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p489 [H M Hooke] DEAR BROTHER, - I rejoice in the blessing the Lord has granted you. As to - and his plans, the Lord, as you say, may frustrate it; but I expect nothing from them; mixed up with the army and the world, the discipline of God's house does not suit them. They like to have their will free, and call that liberty. I am sure the Lord will and does approve the path of patient consistency, and contentedness to be little and despised, and He will make wonderers know that He has loved them, who, though with little strength, have so walked. It has been one of the difficulties here.

I trust you may not get into controversy with these annihilationists. It has been a trial here and in the States, that those who hold the Lord's coming on this Continent (though their views of it are quite false) are generally in these views. This very naturally raised prejudice against them. One of the services I and others have had to render, is to separate the two in people's minds, and a testimony has been so raised up. The Evangelicals could not meet them, for they held to traditions which these false teachers refused from scripture. But a true testimony, thank God, has been raised up, though a small one. I need hardly say that I hold fast the immortality of the soul, and have insisted on it earnestly at New York, Boston, and Milwaukee, where I have met these false teachers, and a good many have been set free from the doctrine or connection with it. It has been a formal question as to union with many, and a main difficulty as to the work in New York and Boston.

I am quite aware of the passage - refers to; and when first published in French (it was translated into English) from notes of lectures at Geneva, it is very possible it was not guarded against misinterpretation, as no one thought of denying the immortality of the soul or calling it in question. It is a statement that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul in contrast with resurrection was brought in by Platonism and philosophy in the third century; which is perfectly correct. Heretical teachers, and those orthodox, infected with what is called Neo-platonism, began to deny the Lord's coming as a present expectation, and to teach simply the soul's going to heaven. That it does so was fully stated in the lectures. It was the setting aside the Lord's coming and resurrection, to bring in the mere doctrine of an immortal soul - man's pride as to his importance, not God's power when Christ came - which was objected to. But as no one dreamed then of questioning that immortality, it was expressed so that it might be laid hold of. Perhaps it is so in the first English edition. But they all know as well as I do, that not only the contrary was held but taught in the book; and that it was the substitution of the immortality of the soul, instead of, and to the rejection of Christ's coming and the resurrection, which was objected to; and it was in fact the ruin of the church. But, as I said, that immortality was questioned by no one then, and it never occurred to any one that any one did. I heard of this poor piece of dishonesty years and years ago, and in the subsequent editions took care to remove all occasion for it. It is a poor fraud, and nothing else. I have not the book here, or I would refer to it. I find it in "Collected Writings," vol. 2 p. 463 (I have not the first edition), "It is hardly needful to say that I do not doubt the immortality of the soul. I only assert," &c. - I suppose to be added to the first edition because this use was attempted to be made of it. But the object of the passage is plain enough, and perfectly put historically, and of all-importance as to the doctrine of the church; it was just the turning-point of its ruin. If you can get a sight of the book, you will see I have given a just account of the statement above.

As regards the main subject, it is a horrible system; it upsets the atonement and human responsibility. For if in my unconverted state I have no more soul than a beast, save as to mere mental capacity, how can I be answerable for my sins and grieve over them, and Christ have to bear them? If death be the wages of sin, if I die before Christ comes, I have paid the wages myself. The rest is all fiction; but Mr. - is wrong on every point. Death never means ceasing to exist, but ceasing to exist here, even as to a beast. The fact of death can tell us nothing beyond, though scripture does; while it clearly tells us that man can only kill the body, and that the soul is still there; "all live to him," as the rich man and Lazarus clearly point out, and many passages. The second death is declared to be the lake of fire, not ceasing to exist. As to eternal torment, eternal punishment is found in Matthew 25, and the word there translated punishment is translated torment in 1 John 4:18, and justly: punishment or torment is its sense.

If death is a state of being as he says, then there is a being which is dead, his own statements are self-contradictory. Death is not the extinction of conscious being in man, as Luke 20:38, and Dives and Lazarus shew. Death in sin is not the offence; it is the state of the offender. In the Old Testament, life and incorruptibility were not brought to light, and they want to bring us back to the state of darkness even saints were lying in then. For note, these passages from the Old Testament apply to saints as much as sinners: though they have eternal life, therefore, on their theory, they had ceased to exist, and what eternal life had they? Yet they are the words of saints and not sinners. They will have it that we die, cease to exist, unless we get eternal life, which is only in Christ; but we die all the same if we have eternal life, so that it evidently has nothing to do with it: nay, Christ died - did He cease to exist? Some of them have told me He did. So scripture always in speaking of mortality, speaks of the body, and of the saints consequently as in 1 Corinthians 15, as much as sinners. These are not delivered from this condition by Christ; they are as mortal as before, only dead in theirs. The punishment is not death: "It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment" that is, all imposed by judgment to come is after death: so false are they in every statement they make.

I trust you may be kept from any discussions on these points. The doctrine is rife. Their coming of the Lord is quite secular and earthly too. -, whom you refer to, refused to shut it out, and the unfaithfulness is common. The churches (so-called) are afraid to deal with it, are horribly alarmed about it, but through that, smoothing it all up. Some have gone on to deny all truth, atonement, the divinity of Christ, and the personality of the Holy Ghost, and though this has caused a split in great towns, they keep together as a party in smaller places. I have said all this surely not to engage you in the controversy, but in reply to your letter. The gracious Lord keep us in the simplicity that is in Christ. My kindest love to the saints; may they be kept in quiet simplicity, and content to be nothing. Worldly religion and religious worldliness is the pest of this day, and, though the patience of God be great, and most gracious, will never stand in the day which shall try all things. The church of Philadelphia is our model.

Your affectionate brother in Christ.

[1867.]

[51291E]

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