LIFE AND IMMORTALITY By Samuel Davies, Sept 1, 1756

( Later, President of Princeton University )

 

"To us, the works of creation, and the ways of providence, are equally and altogether unsearchable. Above all, "what a miracle to man, is man !" Who can explain the nature and operation of a soul ? Yet who so degraded, so stupified, as to doubt he has a soul ? The connexion of our material and spiritual part, is wonderful indeed." ---

Daniel Dana, 1810 (Yale, A.M. 1782)

 

Davies treatise of immortality:

But if you now keep your bodies pure, and serve God with them, and with your spirits too, they will bloom for ever in the charms of celestial beauty; they will flourish in immortal youth and vigour! they will for ever be the receptacles of the most exquisite sensations of pleasure. And will you not deny yourselves the sordid pleasures of a few years, for the sake of those of a blessed immortality?

But let me give you a view of immortality of a more noble kind, the proper immortality of the soul. And here, what an extensive and illustrious prospect opens before us! look a little way backward, and your sight is lost in the darkness of non-existence. A few years ago you were nothing. But at the creative flat of the Almighty, that little spark of being, the soul, was struck out of nothing; and now it warms your breast, and animates the machine of flesh. But shall this glimmering spark, this divinae particula aurae, ever be extinguished! No; it will survive the ruins of the universe, and blaze out into immortality: it will be coeval with the angels, the natives of heaven, and the Indigenae?, the original inhabitants of the world of spirits; nay, with the great Father of spirits himself. The duration of your souls will run on from its first commencement, in parallel lines with the existence of the Deity. What an inheritance is this entailed upon the child of dust, the creature of yesterday! Here let us pause,— make a stand,—and take a survey of this majestic prospect! This body must soon moulder into dust, but the soul will live unhurt, untouched, amid all the dissolving struggles and convulsions of animal nature. "These heavens shall pass away with a great noise; these elements shall melt with fervent heat; the earth also and the things that are therein, shall be burnt up," 2 Pet. iii. 10; but this soul shall live secure of existence in the universal desolation:

"Unhurt amidst the war of elements,

The wreck of matter, and the crush of worlds."— Addison.

And now, when the present system of things is dissolved, and time shall be no more, eternity, boundless eternity, succeeds; and on this the soul enters as on its proper hereditary duration. Now look forward as far as you will, your eyes meet with no obstruction, with nothing but the immensity of the prospect: in that, indeed, it is lost, as extending infinitely beyond its ken. Come, attempt this arithmetic of infinites, and exhaust the power of numbers: let millions of millions of ages begin the vast computation; multiply these by the stars of heaven; by the particles of dust in this huge globe of earth; by the drops of water in all the vast oceans, rivers, lakes, and springs that are spread over the globe; by all the thoughts that have risen in so quick a succession in the minds of men and angels, from their first creation to this day; make this computation, and then look forward through this long line of duration, and contemplate your future selves. Still you see yourselves in existence; still the same persons; still endowed with the same consciousness, and the, same capacities for happiness or misery, but vastly enlarged; as superior to the present as the capacities of an adult to those of a new-born infant, or an embryo in the womb. Still will you bloom in immortal youth, and are as far from an end as in the first moment of our existence. O sirs, me-thinks it may startle us to view our future selves so changed, so improved, removed into such different regions, associated with such strange unacquainted beings, and fixed in such different circumstances of glory or terror, of happiness or misery.

Men of great projects and sanguine hopes are apt to sit and pause, and take an imaginary survey of what they will do, and what they will be in the progress of life. But then death, like an apparition, starts up before them, and threatens to cut them off in the midst of their pursuits. But here no death threatens to extinguish your being or snap the thread of your existence; but it runs on in one continued everlasting tenor. What a vast inheritance is this, unalienably entailed upon every child of Adam! What importance, what value, does this consideration give to that neglected thing the soul! What an awful being is it! Immortality! What emphasis, what grandeur in the sound! Immortality is so vast an attribute, that it adds a kind of infinity to any thing to which it is annexed, however insignificant in other respects: and on the other hand, the want of this would degrade the most exalted being into a trifle. The highest angel, if the creature of a day, or of a thousand years, what would he be? A fading flower, a vanishing vapour, a flying shadow.

When his day or his thousand years are past, he is as truly nothing as if he had never been. It is little matter what becomes of him: let him stand or fall, let him be happy or miserable, it is just the same in a little time; he is gone, and there is no more of him,—no traces of him left. But an immortal! a creature that shall never, never, never cease to be! that shall expand his capacities of action, of pleasure, or pain, through an everlasting duration! what an awful, important being is this! And is my soul, this little spark of reason in my breast., is that such a being? I tremble at myself. I revere my own dignity, and am struck with a kind of pleasing horror to view what I must be. And is there any thing so worthy of the care of such a being, as the happiness, the everlasting happiness, of my immortal part? What is it to me, who am formed for an endless duration, what I enjoy, or what I must suffer in this vanishing state? Seventy or eighty years bear not the least imaginable proportion to the duration of such a being; they are too inconsiderable a point to be seen; mere ciphers in the computation! They do not bear as much proportion as the small dust that will not turn the balance, to this vast globe of earth, and all the vaster globes that roll in their orbits through the immense space of the universe.

And what shall become of me through this immortal duration? This, and this only, is the grand concern of an immortal; and in comparison of it, it does not deserve one thought what will become of me while in this vanishing phantom of a world. For consider, your immortality will not be a state of insensibility, without pleasure or pain; you will not draw out an useless, inactive existence, in an eternal stupor, or a dead sleep. But your souls will be active as long as they exist; and as I have repeatedly observed, still retain all their capacities; nay, their capacities will perpetually enlarge with an eternal growth, and for ever tower from glory to glory in heaven, or plunge from depth to depth in hell. Here, then, my fellow-immortals! here pause and say to yourselves, "What is like to become of my soul through this long space for ever? Is it likely to be happy or miserable? What though you are now rich, honourable, healthy, merry, and gay!

Alas! terrestrial enjoyments are not proper food for an immortal soul; and besides, they are not immortal, as your souls are. If these are your portion, what will you do for happiness millions of ages hence, when all these are fled away like a vapour? Are you provided with a happiness which will last as long as your souls will live to crave it? Have you an interest in God? Are you prepared for the fruition of the heavenly state? Do you delight in God above all? Have you a relish for the refined pleasures of religion? Is the supreme good the principle object of your desire? Do you now accustom yourselves to the service of God, the great employment of heaven? and are you preparing yourselves for the more exalted devotion of the church on high, by a serious attendance on the humbler forms of worship in the church on earth? Are you made pure in heart and life, that you may be prepared for the regions of untainted holiness, to breathe in that pure salubrious air, and live in that climate, so warm with the love of God, and so near the Sun of Righteousness?

Davies’ selection from his sermon entitled : Life and Immortality Revealed in the Gospel ( Sept. 1, 1756)

As found in Sermons of the Rev. Samuel Davies, Vol. 2, pp 42-46

Reprint by Soli Deo Gloria Publications ISBN 1-877611-94-8

Daniel Dana’s quote courtesy the Willison Center, www.willisoncenter.com as found in the Sermon entitled "The Deity of Christ" (1810) listed under the Philosophy and Theology Section.