The Immortality of the Soul—History of the Doctrine

WE come now to the time of Polybius, who was born B. C. 203. "There is a remarkable passage by Polybius," says Leland, "which shows that the disbelief of a future state had in his time become very common and fashionable, both among persons of superior rank and among the lower kind of people." (Ibid, p. 385.) The doctrine of the immortality of the soul was, then, far from being universally believed as yet.

We next come to the time of Cicero, who was born B. C. 107. Perhaps this doctrine had gained greater credence by that time. Hear our learned author again: "What that great man Cicero says of the philosophers in his time is remarkable. In that celebrated treatise where he sets himself to prove the immortality of the soul, he represents the contrary, as there were crowds of opponents; not the Epicureans only, but, which he could not well account for, those that were esteemed the most learned persons had that doctrine in contempt." (Ibid, p. 285.)

Mr. Watson, speaking of the same time, says: "Both philosophers and poets regarded them as vulgar fables. . . . Nor was the skepticism and unbelief of the wise and great long kept from the vulgar, among whom they wished to maintain the old superstitions as instruments by which they might be controlled. Cicero complains that the common people in his day mostly followed the doctrine of Epicurus." (Theological Institutes, vol. i. chap. vi. p. 54.) Epicurus denied the immortality of the soul. This testimony is worthy of consideration. The mass of the common people followed Epicurus, that is, they totally denied the doctrine that the soul is immortal. And the poets and philosophers taught them this! Then who believed the doctrine at that time? It was universally disbelieved.

Caesar represents the same thing as being true in his day. (Leland's Rev., vol. ii. p. 3, chap. viii. p. 387.) So it was in the time of Plutarch, who was born about the middle of the first century. "He intimates that these things were not commonly believed." Not only the philosophers, but the mass of the Roman people had no faith in the doctrine of future rewards and punishments.

Of the popular religion Mr. Jones says: "The Romans in general knew the whole to be an imposition, and many of them ridiculed the pretense that the institution was divine." (Church History, p. 21.) Again he says: "The doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and of a future state of rewards and punishments, was but little understood, and, of course, only very partially acknowledged. Hence, at the period when Christ appeared, any notions of this kind found little or no acceptance among the Greeks and Romans, but were regarded in the light of old wives fables, fit only for the amusement of women and children." (Ibid, 21. See also Mosheim's Commentaries, vol. i. pp. 24, 25.)

The learned Mr. Milman bears this decided testimony: "One class of fables seems to have been universally exploded even in the earliest youth,—those which related to another life. The picture of the unrivaled Satirist may be overcharged, but it corresponds strictly with the public language of the orator and the private sentence of the philosopher:—

"'The silent realm of disembodied ghosts,

The frogs that croak along the stygian coasts,

The thousand souls in one crazed vessel steer'd,

Not boys believe, save boys without a beard.'

"Even the religious Pausanius speaks of the immortality of the soul as a foreign doctrine, introduced by the Chaldeans and the Magi, and embraced by some of the Greeks, particularly by Plato. Pliny, whose Natural History opens with a declaration that the universe is the sole Deity, devotes a separate chapter to a contemptuous exposure of the idle notion of the immortality of the soul, as a vision of human pride, and equally absurd, whether under the form of existence in another sphere or under that of transmigration." (History of Christianity, chap. i. p. 34.)

Gibbon, the celebrated historian, thus confirms this statement of the case: "We are sufficiently acquainted with the eminent persons who flourished in the age of Cicero and of the first Caesars, with their actions, their characters, and their motives, to be assured that their conduct in this life was never regulated by any serious conviction of the rewards or punishments of a future state. At the bar and in the senate of Rome the ablest orators were not apprehensive of giving offense to their hearers by exposing that doctrine as an idle and extravagant opinion, which was rejected with contempt by every man of a liberal education and understanding." (Milman's Gibbon's Rome, chap. xv. pg. 528.)

CHRISTIANS.

From the days of the apostles to the present time, there have been more or less Christians who have rejected the dogma of the natural immortality of man. Of late their numbers are rapidly increasing. They are found in large numbers both in Europe and America. With a very few exceptions, the whole body of Adventists are of this faith; so also are thousands in other churches. They believe the Bible implicitly, and believe in future rewards and punishments, and eternal life for the saints; but they do not believe in the immortality of the soul, nor in the conscious state of the dead. They hope for a future life through the resurrection.

Another class must be counted out, as nonbelievers in man's immortality. We have traveled from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from Minnesota to Alabama, and preached the doctrine of the mortality of man. Wherever we go, we find a large class of persons who say that they were never satisfied about the immortality of the soul, and never could really believe it. We find these persons both in the churches and out of them; yet they are commonly counted as believers in that dogma. Again, there are many thousands of intelligent skeptics who do not believe the soul immortal.

SUMMARY.

We confidently believe that the facts we have presented fully explode the oft-repeated argument that the immortality of the soul has been universally believed. Facts are against it. But if it had been generally believed, so have other monstrous errors. The oldest idea of a future life was, that it is obtained through a resurrection. This view was held by the Egyptians, Persians, Arabians, Mohammedans, Jews, Christians, Peruvians, and even some barbarous tribes of all countries.

We have shown that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul was first taught by the Egyptians, that there is no trace of it in the early history of ancient nations; that it was denied by most men in the time of Socrates; that the masses did not believe it in the time of Polybius; that the contrary of the soul's immortality was the prevailing opinion in the time of Cicero; that this disbelief was full as extensive in the first century; that nearly all the great schools of philosophy openly denied it; that even those who professed to believe it held it only on the principle of emanation and re-absorption, which virtually annihilates all individuality; that none of the ancients could possibly believe it, as they all held to a great periodical destruction of all things; that the Arabs were ignorant of the doctrine; that the Jews did not believe it; that the Hindoos and Buddhists, comprising fully one-third of the human race, implicitly hold to the annihilation of all men; that the Chinese do not believe it; that many of the Mohammedans believe in the sleep of the dead; that many of the natives of Asia, of Polynesia, of Africa, and of the Western Continent have no such doctrine among them; that it is not proved that the native Indians believe it; that there are many Christians who deny it; and that, finally, there are thousands of others who have no faith in this doctrine. These facts show that but a small portion of the race have ever believed in the immortality of the soul.