, them also who sleep, will Gud through Jesus bring with 
 him ; for this we say unto you by the word of the Lord, that we, who 
 are alive, and remain unto the conjing of the Lord, shall not prevent (that 
 is, precede,) those who are asleep ; for the Lord Himself will de-scend from 
 Heaven — and the dead in Christ shall rise first.' &c. Now, this was to 
 be sure, a very consolatory prospect, respecting their departed friends, 
 but if he had known and been authorized to reveal that these very 
 persons were at that very tims actually admitted to a state of liap- 
 piness, one cannot but suppose he would have mentioned this as an 
 additional consolation, and one more immediately striking ; instead of 
 which he makes no mention of any such intermediate state of happiness, 
 but merely speaks of a hope, as of something future respecting the 
 
196 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AOAINST MODERN THEOLOOY. 
 
 lUi-^ 
 
 l\\ 
 
 m<:L 
 
 departed (sorrow not as the rest who have no hope), the hope, namely, of 
 a glorious resurrection *to them that aleep. 
 
 " Nor does the Apostle's language of threatening or exhortation differ 
 in this respect from that of consolation when his purpose is to arouse 
 and alarm men, he still points to the same object. Paul's language to the 
 idolaters at Athens (Acts xvii. 31), is ' that God hath appointed a day in 
 the which He will judge the world in righteousness, by that man whom Ht? 
 hath ordained.' Why did he not, it may be asked, instead of confining 
 himself to the mention of the Day of Judgment, notice also the nearer 
 reward and punishment which should immediately succeed each man's 
 death, if such a doctrine were part of the revelation intrusted to him 1 
 
 " Again, it is worth remarknig, that in the passage already cited, our 
 Lord's answer to the Sadducees, He alludes not to any separate state 
 of consciousness, but to the Eesurredion. That Jehovah is called the 
 God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He adduces as proof ' t/iat the dead 
 are raised.' If there had been any thought in his mind, or in that of 
 his hearers, of an adiuil state of conscious existence of the departed, I 
 can hardly think either that he would have used, or that his hearers would 
 have admitted, such an argument for a Resurrection. For they might have 
 replied, ' It is true God is not the God of the dead, but of the living, 
 and this does seem some indication that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob 
 were and are living in a state of separation from the body, but it does not 
 follow that they are hereafter to obtain a Resurrection.' But His words 
 seem plainly to show that the only question was whether this present 
 life be the whole of our existence, or whether there is to be a Resurrec- 
 tion. 
 
 " And this leads me to remark another circumstance which throws diffi- 
 culty on the subject, namely, the perpetually repeated notices of the 
 Day of Judgment, and allusions to it, both in our Lord's discourses and 
 in those of His Apostles, as to a time when (the dead being raised) all 
 mankind shall be brought to trial before their all-seeing and unerring 
 Judge, and receive from Him their final sentence. ' I charge thee,' says 
 Paul to Timothy, ' before God and the Lord Jesus Christ, who will judge 
 the quick (that is the living) at His appearing and Kingdom.' And in the 
 Epistle to the Romans, ' as many ^ have sinned in the Law shall be 
 judged by the Law, in the day when God shall judge the secrets of 
 men by Jesus Christ, according to my Gospel.' 
 
 " What I mean is, that all these allusions to one particular day (evi- 
 dently the time of the general Resurrection^, are such as seems to imply 
 that it is then that every man's condition will be finally fixed. Now, it 
 is, indeed, very conceivable that the souls of men, in a separate state 
 should remain in a happy or unhappy condition till the resurrection, and 
 then be re-united to bodies, and enter on a different kind of enjoyment 
 or of su£fering ; this, I say is in itself conceivable ; but it is hard to conceive 
 how, supposing that to be the case, the Day of Judgment, at the time of 
 the Resurrection, should be spoken of as it is in Scripture, since each man 
 would, in the case just supposed, not only know his final condition, but 
 actually enter upon his rewu^ and punishment before the resurrection, im- 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 197 
 
 mediately on his death, so that tho judgment of the last day would b<' in 
 fa«t forestalled. It seems strange that a man should first undergo his 
 sentence and afterwards be brougnt to trial — should first enter upon his 
 reward or punishment, and then (perhaps many centuries after) he tried 
 and then judged, and acquitted or condemned !" — IVfuUelu's "Future 
 atate," pp, 72-76. 
 
 Again, discussing the death state. Dr. Whately says : — 
 
 " The only'altemative (as I have before stated) — the onlyH)ther possible 
 supposition — io that the soul remains in a state of profound sleep — of 
 utter unconsciousness — during the whole interval between its sepanitiou 
 from the body by death, and its re-union at the Resurrection. One ob- 
 jection to the reception of this supposition in the minds, I apprehend, of 
 many persons — an objection which affects the imagination, though not 
 the understanding — is that it seems as if there were a tedious and dreary 
 interval of non-existence to be passed by such as should be supposed to 
 sleep, perhaps for some thousands of years, wliich might elapse between 
 their death and the Resurrection. The imagination represents a weari- 
 some length of time, during which (on this supposition) those that sleep 
 in Christ would have to wait for His final coming to reward them. We 
 fancy it hard that they should be lost both to the world and to them- 
 selves — destitute of the enjoyments both of this life and of the next, 
 and continuing so many ages as if they had never been born. 
 
 " Such, I say, are the pictures which the imagination draws ; but when 
 we view things by the light of the understanding, they present a very 
 different aspect. Reason tells us (the moment we consider the subject) 
 that a long and a short space of time are exactly the same to a person 
 who is insensible. All our notion of time is drawn from the different 
 impressions on our minds succeeding one another ; so that when any 
 one loses his consciousness (as in the case of a fainting-fit, or those re- 
 covered from suffocation, of drowning, or the like), he not only does not 
 perceive the length of the interval between the loss of his consciousness 
 and the return of it, but there is (to him) no such interval ; the moment 
 at which he totally lost his sensibility seems (and is, to him) immediately 
 succeeded by the moment in which he regains it." 
 
 Dr. Whately proceeds to remark that the same thing occurs in relation 
 to sleep, to insanity and apoplexy, and adds : — 
 
 " From considering such instances as these, as well as from the very 
 nature of the case, any one may easily convince himself that if ever a 
 total insensibility takes place, so that all action of the mind is com- 
 pletely suspended, the time during which this continues, whether a 
 single minute or a thousand years, is, to the person himself, no time at 
 all. In either case, the moment of his reviving must appear to him im- 
 mediately to succeed that of his sinking into unconsciousness ; nor could 
 he possibly be able to tell afterwards from his own sensations and recol- 
 lections, whether this state of suspended animation had lasted an hour, 
 or a day, or a century. 
 
 " The long and dreary interval then between death and the resur- 
 rection and judgment (supposing the intermediate state to be a profound 
 
 1^' 
 
 i 
 
t 
 
 li 
 
 
 
 I 
 
 
 i; 
 
 )iii 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 198 TIIK Bini.K VINDICATED AOAINST MODBRN THEOLOOY. 
 
 8loep) dooH not exist at all, except in the iniagiiiation. To the party 
 concerned therH is no interval •A'natever ; but to each person (according 
 to this supposition) the moment of his closing his eyes in death, will be 
 instantly succeeded by the sound of the last trumpet, which shall sum- 
 mon the dead, eveii though ages shall have intervened." — fVhately's 
 " Future Stale," pp. 80-85. 
 
 In this last sense it will be seen, that the day of a mau's death is vir- 
 tually, to hiA, the (lay of his resurrection, and from this very idea, may 
 have arisen the notion, that every man receives his reward on the day of 
 his death. 
 
 Luther, commenting on Ecclesiastes ix. 10: "Whatsoever thy hand 
 findeth to do, do it with thy might ; for there is no work, nor device, nor 
 knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thou goest ; " say.s, " An- 
 other proof that the dead are insensible — Solomon thinks, therefore, that 
 the dead are altogether asleep, and think of nothing. Therefore not 
 reckoning da3s or years — but when awakened will seem to themselves to 
 have slept scarcely a moment." 
 
 " Eternal life," say Dr. Thomas, "is a matter of promise ; it is pro- 
 mised only to true believcr-s ; it is hid in Christ, and is only obtainable 
 by the dmd and living at His appearing." 
 
 " What is Flesh ? " The last article from the pen of that eminent 
 Biblical scholar, Dr. Thomas, being in the form of a letter to a friend, 
 and which his lamented death prevented him from finishing, is an 
 answer to the question, " What is Flesh ? " After alluding to some points 
 having no reference to our present purpose, he says : " We can believe 
 the testimony of John, that Deity can, of stones, raise up chi'dren to 
 Abraham, with a true and valid faith, which is not at all impaired by our 
 metaphysical inability to explain the process by which He is able to 
 arrive at such a result ; for the faith which saves men, is the belief of 
 testimony divinely given, not a metaphysical or scientific comprehension 
 
 of processes In assisting our friends towards the solu 
 
 tion of the primary and proximate question of ' fFIud is Flesh f " they 
 will perhaps allow me to direct their attention to Avhat He who made all 
 flesh Bays it is. The spirit in David testifies, in Psalm Ixxviii. 39, that 
 'Jlesh is a spirit that passeth away, and cometh not again.' The common 
 version says ; ' flesh is a wind ; ' but in the Hebrew, the word is ' ruach,' 
 which, in Gen. i. 2, is translated ' spirit,' as also in a multitude of other 
 
 ? laces. Flesh, then, is spirit, if we are to believe the word. Hence 
 'eter, all of whose ideas that were really good, came from the Spirit, 
 styles the dead antediluvians, who were flesh in common with ourselves, 
 * spirits in prison.' But if youand I,andallmankind, and beasts in general, 
 be spirit, what is the most obvious difftjrence, in view of the divine testi- 
 mony, between men and angels who are incorruptible and deathless ? 
 Men and angels are both spirit in a certain sense ; for in Scripture they 
 are both styled spirit ; only the one class is a little lower than the other. 
 What, then, is the most obvious or stiiking difference between the two 
 kinds of spirit, or nature, the human and the angelic] It is this, hu- 
 man nature in general, is ' sphit that passeth aivay and cometh not again ; ' 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 19f) 
 
 while angelic or divine nature, is ' $pirit that doth not pass away,' and it 
 is, therefore, incorruptible and immortal. 
 
 " There is, of necessity, an essential difference betwet-n these two kinds 
 of Spirits, which constitutes the one transitory, and the other permanent. 
 This difference is not obvious. It is beyond the ken of the generality. 
 There is a constitutional difference made between them by the Creator, 
 and upon such a basis, that the one can readily and instantaneously be 
 transformed, or made to pass into the other. This is a question, not 
 of wience, but of organization, which metaphysicians and theosophists 
 have not been able to expound According to the con- 
 stitution of the organism, so is the manifestation of results. Divine 
 ?ower has made spirit out of the dust of the ground, and called it man. 
 le has so made or organized it, that if not further interfered with by 
 His power, it may pass away. This is called flesh or spirit that passeth 
 away, and under ordinary conditions cometh not agam. The human 
 organism is the most perfect of all animal machines ; hence its mental 
 or spiritual manifestations are of a higher or more perfect order than all 
 the rest. His more perfect cerebral organization is the long sought-for, but 
 hitherto never-found, boundary line between instinct and retison. The 
 transforming energy of divine power will convert spirit that passeth 
 away, into spirit that passeth not away. They who may be the sub- 
 jects of this operation will be exalted to equality with the angels, 
 whose substance doth not waste, nor pass away." 
 
 " And with this sentence," says his biographer, " appropriate to be the 
 last, Dr. Thomas laid down his pen, to lift it no more, in the arduous 
 work in which he spent his life ; and spent it not in vain." 
 
 A remarkable circumstance, truly ; and for the information of such as 
 are so ready to hurl the epithet of " Infidel " at (Jhristadelphians, it may 
 here be stated, that Dr. Thomas died as he lived, strong and steadfast in. 
 the one faith and the one hope of the gospel, directing in his last Will 
 and Testament, " that a brother of Christ of good standing and repute 
 among immersed believers of the gospel Paul preached, and commonly 
 known among men by the name of Christ adelphi A NS, read, as my 
 living representative on the occasion, so that though dead, I may yet 
 speak through him, declaring to the spectators the faith in which I died, 
 and previously lived so many years, and earnestly contended for, either 
 an address written by myself, or in default of this. Job xix. 25-29 ; 
 Kom. xiv. 7-12 ; II Cor. v. 10 ; I Cor. xv. ; II Tim. iv. 7-8 ; to be read 
 in the order quoted ; then cover me up, and without sorrowing, leave 
 me to a brief repose, until I hear the voice of the Archangel and the 
 trump of God, when the earth will cast me out, and I shall awake to sleep 
 the sleep of death no more! " Wonderful < Infidelity " this, that could 
 enable such a man, bold as a lion in defence *of the truth, mild as a 
 woman in personal exhortation and counsel, to die in such a glorious 
 hope. — C. 
 
 Desirous of giving the reader a comprehensive view of the teach- 
 ings of Moses in relation to a FuCure Life and Immortality by a 
 resurrection from the dead, the following quotations are given from 
 
 i 
 
I ,. 4i 
 
 200 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 the writings of Archbishop Whately, Dr. Thomas, and Mr. Roberts, 
 The subject is somewhat differently treated by each ; and although it is 
 clear that a class in Israel entertained the hope of a resurrection from 
 among the dead, it would seem that a great portion of that people did 
 not. From the whole, the glorious truth shines out that life and im- 
 mortality (the path of life) were brought to light through the Gospel, 
 by Jesus Christ ; Himself the Way, the Truth, the Resurrection, and 
 the Life.— C. 
 
 Archbishop Whately says: — "It should be considered how much 
 more familiar and easy to be taken in by the mind is the notion of tem- 
 poral rewards and punishments, than that of an immortal life after 
 death — of judgment and blessing beyond the grave ; especially to a rude, 
 ignorant, and unreflecting people, occupied with what was before their 
 eyes, like the Israelites to whom Moses spoke and wrote. One cannot 
 but^ suppose, therefore, that had he intended to reveal to them this last 
 doctrine — to make the rewards and punishments of a future state in any 
 degree the sanction of his laws-^and to impress their minds with the ex- 
 pectation of these — one cannot, I say, but suppose that he would by no 
 means have trusted to a few slight hints obliquely and obscurely con- 
 veyed ; but would have insisted on the doctrine even n^uch more fully 
 and frequently, and clearly, than on the present rewards or judgments 
 they were to expect ir this life Now these last he describes at great 
 length, and insists upon with the plainest and most solemn assurances, 
 more than a hundred times over; whereas, there are at most, but a very few- 
 passages in all his writings that have been interpreted, and that can be 
 interpreted, to relate to the doctrine of a future state ; and that in the 
 most indirect and obscure manner. So that I am at a loss to under- 
 stand how those who assert tiiat Moses intended to reveal and teach the 
 doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul can, if they attentively 
 consider the subiect, bring themselves seriously to believe what they 
 maintain ; especially if they are in the habit of exhorting and instruct- 
 ing Christians, and consequently are aware how very difficult it is to 
 bring even them to keep in mind that there is another life. 
 
 " One of the circumstances that mislead inattentive readers into the 
 idea that the doctrine of a future state formed a part of the Mosaic dis- 
 pensation is, the frequent occurrence, in our translation of the Old Testa- 
 ment of the word 'soul;' which, in the New Testament, is oftener em- 
 ployed (as it usually is at the present day) in speaking of the condition 
 of a man after death ; when, for example, we speak of a man's saving or 
 losing his soul, wc are always alluding to the next life ; in the sam** 
 manner as our Lord said, 'fear not them that kill the body, but are not 
 able to kill the soul ; but rather fear Him who is able to kill both soul 
 and body in hell ; ' and the like in many other passages. And hence 
 many are led to understand in the same sense, a multitude of passages 
 in the Old Testament which speak of the soul and the salvation of the 
 soul ; whereas, the common meaning of the word which is rendered 
 ' soul ' in the New Testament, is nothing more than * life,' or the spirit 
 (breath ?) united with the body ; as you may perceive from many places 
 
 Si". 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 201 
 
 where it occurs ; as for example, when the destruction of any city of the 
 Canaanites by Joshua is recorded, we read * that all the souls therein he 
 utterly destroyed ;' that is all the lives. 
 
 " There are, however, many parts of the Old Testament in which the 
 doctrine is rather less obscurely alluded to than in the books of Moses ; 
 but then these are prophetical passages, either in the prophetical Psalms 
 of David, or in the words of the other prophets ; the most important 
 office of the prophets being to prepare the way for the approach of the 
 Messiah's kingdom, and give hints of His glorious gospel, which ' brought 
 life and immortality to light.' Bub this does not prove that the doctrine 
 of a future state was revealed by Moses, or was part of the sanction of 
 his law. The gospel and its doctrines were not a part of the Mosaic 
 Dispensation ; though that was intended to prepare the way for it, and 
 to serve as the first part of the same great scheme of Providence. Now, 
 if Moses had taught men to hope for eternal happiness through Jesus 
 Christ, he would not have been preparing Vie way for, but would have 
 been actually preaching the gospel before the time ; if, on the other hand, 
 he had taught them that they could earn eternal life by any good works 
 of their own, independently of Jesus Christ, he would have told them 
 what was not true. 
 
 " The Law, accordingly, we are told in the epistle to the Hebrews, 
 (that is the law of Moses), ' made nothing perfect, but the bringing iu 
 of a better hope did.' The Law was an imperfect preparatory dispensa- 
 tion ; and the ' better hope,' that of eternal life, instead of temporal 
 prosperity, was reserved for the more perfect dispensation, that of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 " It is true that same Epistle represents Abraham and Moses himself, 
 and other illustrious patriarchs, as looking for the 'better hope ; ' but 
 there is no reason why these eminent persons may not have been more 
 fully enlightened than the great body of the people. It is probable 
 they were so."—" Future Life," pp. 18-21. 
 
 " It was then, Jesus Christ who * brought life and immortality to 
 light,' and founded the doctrine, not on ingenious philosophical argu- 
 ments, nor on obscure traditions, of which no one can tell the origin, 
 but on the authority of His own assertions, established by the miracles 
 He wrought, and especially by that splendid one of rising Himself from 
 the dead as the first iruits of them that slept ; to confirm the promise to 
 His disciples that He would raise up also at the last day His faithful 
 followers."— /6«i,^. 271. 
 
 Mr. Roberts says: — "Failing Scripture evidence, the advocate of 
 inherent immortality takes refuge among ' the ancient Egyptians, tlie 
 Persians, Phoenicians, Scythians, Druids, Assyrians, Romans, Greeks, 
 &c.,' and among 'the wisest and most celebrated philosophers on 
 record.' All these people, shouts the benighted patron of ancient 
 times, the superstitious and dark-minded heathen of every land, the 
 founders of the wisdom of this world, which is foolishness with God, all 
 believe in the immortality of the soul, and this is undeniable proof that 
 the immortality of the soul is true ! What logic extraordinary ! One 
 
m 
 
 ^* I 
 
 ,11 
 
 I 
 
 
 M 
 
 i^" 
 
 
 li;*-- 
 
 •202 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 woald think that the fact that our ignorant and superstitious ancestors 
 1t>elieved in the immortality of the soul is an ' undeniable proof that 
 the immortality of the soul is not true. What says Paul 1 Speaking 
 of the period prior to the preaching of the Gospel (and referring to the 
 Gentile nations), he calls it ' times of ignorance' — Acts xvii. 30. And of 
 the wisdom which men had educed for themselves, through the reason- 
 ing of * the wisest and most celebrated philosophers,' he says : ' Hath 
 not God made foolish the wisdom of this world 1 ' ' The wisdom of 
 this world is foolishness with God' — I Cor. i. 20 ; c iii. 19. A wise 
 man prefers being on Paul's side ; but in taking this side, he must, of 
 course, place himself against the advocate of inherent immortality, for 
 the latter glories in the wisdom of ancient philosophy and paganism, 
 which Paul pronounces foolishness. Besideo, let the advocate of in- 
 herent immortality say whether he does not believe the statement of 
 Paul, that immortality was brought to light by Christ in the Gospel ? 
 — II Tim. i. 10. If so, how can he pretend to believe i' the version 
 of it put forward by ' the wisest and most celebrated philosophers ' who 
 Jived centuries before Christ appeared, and whose wisdom Paul, speaking 
 by the Spirit, pronounces foolishness 1 The advocate of inherent immor- 
 tality is condemned on his own premises. Either Christ brought the 
 truth of the matter to light, or He did not. If He did, the doctrine be- 
 fore His time was darkness ; if the doctrines before His time (rejoiced in 
 by the advocates of natural immortality), were not darkness, but light, 
 then Christ did not bring the truth to light in the Gospel, for, in that 
 case, it wias brought to light before the Gospel was preached." — " Twelve 
 Lectures,' p. 74:. 
 
 RESURRECTION AND CLASSIFICATION OF TJ!E DEAD. 
 
 This is a branch of the subject, perhaps, less understood than the 
 Bible doctrine of resurrection, respecting which the reader will by this 
 time admit, very great and lamentable ignorance prevails. In 1854, 
 the following letter was addressed to Dr. Thomas, and which he desig- 
 nates as containing " an extraordinary question :" — 
 
 ^'Dr. Thomas, 
 
 " Dear Sir : — Believing that you are qualified by research, and that 
 your knowledge of the Word of God — a knowledge resulting from pro- 
 found investigation — renders you capable of giving a fair exposition of 
 the more intricate sentences of the Bible ; besides, judging from your 
 past actions, that you will by no means prevaricate about tho truth, or 
 hesitate a moment after having investigated the subject, to give your 
 opinion, even if such opinion should conflict with what you have pre- 
 viously contended for : — these things being believed, your views on the 
 following question are most respectfully but earnestly solicited : — Will 
 the loicked when they are resurrected (Rev. xx. 12), be animate or 
 inanimate ? . . . . Your view of the matter will very much oblige 
 your humble servant, 
 
 " An Inquirer. 
 *' Lunenburgh, Virginia, U.S., 
 
 "January 31, 1854." 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 203 
 
 To which the Doctor replied : " The design of resurrection is, not 
 only to reorganize the dead, but to reorganize and make them alive 
 again ; and the reason why they are to be thus ushered into life is, that 
 they may stand before the Tribunal of Christ, and give account of them- 
 selves toGod (Rom. xiv. 10-12,); that they may receive the things in body 
 accordingly, be they good or bad — II. Cor. v. 10. These testimonies stand 
 side by side with Rev. xx. 12. The dead referred to must, of course, 
 become living, or they cannot give an account of themselves or receive 
 recompense, good or bad. If those spoke'i of in the tifth verse, lived 
 not again until the thousand years were finished, it follows that when 
 that time expires they will live again, but with a terminable life. 
 
 "The tenth verse of the chapter, cited by 'Inquirer,' completes the 
 prediction of the destruction of the post-millennial Gog and Magog power, 
 styled the ' Devil,' which will be exterminated on the same territories, 
 and by similar means, as the ' Powers,' represented by the ' Beast and 
 the False Prophet,' were a thousand years before — Rev. xix. 20 ; 
 xiv. ] 0. The eleventh verse presents a new scene. Its description car- 
 ries us back to the beginning of the Millennium, when the ' Cheat White 
 Throne,^ the throne of David, is established, ' the earth and the heaven,^ or 
 present Gentile constitution of the world, having 'fled away,' and the 
 glory of Jehovah pervading the earth as the waters do the sea. Jesus 
 reigns upon this throne until He hah put down all enemies under His 
 feet ; when the last enemy. Death, shall be destroyed ; an idea which is 
 s}TnbolicalIy described, as the casting of death and invisibility into the 
 Lake of Fire — verse xiv 3 1. Cor. xv. 25, 26. The prophecy then em- 
 braced in Rev. xx. 11, 15, is descriptive of resurrection matters pertain- 
 ing to tho beginning and ending of the thousand years. The dead who 
 are raised are those who stand related to the opened books — persons 
 who have died under times of knowledge, and whose works, therefore, 
 will be adjudged as good or bad, according to the light revealed from 
 heaven, as it is written in John iii. 19, 'This is the condemnation, that 
 light is come into the world, and men have loved darkness rather than 
 light, because their deeds were evil.' They all live again who rise ; but 
 all mankind are not raised, because all mankind have not lived under 
 times of knowledge or in relation to the books. 
 
 " Divine knowledge classifies mankind. One class is composed of 
 those wholived undertimes of ignorance, which God winks at — Acts xvii. 
 30. This is comprehensive of those whose ignorance is involuntary and 
 helpless. They are born and die under the sentence pronounced upon 
 Adam : ' Out of the ground wast thou taken, and unto the dust shalt 
 thou return.' This is tlie end of their beginning. They ' remain in the 
 congregation of the dead ' (Prov. xxi. 16), being helplessly siriners by con- 
 stitution. 
 
 " A second class includes those to whom God sends the light, but who 
 shut their eyes against it, loving darkness rather than light, because 
 their deeds are evil. These are not only sinners by constitution, but 
 wicked sinners, who refuse to come under a constitution of righteousness 
 to God. These are the rest of the dead who live not again until the 
 
u 
 
 ,< « '■ 
 
 :■■■' i' ' 
 
 
 i-j.. 
 
 204 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 thousand years are finished. At the end of that time they rise, and, com- 
 mingled with the Gog and Magog rebels, are with them ' tormented day 
 and night to the ages of the ages,' (4is tons aionas ton aionon) in the 
 post-millennial * l^die of fire,' which ' devours ' those adversaries. 
 
 " The third class of the dead is comprehensive of those who, when 
 previously living, came under a constitution of righteousness, and are 
 therefore * Saints.' Sinners who have intelligently obeyed ♦^■he Qospel of 
 the Kingdom, by so doing become saints. Thus they begin to do well, 
 and for a patient continuance in ivell doing they receive glory, honour, in- 
 corruptibility, and life at the first resurrection as the first fruits unto 
 God and to the Lamb. These are ' the just ' who rise to the life of tlui 
 Age, and possess the Kingdom. 
 
 '• The fourth class includes those saints who did run well, but did not 
 continue in well doing, way-side, stony ground, and thorn-choked pro- 
 fessors. These are ' the unjust' who with 'the just' rise at Christ's 
 coming, but to the shame and contempt of the age — Dan. xii. 2. They 
 are driven by the decree of the King into the territories of the Beast and 
 the False Prophet, and Kings of the Earth, styled the 'Devil and his 
 ungels' (Math. xxv. 41), where they arc tormented with fire and brim- 
 stone, in the pre-millennial lake of fire (Rev. xix. 20) in the presence 
 of the Holy Angels (the Saints,) and of the Lamb (ii Thess. i. lO) [the 
 Lori Jesus] who gave them no rest day nor night, to ages of ages, eis 
 aionas aionan (Rev. xiv. 10-11) that is, till the destruction of those 
 dominions is completed, which ensues hefore the thousand years begin. 
 If these things are understood, tliere is no scope for ouch a dispute as is 
 implied in the question of ' An Inquirer,' March 6th, 1854. — " Herald of 
 the Kingdom and Age to come" 1854 p.p. 90-91. 
 
 From the foregoing exposition it will be clearly seen that the punish- 
 ment of the wicked and the unjust, as well as the reward of the righteous, 
 will be on the earth. ' Where the righteous have contended they will 
 be rewarded ; where they suffered they will reign (with Christ) ; 
 where the unrighteous sinned they will sufier punishment, and be 
 destroyed. 
 
 In the light of tliis teaching we can understand the meaning of the 
 wise man when he says: ( Piov. xi. 31), " Behold the righteous shall be 
 recompensed in the earth ; much more the wicked and the sinner." We 
 can also comprehend the saying of Jesus (Luke xiii. 28, 29): " There shall 
 be weeping and gnsisliing of teeth when ye (Scribes and Pharisees) shall 
 see Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, sit down in the Kingdom of God (in the 
 territory covenanted to these fathers of Israel), and ye yourselves ( after 
 resurrection and judgment) cast out (banished to the territory of the 
 Beast and the False Prophet). And they (the Saints of God) shall come 
 from the east, and from the west, and from the north and from the south, 
 and shall sit down in the Kingdom of God." At that time, when ac- 
 cording to Daniel vii. 27, " the kingdom and dominion, and the great- 
 ness of the kingdom under the whole luiaven, shall be given to the people 
 of the Saints of the Most High, and the Saints shall take the kingdom 
 (verse 18) and possess it ; when the first dominion shall have come to 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 205 
 
 the daughter of Zion (Micah iv. 8), and the kingdom to the daughter of 
 Jerusalem ; when Jerusalem (Jer. iii. 17), shall be called the throne of 
 the Lord, and all the nations shall be gathered unto it ; when the Lord 
 of Hosts (Jesus Messiah) shall reign in Mount Zion, and in Jerusalem, 
 sitting on the throne of his father David (Luke i. 32), before his 
 ancients gloriously" — Isaiah xxiv. 23. Surely there is here no lack ot 
 geographical indication as to the locality, the territory of the kingdom 
 — Palestine the centre of the world ; Jerusalem the metropolitan city at 
 that time of the whole earth in the centre of Palestine, and Zion, the 
 liill of Jehovah's Holiness, within the city of the Great King. How 
 plain is the testimony if we only read aright ; and well may we exclaim 
 with the Pslamist (Ps. xii. 6), " The words of the Lord are pure words ; 
 as silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. They are all 
 plain to him that understandeth, and right to them that find knowledge." 
 — Prov. viii. 9. 
 
 RESPONSIBILITY AND JUDGMENT, 
 
 the 
 
 be 
 
 We 
 
 thall 
 
 hall 
 
 the 
 
 tfter 
 
 the 
 
 In considering the nature of man, as a mortal being, and the uncon- 
 scious state of the dead, many stumble thereat and reject the doctrine, 
 because that under it on the one hand, the wicked of all classes and 
 ages escape endless torture in hell, while on the other hand, the good 
 and virtuous miss the happiness of heaven 
 
 Man cannot change or modify divine arrangements. We need not 
 tlierefore unduly burden ourselves as to the destiny or condition of the 
 dead. Yet it is no uncommon thing to hear fathers and mothers say 
 that if their departed little oues are not to be with them in the place of 
 happiness they wish to go to, they would rather not go there. This is 
 the language of the feelings of the flesh. This is certainly placing the 
 flesh above the spirit. This arises from an abnormal development of the 
 organ of philo-progenitiveness, and is in direct opposition to the declara- 
 tion of Jesus (Matt, x., 37) : " He that loveth father or mother more 
 than Me is not worthy of Me ; and he that loveth son or daughter more 
 than Me is not worthy of Me." While some are troubled as to the state 
 or condition of departed offspring and friends, others are unduly exer- 
 cised in relation to the destiny of their progenitors. As to these, if we 
 go back a very few centuries we would find our forefathers in the north 
 and west of Europe, '* inhabiting dark places of the earth, full of the 
 habitations of cruelty " (^ s. Ixxiv., 20), and rejoicing generally in the 
 practice of savage barbarism. Coming nearer our own times, and testing 
 Ihem by " the word of the truth of the Gospel " ((.'ol. i. 5), we would 
 find them far out of the narrow way of the great salvation. " As the 
 treefalleth, so itlieth." 
 
 Mr. Roberts, in " Twelve Lectures," — Lecture 4a — discusses at con- 
 siderable length the subjects of Responsibility and Judgment. 
 
 For the benefit of many, estimable and otherwise, the following ex- 
 tract of some length is here quoted. 
 
 " The common idea of " Judgment to Come," is, that, at a certain time, 
 popularly known as ' the last day,' God will bring every human being 
 
206 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 pi- 
 
 ■■■ r. 
 
 to individual account, having first, if dead, re-united his immortal soul to 
 its former tenement of clay. There is no exception to this rule in the 
 orthodox mind, though what use there is for a judgment day for any- 
 body, if everybody's case is settled at death it is difficult to see. 
 
 " Heathens, pagans, barbarians, of the lowest type — human brutes of 
 all sorts — idiots, infants — everybody — absolutely every human soul that 
 ever had a being ; in whatever condition soever it may have existed — 
 according to current theology, will be resuscitated and brought to account. 
 With this idea, as almost with every feature of popular religion, the 
 Bible is directly at issue. — See Psalm xlix. 6-20 ; Isa. xxvi. 14 ; Jer. li. 
 57 ; Mai. iv. 3, and parallel passages already quoted. 
 
 " It would be unreasonable to bring the brutish class to individual ac- 
 count. Judgment ha-s its basis in responsibility, and responsibility is 
 purely a question of circumstances and capacity. Human beings in a 
 state of barbarism may have the latent capacity to be responsible ; but 
 this latent possession does not bring them within the category of re- 
 sponsible agents, for the simple reason that the actual condition of mind 
 which gives the ground of responsibility does not exist. This is the case 
 with children. They possess reason and moral capacity in the germ, 
 but because these qualities are not developed, by universal law they are 
 held not responsible. Is God less just than man 1 
 
 " Human responsibility to Deity, primarily arises from human capacity 
 to discern good and evil, and power to act upon discernment. Beasts 
 are not accountable either to man or God, because they are destitute of 
 the power to discriminate or choose. They act undei- the power of a 
 blind impulse. Idiots are in the same catt;gory of irresponsible agents 
 in the degree of their incapacity, and many men, not considered idiotic 
 are little better as regards their power of acting from rational choice. 
 
 " The nature and extent of human amenability to a future judgment 
 can only be apprehended in view of the relations subsistinj,- between 
 God and man, as disclosed in the history presented to us in the Scrip- 
 tures. Apart from this, all is speculation, theory, and uncertainty. 
 Philosophy is at fault, because it discards tlie record. The fact recorded 
 is simple and intelligible. The progenitor of the race was made amenable 
 to consequences placed within the jurisdiction of his will. He was 
 threatened with the cessation of being, as the result of disobedience in a 
 certain matter. Disobedience occurred, and the law came into force ; 
 Adam and all his posterity came under the power uf the law of 
 sin and death, which was destined in their generation to sweep them 
 away like wind a-id the grass of the earth. Had God intended no fur- 
 ther d • vi '■ vith the race, responsibility would have ended here. The 
 iM have closed the account ; and human life, if indeed 
 > A the face of the earth, in the entire absence of divine 
 ■;!.' have been the unredeemed tale of sorrow, which it 
 of those who are ' without God and without hope in 
 .- ivned, it may be, >vith future responsibilities, but un- 
 alleviated by the hopes ami affections with which the day spring from 
 on high hath visited us, and enlightened this place uf darkoess. 
 
 gTH.'- )'i: ■■ ■ 
 
 \i ' it. a 
 
 int. • ; . '■•ou. ■\- 
 is iu i-hc I. '.jft :«; 
 the worlii, an^. 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 2or 
 
 " But in His great mercy Jehovah conceived intentions of benero- 
 lence, which He is working out in His own wise way. He did not, in 
 haste and blunder, as our short-sighted and sceptical philosophers insist 
 His goodness ought to have prompted Him to do, at once and summar- 
 ily, and without condition, reprieve the sentenced culprit. This would 
 have been to overlook and violate those deep-laid principles of law, 
 which guide all the Deity's operations in ' nature ' and in ' grace,' and 
 sustain the conditions of harmony throughout the universe. It would 
 have been to perform a work not of mercy, but of destruction, confusion 
 and anarchy. The method of benevolence conceived in the divine mind 
 was intended to work beneficence towards man, conformably with the 
 law that had constituted Him a death-stricken sinner, a law which 
 involves ' glory to God in the highest,' as well as ' good will towards 
 men.' This intention necessitated those successive dispensations of His 
 will which the world has witnessed in times past, and which have res- 
 cued both human existence and human responsibility from the bottom- 
 less profound to which the law of Eden would have consigned them. 
 The enunciation of His purpose in promise and prediction, and the 
 declaration of His law in precept and in statute, re-opened relations 
 between God and man, and revived the moral responsibility which 
 otherwise would have perished. It is, funcever, a Divine principle that the 
 result is limited to those who come within the actual sphere of operations. 
 
 " 'Where no law is, there is no transgression.' — Rom. iv. 15. 
 
 " * If ye were blind ^^that is, ignorant), ye should have no sin.' — John 
 ix. 41. 
 
 " ' The times of this ignorance God winked at.' — Acts xvii. 30. 
 
 '• ' This is (the ground of) condemnation that light is come into the 
 world, and men love darkness rather than light.' — John lii. 19. 
 
 " Hence in the absence of light, that is, when men are in a state of 
 ignorance, they are not amenable to condemnation ; God winks at their 
 doings, just as he does at the action of the brutes of the field. Bar- 
 barous nations are in this condition. They are without light and 
 without law, and Paul's declaration on the subject is in harmony 
 with the general principles enunciated in the Scripture quoted ; — 
 ' As many as have sinned without law, shall also perish without law.' 
 — Rom. ii. 12. If to whom much is given much is required (Luke xii. 
 48), it follows that to whom nothing is given, nothing shall be 
 required, and to whom little is given little is required in all the 
 area over which the judgment operates. This principle of absolute 
 equity in the matter of responsibility is exemplified in the words of 
 Jesus : ' If I had not come and spoken to them, they had not had sin.' 
 — John XV. 22. * The servant who knew his Lord's will, and prepared 
 not himself, neither did according to His will, shall be beaten with manij 
 stripes, but he that knew not and did commit things worthy of $tripes, 
 shall be beaten with few stripes.' — Luke xii. 47. ' He that bejecteth 
 Me, and receiveth not my words, hath One that judgeth him ; t/ie 
 word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.' 
 — John xii. 48. 
 

 
 208 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 " The operation of these principles is illustrated in the history of 
 Imman experience. From Adam to Noah there was but a little light. 
 The promise t)f a seed by the side of the woman to crush out the serpent 
 principle of disobedience and its results, was almost the only star that 
 shone in the darkness of that time. Prophetic glimpses of the coming 
 interference in its ultimate shape, such as those vouchsafed to Enoch 
 (Jude xiv), and the precepts of Noah, the preacher of righteousness, 
 through whom the anointing spirit promulgated the divine principles to 
 those who were disobedient (1 Peter, iii. 18-20), added a little to the 
 light of these times, but apparently not more than was sufficient to con- 
 fer a title to resurrection on those who laid hold of it, by faith. So far 
 as we have any iiiormation, no one became responsible to a resurrection 
 of condemnation in pre-Noachic times. Cain reaped the bitter results 
 of his crime in divine reprobation ; 'known and read of all,' and went 
 to the grave, doubtless, as a final 'turning to dust again.' Human 
 wickedness, culminating in universal corruption, was visited with the 
 almost universal destruction of the species by a flood, which may be 
 regarded as having been a winding up of all judicial questions arising 
 out of the preceding period, so far as condemnation is concerned, and 
 therefore, as precluding from resurrection to judgment those who were 
 the subjects of it. On this point, however, positive ground cannot be 
 taken. Since resurrection to life will take place in several cases belong- 
 ing to that dispensation, it is not impossible that resurrection to con- 
 demnation may also take place among those who were obnoxiously 
 related to that which gave the others their title, including the class spe- 
 cified in Enoch's prophecy — ' the ungodly ' who were guilty of ' ungodly 
 words and hard speeches against Jehovah,' and who must therefore have 
 possessed the amount of knowledge, necessary to constitute a basis of 
 responsibility. This must remain an open question, not because the 
 principle upon which judgment will be administered, is obscure, but be- 
 cause we have not a sufficient amount of information as to the facts of 
 the time in question, to enable us accurately to apply the principle. The 
 principle itself, that responsibility Godward, is only created by contact 
 with divine law in a tangible and authorised form, holds good in every 
 form of human relation to the Almighty. Noah's immediate family 
 were within the pale of the divine cognition, and responsibility in 
 reference to another life may arise out of that ; but their descendants 
 wandered far out of the way of righteousness and understanding, sinking 
 below moral responsibility, degenerating to the level of the beast, and 
 establishing those ' times of ignorance ' throughout the world, which we 
 have Paul's iwthority for saying, ' were winked at.' " 
 
 " In the call of Abraham, the member of, an idolatrous family, but who 
 possessed the latent disposition to be faithful, Glod arrested the tendency 
 to repeat the universal corruption of antediluvain times. The germ of 
 a more direct responsibility was planted among men by his election, and 
 by the bestowal of promises upon him, which had reference to the whole 
 of the race. Abraham, individually, while constituted a man of privi- 
 lege, was also constituted a man of responsibility. Abraham, the idol- 
 
^^^^J 
 
 TESTIMONIEa 
 
 209 
 
 ho 
 
 nd 
 vi- 
 
 ol- 
 
 ator, was his own— his own to live, like the insect of the moment— his 
 own to die and disappear in the irrecoverable grave. Abraham, the 
 called of God, was no longer his, but bought with the price of God's 
 promises. He entered upon a higher relation of being. He was exalted 
 to a higher destiny, and had imposed upon him Godward obligations, 
 unknown to his former condition. Success or failure in the ordering 
 of his life, was of much greater moment than before. Faith and obedi- 
 ence would constitute him the heir of the world, and the subject of 
 Resurrection to Immortality ; unbelief would make him obnoxious to a 
 severer, and farther-reaching displeasure than fell upon Adam. In this 
 respect the children of Abraham by faith, that is, those ' who walk in 
 the steps of the faith which Abraham had, being yet uncircumcised ' 
 (Rom. iv. 12), who, being Christ's, are Abraham's seed (Gal. iii. 29), 
 through believing the Gospel, and being baptized into Christ, are like 
 their father. Dy nature children of wrath even as others, thay were, in 
 the days of their ignorance, ' without God and without hope in the world * 
 (Eph. ii. 12), strangers from the covenants of promise {ihid), aliens from 
 the life of God, through the ignorance that was in them (Eph. iv. 18), 
 living without law, and destined, as the result of that condition, to perish 
 without law, in Adam ; inheriting death without Resurrection—death 
 without remedy ; having neither the pri\'ileges nor the responsibilities 
 of a Divine relationship. But when called from darkness to light, by 
 the preaching of the Gospel, they are not ' their own.' They neither 
 live nor die to themselves as formerly. They passed into a special re- 
 lationship to Deity — extra-Adamic — in which their lives, good or evil, 
 come under Divine supervision, and form the basis of a future account- 
 ability, unknown in their state of darkness, at which God winked. This 
 is neither more nor less than the responsibilities of Abraham, transferred 
 to them on becoming his seed by adoption. 
 
 " The law of faith established by the promises made to Abraham, con- 
 stitutes a centre, around which responsibilities of this description deve- 
 loped themselves. All who acquired Abraham's faith came under Abra- 
 ham's responsibilities. Doubtless many entered this position in the 
 course of the Mosiac ages. The law was added because of transgression 
 (Gal. iii. 19), and the purpose of its addition is indicated in its beii g 
 styled a. aclxoolmashr. Its mission was to teach the first lessons of Jeho- 
 vah's supremacy and holiness. It was not designed as a system through 
 which men might acquire deliverance from Adamic bondage. The pur- 
 pose was purely preliminary and provisional, having reference to that 
 result in its ultimate bearings, but not intended directly to develop it. 
 Paul's comment on it is as follows : — ' If there had been a law which 
 could have given life, verily righteousness would have been by the law,' 
 (verse 21). It was impossible life could come by the law which required 
 moral infallibility on the part of human nature. For this reason the law, 
 though ' holy, just and good ' (Rom. viL 12), was ' weak through the 
 flesh,' and though ordained to life,' Paul found it, ' from this cause,' to 
 be ' unto death,' (verse 10). The conslquence was that ' all the world 
 stood guilty before God ; ' and in that moral relation to Deity, they 
 14 
 
 i^^; 
 
210 THE IJIRLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 were precluded from boasting, that is to say, precluded from attaining to 
 eternal life on a principle which would have left it open for them to think 
 and to say that their life was their own by right as against the Deity. 
 Prospectively considered, this was a mighty triunii)h of Divine wisdom; 
 for had immortal existence been attainable by self-acquired title, room 
 would have been left for the admission of an element in the relations 
 of God and man, which would have disturbed the Gospel harmony 
 that will exist where God is absolutely supreme, both in law and be- 
 nevolence, and man is in the position of a love- saved brand from the 
 burning." 
 
 " The law of righteousness by faith is the principle on which men 
 are saved — saving righteousness is recognized or imputed by God, where 
 He is honoured by faith being exercised in what He has promised. This 
 law came into operation with Abraham. Actually, it had its origin in 
 Eden, for we read of Abel, that by faith (the substance of things hoped 
 for) he offered an acceptable sacrifice. — Heb. xi. 4. The prediction of 
 the woman's serpent destroying seed, formed a pivot on which laith 
 could work even then, and doubtless was the subject matter of the 
 faith which saved Abel, Enoch and Noah ; but the full and official initia- 
 tion of the law of faith as the rule of salvation occurred in the history of 
 Abraham. This law was the basis of resurrectional responsibility. The 
 Mosaic law was national. Its rewards and penalties were confined to 
 the conditions of mortal life. It took no cognizance of, and made no 
 provision for, life beyond the natural term of human existence. In its 
 ceremonial forms and observ. nces, it symbolized the truth in relation to 
 Christ and His mission, but in its proximate bearing upon the nation, it 
 gsubserved no spiritual purpose beyond the continual enforcement of the 
 , choolmaster lesson of Jehovah's supremacy and greatness. In this, 
 owever, it established the greatest of first principles, and laid a founda- 
 tion on which the Abrahamic law of faith could have its perfect work. 
 
 " Out of the law, as a national code, it does not appear that any 
 resurrectional responsibility arose. Yet concurrently with its jurisdic- 
 tion it is evident that a dispensation of God's mind, having reference to 
 resurrection was in force. Undoubtedly this was subordinate, and occu- 
 pied the place of an under-current ; but its existence is unquestionable, 
 else how are Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets to appear 
 in the kingdom of God 1 If it be recognized that God's purpose from 
 the beginning had reference to the mission of the Christ, as ' the Resur- 
 rection and the Life," there will be no difficulty in apprehending this 
 conclusion. Obscurely it may be, but really it must be, that resurrec- 
 tional responsibility was contemplated in all Jehovah did through his 
 servants, from righteous Abel to faithful Paul. Jesus has shewn us that 
 the very designation assumed by the Deity in converse with Moses at the 
 bush, though apparently used for the purpose of historical identification, 
 expresses the doctrine of resurrection in relation, at any rate, to Abraham, 
 Isaac and Jacob. God called himself the God of men that were dead ; 
 ergo, reasoned Jesus, and that convincingly, for the Sadducees were put 
 to silence ; He intends to raise them from the dead. If so great a con- 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 211 
 
 elusion can warrantably be based on apparently so thin a foundation, 
 what may we not legitimately infer from the promise of a country to them 
 they never j)os8e8sed, and the assurance of the universal blessing of man- 
 kind in connection with them which has never yet been realized ] What 
 but the conclusion affirmed by Paul that they died in faith, not hiving 
 received the promises, and therefore that they must rise from the dead to 
 realize them ] With this general argument in view, it is easy to re- 
 cognize resurrectional responsibility in many expressions which a forced 
 method of explanation alone can apply to the judgment of the present 
 limited experience. — Psalm xxxvii. ; Ps. xlix. 14 ; Ps. Iviii. 10 ; Ps. 
 xiii. 12 ; Pro. xi. 18, 31 ; Eccl. iii. 17 ; Ch. v. 8 ; Ch. xi. 9 ; Ch. xii. U ; 
 Isa. iii. 10 ; Ch. xxvi. 19, 21 ; Ch. xxxv. 41; Ch. Ixvi. 4, 5-14 ; Mai. iii. 
 16, 18 ; Ch. iv. 1-3, &c. 
 
 " Jewish responsibility was greater than that of the cast-off descendants 
 of the rejected groundling of Eden, because their relation to Deity was 
 special, direct and privileged. The responsibility originating in natural 
 constitution was supplemented by the obligations imposed by Divine 
 Election, and arising out of the national contract entered into at Sinai, to 
 be obedient to all that the Deity required (Exo. xxiv. 3-7). This is re- 
 cognised in the words of Jehovah by Amos, ' You only have 1 known, of 
 all the nations of the earth, therefore will I punish you for your iniqui- 
 ties.' — Amos iii. 2. Yet there is no evidence that this responsibility 
 takes the individual form which it assumes in connection with the indi- 
 vidual privileges of the Gospel. The national sufferings of the Jews in 
 dispensation and privation are evidently (both on the face of the testi- 
 mony and on a consideration of the moral bearings of the case) a full 
 discharge of the responsibility arising from National Election. 
 
 " A responsibility lying in degree between that of the Jews and the 
 outlying Gentles, attached itself to those nations that were in contact 
 with the Jewish people. This is evident in many pages of the Pro- 
 phets. Take, for instance, the words addressed to the King of Tyre. — 
 Ezek. xxviii. 13, 14 ; ch. xxvi. 2, 3. Take also similar words 
 addressed to Ammon, Moab, Edom, and Philistia. — Ezek. xxv. 3, 4, 8, 
 11,12, 13, 15, 16. 
 
 " In none of these cases is there any evidence that God intends to 
 mete out individual judgment by resurrection from the dead. It re- 
 quires a high state of privilege before such can with justice be done. 
 The majority of mankind, particularly in the rude and barbarous times 
 that required the schoolmaster-lessons of the Mosaic law, were in circum- 
 stances of pure misfortune. Born under condemnation (of death) in 
 Adam, and left to the poor resources of the natural mind, which in all its 
 history has never originated anything noble, apart from the ideas set in 
 motion by ' Revelation,' they were as unable to elevate themselves above 
 the level on which they stood, as any tribe of animals. How just and 
 merciful it was, then, of the Deity to ' wink at the times of this ignor- 
 ance' (Acts xvii. 30), which alienated from the Life of God ( Eph. v. 
 18), and allow flesh under such circumstances, to pass away like the 
 flower of the field, that the place thereof might know it no more. — Ps. 
 
ill'/fi 
 
 
 U.f. : 
 
 212 THE BIBLK VINDKATKD AGAINST MODKllN THKiJl.dOY. 
 
 ciii. 15, 16. On the hupposition that every human being is an immor- 
 tal soul, 8Uch a line of action would of course he excluded, and th(! cir- 
 stancee of the early ' dispensations ' would be altogether inexplicable. 
 An immortal soul in tlu' times of anti«][uity would be worth as much as 
 one now ; and if it bo wise and kind to save immortal soul.-: now, there 
 would seem a strange absence of wisdi-m and beneficence in the arrange- 
 ment which, in these early ages, put salvation beyond their reach, and 
 made their doom to hell fire inevitable by the lack of those means of 
 knowledge which are in our day accessible. If, to get out of this diffi- 
 culty, it be suggested that man, in such a plight, will, in mercy l)e per- 
 mitted to enter heaven, we are instantly compelled to question the valuo 
 of our own privileges, nay, to doubt and deny the wisdom of the (Jos- 
 pel, which, on such a theory, is not only not necessary to salvation, but 
 a positive hindrance to it ; since, by its responsibilities, it perils a sal- 
 vation, which, in its absence, would be certain." 
 
 " We should also be compelled to deny the testimony of Scripture, 
 that " man having no understanding is like the beasts that perish," and 
 that " life and immortalit/ have been brought to light by Christ through 
 the Gospel." But we are not now dealing with the monster fiction of Christ- 
 endom. We leave immortality of the soul out of the account, and deal 
 with the question of judgment in the light of the fact that mankind is 
 perishing under the law of sin and death, and, in Adam, has no more to 
 do with a future state than the decaying vegetation which, year by year, 
 chokes the forests and passes away with the winter. The endeavour 
 is to realize in the light of reason and Scripture testimony the varying 
 shades of responsibility created by the dealings of the Almighty with 
 a race already exiled from life and favour under the law of Eden." 
 
 " We have seen that Resurrectional responsibility was limited to those 
 who were related to the word of the God of Israel. The promises and 
 precepts conferred privilege and imposed responsibility, having reference 
 to Resurrection. They formed a basis for that awakening from the dust to 
 everlasting life, and shame, and everlasting contempt foretold to Daniel 
 and implied in many parts of the writings of Job, David and Solomon. 
 The extent to which they operate, it is neither possible nor important 
 for us to determine. The law of Resurrectional responsibility operates 
 much more vividly upon our own times, and it is the rel&*^.ion of this 
 law to ourselves that we are more especially concerned to elucidate." 
 
 '• A careful perusal of the foregoing in connection with what is written 
 in the sacred oracles will, it is hoped, tend to convince such as sneer at 
 the doctrine of a Resurrection, because the world, say they, could not 
 contain all the dead of our race, that there will be abundant room, see- 
 ing that the great majority of the descendants of Adam, not being amen- 
 able to judgment, will never be raised, either to reward or condemna- 
 tion." 
 
 A thorough and correct understanding of the prominent Scripture 
 doctrine of Resurrection, being of paramount importance, seeing that it 
 constitutes one of the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, involving 
 the way of life, and our escape from death and the grave, matters of the 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 213 
 
 utmost moment to every believer and hearer of the j^ospol ; and es- 
 pecially so, when we consider that as regards the family of mankind, the 
 actual dovelopements, practical manifestations, and results to be evolved 
 by and through the Resurrection, are all yet in the future , the compiler 
 believing that the earnest reader will desire to learn all that can bo 
 published in relation to these momentous matters, within the limited 
 •space at his disposal, has concluded to g. <) a portion of the substance 
 of a lecture delivered by Dr. Thomas before the Christadelphian ecclesia 
 in the city of Detroit, United States, in 1866, abridged from the pamph- 
 let entitled " Anastasis," pp. 6-24, 34-40 :— 
 
 David, one of the prophets, speaks copiously of resurrection in the 
 Psalms. The word is not found there, but the thing itself very fre- 
 quently is. He treats of the resurrection of his descendant, the Christ, 
 from among the dead ; to the -end that He may reign King in Zion as 
 the sovereign ruler of the world. He teaches this in the second Psalm. 
 " In death," he says, " there is no remembrance of the Deity " (Psalm 
 vi. 5) ; and " The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down in- 
 to silence " (Psalm cxv. 17) ; " The living know that they shall d'w, but 
 the dead know not anything : their love, and their hatred, and their 
 envy, are now perished : '* hence, " there is no work, nor device, nor 
 knowledge, nor wisdom in Sheol, whiolier thou goest " — (Eccles. ix. 
 5, 6, 10). This Sheol is styled in Job x. 22, " the land of darkness " and 
 in Psalm Ixxxviii. 12, ^'thelandofforgetjulness" and in Psalm xxx. 3, 
 and many other places, " the grave." 
 
 Thus, the Scriptures speak of the De.*th-State into which all go 
 when they depart from among the living. While " in death " they are 
 said to slee/. From this sleep some never awake ; which is equivalent 
 to saying, that they are never the subject of resurrection. This i? 
 evident from Jer. li. 57, where, speaking of the princes, wise men, 
 captains, rulers, and mighty ones of Babylon, the Eternal Spirit saith, 
 " they shall sleep a perpetual sleep and not wake :" and Isaiah, speaking ot' 
 the same class, says " they are dead, they shall not live ; they are de- 
 ceased, thcj/ shall not rise ; therefore, hast Thou visited and destroyed 
 them, ard made all their memory to perish" (xxvi. 14) ; so that "the 
 man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the 
 congregation of the dead" (Prov. xxi. 16) : a decree of very extensive 
 application. 
 
 But all dead ones in the grave shall not sleep the sleep of death 
 perpetually. " The wicked shall be turned into sheol, all the nations 
 that forget God ; but the needy shall not always be forgotten ; the ex- 
 pectation of the poor shall not perish for ever" — (Psalm ix. 17, 18). 
 These poor and needy are those dead ones, who, while living, " obtained 
 a good report through that faith, which is the full assurance of things 
 hoped for, the conviction of things not seen " — (Heb, xi. 1, 39, 42). 
 These are they styled by David in the Psalms the righteous, who shall 
 flourish as the palm tree : the upright in their hearts ; the seed to be 
 accounted to Yahvveh for a generation ; the excellent in the earth, in 
 whom is all His delist ; those who regard His works and the operation 
 
17 r^ 
 
 :14 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
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 iif His hands ; His people ; His inheritance ; them that reverence Hitn ; 
 the blessed, whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered, to 
 whom Yahweh imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no 
 guile ; the broken of heart and the contrite of spirit : they who shall 
 inherit the earth and dwell therein for ever ; the meek, who shall de- 
 light themselves with abundance of peace ; the saints, who are preserved 
 for the Olahm, and shail shout aloud for joy, when they execute the 
 judgments written; the perfect, whose end is peace; His lovers and 
 His friends ; the fellows of the King, and princes in all the earth ; those 
 under whose feet the peoples and nations are to be subdued j the Man 
 styled by Paul " the One Body ;" the prisoners of Yahweh ; His ser- 
 vants, who take pleasure in the stones of Zion ; the heavens who declare 
 His righteousness ; those who keep His covenant, and remember His 
 commandments to do them ; the seed of Abiuham His servant, the 
 children of Jacob His chosen ; the priests of Zion clothed with salva- 
 tion ; the kings of the earth, who shall sing in the ways of Yahweh. 
 These have been sleeping the sleep of death for ages ; but, inasmuch as 
 that many of the things affirmed of them by the Eternal Spirit, are no 
 part of the estate of the poor and needy during their sojourn among the 
 living, it follows that, as not one jot or tittle of the divine word shall 
 fail, by implication David inculcates their resurrection to execute the 
 judgments written against the kings and nobles of the nations ; to take 
 possession of the earth, and to dwell therein for ever. 
 
 This, then, is the teaching of the Old Testament Script'Te." that 
 there shall be an awakening and standing up of certain of the '^'-'iwi — iiot 
 of the dead universally ; and that, after this, there shall be judgn it. 
 But this awakening from the sleep of death is not taught thf>re simply 
 by implication. It is directly testified. In the book of Job, the most 
 ancient section of the word, the patriarch says, " I know that my Re- 
 deemer liveth, and that he shall stand in the latter day upon the earth ; 
 and, after I shall awake, though this body be destroyed, yet from out of 
 my flesh shall I see Eloahh ; whom I shall see for myself, and mine 
 eyes shall behold, and not a stranger " — (xix. 25). This was the hope 
 of those who held the true faith in the days of Job, and of Moses. They 
 expected to awake from the sleep of death, and, after the destruction of 
 the body in Sheol ; and again to be bodies of flesh capable of beholding 
 the Redeemer. This was awaking to renewed corporeal existence — a 
 reorganization of their disintegrated remains with renewed identity. 
 This was awaking, coming, or springing forth, and standing again, or 
 resurrection. 
 
 Many passages of like import might be adduced from the prophetic 
 writings ; but the limit assigned to these pages will not allow of quota- 
 tion. I will merely remark here that " the poor and needy " whom 
 David so amply characterizes "poor in the world, but rich in faith," 
 while strangers and pilgrims among the living, are styled by Isaiah 
 " Yahweh's dead ones," and " His dead body." Concerning them, he 
 says " they shall live," " they shall arise." They are to come forth from 
 the dust of sheol ; in which, having been reduced thereto, they are con- 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 215 
 
 sidered as dwelling, as well as sleeping. Hence, the Eternal Spirit, who 
 makes them to live and spring forth by His power, addresses them pro- 
 phetically in the words, " Jwake and sing, ye that dvcell in dust." They 
 must awake in order to sing, which implies previous reorganization — the 
 formation of their dust into bodies again ; for dust cannot praise in song, 
 neither any that go down into the silence of " the land of forgetful- 
 ness," — (Psalm xxx. 9 ; Ixxxviii. 11, 12 ; cxv. 17). 
 
 I cannot dismiss this passage in Isaiah without inviting attention to 
 the beautiful figure by which he illustrates the development of these 
 singers from dust. He styles them ** dew," and their evolution as its 
 manifestation upon plants. Thus, addressing the Eternal Spirit, he is 
 caused to say, " for Thy dew is as the dew of herbs, and the earth shall 
 cast out the dead " (Isaiah xxvi. 19) ; and in Psalm ex. 3, " in the bril- 
 liancies of holiness from the womb of the dawn, there shall be to thee 
 the dew of thy birth," The sleepers in the dust are styled dew, because 
 of the resemblance subsisting between the process of nature in the forma- 
 tion of dew, and the operation of the Eternal Spirit in the generation 
 of living beings frora dust. In comprehending the formation of dew, 
 we are enabled to form some idea of the evolution of^a living body from 
 dust. A dew-drop is a sparkling globule of water, secretly and silently 
 deposited upon the leaves of plants. The elements of which it is com- 
 posed exist previously to its formation, free or uncombined, in the air 
 of night. These are the invisible gases termed oxygen and hydrogen. 
 But, besides these, there is the indispensable formative agent, styled 
 electricity. Without this, there could be no dew-drop visible or invisible. 
 The gases might be mechanically mixed ; but without the invisible and 
 silent operation of the electricity, they would not be chemically com- 
 bined in the manifested product called a dew drop. This is a visible 
 and tangiole thing, generated from invisible and intangible latent ele- 
 ments. According to the electrical law of its formation it is globular 
 and light-refracting, or sparkling in the open brightness of the dawn. 
 These refractions are the hddrai, brilliancies, splendours, or glorious 
 vestments of the dew. Before the dawn, the dew-drops are all in the 
 womb of night ; ifrom which both they and the dawn receive their birth, 
 begotten by the orb of day. No figure can be more beautiful, no re- 
 semblance more complete. 
 
 After this similitude, then, we may discover the reproduction of living 
 beings from dust. With this dust were combined, previously to death, 
 fluids, in the proportion of five-sixths to the whole. These fluids were 
 mainly water holding divers earthy particles in solution. The gathering 
 of the spirit and breath of Ail in the article of death, is the withdrawal 
 of that antagonism which, during life, resists a man's return to dust — 
 (Job xxxiv. 14, 15). The power that keeps bodies in living existence is 
 " spirit," or electricity, as it is called by philosophers ; who studiously 
 avoi'. expressing things natural in the terms of Scripture. *The " breath 
 of ^.IL, by which frost is given " (Job xxxvii. 10), is the air we breathe ; 
 and consists of oxygen and nitrogen mechanically mixed. These three 
 things are essential to life — oxygen, nitrogen, and electricity. Without 
 
216 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
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 them, "flesh, a wind that passeth away" (Ps. Ixxviii. 39), cannot long 
 retain its organic constitution ; but rapidly runs into a state in which its 
 original elements are set free, it is truly " a bag of wind ;" for when 
 the creature ceases to breathe, the wind, or gas, soon begins to distend 
 the skin ; nor does the process intermit until he is resolved into hydro- 
 gen, oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, and a little dust. 
 
 Such, in general terms, is the analysis of those who sleep and dwell 
 in dust. In skeol all these elements are there ready for a synthetic 
 operation to be elaborated by Him, who, while tabernacling in the flesh 
 among the Jews, said, " I am the resurrection and the life." He alone 
 can perform this wonderful and mighty synthesis — the reunion of these 
 gaseous elements with the dust, and their development into forms, the 
 living images and likenesses of those to whom the dust formerly be- 
 longed. This is resurrection — the reproduction of a former intelligent 
 being by almighty synthetic power, styled by Paul, " the energy where- 
 by he is able to subdue all things to himself" — (Phil. iii. 21). He who 
 recombines these simple elements of the dead is the Word, in whom is 
 life, and by whom all things were made — (Jno. i. 3, 4). This Word is 
 the resurrection— the Eternal Spirit, "who only hath immortality, 
 dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto." His name is 
 Yah, by which He is well pleased to be extolled — (Ps. Ixviii. 4). He 
 takes away men's breath, and they die, and return to their dust. He 
 subjects them to analysis ; and then at the time appointed, He reverses 
 the operation, in sending forth His spirit for their renewal — (Ps. civ. 
 29, 30). This is the formative or recreative power of resurrection. 
 The gases and the dust might be all mechanically and intimately com- 
 bined; but no image and likeness of a previous entity would result. 
 The power of the life-word, intelligently operative, is indisi^ensable. 
 This power sent forth by Deity, and applied by Jesus (II. Cor. iv. 14), 
 in its application, secretly and silently, as in the combination and forma- 
 tion of like elements into dew, will synthesize the gases and the dust of 
 sheol, and from " the sides of the pit, wherein no water is," and where 
 no forms exist, this formative power will evolve living men and women, 
 who shall come forth from the land of darkness, where the light is as 
 darkness (Job. x. 21, 22), like dew "from the womb of the dawn." 
 He, by whom this power is applied, may well be styled " the Wonder- 
 ful, the Counsellor, the Mighty Power, the Father of Eternity." What 
 an astonishing evolution of living substantial intelligences out of a few 
 invisible elemental principles of nature ! It cannot be said that they 
 are created out of nothing, any more than such a creation could be 
 affirmed of the dew. The crude materials abound in shed, where they 
 would continue eternally in a f armless condition, irrespective of their 
 natural affinities. These would never evolve them into previously exist- 
 ing men and ti&men ; still less would their elemental affinities, however 
 strong, reproduce beings of remote antiquity, with their consciousness 
 of self in as lively exercise as though they had only had a wink of sleep I 
 Nothing but the wisdom and power of Omnipotence definitively applied, 
 can accomplish so extraordinary a result. The Sadducees utterly denied 
 
mmm. 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 217 
 
 that such a thing was either probable or possible ; but, as Jesus said, 
 " they erred, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of the Deity." 
 If they had understood Moses and the Prophets, and had had any ap- 
 preciation of the power by which all things had been created, and 
 were sustained, they would have been preserved from the fatal error of 
 ■denying a resurrection. It is this ignorance of the Scriptures in their 
 signification, that is the source of all the errors so variously and 
 widely prevalenf^ respecting resurrection. Few have any rational 
 conception of the process by which living, previously-existing, self- 
 conscious, intelligent forms, are evolved from a few gaseous and earthy 
 particles ; and almost as few understand the nature of the forms, or living 
 images, produced ; and the doctrinal principles upon which, when repro- 
 duced, they attain to their full and final development. Though Pharisaic 
 in word, the»religiou8 world universally is practically Sadducean. It& 
 creeds confess a resurrection of all the dead ; while those who have 
 received them implicitly from their ancestors, hold the dogma of the 
 heathen, which decrees the existence in all human beings of a divine 
 principle, styled by them "the immortal soul." This, they say, is 
 *' the thinking /," the real, responsible man, which was created in the 
 image and likeness of the gods. At death, it is said, a separation en- 
 sues between this soul and the body ; and, as both ancient and modern 
 heathen, in their ethics, distinguish between virtue and vice, for which 
 there are rewards and punishments in another world, they provide two 
 separate regions for the reception of the two several classes of immortal 
 souls. The one country they style " the Elysian Fields," or " Heaver, 
 beyond the realms of time and space ;" the other, " Tartarus," the 
 kingdom of Pluto, or " Hell." At death, they send all who please 
 them to endless bliss in heaven ; but their enemies, to eternal torments 
 in hell. Thus, logically, resurrection, either to a blessed existence, or . 
 to punishment, is denied ; for if rewards and punishment are awarded 
 at death, and have been enjoyed and suffered incorporeally for thousands 
 of years, resurrection, as scripturally taught, is a needless superfluity, a 
 mere incumbrance upon faith, and uselessly perplexing to the minds of 
 men. 
 
 But these traditions of the heathen, which were early blended with 
 the apostolic faith, by " men of perverse minds," are utterly vain. By 
 whomsoever held, they make of none effect in him the words he may 
 believe. Without an awakening and coming forth from the dust of 
 sheol, there are neither life, blessedness, nor punishment, for those who 
 are sleeping and dwelling there. Resurrection of body is indispensable 
 to either reward or punishment, for without resurrection, the metaphori- 
 cal sleepers and dwellers in the dust are nonentities, being without 
 bodies or parts — mere historical characters, whose " remains " are simply 
 elementary gases and particles of earth. Deny a resurrection, and all 
 the promises of the Deity to the fathers, which He has confirmed " by 
 two immutable things," His word and His existence, are reduced to 
 " cunningly-devised fables." No resurrection, iio salvation — no " glory, 
 honour, incorruptibility, and life," in the kingdom of the Deity. 
 
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 218 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 It will be easily perceived, then, that resurrection is an important and 
 indispensable element of the beginning of the oracles of the Deity. A 
 system of belief in which it is not prominent, is a body without life ; 
 and can, therefore, impart none. Paul exhibited resurrection and aeon- 
 judgment as ingredients of " the milk of the word " designed for the 
 nourishment and growth of babes — (Heb. v. 12, 13; vi. 1, 2 ; 1 Pet. 
 ii. 2). Hence, a man " wise in his own conceit," who does not discern 
 thesci elements of " the beginning of the word of the Christ," must be 
 in a very pulpy and puny state of mind. He is truly " unskilful in the 
 word of righteousness," and incapable of digesting " the strong meat " 
 of the mystery of the Christ, which, in the pre-apostolic generations, 
 was not made known to the sous of men as Paul and his companions 
 taught it (Eph. iii. 4, 5): for " strong meat belongeth to them who are 
 perfect (rtXtuDv) ; to those who, by reason of use, have tfeeir senses ex- 
 ercised to discern both good and evil." But they who would make a 
 merit of not pretending to understand the prophets, yet presumptuously 
 mete out to others, who can read them with intelligence, condemnation 
 and repudiation, are not only the sickliest of mortals, but well nigh to 
 the fate of thorns crackling under a pot. 
 
 But some, while they confess that there will be resurrection, in the 
 same breath in which they pray you to " have patience with them, be- 
 cause they are thick-headed," boisterously and positively assert, that on 
 the dust of dead ones awakening to life, they spring forth from their 
 graves incorruptible and immortal ; so that, manifestly, according to 
 them, Paul was not treating of body, but simply oiincorpm'eal dust, when 
 he says, " this corruptible must put on incorruptiou, and this mortal 
 must put on immortality ! " This corruptible incorporeal dust must put 
 on incorruptiou. But this cannot be the apostle's meaning ; for the 
 dust, instead of being corruptible, has resisted corruption for thousands 
 
 years, as in tlie case of Abel, Abraham, Daniel, and so forth ; it 
 would therefore be superfluous to put on a quality it already has. No ; 
 Paul was speaking of body, not of incorporeal dust. It is therefore neces- 
 sary, that the dust be first formed into body in the grave ; so that body 
 being evolved, there may be body to ^^ pit on" what may be appointed 
 for it. 
 
 Paul's saying, " this corruptible must put on incorruption," though 
 it may, and does, apply to living bodies existing at the resurrection, 
 which will be changed, or quickened, without tasting death, cannot apply 
 to bodies living contemporarily with him ; for those bodies, instead of 
 putting on incorruption, jnit off everything, ran rapidly into corruption, 
 and ceased to be bodies at all. His argument clearly assumes the ex- 
 istence of a body waiting to "put on incorruption and immortality," 
 when the fiat of its Creator shall be declared. * This body, which springs 
 forth from the ground, "as the garden causeth the things that are sown 
 in it to spring forth " (Is. Ixi. 11), is, doubtless, the body he styles "a 
 natural body" in comparison with another body, which he terms " spirit- 
 ual body." He gives " the first man Adam," before he sinned, as the 
 type of the one ; and " the last Adam," when made a " quickening 
 
TESTTMONIES. 
 
 219 
 
 ing 
 
 spirit," the type of the other. " The first man ia out of the earth, of 
 dust, xoiVos j " and such also will they be who will be called upon to 
 " awake I " They will be, " ck yjys, xo'"<o5, out of the earth, of dust ; " 
 but when they afterwards " put on incorruption," in their incorruptible 
 investiture (to otKT/n/pioy, to e^ ovpavoy), they are " clothed upon with their 
 dwelling, which ia from heaven." Thus, the two bodies, the natural and 
 the spiritual, are represented by Paul as derived from two opposite re- 
 gions, as remote the one from the other as the earth and heaven ; yet 
 both as intimately connected as cause and effect ; or as the seed sown, 
 and the body t^e Deity is pleased to give it. 
 
 But Paul says, "in the last trumpet which shall sound, the dead ones 
 shall he raised incorruptible." So it reads in the Common Version ; 
 and, if the words be understood in the sense intended by the apostle, 
 there cannot be the least objection to it. He announced a truth which 
 was afterwards apocalyptically represented to John in Patmos ; that 
 in the period symbolized by the seventh trumpet " the dead sJuill be 
 camedto exist incorruptible." This is the import of the word eyepdqa-oy- 
 Tat, rendered " shall be raised," in this text. It includes the whole 
 process of rebuilding from the awakening to the quickening, when the 
 subject of the finished operation can shout aloud with joy, and exclaim 
 " I am immortal ! Hallelu Yah ! " This will be seen in any lexicon 
 under the woi*d eycipw ; among the definitions are " to raise up, or 
 again, to rebuild, to cause to exist." The raising of an edifice is not 
 begun and consummated in an instant. It is the pleasure of the Deity, 
 who is " the builder of all things," to execute His purposes *^ith delibera- 
 tion. Ke \nya the foundation of "the house, which is trom heaven," 
 in the dust. This foundation is the body which springs forth there- 
 from ; while the superimposed building is tlie whdte robe of imirmiality, 
 "the house from heaven," with which it is arrayed, and in the panoply 
 of which it dwells. Hence, raising in this text, is not an instantaneous 
 act, as though a body shot forth from the dust incorruptible and iro • 
 mortal ; but a process consisting of divers successive stages. The.«': are 
 all developed in, or during, the sounding of the last, or seventh, trum- 
 pet ; but the interval to elapse lietween the beginning and the finishing 
 of the process, is nowhere revealed. It will, doubtless, be sufficiently 
 long to afford scope for " the gathering unto Christ," and the judgment 
 of His house, which is to follow. They are caused to exist when they 
 come forth from their graves ; but they, are not " caused to exist in- 
 corruptible," until they shall have been approved at His tribunal, when 
 the raising will be complete. 
 
 Thus, from these premises, it may be perceived that the raising of 
 the righteous is the exaltation of them from a lower to a higher nature. 
 The lower nature is that exhibited in Adam on the day of his formation. 
 It was " very good " of its kind, but not equal to the nature of the 
 Elohim. This is the higher nature, and styled by Paul the spiritual 
 body. The lower nature is human ; the higher, divine. From the one 
 to the other is an ascent ; and he who ascends from an earthly body to a 
 heavenly, is said to have been raised. 
 
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 .220 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 When spirit became tlesh in the evohition of Jesus from the substance 
 of Mary, he is said to have been " made a little lower than the angels," 
 whose nature He did not assume. — (Heb. ii. 9, 16). It is this inferior 
 nature of which resurrection, in its broadest sense, is affirmed. If Adam 
 had continued faithful and obedient, his " body of life " would have been 
 raised to quality with the Elohistic body by the transforming energy of 
 spirit sent forth from Deity. His body of life, just evolved from the 
 dust, would have been clothed upon by a house from heaven ; or, in other 
 words, having been permitted to eat of the tree of life, his body would 
 have " put on incorruption and immortality.'' But, in his case, this was 
 not permitted. It was reserved for the last xVdam to illustrate, in His 
 own person what would have been if the first had been faithful j and what 
 will be to all of his descendants who walk after the example of the 
 last. 
 
 The resurrection, or rail, ^ < - o from the lower nature with which 
 He emerged fromthetomb to U' in .ature. His " house from heaven," 
 the white robe of spirit in wmch iLe was " takeu up/' supplies the 
 deficiencies in the case of the first Adam ; and exhibits to his brethren 
 the stages of the raising proces ney have '^' ' ^ss through before it can be 
 said they are like Him. (1 John iii. . y. 
 
 The first stage is the formation of tlien- dubu after the image and 
 likeness of the first Adam, which were Elohistic ; and then, being thus 
 Elohistically formed, to be caused to exist by " the breath of lives " being 
 breathed into their nostrils. By this process of formation and inspiration 
 they becom«^ODiES OF LIFE — naphshoth chaiyah. Before the inspiration 
 of the breath of lives, their condition answers to that of the lifeless 
 body of Jesus in the to nab of Joseph of Arimathea, when he deposited 
 Him there. In this parallel, they are naphshoth maith, " bodies of death," 
 such as Paul prayed to be delivered from in Rom. vii. 24. But when 
 the breath of " the spirit of life from Deity enters into them," they awake 
 " and stand upon their feet," bodies of life, styled by Paul in 1 Cor. xv. 
 44, 45, " psychical bodies " and " living souls." This stage of the raising 
 process is strikingly illustrated in the resurrection of the witnesses 
 apocalyptically exhibited in Rev. xi. 11. These were bodies of death during 
 three symbolic days and a half ; but, as soon as spirit from Deity entered 
 into them they become subjects of egliersis, or awakening, and anastusis, 
 or standing up : after this, they ascended, and so, being clothed upon with 
 power, their raising was complete. 
 
 Having emerged from sheol, from " the womb of the dawn," the 
 second stage of the process finds them, after the type of the first Adam, 
 "standing before the judgment-seat of Christ" (Rom. xiv. 10), as the 
 result of their having been angelically " gathered together unto him. — " 
 (Matt xxiv. 31 ; 2 Thess. ii. 1). Adam, at the bar of Deity in Paradise, 
 had arrived there through probation, and emergence from a hiding place, 
 whence he had been brought forth by the voice of Yahvveh Elohim 
 (Gen. iii. 1-9) ; so with his descendants ; they arrive at the judgment-seat 
 of Christ through probation and emergence from sheol, in which they have 
 been long hid ; and from which the voice of Yahweh Elohim brings them 
 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 221 
 
 forth that " every one of them may give account of himself to Deity — "' 
 (Rom. xiv. 12). Had Adam been able to give a good account of himself 
 in probation, he would have been permitted to eat of the tree of lives, 
 that, eating, he might live for ever ; but he was self-condemned in the 
 account he rendered, so that he was sentenced to perpetual exclusion from 
 Paradi.?o, and to " receive through the body for what he had done 
 evil" (2 Cor. v. 10.); which evil is defined in the penalty attached to 
 the law he had transgressed according to the exposition thereof by the 
 lawgiver and judge, in the words " dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt 
 •return ; " and which, after a life of labour and of sorrow, took effect A.M. 
 930, when he died, and, by corruption, became dust again. Thus," having 
 sowed to the flesh, of the flesh he reaped corruption j " as will 
 all his descendants who elect to walk in his steps rather than after the 
 example of the last Adam. — (Gal. vi. 8). 
 
 Here the similitude })etween the first Adam and his posterity ends. 
 Those who " reap life everlasting " are such as, after the example of the 
 last Adam, have, in their probation, sown to the Spirit; *' for whatso- 
 ever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." When those who have 
 sown to the Spirit appear at the judgment-seat of Christ, they will be 
 able to show in the account rendered, that the righteousness of the 
 Mosaic law was fulfilled in them by their walk after " the Spirit, which 
 is the truth," through which they mortified the deeds of the body, and 
 crucified it with its affections and lusts — (Rom. viii. t; 13 ; Gal. v. 24). 
 This was sowing to the Spirit. And who that has been engaged in this 
 work of faith and labour of love, would dread to make his appearance 
 before the judgment-seat of Christ 1 They are gathered there as hope- 
 ful expectants of a verdict justifying them before angels and the 
 Father who is in heaven (Matt. x. 32 ; Luke xii. 8, 9) ; for the angels 
 will be present at this assize, and will be attentive observers, approving 
 the just and despising with ignominy those who loved the world and 
 the things pertaining to it, more than " the truth as it is in Jesus." It 
 can surely be only those whose consciences are not void of offence toward 
 God and men, who contemplate their appearance in His presence with 
 affright. They arc, doubtless, conscious of disaffection and disloyalty to 
 the truth ; of not walking worthy of the vocation wherewith they are 
 called J of conformity to the world upon the things of which their affec- 
 tirns are placed, and of glorying in pursuits of which they ought rather 
 t( > be ashamed. Piofessors who are making for themselves a record of 
 this sort, have reason to be affrighted ; for, "if any man love the world, 
 the love of the Father is not in him ; " and the world's friends are God's 
 enemies (1 John ii. 15 ; James iv. 4) : hence, for such, the expectation 
 of standing before Christ in full angelic assize, is "a certain fearful look- 
 ing for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adver- 
 saries" — (Heb. X. 27). No marvel that they view this prospect with 
 frantic repugnance, and declaim against it as a senseless conceit. But 
 what is the use of this 1 Bad words and rough speeches will not alter 
 the predetermination of Deity. If it be His purpose to demand account 
 from every one, of himself, before he confers upon him, through the 
 
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 222 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 •Spirit, life everlasting, that purpose will assuredly stand. And that it 
 is His pleasure so to do, is emphatically and explicitly taught in the 
 Word. Paul, who testifies it among others, did not view it with dis- 
 may, although he says that evil as well as good is then to be dispensed. 
 He was conscious of having done well, and he knew that such would be 
 accepted — (Gen. iv. 7). Therefore, in view of the judgment, which 
 made Felix tremble, he could joyfully exclaim, " I have fought the good 
 fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith ; henceforth there 
 is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous 
 Judge M'ill give me in that day," when *' He shall judge the living and 
 dead ones at His appearing and kingdom " " and not to me only, but 
 also to all who love the appearing" — (2 Tim. iv. 8, 1, 8). Surely, they 
 who are keeping the faith, and earnestly desiring " the appearing of the 
 glory of the great God and Saviour Jesus Christ," may view the judg- 
 ment of that day, now so close at hand, as cheerfully. It is only evil- 
 doers that have reason to be afraid. 
 
 The consummation of the judgment of Christ's house indicates the 
 epoch of the third and last stage of the raising process. This crisis is the 
 quickening, by which resurrection is perfected. The analogy is found in 
 nature, from which its divine Creator selects many processes and princi- 
 ples, which He employs as figures to illustrate His teaching in the word. 
 Thus, in regard to corporeal regeneration, in the process of developing an 
 immortal being from the dust of sheol, the terms expressive of the stages 
 of what may be styled the spiritual gestation are conformed to the pheno- 
 mena pertaining to the natural. The same fact obtains in relation to 
 moral regeneration, which must precede in probation, the corporeal in the 
 resurrection state. In the moral process " the New Man " is " begotten," 
 or conceived, wh^-n the sinner perceives " the truth as it it in Jesus ; " 
 and he is " quickened " unto a new and independent life, when the truth 
 works in him to will and to do the good pleasure of Deity. If he stop 
 short of the quickening in moral or incorporeal gestation, he is a mere 
 abortion ; but, if in the moral, the process is matured in a " faith that 
 works by love and purifies the heart," the immersed believer is addressed 
 in these words, to wit : " And you hath He quickened, who were dead 
 in trespasses and sins. ... He hath quickened you together with 
 Christ " — (Ephes. ii. 1, 5.) It will be perceived by the thoughtful, that 
 there is necessarily Atnarked interval between the moral conception and 
 the quickening of the dead in sin. An unquickened intelligent sin- 
 ner is a theorist — a speculator in divine* thoughts, which have no 
 moral influence over him ; while a quickened sinner has become cir- 
 cumcised of heart and ears, " the workmanship of Deity," " created 
 by knowledge after His own image " — (Eph. ii. 10 ; Col. iii. 10). 
 
 The moral gestatory order of development, I have said, is in strict 
 conformity with the law of nature. According to this, quickening usually 
 occurs about eighteen weeks after conception. During this interval, the 
 bearer has no direcl consciousness of the embryo forming within ; but 
 when quickening occurs, the attention is strongly excited. Now, the 
 English law recognises the cause of the phenomena of quickening to be, 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 223 
 
 the acquisition of a life hy which the fcetus might live ivdependent of its hearer. 
 This idea is probably correct ; and certainly exact enough to illustrate 
 the phenomena of the moral and corporeal generation of " the new man 
 which, after Deity, is created in righteousness and holiness of the truth" 
 (Eph. iv. 24). The matrix of this new being is "the heart" of the 
 sinner. " The word of the kingdom " is the incoiTuptible seed sown 
 into his heart. For some time, he has no direct consciousness that a 
 new creature is forming within him. In process of time, however, his 
 attention is strongly excited, and he perceives that he carries within 
 him new ideas, aspirations, and feelings, which, before he began to read 
 and study the Word, he was an entire stranger to. These are a new 
 creation ; and, if they do not prove abortive, will ultimate in the de- 
 velopment of the incorruptible and immortal man ; for this new corporeal 
 being is originally quickened by the truth, or spirit-and-life Word, in 
 the heart of the Old Man— (John vi. G3). " It is the spirit that quick- 
 eneth, and the words which I speak unto you, spirit is and life is " — 
 irvtvfia ttJTi Kai ^an; eoriv. This is true, whether the quickening be moral 
 or corporeal ; in the former case, the quickening power is in divine 
 ideas, of which " the words " are the signs ; whiio in the latter, the 
 quickening power is what philosophers would term electrical. 
 
 According, therefore, to the analogy of nature, the second stage in 
 the process of raising, answers to tlie interval between the begettal, or 
 conception, in the dust of sheol, and the quickening after judgment. 
 This interval is perceptible in the case of the last Adam. He was be- 
 gotten in the tomb, in fulfilment of the second Psalm, " this day have I 
 begotten Thee " (Acts xiv. 33). But, when Mary afterwards saw him 
 in the garden, He had not been quickened ; for He told her then not to 
 touch Him, because He had not yet ascended to His Father, who was 
 His Ail, strength or power — (John xx. 17). But subsequently to this, 
 we find Him in the midst of His disciples, when He breathed upon 
 them holy spirit. When the breath of a man from the tomb is holy 
 spirit, that man must have been corporeally quickened, or have become 
 spirit. He came forth from the sepulchre so early that it was yet dark ; 
 and it was the same first day at evening that He breathed upon them. 
 Here was a day. Eight days after this, he appeared among them, and 
 on that occasion invited Thomas to touch Him. He had given the same 
 invitation to the rest eight days before, when he declared that He was 
 flesh and bones, and not a phantasm, as they supposed — (Luke xxiv.' 
 37, 39). Now some time in the interval between the dawn and the 
 evening of the resurrection-day, the cause for the interdict, " Touch me 
 not," must have been removed ; in other words, the ascent from the 
 lower nature, begotten to incipient life in the tomb, to the Father, " who 
 is Spirit " (John iv. 24), must then have taken place. This transition 
 from the one nature to the other, when the fulness of the time is come, 
 is " in the twinkling of an eye ;" which instantaneous operation of 
 Almighty power constitutes the putting on of incorruptibility and death- 
 lessness ; and confers upon the quickened being a life independent of 
 the natural laws, by which " death is swallowed up in victory." 
 
224 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 
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 In the original, the word rendered quickened is ^oxmoiiu), and signifies 
 " to impart life ; to make alive." Now, as there are two natures, there 
 are also two sorts of lives. The life of the lower nature is an inferior 
 life, which depends upon the natural laws for itg precarious continuance. 
 It partakes of the quality of the nature or body through which it is 
 manifested. This being corruptible, the life is only temporal, or for a 
 time. This is our present life, intermitted at death, and restored when 
 we awake from our sleep in the dust of sheol. We are then as Adam 
 was when he came from the Creator's hand. The life is organic and 
 terminable ; and liable to disturbance from any cause operating judici 
 ally. In the case of " the unjust," this judicial operation will develop 
 in their flesh certain morbid phenomena, which will ultimate in the 
 cessation of the life, and the entire disorganization of the body ; a con- 
 summation, styled by Paul in 2 Cor. ii. 15, 16, perishing, or "death 
 unto death;" and in Gal. vi. 8, "of the flesh reaping corruption." 
 
 This post-resurrectional conclusion of the existence of the unjustified, 
 is referable to their not being deemed worthy o{ quickening by the Right- 
 eous Judge. He rejects them as not being fit and proper characters to 
 have incorruptibility and life imparted to them. In His good pleasure, 
 therefore, He leaves them naked, and exposed to shame and contempt 
 (Dan. xii. 2 ; Rev. xvi. 15) : but the wise, who inherit glory (Prov. 
 iii 35), their lamp shall not be put out thus (Prov. xiii. 9) : they will 
 be quickened. Their bodies will be perfected, as the body of Jesus was 
 perfected in its ascent to the Father. Spirit, or power, will be imparted 
 to them without measure j so that their bodies, conceived in the dust of 
 sheol, and capable of a return thither, will be deprived of that tendency ; 
 and be transformed into the likeness of the glorious body of Jesus, who 
 never will be mistaken again for the gardener of Gethsemane. Hence, 
 the transforming operation is the quickening, or impartation of incor- 
 ruptibility and Ufe to bodies already endowed with temporal life. The 
 casting of the dead out of the earth only puts them into the position oc- 
 cupied by those who are alive at the advent of Christ. These, not hav- 
 ing died, are prepared for transformation. If the advent occurred im- 
 mediately, it would find them living men and women, waiting to be 
 gathered together to the tribunal of Christ. They will appear there an 
 unquickened assembly, bearing the image of the earthy Adam (1 Cor. 
 XV. 49) ; and in that image, standing before "the last Adam, the 
 quickening spirit ;" that it may be seen if they be worthy, from their 
 account given of themselves, to bear the image of the heavenly. The 
 fitness of things requires, that all the dead and all the living gathered 
 to the judgment seat of C)hrist should appear there an unquickened host. 
 All have to appear there in the same nature, or body, and for the same 
 end ; namely, for quickening, or transformation, if worthy ; otherwise, 
 not. What fitness would there be in a mixed assembly 1 Certainly, 
 none. The judgment seat is occupied by the quickened and quickening 
 spirits ; and this throne is not set up for the judgment of quickened 
 spirits by the Quickener ; but for that of unquickened flesh and blood.. 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 225 
 
 whether contemporary with the judgment, or reproduced from sheol for 
 judicial purposes. 
 
 The attentive reader of the Scriptures will have perceived, that a dis- 
 tinction is made in things pertaining to the resurrection process. Thus, 
 in John, v. 21, Jesus says, "as the Father rebuilds (eycipci) the dead ones, 
 and imparts life to them (^u>o7rotit) ; so also the Son imparts life to, or 
 quickens, whom he will." Here, the dead are first awakened, which im- 
 plies the rebuilding of their dust and their animation ; and afterwards, 
 quickened with independent and unending life and power. According 
 to Paul, Jesus hin^self was the subject of these operations. This appears 
 from Rom. xiv. 9, where he says, that " Christ both died, and rose 
 (ai/ttm/), and revived {av€(7j<Tt}." Here are two distinct things affirmed 
 of Him after His death. Paul was not content with saying, " He died 
 and rose," because that form of speech did not express all that happened 
 to him : aneate or " rose," from which anastasis is derived, did not ex- 
 press the whole truth ; for the dead may stand up, and yet not be quick- 
 ened. For this reason, Paul adds the word anedzdse, from <rua(a<o, 
 which signifies, to live with increased and strengthened life, which was 
 consequent upon his being quickened by " the Father," or Spirit, who 
 caused him after he died, to stand up (John, vi. 63 ;) honce, because 
 strength and power are related to what is quickened, the word of the 
 Deity is said to be *' quiok and powerful, and sharper than any two- 
 edged sword." 
 
 And so also of all who are to be raised ; they are saidj^Zr^-^, to "come 
 forth" from their graves : but this is not all. When they have come 
 forth, they stand up ; but what do they stand there at the gates of 
 sheol for 1 To what end have they emerged from thence 1 The Lord 
 Jesus answers these questions as follows : " they who have done good 
 things come forth unto a standing up oj life ; but they who have done 
 evil things Mnto a stonrfm^i' up (ayaorao-ts) of condemnation" — (Jno. v. 29.) 
 Ii this the life and the cMndemnation are subsequent to the coming forth ; 
 for the Lord says, they come forth to or for («s) these results ; which 
 are awarded to them, according to the good or evil they may have done 
 before they entered sheol. 
 
 Such then are the things, and the order of their development, in the 
 resurrection period. First, reorganization of dust as a basis for the res- 
 toration of personal identity ; then, the breathing into the nostrils breath 
 of the spirit of life, that the individual may awake, and stand upon his 
 feet ; after this, restoration of identity for appearance at the judgment 
 seat of Christ, that the appearer may give account of himself to that 
 Righteous Judge in presence of the angelic apparitors of His court ; 
 afterwards, when these proceedings are closed, and sentence in accord 
 with the accounts rendered, has drawn the line of separation " between 
 him that serveth Elohim, and him that serveth Him not" (Mai. iii. 18) 
 — between the just and the unjust; then spirit-power, administered by 
 the Judge, quickens or imparts incorruptibility and life to " the just ; " 
 who, in the instantaneity of the operation, ascend to the Father who is 
 spirit, or are corporeally transformed into identity of nature with the 
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 226 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODEUN THEOLCXIY. 
 
 body of Christ. Such is resurrection from inception in the dust of sfuol 
 to the quickening inceptimi of a life that ends no more. 
 
 Some idea of the extraordinary change wrought upon the " mortal 
 body " by its quickening, may be formed from Daniel's description of 
 the " certain man " he saw in the third year of Cyrus, which was the 
 year in which he was consigned .to slieol, now 2406 years ago — (Dan. i. 
 21 ; X. 1, 5). That certain man represented to him, was what Paul 
 styles in Eph. iv. 4. ; i. 22, 23, the " One Body, the Eccle.sia," J which 
 Christ is " the Head." Daniel describes this body corporate of the 
 quickened just ones, as " a man clothed in linen, whose ioins were girded 
 with fine gold of Uphaz : his body also like tiie beryl, and his face as 
 the appearance of lightning, and his eyes as lamps of tire, and his feet 
 like in colour to polished brass, and the voice of his words like the voice 
 of a multitude." Of this host, Daniel was assured he should be one, "at 
 the end of the 1335 days : " which would reach from a given event to 
 the epoch of resurrection " in the latter days." Now, while contemplat- 
 ing " this great vision," he was subjected to an operation indicative of 
 his approaching decease ; and of the process he and others would have 
 to go through, in pasaing from the death-sleep of shcol, to the firmamen- 
 tal and enduring brightness of the kingdom. 
 
 The decease he was about to accomplish, and which he speaks of as 
 though he were already in the dust of death, is specified in the words,^ 
 " I was left alone, and there remained no strength in me ; for my vigour 
 was turned in me into corruption, and I retained no strength. Then 
 was I in a deep sleep on my face, and my face upon the earth. I Wiis 
 dumb ; nor is breath left in me.'' Now, after remaining thus an inde- 
 finite period, the time arrived for him to awake from this death-sleep ; 
 and to be raised from his recumbent position on the ground. He did 
 not make a sudden and vigorous leap to an upright position in which 
 he was fearless, fluent of speech, corruptionless and strong, as some 
 imagine the dead to be, when they dream of leaping forth incorruptible 
 and immortal. No, he had to progress by stages from his proneness in 
 corruption, to a state of confidence and power. In the first stage of the 
 process, a hand touched him. This was the application of power for 
 his resuscitation. Its eff'ect was partial, not complete. It gave him 
 existence ; but it was not vigorous : for it only placed him upon his knees 
 and the palms of his hands ; and in a state of mind apparently expressed 
 by the word quandary. He was awake, but in perplexity, not knowing 
 what move to make ; he was, however, relieved of this, by being invited 
 to " stand upon his feet." Although he was addressed as " a man greatly 
 beloved," he arose from his hands and knees with fear and trembling. 
 " I stood," said he, " trembling." 
 
 Daniel was now in the second stage of the process. Standing upright, 
 he was the subject of anastasis, or " standing up ; " but he was never- 
 theless in trembling and fear ; and still tending earthward and speech- 
 less. But he was bidden not to fear : and was further encouraged by 
 assurances of good, based upon his pre\'iou8 devotion to the Word, and 
 his conduct before God. This judicial conference, though it would 
 
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TESTIMONIES. 
 
 227 
 
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 gladden the heart of Daniel, did uot impart vigour to his conatitution. 
 He was atill earthward and speechlesa ; for after the words of comfori 
 were spoken, ho says, " I set ray face earthward (/wt/tnai artzah) and I 
 was dumb." 
 
 He had now arrived at the lldrd stiKje in which he was to be quickened 
 into courageous ness, tranquillity ami strength ; by which he might " stan<t 
 n his lot at the end of the days ; " and sliine a star of great brilliancy 
 in the constellations of the "New Heavens," in which alone righteous- . 
 iiess shall reign. This quickening is accomplished by " one like the 
 similitude of the sons of men," touching him. In this way he alludes 
 CO Jesus, then unborn, who, in " the time of the dead," shall touch him 
 with Spirit power ; and impart to him the peace, wisdom, and potency 
 of incorruptibility and life. His ability to speak, and so to give account 
 of himself in regard to his existence, had been restored to him in the 
 second stage by the touching of his lips ; but this did not make him 
 '* strong," nor give him "peace." It only enabled him to confess his 
 condition of utter feebleness. It remained, therefore, that there should 
 be a greater irapartation of power, by which his whole man should be 
 strengthened. He was thus touched a second time by the same " ap- 
 pearance of a man ; " not upon the lips, but upon the body. He came 
 again and touched me ; and said, O man, greatly beloved, fear not ; 
 peace be unto thee ; be strong, yea, be strong. And when he had spoken 
 mto me, I was strengthened." 
 
 Such was the preface, dramatically exhibited, of a prophecy revealing 
 hO Daniel the awakening and recompensing of sleepers in the dust in 
 •' the time of the end." It was the last of his visions, and the greatest 
 of them all , because it culminated in " the apocalypse of the sons of 
 the Deity " — (Rom. viii. 19). In the vision John had in Patmos, a like 
 instance occurs in Rev. xi. 1, in which a prophecy ending in resurrec- 
 tion and judgment (verses 18, 19) is prefaced by the dramatic rising of 
 the prophet himself. The things seen by Daniel in his last vision began 
 to transpire " in the first year of Darius the Mede," which was two years 
 before he had the vision j and are strewn along a period reaching " to 
 the time of the end," in which is the resurrection of himself and people. 
 It is an amplification of Avhat he saw in the third year of Belshazzar, 
 when he was also a subject of symbolic resurrection (ch. viii. 18) ; and 
 for the same reason. Prom the tenth chapter to the end of his book, 
 is one continuous record of " that which is noted in the Scripture of 
 truth." 
 
 But in connection with this extraordinary evolution of living beings 
 from apparently nothing but a little incorruptible dust, the question of 
 identifying them as men and women flourishing in society thousands of 
 years before, has wonderfully perplexed the astuteness of the wise and 
 prudent. But the restoration of identity with Deity is neither impos- 
 sible nor difficult. The dead are historical characters, who lived and 
 moved and had being in Deity (Acts xvii. 28). Hence, all their thoughts 
 and actions, constituting their characters, are recorded in Him as in " a 
 book of remembrance." (Mai. iii. 16). Therein is written their history ; 
 
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 228 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 and, with the exception of their incorporeal dust in sheol, their charac- 
 ters inscribed upon the divine page, are the all that remains of them in 
 the universe. This scroll of record is the broad sheet of spirit, styled 
 by philosophers, ether and electricity, which, filling the universe, en- 
 wraps the world. All thoughts and actions are vibrations excited in 
 this spirit of the Creator, by corporeal agents. These subtle vibratory 
 impressions are never obliterated, unless tie wills never to revive them. 
 Many such impressions He has willed to blot out ; as in the case of 
 those who are consigned to " a perpetual sleep ; " and of sins that have 
 been forgiven. But there are impressions, at present latent, that are to 
 to be intensified and made manifest ; and " whatsoever doth make mani- 
 fest is light." (Eph. V. 13). The electrical, and electrically recorded, 
 thoughts and actions to be manifested, are " the hidden things of dark- 
 ness, and the counsels of the hearts " of the just who have accepted, and 
 of the unjust who have rejected or extinguished, the light. These two 
 classes evolved from the dust of sheol, in the first stage of their raising, 
 are " earthward and speechless." They may be said to be like a man 
 newly aroused from deep and heavy sleep, who fails to realize his exact 
 condition ; and is in doubt where, what, and how he is, being in a 
 state not inaptly termed quandary. A recent evolution from the dust, 
 what can he know, or what language can he speak 1 He is like a babe, 
 without speech or knowledge, and, therefore, without identity ; so that 
 with Daniel, when he acquires speech, he can say, " I set my face to- 
 ward the earth and I was dumb." 
 
 What then remains for the establishment in these resurrected men 
 and women of a consciousness of having existed as members of human 
 society three thousand years, more or less before ? All that remains is 
 tliat, like Daniel, their lips be touched with the lightening of divine 
 power — " He touched my lips : then 1 opened my mouth, and spake." 
 This magic and enlightening touch restored to him the consciousness he 
 had lost on falling into the deep sleep, in which all his vigour was turned 
 in him into corruption, and he retained no strength. The electrical 
 vibrations of his former self, by that potent touch upon his lips, were 
 flashed upon his brain ; and he was enabled to give an account of him- 
 self as affected by the vision before he slept. And so with the just and 
 the unjust in general. Their histories will be flashed upon their brains, 
 being transferred thither bj'^ Almighty power from the divine and elec- 
 trical page upon which they are all inscribed. So that truly of the dead 
 it may be said, " they all live to Him — (Luke xx. 38). 
 
 The analogy of nature is often referred to in the Scripture in illus- 
 tration of the deep things of the Spirit. It is reasonable that the one 
 should be laid under contribution in expounding the other ; because the 
 beings to be taught are natural beings ; and the exponent is the Creator 
 of them all. The explanation I have given of the manner in which 
 consciousness of identity is impressed upon newly-created beings, was 
 suggested by the remarkable effect of lightning recently observed upon 
 the bodies of a man and his son, killed by a flash while sheLeilng under 
 a tree. A perfect likeness of the tree was flashed upon them. " What- 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 229 
 
 )n 
 
 ib- 
 
 soever dotli make manifest is the light." The lines and shadows of the 
 tree had been imparted to the subtle fluid, so that when it touched their 
 bodies, it flashed upon them a likeness identical with the original ; and 
 thus the likeness was transferred from the lightning to the bodies. All 
 that is required in resurrection is, identity of form or image, and iden- 
 tity of likeness : so that the intellectual and moral likeness of a pre- 
 resurrectional man, be not flashed upon the post-resurrectional image of 
 a woman. This would be confusion. 
 
 From this view of the development of identity, it will be seen how 
 futile are all human efforts to circumvent resurrection. The enemies of 
 the saints in various ages' have thought to prevent their resurrection 
 by burning their bodies, and scattering their dust to the winds ! But, 
 the Lord in heaven holds all such enterprizes in derision. Any other 
 dust may do as well ; the power of identity not residing there ; but in 
 the character already formed being flashed by the Spirit upon the new 
 creature. 
 
 In the days of Paul, the Old Man or some of his adherents, had succeed- 
 ed in creeping in among the saints at Corinth unawares. They seem to 
 have been very forward in talking about things they did not understand. 
 They ran wild in speculation, until they came to deny that there is any 
 anastasis, or standing up, of dead ones at all. Paul began with them at 
 tins point, and completely demolished their tradition. He declared 
 that, if there were no future resurrection of the saints, there had been 
 no past resurrection of the Christ ; and that, if He were still among the 
 dead, the doctrine he (Paul) preached was false ; and there was eternal 
 life for none. But in opposition to the traditions of these disciples of 
 the Old Man (whom he charged with being destitute of the knowledge 
 of the Deity, to their shame), he testified that the Christ had been 
 raised ; and that His resurrection was the earnest of the resurrection of 
 of those He left sleeping ; and of those who shall be His at His coming. 
 Thus Paul taught. Nevertheless, they were incredulous ; for they could 
 iiot perceive how Qne who had been nonexistent for ages, could be 
 built up and made immortal. They said, " How are the dead ones 
 rebuilded] And^w- tvhat body (ttowo o-a)/u,aTi) do they come forth 1 Paul 
 put their difficulty into this form of words. He did not say, as in the 
 English version, " mth what body dh they come forth ? " There is 
 no word for " with " in the original. The words are in the dative case, 
 the sign of which is to or for. They are to come forth from their graves 
 for something. Are they to retain the body emergent from the ground ; 
 or, is this to be changed into some other kind of body 1 Is this other 
 kind of body that for which they come forth 1 As Paul put the in- 
 quiry, it was not to know " with what body " they come forth ; but "for 
 what body," when the building shall be completed. 
 
 In considering Paul's treatment of these questions, it should be re- 
 membered that he is speaking of resurrection, or anastasis; and not 
 analusis, or dissolution. His point of departure in his argument, is not 
 burial; it is not the putting a body into the ground ; but the bringing of 
 an entirely new body out of it. His discourse in illustration of the 
 
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230 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
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 questions proposed has to do with this new body, and with that which 
 is to succeed it. The old body buried is done with. It has ans- 
 wered its purpose as a medium through which a character might 
 be developed. It dies, is buried, and dissolves, leaving only a residuum 
 of dust. It is no more a body ; so that whatever comes forth must 
 be a new creation, after the similitude of the first Adam in his 
 original formation. 
 
 Paul's proposition in relation to resurrection, is, that there is a " psy- 
 chical body like the first Adam's ; and a pneumatical body, like the 
 last Adam's. The former he styles i/a>x>7 ^wo-a, a living breathing frame, 
 and earthy, or xoikck, of the dust : the latter Wcu/ia ^ovoiow, or quicken- 
 ing spirit ; and e^oupovwu out of or from heaven. In the wisdom of Deity, 
 no body coming out of the dust can be anything but earthy ; and, therefore, 
 neither incorruptible nor immortal. Incorruptiblity and life, which is the 
 incorruption of spirit, must come down out of heaven ; so that a body 
 issuing from the dust, when invested with this incorruption, is reck- 
 oned as a body from heaven, or heavenly — " a house from heaven." 
 
 Now the thing to be accomplished in resurrection is the development 
 of a spirit-body, with the consciousness that the character flashed upon 
 the new earthy body was evolved through an old earthy body in a pre- 
 vious state. In this wonderful development, the new resurrection- 
 earthy body takes the place of the old body dissolved in the grave ; 
 so that, as far as body is concerned in the matter, the one character on 
 record in the Lamb's book of life, when glorified, will have been re- 
 lated to three bodies, more or less intimately connected — the first, the 
 body of sin ; the second, a body like Adam's before he sinned ; and the 
 third, this second new body changed, or transformed, by quickening, 
 into a glorious, powerful and spiritual body. When this is manifested, 
 the process is complete ; and the spiritually embodied character, named 
 Abiiiham, for example, is " clothed upon with his house which is from 
 heaven." He is then " raised incorruptible." 
 
 Now this remarkable process, Paul illustrates by the raising of wheat 
 or of other grain. He was a more intelligent botanist than most of his 
 readers. In raising of wheat, he did not make the sprouting and ripen- 
 ing one and the same phenomenon, as they do. He did not first put 
 his seed into the earth, and as soon as it showed itself above ground run, 
 with iiis sickle to reap it ! The raising of grain is a process which takes 
 months to perfect ; and it is not said to be " raised " until it is ripe in 
 the ear. When the naked seed is put into the ground, that particular 
 seed never reappears. It dies and loses its form ; it is no longer a seed- 
 body ; but is succeeded by a new body, which appears above the ground. 
 This is the sprout-body from that sown, and therefore is said to have 
 been sown. But as Paul says, "it is not that body that shall be." It 
 has to tarry for months until it shall have received a body according to 
 the pleasure of the Creator. Here then are three bodies in grain-raising, 
 more or less nearly related — the seed- body ; the aprout-hody ; and the 
 raised-hody, divinely given. This third, or raised body, was not sown ; 
 the sprout-body was the body sown, because it sprouted or sprung forth 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 231 
 
 from the naked grain cast into the ground. The springing forth is the 
 the third stage of the sowing process. It is first begotten in the earth ; 
 it is then quickened, or made alive ; and, thirdly, it springs forth, or is 
 horn. All this is of the earth, earthy ; and, without the further spiritual 
 influences of heaven, such as air, rain, and sunshine, this terrestrial and 
 in glorious body would never become a raised body bearing fruit. It 
 would fade, shrivel up and die. 
 
 And "so also," says Paul, "is the amw^asis, or standing up of the 
 dead ones " (1 Cor. xv. 42) ; and, speaking of the sprout-body (for there 
 is no other body in the premisses), he adds o-Trfiperai f.v (f>dopa, eycipcrcu 
 (V a<f)6ap(Tui.. This word speiretai, he associates with corruption, dis- 
 lionour, weakness and naturality ; while egheiretai, is connected with 
 incorruption, glory, power, and spirituality. In the active voice, (nr«p<D 
 signifies to scatter, as when seed is cast upon the earth ; but in the 
 passive voice, it signifies " to spring or be born." In 1 Cor. xv. 42, 43, 
 speiretai is passive, and is used in this sense. The antithetic word 
 egheiretai is also passive, and relates to the same body as speiretai ; for 
 it is the sprout- body that is transformed ; there being no other body in 
 the grave, nor out of it, for transformation. When therefore, it can be 
 affirmed that the sprout-body has become incorruptible, glorious, power- 
 ful, and spiritual, the word egheiretai will be applicable. It can then be 
 said to have been raised, or built, incorruptible. " Destroy this temple," 
 said the Spirit, " and in three days / will raise it up (eytpw aurov)." 
 The Jews retorted, " forty and six years was this temple in building, 
 and in three days wilt thou rear it up (cycpeis avrov)1" But thii spake 
 He of the. temple of His body" — (Jno. ii. 19-21). In this text, the same 
 verb is used as in 1 Cor. xv. 42, and in relation to resurrection. To 
 raise, rear up, or build, is the correct idea ; and every one ought to 
 know that such an operation is progressive, not instantaneous. 
 
 This passage, then, in 1 Cor. xv, so little understood by them who 
 quote it most, should be read, " the resurrection-body, speiretai, springs, 
 is sprouted or born, in corruption : egheiretai, it is built, reared up, or 
 raised, in incorruption : it is sprouted in dishonour ; it is reared up in 
 glory : it is sprouted in weakness ; it is built up in power : it is born 
 (of the earth) a natural body ; it is reared up (or transformed by Spirit 
 into) a spiritual body." This is the sense of the passage, and in strict 
 harmony with " the form of sound words " used by the apostle. 
 
 But the analogy of nature in resurrection is not confined to the 
 .sprouting or germinating, and the ripening into " the fruit of righteous- 
 ness," which is incorruptibility and life — (Rom. viii. 10). It is seen in 
 a field of newly-sown grain. When the seed scattered therein has lain 
 certain days in the earth, if germinable, it sprouts, or springs, into view, 
 and the whole field looks fresh and green. But what observer, from 
 mere appearance of the field of vision, can tell whether the green herb 
 be grass, wheat, rye, or cheat t If he desired a pure fieid of wheat, and 
 he were to undertake to separate the wheat from the cheat and rye, 
 he would be ae likely to root up the wheat as the others, being so much 
 alike before they have received the bodies the Deity has been pleased to 
 
232 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 give them. So, also, in the resurrection fields of bodies sprouted, ger- 
 minated, or generated, from the dust. Viewed by a spectator unac- 
 quainted with their antecedents, all who have come forth, both just and 
 unjust, appear alike to him. He could not, from mere appearance, 
 separate the one class from the other. The crowd before Him in this 
 stage of resurrection, which is simply anastads, or standing up, are in 
 corruption, dishonour, weakness, and naturality ; for those ph)'sical quali- 
 ties are constituents of all bodies begotten or conceived in dust — " dust 
 of the earth, earthy ;" yet " very good " bodies, in the sense that the 
 first Adam's was "very good " before he sinned — (Gen. i. 31 ; ii. 7). 
 
 But, to return to the similitude of the fields fresh and green. On the 
 supposition that the seed sown were all wheat, and that it had all 
 sprung forth, and made a very fair show to the eye ; nevertheless, agri- 
 culturists know well that much of what has sprung forth will, from 
 various causes, perish ; to use the phraseology of Paul, that, to very 
 many of the plants, the Deity will not give bodies bearing seed. So 
 also will it be in the resurrection of the saints. Many sinners become 
 saints by " the obedience of faith," and run well for a time. The 
 obedience of faith constitutes them "wheat." After a time, however, 
 they are often bewitched, and tire of obeying the truth — (Gal. iii. 1). 
 Hence, their vitality or vigour is impaired, and they become wheat of a 
 shrivelled and feeble constitution. Their characters become sicklied 
 over with the pale cast of scepticism, indifference, apathy, and con- 
 formity to the world and its practices. Thus " they walk after the 
 flesh," and are "in the flesh," which is regarded by the Deity as 
 " sowing to the flesh," the penalty of which is death. 
 
 Now, according to the constitution of the wheat sown, is its ability, 
 when sprouted, to resist the influences which cause to perish. So with 
 the saints of the Sardian type, who have a name that they live, but are 
 dead. The pallor of death is upon their characters ; so that when bodies 
 come forth from slieol, those of them vipon which are enstamped, or 
 flashed, these sickly, death-stricken characters, are conscious of being- 
 identical with the "bewitched" of a former state. "Boldness in the 
 day of judgment " does not pertain to such. The influences which 
 cause to perish will be too strong for them ; for the account they will 
 give of themselves will be truthful then, if they eschewed the truth be- 
 fore ; and this will overwhelm them in shame and condemnation. They 
 will be " wheat turned to cheat," to which is never given the wheat- 
 body bearing seed. The divine sentence will be against them ; so that 
 an incorruptible and living house from heaven will be withheld ; and 
 they will perish in the corruption of the sprout-body in returning to 
 the dust from whence it came. 
 
 Tertullian, who became a Christian about eighty-five years after the 
 reception of the Apocalypse by the Apostle John, that is, about A.D. 
 185, in writing upon the resurrection, says: " He who raises the dead 
 to life will raise the body in its perfect integrity. This is part of the 
 change which the body will undergo at the resurrection ; for though the 
 dead will he raised in the flesh, yet they who attain to the resurrectiim 
 
g»HffWHI 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 233 
 
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 of happiness will pass into the angelic state and put on the vesture oj immw- 
 tatity, according to the declaration of the Apostle Paul, that ' this cor- 
 ruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immor- 
 tality ;' and again, that ' our vile bodies will be changed that they 
 may be fashioned like unto the glorious body of Christ.' " 
 
 In this testimony, Tertullian teaches, first, the resurrection of the 
 same kind of flesh as that deposited in the grave ; and, second, that 
 those of them thus restored to life, who may be appointed to happiness 
 do not remain in the same state, and of the same nature ; but pass out 
 of it in passing into the angelic state, and so putting on the vesture of 
 immortality ; in which, as Jesus expresses it, " they can die no more ; 
 for they are equal unto the angels ; and are the children of the Deity, 
 being the children of the resurrection" — (Luke xx. 36). 
 
 But some will say : Are all that ever breathed the breath of life to stand 
 up in resurrection ? Unquestionably not. I have already shown from 
 •Scripture that " multitudes sleep a perpetual sleep," but not all. What, 
 then, it may be said, is the ground of difference ? Why should some 
 rise and others not ? In the first place there is no necessity for resurrec- 
 tion where hope is excluded and condemnation is final. " All the M-^orld 
 is guilty before the Deity, who has concluded all under sin " — (Rom. iii. 
 9, 19 ; Gal. iii. 22). Now, respecting this guilty world, " walking in 
 the vanity of its mind, having its understanding darkened, being alien- 
 ated from the life of the Deity through its ignorance and blindness of 
 heart" (Eph. iv. 17. 18), respecting this, Jesus says, "it is condemned 
 already " it is condemned to " sleep a perpetual sleep." 
 
 But some will say, " Has the Deity then made all men in vain ? " Nay, 
 verily. His purpose is to evolve a righteous and immortal 
 WORLD OUT OF THE WORLD OF MORTAL SINNERS, and to lay the foun- 
 dation of this great V!ork in their scriptural intelligence and the obedience of 
 faith. This being His purpose, knowledge, belief, and obedience are 
 made the basis of accountability and res2wnsibility. By the former is 
 meant liability to give an account, and to receive reward or punishment 
 for the same ; and, by the latter, the state of being answerable for some- 
 thing entrusted to one's care. Now, Christ Jesus says in John iii. 19, 
 'this is the )(pun% or ground of judgment, that the light has come into 
 the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light, because 
 their deeds were evil." The light shining into the darkness and divinely 
 attested, makes sinners accountable and SAINTS responsible ; but into that 
 region of the shadow of death where the light has not shone with divine 
 attestation, the inhabitants of that region, who do not attain to the com- 
 prehension of the light, are not accountable to the resurrection and 
 judgment it reveals. " The whole world lieth in the wicked one " — «v 
 Ttt) irovr/po) — in sin ; and, therefore, in the shadow of death ; for the 
 wages of sin is death. When Paul appeared in Athens upon Mars' 
 Hill, he shone as a bright light into the darkness of death's shadow. 
 The polished and learned Athenians he addressed, were the sons of a 
 superstition inherited from a remote ancestry. They had been made 
 subject to it by circumstances they could not control, or, as Paul ex- 
 
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 234 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 presses it, " made subject to vanity not willingly." Of the God of 
 Israel manifested in flesh, His purposes, promises, and commands, they 
 knew no more than their ancestors knew for ages ; and had not Paul, or 
 someone else divinely commissioned, visited them, they would never 
 have discovered the truth concerning these things. " Who by searching 
 <3an find out the Deity 1 " No one ; yet He " was found of them who 
 sought Him not ; " for to a nation not called by His uaine He said, by 
 Paul, " Behold me, behold me ! " 
 
 Thus they were under ^^ times oj ignorance^' when Paul appeared in 
 their midst. They were not liable to be called upon to give an account 
 for not doing what they were helplessly ignorant of. " In times past, 
 the Deity had suflFered all nations to walk in their own ways " — (Acts 
 xiv. 16). This was winking at times of ignorance. Their own ways 
 were the ways of death, in which they were hopeless and atheistic — 
 (Eph. ii. 12). To them there were neither rewards nor punishments be- 
 yond the grave. By their wisdom, on which they boasted, they knew 
 not God. " Professing to be wise, they became fools," and, being left to 
 themselves as devoid of understanding, they died and perished like the 
 beasts— (Ps. xlix. 12, 20). 
 
 Such is the fate of all who die without an understanding of the truth 
 revealed for the faith of their generation. Re that understands the 
 truth, hut declines the obedience it commands, will be held accountable for 
 its rejection ; for " he that believeth not shall be condemned " " in a day 
 of judgment," " when the Deity shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus 
 Christ, according to the gospel Paul preached" — (Rom. ii. 16; Mark 
 xvi. 16). 
 
 But, sinners understanding and believing the truth, and rendering 
 the obedience it commands, in that enlightened and faithful obedience, 
 become saints. As such, they have received the truth as a sacred deposit, 
 for the use or abuse of which they are held responsible in the great day 
 of account — (Jude 6). Saints, who use the truth aright, styled by 
 James "doers of the Word, and not hearers only," are the "just" or 
 " righteous ;" but saints who abuse it, being hearers only of the Word 
 and not doers, lovers of the world and the things that are in it, striving 
 at once to serve God and Mammon, are the " ungodly " and the " un- 
 just," who, like Esau, sell their birth- right for a morsel of the world's 
 meat ; to whom, iu the judgment, will be found no place for repentance, 
 sought ever so carefully with tears — (Heb. xii. 16, 17). 
 
 These three classes are indicated by Peter in the words, " if the right- 
 ecus scarcely be saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?" 
 (1 Epist. iv. 18): the enlightened sinner, who rejects the truth ; the un- 
 godly, who disgraces it ; and the righteous, who do it. Add to these a 
 fourth class, constituted of unenlightened sinners, among whom, and 
 into whom, the light has not shined and cannot shine, from whatever 
 cause, and the whole race of Adam is marshalled, or arranged in due or 
 scriptural order before the mind. 
 
 Having adduced such a mass of evidence, irrefutable in the clear light 
 and correct understanding of the Law and the Testimony, in relation to 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 235 
 
 ■V 
 
 m- 
 
 le a 
 
 Ind 
 
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 or 
 
 rht 
 
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 the all-important subjects kerein treated of, suflicient, it is hoped, to 
 convince the general reader, or at least, to enlist his earnest attention, 
 and ensure his diligent and faithful investigation of the doctrines in 
 question, it may not be amiss, but on the contrary, most meet and pro- 
 fitable, to quote for the further consideration of the reader, a few more 
 extracts bearing upon collateral matters, such as the hopelessness of the 
 present condition of the world, the future destiny of our race, the media- 
 torial position of Israel among the nations, together with a considera- 
 tion of that most momentous of all questions, namely, " What must we 
 do to be saved 1 " although much in reference to several of these topics 
 has already been laid before the reader in previous pages. 
 
 The matter thus submitted will illustrate, in a very prominent man- 
 ner, the wonderful adaptation of agencies and instrumentalities at the 
 disposal of Deit}' to the circumstances of man, and the great 
 end and consummation of His glorious purpose in reference to this earth 
 and race. 
 
 An English writer in the " Herald of the Kingdom and Age to 
 come," for 1854, represents in strong language the imperfections and de- 
 tects in the present order of things, and the necessity existing for the 
 reign of Christ, and the inauguration of a righteous government in 
 the earth. Mr. Roberts, of Birmingham, in his " Twelve Lectures," 
 follows in the same strain, in language which some may consider severe, 
 but evidently not more severe than the state of things in Europe at 
 least, would seem to warrant. 
 
 A principal feature of the mission of Christ in its benign phase, at 
 His second advent is the relief of the oppressed, the poor, and the 
 needy, which is to be effectually accomplished by breaking in pieces the 
 oppressor. " He (Messiah) shall judge (or rule) thy people with right- 
 eousness, and thy poor with judgment. He shall judge the poor of the 
 people, He shall save the children of the needy, and shall break in 
 pieces the oppressor. He shall deliver the needy when he crieth ; the 
 poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the poor and 
 needy, and shall save the souls of the needy." — (C.) 
 
 The Bishop of London on the state of London Religious Society. 
 
 The reader will please remember that England claims to be the centre 
 of religious enlightenment ; and London claims to be the centre of Eng- 
 lish enlightenment — (C). 
 
 " Rev. Dr. Jackson, the Episcopal Bishop of London, England, sum- 
 moned the clergy of his diocese to St. Paul's Cathedral the other day 
 (1872), and there administered them a scolding, the report of wliich 
 fills four columns of the papers. Dr. Jackson has been bishop of London 
 for four years, but he has never before got his clergy together for any 
 purpose. He told them he had the largest diocese in the world ; and he 
 jidded in effect that it was the worst in the world. Everything, he said, 
 had gone wrong, and was growing worse. Both Church and State were 
 in deadly peril. The parochial system was broken up ; the working 
 
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 .-.'■■ft 
 
 \i:"' 
 
 \ 
 
 236 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 classes would not come to church ; Episcopal authority was held in con- 
 tempt ; all idea of moral obligation had been lost ; the great gulph 
 between classes was widening until disruption appeared imminent ; the 
 rich were careless of the poor, and the poor were learning to hate the 
 rich ; and even the sisterhoods of the church were composed of women 
 who are more inflamed with the vanity of wearing a particular dress, 
 than any love for the work." — From an English paper. 
 
 "OF THE NECESSITY OF THE REIGN OF CHRIST." 
 
 " This is a question of the highest importance, and of rapidly increas- 
 ing interest. It is worthy of the deepest consideration. The common idea 
 of the world goes no further than the vague conception of a kingdom 
 established in the heavens ever since the creation. The kingdom of the 
 Father-Creator is the only kingdom which the world will recognize. 
 The religious world, as it is called, will venture a step further, and admit 
 a kind of spiritual kingdom established in the hearts of true believers. 
 A strange kingdom indeed ! A kingdom, in which, at present, gndless 
 disunion prevails ; a kingdom scattered liere and there amidst the multi- 
 tude of unbelievers, and which never more than a fifth established in the 
 hearts of those who call themselves ' the people of God.' Yet both the 
 worldly and religious are satisfied with these empty shadows, and quite 
 pleased to think that the earth is left to them to govern and improve ; 
 and that no interruption is to be feared from the personal presence of the 
 Lord. They cannot bear to think that after all their projects of improve- 
 ment, their boasting of imaginary success, their vast collections of gold 
 and silver, their fluent speeches — the world is still going onward to des- 
 truction, and can never be regenerated but by the presence of the Lord. 
 And yet this is not only a Scriptural truth, but it has become fearfully 
 self-evident. The necessity of a new government has become visible over 
 all the earth. The impossibility of human government is forcing itself 
 upon the minds of all. Europe is divided between the two great 
 powers of absolutism and revolution. Each watches the other with 
 glaring eyes ; suspicion, perfidy and hatred, fill the breasts of all, and 
 nothing but opportunity is wanting for the dread conflict to begin. 
 
 The true description of the European States is that of absolutism kept 
 in check by anarchy, and anarchy held down by absolutism. The two 
 rival powers, locked in each others arms, roll and struggle on the 
 ground in a conflict of life and death, and effectually obstruct every 
 hope of progress. This unnatural state is unendurable, and must end 
 either in the triumph of one of these odious antagonists, or in the com- 
 plete subversion of moral principles through the increasing violence of 
 every hateful passion. Society cannot exist amid a perpetual action 
 and reaction which tears its fibres into pieces and rends asunder all its 
 ties. England, with its boasted advancement, is dying, like America, 
 of excess of liberty, like a wild horse running himself to death, and yet 
 it is not liberty after all, but tyranny in disguise— </t<3 tyranny of the 
 lowest minds. The balance of our constitution is destroyed. Men of the 
 
£^mi 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 237 
 
 most selfish hearts and the meanest minds attain to power and the 
 direction of public affairs ; they labour for the advancement of their own 
 class, completely indifferent to the destruction of all others. The rural 
 population, reduced to the utmost distress, arising in great measure 
 from circumstances beyond their control, with class legislation, crowd 
 into the great cities, contending with each other for the bare means of 
 existence, and are exposed to the demoralising influences and squalid 
 misery of our over-peopled towns. Slowly and unperceived, the false 
 measures of government are undermining the prosperity of the nation, 
 and bringing on a state of pauperism or anarchy ; yet no man suspects 
 the approaching crisis, or is honest enough to acknowledge its approach." 
 
 " But there is one circumstance of the present day which alone is suf- 
 ficient to paralyze the wisest government, and to reduce human sagacity 
 to despair — and that is the increase of population. The limits of the old 
 world have long been fixed by the laws of policy and nations. One 
 country when over-peopled cannot intrude upon the fortunes of another 
 in order to extend its territory. There are no Western Woods like 
 those of the New World, to receive for ages the overflowing multitudes. 
 The people, shut up within the landmarks of their ancestors, strive in 
 vain, to expand, and ask for room to live. They crowd into the great 
 cities for bread, and they find hardly room to die. The very grave-yards 
 are over-filled. Life swarms above the soil, and death below ; and the 
 two worlds of the living and the dead are brought into hideous com- 
 petition ! The tortured government heaps up its statistics, its reports, 
 its waste paper enactments, to form an embankment under the power of 
 men who have proved themselves hitherto incapable of one elevated 
 thought. Nothing but national misery, where the interests of the many 
 are sacrificed to the aggrandizement of the few." 
 
 " Men of science have been tried and found equally wanting. At the 
 commencement of the Revolution of 1848, the most eminent men of 
 science were placed at the head of the French Government. Wonders 
 were expected from their concentrated talents, and a millennium of phi- 
 losophy was thought to be at hand. But the failure of the French phi- 
 losophers was the most pitiable spectacle of that year of follies. Nothing 
 was effected, either civil or military. France was compelled, for her 
 own existence, to place herself first under the government of a soldier, 
 and then under that of an adventurer ; and both the soKlier and the 
 adventurer have shown more political wisdom than all the men n{ 
 science united. Philosophy can never raise her head again, nor will she 
 ever again be entrusted with the cabinets of empires. And it has been 
 found in all ages, that men of science are, of all men, the most unfitted 
 for the conduct of public affairs. In Germany, the men of learning and 
 science have also made a trial of their skill in the Frankfort Parliament, 
 and the result was only not moie pitiable than in the case of the F.ench 
 philosophers, because nothing more pitiable could exist. Childish weak- 
 ness was the characteristic of both, without the redeeming quality of 
 childish innocence. They were all as wise as doves, and harmless as 
 serpents. And thus terminated for ever the Millennium of Philosophy, 
 and the empire of the sword has been revived." 
 
238 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOQY. 
 
 
 r7 
 
 ='i J 
 
 1 
 
 "One great and momentous truth has now 
 minds of all thinking men, and of all who can 
 
 been forced upon the 
 think like men. The 
 world is advancing to some unknown point. Some great collision is at 
 hand, or some complete and final revolution. The highest point of civili- 
 zation, is the lowest point of Godliness. And having reached the highest 
 point of civilization, the world is found in a dreadful state. It can go no 
 further in civilization without being overwhelmed by its own multitudes 
 against the tide. The dread waters roar and swell, and overtop the bar- 
 riers. Science and agriculture exhaust their skill to palliate the suffer- 
 ing. The disease becomes fiercer every day, and threatens to destroy 
 the physician and the patient. Amidst these scenes of perplexity and 
 despair — this grim battle of Life and Death — there is but one triumphant 
 class, and that the most, most sordid of all — the manufacturing interest. 
 This class rejoices in the ruin it has made. It sweeps together from the 
 corners of the land, all the fragments of the broken population ; collects 
 them in the great towns like a drove of bewildered oxen, and compels 
 them to work like beasts of burden from n orning to night for the bare 
 necessaries of existence. It reduces men below the brutes, crowded to- 
 gether in poisonous alleys, without the light or air of heaven — without 
 leisure to look into themselves, without a hope or even a fear, for eter- 
 nity. Far away from the fresh face of nature and the fields, more bru- 
 talized and wretched than the savage, who can look at least on the pure 
 sky, and stray along the banks of some wild, sequestered stream. The 
 savage himself lives on nothing worse than human flesh ; but the mas- 
 ter manufacturer, lives upon the very souls of men ! Earth to him is 
 but a grinning workshop, and heaven and hell are a laughable impos- 
 ture. He grinds the souls and bodies of thousands, that he himself may 
 revel in luxury and ease, and (shame to his hypocrisy) that he may be 
 admitted to a haughty bow from the aristocracy, which he pretends to 
 despise. The race of the Percys and Plantagenets, if careless of the 
 blood of others, were equally careless of their own. They were the first 
 to enter the field of danger, and the last to leave it. But the chivalry of 
 the cotton mill is of a different order. Men who have never exposed a fin- 
 ger to a scratch, who surround themselves with all the ease and luxury 
 of wealth, and then wear out the souls and bodies of their slaves in order 
 to aggrandize themselves, while they slander our troops, whose blood has 
 been shed in the protection of our commercial empire. Such is the chi- 
 valry, the aristocracy which now holds the government of England. 
 What result may we expect from so ignoble a supremacy % Nothing but 
 national degradation, and it can go no further in ungodliness without 
 casting off all connection with God. It is, therefore, manifestly ap- 
 proaching some unknown point — some fearful crisis. This truth is per- 
 ceived by many, but it is felt by all ; and men look in each other's eyes 
 with the expression of a ship's crew (Jriven before the wind on some 
 iron-bound coast. The Future — the future is the paramount subject of 
 every mind. Kings, statesmen, philosophers, and revolutionists, are all 
 occupied with the Future ; and all are equally perplexed. Seers, stars, 
 and comets have been depended on in vain. Monarchs, statesmen and 
 
fciK»liMFIIlfa!lWl|l»r:-J.?i' 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 239 
 
 ap- 
 
 per- 
 
 leyes 
 
 lome 
 
 It of 
 
 all 
 
 |tars, 
 
 and 
 
 conquerors have each been tried ; each have succeeded for a day and pr<miised 
 for a century ; but the efforts of all have been defeated. ' Cursed is the 
 man that putteth his trust in man.' So says the Scripture, and that 
 curse is indefeasible ! 
 
 " Oh ! earth, oarth ! When wilt thou learn in the history of the 
 Past the desperation of the Futuri', and welcome the kingdom of the 
 Messiah as thy last, and appointed refuge 1 Saying, ' Wo give Thee 
 thanks, Lord God Almighty, who art, and wast, and art to come ; 
 because thou hast taken unto Thee Thy great power, and hast reigned.' 
 Meanwhile, in spite of the rage, and enmity, and impostures of the world, 
 the prophetic sentence, already partially fulfilled, shall be fully exe- 
 cuted. ' I will overturn, overturn, overturn (David's throne and nation), 
 until He shall come whose right it is ; and I will give it Him.' " — 
 " Herald of the KingdoiV and Age to Come," lS55,pp. 210-211. 
 
 Torquay, England, Sept., 1861. 
 
 If the foregoing held true in 1851, how much more so in 1874? 
 Twenty-three years have only intensified the state of things represented 
 by this writer, and led thinking men who take note of the times to sigh 
 for the advent of Him who shall be the " Desire of all nations."(C.) 
 
 HOPELESSNESS OF THE PRESENT STATE OF THINGS. 
 
 " It will be the peculiar honour of Jesus to bring all nations to worship 
 before God ; and this he will do in virtue of the covenant with David. — 
 2 Sam. vii. 12, &c. That God will establish the throne of David's 
 Kingdom for ever in the hands of Jesus ; and under Him give to Israel 
 the sure dwelling place from which they shall never be removed, is 
 evident from the Scriptures. These two conclusions are amongst the 
 most copiously attested doctrines of the Word of God. In the light of 
 them all prophecy is intelligible ; without them, the Old Testament is 
 what orthodox people practically find it to be — a dark vision and a dead 
 letter. For this the apostacy is responsible. By inteiinixing Pagan dog- 
 mas with the doctrine of Revelation it has succeeded in mystifying the 
 oracles of God to an extent which is hopeless as regards the majority of 
 people. It has drawn a thick veil over their faces ; it has made the 
 Bible unintelligible, and brought it into ridicule and contempt with 
 many who, with a better understanding, would bow before the sublimity ■^ 
 and splendour of the scheme it unfolds for the redemption of this fair 
 planet from the evil "that now reigns. This lamentable result cannot be 
 remedied to any material extent, at present. A few here and there will 
 surrender to the power of judgment and testimony ; but the great 
 majority will continue in bondage to the power of error numerically 
 elaborated. Seduced by the deception practiced upon their senses by 
 the circumstances existing in society, they are deaf to the voice of rea- 
 son ; they look around them, and behold a crowd walking in the 
 ' stereotyped ways of popular religion ; and though taken man by man, 
 they could estimate their opinions at their proper value — which, in the 
 majority of cases, from the ignorance that prevails, is no value at all — 
 
240 THK BIULE VINDICATED AGAINST MODKHN THKOLOOY. 
 
 •M ( 
 
 
 '. ,^r- 
 
 yet the mere dead weight of numbers gives the collective sentiment a 
 
 f>ower which tiiey cannot resist, and they allow themselves to be dragged 
 ike manacled slaves, at the chariot wheels of a system of faith which 
 will not stand for a moment, when tried on its own merits. Every one 
 man in the crowd sees the rest a« a crowd, and overpowered by the 
 sight of the crowd, he bows to the collective opinion, though it be but 
 a mere traditional bias, and not a conviction on evidence. In this way, 
 each man in the great religious communities is held bound by all the 
 rest, and the bond is rivotted hard and fast by all the influence and 
 machinery of the systems. Nothing will break into this intellectOal 
 slavery, but the iron rod of the Son of Duyid. When He comes to 
 vest, in His single person, the authority now exercised by all the kings 
 and parliaments of the world ; when lie lays hold with unsparing hand, 
 upon the vested interests that obstruct the path of general progress, and 
 shivers to atoms the rotten fabrics of respectable superstition, when He 
 overthrows the institutions which foolish crowds fall down and worship, 
 through the mere power of antiquity ; when He sends forth to all the 
 world the decrees of a divine and onmipotent absolutism ; when He- 
 sets up a system of worship to which He will command conformity on 
 pain of death ; and demands the allegiance of every soul to be personally 
 tendered at Jerusalem the city of the Great King ; when He comes to 
 sweep from the face of the earth, the tangled cobweb of existing institu- 
 tions which shelters ignorance, vice, and misery, while professedly based 
 on right, religion and morality ; and to deal, with unerring hand, the 
 swift and powerful awards of unerring justice ; when He in fact, breaks 
 in pieces the \, hole constitution of human society, as now put together, 
 and substitutes for it a new order of things, having the revived Kingdom 
 of David, in the land of Palestine, as its centre and basis of operations 
 — then, and not till then, will mankind see their folly, and come from 
 the ends of the earth and say : ' Surely our fathers have inherited 
 vanity and lies, and things wherein there is no profit.' — Jer. xvi. 19." 
 " There is no hope till then. Men may preach, and write, and spend 
 money ; print Bibles ; support teachers ; send missionaries to the 
 heathen ; get up associations for putting down the various evils that 
 afflict society ; such efforts will effect a modicum of good in the channels 
 of activity ; but so far as bringing mankind into harmony with divine 
 "wisdom is concerned, they might as well attempt to construct a ladder 
 to the moon." 
 
 " Error will predominate ; sefishness will prevail ;" monopoly will lift 
 its ugly head to heaven ; poverty will degrade the millions ; war devour 
 its prey, and impose its burdens on the living ; in a word Sin will 
 Reign till the Lion of the Tribe of Judah comes upon the scene in 
 righteous indignation, and scatters the proud in the imagination of their 
 hearts, taking upon Himself the mighty task, which long and dismal 
 centuries have proved man's utter incapacity for, ' for He will judge (or 
 rule) the people righteously, and govern the nations upon earth." — Ps. 
 Ixvii. * In that day there shall be one Lord, and His name One.' — Zech. 
 xiv. 9. — Twelve Lectures, pp. 262, 264. 
 
TESTFMONIES. 
 
 241 
 
 lift 
 
 fonr 
 
 riLL 
 
 in 
 
 A pamphlet, published some years ago, on the " Destiny of the Brit- 
 isli Empire," composed from the writings of Dr. Thomas, contains ihv 
 following : — 
 
 " It must be admitted, that undur the present state of things, there is 
 freqently a misuirriage, and often a total failure of justice, in our legal 
 and criminal jurisprudence, and this not always from a want of rectitude 
 on the part of the administrators of thelaw. Tlie> commonly decide accord- 
 ing to the evidence adduced, and this is frequently such tta to mislead, 
 and to frustrate the ends of justice. Too frecjuently from this cause have 
 tlie guilty escaped, and the innocent been made to suffer punishment. 
 In the coming age, however, judges will be appointed who will notarbi 
 trate after ' the seeing of the eye and the hearing of the ear, but who will 
 judge righteous judgment,' and administer justice with equity. The 
 maintenance of standing armies, and powerful navies, rendered necessary 
 by the present state of things, together with the extravagant expendi- 
 ture incurred in the maintenance of the costly and complicated ma- 
 cliinery of Church and State, bear heavily upon the sons of toil in this 
 age. Under the divine system of rule and legislation that will be intro- 
 duced in theage to come, the world will be wisely, justly, economically and 
 strongly governed. Standing armies will be disbanded ; military navies 
 will bedismantled and converted into the commercial marineof the nations ; 
 soldiers and sailors, at present trained to the art of war, will turn to the 
 peaceful avocations of life ; peace that cannot bo disturbed by war's alarms 
 will be established, good shall obtain among all classes of society ; the poor 
 and needy will be cared for ; the circumstances of the world will conduce 
 to a moreequal distribution of wealth, and the necessaries of life ; ignorance 
 and superstition will be exterminated ; the fertility of the soil will be 
 mcreased ; and in all probability a more equable temperature, dividing 
 the present extremes of heat and cold will be established, relieving man 
 to a very great extent of the incessant anxious consuming toil to which 
 he is now subject, eating his bread in the sweat of his face ; the duration 
 of human life will be extended ; trade arid commerce regulated upon just 
 and liberal principles ; vice suppressed ; evil restrained ; good triumphant, 
 the whole population of the earth of one enlightened faith, serving God 
 with one consent ; and the will of God performed throughout the earth 
 as it is in heaven." — " Destiny of the British Empire " pp. 35, 36. 
 
 Again the same writer (page 4), says : — 
 
 ■ It is an undoubted fact, which must be fully apparent to the enlight 
 ent'd student of the prophetic word, that Jehovah takes cognizance of 
 mundane affairs, and exercises a control over them. Though the Lord 
 h. or a long time held his peace, He has not been unmindful of His 
 people, nor heedless of human affairs. The great incidents of history 
 which have given rise to successive kingdoms and dominions from the 
 ov'irturning of the kingdom and throne of God, 2 Chron. xxix. 23), 
 and of David '^'-i anointed in Judea, by the Chaldeans, to the present 
 time, are but events predetermined and arranged in the purpose of God, 
 and revealed in the ' sure word of prophecy.' Not a kingdom has 
 been established nor a king dethroned, but it has formed a move which 
 
f ; 
 
 242 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 has contributed to the development of the purpose which Jehovah had 
 in the creation of man. This truth is beautifully expressed in the words 
 of the prophet : ' Blessed be the name of God for ever and ever ; 
 for wisdom and might are His ; and He changeth the times and the seasons ; 
 He removeth kings and setteth up kings; He giveth wisdom 
 unto the wise and knowledge to them that know understanding ; Be 
 revealeth the deep mid secret things ; He knoweth what is in the darkness, 
 and the light dwelleth with Him.' — Dan. ii. 20. 22. It is He to whom 
 all things are subjected ; for He ruleth in the kingdom of men, and 
 giveth it to whomsoever he will, and setteth up over it the basest of 
 men. — Dan. iv. 17. This is the reason why men and women sometimes 
 with so little wisdom, and frequently even with positive folly and 
 imbecility, are able to rule the nations without * setting on fire the course 
 of nature.' When their wickedness and stupidity became obstacles to 
 God's purpose, He removes them out of the way, and introduces othor 
 actors upon the stage. Jehovah, in carrying out His purpose, is never 
 at a loss for instruments with which to work. He has always a Cyrus, 
 an Alexander, a Cromwell, a Napoleon, or a Garibaldi, in preparation lor 
 the situations He has decreed. These tools have each their own particu- 
 lar ambition to which they are devoted, as to a special inspiration. 
 Ignorant of God and his purpose, they seek to establish their own, in 
 which they encounter insurmountable circumventions and disappoint- 
 ment, they labour for themselves, but the fruit of their labour is for God — 
 They accomplish His purpose and confound themselves." 
 
 " In this way does Jehovah control and regulate the world's affairs ; 
 but in every interference He shapes the course of events towards a cer- 
 tain consummation predetermined from the foundation of the world, 
 and which has been placed on record in the Book of Destiny — the Bible 
 for upwards of 3700 years. In this book of fate we read : ' Surely the 
 Lord God doeth nothing, but He revealeth His secrets to His servants 
 the prophets.' — Amos, iii. 7. According to this testimony, therefore, 
 God has made known His purpose ; and if men desire to understand the 
 end of the political phenomena which now astonish and bewilder the 
 world, and the sublime destiny that awaits this earth, let them study 
 the books of the prophets, and they will find that end plainly revealed. 
 Notwithstanding the large share of attention that has been bestowed 
 upon the important subject of prophecy of late years, and the numerous 
 prophetic works that have issued from the press, much ignorance pre- 
 vails respecting momentous events which are soon to transpire upon the 
 earth, and which are matters of divine revelation to man. This pre- 
 ralent ignorance is attributable to the fact that, even amongst the 
 great body of those who have given much time and attention to the 
 study of the prophetic word, there exists a wide-spread misapprehen- 
 sion as to the divine purpose in the creation of man, and in his ulti- 
 mate destiiiy, both nationally and individually. This divine purpose is 
 made known to us in ' the Gospel ' as it is termed ; and before proceed- 
 ing further it may be as well here to present a concise statement of the 
 
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 TESTIMONIES. 
 
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 purpose of Jehovah as made known in the 'Gospel of the Kingdom.' 
 To this the earnest attention of tlie reader is respectfully requested." 
 
 " The purpose of God in creating the world, as described by Moses, 
 and in bringing it to its present political constitution, by checking the 
 full manifestation of the evil that exists, is that He may found a king- 
 dom and empire litei-ally ' universal' (Dan. ii. 44 ; ch. vii. 14), under the 
 government of which all nations may be blessed. — Gen. xii. 3 ; Ps. Ixxi. 
 11. The Hebrew nation establishtii in the Holy Land will be the 
 kingdom proper; (Exod. xix. 5, 6 ; Micah, iv. 6, 8 ; ch. v. :l ; Ezek. 
 xxxvii. 21, 28), and all other nations the empire attached to that king- 
 dom. The Jewish and other nations will constitute a family of nations, 
 of which Israel will be the first born ; Abraham, the federal patriarcli ; 
 and Christ his seed, the king. This divine family of nations will be so 
 highly civilized, that the present state of society will be regarded as 
 dark and barbarous ; for then, ' the earth shall be fu'l of the knowledge of 
 the Lord, as the waters cover thy sea.' — Isa. xi. I). The blessedness of this 
 divine civilization is detailed in ' the Gospel,' which is therefore styled 
 ' the glad tidings,' or ' Gospel of the Kingdom of God ' (Math. iv. 23), whila 
 the divine civilization itself is ' the economy of the fulness of the ap- 
 pointed times ' (Eph. i. 10, 21), or ' world to come ; styled also the ' age to 
 come.' The Bible is full of the glorious things ptirtaining to this, the 
 real * golden age ' of the world. 
 
 " The government of the nations in that perioti, which will continue 
 a thousand years without change, will be such as their necessities de- 
 mand — just laws and institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, and perfect 
 and righteous men to administer them. To fulfil these requirements, 
 the government of mankind will be committed to Christ, and to those 
 whom He may account worthy of association with Him. The Bible ex- 
 pressly declares that the rulers of the world shall then be immortal 
 kings and priests (Rev. i. 5, 6 ; Ch. ii. 26, 27 ; Cli. v. 9 ; Ch. xxii. 5), so 
 that mortal and immortal men will thus be living contemporaneously 
 upon the earth. Thi.s family of ' many nations,' of which God has con- 
 stituted Abraham the ' father ' (Gen. xvii. 5 ; Kom. iv. 13), will continue 
 under one and the same constitution a thousand years, at the expiration 
 of which there will be a change. — Rev. xx. 6, 7 ; 1 Cor. xv. 24, 26. Sin, 
 and by consequence, religion, priesthood, and death, will be universally 
 abolished ; and the earth will be inhabited by immortals only ; for it is 
 written : ' The wicked shall not inherit the earth ' (Prov. x. 30) ; but, on 
 the contrary, ' the meek shall inherit the earth '. — Ps. xxxvii. 11 ; Math, 
 v. 5. Hence, the final state of things upon our planet will be a Diviiu 
 Monarchy of everlasting continuance, under which there will be bat om 
 nation, (Jer. xlvi. 28), and that nation holy, immortal, and comprehensive 
 of all re<lee ied from among the descendants of the first human pair. 
 When this consummation obtains, the purpose of God in terrestrial crea- 
 tion will be accomplished, even the peopling the earth with an immortal race 
 which shall have attained to immortality on the principle of believing u-hat God 
 has promised, and doing what Helms commanded. 
 
 " In the Gospel there is an invitation to all who believe what God 
 
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 244 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 has promised, to share with Christ in His kingdom, glory, and joy, on 
 certain conditions well defined. — Thess. ii. 12 ; 1 Cor. vi. 9, 11 ; Math. xxv. 
 21. These &Te— faith in the things covenanted to Abraham and David, 
 and in those taught concerning Jesus, in the Old and New Testaments, 
 immersion into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit ; and 
 thenceforth a life of ' holiness to the Lord,' without which none will be 
 approved and promoted to the honour and glory of the kingdom. — Col. 
 xxi. 23." 
 
 The establishment of this Divine civilization among the nations 
 necessitates the abolition of the present civil, ecclesiastical, and social 
 constitution of the world. The nations and the earth to its utmost 
 bounds are ' deeded ' to Christ ; they are an inheritance and possession 
 made His by a deed registered in the Bible, (Ps. ii. 8) but, for the time 
 being, in the hands of regal, imperial, republican and ecclesiastical 
 usurpers. This patent fact and Bible truth, makes a contest between 
 Christ and ' the Powers that be * an unavoidable necessity. The Divine 
 oracle is : ' These shall make war upon the Lamb, and the Lamb (Jesus, 
 the ' Lamb of God ') shall overcome them ; ' in other words, 'He shall 
 destroy them tJmt destroy the earth'. — Rev. xvii. 12, 14 ; Ch. xix. 11, 16, 19, 
 21 ; Ch. XV. 18. This is the doom of the world's tyrants — destruction, 
 not by popular fury, which is merely an embarrassment, but by the mili- 
 tary power of Jehovah's Servant, even of Jesus, the future Lord of 
 armies, whom He has prepared, and whom He will send into the world 
 again for this very purpose. He will take possession of the kingdoms, 
 empires, and republics of the nations 'under the whole heaven ' (Dan. 
 vii. 27), and blend them into one universal empire, which will constitute 
 the secondary dominion, * the first dominion ' consisting of the ' king- 
 dom restored again to Israel' — Micah iv. 8 ; Acts i. 6. 
 
 " For a man, though a Divine man, to take possession of the civil, 
 military, naval, and ecclesiastical power, commerce, and riches of the 
 world, implies co-operation. The Bible teaches emphatically that this co- 
 operation for the wresting of Christ's inheritance from 'the powers 
 that be,' will consist of ' the called, and chosen, and faithful ' (Rev. xiv. 
 i ; ch. xvii. 14 ; ch. xix. 1 4), raised from the dead, or, if living at 
 the crisis, ' transformed in the twinkling of an eye ; these will be * with 
 him' as h:e 'joint heirs,' and companions in arms, commanding the 
 operations of the armies of Israel, whose mission will be, like that of 
 their fathers under Joshua, to subdue ' the powers ' combined to 
 prevent their restoration, and the establishing of the new and divine 
 order of things. — Jer. Ii. 19, 20 ; Isa. xl. 8, 16. 
 
 " The things presented in this outline will be regarded with incre- 
 dulity, and will even be received with ridicule, by those who know not 
 ' the gospel of the kingdom,' or who imagine that nothing can be known 
 of the future until it has become the past. In other words, as this 
 notion has taken such deep root in the theological mind as to be almost 
 universal, few will believe the statements contained in the foregoing 
 synopsis. At the same time, although the ancient philosophers and the 
 theologians teach, and the people generally have been led to believe, that 
 
imlla^a^W".^BJ<^Bi«j^^;t^T»«l«BMMllta 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 2M 
 
 lost 
 ling 
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 hat 
 
 the revelation of God relates exclusively to the salvation of the immortal 
 soul, it yet stands out glaring from almost every page of the sacred 
 volume, that Jehovah has a mighty work to perform in the earth ai>art 
 from the resurrection of the body, and that is to establish on the shat- 
 tered remnants of the present social and political structures a new organ- 
 ization of the social state, with new habits, new enjoyments, and new 
 aims, all regulated and harmonized by governors possessing both the 
 will and the power to preserve order, enforce obedience, and perform the 
 most beneficent actions. 
 
 " Does the reader believe that the Bible contains a revelation of God"s 
 purposes to mankind 1— -that, as itself asserts, it is a sure word of pro- 
 phecy, to which we do well to take heed, as to a light shining in a dark 
 place 1 If so, let him examine the references that accompany the 
 previous statement, and see if anything else can be fairly and reason- 
 ably made to shine out of the prophetic word. If this word be unin- 
 telligible till after the events predicted, it cannot be 'alight,' neither 
 can any one ' take heed ' by its assistance. But ' the gospel ' itself is 
 a great prophecy of what shall be in the age to come. To deny, there- 
 fore, that we can know beforehand what is to come to pass, is to affirm 
 that we cannot understand the gospel, for the gospel is glad tidings of 
 what is to be to all nations and to the saints. It is the report of good 
 things promised, a promise is a prediction, and a prediction is a pro- 
 phecy. The gospel is a great prophecy of what God intends to do, and 
 they who intelligently believe it know beforehand what is to be cli>ne. 
 The little that Has been fulfilled in Jesus is an assurance that what re- 
 mains will certainly be accomplished. He foresees the crushing down 
 of the thrones, the abolition of all kingdoms, empires, and republics, the 
 setting up of Divine monarchy in Israel's land, the blessedness of all 
 nations under the yovernment of Messiah and his brethren, and the will 
 of God done on earth as it is done in heaven. The Bible, in short, in- 
 telligently understood and believed, delivers a man from all doubt about 
 the ' future and unseen world.' He knows of a literary certainty that 
 the future and unseen world has no present existence more than next 
 week has. He knows that it is coming, as 1877 or 1910 are coming ; 
 and when it arrives it will be ' the Econonmy of the fulness of the ap- 
 pointed times' — a constitution under which Israel and Judah will be a 
 united nation under Christ and the saints, constituting the kingdom of 
 God, to which dominion overall nations to earth's utmost bounds, will 
 be annexed. He has no doubt about this. But to those who believe 
 not, of course, all is darkness aiul debate, and ever will be until the 
 reality opens upon their astonished ignorance with terrible and appalling 
 effect. The future is a brilliant inspiration to the believer ; but dark, 
 ominous, and terrific to those whose horizon is bounded by the empirical 
 and unstable policy of the powers of this age. The destiny of our race 
 is glorious, but the probation of the nations, in advancing to that con- 
 summation, calamitous and severe." — ibid, pp. 4-8. 
 
 " To the proposition that Jesus Christ shall one day reign literally and 
 personally upon tlie earth., and exercise absolute authority over the 
 
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 24t) THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MOD-iR:" THEOLOGY. 
 
 world, it has been objected that Jesus said, ' My Kingdom is not of this 
 world.' The Kingdom of Jesus was not of the Mosaic Cosmos or world, 
 but it was also not of a Cosmos contemporaay with the Roman power in 
 its undivided form. His Kingdom belongs to the ' fulness of times ' ; 
 that is when " the times of the Gentiles " are finished, times which are 
 synchronous with the Roman system of nations in its ten-horned consti- 
 tution. In the days of Pilate, the Roman world, or habitable, was un- 
 der Tiberius CsRsar. It was then one empire, including Syria and 
 Palestine. But Christ's Kingdom is to be set up when this fourth 
 kingdom consists of two imperial legs and ten regal toes ; for speaking 
 of the powers represented by these toes, the Spirit in Daniel says ; * In 
 the days of these kings shall the God of Heaven set up a kingdom, 
 which shall never be destroyed ; and the kingdom shall not be left to 
 other people, but it shall break in pieces and consume all these king 
 doms and it shall stand fofever. Dan. ii. 44. This kingdom is tlie one 
 Jesus styles his, and to which the gospel he preached belongs. The toe- 
 kingdoms which his kingdom is to break in pieces when it falls upon 
 them, had not only no cojitemporarj' existence with him and Pilate, but 
 did not even begin to exist for centuries after : He might therefore 
 truly say ; * My kingdom is not of this cosm,os ('age, dispensation, order, 
 arrangement, or constitution of things)" — Ihid. 
 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD, THE FINAL INSTRUMENTALITY IN THE GREAT 
 SCHEME OF HUMAN REDEMPTION. 
 
 The following is taken from Lecture Seven, of Mr. Roberts' Twelve 
 Lectures, and has a most important bearing upon the foregoing testi- 
 mony, besides enabling the general reader to follow the whole matter up 
 to its legitimate Scripture conclusions, there being but very little benefit 
 in warning a man off" the wrong road, unless he is at the same time di- 
 rected in the right way. — (C.) 
 
 Mr. Roberts says : — " In all God's doings there is a purpose. He doe.s 
 nothing from caprice, nothing from undesigning impulse. Everything 
 is planned ; everything adapted with the utmost exactness of wisdom 
 to the accomplishment of a predetermined end ; all His plans are charac- 
 terized by illimitable comprehensiveness of bearing, like His own mind, 
 which takes into account the infinitude of minute circumstance and re- 
 mote contingency, that surround us ' knowing all things from the end to 
 the beginning.' He is wise — He makes no mistakes — He accomplishes 
 as much as possible with as little as possible. The result alwajs 
 transcends the means, the good always over-tops and outnumbers the 
 evil. When, therefore, we are called upon to contemplate any declared 
 purpose of God, we are presented with a sublime subject of study, be- 
 cause such subject is sure to have in it a depth and fertility which it is 
 delightful to the mind to explore. This is true of God's natural won- 
 ders in creation, where we see all these principles abundantly exempli- 
 fied ; how much mor(^ is it true of His schemes in relation to the 
 intelligent creatures whom He has formed in His own image ? Now, 
 the testimony advanced in previous lectures clearly demonstrates the 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 247 
 
 purpose of God to be to interfere in human affairs, to destroy every form 
 of human government at present existing on earth, and to establish a 
 visible kingdom of His own. It shews that when the time arrives, He 
 will take the power out of the hands of the erring mortals who now pos- 
 sess it, and transfer it to Jesus Christ and His ' called and chosen and 
 faithful' ones, who will administer the .ll'airs of the world in wisdom 
 and righteousness. This being the purpose, it now remains for us to 
 enquire what is the object of the purpose and what its consummation 1 
 To some it will seem out of joint with the scheme which proposes the 
 restoration of the human family to friendship with their Creator, and 
 their exaltation to angelic existence. The question will be asked, " Is 
 this Divine ruling on earth to be eternal 1 Is the purpose of the 
 Almighty with mankind to rise no higher than perfection in the govern- 
 ment of mortal generations 1 Is this the glorious salvation which 
 dwelt from everlasting in the bosom of the Eternal, which the prophets 
 sung and which the Son of God confirmed in tears and blood ? The 
 answers to these questions, derivable from the Scriptures, will allay the 
 incredulity indicated by them, if the questioner be conscientious and 
 devout. The Kingdom of God is itself but an instrumentality — another 
 step in the march of God's beneficent scheme — another stage in the ac- 
 complishment of His purpose to, ' gather together in one all things in 
 Christ.' — Ephs. i. 10. It only lasts for a thousand years. — Rev. xx. 6. 
 What is to be accomplished during this period ? Paul says : ' He 
 (Jesus) must reign till He have put all enemies under His feet. The last 
 enemy that shall be destroyed is death.' — 1 Cor. xv. 25, 26. Hence, the 
 millennial mission of Christ is to subdue ' all enemies,' which He will 
 accomplish within the period of a thousand years. But it must be noted 
 that the ' enemies ' spoken of are not necessarily personal enemies, for 
 death is mentioned as the ' last ' of them, which we know to be an 
 evil event, and not a personal adversary. Hence, we may understand 
 Paul's statement to mean that * He must reign ;ill He hath subdued 
 every evil.' This being so, we have a starting point supplied to us in 
 our endeavour to understand the mission of the Kingdom of God. It is 
 to subdue 'all enemies,' or every evil. 
 
 " Now the 'all enemies' are of various kinds. The first class that 
 will be subjected to the subduing power of that kingdom are the govern- 
 ments of the earth. ' It shall break in pieces and consume all other 
 kingdoms.' — Dan. ii. 44. This is the first operation — to break up the 
 existing arrangement of things political — to take the government of man- 
 kind out of the liands of mortals, and place it in the hands of the King 
 whom God has prepared as the all-wise, and all-just, and all -humane 
 ' Governor of the Nations.' Now, it must be admitted that this will be 
 a great thing accomplished, a great enemy subdued ; for where do some 
 of the greatest evils under the sun originate but in the bad government 
 of the world 1 Look at ' savage ' countries. For want of government 
 human violence may run rampant ; caprice and passion reign ; might is 
 right ; brute force, under the guidance of selfish instinct rules the day ; 
 and mankind, instead of dwelling together in social unity and concord, 
 
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 248 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 herd in warring factions and disgrace the name of man by the enormi- 
 ties of their practices. Human life and the possession of property are 
 the uncertainties of the hour : the weak are over-ridden, the innocent 
 are victimized, and him that hath no helper is helpless, indeed, under 
 these circumstances. — Ps. Ixxiv. 20. 
 
 " How much better are the semi-barbarous nations of China, Japan, 
 Sic. 1 Besotted ignorance and selfishness concentrated in a despotic 
 emperor and aristocracy, provide and enforce laws which outrage justice 
 and multiply social evils indefinitely. The uncertain barbarities of 
 African life are, in some respects, to be preferred to the consolidated 
 tyrannies of Asiatic rule ; for in the former case, encroachment may be 
 resented with success. Man against man — tribe against tribe ; but 
 what chance is there against the hoary dynasties, the organized oppres- 
 sions, of Central Asia 1 
 
 " Coming into the civilized world things become a little more decent ; 
 but not much the better for their decency. Look at Russia ; look at 
 Poland ; look at Italy ; look at France, which at present stands fore- 
 most in the world's politics j what do we find ? The suppression of free 
 speech — the deprivation of personal liberty — the invasion of personal 
 rights — the military enforcement of despotism in all that relates to 
 private life ; and the consequent result in the dwarfed intellect, the 
 stunted moral life, the withered enterprize of the population, the uni- 
 versal ignorance and degradation which blots the civilization of the 
 vaunted nineteenth century. 
 
 " And do we find no bad government in our own favoured country I 
 (Britain). Thanks be to God, we have less to complain of than any 
 people under heaven ; but is there no class usurpation ? No monopoly 
 of the soil ] No surfeiting of a pampered few at the expense of starving 
 and groaning millions ? Ay, there are more evils than the neck accus- 
 tomed to the halter, is sensible of. There is more misery and wretch- 
 nes3 and crime in this country than decent well-to-do people, absorbed 
 in their own little concerns, are in the habit of thinking about ; and in 
 great part the evil comes from a system which keeps the wealth of the 
 country in a few hands, and deprives the majority of the opportunity of 
 realizing the true objects and enjoyments of life. The law is also admin 
 istered with a circumlocution and a guardedness which, though indis- 
 pensable in the present fallible order of things, often defeats justice on 
 the one hand, and victimizes the innocent on the other. These are evils 
 that cannot be cured in the present age ; most of them result from neces 
 sities imposed upon society by human fallibility and impotence. They 
 illustrate the utter inadequacy of human government to deal with the 
 affairs of mankind, so as to promote the general good and secure the 
 objects of existence to all. 
 
 " Surveying the world of human government, as a whole, then, we see 
 the greatness of the first enemy which the kingdom of God will subdue, 
 and are enabled to appreciate its political mission. The subjugation of 
 " the poM-ers that be" will be its first achievement, resultirg in the ' king- 
 doms of this world ' becoming ' the kingdom of our Lord, and of His 
 
atmm 
 
 ■^ 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 249 
 
 Christ ' (Rev. xi. 15) ; and for human administration it will substitute 
 that of one Divinely-appointed ruler. ' The Lord shall be king over all 
 the earth; in that day shall there be one Lord, and His name one.' 
 — Zech. xiv. 9. The result of this will be the cure of all the evils enu- 
 merated — ' savage ' countries ; Asiatic countries, European countries 
 will all come under the sway of His 'rod of iron,' which will break in 
 pieces the oppressor. All inimical institutions and practices will fall 
 before the vigour which destroys kingdoms ; individual misdemeanor will 
 be restrained by the indomitable power that breaks dynasties. A uni- 
 versal despotism, wielded with wisdom and humanity, will rule in gen- 
 eral and detail ; nothing too vast for its scope ; nothing too small for its 
 notice ;and thus will African peccadillos and Europe's grander antagon- 
 isms be suppressed by the same Omnipotent hand, and all countries 
 brought into harmony with the spirit of the age. 
 
 " He shall judge the poor of the people. He shall save the children of 
 the needy and shall break in pieces the oppressor. They shall tear 
 Thee as long as the sun and moon endure, throughout all generations. 
 He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass, as showers that 
 water the earth. In His days shall the righteous flourish ; and abun<i- 
 ance of peace so long as the moon endureth. He shall have dominion 
 also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth. They 
 that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before Him ; and His enemies 
 shall lick the dust. The kings of Tarshish and of the Isles shall bring 
 presents ; the kings of Sheba and Seba shall offer gifts. Yea, all kings 
 shall fall down before Him, For He shall deliver the needy when He 
 crieth ; the poor also, and him that hath no helper. He shall spare the 
 poor and needy, and shall save the souls of the needy. He shall redeem 
 their souls from deceit and violence, and precious shall their blood be in 
 His sight. His name shall endure for ever ; His name shall be con- 
 tinued as long as the sun ; and men shall be blessed in Him ; all nations 
 shall call Him blessed. — Ps. Ixxii. 4, 14, 17. 
 
 " But there is another enemy that may survive the destruction of 
 those of a political caste, and that is, the ignorance and depravity of the 
 people themselves. This, philanthropic men are now'trying to cure by 
 various agencies in operation. Mechanics' Institutes, Temperance So- 
 cieties, Missionary Societies, Home Missions, tfec, are among the instru- 
 mentalities by which reformers hope to improve the world, and bring 
 about the millennium ; but the idea is vain. The regeneration of the 
 world is beyond human accomplishment. Benefit is, no doubt, result- 
 ing from the educational and reormatory activities of the present cen- 
 tury, but how partial it is where conferred. Knowledge is extended in 
 every form ; but that does not necessarily mean improvement. Morality 
 and religion are not progressing with education. It is now admitted by 
 the thoughtful among public reformers, who once thought more san- 
 guinely, that the world, if getting more clever is not growing better ; 
 and facts justify the belief. Robust and manly principle grows more 
 stunted as knowledge increases. Flippancy is the order of the day ; 
 scepticism is leavening society with alarming progress ; and instead of an 
 
2o0 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 approaching millennium, we are to all human appearance, drifting upon 
 an age when the exigencies of commercial competition will have eaten 
 out the moral sense, and blunted the generous feelings of the people ; 
 when morals will be practised merely for the purpose of keeping on the 
 right side of the law, and religion professed with a view to customers. 
 But turn, reader, from this picture ; under the guidance of the Scriptures, 
 decline to trust an arm of flesh in a matter so utterly beyond its control 
 and take refuge in the consoling assurances of those ' holy men of God, 
 who spake as the\ were moved by the Holy Spirit.' 'The earth shall 
 be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover 
 the sea.' — Heb. ii. 14. 
 
 " When the earth is filled with the knowledge of the glory of the 
 Lord, it is clear that civilized ignorance and untutored barbarism will 
 have vanished ; but how is this knowledge to be disseminated 1 The 
 answer to this introduces us to what we shall call the second mission of 
 the Kingdom. When the governments of the earth have been broken 
 up and dissipated, and Divine authority established with firm hand in 
 every part of the globe, the next thing to be done is the enliglitenment 
 and elevation of the * peoples, nations and languages,' that will then 
 have transferred their allegiance to the Lion of the Tribe of Juduh. 
 
 "This is done by a process which will afford pleasure and honour to 
 the rulers of the age, while conferring benefit on the subject people. 
 ' At that time,' says Jeremiah, (Ch. iii. 17,) ihey shall call Jerusalem THE 
 THRONE OF THE LoRD. and all the nations shall be gathered unto it to 
 the name of the Lord, to Jerusalem ; neitlier shall they walk any mme 
 after the imagination of their evil hearts.'' Here is a turning from evil on 
 the part of the nations, as the result of a gathering to Jerusalem, when 
 occupiefl as the throne of the Lord. There is an effect and a cause ; but 
 what is th(! connection between them ? The answer is, because from 
 Jerusalem emanates a teaching which, divinely administered, works an 
 intellectual and moral reformation in the recipients thereof. This is 
 evident from the following testimony ; (Isa. ii. 2, 4,) ' and it shall come 
 to pass in the last day that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be 
 established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the 
 hills ; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and 
 say, Come ye. and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the 
 house of the God of Jacob ; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will 
 iralk in his paths ; for out of Zion shall go forth the Ijiw and the Word of 
 the Lord from Jerusalem. And He (Messiah, the Elohim of Jacob) shall 
 judge (or rule) among the nations, and shall rebuke many people ; and 
 they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into 
 pruning-hooks ; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither 
 shall they learn war more.' — Twelve Lectures, pp 220, 225. 
 
 The literality of this beautiful passage so full of glorious promise to 
 our race, is well preserved in the versification of the eighteenth Scrip- 
 ture Paraphrase, attached to the Scottish version of the Psalms. These 
 verses are recited and sung daily and weekly, publicly and privately by 
 thousands who never bestow the slightest attention on the nature of the 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 251 
 
 "^1 
 
 lanj^uage, or the character of the predictions, so plainly and pointedly 
 therein set forth : — 
 
 " Behold I the mountain of the Lord 
 
 In latter days shall rise 
 On mntmtain tops above the hills, 
 
 And draw the wond'ring eyes, 
 I'o this the joyful nations round 
 
 All tribes and tonBuos shall flow ; 
 Up to the hill of God, they'll say, 
 And to his house we'll go. ii'-v 
 
 " The beam that shines from Zion hill 
 i Shall lighten every land ; . ,<.. . - 
 
 The king who reigns in Salem's tow'rs 
 
 Shall all the world command 
 Among the nations He shall judge ; 
 His judgments truth shall guide ; ' ! "I ■• ■ 
 
 ' His sceptre shall protect the just, 
 
 .' And (juoll the sinner's pride. • 
 
 " No strife shall rage nor hostile fruds, • . ' ■ ■ 
 
 Disturb those peaceful years ; 
 ' To ploughshares men shall bend their swords, 
 
 'i'o pruning hooks their spears. •,,., .. 
 
 No longer hosts, eneount'ring hosts .,,j ,.'i, 
 
 Shall crowds of slain deplore ; . . , , " 
 
 They hang the trumpet in the hall, '\ 
 
 And study war no more. " '• '- ^ •/ '•■ 
 
 " Jerusalem was the centre, from which the (iospel, under the present 
 dispensation radiated, and Jerusalem in the future age is again to he the 
 source of Divine illumination, Vjut on a larger and grander scale, and 
 with more glorious results. Jerusalem was the i?cene of the Redeemer's 
 humiliation and anguish ; it is to be the witness of his exaltation and 
 joy. The sweet, ameliorating influences to be located in Jerusalem in 
 the coming age, 
 from Isaiah (ch. 
 
 His holiness) shall the Lord of Hosts (Jesus-Messiah) make unto all 
 people a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things 
 full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined. And it shall be said 
 in that day, Lo, this our God; we have icoited for Him. and He will 
 save us ; we have waited for Him, we will be glad and rejoice in His 
 Salvation. 
 
 Mount Zion ; this is the reason why 
 of it; their gathering, however, will 
 the author of confusion.' says Paul ; 
 the aggregation of the world's populations in such a comparatively small 
 neighbourhood would certainly involve confusion. The prophetic testi- 
 mony shews that there will be a pilgrimage from all parts ol the earth, 
 from one year's end to the other, in which all nations will take their 
 twm. It will be periodical, and take place in every case once a year, as 
 is evident from Zech. xiv. 16, 17; 'And it shall come to pass, that 
 
 are represented in the following beautiful metaphor 
 XXV. 6, 9) ; ' And in this mountain, (Zion the hill of 
 
 " The feast is to be provided in 
 the nations gather there to partake 
 not be simultaneous. ' God is not 
 
 i ., 
 if "I 
 
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 !:<«•: 
 
 
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 •■I 
 
 252 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 every one that is left of all the nati<)ri8 which came against Jerusalem 
 (with the pre-millenial Gog and Magog) shall even go up from year to 
 year to worship the king, the Lord of Hosts (Messiah), and to keep the 
 feast of tabernacles. And it shall be, that whoso will not come up of 
 all the families of the earth unto Jerusalem to worship the king the 
 Lord of Hosts even upon them shall be no rain.' 
 
 " This annual pilgrimage will be fraught with many blessings to the 
 nations. To individuals it will be annual relief from the rotitine of 
 common life, (which routine at the same time, will be vastly less 
 laborious, as to the duration and manner of occupation, fr<»m what ob- 
 tains now), and an annual refreshing physically by travel, and spiritu- 
 ally by contemplation of the objects of the journey, and by the actual 
 instruction received at the city of the Great King.' 
 
 " Nationally, it will be a yearly rivetting of the bonds of hapi)y and 
 contented allegiance that will bind all people to the throne of David, 
 occupied by his illustrious Son, Jesus of Nazareth — Son of God, and 
 King of the Jews. This glorious epoch in the world's history is alluded 
 to in the following quotation from Psalm cii. 12 to 22 : ' Th(<u, Lord, 
 slialt endure for ever ; and thy remembrance unto all generations. Thou 
 slialt arise, and have mercy upon Zion ; for the time to favour her, yea 
 the set time, is come. For 'Thy servants take pleasure in her stones, 
 and favour the dust thereof. So the nations shall fear the name of the 
 Lord, and all the kings of the earth thy glory. When the Lord shall 
 build up Zion, He shall appear in His glory. He will regard the prayer 
 of the destitute, and not despise their prayer. This shall be written for 
 the generation to come ; and the people which shall be created shall 
 praise the Lord. For he hath looked down from the height of His 
 sanctuary ; from heaven did the Lord behold the earth ; to hear the 
 groaning of the prisoner ; to loose those that are appointed to death ; to 
 declare the name of the Lord in Zion, and His praise in Jerusalem ; when 
 the people are gathered together, and the kingdoms, to serve the Lord.' 
 
 " Thus will the earth become filled with tlie knowledge of the Lord 
 as the waters cover the sea, and thus will all nations be turned from the 
 imaginations of their evil hearts as they never can be turned by a falli- 
 ble, unattested propaganda. Then will be realised the petition, ' Thy 
 will be done on earth as it is done in heaven ; ' and then will be fulfilled 
 the prophetic song of the angels, chanted at the birth of Him who was 
 to be its accomplisher, ' Glory to God in the Highest, Peace on Earth, 
 and Good Will among Men.' " 
 
 " And the last enemy that sliall be destroyed is death." Death will 
 continue its ravages during the thousand years — not among the rulers, 
 Jesus nnd the Saints, who are immortal, but among the subject nations 
 who continue as they are now, the death stricken descendants of the first 
 Adam. "The child shall die an hundred years old." — Isa. Ixv. 20. 
 But ultimately death itself shall be abolished. Its subjugation, how- 
 ever, comes last in order, all other enemies are got out of the way first ; 
 and then the greatest and most formidable is removed for ever from this 
 fair part of God's universe, as pointed out in the Scriptures of truth. 
 
■iMid. 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 253 
 
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 To the foregoing may be added the following summary of the leading 
 ]i()ints contained in the fifteenth chapter of First Corinthians, also of 
 some things set forth in this connection in previous pages of this compila- 
 tion. From this chapter we learn : — 
 
 1. That Eternal Life is only attained by and through h re.surrection 
 from among the dead. 
 
 2. That Christ, in opening up a way of escape from death and the 
 grave, disclosed the way of life, manifesting himself as the first fruits oi 
 them that slept ; the first begotten from the dead, and the first born from 
 the dead. 
 
 3. That the dead in Him shall be raised by Him at His corning and 
 appearing. 
 
 4. That as by man came death, so also by man came the resurrection 
 of the dead. As all in Adam die, so all in Christ, and amenable to the 
 judgment of the first resurrection, shall be made alive. 
 
 5. That the living saints, contemporary with His appearing, shall with 
 the resurrected, stand before Him for judgment, as taught (2 Cor. v. 10). 
 " For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that 
 every one may receive the things in body, according to that he hath done, 
 whether good or bad." 
 
 6. That this reward, as regards the righteous, shall consist in the be 
 stowal upon them of Eternal Life when this mortal shall put on immor- 
 tality, and this corruptible shall put on incorruption. 
 
 7. That flesh and blood cannot inherit the Kingdom of God, because 
 corruption cannot inherit incorruption. " Except a man be born again 
 he cannot see the Kingdom of God. Except a man be born (out) of 
 water, and of the spirit, he cannot enter the Kingdom of God. That whicli 
 is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is 
 spirit." — John iii. 3, 5, 6. A man is born out of water, when in obedi 
 ence to the faith of the Gospel, he is buried with Christ in baptism, and 
 arises from the grave of waters to newness of life, or a new life. He is 
 still, however, flesh and blood, and cannot inherit incorruption, or the 
 Kingdom of God. When he is raised from the dead and endowed with 
 life and immortality, he is then born of the spirit, and, being invested 
 with holy spirit nature is no longer flesh and blood, but fitted and 
 qualified to inherit that kingdom as a faithful son of Abraham, and joint 
 heir with Christ. The Father acknowledged the sonship of Jesus on 
 his emergence from the waters of baptism in the Jordan, — Math. iii. 17. 
 Paul (Acts xiii. 33), quoting from the second Psalm, verse 7, says : — 
 " Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee," applies this as the 
 Father's avdwal of the Christ at His resurrection. From all which we 
 can clearly see that, just as the Kingdom of God does not exist until the 
 ten Toe Kingdoms of the Roman Dominion are I Dken in pieces and de- 
 stroyed, so the Kingdom of God, or of Christ, ±iis anointed king, can- 
 not be inherited by flesh and blood, and therefore cannot come into ex- 
 istence until after the resurrection and judgment, neither can it be set 
 up until the " times of tiie Gentiles " are fulfilled, and Jerusalem, the 
 capital, the city of the Great King, shall be no longer trodden under 
 
 IK 
 
 1 ;:i 
 
254 THE HIBLK VINJ>lc;ATED AUAINST MODERN THEOLOOY. 
 
 d 
 
 i 
 
 foot of the Gentiles. These general iiuliuatioiis are so proininontly set 
 forth that we cannot, by any possibility be mistaken respecting them. 
 Neitli'T do these general indications at all interfen- with Luke xvii. 20, 
 21 — " And when Hr was demanded of the Piiarisees when the Kingdom 
 of God should come, He answered them and said, the Kingdom of God 
 cometh not with outward show (margin). Neither shall tliey say, Lo, here ! 
 or lo there ! for behold the FiOYAL majk.sty of the heavens is among you " 
 (margin). The Greek word BaailHa signifying either kingdom, king, or 
 kingly majesty. Christ on this occasion was aildre.ssing, the proud, 
 hypocritical Pharisees, and could not possibly mean to say that " the 
 Kingdom of God " was uithin them. 
 
 9. — The apparent termination, or rather merging, of the messianic, 
 or millennial kingdom, at the expiration of the thousantl years, into the 
 everlasting kingdom of God the Father, wiiich shall never end; "Then 
 cometh the end (of the millenial kingdom of Cl)rist, in its subjective 
 phase, and mixed state of mortals and immortals) wiien He (Christ in 
 His kingly capacity) shall deliver up the kingdom lo God, even the 
 Father, who shall (thenceforth) be all and in all — sin and death being 
 abolished — all of the race of man remaining on the earth being clothed 
 upon with immortality — the tabernacle of Ciod being with men — they 
 all being His people, and He being with them, their God — all tears be- 
 ing wiped from all eyes — no more death ; neither sorrow, nor crying, 
 nor pain, for the former things shall have them passed away. 
 
 So much for the " materialism " of Scripture ; of that real, tangible 
 future life and future state, held forth to men, in the Scriptures, on the 
 free terms, yet unchangeable conditions, of tlie " Great Salvation." How 
 gloriously in harmony are all God's arrangemcints. How admirably 
 adapted to man's varied requirements and complex nature. He knows 
 the end from the beginning. He made ample provision for all, contin- 
 gencies, so to speak — at least what appear to us as contingencies, for 
 with Him there are no contingencies. Man sinned and became subject 
 to death, the whole race, with the exception of Enoch and Elias, gener- 
 ation after generation, going down to the grave ami i-eturning to their 
 dust. Christ came to redeem and deliver from the power of the grave. 
 He abolished death and brought life and immortality to light in the 
 gospel, illumining, with a heavenly clearness, those dim perceptions of 
 Resurrection and future life, which, in patriarchal and mosaic times, 
 were but obscurely apprehended. He did this through His teachings, 
 His life. His death, His Resurrection, His ascension, and His promise to 
 come again, when as the Resurrection and the Life, He will raise His 
 sleeping saints, and together with the living, awaiting His appearing, 
 judge them, the just and unjust; awarding to one class eternal life, to 
 the other the shame and contempt of Me-ssiah's age ; to judge the 
 nations ; and set up the tabernacle of David, the Israelitish sovereignty 
 pertaining to David's house and lineage ; in other words the Theocracy, 
 or Kingdom of God, restored to Israel, and Israel's Prince Royal and 
 lawful king, associating with him as kings and priests of that kingdom, 
 a»ch as having believed the Gospel of tlie Kingdom of God, which H« 
 
 u \ 
 
TKMTIMOMKS. 
 
 25* 
 
 preucliud and tuu^ht, and having been buptisud into Him, and in that 
 way tuguthur with juatihciitiun through faith, and the all HutKciency of 
 the blood of Christ, having their sina covered, and who thereafter by a 
 continuance in well doing, seek for glory, honour, iinuiortality eteinal 
 life ; being aim chihlreik of Abraham by faith and baptism, who walk in 
 the light as He is in the light, experience the efficacy of the advocacy 
 e6tal)lislied at the right hand of Deity, so that the blood of Christ niiiy 
 cleanse them from all sin, and confer upon them a meetness for the in- 
 heritance of the saints in lighl--the kingdom prepared from the founda- 
 tion ot the world. (Comj'ILKK.) 
 
 I 
 
 THE BAPTISTS OF 1660 ON THE KINODoM AND (.OMINd OF CHRIST. 
 
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 the 
 
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 The following Confession of Faith, signed by John Bunyan, and 
 forty other elders, deacons, and brethren, and approved by more than 
 20,000 others, was presented to King Charles the JSecond in London, 
 1660. 
 
 They declared, " We are not only resolved to sutler persecution to the 
 loss of our goods, but also life itself, rather than decline from the same.'' 
 Where are the Baptists of 1660 1 
 
 Art. 22. " We believe that the same Lord Jesus who showed himself 
 alive after his passion, by many infallible proofs (Acts i. 3), which wa.s 
 taken up into heaven, (Luke ^xiv. 51), shall so come in like manner as 
 he was seen go into heaven; (Acts i. 9, 11). ' And when Christ, who is 
 our life, shall appear, we shall appear with Him in glory.' — Col. iii. 4. 
 ' For the Kingdom is His and He is the Governor among the nations,' 
 (Ps. xxii, 23), and King over all the earth.' — Rev. v. 10. ' The king- 
 doms of this world ' (which men so mightily strive after here to enjoy), 
 ' Shall become the kingdoms of our Lord and His Christ.' — Rev. x. 
 15. ' For all is yours,' (ye that overcome this world,) ' for ye are Christ's 
 and Christ's is God's.' — 1 Cor. iii. 22, 23. ' For unto the saints shall be 
 given the Kingdom, and the greatness of the Kingdom, under the whole 
 heaven, — Dan. vii. 27. Though alas, how many men be scarce content 
 that the saints should have so much as a being among them, but when 
 Christ shall appear, then shall be their day, then shall be given unto 
 them power over the nations, to rule them with a rod of iron. — Kev. ii, 
 26, 27. Then shall they receive a crown of life which no man shall take 
 from them, nor they by any means turned or overturned horn ; for the 
 oppressor shall be broken in pieces, (Ps. Ixxii. 4), and their vain rejoicings 
 be turned into mourning and lamentations, as it is written. Job. xx,5. — 7. 
 
 " We believe that there will be an order in the resurrection, and then 
 next or after, they that are Christ's at His coming, then, or afterwards, 
 Cometh the end. Concerning the Kingdom and reign of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, as we do believe that he is now in heaven at his Father's right 
 hand, so Ave do believe that at the time appointed of the Father he shall 
 come again in power and great glory ; and that at or after his coming 
 the second time, he will not only raise the dead, and judge and restord 
 the world, but will also take to himself His Kingdom, and will, accord 
 
 
 
It I*; 
 
 25H THE HIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOOY. 
 
 iug to the Scriptures, reign on the throne of His Father David, on Mount 
 Zion, in Jerusalem, for ever. 
 
 " We believe that the kingdom of our Lord will ba a universal king- 
 dom, and that in this kingdom, the Lord Jesus Christ flimself will be 
 tlie alone visible, supreme king of the whole earth. 
 
 " We believe that ns this kingdom will bo universal, so it will be 
 an everlasting kingdom, that shall have no end, nor cannot be shaken ; 
 in which kingdoni the saints and faithful in Christ Jesus shall receive 
 1 he end of their faith even the salvation of their souls, where the Lord is, 
 they shall be also. 
 
 " We believe that the New Jerusalem that shall come down from God 
 out of heaven, when the' tabernacle of God shall be with them and He 
 will dwell among them, will be the metropolitan city of this kingdom, 
 and will be the glorious place of residence of both Christ and his saints 
 forever, and will be so situated as that the kingly palace will be on Mount 
 Zion,the holy hill of David, where his throne was." — Crossbij's " History cf 
 the Baptists " Vol. 2. app. 58. 
 
 " Let Baptists and other professors of religion, read the above noble 
 and Scriptural confession of faith, and compare the same with the 
 ( reeds and Confessions of Faith of the present day. Reader, who is 
 right 1 The Baptists of 1660, or the professors of the present day? 
 The Scriptures are the same now as then. Search and see if these 
 things are so." — " Rays of Light," No. 7. 
 
 MEDIATORSHIP. 
 
 The things herein set forth respecting the position of Israel, nation- 
 ally, in relation to the kingdom of God may be, and no doubt are, new 
 to the general reader, as they were to the compiler of these ptvges eighteen 
 years ago. An honest apprehension and correct understanding of the 
 Scriptures in their own light, and in the light, especially, of the Gospel 
 of the kingdom of God, preached by Christ and His Apostles, can only 
 lead to the conclusion that the call of Abraham furnishes the key to 
 God's purpose, and in the then dispensation or arrangement of things in 
 the world constitutes the germ of that Mediatorship, national as to 
 Israel, personal as to Christ, so important to the world nationally, and 
 to mankind individually, and so necessary to know and understand. 
 Illustrative of the divers teachings in the religious world, respecting the 
 future restoration of Israel to their own land, and their intimate con- 
 lu^ction with the fultilment of the promises and consummation of the 
 purpose of God. It may be here stated that a leading Baptist minister 
 some years ago, in a letter published in the Canadian Baptist news- 
 pjiper, declared that " the purposes and promises of God were bound up in 
 the Jews ; " while another Baptist minister, about the same time, in a 
 letter published in the same paper, declared that he had " diligently 
 stiidied the Bible for fifty years, and could not find a single passage in it 
 from Genesis to Revelations tluit atuld lead him to believe or think tluit God 
 luid anything further to do with the Jews, or that He ever intended bringing 
 them back to Palestine ! ! ! " 
 
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 TKSTIMONIKS. 
 
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 riie President of the Pontypool Baptist College in his inaugural 
 adilross at the annual session of the Baptist Union held iti I^ondou, 
 England, April, 1872, says : — 
 
 " Tlio return of the Jews to Palestine may, or mai/ not, hd a subject of 
 prophecy ; aiul maij or ma// not take place, in the course of Divine Pro- 
 vidence Jiid thin question has no nncessar// connectioa loith 
 
 the Pre-mi/lennial Advent, and the personal reifj/i of Christ." This may bt5 
 taken as a sample of what prevails all round. Tlie reader must by this 
 time see that man cannot with safety, play fast and loose with this doc- 
 trine!, and that the Kev. Mr. Wilson states tl e truth, when he declares 
 that the purposes and promises of (lod are ceiitred in the Jews. Read 
 carefully, in addition to i)assages already quotevl : — Lev. xxv. 23 ; ch. 
 xxvi. li-'tt) ; Deut. xi. 12 ; ch. xxviii ; ch. xxx. 4-7 ; Isa. chs. xlix. Ix. 
 Ixi. Ixii. Ixv. Ixvi ; -Ter. iii. 17-18 ; ch. xxiii. 1-9 ; ch. xxx ; ch. xxxi ; ch. 
 xxxii. :J7-42 ; ch. xxxiii ; Kzek. xi. 10-21 ; ch. xx. 3;i— 45 ; ch. xxviii. 
 2r)-26 ; chs. xxxiv. xxxvi. xxxvii. xxxviii. xxxix. and many other paral- 
 lel passages in the Old and New Testaments. 
 
 The following from the prolific pen of Dr. Thomas will shed a flood 
 of light on this subject. lie says :— 
 
 " The Law is a term applied in the Scriptures to the system of things 
 enjoined by Jehovah upon the Twelve Trib(!s of Israel through Moses. 
 ' The Law was given through Moses' (John i. 17), and hence it is styled 
 ' the Law of Moses,' not because it originated from him as the French 
 Code did from Na[)oleon, or certain laws of Greece from Draco and 
 Solon ; but because it was transmitted through him as thc^ medium of 
 communication between the Lord of the universes and the desc(m<lants of 
 Abraham in the chosen line of Isiuc and Jacob, wliom He surnamed 
 Israel, of whom He condescended to become the King. ' He gave them a 
 fiery law (Deut. xxxiii. 2), which ho caused to be delivered to .Moses for 
 pioraulgation. He ilid not leave His throne in the light to commune 
 with Moses in His own proper person ; for no man shall see Him and 
 • live (Exod. xxxiii. 20) ; but He imparted His will to the angels of His 
 presence, ' who do His commandments, hearkening unto the voice of 
 His '„ord ;' and these as faithful ministers of His pleasure (Ps. ciii. 
 20-21), handed to Moses His high, and holy, and just decrees, with all 
 the sanctions of Sinai recorded in ' the Book.' Thus ' the law was 
 ordained by angels in the hands of a Mediator' (Gral. iii. 19), who was 
 Moses, occupying middle ground betwfien Israel and their King. Ter- 
 rified with the thunder-tones in whicii tht; decalogue was (hilivered, which 
 made even Moses quake with fear, they besought Jehovah to speak to 
 them only through the medium of their brother. In making this 
 reejuest they proposed a Mediator ship, and suggested the appointment ot 
 .Moses to the office. They had acknowledged themselves Jehovah'.? 
 nation, and now they desired that the communication between them 
 should be through an intermediate person, with whom they could confer 
 without terror. The proposal pleased Jehovah, who said ' they had 
 well spoken, what they had spoken,' and their request was consequently 
 complied with. From this time the Mediatorship became an ordinance 
 17 
 
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 258 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOQY. 
 
 ir'IS 
 
 lb! 
 
 f l»t 
 
 l'"r 
 
 «i|i 
 
 in Israel. Moses was the tirst that held the office, in which he officiate I 
 as a priest, prophet, legislator and king. After the nation was planted 
 in Canaan, the high priests acted in the character of Mediators, being 
 Jehovah's supreme magistrates over the people, for the pontificate was 
 always above the kingly office, though many of the kings treated the 
 high pj'iests with indignity. Moses was the only complete representa- 
 tive of a Mediator that has yet appeared in Israel. He was Jehovah's 
 representative in all his relations to the nation. David and Solomon 
 sliared the mediatorship with Zadok the high priest, but it was only as 
 kingly, not priestly and legislative, representatives of Jehovah. They 
 were Mediatorial administrators of Mose.-,' Law ; and i cpresentative men 
 in the offices tiiey sustained. Jehovah's representatives,— individually 
 representative in their historical outlines of the Mediator like unto 
 Moses, who shall hereafter appear as king in Jeshurun. 
 
 " No other nation besides Israel has received a law ' ordained in the 
 hand of a mediator.' The constitutions and laws of the nations have 
 been given to tliem by evil men who subdued them; or by men no 
 holier, whom they may have chosen to ruL over them. Hence their 
 organizations are evil. The supreme power is one, and the people is 
 another, and there is no mediator — ' no daysman betwixt them that 
 might lay his lianii upon them botli.' Their hiws and institutions being 
 human, purely so, they have no intercourse with God ; for if they spoke 
 to Him and He should answer, seeing that they have no mediator, they 
 would be as terror stricken as Israel of old, and cry out, 'Let not God 
 speak with us, lest we tlie ! ' Never did a people before hear the voice 
 of God speaking out of the fire and live ; nor, besides Israel, has any 
 nation heard him speak at all. Jehovah speaks only to Israel, m and 
 through Israel ; and if the nations are addressed, it is through tlie medi- 
 ation of the tribes; for what Moses was to them, so are they to the 
 world at large. 
 
 " Mediation being an Israelitish institution, and there being no other 
 between Jehovah and the population of the earth ; and it being ad- 
 mitted that no man can come to God save through a mediator approved 
 of Him ; it follows, that Ijoth individuals and nations can obtain access 
 to ' the throne of the Majesty in the heavens ' only throii'jjh the medi- 
 ation which pertains to Israel. Now this mediatorship is in no way 
 practicable on the old basis, that is through the Mosaic law. Obviously 
 so, because according to that law there is no acceptance except through 
 sacrifice offered in Jerusalem by the priesthood of Levi. So long as 
 Jerusalem is trodden under foot of the Gentiles, this is impossible ; 
 Israel therefore, like the rest of the nations, although they trust in 
 Moses, is as destitute of mediation as though the mediatorship pertained 
 to the Chinese and not to them. If blindness had not happened to 
 them, they would certainly see this ; for it is written in Moses, ' cursed 
 is every one that contiiiueth not in all thinys written in the book of the 
 law to do them.' But what one thing, not to mention all things, do 
 they observe in the letter or spirit of it that is written therein ] They 
 practise circumcision. But that is not of the law ; yet by the practice 
 
f[ "iiwrnnirmtwaraii 
 
 ■Hi 
 
 '1 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 259 
 
 acl- 
 
 sess 
 
 .'ay 
 sly 
 
 as 
 
 It in 
 
 led 
 
 to 
 
 sed 
 
 I the 
 
 do 
 
 liey 
 
 Itice 
 
 they become debtors to do tlie whole law. By offending in the least 
 they are guilty of the Avhole ; for Moses curses every Israelite who con- 
 tinueth not in all. Cursed, then, are they of Mosos, in whom they trust ; 
 yet were they ever so willing to obey him, they are ciicumstantiall}' 
 prevented. The Turks possess their holy city and land, and by the 
 sword are prepared to .suppress every attempt to re-establisti the Mosaic 
 commonwealth. Alas for Israel ! They are ' without a king, without 
 a prince, without a sacrifice, without an image, without an '^phod, and 
 without teiaphim,' (Hosea iii. 4) and the king, prince, .sacrifice, imag<' 
 of the invisible God, they will not receive ! But if Lsrael's case is for- 
 lori 1' it of the nations i.s worse ; for while Israel refuses Him who 
 ^ . aKs from the right hand of God, the Gentiles, who profess to acknow- 
 ledge Him, pay no r«^gard to what He says. Redemption awaits Israel 
 (Dan. xii. 1 ) ; but anger and wrath, and sore distress, to all the world 
 besides, f nv 4mll this trouble be eschewed? 
 
 " Esca, 't ti.ore is none save for those who obey the truth. The door 
 is not yet shut. ' He that believes and is baptised shall be saved ;' but 
 mark the words which follow- -' // thai believes not shall he condemned.' 
 What is that thing which, when not believed brings condemnation to a 
 man "■ TI. * context answers this question in two words — ' Thk Gospel.' 
 Mar- : vi 15, 16. So that you see, you may even be baptised, or 
 rather iniaiersed, but if you believe not ' tlie Gospel,' you cannot be 
 saved. That gospel announces to every man, both Jew an<l Gentile, wlio 
 believes it, access to Jehovah and His restored kingdom through His 
 son Jesus, on His accession to the mediatorshij) in Israel. Tlie law of 
 Moses was ordained by angels in the hand of a mediator. But that law 
 as originally ordained has been impaired by the manifestation of souie of 
 its antitypes ; and being therefore, no longer an exact representation of 
 the knowledge of the truth, and incompatible with the nature of things 
 as modified by the appearance of the prophet like unto Moses, — it needs 
 to be emended. This emendation is ordained by Jehovah in the hands 
 of a mediator, as well as the original promulgation of the law. Moses 
 received it from the angels as the ministers of God ; but Jtsus, who is 
 greater than Moses, ' being a son over his own house,' in which Moses 
 was only a servant (Heb. iii. 0, G), receives the amended law direct 
 from Jehovah ; for says God, ' I will put my words in liis mouth ; 
 and he shall speak unto them (Israel) all that I shall command him ; 
 and whosoever will not hearken to my words which he shall speak in my 
 naiiie, I will require it of him.' Angels brought the words of God to 
 Sinai, and there delivered them to Moses for him to speak to Israel ; 
 but the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove, descendetl from before the 
 throne and abode on Jesus. He needed no angels to tell him what to 
 speak, for the B'ather dwelt in Him by His Spirit, and moved His 
 tongue to utterance, ' The Father is in me. 1 speak not of myself ; 
 the Father dwelling in me doeth the works.' Though that Spirit for- 
 sook Him when He yielded up His life upon the cross (Math, xxvii. 
 46, 50), it was only till He ro.se again by its life imparting energy. — 
 Kom. viii. 11. The fulness of the Godhead now dwelleth bodily in 
 
 
4 ■' 
 
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 260 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 Him ; and of that ' fulness have we all,' says an Apostle, ' received, 
 even gift for the sake of gift.' — Col. ii. 9. When He shall depart from 
 * holy ground ' to revisit the arena of His suffering and reproach, angels 
 v^'ill escort Him to His kingdom, full of Jehovah's words of truth and 
 mercy to His people ; for He shall roar out of Zion, and utter His voice 
 from' Jerusalem ; and the heavens and the earth shall shake ; but He 
 will be the hope of His people, and the strength of the children of Israel. 
 So shall they know that He is the Lord their God dwelling in Zion, His 
 holy mountain ; Jerusalem shall then be holy, and strangers shall pass 
 through her no more.' — Joel iii. 16, 17. 
 
 " Thus will He utter His archangel voice from Zion, amid the echoes 
 of Jehovah's trumpet sending forth its blasts as on Sinai in the days of 
 old. That trump will awake the dead (I. Thes. iv. 6) and where will 
 be His foes 1 Though gathered together to battle against Jerusalem 
 a mighty host, of what account will they be, when the crashing thunder 
 of that dead-awakening shout, rattling through the flaming heavens, 
 shall boom upon their ears. Madness will seize upon them, and upon 
 their horses blindness and astonishment. The burden of Jerusalem 
 will be heavy upon them, and a cup of trembling to them all. — Zech. 
 xii. 1, 7 ; ch. xiv. But drink it to the dregs they must ; for their 
 wickedness will be great. — Isa. ii. 3 ; ch. li. 22, 23. Jehovah's first in- 
 terview with His nation at Sinai was attended by a terrific demonsta- 
 tion preceded by the overthrow of Israel's enemies. Under the sanction 
 of this display of power and glory He presented Moses to the people 
 as His representative over them. But the time is not very remote, 
 when the crisis that is now forming will necessitate a second interview 
 between Jehovah and the tribes. They have to be delivered from those 
 that hate them ; and to be impressed with a spirit of prompt obedience 
 and submission to the Moses-like prophet, who is to be the mediatorial 
 representative of Jehovah in their midst for a thousand years to come. 
 Nothing short of a Sinaitic demonstration will accomplish this ; for 
 Israel is as stiff-necked a people to-day as they were thirty four centuries 
 ago. The battle of Armageddon and the war which it inducts, with all 
 the attendant manifestations of power and great glory, will inaugurate, 
 with all subduing majesty, Jehovah's King in Zion, the hill of His 
 holiness. The mediatorship will then have re-appeared in Israel under 
 the New Covenant, dedicated upwards of eighteen centuries before by 
 the blood of the mediator who speaks the words commanded of the 
 Father in sending forch the amended law from Zion, and the Word of 
 the Lord from Jerusalem (Isa. ii. 3) ; not to Israel only, but to the 
 residue of men who then seek after the Lord, and to all the nations 
 called by His name. — Acts xv. 17. Great, glorious, and free, will 
 Israel then be in the midst of enlightened, obedient, and happy nations. 
 The Kingdom of God, for which Jesus taught His Apostles to pray, will 
 then have come to Zion, and His Father's will performed on earth as 
 it is in heaven. As the woman's seed He will have bruised the serpent's 
 head, and have delivered His brethren from evil because the kingdom is 
 His, the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen." . _ . ..-^ 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 261 
 
 " Thus then will the amended law be ordained by Jehovah in the 
 hand of Jesus, the Mediator of the New Covenant, even the law initi- 
 ated by Moses for a single nation ; but perfected and adapted to a con- 
 sociation of all nations, by the Prophet like unto him, the future King 
 and Lord of all the earth — Zech. xiv. 9. When that which is perfect 
 hath come, the ordering of things terrestrial will have obtained the 
 permanency of a thousand years, as exhibited in the following descend- 
 ing series : — ^ 
 
 Jehovah, 
 
 Lord of the boundless universe ; dwelling in inapproachable light ; whom 
 no man hath seen, or can see and live : — 
 
 Jesus, 
 
 Jehovah's High Priest and King over all the Earth on David's Throne in 
 Zion : — 
 
 ■ The Saints, 
 
 Associates with Jesus in the enlightenment and government of the 
 world : — 
 
 Levitical Priesthood, 
 
 Priests to Israel and the Gentiles who come up to worship Jehovah at 
 the Temple in Jerusalem : — 
 
 Twelve Tribes of Israel, 
 
 The Kingdom of God, or Jehovah's First Born of the many nntions, 
 constituted His sons in Abraham, their federal paternal chief : — 
 
 The Nations, 
 
 "The Inheritance of Jehovah's King to the ends of the earth." — Dr. 
 Thomas in " The Herald oj the Kingdom and Age to Come," 1853, pp. 5-8, 
 
 lions. 
 
 will 
 th as 
 lent's 
 
 )m is 
 
 DR. LEASK on immortality. 
 
 The following extracts from the writings of the Rev. William Leask, 
 D.D., editor of the " Rainbow," a religious periodical pu])lished in 
 England, and having a wide circulation there and in the colonies, taken 
 from a reprint, in small pamphlet form, published in Toronto in 1871, 
 is worthy of notice and insertion here, because of the Scriptural charac- 
 ter of Dr. Leask's reasoning on the subject of man's non-imm()rt<ality by 
 nature. — (Italics by the Compiler). — He says : 
 
 " Man has no natural immortality stretching out into eternity, but he 
 who was in the beginning with (iod connis down to men to give the 
 superhuman boon to all who ■ > ieve on Him to life everlasting.' The 
 inspired witness bearer, the belo^ ed John, who know his Lord and the 
 sublime objects of his Lord's incarnation as fully as ever man was privi- 
 leged to know them, ne^nis no corroborative testimony ; yet, the doc- 
 trine is of such paramo\uit importance, sheds such light on the entire 
 revelation of God, exhibits so fully the true import of the terras regen- 
 eration, redemption, at-i>nement, salvation, perish, life, death, justified 
 anctified, and the like ; and unfolds so delightfully the character of our, 
 
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 III 
 
 I 
 
 i?3 
 
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 262 THE BIBLE vindu;ated aoainst modern theology. 
 
 Heavenly Father and kinsman Redeemer, that we shall transcribe a few 
 passages for the reader, in the full belief that he will regard them not 
 as the words of men, but, as they an; in truth, the wcrds of the living 
 God, meaning strictly and literally what they say. 
 
 " ' As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the 
 Son of Man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should notperinh, 
 hut hare eternal life, for God so loved the world, that He gave His only 
 begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have 
 everlasting life.' — John iii. 14, 16. 
 
 " ' 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 man pluck them out of my hand.' — Chap. x. 27, 28. 
 
 " ' Father, the hour is come — Glorify thy Son, that thy Son also may 
 glorify Thee ; as Thou hast given Him power over all flesh, that He should 
 give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him. And this is life eter- 
 nal, that they might know Thee the only true Ood, and Jesus Christ whom Thou 
 hast sent' — Chap. xvii. 1, 3. 
 
 " ' I am come that they might have life'. — Chap. x. 10. 
 
 " ' Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my icord and believeth 
 on Him that sent me, Juith everlasting life, and shall not come into con- 
 demnation, but is passed from death unto life.' — Chap. v. 24. 
 
 " ' This is the Father's will who hath sent me, that of all which He hath 
 given me I should lose nothing, kit should raise it up at the last day. And 
 this i& the will of Him that sent rae, that every one who seeth the Son and 
 believeth on Him may have everlasting life ; and I will raise him up at the 
 last day. He that believeth on me hath everlasting life.' — Chap. vi. 39,40,47. 
 
 " ' To them who by patient continuance in well doing seek for glory, 
 and honour, and immortality (God will render) eternal life.' — Rom. ii. 7. 
 
 " ' That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign 
 through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.' — Chap. 
 V. 21. 
 
 " ' What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed 1 
 for the end of those things is death. But now being made free from sin 
 and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness and the 
 end everlasting life. For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is 
 ete'imal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.' — Chap. vi. 21, 23. 
 
 " ' He that sowetli to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption ; but 
 he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.' — 
 Gal. vi. 8. 
 
 " ' Howbeit for this cause 1 obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus 
 Christ might show forth all long-suff"ering, for a pattern to them who 
 should hereafter believe on Him to life everlasting.' — 1 Tim. i. 16. 
 
 *' ' Fight the good fight of faith, lay Iwld on eternal life.' — Chap. vi. 12. 
 
 " ' In hope of eternal life which God that cannot \\& promised before the 
 world began.' — Titus i. 2. 
 
 " That being justified by His grace we should be made heirs according 
 to Ihe ho})e of eternal life.' — Chap iii. 7. 
 
 " This is t\\ep7vmise that He hath promised us, even eternal life.' I. John, 
 
 ii. 25. 
 
■f 
 
 TKSTIMONIES. 
 
 2()3 
 
 " And this is the record, that Cxod hath given to us eternal life, and 
 this life is in his Son. He that hath the Son, hath life, and he that hath 
 not the Son of God hath not eternal life. These things have 1 written unto 
 you that believe in the name of the Son of God, that ye may know that 
 ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of 
 God. We know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an 
 understanding that we may know Him that is true, and we are in Him 
 that is true even in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and 
 eternal life.' — Chap v. 11 — 13, 20. ' Your life is hid with Christ in God, 
 Christ our life.' — Col. iii. 4. ' Because I live ye shall live also,' — John xiv. 
 19. 
 
 " Why all this — and the Bible has a hundred times more than this r>n 
 the subject — if it be not the purpose of the Spirit to impress upon men, 
 that there is no such thing as immortality except in God's beloved Son, 
 and that the gift of ' eternal life ' to believers in Him is a most marvel- 
 lous honour 1 We, any of us live for evefi ? By our philosophical, 
 poetical, and pagan ' immortality of the soul ' we have simply talked 
 ourselves blind. Surely to live for ever can only be predicated of 
 God, or of one to whom God communicates of His own life. Now this 
 is strictly true. It is really the case that in the new creation in Christ 
 Jesus, we are made partakers of His life ; the ' divine nature ' is im- 
 parted ; we are ' born from above, ' ' born of God, ' ' born again, not of 
 corruptible seed but of incorruptible by the Word of God, which liveth 
 and abideth for ever.' It was to put away sin and to bring in everlast- 
 ing righteousness, and to make us children of God, and to give us this 
 ■wonderful, divine, deathless life, that the Son of God, the eternal life, 
 was manifested among us. Look at the beginning of John's letter. 
 What is this 1 ' That which we have seen and heard declare we unto 
 you, that ye also may have fellowship with us ; and truly our tellowship 
 is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ ; surely there is some- 
 thing here to correct our vain conceptions of man, and to exalt our 
 ideas of God's infinite love ; so far from individual independent immor- 
 tality being an attribute of man as such, it is not even an attribute of the 
 saved. What ; not even Christians partakers of immortality 1 No ; 
 their life as God's sons who shall live for over, is a matter of fellowship 
 with the Fatlisr and the Son ; tliat is to say, they participate in this divine 
 and eternal life in common with the Father and the Son. This is the 
 wonderful and glorious doctrine of the New Testament on this subject ; 
 they are one body of which the life is Christ. It is Christ's life in them 
 hij the Holy Spirit, not their otvn that (jives them immortality. ' I live, yet 
 not I, but Christ liveth in me,' that is the language which each of thom 
 must use if he would speak scripturally on this great subject. Christ 
 came to give ••ternal life to as many as the Father has given Him. but 
 this life is not a grant so given as that each who received it can hence- 
 forth live separate from and independently of Christ the giver. The 
 tiernal life springs in him ; out of that they are constantly sustained ; 
 because He lives, they live ; they are one body in Him, and they enjoy 
 
 if ■i 
 
iin:^ 
 
 
 264 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. , 
 
 the certain prospect of immortality, because He their ' life,' is the glorious 
 Son of God, WHO with the father, only hath immortality. 
 
 " One word more ; w« have throughout this article used the term im- 
 mortality as the equivalent of eternal life, or deathlessness ; but the 
 Oreek word is incorruption — incorruptibility always carrying the idea 
 of perfect purity in resurrection life ; A SINFUL IMMORTALITY BEING AN 
 ABSURDITY AND IMPOSSIBILITY UTTERLY UNKNOWN TO THE WORD OF 
 God. If therefwe it be heterodox to deny the eternity of evil, we accept the 
 epithet irith all its consequences, as we prefer tnith to orthodoxy, and the teach- 
 ing of the Holy iipirit to that of moderii theology." ■ 
 
 The Toronto editor of the foregoing reprint, who is unknown to the 
 compiler of these pages, adds the following remarks, containing much 
 force and truth, and therefore here submitted to the reader. He says : 
 " The prevailing systems of theology, and the general teaching of the 
 day, assume that the theory of Plato, the heathen philosopher, touching 
 the immortality of the soul, harmonizes with the teaching of those ' holy 
 men of God who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.' 
 
 " There is, however, a vital ditference between the one and the other. 
 The immortality of Plato involves the perpetuity of life in sin, atid 
 misery at death ; the immortality of the Bible always connects the per- 
 petuity of life with holiness and happiness, not at death, but after resur- 
 rection. True and accurate conceptions upon this subject are intimately 
 connected with the glory of God and the happiness of man. 
 
 " To the first of the human race our Heavenly Father who ' delighteth 
 in mercy,' manifested His love by casting the shield of His protection 
 over the wayward transgressor, that, having sinned, he should not live 
 for ever, or be immortal in sin and misery. For ' the Lord God placed 
 cherubims and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way 
 of the tree of life,' lest man should 'put forth his hand and take of the 
 tree and eat and live fo)' ever.' — Gen. iii. 22, 24. 
 
 " The hope of immortality thus lost in Eden, has, by the Grace of 
 God, been restored in Christ, who hath brought life and immortality to 
 light through the Gospel. He thus explains how it may be obtained 
 by every sinner ; and all are invited in the Gospel to ' seek for immor- 
 tality.' — Eom. ii. 7. 
 
 " This is life eternal, to know Thee, the only true God and Jesus 
 Christ whom Thou hast sent '. — John xvii. 3. ' He that loveth not, 
 knoweth not God, for God is love.' — John iv. 8. 'This is the love of 
 God that we keep his commandments.' — 1 John v. 3. Eternal life, or 
 immortality is, therefore, inseparably connected with the true knowledge 
 of God and Christ, and that love and obedience which are its fruits. 
 
 " The prevailing current of error upon this subject is truly lamentable ;for, 
 while dishonouring to God, it is desti-uctive to man. Abrogating the ordinary 
 meaning of our language, it gives false conceptions of God, and makes death 
 mean lije ; the delighting in mercy, delighting in misery. Phrases which 
 are nut found in the Word of God, such as the ' immortal soul,' &c., are 
 applied to all men, and ' everlasting agony ' is irrationally associated with 
 
MAiaMMiMiK^ 
 
 ■f 
 
 TESTIMONIKS. 
 
 2()f> 
 
 everlasting death, which is the everlasting cessation of life. Yet ac- 
 cording to the Word of God, ' the dead know not anything.' " 
 
 " ELPIS ISRAEL" ON THE (CONSTITUTION OF iMAN. 
 
 lor- 
 
 lesus 
 
 Inot, 
 
 re of 
 
 or 
 
 3dge 
 
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 nary 
 
 leath 
 
 lliich 
 
 are 
 
 rith 
 
 While on a visit to England, his native land, watching the event* 
 transpiring on the Continent of Europe during the memorable year. 
 1848, Dr. Thomas, from whose writings so much has been herein quoted, 
 wrote and published the first edition of his very valuable exposition i>t 
 the Bible, " Elpis Israel," or "The Hope of Israel," in which he dis- 
 <'Ourses at considerable length on the origin, organization, and nature of 
 man, as a mortal and finite being, in his relation to life, death and im- 
 mortality. A careful perusal of that work is earnestly recommended to 
 the reader. — (C.) 
 
 In 1850, certain persons in the City of Glasgow, Scotland, applied to 
 the Doctor, through a Mr. Greenless, one of their number, for fnrthei' 
 light or explanation respecting some portions of the book, which it 
 would appear, they did not fully comprehend. 
 
 The explanations elicited in reply, are most important and well worth 
 the space they occupy in this compilation. Mr. Greenless, speaking for 
 himself and his Glasgow friends, says : 
 
 " We will first reproduce here in brief, a few passages from your 
 book ' Elpis Israel,' as sources of information, from which we gather 
 your ideas of the constitution of man. In your view of the matter, 
 animal life seems to l)e o. combination oj three dements ; first, the body 
 formed of clay ; second, the vitalizing principle, or neshemet el ; and third, 
 the Ruoch or Spirit, generally found in combination with the foregoing. 
 
 " With regard to the body, you say, on page 32 : 
 
 " But at present we have to do with animal, or natural life, which is 
 all the life the fleshly sons of the first Adam can boast of. Enough how- 
 ever, I think, has been advanced to show the Scriptural import of the 
 text already quoted, that ' the Lord God ' (Heb. Elohim) ' formed man of 
 the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives ; 
 and man became a living soul.' The simple, obvious, undogmatic mean- 
 ing of this is, that the dust was first formed into ' clay' ; which was t\w.\\ 
 modelled by Jehovah Elohim into the form of the soul, called ' man,' as 
 a potter shapes the substance of his vessels. Thus, Elihu said to Jol). 
 ' I also am formed ont of the clay ' ; and again, ' we are the clay, and 
 Thou our potter, and we all are the work of Thine hands.' Tlie fashion- 
 ing of the clay being accomplished in all its component parts, which, in 
 the aggregate, constitute man , that is, the dust being animalized, and 
 then organically developed, the next thing was to set all the parts of 
 this exquisite machine into motion. 
 
 " With respect to the neshemet el, or ' breath of God,' breathing into 
 him ; and as it was the pabulum of life to all creatures formed from the 
 dust, it is very expressively styled, ' the breath of lives ' in the plural 
 number. Some imagine that Jeliovah-Elohim placed His mouth to the 
 nostrils of the clay-cold man-soul, prostrate beneath Him, and so breathed 
 
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 ii WSvi 
 
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 266 THK HI RLE VINDICATED AOAINST MODERN THEOL()(JY. 
 
 into them. Be this as it may ; of this however, we are without doubt, 
 that God breathes into every man at his birth, the breath of lives to 
 this day ; and I see no Scriptural reason why we should deny that He 
 breathed into Adam, as He hath done into the nostrils of his posterity, 
 namely, by the operation of the natural, or pneumatic laws. Hitherto 
 man, though a soul formed from the ground, had been inanimate ; but 
 as soon as he began to respire, like the embryo passing from foetal to 
 infant life, ' he became a LiviN(t soul,' not an ever living soul, but simply 
 nep/iesh chai/iah, a living breathing frame. 
 
 " With regard to the liuach, or Spirit, on page 30 you remark : — 
 
 " From these testimonies it is manifest that the Ruaeh, or Spirit, is 
 all pervading. It is in heaven, in sheol, in the dust of the deepest 
 hrllow, in the uttermost depths of the sea, in the darkness, in the light, 
 .ind in all things animate and inanimate. It is an universal principle 
 in the broadest, or rather, in an illtmitable sense. 
 
 " It is the substratum of all motion, when manifested in the diurnal 
 or ellipsoidal revolutions of the planets, in the Hux and reflux of the 
 sea, in the storm and tempest of the expanse, or in the organism of 
 reptiles, cattle, beasts, fish, fowls, vegetables and men. The atmospheric 
 expanse is charged with it ; but it is not the air ; plants and animals 
 of all species breathe it ; but it is not their breath ; yet without it, 
 though filled with air, they would die. 
 
 " Thus from the centre of the earth, and extending throughout all 
 space, in every direction is the Riuwh Elohim, the existence of which is 
 demonstrable from the phenomena of the natural system of things. It 
 penetrates where the N'eshemet, or atmosphere, cannot. 
 
 " Such " says Mr. Greenlees, : " We think, is man generally considered 
 by you — fiisb made up of dust ; second vitalized by atmospheric air, 
 combined with which is, third, the Ruach, or spirit, an unknown some 
 thing existing everywhere, and in which is the source of all animation. 
 As such, then, there is no difference between him and the inferior ani- 
 mals, beimj all made of dust, vitalized in the sayne waif. Proofs of this 
 are found every where through your first part of ' Elpis Israel,' par- 
 ticularly on pages 28-33. But specifically, there is an essential differ- 
 ence ; in other words, you consider that specific difference to be, the 
 superior phrenological development of num above the inferior animals. The 
 following extracts clearly shew this ; on page 33 you remark that 
 
 " Man differs from other creatures in having been modelled on a divine 
 type, or pattern. In form, and capacity he was made like to the angels, 
 though in nature inferior, to them. Again, on page 34, ' Seth was 
 also in Adam's own likeness.' While image, then, hath reference to 
 form or shape, likeness hath regard to mental constitution, or Capacity. 
 From the shape of his head, as compared with other creatures, it is evident 
 that man hath a mental constitution or capacity which distinguishes 
 him above them all. Their likeness to him is faint. They can think ; 
 but their thoughts are only sensual. They have no moral sentiments, 
 or high intellectual aspirations ; but are grovelling in g'l their instincts, 
 which incline only to the earth. In proportion as their heads assume 
 
TKSTIMONIES. 
 
 2(]7 
 
 lln' hiiniiui form, in tlic, same ratio do tliey excel each other in sagacity ; 
 and, as in the monkey tribe, display a greater likeness to man. But, 
 let the case be rev(!iseu ; let the human head degenerattt from the 
 godlike perfection of the Elohim, the standard of beauty in shape and 
 leatnre ; let it diverge to the image of an ape, and the human animal 
 no longer presents the image and likeness of the Elohim ; but rather 
 the chattering imbecility of the creature most resembling it in form. 
 Adam's mental capacity enabled liim to compreliend and receive spiritual 
 ideas, which moved him to veneration, hope, conscientiousness, the ex- 
 piession of his views, affections, and so forth, 
 
 " Again, on page 79, you remark of the inferior creatures : 
 
 " The propensities enable a creature to propagate its species, to 
 take care of its young, defend itself against enemies, collect food and 
 so forth ; intellect enables it to do thesi; things for the gratification of 
 its sensations ; but when in addition to this, a being is endowed with 
 the sentiments of conscientiousness, hope, veneration, benevolence 
 wonder, iScc, it possesses a spiritual or sentimental organization, which 
 makes it capable of reflecting, as from a mirror, the likeness and glory 
 of God. The appropriate sphere of the propensities is on things sensual 
 and fleshly ; while that of spiritual or sentimentalized intellect is on the 
 things of the spirit of God. 
 
 " Now, thus, far we think we understand and agree with you, at least, 
 that man's body vitalized by the atmospheric, air, ikc. is mortal, or subject 
 to death ; but we are at a loss what to say in regard to the thinking 
 part or what is usually called the mind. We earnestly hope that you 
 will favour us anew with your views on this subject. We are, we con- 
 fess, immaterinlists ; and we have ever considered that the Scriptures 
 countenance this doctrine. We are willing, however, to revise this as 
 well as other things. We will state our difficulty as distinctly as we 
 can 
 
 "To proceed then : the three elements which have already been referred 
 to are called by you ' the flesh.' Now, when, on page 114, you say that 
 the flesh thinks, we are at a loss to know to which of the three ele- 
 ments you allude, since one of them must do so, seeing they are essentially 
 different ? Again, on page 80, you quote Paul's to phroneenui teessarkos, 
 ' the thinking of the flesh,' as proof that the brain thinks, or is the 
 thinking substance. If we are to take this expression absolutely, there 
 is an end to nil reasoning in the matter. The brain truly, is flesh or 
 matter. Doubtless, then, the matter of the body thinks. But motion 
 at least, takes place in thinking. Now, in treating of the liuach (which 
 is certainly not the brain), you say on page 30, that it is the substratum 
 of all motion, whether in animate or inanimte creation. Now we ar« 
 anxious to know how these two statements can be reconciled. Besides, 
 we would like to know also, what you would make of the next clause 
 of the same verse, to phroneema tou pncMmoios, the ' thinking of the 
 Spirit?' If the apostle's sarx, or flesh, be a substance, so must his 
 pneuma, or Spirit, be ; for they are contrasted as causes of certain re- 
 sults. Here, then, are two thinking substances in man. We apprehend, 
 
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 268 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY, 
 
 however, that the apostle is here speaking, not bo much of the thinking 
 substance as of the channels or media through 'which thoughts are 
 effected. W« are at a loss to know why you fix upon the brain in 
 ]iarticular as a corresponding expression for the apostle's sarx, or flesh. 
 The only proof you allege, as far as we can see, is that contained on page 
 114, where you say, quoting the same language, to wit : ' The apostle 
 says that the flesh thinks, to phroneema tees sarkos, that is, the brain 
 thinks, as all who think are well assured from their own consciousness.' 
 Assuredly, I am conscious of thinking; but I am far from being con- 
 scious of the thinking of my brain. Besides, we would like to know if 
 there be not in the New Testament a corresponding expression for tin- 
 Old Testament word Ruach ? One would think that if ' life and immoi- 
 tality were brought to liglit ' in the New Testament, some discoveries 
 might be made there in things which are mysterious in the Old. Are 
 the Ruach and Pneuma not identical ? They are both similarly trans- 
 lated, and for anything that we can see, they are synonymous in their 
 raeaning. Thus, in IT King's, iii. 17, and in Jonah, iv. 8, the word 
 Ruach is translated * wind.' Now I need not quote the passages in the 
 New Testament where pneuma is thus rendered. From testimonies of thi.s 
 kind, are we not entitled to say that they both denote the same agent 1 
 * * * * I must acknowledge, however, that your notions of the 
 Ruach have shed a flood of light on many passages of the Scriptures 
 which hitherto were an enigma. Yet I think you will see cause to 
 modif)' them. In such passages as ' Holy men of Grod spake as they 
 were moved by the Holy Spirit.' What are we to make of the Spirit's 
 indivii' lality 1 
 
 " Greenhill Street, Anderston, 
 "Glasgow, March 4th, 1850." 
 
 W. Grkenlees. 
 
 To the foregoing interesting and pertinent enquiries, Doctor Thoraa.s 
 replied from Richmond, Virginia, in December 1852, as follows : — 
 
 " Although the foregoing epistle from which extracts only are here 
 made (C.) is nearly three years old, the matter it contjiins is as fresh 
 and timely as when originally conceived. Other affairs, which wholly 
 occupied me, left me no leisure for a reply as early as I desired — I there- 
 fore put it aside for a more convenient season. Since then, however, 
 I had lost sight of it, until looking over some old letters recently, it un- 
 expectedly turned up ; and on being re-read, seemed to merit a respect- 
 ful and serious attention. 
 
 " The writer who speaks for others, as well as for himself, has very 
 fairly stated what he and his friends conceive to be the views set forth 
 in ' Elpis Israel ' on the constitution of man. He speaks of his being 
 regarded there as a compound of three elements. 1 should allow this 
 to pass as admitted, if I did not apprehend that the reader might mis- 
 construe the sense in which I admitted the use of the word element as 
 expressive of the views I hold. I do not admit the use of the word in 
 its chemical sense. I do not mean by element that whicli cannot b(^ 
 reduced to any thing more simple than itself. I admit that the Ruach 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 209 
 
 is strictly elementary — a principle that, however it may he diluted, or 
 modified in its manifestations, cannot be resolved by analysis into more 
 simple or elementary matter. But this cannot be said of the body oi' 
 man and the Nesfiemet el. The apostle stylos the former ' vile body,' 
 which is strictly true and this villainousness is attributed to its non- 
 elementary or composite nature ; its constituents being incompatible 
 when the combining influence of the Ruach is withdrawn. 
 
 *' The Nesliemetel, or atmospheric air styled in Scripture ' the breath 
 »)f God,' is also compound, consisting of oxygen, hydrogen, and some 
 carbon. It is evident therefore, that a living man cannot be scientifically 
 composed of three elements ; nor can animal life be said to result from 
 a combination of only three. Elements, then, must be taken with 
 grains of allowance. The subject is animal life or the life of an animal. 
 Without the animal, of course, there can be no animal life. In this sense 
 therefore we may admit that the animal is a constituent, or element, of 
 the life, or existence. But drain from it its blood, and though the body 
 remain undecomposed, there will be no life, though Xeslmmi el or air, 
 and Ruach, or spirit, may abound. Blood, air, and spirit are the elements, 
 or constituents, by whose affinities alone, motion is produced in the 
 organs of the body, though their operation upon the nervous system, 
 which is composed of the brain, spinal cord, ajid sympathetic antl other 
 nerves. This motion is so subtle as to be almost imperceptible, perhaps 
 <|nite so in the matter of thought, where no laesion exists ; at other 
 times very obvious. Motion is the eff'ect of two forces. It is, therefore, 
 a duodynamic eff'ect, and in common parlance, called life, which more 
 strictly speaking, should be applied to the forces, or to thfit which develops 
 or sets the forces free, rather than ' to tlie ordinary phenomena so styled. 
 Nephesh hav bahsahr haddahm hiv ' the soul of the body (is) in the blood 
 itself Nephesh is the Hebrew word for soul ; and hahsahr for body or 
 flesh ; dahm is blood, and baddahm, hi the blood. There can be no mistake, 
 therefore, about the above rendering. Theologists may speculate about 
 the body's soul till they lose themselves in " immaterialism " beyond the 
 skies ; we believe Moses, who was God's interpreter of truth, that the 
 soul of man is in his blood. Jehovah, speaking to him is very explicit 
 upon the subject. Nepliesh, says he, kol halisahr dahmo be napkao hoo,' the 
 soul of all flesh (is) its blood for the soul itself.' And again in the 
 same verse, Nepliesh kol bahsahr dahm hiv, ' the soul of the flesh (is) it-s 
 blood itself.' It is soul makes atonen ^nt for soul ; hence it is written, 
 in the law, haddahm /wo banni'phexh ,,ebiphiHur, 'the blood it expiates 
 for the soul.' — Lev. xvii. 11-14. Wiien, therefore, the blood ot Jesus 
 was poured out from His cross — suspended baltsuhr, or body of flesh, 
 the words of the prophet were fulfilled, merah lamma/weth napliso ' He 
 poured out His soul unto death ' ; and again imtahsivi nhshahm naplisJu* 
 ' verily hissoM/ thou shalt cause to make an expiation.' — Isa. liii. 10, 12. 
 Soul is sometimes used for body or flesh as well as the sense above written ; 
 as lo thcMzoo naphshi h sheol,' thou will not leave my soul in the grave.' 
 But to return : 
 
 " It is manifest that the corporeal element of animal life is blood ; 
 
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 ^ 
 
 IT 
 
 270 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AQAINST MODEllN THEOLOGY. 
 
 an(i that consequently it may be received as an axiom in psychology, 
 that w/iere there is no blood there is no living soul. This compound fluid it 
 is, which acted upon by the air and electricity of our atmosphere, and 
 permeating the minutest tissues, and diffusing itself everywhere through- 
 out the body, is the divinely appointed source of human life. It mat- 
 ters not how much ' immortal soul ' may be imagined to exist in the 
 body — yea, it may be saturated with it— yet unless the brain be duly 
 supplied with arterial blood, there can be no ' thinking of the flesli,' 
 nor can anything be inscribed on the tablet of the heart ; and if with- 
 held a suflicient length of time, motion would cease in all the organs, 
 which would be death. Blood, air, and electricity, then, are the mat- 
 ters from which life is kindled in ' all flesh.' They are necessary to con- 
 stitute life, and in this sense I am willing to tolerate the word in the 
 statement of what \ am supposed to teach is revealed iri the Scriptures 
 concerning the constitution of man. 
 
 " I am supposed to say that the Neshemet el, or air is * the vitalizing 
 principle.' This is not an exact representation of my view of the mat- 
 ter. I regard no one natural, simple element as the principle of life. 
 Oxygen alone, diluted, or undiluted with nitrogen ; nor Ruach, or pure 
 Spirit ; nor blood separately considered, is the principle of life. It re- 
 quires all three to vitalize flesh, such as sin's body is composed of. Chem- 
 ical decomposition is the beginning of life, as observed in the phenomena 
 of digestion. By this process, added to respiration, living blood is gen- 
 erated, and becomes the soul, or life of the heart, liver, lungs, brain, and 
 all the parts of the body, which are collectively styled ' sin's flesh.' It 
 is the ' immortal soul ' that vitalizes the body by a sin','le principle — a 
 physiology well befitting the science of Old Kgypt, hut worthy of no 
 respect since many have run to and fro, and knowledge has been in- 
 creased.-- Dan. xii. 4. A child lives by the life-developments of its ma- 
 ternal flesh ; an existence which is continued after birth, not by being 
 born with an immortal vital principal, hereditarily derived, or by the 
 inrush of an immortal Spirit with its first breath, but by the same pro- 
 cess that continues in being, ' the soul of all flcsii,' from man to a mouse. 
 Let the reader take the following remarkable phenonemon as an illus- 
 tration o^ creature -formation, and animal life, the result of adue combina- 
 tion of princijiles according to some unknown e:dsting law to which matter fuis 
 been subjected in the IFisdom of God. I extract the notice from the ' New 
 York Tribune,* where it appealed recently (1851), under the caption of 
 
 " ' Mr. Ukosse's Insects. 
 
 " ' A great deal of discussion has lately taken place in the scientific 
 world in reference to certain experiments of Mr. Crosse, an amateur 
 philosopher, of Somersetshire, England, who was said to have created 
 insects, called the Acarus Crossei. It was a mistake, however, to sup- 
 pose tliat Mr. Crosse claimed the creation of the insects, for he only 
 alleges that he has been enabled to develop insects, under the most 
 singular circumstances. Our TAmerican) Consul at Liverpool, Mr. F. 
 F. Ogden has recently visited the hou»e of the philosopher, and in a 
 

 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 271 
 
 letter to The National Intelligencer, gives thig accouut uf what lie 
 saw : — 
 
 " ' I own to utter incredulity until I had the opportunity of a thorough 
 examination of the process, and a full explanation of the means. No 
 room was left for doubt — no delusion — no self-deception — no favourite 
 hypothesis to be carried out, had any influence in the result. On first 
 witnessing the result, Mr. Crosse would not believe his own senst .s. 
 He locked up his laboratory and took a long walk in the open air to 
 assure himself that he was not labouring under some illusion. On 
 his return he belield the actual living insect in various stages of its 
 formation. The apparatus was prepared for the purpose of producing 
 crystals from the silicate of potash. 
 
 " ' A tubulated retort, with its long end plunged in a glass disli of 
 mercury has a platina wire passing througli it, connected with a negative 
 pole of a weak galvanic battery. Through a neck in the retort, 
 hermetically sealed, another platina wire immersed in the caustic solu- 
 tion communicates with the positive pole. The bulb of the retort is 
 two thirds filled with a most carefully prepared caustic solution of silex 
 and potash. Pure black flints and caustic soda, after being subjected 
 to a white heat are pulverized and melted into a glass which is soluble 
 in distilled water. In this solution no animal life can possibly exist, 
 nor can there in the mercury. The whole was then placed upon a shelf 
 for constant inspection. A gelatinous substance was first observed to 
 have formed around the bottom of th'; positive wire. Then No. 1 made 
 its appearance gradually expanding into Nos. 2 and 3 when flexible 
 filaments were observed — No. 4 began to show animal life, and, after 
 one hundred and forty days watching through all its changes the perfect 
 living insect crawled up tfie wire I Not singly, but in sufficient numbers 
 to dispel all doubt, if any could have existed and prepared for another 
 stage of life. Like our mosquitoes, that emerge from the element in 
 which they are produced, and are drowned in it if they return ; any un- 
 fortunate struggler that missed his hold, immediately perished. The 
 Acarus C''ossei is now known as a distinct species.' " 
 
 On this wonderful occurrence Dr. Thomas remarks ; 
 
 ** Here is the formation of living animals from materials in which animal 
 life could have by no possibility previously existed. A great outcry 
 was raised against Mr. Crosse by the religious world, when the phenb- 
 menon was first announced in the British journals. He was denounced 
 as an atheist for revealing the fact that a physical law existed by which 
 living creatures were producible by galvanism. Mr. Crosse did not 
 affirm that galvanism was the creator ; nor did he claim bo be the con- 
 triver of the law, but simply, the discoverer of its existence. But 
 superstition and fanaticism are without reason as they are regardless of 
 Scripture. Mr. Crosse has doubtless stumbled on the verge of a great 
 fact — on the principle according to which Jehovah Elohim forms living 
 souls from the dust, and waters of the sea. The Ruach, like the gal- 
 vanism in the above process, directed by superhuman intelligence, is 
 formative and life enkindling, no matter what the substance operated 
 
 t 
 
 i 
 
 ii 
 
 .'t-i;:-..! 
 
272 THE BfBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 w's.i 
 
 m 
 
 upon may be ; so that as John observed, ' God is able of these stones to 
 raise up children to Abraham.' He employs means in all He does by 
 Himself and others. These means are laws to a vast extent completely 
 hidden from His creatures. The law of soul-creation from the dust is 
 known only to Jesus, of all the sons of men. The law exists though 
 hidden ; and awaits its application by Him for the resurrection of the 
 dead. Jesus as God's representative will recreate their souls from the 
 flust by God's Spirit. — H. Cor. iv. 4. ' God,' says PauL ' shall make 
 alive your mortal bodies by His Rmich, pneuma, or spirit.' — liom. viii. 
 11. He will not require the mechanical contrivance used by Mr. Crosse 
 to bring the formative Ruach or Spirit into formative and life enkindling 
 contact with their dust. His Spirit directing finger is enough for this. 
 He wills it, and it is done ; not <vithout law or contrary thereto, but in 
 liarmony w \ latent physical principles, whose mode of operation is 
 known only to Him that appointed them, and is prepared and author- 
 ized to apply them. 
 
 *• The formation of a living soul from the dust, called Adam ; and 
 the reproduction of ever living souls from mortal dust by resurrection 
 is demonstrated to the infidel to be possible by Mr. Crosse's insects. He 
 admits the formation of these bij the positive and negative forces of galvan- 
 ism applied to a solution of calcined silicate of potash and soda in con- 
 densed steam, or distilled water. This is wonderful, and the resurrec- 
 tion of the dead is but a similar wonder on a grander scale. That the 
 dead will rise is a matter of testimony ; that they can be raised is de- 
 monstrated ; and how 1 no one is stumbled at who can trace the ' worm 
 Jacob ' to his manhood, the Acarus Crossei from animal nonentity, and 
 believes that ' all things are possible with God,' 
 
 ",My intelligent correspondent confe-sses that he and his brethren aro 
 ' Immaterial ists,' and believes that ' Immaterialism ' is taught or counte- 
 nanced in the Scriptures. But they are not like Immaterialists in gen- 
 eral, for they mix candour and teachableness of mind with their Imma- 
 terialism, 'being willing to revise it as well as other things.' They do 
 not assume that they are infallibly right, and that all who do not assent 
 to their system are mere disciples of French materialism, and recognise 
 neither God, a future state, nor rewards and punishment to come. Thi.s 
 is the antipodes of their theory, though it recognises all these things. 
 ' The truth of the Gospel ' has no affinity with either. 
 
 " This will appear when we consider what the nonentity is, if I may 
 so speak, that passes current under the term * Immaterialism.' 'Vs de- 
 fined by Webster, it signifies ' the doctrine of the existence or state of 
 immaterial substances or things.' Now, if any one can comprehend 
 this, it is more than I can. ' Immaterial ' is defined to signify, not con- 
 sisting of matter, and ' substance,' ' something material, real, solid body, 
 corporeal nature, or matter.' ' Immaterial substance,' therefore, must be 
 a phrase signifying, no matter matter, unsolid solid, incorporeal body, <&c. 
 Now this is a fair specimen of 'words without knowledge ' or positive 
 absurdity. And such ' immaterial substances ' form the idea entertained 
 by immaterialism of ' spiritual beings. It beggars all speech to give 
 
 -*!■ 
 
TE,STrM(JMK.«. 
 
 '27:i 
 
 « mere dead matter S^^^^^^^^ -M.itl.out it. Ki f""f '"^ 
 
 animate flesh thinks T •'"'' '•'^'- ^ '^^rer f.ira ev.'r i '. ?'\ ^''^"^ 
 
 mot.ve which '^oe^tX^''"^^^^^^^^^ '' 
 
 v^ay locomotive fn.m ..,-. V ' '■ *^ "'^t'-'oity. Afan haff . ,' •'' "^''^ 
 
 «^anl or backward win ""f-''^'-^ ''•'^" ''re. at ]f ^"^ '''*^ '■^•'- 
 v^ind. Shew an 1. ^''" ''""'"^^^ of an ov ^ m '^" '"••^^' ^or- 
 and tell h rthTt a rn'r-' '""' "^' * ^''ousa d y;"! /^ ^'^^'^^ity of the 
 
 hundred hor.es ZldLtT "^ ''^'>^ '»''«« '^» Im -r wth ^'"" !^ ^'^'P^ 
 elude that either^ou wl " •"" ^ ^""^™«» road vm h "■'^,'/' '^'^ 
 you were be8id7vouL V '^v. ^"''' '•'•"'^'^'"A,' mCj^ T'^'^ ^""- 
 «ixty miles an ;ror! 'H i, n V *''*^ •'■*^" "r^ could 1''^' '''\ ^''^'^ 
 materialists to say that '.n"''^ ^" ''^ astonisluM-^ to "m ™^'^' ' •^"'*" «t 
 th« 'lust of tlie^,;' , iV? constructed .t hi,- . '' ''-'^ ^" f'"" 
 
 compose the Princin a Vr.ll A" '*'""' '^'"' '>lo^v aw v X "'''"«'■ 
 
 And why not Is'^rL; ^"" ' '^'^•"^'''^^ I^ost or sK *' ^' l"""" ^'an 
 
 to -AhralLm ivom t ts ""7 T^''^'^ ^'-" the S"C'? .^1^ ' 
 galvanic forces from !i'- /''^ Production of jiv ..1° ^' "" '''"'''••«" 
 Jislilled waJer ? Ti1?k""''^ '•''«*'« «f Bo<la u d J T"?;^'« ^y the 
 reasonable tCtsoli.fm!?;"^\'''^?"^^^''''« >-'t 'go ^ f' '^'^^^^-^ "^ 
 
 Butunor, ...a^atter i. . incapable of tho-,.,,. . ,,_ 
 
274 THE tUBLK VINDICATKD A(1AINST MODKUN THVAHAHiY. 
 
 't\ 
 
 \f 
 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 (tre is of moving sixty miles ati hour. When Paul speaks of tlifl ' think- 
 ing of the fl«sh ' it is of orgaiiiz(5<l matter, matter in liviiiK action he 
 affirms the thinking. And so do I. When I use the phnise, ' the flesh,' in 
 sneaking of mind, I mean the hrain, the thinking apparatus set in 
 motion oy the vital forces. The hrain does not originate its own power 
 to think, any more than the railway locomotive its own power to move ; 
 hut they are both so formed, that under an appropriate stimulus, the 
 one can think, and the other run sixty miles an hour. The locomotive, 
 however, cannot regulate its own movements. It requires a hand 
 directed by intelligence. Once started and it would run till its forces 
 were exhausted, or it was arrested by an obstacle it could not overcome. 
 So the brain requires guidance in right thinking by some other influence 
 tiiun the vital forces. Under the mere impulse of these, its thinkings 
 are instinclire, in other v/ords, the actions of the creature are generated 
 by physical impulses spontaneously arising in the organs of the brain. 
 Brain whose Kbres vibrate only under the excitation of natural forces, 
 is incapable of right thinking. Worked after this manner, it is brutish ; 
 its thinking is wrong, and without the admixture of a single spiritual 
 idea ; and, manifested in the actions of the creature, it exhibits to view 
 man in the savage state. This is 'the thinking of the flesh ' in genuine 
 physical manifestiition. Left to itself it runs like the unguided locomo- 
 tive into headlong excess. This is seen in the savage varieties of our 
 race, among whom Paul's to phroneema Urn piviinuitos, or ' thinking of 
 the spirit ' cannot be found. The spirit referred to in that phrase does 
 not exist in them, in tlie sense in which it is so used. If by ' the 
 spirit ' we are to understand the ' immortal soul ' which immaterialif^m 
 plants in all human beings, then there would be no savage, or semi-bar- 
 barous, or unenlightened, ungodly people on earth ; for under that 
 hypothesis the thoughts of all men, women, an<l children, would be the 
 ' thinking of the spirit,' which Paul says is ' life and peace,' as opposed 
 to the * thinking of the flesh,' which is ' enmity against God.' Imma- 
 terialism teaches that what it terms the 'immortal soul,' is ' a purtide 
 of the Divine Essence' and the originator of human thoughts and actions ; 
 for with this ism it is the thinking principle and principle of life ; hence 
 I mmaterialism elevates every man, Indian, Hottentot, New Zealander, 
 Fijii Islander, Patagonian and Thug, into an incarnation of the Deity, 
 which is mere God-blaspheming pantheism. The phrase 'immortal 
 soul,' imports a deathless soul. Now for a soul to be deathless, it must 
 be incorruptible ; and the living thing that is irH^orruptiblo, is r.sseiiti:dly 
 pure, holy and undefiled. Does the reader imagine, that such a soul or 
 ' spirit ' in savage, semi-barbarian, or civilized man, presiding over his 
 thoughts and actions, could co-exist in them with the characters they 
 are known to possess ? Their diabolism triumphantly refutes the im- 
 materialistic notion of man being in any sense immoiwdity incirnate. 
 No ; the principle in his flesh is not a deathless one, but mortal sin ; and 
 hence all the enmity against God, and wickedness in the world from 
 • the thinking of the flesh.' 
 " Our correspondeat says truly, ' If we are to take this expression 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 27o 
 
 Ision 
 
 al)S()lutely, there is an en«l to all reasoning in the matter.' By ' absolutely,' 
 he means tvilhout lirnitntioii, that is, if we are to interpret the phrase ' the 
 thinking of the flesh ' as meaning simply what it says. And why should 
 we not 1 Because, says Mr. Greenlees, in thinking there ia motion ; 
 and you say that the ' liuach spirit ' is the substratum of all motion ; 
 therefore as the Ihiach produces the motion, it must do tlics thinking. 
 This seems to b«'. his argument deduced from what he says. — The Huach 
 doing the thinking thrmigh the flesh is the immaterialistic interpretation 
 of ' the thinkin<; of the flesh ' ; but if so, then what do they mean by 
 ' the thinking of the spirit ] ' These two thinkings are antithetic ; but 
 immaterialism makes them the same ; therefore their results must be 
 identical, which, according to Paul, is not the fact. Immaterialism has 
 no taste for absolute significations ; because they leave no scope for 
 speculation, or ' thinking of the flesh.' I am however, particularly 
 partial to them, because in the thinking of the spirit of God, they 
 remarkably abound. 
 
 " I have indeed said that ' the Riiach is the substratum of all motion.' 
 But by ' substratum ' is meant ' that which supplies the basis in which 
 are inherent the qualities from which motion results under certain con- 
 ditions.' But without the blood and tlie air the RiMch would not cause 
 a single fibre of the brain to vibrate a thought ; nor would the blood 
 and the air without the Huach. The substratum of motion in flesh is, 
 indeed, made up of these three ; and, under the influence of their 
 resultant the liver secretes bile, the'stomach gastric juice, and the brain 
 thinks. The resultant does not form the thinking any more than it 
 does the secreting of bile and gastric juice ; yet without it all three 
 operations would cease From this it will be seen that there are no 
 diversities of statement to reconsider. 
 
 ",The thinking of the spirit ' is a divine superaddition to ' the thinking 
 of the flesh.' The latter is common to all men and beasts, in a greater 
 or less degree of perfection ; while the former is peculiar to the prophets 
 and apostles ; and the saints of the living God. This is the reason why 
 there is so much diversity between true believers and the world. The 
 world's mind is the tmenlifllitened thmkintj of sin's flesh, the propensities 
 being ascendanl ; while tluvt of the true believer is thinking which resulU 
 from the understanding and earnest belief of the things of the spirit of God, 
 In this case, the intellect is enlightened, the sentiments elevatecl, and 
 God's truth enthroned. The thinking is then in harmony with that 
 truth ; and as the truth is the spirit's, tlie thinking is the spirit's likewise. 
 This explanation, I hope, will remove Mr. Greenlees * supposition, that 
 I teach there are two thinking substances in man, unless by substance 
 we are to understand the truth, as well ivs t/ie brain. The apostle is 
 certainly not speaking of channels of thought, but of the ■s'oiirces of 
 thought in the believer on the one hand, and the um nlightened man, 
 subject to his propensities, on the other. The spirit-truth is the light, 
 the eye of the brain-body in things divine, as the eye is the light of the 
 same organ in regard to things without. When a man is indoctrinated 
 with it, it is the true light within, which restrains him from running off 
 
 I 
 
276 THK lUBLK VINDICATKD AQArNMT MoDEHN THKOLfKlV 
 
 Ill' 
 
 V 
 
 nil' 
 
 into wiltl exce8H of thought, word and deed ; and uonforniM his thinking 
 to the mind of Ooil. ♦*•**. 
 
 " When a man (hinka, and at the same timt* his brain is in an aching 
 state, h<' iH conscious of thinking with that organ. Ohscrvation uUo 
 proves that the hniin is the thinking suhstance of the body ; for pres- 
 gure upon it susfH^nds all thought and seiiHation. '^ * '^ * Strange 
 that any one shoulil say that 1 confound ' spirit' with 'spiritual liody.' 
 Spiiit has many meanings in Scripture, and one of those meanings is 
 spiriltud bix/y ; as apo hpiou pmumatos, ' from the Lord the Spirit ' ; and 
 ' that which is born of the Spirit is spirit ; ' and again, ' the last Adam 
 was made into a life-imparting Spirit.' But these texts are not imina- 
 terialistic, hence confusion arises in the mind of iinmaterialists, whose 
 idea of spirit is mere incorporeal invisibility. * * * •. It is as 
 absurd to style the immaterial part of man the s/tirihial body, as it is 
 for inimaterialists to attirm that there is any part of man that is ini- 
 inateruiL T find the word spirit used in the Bible for what science 
 styles electricity, galvanism, magnetism, (fee, for mind, natural courage, 
 natural force, life, in.stinct, ambition, apparition, demon, breath, dispo.si- 
 tion, a disea.se, words of trutii, Gt»(l, teaching-unction, angels, the gospel, 
 conscience, &c. Any one may see that spirit is not to be rt ndered by 
 one meiiiiiiig in all tlie texts where it occurs. Its signification must be 
 determined by tiie text and context. Tiiis is the rule F work by, and 
 by its aid 1 find no difliiiiiliy in making .sense of ail the passages where 
 it is foinxl." " Hcrahl of flw Kingdom," 1852, pp. 264, 274. 
 
 So wrote Dr. Tln>mas in 1802, not long after his originality of mind 
 and powerful intellect iuid fairly grasped the great problem of the origin 
 and limite<l continuity of organic life. And to prove how thoroughly 
 ho hud mastered the subject at that early period of his remarkable life, 
 and labours in the elaboiation of Scripture physiology, it is only neces- 
 sary to compare the foregoing with his latest utterances on these sub- 
 jects, when the most carping critic will tail to discover any divergence 
 or discrepancy in view or statement (C.) 
 
 MIND .\NU MA1TKI5. 
 
 Si- J it 
 
 Atomism. The origin and nature of atoms constitute fertile sources of 
 conjecturt! and controversy. The recent utterances of Professor Tyndall 
 have invested these subjects with renewed and increiised importance. 
 While Professor Tyndall, however, in a legitimate spirit of scientific 
 enquiry and research, endeavours to explain the atomic theory in relation 
 to physical creation ; the theologians changing base, attempt to baflle hun, 
 by demanding whether this theory can account for, or lies at the foun- 
 dation of the comi>osition of MIND or THOUGHT, and the diversified 
 passions and feelings of the human soul, evidently ignorant or oblivions, 
 of the declaration of Holy Writ that " in the day of a man's death his 
 THOUGHTS perish." — Psalm cxlvi. 4. The reader will observe that this 
 phase of the subject has been very fully discussed elsewhere in this 
 compilation. The present purpose is merely to lay before him the theory 
 
TKSTIMONIKS. 
 
 277 
 
 iwces of 
 ;"yndaU 
 [)rtance. 
 tientitic 
 l-elatioii 
 klehii", 
 It! foun- 
 jersified 
 llivious, 
 lath Ui8 
 lat this 
 |in this 
 theory 
 
 of the hitti Dr. TIiuiii&h hs to the origin of atoms, and it is confidently 
 suSmitted that no ixatfr tluMiry, nor one more in harmony with the 
 general teaching of the Scripture, has been yet adduced. 
 
 He says: — "That which connects the foca' |)ower of the universe 
 with all created things is 'spirit,' styled in Scrii)ture 'free spirit.' — 
 }V:t1m 11. 12. It is free or uncombineil in space and Klls immensity as 
 thf water fills tin- luisin of the seas. The atoms of all material thing.s 
 are KLKMEN I AL lONDKNNATiOXS of ' free spirit ' connecting the orbs of 
 heaven and all they contain with the gkkat focal power of the 
 t'NlVKlt.SK. It is the principle of cohesion, attraction, form, penetrating 
 and pervading everything. To this universality the Psalmist alludes 
 when he encpures of Yahweh, ' whither shall I go from Thy Spirit 1 
 And whither from Thy face shall I flee ? If I shall ascend the heavens, 
 Thitu art thi're. though I shall .spread down in Sheol (the grave, behold 
 Thue ! I will take the wings of the «liiwn, I will dwell in the utmost 
 end of the sea, moreover there Thy iiand (or power) shall lead me, and 
 Thy right hand shall take hold of mt; ; and I said, surely darkiie.ss shall 
 cover me ; but the night was light about me. Moreover darkness will 
 not conceal from Tliee, but the night as the day will shine ; as the dark- 
 ness so is the light.' — Psalm cxxxix. 7-12. All this is (equivalent to 
 saying that the kathkki'OWEU is omnipresent //// His Spirit. Hence lie 
 needs not to be locomotive to see what passes in the sun, moon, earth 
 and stjirs. His all-pervading Spirit places Him in contemi)orary juxta- 
 position with them all ; so that at one and the same instant, He knows 
 the fall of a sparrow on the i-arth, and any other event, small or great, 
 on the sun. In this way it is, that as Paul told the Athenian idolaters, 
 * He is not far from every one of us.' — .\cts xvii. 27. We are out of 
 Him, and through Him, and in Him, as physical beings. This is 
 equally true of all flesh that breatlu's.'' — J'hanerositi, p. 19. 
 
 Much speculation is being indulged in at the present time, by scienti- 
 fic men, religious and iion I'eligious, and much agitation exists among 
 the churches and schools of theology, in relation to the utterances of 
 Professor Tyndall at the late meeting of the British Association of 
 Science, held in Belfast, on the suiiject of Matter and Mind. Space 
 will only permit a glance at two of the salient points in the Professor's 
 address: — 1st. That matter can think. 2nd. That matter will ulti- 
 mately right itself. When Professor Tyn<lall says that matter can 
 think, he speaks, whether intentionally or not, in harmcmy with the 
 teachings of Scripture ; with the statement of the Psalmist in Psalm 
 cxlvi. ver.se 4, that when a man dies, " His breath goeth forth, he re- 
 turneth to his earth, in that very day his l/iou<ihts perish " — clearly in- 
 dicating that when the brain ceases to act, or to evolve thought, tiie 
 man's thoughts perish, or come to an end, just as the power generated 
 in the boiler of a locomotive comes to an end when the fire in the fur- 
 nace dies out. Also with the statement of John the Baptist (Matt. iii. 
 9 ; Luke, iii. 8,) " I say unto you that God is able of these stones to 
 raise up children unto Abraham." 
 But when Professor Tyndall invests matter in the abstract with in- 
 
 i 
 
 ; 
 
27H THK HIHLK VINDKJATKD AOAINST MODKHN THKOLOUT. 
 
 n 
 
 iiatti Hcntient (|iialitie8, uikI attributcH tu mattor inlierent occult powers 
 Ity which it can ultimately right itself, that is to say, of course, to place 
 itself, iiulependently of any external, or higher power, in harmony with 
 the requirements pertaining to perfection, whetlier as regards essence or 
 t|uality, and the powers or objects of enjoyment, then he places himself 
 in antagonism to Revelation, puts the clay in the place of the potter, 
 and exalts matter in the stead of (iod. 
 
 The truth is, that in this, as in respect to all other questions of an 
 important nature, whether pertaining exclusively to the world of science 
 or to the world religious, or whether partaking partly of the one, and 
 partly of the other, the earnest sincere enquirer, who can shake oft' the 
 trammels of prejudice, will find that the truth lies between existing ex- 
 tremes — between the speculations and theories of the non-religious man 
 of science on the one hand, and the narrow minded, bigoted, religious 
 zealot, on th(^ other. 
 
 One would imagine, that in this enlightened age, so called, when so 
 many run to and fro, the increase of knowledge would enable men to 
 .see the wonderful harmony existing between the two Great Books that 
 liave come down to us from the hands of the same Divine author — 
 the Book of Creation and the Book of Kevdation. The chief obstacles 
 to the perception and acknowledgment of this harmony, exist princi- 
 pally, if not entirely, on the part of the Theologians of past and present 
 times, who have introduced, and who hold, false interpretations of 
 Scripture, putting it, so to speak, out of joint, in the minds of men who 
 have accepted these false interpretations, with that other Book, the 
 liook of Creation ; and leading thinking men, who refuse to accept such 
 interpretations, into open, active, and hostile antagonism to the entire 
 Book of Revelation, with all its heavenly truth — and its all-important 
 teachings. 
 
 If the Theologians only understood, and held, the true interpretation 
 of the Bible, they would not, so often, have to hold up their hands in 
 " holy horror," at the discoveries and conclusions of the man of science 
 or naturalist ; and if the Naturalist, or man of science only understood 
 the Bible in its true import and meaning, he would not experience the 
 difficulties that now exist, and upon which the great mind of Hugh 
 Miller made shipwreck, of reconciling his scientific discoveries and legiti- 
 mately authenticated theories, with the true teachings of that book. 
 As it is, however, the student of the Book of Creation manages to keep 
 closer to the teachings of natural, or creation-truth, than do the Theo- 
 logians in reference to revealed, or Bible Tiiith. (C.) 
 
 For the instruction and guidance of the general reader, the following 
 sensible observations from a quotation made use of by Dr. Thomas, 
 taken from a pamphlet by an English physician, entitled '* An enquiry 
 into the existence of a pereonal devil," are respectfully submitted : — 
 
 " Sound thinking, that is, well cultivated and well directed common 
 sense, applied to the discovery of Truth either natural, or revealed, has 
 followed the rule, that nothing ought to be believed as true unless its 
 
TKSTFMONIKH. 
 
 27f) 
 
 ition 
 
 Is in 
 
 lence 
 
 ktood 
 the 
 [ugh 
 pgiti- 
 book. 
 [keep 
 rhco- 
 
 dng 
 kmas, 
 luiry 
 
 liuoa 
 
 has 
 
 b its 
 
 truth uuit he (lemoiiHtrated hy an appeal to the facts recordoil in the 
 Huok of Creation, or to the Book of U«'velation. 
 
 "The Naturalist, that iri, the stiulent of the traths written in tiic 
 liook of Creation, says : 'To the Hook of Creation, if any man spoak 
 not according to this book, it is becauso there is no liglit in him.' 
 
 " The S|)iritualiHt, that is, the student of the truths writttMi in the 
 Book of Revelation, says : 'To the Law and to the Testimony ; if they 
 speak not according to this word, it is berause there is no light in 
 tiiem.' — Isa viii. 20 
 
 " Rigid adherence of late years by the Naturalists to the above rule 
 in reference to the sidyect of natural or creation- written trutl>, has 
 oeen the cause of imraense progress in Natural Science ; ami is it not, 
 without any improper presumption, to be inferred, that a similar rigid 
 adherence to this rule in matters relating to tlie spiritual, Bible-written 
 truths, in other words, in matters relating to tin* morai an<l religious 
 condition of man, will be attended with eqinil progn'ss ? 
 
 "It is a lamentable fact, that in this matter of ligitl adherence to 
 this rule of truth — investigation and truth — denujustration, ' the chil- 
 <lren ' who ntudy the truth of the natural world, are far i»i advance of, 
 and are ' wiser in their own generation tlian are the ciiildren ' who 
 •tudy the things of the spiritual world. 
 
 " It is from this cause that sucli diversities of opinion prevail among 
 professing Christians ; an evil not to be remedied, as some would remedy 
 it, by .squeezing all men's mimls into one uinversal square, impmlently 
 called, flic mindoj the church; or as Milton describes it, the patent uniform- 
 ing proce.ss, ' starching them into the stiffness of uniformity by tradition.' 
 This is not the method ; but the only method is to establish as binding 
 upon all Christian enquirers the rule already recordetl, that ^ nothituj in 
 npiritiial mntkrs oiujht to be believed (is tnit unless its frulh can be demon- 
 strated by an appeal to tlie original Sciijdures, and this to the satisfaction of 
 rvenj well constituted, truth-hwing mind.' 
 
 " This rule once generally recognised and practically carried out, will 
 make the candid and ingenuous all of one mind ; will establish uni- 
 formity, the true uniformity of belief, one founded on the conviction, 
 and not on the suspension, of the under.-itanding. 
 
 " Sincere menof science are of onemind in regard to chemical, mechani- 
 cal; and mathematical facts ; this oneness having been arrived at by 
 rigidly adhering to the prescribed rule in stmlying the Book of Crea 
 tion. What, then, is there in spiritual subjects to prevent uumi pursu- 
 ing Revelation — recorded truths, arriving at a similar oneness of mind 
 in regard to those truths, recorded by the same Divine miiitl, and guided 
 by the same God of order, as dictated the other book of in.stniction ? 
 
 " Let us then take this ride as our guide, holding the principle that 
 Revelation being 'information from God,' being a truth-discoviuy, its 
 truths are therefore for discovery, and that these truths are to be dis- 
 covered with a certainty as great as that connected with the creation- 
 truths." 
 
 In relation to the foregoing observations, Dr. Thomas says : 
 
280 THE IMIthK VINDICATKI) AOAINiST MODKUN THKOLOGY. 
 
 
 is')- 
 
 " Tile populni' fiiiicu'8 in relation to certain rcctMvofl religious dogmas 
 are all of one and the same visionary origin — the phroiieema ton sarkos, 
 IHK THINKING OF THK FLKSH, icmied in the coninutn version, 'tfw 
 cdrntil mind,^ which Paul avers is enmity against God and unsnbject to 
 His law. — Rom. viii. 7. Hence its thoughts are not God's thoughts ; 
 •iiid its conclusions, in every paiticular, are at variance with His. S^ow 
 me an opinion, a principle, or an article ot faith originated by the carnal 
 mind, oi- agreeable to it, and 1 will prove it to be false by the law and the 
 testimony of God. ('reation's book, interpreted theologically by specu- 
 lators ignorant of the ideas revealed in 'the orach's of God,' the words of 
 the Prophets and Apostle.s, is the source of all the foolish notions which 
 have perverted the public mind in regard to religious subj.'cts. We 
 must purge ourselvf^s from these upon all topics if we would bring our 
 thoughts into harmony with the thoughts of God." 
 
 In addition to these rennirks, so appropriate, it may further be ob- 
 iiorved. that while it must be clear to every man who thinks understand- 
 ingly, and fiom correct kiiowleflj^e of the teachings of Scripture, that 
 mankind will attcain, througli scientific discovery, to a degree of know- 
 ledge far in advance of what we now possess, including, no doubt, more 
 thorough and more accurate knowledge in reference to the nature of 
 man, matter, an<l mind, it must be equally obvious that mankind in 
 this state of being can never attain to a full knowledge of the origin 
 and natun^ of our race. Human pridi!, human ambition and conceit, 
 could not well, or profitably, bear such knowledge. In the meantime 
 we know that we make our appearance here without being consulted in 
 the mattei' — that on attaining our powers of reflection and observation, 
 we find ourselves placed in circumstances, and surrounded by influences, 
 in reference to which we have had no choice, and over which we have 
 no control — prominent among these, sin and death, bearing away the 
 race to which we belong, as with a flood— that the Great Fatiier- 
 Creator, whom we could not by searching find out, having revealed 
 Himself to man in His Word, hath made known unto us in that Word 
 His plan and purpose in reference to this earth and race — and that in 
 the seemingly adverse circumstances in which we find ourselves placed, 
 we find in tlie same revelation of His Will, that in His mercy and good- 
 ness, knowing the end from the beginning, He hath devised a scheme 
 of redempticMi from death, ami salvation for man, in every way adapted 
 to man's exigencies and requirements, which He off'eis, upon conditions 
 fully set forth — and further hath made known to us, in minute detail, 
 the way by whijh we may attain to this salvation, become constituents 
 of His glorii>us name, and participants in the destiny He hath in store 
 for this planet and the saved of this race. What more should we re- 
 quire here in this mere state of probation, seeing, from the declaration 
 of the Apostle Paul, "that eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither 
 hath it entered into the heart of man to conceive," the glorious con- 
 dition of things which shall obtain hereafter, prominent among which, 
 we may imagine will be, a knowledge of those things in reference to our 
 present state of being which we do not now understand, and of the 
 
TKSTI MONIES. 
 
 281 
 
 hiiMen laws of creation, affecting this Hystom of ours, which are, at pvf- 
 sent, beyond our reach and ken. (C) 
 
 iWit to return. Fnun the multitude of articles which have appeared 
 in the secular atid religious newspapers atid periodicals in reference to 
 Professor Tyndall's Belfast deliverance, the following are here given, 
 space forbidding more copious quotations. 
 
 The first is from the Scie'-tific Ainerimn, the editor of which discourses 
 after the fttUowing manner, under (he caption of 
 
 )rd 
 in 
 
 led, 
 
 hue 
 ted 
 ms 
 
 Ints 
 iro 
 
 ion 
 ber 
 
 bur 
 the 
 
 "CANDLK FLAMES AND STKRAK8 OF CLOUD. 
 
 " Professor Tyndall ends his most suggestive address as President of 
 tlic British Association with a half regret that he must quit a theme too 
 great for him to handle, but which would be handled by the loftiest 
 minds ages after he and his hearers, like streaks of morning cloud, had 
 melted into the infinite azure of the past. 
 
 "With what had previously been said still ringing in their ears, 
 this simple figure must have carried to those that heard it a deeper 
 meaning than it would seem to bear when standing alone. At another 
 linie, or coming from another speaksr, the words might be taken to 
 imply no more than the prospect of human forgetfulness, the oblivion 
 in which the names and deeds of so many human generations have been 
 lost , but in Prof. Tyndall's system the failing memory of man forms no 
 part of the ' infinite azure ' to which all human kind arc hastening. 
 Indeed the immortality of fame is endless in contrast with the speedy 
 dissolution that awaits us when the environment masters the organism 
 which alcne determines the activities that make us what we are. 
 
 " The cloud melts and disappears, not to continue a ghostly existence 
 ill another world of immaterial sky and cloud, as savages have imagined, 
 but to cease utterly and foiever as that particular cloud, while its dis- 
 severed elements remain to form other combinations, to assume other 
 forms, to perform other functions, in the ever changing sky and earth. 
 
 " So man, equally the product of molecular activity, ' derived in his 
 totality from the interaction of organism and environment through 
 countless ages past,' may or may not make himself a ccjnnecting link in 
 the chain of organisation and thereby impiess his personality upon the 
 fiitui-e ; but whether he does or does not, his individuality ends with the 
 phy.sical frame which gave it being : a product of mattyial conditions, he 
 (eases to t xist when death puts an end to those conditions, ami fades 
 into the 'infinite azure,' not lost, but no longer an integral part of the 
 Universe. 
 
 " it is a striking commentary on the limitations of liuiuan thought 
 that j)recisely the same conclusions were arrived at by the path of ex- 
 perimental philosophy in India thousands of years ago by pure conU'm- 
 plation. The theology of India was underlaid with pantheism. In the 
 Vedas — those books of incalculable antiquity — God is the material as 
 well as the cause of creation, ' the clay as well as the potter.' Later, 
 the ' clay ' took on the attributes of the ' potter,' and became the motor 
 
 
 
282 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 as well as the matter of the Universe. Centuries before Democritus 
 conceived the existence of atoms, or Lucretius detected in the potency 
 of matter the sufficient cause of all things, without the help of the god>s, 
 the school of Canade had developed an atomic system as comprehensive 
 as that which Professor Tyndall, with the rest of the modern scientific 
 world, holds to-day. By the unaided concurrence of atoms, those dusky 
 scholars explained every phenomenon, mental as well as physical, ari- 
 mals, men and gods. 
 
 " But this was not the highest reach of Indian thought, for the con- 
 templatioji of matter endowed with ' the promise and potency of every 
 form and quality of life,' to that of pure force without any association of 
 substance, the step is long but inevitable. Faraday took it when he con- 
 ceived of a body not as an aggregation of substantial atoms but as an 
 assemblage of ' points of force.' In like manner Gotama, the founder 
 oPBuddliism, took it, basing his system wholly on the idea of force. Jn 
 other respects, his views of man and Nature are in philosophisal accord 
 with those which underlie the last results of modern science. His 
 fundamental principle is the supremacy of force. He exerts an impell- 
 ing power in the Universe, a self-existent and plastic principle, but not 
 a self-existent, eternal, personal God. He rejects enquiry into first 
 causes as being unphilosophical, holding that finite minds are capable of 
 dealing with phenomena alone. Like the modern scientist he denies 
 the interposition of any such agency as Providence, maintaining the 
 omnipotence of law. Equally opposed is he to the possibility of chance, 
 saying that what we call chance is but the effect of an unknown, un- 
 avoidable cause. 
 
 " When called on to account for the spirit of man, whence it comes 
 and whither it goes, the reply, in oriental imagery, calls up the flame of 
 a lamp, and asks in what obscure condition it lay before it was kindled, 
 and what bec(>mes of it when it is blown out ? 
 
 " Translated into terms of modern science, Gotama's answer is as one 
 with Professor Tyndall's. The flames of our Slightly lamps, the streaks 
 of morning cloud which warns us to put them away, are alike fleeting 
 products of physical conditions, temporary manifestations of molecular 
 force. Their end is extinction ; but their effects are factors of future 
 events. 
 
 " ' When a fire is extinguished, can it be said that it is here or that 
 it is there ■? ' replies the philosopher Nagasena to King Milinda, when 
 asked whether the all-wise Buddha still exists. 'Even so our Buddha 
 has attained extinction. It cannot be said that he is here or that he is 
 there : but we can point him out by the discourses he delivered. In 
 them he lives.' 
 
 " Science has no further word to offer." 
 
 PKOF. TYNDALL IN A NUTSHELL. 
 
 "Prof. Tyndall's laborious address to the British Association may 
 be readily summed up by a simple restatement of a very old argument. 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 283 
 
 An egg contains all the material necessary to form a chick. It holds 
 also, for a time at least, the force requisite to construct the animal out 
 of its component elements. The only thing needed is to set the forma- 
 tive process in action by the application of another form of force or 
 motion called heat. But this last must be supplied from without. The 
 sum of Prof. Tyndall's researches is precisely analogous. He finds in 
 matter ' the promise and potency of every form and quality of life,' just 
 as the naturalist and the organic chemist find the organic materials of a 
 chick, and the promise and potency to form one, within the eggshell. 
 But neither the philosopher nor the experimentalist can go one step 
 beyond the facts. They are wholly unable to explain the something 
 from without, in whose absence neither an eggt'ul nor a world of life 
 can be called into a palpable existence. This is the point at which 
 philosophy again arrives — the old point at which it has been arriving by 
 various paths ever since the first effort to penetrate an inscrutable mys- 
 tery. The Egyptians symbolized the difficulty, and their inability to 
 surmount it, by offering the mysterious egg reverently to their gods. 
 They laid the unsolved problem of the finite at the feet of the Infinite. 
 Prof. Tyndall and the British Association might learn wisdom, without 
 humiliation, from the ancient idolators, and emulate their not ignoble 
 submission." — London Globe. 
 
 So that it plainly appears that the views enunciated by Professor Tyn- 
 dall are not new. Indeed, it is quite evident that the question as to 
 the nature and destiny of man has been fully discussed in all its phases, 
 in ancient, as well as in modern times. The next extract is from the 
 London Spectator, a prominent organ of public opinion in England. 
 Under the following caption it says : — 
 
 
 'PROFESSOR TYNDALL AND THE RELIGIOUS WORLD. 
 
 lia 
 
 " The spirit in which Prof. Tyndall's address, at the recent meeting 
 of the British Association, has been met by the religious press and by 
 leaders in the religious world, is highly creditable to them. Either they 
 discussed his position with philosophical calmness and with considerable 
 force of logic, or they have frankly said, ' This is not our question ; it 
 is a question of science, and we leave scientific men to discuss it and 
 inquire into it ; to us the evidence of the genuineness of the Bible- 
 revelation is perfect, and by that we stand.' Prof. Tyndall having ad- 
 mitted the necessity of satisfying the religious yearnings of human na- 
 ture, they very reasonably ask him what there is in his philosoph.y to 
 satisfy these yearnings. This is a question which Prof. Tynda'l will 
 find it very difficult to answer. His cultured intellect may for aught wi^ 
 know find a fulness of satisfaction in studying nature and her ' secret 
 meaning in her deeds,' but that will not satisfy the common want of 
 human nature. That want springs from a belief in the immortality of 
 the soul, and that its weal or woe in a future state will be determined 
 by the life led in this world. Nothing that stops short of meeting the 
 case will satisfy the want of human nature, which Prof. Tyndall admit!* 
 
 
 n 
 
 ■\i-i 
 
284 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 it ' 
 
 
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 1.- 
 
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 11 
 
 'II 
 
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 1*1 
 
 M.^ 
 
 
 must be satisfied. It must be confessed we think that there is little 
 hope that the inquiry in question will lead to anything conclusive on 
 this point. Back to the dawn of recorded thought, men have V>een peer- 
 ing into the ' unseen world,* not merely as a matter of curiosity, but 
 with deep earnest purpose to solve the problem of life, but they have 
 peered in vain, and we fancy Prof. Tyndall is as far from the ' work- 
 shop of the destinies ' as any of his predecessors. Either lievelation 
 has to be accepted, or we may at once adopt the short, sharp logic of 
 Herbert Spencer, which leads us front to front with an insoluble mys- 
 tery, a Beyond concerr.l.ig which we may vaguely speculate, but of 
 which we can know nothing certain." 
 
 To the unprejudiced, unbiassed, honest mind, prepared to accept the 
 Scriptures as a Revelation from God, setting forth His mind and will. 
 His plan and purpose, regarding our race and this plauet we inhabit ; 
 wlio is willing to read the Book of Creation in the light of the Book of 
 R(!V6lation and of true science, which must harmonize, proceeding as 
 tliey do from one Divine source, it must be quite obvious, that if the 
 theologians understood and received the Bible in its own true meaning] 
 and if they would accept the discoveries and teachings of true science ; 
 and if the men of science who devote so much time, talent and industry 
 to the study of the Book of Creation, would receive and accept the 
 Bible in its plain, evident teachings, literal and figurative, the latter con- 
 strued by the former, according to the grammatical construction of lan- 
 guage, there would be little room left for vain, unprofitable and sensa- 
 tional speculation and theorizing in reference to religious doctrine, and 
 scitjntific investigation and discovery. 
 
 The testimony of Scripture in relation to the facts of creation, is 
 plain, pointed and comprehensive, although the mode or manner is not 
 described ; and here we must rest satisfied with the declaration of Holy 
 Writ which says that " secret things belong unto the "^-ord our God, but 
 tiio tilings that are revealed belong unto us and to our children." — Deut. 
 xxix. 29. In this respect, as in other rr.<*cters, while we are to be wise 
 u]t to that which is written, we are not to be wise above that which is 
 written. 
 
 The Scriptures teach us that finite man cannot find out God who is 
 infinite, and experience teaches us that although the Book of Creation 
 must be the work of an Almighty intelligence, yet neither from the sky, 
 tlie sea, nor the mountains, nor from any aspect of nature, can we know 
 what He is. He had to reveal Himself. He had to reveal His purpose. 
 This knowledge He communicated through holy men of old, who spake 
 as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (II. Peter i. 20), or as David, 
 one of the inspired mediums of communication, says (II Sam. xxiii. 2) : 
 " The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue." 
 The Apostles were inspired men, and believers in the apostolic age also, 
 exercised the powers of the world to come. — Heb. vi. 4, 5. And Paul 
 distinguishes his utterances " by permission " from those which were of 
 commandment. — I. Cor. vii. 6. 
 
 Paul then tells us (Romans xi. 36), that " nut (ek) of Deity and through 
 
 
 imi-- 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 285 
 
 In 
 
 :)f 
 
 Him, and to Him, are all things." Also (I. Cor. viii. 6), " Per to us 
 there is but one God, the Father, out (ek) of whom are all things, and 
 we by Him ; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and 
 we by Him." To this the mere Atheistical materialist replies : " Oh 
 yes I God is mattter and matter is God." But it does not by any 
 means follow that although all things including matter, as we under- 
 stand that word, are out of Him, that He is such matter, or that matter 
 constitutes Him ; for we read in another place (Psalm xxxiii. 6), " By 
 the word of the Lord were the heavens made, and all the host of them 
 by the breath of His mouth : He gathereth the waters of the sea toge- 
 ther as an heap ; He layeth up the tlepth in store houses. Tjct all tlie 
 earth fear the Lord ; let all tho inhabitants of the world stand in awe of 
 Him. For He spake, and it was done ; He rommande'/, and it stood fast." 
 Paul, in Hebrews xi. 3, makes use of similar language ; "Through faith 
 we understand that the worlds were framed by the W(yrd of God, so that 
 things which are neen, were not made of things which do appear." And 
 if not made of things which do appear, then it must follow that they 
 were made of things which do not appear, evidently bearing out the 
 idea set forth in another part of this compilation that the wonderful 
 agent electricity underlies all visible tangible matter, and that by the with- 
 drawal of those laws by which the wliole, under Deity, is held together, 
 what we call matter would resolve into its original component elements, 
 invisible and intangible to man. Surely it will not be contended that tl»e 
 intangible elements constitute God, or that the intangible elements con- 
 sist of God, although they do exist by Him. As well at once say that 
 the clay is the potter, because the potter is clay — clay being his sub- 
 stance, because made of the dust of the earth. But even this idea falls 
 infinitely short of illustrating the relation of matter to Deity, because 
 He forms alike the clay and the potter. 
 
 In considering the commencement of the Bible, one is struck by the 
 authoritative, and seemingly abrupt and uncontradictable manner and 
 matter of the first verse ; — " In the beginning God created the heavens 
 and the earth." How awfully solemn, how majestically impressive the 
 declaration ! The humble, earnest believer, hears in it, louder than tiie 
 doubts and denials of the outsj)oken infidel materialist, and the more 
 guarded expressions of the man of science, the august language of 
 Omnipotent command, recorded in another place ; — " Be still ! and 
 know that I am God !" In divers other portions of the sacred volume 
 do we find the creation of the earth ascribed to (Jod by inspired men ; 
 but through them acd to them Reasserts the work to be His. In rea- 
 soning with, and reproaching, (Job chap, xxxviii. 1), He says ; — " Who 
 is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge 1 Gird up 
 now thy loins like a man, for I will demand of thee and answer tiiou 
 m(!. Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth f de- 
 clare if thou hast understanding. Who laid the measures thereof if 
 thou knowest ? or who hath stretched the line upon it 1 Whereupon 
 are the foundations thereof fastended 1 or who hath laid the corner 
 stone thereof, when the morning stars san«r toeether and all the sons of 
 
 11 
 
 !, 'I 
 ''I 
 
 ► &i 
 
28*J THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 (iod shouted for joy 1 Or who shut up the sea with doors, when it 
 broke forth as if it had issued out of the womb. When I made the 
 cloud the garment thereof, and thick darkness a swaddling band for it, 
 and established my decree upon it, and set bars and doors, and said 
 Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further, and here shall thy proud 
 waves be stayed," and so on. Afjuin in Isaiah, chap. iv. 25, 26, the 
 spirit says. " To whom will ye liken me, or shall I be equal 1 Saith 
 the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high and behold who hath created 
 these, that bringeth out their host by number ; He calleth them all by 
 names, by the greatness of his might, for that lie is strong in power ; not 
 one faileth." And in Jeremiah li. 15, " The Lord of Hosts hath made 
 the earth by his power. He hath established the world by His wisdom, 
 and hath stretched out the heavens by His understanding, when He 
 uttereth His voice, there is a noise of waters in the heavens, and He 
 causeth the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth ; He maketh 
 lightnings with rain, and bringeth forth the wind out of His treasures." 
 Also in Zechariah xii. 12, "The Lord stretcheth forth the heavens, 
 and layech the foundation of the earth, and formeth the spirit (or 
 breath) of man within him." So also in Actxiv. 15, Paul and Barnabas 
 being at Lystra, when the priest of Jupiter would have offered sacrifice 
 to them, said, " Sirs, why do ye these things t we also are men of 
 like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from 
 these vanities unto the living God which made heaven and earth, and 
 
 the sea, and all things that are therein and gave us 
 
 rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, filling our heaics with food and 
 gladness." Again, Paul, Komans i. 20, says : — " For the invisible things 
 of Him, (God) from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being un- 
 derstood by *he things that are nuide " (that is, evidently, things made 
 visible and tangible out of elements, which previously had been invisible, 
 and intangible). And again. Col. i. 16, 17, "For by Him were all 
 things created, that are in heaven, and that arc in earth, visible and 
 
 invisible all things were created by Him and for Him ; 
 
 and He is be/ore all things and by Him all things consist," agreeing 
 with John i. 1,3, " In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos 
 was with Theos, and Theos was the Logos. All things were made by 
 Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made." Also 
 in Isaish xlv. 12, "I (the Lord) have made the earth, and created 
 man upon it ; I, even my hands have stretched out the heavens, and all 
 their host have I commanded." And in Psalm cii. 25, " Of old hast 
 thou (God^ laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the 
 work of thy hands." This passage we find Paul quoting entire in the 
 letter to the Hebrews, chap. x. and in the eleventh chapter of the 
 same letter, verse 3, he tells us how we are to understand this ; he 
 says ; " through faith we understaml that the worlds were framed by the 
 word of God, so that things ivhich are seen were not made of things which 
 do appear." So we see that even inspired men did not know or under- 
 stand from demonstration, /wtv this came about ; and had to rest satis- 
 
 i 
 
TESTIMONIES. 
 
 287 
 
 [in\; 
 
 ig 
 
 jgos 
 
 by 
 
 ited 
 all 
 iast 
 the 
 the 
 the 
 he 
 ithe 
 h,ich 
 Ider- 
 itis- 
 
 fied as we should and raust do, taking God's word for it. Tlie " How " 
 we do not, cannot know. 
 
 Deity has l)een plea.sed liowever, to condescend to enlighten us to 
 some extent as to the "WHY ? " By the mouth of the Prophet Isaiah. 
 — xlv, 18. " For thus saith the Lord that created the heavens; God 
 Himself that formed the earth and made it, He hath established it. He 
 created it not in vain. He formed it to be inhabited. I the Lord and 
 none else." And so far from His purpose being to destroy the earth at 
 the coming of Christ, as so many teach and believe, we find (Isa. xlix. 
 8), that an important part of the mission of Christ, at His now near ap- 
 proach is " to establish the earth, and to cause the desolate places to be 
 inhabited." 
 
 These testimonies should suffice not only to convince the infidel or 
 atheist, that there is an Omnipotent Intelligence behind the work of 
 creation, but should also satisfy the honest man of science, that rightly 
 understood the Bible, or Book of Revelation is not out of harmony with 
 the Book of Creation, which we behold — but in beautiful accord with 
 
 In his defence, in the course of a lecture on crystalline and mole- 
 cular forces, Professor Tyndall, while, so far as can be ascertained, re- 
 fraining from any positive assertion of a creative Intelligence, energy or 
 Power, thus negatively admits so much. Speaking of Atoms, he says : — 
 
 " The way in which these Atoms build themselves together is to me 
 perfectly astonishing. You have here a play of power as wonderful as 
 the play of vitality itself. And depend upon it, trust me, that the re- 
 velations of science are not in the least degree calculated to lesson our 
 feelings of astonishment. We are surrounded by wonders and mysteries 
 everywhere. I have sometimes — not sometimes, but often — in the 
 spring tide, watched the advance of the sprouting leaves, an<l of the 
 grass and of the flowers, and observed the genial joy of opening life in 
 nature, and I have asked myself this question, can it be that there is no 
 Being or Thing in nature that knows more about these things than I do. 
 Do 1 in my ignorance represent the highest knowledge ot these things 
 existing in the universe 1 The man who puts that question to himself 
 — if he be not a shallow man — if he be a man capable of being pene- 
 trated by a profound thought, will never answer the question by pro- 
 fessing the creed of atheism, which has been so lightly attributed to me." 
 
 It is to be hoped, and greatly to be desired that Professor Tyndall 
 and other eminent men of science, whose great abilities are generally 
 admitted, may in the midst of their scientific labours, devote a portion 
 of their time to the study anew of the Bible, after the manner of the 
 celebrated Sir Isaac Newton, discarding the clerical interpretation and 
 adopting the literal, the only true interpretation, based as it is, and as 
 elsewhere shewn, on the grammatical construction, and ordinary use, of 
 language, and thus confer immense benefit on the cause of truth, scien- 
 tific and revealed. 
 
 But to resume. The Lord God having, as we have seen from the fore- 
 going testimonies, created the heavens and the earth, said Gen. i. 2. — 
 
 i 
 
288 IHK BIBl.K VINDICATK) AGAINST MODKHN THKOLOOY. 
 
 
 t !i 
 
 I' •> 
 
 " Let tliH earth bring forth grass, the herl) yi«'l(Jing seed, ami the fruit- 
 tree yielding fruit aftt^r his kind, whose seed is in itself upon the earth, 
 and it was so." — verse 20. " And God said Let the waters Itring forth 
 abundantly the moving creature that hath lif** and fowl that may fly 
 above the earth in the open firmament of iieaven." — verse 24. " And 
 God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, 
 and cattle and every thing that creepeth upon the earth, an I creeping 
 thing and beast of the earth after his kind, and it was so." — verse 2<'. 
 " And God {Heb. Elohim) said, Let us make man in our image, after 
 our likeness ; and let him have dominion over the flsh of the sea, and 
 over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and 
 over every creeping thing that creepeth upon tl»e earth ; — chap. ii. 7. 
 " And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and 
 breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man liecame a living 
 soul, or a living being, as Dr. Conquest lias it — a living, breathing frame, 
 as elsewhere shewn. Man therefore, is a very groundling as to origin, 
 in common with the inferior creation. The Heijrew name of our com- 
 mon progenitor AD AM, signifying red rhi}/, shews conclu.sively that man 
 was, at the very first, composed of earth-matter, and by the infusion of 
 the "breath of tiie Spirit of Lives," became a living, thinking, sentient, 
 rational being. So that it is ve^y obvious, tliat although matter under 
 Divine manipulation can think, can b(^ made to think, tiiis cannot be 
 said of inert, unvit.ilized dead matter. This seoms very clear from the 
 language of Gen. in. 19 : " In the sweat of thy face shall tliou eat breail 
 till thou KETUK.N unto the ground ; for mU of it toast tlum taken : for dust 
 (red clay) thmi (Adam) art ithat is thy name) and unto dust shalt thou 
 (Adam) return" — which sentence, no doul)t, Adam lli rou;^hly compiv- 
 hended, in all its dread literality, however difficult and impossible this 
 may l)e in the case of the theologians and men ot scienct; in these clos- 
 ing years of the sixth millenary of the history of man. 
 
 The passages of Scripture just juoted, contain glorious, fundamental, 
 and self-evident truths, if men woul<l but receive them as communica- 
 tions from the Great Creator of the universe, respecting the origin of 
 our world and race. Tliese declarations bear no stamp of lium.m origin, 
 or of human inventi(>n. They carry on the face of tlujux the impress of 
 Almighty power — of Omnipotent wisdom and goodness. And if men 
 wouUl but adopt them as the foundations upon which to build their 
 systems of religious investigation, and tlieir theories of scientific re- 
 search and discovery, iheie would be mucli less vain speculation, and 
 much more truth, religious and scientific al)road in the world, because 
 men would l)e relieved from the pressure of that which exercises them so 
 intensely at the present time, namely the " HOW," and the " WHY ? " 
 and would be more exercised in the contemplation of the great purpose 
 of Deity in the creation of this eartli and race ; the glorious destiny He 
 hath in store for both, as revealed in His Word, as elsewhere herein 
 fully set forth ; the manner and means by which that purpose is being 
 steaddy aiul surely accomplished ; an<l the consummation to be brought 
 
 •fl'v 
 
TKSTfMONIES. 
 I>uri„g the pre,.„t ..„, ,,„,,, „ '" """•' 'f '''f') 
 
 he experiment,, „iCf,, ,]^''; f» """tag condensed rewrtj »"'"™'- 
 endency, as being strnnJi ",'''"' »" indication „fff- ""^ '"'"« "'' 
 
 I-ife," and convin! 7™"*,')' corrol»,ative „f .1. '? ""^"' ""ore an.l 
 the Serip?„^""'T" '""■ 'hat while Br Tho„S''ir«°'"« "Theor;„- 
 Under t'he ^ptio, 1?.^,"°^ '" 'heSrSn'tT, """«'"/ i" 
 
 , The persistence of ,„„»• ■ -^ ' ""' ""'er 
 
 creatures tulfar'''"^^^^"fe'J'^'n^^ 
 
 without that St n'u ff T ''^'"^^ "'^'V i? not aU n,f '^ '''•"•"' ^^ «uoh 
 
 tl'e possibility of eoi? -^^ "f.?'^"« action, wTth ",,S t'' °^''*>' •'*«"tract 
 
 «"t off; and for hineenT;^ '"'-^ d'^capilateHrJ^"" ?l^'''" ^^ ^r- 
 response to irrifafr ! fourteen hours th^Jn , ^'^^ ^''^s were 
 
 that lengtroSe Jll ^^ ^"^^"'"«'" «. me'cht L7"f '' ^'^ntractedTu 
 another. Local lif! ""*" "^ 'he arms an d/i V, ? 'hen injected 
 
 ni"ved from the hnZ \ ^^^"^ observer kenf f l. 
 
 a period of sixtee di^-,"' p temperature of ab .t t^T^'^/ ^" «eJ. re- 
 
 f'™«rin;,sB'»S'^^^^^^^^^^^^ 
 
 other organs, however l! .^ ''Rythmical movemenf« nf .. , 
 independent of tlrne' . '^' '"^^^ strikingZoft nf^''" ^^''^and 
 an'Ple, may be sLTrJ^ '""'res, are found*' ' Tl?! ^f 'T"''^'"'^'' action 
 interruption of ifcT.^"* completely from fJi« -^'^P'""^^™- ^r ex- 
 continu^d ?o beat Jor^T^^^^*'^"- S^^^ar t'thr."'' ^^'^/^ ^'thout 
 -aUnd there fiX&r^^^ ^'^^s afttts r^mS f ' ^" ^- 
 *ound to beat fn^\u... 'he case of a man ^ 'p ^n^^^al from the ani- 
 
 Pitation. ''fdl,; tv '"^T '^^"^^ ^ft«' tTeVelthTV'^:^^! '''''' --» 
 -- why .0 :: £, «>-- Dr. Brown-S ta^rV'^haWj '''^•^- 
 
 I 
 
 m 
 
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 r 
 
 11 
 ft 
 
290 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THECLOOY. 
 
 iiieiia of arrest of their activity have taken place at the time of death/ 
 the phenomena of arreut, we may add, being quite independent of the 
 cessation of life. Other observers have demonstrated the rhythmic 
 action of numerous other organs of man and the lower animals : motions 
 that persist after, not death merely, but the entire separation of the 
 
 Knrts from the rest of the body. Indeed Dr. Brown-Sequard claims to 
 ave found that rhythmical motion is a common property of all con- 
 tractile tissues, but one which shows itself only under certain conditions, 
 different from the ordinary circumstances of life. 
 
 " Still mure remarkable is the fact that motions closely .nimicking 
 voluntary movements can go on in the absence of conscious life. 
 
 *' Dr. Se()uard mentions u case in which he was called to see a man who 
 was thoroughly dead of cholera, yet who persisted in certain compli- 
 cated movements distressingly suggestive of life. The dead man would 
 lift up his two arms at full length above his face, knit the fingers 
 together as in the attitude of prayer, then drop the arms again and 
 separate them. These movements were repeated many times, with 
 decreasing force until at last they ceased. To persons not knowing 
 what may take place in the human body after death, these singular 
 movements, observes the Doctor, must certainly have looked as if the 
 will-power had been directing them. In fact, the family and friends all 
 thought the dead man alive, and many tests had to be applied to con- 
 vince them that death had really taken place. 
 
 " It is worthy of notice in this connection that it is generally with the 
 victims of cholera and other sudden and violent diseases that post 
 mortem movements are most common, and consequently the suspicion of 
 premature burial most likely to arise. That such movements are 
 wholly independent of life was demonstrated beyond a doubt by Dr. 
 Fowler, of New Orleans, who adopted the heroic expedient of cutting 
 off the limbs of patients, dead beyond hope of recovery from cholera 
 and yellow fever. Notwithstanding these separations from the nervous 
 centre, the amputated limbs continued their seemingly voluntary move- 
 ments. Whatever may have caused them, it is evident that these 
 imitations of life were not due to anything that could be associated with 
 CO nsciousness. " — Scientific A merican. 
 
 HOPELESSNESS OF PRESENT STATE OF THINGS. 
 
 The following newspaper paragraph (August, 1874) is also much to 
 the point in this connection, and indicates one serious phase of the 
 malady which pervades all society in the present day, which no human 
 agency or power, legislative or otherwise, can exterminate, modify, or 
 alleviate, and which can only be successfully dealt with by Omnipotence, 
 most probably in the way pointed out by Isaiah, as that by which the 
 world of mankind, possibly this present generation, are to be brought 
 to their senses, and a realization of the great purpose of Deity, as else- 
 where set forth in this compilation. " When Thy judgments are abroad 
 in the earth, then shall the inhabitants of the world learn righteous 
 ness." 
 
TESTfMONfEs. 
 
 "'•^rf^iaiztrj^-r f -""red' ^'^^Zxz'r/^ ■ 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 
 S 
 
292 THK HIHLK VINDK.'ATED AOAINST MODKUN THEOLOQY. 
 
 aubstitute one form of excitement for another, without even approximat- 
 ing a cure." 
 
 LITRKAL INTERPRETATION OF 8(.'RIPTURI]. 
 
 
 |i 
 
 t;ti 
 
 m ■ 
 
 The following editorial, from the Montreal fntneas of July 30, 1874, 
 concedes, in general terms all that ChriHtadelphians allege and contend 
 for in this direction, and fully confirmH what in elsewhere stated that 
 the religious zeal of existing Christendom is like that of Israel in Paul's 
 day, emphatically a zeal without knowledge, because the Bible is held 
 out in a false light, the specious, but coloured and clouded light of a 
 false interpretation — an interpretation elsewhere shown to be most 
 derogatory to tlie attributes of God, as regards our race, and dishonour- 
 ing to the mission and worth of Christ. Under the caption of " Reform- 
 ation WANTED," the fVitncus says : — 
 
 " As the great Protestant Reformation was needed in the presence of 
 the corruptions of the Church of Rome, so a great reformation is at 
 present deniandiMl throughout Protestant countries in view of the laxity 
 of morals and ignorance of the Bible which prevail. The statistics of 
 divorce in the United States are becoming appalling, and there is no 
 doubt that, in whatever proportions Protestants and Catholics may 
 appear in the record of other crimes, that in this particular evil of separ- 
 ating man and wife the most Protestant communities are the most at 
 fault. To remedy this we do not propose a return to that condition of 
 things which existed beforti the Reformation, which was vastly worse, 
 or to that condition of things which exists in purely Catholic countries, 
 whicli, divorct' excepted, is also vastly worse, but a revival in the study 
 of God's Word. The reason for the painful outcropping of immorality, 
 where religion was supposinl to reign, can only be the hollowness of that 
 supposed religion. Too much do we see of outward profession, and 
 even teaching and preaching, as compared with the religion of the heart 
 which lives in communion with God, through the unceasing study of 
 His Holy Word— to men the great channel of His spirit. The news- 
 paper of the present day has driven to the wall most of the solid read- 
 ing, and among the rest has, we fe^r, too much supplanted the Bible. 
 Not that the Bible was more read a century ago than now, but that the 
 number of professing Christians has increased in much greater propor- 
 tion than Bible study has increased. It is a hopeful sign for Great 
 Britain that at the very time when education is becoming to some little 
 extent secularized, the love of the Bible among Christians is manifesting 
 
 unusual development Superficial religion 
 
 is too commf)n. There are too many who imagine themselves devout, 
 who have not even a knowledge of the general outline of the facts related 
 in Scripture, to say nothing of the deep soul-knowledge of the living 
 truths therein contained, and thence to be received as the bread of life. 
 What is needed above all other things, for the Protestant United States, 
 and for Protestant Ontario, and for the Protestants throughout this 
 continent, is a return to the earnest personal study of the Holy Scrip- 
 
'"~ "e r-^ . -.. Z!' ."" ' "" '" " '"'•' '" 
 
 created in th/°" '??*'''"' of ZT, '' " '" '»"' 'he reLl " ^P"" 
 
 ^ecfcion°/r!'«nes8; in which rpL- 'i'?^' ^^ich wiJl hi f^*'''-'' ^nd 
 
 S* ee of enjoyment Wh£ ^^Pf'^'ties, 
 
 "*•> a glorious 
 
 Hi 
 
294 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 :. ,1' 
 
 future I It is a future in which all have an invitation to participate. 
 What a magnificent opportunity ! How can we let it slip 1 How can 
 we rest satirfied with our present miserable lot ? How can we be con- 
 tent to labour for the mere wants of our animal nature, which will soon 
 disappear in death ; or for the mere approval of a depraved public opin- 
 ion which it is an honour to escape ; or for the mere accumulation of 
 wealth, which we must leave to others, — when such a glorious destiny 
 is shining upon us from the Bible ? It seems infatuation for rational beings 
 to settle down into such contentment. It is an infatuation, however, which 
 is universally exhibited. The whole world is engaged in one grand pro- 
 cess of " sowing to the flesh," which they deem to be the legitimate and 
 " d'ltifui " occupation of life ; and the danger is, that we may be carried 
 away by the whirl of popular sentiment as embodied in the "respecta- 
 bility " of the time, and diverted from that high spirit-revealed destiny 
 which depends upon a whole-souled consecration to itself, in preference 
 to the fashionable hobbies of " this present evil world." 
 
 " What must we do to be saved 1 " What are the conditions which 
 we are required to fulfil, in order to a participation in the great salvation 
 to be revealed at the coming of the Lord 1 Here is the momentous 
 question specifically proposed, demanding an equally specific answer. 
 Ijet it be premised, then, that such a question pre-supposes a disposition 
 on the part of the questioner, to gladly receive any conditions which the 
 great Lawgiver may think fit to impose. It indicates a conviction that 
 the boon to be bestowed is at the absolute disposal of the Giver. It is 
 an admission that the petitioner has no natural claim upon it, and that 
 the Bestower has the right to say upon what conditions it will be grant- 
 ed. In fact, when sincerely put, it shows the' questioner to be in that 
 childlike frame of mind which Jesus refers to when he says " Whosoever 
 shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, shall in no wise 
 enter therein."— (Luke xviii. 17.) This is not the mental condition of 
 moralists, who think that goodness of character entitles a man to future 
 reward ; nor the condition of those who say that it is of no importance 
 what a man believes, provided " his heart " be right ; for such ignore 
 the obligation of the conditions laid down, being filled with •' high 
 thoughts" which exalt themselves "against the knowledge of God.' 
 These " high thoughts " have their origin in the doctrine of the immor- 
 tality of the soul. The eff"ect of that doctrine is to cause the believer 
 thereof to look upon every human being as the subject of positive eternal 
 destiny ; and as there are only two places and two classes related to 
 that eternal destiny, viz., heaven and hell, and the inhabitants thereof 
 respectively, he assigns every one of them, infants as well, to one or other 
 of those places ; the one being a place of inexpressible bliss, and the 
 other of unutterable woe. Now, as God is declared to be loving and 
 merciful, it is supposed to be incompatible with His character that He 
 should predicate entrance to the good place upon conditions which 
 would have the effect of shutting out from it the great majority of man- 
 kind, or that he should in any case consign to the bad place those myriad* 
 of '' good " people, who, though ignorant of the doctrinal teachings of 
 
TESTIMONJES. 
 
 ., *">'^ ^MONIES 
 
 ">" subject of it w /.">" ■■""nortality „ '^^t ~T '» '"g'oa fo ,t 
 «P«We, i„ the aw' „f' '"" ™™'i'«eT?hem » "' «"■ ">at all hav° 
 
 tne mi ennium nl "^'^ ^o convert thl ^^^ ^" sending this ^ 
 
 
 .■Hi 
 
 I 
 
 3f 
 
 I 
 
 PI 
 
296 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 tation to all who accept it, to form part of that name, by putting it on 
 in the appointed way ; but the class who obey the invitation is very 
 small. " Many are called, but few are chosen." " Many shall strive 
 to enter in, hut shall not h, able." Jesus gave his commission to his disci- 
 ples in the following words : — 
 
 , I 
 
 1,1 
 
 
 "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to everj' creature. He that belteveth, 
 and M baptized, shall be saved ; but he that believeth not shall be damned."— Hark xvi. IS, 16. 
 
 Here we have a clear indication of the principle on which the " people 
 for His name " were to be selected. The Gospel wa^. to be proclaimed, 
 and those to whom it was proclaimed, were requirei to believe it. No- 
 thing short of this would elect them to salvation ; for whosoever would 
 not receive the kingdom of God as a little child should in no wise enter 
 therein. The Gospel was thus constituted the agency of salvation ; 
 hence, Paul styles it " tJie Gospel of your salvation " — (Ephesians i. 13). 
 He also says, " The Gospel is the power of God unto salvation TO every one 
 THAT believeth ;" — (Rom. i. 16.) and with increasing pointedness, de- 
 clares, " It pleased God, by the foolishne s of preaching, to save 
 thm lluit helivee." — (1 Cor. i. 21.) Hence if any man desires to be saved, 
 the very first thing he has to do is to believe the Gospel. Cornelius was 
 instructed by an angel to " send men to Joppa, and call for Simon, whose 
 surname is Peter, who shall tell thee the words WHEREBY thou and all thy 
 house sliall be saved." — (Acts xi. 13, 14). And the Phillipian jailor was 
 told by Paul in answer to his enquiry, " What shall I do to be saved ]" 
 — " Believe mi the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy 
 house." — (c. xvi. 30, 31.) Believing on the Lord Jesus, and believing 
 the Gospel, are exactly the same thing ; for the Gospel is made up of glad 
 tidings concerning the Lord Jesus Christ ; and if a man believe the Gos- 
 pel, he believes on the Lord Jesus Christ. If he is ignorant of the Gos- 
 pel, he cannot believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, for " the 'Lord Jesus 
 Christ " is not the mere name of the Saviour, as a personage, but a great 
 doctrinal symbol, which can only be understood by those who are ac- 
 quainted with the Gospel in its amplitude. The first thing a man has 
 to do, then, in order to salvation, is to bcliove the Gospel ; but obvious- 
 ly, before he can believe it, he must know it, for as Paul says, "How 
 shall they believe on him of whom they have not heard 1 " — (Romans x. 
 14.) Knowledge must always precede belief; for a man cannot believe 
 that of which he has not previously been informed. Hence the first en- 
 quiry on the part of man or woman anxious to be saved, should be, 
 What is the GospeU For until they have arr'ved at a correct know- 
 ledge on this point they cannot go on to the second stage of believing unto 
 salvation. The Gospel is styled " the one faith," because it is made up 
 of things which require faith to receive them — the act of the mind by 
 which these are apprehended being metonymically put for the things 
 tliemselves. It is laid down as a principle that " IVitJiout faith IT is im- 
 possible TO PLEASE God," (Heb. xi. 6.) and it is affirmed by Christians, 
 " Ye are saved through faith," (Eph. ii. 8,) and "the just shall live by 
 faith." — (Heb. x. 38.) Now this faith, in Scriptural usage, is not a 
 
 I' 
 
TESTIMON/ES. 
 
 297 
 
 
 
 ■ ■ Hence if ■, "•"'""""» '^»«Jr»,?J? 
 
 7.1-e genera] naturT it' "^""^ '^'"« by a consklr.?-''''"""^ ^^'^^ is, b/. 
 
 flements-the one wli?^' '' "'"« appe„, ^ V,'""" "^ God and thi 
 'loctrinaJ import of ?'""« '" "-e JcingS" f ^' ^^ " »mp„„„d „f ^* 
 salvation. &tl, „f,i,™^ '^*«'' of Jesnl !,-'"'.'<' 'he otiier to th. 
 Wore savinS,"':""**. must be k„o„ \^^ ^u"''"* our individnll 
 
 i» Lecture. ^itV^i^ i ."" f^r^^lTtT^'T'^"^ 
 
 l« fo'-theth„„/'\""i«= '^''»eer„n' X^f'^ « "fired for a„ 
 M Acts iv. l2MS^"«™ing " the Name ■. ,' '""«'^""' oC God :"and 
 
 the Christ ^''),1 ^"'^ *" gven anrl .. . .^"^^^^t'fit to savins 
 
 human redemption ' S"'^-'""'^ ^^e deatj, o • Chi ^''J"-^ ««' ^^^th in 
 Jh. They are des ttn^ f ""^ ^^"^ '""^allv naked ,^?"'^ "'' ''^^'''fc'on to 
 
 '^ags in comparison fn f ^''^' goodne.ss th- » <-i , """^ on^- that 
 
 ff!P^ar clothed i, he 1 U ^f^^^^^"" -f the aniet N ^ V^'^' ^"^ " ^^th' 
 
 P/-Pparedby the evenN '^^y'^^^^^««'lm\!rton^^ ^''""'^^^ « '•''^^ ^Z 
 i'-'^^'^^t^oUkeZ^V^^^^^^^ That robe was 
 
 . ^* w«c/. «„^y ,,„, ^.. .'2 '^ T'"' '^'^n:./, who bv H; . ' ^"''^' "»d John 
 ^'"«;"-(l CV/ 3ot "'^^^^^^^^^^ and tru i 
 
 ;"«J.t»ted « .«m. /./i,,^,^^« "«t onJy'prov ded '^,?''""' ^«d reden.p ' 
 
 "triple nam-, inasmuch' 
 
 I 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
298 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ft; 
 
 
 'fl 
 
 V -r 
 
 as Jesus is a manifestation of the Father by means of the Holy Spirit. 
 Those who are thus invested, have on " the wedding garment," (Matt. 
 xxii. 12) — the fine linen, clean and white — which is the righteousness of 
 saints. — (Rev. xix. 8.) They no longer " walk naked ; their shame ap- 
 pearing," (Rev. xvi, 15,) but are " found in him, not having their own 
 righteousness which is of the law, but the righteousness which is of God bt 
 FAITH." We must, therefore, understand "the things concerning the 
 kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ," before we can under 
 stand and believe the Gospel which is the power of God unto salyatiou. 
 The one without the other is of no efBcacy. To be ignorant of " the 
 things concerning the kingdom of God," is to be ignorant of the Gospel. 
 A man may be well acquainted with the historical facts of Christ's cruci- 
 fixion, resurrection, and ascension ; but unless he understands them in 
 their true doctrinal significance, and in their connection with " the glory 
 that shall follow," his knowledge of them is of no avail for salvation, and 
 conveys to him no enlightenment as to God's purposes. This is peculiar- 
 ly the case where the knowledge in question is associated with the doc- 
 trine of the immortality of the soul ; for it then ceases to have any 
 scriptural significance or eflicacy whatever, because of the perverting in- 
 fluence of that dogma. Christ died to purchase life. " He brought life 
 and immortality to light," by the sacrifice which He submitted to. I>y 
 the grace of God, he tasted death for every man, (Heb. ii. 9,) but if we 
 regard immortality as the essential attribute of human nature, we dis- 
 place the sacrifice of Christ from its scriptural position. We destroy its 
 character as a means of securing life, and "^' compelled to transform it 
 into that barbarous doctrine of orthodoxy, which regards it as substitu 
 tionary suffering of divine wrath, in order to save immortal souls from 
 the eternal tortures of hell ! — a suffering, which, after all, according U^ 
 orthodox teaching, was awfully inadequate ; for countless, m)Tiads 
 of immortal souls, according to that system of teaching, still continue 
 unreconciled, and are fated to spend an eternity of existence in ragiiig, 
 blaspheming torture ! The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, then, 
 must be removed from the mind before Christian truth can obtain a 
 proper entrance ; for it nullifies the whole system, by obliterating its 
 foundation doctrine, that "by one man came death !''' and destroys its 
 efficacy by entirely diverting attention from the salvation which it offers^ 
 and directing it to a reward which God has never promised. In fac' , 
 its effect is to pervert, vitiate, poison, nullify, and destroy everything 
 pertaining to God's truth. It sends its jarring vibrations through the 
 entire system of revelation, introducing confusion and absurdity where 
 otherwise reign peace, order, harmony, beauty, and consistency. The- 
 ologically, it is an unclean spirit of which a man must be exorcised, before 
 he can become clothed and in his right mind in relation to divine truth. 
 Previously to this, his mind is filled with truth-neutralising doctrine, 
 which effectually prevents the entrance of a single ray of the truth. 
 
 The point at which we have arrived, is, that one of the fundamental 
 conditions of salvation, is belief of certain definite matters of teaching 
 contained in the Gospel, styled " the things concerning the Kingdom of 
 
299 
 
 TESTIMONIES. 
 
 Seofi^^'"*"'"^'^J«su8 Christ" Ti, 
 
 ^"cie ot divine truth Tu '"f'^- Those " thino-o " • , 
 
 concerning Jes^CW V '^'l^^^' worthless etlll*'^^?''''''^^«' h""" 
 
 *^e means which hLV ^''"''^^^ dealings with m?!' \*^« teaching 
 
 Hira, &c. Whlfl^'' ^^« provided for saJvTf, ''^'^' ^'^ promis^.s'' 
 
 faith, should btri':/''"'« ^'^^» that such a kn' "^ ,^"ti«« towa jI' 
 
 • .?l««^,^\- based Sutn" T'^'r "^fi^'-: tTn^^' T^ ^-'' ^ 
 
 be exercised ? The veiv h f''^'' Presented to him T ^^ ^'^'^^^ ^ ^i' 
 f!^f to the mind just eL^r'T ^^ ^octrinaJ ChriSn^r •"'*". ^is faith 
 ^''gher instincts • I^a ®^*^tJy what s needed .^' V^tianity is, that it sun 
 no beauty hele ? t "^^^^ '^ '^^^'^f berquit'i'.^^^^^ut and satisfy ifs 
 "ever heard of the vTT " ^«"«^ation^of 1 " ^^^^^^i^" ^ ia ie 
 bope of the promLlT^'r^bose minds h^^^^^ '^^n >-ho had 
 
 out towards GoHnd ?^1'''" ' "^^ose affeSri ^ '"'"" *''^«'-^'«*^d in 
 P[«?ent; whose'il\^^^ '^-"■^ Ch^i^tTnd fheT" '^'^'^ '^'•^^" 
 aivme w Jl • but tl, ^ "^'•'«i' been cliasVpn ^ • ^""^^ Past and 
 phrase goes-lsunnoi' "f^«^«^«Jes«, vvere re'" . , ',"^" «"bmission 'o 
 tbe coming of ffir:f;r''^'^^™itted into C'^^^-^^ f«"gb, as the 
 
 l'^ ? T^ answ r irtl^'^P^"^'^^ could rSu^o't?'^''" ^^^ ^«d' « 
 
 *boro"ghJy inappre'cia^'ive'^Vr' '''f^ be ^o ;ibr ' tJ; "'' ^^T^^ ^« 
 which years of7rpfi»;r ^"<^y would faiJ fo " .• ^"«3' wou M ho 
 
 '^"d be'equally\tfanaJ,^^Pf tation will c e^le'i^T?^"^^ '^'^ SmVle 
 ;-^th yntan^TrtL /^'^"^. '*^^' ^^ory to God'Tf '^^«^'"t 
 Webeen"lookin.fo,,rf7?^ the mouths and h^ T^"? v^HI burs 
 "re, divinely and f . ^^^ blessed hope " Th« T^' ""^ those m 1„; 
 ^"'nmationtVnlhis r ^ considered^ ' God LT^' ^'""^^ beafai- 
 Pnesthood, a holv n!;- ^ '' making readv »„ .^"^Poses a higher con 
 ^^rn w/io hath Z^fT' ^ ^''''^'^' l^Zle f T" '^'"'^<^('on, a ro^ri 
 Peter ii. 9 ) ^d H ■^'"' "^^ ''^ ^^X'fJJV^''^-^^^' ^/^^ ;mS 
 
 tbeir deceitful Ser'aliu ^' " ''^'^"'^ble " S 17/ "' ." ^^^"^^ " «'" 
 feature from the svl im 1 "''? ^^ the obliterSn ?'«' '^^« breadth of 
 
 f^'J.in the end. but an l''-^'f'^^"^^*'* ^"^'^^^ 6^.7'' v^f, '^'' ^avillin. 
 ;« the Scripture's, and ?aS ^'"?^^«« '' *be will\fc "^" «-- a 
 J^ise may protest against?^ . 'f ''"'''"^ ^«t of the sam! ,- ^' contained 
 •^^'^ - course, but reni^^h't Zr ^^^ " -^ '' Et'l^J^^^rr ,''^« 
 
 •gbtened conscience will apiCj. mvolved_in 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 J 
 
300 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 ^'^1 
 
 stiindeth not in the wisdom of men, but in the word of God." Jesus 
 has said (and let every man give ear !) " The words that I speak unto 
 you, THEY are spirit, and THEY are life." — (John vi. 63.) That is, the 
 Gospel which He approved was " the power of God unto salvation," and, 
 therefore, '^the ivords of eternal life," as they are designated by Peter. — 
 (John vi. 68.) And saith the Lord Jesus — 
 
 "He that rejecteth me, und reeeiveth not my wordu, hath one that Judgeth him ; the word 
 THAT I HAVB BroKB.v, <A,' game ghaU judge him tn the Icut day."- John xli. 48. 
 
 Here, then, is the standard by which our position will be measured 
 when the great testing time arrives ; and whether judged " uncharit- 
 able " or not, it is better to walk in " the narrovj way " of the Word's 
 exact teaching, with little company, than to be found in the "broad 
 road " of either vague speculations or popular heresies, which the great 
 multitude perambulate. The former leadeth unto life ; the other leadeth 
 to certain destruction. 
 
 " If any man will come aft«r me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow 
 me ; for whosoever shall save his life shall lose it ; but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake, 
 the same shall save it. For what is a man advantaged if he gain the whole world, and lose him- 
 self or be cast away ? For whosoever shall be ashamed of me, and of my words, of hiin, shall the 
 Son of Man be ashamed when He shall come in His own glory." — Luke ix. 23-26. 
 
 "If any man among you seemeth to be wise in this world, let him beeonuafool, that he may 
 be wise, for the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God."- - 1 Cor. iii. 18, 19. 
 
 But all this is in direct opposition to modern religious sentiment. 
 Between secular influence and religious impotency, there is growing up 
 in society, on a very extensive scale, especially in the northern counties 
 of England, a total disbelief in the necessity of doctrinal enlightenment 
 as an element of acceptable character before God. It is becoming fash- 
 ionable in all grades of refined society, to sneer at "creed " as a relic of 
 bygone days of superstition, and to regard its advocacy as a sign of 
 narrow-mindedness and intellectual stunt. Th? all-in-all of " true relig- 
 ion " in these modern days, is fast resolving itself into abstract sincerity, 
 goodness of character, piety of sentiment, &c. ; belief in "doctrinal 
 points " is at a discount. Only let a man be sincere in goodness of in- 
 tention, and live a moral and exemplary life, and be he ever so ignorant 
 or mistaken as to the cardinal points of religious truth, he is sure of a 
 goodly share in any inheritance that may be in store for the deserving ; 
 th'. 5 is popular sentiment. Now it is either true or false — safe or delu- 
 sive. If it is true and safe, then the Scriptures are of no authority. It 
 really comes to this. No man can consistently profess a belief in the 
 divine authority of the Bible, and hold this loose sentiment on such a 
 momentously important subject ; because the Bible uniformly and dis- 
 tinctly narrows down the chance of salvation to a certain arbitrary "nar- 
 
 'V way " which few find, or care to walk in when found. Definite 
 . arJitions are stated, and compliance required, involving something 
 r -r: than general goodness of moral nature ; and all who are intention- 
 fl'i. or circumstantially on the side ofnon-compliance, are excluded from 
 the blessing. The issue is, therefore direct between the Bible and un- 
 belief. We are on one side or the other in reference to this question ; 
 
 
TESTIMONIES 
 
 """ality, with 3r-, '° ■""'"' 'he most '"f """«*' distasteful to v^ ' 
 
 "' a iuture life, d^ vn„ i ^ ^^ ^t-cogjiition an7, , *^" "^ay be^in 
 
 to bestow charity u.'^fP^'^'^^^^e to restore Jost^^^^ ''^^^'"^"'^d from 
 
 A claim upon reward ?^^ ^''''^^^ established « 7 w ^" 3'""^- equals^ 
 oughtest tS know that «. ^^^' "^-^ ^"«n<J, phdoson) ' ^" ''i^other life i 
 
 qualities that distinguish fi Z^^''" ^''^''eby <.ive ' 1 ,.''^^aring, restrict- 
 approach the h^ppSsof l^^"^ '^« brutVand W w^ '^ ^^^« "oble 
 
 ^n relation to thvnonr„.,'^ *^^^a*otW life wJ,3 ^ '^"^ thou dosf 
 
 °' 'foi- Jt is in vain flT"*^', ""I'eraci.k.d to i? .,„ ,?"' "' « in natural 
 
 creation of ,?„d. '>""' "otinng, ,.,t mll^aS/^j,"' f -'f;, thyp!; 
 Jhat thereshonU I "'J's^"'^ Irom fh^ 
 
 ■" day in the ttorr « '"'»'*'«. a„i tt "°r,T'"8 "^ all St 
 '' "0 so if h, ,f^y^ ^cause he W«X„,,fi« "/t- a man W 
 
 ""->■ .s the condemn,!,! o,& «««; TOUW 
 
 ™'»al so overwhelm 
 
 
 i 
 
302 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 •1 
 
 'si 
 
 ' '. -fl 
 
 :vf=] 
 
 iH 
 
 iril 
 
 iv 
 
 m- ^- 
 
 ed and dejected 1 Because he beUevea hia death will take place on an 
 early day ; but let him be told that a reprieve has arrived ; and he flins 
 into ecstacies of joy. Whyl B(!cause he believes he shall escape the 
 doom that was impending over him. Our whole commercial system is 
 based on belief ; and the moment society begins to be distrustful, that 
 is, unbelieving, then we have a panic, and all the evils that come in its 
 train. So in matters religious ; belief is the first principle, the founda- 
 tion of practical faith, the source of spiritual ecstacy, the cause of consis- 
 tent action. Now, what is belief? It is the assent of tlie mind to def- 
 inite points of information. Obviously, then, before belief can take 
 place, the mind must be informed ; that is, it must first know or be aware 
 of the subject of belief. Hence, knowledge (though only in the limited 
 sense of information) is the foundation of belief. This principle is prac- 
 tically admitted in things secular ; how inconsistent, then, to deny its 
 importance in things religious. How foolish to talk down " doctrinal 
 points " as of no moment. Those " points " so much disparaged by the 
 wise men of this generation, are, in reality, so many items of informa- 
 tion on which our belief concerning the future is founded, and to run 
 them down as undeserving of an intelligent man's attention, is to insult 
 his judgment, and, in reality, betray religious unbelief. If they are un- 
 true, then they are something more than trivial, and deserve to be scout- 
 ed ; but if they are true, it is folly of a type bordering on insanity to 
 treat them with indifierence. The issue, therefore, lies between belief 
 and unbelief — not between " bigotry " and " charity." Those who pro- 
 fess the latter issue, raise a false cry, and divert many souls from the 
 truth. Nothing in this age is so dangerous to a man's spiritual interest 
 as the spirit of religious " liberality " that is abroad. It is a liberality 
 that lulls many a soul into deceitful slumber, blinding their eyes to the 
 " narrow way " which leadeth unto life. In the broader road, in the 
 most respectable company, with the delights of highly cultivated intel- 
 lect, and all the sweets of luxurious refinement, and hurried forward by 
 the breeze of popular reputation, they are clutching after many shadows 
 and rushing on to certain destruction. God grant that some in the 
 reading of these pages, may be enticed from the worldly throng, and in- 
 duced to cast in their lot with an humbler people, who, in the spirit of 
 profoundest regard for the word of the living God, are seeking to do 
 His will according to His revealed requirements. 
 
 Belief of the Gospel is the first condition of salvation. This, however, 
 is not all. A man may believe in all the glorious promises of God, and 
 yet not be a participator in them. How shall he establish an individ- 
 ual title to them 1 This is his next consideration. The question has 
 been anticipated in the divine arrangement. A ceremony has been in- 
 stituted by which he may pass representatively into Christ, and thereby 
 establish a claim to all the blessings which have been covenanted to him 
 — as a woman betrothing herself to her future husband becomes pros- 
 pective inheritor of what belongs to him. That ceremony is baptism. 
 " He that believeth, and is baptised shall be saved." 
 
 This is a feature of the Christian system which is pretty generally 
 
I'fiSTrMONlES 
 
 c^^^motbe said thatCe js " "^ T «^*he plaint!!?" -^'"'^"''^ ^^^^'d h. 
 '*• set forth in th^ at ^i,''V''"iil»i<ruit,, :,,-,, --"' '-'"'^»<'mn nrerpnfcr i t. 
 
 , - — v^it^wii 37 Qo 7y/"*^'^« vvere adder] nV/ v. '*'* "'»'•« WKRF 
 
 ^TK^'!r'*^^t ApostJe iw .^ J; *«' ^^'^fc at the close "f "u^ ""^. ^'« ^'O'"- 
 KW "Ti. "*' ''"'ed in v 3S Zu'""^ ''y the powerfnl . '" ^<'»« 
 
30* THK BIIJLK VINDICATED AUAINST AKJDEKN THKOLOOY. 
 
 1 ' 
 
 U ■ ! 
 
 A 4 
 
 ih> 
 
 
 ■■,$ 
 
 I i i 
 
 Again,— 
 
 "Ye lire uircuiiiclsctl wlUi the circuinclglon made without hands, in puttiiiK off the budy of the 
 itins uf the flesh liv the circumcision of Christ ; HimiRD with iiiu in uapiism, wherein also ye unt 
 risen with him throui^h tlie fuith of the (i|Miration of Qud. "--Col. ii, 11, li. 
 
 Again, Paul says, in Horn. vi. 3-6 — 
 
 " Know ye not that so muiiy of iis rn were haitizkd into Jkhus Chhiht, were baptized bito 
 hUdeatht Therefore, u'c are HI' KiKD WITH iiim hy baptism i/ifo t/eat/i ; that li'<e ax Christ wa» 
 raised up from the dead l)y the y(\oTy uf the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of 
 life ; for if we have been planted tofirether In the likeness of his death, we shall he also in the like- 
 ness of his resurreution. Knowliif; this, that our old man is urucifled with Him, that the body 
 uf sin ini|;ht bo destroyed, that hei.ceforth we should not serve sin." 
 
 Finally, Peter makes the following allusion to it, which, though inci- 
 dental, is unmistakable : 
 
 " In the days of Noah while the ark was prcjjaring, wherein few, that is, elKht souls, were 
 ■ave<l by (or a." the mari;iiml readin); (fives it, 'through') water. The like fl({ure whereunto 
 BAPTISM DOTH ALSO NOW SAVE US (not the puttiiii: away of the filth of the flesh, but the 
 answer of a good uonsolence towards Qod) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ." — 1 Peter hi. 
 20, 21. 
 
 There are other similar references to baptism throughout the epistles ; 
 but these are sufficient to show that whatevfu- may be t'le difficulty of 
 modern professing Christians in discovering any significance or efficacy 
 in the ordinance of baptism, the Apostles saw much of both. They re- 
 cognised in it a constitutional transition from one relationship to an- 
 other, — a representative putting-off of the old man, or Adam nature, and 
 a putting on of the new man, or Christ, who is the one COVERING name 
 in which, when the naked son of Adam is invested, he stands clothed 
 before Jehovah, and is approved in His sight. Of course tliis effect is 
 imputative ; that is to say, it is not brought about by the mere act of 
 submersion in water, which in itself has no religious virtue whatever, 
 but is the result recognised by God when the act is performed in connec- 
 tion with an intelligent apprehension and affectionate belief of the 
 truth. It may seem strange and incredible that God would connect 
 such a momentous change with a trivial and ('is some regard it) ridicu- 
 lous observance. An earnest mind, however, will not stop to reason on 
 the matter when once satisfied that it is the will of God, especially when 
 he remembers that it is one of the characteristics of God's dealings with 
 men that He selects, " weak things, things de.spised, yea, and things 
 that are not," ( 1 Cor. i. 27, 28,) by which to accomplish important re- 
 sults, that it may be seen that the power is of God, and not in the means 
 and that true obedience may be secured in His servants. It was not 
 the eating of the apple m itself — apsu't from the divine prohibition — that 
 constituted Adam's offence. It was not the mere looking at the brazen 
 serpent in the wilderness that cured the serpent-bitten Israelites. It 
 was not Naaman's seven-fold immersion in Jordan in itself that cured 
 him of his leprosy. It was the principle involved, in eacli case that devel- 
 oped the results, viz., the principle of obedience to the divine law, which 
 is one prominent feature in all God's dealings with man. Obedience is 
 the great thing required at our hands. 
 
 " Hath the Lord as great delight in burnt offeriugu and sacrifices, o» in obeying the voice of 
 the Lord f Behold, to obey i» better than sacrifice, and to hearken than'Jihe fat of lambs."— 
 1 Sam. zv. 22. 
 
TESTDrONiEs. 
 
 Jt matters not what n. Sol 
 
 •l"'red, the mor« . '"^ ''^^ may he ■ ti. 
 
 reason, yet in\T, *"" *»" act in whichfh "^''"S'l it may hp v!^ ^^' 
 and more f'nVu ^ "^^^J^ submission nK ^ "^ ^^^ of sense can n ^•'"•^ ^»- 
 
 tJaptized until they 
 
306 THE BIMLK VINDlCATKD A.OAINST MODKUN THEOLOOT. 
 
 i 
 
 i 
 
 if; 
 
 'hn 
 
 I' I 
 
 f 
 
 M 
 
 ■m 
 
 
 had arrived at a knowledf^o of " the word of salvation." For witiioiit 
 such kiiowlcdf^c, the act would have beonu mer« l)odily at)hition, as pro- 
 fitless, in relation to etornal life, as those performed under the law. In 
 loery New Testament insta/nce the Gospel v>as undmtood ami believed before 
 baptism mis administered. It requires the " oiui faith " to coiistitut<f the 
 " one baptism." It was only a " wWmu/ of water BY TH E WO' il)."— 
 (Eph. V. 26.) Jiut when the word was absent from thomiud, th i cleans- 
 ing element was awanting, and the subject of the rite was still un\ 'ashed 
 -still clothed in filthy garments — still without the wedding garment 
 in the sight of God. This is the coiulition of vast multitudes in our 
 own day, who have been immersed as a h'ligious ordiiianct;, but who 
 were in total ignorance of the Gospel j)reachetl by Jesus anil his Apostles, 
 at the time they submitted to it. Their immersion, under such circum- 
 stances is utterly worthless, if repeated a thousand times ; and if ever 
 the)' come to a true knowledge of the word, baptism will just bo as lu'- 
 cessary as if they had never gone into the water at all.* As for those who 
 i^ive countenance to the s])rinkling of babies as Christian baptism, the 
 whole tendency of the foregoing argument is to show that they are guil- 
 ty of religious foolishness, of a type so palpable aiul self-evident, as to re- 
 quire no formal refutation ; aiul their case must be dismissed with the 
 remark that the doctrine of infant baptismal regeneration, like all the 
 other absunlities of the ajjostasy, is indebted for its existence and sup- 
 port, to the one great central delusion which is the very life of ortho- 
 doxy — the doctrine of tlu* immortality of the soul. 
 
 To sum up the whole matter, a person instructed in " the word of the 
 kingdom," enquiring what must he do to be saved, has only one spirit- 
 ual answer to receive : " Repent and be baptized into the name of Jesus 
 Christ for the remission of sins." — (Acts ii. 38.) When he has yielded this 
 " obedience of faith," he is " born of wat(!r '' through the inceptive in- 
 fluence of the truth ; and having entered " The Name," his sins are " cover- 
 ed ; " his transgressions " hid ; " his whole past life is cancelled, and he 
 has commenced a term of probation in v/hicli he is a lawful candidate for 
 that " birth of the spirit" from the grave, which will finally constitute 
 him a " son of God, being of the children of the resurrection," (Luke xx. 
 36,) "waiting for the Adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." — 
 (Rom. viii. 23.) But his ultimate acceptance will depend upon the 
 character he develops in this new relation. If he brings forth the fruits 
 of the spirit, viz., moral results proceeding from the spirit-words (John 
 vi. 63), which have obtained a lodgment in his mind, as the motive 
 power, he will be approved by the Lord Avhen he returns " to take ac- 
 count of his servants, as of those who bring forth fruit, some thirty, 
 and some sixty, and some a hundredfold." But if he continue to per- 
 form " the works of the flesh," or actions, whether " respectable " or 
 otherwise, which are dictated by the mere fleshly instincts, apart from 
 the enlightenment of the Word, of which his mind has been the subject 
 
 * For a scriptural case of re-immersion, see Acts xix. 1-5, where twelve disciples, who had 
 been baptized oy John the Baptist, were re-immersed on having their faith rectified on a certain 
 point by I'aul. 
 
TESTIMONIKN. 
 
 ff;'»tly dealt witl. bv th/ :;?• ^^^^«'- ^'- «.) The fL'"' ,"''"''^' ">''«// 
 
 ^^^'"'''^ tb..y ha,l bee, si,l ", ^ ^'""'*'« book oH fo " ,//'" "'""«« of 
 ■ became the .s,,efi„iV' '"•^^'^'''«'i at th.ur im,« ' ^^*"v. , 6) i„ 
 
 (lion. viii. .8.; ^^""' '''^- "- ^/- cW/i/ .L4^ :;"f. -orku.,, to- 
 Teach them to nK. . ''^ ^'^ ^^^ purpose." ^ 
 
 ^'^-- ^^nHm;te;t^eJrr^i^"«^'«PHnn^^^^^^^^ 
 
 '^"ce of-.vhich he Z "r:(J'^hn xv. U.) xVo^h. ""' 'J V*' ^o vvAat. 
 Inference is to the " \l.^^ '^ '^'"" f»-ien.l.shii, f I, 7 "'^ cominand- 
 "^^^t together for iLe hi r''''"'''*' ^^'^"" Chr"S ' f; ^''~^^«'^« "• 
 
 „,;««. Jesus. ,„„*._. . '• ^«''«a<-l 
 
 xxii. i9, 20, 
 
 ,^ very appropriate it T . /^'"^^t '"^^^ "« come -' t^^^/^ ^"^^ ^""^ 
 ^•epresents H L broke ,l> T *" '"■*'''''^^' acconJi,,.. to M^ u '^^^•^«rv^ancei s 
 the scene whichTumL "t' "^•' ^'^« ^^ino Hfs Ld'bf'^f'^'"'^ '^'^^''^tion, 
 Chnst's personal We "n f 1"'^' ^« T""' ^'^ble o ?or. 1 ^Tl^ ' ^^^ '^^^ ^^ 
 allied before the disri *" ^""Jemnation of .i? TT'^'^'^^^'^'^'tioiiof 
 
 f 3^"^ that capacity andV''"""^ ^^"«h tl Jfi : ^^ ^''^^^'-vance 
 ;f,t^e great aacrifi e^to wbtVr'"'^"^^ refreshed b^h" '^ ^''"^^ ^"^7 
 ^r^ileit affords a t^Li^J ^ ^« '^^^ngly submi..?/^^ 'Contemplation 
 l^ongh absent, haf nfo^-,T^ "^ «^Presshig tE f "" .'^«''' *««ount 
 
 ^'inus creating circumstances 
 
W 4 
 
 308 THE BIBLE VINDICATED AGAINST MODERN THEOLOGY. 
 
 m ' 
 
 pre-eminently conducive to their building up in the glorious faith and 
 hope which they possess, and counteracting the secularizing and spirit- 
 ually-corrosive effect of the business life which they have to live in the 
 world. Having been commanded, its observance is a binding duty 
 which no really enlightened Christian will underrate in importance, or 
 seek to evade. The Quaker runs to one extreme yi the matter, discard- 
 ing the use of all Christian institutions whatever ; and the Roman Cath- 
 olic runs to the other — exalting them into de facto vehicles of spiritual 
 ossence. But those who are intelligent in the Word will be preserved 
 from both. 
 
 As to the time at which the ordinance is to be attended to, or the 
 frequency with which it must be waited upon, there is no command ; 
 but the practice of the first Christians may be taken as a certain guide, 
 considering that they were under the immediate supervision of the Apos- 
 tles. We read in Acts xx. 7, " Upmi the first day of the week, when the 
 disciples came together to BREAK bread, Paul preached unto them ;" 
 and again in 1 Cor. xvi. 2, *' Upon the first day of the week, let every one 
 of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him." The first day 
 of the week was the Jewish Monday, and therefore our Sunday. It was 
 the day upon which Christ rose from the dead, and, therefore, an appro- 
 priate occasion for the celebration of an event of which His resurrection 
 was the glorious consummation. 
 
 In conclusion, the answertothe questionin the title ofthis lecture is very 
 briefly summarised. Let a man become doctrinally acquainted with the 
 truth expressed in the New Testament phrase, " tKe •"' in^s cc'»cerning 
 the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ ," k-i him then be 
 baptized into the name of the Father, the Sou. a;id U-if Ghost, the 
 great covering name provided in the Lord Jesus ; let him thenceforward 
 wait with those " of like precious faith " upon the weekly memorial in- 
 stitution appointed by the absent Master ; and let him continue in the 
 daily practice of all things commanded by Christ, and in the daily cul- 
 tivation of that exalted character which was exemplified in Christ him- 
 self, tvaiting and anxiously desiring the rdarn of the Lwd from heaven. If 
 he put himself into this position, and faithfully occupy it to the end, he 
 will certainly be approved when the Lord comes, and invited as " a good 
 £ind faithful servant " to " enter abundantly into His kingdom." 
 
 These twelve lectures must now bo brought to a close. If they have 
 been in any degree instrumental in showing the truth in contrast to pre- 
 valent error, the merit lies not with him who has delivered them, but 
 with another (Dr. John Thomas, of America), who, under God, was the 
 means of opening to him the Scriptures, when he feels certain they 
 would otherwise have remained hermetically sealed, so far as his under- 
 standing was concerned. These lectures constitute a feeble attempt on 
 his part to render the service to others which has been rendered to him- 
 self ; and if any mind has been exorcised of error, — if any taste attract- 
 ed to the study of the Word of God, — and, above all, any judgment ma- 
 tured to the comprehension, belief, and obedience of the truth, the effort 
 will have received a perfect recompense in respect of that which shall 
 
 * . ■ . -"1 
 
TESTIMONIES 
 
 ^ruth. It makTV . '" ^^^8 perverted sf'nf / ^^"'^ '«' ^^^ only 
 other hobbSs ar wZ r ^'^ '^' P^^^entand ^ll ?,^«*r««' i« th^ 
 else in preferen^P T ^''j compared to it Til /''' ^^^ ^"'"^e. All 
 
 profitabittZ'Vrjr''^- • ^^e truth L the oZ^T'^^ *^ ^"^^^^^^ 
 questions vvhirperjewu' ' '' ««'« a man at ease ^ l^^^ '^^' g"'«« ^ 
 the problems of &?,i^^ ""enlightened ; it SveVh^'''? '-^ "^^"y 
 ties which distract nfl °'P'''^' ^""^ ^ith confide?!! •'? ,^ ^^y ^^^ all 
 hearted, peacefiwi- i^"" "^^^^^^ ; it guides hi •*°''^ *^^ uncertain- 
 i»g assurSr col, '"'" '°° «^ his affairs ?Ttfi],«r ''^*^. ^ ^^^^^P^e, one- 
 well-foundS exnectr'"^ J^' ^"'»^«' Wutw ?^'"^ ^^'^ ^'^"^fort- 
 heart finds not fn aS ^ °^""^^"'°^ *he peSectTon tl^l'T'' ^^^^h a 
 nioral obliquity LJi t ^'f '^"^ ' it subdues b^L ^''^ ^^« yearnino 
 and in a word i ^^^' ^'' holiest affection?!i .P''°P«"«'ties, correct^ 
 
 ^vhile it Jves 'himfr' '"'^ ^^^^ates ay^^t^f^^^^^ 
 
 tance of Se^:^- f/-amee of a„d „^^^^^^^^^ nature, 
 
 av^ay ; but the Word o? ^hV r^' ^'"^^ ^^^thereth and th J^^^ the g ory 
 ihe word which hi, th. V^ ^^^^^ Endurptw j.l.t J ""^erfadeth 
 
 is 
 
ADDEIVJDUM. 
 
 ETERNAL TORMENTS. 
 
 An English paper (September, 1874) says: "A point of very con- 
 siderable importance to members of the Church of England has arisen 
 in Clifton (England), and will soon, in all probability, come before the 
 Ecclesiastical Courts, The circumstances are these : A member of the 
 congregation of one of the Clifton churches took upon himself to 
 remonstrate by letter with the Incumbent for what he considered very 
 strong utterances in one of his sermons. The result was an interview 
 between the Incumbent and the remonstrant ; when, in the course of 
 conversation, the layman said he did not believe either in the personality of 
 the devil or in eternal torment. Upon this the clergyman said that unless the 
 gentleman sent him a letter retracting these opinions, he (the clergyman) 
 would refuse him the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. The layman tlitl 
 not send the retractation, of course, and on the occasion of the next 
 attendance at the Holy Communion, the clergyman passed him over, 
 taking precaution to comply with the rubric, and gave beforehand 
 notice of his intention to the communicant. Thereupon he wrote to 
 the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, who replied titat tlis Incumbent was 
 not justified wider tlie circumstances in refusing the Sacrament. The layman 
 intends to attend once more the sacrament in the church in question, 
 and if again refused the Sacrament, after the Bishop's intimation, he 
 wUl at once take proceedings agaiost the clergyman in the proper court." 
 
 If the foregoing narrative be correct, it is very clear that the Bishop 
 of Gloucester and Bristol has no faith in the dogma of Eternal Torment. 
 
CHRISTADELPHIAN PUBLICATIONS. 
 
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 EUREKA. — An Exposition of the Apocalypse, in 3 vols., by Dr. Thomas. 
 
 The best extant $9 25 
 
 ELPIS ISRAEL, — An Exposition of the Scriptures, in i voL, by Dr. Thomas. 
 
 An extraordinary worlc ,... 2 00 
 
 TWELVE LECTURES— In i vol., by Robert Roberts. A most valuable 
 work, shewing in glowing language the contrast between the teachings of 
 Scripture and the Theology of the Schools i 13 
 
 DECLARATION OF FIRST PRINCIPLES.— A series of propositions 
 
 setting forth in brief form the doctrines of the Gospel, by Dr. Thomas. . o 09 
 
 PHANEROSIS, or God-Manifestation. — A most original work on the Per- 
 sonality and Manifestation of Deity, by Dr. Thomas o 25 
 
 ANASTASIS. — A comprehensive and useful treatise on Resurrection, by 
 
 Dr. Thomas o 30 
 
 THE REVEALED MYSTERY, ) Most useful works for the en- 
 CATACHESIS, and > quirer after Scripture Truth, by 
 PILATE'S QUESTION ANSWERED. ) Dr. Thomas o 09 
 
 EVERLASTING PUNISHMENT o 25 
 
 ETERNAL LIFE and > Also valuable works elucidative of the Truth 
 THE KINGDOM OF GOD. ^ as it is in Jesus o 09 
 
 Together with a number of minor publications by Dr. Thomas, Mr. Roberts 
 
 and others, having reference to the Exposition of Scripture and Defence 
 
 of the "One Faith," preached by the Apostles 1800 years ago. 
 
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 objects, and the preparation of a people ready to meet the Lord at His appear- 
 ing. Edited by Mr. Roberts, and published in Birmingham, Eng., $2 per annum. 
 To be had of 
 
 Robert Roberts, Athenaeum Rooms, Temple Row, Birmingham, England ; 
 Mrs. Thomas, West Hoboken, Hudson Co., New Jersey, United States ; 
 John Coombe, 35 Front Street, Toronto, Canada ; 
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