He writes:- "If we regard immortality as the essential attribute of human nature, we displace the sacrifice of Christ from its Scriptural position. We destroy its character as a means of securing life, and are compelled to transform it into that anomalous doctrine of pulpitology which regards it as substitutionary suffering of divine wrath, in order to save immortal souls from the eternal tortures of hell.... The doctrine of the immortality of the soul must be removed from the mind before gospel truth can obtain a. proper entrance.... Previously to this the mind is filled with truth-neutralizing doctrine, which effectually prevents the entrance of a single ray of truth" (page 298). The meaning of the last sentence is that the multitudes of God's people who believed that the soul is immortal, were unable to receive a single ray of truth. The very extravagant language that Mr. Roberts employs stultifies all he says, and places him in a ridiculous position, if it were not so tragic for the poor creatures, who imbibe his ideas. The last sentence would consign millions of good Christians to destruction. No one believing in that, which was universally believed for centuries, viz.: the immortality of the soul, has, according to Mr. Roberts, any chance of salvation.
The advocates of the non-immortality of the soul triumphantly demand, "Where in Scripture do you get the expression, immortal soul?" And the answer, of course, is, nowhere. But that does not prove what they wish. There are many words you cannot find in the Bible, but the truth they stand for is clearly there. For instance, the word Trinity is not in the Bible, but the truth of the Trinity—of God, the Father; God the Son; God the Holy Spirit, yet one God—is clearly there. The word Substitute, as referring to the Savior in His sacrificial work on the cross, is not in the Bible, but the truth covered by the word is there. When we read, " Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust " (1 Peter 3:1818For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit: (1 Peter 3:18)), we get the thought of the Substitute in the clearest possible way.
Writing on this subject, Mr. Roberts says—"The strength of natural instinct can never be overcome by theological fiction" (page 29).
It has often been said that the strongest beliefs in the human heart are those that come as the result of intuition. It is a remarkable thing that the belief in the immortality of the soul is intuitive. It is spread all over the globe. In heathen lands, where the Gospel has never penetrated, where the Bible has never been seen, nor its teaching ever heard of, the belief in the immortality of the soul is held. See the Chinese idolater offering up his votive sacrifices to the spirits of his ancestors. See the American Red Indian, who buries the weapons of the chase, and food, in the graves of their braves to assist them to reach the "happy hunting grounds," which they hope to attain.
The cases we have adduced are just those of "natural instinct," and not created by reading the Bible, for it is found in lands where a copy of the Scripture has never been heard of. That "natural instinct"—that is, belief in the immortality of the soul—is not to be overcome by Mr. Roberts' theological fiction."
It may be as well to state clearly what he holds, for one defective doctrine leads to another, and we shall find him denying the immortality of the soul, denying that the saved sinner goes to heaven at all, that there is a personal Devil, and that there is any hell at all, and certainly no eternal punishment, and teaching the terrible doctrine of annihilation. All this in spite of the clear teaching of Scripture.
We will give a few quotations. "The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is an un- true doctrine " (page 15). "Of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, there is not the slightest mention " (page 24). "Man.. only holds this life on the short average tenure of three-score years and ten, at the end of which he gives it up to Him from whom he received it, and returns to the ground whence he originally came, and meanwhile ceases to exist " (page 16). "The belief in question is not only erroneous in supposing that the dead go to such places as the popular heaven or hell, immediately after death, but, in thinking that they ever go there at any time " (page 44). "This going to heaven is a purely gratuitous speculation. There is not a single promise of heaven throughout the whole of Scripture to warrant a man in hoping for it" (page 45). "Death, the extinction of being, is the pre-determined issue of a sinful course " (page 49). "The unjust are to be brought forth at Christ's appearing, for judicial arraignment, and their sentence is, that, after the infliction of such punishment as may be merited, they shall, a second time, by violent and divinely-wielded agency, be destroyed in death " (page 49). "The orthodox 'hell' is mere imagination, based upon Pagan speculation of futurity " (page 52). We should ask our readers to note carefully these extracts for we shall have to comment upon a number of egregious errors that they contain. The one error impinging upon another makes it difficult to take one at a time.
Let us take up the question of the immortality of the soul. Mr. Roberts writes:- "Eminent theologians... maintain (or at least suggest) that the reason of the Bible passing over in silence the doctrine of human immortality is because it is so self-evident as to require no enunciation. This is very unsatisfactory. It would be much more appropriate to suggest the very opposite significance to the silence of the Scriptures on the subject. If the immortality of the soul is to be believed without sanction from revelation on the mere assumption that it is self-evident, may we not uphold any doctrine for which we have a prepossession? A more rational course is to suspect a doctrine not divinely inculcated, and subject it to the severest scrutiny " (page 24).
Mr. Roberts treats " eminent theologians " unfairly in this extract, for they certainly do not suggest that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul rests solely and only on " the mere assumption that it is self-evident," but what they do contend is this, that whilst no verse of Scripture states that the human soul is immortal, in just these words, yet it has a very definite " sanction from revelation." Scripture asserts the mortality of the human body; it never asserts the mortality of the soul, for the simple reason it is immortal. Rev. 6:99And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held: (Revelation 6:9) speaks of the souls of them that were slain being under the altar. Bodies slain, but souls alive in the presence of God. " God is not the God of the dead, but of the living " (Matt. 22:3232I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. (Matthew 22:32)) was said of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whose bodies had been in their graves for centuries. Bodies dead, souls alive. The matter is taken as self-evident in Scripture, the whole tenor of which -falls in with the truth of the immortality of the soul, the very strongest proof possible.
If the soul's immortality is a truth, then every Scripture that bears in any measure upon the subject will be found to uphold that truth. A very pertinent text is Matt. 25:46,46And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. (Matthew 25:46) These shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal." Here we have the righteous and the unrighteous living in other worlds forever.