The next point to be considered is what is actually involved in this claim that all men are by nature immortal. We state as a proposition, that the claim that men are by nature immortal actually implies nothing less than that they are equal with God, and independent of him. This proposition we shall now prove.
- Immortality belongs to God alone. Paul speaks of “the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords; who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto” (1 Tim. 6:15,16). Christ, as the only begotten Son of God, shares this attribute with the Father: “For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself” (John 5:26). Angels are immortal, but only because God has given them immortality; men may obtain immortality, but only as the gift of God, bestowed on them through Christ, only, however, to those who seek it by patient continuance in well-doing. (Rom. 6:23; 2:7). Now for a man to claim one of the attributes of God is virtually to claim all of them. Especially is this true if the attribute claimed were immortality; for the possession of life involves everything else. To claim immortality is to claim the very highest attribute of a Deity. God’s most sacred name is Jehovah, —the One who is, —and when he would give Moses the highest possible credentials, he said, “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you” (Ex. 3:14). So for a man to claim immortality, as his own by right is to claim for himself equality with God, or at least to claim that he is a part of God.
- The great, and, indeed, the only reason why we should serve the Lord with all our heart, and with all our power, is because he has created us, and we live only by his favor. Said the holy angels in Heaven, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honor and power; for thou hast created all things” (Rev. 4:11). And Paul, in proving to the Athenians that God alone should be worshiped, used only the argument that “he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things,” and that “in him we live, and move, and have our being” (Acts 17:25, 28). Now if it were true that we are immortal, and that our life, either present or future, is not dependent on the special favor of God, but that we shall continue to exist for ever, no matter what our character or condition, then it would be true that we would owe no allegiance to God nor to anyone else but ourselves. The claim that man is by nature immortal is virtually a claim that he is independent of God. So again we see that for men to claim immortality for themselves is to make themselves gods, or, at least, a part of God.
- If man were immortal, like God, then, as stated above, he would be independent of God, owing no allegiance to anybody but himself; and in that case he would, necessarily, be his own lawgiver and his own judge. Each man would determine for himself what his course of action would be, and right would be for each individual whatever his nature should prompt him to do. These conclusions are self-evident, and prove the main proposition, that the claim of natural immortality for man is virtually a claim that men are gods, having all the attributes that the Bible ascribes to the one only true God. And this again shows that the spirit of antichrist inspires the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, for Christ is God. (John 1:1). Whatever dishonors either the Father or the Son dishonors the other.
Having thus briefly but positively shown that the doctrine of the natural immortality of the soul is the very essence of the spirit of antichrist, we shall proceed to show (1) that modern Spiritualism, the foundation-stone of which is continued existence for man, does most positively deny both God and Christ; (2) that all teaching having natural immortality as its basis has ever been opposed to God; and (3) that the teaching that man is by nature immortal always leads directly and surely to immortality,—that it is indeed because of all the wickedness that has ever disgraced this earth. We quote first the statements of leading Spiritualist writers.
The editor of the Golden Gate, which is probably the ablest and most respectable Spiritualist journal in the United States, in his issue of November 27, 1886, said: —
“As Spiritualists repudiate the horrible doctrine of election, as taught by certain branches of the churches; as they believe in no Satanic personality, and have no use for an eternal hell in an orthodox sense, they would naturally be regarded by those who still adhere to those old traditions as outside the pale of redemption, —as indeed they are, vicariously, but not in reality; for they realize that if they ever attained happiness in this life or the next it must be through their own efforts, in response to the aspirations of their own souls.
“When a man learns that the only Satan in the universe is his own ignorance and the evil propensities and appetites engendered thereof; and when he learns that in all of God’s great plan of creation there is no one but himself to answer for his own inequities, it would seem, if he stops to think, that he would ‘seek the better way,’ and cease to do evil.”
In this passage the editor makes reference to “God’s great plan of creation,” yet he claims for man absolute independence of God, making man and not God the judge of right and wrong. Again, in the Golden Gate of July 2, 1887, we find the following editorial statement:
“The spirits also teach us that there is no atonement or remission of sin except through growth; that as we sow, so also must we reap. They have not found God, and never will, except as they find him in their own souls.”
Still more direct is a statement made by a correspondent of the Golden Gate, in the issue of September 10, 1887: —
“When the truth was made known to me that ‘God is life, love, truth, intelligence, substance, omnipresent, omnipotent, and omniscient, and there is no evil,’ I became glorified in myself as a part of that God.”
Light in the West, a spiritualist paper published in St. Louis, Mo., contained the following, August 14, 1886: —
“Man is a part of God, a spark thrown off from the Great Spirit.”
W. J. Colville is considered one of the greatest of Spiritualist lecturers. He lectures wholly by “inspiration,” and is held in as high esteem by Spiritualists as Christ is by Christians. In a lecture delivered in Oakland, Cal., June 19, 1886, he used the following language in answer to the question, “Where and what is Heaven, and where and what is hell?”
“The mind of man is the original creator both of that heaven and that hell which your own individual mind or spirit may realize; and no matter what your theological premises may be, the creed you espouse or the doctrines you favor, you cannot obliterate human conscience; and so long as you cannot obliterate human conscience, you will know hell until you are reconciled with conscience, and as soon as you are reconciled with conscience you will know heaven. There can be no heaven unless there be a perfect reconciliation between the impulses of man’s highest soul and his outward life; there can be no heaven until your individual life is guided by the divine within you, that ever points out to you the road which is the perfect way.”—Golden Gate, September 3, 1887.
In a lecture delivered by the “inspirational lecturer”; J. J. Morse, at the Spiritualist camp-meeting held in Oakland, June, 1887, the following statement was made: —
“Truth is the voice of God speaking through the human soul.”
Now take the gist of all these statements, and we find it to be that man himself is God, and that every man is a law unto himself. Recall the statement of the Spiritual Magazine, that Spiritualism “recognizes a continuous divine inspiration in man;” the utterance of the editor of the Golden Gate, that man cannot find God except as they find him in their own souls; and that of Mr. Colville, that a man is in Heaven only when he is “reconciled with conscience,” and “guided by the divine within;” and the last one quoted, namely, that “Truth is the voice of God speaking through the human soul,” and what must we conclude? Simply that Spiritualism teaches that man must follow the impulses of his own nature, and that, wherever they may lead him, he is answerable for his actions to no one but himself. To show that this conclusion is warranted, we make a few more quotations. In a Spiritualist paper called Lucifer, published at Valley Falls, Kansas, in an article entitled “Marriage and Free Love” (July 15, 1887), we find the following: —
“I acknowledge the presence of a power which we call Nature, and whatever Nature approves I encourage, and whatever Nature punishes I tried to avoid, such rewards and punishments being measured by the increase or decrease of personal happiness. It matters little to me whether moralists or reformers approve or condemn free love or marriage; the only question before me is to find out if Nature rewards one more than the other.”
Hon. J. B. Hall, in a lecture reported in the Banner of Light of the February 6, 1864, says: —
“I believe that man is amenable to no law not written upon his own nature, no matter by whom it is given. . . . By his own nature must he be tried—by his own acts he must stand or fall. True, man must give an account to God for all his deeds; but how? Solely by giving the account to his own nature—to himself.”
Now in order to know the consequences that will result from holding that man is the sole judge of his own actions, and that a man’s natural inclinations are but the voice of God, and are to be followed, we have only to ascertain what is the nature of man. Christ, who “knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man; for he knew what was in man” (John 2:24, 25), spoke as follows concerning what men are by nature: —
“For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness; all these evil things come from within, and defile the man” (Mark 7:21-23).
Solomon says of the heart, “out of it are the issues of life” (Prov. 4:2). Therefore when Jesus mentioned “all these evil things,” and said that they proceed “from within, out of the heart of man,” he meant that man naturally exhibit just such traits in their lives. The apostle Paul bore witness to the same thing when he wrote: —
“There is none righteous, no, not one; there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God. They are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable; there is none that doeth good, no, not one. Their throat is an open sepulcher; with their tongues they have used deceit; the poison of asps is under their lips; whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness; their feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace have they not known; there is no fear of God before their eyes” (Rom. 3:10-18).
This is the uniform testimony of the Scripture concerning all men, for Paul simply quoted what other inspired men had written. One more quotation will suffice to complete the picture of the natural tendencies of mankind. The man who is unrenewed by the Spirit of God is said to be “in the flesh;” and the “works of the flesh” are thus enumerated: —
“Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, envying, murders, drunkenness, revelings, and such like” (Gal. 5:19-21).
This is a picture of the natural impulses of the human heart. It is a description of what will be done by all who, unrestrained, follow the leadings of their own nature. And this is not spoken of one man or of any particular set of man, but of mankind universally. The king on the throne, the beggar in the hovel, the learned scientist, and the ignorant peasant, the pious Doctor of Divinity, and the blasphemous ruffian, all have one common human nature. The natural impulses of the heart are essentially the same. A godly ancestry will often give one less of evil to contend with than another, but this does not disprove the general statements; it is simply one of the restraints that God has provided, only the restraint operates before the individual is born, instead of after.
It is true that all who believe that they are their own judges do not exhibit in their lives all the vices above enumerated; but it is only because there are certain restraints imposed upon them. But let them be in a country where the authority of God was wholly disregarded, and where all believed in the following their own impulses, and they would prove the truth of the words of the Bible.
Now let us trace our argument backwards:
The tendency of the human heart is evil, and only evil.
Spiritualism teaches that each man is to follow the leadings of his own nature, and is to be the sole judge of his own actions.
This teaching of Spiritualism is a legitimate and necessary consequence of its teaching that there is “a continuous divine inspiration in man,” and that man himself is God, or a part of God.
And the idea that man is a part of God necessarily goes hand in hand with the idea that he is possessed of an immortal, indestructible nature.
So we say that the natural tendency of the teaching that man is by nature immortal is toward unrestrained vice. When Spiritualists teach that all the god that men will find is in their own natures, they directly deify vice and crime. But Spiritualism is simply the doctrine that men have a continued existence without any break at what is called death. Therefore we repeat that the doctrine that man is by nature immortal tends directly to immortality, and to that alone. If many who believe in that doctrine do love truth and right, and do live moral and upright lives, it is only because they have not yet followed that doctrine to its legitimate, ultimate results. God grant that such may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil before it is too late.