VOL. I.

THE UNITARIAN.

NOVEMBER 1, 1834.

No. 11.

Christ the Teacher of Immortality.

We enjoy two distinct sources of religious knowledge,— nature and revelation. To which of these do we owe our knowledge of a future state? Does the light of nature incontrovertibly prove such a state? Or has Christ alone the words of eternal life, so that, had he not come into the world, no man could have had sufficient reason to expect existence after death? The latter is my own opinion. And, in order to prove it, I shall examine separately the principal arguments which are offered, independently of revelation, for a future state of existence; and shall attempt to show that they are not only insufficient, but of themselves weak. But in doing this, I wish it to be distinctly understood that, while I regard all these arguments together as furnishing no adequate proof of man's immortality, I value them highly as confirming the Christian doctrine of immortality. Far be it from me to extinguish the light of nature, that I may make that of the gospel shine the brighter. They are both lights which God's own hand has kindled in the moral firmament,-but that of nature is the lesser light, and never beams so brightly as when it borrows lustre from the written word.

1. Perhaps no argument is urged more frequently in favour of man's immortality than the general consent of men of different ages and nations. But this consent was by no means general before the promulgation of Christianity. The ancient Egyptians had no idea of any immortality beyond that which the art of embalming may be said, almost without hyperbole, to have conferred on the body. There certainly is not in the Pentateuch, I doubt whether there can be found in the

whole of the Old Testament, a single distinct recognition of the doctrine of a future life; and in our Saviour's time it was denied by a large and influential sect among the Jews. Among the ancient Greeks and Romans the immortality of the soul was the subject of hope rather than of belief among the common people; was rejected by several of the most learned and numerous sects of philosophers; and was called in question even by Socrates and Cicero, who are often cited as firm believers in it. Its partial prevalence may be easily accounted for. It must have necessarily suggested itself as possible to many minds; and, when the possibility of a life after death was once suggested, thousands would embrace the belief simply from their love of life and desire of its continuance.

Since the promulgation of Christianity, a belief in the immortality of the soul has been prevalent among all the nations with which Christians have been conversant,-and for a very adequate reason,-because they have been conversant with Christians, have heard from them the chief doctrine of their system, and have transplanted it into their own systems as congenial with their feelings and desires. The New Hollanders and other recently discovered nations, that had had no previous intercourse with Christians, have been found to be wholly ignorant of a future state.

But even supposing that the belief in a future state had been universal, if this universal consent were the only argument that our neighbours, that the Hindoo, that the Tartar, that the Roman, that Plato, that Socrates could offer, we should have no valid ground for believing with the rest of mankind. Universal consent and for a long time together, has time and again been given to propositions which we now deem false and absurd. The time has often been in the history of the world when universal consent would have testified to the existence, not of one Supreme Divinity, but of gods many and lords many. With the exception of Jacob and his posterity, all mankind for more than two thousand years would have borne testimony, almost without a dissenting voice, against the unity of God. Universal consent cannot then be pleaded as a sufficient ground for our belief in man's immortality.

2. The death of young children has been offered as furnishing a strong presumption in favour of a future state of existence. It is said that, unless they pass hence into another life, there is an unprecedented waste of creative power,-a

waste inconsistent with the divine wisdom. But, admitting that in this case there is an apparent waste of creative power, is this waste unprecedented? Do we not see in every department of the divine government a superfluity of results? Thus it must be, so long as uniformity of operation is maintained. The rain falls upon the ocean, the barren sea-shore, the mountain crag, as well as upon the forest, field, and garden. The richest fruits ripen and pass away untasted. The oak extends its shade where neither man nor beast reposes beneath it. The sun and moon shed their beams upon the pathless desert as well as upon the haunts of men. Though in the eye of God we believe that nothing wants its use and its end, yet to human vision many things are made in vain.

But in fact this apparent waste of creative power does not take place with regard to the infant. However short life may have been, he has not lived in vain. He has probably enjoyed more than he has suffered. He has called into exercise the strongest and purest affections of the human heart; and his departure has been a means of salutary moral discipline. Besides, the possibility of the death of infants offers an additional motive to parental diligence and fidelity, and augments the ardour of parental affection. It also deepens in men's minds a sense of their constant liability to death, and of the necessity of being constantly prepared for it. Thus, though the lamp of life be hardly kindled ere it be quenched never again to be rekindled, its short-lived burning has served important purposes; and therefore, though the highest consolation that a Christian parent can receive for the loss of a child results from the belief that the child has been removed to a better world, he has no right from the bare fact of his child's death to infer the existence of that better world.

3. The strength of the social affections is urged as an argument in favour of the immortality of the soul. It is said that a benevolent God would not have endowed men with the capacity of forming friendships so intimate, so tender, unless he had designed that these friendships should be indissoluble. But is it not a belief in the indissolubleness of friendship that makes friendship thus strong? Are not Christians, who entertain as firm a faith in their eternal, as they have in their present existence, the very persons who most frequently form attachments which neither distance, nor danger, nor death can dissolve? And is not the idea of their eternal duration the most important element in forming and perfecting such attachments? I doubt very much whether an attachment of

that character and intensity ever subsisted between two Atheists, or between two persons who had no idea of a future state. Indeed the personal and domestic history of infidelity during its late reign in France, is so full of suspicion, jealousy, and perfidy, as to force upon the mind the conviction that cordial and ardent friendship cannot subsist among unbelievers.*

Moreover, is not much that is said about the strength and permanence even of virtuous friendship, mere hyperbole? Do not those whose hearts, interests, and hopes seemed one, soon and easily overcome the grief of parting? I know that there are instances in which persons go mourning all their days for the early death of some cherished relative or companion. But these instances are always spoken of as remarkable,—are regarded as exceptions to the general rule. In most cases, a bereaved individual after a few weeks or months recovers his buoyancy of spirit, is able to enter anew with his former interest upon the business and the pleasures of life, and to form new friendships in lieu of that which has been dissolved. Not that man is hard-hearted. But God has graciously endowed his mind with an elasticity, by which it can buoy itself up and throw off the heaviest pressure. And does not this comparatively speedy and easy recovery from the loss of valued friends weaken greatly the argument drawn from our social connexions in favour of a future life?

Further, suppose that we waive the foregoing considerations, and admit in its full force the argument for a future life drawn from the strength of earthly attachments, it will prove too much,-it will prove more than any of us would be willing to admit. We discern in the brute creation the traces of deeper and more permanent attachment, and of more poignant anguish at bereavement, than we often witness in man. He who could hear the orphan's or widow's wail unmoved, could hardly refrain from weeping with the turtledove whose mate has become the fowler's victim. Bereavement seldom occasions death to the human mourner; but dogs and horses have often died sorrow-stricken upon the graves of their masters. And now if, on the ground of the strength and permanence of earthly attachments, we suppose a future life where human friendships will be renewed we must on the

* Numerous illustrations of the remark in the text might be drawn from such works as Rousseau's Confessions, Marmontel's Memoirs, the Life of Diderot, &c.

same ground suppose also a paradise where the turtle-dove will meet her lost and mourned one, and the dog caress the master whom he loved more than his own life. But the immortality of the brute creation no sane man in this enlightened age will admit; and an argument that proves too much proves nothing. The nature of the social affections then affords no sufficient argument in favour of man's immortality.

4. But how is it with man's capacity of intellectual improvement? It is often said that, unless man were designed for continued existence, it would have been useless to have given him a mind capable of indefinite improvement. But how do we know that the mind is capable of indefinite improvement? This is not an independent truth, but a corollary from the doctrine of immortality. We find the mind capable of improvement through the whole of the present life, and argue from analogy that it will be so through the whole of the future life, and therefore that it is capable of indefinite improvement. But if we do not derive from some foreign. source the fact of the mind's continued existence, we can assert nothing of its capacities except what has been verified in human experience and observation. Suppose, for instance, that Newton, when at the acme of his intellectual greatness, had the loftiest and strongest mind that ever tenanted a human body, how know we that our minds have any inherent capacity of going beyond what his was? We are conscious that there is room for improvement; but, when we have measured the distance between what we are and what he was, we have measured all the room for improvement of which we have cognizance,—we have reached, so far as we know, the limits of human capacity.

But, suppose that we were conscious of an inherent capacity in human nature of reaching intellectual strength and attainments vastly beyond those that have been reached in this world by any human being, there may yet be room even here for the exercise of the loftiest powers of mind of which we can conceive. Other races of animals remain unimproved and unimprovable century after century. Man alone improves from generation to generation; and, through the power of speech and the art of writing, the improvements of each may be transmitted to every subsequent generation, and each may enter at once upon that portion of the career at which the preceding left it. Thus truths which a century ago constituted the arcana of a scientific few, are now taught as axioms in the nursery. Thus an intelligent child of twelve years of