By A. Gregory Wilkinson. [Second Edition]
1904 127 As two copies of this pamphlet have been sent to me this week, it seems called for to let Christians know how false and evil, dangerous and degrading it is. How shocking to teach that man, like the brute which perishes, has no more than animal life, unless he believe in Christ for immortality! This is to fall below very many of the heathen, who did and do believe in the soul's existence after death. In general men dreaded death as leading to judgment, save Brahminists, Buddhists, etc., who essayed philosophic schemes to soften or destroy their fears. But here are men bearing the name of Christians who are not ashamed to appeal to scripture for pretended proof that the crowds of unbelieving men, however endowed with intellect and thus superior to brutes, are only animals, and need not be alarmed at everlasting judgment.
No doubt they can quote as allies men like the late Sabellian Abp. Whately, the Congregationalist Dr. Dale, the Wesleyan Professor Beet, and, as at least they claim, Mr. W. E. Gladstone. But they are either ignorant or unscrupulous (as here, p. 45) to include Mr. J. N. Darby among a class whom he pitied and abhorred. Mr. D. did teach in "L'Attente Actuelle de l'Eglise" etc. (Hopes of the Church, etc.), when asserting the truth of the resurrection, that the idea of the soul's immortality has no source in the gospel, but from the Platonists who thereby replaced, as they quite ignored, the risen body. But he never doubted the immortality of the soul, as a truth conveyed even from the beginning of the O.T., and confirmed throughout all the scriptures to the end. Yet the truth is that it had no source in the gospel, and was misused by the Platonist; as I pointed out many years ago to Mr. E. White, when guilty of the same inexcusable misunderstanding.* The Jews, save the materialist Sadducees, had from the O.T. no doubt of the soul's immortality; which proves that it is a truth independent of the gospel.
{*See the B.T. 8:240, 255, 256.}
"God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion" (Gen. 1:26). How solemn the language! how strikingly different from that which ushers in other creatures for the earth, waters, or air! In chap. 2 where relations are stated (as Jehovah is added to Elohim), the distinction is carefully carried on morally. Into man's nostrils exclusively did Jehovah Elohim, after forming the man of dust of the ground, breathe breath of life. All the lower creatures become living souls without any such specific act: only thus did man become a living soul (ver. 7).
Here is the ground of man's immortal soul; and the body alone is called "mortal," never the soul. Hence is man responsible to God, as no lion, or whale, or eagle; which animals cannot therefore be said to sin like man, any more than to repent; nor do they need life eternal or atonement, nor rise to give account to God for the things done through the body. Think of an error among professing Christians, not only so baseless but so debasing as to put "God's offspring" as the apostle recognised even the idolatrous Athenians to be, on the same level as a dog or a pig! The unsophisticated soul, certainly one born of God, feels (awful as it is to confess it) that his sins deserve everlasting punishment. Nor does scripture weaken but give certainty and power to that overwhelming conviction. And the Saviour in particular says, "Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will warn you, whom ye shall fear; Fear him who, after he hath killed, hath power to cast into Gehenna; yea I say to you, Fear him." Think of the reckless unbelief that rejects the Lord's warning under cover, or through the doctrine, of conditional immortality!
See how the Lord in Luke 16:19-31 refutes this unholy falsehood. It is expressly to lift the veil off the state which follows death — not here resurrection but death. The pious beggar passes from his sad lot on earth through death, carried by angels into Abraham's bosom. The rich man that lived to self, not to God, died, was buried, but in Hades lifted up his eyes, being in torments. How dare a believer give the Lord the lie, how at least ignore or pervert the plain truth? The soul of every sinner, the worst, is as immortal as the saint's; but one is for judgment, as the other for life, not Adam's but Christ's, for God's everlasting glory, as we are told. The torments of Hades are not the lake of fire, as Abraham's bliss is not reigning with Christ. But wretchedness and suffering immeasurable begin for the lost soul before judgment seals it for the body as well as the soul; and happiness far more for him who departs to be with Christ. The heterodox notion of conditional immortality, which the learned but eccentric Henry Dodwell (1708) favoured, is a mere, wicked, and pernicious imposture.