CHAPTER XIV.

THE SOULS UNDER THE ALTAR.

In Rev. 6:9-11, is another instance where the word, soul, is used in a manner which many take to be proof that there is in man a separate entity, conscious in death, and capable in a disembodied state of performing all the acts, and exercising all the emotions, which pertain to this life. The verses referred to read:--

“And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held. And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth? And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow-servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they were, should be fulfilled.”

On the hypothesis of the popular view, what conclusions must we draw from this testimony?

1. It is assumed that these souls were in Heaven; then the altar under which John saw them must have been the altar of incense, as that is the only altar brought to view in Heaven. Rev. 8:3. But the altar spoken of in the text is evidently the altar of sacrifice upon which they were slain. Therefore to represent them as under the altar of incense, which was never used for sacrifice, is both incongruous and unscriptural.

2. We must conclude that they were in a state of confinement, shut up under the altar--not a condition we would naturally associate with the perfection of heavenly bliss.

3. Solomon says of the dead, that their love, their hatred, and their envy, is now perished. Eccl. 9:6. But that makes no difference; for here are the souls of the holy martyrs still smarting with resentment against their persecutors, and calling for vengeance upon their devoted heads. Is this altogether consistent? Would not the superlative bliss of Heaven swallow up all resentment against those who had done them this good though they meant them harm, and lead them to bless rather than curse the hand that had hastened them thither?

But further, the same view which puts these souls into Heaven, puts the souls of the wicked, at the termination of this mortal life, into the lake of fire, where they are racked with unutterable and unceasing anguish, in full view of all the heavenly host. In proof of this, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus is strenuously urged. But is it so? If it is not, then the popular exposition of that parable must be abandoned. But that supposed stronghold will not readily be surrendered, so it is proper to look at the bearing it has upon the case before us.

According, then, to the orthodox view, the persecutors of these souls were even then, or certainly soon would be, enveloped in the flames of hell, right before their eyes, every fiber of their being quivering with a keenness of torture which no language can express, and of which no mind can adequately conceive.

Here they were, their agony full in view of these souls of the martyrs, and their piercing shrieks of infinite and hopeless woe ringing in their ears; for the rich man and Abraham, you know, could converse together across the gulf. And was not the sight of all this woe enough to glut the most insatiate vengeance? Is there a fiend in hell who could manifest the malevolence of planning and praying for greater vengeance than this? Yet these souls are represented, even under these circumstances, as calling upon God to avenge their blood on their persecutors, and saying “How long?” as if chiding the tardy movements of Providence, in commencing, or intensifying, their torments. Such is the character which the common view attributes to these holy martyrs, and such the spirit with which it clothes a system of religion the chief injunction of which is to forgive, and the chief law of which is mercy. Does it find indorsement in any breast in which there remains a drop of even the milk of human kindness?

4. These souls pray that their _blood_ may be avenged--an article which the uncompounded, invisible, and immaterial soul, as generally understood, is not supposed to possess.

These are some of the difficulties we meet, some of the camels we have to swallow, in taking down the popular view.

But it is urged that these souls must be conscious; for they cry to God. How easily our expositors forget that language has any literal use, when they wish it to be figurative, or that it is ever used as a figure, when they wish it to be literal. There is supposed to be such a figure of speech as personification, in which, under certain conditions, life, action, and intelligence, are attributed to inanimate objects. Thus the blood of Abel is said to have cried to God from the ground. Gen. 4:9, 10. The stone cried out of the wall, and the beam out of the timber answered it. Hab. 2:11. The hire of the laborers, kept back by fraud, cried; and the cry entered into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth. James 5:4. So these souls could cry, in the same sense, and yet be no more conscious than Abel’s blood, the stone, the beam, or the laborer’s hire.

So incongruous is the popular view that Albert Barnes makes haste to set himself right on the record as follows:--

“We are not to suppose that this _literally_ occurred, and that John actually saw the souls of the martyrs beneath the altar--for the whole representation is symbolical; nor are we to suppose that the injured and the wronged in Heaven actually pray for vengeance on those who wronged them, or that the redeemed in Heaven will continue to pray with reference to things on the earth; but it may be fairly inferred from this that there will be _as real_ a remembrance of the wrongs of the persecuted, the injured, and the oppressed, _as if_ such a prayer was offered there; and that the oppressor has as much to dread from the divine vengeance, _as if_ those whom he has injured should cry in Heaven to the God who hears prayer, and who takes vengeance.”--_Notes on Rev. 6._

But it is said that white robes were given them; hence it is further urged that they must be conscious. But this no more follows than it does from the fact that they cried. How was it? They had gone down to the grave in the most ignominious manner. Their lives had been misrepresented, their reputations tarnished, their names defamed, their motives maligned, and their graves covered with shame and reproach, as containing the dishonored dust of the most vile and despicable characters. Thus the church of Rome, which then molded the sentiments of the principal nations of the earth, spared no pains to make her victims an abhorring unto all flesh.

But the Reformation commences its work. It soon begins to be seen that the Romish church is the corrupt and disreputable party, and those against whom it vents its rage are the good, the pure, and the true. The work goes on among the most enlightened nations, the reputation of the church going down, and that of the martyrs coming up, until the corruptions of the papal abomination are fully exposed, and that huge system of iniquity stands before the world in all its naked deformity, while the martyrs are vindicated from all the aspersions under which that Antichristian church had sought to bury them. Then it was seen that they had suffered, not for being vile and criminal, but “for the word of God and for the testimony which they held.” Then their praises were sung, their virtues admired, their fortitude applauded, their names honored, and their memory cherished. And thus it is even to this day. White robes have thus been given unto every one of them.

The whole trouble on such passages as this we conceive to arise from the theological definition of the word soul: From that definition, one is led to suppose that this text speaks of an immaterial, invisible, immortal essence in man, which soars into its coveted freedom on the death of its hindrance and clog, the mortal body. No instance of the occurrence of the word in the original Hebrew or Greek will sustain such a definition. It oftenest means life; and is not unfrequently rendered, person. It applies to the dead as well as to the living, as may be seen by reference to Gen. 2:7, where the word, “living,” need not have been expressed were life an inseparable attribute of the soul; and to Num. 19:13, where the Hebrew Concordance reads, “dead soul.”

The reader is also referred to the previous chapter on Soul and Spirit. From the definitions there given, it is evident that the word soul may mean, and the context requires that it here should mean, simply the martyrs, those who had been slain; the expression, “the souls of them,” being used to designate the whole person. They were represented to John as having been slain upon the altar of papal sacrifice on this earth, and lying dead beneath it. So Dr. Clarke, on this passage, says, “The altar is upon earth, not in Heaven.” They certainly were not alive when John saw them under the fifth seal; for he again brings to view the same company in almost the same language, and assures us that the first time they live after their martyrdom is at the resurrection of the just. Rev. 20:4-6. Lying there, victims of papal blood-thirstiness and oppression, the great wrong, of which their sacrifice was the evidence, called upon God for vengeance. They cried, or their blood cried, even as Abel’s blood cried to God from the ground.

Thus another stronghold of the immortality of the soul must be surrendered to a harmonious interpretation, and the plain teaching, of the word of God.