A FEW HISTORICAL FACTS by J. B. FRISBIE

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 10, 1859

A FEW HISTORICAL FACTS

By J. B. FRISBIE

On the Origin of the Doctrine of the Immortality of the Soul.

Zoroastre is the most ancient of any whom we have upon record of all the heathen nations that taught the immortality of the soul.—Prid's. Com., Vol. i, p. 205.

Pausanias.—Chaldean and Indian magii have been the first who asserted the immortality of the soul.—Herodotus, p. 111.

Thales, B. C., 640, said that water was the principle of all things, and that God is that intelligence, by whom all things are formed out of water.—Rollin Vol. ii, p. 560.

Pythagoras, B. C. 564, it is generally agreed among the ancients, was the first of all the Greeks who taught it.—Prid's. Com., Vol. i, p. 205.

He believed that God was a soul diffused into all the beings of nature, and from which human souls are derived. He disbelieved in the transmigration of souls. The souls of men and those of beasts are the same substance, particles of God himself; that souls come out of fire, as God is free.—Id., Vol. ii, p. 567.

Socrates, B. C. 471, is styled the prince of philosophers. He is considered the founder of moral philosophy in Greece. He believed the soul to be immortal, and supposed himself a being separate from his body. Crito asked in what manner he wished to be buried: As you please, said Socrates, if you can lay hold of me, and I do not escape out of your hands. I can never persuade Crito, said he, that Socrates is he who converses with you—for he imagines that I am he who is going to see death in a little while. He confounds me with my carcass. If death were the final dissolution of being, the wicked would be great gainers by it. But as the soul is immortal it must receive eternal happiness or misery. But the good are received on high into a pure region which they inhabit where they live without their bodies through all eternity.

The historian says that Socrates had a demon or familiar spirit that was with him through life.

Plato, B. C. 428, taught one God the author of all things; that the soul is immortal (if good), united to God. After this life there is a reward for the good, and punishment for the wicked. He had also taken the transmigration of souls from Pythagoras, but given it a construction of his own. Souls are God. They go two ways after death; the wicked to the place of torment, the pure and innocent to the august assembly of the gods.

Jews.—It is indeed known that the immortality of the soul was not known to the Jews, but by the commerce which they had with the Assyrians during the time of their captivity.—Herodotus, p. 111.

Josephus.—You Greeks believe that the soul is created, and yet is made immortal by God, according to the doctrine of Plato.—Dissertation on Hades.

The Essenes believed that souls were immortal, and continued forever, and that they came out of the most subtle air, and were united to their bodies as to prisons. . . . The Greeks seem to have followed the same notion, when they allotted the islands of the blessed to their brave men, whom they called heroes and demigods; and to the souls of the wicked, the region of the ungodly in hades, where their fables relate that certain persons are punished; which is built on the first supposition that the soul is immortal.—Josephus.

The Pharisees believed that souls had an immortal vigor in them, and that under the earth there would be rewards or punishments according as they had lived virtuously or viciously in this life; that the latter were to be detained in an everlasting prison, but the former would have power to revive and live again. They say that all souls are incorruptible; that the souls of the good only are removed into other bodies, but that the souls of bad men are subject to eternal punishment.—Josephus.

Origen.—What was worst of all, several tenets of a chimerical philosophy were imprudently incorporated into the Christian system. He was at the head of this speculative tribe. This great man enchanted by the charms of the Platonic philosophy, set it up as the text of all religion, and imagined that the reasons of each doctrine were to be found in that favorite philosophy, and their nature and extent to be determined by

it. Its first promoters argued from that known doctrine of the Platonian school, which also was adopted by Origen and his disciples, that the divine nature was diffused through all human souls; or, in other words, that the faculties of reason from which the health and vigor of the mind proceed, were an emanation from God unto the human soul, and comprehended the principles and elements of all truth, human and divine.—Mosheim.

Soul.—That vital, immaterial, active substance, or principle in man, whereby he perceives, remembers, reasons, and wills. It is rather to be described as to its operations, than to be defined as to its essence. Various, indeed, have been the opinions of philosophers concerning its substance. The Epicureans thought it a subtle air, composed of atoms, or primitive corpuscles. The Stoics maintained it was a flame, a portion of heavenly light. The Cartesians made thinking the essence of the soul. The rational soul is simple, uncompounded and immaterial, not composed of matter and form.—Buck's Theological Dictionary.

Benson.—The soul is—"The Spiritual and immaterial part of you; this will still survive in all its vigor, while its tabernacle lies in ruins.—Methodist Commentary, Matt. x, 28.

Wesley.—"For what is immaterial fire? The same as immaterial water or earth! Both the one and the other is absolute nonsense, a contradiction in terms. Either, therefore, we must affirm it to be material, or we deny its existence.—Sermons, Vol. ii, p. 150.

Instruction for Children: Intended for the use of the Methodist Societies, No. 18. "How did God make man?" His body out of the dust; his soul out of NOTHING." p. 7. If God lives and dwells in your soul, then he makes it like himself." p. 14.

"His sov'reign power our bodies made, Our souls are his immortal breath, And when his creatures sinned, he bled To save us from eternal death. Where are the dead?—In heaven or hell Their disembodied spirits dwell; Their perished forms, in bonds of clay, Reserved until the judgment day. [pp. 9 and 202, M. E. Hymn Book, Revised Edition.

So Christ died to save God's immortal breath from eternal death. We will venture to affirm that the whole doctrine of the immortality of the soul is a delusive fable, vainly imagined, and the foundation of every spiritual delusion, heathenism, endless misery, purgatory, invocation of saints, Quakerism, Shakerism, Swedenborgianism, and the last deception of the Devil, Spiritualism.

J. B. FRISBIE.