Job 14:14 If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. The common arguments for the immortality of man are irrelevant. We are not immortal, because we wish to be so, or think we are so, or because immortality befitteth us as lords of the creation, or because we love life, and the thought of annihilation is disagreeable to us, or because there is within us a craving after endless existence. All these arguments, though powerless with those old pagans of whom we have been speaking, are frequently adduced by such as have the Gospel in their hands, as if they were all powerful. But the Gospel, as it needeth them not, ignoreth them. One of the pagans, and he agreeing with others, would tell us that "whatever beginneth, endeth" (Panaetius). And another (Epicurus) that "mind ceases with dissolution." Hence we, as we had a beginning, despite all our reasonings to the contrary, beside or beyond the Gospel, might cease to be. We may not like the thought, it is hard, cheerless, chilling; but if it put us into our right place before God, — if it serve to check that pride of immortality, which is the purest hindrance to preparation for it, — let us not disregard the truth, that we, as we began to be, like all other things might, were it God's will, cease to be...But God hath willed it otherwise. If with Job we ask, "If a man die, shall he live AGAIN?" the reply is direct, he shall. And why? Not because we, having a better insight into what is called Natural Theology and the laws of life, and being more mindful of the dignity of our nature than the men of old, are better able to reason ourselves into a belief of this truth. No; our immortality doth not depend upon natural arguments, or upon sensuous predilections. We are immortal because God hath told us so. It is His will. And as if to bring down our pride, the immortality of the soul hath been testified unto us by the resurrection of the body. The proof of the one is in the other. The Gospel of Christ knoweth nothing of the immortality of the soul apart from the immortality of the whole man. And if we regard the one to the neglect of the other, we do but endanger the blessedness of both. We have begun to exist, but not for this reason, but because it is God's decree, and Jesus Christ hath been raised from the dead, and hath ascended into heaven in our nature, we shall exist forever. This is the solemn thought, which should never be long absent from our minds. We live, and bye we must. The destruction of the present order of the globe will affect our being no more than the fall of a raindrop, or a shooting star. Too dreadful is the truth of our immortality, even though the hope of saints should render it lovely, to permit it to make us proud. The gift may raise us beyond the brutes, but if its alternative he the hopeless land, it will sink us below them. (Alfred Bowen Evans.) Parallel Verses KJV: If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come. |
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