Lan the Dead Talk?
(Continued from page 15)
(1 Timothy 6: 16), but He has promised to
give it to the saints at the end of the world.
Let me give you another proposition. If
the wicked are consigned to hell at death,
then Christ must needs have descended
into hell for us. This is what the so-called
Apostles’ Creed teaches us. “But we see
Jesus, who was made a little lower than the
angels for the suffering of death, crowned
with glory and honor; that He by the grace
of God should taste death for every man.”
Hebrews 2:9. “And that He died for all,
that they which live should not henceforth
live unto themselves, but unto Him which
died for them, and rose again.” 2 Corin-
thians 5: 15.
Irom these texts we gather that Christ
died for every sinner. But if my sins would
damn me eternally in hell, there would be
no opportunity for Christ to have ever been
released from there, were He to pay the
penalty only for the sins of one sinner.
I know, some teach that Christ was in hell
three days and three nights, but this would
not pay the penalty. I merely mention this
to show how inconsistent it is with the
Bible and with reason, to teach that we go
to our reward at death. Remember, if we
were to go to our reward at death, Christ
would be in hell now and you and I would
be without salvation.
This doctrine of the immortality of the
soul, and of conscious existence after death,
had its origin in the first lie, told by the
devil at the tree of knowledge of good and
evil. Satan said, “Ye shall not surely die.”
This lie has echoed and re-echoed through
all the centuries of this earth’s history.
Through it, Satan intends to destroy the
story of the gospel, to lessen confidence in
God, to encourage doubt, and to make
sport of the experience of Calvary.
As we study this subject in the light of
the word of God, we see the wonderful love
and mercy of God extended to the human
family snared in sin. “The wages of sin 1s
death,” was a divine fiat. Death follows
in the train of sin; there is no escaping it;
the penalty must be paid. So as God the
Father and God the Son outlined the plan
of salvation to Adam and Eve, they were
made to understand that this life 1s but a
probationary period in which to perfect
character to stand the test of the judgment.
They understood that as long as the human
family lived in this sinful world, both good
and bad would lie down in the sleep of
death at the close of their life’s work. The
unbeliever has always scoffed at the
thought of the resurrection, and even the
Apostle Paul was arrested, and later suf-
fered death, because he dared to voice his
belief in the resurrection and other kindred
truths. Let us remember that God's ways
are always best. Let us search this question
more diligently and study it more carefully.
Remember, “The truth shall make you
free.”
DECEMBER, 1942
SOCIAL QUESTIONS ANSWERED
By Arthur W. Spalding
War Marriages
Do you advise war marriages? 1 mean,
here am I, a girl eighteen years old, Junior
League, getting wn the scrap, thinking of
WAAC, all that sort of thing. And there 1s
Bob, just turned twenty, sure to be drafted
under the new law. And if he goes to Ireland,
or Guadalcanal, or some other heathen place,
should I remain here as his young wife, or
gust another girl? Probably you don’t know
how young hearts throb, and I may be foolish
to ask you; but Bob seems to think my opinion
would be worth a good deal more if weighted
with your approval.
Probably Bob is right. If I don’t know
how young hearts throb, it's not the fault
of a thousand and one youthful cardiac
organs palpitating before my eyes. I could
even skip a beat myself when requested by
Romeo or especially Juliet. The right an-
swer, however, is going to be given not by
throbbing hearts but by level heads, and I
suspect that Bob's 1s a bit more level than
yours.
I am not going to say, No, unqualifiedly.
Certainly there will be marriages during the
war, and there should be. But who should
marry’—Not children, not immature youth.
Marriage 1s more than a glamorous adven-
ture compassed by a few days of ecstatic
joy. Marriage is a union for life; and life,
my girl, is more than brass buttons and the
alphabet. Not that I disapprove your gay
insouciance. Old heads cannot be put
upon young shoulders; and the world 1s
enriched by the swing and swagger of
youth as well as by the poise of age. I hope
that your high spirits bespeak a courage
that will be proof against the griefs of to-
MOITOW.
For, make no mistake, we are in a tragic
time. The world is in agony; and ‘the
world” means wives, mothers, sisters, chil-
dren, as well as men bending against the
hail of iron and fire. We have as yet in
America little sense of the anguish which
for months and years has been the lot of
Poland, Norway, France, Britain, Yugo-
slavia, Greece, Russia, China. It will come
to us, God knows in what measure. Your
heart perhaps, dear girl, will yet be pierced
through and through. There will be war
widows, there will be orphans. The present
little list of ten thousand or so casualties
will be multiplied manyfold. There will be
“no house where there was not one dead.”
We have to fortify our minds and strengthen
our hearts against that day.
There are many girls who think a “war
marriage’ is insurance against—well, what?
Not grief, nor loneliness, nor widowhood,
surely. But against that stigmatization of
an ‘unclaimed treasure.” All the best men
{
are going away; maybe ten maybe twenty
per cent of them will never come back;
there will be a million or two million girls
who will have missed their chance, who will
always live under the opprobrium of being
old maids. Well, I grant, if there is any
stigma in that, a war marriage will insure
against it; you can write © Mrs.” instead of
“Miss” before your name. But some long-
headed maidens do not see in that any ad-
vantage in the matrimonial market. In
any case, 1t does not bespeak a very com-
prehensive view of life.
More girls, however, are not thinking at
all; they are just “thrilling.” The tempo
of life has been stepped up by the drums of
war, until the heart throbs are around a
hundred and the temperature at fever
point. Marriage, legal or natural, is their
reaction to the excitement. They have
acquired a war complex which is going to
write a greater tragedy in the life of the
nation than all the Messerschmidts and the
Zeros can spell on the battlefield. For the
breakdown of moral concepts and conduct
in women and children, as well as men, will
bring forth after the war a harvest of hell
that no law can master.
What has this to do with your question?
Just this: it indicates that you may have
fever. Not many twenty-year-old boys and
eighteen-year-old girls should marry; In
my lexicon, none. Their minds and judg-
ments are not mature; they may later la-
“ment their decision; the incidence of divorce
is far higher in those who marry in their
teens than in the twenties. Unless we are to
adopt Nazi philosophy and ethics, holding
that the chief function of woman is to breed
more men for the war machine and that the
biological results justify any moral manipu-
lations, we are not impressed by the argu-
ment that the birth rate will fall unless
there are hasty war marriages. The nation
will be better served by one child well bred
than by a thousand spawned in passion and
reared in neglect.
The bride of a few days, then separated
by army orders from her husband for
months, perhaps for years, has no normal
life within the bounds of social ethics. She
cannot receive the attentions of any other
man, even if there were enough men to
spare. If she becomes a mother, she has an
added responsibility which in most cases 1s
not met by her absent husband’s pay, and
she is likely forced into war industries or
some other employment. In that case her
child becomes a member of that tragic
army of “doorkey children” now growing
hugely before our eyes, whom all the re-
sources of the nursery school and hasty
social service cannot relieve. It is true that
war is responsible for this disruption and
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