IMMORTALITY
51J
BIMORTALITY
tribution of rewards and punisliments in this life, and tlie capacities of the human soul, are a presumptive ev- idence which has been adduced, as we shall afterwards show, only by those to ivhom the doctrine had been transmitted by tradition, and who were therefore in pos- session of the idea ; and even then, to have any eifec- tual force of persuasion, they must be built upon ante- cedent principles furnished only by the revelations con- tained in holy Scripture. Hence some of the wisest heathens, who were not wholly unaided in their specu- lations on these subjects by the reflected light of these revelations, confessed themselves miable to come to any satisfactory conclusion. The doubts of Socrates, who expressed himself the most hopefully of any on the sub- ject of a future life, are -well known; and Cicero, who occasionally expatiates with so much eloquence on this topic, shows, by the skeptical expressions which he throws in, that his belief was by no means confirmed."
The first attempt of a philosophical tenet on the doc- trine of immortality is offered in Plato's Pkcedo. On it the New Platonics reared their structure, adorned with many fanciful additions. All scientific attempts throughout the IMiddle Ages, and up to our own day, have been modified views, allied more or less to Plato- nism. In opposition to these, the French materialism of the 18th century attempted to destroy, or at least undermine, the belief in immortality. Not less mate- rialistic is the position of the^Pantheists, headed by Spi- noza. "These hold that the World-Soid, which, in their opinion, produces and fills the universe, also fills and rules man; nay, that it is only in him that it reaches its special end, which is self-consciousness, and attains to thought and will. It is true, they go on to say, that at the death of the individual this World-Soul retreats from him, just as the setting sun seems to draw back its rays into itself; and that self-consciousness now sinks once more into the great, unconscious, undis- tmguished spirit-ocean of the whole." The answer to this ridiculous position lias been best given by M'Cosh {Intuitions of the JMind, p. 392 sq.) : ''A^'e can conceive of air thus rushing into air, and of a bucketful of water losing itself in a river ; and why ? because neither air nor water ever had a separate and conscious personality. The soul, as long as it exists, must retain its personalitj' as an essential property, and must carry it along with it wherever it goes. The moral conviction clusters round this personal self. The being who is judged, who is saved or condemned, is the same who sinned and con- tinued in his sin, or who believed and was justified when on earth."
Kant, Locke, and other metaphysicians, on the other hand, like some theologians, as we have seen above, also exclude the immortality of the soul from the prov- ince of natural theology. " They deem it impossible to prove our future existence from the creation, or even from the admitted attributes of the Creator, and are thus in singular opposition to the ancient Platonists, who regarded the eternal continuance of our being as the more obvious doctrine of natural theology, and in- ferred from it the divine existence as the less direct in- timation of nature. It is saitl.that much of the reason- ing employed by pagan writers to prove the immortality of the soul is unsound. This is a fact, and yet by no means invalidates their right to believe in the conclu- sion which they deduced illogically. There are many truths, the proof of which lies so near to us that we overlook it. Believing a proposition firmly, we are sat- isfied with the mere pretence of an argument for its sup- port; and searching in the distance for proofs which can only be found in immediate contact with us, we dis- cover reasons for the belief which, long before we had discovered them, was j'ct fully established in our own minds ; and yet we deem these reasons sufficient to up- hold the doctrine, although, in pomt of fact, the doc- trine does not make trial of their strength by resting upon them. If they were the props on which our be- lief was in reality founded, their weakness Avould be
obvious at once ; but, as they have nothing to sustain, their insufficiency is the less apparent; our belief con- tinues, notwithstanding the fraihiess of the arguments which make a show of upholding it, and thus the very defects of the proof illustrate the strength of the con- clusion, which remains firm in despite of them. That the immortality of the soul has been firmly believed in by men destitute of a written revelation will not be de- nied by fair-minded scholars. It probably woidd never have been doubted had not some learned, though inju- dicious controversialists, as Leland and others, deemed it necessarj' to magnify the importance of the Bible by undervaliung the attainments of heathen sages. The singular attempt of Warburton to prove that the au- thority of the Mosaic writings is evinced by their not teaching the doctrine of a future state led him to an equally paradoxical attempt to show that the phraseol- ogy of pagan sages furnishes no valid evidence of their belief in the soul's immortality. But each of these ef- forts was abortive ; and if each had been successful, such a kind of success would have resulted in even greater evils than have come from the want of it. The fact, then, that our existence in a futiure world has been an article of faith among pagan philosophers indicates that I this doctrine is an appropriate part of natural theology. But, even if it had not been thus believed by heathens, it ought to have been ; and the arguments which con- vince the unaided judgment of its truth are also reasons for classifying the doctrine among the teachings of na- ture. These arguments may be conveniently arranged imder six different classes : first, the metaphysical, which prove that the mind is entirely distinct from the body, and is capable of existing while separate from it ; that the mind is not compounded, and will not therefore be dissolved into elementary particles ; that, being imper- ceptible, it cannot perish except bj-^ an annihilating act of God (comp. Dr. M'Cosli's argument above cited); sec- ondly, the analogical, which induces us to believe that the soul will not be anniliilated, even as matter does not cease to exist when it changes its form ; thirdly, the teleolo(jical, which incline us to think that the mental powers and the tendencies so imperfectlj^ developed in this life will not be shut out from that sphere of future exertion for which they are so wisely adapted; fourthly, the theological, which foster an expectation that the wisdom of God will not fail to complete what otherwise appears to have been commenced in vain, that his goodness will not cease to bestow the happiness for which our spiritual nature is ever longing, and that his justice wUl not allow the present disorders of the moral world to continue, but will rightly adjust the bal- ances, which have now for a season lost their equipoise ; fifthly, the moral, which compel us to hope that our vir- tues wiO not lose their reward, and to fear that oiur vices will not go unpunished in the future Avorld, which seems to be better fitted than the present for moral retribution; and, sixthly, the liisloricul, the general belief in a future state of rewards and iiunishments, the expectations of dying men, the premonitions of the guilty, and the te- nacious hopes of the beneficent. AU these arguments are in favor of our unending existence, and there ai'e none in opposition to it ; and it is an axiom that what- ever has existed and now exists, will, unless there be special proof to the contrary, continue to exist" {Bibli- otheca Sacra, J\Iay, 184G, art. ii).