IMMORTALITY.

The testimony of Scripture concerning it.

“God only hath immortality.”—1 Timothy 6: 16.

“When this mortal shall have put on immortality.”—1 Corinthians 15: 54.

“Immortality,” athanasia, is a word signifying deathlessness; hence we are taught that the only deathless being in the universe is “the Incorruptible God,” ho aphthartos theos, —Romans 1: 23, “dwelling in the light, whom no man hath seen, nor can see.” The Invisible God was never deathful nor subject to death; but all other intelligences of the universe have, or will be subjected to death, or to something equivalent to it. Their immortality is bestowed at some time subsequent to death; but His, who is the Life of the Universe, is underived; for He is from everlasting to everlasting deathless.

The testimony that “God only hath deathlessness,” teaches that the immortality or deathlessness of men and angels dates from the death state. At this crisis their “mortal body”—Romans 8: 11, puts on deathlessness, so that thenceforth “they die no more.”—Luke 20: 36. To constitute them deathless their bodies must become “incorruptible”—aphtharsia; for a corruptible body cannot be deathless or immortal. Aphtharsia is the substratum of Athanasia; that is, Incorruptibility is the underlay of Immortality. Incorruptibility is not immortality; but without incorruptibility, immortality cannot be. Hence Immortality is something more than incorruptibility. It is “Life and Incorruptibility”—zoe kai aphtharsia—combined. Incorruptibility has regard to physical quality of body, which may be living or inanimate. A diamond may represent an incorruptible body; but because incorruptible, it is not therefore living or deathless. An immortal body, however, is necessarily an incorruptible body; because immortality cannot be without incorruptibility. God though “a spirit” is also a body; for he is styled “the incorruptible God,” and incorruptibility is scripturally affirmed of body. Immortality is life manifested through an incorruptible body; and is the opposite to mortality, which is life manifested through a corruptible body. Such is the immortality brought to light by Jesus in the gospel of the kingdom—“mortality swallowed up of life.”—2 Corinthians 5: 4. The supposition of deathliness and deathlessness co-existing in the same body, or of an “immortal soul” in mortal flesh, is pagan foolishness; and implies ignorance of “ the truth as it is in Jesus.” It is the Spirit of God that makes alive; the flesh profiteth nothing. —John 6: 63. Hereditary immortality is a fiction of the carnal mind, at once revolting to reason and the word of God.

Immortality is a part of the righteous man’s reward, which he seeks after by a patient continuance in well doing. —Romans 2: 7. To talk of the wicked being immortal in any sense is to contradict the scripture. “The soul that sinneth it shall die”—Ezekiel 18: 20, saith God. “The wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ the Lord”—Romans 6: 22-23; therefore “hope to the end for the gift that is to be brought unto you at the revelation of Jesus Christ.”—1 Peter 1: 13.

The following extract from a canon decreed by the Council of Lateran, in the reign of Leo X., will show the kind of authority by which immortal-soulism became an article of the popular creed. —“Some have dared to assert concerning the nature of the reasonable soul that it is mortal; WE, with the approbation of the Sacred Council do condemn and reprobate all such, seeing, according to the canon of POPE CLEMENT THE FIFTH, the soul is immortal; and we strictly inhibit all from dogmatising otherwise; and we decree that all who adhere to the like erroneous assertions shall be shunned and punished as heretics.”—Caranza, p. 412, 1681.

In his “Defence” in 1530, Martin Luther says, “I perceive that the Pope makes articles of faith for himself and his faithful ones, as Emperor of the World, King of Heaven, and God upon earth, such as that the soul is immortal, with all those monstrous opinions to be found in the Roman dunghill of decretals.”

Bishop Tillotson remarks that “The immortality of the soul is rather supposed, or taken for granted, than expressly revealed in the Bible.”—Sermons, vol. 2. 1774.

Dr. Whately, Archbishop of Dublin, in his “Revelation of a Future State,” observes, “To the christian indeed all this doubt would be instantly removed if he found that the immortality of the soul were revealed in the word of God. In fact no such doctrine is revealed to us. The christian’s hope, as founded on the promises contained in the Gospel, is the resurrection of the body.”

Dr. Lowth speaking of the prophets says, “that which struck their senses they delineated in their descriptions; we there find no exact account, no explicit mention of immortal spirits.”

“Life,” says Irenaeus, a contemporary of the apostle John, “is not from ourselves, nor from our nature, but it is given or bestowed according to the grace of God; and therefore, he who preserves this gift of life, and returns thanks to Him that bestows it, he shall receive ‘length of days for ever and ever.’ But he who rejects it and proves unthankful to his Maker for creating him, and will not know him who bestows it, deprives himself of the gift of duration through all eternity.”

“That the soul is naturally immortal,” says Richard Watson, “is contradicted by Scripture, which makes our immortality a gift dependant upon the giver.”—Institutes vol. 2. p. 250.

The existence of an immortal soul in sinful flesh being set aside, and the testimony that “the dead know not any thing”—Ecclesiastes 9: 5, received, the Mother of Harlots is stripped of the Virgin and Saints, whose deified “souls” she worships, and makes her as idolatrous as her pagan predecessor in “the Eternal City!” The physical regeneration of infant souls, purgatory, glorification in heaven at death, apostles on their thrones, kingdoms gained by saints beyond the skies at their decease, &c., are all exploded as the merest fictions of distempered minds. —EDITOR.