Modern Spiritualism

THE SOUL NOT IMMORTAL

Spiritualism declares it to be the great object of its mission, to prove the immortality of the soul, which, it says, is not taught in the Scriptures with sufficient clearness, and is not otherwise demonstrated. It well attributes to the Scriptures a lack of plain teaching in support of that dogma; and it would have stated more truth, if it had said that the Scriptures nowhere countenance such a doctrine at all. But, it is said, the Scriptures are full of the terms, “soul” and “spirit.” Very true; but they nowhere use those terms to designate such a part of man as in common parlance, and in popular theology, they have come to mean. The fact is the popular concept of the “soul” and “spirit” has been formulated entirely outside the Bible. Sedulously, unremittingly, for six thousand years, the idea has been inculcated in the minds of men, from the cradle to the grave, that man is a dual being, consisting of an outward body which dies, and an inward being called “soul,” or “spirit” which does not die, but passes to higher spirit life, when the body goes into the grave. The father of this doctrine is rarely referred to by its believers, as authority, possibly through a little feeling of embarrassment as to its parentage; for he it was who announced it to our first parents in these words: “Ye shall not surely die!” Genesis 3:4. When men began to die, it was a shrewd stroke of policy on the part of him who had promised them that they should not die, to try to prove to those who remained that the other had not really died, but only changed conditions. It is no marvel that he should try to make men believe that they possessed an immaterial, immortal entity that could not die; but, in view of the ghastly experiences of the passing years, it is the marvel of marvels that he should have succeeded so well. The trouble now is that men take these meanings which have been devised and fostered into stupendous strength outside the pale of Bible teaching, and attach them to the Bible terms of “soul” and “spirit.” In other word, the mongrel pago-papal theology which has grown up in Christendom, lets the Bible furnish the terms, and paganism the definitions. But from the Bible standpoint, these definitions do not belong there; they are foreign to the truth, and the Bible does not recognize them. They are as much out of place as was the inventor of them himself in the garden of Eden. Let the Bible furnish its own definitions to its own terms, and all will be clear. The opinion of John Milton, the celebrated author of Paradise Lost, is worthy of note. In his “Treatise on Christian Doctrine, Vol. I, pp. 250, 251, he says: - MOSP 38.1

“Man is a living being, intrinsically and properly one individual, not compound and separable, not, according to the common opinion, made up and framed of two distinct and different natures, as of body and soul, but the whole man is soul, and the soul, man; that is to say, a body or substance, individual, animated, sensitive, and rational.” MOSP 40.1

In this sense the word is employed many times; but whoever will trace the use of the words “soul” and “spirit” through the Bible, will find them applied also to a great variety of objects; as, person, mind, heart, body (in the expression “a dead body”), will, lust, appetite, breath, creature, pleasure, desire, anger, courage, blast, etc., etc., in all nearly fifty different ways. But it is a fact which should be especially noted, that in not a single instance is there the least hint given that anything expressed by these terms is capable of existing for a single moment, as a conscious entity, or in any other condition, without the body! This being so, none of these, according to the Bible, are the agency claimed to be present in Spiritualism. MOSP 40.2

Another fact in reference to this point, should be allowed its decisive bearing. The question now under investigation is, Is the soul immortal, as Spiritualism has taken upon itself to teach, and claims to demonstrate? the Bible is found to be so lavish in the use of the terms “soul” and “spirit,” that these word occur in the aggregate, seventeen hundred times. Seventeen hundred times, by way of description, analysis, narrative, historical facts, or declarations of what they can do, or suffer, the Bible has something to say about “soul” and “spirit.” The most important question to be settled concerning them, certainly, is whether they are immortal or not. Will not The Bible, so freely treating of these terms, answer this question? Very strange, indeed, if it does not. But does it once affirm that either the soul or the spirit is immortal? - Not once! does it ever apply to them the terms “eternal,” “deathless,” “neverdying,” or any word that bears the necessary meaning of immortal? - Even reduced to this attenuated form, the answer is still an emphatic and overwhelming, No! well, then does it say anything about the nature and capabilities of existence of that which it denominates soul or spirit? - Yes; it says the soul is in danger of the grave, may die, be destroyed, killed, and that the spirit may be wounded, cut off, preserved, and so, conversely, made to perish. MOSP 41.1

It is sometimes claimed that the Bible should affirm the immortality of the soul, because it is so self-evident a fact that it is taken for granted. But no one surely can suppose that the immortality of the soul is more self-evident than that of Jehovah; yet the Bible has seen fit to affirm his immortality in most direct terms. 1 Timothy 1:17: “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.” 1 Timothy 6:16: “Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto; whom no man hath seen, nor can see: to whom be honor and power everlasting. Amen.” Let, then, similar Bible testimony be found concerning the soul; that is, that it is “immortal,” or “hath immortality,” and the taken-for-granted device will not be needed. MOSP 42.1