Immortality A Conditional Gift To Be Bestowed At The Resurrection

IF NATURE be essentially mortal, and if death in relation to it be the destruction of all its manifested powers, what is the true relation of a future life to our perishing race? Many jump to the conclusion that the position taken in the two previous lectures involves a denial of future retribution, and even the rejection of the existence of God. That this is a great mistake will presently be made apparent. The view of man's mortality certainly leads to a modification of popular views, but not with the effect stated. And the modification it leads to is borne out by the testimony of the Bible with an explicitness that removes all difficulty from the path of a devout mind.

There is a natural aspiration for immortality in the human breast. The lowest forms of human nature, such as idiots, and barbarous races, may be destitute of it, but where human nature has developed to anything like its natural standard, there is a craving after the perfect and unending. We seem mentally constituted for them. Death comes as an unnatural event in our experience. We dislike it; we dread it; we long for immortality we aspire to live for ever.

It is customary to argue from our desire for immortality that we are actually immortal. This is the principal argument used by Plato, who may be said to be the father of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul. The argument is universally employed by believers in the immortality of the soul to the present day. It is astonishing that its logic should pass unquestioned. It would readily appear absurd in the case of any other instinct or desire. A hungry man, for example, desires food; is this a proof he has had his dinner? The argument turns the other way. If we desire a thing, our desire is evidence that we are yet without the object of desire; for, as Paul says, "What a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for?" If we experience a longing for immortality, it is a proof we are destitute of it.

The existence of such a desire, however, proves a great deal in its place. It proves immortality as a possibility in the economy of the universe. No instinct or desire exists in nature without a corresponding object on which it acts. Are we hungry? There is food to be eaten. Are we curious? There are things to be seen and known. Have we benevolence? There is benefit to be conferred, need to be supplied, and suffering to be alleviated. Have we conscience? There is right and wrong. Have we marvellousness? There is incomprehensibility in heaven above and earth beneath. Have we veneration? There is God to adore. And so on, with every feeling throughout sentient nature. On this principle, the spontaneous craving for immortality and perfection proves the existence of the conditions desired, and the possibility of their attainment; and though we may be ignorant as Hottentots of the "where," "when," "how," etc., relating to them, there remains the strong natural presumption that the condition thus desired cannot be altogether a dream, though at present beyond our reach.

Still, we must use proper discrimination in the application of the argument. It does not prove the necessary attainment of immortality by any. The existence of a desire is no guarantee of its gratification. A man of great alimentive capacity may be in circumstance where food cannot be obtained. He may be shut up in a Hartley colliery, with death as the consequence. His alimentiveness points to food as its proper object, but does not insure possession of it; that is a question of proper circumstance. The logical deduction from this longing for immortality is, that as it is inconceivable that an instinct could exist which it was impossible to gratify, immortality and perfection must be attainable conditions, but that the gratification of a desire being dependent upon proper relative circumstances, it all depends upon the nature of the circumstances governing the possession of immortality as to whether immortality will be attained or not. This cuts between the orthodox believer and the infidel, refuting the immortal soulism of the one, and demolishing the irrational belief of the other.

What is immortality? We can best comprehend a thing by contrast. We know something of mortality, from which the idea of im (not) mortality comes. The word "mortality" comes from the Latin root "mors," death, and signifies deathfulness. To say of anything that it is mortal, is to affirm that it is limited in its power to continue in life, owing to inherent tendency to dissolution. We say of man that he is mortal, and he is so. We behold him daily perishing. He comes into existence as an organized being, inheriting and exhibiting all the qualities of the stock from which he is derived. We see him go out of existence as regularly as we see him come into it. The death list is the universal corollary of the birth list. No man of woman born is exempt from the law of death; however superior to his fellows he may be, however lofty the genius, however farseeing the intellect, however genial the friendship, however lovely the general character, the hand of death stays not; the end must come; the law of sin and death working in his members takes his life at last, and he sinks to the oblivion from which he emerged. This is the mortality of actual experience, whatever theory people may entertain on the subject.