CHAPTER XXXIV.
THE CLAIMS OF PHILOSOPHY.
After the Bible, what? When once the word of God pronounces upon a question, what further evidence is needed to sustain the position, or what evidence is strong enough to break its decision? What can human reason, science, and philosophy, do for a theory upon which the Scriptures have written “Ichabod”?
We have, in previous chapters, examined the teaching of the Bible on the whole subject of man’s creation, nature, death, intermediate state, and final doom. We have found that man was not created absolutely mortal or immortal, but relatively both: immortality was within his reach, and mortality lay as a danger in his path. He sinned and became absolutely mortal. Then death becomes an unconscious sleep in the grave, and his destiny beyond the tomb, if he does not secure through Christ, eternal life, is an utter loss of existence. But there are some who think that reason, science, and philosophy, are sufficient to disprove these conclusions; or, at least, that they are so strong that the Bible record must be made to harmonize with the claims drawn from these sources. But they forget that much that we call reason is in the sight of God “foolishness,” that there is a philosophy which the Bible pronounces “vain,” and some kinds of science which it says are “falsely so called.”
We are willing to grant philosophy the privilege of trying to substantiate its claims. It may boast like Goliah, but it will be found weaker than Belshazzar before the handwriting on the wall.
The soul immortal. It is claimed that the soul is immaterial, and cannot therefore be destroyed, and hence must be immortal. Luther Lee says:--
“If God himself has made the soul immaterial, he cannot destroy it by bringing material agents to act upon it.”
This claim is good if whatever is indestructible is immortal. But this is a manifest error. The elements of the human body are indestructible, but the body is not therefore immortal. It is subject to change, death, and decay. But if it is claimed that the soul, being immaterial, is without elements, then perhaps it might follow that it is indestructible; for that which is nothing can never be made less than nothing.
But if the soul of man, being immaterial, is thus proved to be immortal, what shall we say of the souls of the lower orders of animals? for they manifest the phenomena of mind as well as men. They remember, fear, imagine, compare, manifest gratitude, anger, sorrow, desire, &c. Bishop Warburton says:--
“I think it may be strictly demonstrated that man has an immaterial soul; but then, the same arguments which prove that, prove, likewise, that the souls of all living animals are immaterial.”
Whoever, therefore, affirms the immortality of man from the immateriality of his soul, is bound to affirm the same, not only of the nobler animals, but also of all the lower orders of the brute creation. Here, believers in natural immortality are crushed beneath the weight of their own arguments. If it be said that God can, if he choose, blot from existence the immaterial soul of the beetle and the titmouse, we reply, so can he that of man; and then its immortality is at an end, and the whole argument is abandoned.