The Immortality of the Soul—History of the Doctrine

THAT the popular descriptions of hell were mere fables of poets, designed to scare the common people into obedience, was freely confessed by all writers. That great historian and geographer, Strabo, thus gives the reason why the torments of hell were invented by the lawgivers. He also shows the influence poets have had in the matter. He writes thus:—

"So numbers of our citizens are incited to deeds of virtue by the beauties of fable, when they hear the poets in a strain of enthusiasm recording noble actions, such as the labor of Hercules or Theseus, and the honor bestowed on them by the gods, or even when they see painting, sculptures, or figures bearing their romantic evidence to such events. In the same way they are restrained from vicious courses when they think they have received from the gods, by oracles or some other invisible intimations, threats, menaces, or chastisements, or even if they only believe they have befallen others. The great mass of women and common people cannot be induced, by mere force of reason, to devote themselves to piety, virtue, and honesty. Superstition must therefore be employed, and even this is insufficient without the aid of the marvelous and the terrible. For what are the thunderbolts, the aegis, the trident, the torches, the dragons, the barbed thyrses, the arms of the gods, and all the paraphernalia of antique theogony but fables employed by the founders of States as bug-bears to frighten timorous minds? Such was mythology." (Strabo, book i, chap. ii, sec. 8, p. 30.)

Yes, indeed, such it was, a mass of frightful fables and bug-bears to scare the people into submission.

Of the ancient Brahmins, this writer says, "They invent fables also after the manner of Plato, on the immortality of the soul, and on the punishment in hades, and other things of this kind." (Ibid., vol. iii, book xv, chap. sec. 59.)

What Plato and others said about the immortality of the soul, punishments in hades, etc., was understood to be only fables.

Another eminent Greek historian, Polybius, B. C. 203, bears a similar testimony, thus: "Since the multitude is ever fickle, full of lawless desires, irrational passion, and violence, there is no way to keep them in order but by fear, and terror of the invisible world, on which account our ancestors seem to me to have acted judiciously, when they contrived to bring into the popular belief these notions of the gods, and of the infernal regions." (Book vi, p. 56.)

Dr. Horne bears this testimony: "For though the poets have prettily fancied, and have portrayed in beautiful and glowing averse, the joys of elysium, or a place and state of bliss, and the miseries of tartarus, or hell; and though the ancient philosophers and legislators were sensible of the importance to society, and also of the necessity of the doctrine of future punishments, yet they generally discard them as vain and superstitious terrors." (Intro., vol. i, p. 19.)

Watson says the same. Says Warburton, "They enforced the belief of a future state of rewards and punishments, by every sort of contrivance." Referring to the punishment of the wicked hades, or hell, Cicero says, "If these things are false, as all men understand them to be, what has death taken from him but a sense of pain?" (Leland's Rev., vol. ii, p. 371.)

Gibbon, the historian, says: "The description of the infernal regions had been abandoned to the fancy of painters and poets, who peopled them with so many phantoms and monsters, who dispensed their rewards and punishments with so little equity, that a solemn truth, the most congenial to the human heart, was oppressed and disgraced by the absurd mixture of the wildest fictions. The doctrine of a future state was scarcely considered among the devout polytheists of Greece and Rome as a fundamental article of faith." (Decline and Fall, vol. i, p. 529.)

PRIESTS AND LAWGIVERS.

Another cause, and perhaps the chief one which aided in developing and supporting a belief in this doctrine, was the interest and authority of priests and lawgivers. Commonly these two offices were united in one person. Of course the more importance the priest could attach to the soul, and to rewards and punishments after death, the greater influence he would have with the people, and the more readily would they support him. Hence it was for the interest of the priests to build up this doctrine at every opportunity, and history shows that from the Egyptians to the Roman Catholic priests they have not been slack in doing this. So also the magistrate found that to threaten the people with the wrath of the gods and future torments for disobedience to his laws, greatly aided him in controlling them, and in keeping them under. "Hence also," says Dr. Horne, "the most celebrated legislators of antiquity, Zoroaster, Minos, Pythagoras, Solon, Lycurgus, Numa, etc., etc., all thought it necessary to profess some intercourse with Heaven in order to give the greater sanction to their laws and institutions, notwithstanding many of them were armed with secular power. Hence he also united his interest with the priests in helping forward this doctrine." Volumes might be and have been written showing that this was the case.

The very learned Bishop Warburton, in his "Divine Legation of Moses Demonstrated," has abundantly proved by copious quotations from ancient writers that what was said about the infernal regions, elysium, etc., was all invented by the priests and lawgivers to frighten the people, and keep them in subjection.

Alger truthfully observes: "The doctrine of the soul's survival and transferrence to another world, where its experience depends on conditions observed or violated here—conditions somewhat within the control of a select class of men here—such a doctrine is the very hiding place of the power of priestcraft a vast engine of interest and sway, which the shrewd insight of priesthoods has often devised, and the cunning policy of States subsidized."

The above author thus sums up the causes which operated to establish the heathen nations in these doctrines: "Finally," says he, "by the combined power, first of natural conscience affirming a future distinction between the good and the bad; secondly, of imperfect conceptions of God, as a passionate avenger; thirdly, of the licentious fancies of poets drawing awful imaginative pictures of future woe; fourthly, of the cruel spirit, and ambitious plans of selfish priesthoods; and fifthly, of the harsh and relentless theories of conforming metaphysicians—the doctrine of hell, as a located place of manifold terrific physical tortures, drawing in vast majorities of the human race, became established in the ruling creeds, and enthroned as an orthodox dogma." (Doctrine of a Future Life, pp. 39, 512.)

EGYPT THE MOTHER OF THE DOCTRINE.

That such a doctrine is now largely believed is well known. That it is not taught in the Bible has been fully shown many times; hence it did not originate there. Then where did it originate? All evidence, both ancient and modern, points to Egypt as the mother of this doctrine. Here are a few testimonies. The first is from the historian Herodotus, than whom there could be no higher authority on this question. He was a Greek, born B. C. 484, and is regarded as the father of profane history. (Author's Class. Dict., art. Herodotus.) He traveled in Egypt and many other countries, and carefully studied the customs and doctrines of those ancient nations; hence he was well qualified to speak the truth on these points. He says, "The Egyptians were also the first who asserted the doctrine that the soul of man is immortal." (Herod. Euterpe, ii, sec. 123.)

Bunsen, in his learned and elaborate work on Egypt, says, "The Egyptians were the first who taught the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, a fact mentioned by all Greek writers from Herodotus to Aristotle, and one brilliantly confirmed by the monuments." (Egypt's Place in Universal Hist., vol. iv, p. 639.)

This declaration from such high authority should be well considered by all lovers of truth. Bishop Warburton confirms these testimonies, thus: "The Egyptians, as we are assured by the concurrent testimony of antiquity, were among the first who taught that the soul survived the body, and was immortal." (Divine Legation of Moses Dem., vol. ii, p. 239.)

Egypt, then, and not the Bible, is the mother of this doctrine. So says the voice of all antiquity. Balfour bears this testimony: "Mr. Stanley says the Egyptians were the first who asserted that the soul of man is immortal, and cites in proof Eusebius, Diodorus Siculus, and Halicarnassus." (Essays on the Intermediate State, p. 73.)

Ralph Cudworth, D. D., is probably the highest authority we could quote upon this subject. Mosheim says of him that he had all the ancient authors by heart. In his immortal work, "The True Intellectual System of the Universe," he says of the Egyptians, "They were the first assertors of the immortality of souls, their pre-existence, and transmigration." (Vol. i, p. 527.) Again: "The immortality, pre-existence, and transmigration of, souls, which doctrine was unquestionably derived from the Egyptians." (Vol. i, p. 553.)

Here, then, is the fountain-head from whence the doctrine of the immortality of the soul first flowed. Its origin is heathen, not divine; Egyptian, not Biblical. He that denies this assertion must do it with all the evidence of history against him.