Carpenter argued as became a good
Unitarian. In his Gifford Lectures on Natural Theology, Professor Stokes
asserts, drawing "on sources of information which lie beyond man's
natural powers," in other words, appealing to the Bible, that God made
man immortal and upright, and endowed him with freedom of the will. As,
without the exercise of this, man would have been as a mere automaton,
he was exposed to the temptation of the devil, and fell. Thereby he
became "subject to death like the lower animals," and by the "natural
effect of heredity," transmitted the taint of sin to his offspring. The
eternal life thus forfeited was restored by the voluntary sacrifice of
Christ, but can be secured only to those who have faith in him. This
doctrine, which is no novel one, is known as "conditional immortality."
Professor Stokes attaches "no value to the belief in a future life by
metaphysical arguments founded on the supposed nature of the soul
itself," and he admits that the purely psychic theory which would
discard the body altogether in regard to the process of thought is beset
by very great difficulties. So he once more has recourse to "sources of
information which lie beyond man's natural powers." Following up certain
distinctions between "soul" and "spirit" drawn by the Apostle Paul in
his tripartite division of man, Professor Stokes, somewhat in keeping
with Dr. Carpenter, assumes an "Ego, which, on the one hand, is not
to be identified with thought, which may exist while thought is in
abeyance, and which may, with the future body of which the Christian
religion speaks, be the medium of continuity of thought.... What
the nature of this body might be we do not know; but we are pretty
distinctly informed that it would be something very different from that
of our present body, very different in its properties and functions, and
yet no less our own than our present body." "Words, words, words," as
Hamlet says.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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