The whole trouble on such passages as this we conceive to arise from the theological definition of the word soul: From that definition, one is led to suppose that this text speaks of an immaterial, invisible, immortal essence in man, which soars into its coveted freedom on the death of its hindrance and clog, the mortal body. No instance of the occurrence of the word in the original Hebrew or Greek will sustain such a definition. It oftenest means life; and is not unfrequently rendered, person. It applies to the dead as well as to the living, as may be seen by reference to Gen. 2:7, where the word, “living,” need not have been expressed were life an inseparable attribute of the soul; and to Num. 19:13, where the Hebrew Concordance reads, “dead soul.”
The reader is also referred to the previous chapter on Soul and Spirit. From the definitions there given, it is evident that the word soul may mean, and the context requires that it here should mean, simply the martyrs, those who had been slain; the expression, “the souls of them,” being used to designate the whole person. They were represented to John as having been slain upon the altar of papal sacrifice on this earth, and lying dead beneath it. So Dr. Clarke, on this passage, says, “The altar is upon earth, not in Heaven.” They certainly were not alive when John saw them under the fifth seal; for he again brings to view the same company in almost the same language, and assures us that the first time they live after their martyrdom is at the resurrection of the just. Rev. 20:4-6. Lying there, victims of papal blood-thirstiness and oppression, the great wrong, of which their sacrifice was the evidence, called upon God for vengeance. They cried, or their blood cried, even as Abel’s blood cried to God from the ground.
Thus another stronghold of the immortality of the soul must be surrendered to a harmonious interpretation, and the plain teaching, of the word of God.
CHAPTER XV.
GATHERED TO HIS PEOPLE.
The pleasing doctrine that man can never die, though unfortunate in its parentage, is very tenacious of its life. In treating this subject in previous chapters, we have found that the record of man’s creation brings to view no immortal element as entering into his being; that the Bible, in its use of the terms immortal and immortality, never employs them to express an attribute inherent in man’s nature; that no description of soul and spirit, and no signification of the original words, will sustain the present popular definition of these terms; that the soul and spirit, though spoken of in the Bible, in the aggregate, seventeen hundred times, are never once said to be immortal or never-dying; and that no text in which these words are supposed to be employed in such a manner as to show that they signify an ever-conscious, immortal principle, can possibly be interpreted to sustain such a doctrine.
Yet the dogma of natural immortality, very reluctantly yields the ground. To a twentieth proof text it will cling even the more tenaciously, if the preceding nineteen are all swept away. Besides the texts already noticed, there are a few other passages behind which it seeks refuge; and with alacrity we follow it into all its hiding-places, confident that in no passage in all the Bible can it find a shelter, but that into every one which it claims as its own, it has entered, not by right of possession, but as an intruder and a usurper.
Behind the obituaries of the patriarchs it seeks to shield itself. It is claimed, for instance, that the death of Abraham is recorded in such a manner as to show that his conscious existence did not cease with his earthly life. We might justly insist on their going farther back and taking the recorded close of the lives of the antediluvian patriarchs as the basis of their argument. One of these, Enoch, was translated to Heaven without seeing death; and all the others, according to popular belief, went to Heaven just as effectually, through death. But how different is their record. Of Enoch it is said that he “was not; for God took him;” while of the others it is said, And they “died.” Surely these two records do not mean the same thing, and Enoch, whom God took, and who is consequently alive in Heaven, must be, judging from the record, in a different condition from those who died.
But to return to the case of Abraham. The record of his death reads: “Then Abraham gave up the ghost, and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.” On this verse, Landis, p. 130, thus remarks:--
“What then is this gatheringto the body or the soul? It cannot refer to the body, for while his body was buried in the cave of Macpelah, in Canaan, his fathers were buried afar off; Terah, in Haran, in Mesopotamia, and the rest of his ancestors far off in Chaldea. Of course, then, this gathering relates not to the body, but to the soul; he was gathered to the assembly of the blessed, and thus entered his habitation.”
To show how gratuitous, not to say preposterous, is this conclusion, we raise a query on two points: 1. Does the expression, “gathered to his people,” denote that he went to dwell in conscious intercourse with them? 2. Were his ancestors such righteous persons that they went to Heaven when they died? In answering these queries, the last shall be the first. It is a significant fact that Abraham had to be separated from his kindred and his father’s house, in order that God might make him a special subject of his providence. And in Josh. 24:2, we are plainly told that his ancestors were idolaters; for they served other gods. Such being their character, death would send them, according to the popular view, to the regions of the damned. At the time, then, of Abraham’s death, they were writhing amid the lurid waves of the lake of fire. And when Abraham was gathered to them, if it was in the sense which the theology of our day teaches, he, too, was consigned to the flames of hell! Oh! to what absurdities will men suffer themselves to be led blindfold by a petted theory. God had said to Abram, Gen. 15:15: “And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age.” Was this the consoling promise that he should go to hell in peace in a good old age? And is the record of his death an assertion that he has his place among the damned!? Yes! if the immaterialist theory be correct. Children of Abraham, arise! and with one mouth vindicate your “righteous father” from the foul aspersion. Renounce a theory as far from Heaven-born which compels you thus to look upon the “father of the faithful.”