THE NEED OF DIVINE REVELATION
Whatever we know of a future life must come to us by direct revelation. Sternly has the grave closed its heavy portals against all the efforts of human foresight, philosophy or science, to penetrate the dark region beyond. The human mind has felt its weakness in this respect; and the noblest of its representatives who have presumed, untaught by revelation, to inquire into man’s futurity, have been obliged to confess the more than Delphic uncertainty with which alone their deepest researches have been crowned.MOI 5.1
Says Prof. Stuart: “The light of nature can never scatter the darkness in question. This light has never yet sufficed to make the question clear to any portion of our benighted race, whether the soul is immortal. Cicero, incomparably the most able defender of the soul’s immortality of which the heathen world can yet boast, very ingenuously confesses that after all the arguments which he had adduced in order to confirm the doctrine in question, it so fell out that his mind was satisfied of it only when directly employed in contemplating the arguments adduced in its favor. At all other times he fell unconsciously into a state of doubt and darkness. It is notorious, also, that Socrates, the next most able advocate, among the heathen, of the same doctrine, has adduced arguments to establish the never-ceasing existence of the soul which will not bear the test of examination.”MOI 5.2
Who has not heard of the dying words of Socrates? “I am going out of the world, and you are to continue in it; but which of us has the better part is a secret to every one but God.” It is further recorded of Cicero, that after recounting the various opinions of philosophers, he was obliged to say, “Which of these is true, God alone knows, and which is most probable is a very great question.” And Seneca, on a review of this subject, says, “Immortality, however desirable, was rather promised than proved by these great men.” MOI 6.1
“Reason cannot prove man to be immortal. We may devoutly enter the temple of nature, we may reverently tread her emerald floor, and gaze on her blue, ‘star-pictured ceiling,’ but to our anxious inquiry, though proposed with heart-breaking intensity, the oracle is dumb, or like those of Delphi and Dodona, mutters only an ambiguous reply that leaves us in utter bewilderment.”MOI 6.2
“I am taking a leap in the dark,” said Hobbes, when about to die.MOI 6.3
Testimonies of this nature need not be multiplied. They are abundant, and cannot be disputed. We may, therefore, at once dismiss from the pale of this controversy the uncertain light of nature and the bewildering speculations of philosophy, and seek directly to that revelation of which we here stand so much in need. That this revelation is found in the Bible, that blessed word of the Lord to dying men, that glowing volume of inspiration, which is given as a lamp to our feet and a light to our path, we shall take for granted in this investigation. With those who deny this, it is not here our purpose to enter into controversy. If, then, there is, as logicians affirm, “an antecedent probability in favor of a divine revelation, arising from the nature of the Deity and the moral condition of man,” just so there is a probability that in that revelation, if an uncontingent immortality is the unspeakably grand prerogative of the human race, that fact will be plainly set before us. With a passing glance, then, at the importance of the subject, since upon our views of man’s nature depends, in a very great extent, our views of life, death, resurrection, Heaven, hell, and all other subjects, in short, of divine revelation, we present our inquiries, direct, at the glorious temple of the Living Oracles: What is the nature of man? Must he necessarily exist forever; so that if he fails of securing happiness at the end of his probationary state, his destiny is an eternity of incomprehensible woe? Has he in his nature a principle so tenacious of life, that the severest implements of destruction which God can wield, an eternity of his intensest, devouring fire, can make no inroads upon its immaculate vitality? To these solemn and important questions, we shall here expect answers that will not perplex us by their ambiguity, nor deceive us by their falsehood.MOI 6.4