An Appeal to the People in Behalf of Their Rights as Authorized Interpreters of the Bible

by Catharine Esther Beecher

Add to all this, the deductions of reason as to the moral nature of the Creator and Governor of all minds. He has power to separate the good and bad; his great design, of which we here see only the tendencies, makes it indispensable to the perfect happiness of the good that they be separated from the bad—a perfectly happy commonwealth can not be attained where the bad form a part—while the sense of justice exists in God on a scale far above ours, demanding added penalties for the known and willful destruction of happiness. He, like his children on earth, feels that craving for retributive justice, which can never rest till the guilty and remorseless monster receives the just recompense for his cruelty and crimes.

These teachings of reason and experience lead to the conclusion, not only that there is to be a grand consummation in which all sin and suffering shall be ended in a perfected commonwealth, but also to the conclusion that those excluded from this community of the good are to continue their existence in sin and its natural results for ever.

That any portion, either of matter or mind, is to be annihilated, can not be inferred from any past experience. All that we can learn are the laws of perpetual succession and change. One single fact of annihilation has never yet been made known to man by any process of reasoning, or any recorded experience.

There is another question in reference to this awful subject, which is of deepest interest. Although the deductions of reason lead to the doctrine of the eventual separation of mankind into two distinct communities, the good and the evil, what are its teachings as to the immediate state of each individual soul after the event of death?

Here, as before, we have only the nature and past history of mind, from which the future is to be deduced. In this world we have found the changes in the character of individuals and of communities to proceed by slow and imperceptible movement. We have nothing in the past to lead to the belief that this slow process of discipline, culture and change may not proceed on for ages. As in this life, multitudes have the impress and direction of character given in early life, so that the first few years determine all their future history in this world, so the career of this short life may fix the future through eternal years. And yet the process of change to the full consummation of character may involve ages.

In studying the works of the Creator, we find that every thing goes forward on a system of developments. Nothing comes into being in full perfection, and unless there is an interruption of the natural tendencies of things, every thing reaches its full and perfected state before its existence ends. And the nobler, larger, [pg 179] and grander the existence, the slower it proceeds to its consummated perfection. The oak and the palm demand centuries ere they reach their perfected prime. The highest grades of animal life are slowest in gaining their full development. The horse, the elephant, and the camel, are going forward to perfection for years after the feebler tribes that started with them have perfected and perished.

Guided, then, by the analogies of experience, we should infer that mind, the noblest work of its Creator's hand—mind, that begins its career in such low and feeble development, is not to form the mournful exception to the general rule.

On the contrary, we infer from all past experience, both of matter and mind, that the soul, when it lays aside its outer covering, proceeds onward in its career of development. And if its period of progressive development is proportioned to its relative value in comparison with all other created things, the fleeting years of this life in relation to the ages previous to its prime, may be but as the first days of puling infancy to the whole career of manhood.

But this subject is imperfectly treated, if we neglect to consider the fact, that the soul, so far as we can perceive, is disembodied at death. We have perfect evidence, that the material part is destroyed, as to its organized existence. We have the same sort of evidence that the soul continues to exist, and will continue to exist, as we have that the sun exists when all evidence of sight ceases. But what is the experience of a disembodied spirit, we have no means of learning. It may be that its powers of knowledge and action are greatly increased, when freed from its earthly prison. [pg 180] If this be so, the experience of this life leads to the inference that its dangers and temptations are increased in exact proportion. Increase of civilization is only increase in sources of knowledge and enjoyment, and each addition brings new temptations, new rules, and the need of new penalties. It may be the same in the future life.

We can suppose the body a veil to hide our mind from another, and that death makes every soul “open and naked,” in all its thoughts and feelings, to every other disembodied spirit. What would be the effect of such a revelation, no one could say. But we should fear rather than hope.