the Bible teaches any such doctrine it teaches something outside of the teachings of consciousness, and something to which those teacliings, in the judgment of the vast majority of men, even the most enhghtened, are directly opposed.
Realism Contrary to the Teachings of Scripture.
4. The Scriptures not only do not teach the doctrine in question, but they also teach wiiat is inconsistent with it. We have already seen that it is a clearl}' revealed doctrine of the Bible, and part of the faith of tiie Church universal, that the soul contin- ues to exist after death as a self-conscious, individual person. This fact is inconsistent with the theory in question. A given plant is a material organization, animated by the general principle of vegetable life. If the plant is destroyed the principle of vegetable life no longer exists as to that plant. It may exist in other plants ; but that particular plant ceased to exist when the material organization was dissolved. Magnetism continues to exist as a force in nature, but any particular magnet ceases to be when it is melted, or volatilized. In like manner, if a man is the manifestation of a generic life, or of humanity as an essence common to all men, then when his body dies the man ceases to exist. Humanity continues to be, but the individual man no longer exists. This is a difficulty which some of the advocates of this theory endeavour to avoid by giving up what is essential to their own doctrine. Its genuine and con- sistent advocates admit it in its full force. The anti-Cliristian portion of them acknowledge that their doctrine is inconsistent with the personal immortality of man. The race, they say, is immortal, but individual men are not. The same conclusion is admitted by those who hold the analogous pantheistic, or naturalistic doctrines. If a man is only the modus existendi, a form in which a common substance or life reveals itself, it matters not whether that substance be humanity, nature, or God, when the form, the material organism, is destroyed, the man as a man ceases to exist. Those advocates of the doctrine who cling to Christianity, while they admit the difficulty, endeavour to get over it in different ways. Schleiermacher admits that all philosophy is against the doctrine of the personal existence of man in a future state. His whole sys- tem leads to the denial of it. But he says that the Cliristian must admit it on the authority of Christ. Olshausen, in his commentary on the New Testament, says, when explaining 1 Cor. xv. 19, 20, and verses 42-44, that the Bible knows nothing of the immortality of the soul. He pronounces it to be a heathen idea. A soul with-
68 PART 11. ch. n.— nature of man.
out a body loses its individuality. It ceases to be a person, and of course loses self-consciousness and all that is connected with it. As, however, the Scriptures teach that men are to exist hereafter, he says their bodies must also continue to exist, and the only existence of the soul during the interval between death and the resurrection, which he admits, is in connection (^. e., vital union) with the disin- tegx'ated particles of the body in the grave or scattered to the ends of the earth. This is a conclusion to which his doctrine leoiti- mately leads, and which he is sufficiently candid to admit. Dr. Nevin, a disciple of Schleiermacher, has to grapple with the same difficulty. His book entitled " The Mystical Presence," is the clearest and ablest exposition of the theology of Schleiermacher which has appeared in our language, unless Morell's " Philosophy of Religion" be its equal. He denies^ all dualism between the soul and body. They are " one life." The one cannot exist without the other. He admits that what the Bible teaches of the separate existence of the soul between death and the resurrection, is a difficulty " which it is not easy, at present, to solve." He does not attempt to solve it. He only says that the difficulty is " not to reconcile Scripture with a psychological theory, but to bring it into harmony with itself." This is no solution. It is a virtual admission that he cannot reconcile the Bible with liis psy- chological theory. The doctrine that man is a modus existendi of a generic humanity, or the manifestation of the general principle of humanity, in connection with a given corporeal organization, is inconsistent with the Scriptural doctrine of the separate existence of the soul, and therefore must be false.
Inconsistent with the Doctrine of the Trinity.
5. This theory is inconsistent with the Scriptural doctrine of the Trinity. It necessitates the conclusion that the Father, Son, and Spirit are no more one God than Peter, James, and John are one man. The persons of the Trinity are one God, because the Godhead is one essence ; but if humanity be one essence numeri- cally the same in all men, then all men are one man in the same sense that the Father, Son, and Spirit are one God. This is a reductio ad absurdum. It is clearly taught in Scripture and uni- versally believed in the Church that the persons of the Trinity are one God in an infinitely higher sense than that in which all men are one man. The precise diffi^rence is, that the essence common to the persons of the Godhead is numerically the same •
1 Page 171.