1

other error, indeed, viz: the denial of man's free will, in a Stoic doctrine of fate; yet the fact shows that the early Christians never regarded them as of standard orthodoxy.

(3.) The Pharisaic doctrine of immortality (which we here admit simply for argument's sake, resting as it does wholly on the testimony of Josephus, of whom hereafter) was evidently of foreign origin, of a philosophic cast, and, so to speak, un-Jewish. The account given by Josephus is in a nomenclature to which the Jews had been strangers, which is unknown to the Talmud, but with which the Greeks and Orientals were quite familiar. Something here may be allowed for the private opinions and trimming habits of Josephus; but it has been observed that his statement of Pharisaic doctrine might be mistaken for that of transmigration; and his dissuasive from suicide is quite Platonic: "The bodies of all men are corruptible, and are created out of corruptible matter; but the soul is ever immortal, and is a portion of the divinity that inhabits our bodies." And the writer already cited, speaking of the Pharisees, says: "It is evident that the popular faith of the Jews had to a certain point adopted the dualism of the Parsees, which was made subordinate to the Mosaic monotheism." And again: "It would appear that Rabbinism was but an unfolding of Pharisaism, the full and swelling stream of corrupt doctrines, views, and practices, of which the rivulets run up to the days of Christ, and stretch back to those of Ezra, till they are lost in the fountain-head the religious philosophy of a corrupt Zoroasterism." And he concludes: "It is to unite the hawk and the dove, to bring into one darkness and light, to expect figs from thistles, if we will persist in maintaining that Jesus and the Pharisees had any essential and peculiar features in common we say essential and peculiar features, because such only are of any value in the argument;

1"The Fathers have looked upon the Pharisees as heretics."- Basnage, Hist. of Jews, b. 2, c. 11. He refers to Serrarius, Trihær. 1. 2, c. 9; Voisin, Obs.

in Promium Pugionis Fidei; - Ficinus, Flagellum Judæorum, l. 9, c. 11.

2 Wars of the Jews, b. 3, c. 8, § 5. See the article in Kitto, and reference, at the end.

since even the Pharisees, as men and monotheists, doubtless had some good traits, and possessed some scattered rays of truth.”1

III. But for still another reason Christ did not sanction the doctrine in question by his silence respecting it. It was not his custom to oppose particular errors by explicit mention and condemnation. For the method of the Great Teacher was: 1. To inculcate general principles, rather than special precepts. Of this the Sermon on the Mount is an example, as also his teaching by parables which were sometimes explained, not to the public ear, but to the disciples alone. And there are abundant proofs of this, in the variant applications that have been made of the principles which Christ has laid down. 2. He taught by affirmation, rather than denial. The Gospel was not a negation, but a Revelation. He came "not to destroy, but to fulfil," in this sense also, - that he removed errors not by the special refutation and demolition of them, but by offering truth in their stead. And the children of wisdom have ever done this. The successful reformer has ever labored first and most to proclaim some great truth of which his heart was full. Thus have deep-seated evils been best removed. In this respect Christ and the Apostles were model reformers. Christ undermined the foundations of the kingdom of Might, which had imposed an oppressive tyranny upon the Jews, by asserting another principle, and a higher law. He told of a kingdom of Truth, and bade men "render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's-and to God the things that are God's." And Paul struck at the root of a prevalent system of slavery, by saying: "Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal; knowing that ye also have a Master in heaven." But the same argument now offered to show that Christ recognized man's proper immortality, might be offered, and is employed, to show that tyranny and oppression are right. And, 3. Christ dealt not with the theories of men, but with their conduct. He was a practical teacher. He rarely,

1J. R. Beard, Kitto's Cyclopædia, art. Pharisees. Remarking that "some of the extracts from Josephus show clearly that the Greek philosophy had an influence on the doctrines of the Pharisees," Mr. B. refers to Tholuck, Comm. de vi quam Graeca Philosophia in Theologiam tum Muhammedor. tum Judæor exercuit. Hamb. 1835-7. See also Werdermann, Theodicee, III. 74, 75.

if ever, spoke of what we should call doctrinal errors. And when he uttered his warning against the "doctrine" of the Pharisees and Sadducees, he did not mean their false systems of philosophy, but their bad instructions. The pernicious leaven was the making void the law of God by the traditions of men, and the thousand other corruptions and perversions by which they sought to do away the weighty duties of justice, mercy, and truth. The rational forms of doctrine are important in their place; but Christ never gave them the prominence they hold in that doctrinalism which is itself a perversion. The "sound doctrine" which he taught was the healthy instruction (dɩdaokahía bylavovca, Tit. i. 9) of the Great Physician, come to recover men from death, and teach them in the ways of life.

Through the grave did Christ "show the path of life.” The effect of his doctrine of life upon the early language of the Christians, before it was corrupted by the mixture of foreign views, will appear when we come to the history of their time. The immediate effect of his teaching is remarkably apparent in the earliest and most valued version of the Word of Life, — the Syriac, in which the very names of the Savior and of his saving work are the "Life-Giver," and the "giving of life." We may conclude this argument with a few examples, taken almost at random from Dr. Murdock's translation. "I did not come to judge the world, but to vivify the world" (John xii. 47). "Believe on the name of our Lord Jesus Messiah, and thou wilt have life" (Acts xvi. 31). "It is for your consolation and for your life that we are afflicted" (2 Cor. i. 6). "Our concern is from heaven; and from thence we expect our Vivifier, our Lord Jesus Messiah" (Phil. iii. 20). God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to the acquisition of life" (1 Thes. v. 9). "Jesus the Messiah came into the world to give life to sinners" (1 Tim. i. 15). "And he is able to vivify for ever them who come to God by him" (Heb. vii. 25). "There is one Lawgiver and Judge, who can make alive, and can destroy" (James iv. 12). "That ye may receive the recompense of your faith, the life of your souls" (1 Pet. i. 9). "Grace and peace from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus the Messiah our Life-giver" (Tit. i. 4).

CHAPTER VI.

THE RATIONAL ARGUMENT.

"The truth sooner emerges from error than from confusion."-BACON.

§ 1. THE METAPHYSICAL ARGUMENT.

THE attempt to prove the soul immortal from its very nature is supposed to be so generally abandoned as worthy only of the Schoolmen, that an examination of it in any form may seem gratuitous or invidious. We shall examine it, nevertheless, for three reasons: 1st, because the subtlety of this argument often attracts the most acute minds; 2dly, because its traditional force in the community is not yet spent; 3dly, a fair view of the subject may correct the errors produced by reäction.

Augustine, shortly before his conversion to Christianity, wrote a book of sixteen reasons for the proper immortality of the soul. Among them are the following: The soul is a subject of knowledge, which is ever the same; and of reason, which changes not. As from body can not be taken away that by which it is body, so neither from mind that by which it is mind. The soul is life; hence it can not want life. No essence is contrary to the truth, whereby the mind is what it is.

We are not surprised that in his "Retractations" the more sober and practical Augustine should speak of this book as obscure and perplexed, so that he himself could scarcely comprehend it; but we are surprised that he did not wholly abandon and condemn the entire argument. We can explain this fact only by adverting to the original arguments which still pleased many converted philosophers as much as they had been admired by Cicero. Here is one of them, from the Phædo: "Does the soul always bring life to whatever it occupies? Indeed it does.

Is there, how, any thing contrary to life, or not? There is, death. But the soul will never admit the contrary of that which it brings with it, as has already been allowed. Most assuredly. Be it so; but what do we call that which does not admit death? Immortal." The argument is as good as if one should say a given wheel will ever exist because it is essentially round. It is the nature of a thing to be what it is. And so things are eternized by their definitions.

We may excuse such puerilities because they were indulged beyond the dark ages, on which, perhaps, they throw some light. But what shall we say if we find the old sophism, that, since motion must be either where a thing is or where it is not, therefore nothing can move, revamped on our side of the dark ages to show that the soul can not die? Yet this is done, in a book lately very famous, thus: "The power which is supposed to reduce the soul to a point of annihilation, must either exist in this given point, or it must not; if it exist, we have not yet arrived at that point which describes a nonentity; and where nonentity is not, annihilation can never be. And if it exist in this point, the soul can never be annihilated by its influence; and in either case the soul is immortal." Again we are told: "If the soul be annihilated, it must be either by something which is in existence, or by something which is not. But that which is in existence can never produce what is physically contrary to itself, and that which has no existence can never act." So there can be, perhaps, no physical pain. And again: "That which produces a nonentity is not power, but nothing." Wherefore the Creator should take heed not to reduce an atom to nonentity, lest He should prove himself to be nothing.

Descending from these metaphysic clouds, we meet the more common argument from the uncompounded nature of the soul. It is a simple substance, not subject to disintegration, indivisible. This hope of an after life is as old as Socrates and Cicero, who should be welcome to it in so far it gave them comfort. Later criticism makes "appeal to the most obstinate dogmatist, whether

1 Samuel Drew, On the Soul, Part II. c. 1, § 6; cited as arguments worthy of consideration by Luther Lee, On the Soul, c. 2, § 1.