The State of the Dead and the Destiny of the Wicked
Uriah Smith (1832-1903) church leader, teacher, writer, editor, poet, hymn writer, inventor, and engraver writes about future life. Printed in 1873.
“The root and trunk of all this, is the “taken-for-granted” position that the soul is immortal. But search through your Bible and see if you find it so. See if you will not rather be prepared to exclaim with the eminent commentator, Olshausen, that “the doctrine of the ‘immortality of the soul,’ and the name, are alike unknown to the entire Bible.” See if you can find the death that never dies, and never-dying soul. If not, we ask you to reject the idea at once as a most dangerous and destructive error. Men are thus rejecting it. The leaven is working in the public mind. Men are growing suspicious of the truth of a declaration, first uttered by a not over-truthful character in Eden, perpetuated thence through heathenism, and at last through the medium of the mother of harlots, disseminated through all the veins and channels of Orthodoxy. But truth will work its way up, however deeply the rubbish may have been heaped upon it; and before the bright rising of its light, all antiquated superstitions and traditionary dogmas, will lie exposed in their native deformity.”