Chapter XII. Immortality And The Resurrection.
§ 1. Orthodox Doctrine.
The Orthodox doctrine of the future life is thus stated in the Assembly's Catechism, chapter 32:—
“I. The bodies of men, after death, return to dust, and see corruption; but their souls (which neither die nor sleep) having an immortal subsistence, immediately return to God who gave them. The souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into the highest heavens, where they behold the face of God, in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies. And the souls of the wicked are cast into hell, where they remain in torments and utter darkness, reserved to the judgment of the great day. Besides these two places for souls separated from their bodies, the Scripture acknowledged none.
“II. At the last day, such as are found alive shall not die, but be changed; and all the dead shall be raised up with the selfsame bodies, and none other, although with different qualities, which shall be united again with their souls forever.
“III. The bodies of the unjust shall, by the power of Christ, be raised to dishonor; the bodies of the just by his Spirit unto honor, and be made conformable to his own glorious body.”
The views here given may be considered, on the whole, the Orthodox notions on this subject, although Orthodoxy is by no means rigorous on these points. Considerable diversity of opinion is here allowed. The nature of the life [pg 286] between death and the resurrection, and the nature of the resurrection body, are differently apprehended, without any discredit to the Orthodoxy of the belief. But, on the whole, we may say that the Orthodox views on these topics include the following heads:—
1. Man consists of soul and body.
2. The soul of man is naturally immortal.
3. The only satisfactory proof of this immortality is the resurrection of Christ.
4. Christ's resurrection consisted in his return to earth in the same body as that with which he died, though glorified.
5. Our resurrection will consist in our taking again the same bodies which we have now, glorified if we are Christians, but degraded if we are not.
On the other hand, those views which incline towards rationalism and spiritualism agree in part with these statements, and in part differ; thus:—
1. They usually agree with Orthodoxy in believing man to consist of soul and body.
2. They also agree in believing the soul of man naturally immortal.
3. They differ from Orthodoxy in thinking the proof of immortality to be found in human consciousness, not at all in the resurrection of Jesus.
We will therefore examine these two points of immortality and the resurrection, to see what the true doctrine of Scripture is concerning them.
§ 2. The Doctrine of Immortality as taught by Reason, the Instinctive Consciousness, and Scripture.
The first class of proofs usually adduced for immortality are the rational proofs, which are such as these:—
The Metaphysical Proof.—This is based on the distinction of soul and body. The existence of the soul is proved exactly as we prove the existence of the body. If [pg 287] we can prove the one, we can equally prove the other. If any one asks, How do we know there is such a thing as body? we reply that we know it by the senses; we can touch, taste, smell, and see it. But to this the answer is, that the senses only give us sensations, and that these sensations are in the mind, not out of it. We have a sensation of resistance, of color, of perfume, and the like; but how do we know that there is anything outside of the mind corresponding to them? The answer to this is, that by a necessary law of the reason, when we have a sensation, we infer some external substance from which it proceeds. We look at a book, for example. We have a sensation of shape and color; we infer something outside of our mind from which it proceeds. In other words, we perceive qualities and infer substance. This inference is a spontaneous and inevitable act of the mind. Now, we are conscious of another group of feelings which are not sensations, which do not come from without, but from within. These are mental and moral. But they, too, are qualities; and, as in the other case, perceiving qualities, we infer a substance in which they inhere. This latter substance we name soul, and we know it exactly as we know body. It is known by us as a simple substance, having personal unity. The personality, the “I,” is a fundamental idea. Now, as soon as we perceive the existence of soul, it becomes evident that soul cannot die. It may be annihilated, but it cannot die. For what is death when applied to the body? Dissolution or separation of the parts, but not destruction of the simple elements. Death is decomposition of these elements, and their resolution into new combinations. Now, the soul, being known by us as a simple substance, is incapable of dissolution.
This is the metaphysical proof of immortality. Then comes the teleologic proof, or that from final causes. Man's end is not reached in this life. We see everything in this world made for an end. The body is made for an end, and [pg 288] attains it, and then decays and is dissolved. The soul, with all its great powers, goes on and on, but the body dies before the soul is ever perfected. Every human life is like an unfinished tale in a magazine, with “to be continued” written at its close, to show that it is not yet ended.
And besides these proofs of immortality, there is the theological proof, founded on the attributes of God; and the moral proof, based on the conflict between conscience and self-love; and the analogical proof, based on the law of progress in nature; and the cosmic proof, founded on the relation of the soul to the universe; and the historic proof, resting on the universal belief in immortality; and lastly, the psychologic proof, or the instinct of life in man, which carries with it its own evidence of continuity.
But after all these proofs have been considered, the final result is probability. Only the last gives more, and this acts not as an argument, but as conviction. And the strength of this conviction depends on the strength in any individual of this instinct. Some have more of the instinct of life, others less.29 Those who have much are easily convinced by these various arguments. But those who have less, feel as Cicero did after reading the Phædo of Plato.30
This instinct of life appears not only to be different from the fear of death, but its exact opposite. When we have most of the one, we have the least of the other. Any great [pg 289] excitement lifts us temporarily above the fear of death by giving us more life. So a man will plunge into the sea, and risk his own life to save that of another. So whole armies go to die cheerfully in the great rage of battle. But this instinct receives a permanent strength by all that elevates the soul. All greatness of aim, all devotion to duty, all generous love, take away the fear of death by adding to the quantum of life in the soul.31
If it be asked what the Scriptures teach concerning immortality, it must be admitted that they have not much to say. They speak of life and of eternal life; but this, as we shall discover, is quite another thing from continued existence. It refers to the quality and quantity of being, and not merely to its duration.
§ 3. The Three Principal Views of Death—the Pagan, Jewish, and Christian.
There are three principal views of death—the Pagan view, the Jewish view, and the Christian view.
Paganism, in all its various forms, is chiefly distinguished by its transferring to the other life the tastes, feelings, habits of this life. The other world is this one, shaded off and toned down. It is gray in its hue, wanting the color of this world; and is really inferior to it, and only its pale reflection. To the gods of Olympus the doings of men are matters of chief interest. Tartarus and the Elysian Fields are occupied [pg 290] by lymphatic ghosts, misty spectres, unsubstantial and unoccupied. When a living man enters, like Ulysses, Æneas, or Dante, they throng around him, delighted to have something in which they can take a real interest. “Better be a plough-boy on earth than a king among the ghosts.” This expresses the Pagan idea of the other world. This world is more real than the other, to the Pagan.
Judaism, in its view of hereafter, is much more positive. It began with no idea of a hereafter. Nothing is taught concerning a future life by Moses, and little is to be found concerning it even in the prophets. The explanation is simple. Men hard at work in the present do not think much of the future; and the work of the Jews was to be servants of Jehovah and doers of his law here. However, all men must think a little of the region beyond death. When the Jews thought of it, they projected their law upon its blank spaces. It was a place where Jehovah would vindicate his law—where the just should be happy, the unjust miserable. The perplexity which tormented Job, David, and Elijah—namely, that bad men should succeed in this world and good men fail—was to find its solution there. Judgment was the Jewish idea of hereafter—a judgment to come. “I have a hope toward God, as they themselves also allow,” said Paul, speaking of the Pharisees, “that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, of the just, and also of the unjust.”
The Christian view of death is, that it is abolished—it has ceased to be anything. The New Testament distinctly says, “who has abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light.”32 Death, to a Christian, is but a point on the line of advancing being; a door through which we pass; [pg 291] a momentary sleep between two days. In the same sense the Saviour says, “He that liveth and believeth on me shall never die.”
So also he spoke of Lazarus as being only asleep, and said of the daughter of Jairus, “She is not dead, but sleepeth.”
Certainly Jesus could not have spoken of death in this way if he regarded it as the awful and solemn thing which most believers consider it. If it is the moment that decides our eternal destiny, which shuts the gate of probation, which terminates for the sinner all opportunity of repentance and conversion, for the saint all danger of relapse and fall,—then death is surely something, and something of the most immense importance.
But Christ has really destroyed death both in the Pagan and in the Jewish feeling concerning it. He destroys the Pagan idea of death as a plunge downward from something into nothing, a descent into non-entity or half-entity, a diminution of our being, a passage from the substantial to the shadowy and unreal.
For, according to Christianity, we do not descend in death; we ascend into more of reality, into higher life. Death is a passage onward and upward.
The proof of this we find in the Christian doctrine of the Resurrection.
The meaning of the resurrection of Christ is not, as has been often supposed, that after death he came to life again, but that at death he rose; that his death was rising up, ascent. This we shall show in a future section of this chapter.
One power of Christ's resurrection was to abolish the fear of death. It brought life and immortality to light. It showed men their immortality.
The fear of death is natural to all men, but it is easily removed. The smallest and lowest power of the resurrection is shown in removing it.
[pg 292]The fear of death is natural. It consists in this—that we are, in a great part of our nature, immersed in the finite and perishing. “When we look at the things which are seen,” which “are temporal,” we have an inward feeling of instability—nothing substantial. Therefore it is said, “In Adam all die,” for the Adam, the first man in all of us, is the animal soul. “The first man is of the earth, earthy.” The law of our life is, that it comes from our love. When we love the finite, our life is finite. But besides the finite element in man, the animal soul, or Adam, is the spiritual element, or Christ, the life flowing from things unseen, but eternal.
Christ has abolished death. There is now to the Christian no such thing as death, in the common sense of the term. The only death is the sense of death, the fear of death, which insnares and enslaves. Jesus delivers us from this by inspiring us with faith. We rise with him when we look with him at the things unseen. Faith in eternal things brings into the soul a sense of eternity. Death is only a sleep: outward death is the sleep of the bodily life; inward death is the sleep of the higher life. We awake and rise from the dead when Christ gives us life; and when he, who is our life, shall appear, we shall also appear with him.
The philosopher Lessing says, “Thus was Christ the first practical teacher of the immortality of the soul. For it is one thing to conjecture, to wish, to hope for, to believe in immortality as a philosophical speculation—another thing to arrange all our plans and purposes, all our inward and our outward life, in accordance to it.”
Jesus also destroys the Jewish idea of death, as a passage from a world where the good suffer and the bad triumph, to a world where this state of things is reversed. The kingdom of heaven, with him, begins here, in this world. Judgment is here as well as hereafter. The Jew lived, and all Judaizing [pg 293] Christians live, under a fearful looking for of judgment after death. The Christian sees that judgment is always taking place; that Christ is always judging the world; that God's moral laws and their retributions are not kept in a state of suspense till we die—that they operate now daily. The Christian knows that heaven and hell are both here, and he expects to find them hereafter, because he finds them here. He believes in law, but not in law only. He believes in something higher than law, namely, love—the love of a present, helpful Father, of a friend near at hand, of an inspiration from on high, of a God who forgives all sins when they are repented of, and saves all who trust in him. He is not under law, but under grace.
When he looks forward to the other world, it is not as to a place where he goes to be sentenced by a stern and absolute judge, but where judgment and mercy go hand in hand, where law remains, but is fulfilled by love.
This is what Paul means when he says, “The sting of death is sin, and the strength of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who hath given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
The only real death is the fear of death—the Pagan fear of death, which is a dread of loss, change, degradation of being, to follow the dissolution of the body; and the Jewish fear of death, which is a fearful looking for of judgment, and the sting of which is sin. Christ abolishes both of these fears in every believing heart. He abolishes them in two ways—by the life and the resurrection. He is both resurrection and life: by inspiring us with spiritual or eternal life, he abolishes all fear of dissolution; and by showing us that he has ascended into a higher state by his resurrection, he gives us the belief that death is not going down, but going up. For, though “it doth not yet appear what we shall be, yet we know this, that when he shall appear, we shall be like him.”
[pg 294]But, unfortunately, Christians are still subject to the fear of death. This fear has been aggravated by the current teaching in pulpits professedly Christian. The fear of that “something after death” has been made use of to palsy the will; and conscience, as instructed by Christian teachers, has made cowards of us all; so that few persons can really say, “Thanks be to God, who has given us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
It is very certain that the Pagan view of death and the Jewish view of death still linger in the Church, and are encouraged by Christian teachers. Death is made terrible by false doctrine and false teaching in the Church. Christ has not abolished death to the majority of Christians. Christians are almost as much afraid of death as the heathen—sometimes more so.
Actual Christianity is a very different thing from ideal Christianity. Ideal Christianity is Christianity as seen and lived by Jesus; the gospel which he saw and spoke; the word of God made flesh in him. But actual Christianity is an amalgam; a portion of real Christianity mixed with a portion of the belief and habits of feeling existing in men's minds before they became Christians. The Jews took a large quantity of Judaism into Christianity; the Pagans a large quantity of Paganism. The Christian Church from the very beginning Judaized and Paganized. Paul contended against its Judaism on the one hand and its Paganism on the other. But Judaism and Paganism have always stuck to the Christian Church. She has never risen above them wholly to this day. They mingle with all her doctrines, ceremonies, and habits of life. The Romish Church has more of the Pagan element, the Protestant more of the Jewish. The mediatorial system of Rome is essentially Pagan. Its ascending series of deacons, sub-deacons, priests, bishops, archbishops, patriarchs, cardinals, and pope in the Church below; and beatified and sanctified spirits, angels, and archangels in the [pg 295] Church above; its processions, pilgrimages, dresses, its monastic institutions, its rosaries, relics, daily sacrifice, votive offerings—everything peculiar to the Roman Church, existed before, somewhere, in Paganism. So Protestantism has taken from the Jews its Sabbath, its idea of God as King and Judge, its exclusion from God's favor of all but the elect, its view of the divine sovereignty, its doctrine of predestination, day of judgment, resurrection of the body, material heaven and material hell.
I do not mean to say that there is no truth in these things. There is, because there is some truth in Paganism and in Judaism. We are all Pagans and Jews before we become Christians. The Jewish and Pagan element is in every human soul, and in all constants in man there is truth. But the Pagan and Jewish truths are but stepping-stones to the higher Christian truth. The law and Paganism are school-masters to bring us to Christ. The evil is, that Christianity has not been kept supreme; it has often been sunk and lost in the earlier elements. As the foolish Galatians were bewitched, and relapsed from the gospel to the law,—turning again to weak and beggarly elements, desiring to be in bondage to them again, going back to their minority under tutors and governors,—so the Church has been relapsing, going back to weak and beggarly elements, not keeping Christianity supreme in thought, heart, and life, but letting Paganism or Judaism get the upper hand.
So it has been in regard to this subject. We Paganize and Judaize in our view of death. We reëstablish again what Christ has abolished. We make death something where Christ made it nothing. It is made the great duty of life to “prepare for death.” No such duty is pointed out in the New Testament. Our duty is to prepare every day to live; then, when we die, we shall be taken care of by God. We can safely leave the other world and its interests to Him who has shown himself so capable of taking care of us here.
[pg 296]The gloom of death has been heightened by artificial means. Mourning dresses, solemn faces, funeral addresses, the grave,—all have had an unnatural depth of awe added to the natural sense of bereavement. The Orthodox Church has deliberately and systematically Paganized and Judaized in what it has said and done about death. Its object has been always to make use of the great lever of fear of a hereafter in order to enforce Christian belief and action. Hence Death has been made the king of terrors, the close of probation, the beginning of judgment, the awful entrance to the final decision of an endless doom. All this is wholly unchristian, unknown to apostolic times, a relapse towards Paganism. It is utterly opposed to the great declaration that “Christ has abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.”
What is called faith in immortality, therefore, is of two kinds: it is an instinct, and it is a belief. In the New Testament these are plainly distinguished. In the passage just quoted, it is said that Jesus “brought life and immortality to light.” Jesus himself says, “I am the resurrection and the life.” “He that believeth in me hath eternal life abiding in him, and I will raise him up at the last day.”
Life is a matter of consciousness. It is a present possession, something abiding in us now.
Immortality, or the resurrection, is an object of intellectual belief. It is something future. We feel life; we believe in the resurrection.
We will pass on, in the next sections, to consider each of these.
§ 4. Eternal Life, as taught in the New Testament, not endless Future Existence, but present Spiritual Life.
It is only necessary carefully to examine the passages in the New Testament where the phrase “eternal life” (ζωή αἰώνιος) occurs, to see that it does not refer to the duration, but to the quality, of existence. Temporal life is that life of the soul [pg 297] which through the body is subject to the vicissitudes of time. Eternal (or everlasting) life is that life of the spirit which is independent of change, and is apart from duration. God's being was regarded by the Semitic races as outside of time and space, as a perpetual Now, without before or after. (“I am the I Am.” Exod. 3:14.) Man, made in the image of God, becomes a “partaker of the divine nature” (2 Peter 2:4) by the gift of eternal life.
That “eternal life” is not an endless temporal existence appears,—
(a.) From the passages in which it is spoken of as something to be obtained by one's own efforts, as (Matt. 19:16) when the young man asks of Jesus what good thing he shall do that he may have eternal life, and Jesus replies that he must keep the commandments, give his possessions to the poor, and come and follow him. Certainly that was not the method to obtain an endless existence, but it was the true preparation for receiving spiritual good. So Jesus tells Peter (Mark 10:30) that those who make sacrifices for the sake of truth shall receive temporal rewards “in this time;” and “in the coming age eternal life” (“ἐν τῷ αἰῶνι τῷ ἐρχομένῳ ζωὴν αἰώνιον”). The coming age is the age of the Messiah, when the gift of the Holy Ghost should be bestowed.
(b.) Passages in which eternal life is spoken of as a present possession, not a future expectation. (John 3:36.) “He that believeth on the Son hath (ἔχει) eternal life.” So John 6:47, 54, &c.
(c.) Passages in which eternal life is defined expressly as a state of the soul. (John 17:3.) “This is life eternal, that they may know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent,” &c.
So (Gal. 6:8) it is represented as the natural result of “sowing to the Spirit;” (Rom. 2:7) of “patient continuance [pg 298] in well-doing;” as “the gift of God” (Rom. 6:23); as something which we “lay hold of” (1 Tim. 6:12, 19).
This view of “eternal life” is taken by all the best critics. Professor Hovey thus sums up their testimony:—33
“On a certain occasion, Christ pronounced it necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up, ‘that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life’ (John 3:15)—ἔχῃ ζωήν αἰώνιον. Ζωὴν αἰώνιον, says Meyer, who is, perhaps, the best commentator on the New Testament, of modern times, ‘signifies the eternal Messianic life, which, however, the believer already possesses—ἔχῃ—in this αἰὼν, that is, in the temporal development of that moral and blessed life which is independent of death, and which will culminate in perfection and glory at the coming of Christ.’ And Lücke, whose commentary on the Gospel of John is one of the most thorough and attractive in the German language, says that the ζωὴ αἰώνιος, which is the exact opposite of ἀπώλεια (destruction), or θάνατος (death), is the sum of Messianic blessedness. It is plain, we think, that the life here spoken of as the present possession of every believer in Christ is more than endless existence; it is life in the fullest and highest sense of the word, the free, holy, and blessed action of the whole man, that is to say, the proper, normal living of a rational and moral being. The germ, the principle of this life, exists in the heart of every believer; it is a present possession. ‘Whosoever,’ says Christ, ‘drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a fountain—πηγὴ—of water, springing up into everlasting life.’ (John 4:14.) In another place our Saviour utters these words: ‘He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath eternal life, and shall not come into condemnation, but has passed from death into life’ (John 5:24)—μεταβέβηκεν ἐκ τοῦ θανάτου εἰς τὴν [pg 299] ζωήν. Here, again, the believer is said to have eternal life, even now; for he has passed from death into life. Ingens saltus, remarks Bengel, with his customary brevity and graphic power. We translate a part of Lücke's ample and instructive note on this important verse.
“ ‘The words, “Has passed from death into life” determine that ἔχει (hath) must be taken as a strict present. For the verb μεταβέβηκεν (has passed) affirms that the transition from death into life took place with the hearing and believing. Only if an impossible thought were thus expressed, could we consent, as in a case of extreme necessity, to understand the present ἔχει and the present perfect μεταβέβηκεν as futures. And then we should be compelled to say that John had expressed himself very strangely. But if a higher kind of life, a resurrection process prior to bodily death, is represented by “hath,” and “hath passed,” then ζωὴ and ζωὴ αἰώνιος are not to be understood of a life commencing after bodily death, but of the true and eternal Messianic life or salvation, beginning even here. This life does not, to be sure, exclude natural death, but neither does it first begin after this death. (Cf. 5:40.) Even so θάνατος cannot be understood of bodily, but only of spiritual death, of lying in the darkness of the world. This interpretation would be justified here, even if θάνατος elsewhere in the New Testament denoted uniformly nothing but bodily death. But the metaphorical idea of death stands out clearly in 1 John 3:14; 5:16, 17; John 8:51, 52; 2 Cor. 2:16; 7:10. Similar, also, is the use of the words θανατοῦν (Rom. 7:4; 8:13), and νεκρός, νεκροῦν, ἀποθνήσκειν (Matt. 8:22; Eph. 5:14; Heb. 6:1; Col. 3:5; Gal. 2:19).’
“With the passage now examined may be compared a statement of the apostle John to the same effect, namely: ‘We know that we have passed from death into life, because we love the brethren; he that loveth not abideth in death.’ (1 John 3:14.) This language, explained with a due regard [pg 300] to the preceding context, speaks, evidently, of spiritual death and life, of a passing from one moral condition into another and opposite one. To say that this new moral condition and blessed state is to endure and improve forever, may doubtless be to utter an important truth, but one which does not conflict in the slightest degree with its present existence. It begins in this life; it continues forever and ever.
“Again: we find our Saviour saying, ‘He that believeth on me hath everlasting life;’ ‘Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you;’ and, ‘The words that I speak unto you are spirit, and are life.’ (John 6:47, 53, 63.) By these verses we are taught once more, that the Greek terms which denote life and death, living and dying, were applied by Christ to opposite moral states of the soul. For, observe, (1.) he more than intimates that his words, his doctrines, are the source of present life to those who receive them, and that, by eating his flesh and drinking his blood, he signifies a reception of his words, and so of himself as the Lamb of God. And, (2.) he declares that one who believes has eternal life; that one who eats of the true bread shall not die, but shall live forever; and that one who does not eat the flesh and drink the blood of the Son of man hath not life in himself.
“Is it not plain that the words life and death, as well as the words bread, flesh, and blood, eating and drinking, are here used in a spiritual sense? Is it not plain that Jesus here speaks of something in the believer's soul which is nourished by Christian truth, and which is at the same time called life? But it is the function of truth to quicken thought and feeling, to determine the modes of conscious life, the character or moral condition of the human soul; and hence the rejection of it may involve the utter want of certain spiritual qualities and blessed emotions, but not the want of personal existence. In still another place we read, ‘Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though [pg 301] he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die.’ (John 11:25, 26.) Christ here affirms that every believer is exempted from death. And it matters not for our present purpose whether the word ζῶν, translated in our version ‘liveth,’ refers in this passage to physical or to moral life. If it refers to physical life, then our Saviour pronounces the Christian to be already, in time, delivered from the power of death, and in possession of a true and immortal life. But if it refers to moral life, Christ declares that whoever possesses this life, whether in the body or out of the body, is delivered from the power of death; that is, his union with God and delight in him, which alone constitute the normal living of the soul, shall never be interrupted: οὐ μὴ ἀποθάνῃ εἰς τὸν αἰώνα—he shall never die....
“ ‘And this is life eternal,’ says the Great Teacher, ‘that they should know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.’ (John 17:3.) The best ancient and modern interpreters hold this verse to be a definition by Christ himself of the expression ‘life eternal,’ so often used by him, according to the record of John. De Wette says, ‘And this is (therein consists) the life eternal; not, this is the means of the eternal life; for the vital knowledge of God and Christ is itself the eternal life, which begins even here, and penetrates the whole life of the human spirit.’ Meyer translates thus: ‘Therein consists the eternal life,’ and says, ‘This knowledge, willed of God, is the “eternal life,” inasmuch as it is the essential subjective principle of the latter, its enduring, eternally unfolding germ and fountain, both now, in the temporal development of the eternal life, and hereafter, when the kingdom is set up, in which faith, hope, and charity abide, whose essence is that knowledge.’34 The same view, substantially, is presented by Olshausen, Lücke, Bengel, Alford, and many others.”
Eternal life is the gift of God to the soul through Jesus Christ. It is God's life communicated to man—the life of God in the soul of man. This is distinctly stated in the First Epistle of John (chap. 1:1), as the life which was from the beginning, the eternal life which was with the Father, but is manifested to us, giving us fellowship with the Father and with his Son.
The root of this eternal life is in every human being. It is what we call “the spirit” in man, as distinguished from the soul and body. It is the side of each person which touches the infinite and eternal.
Fichte, the most spiritual of German philosophers, says, “Love is life. Where I love, I live. What I love, I live from that.”35 When we love earthly things, our life is earthly, that is, temporal; when we love the true, the right, the good, our life is spiritual and eternal. Then we have eternal life abiding in us. Then all fear of death departs. The great gift of God through Christ was to make the right and true also lovely, so that loving them, we could draw our life from them. When God becomes lovely to us, by being shown to us as Jesus shows him, then by loving God we live from God, and so have eternal life abiding in us.
The natural instinct of immortality is the spirit, or sense of the infinite and eternal. But it needs to be reënforced by the influence of Christian conviction, hope, and experience, in order completely to conquer the sense of death. It is not by logical arguments in proof of a future existence that immortality becomes clear to us, but by living an immortal life. Dr. Channing says truly, “Immortality must begin here.” And so Hase (Dogmatic, § 92) says, “Any proof which should demonstrate, with mathematical certainty, to the understanding, or to the senses, the blessings or terrors of our future immortality, would destroy morality in its very roots. The belief in immortality is therefore at first only a wish, [pg 303] and a belief on the authority of others; but the more that any one assures to himself his spiritual life by his own free efforts and a pure love for goodness, the more certain also does eternity become, not merely as something future, but as something already begun.”36
Whenever Jesus is said to give eternal life, or to be the life of the world; whenever the apostles declare Christ to be their life, or say that as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive; when Paul says, “The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin [pg 304] and death;” “to be spiritually minded is life and peace;” “the life of Jesus is manifested in our dying (mortal) flesh;” when John says, “He that hath the Son hath life;” when in Revelation we read of the book of life, and water of life, and tree of life,—the meaning is always the same. It refers to the spiritual vitality added to the soul by the influence of Jesus, who communicates God's love, and so enables us to LOVE God, instead of merely fearing him or obeying him. Love casts out all fear, the fear of death included. He who looks at the things unseen and eternal, partakes of their eternal nature, and though his outward human nature perishes, his inward spiritual nature is renewed day by day.