Page:The Annihilation Theory Compared with Holy Scripture.pdf/9

Rh (a) “For the living know that they shall die, but the dead know not anything; neither have they any more a reward,” etc. If this bears on the subject at all, it proves too much for the believers in the annihilation of the wicked, viz., that there is no future, no reward for the good.

(b) “He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust. As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth: for the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more” (Ps. ciii. 14–16). If we interpret this passage according to the views of those who quote it in support of the theory that man is simply a material being (dust), then by a similar carnal reasoning it tells us that there can be no future resurrection into this world,—“the place thereof shall know it no more,” and this applies to the good as well as to the evil.

(c) Eccl. iii. 19, 20. “For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath: so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast: for all is vanity. All go unto one place: all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” If in the widest sense of the expression men are not superior to beasts, then death makes an end of us entirely, and the talk about resurrection and eternal life for the good is a fable.

But why look at passages of this kind in this sense, which is evidently not the one intended. Of course there is a sense in which the death of man is like that