The Future Life:

Thames Star, Volume XIII, Issue 4236, 29 July 1882, Page 4

The Future Life:

An .Abstbact of jl Lecture delivered by the Rev. S. J. Neiil on last Sunday evening.

-'"'''Now He is not the God of the dead, but of the living : for all live unto Him."—Luke xx., 38. See also Exodus iii., Matthew xxii., Mark xii., Romans , ■ vi.,10.' -

. Ist. The Sadducees denied that the Jews were in possession of an oral law given them by Moses. They maintained that ; the^ written law alone was of Divine authority. 2nd; They denied the resurrection. 3rd. They denied the existence of.angel or spirit. 4th. Josephus says they asserted the freedom of the will which the Pharisees denied. With the growth of Christianity. the Saducees • disappear after'; the .first century. Dr Smith states that the great tendency, after the destruction of Jerusalem, which overthrew temporal; hopes, was towards an . acceptance of the oral law of Moses, which revealed a future state of reward ! "and punishments. We see the question put to Christ that the Sadducees wished to show the absurdity of the doctrine of a future life from the fact of the impossibility of restoring each wife to her own" husband. And yet they had the same law which the other Jews possessed. We see - here an illustration of the great principle that men find truths in the Bible just in proportion to the light which they bring to the search. The Sadducees had the same Scripture "I am the , God of Abraham," but made a widely ■ different use of it. In this, Jesus main* tamed his claim to be the Light of Men. There is here a twofold correction made '' by Christ on the ideas of the Sadducees. Their notion of marriage was a low one, and from that they tried to show that there could be no future life. Christ tells them that they err in not knowing the Scriptures. Then, he tells them that as their idea of marriage was faulty, so was their ...idea,of the future life. The future.life -: was no future thing, but a" present reality >—" the dead are raised." Even Moses showed this in the place concerning the .. bush, when he "calleth the Lord the God of Abraham. In the one case, the reproof turns upon the word for " marry;" in the . .second case, the reproof turns on the use of the present tense—not " I was "or "I shall be," but "I am" the God -of Abraham. Then reasons thus: If the Patriarchs have ceased to be, then God cannot call himself their God, for he cannot be the God of what does not exist. In the ordinary acceptation these men are dead—i.e., their bodies are in the earth, but the dust in the Cave of Machpelah is not Abraham, Abraham lives to God. Furthermore, says Christ, " All live unto Him." Well might the Scribes, the writers and students of the , . Law, exclaim, "Master thou hast well said." For those who bore Sadducean .notions of marriage, future life, personal identity, and. non-immortality, the words . of Christ are no less applicable now than eighteen centuries,ago. ..- „As immortality was a truth not generally known, or known only to the initiated, so we see this illustrated in the tendency , which some men occasionally manifest to return to an unenlightened, pristine con- - dition : as we see that the lower creatures will sometimes quickly cast off the results - of domestication, so men occasionally cast off the teachings of civilisation. We / propose to examine some of the causes which lead men to this pristine condition, the denial of immortality. Ist. As Immortality is a truth which cannot be revealed by the senses, so the more sensuous men become the less will their spirital vision be able to see the truth of immortality. So, to many, immortality is only a name ; as the blind -cannot behold the sun;, as the miser cannot understand the meaning of selfsacrifice ; so those tbat are buried in the sensuous cannot realize the supersensuous. But generally speaking such have a sufficient sense of shame to. be silent, conscious that they have lost a..jewel. ' ■ Moreover) they have become practically atheists and. they feel that God is the source of ideas of right and wrong ; but how can one continue to believe in a Being who, it is assumed, forgets all about his gifts, and plunges the recipients into utter nothingness? To. disbelieve in immortality, then, is really to disbelieve in the source .of moral ideas— God,—and when the one belief falls, the other totters to its fall. Again, men of culture have come to deny immortality, and with them also there is a latent atheism. To find some of the causes which have made men of culture non-believers in immortality; and thence in God, we must go to the teachings of men . calling themselves the Church. (1) The theological views of God. (2) The selfish theory of a religious life. (3) The dull, limited, unnatural views of a future life are some of the causes which, operating >ou men of thought and.culture, have resulted in' their doubting men's immortality. As to unjust views of God, the Rev. Stopford Brooke says—" The conception •f God's nature which has been laid before ua for many years has brought many men at last to turn from it with dismay . and pain. They feel that the morality of the pulpit in this matter lags benind the morality of society. In a word," he says, "Godis represented as anything rather than the Father revealed in Christ , Hence it is that men who have '/had such a false image of God presented to them turn away from it, and seek immortality in the memories of men, and < in the "Being of Humanity." Better, they say, to cease for ever than to live ' with the Being who has been described .to us. The cure for this cause of infidelity will be found tp' lay in a more correct representation of the Divine Being. The second source of disbelief in immortality- is the selfish theory of! ' religious life too frequently exhibited. The lower feelings of our nature have been appealed to, the fear of- punishment and hope.of reward to men, with a keen sense of right and love of truth, have said: —" How can that religion be true which is selfish, and locks man up in care for his own safety. On the - highest religious grounds, we reject your teaching of immortality, as hurtful to a pious life." The cure -for this form of scepticism consists in a manifestation of the true Christian life as the life of JoVe, which is the soul of self sacrifice. And again, men have turned from the notion of immortality because of the dull and unnatural views, of a - future life presented to them. When a more faith*

'■fuT""visw" lof' the Divine "Being, a more elevated and unselfish theory of religious life, and a more natural .picture, of the world to come, " fitted to meet a larger and worthier ideal of humanity "; when these are everywhere known to men, then men will find in God the complement of the highest longings and purest thoughts of their own hearts.