CHAPTER VIII.
CRITICAL HISTORY OF DISBELIEF IN A FUTURE LIFE.
IF the first men were conscious spirits who, at the command of God, dropped from the skies into organic forms of matter, or who were created here on an exalted plane of insight and communion far above any thing now experienced by us, then the destination of man to a life after death may originally have been a fact of direct knowledge, universally seen and grasped without any obscuring peradventure. From that state it gradually declined into dubious dimness as successive generations grew sinful, sensual, hardened, immersed and bound in affairs of passion and earth. It became remoter, assumed a questionable aspect, gave rise to discussions and doubts, and here and there to positive disbelief and open denial. Thus, beginning as a clear reality within the vision of all, it sank into a matter of uncertain debate among individuals.
But if the first men were called up into being from the earth, by the creative energy of God, as the distinct climax of the other species, then the early generations of our race, during the long ages of their wild and slowly ameliorating state, were totally ignorant of any conscious sequel to the fate seemingly closed in death. They were too animal and rude yet to conceive a spiritual existence outside of the flesh and the earth. Among the accumulating trophies of their progressive intellectual conquests hung up by mankind in the historic hall of experience, this marvellous achievement is one of the sublimest. What a day was that for all humanity forever after, when for the first time, on some climbing brain, dawned from the great Sun of the spirit world the idea of a personal immortality! It was announced. It dawned separately wherever there were prepared persons. It spread from soul to soul, and became the common faith of the world. Still, among every people there were pertinacious individuals, who swore not by the judge and went not with the multitude, persons of less credulous hearts and more skeptical faculties, who demurred at the great doctrine, challenged it in many particulars, gainsaid it on various grounds, disbelieved it from different motives, and fought it with numerous weapons.
Whichever of the foregoing suppositions be adopted, that the doctrine of a future life subsided from universal acceptance into party contention, or that it arose at length from personal perception and authority into common credit, the fact remains equally prominent and interesting that throughout the traceable history of human opinion there is a line of dissenters who have thought death the finality of man, and the next world an illusion. The history of this special department of thought opens a wide and fertile subject. To gain a comprehensive survey of its boundaries and a compact epitome of its contents, it will be well to consider it in these two lights and divisions, all the time trying to see, step by step, what justice, and what injustice, is done: first, the dominant motive forces animating the disbelievers; secondly, the methods and materials they have employed.
At first thought it would appear difficult to tell what impulses could move persons to undertake, as many constantly have undertaken, a crusade against a faith so dear to man, so ennobling to his nature. Peruse the pages of philosophical history with careful reflection, and the mystery is scattered, and various groups of disbelievers stand revealed, with earnest voices and gestures assailing the doctrine of a future life.1
One company, having their representatives in every age, reject it as a protest in behalf of the right of private judgment against the tyranny of authority. The doctrine has been inculcated by priesthoods, embodied in sacred books, and wrought into the organic social life of states; and acceptance of it has been commanded as a duty, and expected as a decent and respectable thing. To deny it has required courage, implied independent opinions, and conferred singularity. To cast off the yoke of tradition, undermine the basis of power supporting a galling religious tyranny, and be marked as a rebellious freethinker in a generation of slavish conformists, this motive could scarcely fail to exhibit results. Some of the radical revolutionists of the present time say that the doctrine of the divine right of kings and the infallible authority of the priesthood is the living core of the power of tyranny in the world. They therefore deny God and futurity in order to overthrow their oppressors, who reign over them and prey upon them in the name of God and the pretended interests of a future life.2 The true way to secure the real desideratum corruptly indicated in this movement is not by denying the reality of a future life, but by removing the adjustment of its conditions and the administration of its rewards and penalties out of the hands of every clique of priests and rulers. A righteously and benignly ordered immortality, based in truth and adjudicated by the sole sovereignty of God, is no engine of oppression, though a doctrine of heaven and hell irresponsibly managed by an Orphic association, the guardians of a Delphic tripod, the owners of a secret confessional, or the interpreters of an exclusive creed, may be. In a matter of such grave importance, that searching and decisive discrimination, so rare when the passions get enlisted, is especially needed. Because a doctrine is abused by selfish tyrants is no reason for supposing the doctrine itself either false or injurious.
No little injury has been done to the common faith in a future life, great disbelief has been provoked unwittingly, by writers who have sought to magnify the importance of revealed religion at the expense of natural religion. Many such persons have labored to show that all the scientific, philosophical, and moral arguments for immortality are worthless, the teachings and resurrection of Christ, the revealed word of God, alone possessing any validity to establish that great truth. An accomplished author says, in a recent work, "The immortality of the soul cannot be proved without the aid of revelation." 3 Bishop Courtenay published, a few years since, a most deliberate and unrelenting attack upon the arguments for the deathlessness of the soul, seeking with persevering remorselessness to demolish every one of them, and to prove that man totally perishes, but will be restored to life at the second coming of Christ.4 There can scarcely be a question that such statements usually awaken and confirm a deep skepticism as to a future life, instead of enhancing a grateful estimate of the gospel.
1 J. A. Luther, Recensetur numerus eorum, qui immortalitatem inficiati sunt.
2 Schmidt, Geschichte der Deutschen Literatur im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, band iii. kap. iv.: Der philosophische Radicalismus.