Another reason for the use of these figures of speech, undoubtedly, was the philosophy of the ineradicable hostility of matter and spirit, the doctrine, so prevalent in the East from the earliest times, that matter is wholly corrupt and evil, the essential root and source of all vileness. An old, unknown Greek poet embodies the very soul of this faith in a few verses which we find in the Anthology. Literally rendered, they run thus:
"The body is the torment, hell, fate, load, tyrant,
Dreadful pest, and punishing trial, of the soul
Which, when it quits the body, flies, as from the bonds
Of death, to immortal God."
It was this idea that produced the wild asceticism prevalent in the Christian Church during the Middle Age and previously, the fearful macerations, scourgings, crucifixions of the flesh. It should be understood that, though some of the phraseology of the Scriptures is tinged by the influence of this doctrine, the doctrine itself is foreign to Christianity. Christ came eating and drinking, not abjuring nature, but adopting its teachings, viewing it as a Divine work through which the providence of God is displayed and his glory gleams. He was no more of a Pharisee than nature is. As corn grows on the Sabbath, so it may be plucked and eaten on the Sabbath. The apostles never recommend self inflicted torments. The ascetic expressions found in their letters grew directly out of the perils besetting them and their expectation of the speedy end of the world. Christianity, rightly understood, renders even the body of a good man sacred and precious, through the indwelling of the Infinite. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels," and the poor, dying tenement of flesh is hallowed as "A vase of earth, a trembling clod, Constrain'd to hold the breath of God."
The chief secret, however, of the origin of the peculiar phrases under consideration consisted in their striking fitness to the nature and facts of the case, their adaptedness to express these facts in a bold and vivid manner. The revelation of the transcendent claims of holiness, of the pardoning love of God, of the splendid boon of immortality, made by Christ and enforced by the miraculous sanctions and the kindling motives presented in his example, thrilled the souls of the first converts, shamed them of their degrading sins, opened before their imaginations a vision that paled the glories of the world, and regenerated them, stirring up the depths of their religious sensibilities, and flooding their whole being with a warmth, an energy, a spirituality, that made their previous experience seem a gross carnal slumber, a virtual death. "And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins." They were animated and raised to a new, pure, glad life, through the feeling of the hopes and the practice of the virtues of the gospel of Christ. Unto those who "were formerly in the flesh, the servants of sin, bringing forth fruit unto death," but now obeying the new form of doctrine delivered unto them, with renewed hearts and changed conduct, it is written, "If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness;" that is, If Christian truth reign in you, the body may still be tormented, or powerless, owing to your previous bad habits; but the soul will be redeemed from its abandonment to error and vice, and be assured of pardon and immortal life by the witnessing spirit of God.
The apostle likewise says unto them, "If the Spirit of God dwell in you, it shall also quicken your mortal bodies." This remarkable expression was meant to convey a thought which the observation of common facts approves and explains. If the love of the pure principles of the gospel was established in them, their bodies, debilitated and deadened by former abandonment to their lusts, should be freed and reanimated by its influence. The body to a great extent reflects the permanent mind and life of a man. It is an aphorism of Solomon that "a sound heart is the life of the flesh." And Plotinus declares, "Temperance and justice are the saviors of the body so far as they are received by it." Deficiency of thought and knowledge, laziness of spirit, animality of habits, betray themselves plainly enough in the state and expression of the physical frame: they render it coarse, dim, and insensible; the person verges towards the condition of a clod; spiritual things are clouded, the beacon fire of his destiny wanes, the possibilities of Christian faith lessen, "the external and the insensate creep in on his organized clay," he feels the chain of the brute earth more and more, and finally gives himself up to utter death. On the other hand, the assimilation of Divine truth and goodness by a man, the cherishing love of all high duties and aspirations, exert a purifying, energizing power both on the flesh and the mind, animate and strengthen them, like a heavenly flame burn away the defiling entanglements and spiritual fogs that fill and hang around the wicked and sensual, increasingly pervade his consciousness with an inspired force and freedom, illuminate his face, touch the magnetic springs of health and healthful sympathy, make him completely alive, and bring him into living connection with the Omnipresent Life, so that he perceives the full testimony that he shall never die. For, when brought into such a state by the experience of live spirits in live frames, "We feel through all this fleshly dresse Bright shootes of everlastingnesse."
Spiritual sloth and sensual indulgence stupefy, blunt, and confuse together in lifeless meshes, the vital tenant and the mortal tenement; they grow incorporate, alike unclean, powerless, guilty, and wretched. Then "Man lives a life half dead, a living death, Himself his sepulchre, a moving grave." Active virtue, profound love, and the earnest pursuit, in the daily duties of life, of "Those lofty musings which within us sow The seeds of higher kind and brighter being." Cleanse, vivify, and distinguish the body and the soul, so that, when this tabernacle of clay crumbles from around it, the unimprisoned spirit soars into the universe at once, and, looking back upon the shadowy king bearing his pale prey to the tomb, exclaims, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" The facts, then, of sin, guilt, weakness, misery, unbelief, decay, insensibility, and death, joined with the opposite corresponding class of facts, and considered in their mutual spiritual and physical relations and results, originally suggested, and now interpret and justify, that peculiar phraseology of the New Testament which we have been investigating. It has no recondite meaning drawn from arbitrary dogmas, but a plain meaning drawn from natural truths.
It remains next to see what is the Christian doctrine concerning literal, physical death, concerning the actual origin and significance of that solemn event. This point must be treated the more at length on account of the erroneous notions prevailing upon the subject. For that man's first disobedience was the procuring cause of organic, as well as of moral, death, is a doctrine quite generally believed. It is a fundamental article in the creeds of all the principal denominations of Christendom, and is traditionally held, from the neglect of investigation, by nearly all Christians. By this theory the words of James who writes, "Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death" are interpreted with strict literalness. It is conceived that, had not evil entered the first man's heart and caused him to fall from his native innocence, he would have roamed among the flowers of Eden to this day. But he violated the commandment of his Maker, and sentence of death was passed upon him and his posterity. We are now to prove that this imaginative theory is far from the truth.
1. The language in which the original account of Adam's sin and its punishment is stated shows conclusively that the penalty of transgression was not literal death, but spiritual, that is, degradation, suffering. God's warning in relation to the forbidden tree was, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Of course, Jehovah's solemn declaration was fulfilled as he had said. But in the day that man partook of the prohibited fruit he did not die a physical death. He lived, driven from the delights of Paradise, (according to the account,) upwards of eight hundred years, earning his bread by the sweat of his brow. Consequently, the death with which he had been threatened must have been a moral death, loss of innocence and joy, experience of guilt and woe.
2. The common usage of the words connected with this subject in the New Testament still more clearly substantiates the view here taken of it. There is a class of words, linked together by similarity of meaning and closeness of mutual relation, often used by the Christian writers loosely, figuratively, and sometimes interchangeably, as has been shown already in another connection. We mean the words "sin," "flesh," "misery," "death." The same remark may be made of another class of words of precisely opposite signification, "righteousness," "faith," "life," "blessedness," "eternal life." These different words frequently stand to represent the same idea. "As the law hath reigned through sin unto death, so shall grace reign through righteousness unto life." In other terms, as the recognition of the retributive law of God through rebellion and guilt filled the consciences of men with wretchedness, so the acceptance of the pardoning love of God through faith and conformity will fill them with blessedness. Sin includes conscious distrust, disobedience, and alienation; righteousness includes conscious faith, obedience, and reconciliation. Sin and death, it will be seen, are related just as righteousness and life are. The fact that they are sometimes represented in the relation of identity "the minding of the flesh is death, but the minding of the spirit is life" and sometimes in the relation of cause and effect "the fruit of sin is death, the fruit of righteousness is life" proves that the words are used metaphorically, and really mean conscious guilt and misery, conscious virtue and blessedness. No other view is consistent. We are urged to be "dead unto sin, but alive unto God;" that is, to be in a state of moral perfection which turns a deaf and invincible front to all the influences of evil, but is open and joyfully sensitive to every thing good and holy. Paul also wrote, in his letter to the Philippians, that he had "not yet attained unto the resurrection," but was striving to attain unto it; that is, he had not yet reached, but was striving to reach, that lofty state of holiness and peace invulnerable to sin, which no change can injure, with which the event of bodily dissolution cannot interfere, because its elements faith, truth, justice, and love are the immutable principles of everlasting life.
3. In confirmation of this conclusion, an argument amounting to certainty is afforded by the way in which the disobedience of Adam and its consequences, and the obedience of Christ and its consequences, are spoken of together; by the way in which a sort of antithetical parallel is drawn between the result of Adam's fall and the result of Christ's mission. "As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, so much more shall all receive the gift of God by one man, Jesus Christ, and reign unto eternal life." This means, as the writer himself afterwards explains, that "as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners" and suffered the consequences of sin, figuratively expressed by the word "death," "so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous" and enjoy the consequences of righteousness, figuratively expressed by the word "life." Give the principal terms in this passage their literal force, and no meaning which is not absolutely incompatible with the plainest truths can be drawn from it. Surely literal death had come equally and fully upon all men everywhere; literal life could do no more. But render the idea in this way, the blessedness offered to men in the revelation of grace made by Jesus outweighs the wretchedness brought upon them through the sin introduced by Adam, and the sense is satisfactory. That which Adam is represented as having lost, that, the apostle affirms, Christ restored; that which Adam is said to have incurred, that Christ is said to have removed. But Christ did not restore to man a physical immortality on the earth: therefore that is not what Adam forfeited; but he lost peace of conscience and trust in the Divine favor. Furthermore, Christ did not free his followers from natural decay and death: therefore that is not what Adam's transgression brought upon his children; but it entailed upon them proclivities to evil, spiritual unrest, and woe. The basis of the comparison is evidently this: Adam's fall showed that the consequences of sin, through the stern operation of the law, were strife, despair, and misery, all of which is implied in the New Testament usage of the word "death;" Christ's mission showed that the consequences of righteousness, through the free grace of God, were faith, peace, and indestructible happiness, all of which is implied in the New Testament usage of the word "life." In the mind of Paul there was undoubtedly an additional thought, connecting the descent of the soul to the under world with the death of the sinful Adam, and its ascent to heaven with the resurrection of the immaculate Christ; but this does not touch the argument just advanced, because it does not refer to the cause of physical dissolution, but to what followed that event.