The belief in the immortality of the soul has been well nigh
universal, in all ages, and among all nations, and is taught by all
religions. Without it, life and death are insolvable mysteries. A
doctrine so universal, so well established by reason, ought not to be
set aside without the most convincing reasons and the most compelling
evidence. Either this universal belief is due to revelation, or the
abundance of proof appealing to reason, or both.
A child is born, suffers agonies for weeks and months, and dies. If no
future, who can solve the mystery? John Milton writes his immortal
"Paradise Lost," and dies. Must his great soul perish? Nero murdered
his brother, his sister, his wife and his mother, and multitudes of
Christians and lastly himself, and was guilty of a multitude of other
shocking crimes; while many of the best men and women this world ever
knew suffered persecution and martyrdom for doing good and blessing
others. Will they all alike meet the same fate--annihilation--at the
hands of a just God?
The immortality of the soul is supported by science. Science teaches
the indestructibility of matter. Not all the power that man can bring
to bear, can destroy the minutest portion of matter, not a molecule,
not an atom, not an electron. The smallest particle of dust visible to
the eye contains, we are told, about 8,000,000,000 atoms, and each
atom, as complex as a piano,--1740 parts. Not one of these atoms or
parts could be annihilated by all the power of a thousand Niagaras.
In all the multiplied chemical changes everywhere in the world, not a
single particle, the most worthless, is lost or destroyed. Dissolve a
silver dollar in aquafortis, and then precipitate it to the bottom,
and not a particle need be lost. If God takes such scrupulous care of
the most worthless particle of matter, will he suffer the immortal
soul to perish? If he preserves the dust, how much more so the highest
of all his creations, the mind that can write an epic, compose an
oratorio, or liberate a race. Evolution crushes out of the heart the
hope of immortality, and makes man but an improved brute, while Jesus
Christ "hath brought life and immortality to light through the
gospel."
If evolution be true, when did man become immortal? At what period
did he cease to be a brute, and become an immortal soul? Was it before
the days of the pithecanthropus, the Piltdown fraud, the Heidelberg
man, or the Neanderthal man?
The change was ever so slow and gradual; could the parents, anywhere
along the line, be mere brutes and the children immortal human beings?
Would it not be impossible to draw the line? Is it not evident that
the ape-man could never grow into immortality, or into the image of an
infinitely great and glorious God?
If evolutionists _could_ give us any convincing evidence that the
body of man developed from the brute, they can not prove that the soul
grew from nothing to the high mental, moral and spiritual attainments,
into the very image of God, and by its own efforts become as immortal
as God himself.
After all, did any theory as ridiculously untrue as evolution ever
masquerade as science, or ask to be accepted by thoughtful men? Has it
as much to support it as the false sciences of alchemy and astrology?
The brute origin of man, infidelity, agnosticism, modernism, atheism
and bolshevism, are in harmony, and cooperate in robbing man of heaven
and the hope of immortality.
If man believes that he dies as the brute dies, he will soon live as
the brute lives, and all that is precious to the heart of man will be
forever destroyed. We recoil from such a fate, but live in the serene
assurance that such a thing can never be.