NOVEL THEORIES OF ETERNAL LIFE AND DEATH. 217

argue that they have nothing to do with proper or logical antithesis, and thus it happens that Dr. Cumming comes to the conclusion, that as everlasting life is not everlasting life in the plain and simple, or popular acceptation of the term, it must be a higher type than human life, which is mortal life, and so because it is a higher type than human or mortal life, it is a holier and happier existence, that is to say, it is an existence with happiness attached; consequently everlasting life is everlasting happiness, and the theologically proper antithesis of this is everlasting punishment. This may be logic in theology, but it is not exactly according to the rules of common sense logic, where misery and not punishment is the opposite of happiness, neither is an attachment synonymous with a reward. Ask a child not trained to shirk the answer, and he would say that the opposite of everlasting life is everlasting death.

If the question had been, "What is the antithesis of "eternal reward?" then the proper logical reply would undoubtedly be eternal punishment.

But it happens unfortunately for sacerdotalism, that eternal life is not a reward at all, it is a "free gift," which cannot be a reward in any sense, and therefore as there is no eternal reward, neither can there by any possibility be eternal punishment. The dogma of theological responsibility, with its accompanying reward and punishment, is part of the original catechism of good and evil presented by the serpent-priest to Adam and Eve.

The terms happiness and misery are merely qualities or adjectives, and not noun-substantive realities of self-existent entities.

The Bible declares positively, "The soul that sinneth it "shall die."

Dr. Cumming, as usual, shuffles the pea under the sacerdotal thimbles and says, vide page 227. "But the soul that "sins shall not die FOR EVER!!"

The Doctor should give his authority for flatly contradicting plain scriptural statements, for it might eventually be demonstrated that he possessed a divine mission or

diploma to supersede former messengers, and establish a new theistical system. The new faith would be, "There are "three Gods in one, of whom Dr. Cumming is the prophet." This would inevitably put the extinguisher upon Mahometanism for ever.

At page 224, the lecturer maintains that eternal punishment is demanded by God's eternal justice, and he says:

"God is not that Lucretian Deity, all love, all goodness, "but he is holy, just, faithful, and true; and if escape from "such suffering should be incompatible with his justice, it is "vain to plead that such punishment conflicts with his goodness."

Again, he says, "God's truth is concerned in this." That is, in maintaining the accusing angel's demand for eternal punishment. He says:

"If it were not so, God would prove unfaithful to his "threats."

This comes from a parson who explains away the plainest threat of all, that if a man commits a breach of the conditions of existence, or sins, he shall die, and who forges the words "not," and "for ever," to explain away the express warning of the messenger of Deity, making the sentence "shall die," read "shall not die for ever!"

Dr. Cumming says, that Deity is not all love, all goodness, but is a vengeance-breathing, revenge-harbouring, punishing being, and this in defiance of that special revelation of his attributes to Moses where he is described as being "merci"ful, gracious, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, and forgiving iniquity, transgression, " and sin."

There is not a hint about theological or eternal punishment. When any punishment is alluded to, it is limited to natural ills, or diseases transmitted from sire to sons and grandsons, but all such punishment is confined to the duration of mortal or human life. The sins of the fathers are transmitted by hereditary natural taint to their offspring, the dead are released from further ills of life, and are not pursued into another world; the ill or punishment alluded to

THEOLOGICAL IDEA OF THE ATTRIBUTES OF DEITY. 219

is visited upon the children and grandchildren in this world, not the dead in the next.

Dr. Cumming adds that God's justice demands neverending punishment for sin, and such punishment, be it noted, not for reformation of the criminal, but solely as a vengeancebringing measure.

To talk about God's justice is tantamount to constituting Him a judge of theological good and evil. But we are told in the Bible that God judges no man, but has delegated this office of judge to the Son of Man. To be a judge of

humanity, Deity would have to lay aside his eternal and unceasing action of generator and lord of life, to become a prosecutor or condemnatory judge to death. The devil, or accusing man, however, is prosecutor; the Son of Man is judge, not the absolute Father at all, save and except in so far as he is related to this Son of Man, in whom he is to mankind NEGATIVELY revealed.

At page 255 we have the lecturer's idea of the resurrection,

"It would be a very sad thing that this body of ours, this "wonderful mechanism should be yielded to the devil, (?) " and though Christ has redeemed the soul, Satan should "have ruined the body."

As the power of Satan is that of death, and not the generating parent of life, it is not easy to understand what Satan would or could do with a dead carcase when he had got possession of it. By the way, though, he might canonize it, and make it an idol or saint! Then the Doctor says that he does not believe that a single soul will be lost because of Adam's sin, and believes that Satan will not be able to quote for ever, as a trophy of his success, the ruin of the body. The argument at page 258 is continued thus,

"I look for the resurrection of the body as designed "to perpetuate the human race. If souls only are admitted "into heaven they would be angels, but soul and body con"stitute man.”

Nowhere does the Bible say that angels are disembodied or immaterial ghosts, nowhere does that book say that im

material or preternatural beings inhabit the universe. The kingdom or condition of heaven is to be within men upon earth; that is, in constituting men elevated orders or modes of intelligent beings, by elevating and ennobling the natural conditions of their existence.

The next page, 259, furnishes a novel idea respecting the sacerdotal importance attached to water baptism, applied by man to his fellow mortals. We are here told that,―

"The name given you in baptism will be heard as an "under tone in the sound of the resurrection trumpet."

This intimation is indeed of vast importance, if true; and it ought to be clearly and incontestibly substantiated, inasmuch as it makes the rite of water baptism the modus operandi of generating life.

At page 265 the learned Doctor sits in judgment upon Deity himself, and, by implication, condemns him off-hand, saying,—If mortality be man's destiny, God must be a cruel monster. The precise words used are as follows,—

"If such be the end of you and me, the Being that made "us must be a cruel monster."

This speech is surely as windy as it is rash. Words, reverend sir, words, windy, very windy words, puffed out of wind bag blown out to bursting, words as dry and dusty as dead sea apples, giving not one drop of cooling juice to refresh the dry and parched lips of the thirsty traveller seeking knowledge in this dreary wilderness of talk.

The following statement is recorded on page 307,—

"Every allusion in the Bible leads us to the conclusion "that the overwhelming majority of our race shall be saved. "Infants dying shall be saved."

Every allusion is prave 'orts, such brave words indeed as are very difficult, nay, impossible to be found. The warning given by Jesus is wholly ignored, namely, that the way to immortality was very narrow, and that very few ever found it, whereas the road to destruction (or annihilation ?) was broad and smooth, and that many found and journeyed along it. Again, if the righteous hardly be saved, what shall become of the ungodly.

PERVERSION OF THE SENSE OF SCRIPTURE.

At page 324, it is said,

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"I do not think that there is a text in the Bible warning "man by the prospect of death, or bidding man to look to "death, or directing him to death."

That unfortunate text, cobbled, soled, and heeled, by this neat repairer of worn out Biblical statements, has here been smothered altogether," The soul that sins shall DIE." The texts in this Bible are unanimous in asking men to turn from their self-willed breaches of wise conditions and live; for God does not desire that they should perish, but rather that they should turn, and by studying and keeping his wisely-ordained conditions of existence, abandon their egotistical self-will and live.

At page 351, occurs a running comment upon the first eight verses of the fifth chapter of Paul's second letter to his Corinthian converts. It is to the effect that death, in sacerdotal glossaries, means putting off the garment of the immaterial soul; and that death is disrobing that part of man that is not of himself, but only the clothes of the individual.

At the same time it is confessed that the language is metaphorical, and by implication is ambiguous, still the above is supposed to be the correct rendering of the writer's meaning.

The following page, 252, continues the argument thus,

"The existence of the soul therefore is not bound up with "the existence of the body; it may be an advantage to the "soul! We know it will be so in future: it is necessary now, "but in future, after the resurrection it will not only be necessary, but useful and ornamental! But we can "conceive what we are sure of from scripture, that the soul can exist apart from the body.

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"Soul and body may be disintegrated and divorced, and "yet life not destroyed, their connection is a contingency, not "an absolute and inevitable necessity. It is very true, and "there is no doubt of this, that our present existence is such "that we cannot feel the possibility of the soul existing separate from the body, they are so linked together, the power of one so interpenetrates with the functions of the

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