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If UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.* 1 



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THE WICKED 

NOT ANNIHILATED: 



REFUTATION OF 

MODERN SADDUCEEISI. 

BY 

REV. ISRAEL P. WARREN. 



REVISED EDITION. 




PUBLISHED BY THE 

AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

28 CORN HILL, BOSTON. 



Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year 1SG0. by 

THE AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massa- 
chusetts. 



The Li 

OF C<->N<> 
WASHINGTON 



PREFACE. 



A revised edition of this little book, first pub- 
lished six years ago, is now issued at the request 
of some who judge that it may be useful, as fur- 
nishing, in brief space, an antidote to the error 
which it opposes, and which is propagated in the 
community with great industry. The limited size 
of the work precludes, of course, an exhaustive 
consideration of the subject, which, however, is 
the less to be regretted since the publication of 
Rev. Prof. Bartlett's learned and able book,* con- 
taining probably the most thorough discussion of 
it which has appeared. My only hope is that this 
tract may go where that larger and more expensive 
work will not be able to reach, and save some from 
the baleful influence of a faith as humiliating as it is 
untrue. I. P. W. 

* " Life and Death Eternal ; by Samuel C. Bartlett, D.D., 
Professor in Chicago Theological Seminar}'." Published by the 
American Tract Society, Boston. 

March, 1867. 



HE "WICKED NOT JlXXIHIEATED 



IN the later periods of their history, the an- 
cient Jews were divided in respect to their 
religious opinions and practices into three for- 
ties or sects, — the Pharisees, the Sadducees, 
and the Essenes. The last of these is not men- 
tioned by name in the Scriptures. Among the 
principal matters in dispute "between the two 
former were the nature of the human soul, and 
the question of its continued existence after 
death. Josephus, who was a learned Jew, liv- 
ing at the time of the destruction of Jerusa- 
lem by the Romans, says in his book on the 
Jewish Antiquities (xviii. 1. 3, 4), "The Phari- 
sees believe that souls have an immortal vigor 
in them, and that under the earth, " that is, in 
hades, "there will be rewards or punishments, 
according as they have lived virtuously or 

5 



6 



THE WICKED XOT ANNIHILATED, 



viciously in this life. But the doctrine of the 
Saddueees is this, that souls die with the 
bodies? (Jud. Bell ii. 8, 14.) -They take 
away the belief of the immortal duration of 
the soul, and the punishments and rewards in 
hades? So likewise Luke, in explanation of 
the apostle Paul's plea before the Sanhedrim, 
when he proclaimed himself a Pharisee, and 
declared that it was of the hope and resurrec- 
tion of the dead that he was called in ques- 
tion, adds, "For the Sadducees say there is 
no resurrection, neither angel nor spirit ; but 
the Pharisees confess both/' Acts xxiii. S. 

The doctrine, then, that souls have no "im- 
mortal rigor'' and "die with the bodies, 93 and 
that there is "neither angel nor spirit, " is in its 
main features Sadduceeism. It is not meant, 
of course, that its modern advocates hold all 
the opinions of the ancient Jewish sect, or that 
they do not profess many things which that 
sect rejected. Every system of faith has in it 
some cardinal principle which shapes and con- 
trols all its parts, and gives character to the 



HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE, 7 

system itself. This primary belief as to the 
nature of the soul must control all the opinions 
which are entertained of its destiny ; and it is 
in this view that, as we conceive, we are war- 
ranted in designating the doctrine we propose 
to consider a "modern Sadduceeism. " 



I. 

HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE. 

At a very early date in the progress of civ- 
ilization, there prevailed throughout the East, 
especially in Egypt, Babylonia, and Greece, a 
system of speculation concerning the origin of 
tne world, the nature of the gods and of man, 
which assumed the imposing names of "wis- 
dom,"- and "philosophy." Its followers, like 
the disciples of Christianity in later times, 
were divided into several sects, all of them, 
however, holding many opinions in common. 
Xowhere was this philosophy more cultivated 
than in Greece, and nowhere were its sects 
more numerous- or distinguished. Prominent 



8 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILA TED. 



among them were the Epicureans, so called 
from Epicurus, their founder. Dr. Mosheim, 
the learned ecclesiastical historian, sums up 
their opinions thus : " The Epicureans main- 
tained that the universe arose out of a fortui- 
tous concurrence of atoms; that the gods 
(whose existence the)' dared not absolutely to 
deny) were indifferent as to human affairs, or 
rather entirely unacquainted with them; that 
our souls are born and die ; that all things de- 
pend on and are determined by accident ; that 
in everything voluptuous gratification was to 
be sought after as the chief good ; and even 
virtue itself only to be pursued inasmuch as it 
might promise to minister at the shrine of 
pleasure." Another sect, the Academics, held 
that the immortality of the soul was doubtful, 
and the Stoics denied it altogether. (Most. 
Com., i. p. 33.) 

Here, then, was the origin of the doctrine 
under consideration, and from this it passed 
into the system of the Sadducees. " Although, " 
says Dr. Kitto, " there existed in Judaism itself 



HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE. 



9 



a sufficient source for Sadduceeisni, yet, as a 
fact, we have no doubt that Grecian philosophy 
lent its aid to the development of Sudduceeism. 
"Whence we are referred for the rise of the lat- 
ter to the period when the conquests and the 
kingdoms which ensued from the expedition 
of Alexander had diffused a very large portion 
of Grecian civilization over the soil of the 
East, and especially over Western Asia." (Bib. 
Cyc, art. Sadducees.) 

The main tenet of this Epicurean philosophy 
was that sensual pleasure was the highest good 
of man, and the greatest practical wisdom 
they attained was embodied in the maxim, 
" Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." 
Such a tenet would, of course, be particularly 
attractive to the rich, who had the means to 
command sensual gratification. Accordingly 
Josephus says expressly (Ant. xiii. 11. 6) that 
the Sadducees were of the wealthy classes. 
They desired to pass their lives in an uninter- 
rupted course of ease and pleasure ; they were 
devoid of every sentiment of benevolence and 



10 THE WICKED XOT AXXIHILA TED . 

charity toward the poor, and considered them- 
selves as the favorites of heaven, because they 
alone had the means of happiness. " Since 
their tenets forbade men," says Mosheim, "to 
look forward to a future state of rewards and 
punishments, and placed the whole happiness 
of man in riches and sensual gratification, they 
naturally tended to generate and encourage an 
inordinate cupidity of wealth, a brutal insen- 
sibility to the calls of compassion, and a variety 
of other vices equally pernicious and degrading 
to the human mind." (Com. I. pp. 65, 77.) 

The Sadducees, therefore, possessing such a 
character, and holding such views, were, as 
might be expected, the most bitter of all the 
opposers of our Lord. In repeated instances, as 
will be shown presently, he came into direct col- 
lision with them, and most explicitly condemned 
their sentiments. Nothing, indeed, could be 
more opposite to their whole system than Chris- 
tianity, which was built upon the fundamental 
truths that its crucified Founder survived the 
tomb of Joseph and rose to a state of glory, and 



HISTORY OF THE DOCTRIXE. 



II 



that all his disciples who die in faith shall be 
partakers of the same blessedness. We find, 
accordingly, almost no traces of that form of 
heresy in the early churches, or indeed for fif- 
teen hundred years. £s~or indeed does the sect 
seem to have long survived even among the 
Jews. Jerusalem, their holy city, had fallen; 
the nation had perished, or been reduced to a 
crushing bondage. "In their house of dark- 
ness and anguish they naturally turned to the 
consolations and hopes of a future state, and 
the doctrine of the Sadducees, that there was 
nothing beyond the present life, would have 
appeared to them heartless and hateful." 
(Smith's Diet, II. p. 1089.) 

In modern times, however, many of the prin- 
ciples of the old atheistic philosophy have been 
revived, and under various names have gained 
a place and an advocacy among some who 
call themselves Christians. They are usually 
associated with a denial of. the future eter- 
nal punishment of the wicked, partly as the 
logical effect of such denial, and partly as afford- 



12 THE WICKED XOT AXXIHIL A TED . 



ing arguments in its support. That they are 
now no less subversive of the system of revealed 
truth, and no less fatal to piety, than when 
taught in the schools of the pleasure-loving 
Greeks, or confronting our Saviour with quibbles 
and doubts, must be apparent to all who atten- 
tively consider their nature and tendencies. 

There are two leading positions taken by the 
doctrine before us, viz : — 

1. At natural death, the soul dies with the 
body, and a state of unconsciousness follows, 
which continues till the resurrection. 

2. In the resurrection both soul and body will 
be raised, and while those of the righteous are 
received to heaven, the soul and body of the 
wicked will be for ever annihilated. 

It will be convenient to consider these posi- 
tions separately. 

II. 

DOCTRINE CONCERNING DEATH. 
It is taught by the system we are consider- 
ing, that at death the soul dies with the body, 



DOCTEIXE CONCERNING DEATH. 13 



and a state of unconsciousness folloics, which 
continues till the resurrection. 

The following are among the statements of 
this belief in the language of its advocates. 

"No Scripture or philosophy has ever yet 
been shown to prove the mind anything more 
than an attribute of the living, organized dust ; 
and if so, it must cease with the life of the 
body* (Campbell, " Age of Gospel Light," p. 

A.) 

u Man has no soul or spirit that can exist as 
a living thing apart from his body: his whole 
nature is mortal;' (Ellis and Reed, "Bible vs. 
Tradition," p. 42.) 

"All the dead are unconscious in their 
graves : if there be no resurrection, they have 
perished like brutes ; they have been already 
blotted out of existence." (Ib. p. 233.) 

u I shall attempt to show you that the death 
which is the wages of sin is not immortality 
in misery, but an actual extermination of be- 
ing." (Storrs, « Six Discourses," p. 16.) 

" The death threatened against disobedience 



14 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 



was the opposite of living for ever, that is, 
ceasing for ever to exist ; total extinction of 
being. Unquestionably the threatening of 
death was directed against the whole man, and 
not a part of him merely ; as a being, he was 
to die, to become extinct." (Moncrieff, "Dial.," 
p. 19.) 

" We find ourselves imperatively compelled 
to believe that the sentence pronounced in case 
of transgression conveyed the sole idea of ces- 
sation of existence, a return to that blank noth- 
ingness out of which he was brought, and that 
unless a remedial system had mercifully in- 
tervened when Adam died,~there would have 
been an utter and everlasting extinction of 
his conscious being." (Dobney, " Fut. Pun.," 
p. 134.) 

"The Bible teaches that man, the soul as 
well as body, dies." (Grew, "Intermediate 
State," p. 7.) 

" Our Lord and his apostles taught no such 
doctrines as that the disembodied soul is the 
human personality, and that the soul or spirit 



DOCTRINE CONCERNING DEATH. 15 



exists after death in a state of unconsciousness; 
but, on the contrary, they taught the state of 
death to be a complete decease of the con- 
scious being, and that the life will not be re- 
kindled until the period of the resurrection.' 5 
(Ham, "The Generations Gathered," p. 85.) 

The arguments employed in support of these 
opinions are chiefly threefold. 1. From the fact 
that the Bible nowhere directly asserts the im- 
mortality of the soul. 2. From the literal 
meaning of the word " death." 3. From cer- 
tain passages of the Scriptures, which it is al- 
leged teach them. 

1. It is argued as a significant fact bearing 
on this point, that the Bible nowhere directly 
asserts the immortality of the soul. 

To which it may be replied, that it nowhere 
directly asserts the existence of God. This is 
admitted by Mr. Hudson, one of the leading 
advocates of annihilation. "The divine ex- 
istence is never asserted categorically, or stated 
as a proposition. It is assumed as too clear for 
argument, a first truth of the religious con- 



16 THE WICKED XOT AXXIHILATED. 



sciousness, to prove which would be preposter- 
ous. The Bible never goes into debate with 
the atheist. His error is not to be treated with 
logic. He may be the fool who says in his heart, 
There is no God. But so for from being tacitly 
assumed, the divine existence is named and 
alluded to and involved in various forms of 
speech continually." ("Debt and Grace," p. 162.) 
This is true, and it is good reasoning. And it 
is equally true and good in respect to the soul. 
The Bible is addressed to human beings, who 
are conscious of their existence, and who are 
equally conscious that that of which they are 
conscious is not the body. And though the 
Scriptures do not directly say this is immortal, 
they indirectly imply it in every passage which 
speaks of its condition after death, of the in- 
terests of eternity as contrasted with those 
of time, of rewards and punishments already 
entered upon by the departed, and many oth- 
ers. TVe shall speak of these more fully here- 
after. The Bible is not a book of abstract 
propositions ; it has no time to waste on such a 



DOCTRINE CONCERNING DEATH. 17 

physical discussion. It addresses men as be- 
ings in probation, with the tremendous issues of 
eternal joy or eternal woe before them; and if 
they can not amid theories of such overwhelm- 
ing interest infer that they have souls destined 
to eternal existence, they are beyond the reach 
of testimony ; they would not believe " even 
though one went unto them from the dead." 

2. It is claimed that the literal and proper 
meaning of the word death, and kindred terms, 
is cessation of existence ; and hence, as all men 
die, their whole being must become extinct. 
" The very words would seem to shut us up to the 
idea that utter destruction, cessation of exist- 
ence, return to that nothingness out of which 
the divine power had called him, was the death 
threatened to our first father in case of trans- 
gression." (Dobney, "Fut. Pun." p. 128.) 

We deny the fact. Such is not the usual 
and proper meaning of the word death. 

It is not the meaning given to it in our dic- 
tionaries. Webster defines it thus : " That state 
of a being, animal or vegetable, but more partio 

2 



18 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

ularly of an animal, in which there is total and 
permanent cessation of all the vital functions ; 
when the organs have not only ceased to act, 
but have lost the susceptibility of renewed ac- 
tion." Observe, not the cessation of existence, 
not " extermination of being," but a cessation 
of certain functions. No such word as anni- 
hilation, no term implying non-existence, is 
found in the entire list of subordinate defini- 
tions which follows : such as decease, demise, 
departure, dissolution, exit,, etc. 

It is not the meaning in the common use of 
the people. When they speak of a dead body, 
they do not mean an annihilated one. There it 
lies before them. Is it not a body still ? Can 
they not see it and feel it ? Does it not give 
to every sense the same evidence of its exist- 
ence as before ? Submit it to a certain chemi- 
cal process which will arrest the tendency to 
decomposition, and will it not exist indefinitely 
long ? The mummies of Egypt, do they not 
exist ? and yet are they not dead? Tour 
neighbor slaughters an animal : it dies ; he in- 



DOCTRINE CONCERNING DEATH. 19 



vites you to his table laden with the meats 
prepared from it. Does he invite you to feed 
on nonentity ? He cuts down a tree and pre- 
pares it for the fire: does he burn what has 
been annihilated? But I need not multiply 
these questions. It is too plain for mistake, 
that when we ordinarily speak of any substance 
as dead, we do not mean that it has no more 
existence; we mean only that certain powers 
and functions which it possessed have ceased; 
and that is all. It has gone into another jfcrm 
of existence ; its essence, its substance, is just 
as truly in being, just as much of a reality, as 
before. 

It is not the meaning of the word in other 
languages, ancient or modern. Any scholar 
will testify that the Greek and Latin terms de- 
noting death signify anything but extinction. 
They show that the ancients conceived of the 
event as a lot or fate assigned, a departure, dis- 
appearance^ etc. The man who was dead, in 
their conception had gone to hades, the under- 
world. The Egyptians had for a symbol of 



20 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

death, a winged figure representing the soul 
hovering over the body, neither of which had 



ceased to be. The modern Indian understands 
by it a departure to the hunting-grounds of 
his fathers. So all people, with few excep- 
tions, have believed in an existence after death ; 
and their language has been formed in accord- 
ance with their belief. They could not mean 
by death annihilation of being, whether con- 





DOCTEIXE CONCERNING DEATH. 21 

scious or not, for they did not conceive of this 
as the result of it. 

It is not the meaning of the word in the 
Bible. " Let the dead bury their dead." Did 
Christ mean to say that non-existence should 
bury non-existence ? " She which liveth in 
pleasure is dead while she liveth." " You hath 
he quickened who were dead in trespasses and 
sins." Are persons who are living in pleasure 
and sin, already annihilated ? " So then death 
hath passed upon all men," — not shall pass 
hereafter, but hath passed already. Have all 
men suffered " extinction of being " ? " Ex- 
cept a corn of wheat fall into the ground and 
die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth 
forth much fruit." "Thou fool! that which 
thou sowest is not quickened, except it die." 
Must the seed be annihilated in order to germi- 
nate ? Does the bountiful harvest spring from 
the bosom of nonentity ? 

This alleged meaning of the term makes 
the threatening of death for transgression in 
Eden untrue. " Total extinction of being," it 



22 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

is said, " is the only natural meaning that the 
words 'in the day that thou eatest thereof 
thou shalt surely die,' will bear." Be it so. 
Either, then, Adam and Eve suffered "total 
extinction of being 55 on that day, or else the 
curse was not inflicted. They either died, or 
did not die. If they died, then they were an- 
nihilated ; if they did not die, then Satan told 
the truth to Eve. 

Besides, if the penalty was annihilation, then 
mankind are not descended from them. For 
nonentity, I take it, can not propagate the hu- 
man race. The Adam and Eve from whom we 
descended must be some other than that Adam 
and Eve who sinned and "ceased to exist." 

This meaning, lastly, will compel us to believe 
in the annihilation of Christ himself on the 
cross. That he died thereon will not be dis- 
puted ; the conclusion, therefore, is irresistible, 
that he suffered "total extinction of being." 
The apostle Paul expressly says that he took 
our nature, and " in all things it behoved him 
to be made like unto his brethren." If, then, 



DOCTRINE CONCERNING DEATH. 23 

he had a human soul, it must have died, as 
other human souls die, with the body. If other 
men pass into non-existence at death, the man 
Christ Jesus also passed into non-existence at 
death ; if he did not, other men do not. If he 
did, then during those three days prior to his 
resurrection there was no Saviour in being. 
Indeed, one of the modern advocates of anni- 
hilation does not hesitate to say, " Christ's soul 
was not left in the grave ; then it must have 
been in the grave, and dead. It did not die a 
spiritual death, for that would be dead in sin. 
It follows, then, that it died a literal death." 
("Age of Gospel Light," p. 20.) If we revolt 
from this, as impiety and blasphemy, let us not 
take such a position in regard to the meaning 
of the word, death, as compels us to such conclu- 
sion by the most stringent necessity of logic. 

The argument, then, from the so-called lit- 
eral meaning of the word, death, fails. That 
meaning is not what is claimed ; and if it were, 
it would prove too much. It signifies a state 
of moral ruin ; it does not imply, but is wholly 



24 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATE D. 

incompatible with, the idea of a cessation of ex- 
istence. 

3. It is alleged that the Bible directly as- 
serts that the soul is material, and that it dies 
with the body. The following are some of the 
passages adduced in proof. " Man lieth down, 
and riseth not; till the heavens be no more, 
they shall not awake, or be raised out of their 
sleep. In death there is no remembrance of 
thee ; in the grave who shall give thee thanks? 
Wilt thou show wonders to the dead ? Shall 
the dead arise and praise thee ? Shall thy lov- 
ing-kindness be declared in the grave, or thy 
faithfulness in destruction ? Shall thy wonders 
be known in the dark, and thy righteousness 
in the land of forgetfulness ? That which be- 
falleth the sons of men, befalleth beasts, even 
one thing befalleth them ; as the one clieth, so 
dieth the other ; yea, tney have all one breath ; 
so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a 
beast. All go unto one place ; all are of the 
dust, and all turn to the dust again. The liv- 
ing know that they shall die, but the dead 



DOCTRINE CONCERNING DEATH. 25 

know not anything. There is no work, nor 
device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the 
grave, whither thou goest. For the grave can 
not praise thee ; death can not celebrate thee ; 
they that go down into the pit can not hope 
for thy truth. The living, the living, he shall 
praise thee, as I do this day," etc. 

I do not propose at present to examine these 
and similar passages in detail. Considerations 
only will be adduced, which are applicable to 
them as a class. 

First. Let it be remembered that every- 
thing is not the word of God which is found 
on the pages of the sacred volume. Vast num- 
bers of persons are mentioned there, together 
with the words they uttered, or sentiments they 
held, but it is not pretended that all these came 
from God. The last quoted of the above pas- 
sages may serve as an example. This, though 
it occurs in the book of Isaiah, is not what 
Isaiah said, nor what God said by Isaiah. It 
is simply part of a song of thankfulness written 
by King Hezekiah, after his recovery from sick- 



26 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

ness. But there is no evidence whatever that 
Hezekiah was an inspired man. He was, in 
the main, a good man, but all good men were 
not inspired. So with the passages quoted from 
the book of Job. Some of them were spoken 
by Job himself, some by his three friends, some 
by Elihu. Who will undertake to prove that 
any of these were inspired ? Even Job, when 
he cursed the day of his birth, when he com- 
plained that God multiplied his words without 
cause, when he asked if he was a sea, or a 
whale, that God had set a watch over him, — 
did he speak by inspiration? If not, what 
proof is there that he thus spoke when he 
wished himself dead; hid in the grave like an 
untimely birth, where he might sleep and be 
disturbed no more, etc. ? No doubt we have 
here a description of Job's opinions, or at least 
his feelings under extreme distress, but it is the 
merest assumption to say that they are God's 
declarations. It is important, if we would 
read the Bible intelligently, to discriminate 
carefully in this matter. The following may 



DOCTRIXE COXCEEXIXG DEATH. 27 



serve as a few hints to guide us in determining 
what is and what is not said in it by divine 
authority. 

(a.) It is such if it was spoken by God him- 
self; as when he addressed Moses, when he an- - 
swered Job out of the whirlwind, and the 
like. 

(b.) If it was spoken by a prophet, at God's 
command ; as when Moses was ordered to speak 
in his name to the people, and when Isaiah, 
and Ezekiel, and Daniel uttered predictions at 
his inspiration. 

(c.) When it is expressly said that men 
spoke by inspiration ; as when Balaam blessed, 
instead of cursing the Hebrews ; and when Da- 
vid said, "The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, 
and his word was in my tongue." 

(d.) When any person wrought miracles to 
prove what he had said to be from God ; as Moses 
before Pharoaoh, and Elijah and Elisha before 
the Hebrew kings. 

(e.) When their utterances are expressly 
quoted or otherwise referred to in the New 



28 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

Testament, by Christ or his apostles, as the 
word of God. 

(f.) Lastly, when there is in any way proof, 
sufficient for a fact so important, that the words 
in question are to be understood as spoken by 
divine authority. I repeat it, we must dis- 
criminate carefully. It has been far too com- 
mon for men of all creeds to quote the Bible 
at random, as if anything here written out 
were of course God's word. Nor is this saying 
that the Bible is not all inspired. It is so in 
the sense that it purports to be, and no other. 
It says that Job said this, and Hezekiah that, 
and Balaam, and even Satan, something else. 
The fact that they said so is divinely asserted, 
and is therefore inspired, but what they said is 
another thing. This may be God's word, and 
it may not ; it may be truth, and it may be, as 
what Satan said to Eve, unqualified falsehood. 

Secondly. The inspired writers often used 
language according to the appearance of things, 
and not in its most philosophical and absolute 
sense. Thus they speak of the sky as a firma- 



DOCTRINE CONCERNING DEATH. 29 

ment, of the sun's rising and setting, and of 
its standing still at the command of Joshua ; 
they say that God hath founded the earth upon 
the seas, and established it on the floods ; that 
he hath laid its foundations that it should not 
be removed for ever ; and the like. Now all 
this is language describing the appearance of 
things ; and to argue from it as the literal truth 
is to do as the Romish priests did when they 
imprisoned Galileo for affirming that the earth 
revolved about the sun. Upon the same prin- 
ciple, the dead are often spoken of as having 
ceased to be. " Thou turnest man," said the 
Psalmist, " to destruction ; " i. e., he passes out 
of sight just as if he had wholly ceased to exist. 
" Return, O Lord," said David in a time of great 
distress; "deliver my soul. Oh, save me for 
thy mercy's sake, for in death there is no re- 
membrance of thee, in the grave who shall give 
thee thanks ? " that is, I shall otherwise pass 
from the stage of active life and usefulness ; I 
shall leave the earth, and be able to serve thee 
no more. Solomon says that man " dies like 



30 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

9 

the beast," " all have one breath," " the same 
event happeneth to all," etc. This is all true 
in appearance, and for the sake of his argument 
it is not necessary to understand by it anything 
more. So we often say of men that they have 
met a bad end, or a good end ; that they are 
no more ; that an end has been put to their ex- 
istence, and the like : all of which is the lan- 
guage of appearance, and is used just as readily 
and with as little sense of impropriety or self- 
contradiction by the believer in their immor- 
tality as by the unbeliever. The Bible, let it 
be remembered, is a book of common life, and 
employs the language of common life. Every 
attempt to extort from it abstruse philosophy 
is a violence and perversion. 

Thirdly. It is freely conceded that the doc- 
trines pertaining to a future state, and espe- 
cially the future rewards of the righteous and 
the wicked, were not as dearly known to the 
Old Testament saints as they are to Christians. 
It is the glory of the gospel that it has brought 
life and immortality to light. The same is true, 



DOCTRINE CONCERNING DEATH. 31 



also, of the doctrine of the atonement by Christ, 
of justification by faith, and many others. On 
all these topics the views of the ancients were 
obscure ; their language is often obscure, often 
not easily reconciled with the more explicit lan- 
guage of the gospel. Doubtless many of them 
had little idea of any future existence at all, and 
they spoke of the grave as a place of darkness 
and silence and gloom. Is it wise, then, is it in 
accordance with common sense, to go back to 
them, and in the very twilight of revelation 
find authoritative declarations of the future 
non-existence of man? Suppose the legalist 
should go there to find evidence against the 
doctrine of justification by faith, and quote 
Job, and Solomon, and Hezekiah, to prove that 
he only would be saved who obeyed in person 
the whole law of God ; should we admit such 
proofs ? Should we not say that those state- 
ments of good men, true indeed in their under- 
standing of them, must yet be modified and 
corrected, and their defects supplied by the 
clearer light and testimony of Paul and John ? 



32 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

And if we should do the same in respect to the 
class of doctrines before us, should we find any- 
more difficulties in these, anything that should 
be permitted to outweigh the full and clear 
and explicit testimony of the New Testament? 
Nor is this any impeachment of the inspired 
authority of the Old Testament. The Bible is 
to be taken collectively; in many cases the 
whole truth in relation to a doctrine is not given 
in one passage. The partial statements of one* 
portion are to be supplemented by the fuller 
statements of another, and thus, by the colla- 
tion and comparison of the whole, the exact 
truth is reached. Such was Christ's own de- 
claration respecting the design of his mission 
as a teacher : " I am not come to destroy the 
law or the prophets, but to fulfill; " that is, to 
fill out, to complete. 

Fourthly. Those passages which seem to 
deny man's continued existence at death are 
not the only ones that bear on that point in the 
Old Testament. " When we are told so often 
and so confidently," says Prof. Stuart, "that 



DOCTRIXE COXCERXIXG DEATH. 33 

the ancient Hebrews had no idea of a future 
state, we must crave the liberty of hesitating 
before we receive this. What did the Hebrews 
think had become of Enoch and Elijah after 
their translation ? What is meant whten it is 
said that Abraham and others were gathered 
to their fathers? It can not refer to their 
burial, for Abraham was buried in Canaan, but 
his lathers in Mesopotamia, in Charran. What 
means David's language, 6 In thy presence is 
fullness of joy, at thy right hand are pleasures 
for evermore ' ? What shall we say of his de- 
claration, £ I shall be satisfied when I awake in 
thy likeness 5 ? How can any man reasonably 
suppose that the Hebrews, with Moses, and 
Samuel, and David, and Solomon, and Isaiah, 
knew less than the Egyptian and other heathen 
nations around them about a future state of 
existence ? The idea is all but preposterous, in 
my view. All this, and much more which 
might be adduced from the Old Testament, 
makes me hesitate to receive such a doctrine 
as this " 

3 



34 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

A few passages are found in the New Testa- 
ment which, it is claimed, teach, at least indi- 
rectly, the doctrine before us. Among them 
are the following : — 

Acts ii. 34, " For David is not yet ascended 
into the heavens." It is inferred from this that 
he had ceased to exist; but the mere state- 
ment shows how unwarranted the inference. 
The apostle Peter was laboring to convince 
the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah, and 
quoted for that purpose the words of David 
(Psalm xvi. 10), " Thou wilt not leave my soul 
in hell (hades ), nor suffer thy Holy One to see 
corruption." This had been fulfilled in respect to 
Christ, whom God raised from the dead before 
decomposition commenced, therein proving him 
to be his Son. Then, as if anticipating the 
objection that David did not mean Christ in 
this passage, but himself, the apostle adds, 
" For David is not ascended into the heavens ; " 
that is, he is still in the grave — he has seen 
corruption — he will not rise until the general 
resurrection at the last day. Obviously the 



DOCTMXE CONCERNING DEATH. 35 

reference is only to the body of the Psalmist. 
Nothing whatever is affirmed of the soul in 
this passage. 

1 Cor. xv. 18, "Then they also which are 
fallen asleep in Christ are perished." It is ar- 
gued that the apostle meant to say that if there 
be no resurrection, and Christ has not risen, 
these departed saints have ceased to exist. But 
this is to assume that such is the import of the 
word, perished, which, as we have shown of 
the word, death, is simply begging the question. 
The true meaning of the passage is apparent 
from the preceding verse : " If Christ be not 
raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your 
sins? If Christ be not raised, he is proved an 
impostor ; your hope of salvation by him from 
sin and hell is fallacious; your sins still rest 
upon you; and all who have died trusting in 
him are suffering the perdition of their souls, 
under the endless penalty of God's law. 

1 Tim. vi. 16, "Who (God) only hath im- 
mortality." It is inferred that man, naturally, 
has no immortality. But it is also said that 



36 THE WICKED XOT AXXIHILATED. 



God only is wise (Rom. xvi 27 ; i. Tim. 1. 17 ; 

Jucle 25) ; froni which it were equally reasona- 
ble to infer that man lias no wisdom whatever. 
The obvious meaning is simply that God alone 
has underived and eternal self-existence. 

Rom. ii. 7, " To them who by patient con- 
tinuance in well-doing seek for glory and honor 
and immortality" etc. Phil. hi. 11, " If by any 
means I might attain unto the resurrection of 
the dead." It is argued from these, and one 
or two similar passages, that a future life is 
something to be sought and attained, and there- 
fore is not to be reached by all. But this is 
the same assumption which we find at every step 
of the argument, that life means simply exist- 
ence, and death cessation of existence. The 
immortality here spoken of is that which our 
Saviour promised : " TThosoever liveth and be- 
lieveth in me shall never die." John xi. 26. 
The resurrection which Paul sought was the 
opposite of that predicted by Daniel, "some to 
shame and everlasting contempt." Daniel 
xii. 2. 



DOCTRIXE OF THE RESURRECTION. 37 

Sucli are the main arguments employed in 
support of the system under review. Let the 
reader judge whether they are sufficient to 
establish a doctrine so contrary to the com- 
mon faith of Christendom, and so revolting to 
every human instinct ; a doctrine which makes 
man only a brother of the brutes, with no soul 
save his fleshly organization, which flickers 
here for a few days amid storm and darkness, 
and then plunges into blank extinction. 

III. 

DOCTRINE CONCERNING THE RESURRECTION. 

The advocates of the faith under considera- 
tion hold that in the resurrection both soul and 
body will be raised ; and while those of the 
righteous are received to heaven, the soul and 
body of the wicked will be for ever annihilated. 

" When this present organized frame is dis- 
solved, there is a cessation of all conscious ex- 
istence until the end of the world, when God 
by his mighty power through Christ will recall 



38 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED, 



into new life all that have slept in death." 
(Dobney, "Fut. Pun.," p. 142.) 

" This " (Ezek. xviii. 26) " clearly imphes a 
resurrection after the first death and before the 
second, that he may then die for his iniquities 
as he had previously died in them." (Hastings, 
"Retribution," p. 76.) 

" All finally impenitent human beings will be 
raised from the dead in the general resurrec- 
tion of the wicked, and will be judged by the 
Son of God to the doom of indignation and 
wrath, tribulation and anguish, which will 
result in their eternal death," i. e., annihila- 
tion. (Edwin Burnham, "Anti-Eternal Tor- 
ment," p. 1.) 

"It is as if the unjust, hearing the voice of 
God in the last call to life, should be putting 
on a glorious incorruption, and should perish 
in the act." (Hudson, "Debt and Grace," p. 
264.) 

The fact of the general resurrection of the 
dead, of course, we shall not question. But on 
the ground above taken concerning the nature 



DOCTRINE OF THE RESURRECTION. 39 

of death and of the soul, such a resurrection 
is simply impossible. For the fundamental 
idea of a resurrection is the resuscitation of that 
which already, in some mode, exists. To call 
into being from non-existence is an act of crea- 
tion. The Sadducees were consistent with 
themselves in denying the doctrine of a resur- 
rection altogether, as they denied the existence 
of an immaterial element in man. See how 
the sacred writer couples the two as necessarily 
involving each other. "The Sadducees say 
there is no resurrection, neither angel nor spir- 
it ; " of course, no resurrection, because noth- 
ing to rise. The elements of the body we 
know still exist, though in other forms ; when 
these, therefore, or some portion of them, shall 
at God's command resume their place and re- 
lations to the spirit, we call it truly a resurrec- 
tion. But all this is denied of the soul. Noth- 
ing is more distinct, in our conception, than the 
two ideas of a resurrection and a creation. 
Hence, the very fact that all men shall be raised 
is itself a proof that death is not their end ; 



40 THE WICKED XOT ANNIHILATED. 

that something of their nature still survives, 
which shall hereafter be recalled from the in- 
visible world to appear in all the conditions of 
conscious and active being. 

It is scarcely possible to put into words a 
more glaring tissue of absurdities and pro- 
fanations of truth than the doctrine of a re- 
surrection, if man has no immortal soul. For 
existence itself having terminated at death, 
whatever is "raised" will be caused to spring 
out of blank non-existence. Of course, then, 
that will be the beginning of its existence. 
If it have consciousness, volition, memory, and 
other qualities of a moral being, the same mo- 
ment will be the commencement of their ex- 
istence. And yet all these,' according to the 
theory, are identically the same soul, with its 
qualities, which lived in probation; that is, 
each had an existence before it began exist- 
ence! And this new being is to be judged 
and rewarded for the deeds done before its ex- 
istence began by that former being, of whom 
it is a successor ! And the conferring upon it 



DOCTRINE OF THE EES TJBBE CTIOX. 41 

of immortality is a regard or gift bestowed on 
that which long before utterly " perished;" and 
the sentence of death is a punishment of what 
has already become extinct. Thus every state- 
ment pertaining to it is a contradiction in terms ; 
and necessarily so, because the two ideas of 
annihilation at death, and of a resurrection, 
are in themselves a contradiction. The Sad- 
ducees, if they held an error, did not also hold 
an absurdity; if there is neither "angel nor 
spirit," there can be no resurrection; if there 
be a resurrection, as our Lord most explicitly 
declares, then there is an element in man which 
survives death, a spirit, immaterial and im- 
mortal. 

The wicked who have thus been raised will, 
it is said, be judged and again annihilated. 
The proof of this is found as before in what 
is claimed to be the literal meaning of the terms 
employed to describe it. The most prominent 
of these is " death," which we have already con- 
sidered at length. How far this is from estab- 
lishing the doctrine asserted must be obvious 



42 THE WICKED XOT ANNIHILATED. 

to every reader. So with the kindred words. 
Perdition is simply loss ; it denotes that he of 
whom it is asserted has failed of the true end 
of existence; he has lost all good here and 
hereafter. Or, in a passive sense, he is lost to 
God and the universe, as the prodigal son was 
lost to his father and his family. " Go to the 
lost sheep of the house of Israel." Matt. x. 
6. Were the apostles sent to preach the gos- 
pel to men who had no existence ? " Though 
our outward man perish, yet the inward man 
is renewed day by day." 2 Cor. iv. 16. Did 
Paul mean that the body is annihilated, while 
the soul is daily renewed? "Knowest thou 
not that Egypt is destroyed?" Ex. x. 7. 
Did the locusts^annihilate that country ? " He 
hath destroyed me on eveiy side, and I am 
gone." Job xix. 10. Had the suffering pa- 
triarch already become extinct ? To consume, 
to burn up, to be devoured, to be cut off, to be 
as nothing, to be blotted out, to come to an end, 
etc., are similar phrases, but not one of them 
means annihilation. A half-hour's search with 



DOCTRIXE OF THE RESURRECT10X. 43 

a concordance will show any reader numerous 
passages where they are applied to persons and 
things still living, and in the full possession of 
all their natural qualities. Gen. xxxi. 40 ; Job 
vi. 9 ; xxx. 30 ; Ps. xxxi. 9, 10 ; lxxxiii. 17 ; cii. 3 ; 
Prov. x. 15; Isa. i. 7; xiv. 20; Jer. iv. 9; 
Hos. iv. 6; xiii. 9; Gal, v. 15. 

To what end, we can not forbear to ask, is 
this resurrection and re-annihilation of the 
wicked ? Is it to suffer the penalty of God's 
law ? But this they had already suffered ; 
they were still suffering. Is it necessaiy to in- 
flict a penalty twice ? When a criminal has 
been hanged till he is dead, is it necessary af- 
terward to suspend the body again? Does 
any principle of justice demand this? Does 
not this theory make both resurrection and 
judgment a farce required by no law, conducive 
to no useful end? 

Nay, more, if needless, then cruel. Suppose 
a judge could galvanize into life the dead body 
of a criminal who, by dying once, has fully 
satisfied all the ends of justice, for the sole 



44 THE WICKED NOT AXXIHILA TED. 



purpose of executing him again : what would 
be thought of such a man ? Would not the 
voice of universal humanity cry out against 
him as a monster ? But the wicked, who at 
death suffered the full penalty of the law, total 
extinction of being, are recalled into life, to be 
judged and annihilated again ! And this the 
sole significance of the day of judgment, the 
most august, the most momentous in all the 
history of this world ! What shall we say of 
such profanations and caricatures of the most 
solemn truths of revelation ? What of a sys- 
tem of faith of which these are among the cor- 
ner-stones ? 

IV. 

REFUTATION OF THE FOREGOING DOCTRINES. 

We have examined the chief arguments ad- 
vanced in support of the system under consid- 
eration, and it now remains to adduce some of 
those which go to disprove it. 

1. The first is the inspired declaration that 
God made man in his own image. This was 



REFUTATION OF THE DOCTRIXE. 45 

said of him in the creation, and is re-affirmed 
by the apostle Jarnes of all men. " They are 
made," said he, " after the similitude of God." 
James iii. 10. Xow this similitude to God 
can not be personal holiness, for men are not 
now created holy ; that feature in the original 
image was lost in the fall, and yet the simili- 
tude itself they still hear. I know not where 
to find this but in a spiritual and immortal na- 
ture. It is not in man's body, for God is not 
material. • It is not in any instinct of the body, 
anything resulting from mere physical organi- 
zation, for the brutes likewise hare this, and it 
might as well be said of them, on this supposi- 
tion, that they too are made in God's image. It 
must be, then, in the soul itself. God is a spirit, 
and man is made in his image, in his similitude. 
What is more conclusive than that man is 
created a spirit also ? And therefore it is, be- 
cause of the essentially spiritual and god-like 
dignity of man, that the crime of murder — that 
is, the crime of sending a spirit, unprepared and 
uncalled for, from its probation into eternity 



46 THE WICKED XOT AXXIHILATED. 

— is made so heinous. " Whoso sheddeth man's 
blood, by man shall his blood be shed ; for in 
the image of God made he man." Whoever, 
then, comes to me with the assertion that I 
have no soul, and, save in the fineness of my 
organization, no pre-eminence over a beast, I 
need but reply to him, " God is not a beast, he 
is not a mere organized body of matter ; God 
is a spirit, and I am made in his image. My 
consciousness responds to the testimony of his 
word, that the I which thinks, the I that 
makes my manhood, is not my body. My 
spirit within me asserts its sonship to the di- 
vine Spirit. It came forth from God ; it will 
return at death to God who gave it." 

2. The Scriptures everywhere, and espe- 
cially in the New Testament, employ language 
which necessarily implies that the sjDirit of man 
is distinct from his body, and that it has, or 
may have, an existence entirely separate from 
and independent of it. Of these, the follow- 
ing are a specimen : " Fear not them that kill 
the body, but are not able to kill the soul, but 



REFUTATION OF TEE DOCTEIXE. 47 

rather fear Hini which is able to destroy both 
soul and body in hell." But if the soul de- 
pends on bodily organization, and if to kill is 
to cause extinction of being, then every man 
who can kill the body can kill the soul. 
Every wicked king or magistrate who can 
inflict capital punishment may do both. Did 
our Saviour, then, tell the apostles, for their 
comfort as they went forth to preach, to be 
courageous against every foe who could not 
touch life, but to fear every petty tyrant who 
could kill body and soul both ? On the cross, 
immediately before his death, he exclaimed, 
" Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." 
Luke xxiii. 46. Was this, as some pretend, 
only commending his breath into the hands of 
God ? Was the breath a thing to be preserved, 
to be cared for, to be an object of solicitude after 
the body had died ? " To-day " said he to the 
dying thief, "thou shalt be with me in Paradise." 
Luke xxiii. 43. But the body that day was on 
the cross, or in the grave. What was it, then, 
that went to Paradise with Christ ? If it be 



48 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

said, m reply, that the expression should be so 
punctuated as to read, " I say to-day, thou shalt 
be with me in Paradise," I answer, The form of 
the expression in the original Greek forbids this. 
Nay, the claim is an insult to the word of God. 
Is it so that the Saviour would solemnly mock 
the dying penitent with such nonsense as, " I 
say to you to-day, — I do not now speak yester- 
day, or to-morrow, or next year, — thou shalt be 
with me, after the resurrection, in Paradise " ? 
That eminent Greek scholar, Dean Alford, 
says of the proposed change, " Considering that 
it not only violates common sense, but destroys 
the force of our Lord's promise, it is surely 
something worse than silly." "The body is 
dead because of sin, but the spirit is life be- 
cause of righteousness." Rom. viii. 18. "Glo- 
rify God in your body, and in your spirit, which 
are God's." 1 Cor. vi. 20. " I pray God your 
whole spirit and soul and body be preserved 
blameless unto "the coming of our Lord Jesus 
Christ." 1 Thess. v. 23. "As the body with- 
out the spirit is dead, so faith without works is 



REFUTATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 49 

dead also." James ii. 26. These, and many 
similar passages, imply a distinction between 
the two. They are just as they would be, sup- 
posing each to have an existence of its own. 
They exactly accord with the common idea of 
the twofold nature of man; they have been 
understood, in all ages, and by the most emi- 
nent interpreters, as teaching that man has 
such a nature. What can be proved, then, 
from the language of God's Word, if they do 
not mean it here ? 

3. Repeated mention is made in the S clo- 
tures of the actual existence of human souls in 
a disembodied state. Such was that of Sam- 
uel, who appeared to Saul, while consulting 
the necromancer and inrpostor at Endor. That 
this was not a dream, or mere mental vision, is 
plain from the fact that Samuel was seen by* 
the woman herself, as well as by Saul. 
That it was not a phantom, or spectral illusion, 
is certain, since Samuel addressed Saul in audi- 
ble language, and denounced upon him the dis- 
• pleasure of God. Will the believer in annihi- 
4 



50 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 



lation tell us what this was that conversed with 
Saul, if it was not the departed spirit of the 
venerable prophet ? The appearance of Moses 
with Elias on the mount of transfiguration is 
an instance to the same effect. It is said, how 
ever, that the body of Moses had now been 
raised, and that it was this which appeared 
talking with Jesus. It is enough to reply, this 
is pure assumption. Xot a hint of any such 
thing is given in the narrative, and nobody 
would have ever dreamed of such an idea but 
in the desperateness of an indefensible error. 
Besides, what is a body that can speak and 
hold converse with Christ after its spirit has 
become extinct ? Again, " I saw under the 
altar the souls of them that were slain for the 
word of God, and for the testimony which they 
held. And they cried with a loud voice, How 
long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not 
avenge our blood on them that dwell on the 
earth?" Rev. vi, 9. It is said, in respect to 
these, that they only existed in the vision of 
the apostle, that as yet the martyrs themselves 



REFUTATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 51 

had not lived nor died ; and these, therefore, 
could not have been actual souls. But though 
they were not, does this annul the essential 
import of the scene ? Does it not teach that 
there is, at least, such a thing as a soul ? And 
who, I may ask, were all those beings whom 
John saw in Patmos as purporting to be the 
departed of earth ? Who were the multitudes 
that surrounded the throne of the Lamb, and 
sung the new song of praise to Him that was * 
slain, and had redeemed them unto God by his 
blood ? Who the hundred and forty and four 
thousand that stood on Mount Zion ? Were 
all these phantoms, illusions, nonentities ? Is 
it the natural and legitimate inference from 
them, that there is no such thing as a human 
soul, spiritual and immortal, that lives after 
death? 

4. The apostle Paul, in repeated instances, 
expressed a readiness, nay, even a desire to 
die, that he might be with Christ. "For to 
me," said he, "to live is Christ, and to die is 
gain." Phil. i. 21. It is claimed that this 



52 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

means that death to Paul would be gain, not 
to him, but to the cause of the gospel. But 
what effrontery to say that Paul actually meant 
it would be gain to the cause of Christ on 
earth, if he, its most laborious and successful 
advocate, were absolutely to be annihilated, — 
were to suffer "total extinction of being"! 
What more could be said of him, if he were 
the vilest wretch in existence ? Think of the 
desperateness of any cause which is compelled 
thus to abuse God's Word, and dishonor his 
most faithful and devoted servant, to get rid 
of the evidence against it. And if there were 
any doubt of his meaning, it would be solved 
in the very next verse but one : " For I am in 
a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart 
and to be with Christ, which is far better ; nev- 
ertheless, to abide in the flesh is more needful 
for you." Here he expressly says that his liv- 
ing^ not dying, was most needful for the church; 
the gain of his dying, therefore, was something 
which would accrue to him, and not to them. 
He desires, too, to depart and be with Christ. 



REFUTATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 53 

Now Christ had already ascended to his Fa- 
ther ; to be with him, then, would be to be in 
heaven, and this while his body was in a dis- 
honored grave at Rome. This, he says, would 
be far better than to live, for heaven is better 
than earth ; but how better, if death to him 
were annihilation? Did Paul mean that it 
would be better to cease existence, than to 
serve Christ in the ministry of the gospel? 
Surely, to ask the question is to answer it. 
Again he says, "We are always confident, 
knowing that while we are at home in the 
body, we are absent from the Lord : we are 
confident, I say, and willing rather to be ab- 
sent from the body, and to be present with the 
Lord." 2 Cor. v. 6. No language can more 
explicitly and positively declare Paul's belief 
that death is riot non-existence, — that to pass 
from the body would be to pass into a state of 
conscious and most joyous existence, in the 
presence and fellowship of Christ in heaven. 

5. Equally inconsistent with this theory 
was the plea of the apostle before the San- 



54 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

hedrim, recorded in Acts xxiii. 1-10. Notice the 
circumstances. This body, the great Council 
of the nation, consisted of men of both parties 
among the Jews. There were the Sadducees, 
who said that there is no future state, no res- 
urrection, angel, or spirit. There were the 
Pharisees, who held to all these. Paul was 
called in question for having preached that 
Christ was raised from the dead. If he be- 
lieved that there is no angel nor spirit, that the 
soul of man is but his breath, and dies with the 
body, it was then the time to avow it. He 
could as well have made interest with the Sad- 
ducees as the Pharisees. The point in dispute, 
was virtually this very one which had always 
divided the two. Why, then, did not Paul 
avow himself a Sadducee ? Why did he not 
speak decidedly on this point, and proclaim the 
great fact which our modern Sadducees are so 
eager to maintain, that man has no pre-emi- 
nence over a beast ? Perhaps he is about to 
do so. He opens his lips as if to speak ; let 
us listen : " Men and brethren, I am a Phari- 



REFUTATION OF THE DOCTRINE.. 55 

see, the son of a Pharisee; of the hope and 
resurrection of the dead, I am called in ques- 
tion." Not of the hope in a general resurrec- 
tion, for that was not the burden of his preach- 
ing, but of hope in, and reliance on, one who 
was dead but now alive again, Jesus of Naza- 
reth. Does this sound like Sadduceeism ? Do 
the Sadducees themselves understand him as 
holding their favorite doctrine ? No, there is 
instantly a great dissension. The Pharisees at 
once take his side : " We find no evil in this 
man, but if a spirit or angel hath spoken by 
him," as he says 'Jesus did on his way to Da- 
mascus, " let us not fight against God. We ad- 
mit that the soul of the Crucified One did live 
after death, and possibly he did appear to Paul. 
You Sadducees do not believe it, for you say 
his soul perished with his body on the cross." 
We appeal to the reader, knowing the senti- 
ments, respectively, of these two parties, and 
the circumstances in which Paul made this 
election between them, is it not absolutely cer- 
tain that he abjured the doctrine that there is 



56 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

neither angel nor spirit? Was not his conduct 
a .direct and pointed denial of Sadduceeism, 
and that, too, in reference to this very point ? 
Would it have been possible for him more 
forcibly to refute and brand it with falsehood 
by any form of language whatever ? 

6. Another instance very similar to this 
occurred in the preaching of Paul, at Athens. 
This city was one of the seats of the Greek 
philosophy, in its most flourishing era. He has 
been preaching to the Jews as usual, in their 
synagogues and in the market-place, of Jesus 
and his resurrection. " Then certain philoso- 
phers of the Epicureans and Stoics encountered 
him." Why? Because these were the sects 
who denied the spirituality and immortality of 
the soul. To say that a dead man, one that had 
been executed as a criminal, had come to life 
again, was, in their view, absurd. At last 
they lead him to Areopagus, the large open 
space fitted up on the brow of Mars' Hill, 
where the public assemblies of the Athenians 
were held, and say, " May we know what this 



EEFUTATIOX OF TEE DOCTEIXE^ 57 

new doctrine whereof thou speakest is ? For 
thou bringest certain strange things to our 
ears; we would know, therefore, what these 
things mean." Here, then, the apostle begins 
his noble and beautiful oration in behalf of the 
truth, in the midst of that crowd of learned 
and polished skeptics. . He speaks to them of 
God, of his invisible nature, of his creation of 
men, and his relation as parent to them all, of 
the folly of idolatry, and of a day of judgment, 
"by that man whom he ordained, whereof he 
hath giyen assurance to all men, in that he 
hath raised him from the dead." Ah, the shout 
of derision that follows when he comes to this ! 
"The resurrection of the dead! The coming 
to life of a dead man ! How absurd ! Why, 
does he not know that the dead have no exist- 
ence, they have suffered 'total extinction of 
being ; ' that the soul is only the product of 
organization, and perishes with the body? 
What is the man talking about, in telling us 
of a dead man's coming to life again, and God's 
appointing him to judge the world?" Thus 



58 THE WICKED XOT ANNIHILATED* 

" when thev heard of the resurrection of the 
dead," — not the general resurrection, be it ob- 
served, for Paul had not said a word about 
this, but of the resurrection of Jesus only, — 
"some mocked;" viz., the Epicureans and 
Stoics; "others said, 'We will hear thee again 
of this matter. 5 " Is it not unaccountable that 
if Paul believed this very doctrine of the Greek 
philosophers, he should not now have avowed 
it, — that he should have preached instead the 
very opposite ? Here again we have inspira- 
tion in contact with the doctrine before us, 
and most pointedly and expressly condemn- 
ing it. 

7. Observe again Paul's discussion of the 
resurrection, in 1 Cor. xv. The Corinthians 
were Greeks, at a little distance from Athens, 
and among them luxury and vice prevailed, if 
possible, even more than at Athens itself. 
Here were Epicureans and Stoics, and among 
the Jews, doubtless, Sadducees; and some, 
probably, in the church were tinctured with 
theh^ peculiar views. Paul had preached here, 



REFUTATION OF THE DOCTRINE. 59 

as everywhere, that Jesus had been raised from 
the dead. "The Scriptures," says he, "pre- 
dicted his rising; he was seen after it by Ce- 
phas, then by the twelve, at one time by above 
five hunlred brethren vt once, then by James, 
then by all the apostles. And last of all, he 
was seen by me also, as of one born out of due 
time." " Xow," he says, after all this proof, " if 
Christ be preached that he rose from the dead, 
how say some among you that there is no res- 
urrection of the dead?" Observe, not the 
general resurrection, for nothing had been said 
of this, but the resurrection of Jesus, and the 
reality of a future state, as demonstrated by 
it. According to Dr. Dwight, in his sermon on 
the resurrection, the meaning is, "How say 
some among you that there is no future life, or 
existence, of the dead? To remove," he re- 
marks, "this great Sadducean error from that 
church, and to prevent its existence ever after- 
ward, was obviously the design of Paul in 
writing this chapter. Accordingly he shows 
its absurdity in the most triumphant manner, 



60 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

in the first thirty-four verses, and with equal 
success elucidates and proves the contrary doc- 
trine. In the remainder of the discourse he 
dwells extensively on the nature of the body 
with which those who are dead will be invested 
at the final day, declares the change which 
those who are living at that time will experi- 
ence, and concludes with a song of triumph 
over death and hades, and a solemn exhortation 
to Christians to steadfastly abound in the ser- 
vice of God." (« Theol.," vol. iv. p. 431.) 

Paul's express object, then, in writing this 
chapter was to refute Sadduceeism and Epic- 
ureanism in the Corinthian church, and prove 
that there is an existence of man after death. 
The first thirty-four verses are occupied in 
this, and then, introducing an objector who 
asks about the body, he discusses the doctrine 
of the resurrection of the body. More than 
one-half of it, then, is an argument in direct 
refutation and reproof of the doctrine we are 
considering. 

8. No less explicit are the teachings of our 



EEFUTATIOX OF THE DOCTBIXE.. 61 



Saviour himself. He declares expressly that 
the believer in him shall not die. "He that 
believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." 
4i This is that bread which eometh down from 
heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not 
die. I am the living bread which came down 
from heaven ; if any man eat of this bread, he 
shall live for ever." "TThoso liveth and be- 
lieveth in me shall never die? Granting, then, 
that death does mean, as is claimed, " total ex- 
tinction of being ; " these declarations, and nu- 
merous more of a similar character in both the 
Old Testament and the Xew, assert that the 
believer never suffers it. But his boely dies, 
nevertheless, precisely as the unbeliever's, so 
that the language can not apply to that. The 
conclusion is irresistible ; it must refer to the 
Boul, the only other imaginable part of his being. 

Let it not be said, in reply, that these pas- 
sages refer solely to the life that will be con- 
ferred on the believer at the resurrection. The 
very terms expressly forbid this. They say he 
has now eternal life, and that he shall not die 



62 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 



at all, shall never die. " Verily, verily I say 
unto you, lie that heareth my word, and believ- 
eth on'hirn that sent me, hath everlasting life, 
and shall not come into condemnation, but is 
passed from death unto life? On either hand, 
then, the doctrine that the soul perishes with 
the body is, at least in the case of believers, 
disproved. If this be the meaning of death, 
Christ says they shall not suffer it ; if it be not, 
then dying does not involve it. 

9. Christ refuted this doctrine in his inter- 
view with the Sadducees, when they asked him 
of the woman who had had seven husbands. 
Hear again Dr. Dwight upon this subject : " The 
word," says he, speaking of the Greek term 
anastasis, "is commonly, but often erroneously, 
rendered resurrection. So far as I have ob- 
served, it usually denotes our existence beyond 
the grave. The Sadducees ask whose wife 
shall she be in the ancistasis, i. e., in the future 
state. They could not suppose that she would 
be any man's wife, in the (literal) resurrection, 
a momentary event, and of such a nature as to 



• REFUTATION OF THE DOCTRIXE. _ 63 

forbid the supposition that the relations of the 
present life could be of the least possible im- 
portance, or be regarded with the least possi- 
ble attention, during its transitory existence. 
Our Saviour answers them. ' In the anasiasis, 
in the future state, they neither marry nor are 
given in marriage, but are as the angels of God 
in heaven. But as touching the anastasis, or, 
as it ought to be rendered, the future existence 
of the dead, have you not read that which was 
spoken to you by God concerning the exist- 
ence of those who are dead, saying, I am the 
God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the 
God of Jacob ? God is not the God of the 
dead, but of the living.' This passage, were we 
at any loss concerning the meaning of the word 
(Diastasis, determines it beyond dispute. The 
proof that there is an anastasis of the dead is 
the declaration of God to Moses, C I am, etc., 5 
and the irresistible truth that God is not the 
God of the dead, but of the living. The con- 
sequence, as any one who reads the Bible 
knows, is that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were 



64 THE WICKED XOT AXXIHILA TED. 



living at the time when this declaration was 
made. Those who die, therefore, live after 
they are dead; and this future life is the anas- 
tasis concerning which there was so much de- 
bate between the Pharisees and the Sadducees, 
which is proved by this passage,' and which is 
universally denoted by this term throughout 
the Xew Testament. Nothing is more evident 
than that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had not 
risen from the dead, but it is certain that they 
are living beings ; and therefore this passage is 
a complete proof that mankind live after 
death." (" Theol.," vol. iv. p. 430.) 

Such is President Dwight's exposition of the 
conversation with the Saviour. Xothing can 
be more directly to the point before us, — noth- 
ing more conclusive. 

10. The doctrine we are considering is directly 
and most impressively refuted by Christ's nar- 
rative of the rich man and Lazarus. We do 
not forget the persistent endeavors which are 
made to evade the force of this passage by 
calling it a parable. Though we may not press 



REFUTATIOX OF THE DOCTRIXE^ 65 

too far every item introduced into it to give 
completeness to the picture, yet in its general 
import it is unmistakable, and no less authori- 
tative than the simplest didactic statement. 

Dr. Mosheim's commentary on this parable 
is as follows : u Our blessed Saviour, in that 
history of the rich man (whether true or 
feigned matters not) which is recorded in St. 
Luke's Gospel, hath given us a just picture of the 
manners and way of living of the Sadducees. 
Dives was a Jew, for he calls Abraham his 
father, but he was neither a Pharisee, nor one 
of the Essenes ; and we may therefore conclude 
him to have been a Sadducee. Indeed, our 
Saviour's narrative leaves us no room to doubt 
on this point, for the request of Dives to Abra- 
ham is that he would send Lazarus to his 
brethren, for the purpose of converting them to 
a belief in the soul's immortality, and in the 
certainty of a future state of rewards and pun- 
ishments. It is plain, therefore, that during his 
lifetime he had imagined that the soul would 
perish with the body ; and had treated with 
5 



66 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

derision the doctrine held by the Pharisees re- 
specting the happiness or misery of a future 
state ; and that the brethren whom he had left 
behind entertained similar sentiments, — senti- 
ments which already mark them as the vota- 
ries of that impious system to which the Sad- 
ducees were devoted. The writings of Moses 
and the prophets were not, indeed, rejected by 
him. On the contrary, it should seem that he 
held them in respect : 4 They have Moses and 
the prophets,' says Abraham. The Holy Scrip- 
tures, therefore, it appears, were in the hands 
of these men, but they would not allow that 
anything contained in them would warrant a 
conclusion that the souls of men would sur- 
vive the dissolution of their bodies, and be 
either punished or rewarded in a future state 
for the deeds done in the flesh." (Comm., 
vol. i. p. 66.) 

It is of very little consequence whether Dr. 
Mosheim is right in supposing that our Lord 
aimed directly at the Sadducees or not; it is 
obvious that he has fairly interpreted the sense 



REFUTATION OF THE DOCTRINE. . 67 

of the parable. As Trench well remarks, the 
rich man and his brethren were u Sadclucees at 
heart, though, it might be, Pharisees in name." 
" I doubt not," said Augustine, " that, when 
talking with his brethren of the exhortations 
and warnings of the prophets, he ridiculed the 
whole, saying, ' What life is there after death ? 
What memory has a corpse ? What percep- 
tion has a heap of dust ? Who ever came back 
from the other world ? ' " Xothing, then, can be 
more impressive than the Saviour's condemna- 
tion of this unbelief. He removes the vail that 
hides the future existence, and shows how real 
and how awful a fact it was to those who had 
denied it ; a fact, he adds, so clearly revealed 
by the Scriptures that if any will not believe it 
on their testimony, " neither would they be 
persuaded though one rose from the dead." 

11. Finally, the doctrine of annihilation is 
disproved by all those passages of the Scrip- 
tures which declare that the iTunishment of the 
wicked shall he eternal. This is done in many 
forms of speech which do not include the 



68 THE WICKED NOT AXXIHILA TED. 

words death, destruction, etc., and which im- 
ply an eternity of conscious suffering. They 
shall be "delivered to tormentors;" "there 
shall be weejring and gnashing of teeth ; " " the 
worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched ; " 
they shall be " tormented day and night for ever 
and ever;" "the smoke of their torment as- 
cendeth up for ever and ever, and they have no 
rest, day nor night." I know, indeed, the elabo- 
rate reasonings which attempt to evade the 
plain meaning of these expressions ; but they 
are all futile. They are sanctioned by no re- 
spectable commentator, and they never will be. 
It is more reasonable to reject the Bible out- 
right as not worthy to be believed on this sub- 
ject than to deny that it teaches the endless 
suffering of the wicked. 

Were there nothing else, however, the sol- 
emn language of Christ himself, the final Judge, 
would be decisive. " These shall go away into 
everlasting punishment." The word translated 
punishment occurs only once besides in the 
New Testament, viz., 1 Jno. iv. 18: "Fear 



MORAL ESTIMATE OE THIS DOCTRINE. 69 

hath torment P The term itself implies suffer- 
ing^ and that suffering, it is said, shall be eter- 
nal. The same adjective is applied to it as to 
the blessed life of the righteous ; and were there 
not a purpose to be accomplished, its meaning 
of endless duration would never be questioned. 
Xor can this be evaded by claiming, as Hud- 
son does, that annihilation is endless punish- 
ment. TVe might as well say that killing a 
man is eternal murder, or that burning a house 
is an endless conflagration. Punishment can 
continue only so long as the soul which suf- 
fers it exists. Thus only are our Saviour's 
words invested with their full significance, and 
the awful parallelism of destiny pronounced on 
the righteous and the wicked in the last day 
preserved. 

V. 

MORAL ESTIMATE OF THIS DOCTRINE. 

Having exhibited the unscriptual character 
of modern Sadduceeism, it is desirable, ere we 



70 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

close, to glance at the moral aspects of this 
doctrine, and its practical bearings on the Chris- 
tian truth, and on man. 

For it is not enough to say simply that it is 
an error. Many other errors are held which 
are of little account. They are aberrations of 
the judgment or belief, of little importance, 
and perhaps involving no moral obliquity. 
But this is not an error of that kind. Begin- 
ning with putting the utmost dishonor on 
man, in reducing him to the grade of a mere 
animal, it fatally corrupts all that system of 
truth and motives which gives to virtue its 
sanctions, and is essential to the soul's salva- 
tion. 

1. It dishonors the government of God. The 
professed aim of this doctrine is to relieve the 
divine character from the imputations which 
rest upon it from the alleged eternal punish- 
ment of the wicked, and the endless continu- 
ance of sin and suffering in the universe, — an 
evil, it is urged, too tremendous to be consist- 
ent with God's goodness, or justice, in permit- 



MORAL ESTIMATE OF THIS D0CTRLXE. 71 

ting it. But the relief thus sought — in the 
theory of annihilation — is not gained ; besides, 
it attributes other things to God's government 
which are fatal to its wisdom and honor. 

The relief sought is not obtained. For the 
real difficulty involved in this ancient problem 
respecting sin, this "conflict of ages," is not 
that of its endless duration, but its existence at 
all under the government of a holy God. " It 
is urged," says Professor Mansel, " that 3in can 
not for ever be triumphant against God. As if 
the whole mystery of iniquity were contained 
in the words for ever/ The real riddle of ex- 
istence — the problem which confounds all 
philosophy, aye, and all religion too, so far as 
religion is a thing of man's reason — is the 
fact that evil exists at all, not that it exists for 
a longer or shorter duration. Is not God in- 
finitely wise and holy and powerful now? 
And does not sin exist along with that infinite 
holiness and wisdom and power ? Is God to 
become more holy, more wise, more powerful 
hereafter? And must evil be annihilated to 



72 



THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 



make room for his perfections to expand ? n 
Let the believer in annihilation explain, if he 
can, why sin and suffering are permitted at all, 
and he will, in so doing, have answered his 
own assumption that their eternal existence is 
a reproach to a holy and benevolent God. 

Then see what other absurdities the annihi- 
lationist attributes to him. The penalty of 
God's law, he says, is death, — extinction of be- 
ing. But this is a penalty which admits of no 
degrees. Annihilation is and must be always 
the same thing. The least sin incurs it ; the 
greatest can incur nothing more. The child's 
first moral act of wrong receives the same as 
the deepest-dyed crime of a Nero or a Judas. 
So, too, a single sin is punished precisely the 
same as a lifetime of iniquity. The full pen- 
alty is visited upon the first sin, and no subse- 
quent sins can be punished at all, because the 
sinner no longer exists to receive it. Can a, 
government of which the fundamental princi- 
ple is thus subversive of all discriminative 



MORAL ESTIMATE OF THIS DOCTRIXE. 73 

equity be predicated of the all-wise and just 
God? 

2. It equally dishonors, nay, subrerts the 
gospel of Christ. It utterly excludes the idea 
of grace to the guilty. All men, the righteous 
and the wicked, alike suffer the full penalty of 
the law : they cease to exist. There is no re- 
mission of the penalty, no forgiveness, no sal- 
vation. Adam is now suffering that penalty, 
Xoah, Abraham, Moses, David, Paul. Nor is 
it the blood of Christ by which men are saved. 
It is the resurrection alone. There is no spir- 
itual regeneration by the Holy Ghost, which 
makjes one a child of God; that change is 
wrought only when the dead are raised from 
then graves. Regenerate and unregenerate, 
the prayerful and the prayerless, alike suffer 
the penalty of the inexorable law, and pass 
into non-existence. There are no "spirits of 
just men made perfect" in heaven, for nobody 
has got there yet. No songs of praise are sung 
there " to the Lamb that was slain, and has re- 
deemed us unto God by his blood." Heaven 



74 



THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 



is empty ; the earth resting under the original 
curse ; all its uncounted millions of inhabitants 
have sunk and are sinking into the hell of an- 
nihilation, and till the distant morn of the res- 
urrection God's moral universe is a blank. 
And this is the gospel of Jesus Christ ! This 
that wondrous plan which is to vindicate God's 
character in creating man, and at the annun- 
ciation of which the plains of Bethlehem were 
made vocal with angels' songs of praise ! 

3. Such a doctrine, it is manifest, destroys 
all the moral sanctions of truth. Why should 
men fear to sin, if the worst that is to befall 
them is simply to cease all consciousness of 
suffering ? Nay, this, however great an evil it 
be, is already incurred. Let them sin however 
much, they can incur nothing more. The 
worst that can happen will happen, at all 
events. Why not say, as the Epicurean fa- 
thers of this doctrine did, " Let us eat and drink, 
for to-morrow we die " ? 

We are told, indeed, that man instinctively 
shrinks from annihilation, and that the dread 



MORAL ESTIMATE OF THIS DOCTRINE. 75 

of this must be sufficient to restrain from sin. 
Doubtless there is such an instinct in all living 
beings ; vet how many are there, even in this 
life, who, if annihilation were offered them, 
would gladly leap into it to escape their pres- 
ent miseries ! It is not this they fear, but — 

" The dread of something after death — 
The undiscovered country from whose bourne 
No traveler returns — puzzles the will, 
And makes us rather bear those ills we have 
Than fly to others that we know not of." 

Destroy this fear which " makes cowards of 
us all," and suicide would be as common as the 
sorrows which tempt to it. Besides, of what 
avail to shrink from non-existence? The pen- 
alty is already incubred. Sin as much as 
you please, eat, drink, riot in every excess, 
revel in outrage and crime, and then your 

"quietus make # 
With a bare bodkin," 

if this doctrine be true, and you will suffer just 
the same doom that you inevitably must suffer 
now, — annihilation. Is this a doctrine to be 



76 THE WICKED NOT ANNIHILATED. 

proclaimed with safety in such a world as this, 
where, despite all the sanctions of God's law, 
and of conscience, its vicegerent in the soul, 
sin is restrained with so much difficulty ? 

Dear reader, can you choose such a version 
of the gospel as the one we have now exhib- 
ited, as the foundation of your hopes ? Beware 
of its shallow sophistries, its gross assumptions, 
its utter perversions of the word of God. You 
have in the narrative of the rich man an in- 
spired delineation of what it could do for him. 
Will you, too, build upon it for eternity, or will 
you rather declare with Paul on this point of 
fundamental truth, " I am a Pharisee," — a be- 
liever in man's immortality, — a believer in 
Christ, and in that assurance which he has 
given for our comfort and hope, "Verily I say 
unto you, he that heareth my word, and be- 
lieveth onjhini that sent me, hath everlasting 
life, and he that liveth and believeth on me 

SHALL NEVER DIE " ? 



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