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Review and Herald, Vol. 53, No. 5.

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL

Review and Herald

Jan 30, 1879

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 30, 1879

IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

ELD. D. M. CANRIGHT.

PERIODICAL DESTRUCTION.

There was another point universally held by the ancients which utterly forbade their believing in the soul’s immortality. They held to a periodical destruction of all things, not excepting the soul.
Thus writes Mr. Leland: “It was a notion which generally obtained among them [the philosophers], that at certain periods which the Stoics termed conflagrations, and which were to happen at the end of what they as well as the Pythagoreans and Platonists called the great year, there should be an utter end put to the present state of things; and the souls of all men, and even of those of them which had become gods, demons, or heroes, were to be resumed into the universal soul, and thereby lose their individual existence.”
Watson confirms this testimony thus: “Another notion equally extensive and equally destructive of the original doctrine of the immortality of the human soul, and a state of future rewards and punishments, which sprung up in the Egyptian schools, and was from thence transmitted into Greece, India, and throughout all Asia, was that of a periodical destruction and renovation of all things.” “When the universal inundation takes place,” says Enfield, “the whole surface of the earth is covered with water and all animal life is destroyed; after which nature is renewed, and subsists as before till the element of fire, becoming prevalent in its turn, dries up all the moisture, converts every substance into its own nature, and at last, by universal conflagration, reduces the world to its pristine state. At this period, all material forms are lost in one chaotic mass; all animated nature is reunited to the deity, and nature again exists in its original form, as one whole, consisting of God and matter. From this chaotic state, however, it again emerges, by the energy of the Efficient Principle, and gods, and men, and all the forms of regulated nature, are renewed, to be dissolved and renewed in endless successions.”
Then none among them could possibly believe in the immortality of the soul as a separate personality.

EMINENT MEN WHO REJECTED THE SOUL’S IMMORTALITY.

On examination we find that most of the eminent orators and authors of antiquity have recorded themselves as unbelievers in the soul’s immortality. Among these, Cicero stands prominent as a great orator and statesman. Though in some of his writings he argues for the immortality of the soul, yet after all he confesses that he did not really believe it. Of him Warburton says, “He professes his disbelief of a future state of rewards and punishments in the frankest and freest manner.”
Virgil, Horace, and Seneca were all disbelievers in the immortality of man.
After showing that Cicero was full of doubts on the subject, Dr. Horne says: “All which gave Seneca just occasion to say that ‘immortality, however desirable, was rather promised than proved by these great men.’ While the followers of these great philosophers were thus perplexed with doubts, others of the heathen entertained the most gloomy notions,—either imagining that they should be removed from one body to another, and be perpetual wanderers, or contemplating the grave as their eternal habitation, and sadly complaining that the sun and stars could rise again, but that man, when his day was set, must lie down in darkness, and sleep a perpetual sleep.”
No wonder that Paul said that the heathen had no hope; for it was really true.
Gibbon, the celebrated historian, says: “The writings of Cicero represent in the most lively colors the ignorance, the errors, and the uncertainty, of the ancient philosophers with regard to the immortality of the soul. When they are desirous of arming their disciples against the fear of death, they inculcate, as an obvious though melancholy position, that the fatal stroke of our dissolution releases us from the calamities of life, and that those can no longer suffer who no longer exist.”
So, then, the belief of the ancients was against the immortality of the soul.

BELIEF OF THE HINDOOS.

To-day the doctrine of the soul’s immortality is not universally nor even generally believed, though it has been industriously propagated for over two thousand years, from the time of the school of Plato down to that of the modern theological seminaries. Nearly the whole of the Asiatic nations reject it, and hold to the total annihilation of all souls! That this is not merely my assertion will be seen from the following testimonies, all from men who hold to the immortality of the soul. Mr. Watson’s testimony will not be questioned. Hear him:—
“With us, this [the doctrine of the soul’s immortality] is a matter of general belief; but not so with the generality of either ancient or modern pagans. The same darkness which obscured the glory of God, proportionately diminished the glory of man,—his true and proper immortality. The very ancient notion of an absorption of souls back again into the divine Essence was with the ancients what we know it to be now in the metaphysical system of the Hindoos, a denial of individual immortality; nor have the demonstrations of reason done anything to convince the other grand division of metaphysical pagans into which modern heathenism is divided, the followers of Buddha who believe in the total annihilation of both men and gods after a series of ages,—a point of faith held probably by the majority of the present race of mankind.”
This is a valuable testimony, especially coming from one who is such good authority. This alone gives a majority at the present day against the doctrine of the soul’s immortality.
Mr. Davy says: “The religion of Buddha is more widely extended than any other religion. It appears to be the religion of the whole of Tartary, China, Japan, and their dependencies, and of all the countries between China and the Brahmapootra. They appear to be materialists in the strictest sense of the term, and to have no notion of pure spirit or mind. . . . Ordinary death is merely a change of form, and this change is almost infinite, and bounded only by annihilation, which they esteem the acme of happiness.”
Then a majority of the race are materialists, instead of immortal-soulists!
Our next witness is that candid author, Henry Howe. He writes: “Buddhism, the religion of Burmah, has the greatest number of disciples of any on the globe, among whom is half of the people of China, Laos, Cochin China, and Ceylon; all of Cambodia, Siam, Burmah, Tibet, Tartary, and Loo-Choo; and a great part of Japan, and most of the islands of the Southern seas.”
“Existence and sorrow are declared to be necessary concomitants; and therefore ‘the chief end of man’ is to finish this eternal round of changes, and be annihilated. The great doctrines of this faith are five; viz., 1. The eternal existence of the universe and all things; 2. Metempsychosis; 3. Nirban, or annihilation,” etc.
Of this religion, Alger says, “It is the basis and motive of the most extensive disbelief of individual immortality the world has known.”
In the Methodist of April 16, 1870, Bishop Thomson publishes a sermon in which he says: “As to the existing systems of India, China, and Japan, Hindooism, Confucianism, and Buddhism are all, as every intelligent man knows, decaying and ready to perish, without satisfying the wants of mankind. They hinder human development, and must be swept from the earth by human progress. Nor need we lament; nay, we should rejoice in the prospect, for they offer no salvation to man in this life, but by the extinction of all interests in this life,—its duties, responsibilities, and possibilities,—and no salvation beyond the grave but annihilation, the blowing out of the soul as the blowing out of a candle.”
Then the bishop understood them to teach the annihilation of the soul after death, and they do not believe in the immortality of the soul.
In the same paper I find still further unquestionable proof of the belief of the Hindoos on this point. A new sect has lately originated in India called the “Church of the One God.” Says the Methodist: “Representatives of the ‘Church,’ learned in the Sanskrit, were sent to the sacred city of Benares to study more fully the Vedas—the supreme scriptures of Brahmanism—in order to ascertain if the new movement could not be reconciled to the primitive and purest faith of the country; but they reported that these ancient documents taught Pantheism, Metempsychosis, and the annihilation of the soul.”
“The Hindoo books describe several different degrees or states of happiness for mankind after death. Of these the highest state is called Mooktee, and consists of union with the deity, or absorption into the infinite Spirit. This state is the result or reward of attaining divine knowledge. As soon as any man acquires a knowledge of Brahma, it overcomes or extinguishes all sin within him, and its influence upon him; he disregards all work, however meritorious in general opinion, and, emancipated from all worldly desires and bodily passions, his spirit becomes united with Brahma, or is absorbed into him, ‘as a drop of water when it falls into the ocean.’ He loses all personal identity. He is no longer, and will never again be, a conscious and separate being, and so is not subject to any further transmigrations or changes.”
“The third and fourth states of happiness are in the heaven, or abode of the gods, called the Swarga. Some few persons who in this life have performed works of extraordinary merit, after death proceed to Swarga, and reside there till the close of the present Kalpa, when Swarga and all its residents, whether gods or saints, will be annihilated.”
This is the faith held by the majority of the human race to-day. Is this the doctrine of the immortality of the soul? It is just the opposite. Do not our orthodox friends know these facts? How, then, can they have the face to claim a universal belief in their notion of the soul’s immortality—when all the facts are the other way?

THE PROSPECT IN GREAT BRITAIN.

The following article which we copy from the daily Inter-Ocean of Jan. 14, 1879, is somewhat lengthy for our limited space, but we consider its interest and importance sufficient to justify its insertion in full. It is a deep and philosophical examination of one of the great problems of the age, which is eliciting the profound interest of all thoughtful men, and which is so intimately connected with prophecy; namely, the growing and deepening distress among the lower classes. In England financial matters, it seems, were never in a worse condition, and there is not one ray of light in the prospect of the future. Such is the gloomy picture presented before us, one calculated to excite in thoughtful minds the inquiry whether this state of things may not have some prophetic significance. The article is a most instructive one, and will repay careful study.
All the great natural forces which co-operate in the advance of civilization have been hostile to the thoroughly artificial edifice of English prosperity. It has been truthfully said that however solid her commercial supremacy may have seemed at times, it was no more secure than one of those vast temple walls which the traveler sees in India—walls constructed centuries ago to resist the violence of earthquake as well as more ordinary forces of destruction, but now toppling to their fall because a banyan seed has germinated in a neglected crevice, and the huge roots are gradually hurling the stones from the places where they seemed fixed forever. The germ of free trade, once worshiped in England as the banyan is by the superstitious natives of India, has been the means of undermining and destroying the temple which had been reared with such great pains. The terrible and continued complaints of the depression of trade in England, and the fears among the free traders of what they term a “Protection Revival,” have reached this side of the Atlantic in various forms for the past three months. Mr. Wedgwood showed in Parliament, last September, that during the entire series of years from 1840 to 1872, British trade exhibited elasticity and growth. Then came a change, and the exports have diminished from $1,280,000,000 in 1872 to $990,000,000 for last year. In spite of continuedpredictions from year to year and month to month that the tide was at the point of turning, it has not turned yet.
Mr. Mundella, one of the leading members of Parliament, stated the other day that British exports have fallen about 24 per cent from the highest point. Steel rails, which had been selling at $75 and $100 per ton, are to-day being delivered at $26. The price of coal has declined about 50 per cent, and cotton and woolen goods were never so cheap in the history of manufacturers.
Mr. Norwood, another English authority on commercial matters, consoles his countrymen by considering it unreasonable for Englishmen to expect that they should continue to be the sole manufacturers of the world.
Mr. John Morley, the editor of the Fortnightly Review, lately gave a long, careful, and, in the main correct, discussion on the present state of trade and on the prospects of the manufacturing interests. His conclusions are that there has been over-production everywhere. Business is being carried on in all branches at ruinously low terms.
But what cheer can the English merchant gain from the most recent Board of Trade returns? The testimony of these reports fails to yield any comfort in respect to the condition of the great industries of the country. The imports of raw cotton are less by upwards of one-fourth than they were in the corresponding month last year. The imports of flax and hemp have fallen off by one-fifth. The evidence of the principal exports points in the same direction. Cotton, piece goods, linen and jute manufactures, iron and steel, hardware and cutlery, all show a decline, both in quality and in value, and the decline in value is much greater than in quantity. The outlook for trade is, therefore, very dark, and, as we have fully shown, the fact is now generally acknowledged. In spite of successive reductions in the rate of wages and in the price of raw materials, the English manufacturers seem to be losing their hold on the foreign markets. But the other day the London Times in a leader said:
“The firms which have fought a losing battle against fate for four disastrous years, with the help of the banks, were encouraged to prolong the contest by the hope of better days that never came. At this moment there are, it may be said, less signs than ever of their coming.”
The current number of the London Quarterly Review furnishes some startling figures in regard to the decline of the cotton trade. The consumption of English cotton goods in foreign markets no longer grows at its old pace, and the reason is not far to seek. Her rivals are making greater progress than England, for since 1870 Great Britain's annual consumption of cotton has increased less than 400,000 bales, while that of the continent of Europe, the United States, and India, has grown more than 1,250,000 bales. Below we present the actual figures of the cotton consumption in thousands of bales:—
1870 1871 1872 1873 1874 1875 1876 1877
Great Britain 2,760 3,222 3,132 3,335 3,149 3,077 3,117 3,149
Cont't Europe 1,722 2,327 1,770 2,090 2,397 2,369 2,605 2,383
United States 928 1,140 1,067 1,214 1,816 1,194 1,357 439
India — — — — — — 216 237
Under the influence of protection, the United States has increased its consumption of cotton to such an extent that our imports of cotton goods have steadily declined from 227,000,000 yards in 1860 to 61,000,000 yards in 1877, and but 26,000,000 yards in the first seven months of 1878; while, on the other hand, especially during the last five years, our exports have undergone an entirely opposite process, the exports having been only $2,400,000 in 1872, and having steadily increased until they reached, in 1877, $10,660,000. The British imports of cotton goods from the United States have grown in the last few years.
But with depression in business and falling off of trade the winter in England opens with a very considerable and significant increase of pauperism. The figures for the year are before us. The fact of the increase is somewhat obscured in the general totals, there being about two per cent more paupers in all England than there were in 1877. A careful analysis of the returns shows that in the Northern manufacturing districts and Wales the augmentation is much more formidable. At the end of July last, in the Northwestern or Lancashire district, the increase in the number of paupers was as much as 6,079 on a total of 60,175. In the York district the increase at the same date was 3,948 on the total of 56,854. Altogether, in the West Midland, North Midland, Northwestern, York, Northern, and Welsh districts, the augmentation amounted at the above date to 17,513 upon a total of 824,895. These figures form painful evidence of the extent to which the masses near the verge of distribution have been pushed over the limit, and have been at least temporarily pauperized. But there is yet another proof to complete the melancholy picture. The Inter-Ocean has before shown what a great index the amount of deposits in the English postal savings banks is to the financial condition of the masses. The report of the Postmaster-General, just out, shows signs of withdrawals, and this fact indicates conclusively the extent of the distress and suffering among the working classes in England.
We do not want to dwell on these dismal topics for any grim pleasure that may be derived from the prostration of a rival. The facts are presented rather with a view of ascertaining what, if any, significance they have to America. This depression cannot come to an end without effecting vast and permanent changes in the relations of the chief industrial communities. As Professor Thompson, of Philadelphia, in a recent address, has clearly shown, previous panics effected no such change. England, the chief monopolist of the world's commerce, came out of them a little better established in her pre-eminence than she went in. She had used the period of prostration chiefly to crush native rivals in her foreign markets. No nation “had so strong a back,” and could hold out so long as England.
The facts and figures above given clearly indicate that it is to the United States that England looks for the possible destruction of her commercial supremacy. In the long run, one must succumb. Will it be the English, or will it be the American producer? Professor Thompson says that a careful examination of the facts shows beyond a doubt that the former must succumb. In the first place, the American, with control of the home market and a moderate export, will be very well off. The former he already has, the latter he is fast getting. We have shown that England is so overloaded with industries of all sorts that she cannot afford to lose even her American market. But ours is already shut on her, and her colonies, even India, as above shown, are rapidly shutting theirs. And in Europe, where her free-trade propaganda seemed likely to bear such abundant fruit, the outlook is far from promising. It is a well-known fact that Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia are not advancing in the free-trade direction. Those who had it are adopting tariffs; those whose tariffs were weak are strengthening them.
That America will ultimately take the lead in the industrial race there can be no doubt, when, added to the eloquence of convincing facts and figures, the greatest of English statesmen, Mr. Gladstone, in the following words admits it: “The huge figure of $5,000,000,000, which may be taken roundly as the annual income of the United Kingdom, has been reached at a surprising rate; a rate which may perhaps be best expressed by saying that if we had started forty or fifty years ago from zero, at the rate of our recent annual increment we should now have reached our present position. But while we have been advancing with this portentous rapidity, America is passing us by in a canter. Yet even now the work of searching the soil and the bowels of the territory, and opening out her enterprise throughout its vast expanse, is in its infancy.”

The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald

“Here is the patience of the Saints: Here are they that keep the Commandments of God, and the Faith of Jesus.” Rev. 14:12.
VOLUME 53.
BATTLE CREEK, MICH., FIFTH-DAY, JANUARY 30, 1879.
NUMBER 5.

“IT MIGHT HAVE BEEN.”

“It might have been,” impatient heart, Still fretting o’er the buried past, Seeking in life some brighter part Than where thy lot is cast, And vainly turning back again, To make the wrong and error plain.
“It might have been!” Nay, think not so; For all that had been was ordained, And each day’s share of joy and woe Fits in where wisely planned;— The perfect whole we yet shall see, When that shall come that is to be.
Each error past, each blind offense, May be themselves the means and way Set by the wisest Providence— Guides to a better day, Leading through weakness unto strength, And through the dark to light at length;
To light and truth, to peace and rest, If but with resolute step and sure We follow now what we know best, Contented to endure; Nor shrink and tremble in dismay To see how rough and hard the way;
Nor sit disheartened by the road, To tell our losses past with tears— Our “might have beens:” leave all with God, Turn to the coming years; Yes, leave the past with humble trust, To do and suffer what we must:
To meet each day as it is sent, And bravely take our portioned share— Though hidden to us the full intent,— That each must do or bear; Sure, if we each do what we can, ’Tis part in some great, noble plan.
Nor vainly our poor hearts perplex With thinking how it “might have been;” Oh! useless pain our souls to vex, From holier truths to win! With God’s great wisdom ruling all, How could our “might have beens” befall?
—Selected.

THE PROPHETIC CONFERENCE AND THE ADVENT MESSAGE.

By J. H. Rogers

As we have been engaged in heralding to the world for more than a quarter of a century the doctrine of the coming of our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ, it is with the greatest interest that we have watched the waking up of the public mind on this subject. A correspondent of the Louisville Presbyterian, writing concerning the late Prophetic Conference, says:—
“It has given voice to a wide-spread, deep, and growing conviction in the minds of many Christians of all denominations that the true doctrine of God’s word concerning the second coming of the Lord has been sadly obscured, where it has not almost entirely lapsed from the minds and hearts of professing Christians.”
“The Conference was called by some one hundred and fourteen ministers and others, composed, as one of the speakers stated, of one Lutheran, one Dutch Reformed, one Reformed, six Methodists, ten Congregationalists, fifteen Episcopalians, ten Undenominational, twenty-seven Baptists, and forty-three Presbyterians; and the purpose of the Conference was announced to be, to restore the ‘precious doctrine of Christ’s second personal appearing, which has long lain under such neglect and misapprehension,’ to its proper place in the system of revealed truth.
“Earnest work was meant, as is seen by the fact that the names of Bishops Vail and Nicholson, Drs. Tyng and Newton of the Episcopal Church, Gordon and Clarke of the Dutch Reformed, Gordon of the Baptist, and Brooks, Kellogg, Cooper, Imbrie, Craven, and West of the Presbyterian Church, were appended to the call.
“The programme of papers read before the Conference was followed, with some slight modifications.
“The addresses were generally able, scholarly, and effective. Dr. Tyng, one of the leading representatives of Evangelical Episcopacy in this country, showed the doctrine of the personal and visible return of our Lord to be a part of the primitive faith of the church, and boldly appealed to the Scriptures, received as of divine authority and interpreted in accordance with the laws of language, as the final source of appeal in the discussion of this and all the other topics before the Conference.
“Dr. Kellogg, a rising theologian of the Northern Presbyterian Church, and of twelve years’ experience, as a missionary in India, demonstrated the Lord’s coming to be pre-millennial, in a patient, painstaking, and exhaustive examination of all the leading passages of Scripture on the subject.
“Dr. Mackay of the English Presbyterian Church, a short, thickset, burly Scotchman, with wit enough to have been an Irishman, whose subject was, ‘The teaching of Scripture as to the manner in which the Church shall be caught up together in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, at his coming,’ by his bold, earnest, and glowing presentation of the truth which was evidently dear to his very heart, awakened the profoundest enthusiasm.
“Dr. Cooper, Professor of Theology in the United Presbyterian Seminary of Allegheny, Penn., and a most prominent man in that body of Presbyterians so noted for their rigid adherence to the standards of the Westminster Assembly, presented the doctrine of the judgment or judgments, showing that there are five distinct judgments, extending over the entire period of ‘the day of God.’
“Dr. Brooks, of St. Louis, so well known to your readers for his earnest and glowing piety and his most effective preaching of the gospel, read an elaborate paper on ‘The Coming of the Lord in its relation to Christian Doctrine,’ which aimed to be absolutely overwhelming in its accumulation of evidence to show that the doctrine of the Lord’s coming, as personal and imminent, extends like a golden web through the whole texture of the New Testament, intensifying every other truth.
“He actually quoted from the New Testament one hundred passages in which the Holy Spirit himself has connected, in the most intimate way, this doctrine with every other doctrine, and with all duty and service.
“But in the judgment of many, the most notable paper presented to the Conference was by Dr. Nathaniel West, of Cincinnati, on the ‘History of the doctrine of the Pre-millennial coming of Christ.’
“All lovers of true Presbyterianism know Dr. West for his intrepid and successful defense of orthodoxy in conjunction with Dr. Skinner in the famous McCune case. Dr. West showed in a series of careful historic statements that each of the apostles held the doctrine of the imminent personal return of the Lord, and that a long line of the most devout, God-fearing, and faithful believers of every age, including the ancient Chiliasts, the Reformers of the sixteenth century, the Prolocutor Dr. Twisse, and most of the leading divines of the Westminster Assembly, and many of the most active and useful ministers and missionaries of every age down to our own day, have found one of their chief motives to labor and service, and their strong support in suffering and persecution, in this inspiring truth.
“He showed that post-millennialism is a recent heresy in the Church of God, originated by the Arminian Whitby, who afterwards, it is said, became a Universalist, and that these facts ought to be known, at least by all intelligent Presbyterians. A still more significant fact was, as he asserted, that all forms of corrupt and apostate Christianity unite in bitterest hatred and opposition to premillennialism. The scoffing infidel science of the age is already asking as Peter foretold, ‘Where is the promise of his coming?’ and when this infidelity shall have culminated in the development and revelation of the Antichrist, he will without question be found the leader of the hosts who oppose this truth.
“It may serve to remove the misapprehensions of some to learn that the following resolution, offered by Dr. Brooks, was unanimously adopted:— “‘Resolved, That the doctrine of our Lord’s premillennial advent,’ instead of paralyzing evangelistic and missionary efforts, is one of the mightiest incentives to earnestness in preaching the gospel to every creature till He come.”
“All the discussions of the Conference find their crystallized expression in the following paper, unanimously adopted, as its testimony to the truth:—
“‘1. We affirm our belief in the supreme and absolute authority of the written word of God on all questions of doctrine and duty.
“‘2. The prophetic words of the Old Testament concerning the first coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, were literally fulfilled in his birth, life, death, resurrection, and ascension; and so the prophetic words of both the Old and the New Testament concerning his second coming will be literally fulfilled in his visible, bodily return to this earth in like manner as he went up into Heaven; and this glorious epiphany of the great God, our Saviour Jesus Christ, is the blessed hope of the believer and of the church during this entire dispensation.
“‘3. This second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ is everywhere represented in the Scriptures as imminent, and may occur at any moment, yet the precise day and hour thereof is unknown to man and known only to God.
“‘4. The Scriptures nowhere teach that the whole world will be converted to God, or that there will be a reign of universal righteousness and peace before the return of our blessed Lord; but that only at and by his coming in power and glory will the prophecies concerning the progress of evil and the development of Antichrist, the times of the Gentiles and the ingathering of Israel, the resurrection of the dead in Christ and the transformation of his living saints, receive their fulfillment, and the period of millennial blessedness its inauguration.
“‘5. The duty of the church during the absence of the Bridegroom is to watch and pray, to work and wait, to go into the world and preach the gospel to every creature, and thus hasten the coming day of God, and to his latest promise, “Surely I come quickly,” to respond in joyous hope, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”’”
The resolution concerning our Lord’s pre-millennial advent looks quite different from a resolution found in the Evangelical Messenger a few years since, asserting “that we believe the millennium to mean that state of happiness, prosperity, and holiness which the people of God will enjoy upon the earth for one thousand years before the resurrection of the dead, and not after.” We are glad to see our friends “wheeling into line” on these important truths. Surely the minds of the people are being called out to the “precious” doctrine which has lain so long under neglect and misapprehension.
We are nearing an important time in this work. The Lord is preparing the way before us for the message to go with power.
J. H. ROGERS.

RESTLESSNESS

By Eliza H. Morton

It is a noticeable fact that a spirit of restlessness seems to characterize the present age. People are hurrying “to and fro” all over the world. The steam-cars and steamboats are daily crowded with human beings, and change and novelty seem the object of life. Those who have not the means to travel are uneasy, and are constantly changing their places of abode. Riches do not satisfy, fame does not quench the heart-longings, and power does not give peace. This, perhaps, has ever been so; but now more than ever all nations are looking for some great event, and the hearts of the people are growing faint. Well may the world “be restless, like the waves of the sea,” for a change is soon to take place. Vague, shadowy omens of coming woe, like dark clouds, hang over the people. Man seems to lose confidence in man, and business stagnates. The crust of the earth heaves with earthquakes, volcanoes, and tornadoes.
All this is but the trembling of earth over its final doom,—one of the signs that foretell its dissolution. Not many years can come and go before an awful blackness will cover the earth, and a terrible despair settle upon the ungodly. The restlessness of the children of men will soon reach its climax, and the gathering storm burst in all its fury.
The sad lamentation, “too late! too late!” will re-echo from pole to pole, and Heaven’s gates will forever close to the unrighteous.
O restless heart of man! cease thy striving for worldly honor; reach up and grasp the golden cord of mercy which for a little season hangs over the human race, and thus secure eternal rest. ELIZA H. MORTON.

The Same Sun That Melts Wax Hardens

THE same sun that melts wax hardens

“GET READY TO DIE.”

By G. D. Ballou

One of the prominent features of our times is the great lack of practical Christianity. There is enough profession and loud boasting of the wonderful progress of the gospel; but when we look for fruit we find only here and there an olive berry on the outmost fruitful branches. Isa. 17:6. This lack of living piety is a great rock of offense over which thousands of unbelievers are stumbling to ruin. Every result has an adequate cause or causes. Probably the great cause of this lack of which we have spoken is the almost universal preaching of the sentiment which heads our article. Death is made the objective point of all religious teaching, the consummation of the Christian’s hope, the gate to endless joy. And since the devil is the one that has the power of death (Heb. 2:14), it follows that he is the gate-keeper to the abode of bliss and eternal felicity. Surely his Satanic majesty occupies a most honorable and important position in God’s gospel plan of salvation.
But the Bible nowhere gives a hint or intimation that any reward is to be given at death, or that any fondly-cherished hopes will be realized then. Not in all its pages can be found a single exhortation to make a moral preparation for death. When the Lord said to Hezekiah, “Set thine house in order; for thou shalt die, and not live,” he did not have reference to a preparation of character for death, but to the adjustment of his business affairs. God made man to live and glorify his Creator, and his constant appeal to us is to live right, act right, and do right. All his exhortations to us are in regard to how we ought to live, and none of them as to how we ought to die. This life is given us in which to make preparation for the life beyond the resurrection, and not for any condition in death. God made man to live, and not to die; and life is that for which we are to seek and make preparation. I Tim. 6:12, 19.
Why should so much be said about getting ready to die, when we are none of us fit to live? Let us learn to live first, and we need have little concern about death. Our future will not depend on how we die, but on how we have lived. We shall not be judged by our happy or gloomy feelings at death, but by the record of our works which the books shall show. Rev. 20:12. If our lives are such as God can approve, we shall need no special preparation for death, nor need we fear its trying ordeal.
The most pernicious effects are seen as the result of this popular exhortation. It blights and withers the great and noble thoughts that would lead us to a consistent, careful Christian life, by causing us to overlook practical, every-day duties and center our chief thoughts on the death-bed scene, hoping that by some means we may have a happy, triumphant departure. Happy feelings in death cannot save us. We are not to be judged by our feelings, but by our doings. It is possible for us to be deceived when we depend entirely on feeling as an evidence of our acceptance with God; and it is possible, too, that we may cherish a false hope based on false teaching, and at last go down in death self-deceived. Matt. 26:42–46.
This subordinating everything else to a preparation for death leads sinners to fatal procrastination in the work of repentance. Indeed, if this is the important thing, why may they not spend this life in carnality and sin, and then use the last few minutes in sorrow and contrition, and thus, in accordance with funereal theology, make their accounts all right with their Maker? It certainly must be a matter of no small encouragement to the sinner to take just the course here indicated, when he hears the unrepentant man preached into the courts of bliss on the strength of his having at some time in his life arisen for prayers and on his death-bed expressed the determination that if restored to health he would live a better life. Such evidences weigh light in God’s balances. There can be but little hope for that man who has deliberately spent all his life in sin, right in the face of gospel light. In cases of recovery such death-bed repentances generally prove to be anything but genuine.
The Bible nowhere enjoins such repentance, but it says, “Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them.” And many similar exhortations do we find. It also gives us rules by which our lives are to be regulated, but in no case does it give us a rule by which we are to die.
Life is the important thing, and our future will depend, not on a few forced, spasmodic efforts on the brink of the grave, but on our course through life. He whose life has been in accordance with God’s word does not look down into death for any consolation; his faith carries him beyond, over into that eternal life promised to the righteous. This special plea for a preparation for death is entirely too weak and unscriptural to thoroughly convert men to God. What we need is more living, practical godliness to convince men of the truth of Christianity.
G. D. BALLOU.
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