And why? For this simple reason, that the old heathen knew as much as that before Christ came.
The old Greeks and Romans, and Persians, and our own forefathers before they became Christians, believed that men’s souls would live for ever happy or miserable. The Mussulmans, Mahommedans, Turks as they are called in the Prayer-book, believe as much as that now. They believe that men’s souls live for ever after death, and go to ‘heaven’ or ‘hell.’
So those words ‘everlasting Life’ must needs mean something more than that. What do they mean?
First. What does everlasting mean?
It means exactly the same as eternal. The two words are the same: only everlasting is English, and eternal Latin. But they have the same sense.
Now everlasting and eternal mean something which has neither beginning nor end. That is certain. The wisest of the heathen knew that: but we are apt to forget it. We are apt to think a thing may be everlasting, because it has no end, though it has a beginning. We are careless thinkers, if we fancy that. God is eternal because he has neither beginning nor end.
But here come two puzzles.
First. The Athanasian Creed says that there is but one Eternal, that is, God; and never were truer words written.
But do we not make out two Eternals? For God is one Eternal; and eternal life is another Eternal. Now which is right; we, or the Athanasian Creed? I shall hold by the Athanasian Creed, my friends, and ask you to think again over the matter: thus—If there be but one Eternal, there is but one way of escaping out of our puzzle, which makes two Eternals; and that is, to go back to the old doctrine of St. Paul, and St. John, and the wisest of the Fathers, and say—There is but one Eternal; and therefore eternal life is in the Eternal God. And it is eternal Life because it is God’s life; the life which God lives; and it is eternal just because, and only because, it is the life of God; and eternal death is nothing but the want of God’s eternal life.
Certainly, whether you think this true or not, St. John thought it true; for he says so most positively in the text. He says that the Life was manifested—showed plainly upon earth, and that he had seen it. And he says that he saw it in a man, whom his eyes had seen, and his hands had handled. How could that be?