Common Sense Applied to Religion; Or, The Bible and the People

by Catharine Esther Beecher

The other principles to guide us are, that nothing is to be assumed to be true unless there is some evidence that it is so, and, in case of conflicting evidence, the balance of evidence is to decide what is right and true.

These principles being assumed, we find that at the death of every human being we have evidence, first, that the body ceases to be connected with the spirit, and is dissolved.

Next, we have evidence at the period of this dissolving of soul and body that the soul exists without a body, and no evidence that it is changed in any of its powers, or habits, or character.

Thus we arrive at the conclusion that the spirits that have existed in this life connected with bodies are still existing with all the powers, habits, and character which they possessed in this life, except as they are modified by causes and tendencies that experience in this life has disclosed. We thus infer that all minds who have left this world have continued in the upward or downward tendencies of character which existed when they were disconnected with the body.

This is all the knowledge we can gain by reason and experience alone in reference to other created beings, and their character and mode of existence.

As to the time when the soul commences existence, we have no evidence of such existence except what is manifested in the body. We can only infer, then, that the soul begins to exist when the evidence of its existence commences in the body. To assert that it begins before that time is to violate the principle of reason which forbids us to assume any thing to be true unless there is evidence of it.

Thus, without a revelation, we are led to a belief in the existence of two classes of disembodied spirits, the good and the bad. But we have no evidence of the existence of any other created minds except those that have formerly been connected with bodies in this world.

So far as animals give evidence of possessing an independent spiritual existence, the same argument that proves the continued existence of the human mind after death, proves that the animal spirit, if there be one, continues after the dissolution of the body.

But we can not reason in regard to animals as we can in regard to human minds, for we never had the experience of animal existence to commence with, as we have our own experience in reasoning as to the nature and experience of mind in reference to other beings of the same race.