common to all beings, whether God, man, animals or plants. Being results from the infusion of this • life-principle into or- ganism, the nature of the being resulting wholly from the kind of organism. Man results spontaneously from the impartation of life-principle to' a human bodily organ- ism. Extinction results necessarily from the separation of the life-principle from the organism. This is all a denial of man's true creation and .of his immortality of spirit, the latter being a truth which Mr. Bussell utterly repudiates. 2. He makes death to be an extinction of being, whether in beast or man, and even in Christ Himself. And he allows no more to death, as the penalty of sin, than a forfeiture of right to continued exist- ence, and no more to "everlasting l i f e " than never-ending existence. He, there- fore, allows no rroral or spiritual character to any Scriptural terms of life and death; they mean only the departure of the life- principle from organism, on the one hand, and the continuance of the universal life- principle in organism, on the other. There is no su"h thing, then, as "the gift of eternal l i f e" as a present boon from heaven to us mortals, but only as a final, unend- ing continuance of our existence in our own human nature. Accordingly. A dam did not die' in the day he sinned, but only began to .iourney toward the tomb. " S h e that liveth in pleasure" jjannnt in any moral or spiritual sense be said to be " d e a d while she l i v e t h ." neither cm it be said, "nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in m e ." 3. The "second d e a t h" is described as extinction of being the second time, to last forever. This means the annihilation of the finally disobedient, an old doctrine of the devil. IV. RESTITUTION. He teaches future probation for all the dead. i | He falsely interprets the Scriptural promise of " t h e restitution of all t h i n g s ." What refers to a restoration of earthly dominion to Israel, and its attendant cir- cumstances. he capriciously construes to refer to a " future probation'' and restor- ation of mankind in general. 2. He claims that only Adam has had a probation for everlasting life, that even he will, and must have a "second proba- t i o n " before he. now extinct, can obtain that life. All others have died in conse- quence of their f a t h e r 's sin and have not been as yet on trial at all for their final destiny. Indeed, he teaches, God is per- mitting sin without probationary restraint
that God meant it to be so, and that he should be the first and exclusive revelator of. the sense of God's entire Bible. He explicitly defines this as " t h e divine pur- pose of concealing the truth until the due time for it to be understood." 3. He obtains his sense of Scripture by means of key-words chosen and capricious- ly explained by himself, by a continual paraphrasing of Scripture language in a way to suit his own mind, by false trans- lations of the original, and even by sacri- legious alteration of the very language of Scripture. 4. His followers and associates tell us that with them, as not with the public, he is undisguised in " t h e presumptuous claim of being the " o n l y , c h a n n e l" of truth, the only one qualified and authorized to in- terpret God's Word, while exposing to them " a mass of evidence of his spiritual degeneracy." "Nevertheless, he does not hesitate to consign to 'second death,' ' outer darkness,' etc., any who differ with him on any ma t t e r s ." I I THE GODHEAD. He denies the God- head of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. His doctrine is strictly unitarian. 1. He makes God Almighty to be a sol- itary being from eternity; who is unre- vealed and unknown, not only in any di- rect way, but even in any mediate way for no one has existed as His equal to re- veal Him. 2. He denies to Jesus Christ all deity and makes Him in His pre-existence to have been only a finite, mortal creature, though the highest of all creatures. He is to be called only " a g o d ," as there are ' ' gods many, and lords ma n y ," a " mighty o n e ," a hero. He is the " o n ly begotten S o n " simply because God generated only Him, while Christ generated all other crea- tures. 3. He denies all being and personality to the. Holy Spirit and makes Him to be only the mind, power or influence of God, of Christ, or of any holy person. All ex- pressions and evidences of the Spirit's per- sonality are ignored by Mr. Russell, or easily brushed aside by his manner of in- terpretation. The saints' " f e l l ow s h i p" and " c ommu n i o n" with the " o t h er Com- f o r t e r " is of no present weight or value; however much of delusive " c o n s o l a t i o n" it may have afforded them all these past centuries. III. MAN. His teachings as to human be- ing, life and death are false. 1. He represents life to be a principle,
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