The Immortality of the Soul—History of the Doctrine

THE Egyptians were among the most ancient of nations. It is a well-known fact that they were celebrated for embalming the dead. This they did at great expense, and so effectually that many bodies, called mummies; are preserved in quite a perfect condition to the present day.

Their object in thus embalming their dead was to preserve the body for the resurrection. This is admitted by the ablest scholars, as will be seen by the hollowing testimonies which are from the very best authorities. The first is from Calmet's Dictionary of the Bible: "The ancient Egyptians, and the Hebrews in imitation of them, embalmed the bodies of the dead. . . . The art of physic was by the Egyptians ascribed to Isis, and in particular the remedy which procured immortality, which, in my opinion, was no other than that of embalming bodies, and rendering them incorruptible." (Art. to Embalm.) This language is remarkable. Their first idea of immortality was to preserve the body from decay till it should live again, and thus become immortal. "That the custom of embalming was very ancient in Egypt, is shown from the practice of cutting the bodies with an Ethiopian stone. Some mummies also bear the date of the oldest kings." (Egypt and the Books of Moses, p. 71.)

Our next testimony on this point is from that celebrated work, "Kitto's Biblical Cyclopedia." Kitto says: "The feeling which led the Egyptians to embalm the dead, probably sprung from their belief in the future reunion of the soul with the body. Such a reunion is distinctly spoken of in the Book of the Dead; and obscure as is the subject, probably on account of the obscurity of the details of the Egyptian belief, the statements are sufficiently positive to make this general conclusion certain." (Art. Embalming.) Thus we see that this critical author considers it certain that embalming was practiced to preserve the body from decay till its reunion with the soul, or till it should live again. What is more natural than this conclusion? and if this were not their object in embalming their dead, what could it have been? Mr. Chambers says: "This art [that of embalming] seems to have derived its origin from the idea that the preservation of the body was necessary for the return of the soul to the human form, after it had completed its cycle of the existence of three or ten thousand years." (Chambers' Cyclopedia, Art. Embalming.)

We will now introduce another witness, Mr. Bunsen, whose testimony on this subject should be decisive. No author could be better prepared to judge than he is. "The real meaning," he says, "of the celebrated passage in Herodotus (ii, 135) about the reason why the Egyptians bestowed so much care on the preservation of the body, and, as it were, on preventing it from passing away, must have been this: The belief in a resurrection of the body. . . . Man justified is one with God, the eternal Creator, self-created. His bodily organ, therefore, is holy. This doctrine we may now read in every page of the sacred books. Hence, the popular notion in Egypt, that, unless its old human envelop were preserved, the soul would be subject to disturbances and hindrances in performing its destined course. . . . The Greeks and Romans had an equal faith in burial as necessary to insure the entry of the soul into the invisible world of spirits."

Another able author says: "The practice of embalming was not peculiar to Egypt. It was practiced among many nations of the Old World, and is in use among some people even at the present day." (Egyptian Antiquities, vol. 2, p. 121.)

Thus the earliest doctrine of a future life was that it must be obtained through the resurrection of the body.

THE ANCIENT PERSIANS.

The ancient Persians were among the oldest nations of antiquity, the immediate descendents of Noah. It is well known that they too hoped for a future immortality through the resurrection of the body. Says Alger, stating their doctrine: "But at last Ormuzd will rise in his might, and put an end to these awful scenes. He will send on earth a saviour, Sosiosch, to deliver mankind, to wind up the final period of time, and to bring the arch-enemy to judgment. At the sound of the voice of Sosiosch the dead will come forth. Good, bad, indifferent—all alike will rise, each in his order. Kaiomorts, the original single ancestor of men, will be the firstling. Next Meschia and Mescbiane, the primal parent pair, will appear. And then the whole multitudinous family of mankind will throng up. The genii of the elements will render up the sacred materials intrusted to them, and rebuild the decomposed bodies. . . . . At the appointed epoch, Ahriman shall be subdued, and men shall live again, and shall be immortal.'" (The Doctrine of a Future Life, Alger, part I, chap. i, pp. 138, 139.)

Here, again, the same primitive faith in a future immortality through the resurrection is expressed.

THE ANCIENT ARABS.

Between Egypt and Persia lived the Arabians, one of the most ancient of the nations. They believed in a future life, but not in the immortality of the soul. So says the very learned Dr. Good, who was himself a believer in the doctrine that the soul is immortal. He writes thus: "If we turn from Persia, Egypt, and Hindoostan, to Arabia, . . .we shall find the entire subject left in as blank and barren a silence as the deserts by which they are surrounded; or, if touched upon, only touched upon to betray doubt, and sometimes disbelief. The tradition, indeed, of a future state of retributive justice seems to have reached the schools of this part of the world, and to have been generally, though perhaps not universally, accredited; but the future existence it alludes to is that of a resurrection of the body, and not of a survival of the soul after the body's dissolution." "And the same general idea has, for the most part, descended in the same country to the present day." (Book of Nature, Series 3, § 2, p. 372.)

This is another good proof as to what was the ancient faith of men.

THE MOHAMMEDANS.

The Mohammedans arose in Arabia in the seventh century, and now number over 160,000,000, more than one-tenth of the entire population of the world. Says Alger: "A very prominent doctrine in the Moslem creed is that of the resurrection of the body. This is a central feature in the orthodox faith." (Doctrine of a Future Life, p. 201.)

"They are not agreed on the subject of the condition of the soul between death and the resurrection. On this they have argued and speculated much, but they are still divided. The souls of the prophets, it is thought, are admitted directly to Heaven. The souls of martyrs, according to a tradition received from Mohammed, rest in Heaven, in the crops of green birds that eat of the fruits and drink of the rivers there. As to the location of the souls of the great mass of the faithful, the conclusions are various. Some maintain that their souls and those of the impious will alike sleep in the dust until the end, when Isratil's blast shall stir them into life to be judged." (Ibid.)

The learned Dr. Good confirms this testimony thus: "Yet in this sublime and magnificent poem, replete with all the learning and wisdom of the age, the doctrine upon the subject before us is merely, as I have just stated it, a patriarchal or traditional belief of a future state of retributive justice, not by the natural immortality of the soul, but by a resurrection of the body. And the same general idea has, for the most part, descended in the same country to the present day; for the Alcoran [the sacred book of the Mohammedans] which is perpetually appealing to the latter fact, leaves the former almost untouched and altogether in a state of indecision; whence the expounders of the Eslam scriptures, both Sonnites and Motazzalites, or orthodox and heterodox, are divided upon the subject, some embracing and others rejecting." (Book of Nature, pp. 372-3.)

From modern nations they have to some extent imbibed the notion that the soul lives without the body, though this view is not held by all. The primitive doctrine of the resurrection is still firmly held.

THE JEWS.

The Jews were the near neighbors and cotemporaries of the Arabians. We have the history of their ancestors from Adam. God directly and frequently instructed them concerning a future life. That, as a nation, they were firm believers in the resurrection of the dead, is well known to all readers of the Bible. We need not argue that point here. But many learned men who believe in the immortality of the soul have frankly confessed that nothing is said upon this subject in the Bible.

Olshausen, in his comments on 1 Cor. 15:13, says, "The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and the name, are alike unknown to the entire Bible." This is a good confession, and here is another of the same kind. Bishop Tillotson, in his sermons of 1774, vol. ii, says, "The immortality of the soul is rather supposed, or taken for granted, than expressly revealed in the Bible." This is virtually admitting the whole question.

Dr. Bagnall, in the Methodist Quarterly Review for April, 1852, while advocating the natural immortality of man, makes this confession: "In the Bible, we think, there is no passage which can be strictly said to declare that all human souls are immortal. The celebrated Richard Watson corroborates this statement thus: 'That the soul is naturally immortal . . . is contradicted by the Scripture, which makes our immortality a gift dependent on the will of the giver.'" (Theol. Inst., vol. ii, part 2, chap. xviii, p. 83.)

Mr. Alger, in his late popular book, says: "The whole tenor and drift of the representations in the Old Testament show that the state of disembodied souls is deep quietude. Freed from bondage, pain, toil, and care, they repose in silence." (Doctrine of a Future Life, chap. vii, p. 153.)

Archbishop Whately, in his "Revelations of a Future State," says: "To the Christian, indeed, all this doubt would be instantly removed, if he found that the immortality of the soul, as a disembodied spirit, were revealed in the word of God. . . . In fact, however, no such doctrine is revealed to us; the Christian's hope, as founded on the promises contained in the gospel, is the resurrection of the body." (Quoted by Horne in the Watch Tower, p. 8.)

Bishop Lowth, in his "Lectures on Hebrew Poetry," p. 78, says, "We there find no exact account, no explicit mention, of immortal spirits." (Ibid. p. 12.) This is a significant confession, since the bishop was a firm believer in the soul's immortality.

Dr. Neander says, "It was an old Jewish notion that immortality was not founded upon the nature of the soul, but was a peculiar gift of divine grace." (Church History, p. 444.)

Here is another good admission from an orthodox writer: "We would express our conviction that the idea of the immortality of the soul has no source in the gospel, that it comes, on the contrary, from the Platonists." (Darby's Hopes of the Church.)

Says Gibbon: "We discover that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is omitted in the law of Moses." (Decline and Fall, vol. i, chap. 15, p. 530.) Mihman thus admits the same: "Modern writers have accounted in various ways for the silence of the Hebrew legislator on the immortality of the soul." (Ibid. note.)

Nemesius, bishop of Emesa, in the fifth century, thus states the doctrine of the Jews: "The Hebrews say that originally man was made evidently neither mortal nor immortal, but on the confines of tither nature; so that if he should yield to the bodily affections, he should share also the changes of the body; but if he should prefer the nobler affections of the soul, he should be deemed worthy of immortality." (De Natura Hominis, chap. i. Quoted by Hudson, Debt and Grace, p. 310.) This plainly shows the faith of the ancient Hebrews, as well as the doctrine of the Bible upon this point.

CHRISTIANS.

It is well known that, with isolated exceptions, simply here and there one, the great body of the Christian nations have from first to last firmly held to the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. This is true of the Greek church, numbering about 70,000,000; the Catholic church, about 170,000,000; and the Protestant churches, about 90,000,000, about one-quarter of the race. We mention this to show how large a place the doctrine of the resurrection has always had in the faith of men; and it is because this is what God taught men from the very beginning of the world. Since that time, they have corrupted this simple doctrine by a thousand speculations of their own.