L MJG 2. T 2003 
 
 __— 1 
 
 THFOLOGiCftL SEMINARY 
 
 BT 701 .H4 1868 
 Heard, J. B. b. 1828. 
 
 The tripartite nature of mar 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/tripartitenatureOOhear 
 

THE 
 
 TRIPARTITE NATURE OF MAN 
 
 SPIRIT, SOUL, AND BODY 
 
 APPLIED TO ILLUSTRATE AND EXPLAIN THE DOCTRINES 
 OE ORIGINAL SIN, THE NEW BIRTH, THE DISEMBODIED 
 STATE, AND THE SPIRITUAL BODY 
 
 REV. J. B. HEARD, M.A. 
 
 SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED 
 
 LIBRARY OF P 
 
 MAY 2 9 
 
 THEOLOGICAL 
 
 EDINBURGH: 
 
 T. & T, CLARK, GEORGE STREET. 
 
 MDCCCLXVIII. 
 
LIBRARY OF PRINCETON 
 
 MAY 2 9 2002 
 THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 .) 
 
PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION. 
 
 In preparing a Second Edition for the Press, I have 
 given the work a thorough revision, and corrected 
 several errors which had escaped my attention when 
 the First Edition was preparing for the Press. 
 
 I desire to thank my critics in general for their en¬ 
 couraging remarks on this attempt to trace out the 
 bearings of that important distinction between the 
 psychical and pneumatical natures, which seem to me 
 to be the key to many theological questions still under 
 controversy. I have been charged with inconsistency 
 in describing the conscience as the dead or dormant 
 pneuma in the unregenerate. If dead, my critics say, 
 it is not dormant; and, if dormant, not dead. But I 
 do not consider dead and dormant to be logical contra¬ 
 dictories, the one excluding the other. I can conceive 
 the conscience to be dead as to its higher or spiritual 
 functions, properly so called ; while, at the same time, 
 it is only dormant as the rule of right and wrong be¬ 
 tween man and man. Death and sleep are only differ- 
 
 b 
 
VI 
 
 Preface to Second Edition. 
 
 ences of degree—in the one, there is the suspension 
 of sense; in the other, of all the functions of life. 
 Were the conscience wholly dead, then, as it seems to 
 me, there could be no awaking it out of sleep. Men 
 would be beyond the reach of redemption, as we have 
 reason to suppose the devils are. On the other hand, 
 were the conscience awake and active, men would not 
 be in a fallen state at all, and the new birth would be 
 identical with the birth of the flesh. Truth lies in a 
 golden mean between these two extremes, to which 
 the theories of Augustine and Pelagius incline. From 
 attending to this distinction between Psyche and 
 Pneuma, the Greek fathers seem to me to have reached 
 that golden mean, which was lost in Latin theology 
 generally, and which even the Reformers, Lutheran and 
 Calvinist, alike failed to reach. If I have succeeded 
 in pointing out the true Eireniken to the free-will 
 controversies which have died out in our day from 
 sheer exhaustion of the subject, I shall only feel that I 
 have acted on Bishop Butler’s wise suggestion, “that 
 it is not at all incredible that a book which has been 
 so long in the possession of mankind should contain 
 many truths as yet undiscovered, and that the whole 
 scheme of Scripture is only to be understood by 
 thoughtful men tracing out obscure hints, as it were, 
 dropped us accidentally.” 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 A very few words will explain the object and scope 
 of the following treatise. It is the attempt to weave 
 into one connected whole those passages scattered up 
 and down the Word of God which speak of human 
 nature as consisting of three parts—spirit, soul, and 
 body. The distinction between soul and body is 
 obvious, and is as old as philosophy itself. But what 
 of the distinction between soul and spirit ? It is this 
 which distinguishes Christian psychology from that of 
 the schools. The Pneuma is that part of man which 
 is made in the image of God—it is the conscience, or 
 faculty of God-consciousness which has been depraved 
 by the fall, and which is dormant, though not quite 
 dead. The pneuma in the psychical or natural man 
 has some little sense of the law of God, but no real 
 love for Himself, and therefore it drives man from 
 God, instead of drawing him to God.* 
 
 * A remark of Auberlen (Bei Jesus ist nienjals von einem Gewissen die 
 Rede, weil er den Geist als Kraft besitzst, v. Grist, Herzog’s Encyclopadie, 
 vol. iv. p. 733) suggested to the writer the true theory of what the Pneuma 
 is at present in fallen human nature. He stood long in doubt whether to 
 
vili Preface . 
 
 Thus the psychology of the schools is radically dif¬ 
 ferent from that of Scripture; yet to this day divines 
 treat the distinction of soul and spirit as if it were only 
 a verbal one, and speak of mortal body and immortal 
 soul in phrases which are unconsciously borrowed from 
 Plato rather than from St Paul. That philosophy 
 should be content with a division of human nature into 
 two parts only, “ the reasonable soul and human flesh 
 subsisting,” is neither strange nor inconsistent. The 
 wonder rather would have been if the Pneuma had 
 been detected by those old Greeks who, with all their 
 wisdom, knew not God, and therefore knew not of a 
 dormant faculty of God-consciousness which exists 
 only as a bare capacity for good, not as an active 
 energy or habit in man until he is born from above. 
 Thus the trichotomy of human nature into spirit, soul, 
 and body is part of that “hidden wisdom which eye 
 had not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man con¬ 
 ceived” till it was taught us by God in his Word. 
 The Bible which contains the only sound system of 
 theology, is also the teacher of the only sound system 
 of psychology. Yet divines have paid too little 
 attention to the psychology of the Bible, and in 
 consequence obscurities, if not positive errors, have 
 
 describe it as dead altogether or as dormant only. Now he sees that what the 
 moralist describes as conscience is the same as the Pneuma of Scripture, with 
 this important difference, however, that the unconverted conscience is only 
 conscious of the law of God, not of the gracious character of the Lawgiver, 
 and when sincere, is an “excusing or accusing conscience,” not an approving. 
 It is only when the conscience is quickened and converted, and when perfect 
 love has cast out fear, that the Spirit beareth witness with our spirit that we 
 are the sons of God (Rom. viii. 16). 
 
IX 
 
 Preface . 
 
 crept into theology, which can only be cleared up by 
 bringing the light of Biblical psychology to bear on 
 theology. 
 
 This was attempted in the early Church, but only 
 carried out with very indifferent success. The Greek 
 Fathers, generally speaking, understood the psycho¬ 
 logy of Scripture aright: but unfortunately confound¬ 
 ing the Platonic Logos or Nous with the Pneuma of 
 the New Testament, they either distinguished the 
 pneumatical and psychical as the intellectual and the 
 carnal man respectively (which was the root error of 
 the Gnostics), or confounded in a semi-pantheistic way 
 the human Pneuma with the divine, which, in the case 
 of Origen and Apollinaris, led to distinct heresies, which 
 the Church afterwards formally condemned. The 
 consequence of this was, that in the reaction against 
 these errors the Latin Church generally, as guided by 
 Augustine and Jerome, rejected altogether the distinc¬ 
 tion between Psyche and Pneuma, for which the Latin 
 tongue was not flexible enough to find equivalents, and 
 so the usual dichotomy of man into body and soul only 
 became the prevailing view throughout the West. 
 A proof, by the way, that the Athanasian creed was 
 of Latin origin is seen in this, that no Greek writer 
 would have made a dogmatic statement of the union 
 of the two natures in one person in such terms as these: 
 “Perfectus Deus perfectus homo, ex anima rational! 
 et humana carne subsistens.” The expression furnishes 
 not only documentary evidence as to the probable date 
 and authority of the creed itself, but also proves the 
 complete oblivion into which the Pauline distinction of 
 
X 
 
 Preface . 
 
 Psyche and Pneuma had fallen. In plucking up the 
 tares of Origen and other gnostic errors, the Latin 
 Fathers had plucked up the wheat as well. 
 
 As Augustine reigned as a Church teacher without 
 a rival not only up to, but even two centuries after the 
 Reformation, it is not surprising that the true psychology 
 of Scripture was not discovered even by Melancthon, 
 whose Liber de Anima , printed in 1552, is not only 
 scholastic in form, but also dichotomist in spirit, and 
 throws no real light on the great doctrines of original 
 sin and the new birth, to which the distinction of 
 Pneuma and Psyche is in truth the only key. 
 
 Real Biblical criticism, which may be said to have 
 begun with Bengel, 1750, has at last ascertained and 
 set on the sure foundation of a comparative study of 
 proof passages the true psychology of the New Testa¬ 
 ment. 
 
 A number of recent writers, principally German, 
 have caught the true meaning of the distinction between 
 Pneuma and Psyche. Roos, Schubert, Olshausen, 
 Beck, Haussman, Oehler, Hofmann, Meyer, Goschel, 
 Von Rudloff, a general in the Prussian army (it is only 
 in Prussia that generals handle points in speculative 
 theology), and lastly, Delitzsch, have discussed the 
 trichotomy of spirit, soul, and body with varying 
 degrees of ability and success. In this country Bishop 
 Ellicott is, so far as we are aware, the only divine who 
 has given the subject more than a passing notice. A 
 valuable sermon on the threefold nature of man, in the 
 Destiny of the Creature , contains some sound and sug¬ 
 gestive hints on which a correct system of Christian 
 
XI 
 
 Preface. 
 
 psychology may be built up. Dean Alford has also 
 some good remarks on the distinction in his Notes to 
 the New Testament; and several writers in critical and 
 theological reviews, both English and German, have 
 thrown out a few scattered hints which show that they 
 have caught the distinction, though they do not, in 
 most cases, carry it out correctly into details. They 
 generally either follow Philo in classifying the Psyche 
 under the three principles—the nutritive, the emotional, 
 and the rational, as subdivisions of it—or they confound 
 the Psyche with the animal life, from which it is dis¬ 
 tinct, and then interpolate a third faculty called Nous, 
 distinct and intermediate between Psyche and Pneuma. 
 Now the key to Christian psychology seems to be to 
 take Aristotle’s psychology as far as it goes, and at the 
 point where Aristotle’s draft of the psychical man stops, 
 to begin with that of Scripture. 
 
 We shall gather in this way that there are two 
 parts of human nature, the body and psyche, or sense 
 and intellect, of which Aristotle knew as much as we 
 do, and a third faculty, the pneuma of St Paul, which 
 lies wholly beyond the psychical man’s horizon, and 
 of which all that we know is to be gathered from one 
 book—the Bible. Thus, of the three forms of con¬ 
 sciousness,—sense-, self-, and God-consciousness, 
 Philosophy can tell us of the two former, Revelation 
 alone discovers to us the existence of the third and 
 highest. The organ of Godxonsciousness, or the 
 pneuma and its function , or the life of God in the 
 awakened spirit, are thus made known to us in God’s 
 word, and there only. If man’s existence were bounded 
 
Xli 
 
 Preface. 
 
 by time, and the Being of God were only one of 
 many hypotheses to account for the existence of mat¬ 
 ter, then Aristotle’s treatise, De Anima, would pro¬ 
 bably be a complete, as it is undoubtedly a correct 
 draft of human nature as far as it goes. It is exactly 
 where the psychology of the Schools stops that Chris¬ 
 tian psychology takes up the account of man’s origin, 
 and of the end and aim of his existence. Till we 
 clearly understand wherein the image of God in man 
 consists, we shall miss the meaning of the distinction 
 between Psyche and Pneuma, and our criticisms will 
 be verbal only, not piercing, as the Word of God is 
 said to do, to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, 
 and (or, as if) of the joint and marrow. 
 
 That this has not been done in any thoroughgoing 
 way before is our excuse for venturing into print. 
 Scattered hints have been thrown out by modern ex¬ 
 positors of Scripture, interpreting such passages as i 
 Cor. ii. 14, 1 Thess. v. 23, Heb. iv. 12, but the full 
 inferences which flow from these psychological hints 
 of God’s word have never, so far as we are aware, 
 been fully traced out. German divines, who have 
 traced out in detail the distinction between Psyche 
 and Pneuma, have not built on it any formal argu¬ 
 ment ; 1, for the nature of original sin; 2, for the 
 new birth; 3, for consciousness in the intermediate 
 state; and 4, for the nature of the pneumatical or 
 resurrection body. Even Delitzsch, with much that 
 is most valuable and suggestive, has treated the ques¬ 
 tion as one of pure psychology, rather than as one 
 
Xlll 
 
 Preface. 
 
 which is the key to four of the cardinal doctrines of 
 theology. Thus the distinction between applied and 
 pure mechanics exactly expresses the distinction be¬ 
 tween the present work and Delitzscli’s Psychologie, 
 to which we desire here once for all to express our 
 
 deep and constant obligations.* 
 
 The present writer felt that if the distinction were 
 Scriptural at all, it was much more than a mere verbal 
 distinction, and he has endeavoured to use it to clear 
 up what previously seemed to him to be unexplained, 
 in our popular evangelical theology, i.e., how, on the 
 one hand, man’s intellect is alive and interested in the 
 works of God, but dead or indifferent to his person 
 and character. There must be some stupendous fault 
 in human nature to account for this, of which of coui se 
 the psychology of Aristotle would take no notice, but 
 which the Bible would explain, and which, when 
 rightly understood, would throw light on the doctiine 
 of original sin and of the new birth. The wntei has 
 thus used the Scripture trichotomy of spirit, soul, and 
 body to interpret and explain, doctrines which must 
 remain dogmas until internal experience comes to con¬ 
 firm external authority, and we feel that they are not 
 
 * Messrs Clark will confer a benefit on English Theology by a translation 
 of Delitzsch’s Psychologie, which we are glad to see is promised to the readers 
 of Clark’s Theological Library. The writer will bfe well rewarded if the 
 present work draws attention to Delitzsch’s work, which is by far the most 
 learned which Germany has yet produced on the subject. For non-theolo- 
 gical readers we should particularly recommend Schubert’s Geschichte der Seele, 
 or General von Rudloff’s Die Lehre non Menschen. It is only in Germany that 
 military men write at all on such subjects, and write as if theology and not 
 tactics had been their profession in life. 
 
XIV 
 
 Preface. 
 
 only theologically but also psychologically true as well. 
 If the psychology of Scripture thus recommends its 
 theology, it is only another instance of the old re¬ 
 mark, that the obscurities of the Bible arise from our 
 viewing its truths from one side only. We must 
 walk about Jerusalem and mark well her bulwarks, 
 and tell the towers thereof,” if we would see how 
 “ s ^ le beautiful for situation, and the joy of the 
 whole earth.” There is nothing, it has been said, 
 makes success like success. It is much more correct 
 to say that nothing serves the truth so much as truth. 
 Separate fragments of truth, when they are found to 
 piece in together, give us that sense of conviction 
 which nothing can afterwards shake. So it was that 
 the discovery of the telescope set at rest the Coperni- 
 can theory, which, however mathematically true and 
 undeniable, wanted this optical confirmation, to over¬ 
 turn the prejudice of the senses and the partiality of 
 human nature for old opinions. We thus look for¬ 
 ward to Christian Psychology, setting the old truths 
 of theology in a new light, by which the cavils of the 
 mere psychical man at the new birth will be seen to 
 be only cavils, the objections of a blind man to the 
 laws of light, or a deaf man to the laws of sound. 
 The theology of the Bible tells us of the f unction of 
 spiritual-mindedness; its psychology tells us of the 
 organ itself. The one thus explains the other, and in 
 the mouth of two witnesses every word is established. 
 If the writer has thus succeeded in underpropping our 
 current evangelical theology with a sound psycholo- 
 
XV 
 
 Preface. 
 
 gical principle, on which to explain the doctrines of 
 original sin, the new birth, consciousness in the Inter¬ 
 mediate state, and the spiritual body, his studies will 
 not have been undertaken in vain, and he will bless 
 God for enabling him to direct others to a solution 
 which has cleared up some of the difficulties of belief 
 to his own mind. 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE CASE STATED. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Psychology and Ethics are the two sciences to which the 
 Bible lays peculiar claim, .... 
 
 The tripartite nature of man marked out in Scripture, . 4 
 
 Why the distinction of Psyche and Pneuma was not attended 
 
 to by the Latin Fathers, . • • • 7 
 
 Abuses of the distinction by mystics and others led to its rejec¬ 
 tion in toto, . 
 
 The psychology of Scripture throws light on its theology, . 13 
 
 Function and organ are correlative terms ; hence the Bible, 
 which teaches us the function of spiritual wickedness, also 
 tells us of the organ which discharges that function, . 20 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NATURAL AND 
 REVEALED RELIGION CONTRASTED. 
 
 The Being of a God, our accountability to Him, and our 
 existence after death are the three postulates of all re¬ 
 ligion, • 
 
 How far natural religion can prove these postulates trye, . 24 
 
 Natural religion transforms the spiritual instinct that theie is 
 an existence after death into the doctrine of the natural im¬ 
 mortality of the soul, 
 
 3° 
 
XV111 
 
 Contents. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The confusion between the spiritual instinct and the logical 
 
 argument which is supposed to underprop it cleared up, . 35 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION OF MAN. 
 
 Gen. ii. 7 implies rather than asserts the trichotomy. 
 
 The material cause, . the dust of the earth. 
 
 The formal cause, . the breath of lives. 
 
 The final cause, . man became a living soul, . 40 
 
 The psyche or living soul is thus the union point of two op¬ 
 
 posite natures, flesh and spirit, as water is the identity of 
 two gases, . . . . . .46 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 THE RELATION OF BODY TO SOUL IN 
 SCRIPTURE. 
 
 5 1 
 
 55 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 OF THE RELATION OF SOUL AND SPIRIT 
 IN SCRIPTURE. 
 
 Heb. iv. 12 teaches us how to discern between soul and 
 spirit, 
 
 The heart, not the brain, was supposed to be the centre of 
 thought and feeling, ..... 
 
 But the psyche is not localised in any single organ, but is dif¬ 
 fused through the whole body. Thus the Scriptural 
 account of the psyche as the totality of man’s natural life 
 exactly agrees with that of Aristotle, 
 
 60 
 
Co?i tents. 
 
 XIX 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Too great stress is not to be laid on the distinction between 
 
 Ruach and Nephesh in the Old Testament, . . 66 
 
 So with the teaching of our Lord, till the Holy Ghost was 
 given, the doctrine of the human Pneuma lies in the back¬ 
 ground, . . . . . .69 
 
 1 Thes. v. 23 considered, . . . *73 
 
 Heb. iv. 12, . . . . .76 
 
 1 Cor. ii. 11-14, . . . . .81 
 
 James iii. 15 and Jude. v. 19 compared, . . .88 
 
 Result of a comparison of those five passages of the New 
 Testament. Where Aristotle’s psychology leaves off, 
 Scripture takes up its account of the nature of man. Thus 
 the silence of Aristotle as to the existence of the Pneuma 
 is negative evidence of the strongest kind, 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PSYCHE AND PNEUMA IN THE LIGHT OF 
 CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 
 Mansel and Maurice’ controversies as to the existence of a 
 religious instinct in man, .... 
 
 Religious functions suggest some corresponding organ : this is 
 the Pneuma, ..... 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE UNITY UNDER DIVERSITY OF THE THREE 
 PARTS OF MAN’S NATURE. 
 
 The distinction of spirit, soul, and body does not imply three 
 separate natures in man, 
 
 Scripture psychology distinct alike from materialism and 
 spiritualism, .... 
 
 Tertullian’s divide et opera tested, . 
 
 ri 5 
 118 
 
 I2 5 
 
xx Content s. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Man’s nature is not complete unless as the union of spirit, 
 soul, and body; hence the need of the resurrection of the 
 
 body, . . • • • • • 1 3 ° 
 
 This doctrine the test of the difference between philosophy and 
 
 revealed religion, . . • • • 1 3 1 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 ANALOGIES FROM THE DOCTRINE OF THE 
 TRINITY TO THE TRICHOTOMY IN MAN 
 CONSIDERED. 
 
 Homo imago Trinitatis : how far the analogy sound, . 138 
 
 The mystics attempt to transcend creationism—Pantheistic 
 
 results of all theosophy—Hegel, . . • *45 
 
 CEIAPTER IX. 
 
 OF THE PNEUMA AS THE FACULTY WHICH 
 DISTINGUISHES MAN FROM THE BRUTE. 
 
 The old distinctions between reason and instinct are giving 
 
 way before the attacks of modern physiology, . • 149 
 
 The real distinction between man and the brute lies in the will 
 
 or moral character more than in the intellect, . • 1 5 5 
 
 Conscience, or God-consciousness, is the true differentia 
 
 between man and the brute, . . . .157 
 
 Conscience identified with the Pneuma in fallen man, . 159 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE STATE OF THE PNEUMA IN MAN SINCE 
 
 THE FALL. 
 
 Adam’s nature before the fall, innocent, and with a capacity 
 
 of becoming holy, . . . . .162 
 
Contents . 
 
 xxi 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Pneuma in man is the regulative faculty : this has been 
 
 deadened by the fall, . . . • .169 
 
 The nature of original sin privative only, not positive. The 
 
 other theory would make God the author of evil, . 183 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 THE QUESTION OF TRADUCIANISM AND CRE¬ 
 ATIONISM SOLVED BY THE DISTINCTION 
 BETWEEN SOUL AND SPIRIT. 
 
 History of the Controversy—Tertullian—Augustine—the 
 
 Schoolmen—the Reformers—Modern German Divines, 189 
 
 The traducian theory true of the descent of body and soul— 
 
 For the quickening of the Pneuma, the creationist theory pre¬ 
 ferable, . • - • • *94 
 
 The distinction of per afflatum and per spirltum illustrates the 
 
 nature of the Pneuma before and after conversion, . 197 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 CONVERSION TO GOD EXPLAINED AS THE 
 QUICKENING OF THE PNEUMA. 
 
 Men are born into the world with a living body and soul, but 
 
 with a dormant spirit, . • • .201 
 
 The witness of conscience is not spiritual life, but prepares the 
 way for it, . • • • .207 
 
 The nature of the new birth explained, . . .210 
 
 The relation of regeneration to sanctification : the one is the 
 
 act, the other the habit, . • • .217 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE QUESTION OF THE NATURAL IMMOR¬ 
 TALITY OF THE PSYCHE CONSIDERED. 
 
 The moralist throws on the psychologist the onus prohandi 
 that death is extinction of man, 
 
 C 
 
 22 I 
 
XXII 
 
 Contents. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Superstition, philosophy, and revelation, all three agree in teach¬ 
 ing that man exists after death, but here their agreement ends, 222 
 The superstitious theory of disembodied ghosts, The philoso¬ 
 
 phic theory of the Immortality of the Psyche, . 224 
 
 I. The metaphysical proof for Immortality of the soul con¬ 
 sidered, . • . . . 23 1 
 
 II. The ontological proof, . . . .237 
 
 III. The teleological proof, . . . .241 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 APPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF THE TRI¬ 
 CHOTOMY TO DISCOVER THE PRINCIPLE 
 OF FINAL REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS. 
 
 The Pneuma, not the Psyche, the true source of man’s immor¬ 
 tality, ...... 249 
 
 The hereafter, as well as the welfare of mankind, results from 
 
 the n^eritorious work of Christ, . . .250 
 
 Three theories as to the immortalily of the soul, . .252 
 
 Degrees of punishment will be proportioned to degrees of 
 
 wickedness—carnal, psychical, and pneumatical, . .258 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 
 Consciousness during intermediate state held by the Reformers, 261 
 The dependence of the soul on the body would favour the 
 theory of the sleep of the soul. But, on the other hand, 
 Scripture asserts that if absent from the body we are present 
 with the Lord, ..... 263 
 
Contents. 
 
 xxm 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 The distinction between soul and spirit clears up this contra¬ 
 diction between reason and revelation, . .268 
 
 The contrast between the intermediate and the final state has 
 been generally lost sight of since the Reformation, . 273 
 
 Bishop Butler anticipated that, by use of the inductive method, 
 discoveries would be made in the Book of Revelation, the 
 same as in the book of nature, . . .277 
 
 The scriptural distinction between Hades and Heaven pointed 
 out by Lange and others, . . . 279 
 
 The intermediate state one of progression in holiness. Isaac 
 Taylor’s theory on this subject, . . . 288 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE RESURRECTION AND SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 The intermediate state is the Sabbath-day ; the resurrection, 
 the Easter morning, . 
 
 The resurrection body is said to be a pneumatical body, 
 Buffon’s definition of man as an intelligence using organs more 
 applicable to man hereafter than at present, 
 
 Bichat’s distinction of the nutritive and sensitive life, 
 
 The nutritive life, or the flesh, will not rise with the resurrec¬ 
 tion body, ...... 
 
 The transformation of insects teaches the right doctrine of re¬ 
 surrection, ...... 
 
 This analogy was misunderstood by the ancients, 
 
 Bonnet’s Palingenesie suggests the true theory of the spiritual 
 body, ...... 
 
 Error of Swedenborg and his school on this subject. 
 Mediaeval doctrine of resurrection of the flesh, 
 
 Scripture account of resurrection midway between these two 
 extremes, ...... 
 
 296 
 
 298 
 
 3°2 
 
 3°9 
 
 312 
 
 3 2 3 
 
 3 2 3 
 
 333 
 
 334 
 344 
 
 348 
 
XXIV 
 
 Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 SUMMARY. 
 
 Eight points established from Scripture. 
 
 1. Man a tripartite nature, 
 
 2. With two tendencies, flesh and spirit. 
 
 3. The fall deadened the spirit. 
 
 4. The Pneuma in fallen man is conscience. 
 
 5. The new birth is the quickening of that Pneuma. 
 
 6. Man’s immortality not in the Psyche, but in the Pneuma. 
 
 7. Consciousness of the spirit-soul in the intermediate state. 
 
 8. The resurrection is the transformation from a psychical to a 
 
 pneumatical body. 
 
 Concluding reflections. Theological torpor arising from not apply¬ 
 ing the inductive method to Scripture. The method of authority 
 still in force even in Reformed churches. 
 
The Tripartite Nature of Mail. 
 
 THE CASE STATED. 
 
 SYCHOLOGY and Ethics are the two sub¬ 
 jects on which the Bible may be expected 
 to speak with authority. However distinct 
 the orbits of reason and faith may be, they intersect 
 each other at least at two points. Self-knowledge, 
 and the knowledge of our duty, are the two sciences 
 which descend from heaven, or of which a revelation 
 from heaven must determine at least the outlines. 
 Psychology and ethics must be Christian, if Christianity 
 is to exist at all. Whatever may be said of its rela¬ 
 tion to other sciences, the Bible will fall behind the 
 age, and lose the allegiance of the educated classes, if 
 it cannot maintain its supremacy in the department of 
 the mental and moral sciences. These it claims by 
 right as its own. It professes to be a revelation of 
 the character of God ; from the nature of the case, 
 it must also be a revelation of the character of man. 
 Beholding, as in a glass, his natural face, however he 
 may go away and straightway forget it, man sees in 
 the Scripture his real nature, its present corruption, 
 
2 
 
 The Case Stated. 
 
 and capabilities of future glory. Whatever may be 
 said about leaving the physical sciences to take their 
 own course, unfettered by traditional interpretations of 
 the word of God, the same cannot be said of the moral 
 sciences. There must surely be some point where we 
 must take our stand in conceding to the demands of 
 free inquiry. That point seems to be where, to use 
 Locke’s phrase, the eye attempts to turn in on itself 
 and exercise that introspection which, according to 
 Bacon, and the Positive school which exaggerates his 
 axioms, is a non-natural effort of thought. We shall 
 not stop here to discuss this point with the Positivists. 
 But while we do not admit that the highest end of 
 man is, by the exercise of his outward faculties, to 
 mould external nature to his convenience and use, it 
 cannot be denied that in this direction his faculties 
 work most readily and with most success. When he 
 turns his powers of observation in on himself, he seems 
 to work awkwardly and under restraint. The mind 
 upon matter works more readily, but is somewhat de¬ 
 based thereby. As Shakespeare spoke of himself:— 
 
 « Thence comes it that my name receives a brand, 
 
 And almost thence my nature is subdued 
 To that it works in, like the dyer’s hand.” 
 
 So it is when the mind, forgetting her high design, and 
 taking to work in clay, has become of the earth earthy. 
 But, on the other hand, no sooner does she turn in on 
 herself, and attempt the higher task of introspection, 
 than she finds herself lost in the dark, and deafened 
 with a din of controversy, on words without meaning. 
 
The Case Stated. 
 
 3 
 
 From Zeno of Elea to Hegel, subjective logic has been 
 a mighty maze, but without a plan; a labyrinth with- 
 out an Ariadne’s thread; a riddle, with no CEdipus 
 to answer it. The explanation of man’s inability to 
 know himself is acknowledged in the gnome:— 
 
 “ E ccelo descendit yvujOi ffsaurov.” 
 
 But this is only half the truth. Heaven must not only 
 bid us know ourselves, but also teach us the way by 
 which to do it. 
 
 Thus, however it may fare with the other natural 
 sciences, psychology and ethics are the two depart¬ 
 ments of human knowledge which Revelation claims as 
 its own. It can never give up its right to regulate these. 
 It must tell us of our nature as made in the image 
 of God ; that is the task of Christian psychology. It 
 must point out the duties of such a Godlike nature; 
 that is the task of Christian ethics. 
 
 We are not without a system of Christian ethics. 
 The writings of Chalmers and Vinet, Wardlaw and 
 Wayland, Harless and Rothe have established the de¬ 
 pendence of morality upon religion in a way which 
 could not have been anticipated a century ago. The 
 Christian code of ethics is not treated as obsolete, 
 as Bishop Butler declared it was by the polite world 
 of his day. But we are as yet very far from recognis¬ 
 ing a scheme of Christian psychology distinct from the 
 psychology of the schools, in the same sense that the 
 ethics of the Bible is distinct from the ethics of India 
 and Greece. To this day divines accept the distribu¬ 
 tion of the mind which the reigning philosophy, what- 
 
The Case Stated. 
 
 4 
 
 ever it be, lays down, and work upon it, quite uncon¬ 
 scious that it may be wholly subversive of what the 
 Bible teaches of the inner nature of man. The old 
 scholastic division of the mind into memory, intelli¬ 
 gence, and will— 
 
 “ Memoria, intelligenzia, e voluntade.” 
 
 —Dante Purg. xxv. 85.— 
 
 which we find in Dante, and traces of which appear in 
 Bacon’s division of the sciences into history, poetry, 
 and philosophy, lasted until the time of Descartes. 
 Then arose the new school of dichotomists, who re¬ 
 peated the Cartesian formula of mind and body, 
 reason and instinct, until it has stamped itself into our 
 theology, as well as into all other modes of thought. 
 The controversy between those who took reason for a 
 faculty sui generis , and those who made it only a modi¬ 
 fication of instinct, has lasted down to our own day. 
 There have been almost endless refinements and dis¬ 
 tinctions from Locke’s reflection and Leibnitz’s monads, 
 down to Kant’s analytic and synthetic faculty, and 
 Coleridge’s repeated distinction between reason and 
 understanding, the Vernunft and Verstand of Schelling. 
 
 All the while we have scarcely taken the trouble to 
 ask whether the Bible might not throw light on this 
 and similar questions. Men have persisted in disput¬ 
 ing on a point which had been settled beforehand, if 
 they had only thought of consulting the oracles of God. 
 When it is said that man was created “ in the image 
 and after the likeness of God,” these two expressions 
 might have suggested—the one, that essential part of 
 
The Case Stated. 
 
 5 
 
 man which sin has not quite effaced; the other (like¬ 
 ness, bfjjoiuxug in the LXX.) that moral resemblance 
 which sin has destroyed. And again, the New Testa¬ 
 ment distinction between Psyche and Pneuma might 
 have set, we should have supposed, almost every 
 thinker on the right track for a true theory of human 
 nature. The tripartite nature of man, which heathen 
 philosophers had guessed at, but never truly discovered, 
 was as clearly intimated in Scripture as any other fact 
 connected with human nature. We can only attri¬ 
 bute the adherence of divines to the old psychology 
 of body and soul partly to timidity, and partly to not 
 seeing clearly how much a defective psychology affected 
 their conclusions in theology. 
 
 We do not mean to imply that the trichotomy of 
 man, as made up of body, soul, and spirit, was not 
 traced out by the early Greek fathers. The distinction 
 of Psyche and Pneuma,* on which the doctrine of the 
 trichotomy chiefly rests, was caught by the Greek 
 fathers, but in most cases they founded no teaching on 
 it; and as the only fathers who did so, Origen and 
 
 * It is only what we might expect., that the distinction of Psyche and 
 Pneuma was caught by the Greek, but lost or neglected by the Latin fathers. 
 The Latin language wanted the precision of the Greek, and spiritus and anima 
 never acquired the same precision of meaning as Pneuma and Psyche. 
 Irenseus, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Didymus of Alex¬ 
 andria, Gregory of Nyssa, and Basil of Csesarea, all note the distinction of 
 soul and spirit, and designate the spirit as that which bears the truest image 
 of God. With the error of Apollinaris, who denied to Christ a human 
 Pneuma, the reaction came, and the trichotomy fell into disfavour, and was 
 neglected even in the East. In the West it cannot be said to have ever re¬ 
 ceived the attention it deserved. Tertullian opposed it from the first, and 
 Augustine thought it safest to neglect it .—See Bishop Ellicott's Destiny oj the 
 Creature , p. X 17 • 
 
6 
 
 The Case Stated. 
 
 Apollinaris, fell into error on the subject, we hardly 
 wonder that Augustine thought it safer to pass it by 
 as an unprofitable distinction : Origen, by holding that 
 the spirit of man was unitibtKrw tw yiioovuv, impassive 
 of evil, led the way to a theory of the purgation of evil 
 by punishment, which must result in the salvation of 
 all; Apollinaris, by denying to Christ a human Pneuma, 
 and declaring that the Holy Spirit in His case supplied 
 the place of the third part of our nature, thus im¬ 
 paired his humanity. Thus the doctrine of the Pneuma 
 fell into undeserved reproach, and at last was quite 
 lost sight of. 
 
 But it might have been otherwise. To take one 
 instance only out of many. If Augustine, the autho¬ 
 rity and the oracle—not only of his own age, but of 
 the whole western Church down to our day, had 
 adopted the trichotomy, instead of the prevailing di¬ 
 chotomy of body and soul, which is still the popular 
 conception of man’s nature, how much smoother would 
 have been the course of theology, how much less dis¬ 
 turbed by a controversy in which we now see that 
 both sides were right in what they affirmed, and 
 wrong only in what they denied. Pelagius asserted, 
 and Augustine denied the reality of human goodness, 
 till, heated by controversy, the one bordered on deny¬ 
 ing the fall, and certainly quite frittered away its mean¬ 
 ing ; while the other went so far as to call the virtues 
 of the heathen “ splendid vices,” and in his greatest 
 work, “The City of God,” fell into a narrow and 
 half-Manichean conception Qf the world as divided into 
 two cities, owning allegiance to two distinct rulers, 
 
The Case Stated. 
 
 7 
 
 God and the devil, and ending, of course, in an eter¬ 
 nal separation at the last day. Had Augustine only 
 adopted from the Greek the distinction of Pneuma 
 and Psyche, and bent the still living Latin tongue to 
 the exact use of spiritus and anima, as geist and seele 
 are distinguished in German, or as esprit and time 
 originally were in French, or as spirit and soul might 
 be even still in English—what clouds of controversy 
 which have troubled the Church for the last fourteen 
 centuries might be rolled away! Had Augustine but 
 recognised the trichotomy, and taught that the Ruach , 
 or pneuma or spiritus— i.e., the inspired and Godlike 
 part of man, was deadened by the fall, and that in that 
 state of spiritual injury a propagation of soul and body 
 from Adam to his posterity must ex traduce carry with 
 it a defective, and hence a diseased constitution, his 
 refutation of Pelagius would have been sufficiently 
 convincing, without hurrying him into an exaggeration 
 in the opposite extreme, in which moralists who oppose 
 theology have not failed to see the weakness, and to 
 profit by it. 
 
 This is only one instance of several which we shall 
 point out in the course of the following inquiry, of the 
 solution which a sound psychology offers to a sound 
 system of theology. Error latet in generalibus. Theo- 
 logy borrows its axioms or first laws of thought from 
 the reigning school of philosophy, often quite uncon¬ 
 scious that they are so borrowed, and then finds, to its 
 dismay, errors in the conclusion which it did not sus¬ 
 pect in the premises. It is not till the wedge of gold 
 or the Babylonian garment has been found in the floor 
 
8 
 
 The Case Stated. 
 
 of the tent, that we acknowledge that the difficulties 
 which emerge in theology are difficulties brought in by 
 ourselves from philosophy. Even still, though systematic 
 divinity is on the decline, divines are a great deal too 
 facile in admitting as axioms certain philosophical 
 theories, which have come dowm by tradition from 
 heathen schools of thought. There is something in 
 Tertullian’s rough saying, Quid philosophus ac Chris- 
 tianus , though he was by no means consistent with his 
 own principle. For instance, the prevailing dichotomy 
 of body and soul rests on the old Protagorean system 
 of couples of logical antitheses and opposites. Thus, 
 mind and matter, finite and infinite, hot and cold, wet 
 and dry, light and dark, &c., were supposed to be 
 entities co-eternal with God. These co-eternal entities, 
 out of which Plato’s Trinity of God, matter, and ideas 
 is constructed, was rejected, of course, by Christian 
 divines. But a substratum of error remained untaken 
 away. They still held by the old categories of matter 
 and mind, and supposed man to be made up of two 
 parts, the reasonable soul and human flesh. The 
 division has come down unchallenged to our day, and 
 little modified even by those who recognise the tri¬ 
 chotomy of Scripture. Divines, in general, if they 
 assign any meaning at all to the Pneuma, describe it 
 as a kind of sub-division of the Psyche, like Aristotle’s 
 division of the soul into the fi'tpog aXoyov, and that Xoyov 
 t'/pv xi igtZg. If the Pneuma is only a class under the 
 Psyche, not an original part by itself, no wonder that 
 practical men pass the subject by as a needless refine¬ 
 ment, illustrative of Greek subtlety, but not of any use 
 
The Case Stated . 
 
 9 
 
 to explain certain obscure and apparently irreconcil¬ 
 able mysteries of the kingdom of grace. The Bible 
 speaks of man as wholly corrupt, yet recognises traces 
 of natural goodness, and that among the heathen (Phil, 
 iv. 8, Rom. ii. 14). The Bible again speaks of our 
 being born from above, yet speaks of putting off the 
 old man and putting on the new, as if the new creature 
 in Christ Jesus were not the creation of a new, but the 
 restoration of the old. The Bible again speaks of 
 death as a sleep, and that the dead praise not God, 
 neither they that go down into silence. Yet it also 
 teaches us that blessed are the dead which die in the 
 Lord; for though they rest from their labours, their 
 works do follow them.” And again, that though 
 u absent from the body, we are present with the 
 Lord.” Now the popular dichotomy, as we shall see, 
 is unavailing against those who maintain the sleep of 
 the soul, and the only clue to this contradiction lies in 
 the distinction between psychical and pneumatical life. 
 So again the Bible tells us that we shall at the last day 
 be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven, 
 and which the apostle elsewhere calls a pneumatical 
 body. But if the pneuma is only a faculty of the soul, 
 the spiritual soul, as contrasted with the merely intel¬ 
 lectual soul, such an expression as the spiritual body is 
 almost unmeaning, and divines are driven to hold a 
 doctrine of the resurrection of the flesh which is no¬ 
 where taught in Scripture. If the mortal, animal 
 body, and the immortal or rational soul, are the two 
 integral parts of human nature, then, as we shall see, 
 the resurrection of the body is a doctrine not only diffi- 
 
IO 
 
 The Case Stated. 
 
 cult in itself, but also unworthy of the place which it 
 holds in the Christian scheme. If at death the spirit 
 rises to a higher state of being on quitting this tremb¬ 
 ling house of clay, is it after the analogy of God’s 
 other dealings that He should degrade it again by putting 
 it, as He did once, and for a little time r/, Heb. 
 
 ii. 9), in a tenement lower than that of angels ? 
 
 These are some of the difficulties of belief of which 
 the prevailing division of man into body and soul offers 
 no solution but which at once explain themselves on the 
 other theory of the trichotomy. On these questions, we 
 are at the present moment brought to the point 
 where Copernicus stood when he found the diffi¬ 
 culties of the Ptolemean theory insuperable, and 
 was thus driven to conclude that these errors in 
 detail implied an error somewhere of first principles. 
 He threw out the hypothesis which has since won its 
 way to general acceptance. In the present case, how¬ 
 ever, it may be said, hypotheses non jingo. Ours is only 
 a return to the true and Scriptural account of man’s 
 nature, which later theories have obscured, and which 
 fell into undeserved reproach in early times, from its 
 supposed connection with the Apollinarian error as to 
 the person of our Lord. 
 
 u No difficulty emerges in theology which has not 
 previously emerged in philosophy,” such is Sir W. 
 Hamilton’s celebrated maxim. The difficulties of 
 theology will, if traced to their source, be generally 
 run home to some conception current in the schools of 
 philosophy. Thus it happens that the Bible is made 
 responsible for difficulties which are not of its own 
 making. Its doctrines are objected to, when in truth 
 
The Case Stated. 
 
 11 
 
 it is our point of view which is at fault. Change 
 the point of view, and the objections will generally, if 
 not in every case, disappear. So it is, we are sure, 
 with the difficulties of belief relative to original sin 
 and the new birth.* They are solved by a single 
 text rightly understood (Jude 19). We thus appeal 
 from the Bible as seen in the light of the schools to 
 the Bible as seen in its own light. If we take one 
 part of God’s Word without the other, we must 
 expect to fall into error. But we must only blame 
 ourselves for the result. 
 
 Thus the purpose of the following inquiry is prac¬ 
 tical and apologetic, not speculative and critical only. 
 If the distinction of Psyche and Pneuma were merely 
 verbal, it would be a nice refinement of language, but 
 no more. Since it was regarded in this light by Ter- 
 tullian,-f* he very naturally rejected it with that rough, 
 
 * The author of The Difficulties of Belief, the Rev. T. R. Bilks, has with 
 great ability endeavoured to rectify some of these misconceptions by which 
 the Bible is made accountable for the injudicious reasonings of some of its 
 friends and apologists. Mr Birks controverts certain crude notions of God’s 
 omnipotence or sovereignty, and of his permission of evil when He might have 
 prevented it. He also correctly marks the difference between sin in man and 
 angels, on account of man being in the flesh. The one was culpa and the 
 other crimen , The one, therefore, entailed the sentence of temporal death 
 only ; the other of eternal. He rejects the notion of a covenant between 
 God and Adam, in which Adam contracted with God on behalf of all his 
 posterity; and thus sweeping away most of the figments of our modern 
 Augustinian theology, if he does not allay doubt, he alleviates, at least, some 
 of the difficulties of belief. The line of inquiry that we shall pursue is along 
 the same path as that traced by Mr Birks; and we take the sagacious hints 
 which he has thrown out as finger-posts on the road to a higher theology, in 
 which our differences shall disappear when truths are seen in the light of God, 
 who is love. 
 
 f Tertullian, in his treatise on the Soul (De Anima, ch. x.) opposes the idea 
 of any absolute division between the soul and spirit. Denique si separas 
 
12 
 
 The Case Stated . 
 
 practical good sense which distinguished the Latin 
 mind from the Greek. In this he was followed by 
 Augustine ; and it is needless to add that the authority 
 of Augustine decided the course of the western Church 
 in rejecting the distinction as mystical, and tending to 
 deprave the doctrine of man’s fall and corruption. It 
 must be admitted that Augustine and his followers 
 have had some reason for their suspicions. With 
 scarcely an exception, those who have followed Origen 
 in his theory of the Pneuma as the divine element in 
 man, have inclined to the notion that this divine and 
 inner light is itself “impassive of evil.” They have 
 thus failed to see the meaning either of original sin or 
 of the capability of spiritual wickedness, which is the 
 same as the sin against the Holy Ghost. The Cam¬ 
 bridge school of Platonists of the 17th century, and 
 the followers of Fox and Barclay, also caught the dis¬ 
 tinction of Psyche and Pneuma; but as their theories 
 clearly tended in the direction of Origenism, their 
 opinions led to no sound conclusions, and were rejected 
 by the majority of their countrymen. The some may 
 be said of the new school of Platonising divines, of 
 whom Mr Maurice and Robertson of Brighton are the 
 foremost names. Those who, to uphold the distinct 
 
 spiritum et animam separa et opera; agant in discrete) aliquid ambo, seorsum 
 anima seorsum spiritus, * * Si enim duo sunt anima et spiritus dividipossunt 
 ut divisione eorum alterius discedentis alterius immanentis mortis et vitas 
 concursus eveneat. Yet this latter supposition, which Tertullian excludes as 
 absurd, is the very one on which Scripture founds the idea of spiritual death : 
 “She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth” (i Tim. v. 6 ). Men 
 are dead in trespasses and sins when the psychical life is there, but the 
 pneumatical not yet awakened. It is only just to Tertullian, however, to 
 admit that he afterwards compares the Psyche and the Pneuma to the female 
 and the male, and adds, 0 beatum connubium si non admiserit adulterium (De 
 Anima, 41 ). 
 
The Case Stated. 
 
 
 nature of the Pneuma or divine image in man, reject 
 or obscure the doctrine of original sin, must not be 
 surprised if an invincible prejudice is still felt against a 
 theory which seems to lead to such conclusions. 
 The image of God in man has been defaced in one 
 part of our nature, the Psyche, and altogether effaced in 
 the other, the Pneuma. All that remains is the feeble 
 flutter of a conscience witnessing for God, and that 
 not by approving, but by accusing and excusing our 
 thoughts. This is all that remains of that inner light 
 of which so much has been written by the mystics and 
 neo-Platonists of this and the 17th century. The 
 Pueuma in fallen human nature is as a bruised reed 
 and as smoking flax, which God will not quench, but 
 which must be kindled by a flame from heaven if it is 
 to give us any light. As soon as it can be seen that 
 the distinction between Psyche and Pneuma, so far 
 from making void the doctrine of original sin, actually 
 confirms and explains it, the objections to it will, we 
 should hope, disappear, and the Scripture trichotomy 
 of spirit, soul, and body be accepted as the only true 
 one. 
 
 Thus the object of our present inquiry is practical 
 and not speculative only. It is the test of the truth 
 of a theory when it clears up difficulties which were 
 before irreconcileable. Thus, when Galileo turned 
 his glass to the skies, and pointed out the moons of 
 Jupiter revolving round the planet, he set the question 
 at rest between Copernicus and Ptolemy. The Cop- 
 ernican theory was no longer a hypothesis, but a truth, 
 Difficulties which were inexplicable under the Ptole- 
 
H 
 
 The Case Stated. 
 
 mean astronomy, vanished at once in the light of the 
 new theory. It was a revolution, doubtless, in all the 
 accustomed modes of thought; it required men to give 
 up certain traditional views, which rested, as they sup¬ 
 posed, on the authority of the Bible. But as soon as 
 this sacrifice to truth was made, the rest was easy. 
 It is difficult to find truth in the first instance, not 
 because she loves to conceal herself, but because we 
 look for her in the wrong direction. But when found, 
 she is always seen to be self-consistent, simple, and 
 easy of comprehension. In buying truth, as in the 
 case of other less precious commodities, the first cost 
 is the greatest 5 when that is paid, truth is her own 
 reward, and repays the purchaser many times over. 
 
 So it is when we apply one Scripture truth to solve 
 another. Looked at apart, the doctrines of original sin 
 and the new birth seem the hardest, if not the most 
 repulsive, of dogmas. No truths are more undeniably 
 part of God’s word, and no truths have been more 
 often rejected and explained away than these. How 
 comes this ? It is easy to set it down to the hardness 
 of the natural heart; and certainly we are far from 
 excusing men’s rejection of these dogmas. But may 
 there not be a fault in our part ? May they not be so 
 irrationally explained as to provoke this revolt of rea¬ 
 son ? If orthodoxy has not thus often produced 
 heterodoxy, Church history has been written to very 
 little purpose. Divines should begin to suspect that 
 it is the point of view at which they put the inquirer 
 which leads him to reject salvation. Like Balak, they 
 lead Balaam only to “ see the utmost part of them, and 
 
Ibe Case Stated, 
 
 l 5 
 
 not to see them alland, instead of cursing our ene¬ 
 mies, the freethinker ends in blessing them altogether. 
 Let us take him up to the top of the high mountain, 
 let him see not a part only, but the whole of God’s 
 plan spread out before him, and it will be strange if 
 he does not end in blessing those whom God has bles¬ 
 sed, and cursing those whom God has cursed, and not 
 the contrary, as at present. 
 
 Our purpose will be gained in this treatise, if we 
 can induce our reader to change his point of view, and 
 adopt the Scripture account of man’s tripartite nature, 
 instead of the dual conception still'common. Original 
 sin will then be seen in a new light not as a hard and 
 forbidding dogma, but as the simple and only way of 
 accounting for the fact of evil abounding. If man was 
 by his original nature only psychical, with a capacity, 
 however, for becoming spiritual, then it is self-evident 
 that when man fell he forfeited that capacity, and be¬ 
 came, first, earthly, then psychical, and finally, devilish, 
 or devil-inspired, since from the nature of the case of the 
 Pneuma, it is no longer led of God, it is given over to 
 the inspiration of the wicked one, James iii. 15. Now, 
 like produces like, fallen man could only transmit to 
 his posterity the nature which he had. Being psychi¬ 
 cal himself, and having not the spirit (Jude 19), how 
 could the child rise above the level of the parent, for 
 if we can speak of any tendency in human nature, it is 
 to degenerate, not to improve, when left to itself? 
 
 Thus from this point of view the difficulty is to see 
 how it could be otherwise. Original sin, or the trans¬ 
 mission of evil ex traduce , so far from being a terrible 
 
i6 
 
 The Case Stated. 
 
 decree, or an inscrutable mystery, which led the ortho¬ 
 dox in the sixth century* to think that celibacy was the 
 blessed state, as not continuing the propagation of evil, 
 is seen to be the fault and corruption of our nature. 
 It is a fault and corruption arising entirely from the 
 privation of the Pneuma, not from the transmission by 
 propagation of some peculiar and positive germ and 
 orinciple of evil. The crude and contradictory theo¬ 
 ries of Traducianism and Creationism, between which 
 Augustine wavered so long, inclining only to the latter 
 doubtfully, and as a choice of difficulties, would never 
 have been heard of. The birth of a soul is a mystery, 
 and so is the birth of an insect. Till we can solve the 
 mystery of life in its lowest form, we need not contend 
 about the mode in which its higher forms come into 
 being. The simple truth with regard to all birth from 
 man to the worm is this, that although God has entered 
 into his Sabbath of creation (Heb. vi. 4), it is not a Sab¬ 
 bath of inactivity, but of active care and Providence 
 (John v. 17), “My Father worketh hitherto, and I 
 work,” i.e.j on the Sabbath-day, and in the way that 
 God works during the Sabbath of creation. 
 
 Thus the question on which Creationists and Tra- 
 ducianists have disputed so long, disappears from the 
 point of view of the trichotomy. The question really 
 turned not on the physiological question whether the 
 soul is born, which none would deny who did not take 
 the Hindu theory of pre-existence, but on the question 
 of the transmission of evil. Thus the dispute about 
 
 * For illustrations see Milman’s History of Latin Christianity, particularly 
 the epithalamium of Gregory the Great on the marriage of a noble Roman 
 pair. 
 
The Case Stated. 
 
 J 7 
 
 Creationism and Traducianism was really a dispute on 
 the nature of original or birth sin. It was a corollary 
 from the doctrine of original sin, that the soul was 
 transmitted with the body, and it is a proof of Augus¬ 
 tine’s candour that although Traducianism told directly 
 in favour of his argument,'and notwithstanding that Pe- 
 lagius was a decided Creationist, yet he rejected the 
 Traducianist theory on account of its seeming to lead 
 to conclusions even more objectionable than Pelagian- 
 ism. We shall afterwards see that neither hypothesis 
 is necessary on that view of original sin which the dis¬ 
 tinction between Pneuma and Psyche opens up to us. 
 It is not the least merit of this, the account of the tri¬ 
 partite nature of man, that it allays those controversies 
 which the other theory only created. 
 
 Lastly, there is a practical use of a sound system of 
 Christian Psychology, which our preachers and apolo¬ 
 gists would do well not to overlook. All evangelical 
 Christians turn to the 3d of St John as the proof pas¬ 
 sage of the doctrine of the new birth. They maintain, 
 and rightly as we think, that such words as these are 
 not to be explained away into duly receiving any ex¬ 
 ternal rite, however solemn. Experimental religion 
 is either a delusion all through, or there are some 
 of the baptized who are born again of the Spirit, and 
 others who are not. We are not here showing reasons 
 for believing the interpretation of the new birth com¬ 
 monly held by Evangelical Christians to be the correct 
 one. We here accept these reasons as sufficient, and 
 express our hearty agreement with them. We believe 
 
x8 The Case Stated . 
 
 % 
 
 that a change must pass over men before they can en¬ 
 ter the kingdom of heaven—that which is born of the 
 flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit, is 
 spirit. 
 
 But what the evangelical argument wants, is a psy¬ 
 chological ground on which to rest this theological 
 truth. Evangelical divines rightly maintain that we 
 must be born again, but this does not meet Nicode- 
 mus’ difficulty. WLat is that part of our composite 
 nature which is born again or born from above? 
 Clearly not the body ; that view carries absurdity with 
 it; can a man enter his mother’s womb a second time 
 and be born ? Is it then the soul or Psyche ? But the 
 soul cannot be born a second time any more than the 
 body, hence they conclude that the second birth means 
 a new direction to the affections, desires, and tastes, 
 or a new will or power to turn to God. The new 
 birth is thus rather a renovation of the old, than the 
 birth of something new. The new man is nothing 
 but the old man renewed in the spirit of his mind. 
 That there is«a renewal of the old we do most readily 
 admit, but that this is equivalent to the new birth, and 
 not the effect of it, we never can allow. Regeneration 
 by itself is one thing, the effects of it is another. It is 
 very true, that it is not necessary to know the laws of 
 the wind, whence it cometh or whither it goeth, in 
 order to know its force, or to judge of it by its effects. 
 So the Lord does not give Nicodemus a psychological 
 account of the difference between psyche and pneuma, 
 which Nicodemus in all probability would not have 
 understood, but passes on to a description of the new 
 
The Case Stated. 
 
 l 9 
 
 birth, instead of defining it by itself. It is the same 
 with the majority of our evangelical teachers, they 
 describe the results of the new birth correctly, and 
 well. Newton’s Cardiphonia, Romaine’s Letters, 
 Wesley, and Toplady’s Sermons are instances of this. 
 But what the logical differentia between a converted 
 and an unconverted man is, they fail to tell us. They 
 are like Meno in Plato’s dialogue, who when asked to 
 define what virtue is in itself, described instead a list 
 of particular virtues. It is then, at this point that a 
 correct, i.e., a Scriptural Psychology comes to help 
 out a correct, i.e. a Scriptural Theology. Our prea¬ 
 chers, to use an illustration from physiology, seem to 
 understand the function of spiritual-mindedness, but 
 not to have discovered the organ which discharges that 
 function. Now, what should we think of a physiolo¬ 
 gist who, after discovering a new function in the hu¬ 
 man body, never took the trouble to describe its pro¬ 
 per and peculiar organ. Function and organ are cor¬ 
 relative terms in physiology ; they must be also in 
 psychology. It is consistent enough in those who 
 have no sense of a personal God, to deny a peculiar 
 organ of God-consciousness in man. Thus an Aris¬ 
 totle summing up his account of the Psyche as the 
 entelechy, or sum total of human activity, is consistent 
 enough. He had no consciousness of a peculiar func¬ 
 tion, and therefore may be excused for not suspecting 
 that there was any such organ as the Pneuma, in man. 
 It is our knowledge of the function that sets us on the 
 track to discover its peculiar organ; and here let us 
 remark, that it is the glory of the Scriptures to have 
 
20 
 
 Ihe Case Stated. 
 
 revealed both to us. Had the mental analysis of 
 Aristotle pierced so deep as to the dividing asunder of 
 soul and spirit, had he then discovered the spirit lying 
 in embryo underneath the psyche, as Schwammerdamm 
 dissected the cocoon to find the butterfly, it would 
 have been a barren discovery. Knowing nothing of 
 the mind of God, what would such a discovery of an 
 organ of God-consciousness have led him on to ? He 
 might have fallen into a vein of mysticism like the later 
 Platonists, but the discovery would have been of as 
 little use as a telescope to a blind man, or a trumpet 
 to one born deaf. 
 
 On the other hand, had the Scriptures, which de¬ 
 scribe the function of spiritual mindedness, not told us 
 also of its appropriate organ the Pneuma, we might have 
 been fairly puzzled. It is true that if we go to the 
 Old Testament to look for proof passages on the sub¬ 
 ject we are disappointed. But we forget that the 
 knowledge of ourselves, and of the nature of God go 
 on proportionately together in the Scriptures. When 
 the function was but feebly exercised, the organ itself 
 was only slightly mentioned. There are rudimentary 
 organs, for instance, in the body of a child, which 
 come into use only when he attains manhood. So 
 with the Spirit. It is in proportion as men by attain¬ 
 ing to spiritual manhood, and having their senses exer¬ 
 cised by reason of use, to discern good and evil, that 
 they learn what is the organ which discharges that 
 function of spiritual mindedness. We see only half 
 the glory of God’s word if we suppose that the same 
 organ can discharge two different functions, serve i.e . 7 
 
The Case Stated. 
 
 2 I 
 
 as the intellectual instrument or the unawakened psy¬ 
 che, and also as the instrument of religious conscious¬ 
 ness when the spirit is awakened and turned to God. 
 Conversion is a truth, but is only fully understood in 
 all its bearings when we see that it is the wakening up 
 of what was previously dormant, the divine part in 
 man now turned to its proper use to witness for Him, 
 to worship him in the beauty of holiness, (not the 
 holiness of beauty, as Laud misread the text), and to 
 delight in him at all times. It is one thing, for instance, 
 to know the functions of the hand, another thing to 
 describe the organ itself, as Sir C. Bell has done. For 
 all purposes of saving knowledge it is enough to ex¬ 
 perience the spiritual mind as contrasted with the car¬ 
 nal. But if knowledge is excellent at all, it is surely 
 desirable that those who, as spiritual anatomists, de¬ 
 scribe the functions of the new nature should go on to 
 understand and observe the organ by itself. A smith 
 or a carpenter know very well what they can do with 
 their thumb and fore-finger, but a knowledge of the 
 anatomy of the hand greatly enlarges our conceptions 
 of the wisdom of the great Contriver, and enables us 
 to refer each of these many functions to its proper and 
 peculiar organ. Adaptation is seen in the fitting of 
 every instrument to its own work. Now we only 
 half admire the work of God in conversion if we do 
 not see the organ out of which the quickening Spirit, 
 the Lord and giver of life, draws such wonderful func- 
 - tions. It is not the psyche that prays, though we 
 cannot, it is true, pray without a certain discharge of 
 intellectual force, which is psychical only. Just in the 
 
22' 
 
 Ihe Case Stated. 
 
 same way it is not the brain that thinks, though we 
 cannot think without the healthy exercise of the brain. 
 In all God’s works, the bringing in of the higher form 
 of life does not suspend the action of the lower—the 
 lower still co-operates with it. Thus the body serves 
 the soul or psyche, and the soul the spirit. But as 
 we do not confound body and mind, so we must not 
 confound soul and spirit, as if they were all one, be¬ 
 cause their union is essential to life. Like the woman 
 and the man, the one is not without the other “in the 
 Lord.” 
 
 These are some of the reasons for which we think 
 the application of Scripture Psychology to illustrate 
 Theology both practicable and profitable. If the dis¬ 
 tinction of spirit, soul and body helps to set forth and 
 to simplify the doctrines of original sin, the new birth, 
 the intermediate state and the spiritual body we shall 
 not have pursued our inquiry in vain. 
 
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF NATURAL AND 
 REVEALED RELIGION CONTRASTED. 
 
 There are three postulates, the Being of a God, our 
 accountability to Him, and the immortality of the soul, 
 on the certainty of which every other doctrine of 
 religion is assumed to rest. These three postulates 
 extended and applied make up what is generally called 
 Natural Religion. It would be beside our purpose 
 here to dispute the justice of the term Natural Religion, 
 or to inquire how far, and to what extent since the fall 
 man can of himself turn to God, can fear and serve 
 Him here, and hope to see Him hereafter. We must 
 however, in limine protest against the so-called system 
 of natural religion. Though man may, by his unaided 
 reason, spell out one or even two of these truths singly, 
 yet he certainly cannot put them together, he certainly 
 cannot reach even that elementary stage of faith spoken 
 of in Heb. xi. 6, “For he that cometh to God must 
 believe that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them 
 that diligently seek Him.” Even though he may rise 
 above and reject the idols of the theatre and the tribe, 
 he certainly cannot break away from the idols of the 
 den: those false conceptions of God which we must 
 form to ourselves in our own fallen and corrupt hearts. 
 The philosopher may have purified his mind from the 
 corrupting conceptions of the popular idolatry, but 
 
24 Biblical Psychology. 
 
 u unless above himself he can exalt himself,” an attempt . 
 which carries a contradiction on its very face, he must 
 still fashion a God to himself after his likeness and after 
 his image. There must be moral likeness between 
 the worshipper and the Being worshipped. Man’s 
 powers of abstraction are very great, but he is wholly 
 unable to choose all the good and refuse all the evil in 
 his own heart, to draw out the precious from the vile, 
 and rejecting all baser metal, cast the pure gold only 
 into the furnace, that thereout may come a God worthy 
 to be loved with all our mind and heart, and soul, and 
 strength. To test how far man’s powers of abstraction 
 go in this direction, we must transport ourselves outside 
 the pale of Christendom altogether; we must not take 
 account of what so-called Theists have taught, who 
 have borrowed without acknowledgment the light of the 
 knowledge of God revealed in the Old and New Testa¬ 
 ment Scripture. It is from the philosophers of Greece, 
 Rome, and China, the only teachers of whose wisdom 
 we have any authentic account, that we shall learn how 
 far man’s unassisted powers can attain to the knowledge 
 of God. The result of a careful comparison appears 
 to be this, that the wiser heathen could see the folly 
 of the popular religion, and there stood still, rejecting 
 superstition, but having nothing to put in its stead. 
 Or if they advanced beyond this they draw out their 
 conceptions of the divine so far as to personify a Great 
 Intelligence, who was either the soul of the world, or 
 the great over-soul, according as their views leaned to 
 Pantheism or not. Thus they either contentedly 
 adopted Atheism, or worshipped an abstraction, an 
 idol of the den, called the Supreme Mind. 
 
and Philosophic Views of the Soul. 25 
 
 Thus, as the first postulate of Natural Religion, the 
 Being of God, was never distinctly understood, it is 
 not likely that the second or third were so apprehended 
 that men could put the three together and act upon 
 them. As the knowledge of God never rose beyond 
 an abstraction formed out of a single attribute, so the 
 sense of duty to Him was vague and indefinite, and 
 vaguest of all, the sense of a hereafter, in which he 
 should live unto Him. It is on this point that we wish 
 to inquire what the heathen really thought, and how 
 far the popular view of the evidence from natural 
 religion of the immortality of the soul is supported by 
 fact. 
 
 The traditions of all nations agree in this, that the 
 expectations of man are not bounded by the grave. It 
 would be almost superfluous to quote authorities on 
 such a well-worn subject. The Sheol of the Hebrews, 
 the Amenthes of the Egyptians, the Hades, Erebus, 
 and Tartarus of the Greeks, the Patala of the Hindus, 
 the Dowzank of the Persians, all point to the same 
 truth, that man does not wholly die. Not to speak 
 of such word-quibbles as the immortality of the race, 
 which is only what man has in common with all organic 
 life, the immortality of the individual was the point of 
 conjecture which they wrestled with, like Jacob with 
 the angel till the breaking of the day, unwilling to let 
 it go, yet unable to wring from it a definite meaning. 
 They sat before the grave, like the women who 
 watched at the holy sepulchre, unable to roll away the 
 stone, for it was very great, yet unwilling to think that 
 behind the stone lay only dust and corruption. Christ, 
 
26 
 
 Biblical Psychology 
 
 it is true, has brought life and immortality to light by 
 the gospel, but there were watchers before the dawn, 
 those who wished for the world’s Easter-day before 
 the day had fully come. Now men cannot look for a 
 thing without forming some conception as to how it 
 is to be brought about. Hope will have its forecasts, 
 though they often prove fallacious. But as even a 
 mistaken hope is better than none at all, we must think 
 with respect even of the Indian’s dream of heaven in 
 some happy hunting ground, or the Egyptian hope of 
 the resurrection of mummies, after a general conflagra¬ 
 tion at the end of a great cycle. 
 
 In early and simple times, before the distinction be¬ 
 tween matter and spirit had been sharply marked off, 
 the notion was that the ghost of the man, his spirit or 
 glassy essence, survived the death of the body, or the 
 animal part. But the nature of soul and body was not 
 contrasted as in later times. Just as the latest con¬ 
 jecture of advanced thinkers in Germany is to a theory 
 of their unity, so the starting point of all speculation 
 appears to have been this. So true is it that speculation 
 runs the great circle round, only, like the ancient mar¬ 
 iner of Coleridge, to see the kirk upon the hill from 
 which he set out.* 
 
 * See the Psychological theory of Fichte, the younger, translated and 
 edited by Mr Morrell, under the title of “Contributions to Mental Philo¬ 
 sophy, by Immanuel Hermann Fichte,” London, Longmans, i860. Klenke 
 has also built up a theory of correspondence between mind and body, on what 
 may be called a system of organic psychology. Bacon seems to have thrown 
 out a hint in that direction, when he says in the De Aug. “ that unto all this 
 knowledge of concordance between the mind and the body, that part of the 
 inquiry is the most necessary which considereth of the seats and domiciles which 
 the several faculties do take and occupy.” 
 
and Philosophic Views of the Soul. 27 
 
 In Homer, the soul goes to Hades whether the 
 body is cast to the dogs or honourably interred. So 
 far there is separation between the two; but the non¬ 
 mortal part is only a shadow of the mortal. Life in 
 the shades is only a cold and colourless copy of the 
 •picture of life upon earth. Ghosts are little else than 
 bloodless bodies : their time is spent in useless reveries 
 upon the past. “ The blessed ” is a phrase which we 
 are so accustomed to apply to the dead, that it is well 
 to remember that the thought of death being a state of 
 blessedness was one which a heathen could not con¬ 
 ceive. Even Achilles in the Elysian Fields declares 
 that the life of the meanest drudge on earth is prefer¬ 
 able to the very highest of the unsubstantial rewards 
 of the under world. 
 
 The late Archbishop Whately has, we think, gone 
 too far in inferring, that because the conceptions of the 
 heathen of the soul’s separate existence were thus 
 vague and unsubstantial, that therefore they had little 
 or no belief in the doctrine at all.* We think this is 
 inferring too much. They knew nothing of the modus 
 by which the soul could exist separate from the body, 
 and therefore used vague and contradictory language 
 on the subject. Just as a modern divine might speak 
 of angels as incorporeal substances, and then inconsis¬ 
 tently speak of a dead child as laid upon the lap of an 
 angel. It would not be fair to infer from this that he 
 did not believe in the existence of angels, but only that 
 
 Novalis says, “that we touch heaven when we lay our hand on a human 
 body.” Alas, sometimes the converse is nearer the mark. Sometimes our 
 bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost, but more often the house where the 
 unclean spirit enters in to dwell there. 
 
 * Whately’s Essays on Peculiarities of Christian Religion, Essay I. 
 
28 
 
 Biblical Psychology 
 
 his notions of their nature were obscure, and that from 
 the poverty of language he was obliged to use expres¬ 
 sions which we know to be inapplicable. In the same 
 way we ought to infer, not that the heathen assigned 
 to the souls of the deceased a kind of shadowy exist¬ 
 ence corresponding to their own indistinct conceptions 
 —a sort of intermediate condition between being and 
 not being, resembling our recollections of a dream or a 
 fancy, an intermediate state between the vivid impres¬ 
 sion produced by a real present object and no impres¬ 
 sion at all. We should rather say, that they held, as 
 we do, the soul to be the man, the centre of person¬ 
 ality, but that they were at a greater loss even than 
 we are to conceive of the man acting and thinking 
 ■ without the proper organs of thought and action— 
 brain, blood, pulse, and nerve. We are no better off 
 in this respect than they are, as every reader of Bishop 
 Butler’s first chapter of the Analogy knows already— 
 and they are no worse off than we. When a Chris¬ 
 tian poet, such as Dante or Milton, has to describe 
 the under world and its inhabitants, he has only the 
 tongues of men with which to describe the operations 
 of angels. He may excel, as Milton does, in idealising 
 the subject, or come short in this, as Dante, but what 
 he gains in one direction he loses in another. Mil¬ 
 ton’s under world is less fabulous than that of Dante, 
 but it is not near so vivid. What Milton imagined 
 Dante imaged forth — the first was a cartoon, but 
 the other a statue hewed from the living stone. 
 
 We should say then that in the age of Homer the 
 existence of the soul after death was believed in as 
 
and Philosophic Views of the Soul. 29 
 
 firmly as in later times; but as language had not at- 
 attained the same philosophical precision, the mode of 
 its existence was spoken of under certain corporeal 
 emblems which gave a confused impression as to its 
 existence at all. The picture was blurred and the 
 light crossed; but as far as it went it was a true ex¬ 
 pression of one of our deepest convictions, that man 
 does not wholly die when the body dies. Those who 
 infer, as Archbishop Whately does, that the obscurity 
 of the notions of the heathen with regard to the life 
 hereafter implies their unbelief of the fact itself, forget 
 the distinction between faith and knowledge. Know¬ 
 ledge is of things we see. The conviction even 
 of an apostle in the truth of a life to come must stop 
 short of positive knowledge. There is a “great gulf 
 fixed ” for us as well as for them; so that we too, as 
 well as the heathen, must walk by faith, and not by 
 sight. Our faith, it is true, is grounded on a fact— 
 the resurrection of Christ from the dead; consequently 
 it is a good hope which maketh not ashamed. Never¬ 
 theless, it is faith, not certainty; hope, not sight; for 
 what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for ? 
 
 Existence after death is the postulate, then, of 
 natural religion, which has never been quite effaced 
 from the mind of man, notwithstanding his fall and 
 lapse into idolatry. This is that innate truth, as some 
 would call it—the spiritual instinct, as we prefer to 
 describe it—which has never been killed, but which 
 gropes for its end as bees do to build cells and make 
 honey, whatever the obstacles we may put in their 
 way. All theories among the heathen as to the nature 
 
30 Biblical Psychology 
 
 of the life to come fall under two divisions, according 
 as they date before or after the rise of philosophy. 
 Before the age of speculation men believed in a future 
 life, but described it under the fables of the poets. 
 They described the soul, as we have seen before, as a 
 kind of bloodless body, a ghost that flitted bat-like 
 through the shades of sunny memories, and lived on 
 the Elysian fields as old pensioners do with us, shoulder¬ 
 ing their crutches, and showing how fields were won. 
 But with the age of speculation the belief in a future 
 state was moulded by the distinction which now ob¬ 
 tained between mind and matter. Man’s nature was 
 made up of two parts—one animal, the other spiritual; 
 one obeying instinct, and the other reason; one 
 earthly, and the other God like; one mortal, and the 
 other immortal. The immortality of the soul was 
 accepted as an axiom as undeniable as the mortality of 
 the body. Either man perishes altogether with the 
 brutes that perish (for the Buddhist theory of trans¬ 
 migrations or incarnations never really took hold of 
 the western mind), or he lives beyond the grave in 
 that part of his nature which is inherently immortal. 
 Speculation had no sooner forged this distinction be¬ 
 tween mind and matter than the whole theory of the 
 immortality of the soul was hammered out at once 
 and on the same anvil. Modern metaphysicians have 
 added nothing to the argument for the immortality of 
 the soul. As a principle of unity it was indiscerptible 
 and indestructible ; as a principle of motion, it was in¬ 
 capable of rest; as a vital principle, it was incapable 
 of annihilation; as a self-conscious principle, it was 
 
and Philosophic Views of the Soul. 31 
 
 incapable of oblivion. Descartes, Addison, Mendels¬ 
 sohn, and Bishop Butler have dressed up these a 
 priori proofs in their own words, but they are already 
 as well expressed in the Phcedo of Plato. It is singu¬ 
 lar that a theory which has received such universal 
 assent has been so little improved by the ages of 
 speculation which have turned it over and over. In 
 the pages of a popular manual like Dick’s u philosophy 
 of the future state ” it comes out substantially the 
 same argument as when hammered for the first time 
 on the anvil of the Socratic dialogue. Kant was cer¬ 
 tainly not the first to point out the fallacy of the 
 popular Platonic argument; but since Kant’s cele¬ 
 brated Critique it is now admitted by all who think on 
 the subject that between the belief of the non-mor¬ 
 tality of the soul and the philosophical proof of its im¬ 
 mortality there is a wide gulf which the a priori argu¬ 
 ments of the Phmdo fail to bridge over. Augustine’s 
 distinction between the holiness of the creature and 
 the Creator may be applied to these arguments for our 
 immortality. Of the creature it is true that it may 
 attain to the state posse non peccare , and so posse non 
 mori; but to God alone does it inherently belong both 
 non posse peccare and non posse mori. The God that 
 cannot lie is the God that cannot die; for all others, 
 from the angel of the presence down to the babe 
 born to-day, God is their life, and God is their 
 light. He alone is the fountain of life as well as of 
 holiness. 
 
 Thus, as the instinct or moral sense of existence 
 after death took one shape when handled by the poets, 
 
2 2 Biblical Psychology. 
 
 so it took another from the philosophers. Supersti¬ 
 tion encrusted it with fables, and speculation set it up 
 on the treacherous foundations of certain a priori prin¬ 
 ciples The modern world has outgrown these super¬ 
 stitious fables. With the exception of those who cling 
 to the old pagan notion of purgatory, in which Virgil, 
 not Paul, is fitly chosen as Dante’s guide, our age be¬ 
 lieves in a life to come on different grounds from those 
 on which the ancients supposed that the hollow parts of 
 the earth were full of the ghosts of men, as the graves 
 were of their bodies. But the religious and spiritual 
 instinct has not discharged itself of the speculative ele¬ 
 ment in the.same way that it has of the supeistitious. 
 To this day the majority of divines, consciously or not, 
 underprop their argument for existence after death 
 (the instinct of which we admit) by a scholastic argu¬ 
 ment of the soul’s immortality. The first chapter of 
 Bishop Butler’s great work might be cut out as we 
 conceive, leaving the rest of the Analogy only stronger 
 for the rejection of this its weakest point. Yet to this 
 day divines commend this attempt to lay the founda¬ 
 tions of revealed religion deep in the solid rock of first 
 truths and self-evident principles. “ For,” they say, 
 u ^ t h e foundations be removed, what shall the right¬ 
 eous do ?” If men doubt the immortality of the soul, 
 there is nothing before us but materialism, nihilism, or 
 what not. So divines reason, forgetting that the 
 dilemma is of their own making. They have made 
 natural religion the base of revealed, and the super¬ 
 structure must stand or fall with its foundations. But 
 the fault is not in the Bible, but in its advocates. 
 
and Philosophic Views of the Soul. 33 
 
 They have assumed two philosophical antinomies, 
 spiritualism and materialism, and challenged every be¬ 
 liever in the Bible to take his side for the one and 
 against the other. Undoubtedly, as St. Paul before 
 the council took sides with the Pharisees against the 
 Sadducees, the Scripture doctrine of the life to come 
 is nearer to the spiritualist than to the materialist side 
 of the controversy. But, properly speaking, the Bi¬ 
 ble sides with neither, but takes a line of its own, in 
 which existence after death depends not on our pos¬ 
 sessing any inherently immortal principle, but on God 
 being a living God, and on the truth that all who live 
 (as God said of Abraham to Moses in the bush, four 
 hundred years after his body had seen corruption), 
 live unto God. Our blessed Lord, in refuting the 
 Sadducees, would have used the common argument of 
 Plato and Butler if He had countenanced its truth. It 
 was readier and more obvious to common apprehension 
 than the other, grounded on a verbal criticism of the 
 expression “I am ” in the Book of Exodus. But he 
 passed it by as inconclusive, as either proving too much 
 or nothing at all, and took his stand on the ground 
 which is everywhere appealed too in the Bible, that 
 God is life, and the promise, As I live, ye shall live 
 also. 
 
 The doctrine of the immortality of the soul grows, 
 as we have seen, out of the instinct of its non-mortality. 
 The latter statement by no means sustains the weight 
 of the former. It is one thing to deny materialism, ano¬ 
 ther thing to affirm spiritualism fit is one thing to stand 
 
 c 
 
34 Biblical Psychology , 
 
 on the instinct non omnis moriar , another thing to say, that 
 the part which does not die possesses a principle of unity, 
 life, and consciousness, and is thus inherently immortal 
 In the case of Plato such an argument was not only 
 allowable, it was virtuous and praiseworthy. Reason¬ 
 ing in the night of nature, being, as other Gentiles 
 without God and without hope^ it was noble to choose 
 the better part; to say of man, “He thinks he was 
 not born to die.” It was heroic to look death in the 
 face and say, “Oh, death, thou art but a birth, the 
 second birth of the immortal soul.” Plato knew not, 
 as we do, that death is the wages of sin. Dissolution 
 must either be a law or a penalty ; and those who saw 
 the law of dissolution obtaining everywhere else, could 
 not help conceiving of it as a law in the case of man. 
 
 “ Omnia mors poscit, lex est, non poena perire. 
 
 But we are taught differently. We know that death 
 is a penalty, and not a law, in the case of man, and 
 therefore the arguments which Plato used to prove the 
 natural immortality of the soul cannot be used by us, 
 who view death and life in a different light. We 
 have no right, moreover, to take just so much of Pla¬ 
 to’s argument as suits our purpose, and reject the rest. 
 We cannot say that it is a self-evident truth that there 
 is a deathless principle in man, but that we learn from 
 the Bible that this deathless principle is separated from 
 the body as the wages of sin. This is the “ one foot 
 on land one foot on sea” kind of argument which is 
 popularised in tracts, sermons, and bodies of divinity 
 too numerous to mention. It is this amalgam of Plato 
 and Paul which passes for Christian spiritualism, and 
 
and Philosophic Views of the Soul. 35 
 
 is the received and so-called orthodox psychology of 
 the age. Before we can lay the foundations of a 
 true scriptural psychology, this pretended spiritualism 
 must be cleared away. The confusion in the popular 
 mind between the instinct for a future life grounded 
 on the great spiritual truth that “it is appointed unto 
 men once to die, and after death the judgment,” and 
 the argument for the soul one and indivisible, must be 
 cleared up. The only first truths or axioms we recog¬ 
 nise are these, that there is a God, that there is a 
 judgment to come, and that the need of this judgment 
 to come is a moral instinct as real and deep as the 
 need of righteousness, temperance, or any other in¬ 
 stinct of our moral nature. 
 
 We are not, then, to look for the foundations of a 
 sound and Scriptural system of psychology in the dog¬ 
 ma of the soul’s natural immortality as taught in the 
 schools of philosophy. Superstition and speculation 
 have both, out of the instinct of a future life, constructed 
 a theory of their own, in which all that is true is the 
 voice of conscience commending the truth that it is 
 appointed unto man once to die, and after death 
 the judgment. We find no more support for Chris¬ 
 tian psychology in the reasonings of the philosopher 
 than in the fancies of the poet. Not knowing 
 that the sting of death is sin, how could Plato under¬ 
 stand either the true significance of death, or wherein 
 eternal life really consists ? Yet the Platonic theory 
 of the immortality of the soul is regarded as a founda¬ 
 tion truth essential to Christianity itself by those who 
 would reject with horror the Platonic theory of pre- 
 
^6 Biblical Psychology , 
 
 existence, or the Platonic dogma of the inherent evil 
 of matter, out of which most of the errors of the Alex¬ 
 andrian school arise. As with the idea of God the 
 philosopher only exchanged the idols of the theatre for 
 the idols of the cave, and rejecting Polytheism fell into 
 Pantheism; so with regard to the soul, in rejecting 
 the materialism of earlier times, he fell into a spiritual¬ 
 ism quite as wide of the mark. In Homer’s age, the 
 ghost of a man was the breath which went out of his 
 body, and so was little more than a mateiial emana¬ 
 tion from the same. But philosophy in later times 
 went into the other extreme,—the soul was the man, 
 the body was only the house of clay that contained it. 
 The metaphor from a house to its inhabitants, or a 
 ship to its crew, or a pitcher to the water in it, were 
 marked out with such detail by the Neo-Platomsts m 
 particular, that by some it was taught to be a misfor¬ 
 tune that man had a body at all. The fall consisted in 
 being clothed upon with flesh. Redemption was no¬ 
 thing else than the shaking off this mortal coil. So 
 far were these spiritualist notions carried, that the eai ly 
 Church looked upon Platonism, not as a useful ally, 
 but as a dreaded rival, the fountain-head of all the 
 Gnostic heresies which arose to vex the Church. The 
 natural immortality of the soul, so far from being ac¬ 
 cepted as an outwork to Scripture truth, was opposed 
 as a rival theory to the Christian doctrine of the re¬ 
 surrection of the body. In Augustine’s time the re¬ 
 conciliation between the two began to appear. But 
 the writers of the first four centuries, with hardly an 
 exception, regard the two theories as antagonist, and 
 
and Philosophic Views of the Soul. 37 
 
 sought not to reconcile, but to replace the Platonic 
 doctrine of the soul’s natural immortality with the 
 Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body. 
 
 But with change of times there came a change of 
 opinions. The prevalent tendency of modern error, 
 at least until our own day, was towards a blank and 
 dreary materialism. Hence it was that Christian ad¬ 
 vocates were glad to furbish up weapons that had 
 once been used against themselves. The immortality 
 of the soul was the strong point of spiritualism which 
 the Church now thought she could turn in her 
 favour. We see this alliance between spiritualism 
 and Christianity consummated and carried to its highest 
 point in Bishop Butler, not only in his theory of the 
 supremacy of conscience, but especially in his argu¬ 
 ment for the existence of an indestructible principle in 
 man. We see what services spiritualism could render 
 to the cause of truth. Let us not be ungenerous, or 
 deny that in routing materialism out of the field, we 
 are thankful for help from the opposite quarter. But 
 all such alliances are dangerous, and the price which 
 the Christian advocate has to pay is to find himself 
 held responsible for a philosophy in addition to his 
 creed. He is not as free as before to go direct to the 
 lively oracles, and seek truth at first hand, from the 
 fountain-head. He must search the Scriptures for 
 proof texts, rather than bring his mind to read text 
 and context together. These are some of the many 
 evils which alliances of this kind bring with them. 
 What tradition is to the Church of Rome, that natural 
 religion is to many of our reformed divines, a top load 
 
38 
 
 Biblical Psychology . 
 
 enough to sink itself and Scripture. Christian Psy¬ 
 chology will never deserve its name until it cuts itself 
 off from entangling alliances with the schools, as 
 Christian ethics have done. As Wardlaw and Chal¬ 
 mers cleared up the confusion between natural virtue 
 and Christian holiness, as if they were only different 
 names for the same thing, so we wish to point out 
 that the Psychology of the Bible is something distinct 
 from that of the schools, and that whatever points it 
 may have in common with spiritualism, it has points in 
 common no less with materialism, and is itself, when 
 rightly understood, a third theory of human nature 
 distinct from both, and with as little real affinity with 
 the one as with the other. 
 
THE ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION 
 OF MAN. 
 
 It has been often remarked that Scripture does not 
 teach us either the nature of God or of ourselves, as 
 books of systematic divinity do. As its teaching on 
 other truths is at u sundry times and divers manners,” 
 so with regard to this truth. It is for the divine to 
 collect these intimations, and put them together into 
 some system or other. According as he does this 
 faithfully or not does he acquit himself of the task 
 which he has taken in hand. 
 
 We have only another caution to make before en¬ 
 tering on our task: it is that revelation being a pro¬ 
 gressive manifestation of the truth of God, the dis¬ 
 covery of man’s nature must be also progressive. 
 Further, if there be some correspondence between the 
 trichotomy of man’s nature, spirit, soul, and body, and 
 the Persons of the Triune Jehovah, it is only what we 
 might expect, that the same air of enigma that hangs 
 over the one should also hang over the other. Till 
 the Spirit was given we are not to expect the nature 
 of man’s spirit to be more than alluded to. As the 
 distinct personality of the Holy Spirit is implied but 
 not expressed in the Old Testament, so the distinction 
 
40 The Creation of Man. 
 
 between the Psyche and Pneuma is latent there also. 
 We should feel it to be a difficulty if the tripartite 
 nature of man were described as such in those books 
 of the Bible which only contain implied hints of the 
 plurality of persons in the Godhead. All we shall see 
 of the subject will confirm this view of the harmonious 
 way in which doctrines and duties, the nature of God 
 and the nature of man, are unfolded together. 
 
 Consistent with the foregoing remark the account 
 of the creation of man (Gen. ii. 7) rather implies than 
 asserts the trichotomy of spirit, soul, and body. It is 
 by the light of later Scriptures that we see that the 
 breath of lives there refers not to the animal and 
 psychical part only, but to a pneumatical as well. 
 Passing over the account of man in Gen. i. 26, which 
 rather describes what man was intended to be, than 
 what he actually is, his office more than his nature, 
 his place in the cosmos than the elements out of which 
 he was formed, we turn to the second of the two 
 narratives. We would further premise that the second 
 in order is the first in human interest. Chapter i. re¬ 
 fers indeed rather to man’s dignity as the headstone of 
 the temple of Creation—chapter ii. to the nature of 
 man, and the mode of his creation. Chapter i. is 
 theological, chapter ii. anthropological,—for the psy¬ 
 chology of man we must address ourselves therefore 
 to the second of the two accounts of his formation. 
 
 We read Gen. ii. 7. “ And the Lord God formed 
 
 man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his 
 nostrils the breath of lives, and man became a living 
 soul.” The narrative here points out two distinct 
 
Ihe Creation of Man. 41 
 
 sources from whence man was taken. 1. Of the dust 
 of the ground, fashioned by the hand of God, as the 
 potter fashions the clay (W). 2. Of the breath of 
 
 lives breathed into his nostrils by the creative spiiit of 
 God. Three points here arrest our attention, and 
 suggest the true key to the threefold nature of man. 
 
 A. The material cause. The Lord God took of 
 the dust of the ground. 
 
 B. The formal cause. He breathed into his nostrils 
 the breath of lives. 
 
 C. The final cause. And so man became a living 
 soul. 
 
 A. As to the material cause there can be little dis¬ 
 pute. Man is made of the dust of the ground—this is the 
 base or ultimate elements of his animal nature. Hence 
 in all probability the name given to man, Adam from 
 Adamah, to indicate that the first man was of the earth 
 earthy. The other derivations of 1. On ac¬ 
 
 count of the red colour of his skin, (comp. Joseph. 
 Antiq. i. 1,5), in the same way as the Chinese represent 
 man as kneaded of yellow earth, and the red Indians 
 of red clay; and 2. Adam as if for tn equivalent to 
 with a reference to his being made in the image of 
 God ; or 3. for D*i blood, are all fanciful and far-fetched. 
 The inspired historian has pledged us to one deri¬ 
 vation, and to that we must adhere. Adam is IP 
 nnnsn" dust of the earth. Hence the penalty of death 
 is this, that dust he is, and unto dust he must return. 
 He had chosen to indulge the animal part of his nature, 
 to hearken to the voice of his wife, and through her to 
 follow instinct and not reason, hence he is condemned 
 
42 
 
 The Creation of Man. 
 
 to share the fate of the animal. Dust he is, and unto 
 dust he must return. Dissolution is the law of all 
 organic being. We have no reason to suppose the 
 animal world before the fall to have been any excep- 
 tion to this law. The exception only began with 
 man. He would have been translated had he con¬ 
 tinued sinless. He would not have seen death, but 
 have been changed in a moment, in the twinkling of 
 an eye, even as Eve was taken from his side during 
 the deep sleep into which he was cast by God. He 
 would have passed away in a trance, in which there 
 would have been neither pain nor penalty; mortality 
 would have been swallowed up of life, and the cor¬ 
 ruptible would have put on incorruption. But with 
 his transgression Adam had to take the physical as 
 well as the spiritual consequences of sin. His animal 
 nature was degraded to the condition of the rest of the 
 animal world, and from the day that he ate of the 
 forbidden fruit, dying, he began to die, until he re¬ 
 turned to the earth out of which he was first taken. 
 So much for the first or material part of man. 
 
 B. Next we read of the formal and efficient cause 
 of man. The Lord God breathed into his nostrils 
 the breath of lives. We speak of the formal and 
 efficient cause in one, not because we wish to con¬ 
 found the agent with the instrument, but because 
 the instrument is in this case of the same nature as 
 the agent. The Lord God is the efficient cause— 
 doubtless the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of 
 life. But the instrument He uses is the breath of 
 lives. It is clear that the breath is here of the same 
 
43 
 
 The Creation of Man. 
 
 nature as the Being who breathes it. Holy Scrip¬ 
 ture is everywhere careful not to confound creation 
 with emanation. Unlike all other cosmogonies, in 
 the Mosaic the heavens and the earth are made by the 
 word of the Lord. He spake and they were made ; 
 He commanded, and they stood fast. When we speak 
 of creation out of nothing, we use a verbal contradic¬ 
 tion to express a mystery which is only to be under¬ 
 stood by faith. It is better expressed in the words of 
 the apostle (Heb. xi. 3) that “ the things which are 
 seen, are not made of the things which do appear. 
 So when we read of the formation of the animal part 
 of man, no expression is used which would counte¬ 
 nance the thought of any community of nature be¬ 
 tween the creature and the Creator. But when we 
 are told of that part of man’s nature in which he is 
 the image and likeness of God, as there is a higher 
 nature communicated, so it is conveyed in a different 
 way. The spirit of man is not a mere act of crea¬ 
 tion, but rather an act of pro-creation. “ For we are 
 also his offspring.” It is not as in the Chaldean myth 
 that a drop of the Divine blood is mixed with clay of 
 the ground, but the breath of God breathes into man 
 that rational and moral nature which makes us in a sense 
 partakers of the very nature of God himself. The plural 
 form, “ breath of lives,” may or may not, refer to the 
 twofold division into the intellectual and active powers, 
 or the natural and moral as generally adopted by 
 psychologists. Some consider it only the pluralis 
 dignitatis , as the tree of life is also called the etz chayim , 
 and there are several instances in which the plural 
 
44 The Creation of Man. 
 
 form is used where we should use the singular. Or 
 the plural form may refer to the truth that the spi¬ 
 ritual life which was breathed into man’s nostrils was 
 a life which he had in common with God, and which is 
 the life of God in the soul. The spirit of man is the 
 candle of the Lord. Bishop Sanderson* explains con- 
 scientia as the knowledge of good and evil which we 
 have in common with God. In this sense the breath 
 of lives may be used in the plural to convey the deep 
 truth that the spirit’s life never can be solitary. While 
 with regard to all other created spirits we can lead 
 a self-contained life, we cannot live out of God’s pre¬ 
 sence. He is ever present to the spirit, even as the 
 world of nature lives in Him. He is the Father of 
 spirits, and more than this, our spirits, individual 
 though they be, and immortal as they may become, 
 live unto Him. In a much deeper and more intimate 
 sense than in the case of our animal life, He is the 
 spring and support of all spiritual life. Our spirits 
 live, and move, and have their being in Him: our 
 bodies rather live and move through Him. To our 
 spirits He is eternally present. As the Psalmist says, 
 we cannot flee from His presence, even if we take the 
 wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts 
 of the earth. But more than this, if we go into the 
 depths of our own self-consciousness, if we say, perad- 
 venture there the darkness shall cover me, still we 
 shall find that the darkness is no darkness to Him. 
 He sees us from within, not from without, as others 
 do. Man looks upon the outward appearance, and 
 
 * See “ Sanderson de Obligatione Conscientiae,” Whewell’s edit. 
 
45 
 
 The Creation of Man. 
 
 judges of the thoughts by the words and actions. 
 Nor is he always unjust in this kind of judgment. 
 But God sees from within. He tries the reins, and 
 understands our thoughts long ago. He foresees, as 
 we cannot, what our conduct will be, for he sees the 
 germ of murder in hatred, or of adultery in a lasci¬ 
 vious eye. Thus the life of our spirit is a double life 
 in a sense which would abundantly justify the plural 
 form. 
 
 We pass by as frivolous the explanation that the 
 breath of lives refers to the fact, that as man has 
 two nostrils, it was a divided or a double breath. It 
 is nothing to the point through which of the organs 
 of sense the first inspiring breath of God passed. 
 The nostrils are referred to as the organs through 
 which we draw in natural breath, and therefore in 
 man “ a being breathing thoughtful breath,” the 
 breath of God’s Spirit, which is the higher life of man, 
 passed in at the same channel, and doubtless at the 
 same moment, as the natural breath. Had God made 
 man with an animal life only, there would have been 
 some Divine afflatus, doubtless, to animate the clay, 
 for even of the lower world, it is said, “Thou takest 
 away their breath, and they die.” But since man, 
 though veiled in flesh, was made a spiritual being, a 
 higher or spiritual life was conveyed at the same 
 time as the lower and through the same channel, the 
 nostrils ; but lest we should ever confound the two 
 together, it is said that “ the Lord God breathed into 
 man’s nostrils.” We gather from this expression of 
 dignity that the creation of his spirit was not some 
 
4 6 
 
 The Creation of Man ♦ 
 
 new transformation of matter, as when the earth 
 brought forth abundantly cattle and creeping things, 
 but was an emanation direct from God Himself. 
 
 C. And man became a living soul. This is the 
 third and final cause of man’s nature. God having 
 given him an animal life out of the dust of the ground, 
 and a spiritual life by emanation from Himself, the 
 soul, or tertium quid of body and spirit, is next re¬ 
 ferred to. “ So man became a living soul.”* He 
 awoke, as Moses was said to have died on Pisgah, 
 beneath the kiss of God. The general expression, 
 Nephesh Chayah , a living soul, which is applied to the 
 animal creation as well as to man, well expresses the 
 nature of man’s soul at present, midway between 
 matter and spirit—a little lower than the angels, a 
 little higher than the brute. The popular view of 
 this expression, man became a living soul, is clearly 
 incorrect. It is an instance of the loose and unsatis¬ 
 factory views of psychology for which our popular 
 commentators are mainly responsible. So far from 
 the expression Nephesh Chayah indicating any differ¬ 
 ence between man and the brutes, it would rather, 
 taken by itself, suggest a community of nature. Of 
 the lower creation spoken of in chap, i., it is said that 
 they became living souls, and the Hebrew Nephesh, 
 instead of suggesting any idea of immateriality, much 
 
 * Kai i'ytveTo 6 (LvOpuriros els \f/vxv v pwcrai'— So the LXX. and so St Paul 
 i Cor. xv. 45. The force of eis is local. The LXX. rightly rendering the 
 Heb. by eis, which implies that the soul is the meeting point of two 
 opposite natures, the flesh and the spirit. Here also remark the contrast be¬ 
 tween the first and seeond Adam—the soul is the terminus ad quern in the 
 one case, the spirit in the other. 
 
47 
 
 The Creation of Man. 
 
 less immortality, is the general expression used for all 
 animal life. It is used indifferently of man and beast, 
 each after its kind. The one after death going up¬ 
 ward, and the other downward; but taken by itself 
 Nephesh is perfectly general; it is the anima , not the 
 animus of the Latins, the individual, as contrasted 
 with the species, whether that individual possess a 
 reasonable soul, or a soul capable of instinct only.* 
 
 It is in this indeterminateness of the expression, 
 a living soul, that we see the accuracy of Bible Psy¬ 
 chology, and get a clue for all our after inquiries. 
 The soul, which we may here provisionally describe 
 as the ego, or the nexus between matter and mind— 
 is the meeting point between the higher and the 
 lower natures in man. It is referred to in Gen. ii. 7, 
 in such terms that we cannot fail to see that an exact 
 system of psychology is here alluded to. Whatever 
 allowance may be made for the loose and popular ex¬ 
 pressions of the Bible with regard to astronomy and 
 the positive sciences generally, we neither expect nor 
 desire such indulgence to be extended to its use of 
 psychological terms. For the Bible does profess to 
 teach us, if not the details, at least the main outlines 
 of a true psychology. It lays down for our instruc¬ 
 tion the two natures of man—the animal and the 
 spiritual, and then describes Nephesh as the union 
 
 * Individual and person are very often loosely used as synonyms, whereas 
 individual is opposed to species, person to nature. Each animal per se is an 
 ens individuum, and has an identity as such—but it has not personality. Man 
 alone is ‘‘person and nature,” as the Germans say—person as to his higher 
 nature as to his lower or animal life. Inattention to this distinction lies at 
 the root of the old controversy as to the nature of man between the spiritual¬ 
 ists and the sensualists. 
 
^3 ^he Creation of Man. 
 
 point between the two. Man became a living soul, 
 in the sense that his Nephesh or self is the meeting 
 point, or tertium quid of these two natures, body and 
 
 spirit. 
 
 Thus the narrative in Genesis stands out distinct 
 and contrasted, as well from spiritualist as from ma¬ 
 terialist theories of human nature. Considering the 
 temptation that there is to adopt one of the two con¬ 
 flicting psychological theories, and to take sides either 
 with the idealists or the sensualists, it deserves to 
 rank with other proofs of the inspiration of Scripture, 
 that it should have described the constitution of man 
 in a way which all our later investigations tend to 
 confirm the truth of. We may amplify and illustrate 
 the psychology of Gen. 11. 7, but here is substantially, 
 and in the fewest possible words, all that we know of 
 the sources of man’s nature and their union-point, the 
 soul. To write the history of the soul would be to 
 write a history of philosophy. For this word is the 
 standard around which the battle has raged from the 
 dawn of speculation down to our day. From Con¬ 
 fucius to Comte, and from the Elean school of Zeno 
 to Hegel, the controversy has been waged, and is no 
 nearer a settlement, as far as physicians and metaphy¬ 
 sicians are concerned, in our day, than when it first 
 broke out. But those who have no wish to take a 
 side, and who only search for truth, no matter where 
 it comes from, are drawing nearer every day to the 
 settlement which Moses pointed out centuries before 
 the schools began to dispute. They see that in the soul 
 of man the animal and the spirit meet and combine in 
 
49 
 
 The Creation of Man. 
 
 a union so intimate, that after their union their sepa¬ 
 rate existence may be said to be destroyed. Just as 
 oxygen and hydrogen gas, when uniting in certain 
 fixed proportions, lose all the properties of gas and 
 become water, a substance which seems to have little 
 or nothing in common with its two constituent ele¬ 
 ments, so the animal and the spirit, combined in cer¬ 
 tain proportions, as definite as those of oxygen and 
 hydrogen, though not as easily described by numerical 
 ratios, produce a third, and apparently distinct nature, 
 which we call the soul.* 
 
 * Goschel sets out, in his short and most suggestive treatise on Psychology, by 
 setting forth this unity of two natures in one person—body and spirit merging 
 in the personal soul, as the true idea of man. It is sin, therefore, which in 
 this sense has created the dualism in human nature by which we speak of the 
 flesh and the spirit as contrary the one to the other. This view is undeniably 
 true.—See Goschel zur Lehr von dem Menschen. 
 
 D 
 
the relation of body to soul in 
 
 SCRIPTURE. 
 
 The relation between body and soul, and spirit, is 
 implied rather than asserted in Scripture. We are 
 not told in the language of the schools that reason is the 
 governing principle, and sense the subject, 01 that the 
 will as the middle point between the two is bound, to 
 follow reason, and to resist the motions of appetite. 
 The scholastic method is not the scriptural, but the 
 two are not therefore opposed. It is possible to draw 
 out a right theory of the relation of the animal to the 
 spiritual and rational nature in man, from the teaching 
 of Scripture, and to throw it into a scheme like that 
 
 of Aristotle, if desirable. 
 
 The first point to be ascertained is the connection 
 which Scripture points out between soul and body. 
 What light does the physiology of the Bible throw 
 upon its psychology. We set out with disclaiming to 
 find any intimation of a knowledge of the truths of 
 modern physiology in the Bible. It is not necessary 
 to suppose that Moses or Solomon were inspired to 
 anticipate the discoveries of Hervey and Bell, any more 
 than of Newton or Lyell. The three great discoveries 
 which have rewarded modern anatomy, are the circula¬ 
 tion of the blood, the brain as the organ of thought, 
 
The Relation of Soul to Body , etc . 51 
 
 and the nervous system as the organ of feeling and 
 motion. There is no trace of these to be found in 
 the Hebrew Scriptures, as there is certainly none in 
 the writings of Aristotle, or of any physiologist of his 
 school. The truth so obvious to us, that the brain is 
 the centre of sentient and rational life, was not even 
 suspected until the age of the Ptolemies.* Plato, it is 
 true, has a conjecture in the right direction, but it was 
 only a lucky guess, and does not deserve to be accre¬ 
 dited as a fact of discovery. He considers that God 
 and matter are the archetypes, and that the first form 
 which matter assumes is triangular. Out of these 
 triangles are composed four elements, and from these 
 four elements, with an addition of a quintessence, the 
 soul, man is formed. He considers the spinal marrow 
 to be the part first formed, that the marrow then covers 
 itself with bones, and these bones with flesh. The 
 soul he lodges in the brain, which he calls the con¬ 
 tinuation of the spinal marrow, and the ligaments by 
 which the latter is held in its place, he looks on as the 
 bonds connecting mind with matter. But this theory 
 of the brain as the seat of the soul was only a guess 
 unsupported by a single experiment, and so physiolo¬ 
 gists return to the old opinion that the heart was the 
 centre of life, that the nerves conducted to it, and that 
 by the heart we felt, perceived, and reasoned. Aris- 
 
 * In this he was preceded by Pythagoras, who was the first who isolated 
 the vovs in the brain. Alcmazon, his pupil, considered the brain as the organ 
 as well of perception as of thought. In like manner the younger Hippocratic 
 school and most of the Alexandrian physicians. It is somewhat remarkable 
 that the book of Daniel (v. ii., 28 iv., 2, 7, 10, vii , 1, 15) considers the head 
 as the seat of visions. Delitzsch rightly notices that in this book is the only 
 trace of the reference of spiritual-psychical events to the head. 
 
^2 yhe Relation of 
 
 totle clung to the opinion that the brain is a mere 
 excrescence of the spinal marrow, adapted by its usual 
 coldness and moisture to allay the fire at the heart, 
 and it was not until the Alexandrian physicians, 
 Erasistratus and Herophilus, by dissecting the bodies 
 of criminals given for examination in the medical 
 schools, overturned the old opinion that the heart was 
 the seat of the soul. But language does not advance 
 with the advance of scientific ideas. To this day the 
 heart is popularly supposed to be the centre of feeling, 
 though not of thought. We speak of a large heart 
 and a feeling heart, of the heart bleeding and so on. 
 The head and the heart are indeed contrasted to this 
 day, as if the one were the seat of intelligence, the 
 other of feeling. By and bye we shall give up the 
 absurdity of bleeding hearts with its accompanying 
 jingle of cupid’s darts, but our language at present is 
 in the transition state, and if the transfer of the capital 
 of Mansoul from the middle of the body to the crown 
 is not complete, it is at least going on. We know 
 that it is an accommodation to prejudice to speak of 
 the heart as in any sense the organ of perception and 
 feeling. 
 
 As the heart, then, and not the brain was supposed 
 to be the centre of thought and feeling, we find in 
 Scripture expressions used of the heart which we 
 should apply now to the head. Not only do we read 
 of a broken and a contrite heart, a clean heart, an 
 honest and a good heart, an evil and a hard heart, a 
 gross and a fat heart, expressions in which the heart 
 is spoken of as the seat of the moral affections: it is 
 
Soul to Body in Scripture . 53 
 
 also spoken of as the seat of the intellectual acts as 
 well. God opens a man’s eyes, not as we should say 
 to pour knowledge into his head, but into his heart. 
 Solomon is given wisdom and largeness of heart, the 
 disciples are fools and slow of heart. When we should 
 speak of sluggish brains, the Hebrews spoke of a slow 
 heart, when we should speak of a man taking a thing 
 into his head, they speak of laying it to heart. It is 
 needless to multiply instances of this, which any Eng¬ 
 lish reader can do for himself, but it is worthy of notice 
 that while there are hundreds of passages in which the 
 heart is said to be the seat of certain internal and 
 mental acts of thought and feeling, we have not been 
 able to find a single instance of the head being more 
 than the summit of the body in the external sense only.* 
 In Scripture the head is thus contrasted with the feet, 
 but not with the heart. From the crown of the head 
 to the sole of the foot, the whole body is diseased 
 according to Isaiah, but the fountain of the disease is 
 in the heart, from whence, as our Lord teaches, pro¬ 
 ceed evil thoughts, &c. Blessings rest, it is true, upon 
 the head of the just, but this is because the blessings 
 come down from above, and fall first on the head. It 
 is like the anointing oil which descends from the head 
 even to the skirts of Aaron’s clothing. The head is 
 the summit of man’s external and bodily form, but it 
 is not the capital or seat of empire. Nothing goes 
 
 * Einhorn, quoted by Delitzsch, rightly remarks on the distinction between 
 the use of the head and the heart in the Old Testament. “ The head is to the 
 external appearance what the heart is to the internal agency of the soul, and 
 only on this view is a prominent position given to it in the biblical point of 
 view.” 
 
54 
 
 The Relation of 
 
 into the head and nothing comes out of it. The in¬ 
 ference so obvious to us that as the chief senses, sight, 
 hearing, smell, taste, were all clustered round the 
 brain, and in close communication with it, the brain 
 and not the heart must be the centre of thought, does 
 not seem to have occurred to the ancients. Misled by 
 a false analogy between warmth and intelligence, they 
 assumed that the cold white and grey matter of the 
 brain could not be the instrument of thought, and they 
 therefore placed the seat of the soul, and the centre 
 of the nervous system, at the fountain-head of the 
 blood, for the blood was the life, and where the life 
 was warmest, there the seat of the soul undoubtedly 
 must be. 
 
 But while the Hebrews thus made a twofold error 
 with regard to the heart, not assigning to it its true 
 function, and assigning to it others which do not belong 
 to it, it would be wrong to suppose that they material¬ 
 ised the soul as the modern phrenological school do. 
 The soul inhabited the heart, but it was not a function 
 of the heart; as intellect and feeling are functions of 
 the brain among modern physiologists, whose views 
 incline to materialism. The inhabitant of the house 
 was not confounded with the house itself. While not 
 going as far as the later Platonists, who not only dis¬ 
 tinguished soul from body, but spoke of the union of 
 spirit with flesh, as an imprisonment, a disgrace, and 
 the punishment of sins perhaps committed in a pre¬ 
 existent state, they certainly did not localize the soul 
 so exclusively in the heart, as the new school of 
 physiology do in the brain. The heart was the chief 
 
55 
 
 Soul to Body in Scripture , 
 
 but not the only centre. Generally the reins and the 
 bowels are referred to, the one as the seat of moral 
 reflection, or as we should say, of conscience, the other 
 of affection. Bowels of mercies is a Hebraism found 
 in the New Testament, and exactly corresponding to 
 /3 c%o 5 dogfc weight of glory, or x dp/e sitfvn. As m 
 the two latter expressions the East and West combine 
 their form of expression, and pile up weight upon 
 glory, peace upon grace—so in the phrase bowels of 
 mercies, the mercy and the organ whose function it is 
 to express feeling, are both spoken of to show how 
 entire and deep the affection was. It was a mercy 
 which went through and through a man s nature, an 
 affection which indeed affected not the mind only, but 
 as all deep affections do, the body as well, of him who 
 felt it. 
 
 The reins or kidneys, in the same way, are spoken 
 of as the seat of reflection, as the bowels are of affec¬ 
 tion. God tries the reins, chastens the reins, sends 
 his arrows of conviction into the reins (Lam. iii. 13)* 
 The reins are coupled with the heart as the seat of 
 secret thoughts, which God is entreated to examine 
 and try. To sum all up, as the physiology of the 
 Bible is that of the age when it was written, in 
 all these passages in which psychology touches upon 
 physiology, we find that those organs of the body are 
 spoken of as the organs of thought and feeling which 
 are directly sympathetic with thought and feeling. 
 The heart, the liver, and the diaphragm are organs so 
 sympathetic with our emotions that it requires more 
 knowledge of anatomy than the ancients possessed, 
 
56 The Relation of 
 
 not to go a step farther, and make them the very 
 centres from which these affections flowed. When a 
 tale of shame and suffering causes the heart to beat 
 and the colour in consequence to mount up into the 
 cheek, it is difficult to resist the impression that the 
 heart is bleeding, because the feeling soul is beating 
 its pulsations thus. The fancy of Shakespeare that 
 the blood of Julius rushed out of doors to see if Brutus 
 so unkindly knocked or no, is only a poetic way of 
 expressing the general fact that the heart is the foun¬ 
 tain and the blood the river of life, and that, “ like the 
 ebb and flow of the Euripus,” the tides of feeling flow 
 to and from the heart. 
 
 Thus, while Scripture assumes the connection be¬ 
 tween mind and body, it is everywhere silent as to the 
 nature of that connection. It distinguishes certain 
 chief organs which the soul plays upon, as a musician 
 on a harp, lute, or lyre; but it nowhere touches the 
 question which of these is the chief instrument, or 
 whether he could discourse music without any instru¬ 
 ment at all. The Hebrews probably inclined to the 
 opinion that the soul was diffused through the body, 
 and that the whole body was an organ of intelligence, 
 and was not localised in some one organ, as modern 
 physiologists too much incline to think.* There is a 
 sense in which the whole body may be said to be 
 employed, although it may conduct its principal opera¬ 
 tions through one or two particular organs, just as the 
 entire temple was holy, although the Deity was sup- 
 
 * This is expressed in the language of the old dogmatists “ Anima in toto 
 corpore tota et in singulis simul corporis partibus tota.” 
 
57 
 
 Soul to Body in Scripture. 
 
 posed to manifest his immediate presence in the Holy 
 of Holies. That our bodies are to be the temples of 
 the Holy Ghost is the argument used by the apostle 
 to urge sanctification of our entire nature. But such 
 an argument would be inapplicable unless in a sense 
 the soul inhabited the whole body, and that the out¬ 
 ward form was penetrated through and through by 
 the inward essence. The doctrine of correspondence, 
 which has been pressed by certain mystics to an 
 unwarrantable length, has at least this measure of 
 truth, that the outward is more than a veil or covering 
 for the inward. There is a harmony between body 
 and mind which was felt long before phrenology, 
 cheiromancy, and other pretended explanations of it 
 were ever thought of. The rudest tribes, as well as 
 children, and even animals, are physiognomists to this 
 extent at least, that they can judge very well who are 
 their friends. The play of the involuntaiy muscles, 
 which betray our secret sympathies and antipathies, 
 can be read by those who have very little power of 
 observation. The connection, indeed, between mind 
 and body is deeper than we have yet been able to 
 trace. It is marked out in the well-known lines of 
 Hamlet:— 
 
 “ For nature, crescent, does not grow alone 
 In thews and bulk ; but, as this temple waxes, 
 
 The inward service of the mind and soul 
 Grows wide withal.” 
 
 This harmony between the outer and the inner man, 
 the interdependence of sense on thought and thought on 
 sense, is the point on which our soundest physiologists 
 
58 
 
 The Relation of 
 
 are advancing every day. Discarding the old material¬ 
 ism which made thought a secretion of the brain or 
 blood, and the old spiritualism which taught that the 
 spirit of man was probably that of some fallen dmmon 
 imprisoned for a while in flesh, we are advancing in 
 the right direction when we maintain the separate 
 existence of the mind and body, and yet regard the 
 former as perfectly pervading the latter, nay, as being 
 the formative principle by which it is constructed and 
 adapted to our nature and use.* 
 
 The goal to which modern research is tending is the 
 point where the old dualism between mind and body 
 will not disappear, but be seen to combine with some 
 higher law of unity that we have not as yet grasped. 
 Physiology and psychology will not then stand con¬ 
 trasted as they do now, but rather appear as the study 
 of the same thing in its outward and inward aspect. 
 The resurrection of the body, which at present is a 
 stumbling-block to the spiritualists and foolishness to 
 materialists, will then be found to be the wisdom of 
 
 I 
 
 God as well as the power of God, and the Scripture 
 intimations of the unity of man’s true nature in one 
 person be abundantly vindicated. 
 
 Thus, according to Scripture, the body was not so 
 much the slave of the soul, or its prison-house, as 
 philosophy, with its dualistic view of body and mind, 
 has constantly taught. The relation of the two may 
 be described as sacramental; the body was the out- 
 
 * For the theory of the soul as the formative principle of the body, v. Con¬ 
 tributions to Mental Philosophy, by Immanuel Hermann Fichte ; Preface by 
 J. D. Morell. 
 
Soul to Body in Scripture. 
 
 59 
 
 ward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual mind. 
 The mind was not seated in one part of the body, but 
 in the whole; did not employ one class of organs only, 
 but all. Hence the well-known Hebraism, “ All my 
 bones shall praise theeand the other expression, 
 Naphshi, which we render as My soul, but which might 
 be better expressed Myself. The entire nature of the 
 mind breathing through the entire body.* Thus the 
 Nephesh, which is exactly equivalent to Aristotle’s use 
 of 'I'vxv, is not the mind , or soul, or spirit; but the 
 man who thinks, wills, and acts. It was as foreign to 
 Hebrew psychology as it is to modern views to suppose 
 the mind thinking or willing without the body. Hence 
 it was that all who clung to the belief in an existence 
 after death, as they could not conceive of a pure dis¬ 
 embodied spirit, supposed that death only destroyed the 
 outer frame-work of flesh, and that there was an inner 
 and ethereal body by which the soul continued to live 
 
 * Whether under Aristotle’s i/jvxv is included what we call the thinking 
 principle, or the soul, properly so called, does not admit of a doubt. He dis¬ 
 tinguishes, indeed, thinking from sensation, and assigns it as a mark peculiar 
 to the highest class of animals, man. He further argues that the reflective 
 faculty is not the sensitive faculty in a state of repose. He says that the vovs, 
 or intellect, is that part of the soul by which it both knows and reflects. But 
 whether this vovs exists after separation from the body, he nowhere decides. 
 Respecting mind and the speculative faculty, he says nothing as yet is evident 
 (ovdbv irw <pavepov) ; but it seems to be another kind of soul, and is alone cap¬ 
 able of separation, as the imperishable from the corruptible .—Be Anima , II. 2. 
 
 Galen argued that the mind was mortal, because it was part of the soul , or vital 
 principle. According to him there were three souls—one inhabiting the liver ; 
 a second, the heart; and the third, a rational soul, the brain. Now, if the 
 intellectual part in man be of the nature of the soul, or vital principle, it must 
 perish with the brain, of which it is the function. Function, as all physiolo¬ 
 gists would say, becomes extinct with the organ to which, it was fitted .—See 
 Lewis' Aristotle. 
 
6o 
 
 The Relation of 
 
 after death.* On this subject Scripture was silent. 
 The whole question of man’s immortality was the 
 mystery which was hid in Christ from the beginning 
 of the world. As in all things he was to have the pre¬ 
 eminence, so in this that he was to be the first begotten 
 of the dead. Pharisees and Sadducees disputed on this 
 point. Of the two sects the Pharisees came far nearest 
 the truth. They were right in what they affirmed, 
 wrong in the way they maintained it; whereas the 
 Sadducees were wrong as well in their denial of the 
 resurrection, as in grounding it on the silence of Scrip¬ 
 ture. Both sides (as is commonly the case in disputes) 
 forgot that they were reasoning on imperfect data, and 
 that it is one thing to believe that God will not leave 
 one soul in Sheol, or suffer his holy One to see cor¬ 
 ruption, another thing to turn this spiritual instinct 
 into a proof of man’s natural immortality, and of the 
 native power of the soul to resist corruption in the dis¬ 
 embodied state, clothing itself again with a new body, 
 as nature throws up a new nail or a tooth when the 
 old one is broken or impaired. 
 
 * Tertullian held that the soul was not only in a body, and held a human 
 form, but that in its disembodied state it was still a filmy, shadowy body. 
 He even went so far as to say that God had a body, and that nothing which 
 exists is bodiless. Augustine, while he finds fault with Tertullian for this 
 notion, which he calls materialism, by no means rejects it. Theodotus says, 
 dXXa kcu r/ 'pvxn <rw/ia. Even the soul is a body, for, he adds, the apostle says 
 it is sown. Methodius, also, in his treatise on the resurrection, says that the 
 souls created by the Father of all are intelligent bodies ; aufj-ara voeph. Bacon 
 and Cudworth too inclined to the view that the soul is a kind of ethereal body, 
 a body within our body of flesh ; and in modern times, Geoffroy St Hilaire, 
 J. Garth Wilkinson, Dr Moore, and others have held this theory of corre¬ 
 spondence, and that the soul was a body within the body, as the body was a 
 kind of outer soul .—See Anastasia of Professor Bush, and RendelVs Peculiarities of 
 the Bible. 
 
Soul to Body in Scripture. 61 
 
 u It is dangerous to shew man how much he resembles 
 the beasts, without at the same time pointing out to 
 him his own greatness. It is also dangerous to shew 
 him his greatness without pointing out his baseness. 
 It is more dangerous still to leave him in ignorance of 
 both. But is greatly for his advantage to have both set 
 before him.” In these words of Pascal we have the 
 true rationale of the relation of the lower to the higher 
 nature in man. Scripture assumes this throughout. 
 Man is treated all through as being made for a little 
 while lower than the angels, and clothed with a body 
 of flesh, in order that, by a discipline of the will, the 
 flesh might be subdued to the spirit, so that by and by 
 he might be admitted to a higher state of being, equal 
 with the angels, and clothed upon with a body which 
 is from heaven. 
 
OF THE RELATION OF SOUL AND 
 SPIRIT IN SCRIPTURE. 
 
 When we pass from the relation of body and soul to 
 the relation of soul and spirit in Scripture, we come 
 upon more certain ground, because we come within 
 that which it is the province of Scripture to teach. 
 The relation of body to soul is a question as much of 
 physiology as of psychology, and therefore to a great 
 extent beside the class of truths for which a revelation 
 has been given. Not so with the relation of soul to 
 spirit. Here it is that the candle of science has almost 
 gone out, and the candle of inspiration burns all the 
 more brightly. 
 
 The passage to which we turn for a decisive testi¬ 
 mony, as well of the distinction between soul and 
 spirit, as of their relation to each other, is Hebrews 
 iv. 12. 
 
 It is said of the word of God, that it pierces sharper 
 than any two-edged sword: the proof of its power of 
 piercing is this, that “ it divides and discerns between 
 soul and spirit,” “and,” or, “ as if,” (for the latter is 
 not a fresh instance of its penetrating power, but a 
 comparison by which we may judge of it), “ of joint 
 and marrow.” This two-edged sword, unlike other 
 
The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 6g 
 
 swords which only cleave the flesh as far as the bone, 
 divides the bone as well, and enters into the marrow. 
 That which the marrow is to the joints, that the spirit 
 is to the soul. As marrow is flesh within flesh, so the 
 spirit is a soul within the soul. The comparison of 
 Justin Martyr,* that the body is the house of the soul, 
 and the soul the house of the spirit, is another illustra¬ 
 tion to the same effect. It points to the same thought 
 that the spirit lies encased within the soul, as the soul 
 within the body, that the comparison of the apostle is 
 even more striking than just. There is a wall of bone 
 between the marrow and the flesh, and thus it is far 
 easier to reach the soul through the body than it is the 
 spirit through the soul. Any sword will pierce the 
 soul, but it is only the sword of the Spirit that can 
 pierce and divide between soul and spirit. To make 
 Justin Martyr’s comparison at all as forcible as that of 
 the apostle, we should say that the soul dwells in a 
 house pierced with windows, but the spirit is a walled 
 dungeon, with only a skylight in the roof. It is easy 
 to reach the soul through the senses, but to reach the 
 spirit through the soul requires a power far above a 
 sword, which is of the nature of the spirit itself. 
 
 * OIkos yap rb awp-a \pvxfjs irve^tfiaros Se fvxn oTkos. Just. Mart. Frag- 
 menta, so Aug. Conf. x. 19* Vivit enim corpus meum de anima mea et vivit 
 anima mea de te. Tertullian again says, anima corpus spiritus, caro coipus 
 anima. 
 
 See Schultz, Die Voraussetzungen der Christlichen Lehre von der Unster- 
 blichkeit, p. 82. Beck Umriss der Biblischen Seelenlehre, says, “The spirit 
 is not beside nor upon the soul, but in it,” Compare with this the Cabbalistic 
 view of the five souls, one within the other, and the outer the vehicle of the 
 inner, and corresponding to it, the Nephesh, Ruach, Neshamah, Chajah, 
 Jechidah v. Beck, p. 208. 
 
64 The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 
 
 But the sword of the Spirit not only pierces through 
 to the spirit, it divides between soul and spirit. Here 
 we come to the important truth that the trichotomy of 
 man’s nature, body, soul, and spirit is only discovered 
 under the Spirit’s convincing power. This is why the 
 true trichotomy of man was not so much as suspected 
 by the ancients. It is true that Plato, like St Paul, 
 divided man into three parts, but theie the resem¬ 
 blance ends, the parts do not mutually correspond, 
 and that which is the master faculty in Plato is a sub¬ 
 ordinate faculty in the apostle s scheme. To under¬ 
 stand the tripartite division of Plato, viz., the appeti¬ 
 tive, the irascible and the intellectual natures as situated 
 in the stomach, the heart, and the head respectively, 
 we must bear in mind that the location of intellect, or 
 the vovg in the head, was only a lucky guess, and not 
 grounded on any sound physiological views of the 
 functions which the brain discharges as the instrument 
 of thought. Plato, as an intellectualist, assigned to 
 reason or voZg the sovereign place 5 but in this his tri¬ 
 chotomy is contrasted with that of Scripture. In Scrip¬ 
 ture psychology the intellect holds the second place not 
 th efirst. To harmonise Plato and St Paul together is 
 impossible. The appetitive nature of Plato corre¬ 
 sponds, we admit, to the body or animal nature of St 
 Paul, (1 Th. v. 23). But the psyche of St Paul is 
 distributed by Plato between the emotional and intel¬ 
 lectual natures seated in the heart and head respec¬ 
 tively, while the pneuma of St Paul is unknown to 
 Plato. How could it be otherwise ? Till the func¬ 
 tion of spiritual-mindedness was known, the organ 
 
The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 65 
 
 which discharges that function lay undiscovered. It 
 was part of that mystery hid from generations and 
 ages, which eye had not seen, nor ear heard, nor the 
 heart of man conceived. The early apologists, forget¬ 
 ting this, and too ready to catch at corroborations of 
 the truth from heathen sources, saw, or fancied they 
 saw, a correspondence between the Platonic trichotomy 
 and the Pauline, thus confounding Logos and Pneuma, 
 pure intellect and the spirit. What this led to in the 
 case of Appollinaris we have already seen, but the 
 worst result of all was that it led to a rejection of the 
 trichotomy itself, from its suspected affinity to Platonism. 
 It is another instance of the danger of making alliances 
 between Christian and heathen modes of thought. 
 
 A preference for the number three may have in¬ 
 clined Plato, with many modern psychologists, to 
 speak of three distinct lives, the vegetative, the sensi¬ 
 tive, and the rational; but the same reasoning would 
 lead us with Bryant and the old school of mytholo- 
 gists, to see traces of the primitive doctrine of the 
 Trinity in the Hindoo, Greek, and Egyptian Triads. 
 Reasoning on such straws of resemblance as these, 
 Fluellen compared Macedon and Monmouth together, 
 but analogy, which is the resemblance of reason, re¬ 
 jects external points of comparison to seize on those 
 that are internal and essential. Plato and the Greek 
 philosophers, speaking strictly, were dichotomists. 
 According to Plato, man consisted of two parts, a 
 mortal body, and an immortal soul: their separation 
 is what we call death. Of the soul he said, there are 
 two primitive and component parts, a mortal and im- 
 
 E 
 
66 The Relation of Soul and Spirit . 
 
 mortal—the one made by the created gods, and the 
 other by the supreme—that for the purpose of unit¬ 
 ing these parts together, it is necessary there should 
 be a demoniac portion or spirit. But this spirit (©^05 
 not wsv/jyo) of Plato means something essentially differ¬ 
 ent from the pneuma of Scripture. The spirit is the 
 vehicle of the soul in Plato, whereas in Scripture the 
 soul may be said to be the vehicle of the spirit. We 
 must put the second first, and the first second, if we 
 would harmonise Plato and St. Paul. Incende quod 
 adorasti , adora quod incendisti is the only terms on 
 which the Intellectualism of Plato can be reconciled 
 with the spiritualism of St Paul (2 Cor. x. 5). The 
 spirit or irascible part in Plato has been too long con¬ 
 founded with pneuma, or religious consciousness of St 
 Paul. For the views of the later Platonists see Cud- 
 worth’s Intellectual System, who, however, like all his 
 school, is more given to trace resemblances than differ¬ 
 ences between Greek philosophy and Christian truth. 
 
 For the same reason the true trichotomy of human 
 nature is not to be sought, at least in any explicit form, 
 in the Old Testament. It is implied as we have seen in 
 the account of man’s creation, Gen. ii. 7. But we can¬ 
 not agree with those who would give the words nvt 
 Ruach, and Nephesh a precise psychological mean¬ 
 ing throughout the Old Testament. The Ruach and 
 the Nephesh are certainly distinguished from each other, 
 as the animus and the anima of the Latins, the miv/ta 
 and the " 4 of the Greeks. But the distinction was 
 rather between the lower and the middle, than be¬ 
 tween the middle and the higher kind of life. Nephesh 
 
The Relation of Soul and Spirit . 
 
 and Psyche are used in the Old Testament to distin¬ 
 guish the animal from the intellectual, not the intel¬ 
 lectual from the spiritual, properly so called. The 
 Nephesh of the Old Testament is a general term, ex¬ 
 pressive of life. Every living thing has a soul; whether 
 it has conscious personality or not it has a soul in so 
 far as it is an individual. Let the earth bring forth the 
 living creature is in the Hebrew the living soul, or of 
 reptiles and birds. Nephesh is a term convertible 
 with life, see in Lev. xvii. 14. The life or the. soul of 
 the flesh is in the blood. Not only do we read of a 
 Nephesh Chayah, but also of a Nephesh Meth, a dead 
 soul, used as a synonym for a dead body, Num. vi. 6. 
 It is equivalent to bodies in such an expression as this, 
 “ Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s 
 wife, and all their substance that they had gathered, 
 and the souls that they had gotten in Haran.” So in 
 the account of the fall of Tyre, Ezek. xxvii. 13, the 
 merchants traded in the persons (Heb. souls) of men, 
 and vessels of brass in thy market. With reference 
 to this obvious Hebraism, we read in the fall of Baby¬ 
 lon of sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and 
 souls of men, Rev. xviii. 13. The distinction here 
 drawn by some interpreters between eu/idra and 
 avdgavw as if the one referred to the body, and the 
 other to the soul, is uncritical. The distinction, if any, 
 is that which we use in modern English, when we 
 speak of hands and persons, in the one case referring 
 to the labour done, in the other, to the labourer who 
 does it. The c^ara are the hands as we should say, the 
 
68 7 he Relation of Soul and Spirit. 
 
 slaves who tended the chariots and horses, and the 
 Care the slaves in general * 
 
 Thus the Hebrew Nephesh has a lower meaning 
 than the English soul. The contrast that we express 
 between soul and body, they expressed by spirit and 
 soul. Ruach and Nephesh had each a lower meaning 
 than we now attach to them, Ruach referring to what we 
 should now call the soul, and Nephesh to what we should 
 now call the body. This is only what we might ex¬ 
 pect from the nature of the case. As the doctiine of 
 a life to come waited for the coming of Him who 
 brought life and immortality to light by the gospel, so 
 the deeper views of the Spirit as the soul of the soul 
 were not disclosed under a carnal dispensation, and 
 while as yet the personal indwelling of the Holy Ghost 
 had not been taught. It would have been contrary to 
 the proportion of faith that there should have been a 
 complete psychology before there was a complete 
 Theology. The Holy Ghost was not yet given, for 
 Jesus was not yet glorified, and as the spheie of the 
 Spirit’s operation is in the pneuma, witnessing to our 
 spirits that we are the sons of God, it is only what we 
 might expect that the intimations of the existence of 
 the one should be as enigmatic as those of the other. 
 Till the person of the Holy Ghost was explicitly taught, 
 his sphere of operation was not disclosed. The force 
 of this argument rests, of course, on this, whether the 
 distinct personality of the Holy Ghost and by conse¬ 
 quence the doctrine of the Trinity, is revealed in the 
 
 * See Dean Alford in loco. 
 
The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 69 
 
 Old Testament. That it is implied we admit, but the 
 doctrine itself waited to be disclosed in the only way 
 man can receive such a mystery, by the progressive 
 unfolding of the Redemptive work of the Father, Son, 
 and Holy Spirit. If this be so, then we are prepared 
 to expect the same reticence of the Old Testament 
 with regard to the spirit of man, as with regard to the 
 personality of the blessed Spirit of God. The psy¬ 
 chology of the Old Testament is incomplete, even as 
 its theology is, and in the same degree. The deeper 
 insight given in our dispensation into the operations of 
 the Godhead correspond to, and prepare the way for 
 a deeper insight into the operations of our own inner 
 nature. 
 
 With the teaching of our blessed Lord, the true 
 psychology of Scripture begins to emerge from the 
 mists and shadows of a carnal dispensation. In our 
 Lord we find the contrast between the worth of the 
 soul and the body brought out for the first time. The 
 dimness that hung over the mental vision of Moses, 
 David, Hezekiah is gone. We see now into the 
 spirit world; and instead of vague laments for the 
 dead, or complaints at the inequality of the distribu¬ 
 tion of the good things of this life, we find the awaken¬ 
 ing statement, “ What shall a man give in exchange 
 for his soul?” Such language as this, “Fear not 
 them that kill the body, and after that can do no more, 
 but rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul 
 and body in hell,” Matt. x. 28. The parable of Dives 
 and Lazarus, and those in Matt, xxv., which speak of a 
 judgment to come and a resurrection to life or to damna- 
 
jo The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 
 
 tion,—the assertion that He is to be the judge of quick 
 and dead,—all these eschatological truths which make 
 up so large a part of the Lord’s ministry when on earth, 
 may be supposed to have deepened proportionately the 
 psychology of those who were at the Old Testament 
 point of view. Men could no longer confound the 
 Nephesh with the animal life. Body and soul fall into 
 their right place and relation to each other, the one as 
 mortal, the other as non-mortal; the one perishing 
 with our last breath, the other passing out into the 
 world of spirits, and there prolonging a conscious ex¬ 
 istence either of happiness or misery. 
 
 It is worthy of remark that our blessed Lord s 
 psychology advances just as far as his teaching of 
 theology; where He drew the curtain over the one, 
 He also maintained a reserve about the other. “I 
 have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear 
 them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of Truth, 
 is come, he will guide you into all truth.” The con¬ 
 trast between the psychical and the pneumatical man, 
 and between the state of the Pneuma before and after 
 conversion, is not taught by our Lord : it was one of 
 that class of truths which they could not bear as yet. 
 We need a spiritual mind to discover our own spirits 
 to ourselves. It is only those who have felt the 
 Spirit’s work who ever care to penetrate into and ex¬ 
 plore their own spiritual being. This is distinctly 
 taught in that passage where St Paul contrasts the 
 psychical and the pneumatical in this respect, that the 
 one knows itself because it knows God, while the 
 other knows neither itself nor God. “For what man 
 
The Relation of Soul and Spirit . 71 
 
 knows the things of a man, save the spirit of man 
 which is in him ? Even so the things of God knoweth 
 no man, but the Spirit of God.” “But God, he 
 adds, “ has revealed them to us by his Spirit ” (1 Cor. 
 xi. 10, 1 [). 
 
 Thus the deeper meaning which our Lord gave to 
 the soul or Nephesh in contrast with the body led 
 the way for that true and complete trichotomy of man 
 which could only be taught after that Jesus was glo¬ 
 rified and the Holy Ghost given. The first step was 
 to make the contrast clear between soul and body, and 
 to distinguish the Nephesh or Psyche from the mere 
 animal life, with which it is often confounded in the 
 Old Testament. This distinction between soul and 
 body being made good, the apostles were able to 
 take a further step in advance, and to unfold the 
 distinction between soul and spirit, which lay in the 
 Old Testament like the petals of a flower that is only 
 in bud. The doctrine of the new birth, as disclosed 
 by our Lord in his discourse to Nicodemus, seemed 
 to assume the existence of a third or inner life, en¬ 
 folded within the rational, as the rational lay within 
 the animal. Without this distinction between the soul 
 and spirit, as we shall see by and by, the doctrine 
 of the new birth is incomplete. It lacks that which 
 alone can make it complete in itself, and consistent 
 with what we know of the Divine operations else¬ 
 where. Thus a new truth in theology, the new 
 birth from above, seemed to point to some latent 
 truth in psychology which would be its complemen- 
 
y 2 The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 
 
 tary.* The exact nature of that new birth was not, 
 of course, intelligible to Nicodemus, or indeed to any 
 who are unable to divide between the soul and the 
 spirit. It must have seemed to him, as indeed it 
 always has to the unspiritual ever since, either a 
 monstrous absurdity, or a very metaphorical way of 
 expressing a change from one external religion to 
 another. Our Lord did not clear up the mystery by 
 giving him an insight into another mystery, the ex¬ 
 istence of a latent pneuma underneath the active, 
 living psyche. This would have been to anticipate 
 the teaching of the Holy Ghost, and to put the doc¬ 
 trine of the new birth out of its right order. Our 
 Lord breaks off, therefore, at this point, and instead 
 of heavenly things, which Nicodemus could not un¬ 
 derstand, glances at earthly things, which he could, 
 and, through the type of the brazen serpent, points on 
 to his own approaching death on the cross. But this 
 wonderful discourse, so carefully recorded by the latest 
 evangelist, was doubtless one of those u many things ” 
 the meaning of which the abiding Comforter was sent 
 to clear up. It might not of itself have suggested the 
 distinction between soul and spirit, but it certainly 
 presupposed it, and lay an unexplained problem on 
 
 * Those who object to the trichotomy generally rest their case on our Lord's 
 use of the contrast of body and soul without any reference to the spirit what¬ 
 ever. Compare such passages as Matt. x. 28, Luke xii. 5. But they over¬ 
 look these two considerations thrown out in the text, and which accounts, 
 as we think, satisfactorily for our Lord’s silence as to the spiritual part of 
 man’s nature—first that the Holy Spirit not being yet given, the organ 
 through which the Spirit acts on human nature was intentionally passed by— 
 and secondly that our Lord prepared the way for that teaching by laying down 
 the necessity of a new birth, which was unintelligible until the Spirit was 
 given. 
 
The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 73 
 
 the disciples’ memories till the Holy Ghost was given. 
 
 It was a gordian knot which nothing could cut but the 
 two-edged sword which pierces to the dividing asunder 
 of soul and spirit. 
 
 But with the gift of the Divine Pneuma, the exist¬ 
 ence of a third or pneumatical part in man became 
 as distinct as it was before obscure. The dying 
 Stephen commends not his soul, or the rational and 
 moral life, to God; but the spirit, the divine and 
 regenerate nature, quickened by the Holy Ghost, 
 and created in the image of Him that formed it. 
 So it is that the mevpa begins to appear in the page 
 of the apostle’s epistles, not as contrasted with the 
 or flesh only, but also with the rational life or 
 psyche. However dichotomists may twist those 
 passages which contrast flesh and spirit together, as 
 ordinary moralists would soul and body, and infer 
 therefrom that spirit is only another name for soul, 
 as flesh is for body, there are certain passages which 
 are simply inexplicable on the dichotomist hypothesis, 
 and, therefore, which either mean nothing at all, or 
 must be allowed to prove the triple nature of man. 
 
 We will notice a few of these in order. 
 
 1. As the most explicit of all, and occurring in 
 the earliest written epistle of the Apostle Paul, we 
 read the words, 11 1 pray God your whole spirit and 
 soul and body may be preserved blameless unto the 
 coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, 1 Thes. v. 23. 
 The apostle had desired that the very God of peace 
 should sanctify them wholly, oXorsXsTg. The word 
 axors* ijs, which occurs nowhere else in the New Tes- 
 
74 The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 
 
 tament, is clearly contrasted with the following 6Xk- 
 Xqgov, and the contrast is that between totus and integer, 
 complete and entire. In the one case the apostle 
 prays that their salvation may be complete as a whole 
 (totus), in the other entire (integer ) in every part. 
 The complete sanctification of the believer thus sug¬ 
 gests those parts of man’s nature that the Divine 
 Spirit is to enter and entirely (entierement, i.e. inwardly) 
 sanctify by His indwelling Power. If sanctification 
 is to be complete as to the end, so it must be as to 
 the means, if of the whole, so of the parts. The 
 TiXog in the first compound suggests the end, which 
 is our whole sanctification ; the nXypos, of the second, 
 suggests the means, that we may be sanctified in 
 every part. Sanctification thus rests on these two 
 conditions, that the Holy Spirit shall possess each of 
 the three parts of our nature, and possess them en¬ 
 tirely. If sanctification, as the work of God the 
 Holy Ghost, is to reach its proper rsXog, or end, He 
 must first enter in and occupy each several part of 
 man’s nature, and then sanctify that several part 
 thoroughly. This passage has thus a practical as 
 well as a speculative import. It teaches us, in the 
 first place, that there are three parts in man, and not 
 two only, thus setting at rest the controversy whe¬ 
 ther the dichotomist or trichotomist view of human 
 nature be that of Scripture: but it also confirms 
 those other passages of Scripture which speak of the 
 indwelling of the Holy Ghost as not being confined 
 to the human spirit, but extending as well to the 
 soul and body. Our souls and our bodies are the 
 
The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 75 
 
 temples of the Holy Ghost, as well as our spirit. 
 Not, it is true, in the same eminent andjpeculiar sense, 
 but in as far as even the outer courts of the Jewish 
 temple were holy,* as well as the priest’s court, or the 
 innermost court of all, in which the Shekinah immedi¬ 
 ately dwelt: so it is with our body and our soul. If 
 sanctification is entire it must enter everywhere. It 
 must sanctify man as a whole by wholly occupying 
 every part. When Christ drove the money-changers 
 out of the Court of the Gentiles, he pointed to this 
 solemn, but often slighted truth, “Make not my 
 Fathers House an house of merchandise.” God’s 
 presence was to be felt to the very outer precincts 
 of the sacred enclosure. There was to be nothing 
 common or unclean; these degrees of sacredness were 
 as abhorrent to a God of holiness as degrees of obe¬ 
 dience. The same Rabbis who began by dividing 
 God’s commandments into great and little, ended by 
 
 * The analogy from the temple, with its three courts, to the temple 
 of the body, is a lively illustration of the trichotomy of man. Luther, in 
 his exposition of the Magnificat, has very well opened up the analogy, and 
 applied it in its details. The passage is quoted at length by Delitzsch, and 
 Goschel, and other writers. Luther, also correctly seizes the Scriptural dis¬ 
 tinction between spirit and fesh, not as favouring dichotomy, as some suppose, 
 but as rather suggesting the good and evil direction, in which all three, spiiit, 
 soul, and body, are drawn, when the spirit of God, or the spirit of the wicked 
 one, acts upon. Flesh and spirit are not thus the factors of human nature, as 
 dichotomists think, but the pole to which these factors incline according 
 as they are inspired from above or from beneath. 
 
 Scripture, Luther says, divides man into three parts, and he quotes i Thes. 
 v. 23. Each of these three parts , together with the whole man, is also 
 divided in two spheres which we call spirit and flesh. Which division is one 
 not of nature , but of quality only , i.e., human nature has three parts, spirit, soul, 
 and body, and these must each and all be good or bad.—See the passage quoted 
 at length in Delitzsch’s Psychologic, Appendix, p. 372. 2d Auflage. 
 
76 The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 
 
 slighting the weighty commandments in their cere¬ 
 monial zeal for the lighter. So it ever will be with 
 our sense of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. If 
 He does not reign “the Lord of every motion there,” then 
 we shall find even our spirits at last not right with God, 
 and we shall grieve Him away even from His proper 
 home, the inner spirit of man, made in the image of God. 
 As in Bunyan’s allegory, the Diabolonians, when their 
 master was deposed, and his images broken in the 
 streets of Mansoul, retire to the caves and cellars of the 
 city, and there plot mischief, so it is if there is any 
 part of man’s nature which is allowed to rest unsancti¬ 
 fied. God is a jealous God, and so He will have all 
 or none. 
 
 The order , moreover, in which the apostle mentions 
 spirit , soul and body , seems to point to the work being 
 a progressive , as well as an entire work. The Divine 
 Spirit enters and dwells in our spirits first. From 
 thence he gets the mastery over the desires of the 
 mind, and lastly over the desires of the flesh. We 
 have reached the state of entire sanctification, the per¬ 
 fection (though never sinless) which is attainable on 
 this side of the grave, when, with the apostle, we 
 keep our body under and bring it into subjection, deal 
 it blows in the face, as the conquering gladiator did, 
 and grapple it with a hook to drag it off dead from 
 the arena.—1 Cor. ix. 27. 
 
 11. The next decisive passage is that in Heb. iv. 12, 
 on which we have already remarked at the beginning 
 of this chapter. The word of God is compared, from 
 
The Relation of Soul and Spirit . 77 
 
 its penetrating power, to a sharp two-edged sword,— 
 a sword with two mouths, the Hebrew metaphor for 
 the blade, or, as we should say, the tooth that bites. 
 In the Revelation Christ is represented with a sharp 
 two-edged sword proceeding out of his mouth, and 
 these edges pierce to the penetration («%/>/ pepio/tdv) 
 through soul and spirit. The word ^10^ does not 
 mean the dividing between soul and spirit, as if they 
 were separate substances. Thus we see Tertullian s 
 objection to the trichotomy of human nature falls to 
 the ground, if we understand the soul and spmt as 
 ideally, not as actually separable. We distinguish 
 rather than divide , when we speak of the three parts 
 of man’s nature. Whether either by itself is capable 
 of a separate entity, is more than doubtful. Body 
 when separate from psyche, falls back under the laws 
 of matter, and becomes, not merely an animal body, 
 but a corpse, and soon a handful of dust and a few 
 bones. So pneuma may not be able to maintain a 
 separate existence when divided fiom the psyche. 
 Without the personal soul with which the individu¬ 
 ality is bound up, it might merge its existence into 
 the ocean of universal Spirit, as the Buddhists think 
 of Nirwana. Appearances seem to point to this state 
 of the three parts of man’s nature, either that the first 
 and second can maintain an existence separate from 
 the third, or that the second and third can consciously 
 exist separate from the first ; but that the psyche, the 
 middle term of the three, must be united with the 
 body on the one hand, to give it animal life and animal 
 consciousness, or with the spirit on the other hand, to 
 
y 8 The 'Relation of Soul and Spirit. 
 
 enable it to maintain spiritual life and spiritual con¬ 
 sciousness. Thus, in our analytical chemistry of man’s 
 nature we reach three ultimate atoms, three primary 
 elements, but while the presence of the third may be 
 detected in the compound of the first two that we 
 call man, we are unable to catch and retain it in its 
 simple state. Unlike oxygen, which can now be 
 liberated from the compounds with which it has the 
 greatest affinity, spirit is only found in its composite 
 form, and defies our attempts to extract it pure. 
 
 The sword of the Spirit does not separate, then, 
 soul from spirit, but it separates between. The dif¬ 
 ference is important, and is explained by the follow¬ 
 ing metaphor of the joints and marrow. Till the first 
 dissector put his knife through or up a bone, he 
 might have supposed the tibia to be a hollow tube for 
 conducting air, as the arteries were once thought to 
 be. But the first inspection of a fresh bone taught 
 the observer that this hollow tube was lined with 
 marrow ; as its outer side was cased in flesh. With¬ 
 out the bone to support it, the flesh fell away to cor¬ 
 ruption ; so without the same nidus to rest in, the 
 marrow would waste away and dissolve. In separat¬ 
 ing the joints from the marrow, he would never ask 
 himself whether either marrow or joint could main¬ 
 tain a separate existence. So in our mental dissec¬ 
 tion. When we reach the spirit lying within the 
 soul, and speak of it as separable from the soul, Ter- 
 tullian’s challenge, divide et opera , seems as inept as 
 to request the dissector to tell you the use of the 
 marrow apart from the bone. The anatomist is quite 
 
The Relation op Soul and Spirit. 79 
 
 content to find the use of the members of the body 
 when in their place, without requiring to know how 
 they work out of their place. Now as death is an 
 abnormal state, the wages of sin, it is an unfair chal¬ 
 lenge to ask in what way, if soul and spirit were 
 divided, each could exist separately, and to infer that 
 because their separate existence is to us inconceivable, 
 that our distinction is only a verbal one, and that soul 
 and spirit are, after all, only different names for the 
 same thing. 
 
 Yet this is the way in which this and other passages 
 of Scripture that bear a trichotomist meaning are 
 treated by many interpreters. To rescue these pas¬ 
 sages from these misinterpretations, we must guard 
 the meaning carefully ftom those exaggerations which 
 tend to its rejection. All that ax ,? 1 ptpufpov implies is 
 that the sword of the Spirit pierces through the soul 
 of man into his spirit. As the soldiers lance pierced 
 our Lord’s side till it reached the pericardium, where 
 the blood had coagulated, and the serum became 
 separated from the blood, so with the Divine sword. 
 We can only know how deep the soldier pierced by 
 the water and the blood. Had he not reached the 
 heart, we should not have that record of the water 
 and the blood which flowed from the Lord’s side, and 
 which, together with the spirit, make up the three 
 witnesses which agree in one. But penetration is not 
 dissection. Christ’s heart was never separated from 
 his body ; so our spirit is not separated from our 
 soul, but it is reached, and that through the soul, un- 
 
8 o The Relation oj Soul and Spirit. 
 
 derneath which it lies, as the marrow lies underneath 
 the joints. 
 
 The piercing through the soul and penetrating into 
 the spirit, seems to imply this, that when Divine 
 things are realised, and the quickening Spirit has be¬ 
 gun His convincing, converting work, not only does 
 He discern the impulses of the soul, but also the 
 thoughts and intents of the heart. The svOuwmuv and 
 ewoiuv are thus contrasted, the one as the effective and 
 emotional, the other as the directive and rational fa¬ 
 culties. The one lie entirely within the sphere of the 
 psyche, the other principally* of the pneuma. Multi¬ 
 tudes hear the gospel, and it reaches only the outer 
 psyche ; it is sown either on the highway or on the 
 stony or thorny ground. Some, however, receive it 
 more deeply. It does not affect them merely for a 
 time, but it effects the work it is intended to do. 
 That work can only be judged of by and by. The 
 seed must germinate, bud, blossom, and finally fruit 
 before we can say it has fallen on good ground. But 
 even before the harvest, which is the end of the world, 
 we may so far judge favourably if it produces convic¬ 
 tions, and not mere passive emotions only ; if a man is 
 
 * We say principally, as the “ intents of the heart ” are partly psychical, 
 partly pneumatical. We must ever remember that, in a mixed nature like 
 ours, while the lower can act without the higher, the higher requires the co¬ 
 operation of the lower; the body is the vehicle of the soul, the soul of the 
 spirit. Thus, as the soul or intellect cannot work without some activity of 
 the brain, so the spirit, or devotional part, requires the service and help of the 
 intellect. Mystics who dream of a state of ecstacy, in which the spirit sees 
 God by its own light, apart from the logical intellect, transcend the laws ot 
 human nature. As there is no act of pure intellect without the co-operation 
 of the brain, so the spirit cannot act without the Nous or reason. It is a con¬ 
 sortium, or rather a connubium, of two inseparable factors. 
 
The Relation of Soul a?id Spirit. 81 
 
 distressed at the discovery of indwelling sin ; if he 
 longs for holiness, and is brought into a state of con¬ 
 demnation, because he can neither overcome the one 
 nor attain to the other, we may then speak of convic¬ 
 tions of sin, righteousness, and of judgment, which are 
 the unerring mark of the Holy Spirit’s work. When 
 we begin to discern between mere desires after good, 
 
 * and the steady self-discipline which the pursuit of it 
 implies, we have begun to reach the proper sphere of 
 the pneuma. Every treatise of vital and experimental 
 religion will give us instances of this dividing between 
 soul and spirit. Many divines correctly describe the 
 life of God in the Spirit, though they do not give the 
 right psychological explanation of the theological truth 
 which they are maintaining. Our purpose is here not 
 to write a treatise on conversion or spiritual-minded- 
 ness, which has been done often before and better 
 already ; but to refer to such treatises as practical il¬ 
 lustrations, though not expositions, of this important 
 text. 
 
 hi. The next instances from Scripture of the dis¬ 
 tinction between the Psyche and the Pneuma are these 
 four passages, which we shall group together, in which 
 the Psyche is spoken of as the characteristic faculty of 
 unregenerate human nature, while the activity of the 
 Pneuma is characteristic of the regenerate. Thus Scrip¬ 
 ture not only treats of the distinction between the 
 and the cmE^a, but teaches us farther that the case of 
 the one or the other being the governing faculty, is 
 that which distinguishes those who are not from those 
 who are born again. 
 
 F 
 
82 The Relation of Soul and Spirit ♦ 
 
 In i Cor. ii. u, the apostle lays down this prin¬ 
 ciple, that man needs a corresponding divine faculty 
 in order to understand divine truth ; that as the eye 
 is the organ for seeing and the ear for hearing, so the 
 pneuma is the organ or faculty by which we know 
 God. It is on this that he grounds the assertion that 
 the hidden wisdom which he preached could not be 
 understood by the princes of this world. They did 
 not understand it when the Lord took flesh and dwelt 
 among us, neither do they understand now that it is 
 preached by us his messengers. 
 
 This, then, is the conclusion to which he comes, 
 that the psychical man (v. 14) “ receiveth not the 
 things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness 
 to him ; neither can he know them, because they are 
 spiritually discerned.” In our version, as in Luther’s, 
 the psychical is translated as the natural man* This 
 is not a bad translation, if we ever bear in mind the 
 equivocal use of the word nature, that it either may 
 mean the course of things as they are, or the course 
 of things as they ought to be. It is in the former 
 sense only that man is natural, or in a state of nature 
 (i.e. fallen nature), and unable to discover divine truth 
 of himself, or to discern it when discovered. Luther, 
 in rendering ^^1x65 clvOocvnos by Der Naturliche 
 Mensch, adds this description of what the natural 
 man is: He is one who is without grace, although 
 fully endowed with understanding, sense, and taste, 
 
 * The animalis homo of the Vulgate is quite unobjectionable, and corresponds 
 exactly enough to the of the Greeks, as the Anima of the Latins is 
 
 nearly equivalent to the Psyche or vital principle of the Greek. 
 
The Relation of Soul and Spirit . 83 
 
 and apprehension. If the expression, The natural 
 man, be taken with this qualification, it is the best 
 rendering of -\vyj%k that we can find. Agreeing with 
 Dean Alford (v. Jude ver. 19) that if the word were 
 not so ill looking in our language,* psychic would be 
 a great gain, we do not see any corresponding advan¬ 
 tage to be gained by unsettling the English version. 
 Every translation of the Scriptures into a language 
 gives a fulness and depth of meaning to it which it 
 had not before; so that while the English word 
 Natural by itself falls far short of being the equivalent 
 of the Greek -^uyuos, it may be deepened, as the 
 channels of rivers are when great cities have grown 
 up at a point a little above where they are navigable. 
 Language is the river of human thought. The city 
 of God, rising by the banks of that river, deepens it 
 in proportion to the wants of that city. It brings, in 
 one way or other, the ships to the city, or the city to 
 the ships. If it find expressions suitable in the lan¬ 
 guage, it uses them ; if not, it adapts them from the 
 Greek or Hebrew, careful at the same time to na¬ 
 turalise them at once. But when a choice occurs be¬ 
 tween borrowing a foreign word, or adapting the ver- 
 
 * We may carry our reluctance to coining new words too far. Thus, selfish, 
 now so thoroughly naturalised in English, was a thorough barbarism two cen¬ 
 turies ago. Talented, first used by Lady Morgan, is another instance of a word 
 adopted in spite of the purists, and within our memory. When Mr H. Dun- 
 das used the word starvation in the House of Commons, it was received with 
 a roar of derision as a north country barbarism. We see no reason why soul- 
 ish should not be used as a contrast with spiritual, as scelisch is in German. 
 Selfish was used by the Scotch covenanters for self-seeking, as contrasted with 
 seeking God. It is now used in a limited sense as a form of immoral conduct; 
 otherwise the selfish nature is quite equivalent with the soulish or psychical 
 man. 
 
84 The Relation of Soul and Spirit . 
 
 nacular term, giving it, at the same time, a suitable 
 extension of meaning, all would admit that the latter 
 is the right course. For this reason, we prefer to re¬ 
 tain our English word Natural as the equivalent for 
 the Greek 4u%/xtf;, as well because it is a true English 
 word, as because it suggests the thought that nature, 
 or that which is born of the flesh, is inferior to the spirit 
 or that which is born of God, and that a generation 
 from beneath is not enough without a regeneration 
 from above. 
 
 The psychic and pneumatic natures in man are next 
 contrasted by the apostle, as supplying the one the 
 centre of our present body of humiliation, the other, 
 the centre of the glorified resurrection body. As there 
 is, he says, 1 Cor. xv. 45, a natural body, so there is 
 also a spiritual body. The h implies that as surely as 
 there is a body whose centre is the psyche (for that 
 is the force of the so surely will there be 
 
 a body whose centre is the pneurna. That the first 
 nature is a psychical nature only, he proves by the text 
 in Gen. ii. 7, which is the ground text on which all Scrip¬ 
 ture psychology rests. The first Adam was made a 
 living soul,* the second Adam was made a life-giving 
 spirit. Thus we have the text and its interpretation, 
 and on the authority of the inspired apostle all question 
 is set at rest as to the meaning of Gen. ii. 7. Adam, 
 
 * els \pvxnv Z&aav implies more than that man became a living soul. 
 The force of the els, as of the Hebrew E to a towards, suggests that out of 
 
 two compounds of distinct essence, the earth and the divine breath, there re¬ 
 sulted a third or the soul, as the tertium quid of matter and spirit. Man 
 attained to a psychical nature as the resultant of two opposite forces, the one 
 flesh, the other spirit. 
 
The RelatioJi of Soul and Spirit. 85 
 
 however he may have received the breath of lives, and 
 was capable thus of becoming a spiritual, was only at 
 first a living soul or creature. The Nephesh of the 
 Hebrew, as we have seen, suggesting no higher thought 
 than that he was a creature like others, albeit “breath¬ 
 ing thoughtful breath.” He was of the earth, earthy, 
 and hence his name Adam.* In his case the soul, and 
 not the spirit, was the centre of his personality. In 
 the order of advance upward from the lower to the 
 higher life, the apostle shows, by comparison of divers 
 kinds of bodies, 1 Cor. xv. 39, that this condition of 
 Adam was necessary. Had he not been made of the 
 earth earthy, endowed with a living soul, but not yet 
 given the quickening spirit as the centre of his person¬ 
 ality, there would have been a gap in creation, such a 
 gap as man’s present nature, midway between the 
 angel and the brute, exactly fills up. As the astrono¬ 
 mer, by observing a disturbance in the motions of 
 Neptune, was led to infer the existence of another 
 planet, and to point out its orbit, so an observer of 
 another world might have inferred the necessity for 
 such a creature as man from observing the differences 
 between the animal soul of the brute and the spiritual 
 body of the angel. Reasoning from the principle that 
 natura nil fit per saltum , he would conclude that some¬ 
 thing between the angel and the brute was necessary 
 to fill up the blank, and bridge over the gulf between 
 
 * So homo, from humus; Mensch, a man, from Aryan root Men, to mea¬ 
 sure—Mind and Moon are derivatives—implies the other conception. Plato 
 derives avdpu-rros from his looking up (v. Cratylus). See Max Muller s 
 Lectures on Language. 
 
86 The Relation of Soul and Spirit . 
 
 the animal soul and the spiritual body. The apostle 
 reasons in this way when he says that the natural body 
 of Adam must precede and prepare the way for the 
 spiritual. Howbeit that was not first which was spiri¬ 
 tual, but that which was natural, and afterward that 
 which is spiritual. Man, as originally created, was 
 made at the midway point between the angel and the 
 brute, a little lower than the one, a little higher than 
 the other. He was made, too, not perfect, but capa¬ 
 ble of perfection; not immortal, but capable of im¬ 
 mortality. He was given a psychical body, a body the 
 centre and spring of which was the psyche, the “ ani- 
 mula vagula blandula ’’ of the ancients, poised between 
 matter and spirit, and drawn upward and downward by 
 alternate and opposite impulses. It is futile to inquire 
 what would have occurred had Adam’s psychical nature 
 withstood temptation and resisted the devil. 1 hat it 
 did not resist, by no means implies that it could not, 
 or lessens the guilt of our first parent. But,* on the 
 other hand, we should not describe his guilt as greater 
 than it really was. How far the higher or pneumati- 
 cal nature was in our first parent, whether as a germ 
 only, or as so far grown as.. to give his transgression 
 the character of a sin against light—a spiritual sin, 
 as well as a sin of lust, such as St John classifies these 
 sins—it is impossible for us to say. For our part, we 
 incline to the view that Adam’s sin is contrasted with 
 that of angels in this, that the one sinned in the lower 
 part of his nature, and the other in the higher. 
 
 " On this subject, see Birk’s Difficulties of Belief, p. 108. 
 
The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 87 
 
 Whether Satan’s was exclusively and entirely spiritual 
 wickedness, and whether he is incapable of carnal 
 wickedness, is more than we dare affirm, till the inter¬ 
 pretation generally given to Jude 6 is set at rest. 
 But of this we may be sure, that as Adam’s was a 
 psychical nature, and angels’ who kept not their first 
 estate a pneumatical, so the sin of Adam was psychical, 
 and that of angels pneumatical Hence we see the 
 nature of the retribution which fell on our first parent. 
 
 It was partly punitive, and partly privative. The 
 punitive part consisted in the toil and pain in which 
 man was to eat bread and woman to bear children ; 
 the privative part, in the forfeiture of that immortality 
 to which he would have been advanced if, by obedience, 
 he had obtained a right to the tree of life which is in 
 the Paradise of God. 
 
 Thus, as in the scale of creation, all advance is from 
 the lower to the higher form of life, that was not first 
 which was spiritual, but that which was natural. Adam, 
 unlike the angels, was given a psychical nature; and, 
 as he fell in that psychical nature, he forfeited for him¬ 
 self and his posterity all right or power to attain to the 
 pneumatical. This is the contrast which the apostle 
 points out in 1 Cor. xv. between the two natures 
 corresponding to the two covenant heads, the first and 
 second Adam. As is the earthy (or the first Adam), 
 such are they that are earthy ; and as is the heavenly, 
 such are they also that are heavenly. This pneumati¬ 
 cal nature, therefore, must come by spiritual birth from 
 our spiritual head, just as the psychical nature comes 
 by natural birth from our natural head. This distinc- 
 
88 T’he Relation of Soul and Spirit. 
 
 tion, as we shall by and by see, throws great light on 
 the old controversy of Traducianism and Creationism. 
 For the present it is enough to have grasped the 
 apostle’s teaching in i Cor. xv., that as there are two 
 distinct natures, one psychical and the other pneumati- 
 cal, as we have seen in chap. ii. ver. 14 ; so these 
 natures are derived, not the one from the other, as we 
 might suppose, and some erroneously teach, but are 
 each a distinct birth (creation would assume the point 
 in dispute) of God, the one coming to us naturally, as 
 the offspring of Adam; the other supernaturally, as 
 the offspring of the second Adam: rou ya% ymg 
 k/j,sK Acts xvii. 28. 
 
 Two more texts only remain to complete our list of 
 proof passages of the distinction in Scripture between 
 the Psyche and the Pneuma. In St James iii. 15, the 
 wisdom that is from beneath is described as swlyuog 
 'pvy/xq da.i'j.oviAfirig; and in St Jude ver. 19, the scoffers 
 of the last days are described as 4 1 vyjxo] c 7rvs\j[jj(t firi 
 syovrsg. We will class these two passages together as 
 throwing light on the contrast between the natural and 
 the spiritual man of 1 Cor. ii. 14. In the first case, 
 St James says of the wisdom that is from beneath, 
 that it is earthly, imyuig, and the two next predicates 
 are thrown in to strengthen this affirmation, as well as 
 to advance a climax. This earthly wisdom, unlike 
 that which comes down from above, has its seat in the 
 psychical nature only. As there is nothing heavenly 
 about it, so it does not spring from the ‘Xvevfia,^ but 
 only from the soul, the seat of his affections and im- 
 
The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 89 
 
 pulses. If it has any source of inspiration (and here is 
 the fearful climax which the passage leads up to), it is 
 from beneath, and not from above. Satan, not the 
 Holy Spirit, is the inspirer of this kind of wisdom ; it 
 is devilish, not godlike. In St Jude, we read of the 
 scoffers that they separate themselves, being psychical 
 only, and having not the Spirit. The German here 
 marks a distinction which we fail to reproduce in the 
 English. Luther renders it “ Fleischliche die da 
 Keinen Geist haben.” But the Berlenburgh Bible, 
 with De Wette and Stolz, render it more accurately 
 still, u Seelische die Keinen Geist haben, men, that 
 is, who act on psychic principles only, because they 
 lack the pneumatical faculty. There are men whose 
 very conscience is defiled, and who by long indulgence 
 in known sin have so deadened the pneuma, that it is 
 the same as if it never existed. We gather from this 
 passage in St Jude this decisive truth, that the spirit is 
 that part which is dead in the unregenerate man. The 
 commission of sin does not kill the psychical natuie; 
 for though there are certain brutal acts which refine¬ 
 ment forbids, and which the intellectual man, as such, 
 is incapable of, yet these are not the worst acts of sin. 
 Refined sensuality, in which vice has only increased 
 its malignity by losing all its grossness, so far from 
 deadening the psychical nature, rather awakens it to a 
 higher activity. When Savonarola lifted up his voice 
 against the demoralization of Florence, what were the 
 objects of his attack, and against what did he stir up 
 the citizens of Florence ? It was art which had entered 
 into a league with vice, so close and intimate that 
 
90 ^The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 
 
 there was no reaching vice except over the prostrate 
 body of art. The longing of the awakened spirit for 
 purity took the form of Puritanism. The world, of 
 course, sees only the extravagance, and cannot see, for 
 it knows not and feels not, the need of inner and heart 
 purity. But so it was, and so it ever will be. The 
 psychical nature is disgusted at some of the grossest 
 forms of vice, and tries to keep up the appearance of 
 virtue ; but this is all. These indulgences are not in¬ 
 stant death to it as they are to the pneumatical nature. 
 Fleshly lusts war against the soul, it is true, as St 
 Petersays (i Pet. ii. n), so that the end of these 
 things is death. We know that they who sow to the 
 flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but the first 
 deadening effect of these things is felt in the pneuma , 
 not in the psyche. It is conceivable that a licentious 
 scoffer should have the psychical nature in its highest 
 perfection; it is not conceivable that he could exercise 
 the pneuma. This is the truth which this verse in St 
 Jude teaches, and we have seen how exactly it 
 confirms the word of St James with regard to earthly 
 wisdom. 
 
 To sum up our remarks, then, on the contrast be¬ 
 tween psyche and pneuma, in the five passages of the 
 N ew Testament which we have considered at length, 
 we gather the following distinction from Scripture. 
 The psyche is the life of man in its widest and most 
 inclusive sense, embracing not only the animal, but 
 also the intellectual and moral faculties, in so far as 
 their exercise has not been depraved by the fall. In 
 this sense Aristotle’s generalization of the psyche is 
 
7 he Relation of Soul and Spirit. 91 
 
 not wide of the Scriptural meaning. The soul, he 
 says,* is that by which we live, feel, or perceive, will, 
 move, and understand. The soul thus includes all the 
 energies which are natural to man, and necessary to 
 complete a definition of human nature, including on 
 the one hand certain functions, as of growth and 
 motion, which are generally now left to the physiolo¬ 
 gist, and on the other hand those special faculties of 
 mind which the modern psychologist devotes himself 
 to. The psyche is thus the entelechy of a body hav¬ 
 ing potential life, the sum-total that is of human ac¬ 
 tivity in all directions, whether conscious or precon- 
 scious, voluntary or involuntary. This would very 
 well accord with what Scripture says of man’s psyche. 
 It is the formative principle (Aristotle s entelechy), of 
 one body and mind.f Just as the light of the body is 
 the eye, so the life of the body is the soul. The 
 division of the soul into vegetative, animal 01 sentient, 
 and rational, is foreign to the simplicity of Sciiptuie, 
 and even in Aristotle it is only a logical division, 
 grounded on no essential distinction between ihe higher 
 and lower parts of man's nature. It is for this reason 
 that Aristotle has been charged with materialism by 
 some, because he does not fall in with the prevailing 
 dichotomy, which under the name of spiritualism has 
 reigned almost without dispute in the schools of Chris- 
 tian philosophy. But be this as it may, it is no 
 
 * See de Anima, II., ch. 2. 
 
 f On this subject see Sir A. Grant’s Dissertations, prefixed to his Edition of 
 the Ethics of Aristotle: see also the Psychologie d’ Aristote, by Barthelemy 
 St. Hilaire. 
 
92 The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 
 
 purpose of ours to clear Aristotle from the charge of 
 materialism. It is enough if we point out a general 
 agreement between his account of the psyche and that 
 of Scripture. Were man made up of body and soul 
 only, then the psychology of Scripture would be iden¬ 
 tical with that of Aristotle, and a controversy of long 
 standing might be ' set at rest at once and for ever. 
 But it is exactly where Aristotle leaves off that Scrip¬ 
 ture begins to treat of human nature, and tells us of a 
 faculty—let us call it God-consciousness—which is 
 dead or dormant in a great degree since the fall, and 
 which it is the office and work of the Holy Ghost first 
 to quicken, and then to direct, sanctify, and govern. 
 This faculty, to which Scripture gives the name of 
 Ruach or Pneuma, is altogether ignored by Aristotle, 
 and by Plato is confounded with the intellectual Nous. 
 As in these matters confusion is worse than ignorance, 
 we confess that Aristotle’s psychology harmonises 
 better with the psychology of Scripture than that of 
 Plato. The dichotomy of the one, which is right as 
 far as it goes, misleads less than the trichotomy of the 
 other, which under a certain outward resemblance 
 conceals most essential and irreconcilable differences. 
 The fathers of the early Church would have acted 
 wisely if they had kept clear of that entangling alli¬ 
 ance with Platonism which seemed to offer at first such 
 advantages. The intellectualism (for such it fairly 
 may be described) of Aristotle was in truth a much 
 safer propoedeutic to the truth than the vain and 
 vaunting spiritualism of Plato. There was no doc¬ 
 trine of sin in either of the two schools of philosophy; 
 
1 he Relation of Soul and Spirit. 93 
 
 but for this very reason the spiritualism of Plato mis¬ 
 leads more, because it is a spiritualism which neither 
 recognises the fall,' nor man’s inability to turn to God 
 by his own powers. Admitting that Plato approached 
 nearer to the truth than Aristotle, he was for this 
 reason all the more likely to mislead. The inner light 
 which his disciples set up as their guide may be a 
 sparkle of the true light of light; but not knowing of 
 the fall, and misunderstanding the source of man’s 
 natural inability to know God, Platonism fell in with 
 the Pelagianism of the natural mind, and thus the 
 word of our Lord to the Pharisees may be applied to 
 the rival schools of the Greeks. “If ye were blind 
 then ye should have no sin, but now ye say we see, 
 therefore your sin remaineth.” 
 
 Thus the psyche of Scripture is the sum total of 
 man’s natural powers; the life as born into the 
 world, and all that it contains or can attain to. But 
 the pneuma is not only that which lies behind the 
 psyche, as the psyche does underneath the bodily 
 organism, it is that part of man which is unable to 
 expand of itself, or to attain to its proper end in 
 consequence of the fall. We need no other in¬ 
 stance than Aristotle himself of the contrast between 
 psyche and pneuma. That a mind like his, that 
 took in all knowledge as his department, and whose 
 curiosity knew no bounds but its own powers, should 
 pass by in entire silence the inner sanctuary of the 
 spirit and its exercises upon things unseen and eter¬ 
 nal, implies something more than inattention or a 
 wholesome dread of mysticism. The excuse, what- 
 
94 The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 
 
 ever it is worth, has been put forth in the case 
 of Goethe, but it is wholly inapplicable to such a 
 case as that of Aristotle. There was no false shame 
 in his case; no dislike to Christian duty and doc¬ 
 trine to repel him for piercing within the psyche to 
 analyze the operations of his own pneuma. He 
 was profoundly and we believe sincerely unconscious 
 of the divine faculty in man, for the reason given 
 by the apostle that the psychical man perceives not 
 the things of the Spirit of God. He knew not of 
 the Spirit’s work, because he was “ dead,” as all 
 men by nature are, to divine things. In his case 
 there was no mock spiritualism to deceive the un¬ 
 wary, and on which to ground a doctrine of natural 
 illumination, and which mystics describe as the inner 
 light. Aristotle’s case may be taken as a palmary 
 instance of the shallowness of their theory. Is it 
 likely that such an analyst, whose penetrating eye 
 nothing escaped, could have passed by such a fact 
 in human nature as they describe it to be? The 
 silence of Aristotle is a negative evidence for the truth 
 of Scripture which cannot be gainsaid. The Bible 
 tells us that there is a faculty called the pneuma, 
 but that in consequence of the fall it is as if it did 
 not exist. Now, had Aristotle not passed it. by we 
 should be led to conclude—either that it operates 
 still in spite of the fall, which Scripture plainly con¬ 
 tradicts; or that Scripture itself is wrong in what 
 it asserts of the natural man and his powers. We 
 have thus a case of an objection turned into an 
 argument. At first sight Aristotle’s omission of all 
 
The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 95 
 
 reference to a faculty of God-consciousness seems a 
 fatal objection to the psychology of Scripture which 
 distinctly asserts its existence. Hence the mistaken 
 way in which early apologists caught at Platonism 
 as more friendly to revealed truth than the peripa¬ 
 tetic philosophy. Intuition affirmed what induction 
 ignored: can we wonder if intuition was enthroned 
 in Alexandria, and reigned almost supreme so long 
 as the knowledge of Greek survived in the West ? 
 But truth in the end is the only weapon which will 
 serve the truth. While the intuitive school is one 
 of the antichrists of the age with which the truth 
 is engaged in a death grapple, the school of induc¬ 
 tion leaves revelation to its own department, on 
 condition that revelation does not interfere with it. 
 The two paths of Scripture and science diverge, and it 
 is only unbelieving divines and dogmatic philosophers 
 who ever cause a collision between such opposite 
 interests. 
 
 The silence, then, of Aristotle is the very evidence 
 which we should desire to prove the existence of 
 the pneuma. The force of positive testimony may 
 be explained away, that of negative cannot. When 
 we know why Aristotle omits all mention of the 
 pneuma, we see that the omission is itself an evi¬ 
 dence that Scripture is right in the account it gives 
 of the condition of man since the fall. If man could 
 know his own spiritual powers, or even know how 
 lamentably he has lost their use by the fall he would 
 not be as fallen as he is. The root of his disease 
 lies in this that he knows not that he is diseased. 
 
g6 The Relation of Soul and Spirit. 
 
 The physician who takes him in hand has to disclose 
 to him the function whose healthy exercise he never 
 enjoyed, and therefore the loss of which he haidly 
 suspects. Ignoti nulla cupido. As easily might we 
 imagine Aristotle inditing the 4.26. Psalm, as inserting 
 in his treatise on the Soul a chapter on the functions, 
 end, and use of the pneuma. Scripture which teaches 
 us what it is to be athirst for God, yea, even the liv¬ 
 ing God, alone describes that part of man’s nature from 
 whence this thirst arises, the immortal pneuma made in 
 the image of God, and which nothing but the living 
 
 God can satisfy. 
 
PSYCHE AND PNEUMA, IN THE LIGHT 
 OF CHRISTIAN EXPERIENCE. 
 
 God is spirit. God is love. In the one expression 
 we have his nature, in the other his character. His 
 being and perfections are thus summed up in two short 
 epithets. Unlike other beings who partake of the 
 nature of spirits, God is pure essential spirit, without 
 body, parts, or passions. Unlike other characters 
 whose nature it is to love and be loved, God is love, 
 love essential, eternal, unchangeable, love that does 
 not depend upon any other love, the love which, 
 whether reciprocated or not, is still itself the same, 
 and flows forth from Him, because his very nature and 
 property is always to have mercy and pity. 
 
 We shall fail to grasp the distinction between soul 
 and spirit laid down in Scripture, unless we see that 
 the spirit is the only part in man which fully images 
 forth the inner nature of God. God is spirit: man 
 is a spirit in a soul, and a soul in a body. Thus we 
 have to penetrate through the two outer courts to get 
 into the shrine of man’s being before we come to that 
 which is properly and truly divine, and by which we 
 see God. The animal nature in man does not reflect 
 
 G 
 
98 Distinction Between 
 
 God at all, while the rational and intellectual nature 
 reflects Him only partially. We cannot think of God 
 as a reasoning being. The steps by which we ascend 
 from particulars to generals, the powers by which we 
 abstract and associate ideas, eliminate error, and dis¬ 
 cover truth, are not acts which we can attribute to an 
 infinite mind. For aught we know to the contrary 
 angels may acquire knowledge as we do, though the 
 steps of reasoning may be as much greatei than ours, 
 as the steps of a pyramid are than an ordinary flight 
 of stairs. But between the infinite mind and all other 
 finite minds there must be not only dispaiity, but 
 difference. The controversies which Mr Mansel s 
 Bampton lecture stirred up a few years ago arose from 
 not attending to the distinction between the intellectual 
 and spiritual natures in man. In so far as man, as man, 
 is a rational being, he is not the offspring of God, but the 
 creature. God is said to be the “Father of spirits,” 
 (Heb. xii. 9), not of intellects. We cannot make an ab¬ 
 straction, as Plato did, of the universal Nous or reason, 
 and say that man is divine because his reason is a spark 
 kindled from the universal mind. Thus far, then, 
 Professor Mansel was right in saying, with Archbishop 
 King, that there was an analogy only, not a likeness 
 of nature, between God and man. The modern form 
 of the controversy arose out of an essay of Sir William 
 Hamilton on the Philosophy of the Unconditioned, 
 which ought to have set at rest, if anything could, the 
 absurdity, not to say impiety, of the Hegelian method, 
 which pretended to deduce the mysteries of the 
 
99 
 
 Psyche and Pneuma. 
 
 Trinity, Incarnation, and so forth, out of his own 
 logical intuitions. The laws of thought were certainly 
 stretched very far by the Jena professor, who thought 
 he could find out the Almighty to perfection by evolv¬ 
 ing the facts of his own consciousness. To this extent 
 Professor Mansel, following in the wake of Sir William 
 Hamilton, was incontestibly right. It is by faith, and 
 not by reason, that we learn the ways of God. Rea¬ 
 son not being that part of our nature in which we are 
 like God, we cannot by discourse of reason know 
 God. 
 
 But, on the other hand, there was a truth in Mr 
 Maurice’s and other replies to the Bampton Lecturer. 
 They denied that we know God only by inference. 
 They asserted that faith is something more than a 
 blind submission of reason to what is logically incon¬ 
 ceivable. They were right as well in what they de¬ 
 nied as in what they affirmed. But for want of this 
 distinction of soul and spirit they failed to make this 
 clear, that while the reasonable soul only knows what 
 God is not, it never can discover what God is. The 
 spirit, however, rises to a higher consciousness both 
 that God is and what He is (Heb. xii. 6). This spirit- 
 consciousness we cannot clothe in words ; for what are 
 words but the reflection which things make upon 
 thought, the record of our experiences of the outer 
 world ? 
 
 “ Multse terricolis linguae.” 
 
 There are many tongues and many voices, each a 
 vibration of that CEolian harp of many strings, the 
 
IOO 
 
 Distinction Between 
 
 soul of man, when played upon by the external world. 
 But the spirit would have to make a language to itself 
 to record rightly its intercourse with God. This it 
 cannot do, and fain must use the vocabulary of the 
 logical understanding. Now all translation is difficult, 
 and the more so if the exact equivalent does not exist 
 in the language into which we translate. This helps 
 us to see how vain it is to try to render the facts of 
 the spirit-consciousness in modes of speech framed only 
 to express the facts of sense or of self-consciousness. 
 Mystics like Jacob Bohmen, Swedenborg, and Fox, 
 from ignorance of this, have only fallen into absurdities 
 to which the Arabian Nights are sober and probable. 
 But their extravagance must not discredit a truth, which 
 is, that there is in man this faculty of God-conscious¬ 
 ness which we call the spirit. In prayer, as distinct 
 from saying our prayers, we catch the sense of our 
 nearness to Him who is not only the Over-soul, the 
 Master Intellect, the Architect of the universe, but 
 also the Father of our spirits, the being whose Presence 
 we feel, when we really go down into ourselves. 
 When we say our prayers, we are thinking about God 
 
 _3 very pious aud profitable exercise, and without 
 
 which our spirits will never rise into the state of silent 
 and spiritual worship. We must first lay the wood in 
 order, and then light the dry sticks of logical concep¬ 
 tions/ if the fire is to be kindled in our spirits, and we 
 are to feel the presence of God there. 
 
 Thus those who say that we may know God, who 
 is a Spirit, by our spirits, which are Godlike, only say 
 what is both a simple and scriptural truth. If Mr 
 
IOI 
 
 Psyche and Pnenma. 
 
 Maurice, in his reply to Mr Mansel, had confined him¬ 
 self to this, he would have escaped the charge of 
 mysticism so often brought against him. The ground 
 of all modern mysticism lies in the vain attempt to draw 
 a distinction between the reason and the understanding, 
 the vernunft and verstand of the German. Plato's 
 trichotomy is radically opposed to that of Scripture, in 
 that he makes the pure intellect the faculty which has 
 intuition of ideas or first truths as the divine part in 
 man’s nature. With Aristotle, Locke, and Sir William 
 Hamilton, we deny that man has these intuitional 
 powers of pure truth, and even if he had, this is very 
 unlike the as taught by our Lord and His apos¬ 
 
 tles. Coleridge spent his life in endeavouring to im¬ 
 press this distinction between reason and understand¬ 
 ing on a few initiated disciples. The great world out¬ 
 side the grove of Plato has ever refused to draw the 
 line between the lower and higher intellectual powers 
 in man. Reason, to all but our modern Platonists, is 
 understanding exercised on first truths; and the 
 understanding is only reason turned to those which 
 come in by sense-perception. But with this distinction 
 between understanding and reason, the whole super¬ 
 structure of a mystical God-consciousness falls to the 
 ground. There is no rational intuition of God what¬ 
 ever. God is spirit, and can be only known and 
 worshipped through our spirits. Reason is a reflection 
 of God in us. Man’s reasonable soul, we freely admit, 
 is more after God’s likeness than his animal frame. 
 But neither the animal nor intellectual nature is the 
 express image of God within us. It is by the Spirit 
 
102 
 
 Distinction Between 
 
 only that we see and know God. Reason (to apply 
 Sir William Hamilton’s distinction from sense-percep¬ 
 tion to spirit) has a representative sense of God. 
 Spirit alone has a presentative. 
 
 But our modern mystics not only fail to distinguish 
 between reason and spirit, and so look in the wrong 
 direction to see traces of the divine in man. They 
 fail also to grasp the effects of the fall on man s 
 spirit. Instead of teaching that the spirit is dead or 
 dormant in man as now born into the world, they 
 speak of the God-consciousness as active in all men, 
 even of those born in heathen lands. Their idea of 
 missions is therefore rather to uncover what is within, 
 though buried under sensuality and sloth, than to 
 recover what is lost, or to discern what is unknown. 
 They speak of the indwelling spirit in language 
 which even regenerate Christians at times do not 
 always realize. This is plainly unscriptural. Man 
 is not born with a depraved, but a dormant spirit. 
 This makes the saving difference between his case 
 and that of devils. But he is a fallen man, with a 
 degraved sense-consciousness, a darkened self-con¬ 
 sciousness, and a dead or dormant God-conscious¬ 
 ness. In this state, till awakened by God’s Holy 
 Spirit, he cannot of himself turn to God. He 
 sometimes seeks after Him, if haply he may find 
 Him. But though God is not far from every one of 
 us, yet for want of purity of spirit we cannot see God 
 within. As colour-blindness disables a man from dis¬ 
 cerning some of the secondary qualities of matter, 
 while he is fully sensible of the primary, so the de- 
 
Psyche and Pneurna . 103 
 
 feet of the pneuma in man disables him from seeing 
 God in everything as he would if he had the full use 
 of his powers. We cannot be too explicit as to the 
 work that regeneration effects in fallen human nature. 
 It controls the animal, it purifies the intellectual and 
 moral nature; but its especial and primary work is to 
 quicken the spiritual. u That which is born of the 
 flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is 
 spirit.” 
 
 As God is spirit, so the spirit in man is that which, 
 m an eminent and peculiar sense, comes from God. 
 God, as we shall see in discussing the question of 
 creationism, is the Creator ex traduce of the animal 
 and intellectual part of every man naturally born into 
 the world. Not so with the spirit, it comes from 
 God, and is of God. Let us not shrink from using 
 the expression that it proceeds from God, not by 
 creation, but by emanation. Mere creationism fails 
 to bring out the meaning of that expression, “ God 
 breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives.” It 
 were Pantheism to speak of nature as consubstantial 
 with God. The creature is only His handy-work. 
 He spake and they were made, He commanded 
 and they stood fast. God the Father willed, God 
 the Son spake, and God the Holy Ghost moved 
 or brooded over the abyss out of which creation 
 came at a word. But the spirit in man is divine, 
 consubstantial with God, who is the Father of spirits, 
 as our bodies of flesh are consubstantial with those of 
 the parents of our flesh. This is, doubtless, a great 
 mystery, second only to that which it leads up to, 
 
104 Distinction Between 
 
 that he which is joined to the Lord is one spirit, and 
 that we are members of his body, of his flesh, and 
 of his bones. But any view short of this fails to 
 bring out the contrast between psyche and pneuma 
 which we have seen to be scriptural, and which we 
 are therefore bound to trace in detail. The pneuma 
 is, we admit, very closely joined to the psyche; but 
 so is the psyche to the animal frame. If we can dis¬ 
 tinguish between soul and body, as all psychologists 
 do, who are not materialists; are we not bound 
 equally to distinguish between soul and spirit ? Con¬ 
 sciousness is the common term which unites the three 
 natures of man together. Sense, self, and God-con¬ 
 sciousness are the three aspects or sides of the one 
 ens individuum man. But the third is as clearly 
 marked off from the second as the second from the 
 first. It is not, as dichotomists would say, that the 
 spirit is only the reasonable soul exercised on the 
 inner world of spirit, instead of the outer world of 
 sense. Is it the same faculty, capable of two such 
 different acts ; or must we suppose a distinct faculty 
 for the distinct act? We are loth to put up par¬ 
 titions, however thin, between one part of man’s in¬ 
 tellectual nature and another. The old psychology, 
 which ascribed the different mental acts to so many 
 distinct faculties, has been carried by the phrenolo¬ 
 gists to the length of absurdity, and has been gen¬ 
 erally discarded. But this is no reason why, if we 
 distinguish at all between the animal powers in man 
 and those which are intellectual, we should not 
 go on to distinguish between the intellectual and 
 
Psyche and Pneuma. 105 
 
 the spiritual. For in truth the spiritual in man 
 differs from the intellectual more even than the in¬ 
 tellectual from the animal. The dichotomist assumes 
 the point in question when he says, that we are 
 conscious of God by an act of the reasonable soul 
 turned to a distinct object, the infinite God. So 
 far from this being the case, our intellectual powers 
 do not present God to us, but only represent Him. 
 We may cognize God, it is true, as the theologian 
 does; but then we only cognize certain notions 
 about God, the idols of the den or the market. 
 The awful Presence, the Eternal God with whom 
 Jacob wrestled in spirit all night, is not to be under¬ 
 stood as a Noumenon any more than He is to 
 be apprehended as a phenomenon. So far Professor 
 Mansel is right in overturning the Philosophy of 
 the unconditioned, the metaphysical Rationalism of 
 the school of Hegel, as offensive to piety as the old 
 positive Rationalism of Paulus. But we are not to 
 lose the sense of God, because self-consciousness or 
 the nous cannot apprehend Him. Here is the defect 
 in Dr Mansell’s book, which his opponents had not 
 failed to point out. .There is a God-consciousness in 
 man, and a faculty by which God makes his presence 
 felt in prayer. He talks with man then as with Adam 
 in the cool of the day. He witnesses against him, 
 strives with him, and till quenched leads him on to 
 repentance. It is true God does not make his 
 presence felt at first in any other way than by awak¬ 
 ening in man a fear of God, a sense of His holiness 
 and the strictness of the law’s demands. But to his 
 
106 Distinction Between 
 
 awakened and believing children He manifests Him¬ 
 self as He does not unto the world; they walk with 
 Him as Enoch did, they are treated as his friends as 
 Abraham was; they meditate on Him or delight in 
 Him as Isaac, they wrestle with Him as Jacob, they 
 behold His glory as Moses, like David they are athirst 
 for God, yea, even the living God, and, in fine, through 
 the awakened pneuma, they realize the same evidence 
 of things unseen that they have through the senses of 
 the reality of the external world. It is as inconceiv¬ 
 able to them to doubt this inner-witness to God, as it 
 is to doubt the testimony of their own senses. In a 
 noble passage* in Dr Newman’s Apologia (oh si sic 
 omnia), he speaks of this sense of the presence of the 
 eternal, and feels that he should doubt much sooner 
 the testimony of the senses which may become dis¬ 
 eased, than that of the inner spirit by which a sense of 
 God is brought presently and constantly home to him. 
 Not to respond to this experience is to proclaim one¬ 
 self unspiritual; to have only the psychical nature 
 which cannot receive the things of God, because they 
 are spiritually apprehended. To deride this experi¬ 
 ence as mystical, betrays what is worse than ignorance, 
 for it betrays Aristotle’s ignorance of the pneuma without 
 Aristotle’s excuse. How God will deal with such men 
 as Aristotle or Confucius, who, surrounded with super- 
 
 * “ The whole world seems to give the lie to the great truth of the being 
 of a God, and of that great truth my whole being is full; so that were it not 
 for the voice speaking so clearly in my conscience and my heart, I should be 
 an atheist, pantheist, or polytheist when I looked into the world.” “ Look¬ 
 ing into the world,” he adds, “ and seeing no reflection of God, is as if a man 
 looked into a glass and did not see his face .”—Dr Newmans Apologia. 
 
Psyche and Pneuma. 107 
 
 stitions one more corrupt than another, turned the 
 blind eye to the glass of faith, and reported that they 
 saw nothing, and that there was nothing to see, we 
 cannot tell. But their excuse will not be ours, if we 
 live of the earth earthy, if we end life as we began it, 
 “psychical, having not the spirit.” 
 
 The religious consciousness, or pneuma in man, has 
 been well described by Professor Mansel* as composed 
 of these two factors, the sense of dependence and the 
 sense of moral obligation. He shows, in opposition to 
 Schleiermacher’s theory, that the blind sense of de¬ 
 pendence would not be sufficient to describe man as a 
 spiritual being, for then the dog would also be a re¬ 
 ligious animal. The appeal that the ox knows his 
 owner, and the ass his master’s crib, would lose all its 
 pathos if it were grounded on the theory that there is 
 no higher relationship and no deeper dependence be¬ 
 tween us and God than between the ox and his owner. 
 Moral obligation and dependence taken together com¬ 
 plete our idea of the religious consciousness. Schleier¬ 
 macher’s theory is one-half only, not the whole account 
 of the spiritual in man. These elements, taken by 
 themselves, we' admit are psychical only, and not pneu- 
 matical. As the elements out of which water is formed 
 are gases while apart, so in their separation or state of 
 intellectual analysis, the sense of dependence and the 
 sense of moral obligation are data of the intellect. 
 Just as the old schoolmen said, that there was nothing 
 in the intellect that did not come in through the 
 
 * Mansel’s Bampton Lectures—Lecture iv. 
 
108 Distinction Between 
 
 sense ; yet as Leibnitz added, procter intellect urn , so 
 we say of the pneuraa. The words and thoughts on 
 which the religious consciousness works, come in from 
 the psyche, yet the result is not psychical. We may 
 apply the very words of Leibnitz to describe our posi¬ 
 tion,— Nihil est in spiritu quod non prius in intellectu , 
 prccter spiritual. 
 
 God being such as He is—the Great I Am—the 
 final and chief good—the Alpha and Omega—the be¬ 
 ginning of all creation and the end to which it leads 
 up, it is surely consistent with such a conception, that 
 there should be a distinct centre of our being in which 
 spiritual impressions take their rise, and are carried 
 into action. As we generalize all our animal functions 
 under the head of body, and our intellectual acts 
 under the head of soul, so the devotional and dutiful 
 seem to require a distinct centre. Let those who have 
 only an intellectual consciousness of God (as, alas ! too 
 many only have) include this under those other acts of 
 reason which discourses, de omni scibili. But is this 
 classification adequate to the wants and desires of the 
 awakened and spiritual man ? If prayer be an unfre¬ 
 quent exercise, or only a form of words without a 
 motion of heartfelt desire; if the fear of God be a 
 dim and scarcely felt emotion, kept in the background 
 of consciousness ; if the love of God be an experience 
 to which our hearts have never responded, is it strange 
 that we deny the existence of a faculty of whose 
 operations we are unaware ? The rule de non appar- 
 entibus applies to our case; we deny the pneuma, be¬ 
 cause we do not know its proper object, God. The 
 
Psyche and Pneuma . 109 
 
 subjective faculty stands in such a relation to its proper 
 object (in this differing nothing from the lower func¬ 
 tions in man) that the organ disappears when the 
 function ceases. Like the eyeless fish in the mam¬ 
 moth cave of Kentucky, we lose the spiritual faculty 
 in proportion as we disuse it. But this, so far from 
 disproving its reality in the case of those who are 
 truly awakened by God’s Spirit, rather proves the 
 contrary. It only proves that men are born spiritually 
 blind, but that when couched by the Heavenly Physi¬ 
 cian, they learn to see : first, they learn that there is 
 a light, and then that the organ by which we see that 
 light is the spirit. Communion with God is thus the 
 function of which the human pneuma is the special 
 organ. On the healthiness of the organ the right ex¬ 
 ercise of the function depends, and reciprocally the 
 distinct nature of the functions seems to require the 
 existence of a distinct organ. The more spiritual we 
 are, the greater our sense of God; conversely, the 
 greater our sense of God, the more spiritual we be¬ 
 come. The distinct consciousness of God, apart from 
 His mere attributes, or our intellectual consciousness 
 of Him, is the point in dispute between us and di- 
 chotomists. They would call this an abstract idea, as 
 difficult to reach as that of a Lord Mayor of Martinus 
 Scriblerus, without his glass coach, his gold chain, and 
 his fur ruff. So it is, we admit it, when we try the 
 intellectual method of knowing God. Job thus 
 wrestled within him to know God, and we know that 
 the universe when marshalled in array only told him 
 about God. “ Behold 1 go forward, but He is not 
 
11 o Distinction Between 
 
 there, and backward, but I cannot perceive Him.” 
 (Job xxii. 8.) 
 
 So it will always be in approaching God in our 
 present fallen state. 
 
 “ I stumble where I firmly trod, 
 
 And falling with my weight of cares 
 Upon the world’s great altar stairs, 
 
 That lead through darkness up to God.” 
 
 But these are the approaches to God’s presence. 
 Clouds and darkness are round about Him—righte¬ 
 ousness and truth are the habitation of His dwelling. 
 So long as we are in the outer court of the intellect, 
 we have no open vision, no sense of His presence 
 and nearness. We are dealing with notions about God, 
 but His own being we do not feel until the thought 
 is lost in wonder, love, and praise. Hence the impor¬ 
 tance of continuing in prayer, waiting in the outer 
 court of the intellect till God calls us in for an 
 audience. Time spent on our knees is not time lost, 
 if after one hour of meditation about God we are given 
 even one moment of the ecstatic sense of His pre¬ 
 sence. Of this the psychical man knows nothing, 
 he does not even desire it. He says his prayers as a 
 kind of blind duty. He believes it will in some way 
 do him good, either that God will directly give him 
 the thing that he prays for, or give him a more sub¬ 
 missive mind to make God s will his own. These are 
 the two theories of prayer when looked at in the light 
 of the intellect. They are true as far as they go, only 
 they do not go deep enough to the root of the mat- 
 
111 
 
 Psyche and Pneuma . 
 
 ter. There are three kinds of prayer corresponding 
 to the three parts of our nature. There is lip 
 prayer, notional prayer, and the prayer of devotion, 
 properly so called, when the spirit rises into commun¬ 
 ion with the Father of spirits, when we do not merely 
 desire good things from Him but that He would re¬ 
 veal Himself to us. 
 
 Thus the consciousness of God and the sense of 
 our own spiritual being vary in exactly the same pro¬ 
 portion. 
 
 Where there is little sense of God’s presence, there 
 the Pneuma is scarcely, if at all, developed. The 
 child and the savage cannot rise to a higher conception 
 of God than as a great being who dwells in a palace 
 above in the skies. The philosopher again rejects this 
 crude idea of a God dwelling in one fixed place, and 
 rises to the notion of omnipotence and omnipre¬ 
 sence. But these are intellectual notions only; they 
 do not bring God nigh us, and make Him dwell in 
 us. That heaven is his throne and earth his foot¬ 
 stool is a deeper and truer conception of Deity than 
 that He dwelleth in a house of stones and cedar. But 
 there is a higher and purer notion again than this. 
 It is that he dwells in the humble and contrite heart. 
 But to realize this indwelling of God in man, it is clear 
 that we must know what that part of man is which 
 alone is worthy to receive Him. To suppose God 
 indwelling in the human intellect falls as far short of 
 the whole truth as that He should dwell in our 
 bodies, in the coarse sense that Swift caricatured the 
 mystery of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Our 
 
I I 2 
 
 Distinction Between 
 
 bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost in the sense 
 that even the precincts or outer court of the Gentiles 
 were holy in the temple of Jerusalem. He who 
 defiles the outer court despises already the presence 
 of Him who sanctifies the innermost court of all. 
 Him will God destroy. But the true presence- 
 chamber of God is the Pneuma: there He meets 
 with man. We pass through the outer court of the 
 senses and even through the inner court of reason to 
 reach this sanctuary where God makes himself known 
 in silence and in stillness. Hence it is, that those 
 who fail to grasp the distinction between Pneuma and 
 Psyche fail also to grasp the deep meaning of the per¬ 
 sonal indwelling of God the Holy Spirit in the breast 
 of a regenerated believer. They speak of the influ¬ 
 ences of the Holy Spirit—an expression which would be 
 adequate if the office of the Holy Spirit were only to 
 enlighten our understandings and to purify our wills. 
 But they do not understand, or at least fail to make 
 clear to others, these deeper operations of the Spirit by 
 which the Pneuma, or diviner part in man, is occupied 
 and possessed by the Holy Spirit of God. 
 
 Our not being conscious of this immediate presence 
 of God’s Spirit with our spirit is no proof against it, 
 as those who deny or explain away the doctrine of 
 the personal indwelling of the Holy Ghost suppose. 
 Consciousness, or the power of turning over at will 
 our internal experiences, is not always co-extensive 
 with those experiences. There are some thoughts too 
 deep to be subjected to this kind of test* Besides, 
 
 * Psychology has not yet worked itself clear of the Cartesian confusion be¬ 
 tween thought and our consciousness of thought. According to Descartes an 
 
Psyche and Pneuma . 113 
 
 we are directly taught not to expect a consciousness of 
 the Spirit’s presence, but of Christ, of whom the 
 Spirit testifies. “He shall not speak of himself,” 
 John xvi. 13. 
 
 Thus Christ dwells in the believer mediately, the 
 Holy Spirit on the other hand dwells immediately. 
 The believer has the mind of Christ, and is led by the 
 Spirit of God; but he is directly conscious not of the 
 Spirit’s presence, but of that of which the Spirit testifies, 
 viz., the person and work of Christ. We must be ex¬ 
 plicit on this as our safeguard against that extravagant 
 error of all mystics, from the monks of Mount Athos 
 to the disciples of Swedenborg, that we can cast 
 ourselves into a state of magnetic sleep or trance, 
 and there enjoy the beatific vision. “It doth not yet 
 appear what we shall be,” and it is not given to us 
 in our present state to enjoy a foretaste of that 
 higher sense of God’s presence which awaits us after 
 death. “We who are in this tabernacle do groan, 
 being burdened. We could desire to be unclothed, 
 if so be that, being absent from the body, we might 
 be present with the Lord.” But meanwhile the 
 Spirit which is the earnest of our inheritance, dwells 
 in us in a way of which we are distinctly conscious, 
 though we cannot make that consciousness clear to 
 others. The Spirit is there, but his presence is only 
 felt by his effects. “ The wind bloweth where it 
 
 idea and our clear conception of that idea are one and inseparable. So far from 
 this there are pre-conscious states of thought. As memory and recollection 
 . differ, so thought and consciousness. The later psychologists, especially Ham¬ 
 ilton, are on the right track on this subject, but it has yet to be fully worked 
 i out. 
 
 H 
 
114 Distinction Between Psyche and Pneuma. 
 
 listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst 
 not tell whence it cometh or whither it goeth; so is 
 
 every one that is born of the Spirit. 
 
 Thus, to sum up our foregoing argument, the deep 
 things of God correspond to and suggest, something 
 proportionably deep in the receptive faculties of man. 
 Were notions about God all that we could ever attain 
 to, then man’s psychical nature would be .sufficient; 
 we should have no need to suppose the existence of 
 a third nature. But as man is made in the. image of 
 God, we are bound to suppose that there is a special 
 organ of God-consciousness, since we can trace a dis¬ 
 tinct function called spiritual-mindedness. And con¬ 
 versely, the existence of such functions obliges us to 
 assert a distinct organ on which they centre. Such 
 is the Pneuma. It is immortal because divine, not 
 divine because immortal. Did man only know about 
 God, we see. nothing on which he could rest his 
 hopes of immortality. But loving Him, trusting 
 Him, delighting in Him, man feels that he cannot 
 altogether die, that God would be untrue to himself 
 to thrust such a being back into nothingness. Hence 
 David exclaims, “Thou wilt not leave my soul m 
 Hades, neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see 
 corruption.” There is that in the Pneuma which we 
 do not find in the Psyche, viz., that it is made for 
 God, and meant to enjoy Him for ever and ever. 
 
THE UNITY UNDER DIVERSITY OF THE 
 THREE PARTS OF MAN’S NATURE. 
 
 We have seen from Scripture that the distinction 
 between body, soul, and spirit is real, and not verbal 
 only. But, like all distinctions, it must not be pressed 
 too far. Man is, indeed, a tripartite person— rg//mg>ie 
 vnoaratuc —made up of three parts, which we can 
 ideally distinguish. But this does not imply that we 
 can actually divide them, much less that any one of 
 these three natures in one person can maintain an 
 existence apart from the other two. Body without 
 soul or spirit becomes a corpse, and, as such, is quickly 
 resolved into its ultimate atoms. Soul, again, without 
 spirit or body would pass into the universal soul or 
 reason, if we may personify a mere abstraction; and 
 spirit again, being “ the likest God within the soul, 
 would, when the tie of life is broken, return to God 
 that gave it, in the sense that it would be reabsorbed 
 in the Deity. 
 
 This is, as far as we can infer from reason, what 
 would occur at death, did not revelation tell us that 
 God has arrested death in the act of completing his 
 triumph, and has said by the bier on which the body 
 is laid, Thus far shalt thou go, but no further. In 
 
116 Unity of Man s 
 
 prospect of a resurrection of the body, procured in 
 and by the meritorious work of Christ, our death is 
 not entire dissolution. It is only suspended anima¬ 
 tion. When the Lord said, “The maid is not dead, 
 but sleepeth,” they laughed him to scorn; so the 
 Stoics and Epicureans of our age may meet this truth 
 with derision ; the one asserting that death is an eter¬ 
 nal sleep, and the other that it is only a second birth, 
 
 “Eternal process moving on: 
 
 F rom state to state the spirit walks; 
 
 And these are but the shattered stalks, 
 
 The ruined chrysalis of one.” 
 
 Midway between materialism and spiritualism, and 
 having little in common with either, Scripture treats 
 of man as a unit, the fractions of which never can be 
 treated as integers. We may distinguish in idea, as 
 we shall presently see Scripture does, between the 
 body, the soul, and the spirit; but to suppose that 
 either can act without the other, or to suppose, for 
 instance, that the unsouled body, or the disembodied 
 soul, or lastly, the pure unsouled spirit, can act by it¬ 
 self, is to assume something which neither reason nor 
 revelation warrants. Death, to be entire, must imply 
 not separation of soul and body only, as we commonly 
 describe it, but the dissolution of the link which binds 
 the three parts together. In that case, all conscious¬ 
 ness and being must cease with the disruption of the 
 tie which unites the higher and lower natures together. 
 Were the first death of Adam at all equivalent to this 
 (as it is conceivable it would have been but that man 
 
Tripartite Nature. 117 
 
 was redeemed in idea, before even he fell, by the 
 Lamb slain from the foundation of the world), then all 
 our conjectures about the future state would have been 
 equally idle; man would indeed walk in a vain show, 
 and disquiet himself in vain. Buddhism would then 
 be of all creeds the most consistent, and, instead of 
 four hundred millions of professors, should claim the 
 whole human family as proselytes to its dreary dream 
 of ultimate annihilation. To our mind, there is no 
 middle point to choose between Gaudama Buddha, and 
 the Lord Christ. Either all life is evil, and non-being, 
 or apathy (for Nirwana may equally mean either) is 
 the supreme God, or on the other hand Christ is “ the 
 resurrection and the life,” and “ whosoever believeth 
 in him shall never die.” Between these two poles of 
 thought philosophy ranges itself with as many degrees 
 and zones as there are on the globe’s surface. But 
 they all lead up to or down to one of two theories, 
 which, like logical contradictories, exclude each the 
 other. Ranging between the two, philosophic re¬ 
 ligionists try to combine a little more or a little less of 
 the one or the other, but they all really tend to the 
 rejection of the one and the acceptance of the other. 
 At any given moment the philosophic standpoint may 
 seem neutral; it is in reality a tendency toward, or a 
 turning away from, the truth as it is in Jesus. No 
 man can serve two masters, either in speculation or in 
 practice. 
 
 Philosophy and revelation are thus at issue on this 
 primary question, whether death of man is a natural 
 or a penal process, and consequently, whether the 
 
118 Unity of Man s 
 
 higher functions of man can continue to act when 
 separated from the lower. e do not hei e deny that 
 they will continue to act after death, but this we attri¬ 
 bute, not to any necessity of the case or any fitness of 
 things that the higher should survive the lower, but 
 solely to the will of God arresting death m the act of 
 asserting his entire dominion over men. This being 
 the case we can ideally divide body, soul, and spirit 
 from each other, and set them apart as we do the 
 cornea, lens, or lacrymal humour of the eye foi separate 
 consideration. Together they make up only one 
 organum or instrument, and the loss of one pait would 
 imply, not the incompleteness only, but the uttei use¬ 
 lessness of the other two. 
 
 The trichotomy of Scripture does not then imply the 
 union of three separable and-distinct natures in man. 
 This would be to repeat and even exaggerate the 
 error of the old school of dichotomists. The ground 
 error of the dichotomist system is this, that man is 
 made up of two parts, body and soul, and that these 
 parts are not only separated in death, but capable, the 
 higher at least, of surviving that separation. What 
 would it be but to make confusion worse confounded 
 if we were to assert the existence of a third nature, 
 distinct from the former two, and equally with the 
 soul capable of continuing its existence in the disem¬ 
 bodied state? The only difference, in that case, 
 between the dichotomist and the trichotomist view of 
 man would be, that whereas the dichotomist described 
 man as the union of two natures, the one mortal and 
 the other immortal; the trichotomist described him as 
 
Tripartite Nature. 119 
 
 the union of three such natures, one moita.1 and two 
 of them immortal. Such a scheme would only com¬ 
 plicate what is obscure enough already and build up 
 one unproved assertion on another. The doctnne of 
 the natural immortality of the soul labours under diffi¬ 
 culties enough already* without laying on the additional 
 burden of proving the immortality of spuit as well. 
 
 The only trichotomy which will stand the test of our 
 advanced school of physiologists is this, that the bodily 
 organism, the intellectual faculties, and that higher 
 spiritual consciousness by which we know and serve 
 God, are not separable natures, but separate manifes¬ 
 tations of the one nature. That relation of the Per¬ 
 sons of the Trinity which is called Sabellianism is the 
 best expression of that which we hold with legard to 
 the nature of man. However defective such a theory 
 may be to express the relation of the Persons of the 
 Triune Jehovah, it is not unobjectionable to speak of the 
 three manifestations of one nature in man. The will 
 or personality, the original monad or centre of foice, 
 
 * Olshausen says, “ Hoc tamen patribus dandum est, nusquam legi in libris 
 sacris animam esse immortalem, de Deo potius prsdicatur, eum tenere solum 
 immortalitatem (i Tim. vi. 16), et de Christo (John xi. 15). lhe grounds 
 on which some of the ante-Nicene fathers spoke of the soul as mortal and the 
 spirit as immortal, Olshausen gives in his treatise on the trichotomy, see his 
 Opuscula, p. 167. The theology of any age can only be understood by refer¬ 
 ence to the current opinions of that age. The Platonic trichotomy was a ^v X v 
 X07007 or rational soul, which was immortal, the irrational or sensitive soul 
 and the body. The Scripture trichotomy brought in a new conception of a 
 pneuma superior to the psyche. Hence the first stress of the early apologist 
 was to prove the mortality of the psyche as opposed to Plato, on which to base 
 the true source of man’s immortality in the pneuma. When the chuich be¬ 
 came dichotomist, this distinction was disregarded, and divines f-li back on 
 the old statement of the immortality of the soul. 
 
120 
 
 Unity of Man s 
 
 has three forms of consciousness, that of sense, of self, 
 and of God-consciousness. Man has not three lives, 
 but one life; he is not three persons, but one person. 
 The will or the ego is at one moment more present to 
 sense-consciousness, and then again it passes into self- 
 consciousness, or God-consciousness, passing thus 
 through the outer court of the holy place into the 
 holiest of all; but it is always one and the same will. 
 Our personality is the same, whether the will acts 
 through the body, the soul, or the spirit. This is the 
 difference, therefore, between the trinity and the 
 trichotomy, that in the one case the person is distinct 
 as well as the work, in the other case not. The 
 Trinity is three persons in one nature or substance— 
 the trichotomy is three natures in one person. Man 
 is the fibula duarum naturarum , the clasp which unites 
 the sensual and the spiritual together. This expres¬ 
 sion of the old dichotomist is perfectly unobjectionable; 
 but to go further, and to press analogies from the 
 mystery of the blessed Trinity, analogies faulty in their 
 very form (for what has the mystery of the three per¬ 
 sons in one nature to say to the fact of three natures 
 in one person) is to go beyond the bound, both of 
 scripture and reason. 
 
 The facts of consciousness are all against such a 
 trichotomy as would divide as well as distinguish the 
 natures in man. In every mental operation we feel 
 that the whole man works, and that through every 
 part of his nature. Physiology teaches us that there 
 is not a single mental act which does not depend upon 
 the circulation of the blood through the brain vessels, 
 
Tripartite Nature. 12 1 
 
 and that upon the quantity or quality of that blood 
 will depend the soundness of the conclusion. A tor¬ 
 pid liver or a disordered stomach, by either diminish¬ 
 ing the volume of blood in the brain vessels, or dis¬ 
 turbing its purity, will produce such aberrations of 
 intellect, that the reasoning powers shall either alto¬ 
 gether cease, or beat wildly like the pendulum of a 
 clock released from its weight. When we speak of 
 the pure reason, we speak of an abstraction which 
 does not exist in human nature. On the data brought 
 in by sense-perception, the judgment acts, and it can 
 so far recall or modify these data as to seem to create 
 the grounds of its own judgment, and so far to carry 
 on a train of pure reasoning. But this is simply be¬ 
 cause we forget whence these data originally came. 
 Lost in a train of abstruse reasoning, and oblivious 
 even of the sheet of paper which he is covering with 
 his symbols, the mathematician may seem to be in the 
 region of pure thought, and using pure reason only. 
 But this is only because we are forgetful of the phy¬ 
 siological fact, that on the supply of blood to the brain 
 depends that very exercise of the pure reason, and the 
 psychological fact, that the data of reasoning are 
 nothing else than transformed sensations, perceptions 
 accumulated during many years’ observation, and now 
 by abstraction defecated from those associations with 
 which they first entered the mind through the senses. 
 None of us can remember the original apples or abaci 
 by which we first learned that two and two make 
 four; but none would dispute that, without such aids 
 to reflection, even Newton or Pascal could not have 
 
122 
 
 The Unity of Man’s 
 
 discovered the mathematical genius for which they 
 were afterwards so distinguished. 
 
 In truth, in every act of the mind, from the simplest 
 to the most abstract, we put forth our entire faculties, 
 though in a very different degree. Suggestions from 
 without, and association of ideas from within, are the 
 instruments, so to speak, which the judgment cannot 
 do without. Thus, without the aid and suggestion of 
 the senses, it is difficult to see on what thought could 
 occupy itself. Man, as far as we know at present, is 
 as incapable of pure thought as he is of pure ani¬ 
 malism. Even the sensualist idealizes his indulgences, 
 lest he should turn from them in utter disgust and 
 loathing. There is the irgovoia, rrjg tra^xog, the provision 
 for the flesh, else the epicure would loathe his own 
 delicacies. He must toil after his gastronomic profi¬ 
 ciency (to use Charle’s Lamb’s quaint account of his 
 taste for strong tobacco) as some men toil after virtue. 
 But the converse is equally true. If, in living to the 
 flesh, men must still exercise judgment, taste, imagina¬ 
 tion, wit, and that thus the elder is made to serve the 
 younger, it is equally true that in a life of the highest 
 mental abstractedness, of a Kant at Konigsberg, or a 
 Newton in the quadrangle of Trinity—nihil est in in- 
 tellectu quod non prius, per sehsum. Through the 
 wicket gate of sense have passed those trooping 
 fancies, those soaring thoughts, those long-drawn de¬ 
 ductions of reason which mark the higher forms of 
 mind, whether in a poet “ of imagination all compact,” 
 like Shakspeare, or a reasoner and analyst like New¬ 
 ton or Kant. 
 
I2 3 
 
 'Tripartite Nature. 
 
 Thus, as of the sexes, the man is not without the 
 woman, nor the woman without the man in the Lord, 
 so of the senses and intellect. Mind enters into all 
 our animal functions, except those which are purely 
 unconscious, and so are out of the control of the will, 
 as the functions of the heart and the stomach. The 
 senses, on the other hand, are constantly ministering 
 to the mind, even when in her most creative and un¬ 
 earthly mood. She may take the pabulum of thought 
 with the same unthoughtfulness of her need of it that 
 Newton ate the baked apples which his housekeeper 
 took care to lay on his table before him. But still 
 the ministering hand is there, and we are utterly at a 
 loss to conceive a state of being in which a lower na¬ 
 ture shall not thus minister to, and subserve a higher. 
 Idealism loses sight of the connection of the mind with 
 the body, just as materialism declares that mind is 
 nothing else than a subtle and rare secretion of body. 
 True, research is leading on to the conclusion which 
 Scripture has long ago laid down, that man is the 
 integer of two, or rather three, factors or fractions 
 —the mysterious unity of sense-consciousness, which 
 we call the body; self-consciousness, which we call 
 the soul or reason ; and God-consciousness, which we 
 call the spirit. 
 
 This view of the essential unity of man reconciles 
 us to what would otherwise appear an anomaly in a 
 spiritual religion like that of Christ—the doctrine of 
 the resurrection of the body. The Christian doc¬ 
 trine is no less offensive to spiritualism than to mate¬ 
 rialism. Nay, of the two, the spiritualist philosophy 
 
I 24 The Unity of Man s 
 
 takes most offence at the doctrine of the resurrection. 
 The materialist may think the doctrine incredible, but 
 it will never seem to him a thing impossible that God 
 should raise the dead. Nay, rather, like Priestley, 
 whatever other objections he may find to the superna¬ 
 tural element in Christianity, he will readily admit the 
 doctrine of the resurrection of the body, as confirming 
 his theory of the dependence of the intellect upon the 
 senses. But to the spiritualist school such a doctrine 
 is utterly repulsive. Plotinus resented being asked 
 about his bodily health, considering his present condi¬ 
 tion as a degradation, an incarceration in the flesh for 
 spiritual sins committed in some former state of being. 
 To one accustomed to this view of the independence 
 of mind on matter, the Christian doctrine of the resur¬ 
 rection of the body must have seemed utterly repulsive. 
 Hence we find that when the apostle came to Greece 
 the resurrection of Jesus was foolishness, even as the 
 Messiahship of Jesus was a stumbling-block to the Jew. 
 The expressions applied to each (a stumbling-block to 
 the one and foolishness to the other), exactly express 
 the nature of the offence in each case. The Messiah¬ 
 ship of Jesus was to the Jews a scandal, because they 
 would admit the idea of Messiahship, but were offended 
 at the meanness of the birth, life, and death of Jesus 
 of Nazareth, who claimed to be their Messiah. But 
 with the Greek, the state of feeling was opposite. 
 With him, the very idea of a resurrection was foolish¬ 
 ness : a resurrection of rubbish—a reincarceration in 
 the flesh—a second childishness, to end in mere obli¬ 
 vion. The one admitted the idea, but staggered only 
 
Tripartite Nature. 125 
 
 at the fact which embodied it. But the Greek re¬ 
 jected even the idea of a return to the body. It was 
 more than a particular and single scandal, which might 
 be got out of the way : this preaching of the resur¬ 
 rection of the body was much more than a single 
 folly, it was foolishness itself; so that the Greek phi¬ 
 losophy, which taught the immortality of the soul in 
 opposition to the resurrection of the body, must be 
 swept out of the way, before men, who call them¬ 
 selves spiritualists, can receive Christianity, as it is 
 taught by the Lord and his apostles. 
 
 Harless has well remarked that there is less now 
 for Christian truth to fear from so-called materialism, 
 with its inductive method applied to psychological 
 questions, than from that vague and misty spiritualism, 
 of which Cams’ “ Psyche,” and Ennemoser’s u Spirit 
 of man in Nature,” are the most striking instances.* 
 To the spiritualism which has strangely enough im¬ 
 bedded itself in our popular theology, like a fly in the 
 amber, or a toad in a rock, mortal body and immortal 
 soul, are favourite and oft-repeated antitheses. Out 
 of this assumed dichotomy of man into two distinct 
 and separable parts, is built up a scheme of natural 
 religion, which one class of writers, the Deists of 
 last century, appealed to as a substitute for revealed, 
 and another, the orthodox apologists, appealed to as 
 the schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. It is not 
 generally perceived, that if this antithesis of mortal 
 body and immortal soul, w 7 hich is certainly not Pauline 
 but Platonic, is worth anything at all, it cuts at the 
 
 * See Harless Chrisliche Ethik, quoted by Delitzsch. 
 
i2 6 The Unity of Man s 
 
 roots of the Christian doctrine of a resurrection of the 
 body. Hence it is that the doctrine of the resurrec¬ 
 tion of the last day seems to some to be an encum¬ 
 brance to the Christian scheme. If the body be the 
 mortal, and the soul the immortal part ex natura 
 rerum] why degrade the soul again by clothing it upon 
 even with a glorious body ? The spirits of just men 
 are said to be made perfect when out of the body; 
 why imprison them again, even in a house which is 
 from heaven ? . So the Egyptian notion of the ™\>y- 
 y £V nua, or the revivification of the flesh at the end of 
 the annus magnus seems to have dropped into the 
 stream of Christian truth, like an overhanging pine 
 tree into the torrent below, and dammed up its cuirent 
 rather than bridged over its difficulties. If man be only 
 a soul in a body; if the true Ego be an immortal wDc 
 in a perishable cw//.a, as Plato and the philosophers 
 thought, it is a strange advance to raise man from the 
 disembodied state of being after death, to that of the 
 resurrection body. The inconsistency of the two doc¬ 
 trines is not felt by the majority of divines, because of 
 their artificial and arbitrary distinction between natural 
 and revealed religion, and because they half Christian¬ 
 ise Plato, and make him the “ Moses of Athica,” as he 
 was said to be by Clement and others of the Alexan¬ 
 drian school. 
 
 But the contradiction, though not always apparent, 
 is none the less real. The difficulty (for such it is) of 
 the resurrection of the body is got over by many 
 divines, on the principle that rewards and punishments 
 could not be justly awarded at the last day, if the 
 
I2 7 
 
 Tripartite Nature. 
 
 body which had been a partaker of the sin were not 
 raised again to share the retribution. There is a 
 Rabbinical tale which Sherlock and other divines have 
 urged as an argument for the resurrection of the body : 
 In the day of judgment the body will say, the soul 
 alone is to blame; since it left me I have lain still in 
 the grave: The soul will retort, the body alone is 
 sinful; since released from, it, I fly through the air 
 like a bird : The judge will interpose with this myth 
 —A king once had a beautiful garden full of early 
 fruits. A lame man and a blind man were in it. 
 Said the lame man to the blind man, let me mount 
 upon your shoulders and pluck the fruit, and we will 
 divide it. The king accused them of theft: but they 
 severally replied—the lame man, how could I reach 
 it ?—the blind man, how could I see it ? The king 
 ordered the lame man to be placed on the back of the 
 blind man, and in this position had them both scourged. 
 So God in the day of judgment will replace the soul 
 in the body, and hurl them both into hell together. 
 
 Now, allowing this allegory all the worth it claims 
 as an argument, and admitting that for a perfect retri¬ 
 bution to the wicked, their bodies must be quickened 
 and immortalised as well as their souls ; how does this 
 apply to the righteous ? If their souls are in full 
 fruition of blessedness what farther need have they of 
 organs of sense-perception, similar to, if not quite the 
 same, as those which we now possess ? The truth is, 
 that the resurrection of the body is a difficulty which 
 cannot be got over by the philosophy of spiritualism. 
 Divines may uphold it as a point of orthodoxy, but 
 
128 
 
 The Unity of Man's 
 
 laymen who care less for orthodoxy than consistency, 
 will not scruple to explain it away, w’hen they see how 
 irreconcileable it is with their philosophical dogma of 
 the immateriality and immortality of the soul. As 
 early as the apostles’ days, we find some who said with 
 Hymenaeus and Philetus, that the resurrection was 
 past already, because it seemed to them not only in¬ 
 credible, but unworthy of God to reinvest man in a 
 garment of matter. The Manicheans very consistently 
 denied a bodily resurrection. Matter seemed to them 
 to proceed from the evil principle, and redemption 
 consisted rather in deliverance from the body by death, 
 than that the temple of the body should be destroyed 
 only to be reared again by Christ at the last day. 
 Locke, in the third letter of his controversy with the 
 Bishop of Worcester, seems to fall in with those who 
 take a figurative view of the resurrection of the body, 
 and in the paraphrase and notes to the Epistles, com¬ 
 menting on the expression “ it is sown in corruption,’’ 
 he maintains “that the time that man is in this world, 
 affixed to this earth, is his being sown, and not when 
 being dead he is put in the grave, as is evident from 
 St Paul’s own words—For dead things are not sown; 
 seeds are sown, being alive ; and die not till after they 
 are sown.” It is evident that Locke here mistakes the 
 apostle’s meaning, and twists the sense so as to explain 
 away the resurrection of the body. The apostle does 
 compare the corpse put into the grave to a seed of 
 corn, and the comparison is as just as striking. In 
 both cases there is outward death. A seed is a dead 
 thing till it is quickened in the bosom of the earth ; 
 
Tripartite Nature. 129 
 
 and a body is but a corpse until it is quickened at the 
 resurrection morning. The comparison, moreover, 
 becomes more reasonable the more it is pursued in 
 details. With what body shall they come, the philo¬ 
 sophers asked in Corinth, as they do to this day. It 
 did not want the light of modern science to teach that 
 the body wholly decomposes in the grave, and that 
 not one particle remains in a few years or centuries, as 
 the case may be ; the whole of the atoms pass off in 
 gas or dust, to form the constituent elements of fresh 
 bodies. Modern chemistry has taught us a little more 
 of the modus operandi; but the fact itself was as well- 
 known in Corinth two thousand years ago as in London 
 or Paris to-day. Yet the apostle’s answer is short and 
 decisive. “ Thou fool, that which thou sowest, thou 
 sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain; 
 but God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to 
 every seed his own body.’ Those who protest against 
 the absurdity of the resurrection of relics are answered 
 at once. Do we find in nature a resurrection of relics ? 
 Does the grain of wheat give back its particles to the 
 new stalk and ear ? Undoubtedly not. “ Thou fool, 
 thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare 
 grain.” “ Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground 
 and die, it abideth alone.” It is by its death, i.e., by its 
 dissolution and decomposition, that it obtains a new 
 life. The seed rots in the earth, with this difference, 
 however, from other cases of mere decomposition, that 
 in dying it strikes a radicle into the earth, and in this 
 radicle there is life; it has the power of assimilating 
 to itself fresh particles of matter ; and so God gives it 
 
 1 
 
1 30 "The Unity of Man s 
 
 a body as it hath pleased Him. The point of identity 
 thus between the old and the new plant, between the 
 present and our resurrection bodies, is not an identity 
 of atoms, but an identity of nature. “ To every seed 
 his own body.” As the oat seed only produces the 
 oat plant, barley barley, and wheat wheat, so each in¬ 
 dividual corpse is the germ, and nothing more, of a 
 resurrection body, whose identity with the old is 
 an identity of reason and idea, not of matter and 
 
 sense. 
 
 We admit that this is not the mediaeval doctrine of 
 the resurrection ; it is, nevertheless, the Pauline, and 
 is as reasonable, and after the analogies of nature, as 
 the other view is wildly absurd and improbable. The 
 resurrection of the body was complicated with diffi¬ 
 culties which did not belong to it, because divines did 
 not understand the apostle’s illustration, and did not 
 distinguish as they should between such an idea of re¬ 
 surrection as that of the dry bones of Ezekiel, which 
 is only revivification, and the regeneration of a new 
 plant from an old germ, which is the Christian doc¬ 
 trine of the resurrection. Thus the Jews had a tradition 
 that there was one small almond shaped bone which 
 was indestructible, and would form the nucleus around 
 which the rest of the body would gather at the time 
 of the resurrection. Tertullian, not to be outdone in 
 absurdity, fixed the germ of immortality in the teeth. 
 The teeth, he says, are providentially made eternal, to 
 serve as the seeds of the resurrection. Even Augus¬ 
 tine gives in to this carnal mode of apprehending the 
 resurrection. Every man’s body, howsoever dispersed 
 
Tripartite Nature. 131 
 
 here, shall be restored perfect in the resurrection. 
 Every body shall be complete in quantity and quality. 
 As many, hairs as have been shaved off, or nails cut, 
 shall not return in such enormous quantities to deform 
 their original places, but neither shall they perish; 
 they shall return into the body, into that substance 
 from which they grew. It is needless to accumulate 
 instances. The Church fell into the way, not of study¬ 
 ing what the apostle said, but what this or that father 
 said about the apostle, and hence the schoolmen only 
 repeat each other in piling up absurdities about the 
 resurrection of relics. Thomas Aquinas gravely de¬ 
 cides that no other substance would rise from the grave 
 except that which belonged to the man in the moment 
 of death.* 
 
 Thus the reputed orthodox view errs as wide of the 
 mark in one extreme as that of the Sadducees in the 
 other extreme, and for the same reason. Ye err, 
 knowing neither the Scriptures , nor the power op God. 
 Between the oat plant and the oat seed there is no ex¬ 
 ternal likeness whatever: it is a likeness of kind. It 
 is to reasons eye, not to that of sense-perception , that we 
 appeal in proof of the identity of the buried grain with 
 the growing corn. So with our bodies. Inattention 
 to this obvious distinction has made more infidelity 
 than almost any other mistake of divines. It is not too 
 much to say, with the author of a Restoration of Belief, 
 that before all other replies to negative teaching we 
 want some clearing up of the positive meaning of 
 
 * Hagenbach’s Hist, of Doctrines, Clark’s Translation. 
 
17 2 The Unity of Man s 
 
 Scripture. We have had quite enough dogma in 
 our churches—what we want is a clearing up of some 
 of the difficulties of the Bible from the dogmas which 
 have been laid on the Bible by divines who philoso¬ 
 phized as they thought in the orthodox sense. 
 
 Thus on account of certain difficulties connected 
 with the resurrection of the body, which arose from 
 our crude conceptions of the apostle s meaning, the 
 doctrine itself has been more opposed than any other 
 in revelation. Two theories are now put forward on 
 the subject to get over the difficulty. The one theory 
 is that of an inner body, which was first and ingeni¬ 
 ously worked out by Bonnet in his Palingenesie Philo- 
 sophique ; the other is the anti-atomistic theoiy of 
 Leibnitz applied to souls. Each soul is a monad or 
 centre of force, which is the organic identity of man, 
 and which at his death passes out into the world of 
 spirits, to die no more. These are the two counter¬ 
 theories to the Christian doctnne of mans natuie. 
 Thus there are two irreconcileable schools of thought, 
 each professing to tell us of the mystery of death and 
 the grave—the one, the method of Scripture; the 
 other, that of philosophy. Rejecting the latter, we 
 conclude that man is a tripartite nature of body, soul, 
 and spirit, made for immortality, it is true, but that 
 this immortality was contingent on his spiritual likeness 
 to God through obedience and love. Man, when he 
 fell, lost for himself and all his posterity that spiritual 
 likeness to God in which alone his true immortality is 
 to be sought.* We are born dead m trespasses and 
 
 * For a catena of testimonies from the early Fathers, that they held the 
 
Tripartite Nature. 133 
 
 sins, and cannot attain the right to the tree of life, that 
 we may eat it and live for ever. The redemption of 
 Christ has purchased back for man this right to the 
 tree of life. Entering into our nature, He who alone 
 has immortality gives it alone to those who 3re in like 
 vital union with Him by spiritual regeneration, as those 
 of Adam born are in union with the first Adam by 
 natural birth. 11 As in Adam all die, or u as all that 
 are of Adam die,” so “ all that are in Christ are made 
 alive.” Thus as the wages of sin is death, the gift of 
 God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. This gift of 
 God is, as we might expect, not a partial gift. As 
 redemption is free, so it is also full. God will immor¬ 
 talise not a part of our nature, but the whole. Were 
 it the intention of God from the beginning (of which 
 we do not gather a trace from Scripture) to set an im¬ 
 mortal spirit in a mortal body, partners of a common 
 life or soul for a little while, with a very different here¬ 
 after before them, then we should not have been told 
 of the resurrection of the body. The resurrection of 
 Christ’s body might have taken place (though even 
 this might have been dispensed with) to assure us that 
 we do not die in death, but that rather death is our 
 second birth, and that the spirit, thus delivered from 
 its partner and co-mate in exile, the body would at 
 
 opinion that the true immortality of man lay in his being made in the image 
 of God, i.e., that he was neither naturally mortal nor immortal, but denriKos 
 Se eKarepwv, capable of becoming one or the other by obedience. See Schultz 
 Voraussetzungen der Unsterblichkeit, p. 67. 
 
 See also a good Sermon by Sartorius on Die Heilige Liebe, p. 34 : Die 
 
 gottliche Ebenbildlichkeit des Menschen, ist auch der Grund seiner Unster¬ 
 blichkeit, die nicht auf einer bios physichen oder metaphysichen, sondern auf 
 religiosen oder heiliger Basis ruht. 
 
124 The Unity of Man s 
 
 once pass into joy and felicity. Instead of this, Scrip¬ 
 ture teaches us that redemption is not complete till 
 the resurrection of the body, and that even we who 
 have the firstfruits of the Spirit groan within ourselves, 
 waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the 
 body. Thus in Scripture death and sin, immortality 
 and the redemption of Christ, are coupled together as 
 we do not find them in the schools of philosophy. The 
 resurrection of the body, not the existence of the soul 
 after death, is the pledge of entire redemption from 
 the curse and bondage of sin, to which Scripture in¬ 
 variably points our hopes. 
 
 The Eschatology of the schools is different from that 
 of Scripture, and no ingenuity of divines pledged to 
 connect and harmonise natural and revealed religion 
 can weave the two into agreement. The schools of 
 philosophy know neither the doctrine of original sin 
 nor the penal character of death. Looking down at 
 the grave, they say, Mors est aut exitus aut interitns. 
 Startled, as indeed they may be, at the thought of an¬ 
 nihilation ; rejecting, as our better instincts always 
 will, the alternative adopted by Lucretius— 
 
 “ Sic ubi non erimus quum corporis atque animai 
 Discidium fuerit, quibus e sumus uniter apti.” 
 
 De Rerum , Nat. III. 850. 
 
 when it comes to the question whether “to be or not 
 to be” is the case of man after death, there will always 
 be an inconsiderable minority only in favour of the 
 former. Any hypothesis will be invented rather than 
 that man should lie down and die like the brute. 
 
Tripartite Nature. 1 35 
 
 Hence, if death be not the end of man’s being, it must 
 be a crisis; it must be the entrance into a new life, a 
 higher life, as he is pleased to fancy, in which the 
 higher or deathless principle shuffles oft its mortal coil, 
 as the snake sheds its skin, or the grub rises into a 
 butterfly. Curiously enough, the penal character of 
 death crosses his thoughts, but only to be brushed 
 aside as an untenable theory. 
 
 “ Omnia mors poscit, lex est non pctna penri.” 
 
 Death, the philosopher argues, is common to man 
 with the brute. Now, as the brute creation has not 
 sinned, it cannot be that death has passed upon all in 
 consequence of sin. But St Paul, Rom. v., has an¬ 
 ticipated this very difficulty, and in the face of it reaf¬ 
 firms the truth that “Nevertheless death reigned from 
 Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned 
 after the similitude of Adam’s transgression. At 
 this point, then, of the penal character of death in the 
 case of man only, and in consequence of Adam’s trans¬ 
 gression, we come to the cross-roads where philosophy 
 and Scripture branch off; the two paths diverge, and 
 every step we take on the one carries us farther from 
 the other. No ingenuity can reconcile the penal 
 character of death with its natural. “ Stipendia enim 
 peccati mors ” is the verdict of St Paul; Mors Janua 
 vita is the sentence of the schools from Plato to 
 Fichte. Setting out with the latter interpretation of 
 death, the schools have worked out a theory of im¬ 
 mortality, in which Plato’s notion of the pre-existence 
 of the impersonal nous or universal reason, and Leib- 
 
136 Unity of Man s Tripartite Nature. 
 
 nitz’ doctrine of monads, are the axioms on which it 
 rests. The old doctrine of the immortality of the soul 
 arising from its immateriality has passed through the 
 fire of hostile criticism. Warburton rejected it; Kant 
 put it into the crucible of his Critique, and reduced it 
 to a mere play on words. Yet it lives on still in our 
 systems of theology, for this most unanswerable 
 reason, that what men continue to believe in, they will 
 always find a reason for. But the only terms on which 
 a lasting concordat between reason and faith can be 
 drawn up must clearly be, that faith is not to borrow 
 the weapons of a school philosophy with which to 
 overturn philosophy. So long as we take the psycho¬ 
 logy of Scripture to illustrate its theology, and vice 
 versa , we may expect some agreement; but when we 
 take certain dicta of philosophy with regard to the 
 nature of man, and try to piece these in with what 
 the Bible tells us of God’s dealings with man, is it to 
 be wondered at that the result is confusion worse con¬ 
 founded ? and a state of uncertainty as to any settled 
 meaning in Scripture which tends to unbelief if not to 
 positive disbelief. 
 
ANALOGIES FROM THE DOCTRINE OF 
 THE TRINITY TO THE TRICHOTOMY 
 IN MAN CONSIDERED. 
 
 We know from Scripture that man is made in the 
 image of God. Scripture, moreover, teaches us that 
 there is in the Divine unity a plurality of persons 
 .—three persons in one substance. To put these 
 two thoughts together, and to suggest an analogy 
 from the trichotomy of man to the three persons of 
 the Blessed Trinity, is such an obvious comparison 
 that it is not strange if it has been pressed into the 
 argument. We now proceed to test that analogy, and 
 see whether it is as sound as it is specious. 
 
 That man was the microcosm was a fancy which 
 long retarded the advance of sound views of physio¬ 
 logy. Man, the miniature of the Trinity, may be 
 the same misleading conception in psychology. So 
 long as men thought that there were four elements 
 in nature, and that out of these elements our bodily 
 form was built up, and that the soul was a quint¬ 
 essence of the other four, no rational system of 
 physiology was possible. The spirits, as they were 
 called down to the time of Cullen, formed an impor¬ 
 tant part of medical diagnosis of disease. What the 
 
i^8 Analogies from 
 
 spirits were no one could exactly say, but the fiction 
 that air, the fourth element, enters into the composi¬ 
 tion of the human frame, led to the conception of an 
 entity called the spirit, which was as purely imaginary 
 as the geography of Paradise, the situation of Limbus, 
 or other questions on which the middle ages exercised 
 their ingenuity to little or no purpose. 
 
 Analogies are of all arguments the most deceptive. 
 That forward, forth-reaching faculty may land us on 
 to the shore of truth, but it may as often mistake a 
 sleeping whale for an island, and land us where there 
 is not a foothold of certainty. Such has been the 
 fate of all analogies from man to the universe, and 
 such will the analogy prove, from the trichotomy to 
 the Trinity. It will not bear the weight of solid 
 reason. 
 
 Man is made in the image of God. It is but a 
 single step from this to say with Augustine, “ Man 
 has three parts—spirit, soul, and body. Man, 
 therefore, is an image of the sacred Trinity.” “ Homo 
 habet tres partes, spiritum animum et corpus, itaque 
 est imago Sacrosanctae Trinitatis ” (Aug. de Symbolo). 
 We may be tempted even to carry this into detail as 
 Augustine had the good sense not to do. We may 
 say that such as is the inner nature of God, such 
 will be the inner nature of man. God has three 
 persons in one substance, man has three natures in 
 one person. God is will, word, and work; the pur¬ 
 pose, its plan, and its performance; thought in idea, 
 thought in execution, and thought as it has passed out 
 
x 39 
 
 The Doctrine of the Trinity. 
 
 into action.* In man we can trace, they say, the 
 same idea of the Trinity. He is pure will or spirit; 
 the will gathers itself into thought and becomes a 
 soul, that thought again embodies itself m an outwar 
 form. This trinity in unity, moreover, is as indivis¬ 
 ible in man as in God. There can be no soulless 
 spirit, no spiritless soul. As in theology, suc y^ s 
 the Father is, such is the Son, so in psychology, 
 will is immanent in thought, and thought emanent 
 from the will, as the Son dwells in the bosom of the 
 Father. The two are necessary to each other, co¬ 
 existent and co-equal. Again, when thought is mixed 
 with will, it must result in action. So the Spirit pro¬ 
 ceeds from the Father and the Son. The body m man 
 according to this new theosophy, is not the paitnei o 
 the soul, much less its prison ; it is itself the soul, the 
 soul in act, as the soul is the body in idea. As t e 
 universe in this pantheistic conception is not the work 
 of God, but a necessary process of evolution, by the 
 which God comes to full consciousness, so the body is 
 the idea of a life which has taken form,. and built to 
 itself a house of flesh by a process of internal self¬ 
 evolution. 
 
 * See Rudloff (Lehre vom Mesnchen, p. 102), whose otherwise useful book 
 is weakened by this analogy, compares the spirit, soul and Nephes , or, as e 
 calls it, nerve-spirit, to the blessed Trinity respectively. Delitzsch who ver) 
 properly rejects these analogies, has one of his own which, though unobjec¬ 
 tionable, is somewhat mystical and cabbalistic. He compares spirit, soul, and 
 body to God, Doxa, or His glory and the world. Milton s description o 
 
 light, 
 
 “ Bright effluence of bright essence uncreate,” 
 is intelligible in comparison to this personification of an abstract conception 
 such as the gldry of God.— See Delitzch Psychologie, p. 225. 
 
 ft 
 
140 Analogies from 
 
 We might carry these analogies much farther, and 
 yet fall short of the lengths to which Hegel has 
 carried this dressing up of psychology in the terms of 
 theology. In the case of Hegel and his school, the 
 thought that man is the image of God has been 
 carried to such lengths that at last it breaks down under 
 its own load of analogies. Pushed beyond the point 
 of analogy, /.<?., resemblance of ratio under difference 
 of form, it has reached the point of identity. Man is 
 not the representative only of the divine idea; he is 
 the idea itself, as it proceeds into fact, and attains self- 
 consciousness. When Pantheistic spiritualism has 
 reached this stage, there remains only one more bold 
 assertion to make—which it does not scruple to do—- 
 which is, that man is not merely the image of God, 
 but rather that God is the impersonal idea of which 
 man is the idea in fact. As pantheistic materialism is 
 quite as logical as pantheistic spiritualism, it is as easy 
 
 “ By the a priori road 
 To reason upward till we come to God,” 
 
 to set out from universal matter as from universal 
 spirit; and to assert that matter attaining to self-con¬ 
 sciousness in man has become a God, as to say con¬ 
 versely that spirit has become conscious, and taken 
 form in man. Schopenhauer’s theories, which are 
 avowedly Buddhist, are but a farther development of 
 Hegel’s method of revolving the mysteries of the God¬ 
 head out of the facts of consciousness. When logic 
 run mad takes its own laws of thought for the laws of 
 things, and presumes to say what things must be in 
 
The Doctrine of the Trinity. 141 
 
 themselves from analysing its own notions about things. 
 when it has thus lost the power of distinguishing 
 object from subject, notion from reality, it will of 
 course apply this method to theology, and, spinning 
 out its own logical cobwebs, pretend to see in these 
 the mystery of God and the universe. 
 
 Thus the modern pantheistic theories of the rela¬ 
 tion of man to God are only varieties of the dogma 
 of Protagoras, that man is the measure of all things. 
 We are not to expect that Christian psychology, 
 properly so-called, can make use of analogies so pre¬ 
 sumptuous as these. As the New. Testament rests 
 on the Old, and stands or falls with it, so any deduc¬ 
 tion from the New Testament which is irreconcilable 
 with the fundamental truths of the Old Testament 
 cannot be a true one. If the relation of the human to 
 the divine in man is not to be reconciled with the 
 great contrast between the creature and the Creator, 
 which is the very back-bone of the whole Old T esta- 
 ment, it is clearly wrong. Two truths nevei can 
 contradict each other, and sincere contrast between 
 the Creator and the creature is the foundation on 
 which all religion rests, we must harmonise these 
 truths or reject them altogether. The . first view we 
 have of man is as the work of God, his creature, as 
 much as the sun and moon are, as plants and animals 
 
 are _created, it is true, on the sixth day, and on the 
 
 eve of God’s Sabbath, when he rested from all his 
 works which he had made; but still his creature, and 
 as such dependent on him for life, and breath, and 
 
 all things. 
 
Iz j.2 Analogies from 
 
 We may go on from this thought of man’s crea¬ 
 ture relationship to God to dwell on his sonship. 
 The same narrative which distinctly teaches the one, 
 also implies the other. Let us make man in our 
 likeness, after our image. Creationism and filiation 
 are here both combined in one paragraph, as they are 
 in the second narrative in Gen. ii. 7; for where crea¬ 
 tionism is implied in the first clause, “ God took of 
 the dust of the ground:” filiation is implied in the 
 second, “God breathed into his nostrils the breath 
 of lives.” Man becomes a living soul as the identity 
 of the two opposites, matter and spirit—the one of 
 which is created by God, the other proceeds from 
 
 Him. 
 
 Thus the true account of the trichotomy of man 
 at once disposes of those vain and visional y analogies 
 between the relation of persons in the Godhead and of 
 natures in man. There is in the first place this con¬ 
 trast between the two, that there are three peisons in 
 one substance in God; three consubstantial persons, 
 co-eternal and co-equal, in the divine unity; while in 
 man’s trichotomy there are only three natures or kinds 
 of being in one person. Thus the very ground for 
 the analogy is cut away from us, unless we adopted 
 the Sabellian hypothesis (as Rudloff has done), which 
 is only a rationalizing mode of explaining the mystery 
 of the Trinity. In God there are three persons in 
 one substance; in man three substances are fused into 
 one person. Thus, looked at in this light, the analogy 
 between the Trinity and the trichotomy absolutely dis- 
 
The Doctrine of the Trinity. 143 
 
 appears. It is an analogy worse than useless; it is 
 positively misleading and mischievous. 
 
 In the image of God made he man not in the 
 sense assuredly that the relation of Father, Son, and 
 Spirit are to each other as Spirit, Soul, and Body, 
 or even, to avoid the grossness of this conception, as 
 will, word, and work. This is to explain obscurum 
 per obscurius , to fall back upon a deeper mystery 
 to resolve the mystery of our own consciousness. 
 We therefore reject such analogies, and keep the 
 subject of Christian Psychology clear of confusion 
 by not embarrassing it by comparison with other 
 mysteries of the Christian faith. If we cannot discern 
 the meaning of the words, “man is made in the image 
 of God,” except by falling back on the mystery of a 
 plurality of persons in the Godhead, we shall only 
 throw confusion on Psychology, without throwing 
 any light on Theology, properly so called. 
 
 Man is made in the image of God, and after his 
 likeness, not in the sense that the three parts of every 
 man reflect and shadow forth the three persons of the 
 one God, but in the sense that one part in man is the 
 image of God, and that he can become after his like- 
 
 * The Fathers, in comparing the Trichotomy and the Trinity together, 
 ,robably meant little more than a fanciful and external play on the number 
 hree. As there were four evangelists, for the reason that there were 
 bur cardinal points. Clement indeed mentions a tenfold division of man 
 inalogous to the decalogue (Hagenbach i. i 53 ). Augustin, in the expres- 
 iion quoted above, homo est imago Sacrosanct* Tnnitatis, certainly * 
 lothing more than a play on the number three, as he ebewhere shows that it 
 is in the soul not in the body that we are to trace the image of God, and 
 Dichotomist, he was not likely to go far in these mystical, if not mischievous 
 comparisons, with the persons of the Blessed Trinity. 
 
i 4 4 
 
 Analogies Jrom 
 
 ness in every part. He is Godlike in his spirit, and is 
 to become Godly in his spirit soul and body. Con- 
 substantial with God as to his spirit (if such an ex¬ 
 pression may be used of the creature without offence) 
 the end of his being is to reflect or set forth God in 
 all parts of his nature; whether he eats or drinks, or 
 whatever he does, he is to do all to the glory of God. 
 One part of his nature, the spirit, proceeds from God, 
 but the whole man is of God, and through Him and 
 to Him. 
 
 The conception of the human trias, being the pat¬ 
 tern of the Eternal Trinity, must lead to such a notion 
 as that of Tertullian,* that the body of man is created 
 after the image of God. That God has a bodily form 
 is a thought which has only to be stated in terms to 
 be rejected. Spiritualize it as we may, the thought 
 that a form or outward manifestation of any kind is 
 essential to God, is one of the most dangerous errors 
 into which we can fall. It lies at the root of all 
 idolatry; it is that which Moses is cautioned against 
 more than once, “ ye saw no similitude in the mount. ’ 
 Even light, that form of matter which is likest to spirit, 
 must not be thought of as the form or body of God. 
 “Thou deckest thyself with light as with a garment,” 
 clearly implies, not that light reveals, but rather con¬ 
 ceals Him; it covers Him as our clothing covers our 
 body, but that which is behind the garment is not the 
 form of God but the substance. 
 
 “ Then what I am beheld again 
 
 What is, but no man understands, 
 
 * Tertullian de Carne Christi c. 6; Adv Marc, c 8; Adv Prax. c. 12. 
 
H 5 
 
 Doctrine of the Trinity . 
 
 And out of darkness came the hands 
 That reach through nature moulding men.” 
 
 The light which surrounds God, the do%cc as it was 
 called by some; is thus a <p£>s avpoeirov, a light unap¬ 
 proachable, which no man hath seen or can see. 
 Mystics like Bohmen and Baadai speak of nature as 
 grounded on God, not m the sense that all would ad¬ 
 mit, but as if there were in the being of God a blind 
 instinct or impulse which lay at the basis of all exist¬ 
 ence,* and which, when overcome and possessed by 
 the ideal or free principle, as we see it is in the case 
 of man, advances to a higher state of spiritual existence. 
 God is thus the pattern of all things. Nature lies un¬ 
 conscious in God 5 creation is its evolution out of Him, 
 and it attains to a sense of separate consciousness and 
 distinct personality in man, the crowning work of 
 creation and the image of God. Such are the steps 
 by which Mysticism passes into Pantheism, and a 
 Scriptural truth that man is made in the image of God 
 is degraded into the dangerous notion that God is the 
 image of man. This pantheistic unification of God 
 and man does not stop here. It goes on to confound 
 God and nature together. Nature, as well as man, is 
 the image of the invisible God. xhe piototype of all 
 things that we see, its idea in the Platonic sense, exists 
 in God, so that creation is only evolution, the emana¬ 
 tion of what existed already immanently in God. 
 
 There is no safegaurd against errors like these but 
 in returning to sound and Scriptural views of Creation- 
 
 * See a letter of Jos. Fr. Molitor on Bohmen’s notion of Nature in God 
 quoted by Delitszch, p. 53. Psychologie, 2d Ed. 
 
 K 
 
 I 
 
146 Analogies from the 
 
 ism. As the tap root of Pantheism lies in the relation 
 of man to God, we can only destroy Pantheism by 
 clearly distinguishing the creationist from the emana¬ 
 tion conception in Genesis ii. 7 * Man as to body and 
 soul is but a work of God: it is only the spirit, or 
 conscience towards God which is a breath of God, an 
 emanation from Him. We do not care to say with 
 the Alexandrian school that man’s body and soul have 
 been created, not so much after the image of God 
 himself as after the image of the Logos,* and is thus 
 an image after an image. We lose the significance 
 of the incarnation (exsvcossii Lavrov, Phil. ii. 8) if we think 
 of any likeness or oneness of nature between us and 
 Christ before He took our nature upon Him at His 
 birth. It is sounder and safer to speak both of the 
 animal and intellectual natures in man as created by 
 the word of God. With man’s spirit the case is dif¬ 
 ferent. Here we rise above the ordinary conception 
 of creation, and think of it as a procession from God. 
 Not as the Pattern of one Person in particular of the 
 blessed Trinity, but as coming from the Father, by the 
 Son, through the Holy Spirit. 
 
 The conclusion, then, we come to is, that the mystery 
 of the Trinity stands by itself, and is not to be brought 
 in to explain either how man consists of three natures 
 in one, or of the relation of those natures to each other. 
 Theosophy, or the attempt to define the inner nature 
 of God, from conceptions taken from the nature of 
 man, is not so innocent as it seems. Anthropomorph¬ 
 ism is idolatry in its earlier stages,—Theosophy is 
 
 * Vide Hagenbach History of Dogmas. 
 
*47 
 
 Doctrine of the Trinity. 
 
 idolatry in its more cultured stage. But idolatry is 
 equally hateful to God whenever or however indulged 
 in. The Supreme Being is God and not man, and 
 however He may be pleased in creation to impart some 
 of his nature to man by breathing into his nostrils the 
 quickening spirit, and however in grace to take our 
 nature upon Him, and to partake of flesh and blood, 
 this, so far from countenancing presumptuous analogies 
 from the trichotomy to the Trinity, directly forbids it 
 —as teaching us that any community of nature which 
 we have with Him is all of His own good will—who 
 formed us to be his creatures and spiritual offspring, 
 and who has redeemed us, that we might not fail of 
 this end of our being. 
 
ON THE PNEUMA AS THE FACULTY 
 WHICH DISTINGUISHES MAN FROM 
 THE BRUTE. 
 
 The old psychology was content to rest the difference 
 between man and the lower animals on his possessing 
 a soul or thinking principle. That distinction can be 
 maintained no longer. "We must take higher ground, 
 and seek elsewhere than in the distinction between 
 reason and instinct for the secret of man’s superiority 
 to the brute, or we shall have to give it up altogether, 
 and submit to the teaching of those who hold the 
 development theory, and that man is an improved 
 ape. 
 
 The distinction between reason and instinct was the 
 starting-point of the Cartesian philosophy. On the 
 assumed validity of this distinction, modern psychology 
 has built its house on what, we fear, must turn out to 
 be a foundation of sand. 
 
 If, on closer inquiry, psychologists are now pre¬ 
 pared to admit that many of those processes that we 
 call reasonable in man are really instinctive, and that 
 many of the so-called instinctive acts of the lower 
 creation are based on processes undistinguishable from 
 reason, we shall be forced to choose some other 
 
Phe Pneuma , JS/Laii s Distinctive Pacuity. 149 
 
 ground on which to rest man s acknowledged supre¬ 
 macy. 
 
 Science is effacing some of the old landmarks 
 between reason and instinct- on which the Cartesian 
 school relied, and the rest are held on very doubtful 
 authority. Spiritual philosophy has hitherto thought 
 herself safe behind the outwork of reason. She will 
 have to retreat to her citadel if she would hold out 
 against the assault of naturalism. It is here, there¬ 
 fore, that Christian spiritualism comes to reinforce 
 psychology, by pointing out a difference, not of de¬ 
 gree only, but of kind, between animal and human 
 intelligences. The Pneuma, or conscience toward 
 God, is the differentia of man, his title to immoitality, 
 his distinguishing mark from all the lower creation. 
 
 Not only are the anatomical differences between 
 man and the ape disappearing under modern research, 
 but even the differences between the volume and 
 structure of the brain, on which Professor Owen took 
 his stand a few years ago, are not substantiated by 
 modern physiologists. It is only by difference in 
 degree that Professor Owen is able to establish the 
 existence of his sub-class of Archencephala, to which 
 position he assigns man. It will be admitted that 
 these differences in degree, when many and various, 
 are tantamount to a difference in kind. But if the 
 intellectual nature of man admits of almost infinite 
 degrees, from the genius of Pascal and Newton to the 
 mind of an idiot who suns himself under the wall of 
 the asylum which shelters him, it is impossible to deny 
 that some animals are intelligent agents, as much above 
 
1^-0 The Ptieuma , 
 
 idiots and infants as they are below Newton and 
 Pascal. Man both sinks and soars as the brute can¬ 
 not, but his intelligence is only a power of generalising 
 from particulars, in which he leaves the brute far 
 behind; but if this were all, the Indian’s hope of his 
 faithful dog bearing him company to heaven, would 
 not be so unfounded as we commonly take it to be. 
 
 Professor Agassiz, as quoted by Sir C. Lyell, con¬ 
 fesses that he cannot say in what the mental faculties 
 of a child differ from those of a young chimpanzee. 
 “ The range of the passions of animals is as extensive 
 as that of the human mind, and I am at a loss to per¬ 
 ceive a difference of kind between them, however 
 much they may differ in degree and in the manner in 
 which they are expressed. The gradations of the 
 moral faculties among the higher animals and man are, 
 moreover, so imperceptible, that to deny to the first a 
 certain sense of responsibility and consciousness would 
 certainly be an exaggeration of the difference between 
 animals and man. There exists, besides, as much 
 individuality within the respective capabilities among 
 animals as among man, as every sportsman, or every 
 keeper of menageries, or every farmer and shepherd 
 can testify, who has had a large experience with wild 
 or tamed or domesticated animals. This argues strongly 
 in favour of the existence in every animal of an imma¬ 
 terial principle similar to that which, by its excellence 
 and superior endowments, places man so much above 
 animals. Yet the principle exists unquestionably; and 
 whether it be called soul, instinct, or reason, it pre¬ 
 sents, on the whole range of organised beings, a series 
 
Man s Distinctive Faculty. 151 
 
 of phenomena closely linked together, and upon it are 
 based not only the higher manifestations of the mind, 
 but the very permanence of the specific differences 
 which characterise every organ. Most of the aigu- 
 ments of philosophy in favour of the immortality of 
 man apply equally to the permanency of this piinciple 
 in other living beings.”''" 
 
 Again, M. Quatrefages, as quoted by Sir C. Lyell, 
 observes, that the moral and religious aie the only two 
 attributes not common to man and brutes 5 tmd that it 
 is on the possession of these that he would lest the 
 distinction of man from the brutes. 
 
 As to his organization, he observes, we find in the 
 mammalia nearly absolute identity of anatomical stiuc- 
 ture, bone for bone, muscle for muscle, neive foi nci ve, 
 similar organs performing like functions. It is not by 
 a vertical position on his feet, or the os sublime of 
 Ovid, which he shares with the penguin ; nor by his 
 mental faculties, which, though more developed, are 
 fundamentally the same as those of animals; nor by 
 his powers of perception, with memory and a cei tain 
 amount of reason ; nor by articulate speech, which 
 he shares with birds and some mammalia, and by which 
 they express ideas comprehended not only by indi¬ 
 viduals of their own species, but often by man ; nor is 
 it by the faculties of the heart, such as love and hatred, 
 which are also shared by quadrupeds and birds; but 
 it is by something completely foreign to the mere 
 animal, and belonging exclusively to man, that we must 
 
 * Fid. Lyell’s “ Antiquity of Man,” p. 493. 
 
1^2 The Pneuma, 
 
 establish a separate kingdom for him. These dis¬ 
 tinguishing characters, he goes on to say, are the 
 abstract notion of good and evil, right and wrong, 
 virtue and vice, or the moral faculty and a belief in a 
 world beyond ours, and in certain mysterious beings or 
 a Being of a higher nature than ours, whom we 
 ought to fear or revere: in other words, the religious 
 faculty. 
 
 The very term, u pure reason,’’ which has come 
 into use since the time of Kant, implies that psycho¬ 
 logy has had to give up the old ground on which it 
 took its stand, and to fall back on a fresh distinction 
 and a new refinement in order to maintain the superi¬ 
 ority of man to the brute, without appealing to the 
 Book which settles the question, by telling us that 
 man was made after the image and likeness of God. 
 There are so many operations of the higher mammalia 
 which refuse to be classed under the name of instincts, 
 that we are fain to speak of the “ half-reasoning ele¬ 
 phant,” and to admit the faithful dog as fit company 
 for man almost to the portal of the sky. Where are 
 we to part company, where are we to draw the divid¬ 
 ing line between man and brute? Nowhere that we 
 can see short of the point where man is endowed with 
 the high gift of knowing God, of feeling his accounta¬ 
 bility to Him, of enjoying communion with Him. 
 Kant’s psychology is grounded on the distinction 
 between reason and understanding. The one, ver- 
 nunft or reason, is proper and peculiar to man; the 
 other, verstcind. or understanding, he has in common 
 with the animals, though in a higher degree, and 
 
Mans Distinctive Faculty. i 53 
 
 capable of much more extended exercise. By the one, 
 man reasons a priori by analogies of his own mental 
 judgments; by the other a posteriori by observation 
 and comparison of things outside him. Thus there are 
 two classes of judgments, analytical and synthetical,* 
 growing out of the reason and understanding severally; 
 and the transcendental method which Kant and his 
 followers attempted, with what success we do not here 
 venture to say, is nothing else than the effort to raise 
 the pure reason above all those disturbing data which 
 are derived from the understanding, and to set it to 
 work in vacuo in its own upper region of thought. 
 No one will deny that there are wide fields of thought 
 outside, or rather above all test of experience. Mathe¬ 
 matical reasoning is nothing else than the deduction of 
 the necessary laws of thought about numbei. The 
 superior certainty in which mathematical excel moral 
 and other sciences, arises from this, that the proofs are 
 so many deductions from within. So long as we keep 
 to our own laws of thought, which is the sphere of 
 pure mathematics, so long our proofs will be as un¬ 
 erring as they are self-evident. It is only when we 
 bring in some fact from experience that there is room 
 for error. Hence, as soon as we apply mathematics to 
 shipbuilding, to the science of projectiles, astronomy, 
 and so forth, its character for superior certainty dis- 
 
 * We do not forget that according to Kant there are a priori judgments 
 which are synthetical and not analytical, only, or explicative Mathematical 
 lodgments, he says, are synthetical, not as commonly supposed to be analytical. 
 
 Thft . 4 - 7 = 12 is not to shewa mere analytical proposition, but a new judg¬ 
 ment not contained in the simple ideas of 5 and 7 . Still, for practical purposes, 
 it is correct enough to say that analytical and synthetical judgments belong to 
 the reason and understanding respectively. 
 
*54 
 
 The Pneuma , 
 
 appears, and there are as keen disputes between rival 
 shipbuilders, cannon founders, and astronomers, as 
 between jurists, divines, and economists. That ele¬ 
 ment of certainty which has given to mathematics the 
 name of science par excellence is the pure reason which, 
 we agree with Kant, is distinctive of man from the brute. 
 But we think that Kant has greatly exaggerated the 
 powers of pure reason, and extended their range. So 
 far from accepting his phrase, a transcendental logic, 
 we think his whole scheme of pure reason, with its 
 transcendental dialectic, its antinomies, and so forth, 
 to be so much piling up of clouds. It is mere posture 
 making to draw out a succession of quiddities which 
 we call ideas of pure thought, and to contrast, as Kant 
 attempts to do, our ideas derived from within with 
 conceptions from without. As we cannot make one 
 hair white or black, so we are reasoning too fast if we 
 affirm with Kant that 5 + 7 = 12 is an a priori 
 synthetical judgment, since the very data themselves 
 on which we found our judgment arise from sense- 
 perception. It is true that reason gives laws of 
 thought to the understanding, but the understanding 
 again supplies reason with its materials for thought, so 
 that the benefits are reciprocal, and the mind is unable 
 to say how much she owes to thought, and how much 
 to things. 11 The laws of thought ” is a much less 
 objectionable expression than “ the logic of pure 
 reason.’’ To the former, as traced out by Archbishop 
 Thompson and others, we see no objection ; on the 
 contrary, it is important to take our stand against the 
 school of sensation, on the ground that there are 
 
Mans Distinctive faculty. 155 
 
 certain truths a priori of all experience, forms into 
 which we lay the knowledge we acquire through sense- 
 perception, as bees first prepare the cells in which they 
 lay their honey. But it is another thing to make out of 
 these inert and abstract forms active principles. They 
 are conditions of the thinkable rathei than thoughts 
 properly so called. The very antinomies, of which 
 Kant makes such account, are only intelligible when 
 stated in terms derived from experience. Like the 
 cells to which we have already compared them, they 
 are shaped on one invariable pattern. The highest 
 acts of pure reason, as well as those of blind instinct, 
 have this mark of necessity in common. It is humiliat¬ 
 ing to our boasted ascendency, that we can only take 
 out of our thoughts what we have put in from with¬ 
 out. The cells of the bee are always hexagons; in 
 this respect there are no degrees of excellence wheie 
 all are perfect. The quality of the honey depends 
 upon the flowers which the bees have sipped. . So of 
 reason and understanding. Admitting the distinction 
 as more than a verbal one, still the difference between 
 man and the brute, and between one man and the 
 other, is less in the reasoning process itself than in the 
 vigour of mind and powers of concentration and ab¬ 
 straction which one man possesses ovei another. 
 
 To what, then, are we to look as distinguishing 
 man from the brute, if not to the necessary laws of 
 thought ? Partly, as Archbishop Sumner pointed out, 
 in his Records of Creation, to the power of progres¬ 
 sive and improvable reason, but principally to the 
 power of will. By will we understand not the meie 
 
The Pneuma , 
 
 156 
 
 arbitrium , or power of selection only, which even 
 Buridanus’ ass, between two bundles of hay, must 
 possess, but that of selection with approval , or con¬ 
 science, that the thing selected is good or evil, true or 
 false, right or wrong. Thus the tree of the know¬ 
 ledge of good and evil, beside which the two first 
 human beings were placed, not to tempt but to test 
 them for spiritual existence, is the real criterion 
 between man and the brute. So far from that proba¬ 
 tion of Adam appearing a difficulty, as it is to those 
 who ask the question why God exposed our first 
 parents to a temptation which he knew they could not 
 withstand, we rather regard it the other way. With¬ 
 out some such probation, it would be impossible for 
 man at all to exercise the spiritual faculty of knowing 
 and serving God. In this test of obedience lay the 
 real superiority of Adam over every other living 
 creature. Thus the contingency to evil could have 
 been avoided only in one way, by denying to man the 
 pneumatical faculty altogether ; freedom to choose the 
 good and to refuse the evil, is involved in the very 
 definition of what a spirit is. 
 
 Man might have been innocent on lower terms, but 
 it would have been the innocence of the idiot or the 
 infant, who knows neither good nor evil. There is no 
 scaling a height without passing along the brink of 
 deep precipices; so it was that with a possibility of 
 failure man was permitted to make the attempt to rise 
 from the animal to the spiritual, and to become in 
 effect, as he was in idea, the image of God upon 
 earth. Under that attempt he failed; and where 
 
7 
 
 Man s Distinctive Faculty. 
 
 Adam failed, all his posterity fail also. But though 
 man has fallen, conscience nevertheless remains as the 
 distinguishing faculty of man ; the mark of his superi¬ 
 ority lies in his sense of moral accountability to an un¬ 
 seen but righteous Judge. He is more excellent than 
 the brute in other respects, but in one he stands out 
 unique and peculiar. His thoughts “ the meanwhile 
 accuse and excuse one another.” He has a conscience 
 which tells him of God and a hereafter. This con¬ 
 science fails, it is true, to answer its proper end. It 
 does not raise him up to enjoy communion with God. 
 It crouches in the lower region of fear, where super¬ 
 stitions batten on their prey, and false religions tor¬ 
 ment without appeasing the conscience. It cannot 
 soar to the higher regions, where perfect love casteth 
 out fear, where faith and hope exercise themselves in 
 view of a glorious hereafter. But it is nevertheless a 
 testimony to what God intended us to be. 
 
 We are thus brought to the point where we are 
 able to decide what it is of the Pneuma, or God-con¬ 
 sciousness, which remains in the psychical or fallen 
 man in his unregenerate state. Conscience, and not 
 pure reason, is the distinguishing mark between man 
 and the brute.* Were man to lose this accusing and 
 
 * It may seem fighting for a shadow when we distinguish between the 
 practical reason or conscience of Kant and Coleridge, and the Pneuma properly 
 so called. Kant, we allow, comes very near the mark in his distinction 
 between the speculative and practical reason, the former of which is dialectical, 
 the latter intuitive only. Still there is a distinction. Kant’s practical reason 
 or conscience is not a spiritual faculty, properly so called. Duty, not devotion, 
 is its proper sphere—its range is ethical not religious—its last word is the 
 categorical imperative of the Stoic, not the cry of the Psalmist, “Oh God, 
 thou art my God, early will I seek thee.” This is why, while admitting 
 Coleridge’s favourite distinction between understanding and reason to be a valid 
 
Ihe Pneuma , 
 
 158 
 
 excusing faculty, he would soon lose self-consciousness 
 as well, and sink quite to the level of the brute. 
 
 “ Mere fellowship of sluggish moods ; 
 
 Or, in his coarsest satyr shape, 
 
 Had bruised the herb or crushed the grape, 
 
 Or basked and battened in the woods.” 
 
 There is a point where it is conceivable that man 
 could have sunk beyond the reach of the redemption 
 which is in Christ Jesus. As the sin of the angels, 
 being spiritual wickedness, a sin from within, excludes 
 the thought of their recovery; so were man, in the 
 other extreme, to lose the last spark of God-conscious¬ 
 ness remaining in the witness of conscience, he would 
 then be in the state of those whom St. Jude describes 
 as twice dead. 
 
 Thus it is important to see where to draw the line 
 when we say that man is fallen, and that the spirit is 
 dead in trespasses and sins. The spirit is dead as to 
 all higher exercises of faith, hope, and charity ; but 
 not so dead as to have lost all fear of God, all sense of 
 dependence on Him, or all sense that his law is the 
 supreme standard of right. Were man to lose this 
 remains of the spirit which we call conscience, then he 
 would have no sin, farther than a dog can do evil by 
 snatching a bone, regardless of the beating which it 
 knows is in store for it. So our Lord says to the 
 Pharisees, “If ye were blind, ye should have no sin ; 
 but now ye say we see, therefore your sin remaineth.’’ 
 
 one, we class both reason and understanding as sub-divisions of the same gene¬ 
 ral faculty of the Psyche, while we reserve conscience, or the moral and spiritual 
 element in man, as the distinct or third element in human nature, to which 
 exclusively we give the name of Pneuma, 
 
Mans Distinctive Faculty. 159 
 
 Thus we identify conscience with the remains of 
 the Pneuma in fallen man. What confirms this view 
 of the case is the remarkable fact that we nowhere in 
 the gospels read of the conscience of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. We should be loth to say with Apollinaris 
 that this arises from the Holy Spirit in his case being 
 the substitute for the human Pneuma. Since Christ 
 was perfect man, he took all three parts of our nature, 
 spirit, soul, and body. But then He took them in 
 all their perfection, and that without any spot of sin, 
 original or actual. Hence the human Pneuma in 
 Christ was a perfect Pneuma, not that feeble semi- 
 animate conscience which stirs, and only stirs, in our 
 present fallen nature. Christ appealed to the con¬ 
 sciences of men ; he convinced their consciences ; and 
 on one occasion, condemned by their conscience, a 
 whole assembly went out from his presence one by 
 one* But in the case of Him who always lived in 
 unbroken communion with God, the expression con¬ 
 science would be quite inadequate to express that full 
 intercourse of his spirit with that of his Father in 
 heaven. Such exercises of prayer as his, such nights 
 of rapt enjoyment of God, and of ecstacy of spiritual 
 worship are, in comparison with the stirrings of God- 
 consciousness in us, what sunlight is to the smoking 
 wick of an expiring candle. If conscience were an 
 integral part of sinless human nature, we should read 
 of it in Christ. But supposing it to be the remains 
 
 * See Auberlen’s very suggestive remarks on this apparent absence of con¬ 
 science in Christ in an article in Herzog’s Cyclopadie.—sub. voce Geist. 
 Vol. iv. p. 733. 
 
7he Pneuma. 
 
 160 
 
 of a nobler faculty, which has been injured past 
 human recovery, then we can see why it is that while 
 we read of the spirit of Christ, of his being troubled 
 in spirit, and knowing in his spirit, we do not read o 
 the conscience of Christ. Conscience and the law of, 
 God are correlative terms; and as the holy Christ 
 lived above the law, so he lived above the level of con¬ 
 science. The lower in his case was taken up into the 
 higher. Instead of legal obedience, he delighted in 
 the law of God; instead of obeying the voice of con¬ 
 science, he was led up of the Spirit. God’s Spirit 
 dwelled in his Spirit in a union as deep. and mystical 
 as that of the Persons of the Blessed Trinity. 
 
 As conscience, then, or God-consciousness, is the 
 differentia between man and brute, so, on the other 
 hand, it is the germ of that glorious faculty which, 
 when quickened by God the Holy Spirit, renews us 
 in the image of God. Thus all men have a Pneuma, 
 but none are pneumatical save they who are led 
 by the Spirit of God. And, again, when conscience 
 is raised from a mere dormant capacity to become an 
 active habit, it not only witnesses for God, but also 
 delights in Him, serves Him, and longs to know Him 
 more perfectly. 
 
THE STATE OF THE PNEUMA IN MAN 
 SINCE THE FALL. 
 
 We have seen that neither soul nor spirit are distinct 
 monads, but that man himself in his totality of body, 
 soul, and spirit, is the monad or centre of force. His 
 nature or law of existence is to unite body, soul, and 
 spirit in one complex whole, a Gordian knot which 
 may be cut by sin and death, but which cannot be 
 untied. Any theories of human nature which fail to 
 realise this, either by confounding or dividing the 
 tripartite nature of man, come short of the Christian 
 doctrine on this subject. Man is incomplete unless 
 sanctified wholly, spirit, soul, and body, unto the 
 coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.* 
 
 * Dr Arnold has well expressed the nature of man as three aspects of the 
 one individual man. The following extract from one of his sermons will 
 illustrate this:—“Thus, then, when this threefold division of our nature is 
 mentioned, the term body expresses those appetites which we have in common 
 with the brates ; the term soul denotes our moral and intellectual faculties, 
 directed only towards objects of the world, and not exalted by the hope of 
 immortality; and the term spirit takes these same faculties when directed 
 towards God and heavenly things, and from the purity, the greatness and the 
 perfect goodness of Him who is their object, transformed into the same image, 
 from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” 
 
 * * * * * * 
 
 “ It may be observed further, although the term ‘ soul ’ includes both our 
 moral and intellectual nature, so far as it regards this life only, yet it appears 
 in a particular manner to express the latter. Indeed, if we set aside our 
 relation to God as His creatures, if we dissolve the community or covenant 
 subsisting between Him and ourselves, it seems as if the faculties of the 
 
 L 
 
162 The State of the Pneuma 
 
 We have now to consider the historical relation of 
 the three parts of man’s nature to each othei, as we 
 have before considered their ideal. To use a distinc¬ 
 tion of M. Cousin, that which is logically prior is 
 chronologically posterior and vice versa. In the idea 
 of man, spirit appears first, then soul, then body. But 
 in man as he is and was created from the beginning 
 we observe the reverse order. The animal life is the 
 first to manifest itself, then the rational, and last of all 
 the spiritual or divine life in man. To use the words 
 of the Apostle, “Howbeit that was not fiist which 
 was spiritual, but that which was natural, and after¬ 
 wards that which was spiritual.' * 
 
 The first pair were created, as we have reason to 
 suppose, adults in stature and intellect, but infants in ■: 
 spiritual growth and experience. On the former 
 
 understanding rose at once in our estimation, and the intellect or mind 
 assumed a place above the moral virtues. When God is regarded solely as 
 the Supreme Being , His infinite wisdom may naturally appear to us His most 
 peculiar attribute. And thus Aristotle urges this exercise of our contem¬ 
 plative understanding as the means by which we may most resemble God 
 from intellect, or that which has most kindred with the divine nature. 
 Whereas, St. John, accustomed to look upon God as he is related to us, con¬ 
 siders his essential attribute to be love, and directs us therefore to seek to 
 become one with God by cultivating our affections. In speaking of the 
 soul, therefore, as distinguished from the spirit, although both terms include 
 our moral and intellectual nature, yet in the first, intellect or reason is the 
 predominant idea, while in the second, though knowledge is not excluded, 
 the principal idea is of charity or love.”—See Sermon XXVI. of Dr T. 
 Arnold’s Sermons, 3d edition, London, 1832. 
 
 * Coleridge has set out with the distinction of prudential, moral, and 
 spiritual as the starting point of his inquiries in his Aids to Reflection. If 
 we substitute instinctive for prudential the division substantially agrees with 
 ours. Prudential falls in more with the intellect or psychical man, and so is 
 hardly distinguishable from the moral, whereas our instincts spring from the 
 lower or sensitive life. Self-preservation is of the animal, but prudence or pro¬ 
 vidence of the rational nature. 
 
Since the Fall. 163 
 
 assertion we need not waste inquiry. The institution 
 of marriage in Eden proves that man did not begin his 
 days in immature childhood. Whether his intellectual 
 powers were as developed as his animal, whether 
 Aristotle was as inferior to Adam as the Academy was 
 to Eden, is an inquiry which we may also pass by as 
 more curious than profitable.^ But on this we may lest 
 with some degree of confidence, that the pneuma in 
 Adam was given in its rudimentary or infant stage of 
 growth, and that he was placed in Eden foi that very 
 purpose, that he should grow in grace and in the 
 knowledge of God, as he had no need to grow in 
 bodily stature, or possibly even in intellectual power. 
 
 Irenceus has noticed this distinction between the 
 creation of man as physically and psychically an 
 adult, but in spirit an infant. Man, he said, was 
 created in an infantile state of mind, though in the 
 image of God. He was like a child who is unable 
 at first to eat strong meat, but must have his senses 
 exercised by reason of use. Christ alone, he says, 
 has led us up by the gift of the Holy Spirit to that 
 higher state of being in which we can see God. 
 The first life in man was per afflatum , not per 
 spiritum , a distinction which he grounds on this, that 
 the Lord breathed on his disciples after his lesui- 
 rection, but when the Holy Ghost was not as yet 
 
 * See South’s discourse on the image of God in man. “ An Aristotle was 
 but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of paradise. 
 South traces the image of God in three parts of man, but they are the under¬ 
 standing, the will, and the passions or affections. This corresponds to the 
 Platonic trichotomy but not to the Pauline, as we have already seen. 
 
164 The State of the Pneuma 
 
 given. This afflatus, or breathing, on man at crea¬ 
 tion, was that partial gift of the Spirit which did not 
 long remain with man: it is (-rpoexaipog) for a season 
 only, and does not enable us to see God; while the 
 gift of the Holy Ghost is indwelling and ever dwel¬ 
 ling (uwotov). (See Irenseus, b. iv. 38, vi. 36, Ed. 
 Stieren).* 
 
 Of the second righteous Adam, the Lord from 
 heaven, we read that He increased in wisdom and in 
 stature, and in favour with God and man. The 
 intellectual and physical growth are referred to in 
 the first clause, the spiritual or moral (for they 
 are two sides of the same thing) is referred to in 
 the second. Thus, the trichotomy of man is here 
 distinctly referred to, and in the case of the holy 
 child Jesus, spirit, soul, and body, all harmoniously 
 grow and unfold as bud, blossom, and fruit do in 
 the living tree. We reject instinctively, in His case, 
 the thought of anything prodigious or premature in 
 the development of his faculties. We think of the 
 Blessed Spirit indwelling in Him (given, it is true, 
 without measure), but still proportionate to His 
 capacities and powers. As the intellect and stature 
 were that of a child, so the spiritual receptivity. 
 The Pneuma in Him was beyond that of other 
 ordinary children, but not disproportionate with 
 what would have been the case had Adam reached 
 the standard he was intended to attain to, and as a 
 spiritual nature, and now adopted Son of God, had 
 
 * On the Psychology of Irenseus, see an interesting article in the Studien 
 und Kritiken for 1863. 
 
Since the Fall. 165 
 
 begotten a son in that likeness, and after that image.* 
 Christ, the second Adam, is rather thus the pattern 
 of what Adam’s children would have been, had he 
 not sinned, than of what Adam was, when first 
 made and put into paradise. The distinction is im¬ 
 portant, as it enables us to see what man has lost by 
 the fall. He has lost the power of propagating a 
 spiritual progeny ex ti~aduce. That which is born 
 of the flesh is flesh. Cain and Abel inherited the 
 whole nature of their parents, the animal body, the 
 intellectual soul, but not the Divine Pneuma. 
 
 Whether that could ever have passed down ex 
 traduce may seem an inquiry on which we are 
 reasoning without data. But not altogether so. 
 The capacity or receptivity of spiritual influences 
 was created with the first Adam, and the baie 
 capacity as an integral part of mans natuie could 
 not be destroyed by the fall. As a dead organ, a 
 rudimentary organ, without corresponding functions 
 (as physiologists speak of the mammae in males, 01 
 the toes in a horse’s hoof, or the teeth in a whale s 
 jaws), so the spiritual capacity has passed down from 
 Adam through all his posterity. But as they aie 
 
 f The Apollinarian theory, that the indwelling Spirit in Christ was the 
 substitute for the human pneuma, not only derogates from his perfect man¬ 
 hood, but also tends to throw confusion on the whole subject of the relation 
 of the human spirit to the divine. Apollinaris’ error was twofold—first, in 
 adopting the Platonic trichotomy in which Ao'yos or NoDs, the pure and im¬ 
 personal Reason was the sovereign part—secondly, in substituting the thiid 1 ei- 
 son of the Blessed Trinity for the human Nous in the man Christ Jesus. The 
 Apollinarian error on this subject was, as we have seen, one of the reasons why 
 the trichotomy was looked on with suspicion. It has been inconsiderately 
 adopted by V. Rudloff as the right theory of the human nature of Christ. See 
 his JLehre •vom Menschen , p. m, 2d ed. 
 
166 "The State of the Pneuma 
 
 born in sin and shaped in iniquity, the defect becomes 
 apparent, as soon as the intellectual nature begins to 
 stir itself, and the motions of sin are felt in the animal 
 nature. Then the want of the regulative or divine 
 faculty in man is felt. Reason begins to put itself 
 forth, and we watch the pretty blossoms of intellect, 
 first in the retentive memory, and after awhile in the 
 ripening of judgment. But where is the u residue of 
 the Spirit ?” Where is God s monitor and witness in 
 man ? God has not quite left Himself without wit¬ 
 ness, but it is generally an accusing, not a comforting, 
 voice within. Conscientia, or the knowledge which 
 we have of ourselves and our conduct, the eye of God 
 in the soul, seldom sees much to approve, but much 
 to disapprove of.* The passions begin to break out 
 in our animal nature, and we give way to them. Rea¬ 
 son, like Eli, shakes its head at these follies of our 
 youth, but we pay reason no more respect than the 
 wicked sons of Eli did their father’s remonstrance. 
 Conscience, or the dormant pneuma, which still wit¬ 
 nesses for God, mourns over these things in secret, 
 but it cannot alter them. The government is not in 
 
 * Les moralistes ont beaucoup parle des joies d’une bonne conscience ils ont 
 trop meconnu ses peines. Je dis les peines d’une conscience droite. Le devoir 
 est un maitre exigeant. La conscience devient plus delicate a mesure qu’elle 
 se purifie, ce que semblait licite, ne le paraft plus: le scrupule est la bizarre 
 aux yeux du monde angoissant pour celui qui la porte en son sein. On gravit 
 peniblement la montagne, et a mesure qu’on avance le sommet semble reculer, 
 et defier les atteintes du voyageur. Quelles sources de douleurs, douleurs 
 saintes sans doute, mille fois preferable aux plaisirs de la vie, mais douleurs enfin. 
 Oh le douleur tout seul sans explication, sans experance, sans avenir. Le de¬ 
 voir est un noble maitre mais c’est un maitre dont le joug est dur, et le fardeau 
 pesant.—Naville du Vie Eternelle, Disc. i. 
 
Since-the Fall. 1 &7 
 
 As hands. It is young and immature it has the autho¬ 
 rity, but not the power to enforce its authority, and 
 so the character is formed, and a bias to evil of some 
 Snd or other grows when young which nothing will 
 ever afterwards break down ; till mighty sovereign 
 grace stirs our stagnant being to the depths and be¬ 
 ginning with awakening the pneuma, makes all things 
 
 This we take to be a fair account of man s condi¬ 
 tion since the fall. Thus the defect of good in every 
 man, as naturally born into the world, turns the char¬ 
 acter to evil. Original or birth sin is thus not so 
 much our fault, crimen ; it is rather our misfortune, 
 culpa. But whether our fault or our misfortune only, 
 the consequences are equally the same. Man is b°rn 
 into the world incapable of attaining the true ideal of 
 human nature, as in the case of the only one of woman 
 
 born who was born without sin. 
 
 Thus Adam differs from his posterity in these two 
 respects He was born innocent, and also endowed 
 with inherent capacities for becoming spiritual: we 
 are neither innocent by birth nor capable of becoming 
 spiritual by our innate powers. The first Adam was 
 innocent; we are not. By innocent we mean that 
 negative kind of goodness which is distinct from ho 1- 
 ness, in that it lacks the sense of the presence of Go . 
 A lamb is innocent, for instance; it fulfils all the ends 
 of its nature, and in the right order and way. It is 
 not, like a venomous beast, the minister of evil to any. 
 It does not taste happiness at the expense of any ot er 
 _its gain is no other animal’s loss. Now Adam might 
 
168 The State of the Pnenma 
 
 have been formed for innocence of this kind, and with 
 no higher end in view. His innocence would then 
 have been the perfection of an animal and intellectual 
 nature, body and psyche, well strung and attuned, 
 capable of large generalizations and lofty ideals, mak¬ 
 ing immense acquisitions of knowledge, beaming with 
 benevolence, but with nothing entitling him to immor¬ 
 tality. He might, in that case, have lived a Goethe 
 kind of existence, as an intellectualist and an art wor¬ 
 shipper, and died with perhaps the same exclamation 
 on his lips, u More light, more light.’’ He would have 
 answered the end of his existence, and reached his 
 ideal, but that would have been not a little lower, or 
 for a little time lower than the angels, but altogether, 
 and for ever, lower than they. 
 
 This would have been the innocence of Adam had 
 he been created psychical only, and with no pneumati- 
 cal capacity. But we are not born innocent as he 
 was. Our rational and animal natures do not work 
 harmoniously, but in discord. Not only does the flesh 
 lust against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh, 
 but also our understanding and our appetites draw in 
 opposite directions, so that we cannot do the things 
 that we would. A state of innocence in which the 
 intellect has the mastery of the passions is more 
 imaginary than real. It may be so with a few studi¬ 
 ous men, and a smaller list still of passionless poets 
 like Wordsworth, of whom Hazlitt the critic, says, 
 that he seemed to have lived in a world in which there 
 was no marrying nor giving in marriage. We see an 
 approach to this ideal state, though, as we cannot read 
 
Since the Fall. 169 
 
 their inner lives, we cannot say how much of mannerism 
 and the desire of applause was concealed behind so 
 much simplicity. We can judge none but ourselves, 
 but of this we may be sure, that as man is not leason 
 and desire only, but conscience and will as well, he 
 cannot satisfy his nature merely by restraining, his 
 passions and indulging his intellect. He has instincts 
 after God which nothing but God can satisfy, and these 
 cravings of conscience must either be fed with the clay 
 of superstition or the true bread which cometli down 
 
 from heaven. 
 
 This leads us to the second distinction between us 
 and Adam. We are neither born innocent as he was, 
 nor capable of becoming pneumatical through the 
 native powers of the pneuma. This was Adam s glori¬ 
 ous privilege, the excellence in which he came forth 
 with his Maker’s image stamped upon him. . When 
 God breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives,. he 
 was given that which we called the -pneuma , 01 spirit, 
 the conscientia or consciousness common between him 
 and God. Bishop Sanderson’s explanation of consci¬ 
 ence, as that which is common to us and God, may 
 seem fanciful ; but we think it explains the use of the 
 plural lives. The knowledge of good and evil is our 
 life, and it is God’s life. As rational beings, we know 
 the relationship of things to each other; as moral 
 beings, we know their relation to ourselves. Thus 
 moral-consciousness is so much more divine than the 
 critical faculty that it is God’s life within us, as reason 
 is not. Sceptics, like Hume, can with some good show 
 of reason deny that we have any proper idea of causa- 
 
170 The *SAz/<? the Pnouma 
 
 tion, and hence of a great first cause. But we fall 
 back from our intellectual to our moral intuitions, and 
 here, as Kant admits in his celebrated critique of Hume, 
 the appeal is unanswerable. The moral-consciousness 
 is the God-consciousness in man; and here, however 
 he may hide himself in the trees of the garden, how¬ 
 ever he may sophisticate his mind with intellectual 
 doubts and say, 
 
 “ Drunk with the wine of life, and blind with leaves 
 He stole in Eden to adorn his brow ; 
 
 I cannot see my God: the soul deceives.”* 
 
 still the voice of the Lord God will penetrate into the 
 conscience, and make itself heard, in the cool of the 
 day. It is a strong confirmation of this that the age 
 of the greatest intellectual scepticism was one of the 
 deepest sense of a spiritual void, produced in and 
 through an accusing conscience. In Tacitus’ age, men 
 believed nothing about the old gods of Rome; but 
 they could not disbelieve in the furies which tormented 
 a Nero. Men lose all other belief in God but as an 
 avenging Deity ; but when they part with this then 
 it is time to call in the sword of God, and save the 
 world by destroying it. 
 
 But in Adam’s case this conscience was not, as it is 
 toned down by modern moralists, a bare knowledge of 
 good and evil, and their consequences for good and 
 evil on ourselves. It was the knowledge of good as 
 godly, and of evil as ungodly. Hence the temptation 
 
 * Quoted from some remarkable sonnets by the late Dr. S. Browne of 
 Edinburgh. 
 
Since the Fall. * 7 * 
 
 of Satan lay in this, that he urged Adam not only to 
 know the distinction of good and evil; but to know 
 it as gods, i.e., in a god-like not in a creaturely way. 
 This was to transcend the limits of the creature. To 
 us, as to angels, God creates good and evil by the de¬ 
 cision of his will, this way or that, as He divides the 
 light from the darkness. We will have nothing to say 
 to such logical quibbles as these, that a thing is com¬ 
 manded because right—not right because commanded. 
 Distinctions between positive and moral precepts may 
 have a certain relative use in the schools, but they are 
 not as deep as they are subtle. They seem to over¬ 
 look the gulf fixed between the finite and the infinite; 
 and that “his thoughts are not as our thoughts, or his 
 ways as our ways.” Thus while with God a thing is 
 right because He wills it, with all his creatures the 
 converse is to be the rule, we are to will it because it 
 is right. The rightness of a thing is not affirmed by 
 our wills, as Jacobi, Fichte, and the egoist school 
 wildly talk. In this pride of will there is something 
 not only of the old stoic, but also of the old serpent. 
 Men are to be as gods, by affirming that what they 
 will is right, because they will it. Quicquid vult valde 
 vult. This is a sign of a strong character doubtless, 
 but it may be strong for evil as well as for good. . It 
 is as true of Satan bound with chains of everlasting 
 darkness, as the Angel of the Presence, whose delight 
 it is to do the will of God continually. 
 
 The discipline, then, man was put under in Eden 
 was not merely to choose the good, and refuse the 
 evil, to make reason the sovereign, and appetite the 
 
17 2 The State of the Pneuma 
 
 servant; it was also to know good and evil, to know 
 that the essence of goodness consisted in obedience 
 to God’s rule as such ; and that the root of sin is dis¬ 
 obedience or self-will. H upagria eerh q &vo,ula. i John 
 iii. 4, “ Sin is the transgression of the law.” 
 
 This was the root of the tree of the knowledge of 
 good and evil, the reason why God planted it in para¬ 
 dise, and tried man by it, before he could have right 
 to the tree of life. Moralists and divines have often 
 mistaken the meaning of these two trees, and so mis¬ 
 read the whole purpose of God in making man. Mo¬ 
 ralists have made the one tree a criterion of only the 
 lesser and lower part of our duty, our duty to our¬ 
 selves, and have overlooked its higher end as awaken¬ 
 ing the spirit in man with the sense of duty to God. 
 What God has commanded is right, because commanded. 
 The command not to eat is arbitrary—be it so—the 
 command of a superior, who is the Father of spirits, 
 must be arbitrary, or how else are we to learn that 
 right and wrong turn in this very point of agreement 
 to his will or not? But as moralists come short of ex¬ 
 plaining the purpose of the tree of the knowledge of 
 good and evil, so divines mislead us as to the- meaning 
 of the tree of life. Instead of seeing that the only 
 approach to the one tree is by the other, /.<?., that 
 through the disciplining of the spirit, and its becoming 
 godlike and godly, we obtain right to the tree of life ; 
 they separate between the two trees, as the mystics 
 on the other hand have confounded the two together. 
 They place man’s immortality in a metaphysical and 
 ontological necessity, not in a moral and spiritual like- 
 
T 73 
 
 Since the fall. 
 
 ness to God. They read between the lines of the 
 verse, “ lest he should eat of it and live for ever,” a 
 thought written as if with invisible ink, that man was 
 already immortal by nature, and now only lost an im¬ 
 mortality of happiness. Man cannot, they say, eat of 
 the tree of life and live for ever in paradise; but he 
 has already a deathless principle in him by which he 
 must live for ever in misery. 
 
 When we turn from systems of theology to the 
 fountain head of Scripture, we collect that Adam was 
 not created innocent and holy, but innocent and cap¬ 
 able of becoming holy; not holy and immortal, but 
 capable of becoming holy by not eating of the one 
 tree in the garden, and so of attaining immortality by 
 having right to eat of the other tree. He was inno¬ 
 cent because he had a well-balanced nature, in which 
 the passions had not got the mastery over reason, as 
 they now have; but he was not created holy. We 
 cannot indeed conceive of holiness as a thing created 
 out of hand. “Perfect through suffering” seems to 
 be the law of sonship. Angels have their trials, man 
 his. The image of God, if it is to become an active 
 habit, not a mere dormant capacity, must be put into 
 the fire to be purified there seven times.* Inattention 
 to this distinction between innocence and holiness, 
 which is the same as the distinction between the 
 psyche and the pneuma, has led to strange misrepre¬ 
 sentations of the nature of Adam’s probation, and the 
 
 * See a thoughtful treatise by Mr Birks on the Difficulties of Belief; a 
 book which, if more widely known and read in certain religious circles, would 
 help to cure us of our indolent acquiescence in stereotyped modes of thought. 
 
174 The State of the Pneuma 
 
 effect of his fall on us. Adam, with perfect powers 
 of self-command, innocent of concupiscence, or the 
 motions of sin in his members, was in a condition to 
 be led up of the spirit to be tempted of the devil. 
 Unlike the second Adam, the nature of his temptation 
 was much less sore, as his strength was less. Instead 
 of a wilderness it was in a garden' instead of at the end 
 of a forty days’ fast, the tempter came to him when the 
 calls of hunger could not have added a sting to the 
 prompting of lust. Now, had Adam been holy, in 
 the sense that his spirit was, sanctified by the Spirit of 
 God, he would have spurned this whisper of lust; the 
 sophistry of Satan would not have deluded him as to 
 his knowledge of good and evil as God ; he would 
 have said, like Joseph,—how can I do this great wick¬ 
 edness and sin against God? But not being holy, 
 having only the germ of holiness, he was blinded by 
 Satan. First the woman through lust, and then the 
 man through pride, were in the transgression. Flat¬ 
 tered and fooled by Satan, who was a liar fiom the 
 beginning, they took of the tree and did eat. That 
 instant the spark of the divine image in man was 
 quenched. Fie had the knowledge now of good and 
 evil, but it was not as God, but as without God. As 
 he found his spirit empty of God, so he knew himself 
 to be naked of his former innocence. The greater 
 loss brought with it the less. Privation of holiness 
 brought with it the loss of innocence. The spirit had 
 lost its hold on God, and so the soul rebelled against 
 the spirit, and the body against the soul. 
 
 Such was Adam’s state from the time that he fell. 
 
Since the Tall. 
 
 x 75 
 
 The spirit now, instead of going on to know God and 
 so attain the proper end of man, viz., to enjoy God, 
 and to be happy with Him for ever, fell back into a 
 dead reception of divine impressions. The motions 
 of the Spirit were no longer felt, or felt only as the 
 voice of conscience reproving him for what he had 
 left undone. Man tries to satisfy that conscience, 
 and quiet the witness within, by external religious 
 duties. The more sharply the stings of conscience 
 are felt, the more he tries by superstitious services, 
 fasts, penances, and such like austerities, to say peace, 
 when there is no peace. He scourges his back for 
 the sin of his soul; he makes long prayers; and the 
 farther he strays from God, the more ascetic and severe 
 his religion becomes. Superstition and spiritual¬ 
 mindedness are contrary to each other, and the more 
 man loses of the one, the more he vainly tries to make 
 it up by the other. Thus to measure the depth of 
 man’s fall, we should pass the religions of human na¬ 
 ture in review, from China to Mexico ; from the first 
 act of idolatry, on the plains of Babel, to the last de¬ 
 cree of the Church of Rome—the dogma of the Im¬ 
 maculate Conception. In all this descent, we see no 
 power of self-recovery; no sign of improvement with 
 the advance of enlightenment. No one will deny 
 that in all superstition there is ignorance; but we 
 may dispel the ignorance and not cure the supersti¬ 
 tion. The truth is, that conscience or the half-dead¬ 
 ened spirit will assert its claims to be heard. It will 
 witness for God, and man fearing to come to God, 
 uses religion as a contrivance for keeping on terms 
 
176 Tbe State oj the Pneuma 
 
 with God, while we continue to live at a distance from 
 Him. 
 
 Such are the effects of the fall on human nature. 
 Body, soul and spirit, are all affected by it, but in very 
 different proportions. It has impaired our animal and 
 intellectual powers—to what extent, it is impossible to 
 say, as we have not the means of comparison—and 
 the case of the Lord Jesus Christ, for obvious reasons, 
 cannot be pressed too far into such an argument as 
 this. But the ruin is complete in the crowning part 
 of human nature—the spirit.* Hence it is that man 
 cannot now develop himself as God intended he should; 
 body, soul, and spirit, unfolding harmoniously together, 
 and the lower being always subservient to the higher. 
 For want of a spiritual mind, the intellect is proud, 
 knowing nothing, but doting upon questions and strifes 
 of words, and the animal part, over which reason, now 
 itself a rebel, has lost its proper authority, breaks out 
 into excesses, which bring with them their own punish- 
 
 * Dr. Manning, in one of his Oxford Sermons, has very eloquently de¬ 
 scribed this defect of the pneuma which marks the psychical man. Great 
 as the knowledge is, that some men void of God’s presence have attained in 
 natural, and human, and even revealed truths, yet there is something percepti¬ 
 bly wanting in them. They amaze us with the light of their speculations, 
 and then astonish us with a pur-blind ignorance of some self-evident and vital 
 axiom of truth. There is evidently some stupendious breach in their intellec¬ 
 tual system ; some want of continuity in its perceptions; or some faculty 
 related to particular kinds of truth wholly wanting. And this is in fact the 
 true solution.” That faculty which Dr. Manning truly says is wanting in 
 fallen human nature is the pneuma; and thus it is that the psychical man 
 understands not the things of the Spirit of God, because they are pneumati¬ 
 cally discerned. The spiritual organ, in consequence of the fall, cannot dis¬ 
 charge its function ; hence a state of disease is set up in our inner constitution, 
 which must affect every other organ of mind, as well as that where the seat of 
 the disease lies. 
 
Since the Fall. 
 
 'll 
 
 ment. That this state of anarchy does not go the 
 lengths which it did in the antediluvian world, is owing 
 to other causes than those which are under the control 
 of human nature. God’s restraining grace has never 
 been withdrawn ; and he has never left himself with¬ 
 out a witness within, as well as a protest without. 
 
 Under such conditions then as these, men are born, 
 live, and die. As like produces like, we each come 
 into the world possessed of exactly those qualities 
 and capacities of mind, as well as of body, which our 
 parents are able to transmit. It was always intended 
 ' that the order of manifestation should be from the lower 
 to the higher ; hence there is no direct proof of the fall, 
 in the fact that the animal nature is the first to appear, 
 then the rational, and last of all the moral or spiritual. 
 But the effect of the fall is seen in this, that at the 
 time when we should expect to find the higher con¬ 
 trolling the lower, we miss it. As the tares did not 
 appear till the wheat had begun to grow, so man’s un¬ 
 spirituality is not seen till the intellectual and animal 
 powers have begun to put themselves forth. Then 
 we see with surprise that the young nature, like a wild 
 vine, instead of training upward, trails along the earth. 
 We look for grapes, but behold wild grapes ; for 
 judgment, but behold oppression; for righteousness, 
 but behold a cry. Now we discover what man ought 
 to be, from seeing what he is not. We learn the 
 nature of the spirit by its defect. This negative proof 
 is perhaps the most convincing of any. While our 
 survey of these texts, which point out the distinction 
 between the psyche and pneuma, leads us some way 
 
 M 
 
178 
 
 The State of the Pneuma 
 
 on our inquiry, and the well-known distinction between 
 the intellectual and moral faculties, helps us still far¬ 
 ther on the road, the decisive proof awaits us at this 
 point. We have found that the pneuma is an essential 
 ingredient in man, when we see that for want of it he 
 fails of the proper end of his being. 
 
 This would itself be a sufficient testimony on which 
 to rest our case; but we have a yet strongei one. 
 Plutarch, in his treatise on false and true religion, 
 balances the question between atheism and superstition, 
 as to which is the greatest plague to man. It seems 
 to him a choice of evils, and he is unable to decide 
 which is the greatest. He wishes to recommend 
 cheerful piety as the happy mean between these fatal 
 extremes, but feels that this is not to be expected of 
 human nature as he met with it. What is this but an un¬ 
 conscious testimony to the extent and natuie of the fall ? 
 Cheerful piety would be the natural outcome of human 
 nature if men increased in wisdom as in stature, in 
 favour with God as with man. That there is no such 
 golden mean is the proof we desire for the defect of 
 the Pneuma which we call original sin. 
 
 Long and learned controversies have arisen on the 
 nature of this defect in man. Pelagius and Augustine 
 are at the head of two schools which, with all the in¬ 
 tervening shades of semi-Pelagianism, divide the Chris¬ 
 tian Church to this day.”* No fresh light can be 
 thrown on this dispute from the ground of experience 
 or Scripture. The passages that have a meaning either 
 
 * Pid. Mozley’s Augustinian Doctrine of Predestination. 
 
Since the Fall. 
 
 i 79 
 
 way have been sifted again and again. The appeal to 
 experience about the innocence of childhood, and that 
 men are naturally good till the effect of bad example 
 has begun to tell, has been advanced and refuted over 
 and over again. Experiments even have been tried 
 whether, by removing the external excitements to evil, 
 we could cause it to die a natural death. Dreamers 
 like Owen and St Simon have tried to cure the world 
 of sin, as high farming does the land of weeds. But 
 the result is always the same. We find mankind 
 making endless advances in knowledge, but brought 
 to a stand-still in moral goodness and spiritual-minded- 
 ness. Mr Buckle makes a great parade of this fact, 
 as if it told in favour of the Positive theory, the very 
 contrary being the case. The inference we draw from 
 this fact is indeed the opposite to his. So far from 
 glorying in our shame and boasting of such advanced 
 knowledge, while the nobler part of man is torpid or 
 dead, we lament that it is so, while we thank God 
 that we know the cause. The fall is the key to all 
 man’s after history. The sin of Adam, or what is 
 called original sin, accounts for what would otherwise 
 be inexplicable. 
 
 But if man were not created at first as body, soul, 
 and spirit, original sin, which is the key to all the 
 mysteries of his present existence, would be the 
 hardest and most contradictory of all dogmas. Sup¬ 
 pose man a bipartite nature only of body and soul, 
 appetite and intellect, is it conceivable that the taint 
 of Adam’s transgression could pass down as a virus 
 (for this is the way it is sometimes expressed) 
 
180 The State of the Pneuma 
 
 through six or seven thousand years ? To the third 
 or fourth generations a physical taint or peculiarity 
 will continue, and then it dies out. If original sin 
 were something positive, and which passed down as 
 unsound states of the body are transmitted until 
 either the taint is worn out or it wears out the race 
 that suffer from it, we do not see how we can avoid 
 the conclusion that God, who is the author of nature, 
 must be also the author of sin. Augustine’s reply to 
 this objection is verbal only. “Both,” he says,. “ are 
 propagated together, nature and the depiavity of 
 nature, one of which is good, and the other evil ■ 
 the first is derived from the bounty of our Creator, 
 the latter must be attributed to our original condem¬ 
 nation. The first has its source in the good pleasure 
 of God, the latter in the perverse will of the first 
 man. That exhibits God as the framer of his crea¬ 
 tures, this as the punisher of disobedience. Finally, 
 the same Christ, from the creation of our nature, 
 is the Maker of man ; but, for the healing of the 
 disease of this nature, became man.” The dogma 
 that original sin was something positive, not priva¬ 
 tive only, was pushed to its extreme conclusions by 
 Flaccius Illyricus—that it corrupted the nature of 
 the soul. This was resisted by orthodox Lutheran 
 divines as an error in the other extreme ; but we do 
 not see on what principle they can draw the line where 
 they do, and speak of a birth-taint as affecting the 
 inner power of the mind. If the whole nature is 
 born with us at our birth, and education be only 
 the unfolding of our innate powers, we do not see 
 
Since the Fall. 181 
 
 how a taint ex traduce is to stop short at the rational 
 powers and not to affect them. Probably those who 
 opposed the Flaccians held the creationist theory of 
 the soul, and so desired to remove the appearance of 
 God in any way being the author of evil. But for 
 our part, we cannot see any middle course between 
 the privative and positive theory of the transmission 
 of evil. Original sin is, we admit, an ambiguous 
 expression. What divines really mean to teach is, 
 the origin of sin and the transmission of evil in man. 
 What they wish to deny is, that each man is the 
 origin of evil to himself, a position which ought to 
 be as simple and self-evident as that man is not the 
 author of his own being, or self-contained and inde¬ 
 pendent, as the Stoics boasted to be. It is a matter 
 of fact that as men come into the world by me¬ 
 diate descent from Adam, not by an immediate act of 
 God’s creative will, so they come into the world with 
 infirmities and under disabilities, which, if it does 
 not remove responsibility, restricts it. Of the evil 
 that men do, and of which their conscience condemns 
 them, all must acknowledge that part of it is our own 
 fault, and part of it our misfortune. “I was born 
 frail, I have become foul; 1 would not make the 
 one my excuse for the other. For what is my fault, 
 I deserve to suffer; but for what is my misfortune, 
 I am distressed. O God, undertake for me. This 
 is the voice of conscience when true to herself on the 
 subject of this mystery ; and if divines had kept to 
 this, the doctrine of original sin would never have 
 raised the strife which it has. But urged on by con- 
 
18 2 State of the Pnenma 
 
 troversy and the love of system, the fact of expe¬ 
 rience was turned into a dogma, and two new theories 
 of evil were rolled into one, to give the dogma a 
 more imposing and logical form. ' The one was the 
 theory of concupiscence, that it has the nature of sin. 
 Divines very properly shrank from saying that it is 
 quite the same as sin. Lust, when it is conceived, 
 bringeth forth sin ; but it is only when desire has 
 been impregnated by the will, that sin, properly so 
 called—sin, i.e. as the transgression of the law—is 
 produced. Hence the Church of Rome, with its 
 quantitative views of sin, says that of all sins original 
 sin is the least. To express how light original sin is, 
 as compared with actual, the limbus infantum to which 
 all unbaptized infants were supposed to go, seemed 
 little more than an exclusion out of heaven, without 
 any suffering or misery, like a state of sleep or inac¬ 
 tivity. The other theory is that of imputed guilt. 
 Either, it is said, we existed federally in our father 
 Adam, and so his act became ours, or our wills were 
 bound up in some mysterious way in his, so that his 
 guilt could be justly transmitted to us as well as his 
 nature. Of course, imputed righteousness and im¬ 
 puted guilt are correlative ; they stand and fall to¬ 
 gether. The same controversy which suggested the 
 one suggested the other also. Now as we do not 
 see ground in the New Testament for the distinction 
 between imputed and inherent righteousness, on which 
 the Reformers laid such stress, so the distinction be¬ 
 tween original and actual guilt looks like a scho¬ 
 lasticism. There is a deeper truth which embraces 
 
i Since the Fall. 
 
 i8 3 
 
 both inherent and imputed righteousness, viz., that 
 we are in our regenerate nature mystically one with 
 
 the Lord_the seed of divine life in our spirits, 
 
 which cannot sin, being taken from Christ, as Eve 
 was taken from the side of Adam. Hobbes theory 
 of the Leviathan is an immoral exaggeration of a 
 deep spiritual truth, viz., that humanity is a mighty 
 unit; Adam and his posterity are one, as a river 
 at its mouth is the same as at its souice. If this be 
 so, we see that original sin is not so many successive 
 acts of birth-sin, a supposition which Aquinas rightly 
 rejected; nor is it again even a habit or taint, as he 
 supposed, passing down, as concupiscence, fiom parent 
 to child ; much less is it the fictitious transfei of the 
 guilt of Adam to his innocent and unborn posterity. 
 a As I live, saith the Lord, ye shall no more use this 
 proverb, The fathers have eaten soui gtapes, and the 
 children’s teeth are set on edge,” should have put di¬ 
 vines on their guard against this foiensic theoi^, which 
 is indeed most unforensic, for what court of law ever 
 held a man accountable for other than his own acts ? 
 
 We must clear away all these theological phrases to 
 get at the Scriptural truth underneath. The defini¬ 
 tion in the Augustan Confession, which is cleaiei and 
 shorter than our ninth article, shows how r fai we hold 
 with it, and what we think to be an aftergrowth of 
 theology. 11 Peccatum originis habet privationem ori- 
 ginalis justifies et cum hoc inordinatam dispositionem par- 
 tium anima , unde non est privatio , sed quidam habitus 
 corruptus .” Original sin consists in the want of ori¬ 
 ginal righteousness, and in an inordinate disposition 
 
184 The State of the Pneuma 
 
 of the faculties of the soul, so that it is not merely a 
 privation, but a certain corrupt habit. This definition 
 has the great merit of being precise and put in the 
 fewest possible words. It defines original sin as a 
 corrupt habit as well as a privation. We are far 
 from denying the fact of a corrupt habit. Men are 
 born with this tendency to evil. u As soon as they 
 are born they go astray and speak lies/’ But we do 
 not think Aquinas’ distinction between habits sound 
 or satisfactory. In one sense he says original sin is a 
 habit, in another not; just as we speak of health as a 
 good habit of the body, and sickness as the contrary ; 
 to us it seems much simpler to explain the corrupt 
 habit which no one denies, not as a distinct fact, but 
 as to the effect of the privation of original righteous¬ 
 ness. To our mind the negative or privative idea of 
 birth-sin is quite sufficient to explain the facts of the 
 case, and by the law of parsimony we should never 
 import more into the cause than the effect requires. 
 The babe is born very good, as we should not hesitate 
 to say, both as to his animal and intellectual faculties, 
 but with a fatal defect which mars all the rest. Just 
 as if a ship were launched complete in every respect, 
 but unprovided with a rudder. The defect would be 
 fatal to her making a safe or successful voyage, but it 
 would be strange, when she struck on the first rock 
 that lay in her course, if fault were found with her 
 timbers or iron work for not resisting the shock. The 
 fault lies with the regulative faculty in man. But one 
 defect will mar the perfection of the whole in any 
 nature whose perfection consists in the constitution of 
 
Since the Fall. 
 
 18 5 
 
 parts. Bishop Butler, and also Chalmers, have very 
 truly pointed out that this constitution of paits making 
 up a balance of forces in man’s inner natuie. If 
 man, then, be a constitution of body, soul, and spirit, 
 is it conceivable that the constitution can work when 
 the sovereign power is dead or disabled ? The loss 
 of the one must lead to the destruction of all the rest. 
 But this is only saying that birth-sin is privative, not 
 positive. To test our view of the case we maintain 
 that were the pneuma in any man quickened from the 
 earliest dawn of infancy, were he effectually sanctified 
 by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit from the fiist 
 moment that appetite began to stir and intellect to 
 dawn, it is not conceivable that such a man could sin, 
 nor even could have concupiscence in the sense that 
 St James speaks of lust, for every act of appetite or 
 intellect could be prevented as well as followed by a 
 spiritual motion. He would live in the light of God s 
 countenance, and sin would be as foreign to his nature 
 as to that of the Holy Son of God Himself, when He 
 took our nature of spirit, soul, and body upon Him. 
 
 Thus a sound system of psychology solves one of 
 the most vexed questions in theology, on which divines 
 have differed for fourteen centuries, and on which 
 hardly two men hold quite the same shade of doctiine. 
 God withdrew from Adam the presence of his Holy 
 Spirit, and thus the pneuma fell back into a dim and 
 depraved state of conscience toward God. We need 
 not suppose more than this fatal defect allowed to 
 continue, and Adam to propagate a race under the 
 unspiritual condition into which he had fallen, and we 
 
186 The State of the Ptieuma. 
 
 have enough to account for the condition of man as 
 we see him to this day. Original sin is thus a priva¬ 
 tion, judicial we admit; but a privation only of origi¬ 
 nal righteousness, or the image of God in every man. 
 Given this one fact, that man was intended to become 
 spiritual and has failed of this end, and all that divines 
 call original sin is easily explicable. To conclude, we 
 do not see any account of original sin, from a dichoto- 
 mist point of view, which does not make more difficul¬ 
 ties than it solves. The trichotomy of man, and the 
 present defect of the governing part in man, is the 
 true origin of evil. We dare not attempt a Theo- 
 dicee of evil in general; but this we can say, that the 
 privation of grace, which we call original sin, is con¬ 
 sistent not only with the character of God, but also 
 explains the defect of that special religious faculty in 
 man, which is called the spirit, and which Scripture 
 distinguishes from the soul. That man born into the 
 world with a defective and dormant pneuma should 
 not decline to evil would indeed suppose a continued 
 miracle on God’s part, in comparison with which the 
 ordinary doctrines of grace are easy of belief. Ihe 
 theory we advocate meets the two tests of truth : it 
 is simple, and it is self-consistent. No other theory 
 accounts for the hereditary depravity of the human 
 race so well as this; but for defect of the regulative 
 or sovereign pneuma, body and soul fall away into 
 evil as soon as we begin to act and think. 
 
THE QUESTION OF TRADUCIANISM AND 
 CREATIONISM SOLVED BY THE DIS¬ 
 TINCTION BETWEEN SOUL AND 
 SPIRIT. 
 
 In discussing the subject of original sin, we purposely 
 passed over the question of creationism and traducian- 
 ism, which at once occurs as calling for some settlement 
 when we consider the transmission of evil from Adam 
 to his posterity. The derivation of sin with the race 
 from a single pair, obviously suggests the question 
 whether at every birth the entire nature of the child 
 is transmitted from the parents {ex traduce , the phrase 
 was first used by Tertullian), or whether the soul and 
 its powers came from God by a special act of cieation. 
 Thus, as a corollary from the doctrine of original sin, 
 the question of creationism and traducianism comes up 
 for settlement. "We shall endeavour to show that the 
 distinction of psyche and pneuma, which is the key to 
 the question of original or birth-sin, also solves the 
 creationist controversy, on which divines are still 
 divided. 
 
 The history of the question is briefly as follows: 
 In the east, Origen and his school seem to have held 
 a theory of the pre-existence of souls, which is nothing 
 
188 Traducianism and Creationism ♦ 
 
 else than the Platonic argument for knowledge, 
 founded on memory, as is seen in the Meno. Accord¬ 
 ing to Origen, God created spirits at first, one by one, 
 and all perfect. Some of these kept their first estate ; 
 some fell and were degraded into the class of demons, 
 and others, who had sinned less, into the condition of 
 men. This extreme theory of creationism was con¬ 
 demned at the council of Constantinople. The ortho¬ 
 dox theory was then declared to be that of partial 
 creationism; that the body and psyche came from the 
 parents, but the spirit by a special creation from God. 
 If the trichotomy of spirit, soul, and body had been 
 upheld by the Church, this division would have satis¬ 
 fied every candid mind, and the question would pro¬ 
 bably have been forgotten long ago. 
 
 Unfortunately for the cause of truth and peace, the 
 Latin Church, partly from the poverty of the language, 
 partly for want of ability to deal with points of divinity 
 more speculative than practical, rejected the distinction 
 of psyche and pneuma, and the result soon was seen 
 in the first Latin writer who approached the question 
 of the transmission of evil. Tertullian, in his treatise 
 De Anima, decided that body and soul came ex traduce 
 —God deputing to the parents a kind of quasi-creative 
 power of the soul. This, like Descartes’ theory of 
 occasionalism, to account for the action of the mind 
 on the body, only made the difficulty greater than it 
 found it. If the parent creates the soul by a kind of 
 deputed power, the soul clearly comes, like the body, 
 ex traduce , and that this was Tertullian’s real opinion 
 there can be no reasonable doubt. Duas species con- 
 
'Traducianism and Creationism. 189 
 
 fitemur seminis corporalem et animalem indiscretas 
 tamen vindicamus et hoc modo contemporales ejus- 
 demque momenti * According to Jerome, who was a 
 creationist, the Western Church, for the first four cen¬ 
 turies, generally adopted Tertullian’s view oftraducian- 
 ism. Augustine, however, took the side of creation¬ 
 ism. The other theory offered such an obvious account 
 of the transmission of original sin that it is no small 
 mark of Augustine’s candour that he declined to take 
 advantage of it, even though Pelagius was a creationist. 
 Augustine’s decision in favour of creationism set the 
 question at rest for centuries. The traducianist theory 
 fell in consequence under a cloud, and was almost re¬ 
 puted a heresy in the middle ages. Peter Lombard’s 
 distinction is only verbal: “ Creando infundit infun- 
 dendo creat.” The creation of the soul by infusion is 
 still creation; and this account of the question the 
 Roman Catholic Church has pronounced to be the 
 orthodox one. In the Lutheran Church, on the other 
 hand, traducianism was adopted as the only account of 
 the transmission of evil, and as Delitzsch observes in 
 the seventeenth century, there was scarcely a Lutheran 
 divine who did not oppose creationism as either semi- 
 Pelagian, or as a Romish error. 
 
 Of modern psychologists, Delitzsch is a Traducianist, 
 while J. H. Fichte takes the other side, though with a 
 theory of the pre-existence of souls, which is Platonic, 
 but not Christian. Frohshammer (Ueber den Ur- 
 sprung der menschlichen Seele) takes the side of 
 Traducianism, which he calls Generationismus. Lange, 
 
 * Tertullian De Anima, chap. xix. 
 
190 'Traducianism and Creationism . 
 
 on the other hand, objects that pure Traducianism 
 would reduce man to the condition of a brute. The 
 true Tradux of the human race is, he says, the word 
 “ Let us make man,” not “ let the earth bring forth.” 
 Martensen, in his Dogmatik, sets out with the premiss 
 that human beings without any varied and inner 
 individuality would only be a mere repetition of the 
 race, and he comes to the conclusion that men are both 
 born and created. There is, he says, a truth of Trad¬ 
 ucianism that men are not mere units, but links in a 
 living chain. The truth, on the other hand, of crea¬ 
 tionism is this, that the general productivity “of nature, 
 through which the human race propagates itself, is the 
 organ and occasion of an individualising work of crea¬ 
 tive activity, so that in the existence of every man there 
 is a new revelation of the will of God which has made 
 man in his image. Every man, he says, is born, and 
 so comes under the law of Traducianism, Ps. 51. 
 Every man is created, and so comes under the law of 
 Creationism. Ps. 139.”* 
 
 Schubert, on the other hand, sets out with the in¬ 
 cautious assertion that a being who is to have an exist¬ 
 ence for eternity cannot have had a beginning in time. 
 The spirit, therefore, is pre-existent in a certain sense : 
 as the air exists before the lungs which inhales it, so 
 the spirit before the soul which it vitalises and gives 
 personality to. The spirit enters the soul, and wraps 
 it more closely round within than the body does 
 without. The spirit has an eternal origin; it has 
 existed a parte ante in God, and shall exist for eternity 
 
 * See Martensen’s Dogmatik. 
 
7 raducianism and Creationism. 191 
 
 a parte post before Him. The soul which man has in 
 common with the brute would perish with the body, 
 but for the spirit. It is the spirit which sustains the 
 soul’s consciousness after death, and supported by it, 
 it arrests that dissolution to which it would otherwise 
 tend.* 
 
 Such is a brief account of the leading theories on 
 the subject. It is clear that divines are as far off agree¬ 
 ment as ever, and that some of the later theories of 
 pre-existence are as strange and mystical as those of 
 Origen and Plato. May not the relation of psyche 
 and pneuma help to throw light on this, as on the pre¬ 
 vious question, of original sin ? The view we have 
 taken above is, that Adam was created with a “living 
 soul,” and with a capacity of becoming a quickened 
 spirit. But when Adam fell, he not only lost the 
 pneumatical faculty for himself, but also the power of 
 transmitting it to his posterity. He had become carnal- 
 minded, and alienated from the life of God, through the 
 ignorance which was in him. The soul, now enslaved 
 in sin, could only “ gender to bondage.” That which 
 was born of the flesh is flesh. "We are thus on the 
 side of Traducianism, so far as to hold that body and 
 psyche, or the sum total of the powers of the natural 
 man, are transmitted by generation. As to the 
 pneuma , or divine image in man, that we consider to 
 be dormant since the fall. The capacity is, we admit, 
 transmitted, but it is a dead capacity—it is an organ 
 which never attains to its proper function in the unre¬ 
 generate, and though, as conscience, it witnesses for 
 
 * See Schubert’s Lehrbuch der Menschen and Seelenkunde. 
 
ig 2 Traducianlsm and Creationism. 
 
 God, accuses or else excuses, still it never leads us to 
 any spiritual exercise, properly so called. The race 
 of Adam transmit the pneumatical nature from one to 
 the other, as the exiled race of Stuarts handed down, 
 for three generations, their pretensions to the crown 
 
 of England. 
 
 Eor our part we see no need of the creationist hypo¬ 
 thesis on account of the supposed dignity and immate¬ 
 riality of the soul. That the thinking principle is 
 immaterial is rather a self-evident truth than an impor¬ 
 tant principle charged with the consequences which 
 Descartes and his school attached to it. Granting that 
 man is material as to his body, and non-material as to the 
 soul or reason, it is as difficult to understand the trans¬ 
 mission through generations of physical as of mental 
 or moral qualities. To suppose that the body comes 
 ex traduce , but the soul by a fresh creation of God 
 (for this is all that Creatonists ask for, they do not ob¬ 
 ject to the animal part of man descending by propaga¬ 
 tion) is to distinguish, where Scripture does not, be¬ 
 tween matter and spirit or reason on the half-heathen 
 
 theory,— 
 
 “Nec deus intersit nisi dignus vinaice nodus 
 
 The birth of a soul, these Cartesianists would say, is 
 worthy to call out God into a fresh act of creation, 
 which the birth of a mere animal frame would no£, 
 But such conceptions of God’s interference with the 
 ordinary course of affairs on great occasions, but not 
 on little, carry their own refutation with them. They 
 rest on a fundamental mistake as to the present nature 
 
Traducianism and Creationism . 193 
 
 of man. God has been pleased to make man for a 
 little while, and in a little degree (both senses are here 
 applicable), lower than the angels. The birth of an 
 angel is, we admit, an original act of creation, the same 
 as when God said, Let light be, and light was. The 
 angelic nature is not successive as one of a race, but 
 single. Men, on the other handj are first separated 
 from their mother’s womb, and then called by God’s 
 grace. First the animal, then the intellectual individu¬ 
 ality, and, last of all, if at all, the spiritual. The 
 truth is, that we learn our intellectual individuality 
 through our animal. We grow into our sense of per¬ 
 sonality by the aid of the body, and those acts of sen¬ 
 sation and perception which are preconscious. The 
 body, as experiment has proved, cannot for a while 
 localize its sensations; it learns to transform its sen¬ 
 sations, which are passive, into perceptions, which are 
 active, and so memory and judgment (psychical faculties, 
 as all would allow), grow out of and wait upon the 
 exercise of the animal. The use of the body to teach 
 the mind the sense of personality is nowhere better de¬ 
 scribed than in Tennyson’s lines,— 
 
 “ The baby, new to earth and sky, 
 
 What time his tender palm is pressed 
 Against the circle of the breast, 
 
 Has never thought that this is I, 
 
 But as he grows he gathers much, 
 
 And learns the use of ‘ I ’ and ‘ me,’ 
 
 And finds I am not what I see, 
 
 And other from the things I touch ; 
 
 N 
 
194 
 
 Traducianism and Creationism . 
 
 So rounds he to a separate mind, 
 
 From whence clear memory may begin, 
 
 As thro’ the frame that binds him in, 
 
 His isolation grows defined.” 
 
 This, then, being the case, we do not see why either 
 reason or religion requires us to sever, as the Creation¬ 
 ists do, between body and soul, as if the dignity of the 
 soul required some special act of interposition on 
 God’s part. Two errors seem to lurk in such a 
 supposition as this—one is, that all lower lives are left 
 to the operation of what are called natural and neces¬ 
 sary laws; the other is, that God at the creation o 
 each fresh soul breaks in on that Sabbath which He 
 has entered into at the close of His six days work 
 Our Lord tells us that God’s Sabbath is not one of 
 inactivity (John v. 17). God works hitherto or up to 
 the present day. This He does by upholding all 
 things by the word of His power, by giving to all hie 
 and breath, and all things. But this creatio continua 
 is very different from the distinct act of creating an in¬ 
 dividual soul, which is the Creationist hypothesis. So 
 difficult, indeed, is this hypothesis, that those who 
 espouse it, as J. E. Fichte and Schubert, fall back on 
 a theory of the pre-existence of souls in God , which is 
 not only mystical, but self-contradictory. For, if they 
 exist in God, they are not created, but proceed fiom 
 Him. We do not object to the distinction of Irenaeus 
 between the afflatus of Christ and the inspiration of 
 the Holy Spirit. The soul or rational part may be 
 given at birth per afflatum , and the pneumatical part 
 
Traducianism and Creationism. 195 
 
 be quickened at regeneration per spiritum. This may 
 be so. If any, as Fichte, object to the higher powers, 
 as of the pure reason, descending by generation from 
 father to son, we shall not seriously differ with them. 
 Embryology, even in the lower forms of life, is beset 
 with mysteries, but when we rise to man it is better 
 to be silent on the question, whether the genius of a 
 Newton or a Pascal comes by descent from their 
 parents or was a new and original gift imparted to 
 them by God. It is a question on which thoughtful 
 minds have been long divided, one on which neither 
 psychology nor physiology throws the least light at 
 present From a large induction of instances it cer¬ 
 tainly seems as if the mothers of great men have gene¬ 
 rally been women of character, if not of rare and ori¬ 
 ginal genius. Whether the explanation of this fact be 
 some physiological law which embryology, a science 
 still in its infancy, has not been able to detect, we can¬ 
 not say. We only notice the fact, without attempting 
 to found any inference on it. So far at least as we can 
 see at present, there are examples either of hereditary 
 genius, as in the Sheridan family, the Coleridge, the 
 Herschells ; or conversely, of hereditary dullness in 
 some of our old families, where “ the tenth transmitter 
 of a foolish race” has passed into a proverb. These 
 examples go to confirm the Traducian hypothesis. We 
 do not know why the mothers of great men generally 
 belie Pope’s account that u most women have no char¬ 
 acter at all.” But the fact is so, and cannot be over¬ 
 looked in an inquiry like the present. Martensen is 
 doubtless right in saying there is a truth in Tra- 
 
ig 6 Traducianism and Creationism. 
 
 ducianism, and also a truth in Creationism. The 
 truth of the former is, that men are not units, but 
 part of a race. Humanity is a great tree, of which 
 each generation is a foliage, each individual a single 
 leaf. The illustration is as old as Homer, and a great 
 deal more graceful than Hobbes’ monster man, the 
 Leviathan. On the other hand, Creationism repre¬ 
 sents a truth, that each man is an ens individuum with 
 a sense of personality and responsibility which we carry 
 with us into the future world. 
 
 u This use may be in blood and breath, 
 
 Which else were fruitless of their due,— 
 
 Had man to learn himself anew, 
 
 Beyond the second birth of death.” 
 
 The distinction between psyche and pneuma seems 
 to reconcile these two aspects of truth, and to solve 
 the question between Creationism and Traducianism. 
 So far as the animal and intellectual nature of man is 
 concerned, we are quite on the side or Traducianism. 
 But there is another part in man’s nature in which 
 personality resides. Our knowledge may belong to 
 us like our rank, riches, and other things, which are 
 outside the kernel and centre of our being. . But 
 the conscience, the hidden man of the heart, this is the 
 true centre of man’s being, and this organ or faculty 
 is that which Scripture distinguishes from the nephesh 
 or psyche. The ruach, or the pneuma, is that which 
 comes from God, and is of God. Its etymology im¬ 
 plies an inspiration or afflatus ; it is “the candle of the 
 Lord,” in the spirit of man. And we admit that the 
 
fraducianism and Creationism . 197 
 
 Traducian hypothesis does not account for the trans¬ 
 mission of this pneuma from father to son. For the 
 pneumatical part of the tripartite nature of man, we 
 revert to the Creationist theory. 
 
 But do we then hold, as Barclay and Fox, as well 
 as the Cambridge school of Platonists, that this pneu¬ 
 matical faculty is born with every man naturally born 
 of Adam? We have already disclaimed agreement 
 with the school of the Neo-Platonists. We do not 
 understand their favourite text, “ That is the true 
 light which lightetli every man that cometh into the 
 world,” to apply at all to the doctrine in question. 
 Their theory of the inner light is mystical, and not 
 borne out by missionary experience. But like all theo¬ 
 ries, it rests on a truth which its opponents would do 
 well to admit, if they would hold their own against the 
 new school of Origenists. To explain the truth, of 
 which the u inner light ” theory is an exaggeration, 
 we fall back upon Irenaeus’ distinction between per 
 ajjlatum and per spiritum. The pneuma of all men 
 comes from God at birth, by a general Creationist 
 power, such as that which the risen Saviour breathed 
 on his disciples. But the pneuma is quickened in the 
 regenerate to a higher and divine life, by a special Cre¬ 
 ationist power, such as the descent of the Holy Spirit 
 at Pentecost, when it sat upon each of them. The first 
 birth of the pneuma is general; the second, or new 
 birth, is particular. The one is in all men, yea, in the 
 very reprobate; for if they had no inner light, they 
 would have no sin. Sin|and light; law and transgres¬ 
 sion, being always reciprocal ideas. The other is that 
 
198 Traducianism and Creationism. 
 
 inner light of a man who doeth truth and cometh to 
 the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that 
 they are wrought in God. The spirit, per afflatum , 
 goes no farther than conscience, which the Apostle 
 (Rom. ii.) describes as doing for the Gentile what the 
 written law did for the Jew. The abuse of the written 
 and unwritten law are the same in both cases. Jew 
 and Gentile alike took the law, whether written within 
 or without, as a means of justification, and flattered 
 themselves that they kept the law, when they kept 
 only certain traditions and customs, to which they had 
 lowered the standard of the law’s demands. The 
 inner light, then, or the light of conscience, never 
 leads men to Christ; not through defect of the light, 
 but because it is not fairly used. Where it is fairly 
 used, when men, casting aside Pharisaism and for¬ 
 malism of all kinds, become conscientious and scrupu¬ 
 lous in the deep sense of the word, then they are 
 already beginning to be led of the Spirit of God. 
 They may not know it; like unconverted Saul, they 
 may little suspect what they are being led on to. 
 The violent prejudice, for instance, of certain conscien¬ 
 tious formalists, against what they call evangelicalism, 
 is a case like that of Saul. Their conscience is pricked 
 —the law is doing its work, convincing them of sin; and 
 though they are far from knowing the joy and peace 
 in believing which they may afterwards attain to, they 
 are, nevertheless, not far from the kingdom of heaven. 
 That no flesh should glory in His presence, Zacchmus 
 the publican, and Paul the Pharisee, are both called, 
 one in one way, and the other in another. But in 
 
Traducianism and Creationism. 199 
 
 both cases alike, the spirit or conscience was stirred up 
 to higher conscientiousness; and out of this deeper 
 sense of right and wrong, with a corresponding 
 sense of defect, there grew the convictions of sin, 
 righteousness, and judgment, which are the unening 
 marks of a man being regenerate and born anew of 
 the Spirit. 
 
 To trace the connection between the pneuma, per 
 afflatum , in the unregenerate, and that, per spiritual , 
 in the regenerate, is a subject worthy of a sepaiate 
 treatise. We only here give an outline of the chief 
 points of correspondence. When we speak of the 
 new birth, we do not mean that the human pneuma 
 begins to exist then for the first time, for that would 
 amount to a dichotomist view of fallen human nature, 
 which we are far from agreeing with. But we mean 
 that the pneuma in man is now quickened and acted 
 upon by the divine pneuma—the third person of the 
 Blessed Trinity. The pneuma, or conscience, works 
 in the man who is not yet regenerate. His state befoie 
 conversion, and when pricked by God’s law, is as when 
 an ox is pricked by a goad. It struggles for a time 
 against these convictions of sin, and learns to its sorrow 
 that it is hard to kick against these pricks. It knows 
 the law of God and fears its threatenings ; but it does 
 not delight in God, or love Him, or hold fellowship with 
 Him, or tell Him all its wants, sins, and sorrows; in 
 fine, it does not demean itself as a reconciled child with 
 a father, who loves us too dearly to be indulgent 
 who is too true not to chide us when we forget Him. 
 
 Thus as the Traducianist hypothesis is the only one 
 
200 Traducianism and Creationism. 
 
 which accounts for the facts of body and soul, so the 
 Creationist explains the spirit’s existence, either as the 
 unenlightened natural conscience, or as the awakened 
 and converted pneuma. If the pneuma were not an 
 integral and original part of man’s nature, the doctrine 
 of the indwelling of the Holy Ghost would be utterly 
 unmeaning. They are consistent who to deny the one, 
 deny the other as well. 
 
 But to believe in the personal indwelling of the 
 Holy Ghost in the hearts of the regenerate people of 
 God, and not to see that such a doctrine of theology 
 requires a special doctrine of psychology, on which to 
 rest its credibility, would argue very little discernment 
 in those who professed it. The spirit in man presup¬ 
 poses that there is a spirit in God, or else how could 
 the heathen ever say,—“ for we are also his offspring ? ’ 
 On the other hand, the truth that the Spirit is shed abroad 
 among men would be unaccountable, except in the lower 
 sense of his dwelling corporately through the Church, 
 and in her sacraments, unless we saw that this special 
 function presupposes a special organ in man. The 
 adaptation of means to ends, and of parts to each 
 other, is always seen in whatever comes from God. 
 Hence a spiritual theology must require a spiritual 
 psychology, as certainly as the eye is adapted to light, 
 or the lungs to inhale air. 
 
CONVERSION TO GOD EXPLAINED AS 
 THE QUICKENING OF THE PNEUMA. 
 
 The mystery of human nature seems to lie in this, 
 that men are born into the world with a living body 
 and soul, but with a dead or dormant spirit. How else 
 are we to reconcile the Scripture statement, that men 
 are by nature dead in trespasses and sins, with the fact 
 that the intellectual and sensitive powers, though im¬ 
 paired, are not destroyed by the fall ? But for the 
 distinction between psyche and pneuma, we should 
 either have to understand the expression, “dead in 
 trespasses and sins,” as merely figurative, or else we 
 must contradict the facts of experience, and speak of 
 the psyche as born naturally dead as well as the spirit. 
 According to the popular account of the mattei, the 
 unregenerate man is said to be made up of two paits, 
 a living body and a dead soul. To quote from an able 
 address by Dr Simpson of Edinburgh, entitled “.Dead 
 in Trespasses and Sins: ”—“ While unbelievers in Christ, 
 people are not what they seem to be. They are in¬ 
 deed hideous and loathsome in the eye of God, for 
 with all their efforts to hide it from themselves and 
 others, they are carrying about in ^connection with 
 
202 Conversion to God Explained. 
 
 their living bodies, 'dead souls. They remind us of 
 the fearful punishment described by Virgil as in¬ 
 flicted by the mythical Mezentis, king of the Tyr¬ 
 rhenians, when he bound dead corpses to living men, 
 and the living moved about with the dead, decom¬ 
 posing bodies tied to them, face to face, and hands 
 to hands. In God’s holy sight the soul of every un- , 
 believing man, however moral, and good, and virtuous, 
 and excellent, and exemplary in the estimation of the 
 world that man may be, is dead, dead in trespasses 
 and sins.” 
 
 Now, if for soul, in the above passage, we read 
 spirit, the language is both true to Scripture and 
 consistent with the facts of the case. It is hardly 
 correct to say that the psyche of an Aristotle or a 
 Laplace was dead, their intellect was as serene, their 
 moral nature as sweet and amiable as that of many 
 whose spirits are quickened by the divine spirit. 
 We do not, of course, imply that sin has worked 
 no damage on the pure reason, or that the standard 
 of moral good and evil has not been grievously 
 lowered by the fall. But these are the indirect and 
 secondary results of the fall—they do not touch the 
 root of the evil, or describe what the loss is by itself. 
 The loss lies in this, that man, with all his natural 
 powers, cannot find out God, and, what is stranger 
 still, does not even desire to do so. His nature is 
 “psychical, having not the Spirit.” He is “dead 
 in trespasses and sins,” in the sense that while his 
 interest is keen and his ability great towards the 
 things of time and sense, he is apathetic to the 
 
203 
 
 Conversion to God Explained 
 
 things which are unseen and eternal. The state of 
 spiritual death is the more awful because it is con¬ 
 joined with moral and intellectual life. Were the 
 soul dead as well as the spirit, then there would be 
 nothing surprising that there should be no life to 
 God within. But that man should be alive to any- 
 ‘ thing else, and dead only to God and the things of 
 God—this is indeed that living death, that Mezen- 
 thian union which Dr Simpson describes with practi¬ 
 cal truth, though not with psychological accuracy.* 
 The pneuma in the unregenerate man is, as we 
 have seen before, a dead or dormant capacity. We 
 leave it open to question whether it is more correct to 
 describe it as dead or dormant. If dormant only, 
 it is dormant in the sense that it will never awake 
 of itself till Christ awaken it; if dead, it is dead in 
 the sense that Lazarus was when Christ said, “ our 
 brother Lazarus sleepeth, but I go to awake him 
 out of sleep.” If there is any life at all in the un¬ 
 regenerate pneuma, it is the life of the embryo, which 
 
 » No one has better argued for the depravity of man from his general 
 goodness than Dr Chalmers. The argument is a great advance on the illus¬ 
 trations of the corruption of nature adduced by the old school of divines. 
 Nothing could be weaker than some of these—thus the crying of an infant 
 in pain; the passion of a young child which is a compound of weakness, 
 ignorance, and fear, and quite as instinctive as its loud cries of joy ; the 
 brutality of savages, who are only full grown children: these were the proofs 
 of original sin to which divines appealed. The argument was as inconclu¬ 
 sive as King James’ attempt to discover whether Hebrew was the primeval 
 tongue, by exposing two infants on an island—an experiment, by the way, 
 as old as Herodotus—or again, in the case of the wild boy Peter of the woods, 
 who was intrusted by Queen Caroline to Dr Arbuthnot, “ for the purpose of 
 investigating his theory of innate ideas.” When great truths are propped 
 up by irrelevant or insufficient arguments, we cannot complain if the cause 
 suffers with its advocates. No chain is stronger than its -weakest point. 
 
204 Conversion to God Explained. 
 
 stirs, but cannot act or think for itself. There are 
 the motions of conscience, feeble, few, and incon¬ 
 stant—the witness for God, which excuses and 
 accuses, but which never discharges its right func¬ 
 tions as it was intended to do, viz., of bringing us 
 into communion with God, and judging all our con¬ 
 duct in the light of his countenance. So fallen is 
 man, that instead of the Spirit witnessing with our 
 spirit that we are the sons of God, all that remains 
 to us is a feeble and accusing witness of the? law of 
 God. Conscience does not testify of the person of 
 God, but only of His law. As in a dream, confused 
 recollections start up of scenes and persons which we 
 once knew, but all so broken and disturbed, that we 
 cannot say what it is that is recalled to us, so of the 
 stirrings of the pneuma in the unregenerate man. 
 At times something flits before him to make him 
 feel that he is not what he ought to be. A word 
 from the pulpit, a death-bed warning, the example 
 of one who has passed through the great change, 
 and to whom old things are passed away, all things 
 are become new, when these things rise before the 
 unregenerate mind there is a stirring of conscience to 
 which, better than anything else, may be applied the 
 words of the poet,— 
 
 “ Blank misgivings of a creature, 
 
 Moving about in worlds not realized, 
 
 High instincts before which our mortal nature 
 Hid tremble, like a guilty thing surprised.” 
 
 That conscience is the fallen Pneuma, u trembling 
 
Conversion to God Explained. 205 
 
 like a guilty thing surprised,” has been understood 
 by our poets better than our philosophers. “ That 
 conscience doth make cowards of us all,” is that pro¬ 
 found view of the fall, and the witness within to it, 
 which makes the psychology of Shakespeare as true 
 to life as that of the schools is false. There are 
 several passages in which conscience is described as 
 a troublesome witness for God’s law. So Gobbo , in 
 the “Merchant of Venice,’’ supposes a dialogue 
 between conscience and the fiend, which is as true 
 as it is humorous. So the Murderer , in “ Richard 
 III.,” speaks of conscience as a dangerous thing :— 
 “ I’ll not meddle with it; it makes a man a coward : 
 Tis a blushing, shameful spirit, that mutinies in a man’s 
 bosom.” 
 
 But this witness of conscience is not real spiritual 
 life, though it wears the appearance of it, and some¬ 
 times deceives the inexperienced. As the babe 
 leaped in the womb as soon as the sound of the 
 salutation of the mother of the Lord reached the 
 ears of Elizabeth, so there may be stirrings of con¬ 
 science, strivings of the Spirit with our spirit, which 
 may or may not afterwards come to the birth, and 
 result in spiritual life. Sensibility is not spiritual¬ 
 mindedness ; it may be its precursor, one of those 
 marks of a gracious Spirit which we are not to slight. 
 But the real birth of the spirit is determined by 
 other and more unmistakable signs. Both in Herod 
 and Felix there was much religious sensibility. The 
 readiness of Saul to fall in with religious emotions, 
 when prevalent, gave rise to the proverb in Israel, 
 
206 Conversion to God Explained. 
 
 u Is Saul also among the prophets?” Yet none of 
 these men ever felt the great change, or were 
 awakened in any saving sense. The Word of God, 
 which is quick and powerful, is said to pierce to the 
 dividing asunder of soul and spirit. As we have 
 explained this above, it pierces not only into the soul, 
 the seat of the emotions and mere intellectual notions, 
 but also down into the spirit, where the conscience 
 lies sleeping and unalarmed, and where the will, the 
 master principle of all, is at present at enmity with 
 God, though we know it not. When a man’s spirit 
 is acted upon by the quickening Spirit, and is really 
 regenerated of the Holy Ghost, the sure and certain 
 mark of that work of grace begun is a sensitiveness 
 to sin and a fear of offending God, not so much for 
 fear of the consequences as because we learn to hate 
 sin even as God hates it. “ Oh ye that love the 
 Lord, see that ye hate the thing which is evil.” In 
 this one clause, the two tendencies which mark the 
 regenerate mind are linked together, as they are in 
 experience. The love of God and hatred of sin are 
 inseparable, and when they are found together, as 
 they invariably are in the case of the really awakened, 
 there we may pronounce with the greatest confidence 
 that a work of grace has begun. There may be much 
 or little intellectual insight into the plan of salvation as 
 such; there may be more or less of assurance, as there 
 is much or little of a present personal sense of accept¬ 
 ance. These will differ with the nature of the teach¬ 
 ing which we receive, with our constitution of mind 
 and previous habits. In the case of those who enjoy a 
 
Conversion to God Explained. 207 
 
 free and full gospel preached, there will not be much 
 “ tarrying at the place of the breaking forth of the 
 womb.” As the terms of salvation are stated to be, 
 “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt 
 be saved,” so their acceptance of these terms will be 
 prompt and joyful. They will not pass, like Wesley 
 and Whitfield at Oxford, through a long and dreary 
 time of probation, proving themselves with the law 
 as to whether they are worthy to accept the gospel. 
 It is our happy privilege to live in an age of religious 
 light, when such experiences as those of the early 
 Methodists ought to be exceedingly rare. But with 
 all this difference in our favour, the new birth is the 
 
 Ibb J 
 
 same mighty and marked change as it ever was. It 
 is the awakening of the pneuma to conscious life and 
 activity, the conscience turning to God, instead of 
 away from Him. 
 
 This is at first a painful process. Spiritual, like 
 natural birth, is not passed through without throes and 
 birth pangs; indeed, it is the symptom in both cases 
 of a healthy birth, that it shall be a painful one. Con¬ 
 science has hitherto turned us away from God instead 
 of to God: is it likely that it can be given a change 
 of direction without a wrench of our previous habits, 
 the pang of separation from old associations and old 
 habits of thought ? Hence it is that the later in life 
 the new birth occurs, and the more confirmed in world¬ 
 liness the character has become, the more painful is 
 the change. It is as if in the case of the new birth 
 those sorrows are multiplied which were the curse 
 upon woman in consequence of her fall. Conscience 
 
208 Conversion to God Explained. 
 
 in the unawakened man keeps him as far as it can at 
 a distance from God. It witnesses to the holiness of 
 God and approves His law as holy, and just, and good. 
 But conscience, until convinced of sin, does not use the 
 law lawfully. It lowers the standard of God’s require¬ 
 ments, and accepts partial as a composition for entire 
 obedience, for which there is no warrant in the Word 
 of God, but quite the contrary. Thus it is by playing 
 us false, and saying peace, peace, when there is no 
 peace, that our conscience keeps us at a distance from 
 God, and God at a distance from us. But when the 
 time of spiritual awakening comes, conscience cannot 
 play off these little deceptions on us any longei ; it 
 would act like the unjust steward if it could: it would 
 keep up the deception: to the demands of the law on 
 its debtors it would say, “ take up thy bill and write 
 fifty” or “write fourscore.” This is how the un¬ 
 awakened conscience would act. But the awakened 
 conscience, the spirit or pneuma as we must now call 
 it, so soon as it is quickened by the Holy Ghost, will 
 not palter with itself any longer. God requires of us 
 an hundred measures of wheat, an hundied measures 
 of oil, and now He shall have full measure and full 
 weight if we break for it or have to go to piison. 
 Instead of the pitiful evasions and compromises with 
 which a deceiving heart puts off the day of settlement, 
 conscience now brings out its ledger and day-book, and 
 tells the account with God as it really stands. Before 
 men are awakened they are continually setting one good 
 deed done against some good deed left undone. The 
 Italian brigand will set up a cross over the spot where 
 
Conversion to God Explained 209 
 
 he has hurled a traveller over the precipice, and pay 
 for a mass for his soul out of the plunder to which he 
 has helped himself. The Pharisee will pay tithe of 
 mint, anise, and cummin, while he neglects the 
 weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and 
 truth. The writings of the prophets are one long 
 protest against this abuse of the law. This is why 
 our Lord so continually warned His followers against 
 the leaven of the scribes and Pharisees, which was 
 hypocrisy. His reproof of them was for the very 
 thing that they had made the law void through their 
 traditions. 
 
 The first mark, then, of an awakened conscience is 
 this, that it will not allow the demands of the law to 
 be disposed of by evasions like these. Instead of 
 treating the ceremonial law as a set off to the moral, 
 it sees that the latter is, of the two, the most impor¬ 
 tant—that “to obey is better than sacrifice, and to 
 hearken than the fat of rams.” Brought to this convic¬ 
 tion, it cannot regard with its former complacency those 
 breaches of the moral law which once were indulgently 
 passed over. A great change comes over its view of 
 the law of God. The commandment which was or¬ 
 dained unto life it finds to be unto death. It is drawn 
 by a fatal attraction towards that very law which only 
 discovers our sin, and, through the commandment, 
 makes that sin to appear exceeding sinful. Then 
 a horrible dread begins to overwhelm the spirit. We 
 were alive once without the law,—alive, that is in the 
 lower sense of the word,—living a natural life in the 
 flesh, feeling no great attraction to God, on the one 
 
 o 
 
210 
 
 Conversion to God Explained. 
 
 hand, but, on the other hand, feeling no great dread 
 of sin or fear of displeasing Him. Now this state of 
 insensibility is over. We can deceive. ourselves no 
 longer, either as to the necessity of strict and entire 
 obedience, or as to the reality in us of an evil heart of 
 sin and unbelief. Thus the spirit, on its first awaken¬ 
 ing, is drawn by two opposite attractions—one towards, 
 the other averse from God. Plato, in the opening of 
 the Republic, describes the strange fascination with 
 which we cannot turn away our eyes from some object 
 we most loathe to see. So it is that we are at one and 
 the same time drawn to God by a desire after holi¬ 
 ness, yet driven from Him by a sense of indwelling 
 sin. 5 Peter cast himself on his knees before Jesus, and 
 uttered the prayer which was the farthest from his 
 real desires, Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, 
 O Lord. Legion, in the same way, prayed Jesus for 
 relief, and then broke out in the opposite strain, 
 “What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, thou Son of 
 the Most High God?” This explains that strange 
 phenomenon of a double consciousness in the awakened 
 conscience. The Ego is at one time the will identified 
 with the law of God, and then, again, with the law of 
 sin that is in our members. Those commentators have 
 misunderstood the seventh chapter of the Romans who 
 refer the Ego, or will, the centre of the man, to either of 
 these* personalizations, the law or the flesh exclusively. 
 
 * We have intentionally passed by the question of the relation of the will 
 to the Psyche in the unregenerate, and to the Psyche-Pneuma in the regene¬ 
 rate, lest we should seem to countenance a tetrachotomy of body, soul, spirit, 
 and'will, or the Ego acting in and through the three natures. Psychologists 
 
21 I 
 
 Conversion to God Explained. 
 
 The truth is, that it wavers between the two, and the 
 very meaning of the conflict consists in this. Were 
 our identity connected exclusively with either the 
 higher or lower nature, there might be war, but it 
 would not be civil war. It would be the invasion of 
 our nature, and its possession by some other foreign 
 power. We should not then be responsible as we are, 
 and the conflict would assume a totally different aspect. 
 But as the Apostle describes it, and as the experience 
 of all truly awakened Christians bears him out, the 
 conflict arises out of this very duality of our nature in 
 flesh and spirit, and the long hesitation of the Ego or 
 will to which of the two to yield itself. 
 
 When the new or pneumatical nature begins to stir 
 under the old or psychical nature, it asserts its rights, 
 and claims our whole being, spirit, soul, and body as 
 the temple of the living God. 
 
 The conflict, properly so called, begins then, so soon 
 as we first begin to waver in our wills whether to yield 
 subjection to the law of the Spirit of Life in Christ 
 
 are divided as to the nature of the will—on the one hand, there are those 
 who call it a self-determining power, that “innate intellectual energy which, 
 unfolding itself from all the other forces of the mind, like a flower from its 
 petals, radiates through the whole sphere of our vitality,”—on the other hand, 
 the school of sensation confound will with desire, and deny any previous de¬ 
 termination of the will. The truth seems to lie between the two, man is both 
 “Nature and Person,” as the Germans say, midway between the animal, who 
 has no self-determination, and the angel, which has, and whose will is free for 
 good or evil in the fullest extent. Thus, it is said of Adam, he was made a 
 living Psyche, not, as the angels, a living Pneuma. Were man a free will, in 
 the full sense of the word, probably there would have been no possibility of his 
 redemption ; but as the evil came from without, so the remedy. The will, 
 then, is seated in the Psyche, and according as the will is drawn up to the 
 spirit or down to the flesh, so we become pneumatical or carnal, and our char¬ 
 acter is formed in time for eternity. 
 
212 
 
 Conversion to God Explained* 
 
 Jesus, or to the law of sin and flesh. But unaided 
 and alone the psyche cannot begin this conflict that 
 we speak of between the lower and the higher parts 
 of our nature. We do not read in Scripture, nor do 
 we find in experience, that reason and the flesh are 
 contrary to each other, as the flesh and the spirit are. 
 Reason, or the psyche, is, it is true, superior to the 
 flesh; but it is not the rightful master within us—it 
 is not the lord of every motion there, because it is not 
 the faculty which brings us into relationship with God, 
 the true Lord of our being. But on the other hand, 
 if our nature were entirely pneumatical, in the sense 
 that the Second Adam was made a quickening Spirit, 
 there could be no conflict. In that case we should 
 instinctively yield our members as instruments of righte¬ 
 ousness unto God. The pneuma would direct the 
 psyche, and the psyche our carnal appetites. There 
 would not be a single motion of sinful desire. It 
 would be as in a well-ordered city, where a single con¬ 
 stable with his truncheon can keep the peace of the 
 streets, because the whole power of the law is behind 
 him to enforce his orders. But such is not the state 
 which man is in at present. He begins life with a 
 dormant pneuma, and therefore with desires which 
 have become exorbitant, and with a reason unable to 
 control them. For a time he patches up a kind of 
 hollow truce between desire and reason, the flesh and 
 the psyche, and thus the apostle tells us that he was 
 alive once, i.e n led a contented psychical life once, 
 without the law. But by and by the pneuma, or con¬ 
 science towards God, is quickened and begins to behave 
 
Conversion to God Explained. 213 
 
 itself, “like a guilty thing surprised.” It discovers the 
 exceeding holiness of God, and its desires after holiness 
 are as vast as the law’s demands are great. It puts 
 the flesh and the reason upon obeying God’s law, and 
 the flesh and reason kick against these restraints, re¬ 
 fuse to meet its demands, and thus the conflict begins. 
 Between the desires after God of the spirit, and the 
 desires of the self-indulgent flesh, the weak psyche, or 
 natural reason, is divided and distracted. At times it 
 yields to the flesh, and then at better moments it falls 
 in with the spirit. But the conflict is too sore for it 
 to endure long, and at last it cries out in despair, 
 u Oh, wretched man that 1 am, who shall deliver me 
 from the body of this death?” 
 
 This cry of despair is the critical moment of our 
 existence. It is not the exact moment of the quicken¬ 
 ing of the pneuma, for the pneuma is quickened, as 
 we think, as soon as it is convinced of sin by the law; 
 but it is the moment of its coming forth to self-con¬ 
 sciousness and God-consciousness, the moment of its 
 effectual conversion to God. On the subject of con¬ 
 version, we may here remark there are two opinions, 
 each true from the point of view of those who hold 
 them. There are those who think that a man is con¬ 
 verted even while he is under a mere legal experience, 
 and before he has found joy and peace in believing. 
 There are others who will not allow that a man is con¬ 
 verted until he is able to say, “There is, therefore, now 
 no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.” 
 Both these two views have a measure of truth in them. 
 It is easy to see that there is a common ground on 
 
214 Conversion to God Explained. 
 
 which we may agree with both. On the one hand, we 
 hold that the pneuma is already alive in those who are 
 drawn to the law of God by a secret attraction, and 
 who, in desiring to keep it, only discover the strength 
 of indwelling sin. But still they are not yet con¬ 
 verted, in the sense that the pneuma is acknowledged 
 to be the master principle, and that they yield their 
 members as instruments of righteousness unto God. 
 The spirit has the right, but not as yet the might, 
 within. Hence it is that there is a state of conflict 
 within ; and that in one sense they are, and in another 
 sense are not, to be classed as converted men. 
 
 But the work of grace, blessedjjoe God, does not 
 stop here. We are not to read the seventh chapter 
 of Romans without going on to read the eighth. If 
 in the one chapter we read of the conflict between 
 the law and the flesh, in the other we read that there 
 is no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus; 
 and, as the apostle goes on to show, who walk not 
 after the flesh, but after the spirit. It is the work of 
 Christ on the cross which’destroys the enmity which 
 exists between the higher and the lower parts of our 
 nature. The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the 
 spirit against the flesh; and the result in the case of 
 a newly awakened man, whose experience is only legal, 
 is, that he is brought to a stand-still. He finds his will 
 paralysed, because it is drawn in contrary directions. 
 The flesh and the spirit distract him, so that (or in 
 order that, ha m) he cannot do the things that he 
 would. (Gal. v. 17.) 
 
 This conflict is God’s appointed way of bringing the 
 
Conversion to God Explained. 215 
 
 will out of the bondage of corruption into the glorious 
 liberty of the children of God. The work of Christ, 
 when applied by faith, appeases the voice of an accus¬ 
 ing conscience, and assists the halting will to remove 
 the last hindrance which stands between us and our 
 return to God. The flesh is already condemned in 
 the death of Christ; and we are given strength to arm 
 ourselves with the like mind. That He paid the debt 
 that was due by us is only a part of the work of 
 Christ. On this single view of the atonement too 
 many rest, and hence with such a defective view we 
 need not be surprised that there is so little powei, and 
 life, and love in their religion. The doctrine which is 
 according to godliness is this, that Christ died for our 
 sins to enable us to die unto sin, and to rise again unto 
 righteousness. 
 
 In dying He condemned sm in the flesh, that the 
 righteousness of the law may be fulfilled in us, who 
 walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit. Those 
 who do not grasp the distinction between the psyche 
 and pneuma fail to make clear to themselves, 01 at least 
 to make clear to others, the connection between the 
 justifying and sanctifying grace of Christ. Being 
 justified freely, /.<?., forgiven freely, by his blood, 
 preachers tell us that we ought to give ourselves to 
 Him who so freely gave himself for us. Gratitude 
 is thus called in as the motive which is to constrain us 
 to live no longer to ourselves, but to Him who loved 
 us, and gave himself for us. I do not overlook the 
 importance of pressing this consideration. I do not 
 make little of gratitude as a constraining motive. But, 
 
2 i 6 Conversion to God Explained. 
 
 judging human nature by what we know it to be, I do 
 not think that God would have intrusted the sanctifi¬ 
 cation of his people to a single motive, however strong. 
 Besides, the force of gratitude, or the remembrance of 
 a past benefit, is apt to decline as time goes on. Old 
 impressions of forgiven sin, the remembrance of a 
 transaction once accomplished on Calvary, and once 
 applied by faith to our conscience, is in danger of be¬ 
 coming dim, and at last fading away altogether. In 
 this case of trusting to gratitude only, which is the one 
 which the Apostle Peter contemplates, a man will 
 forget that he has been purged from his old sins (2 
 Peter i. 9), and is in danger of lapsing into antinomian 
 security. Thus it is that antinomianism is the bane 
 attendant on so much of our popular preaching. The 
 so-called forensic theology, taken by itself, must inevi¬ 
 tably degenerate to this. Even in Luther’s life-time 
 the evil had already begun, and in the generation after 
 Luther 'popular Lutheranism was as dead in notional 
 theology as Rome in ceremonial. Spener in his day 
 called the pulpit one of the four dumb idols set up in 
 the churches of Germany. This defect in the popular 
 doctrine of justification by faith is not to be met, as 
 Bishop Bull and his school thought, by preaching 
 faith and works as contrasted with preaching salvation 
 by faith only. St. James, misunderstood, is sometimes 
 set up to counteract the errors of St. Paul, misunder¬ 
 stood ; and the result is only a darkening of counsel 
 by words without knowledge. The remedy for these 
 mistakes of doctrine must be sought in a deeper study 
 of the plan of salvation. The adaptation of the atone- 
 
Conversion to God Explained. 217 
 
 ment to meet all the wants of the case will then be 
 fully seen; and we shall see in the work of Christ all 
 the wisdom of God, and the power of God unto sal¬ 
 vation. 
 
 The application of the atonement as a sanctifying 
 power is on this wise. There is in the regenerate 
 pneuma a striving after holiness, as well as a thirst 
 after God. The spirit, when quickened, is that seed 
 of God which is said by one apostle to be incorrupt¬ 
 ible (1 Peter i. 23), and by another that it cannot 
 sin (1 John iii. 9). It is the image of God in man, 
 which, though dormant, and, in consequence of the 
 fall, unable to become quickened of itself, is never¬ 
 theless there, as a hvmfug or capacity, if not an svtpyeia 
 or active habit, and which we could not lose altogether 
 without losing with it the nature of man. When the 
 Holy Spirit of God quickens this spirit in man, and 
 draws its desires upwards to Him, then the conflict 
 which we have before described begins. Evangelical 
 preachers who describe human nature as made up of 
 two parts only, body and soul, and who say, correctly 
 enough, that the soul, as well as the body, is 
 desperately wicked, are therefore in this dilemma— 
 how can a good thing come out of an evil ? u Can a 
 leopard change his spots, or an Ethiopian his skin ? ” 
 The psyche or heart of man, the fountain of his 
 natural life, is poisoned and impure, can it send forth 
 out of the same place sweet water and bitter ? Hence 
 from not reserving a nidus in human nature in which 
 the Divine Spirit can descend and purify all from 
 within, these accounts of Christian sanctification are 
 
218 Conversion to God Explained. 
 
 often most lame and inconsistent. At one time they 
 say that the heart is desperately wicked, and remains 
 so, yea, even in the regenerate; while at another, men 
 are said to be led of the Spirit of God, and to walk 
 not after the flesh but after the Spirit. How a heart 
 that is desperately wicked can yet obey godly motions 
 is as unexplained as how a deaf man can hear, or a 
 lame man walk. Let but the distinction between 
 psyche and pneuma be seen, and all is clear and con¬ 
 sistent. The psyche is like the flesh, prone to evil, 
 and remains so, yea, even in the regenerate. But the 
 pneuma or godlike in man is not prone to evil—in¬ 
 deed it cannot sin.* Its tendency is naturally upward 
 to God, as the tendency of body and soul is outward 
 and earthward. Regeneration, then, is the quicken¬ 
 ing of this pneuma, and sanctification is the carrying 
 on of that which conversion began. Sanctification is 
 regeneration continued, as regeneration is sanctification 
 begun. The pneuma, when first quickened, is barely 
 able to show its existence. It is far from able to assert 
 the mastery which it has by right over soul and body. 
 It is like an infant on the throne, unable to choose his 
 
 * When we say that the spirit cannot sin, we are far from over-looking 
 the possibility of the spirit becoming devil-possessed (Sat^oi'iwSyj, James 
 iii. 15). We are far from agreeing with Origen’s theory of the spirit, 
 which lies at the root of all our modern universalism, that the spirit or 
 divine part in man is impassive of evil ( aveiribeKTOv rCov %ei pbvuv rb Trvevixa. 
 rod avdpuixov). Still the case of spiritual wickedness, the climax of which 
 is the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, happily for the salvation of the 
 mass of mankind, is an exceptional state. It is true of the majority that the 
 tendency of their pneuma is to God ; but they are unable to break the chains 
 of evil habit with which they are tied and bound, till the Holy Spirit brings 
 deliverance. 
 
Conversion to God Explained 219 
 
 own advisers, while his guardians use his name for their 
 own advantage. The advance of sanctification is 
 marked by a growth of the pneuma. It begins to 
 assert its supremacy, and to compel the psychical and 
 animal parts of our nature to know their place, and 
 own their subjection to it as the governor supreme 
 under God. The more sanctification advances, the more 
 marked is the supremacy of the pneuma. At last it 
 comes of age, and on attaining its majority the inferior 
 faculties in human nature own their subjection to it, 
 and yield a cheerful obedience to it as their natural 
 protector, as well as their lawful superior. Thus it 
 is that the character is formed for God, and the man 
 becomes pneumatical in the full sense of the word. It 
 is not at once on our believing in Christ, and tasting 
 his forgiving mercy, that we become pneumatical. 
 The pneuma may be quickened, but it may not yet be 
 the master faculty in human nature. So it was with 
 the Corinthians, who by their party spirit and sensual 
 practices were, in the judgment of the apostle, still 
 carnal. No censure could be so severe, no language 
 so cutting as this. Here are men, spiritual by pio- 
 fession, who are still carnal ' kya.Mn ou^/ A%«/« was 
 not a more cutting reproach to the Greek warriors 
 before Troy. It is sinful of course in natural men to 
 follow their natural inclinations ; for though an uncon¬ 
 verted man has not the pneuma with which to rule 
 psyche, yet he has the psyche which ought to govern 
 the flesh, but fails to do so. But this is doubly sinful 
 in spiritual men, who not only have the spirit, but 
 who know that the spirit ought to rule the soul as well 
 as the soul to rule the flesh. 
 
220 Conversion to God Explained. 
 
 Where this mastery of the spirit over the soul, 
 and the soul over the body is complete, there sancti¬ 
 fication is complete also. The apostle prays that 
 this may be the case with his Thessalonian converts, 
 i Thess. v. 23. But we are not to infer because this 
 is the aim of sanctification, that it is ever attained on 
 this side of the grave. The apostle disclaims this 
 state of entire sanctification even for himself. “Not 
 as though I had already attained, either were already 
 perfect” (Phil. iii. 12). It was the ideal state that 
 he followed after, as the sculptor tries to hammer 
 out of the marble the ideal that dwells in his mind, 
 and will not come out of the stone at his bidding. 
 So Michel Angelo felt, and expressed in one of his 
 sonnets, that the more the marble wastes, the more the 
 statue grows.*' 
 
 The vile shall day by day 
 Fall, like superfluous flesh, away. 
 
 In the same way it is, that as the external man 
 perishes, so the inward is renewed day by day. As 
 in the process of petrifaction, for every particle of 
 wood washed away by the dropping well, another 
 particle of stone is deposited in its place ; so our 
 sanctification goes on by a minute molecular change 
 of the heart from stone to flesh, a process of depetri¬ 
 faction as it might be called. Little by little the 
 flesh gives way to the spirit, and more and more the 
 spirit becomes accustomed to claim and enforce obedi¬ 
 ence. We do not say that the conflict will ever 
 
 * See Life of Michel Angelo by Grimm, Miss Bunnett’s Translation. 
 
Conversion to God Explained. 221 
 
 cease on this side the grave. The will, related as 
 it is to the psyche or soul, will sometimes turn to the 
 flesh; and if we are not on our guard, and prayerful 
 as well as watchful, we shall be surprised into sin, 
 and find ourselves, like Samson, quickly hurried from 
 the arms of Delilah to the prison-house of the Phili¬ 
 stines. But so long as we are true to our Nazarite 
 vow; so long as we keep the secret of our strength, 
 and do not presume on our past prowess, we are 
 safe. The Lord will not forsake those that depend 
 upon Him. At times we may be cast down, but 
 we shall not be destroyed. The spirit, like Samson’s 
 hair, will quickly grow again, and we shall shake 
 our invincible locks again, and do more in the strength 
 of the Lord than we ever have done before. Such is 
 the teaching of Scripture with regard to the Christian’s 
 sanctification. Thus it is that a sound psychology and 
 a sound theology establish and confirm each other. 
 On this distinction between psyche and pneuma, rests 
 the true doctrine of sanctification. It is an error to 
 build again the things which we destroyed, and to try 
 to save ourselves in gratitude for Christ’s love in so 
 freely saving us; but sanctification, rightly understood, 
 is the working out of what is begun at our conversion 
 —the seminal principle is then quickened, it grows 
 and asserts its presence, and by asserting its mastery 
 over the lower parts of our nature, restores the true 
 harmony of man’s constitution, as spirit, soul, and body, 
 which has been overturned by the fall. 
 
THE QUESTION OF THE NATURAL IM¬ 
 MORTALITY OF THE PSYCHE CON¬ 
 SIDERED. 
 
 When man has breathed his last breath, and sighed 
 his last sigh ; when the muscles begin to stiffen with 
 the rigor mortis , and the eye is glazed, and the pulse 
 still, and the heart ceases to beat—for “the pitcher 
 is broken at the fountain, and the wheel bioken at 
 the cistern,”—we say that the man is dead. The 
 physician and the physiologist carries his description 
 a little further ; he can describe how the vital func¬ 
 tions cease, one after the other, and in what order. 
 It is a moot point, whether the last pulse, or the last 
 breath, or even the last sense of excitibility to muscular 
 contraction, is the final and supreme moment when 
 physiology is to pronounce that the man is dead. 
 
 But at the point when the physiologist closes the 
 inquiry, the moralist may take it up. Is the man 
 truly dead, or is he only sleeping ? He is dead, the 
 physiologist says, because life, which is the sum total of 
 all those powers which resist dissolution, has ceased ; 
 the higher law by which certain chemical affinities 
 are arrested in living organic bodies is broken; and 
 
The Natural Immortality . 223 
 
 now the lower law, by which the particles of matter 
 seek their natural affinity, resumes its reign. Thus, 
 as life is an instance of a higher law by which 
 chemical affinity is suspended, death is a return to 
 the lower law. All organic matter comes out of in¬ 
 organic, and returns to it. This self-assertion of the 
 higher law is life, this mastery of the lower law is 
 death. 
 
 This is all the account that physiology can give of 
 death. As far as appearances go, death is an entire 
 dissolution, disintegration, and annihilation of man. 
 Immortality is a dream or desire projected into fact or 
 logical quibble. 
 
 « Thou makest thine appeal to me, 
 
 I bring to life, I bring to death, 
 
 The spirit does but mean the breath.” 
 
 We may project our desires forward, and delude 
 ourselves into mistaken memories for hopes. In that 
 sense we may speak of the immortality of fame, we may 
 say that Ctesar, Alexander, or Napoleon are not dead 
 because they live in our thoughts, and will live in his¬ 
 tory so long as the world lasts. Or again, we may 
 cheat ourselves with a quibble that though the indivi¬ 
 dual should perish, the race is immortal. But that is 
 saying nothing more of man than of any of the other 
 mammalia which now inhabit the earth, and even this 
 immortality of the species will not stand the test of 
 geology. 
 
 “ So careful of the type, but no, 
 
 From scarped cliff and quarried stone, 
 
 She cries a thousand types are gone, 
 
 I care for nothing ; all shall go.” 
 
224 The Natural Immortality 
 
 But here the moralist has a right to be heard. 
 He says that it is very true that as far as appear¬ 
 ances go, death is the end of man’s existence. But 
 may we not be reasoning too fast, and coming to 
 conclusions for which we have no data ? We give 
 up the body to the physiologist, death is the end of 
 the outer man; but suppose there be an inner man, 
 how can you assert that this inner moral nature is 
 destroyed by death as the outer case that contains it 
 is ? May not the reverse be the fact, and that the 
 death of the outer is the birth of the inner man; he 
 is set free then from this body of corruption and 
 passes into a world of light. Eastern spiritualism 
 says that we are born when we die, and die when we 
 are born. "Western physiology says the very opposite. 
 Who will pronounce that the East is wrong and the 
 West right ? 
 
 Thus the moralist throws back upon the phy¬ 
 siologist the onus probandi , that death is the end of 
 each man’s separate existence. It may be so, but 
 he has not proved it. As far as the body goes, 
 appearances are certainly in his favour; but from 
 all we know of mind and its operations, there are 
 certain appearances of which physiology takes no 
 account, and which we choose to set on the other 
 side as evidences that man does not wholly die. It 
 is in this sense that the first chapter of Bishop 
 Butler’s Analogy is to be understood. As proofs of 
 our existence after death, the arguments there ad¬ 
 duced are merely verbal, and such as would satisfy 
 no reasoner, much less one so exact and severe as 
 
225 
 
 Oj the Psyche. 
 
 the author of the Analogy. But as presumptions 
 against materialism they are quite strong enough for 
 his purpose. They throw back upon the atheist the 
 burden of proof, that when a man’s brains are out it 
 is all over with him. Till this is settled demonstra¬ 
 tively the Bishop will hold with the immense majority 
 of mankind, that death is not an eternal sleep, and that 
 there is every likelihood that our real existence, so far 
 from being destroyed by death, only then enters upon 
 a new and higher state of being. 
 
 Thus the question of existence after death has 
 reached this stage, that there are certain appear¬ 
 ances against it, but on the other hand certain deep 
 instincts for it. All that physiology can tell us bears 
 against the notion of our existence after death, but 
 all our moral convictions bear the other way, and 
 between these conflicting presumptions, the prajudicia 
 of two opposite schools of thought, the judgment, if 
 candid, cries a halt, and like Paul and his shipmates 
 with anchors out but breakers ahead, wishes for the 
 day. 
 
 But let sceptics say what they will, contented ignor¬ 
 ance is, of all states of mind, the most painful to the 
 majority of mankind. To sit on the tongue of the 
 balance, and weigh the objections on either side, with¬ 
 out perceiving the scales incline either way by a hair’s 
 breadth, may suit some peculiar tempers, in whom the 
 speculative faculty has entirely overpowered the prac¬ 
 tical. But mankind in general will never long continue 
 in such a state of mind as this. It will have some 
 solution of this mystery, whether true or false ; it will 
 
 
226 The Natural Immortality 
 
 set up some guide, and accept his teaching as the truth 
 on this question. 
 
 Superstition, philosophy, and the Revelation of 
 Jesus Christ, all come forward to assure us of man’s 
 existence after death. Their witness agrees in con¬ 
 demning the materialist theory, that death is the anni¬ 
 hilation of man as well as of brute. But it agrees in 
 little else. The three witnesses give a conflicting 
 account of the mode of our existence aftei death. They 
 may, therefore, all three be false—but it is certain 
 they cannot be all equally true witnesses to a fact in 
 which their witness agrees not together. 
 
 Of the superstitious theory of the soul’s existence 
 after death we need not say much here. It forms the 
 groundwork of all systems of priestcraft everywhere. 
 Under a thousand fanciful aspects we find the old 
 thought recurring, that the ghost of a dead man is that 
 part which survives the body. Reluctantly it disen¬ 
 gages itself from the body. Virgil describes Camilla 
 extricating herself from her corpse after the spear of 
 Aruns has given her a death-wound,— 
 
 “ Turn frigida toto 
 Paulatim exsolvit se corpore.” 
 
 For awhile it hovers over the place of the dead, wait¬ 
 ing till the body has received decent burial, it then 
 passes across some fabled river to an under-world of 
 gloom and shadow, where it leads a vague and dream¬ 
 like existence, pleasurable or painful according as its 
 deeds in the body were good or wicked. In these 
 superstitious theories of existence after death, there is 
 
Of the Psyche. 227 
 
 generally only the faintest degree of moral sentiment. 
 The rewards and punishments are sensual only, and 
 dealt out capriciously, and with little regard to char¬ 
 acter. A hero, for instance, or the offspring of the 
 union of a mortal with an immortal, is deified after 
 death, and passes, not to the under-world at all, but 
 to the upper world of the Gods. The crimes, more¬ 
 over, which call for deep and eternal punishment are 
 crimes generally of sacrilege, which the priestly order 
 were interested to punish and repress, or incestuous 
 acts committed under the leading of destiny or blind 
 passion. We may dismiss these superstitious testi¬ 
 monies to man’s existence after death. Like the 
 religions of which they formed the chief support 
 they are dying out under the light of common day. 
 The only one of them which has any seeming vitality 
 lives because it is a monstrous after-birth of Chris¬ 
 tian and pagan thought, endued with all the vitality 
 of the one and the sensuousness of the other. Yet, 
 even the Romish dogma of purgatory, cannot survive 
 the advance of sound views on psychology and phy¬ 
 siology. It lives on human ignorance as the parasite 
 on the decay of the tree. Heaven and hell, it has been 
 said, are as much a part of the Italian’s geography 
 as the Adriatic and the Apennines: the Queen of 
 Heaven looks on the streets as clear as the morning- 
 star, and the souls in purgatory are more readily pre¬ 
 sent to conception than the political prisoners immured 
 in the dungeons of Venice.* 
 
 A state of mind like this will not last much longer. 
 
 * Quoted from Alger’s History of Doctrine of Future I.ife, p. 427. 
 
228 
 
 The Natural Immortality 
 
 We need not trouble ourselves about such spectres 
 as these. As the poet of hell said of a similar 
 subject,— 
 
 “Non ragioniam di lor ma guarda e passa.” 
 
 The next theory of existence after death is that of 
 philosophy. By a natural confusion of thought, the 
 instinct or voice of universal conscience, which whis¬ 
 pers that man is not mortal as the brutes, is elevated 
 into a declaration that he is immortal. Thus the -posse 
 non mori is transposed to mean non posse niori. The 
 voice of conscience, which is the voice of God in the 
 world, says everywhere,— 
 
 “ Thou madest man, he knows not why, 
 
 He thinks he was not made to die.” 
 
 But the postulate or presumption is not strong 
 enough to support our hopes of existence hereafter, 
 and so philosophy comes forward to underprop it with 
 its proofs and analogies. There are certain anticipa¬ 
 tions of immortality, presages of a life beyond the 
 grave. Philosophy offers her method to turn these 
 anticipations into arguments, these presages into proofs. 
 Proof is too often the finding reasons for what we 
 have already decided to hold, and as the majority of 
 mankind have rejected (and rightly), the materialist 
 version of death, reason is set to the task of justifying 
 the convictions of conscience, and finding proof that 
 man does not die when his brains are out. 
 
 Unfortunately reason does not begin the inquiry at 
 
Of the Psyche. 229 
 
 the right point, but takes up the argument at a middle 
 point in human history, instead of at the beginning. 
 Philosophy sets out with assuming the fact that all 
 men die, instead of asking the question why men die. 
 It assumes death to be a normal stage in man’s develop¬ 
 ment, instead of a disease and disturbance of the right 
 course of nature. Now, as in all cases of analysis, 
 until we get to the ultimate facts of the case, our 
 analysis will be faulty; the unresolved quantity in 
 the problem will come out unresolved in the solution. 
 Death is not an ultimate fact in human nature; it is 
 not the law it is assumed to be. “ He thinks he was 
 not made to die ” is a true deliverance of conscience; 
 but there are two explanations of this complex pheno¬ 
 menon—the fact of death, and our fear of it. The 
 one explanation of death is that of Scripture, that 
 death is penal; the other, that of philosophy, that it 
 is a process to a higher life. Which are we to accept? 
 The two are not to be reconciled; they exclude each 
 other. We do not blame philosophy (pre-Christian, 
 we mean) for thinking that death was normal. What 
 else could the mind conclude about a fact to which 
 there was not a single exception ? The Greeks knew 
 nothing of the story of man’s fall and his loss of im¬ 
 mortality in Eden ; and finding men mortal, they were 
 obliged to feign an immortality, and build up a fiction 
 (a noble one, we admit, like a Grecian temple, 
 beautiful in its very ruins) of the immortality of the 
 Psyche, and its deliverance by death out of the body, 
 in which it was imprisoned as a butterfly in its 
 
 cocoon. 
 
230 The Natural Immortality 
 
 The mistake of Greek thinkers was the most 
 natural one in the world ; so natural that they are to 
 be excused, nay honoured, for holding to it. But for 
 us to repeat their error is to betray wilful prejudice, 
 the same as if chemists persisted in speaking of phlo¬ 
 giston after Lavoisier had taught the theory of com¬ 
 bustion. Till the middle of last century, it was quite 
 as reasonable to say that a candle burned because it 
 gave oft an unknown x (we will call it phlogiston), as 
 because it consumed an unknown y (we will call it 
 oxygen). The one hypothesis was as good as the 
 other, quoad hypothesis, i.e., as a provisional theory to 
 account for the facts of the case. Without these 
 hypotheses or landing-places, the heights of discovery 
 would never have been scaled to this day. But when 
 that which is perfect is come, that which is in part 
 must be done away. The phlogiston hypothesis re¬ 
 tires on the discovery of oxygen. The one was only 
 an opinion , the other is a fact; and when opinions and 
 facts come into collision, there is but one conclusion in 
 any mind where truth retains her supremacy. 
 
 So with philosophic theories of existence after death. 
 Till life and immortality had been brought to light by 
 the gospel, it would have been reasonable to argue, as 
 the philosophers did, that the soul does not die be¬ 
 cause it cannot die. As there was no external evidence 
 for existence after death, they had to fall back on in¬ 
 ternal. The immortality of the soul was the phlogiston 
 hypothesis which accounted very plausibly for the con¬ 
 tradiction between man’s inner aspirations and the 
 humiliating fact of his early and untimely death. But 
 
231 
 
 Of the Psyche. 
 
 the resurrection of Christ as the firstfruits from the 
 dead is a fact in these moral speculations the same as 
 the discovery of oxygen in the speculations of chemists. 
 It is not only a fact in itself, but one irreconcileable 
 with all previous hypotheses. Which are we to em¬ 
 brace ? Either man is non-mortal because he is im¬ 
 mortal, or he is non-mortal because “ the hour is 
 coming when all that are in the graves shall hear the 
 voice of the Son of God, and shall come forth: they 
 that have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and 
 they that have done evil, unto the resurrection of 
 damnation.” 
 
 We will now proceed to consider the proofs* with 
 which philosophy seeks to build up the presumption 
 that the dissolution of the body is not the entire death 
 of man. These proofs may be classified under the 
 three following heads :—the Metaphysical, the Onto¬ 
 logical, and the Teleological. 
 
 A. The metaphysical proof rests on the assumption 
 that man is a being of two natures ; the one of which 
 
 * Kant’s Kritik, of which the following is only an expansion, ought to have 
 set at rest the popular way of speaking of the soul’s natural immortality. 
 Here is philosophy throwing up the tables, after passing in review, one by 
 one, the usual arguments by which it is attempted to roll away the stone from 
 the door of the sepulchre. Whatever may be thought of the constructive 
 part of Kant’s Kritik, the destructive is positively unanswerable. Yet in this 
 country at least, to judge from recent editors of Bishop Butler, Kants 
 criticism of the usual philosophic proofs of the soul s immortality is almost un 
 known. It is a curious instance of that habit of mind which the late Arch- 
 bishop Whately called proof-proof. An argument is demolished, as we think ; 
 but we turn our backs, and it starts up again as lively as ever, proving what a 
 little hold logic has over men’s convictions when their wishes go in the other 
 direction. To reason from our wishes is very illogical, but it is very natura 
 
 and very human. 
 
232 The Natural Immortality 
 
 we call the body, and the other the soul. The one is 
 compounded, and the other uncompounded. What¬ 
 ever is made up of parts is capable of dissolution ; but 
 that which is indiscerptible is also indestructible. 
 The soul is such a unit. Immutability is an essential 
 property of the soul, as cold is of snow. This argu¬ 
 ment, which every reader of Plato’s Phaedo is 
 thoroughly familiar with, has come down to modern 
 times, and still plays its part in modern metaphysics. 
 The schoolmen relied upon it as their strong point. 
 It was elaborated by Descartes, whose whole philo¬ 
 sophy rests on the assumption of the essential distinction 
 between the animal and the intellectual soul. Brutes, 
 he thought, were mere machines; their existence a 
 kind of waking dream. Consciousness, so for from 
 being a mode of existence, as with later metaphysicians, 
 was with him the condition of existence. Cogito ergo 
 sum is a noble but fallacious attempt to rest the soul 
 on itself. “ O set me on the rock that is higher than 
 I,” is the exclamation of the Psalmist; to which 
 spiritualizing philosophers return the answer that the 
 soul is itself a rock. Maximus Tyrius argues the im¬ 
 mortality of the soul from the duration of knowledge 
 and memory. # The body, he says, can no more re¬ 
 tain the impressions made on it than a piece of melting 
 wax can the stamp of the seal. He therefore compares 
 the soul to a rock standing out of the sea. The same 
 comparison of a rock, engraven with certain characters, 
 and washed by the waves beneath, is used of conscience 
 
 * Vide Diss. xxviii., p. 292. Ed. Davis. 
 
233 
 
 Of the Psyche. 
 
 by an eloquent but superficial French moralist. The 
 comparison in the case of conscience, Bishop Fitzgerald 
 well remarks, might gain something in correctness if 
 we imagine the inscription traced upon a softer sub¬ 
 stance. “For the stormy waves of passion not only 
 conceal, while they prevail, the sacred character ol 
 virtue, but as billow after billow passes over the 
 tablet, they tend to obliterate the lines.’ The same 
 may be said of Maximus Tyrius’ comparison of the 
 soul to a rock breasting the waves. The duration of 
 knowledge and memory are like the rock which resists 
 a wave for centuries, but is worn away at last. Our 
 sensations, even that of light, will not live for ever on 
 memory. Milton, for instance, who wrote the Paiadise 
 Lost a little while after he had lost the use of his 
 sight, had lost (as critics have often remarked) the 
 sense of colour when a few years after he wrote the 
 Paradise Regained. Colour-blindness had become a 
 mental as well as a physical affliction, and this is one 
 of the causes of the falling off of the latter poem. 
 If memory thus fails us during our lifetime, to lest 
 our immortality on the ineffaceable nature of mental 
 impressions is to rest our hopes on a broken reed. 
 
 The Cartesian theory, that thought being the in¬ 
 separable quality of soul, the extinction of a think¬ 
 ing being is a logical contradiction, was carried a 
 step farther by Mendelssohn. He argued that no 
 time could occur between the moment preceding the 
 soul’s extinction and that in which it ceased to exist; 
 and that as we cannot conceive of such an interval 
 between thought and consciousness, consciousness 
 
234 The Natural Immortality 
 
 must be an attribute of thought inherent to and in¬ 
 separable from it. But Kant easily disposed of these 
 kind of subtleties. He showed that while the soul 
 could not cease to exist by any diminution of its ex¬ 
 tensive quality, that the argument, from its simplicity, 
 did not exclude its extinction through the gradual 
 weakening of its forces and the successive relaxation 
 of its intensive quantity. For even memory has 
 always a degree which may be indefinitely decreased 
 —so of self consciousness, and so of all the other 
 faculties. Hence there is nothing to prevent a simple 
 substance from being resolved into several simple 
 substances, and several simple substances from flowing 
 together into one, which would contain within itself 
 the degree of the reality of all the preceding sub¬ 
 stances together. 
 
 Thus the metaphysical proof of the soul’s im¬ 
 mortality rests on two assumptions, which are not 
 only without proof, but also contrary to all experi¬ 
 ence. It is assumed, in the first place, that body 
 and mind are distinct and divisible parts of human 
 nature; and, secondly , that of these parts one is com¬ 
 pounded and dissoluble, the other uncompounded 
 and indissoluble. To the first assumption modern 
 physiology has advanced a decided negative. Crude 
 as the theories of the French school of last century, 
 that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes 
 bile, they were not more wide of the mark than 
 the Cartesian theory that the soul is in the body as 
 an oak in a flower-pot. We have not yet reached 
 the point when we can say what the connection be- 
 
235 
 
 Of the Psyche. 
 
 tween the two is; but all advance is in the direction 
 of a fusion of physiology and psychology in one, 
 when we shall neither speak of the body without 
 the mind, nor of the mind without the body. When 
 two gases uniting in definite proportions combine 
 into a new substance with distinct properties of its 
 own, unlike those of the gases when separate, we 
 call this tertium quid by a name of its own. For 
 all practical purposes water is still an element. It 
 is not a fusion or mixture, as of water with wine, 
 much less of one floating on the other, as of oil on 
 water; but it is a union in which the very substance 
 itself of oxygen and hydrogen, and not the phenomena 
 only, are absorbed into a new substance, with new and 
 distinct phenomena of its own, which we call water. 
 So in the union of mind and matter in the formation 
 of man. Man is not a mixture of mind and matter, 
 much less an immortal mind in a mortal bodybut he 
 is the identity of two distinct substances which lose 
 
 their identity in giving him his. 
 
 Man, and not mind by itself, is thus the true 
 monad. We may analyse the constituent elements of 
 which he is composed, but our analysis does not war¬ 
 rant us to say that the essential property of man 
 resides either in body or mind, or to suppose that 
 man could exist as pure mind without body, any more 
 than as body without mind. All analogy goes to 
 infer that dissolution of unity is entire destruction. 
 That the life lies in the nexus. In the case of these 
 Siamese twins the ligature that binds the two together 
 is situated, it is said, in a mam artery; so that 
 
236 The Natural Immortality 
 
 separation would be fatal, and the death of the one 
 must lead to that of the other. So it seems to be 
 with mind and body in man. They have been joined 
 together by no freak of nature, but by the appoint¬ 
 ment of God. Just as water is the substance, and 
 oxygen and hydrogen only the elements,—elements 
 incapable of any separate existence of their own,— 
 and passing into fresh combinations, when the union 
 in which they are held is dissolved. So of mind and 
 matter, the elements of man. For aught we know to 
 the contrary, the one element might pass away to 
 form fresh combinations of mind, as the other element, 
 matter, certainly passes away to form fresh combin¬ 
 ations. 
 
 But mind, it is said, is not compounded, and is 
 therefore not dissoluble. We have already con¬ 
 sidered Kant’s reply to this objection, that the soul 
 may decay from loss of intensive as well as of exten¬ 
 sive force. Assuming it to be indivisible, it is a 
 long step from this to assert that it is indestructible. 
 Plato begs the question when he argues that every 
 body is destroyed by its own kindred evil, and that 
 sin is the kindred evil of the soul. But that, as sin 
 does not destroy the springs of being, the soul can 
 continue to exist whatever evil passions it may fall 
 a prey to. Such a theory of evil might be held by a 
 Greek whose notion of sin was only superficial, though 
 Aristotle rightly recognised that depravity as cpdagrixri 
 tuv ag%wt', destructive of the nature of that which it 
 depraves. 
 
 However small the beginnings of evil may be, we 
 
2 37 
 
 Of the Psyche. 
 
 know that it works through and through our nature 
 like corruption, “ mining all unseen.” To suppose that 
 evil is not corrosive of the very nature of the soul, 
 when it has entered in and been taken up into it, is 
 to incline to, or even to go as far as, the Manichean 
 conception of evil, and hold with the Persian philo¬ 
 sophy, that there is an eternal principle of evil as well 
 as an eternal principle of good, and that the conflicts 
 between the two in both necessary and eternal. 
 
 Thus, the two assumptions, on which the meta¬ 
 physical proof of the soul’s immortality rest, crumble 
 away under the touch of inquiry. We may distin¬ 
 guish, but we cannot divide soul and body, nor can we 
 say of the soul that it is a unit in itself, and therefore 
 indivisible and indestructible. Had man no better 
 ground than this on which to rest his hopes for here¬ 
 after, he would have little hope in death, and the dis¬ 
 coveries of modern physiology of the relation between 
 mind and brain would fill him with the gloomy fear 
 that the mind was but a certain harmony of brain, 
 which could not outlast the conditions that produced it. 
 
 B. The ontological proof is the celebrated one of 
 Anselm applied to the soul. We have an idea of in¬ 
 finite holiness, goodness, and truth, and as holiness, 
 goodness, and truth in us are not substances, but only 
 qualities of beings, who are finitely holy, good, and true; 
 so they must be qualities of a Being who is infinitely 
 holy, good, and true. The argument from the idea 
 of a thing to the fact itself, is one of very dubious 
 validity. We know too little of the necessary laws 
 of thought to be able to assert in any particular case, 
 
238 The Natural Immortality 
 
 that a thing must be so because it is inconceivable 
 otherwise. Three centuries have swept away a whole 
 world of self-evident truths, and set up their inconceiv¬ 
 able opposites in their room. It was inconceivable 
 that our head should point at night where our feet 
 had pointed at noon. It was inconceivable that the 
 world should roll through space at a velocity greater 
 than that of a cannon ball, and that we should not be 
 whirled off by centrifugal force. It was inconceivable 
 to Voltaire that the wonders of the Bible, its miracles, 
 types, and prophecies, should have been wrought for 
 the benefit of an obscure race in a corner of the world. 
 The question of probability before proof has been 
 worked out with great ingenuity by many able 
 thinkers, and the conclusion they come to is this, that 
 except a few laws of thought connected with the pro¬ 
 perties of number, the metaphysical law of identity 
 and difference, and the moral law that we are bound 
 to obey conscience, we know of nothing which may 
 not have been otherwise than it is. There are many 
 truths which undoubtedly seem necessary or first truths, 
 but when tested we find they are contingent and 
 relative. They depend on some appointment higher 
 than their own, they are conditioned by other causes 
 more remote than they. 
 
 The ontological proof, if worth anything, would bear 
 to be tested by an appeal to experience. Necessary 
 laws are always universal. Cicero lays this down as a 
 test of a law of nature, that it has the consent of all 
 nations.* But so far from all men everywhere having 
 
 * Tusc. Ques. i. 13. Omni autem in re consensus omnium gentium lex 
 naturae putanda est. So Origen de Princ. ii. 11, iii. 1, 13, 122. 
 
2 39 
 
 Of the Psyche. 
 
 this sense of the immortality of the soul, opinion has 
 been always divided on this subject, and some have 
 held that the soul dies with the body, others that it 
 survives indeed, but passes into animal forms, and, as 
 the vital principle, thus runs the circle round of ani¬ 
 mated nature: it is only a very few of the better sort 
 of philosophers who have distinctly held to personal 
 immortality. The consensus gentium , whatever it is 
 worth in itself, is against the argument, that the soul’s 
 immortality is part of our conception of it, as extension 
 is our conception of body. If the voice of human 
 nature everywhere gave response that it was so, then 
 we should attach great weight to such a testimony. 
 But is it so ? Does not an appeal to history decide 
 against it ? We do not deny an element of truth in 
 this ontological proof. Conscience whispers of a here¬ 
 after—her voice goes as far as to testify that it is ap¬ 
 pointed unto men once to die, and after death the judg¬ 
 ment. But a hereafter is one thought, eternity another. 
 The possibility that I shall not die with the brutes is 
 different from the impossibility of my dying at all. 
 The one is a genuine voice of conscience, the other is 
 only a philosopheme founded upon it, though appa¬ 
 rently as stable as the foundation on which it rests. 
 But the foundation is not to be confounded with the 
 superstructure. 
 
 Kant’s test of the ontological proof is decisive of its 
 worthlessness. For a man to think that he has a hun¬ 
 dred dollars is surely not the same as actually to possess 
 them. The ontologist says in reply, that we could 
 never think of a hundred dollars, unless dollars really 
 existed. But if so, he is only reasoning in a circle, 
 
240 The Natural Immortality 
 
 that the idea proves the fact, as well as the fact sug¬ 
 gests the idea. There must be some objective reality 
 to account for the subjective conviction. If we were 
 to admit reasoning like this, it is impossible to say 
 where we should stop. It is but one step from this 
 to say, they exist because we think of them; It is 
 easy to see that the ontological proof found favour with 
 Spinoza and Hegel. Spinoza advancing on the Car¬ 
 tesian notion of thought as the condition of being, 
 identified the two as the essential qualities of substance. 
 It is substance which is, and substance which thinks. 
 Substance is thinking being, and outside of thought 
 there is no existence at all. Descartes said, Cogito 
 ergo sum. Spinoza went a step farther and said of the 
 universe, Est ergo cogitat. Pantheism was thus the 
 inevitable conclusion of reasoning in this vicious circle 
 from thought to things. Hegel went, if possible, 
 further. With him substance is not the identity of 
 thought and existence, but existence is rather a quality 
 of thought. His system, under another name, is the 
 barest phenomenology. Man, as with Protagoras of 
 old, is the measure of all things. The identity of the 
 Ego and non-Ego is thought, but it is thought which 
 thus identifies the non-Ego: things exist because 
 they exist in thought. Outside this there is no 
 criterion of truth. Truth is what each man troweth 
 of things; and as men have the idea of the absolute 
 and infinite, the absolute and infinite exist. But as 
 the idea is impersonal, so it has no existence outside 
 the thinking subject. This school of ontology can 
 never produce anything higher than the idea of the 
 infinite, which is very far short of proving our personal 
 
Of the Psyche. 241 
 
 immortality. The ontological proof, like the meta¬ 
 physical, is valuable only for its negative results. Its 
 positive results are nil. It is a fair presumption before 
 proof that man is capable of immortality because he 
 can rise to the conception of it, but for any further 
 demonstrative force it is valueless. If the reason from 
 our wishes is worth anything, the believers in Nirwana 
 outnumber those who believe in heaven and hell in the 
 proportion of live to two. 
 
 C. The teleological proof is the one which is least 
 logical, and yet the most satisfactory of the three. 
 The argument for a future life from the inequalities of 
 the present, would of itself be insufficient to convince 
 any acute thinker. Because there are wrongs on this 
 side of the grave, to suppose there must be another 
 life beyond the grave to redress these wrongs would 
 be to assume too much. How do we know that they 
 will be redressed there ? If there are inequalities and 
 anomalies in this life, why not in the next ? It is like 
 the pre-existence hypothesis to account for the origin 
 of evil. The difficulty is only pushed back or pushed 
 forward : it is not really solved in either case. Why 
 was evil permitted in a former state of being ? we ask 
 in the one case. Are we sure that all wrongs will be 
 redressed in a future state of being ? we ask in the 
 other case. But the real force of the teleological 
 proof lies in this, that God is a righteous ruler, and 
 that He must enter into judgment, and render to every 
 man according to his deeds. At present his judgment 
 tarries ; and men, if they were wise, would feel that 
 this long-suffering of God is salvation. But that He 
 
 0 . 
 
242 The Natural Immortality 
 
 has appointed a day in which He will judge the world 
 in righteousness is a truth which conscience at once 
 accepts, though it could not say beforehand that it 
 must be so. The person of the Judge, and the nature 
 of the award, we can only learn by positive revelation , 
 but unless we sophisticate our conscience, and drug it 
 with excuses, we must feel that there is a day of judg¬ 
 ment for men, and that, if for no other reason, there 
 must be an existence, after death in order that there 
 may be an award to all. 
 
 The teleological proof thus rests for its support on 
 the character of God. We see no good reason why 
 the inequalities of life should be redressed except this, 
 that God is a God who hateth iniquity, and will by 
 no means clear the guilty. Lax or Epicurean views 
 of his moral attributes would leave us with the im¬ 
 pression that as there is evil unredressed in this life, so 
 there will be in the next. Eut a sound view of 
 God’s moral attributes leads us on to hold that full re¬ 
 tribution and reward must attend on vice and virtue, if 
 not in this world, then certainly in the next. If for no 
 other reason therefore, there must be a future life, 
 in order that God may so vindicate his holy abhor¬ 
 rence of sin. This is the proof which has commended 
 itself as most convincing to thinkers of the most oppo¬ 
 site schools of thought—Athenagoras and Raimond de 
 Sebunde, Mendelssohn and Goschel.* But at most it 
 
 * Vid. Athenagoras “De Resurrectione Mortuorum,” xix., xx.; Mendels¬ 
 sohn’s “Phoedo,” 201 ; Goschel, p. 32. The authorities are quoted at length 
 by Schultz, “ Die Voraussetzungen der Christlichen Lehre von der Unster- 
 blichkeit,” p. 46. 
 
OJ the Psyche. 243 
 
 only proves an existence after death, not that this 
 existence is either final or endless. It argues with 
 great plausibility that as we see no settlement made 
 with wickedness here, there must be some settlement 
 made hereafter. But whether that settlement is to be 
 a final one, it does not presume to say. Proof it is 
 none; but it furnishes a strong presumption in favour 
 of the proof which revelation brings, that all men shall 
 rise to give an account of the deeds done in their 
 bodies. It is the voice of conscience within witnessing 
 to that truth which it cannot by itself establish, but 
 which, when once brought in, it goes far to confirm. 
 
 Thus, to sum up these three proofs, the metaphy¬ 
 sical, the ontological, and the teleological, are unsatis¬ 
 factory, chiefly because they attempt too much. If 
 put out of their place, and raised into independent 
 proofs, they only arouse criticism, and excite the 
 scepticism they are intended to lay. Their logical 
 value is little; but we should err in the other 
 extreme if we were to reject them as altogether 
 worthless. The sense of a hereafter awaiting us 
 after death is as strong as any moral instinct in human 
 nature. Like other instincts of the lower creation, 
 it works blindly, not knowing its own end and aim, 
 but none the less true for the purpose for which it 
 was implanted. The real base on which this instinct 
 of immortality rests, and without which it would 
 soon fade out and disappear, is the continuity of 
 moral character, and the consequent necessity for a 
 world beyond the present, in which the character 
 here formed for good or evil, may receive the full 
 
244 Natural Immortality. 
 
 fruition of that for which it has been preparing itself 
 
 in time. c 
 
 We should describe these so-called proofs of our 
 
 immortality as intimations more than arguments. 
 They are presages rather than proofs, and belong to 
 the poet more even than to the philosopher. Words¬ 
 worth, in that noble ode in which these intimations 
 are described, with lyric grace and almost prophetic 
 fire has carried the proof, if proof it can be called, 
 from the dignity of man to the point where it breaks 
 down with its own weight. Man is made for immor¬ 
 tality, and a voice within whispers that it must be so. 
 He comes from God, and goes to God. 
 
 « Our birth is but a sleep and forgetting ; 
 
 The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, 
 
 Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
 
 And cometh from afar.” 
 
 But this argument for our immortality from our 
 pre-existence, leads to conclusions which the poet 
 himself would reject, if he really considered the 
 consequences of his own theory. It would lead 
 either to the Brahminical theory of transmigrations of 
 being, or the Buddhist notion of a final absorption in 
 the ocean of universal spirit, in which there is no more 
 
 being, because there is no more birth. 
 
 Thus, the argument for man’s natural immortality 
 is no sooner put into a logical form, than it leads to 
 a paralogism. We prove too much. These pre¬ 
 sages of a life beyond the present, carry us back as 
 well as forward. In the hands of ' a poet like 
 
Of the Psyche. 
 
 245 
 
 Wordsworth, or a poetical philosopher like Plato, 
 they make out a case for pre-existence, on which we 
 can say nothing more than this, that anyone who 
 can stake his hopes of existence hereafter, on any thing 
 so shadowy as this theory of pre-existence, must be 
 one who confounds memories with hopes, and fancies 
 with facts. Taken as a whole, these presages of 
 immortality, which we call the ontological, cosmo¬ 
 logical, and teleological, are enough to excite a surmise, 
 but not to establish a proof. They bring reason, like 
 the women, early to the tomb of Jesus, but they are 
 unable to roll away the stone, much less to bring the 
 dead to life. 
 
APPLICATION OF THE DOCTRINE OF 
 THE TRICHOTOMY TO DISCOVER THE 
 PRINCIPLE OF FINAL REWARDS AND 
 PUNISHMENTS. 
 
 “ God is a spirit.” u He alone has immortality. 
 Is there any connection between these two declara¬ 
 tions as to the nature of God? Do we see any re¬ 
 lation between his essence as a spirit, and his attribute 
 as the Being who was, and is, and is to come. We 
 think there is. The little we know of spirit as 
 opposed to matter amounts to this, that whereas 
 material existences depend each on the other, and the 
 higher the organism the more dependent it is on all 
 lower organisms for support; with spirit the very con¬ 
 verse is the case. Spirit is not supported by, but 
 sustains all existences lower than itself. Unlike the 
 atoms of matter, which are in continual flux, the 
 mineral passing into the plant, and the plant into the 
 animal, spirit is self-contained. It does not draw its 
 springs of being from without, but from within ; and 
 when it goes out in action, does so rather for the good 
 of others than for its own. Forasmuch as we are the 
 offspring of God, we are dimly conscious of having 
 
Final Rewards and Punishments. 247 
 
 something akin to this essential property of spirit in 
 our spirits. It does not come into distinct conscious¬ 
 ness in many cases, but in so far as it exists at all it is 
 an intimation to us of a Being who is pure spirit, and 
 who in the fullest sense of the word is self-contained, 
 and therefore eternal. 
 
 If God, then, is immortal because He is a Spirit, 
 we have not far to look for the true ground of man s 
 immortality. We are made in Gods image, and we 
 have seen that this image of God is not to be sought 
 in the animal or even in the intellectual part of our 
 nature, but in the moral or spiritual. It is only in so 
 far as man is a spirit that we can see any ground for 
 supposing that he is made to exist for ever, and to 
 enjoy the favour of God. But man is not a pure 
 spirit. We cannot say this even of angels. The im¬ 
 mortality, then, of men or of angels seems to depend 
 upon their continuing in the image of God. Once that 
 they lose this they lose with it that eternal life, which 
 seems to consist in the knowledge of God. Their 
 existence does not instantly end with the extinction of 
 spiritual life; but the conditions of immortality are 
 gone, and they exist only for such time as God is 
 pleased that they shall live, as monuments of his wrath, 
 and warnings to those who have not sinned. 
 
 As we know so little of the nature of angels, it is 
 safer to confine our reflections on this subject to the 
 case of men. Of the immortality of man we may 
 collect this from Scripture that it springs from his 
 being given a spirit made in the image of God; but 
 that when he lost that image and became dead in 
 
248 Final Rewards and Punishments. 
 
 trespasses and sins, then he fell under the law of 
 mortality of the lower animals, and from the day 
 that he sinned came under the sentence of death. 
 “ Death passed over all, for that all have sinned.” 
 Man chose to follow the lower instincts rather than 
 the higher. He indulged his intellect at the. expense 
 of his spirit; and the flesh at the expense of his in¬ 
 tellect. The psyche rebelled against the pneuma when 
 Adam saw that it was a tree to make men wise; the 
 sarx or fleshly desire rebelled against the psyche when 
 the woman saw that it was pleasant to the eye, and 
 good for food: and the result was anarchy. The con¬ 
 stitution of human nature was broken up. Man had 
 made the fatal and final choice—for a mesa of pottage 
 he had sold his birthright—like the base Indian, he 
 had thrown a pearl away richer than all his tribe. 
 But the choice was irrevocable ; his destiny was fixed; 
 dying, he must die. For himself and his posterity 
 Adam had chosen the animal instead of the spiritual 
 nature, and he had now to live the animal life, and, like 
 the animal, to fall back upon the law of decay and dis¬ 
 solution. He had sown to the flesh, and must of the 
 flesh reap corruption. Hence it was that from the 
 day that he sinned, the sentence began to take effect 
 .—dying, thou shalt die. Thus the death was in the 
 same order as the sin. First there was the death of 
 the spirit, then of the soul or intellect, and lastly of 
 the body itself. The instant that Adam sinned his 
 spirit died; for what is death but the higher sinking 
 into subjection to the lower? When we speak of the 
 animal dying, we mean that the power which arrests 
 
Final Rewards and Punishments. 249 
 
 chemical action fails, and the organic sinks into the 
 inorganic. So when we say that the spnit dies, we 
 mean that the higher or pneumatical nature falls under 
 the law of the psychical, and shares its fate. The 
 higher nature thus is subdued by the lower, and if 
 there is no property of inherent immortality in the in¬ 
 tellect more than in the body of man, it is cleai that 
 with the death of the spirit the only spark of immor¬ 
 tality in man died, and the reign of death began with 
 the reign of sin. 
 
 The objection to this view, which confines the 
 immortality of man to the possession of the spiiit, is this 
 
 _that it appears to exclude the necessity foi any 
 
 future state of rewards and punishments. How, it 
 will be said, can we reconcile this with the teaching of 
 Scripture, that the wages of sin is death, not the 
 death, i.e., of the body only in this life, but of body 
 and soul in hell hereafter ? To this we answer that 
 the popular view of the punishment of Adam s sin is 
 founded on a misconception of the reason which Scrip¬ 
 ture gives for an existence after death, and of rewards 
 and punishments in a higher state of being. If we 
 might conjecture on such a subject without committing 
 the folly of arraigning the wisdom and goodness of 
 God, we should say that had there been no provision 
 made for putting away Adam’s sin, the sentence of 
 death passed on Adam would have been instantly and 
 exactly enforced. Dying, he would have died. In 
 the day that he sinned his spirit or immortal part died, 
 and soul and body would have followed a few years 
 after, by that law of dissolution which is common to all 
 
250 Final Rewards and Punishments. 
 
 animal life, and which he was only exempted from in 
 so far as he was a spirit, and continued to live in the 
 image of God. Thus the penalty on Adam’s sin was 
 death, or gradual and entire extinction, as life was 
 withdrawn successively from spirit, soul, and body. 
 
 If we take our Lord’s words,* in their plain and 
 natural meaning, all life beyond the grave, as well as 
 all judgment, either to life eternal or to death eternal, 
 comes from Him as the Son of man. He has life in 
 Himself; this life is given to Him in virtue of His in¬ 
 carnation. He is the quickening Spirit as the first 
 Adam was the living soul. He not only executes the 
 judgment, because he is the Son of man, but He even 
 called men from their graves. All who are sleeping 
 in their graves, the dead of all time, from the first day 
 to the last, are to hear that voice, and come forth, they 
 that have done good unto the resurrection of life, 
 and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of 
 damnation. 
 
 The plain meeting of this passage is this, that the 
 hereafter of the whole human race is bound up with 
 the person and work of Christ, not merely, as we 
 commonly think, the happiness or misery of the human 
 race. He is the resurrection and the life—the two 
 words are not tautologous. He both raises men and 
 judges them—the being of all, and not only the well¬ 
 being of the saved, results from his Incarnation. We 
 are not going beyond the sense of this and many 
 other Scriptures when we say that if Christ were not 
 raised, death would most probably have been what the 
 
 * John v. 25-29. 
 
Final Rewards and Punishments. 251 
 
 ungodly and impenitent would wish it to be, an eternal 
 sleep. The life to come and the judgment to come 
 are both from Him who, for this end, both died and 
 rose, and revived, that he might be the Lord both of 
 
 the dead and of the living. 
 
 Thus heaven and hell, and the fearful alternative 
 awaiting every human being, in the one or in the 
 other, are both the result of Christ’s work. It is not 
 enough to say, that hell was prepared for the sin of 
 Adam, and that Christ’s work has opened heaven to 
 all believers. It is more consonant with Scripture to 
 say, that both heaven and hell, the life eternal of the 
 one and the second death of the other, are the lesults 
 of that meritorious work of Christ. If we had sinned 
 only after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, and 
 no provision of mercy had been made in Christ, the 
 hereafter of man would have been better for some and 
 worse for others than it now can be. It is agreeable 
 to all we know of God’s character, that to whom little 
 is given of him little will be required, and to whom 
 much is given, of him more will be required. The 
 higher the gift the greater the penalty consequent on 
 its abuse. Pleasures and pains are co-extensive, 
 rights and duties are co-relative, d he animal suffers 
 less, because it enjoys less than man, and man, when 
 endowed with higher sensibilities of goodness, becomes 
 capable of greater misery for a loss of goodness, and 
 the sense of wickedness becomes part of his being. 
 
 Thus the question of the final state of mankind 
 turns on the point, whether they are in Christ or not. 
 As to the case of those whose spirit is renewed by 
 
252 Final Rewards and Punishments. 
 
 the Divine Spirit, the language of Scripture is clear 
 and explicit. They have eternal life begun already, 
 for u he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting 
 life,” and with it they have the pledge that He. that 
 raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken 
 their mortal bodies by His Spirit which dwelleth in 
 
 But what of those who are not in Christ; who are 
 not renewed or quickened by the quickening Spirit ? 
 It is a solemn question, and one not to be lightly 
 answered. It is easy to make confident assertions on 
 such a subject, but confident assertions are no sign of 
 deep conviction. Besides, as Archer Butlei has well 
 
 observed,_“ Our liability to error is extreme when 
 
 we become immersed in the holy obscurity of jhe 
 cloud, over the mercy-seat of the divine mysteries. 
 
 We would then at once dismiss, in limine , all those 
 popular theories of the life everlasting, which as they 
 rest on the old dichotomy of soul and body, do not 
 throw any real light on the mystery of evil. The 
 question of the duration of future punishment has 
 generally turned on the natural immortality of the soul, 
 and thus three opinions have grown up, each of which 
 has found its advocate. 
 
 They are these : 1. The usual orthodox opinion 
 
 that the soul is naturally immortal, and hence that a 
 life everlasting must await all alike, either in heaven 
 or in hell—in happiness or in misery : 2. The opinion 
 
 that the soul is naturally mortal as well as the body; 
 hence, if it is raised at all, it is raised to receive a 
 finite punishment for a finite sin, which is to end in de- 
 
Final Rewards and Punishments. 253 
 
 struction or annihilation. This view was held by 
 Socinus and Crellius, and afterwards by Locke, Di T. 
 Burnet, and the Latitudinarians generally. The late 
 Archbishop Whately adopted it in his scripture revel¬ 
 ations of a future state. Mr Litton, in his recent 
 work on “ Life and Death,” and an increasing number 
 of writers, who shrink from Universalism, but see no 
 ground in Scripture for the common opinion of the 
 soul’s immortality, take this view: 3. There is the 
 
 theory of Dodwell, which is a compound of the two 
 preceding. According to Dodwell, the soul is natur¬ 
 ally mortal, but actually immortalised by the waters of 
 baptism, either to everlasting happiness or misery. 
 Many Lutheran divines have held a similar opinion, 
 with this only difference, that the bread and wine of 
 the other sacrament is supposed to convey the immor¬ 
 talising virtue, instead of the waters of baptism. Of 
 these Sacramentalists we need say little for or against. 
 Their theory is a compromise between two contra¬ 
 dictory views, and, like other cases of compromise, 
 satisfies neither party. It takes, moreover, a shallow 
 and external view of the work of grace. It falls 
 under the reproach of superstition, as it tends to con¬ 
 found the accident with the essence of salvation. The 
 life eternal which comes from feeding on Christ by 
 faith, should not be confounded with the bodily act of 
 eating bread and drinking wine in remembrance of 
 Him. To confound in this way mind with matter, the 
 spirit with the letter, the essence with the form, is 
 mysticism in philosophy, and superstition in religion. 
 Dodwell’s paradox probably never convinced a single 
 
254 Final Rewards and Punishments. 
 
 individual, who has read that strange farrago of mis¬ 
 applied learning; so we need not take up space by 
 confuting it. 
 
 Thus the question of the life everlasting has been 
 hitherto discussed on the narrow grounds of the natural 
 mortality or non-mortality of the soul. Three opinions, 
 we have seen, have been held on the subject: but, 
 from their defective psychology, none of them seem to 
 us to throw much real light on the question. The 
 truth is, that the soul is neither mortal nor immortal, 
 and as long as we keep to the grounds of dichotomy, 
 we cannot go farther than the words of Justin Martyr, 
 in his dialogue with Trypho, “The souls* of good 
 men, who are worthy of God, die no more, but the 
 souls of the unjust are punished as long as they exist, 
 
 and God will have them suffer.” 
 
 But when we take into account that besides a soul 
 or thinking principle there is in every man a spirit, a 
 God-consciousness, a faculty endowed with almost in¬ 
 finite capacities for good or evil, an organ or instru¬ 
 ment either for God or Satan to work upon, and so of 
 being inspired either with “airs from heaven or blasts 
 from hell,” the question becomes awfully deepened and 
 
 * This much controverted passage is found in Justin Martyr’s Dialog, 
 cum Tryphone ch. 9. Ed. Otto. It is quoted by Dodwell, Burnet, and 
 others, in favour of their view of the mortality of the soul, but it fairly may 
 be taken to mean no more than this, that the existence of the wicked in the 
 place of punishment depends on the appointment of God, not on the neces¬ 
 sary immortality of the soul. Irenseus has the same view, “ Perseverant 
 autem quoad usque est deus et esse et perseverare voluerit,” (1. ii. c. 34). 
 The stress of the early apologists was against Platonism, and we must bear 
 this in mind in quoting their words against the natural immortality of the 
 soul. 
 
Final Rewards and Punishments. 255 
 
 solemnised. Viewing man as a spiritual being we see 
 that he has within himself heights and depths of hap¬ 
 piness and misery, which we can only catch glimpses 
 of here, but which we shall explore hereafter. We 
 carry within us unrealized heavens and hells, of which 
 the majority of us are as little conscious as men are of 
 the subterranean fires beneath their feet. It would be 
 a relief to us to believe, if we could, that this dormant 
 pneuma will never be aroused in the finally lost. For 
 then, though there is a natural shrinking from bare 
 annihilation, and we are loth to believe that even sin 
 can cause God to undo his own work, and consign back 
 to unconsciousness any who have breathed the breath 
 of thoughtful life, still it would be far less terrible to 
 think of such fallen spirits becoming as the untimely 
 fruit of a woman, or as corn blasted before it be 
 grown up. 
 
 But we cannot think of the pneuma, even in the 
 unregenerate, remaining as a bare potentiality, unde¬ 
 veloped in the adult as much as in the babe unborn. 
 Such a view as this would never explain the case of 
 those who resist the Holy Ghost, who quench the Spirit, 
 who do despite to the Spirit of Grace, who are not 
 only earthly and psychical, but even devilish or devil- 
 inspired ; who yield their spirits to Satan—who sell 
 themselves to work wickedness—who call evil good, 
 and good evil—who put sweet for bitter, and bitter 
 for sweet—who put light for darkness, and darkness 
 for light—who, knowing the judgment of God, not 
 only do these things, but have pleasure in them that 
 do them. Such are said to “treasure up to themselves 
 
256 Final Rewards and Punishments. 
 
 wrath against the day of wrath. To such there is 
 “no more place of repentance, but a certain fearful 
 looking for of judgment.” Of one such it is said, that 
 u i t W ould have been good for him if he had never 
 been born.” To these blasphemers of the Holy 
 Ghost, the Saviour says, there is repentance neither in 
 this life nor in that which is to come. He calls them 
 serpents, a generation of vipers, and exclaims, “how 
 can ye escape the judgment of hell?” The punish¬ 
 ment of mere privation may apply, as Augustin thought, 
 to unbaptized infants, or with good Dr Watts we may 
 suppose that the souls of little children may be anni¬ 
 hilated. But *what of those who have exercised the 
 pneuma, and have thereby resisted the Holy Ghost, 
 and heaped to themselves wrath against the day of 
 
 wrath ? 
 
 We are here shut in to the fearful conclusion, that 
 there are some who are vessels of wrath fitted for de¬ 
 struction, as there are others who are vessels of mercy. 
 Certainly with some, if not with all, theii day of giace 
 is closed in time, and their probation is ended in this 
 life, by their treading under foot the Son of God and 
 doing despite to the Spirit of Grace. Universalism 
 seems to shut its eyes to all those passages which 
 speak of spiritual wickedness as distinct from mere 
 fleshly or psychical sins. But the distinction is Scrip¬ 
 tural. As there are three natures in man, so there 
 are three degrees of sin. It seems to deepen in malig¬ 
 nity as it rises from sins of the flesh to sins of tempei 
 and intellect, reaching at last devilish sins. Thus the 
 climax is reached, and a seal set upon the character, 
 
Final Rewards and Punishments. 257 
 
 when men attain to spiritual wickedness, when they 
 call evil good and good evil, and when they speak a 
 lie, not from infirmity, as Peter, or cowardice, as Jacob, 
 but as Satan, who speaks of his own, for he is a liar, 
 and the father of it. 
 
 Now, the duration of punishment, and the malig¬ 
 nity of evil, must bear some proportion to each other.* 
 “ Whatever else we can say of the unseen world, we 
 may assume this as an axiom, that the unhappiness of 
 the wicked will last as long as their wickedness lasts. 
 W e cannot suppose to find in the next world any ex¬ 
 ception to the rule that sin and misery go together. 
 If, then, the misery of the wicked be not eternal, it 
 must be terminated either by their reformation, or 
 their annihilation. Now, I think it is the first only of 
 these suppositions that needs to be discussed on this 
 occasion.” 
 
 If Dr Salmon had noticed the distinction between 
 carnal, psychical, and spiritual wickedness, growing out 
 of the threefold nature of man, he would have seen 
 that while it is undeniably true that men’s misery will 
 last as long as their wickedness, there must be three 
 different degrees of misery corresponding to these three 
 degrees of wickedness. The earthly, the psychical, 
 the devilish, are all punished with everlasting destruc¬ 
 tion from the presence of the Lord, but may it not be 
 with few stripes in one case, and with many stripes in 
 the other. 
 
 * Quoted from Dr Salmon’s Sermon on the place in preaching which the 
 Doctrine of the Eternity of Future Punishments ought to hold. Dublin : 
 Hodges and Smith. 1865. 
 
 R 
 
25B Final Rewards and Punishments. 
 
 We are far from saying that the distinction of spirit, 
 soul, and body warrants us in affirming that there will 
 be three circles in hell for carnal, psychical, and pneu- 
 matical sin respectively. But at least it suggests some 
 middle truth between the Augustinian theory of a 
 massa perditionis , the undistinguishable misery of all 
 out of Christ, and the universalist doctrine that all 
 punishment is remedial, and after a certain baptism of 
 fire purified souls will return back to the bosom of the 
 universal parent. On such a subject we agree with 
 Bengel, that the doctrine of final retribution is not one 
 fit for discussion.* But this at least we may affirm, 
 that the judgment of God will be according to truth, 
 and there will be love as well as justice and truth seen 
 in the final sentence, “ Depart ye cursed into the place 
 prepared for the devil and his angels. 
 
 Christian Psychology may not be able to explain 
 Christian eschatology, but it raises at least a higher 
 issue than the old one, as to the natural immortality 
 of the soul, on which the question was supposed to 
 turn till the true nature of the spirit and of spiritual 
 wickedness was seen from Scripture. Whether the 
 devil and his angels are immortal, and whether all who 
 go to the place prepared for the devil and his angels, 
 
 * Bengel adds, “that the word aubvtos has two significations, is undeniable, 
 and thus the Scriptural expressions KoXaals aiuvios and far) aiwvLos (everlasting 
 punishment and everlasting life, Matt. xxv. 46), seem to have unequal' mean¬ 
 ing. Considering,” he adds, “all that we experience, and that is revealed to us 
 respecting the divine mercy we may fairly believe that there is an economy 
 for the poor ignorant heathen apart from that with which we are concerned. 
 St. Paul does not undertake to give any final decision about them, “ what have 
 I to do with them that are without” (1 Cor. v. 12 ).—See Bengel's Life and 
 Writings, English translation, p. 376. 
 
Final Rewards and Punishments. 259 
 
 like the children of the resurrection, “cannot die,” 
 lies beyond the horizon to which Scripture bounds our 
 view. There are some who think that as evil carries 
 in itself the seeds of its own destruction, even spiritual 
 wickedness will not exist for ever, but will end, not 
 with the reformation but the extinction of those who 
 only live to defy God, and gnaw their tongues with 
 pain. He must reign, we read, till He hath put all 
 enemies under His feet, and the last enemy that shall 
 be destroyed is death. This may, of course, only 
 mean that the enemies put under His feet will exist 
 for ever, broken but still defiant, crushed but still 
 rebels. But it may also mean that the enmity itself 
 shall cease because the enemy is brought to a perpetual 
 end; it may mean that evil will end at last with the ex¬ 
 istence of the evil one, and that death itself shall die. 
 Thus the second death may mean not life in death, 
 but the “death of death, and hell’s destruction,” when 
 all that shall remain of the old enemy will be the 
 ashes in the valley of Hinnom, to remind the dwellers 
 in the new Jerusalem of the long conflict between good 
 and evil, and of the final and glorious triumph. There 
 is again, the other view, in which eternal punishment 
 is understood to mean everlasting. We are told, that 
 “ the smoke of the torment ” of the lost shall go up 
 for ever and ever, even as the smoke of the incense of 
 praise will ascend for ever, from those who stand be¬ 
 fore the throne, and who worship in the heavenly 
 temple. However terrible this view appears, it is 
 certain that the judgments of God will be according to 
 truth. All we wish here to impress is, that everlast- 
 
260 Final Rewards and Punishments. 
 
 ing punishment, as well as everlasting life, loses its 
 full depth of meaning unless we grasp the distinction 
 between spirit and soul. Spiritual wickedness is that 
 which makes us children of the devil (hanwi&hs, James 
 hi. 15), or devil-inspired. To this fearful climax the 
 psychical man is always tending, though it is as im¬ 
 possible to say when he has reached it as it is to define 
 what the sin against the Holy Ghost may be. Certain 
 it is that as flesh and spirit are the two poles of man’s 
 existence, so we begin in the flesh, and our characters 
 are formed for heaven or hell, according as the spirit 
 is quickened by God’s Spirit, or hardened by rejecting 
 its gracious influences. In this, as in other respects, 
 psychology throws light upon theology; the distinc¬ 
 tion between flesh and spirit teaches us that there is a 
 distinction in wickedness here, and leads us theiefore 
 to believe that in the government of a righteous God 
 there will be a distinction in punishment hereafter. 
 
OF THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 
 When the Reformed Churches rejected the Romish 
 doctrine of purgatory as a fond thing vainly invented, 
 and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, the 
 question of the intermediate state at once pre¬ 
 sented itself in a new light. Is it a state of entire 
 consciousness, or is it one of blissful expectation on 
 the one hand, and of a certain fearful looking for of 
 judgment on the other ? On the one hand, a sect 
 arose, called, in the jargon of that age, the Psycho- 
 pannuchists, which taught that the soul, when sepa¬ 
 rated from the body, subsided into entire uncon¬ 
 sciousness (navvvX'ia,, hence the name).* One of 
 Calvin’s earliest controversial labours was a reply to 
 these opinions, in which he maintained the view held 
 by the Reformers generally, and which the compilers 
 
 * The Psycho-pannuchists, or Thnetopsychists, as they were called, among 
 whom Petrus Pomponatius, 1515, was the most distinguished name, were con¬ 
 demned by Leo X. in a bull dated 1513. This opinion of the soul’s sleep 
 seems to have come from the East through Averroes, and was condemned in 
 the Council of Lyons, 1274; that of Ferrara, 1438 ; and of Florence, 1439. 
 At the time of the Reformation it was adopted by Socinus and his followers. 
 The Anabaptists, or Katabaptists as Calvin called them, also took the same 
 view of the soul in the intermediate state. The Arminian party also 
 inclined to the same opinion. For the literature of the subject, see an article 
 by Goschel in Herzog’s Cyclopedie-Seelenschlaf. 
 
262 
 
 On the Intermediate State. 
 
 of our Liturgy undoubtedly held. The prayer in the 
 Funeral service beginning, “Almighty God, with 
 whom do live the spirits of them that depart hence 
 in the Lord, and with whom the souls of the faithful 
 after they are delivered from the burden of the flesh, 
 are m joy and felicity, was introduced intentionally, 
 no doubt, to controvert the opinion that the inter¬ 
 mediate state was one of entire unconsciousness. The 
 40th of the forty-two Articles of 1852 also contains 
 the following:—“The souls of them that depart this 
 life do neither die with their bodies nor sleep idly. 
 They which say that the souls of such as depart 
 hence do sleep, being without any sense, feeling, or 
 perceiving, until the day of judgment, 01 affirm that 
 the soul dies with the body, and at the last day 
 shall be raised up with the same, do utterly dissent 
 from the right belief declared to us in Holy Scrip¬ 
 ture.” This article, it is true, was erased by Arch¬ 
 bishop Parker in 1559 ? does not foim one of the 
 articles of belief as finally revised and subscribed by 
 the clergy in 1562 5 but we are not to infer fiom this 
 that any difference of opinion on the natuie of the 
 intermediate state had arisen during the time between 
 the two revisions which the articles underwent. The 
 orthodox doctrine has remained substantially the 
 same, although the Church has abstained fiom any 
 definite censure of those who hold the contrary view. 
 The notion that the intermediate state was one of 
 entire unconsciousness was held by Socinus and his 
 school, and in later times generally by those who 
 belonged to the Latitudinarian party. Blackburne, 
 
On the Intermediate State. 263 
 
 last century, wrote a treatise on “ The Controversy 
 concerning an Intermediate State, and of the Separ¬ 
 ate Existence of the Soul between Death and the 
 General Resurrection,” in which he maintained the 
 opinion that the disembodied soul passes the interval 
 in entire unconsciousness. Bishop Law, of Carlisle, 
 maintained the same view which has been held in 
 our own day by Archbishop Whately and others. 
 It was the subject of a curious controversy in which 
 Coward, Dr Thomas Burnet, Dodwell, Pitts, and a 
 number of other writers, whose names are now 
 forgotten, opposed the popular view of the soul’s 
 immateriality and natural immortality, and were 
 answered by Dr Samuel Clarke, Norris, Whitby, 
 Earberry, and others. The preponderance of opinion 
 has remained, however, on the side of those who 
 maintained the opinion of the soul’s natural immor¬ 
 tality. We may set out with saying that we agree 
 with that opinion, though not with the grounds on 
 which it is established. On the other hand, we differ 
 with those who maintain that the disembodied soul 
 sleeps, though on the grounds of the common dicho¬ 
 tomy, we should say, that they have the best of the 
 argument. We have now to examine the grounds on 
 which the question has been argued, and to point out 
 that the distinction between Psyche and Pneuma cuts 
 the knot of a controversy which no amount of argu¬ 
 ment can otherwise untie. 
 
 On the grounds of the common dichotomy of man 
 into body and soul, we do not see how we could differ 
 with those who hold that the intermediate state is one 
 
264 ^he Intermediate State. 
 
 of entire unconsciousness. Man goes to the grave, and 
 there, as it seems even from Scripture, “ all his thoughts 
 perish.” There is no more remembrance there either 
 of his love or his hate. The existence of the soul or 
 rational principle seems, so far as our observation 
 reaches, to be so dependent on the activity and health 
 of the brain that the physical and the intellectual vary 
 in direct proportion. The decline of the one is the 
 signal for the decline of the other. Any injury to the 
 brain affects our powers of thought. Memory, judg¬ 
 ment, affection, will-i-all our intellectual, together with 
 all our active powers, decline with the decline of the 
 brain’s vitality. There is no fact better attested than 
 this. There must be an end of all inductive inquiry, 
 before we can shake the testimony of the physiologists, 
 that mind, however separable in idea from the organ 
 that it uses, is yet as dependent on that organ for its 
 power of exerting itself, as the steam is on the boiler 
 in which it is generated. If, on the other hand, dead 
 matter, when unensouled with some vital principle to 
 act as the centre of force, is inert and powerless —vis 
 ingeni expers / so, on the other hand, disembodied mind 
 would evaporate, so to speak, as steam when not com¬ 
 pressed ; the resistance in both cases being the condi¬ 
 tion though not the cause of the force. 
 
 “ As through the frame that binds us in 
 Our isolation grows defined.” 
 
 If the dichotomy were a complete account of the 
 powers of man, we should incline, without hesitation, 
 
The Intermediate State. 265 
 
 to the side of those who say that during the interme¬ 
 diate state the sonl sleeps on in a dreamless sleep 
 our life, like a vapour, has passed away, with the de¬ 
 struction of the machine which contained it, and tlnough 
 which it exerted that subtle force of volition and 
 thought which we call mind. 
 
 But, on the other hand, the Scriptures do not assume 
 that man ceases to exist, the instant that his brain has 
 ceased to act. There are many passages which assert 
 the contrary. Death, though it is sometimes spoken 
 of as a sleep, is never described as a state of entire 
 unconsciousness, as the psychopannuchists maintain. 
 Not to rest on such expressions as those, that he was 
 u gathered to his fathers,”* or “I shall go to him, but 
 he shall not return to me,”—the meaning of wdiich is 
 equivocal, our Lord in the parable of Dives and 
 Lazarus plainly teaches that immediately after death 
 there is a discrimination between souls, and that the 
 rich man in hades lifted up his eyes, being in toiments, 
 and saw Abraham afar off, and Lazarus in his bosom. 
 Now, however much we may allow for what is called 
 drapery, or, in plain words, accommodation to Jewish 
 conceptions in this description of hades, with its two 
 abodes adjoining each other, and only divided by a 
 deep impassable chasm, we cannot allow, consistently 
 
 * The expression, “ He was gathered to his fathers ”—unlike the classic 
 phrase “ He has joined the majority ”—ol ir\eloves — ad f lures penetra-vit Plautus 
 —implies something more than dissolution, for God was the God of Abiaham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob, in a deep and peculiar sense ; hence whatever might be said 
 of the majority or mass of the dead, the patriarchs were with God, and there¬ 
 fore in joy and felicity, as our Lord taught the Sadducees by the word of God 
 to Moses in the bush. 
 
266 
 
 The Intermediate State. 
 
 with reverence for our Lord’s character, that there is 
 any description here contrary to the real state of the 
 case. If the state of the dead until the resurrection 
 morning be one of entire unconsciousness, our Lord’s 
 parable is worse than unmeaning. It is untrue in a 
 sense which we forbear here to characterize. Nor is 
 this the only decisive statement of Scripture. Our 
 Lord’s promise to the dying thief, “ this day shalt thou 
 be with me in paradise,” would be worse than unmean¬ 
 ing if the dying man were to lapse that instant into 
 unconsciousness, and continue in that state till the 
 moment of the general awakening. The apostle Paul, 
 moreover, puts the contrast between being absent from 
 the body and present with the Lord in a light which 
 will bear no other interpretation than this, that though 
 he did not desire to be unclothed, i.e., to enter upon 
 the disembodied state, and would rather be of those 
 who are alive and remain to the coming of the Lord, 
 that so mortality might be swallowed up of life ; yet 
 that he would accept the disembodied state as the less 
 of two evils, or, rather, as the greater of two gains, 
 and would desire not to be at home in the body, see¬ 
 ing that thus he was absent from the Lord. If the 
 choice lay between body and soul living without the 
 Lord, or soul and spirit with the Lord, he would will¬ 
 ingly choose the latter, and consent to be Qxdriwsai) an 
 exile from his home in the flesh, that so in the spirit 
 he might enjoy the full communion of his exalted Head. 
 Why should he be willing rather to be absent from 
 the body, and to accept such a certain privation as that, 
 unless that there was a presence which more than com- 
 
The Intermediate State. 267 
 
 pensated for the loss of sense perception and bodily 
 consciousness ? If the state of death were a state ol 
 entire unconsciousness, the Apostle could never have 
 chosen it as the better of two alternatives. In a lower 
 degree he already enjoyed his Lord’s presence, and 
 unless he were to pass into a state in which he would 
 enjoy it in a much more perfect way, he could never 
 have thought death the less of the two evils. If to 
 him to live was Christ—to die was gain. But where 
 would the gain be if he lost one kind of consciousness, 
 and did not presently enter into a higher ? We do 
 not press into the argument the expression found in 
 the Book of Revelations, of the souls beneath the altar 
 crying out, “how long?” though the fair meaning of 
 such language would imply that the waiting saints, in 
 the intermediate state, are not unconscious of the lapse 
 of time, and feel some of the same impatience as the 
 church on earth, that the Lord delays his coming. 
 Whatever view we take of the passage, it seems at 
 least irreconcilable with the view of death as a state of 
 dreamless sleep.* 
 
 We arrive, then, at this conclusion, that while all 
 observation of the connection between soul and body 
 inclines us to agree with the Psychopannuchist, the in- 
 
 * But Rev. xiv. 13 is at least decisive. Here it is said that hencefoith (air 
 &Ptl) either, i.e., from the moment the voice spake, or now in prospect, i.e., 
 of the harvest of the earth in salvation, and the vintage of the earth in judg¬ 
 ment, proclaim this truth as if with a voice from heaven, that the dead in 
 Christ are blessed—blessed in a twofold way. 1. In that they rest from toil, 
 k6itos- 2. That they do not rest from that which is their proper service for 
 they rest not day nor night, saying, Holy, Holy, Holy. This seems to deter¬ 
 mine the nature of the intermediate state; there is no bodily toil, k6itos, hut 
 there is the highest spiritual activity, Hpxov- 
 
268 
 
 The liitermediate State . 
 
 timations of Scripture are so strong on the other side, 
 that an irreconcilable opposition between reason and 
 revelation here occurs, which cannot be got over on 
 the ordinary supposition of the dichotomy of human 
 nature. To resolve this contradiction, and reconcile 
 the two voices of God, in his word and in his works, 
 we must fall back on the trichotomy, or the distinction 
 between soul and spirit, as well as between body and 
 soul. We have described the three parts of mans 
 nature, as three kinds or degrees of consciousness. 
 There is sense-consciousness, or the animal body ; self- 
 consciousness, or the rational soul; God-consciousness, 
 or the spirit. We have also seen that it is conceivable, 
 that any two of these forms of consciousness could 
 exist without the presence and co-operation of the re¬ 
 maining third ; the first and second without the third ; 
 or the second and third without the first. As two 
 chords in music will make a harmony, but not less than 
 two, so either the animal and rational, or the rational 
 and spiritual, will combine to sustain what we call life 
 or consciousness in man. The loss of one will deprive 
 him of part of his powers, and this is the first death. 
 It is an instance of the first death when Adam trans¬ 
 gressed, and, in consequence, the Spirit, or God-con¬ 
 sciousness, died in man, leaving only the animal and 
 rational life remaining. In this sense we are born into 
 the world, dead in one sense, though alive in a lower 
 sense. Conversely, we can understand that though 
 the body dies, yet, if the union of spirit and soul is 
 still undissolved, there is ground for supposing that 
 consciousness will survive this first death. We have 
 
The Intermediate State. 269 
 
 only another instance, though a reverse one, of the 
 first death, in the suspension of the animal life, which 
 is the lowest of the three essential elements of human 
 nature. The second death is, we suppose, when the 
 capability of receiving spiritual life is at an end, and 
 when there shall be no more place found for repent¬ 
 ance. In that case, which Scripture speaks of as 
 following, not as preceding the day of the general 
 judgment, the final state of the lost will be sealed 
 for ever* On this distinction, then, between the first 
 and second death, we ground our views of the nature 
 of the intermediate state. Man, in passing out of the 
 body, becomes “unclothed,” but does not, therefore, 
 pass away into entire insensibility. On the contrary, 
 by being deprived of sense-consciousness, he is thrown 
 in on himself, and so during the intermediate state, 
 attains to a higher consciousness than before, of things 
 unseen and eternal. Self-consciousness, and God- 
 consciousness, the one the function of the pure reason, 
 and the other of the spirit, are now exercised in a 
 greater degree than ever. While present with the 
 
 * This view differs in one respect from the common one. The received 
 view of that of Augustine (de Civ. Dei xxi. ch. 5). Non enim nulla sed 
 sempiterna mors erit quando nec vivere anima poterit Deum non habendo, 
 nec doloribus corporis carere moriendo. Prima mors animam nolentem pellit 
 e corpore, secunda mors animam nolentem tenet in corpore. Both deaths, he 
 adds, have this in common, that the soul suffers from the body that which it 
 most dreads. Aug. seems to conceive that the immortality of the souls of the 
 wicked arose from their being joined to immortal bodies of flesh; but while 
 Scripture tells us of the resurrection of all from their graves (John v. 27), and 
 of the glorification of the bodies of believers (1 Cor. xv. 44, Phil. iii. 21), it is 
 silent as to the state into which the unregenerate shall rise, for 2 Cor. v. 10 is 
 not decisive on this subject. 
 
270 The Intermediate State. 
 
 body we are absent from the Lord. If even the 
 Apostle Paul, who lived in the Spirit, and walked in 
 the Spirit, felt this, how much more must we feel it. 
 Even the most advanced saints feel that sense-consci¬ 
 ousness distracts and diverts them from the inner and 
 hidden life. Not to speak of the lust of the flesh, 
 there is the lust of the eye, which continually draws 
 us away from commuion with God. The body, or 
 rather the flesh, (for that is the term Scripture uses 
 to describe it in our present fallen condition,) lusteth 
 against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. 
 The demands of the body are so incessant; its desires 
 so many and various, and call for such attention the 
 preparation of our food—the care of our health—the 
 provision for our families, that the spirit’s life is but a 
 feeble one at best. The body clearly must die if the 
 spirit would live. 
 
 This, then, is the use of the intermediate state; 
 this the compensation to which the spiritual look with 
 such joy and hope, and the unspiritual with such dread 
 and dismay. At the moment of death, the tie which 
 connects us with sense and sense-perception is snapped, 
 and the higher kind of consciousness begins, unbroken 
 by the calls of our animal life. It is this which makes 
 up the real dread of dying to the natural or psychical 
 man. At present, the psyche or reasonable soul is 
 diverted or amused with a thousand distractions. Art, 
 science, and the pleasures of sense, all keep him busy 
 and 'amused. He is seldom or ever driven in on 
 himself. He can always fly from his own thoughts, 
 to find occupation, either in criticising the thoughts of 
 
The Intermediate State. 271 
 
 others, or in mixing with the crowd in the common 
 haunts of men. The unspiritual or merely psychical 
 man is never so little at home as when at home. He 
 does not like to exercise .the higher powers of the 
 psyche, and rise to self-consciousness, for that would 
 suggest the sense of God-consciousness, and of the 
 pneuma, which he has deadened and dulled by an out¬ 
 ward worldly life. 
 
 But at death this state of self-deception must end. 
 Then sense-consciousness ceases at once, and self and 
 God-consciousness begin together. An accusing con¬ 
 science is that which men are seldom long troubled 
 with on this side the grave. There are a hundred 
 ways of lulling or amusing the psyche, so long as we 
 are in the body. While the union of body and soul 
 lasts, the soul does not miss its true partner the spirit. 
 But when all animal enjoyment is at an end, and reason 
 must betake herself within to chew the cud of sweet 
 and bitter memories, then the dreadful discovery will 
 break in on natural men, of a higher consciousness, 
 which they have studiedly, and all their life long 
 neglected. Then prayer and meditation on God’s 
 word, and self-examination, and all those other spiritual 
 exercises which they evaded*so easily, will press in on 
 them with all their terrible reality. We dare not 
 carry this thought farther than God’s word has ex¬ 
 pressly revealed to us. Whether any who have not 
 wilfully resisted the strivings of God’s Spirit, and done 
 despite to the Spirit of Grace will be given to know 
 Christ in the intermediate state, is a question which it 
 is better not to approach. Secret things belong unto 
 
2^2 SShe Intermediate State. 
 
 the Lord. The question whether few shall be saved 
 is one which the Lord refused to answer. In nothing 
 do we see the contrast between the inspired and apo¬ 
 cryphal books so much as in the proneness of the latter 
 to fall into disquis tions on this subject, on which the 
 canonical books maintain a solemn silence. There is 
 one passage which certainly seems an exception, and 
 which, as such, has raised more discussion than any other 
 in Holy Writ, i Peter iii., and iv. 6, would certainly 
 seem to connect Christ’s descent into the under woild 
 with the salvation of some who have never heaid the 
 gospel preached, when in the flesh. The testimony of 
 the early church is uniform as to one part of Christ s 
 work in Hades. That he there proclaimed his redemp¬ 
 tion to the waiting spirits of the patriarchs and fathers 
 of the Jewish Church who had died in faith, not 
 having received the promise, is a truth on which they 
 are very nearly agreed. The unanimity indeed of the 
 early church in holding this opinion has been one of the 
 strongest arguments alleged by the Romish Chuich in 
 favour of purgatory. The limbus patrum , and the 
 limbus infantum were held long before the mediaeval 
 church had formulated the doctrine of purgatory, with 
 its ascending spirals, as described by Dante. It was 
 but carrying this notion of limbus patrum one step 
 farther, to assert that the intermediate state was a 
 place of washing and purification for all who died 
 after, as well as for those who died before the work of 
 Christ. Such hold did this notion of a place of puri¬ 
 fication take on the mind of the middle ages, that it 
 practically overshadowed their conceptions alike of 
 
Ihe Intermediate State. 273 
 
 heaven and hell. With indistinct notions of the work 
 of Christ’s redemption, and untaught in the great 
 doctrine of justification by faith, it was natural that 
 heaven and hell should sink into the background, and 
 their notions of the hereafter cluster around the one 
 thought of a place of purgatory. Hell might be the 
 place reserved for unbaptized infidels, and heaven for 
 eminent and miracle-working saints. But for the great 
 majority of the baptized, reason seemed to call for 
 some middle place of purgation. And so what reason 
 called for the doctors and schoolmen were not slow to 
 find warrant for in revelation. 
 
 The Reformation swept away this fond superstition 
 of penances, pardons, and indulgences, which had 
 grown out of the belief in purgatory, as the tares 
 from seed sown in the night. But as in every case of 
 reaction the reformers did not see that in plucking up 
 tlTe tares they were in danger of rooting up the wheat 
 also. They dispelled the delusion, about a place of 
 purgation for sins not atoned for by penance on earth; 
 but they also lost with it all sense of the contrast be¬ 
 tween the intermediate and the state of final blessed¬ 
 ness. . 
 
 Sudden death was sudden glory, 
 
 “ Swift as the eagle cuts the air, 
 
 We’ll mount aloft to Thine abode,” 
 
 is the common conception to this day of the passage 
 of the spirit after death into the presence of God A 
 
 * It was the same in the Lutheran Church as with ourselves. While Luther 
 held the opinion that the intermediate state was one of progressive holiness, a 
 state—to use his own words—“der zunehmender Liebe ; ” this view was 
 
 S 
 
274 Intermediate State. 
 
 So much was this the case, that the doctrine of the 
 resurrection of the body, to a great extent, lost the 
 importance which it holds in the New Testament 
 Though not denied, it became a difficulty instead of 
 an evidence for the truth of the Christian religion. 
 Those who held advanced views went so far as to 
 deny it; for it was impossible to see any reconcile¬ 
 ment between the philosophic notion of the immor¬ 
 tality of the soul and the apostle s teaching with 
 respect to the resurrection of the body. Such a re¬ 
 turn to what seemed materialism was abhorrent to 
 the notions of the platonising divines of last century, 
 who either explained away the doctrine of the re- 
 * surrection of the body altogether, or held it as a mere 
 dogma, a thing apart, which did not enter in any 
 
 living way into their belief. 
 
 The intermediate state is one of those lost truths 
 of the Bible which it is to the credit of our age that 
 it has rediscovered, and restored it to its right im¬ 
 portance. We do not of course understand this 
 subject in all its bearings, and never shall on this side 
 the grave. Whether salvation is reached foith to 
 any there, who have never heard the gospel here, 
 is a matter of private opinion, in which we may in¬ 
 dulge the hope, without committing ourselves to any 
 strong statement on either side. Pope Gregory 
 had set his heart on the thought that the Emperor 
 
 gradually dropped by his followers, and the doctrine of immediate glory and 
 condemnation took its place. So B. Lorcher, in his “ Sammlung von 
 Abhandlungen iiber den Zustand der Seelen nach dem Tode,” speaks of the 
 soul springing from the mouth straight into heaven, “Vom Mund auf, zum 
 Himmel fahren.” 
 
The Intermediate State. 275 
 
 Trajan might be a favoured exception to the general 
 doom which awaits the heathen. Reasoning there¬ 
 fore by his wishes, he had a vision at last that 
 his prayer was heard, and the soul of Trajan given 
 to him at his intercession. In an age when prayers 
 for the dead were believed to be availing, instances 
 of these exceptions were not uncommon. Virgil was 
 —it maestro —the guide of Dante, not only through 
 the gloomy circles of hell only, but also through the 
 upward spirals of purgatory. It was difficult for a 
 good schoolman to believe in the eternal perdition of 
 Aristotle, without whom orthodoxy itself could not 
 sustain its ground. Socrates, the great example of 
 a pre-Christian martyr, and Plutarch, the lover of 
 good men, the panegyrist of whatsoever is lovely and 
 of good report, must be instances of souls included 
 within some general amnesty. So reasoned the more 
 charitable divines of the middle ages, and we, at least 
 in our zeal for truth, need not fall behind them in 
 charity. It may be—and it is a mystery probably as 
 much hidden to us as the salvation of the Gentiles 
 was hidden to the Jews—that God has purposes of 
 mercy in store for those who have not wilfully 
 hardened their hearts and sinned against the Holy 
 Ghost by stiffing the pneuma within them. We are 
 not to argue, from our ignorance of the plan of this 
 future salvation, to its impossibility. This was the 
 mistake of the Jews of old with regard to the election 
 of the Gentiles. They claimed to be the elect. They 
 held God bound by His word, and when they went so 
 far as to do evil that good might come, and fell into 
 
2 y6 The Intermediate State. 
 
 an immoral predestinarianism, declaring that God could 
 not cast off those whom he had foreknown, we feel 
 with the apostle that their damnation was just. May 
 we not reason in the same presumptuous way ? We 
 do know that for us, “ now is the accepted time, now 
 is the day of salvation.” We are also told that for 
 those who wilfully reject Christ theie remaineth no 
 more offering for sin, but a certain fearful looking for 
 of judgment. But where our duty ends theie the 
 silence of scripture begins, and we are left to our own 
 conjecture as to the want of universality in revelation, 
 on which nothing better or wiser can be written than 
 
 the words of Bishop Butler. 
 
 Having spoken of the gradual and slow progress 
 of discovery in the useful arts of life, and the fact 
 that many of the most valuable remedies existing in 
 nature have been unknown to mankind for ages, are 
 known but to a few now, and that probably many 
 valuable ones are not known yet, he adds that,* “not 
 only is this the case, but often the remedies are so 
 unskilfully applied as to produce new diseases, and 
 with the Tightest application the success of them is 
 often doubtful. Many persons who labour under 
 diseases for which there are known natural remedies 
 are not so happy as to be always, if ever, in the way 
 of them. In a word, the remedies which nature has 
 provided for diseases are neither certain, perfect, nor 
 universal.” The inference from this is of course 
 obvious, that the objections which lie against the 
 
 * See Analogy, Part II., chap. 3. 
 
The Intermediate State. 277 
 
 want of universality in the one case are paralleled by 
 like objections in the other case. 
 
 Bishop Butler is far too acute not to have antici¬ 
 pated the usual objection which has been urged again 
 and again to the Analogy, viz., that Revelation as a 
 redemptive system, instead of repeating the difficul¬ 
 ties of natural religion should meet and relieve them. 
 His answer to this is that as discoveries in nature are 
 made by little degrees and by slow advances, so it 
 may be with the scheme of redemption. Men aie 
 impatient and for precipitating things, but the Authoi 
 of nature appears deliberate throughout his opeiations, 
 accomplishing his natural ends by slow successive steps. 
 
 This being the case the fault lies with those who 
 reason from our knowledge of a part to a knowledge 
 of the whole. Christianity is, as he is careful to 
 remind us, a scheme imperfectly comprehended. 
 
 “ Our present state may possibly be the consequence 
 of something past which we are wholly ignorant of, 
 or it has a reference to something to come, of which 
 we know scarce any more than is necessary to piactice. 
 
 It would have been well for the cause of truth 
 and charity if divines had been contented with this 
 “learned ignorance,” 
 
 Nescire velle quoe magister maximus 
 Docere non vult, erudita inscitia est. 
 
 We should be content then to judge those that are 
 within, and to leave to God’s secret councils his mode 
 of judgment of those that are without. Every where 
 we see in nature the gifts of God showered down 
 
278 The Intermediate State. 
 
 without partiality, the sun and the rain given equally 
 to the just and to the unjust, yet we also see priority 
 and even preference, some greater some less, some 
 invited to sit down in the highest place, and some 
 compelled to take the lowest room. May there not 
 be the same distinction in the kingdom of grace ? 
 On the one hand the manifestation of the goodness 
 and long-suffering of God to all, but on the other 
 hand a difference of degree. That God’s judgments 
 are a great deep who can doubt who has ever seriously 
 thought of God’s dealings with himself? On the 
 subject of preference without partiality we cannot do 
 better than again refer to the words of Bishop Butler. 
 
 “Nor is there,”* he says, “anything shocking in 
 all this, or which would seem to bear hard upon the 
 moral administration in nature, if we could really 
 keep in mind that every one shall be dealt equitably 
 with,^instead of forgetting this or explaining it away 
 after it is acknowledged in words. All shadow of 
 injustice, and indeed all harsh appearances in this 
 various economy of providence would be lost, if we 
 would keep in mind that every merciful allowance 
 shall be made, and no more required of any one 
 than what might have been equitably expected of 
 him from the circumstances in which he was placed, 
 and not what might have been expected had he been 
 placed in other circumstances; or in scripture language, 
 “ that every one shall be accepted according to what 
 he hath and not according to what he hath not.” This, 
 however, doth not by any means imply that all per- 
 
 * See Analogy, Part II., chap. 6. 
 
The Intermediate State. 2 79 
 
 sons’ conditions here is equally advantageous here 
 with regard to the future. And providence design¬ 
 ing to place some in greater darkness with regard 
 to religious knowledge is no more a reason why they 
 should not endeavour to get out of that darkness, 
 and others to bring them out of it, than why ignor¬ 
 ant and slow people in matter of other knowledge 
 should not endeavour to learn, or should not be in- 
 
 structed.” . , 
 
 But while we are content to take our stand with 
 
 regard to the hereafter on the safe ground that it 
 doth not yet appear what we shall be, we are not. to 
 overlook the possibility of light unexpectedly breaking 
 in on us on these subjects even before their accomplish¬ 
 ment through the careful and diligent study of God s 
 word As the prophecies with regard to the millen¬ 
 nium, the restoration of Israel, the life from the dead 
 of the heathen world, through the gathering m of the 
 Tews, and the personal reign of Christ with the first 
 resurrection of his beheaded martyrs, are understood 
 in our day even before their fulfilment, by those who 
 are diligent in comparing scripture with scripture; 
 may it not be, that with regard to the intermediate 
 state and the purposes of God with regard to those 
 who die either in infancy, or who as idiots and savages 
 are only children of an older growth, that our error 
 may arise from our knowing “neither the Scriptures 
 nor the power of God." It has been assumed far too 
 hastily that because the Bible has been m the hands 
 of men for nearly two thousand years, there can be 
 nothing new to be discovered there, and so the dictum 
 
28o 
 
 The Intermediate State . 
 
 
 admitted both by friends and foes has been that theo¬ 
 logy at least is not one of the Inductive Sciences. 
 The fact is that theology is stationary, but the fault is 
 not with the Bible but with us, its interpreters. 
 Bishop Butler, with his usual acuteness, has pointed 
 this out—that the methods of study, whether of the 
 book of nature or Revelation, must be the same, and 
 that if we have not made discoveries in the one case 
 as well as in the other, it must arise from the same 
 causes. u The hindrances, -too, of natural and of 
 supernatural light and knowledge have been of the 
 same kind. And it is owned the whole scheme of 
 Scripture is not yet understood: so if it ever come to 
 be understood before the restitution of all things, and 
 without miraculous interpositions, it must be in the same 
 way that natural knowledge is come at, by the continu¬ 
 ance and progress of learning and liberty, and by parti¬ 
 cular persons attending to comparing and pursuing inti¬ 
 mations scattered up and down it which are overlooked 
 and disregarded by the generality of the world. For 
 this is the way in which all improvements are made, by 
 thoughtful jnen tracing out obscure hints, as it were 
 dropped us by nature accidentally, or which seem to 
 come into our minds by chance. Nor is it at all in¬ 
 credible that a book which has been so long in the 
 possession of mankind should contain many truths, as 
 yet undiscovered.” 
 
 That the intermediate state may be the scene of a 
 display of the riches of God’s long-suffering and grace 
 as far transcending any we know of at present as this 
 dispensation transcends that of Judaism is an opinion 
 of some, on which possibly the well-known passages 
 
The Intermediate State. 
 
 281 
 
 (1 Peter iii. 18, iv. 6) are intended some day or other 
 to throw light. For eighteen centuries these two 
 passages have been considered by divines of all schools 
 without their coming to any agreement as to their 
 meaning. In the one passage it is said that Christ 
 was put to death in the flesh but quickened in the 
 Spirit, which means either that the Holy Spirit, who 
 quickened Him, had preached before in the days of 
 Noah to the antediluvian world, or that He (Christ) 
 though dead in the flesh died not in the Pneuma, 
 which could not die, but which then descended into 
 Hades or the underworld, and there preached or pro¬ 
 claimed his gospel to the inhabitants of the underworld 
 of whom the multitude who were disobedient in the 
 days of Noah, are mentioned as examples of a class. 
 The second passage asserts that the gospel is preached 
 to them that are dead, either, as many interpreters 
 say, to men who are figuratively dead, /.<?., in tres¬ 
 passes and sins, which would be here not only a truism 
 but also unmeaning, or that the gospel is preached to 
 those who are literally dead in the flesh, and departed 
 to the underworld of spirits, in order that at the judg¬ 
 ment of the last day they may be judged according to 
 men in the flesh, i.e., acording to the same principle of 
 judgment, viz., whether they refused or accepted 
 Christ. In this view of the case there will be equality 
 in God’s dealings with all, and whether in the body or 
 out of the body the probation of men will, may turn on 
 the same principle, viz., whether they “did truth and 
 came to the light,” or whether they “loved darkness 
 rather than light because their deeds were evil.” 
 
 Of the meaning of these two passages and the in- 
 
282 
 
 The Intermediate State. 
 
 ferences we are entitled to build on them, there has 
 been an infinite variety of opinion. First, there are 
 those who deny any reference whatever to Christ’s de¬ 
 scent to Hades, and maintain as Augustine, Aquinas, 
 Hammond, Leighton, and others, that the preaching of 
 the Spirit was that by Noah, a preacher of righteous¬ 
 ness. Again, even of those who understand the pas¬ 
 sage literally of our Lord’s descent into Hades, some, 
 as Hollaz, understand the preaching to mean a concio 
 danmatoria , a sentence, i.e., of judgment upon those 
 who are already in prison reserved to the judgment of 
 the last day. Of this we need only say that it is a 
 sense of the word xripUasiv, never elsewhere used in the 
 New Testament, and evidently resorted to here as a 
 critical expedient to get over a theological difficulty. 
 Several of the fathers again, as Irenaeus, Tertullian, 
 and Hippolytus, and Zwingle, and Calvin, among the 
 Reformers, limit this preaching to the spirits of the 
 patriarchs of the Old Testament Church, who were 
 waiting in Hades for the announcement of a coming 
 deliverance. This is the origin of the doctrine of that 
 limbus patrum , of which the schoolmen made one of 
 the many mansions of the underworld. Suarez, Estius, 
 Bellarmine, and Luther, as well as Bengel, assume that 
 the words refers, not to all unbelievers of Noah’s time, 
 but only to those who repented at the last moment 
 when the flood was upon them, an interpretation which 
 leaves the difficulty just where it found it, and only 
 piles up one hypothesis upon another. Lastly, there 
 is the view of Athanasius and Ambrose, to which Cal¬ 
 vin appears to have inclined in his Institutes, that the 
 
The Intermediate State. 283 
 
 preaching was of two kinds, a saving message to the 
 waiting saints, and a message of judgment to those who 
 were condemned already and kept in prison until the 
 sentence of the last day. 
 
 As it is clearly impossible either to add a new inter¬ 
 pretation to the many here referred to, or to weave 
 any consistent teaching out of such a conflict of opinion, 
 we must either despair of finding any meaning at all 
 in the apostle’s words, or remember Bishop Butlei s 
 hint, that it is not at all incredible that a book which 
 has been so long in the possession of mankind should 
 contain many truths as yet undiscovered. The re¬ 
 marks of Lange on this passage are worth translating, 
 as they suggest the view now taken by most orthodox 
 commentators in Germany, and to which also Dean 
 Alford gives his adhesion “ Holy Scripture nowhere 
 asserts the eternal condemnation of those who have 
 died either as heathen or as not having heard the gos¬ 
 pel. It rather implies in many passages that repent¬ 
 ance is possible even beyond the grave, and distinctly 
 declares that the final decision is made, not at the 
 moment of death, but at the last day (see Acts vii. 3 1 5 
 2 Tim. i. 12, 18; 1 John iv. 17). In this passage, 
 however, as in 1 Pet. iii. 195 St Peter distinctly 
 teaches that God’s way of salvation does not end with 
 this life ; and that to those who have departed this life 
 without hearing of Christ, such a proclamation or 
 preaching shall be made hereafter. There is no sup¬ 
 port, however, from this passage for the theory eithei 
 of the restitution of all, and the salvation of the devil 
 and his angels and all wicked men alike; nor for the 
 
284 7 he Intermediate State. 
 
 doctrine of a purifying fire, on which the Roman 
 Catholic Church rests her theory that all souls which 
 are not made perfect here will be purified by suffering 
 hereafter.”* 
 
 It is at this point of the argument that the tricho¬ 
 tomy of man into body, soul, and spirit throws light on 
 what is otherwise an inexplicable mystery. As man 
 is at present, he is born into the world with a strong 
 animal nature, with a weak rational, and with a spiritual 
 nature that hardly, if at all, asserts its existence. 
 Is this the right order of things ? Is this the balance 
 of power as God intended it to be ? Or is it not 
 rather a proof that an enemy has done this ? Man, 
 wounded and half dead, lies at the roadside, a fit case 
 for the compassion of the good Samaritan, but in no 
 condition to rise and recover himself by the aid of any 
 remaining strength that he has left. This being the 
 case, it is misleading to speak of the present being a 
 state of probation in the strict sense of the word. We 
 do not test an instrument till all its parts are in work¬ 
 ing order. Till the balance is restored, and, in the 
 language of the South, “ human nature is set on its 
 legs again,” we cannot say that probation, properly so 
 called, begins. With the passions strong and the 
 judgment weak, what hope is there for man if left to 
 himself? To suppose that he can return to God of 
 himself, while the spirit is so disordered that it feebly, 
 if at all, testifies even of the being of God, is to sup¬ 
 pose that a child turned adrift in an open boat could 
 safely cross the Atlantic. One of two ways only are 
 
 * Fid. Lange’s Biblewerk, x Pet. iv. 6. 
 
I he Intermediate State. 285 
 
 open by which the probation of man is possible. We 
 incline to the belief that God will employ both, one 
 in one case, and the other in another. Either God 
 may give his grace now while man is in the flesh, and, 
 by quickening the spirit, as well as training the rational 
 soul, may so far restore the balance as that the flesh 
 shall be subdued to the spirit, and we, who brought 
 forth fruit only unto death, may now bring forth fruit 
 unto life. Or, when the body is laid at rest in the 
 grave, and the spirit has returned to Him that gave it, 
 He may be pleased to quicken that spirit by his Spirit, 
 either to everlasting life or to everlasting death, at the 
 judgment of the last day, according as the awakened spirit 
 is turned to Christ or away from Him. Sanctification 
 consists principally in subjecting the lower parts of our 
 nature to the higher. In the case of those who are 
 called in time, their discipline will be so much more 
 complete as they have learned to keep their body in 
 subjection to the soul, and the soul, in its turn, to the 
 spirit. The former of these two branches of sanctifi¬ 
 cation will be wanting to those who are called late. 
 Something analogous to this occurs in time in the case 
 of late conversions. Those who at the eleventh hour, 
 in old age or on a death-bed, repent and turn to 
 Christ, miss much preparatory discipline, which the 
 deeply-taught child of God would not be without. Yet 
 we never doubt that they are finally saved, though we 
 say that their cup of glory, though full, will not be so 
 great as that of those who have known and served 
 Christ during a long life. As there are many man¬ 
 sions, so we doubtless believe that there are degrees of 
 
286 
 
 Ihe Intermediate State. 
 
 blessedness. "What is to forbid the C3.ll at the eleventh 
 hour being understood of those whose discipline begins 
 too late to subject the body to the soul, but not too 
 late to subject the soul to the spirit, and the spirit to 
 God ? The essential part of sanctification lies in the 
 fact of this subjection, not in the degree to which it is 
 carried out. Even the most advanced Christians are 
 very imperfectly sanctified in time, and to the last cry 
 out on account of the motions of sin which stir in their 
 carnal natures. How often the most watchful saint is 
 overtaken in a fault, surprised by temptation, and finds 
 that sin revives, and he dies. He does not, theiefoie, 
 give up the conflict. He knows that for this sin he 
 has an advocate with the Father, and he also feels 
 another advocate pleading within him with groanings 
 which cannot be uttered. Thus forgiven the guilt of 
 sin by the one advocate, and encouraged against an 
 accusing conscience by the other advocate, he renews 
 the strife, and at last is made more than conqueror 
 through Him that loved him. But even this advanced 
 and experienced saint is only saved by hope. He still 
 groans within himself, waiting for the adoption, to wit, 
 the redemption of the body. He feels that, so long 
 as soul and spirit are joined to this body of corruption, 
 his sanctification must be incomplete, and that he is not 
 yet one of the spirits of just men made perfect. 
 
 Thus it looks forward to the intermediate state as 
 the time when God will perfect that which is lacking. 
 Not in purgatorial fires—quite the contrary—but 
 under the sunshine of God’s love, his spirit shall then 
 grow in increased likeness to the Father of spirits. 
 
I he Intermediate State. 287 
 
 $ 
 
 Thus, as the spirit grows in likeness to God, so it will 
 grow in strength and mastery over the rational soul. 
 Rationalism, as well as animalism, is one of the tenden¬ 
 cies of our present fallen nature. Sins of the intellect 
 and sins of sense are among the corruptions that re¬ 
 main even in the regenerate. Of the two, the former 
 are not so easily overcome as the latter. It is easier 
 even to subject the body to the soul than the soul to 
 the spirit. This higher discipline, then, probably 
 awaits us in the intermediate state. Then relieved 
 altogether from the conflict with the lower or animal 
 nature, the spirit can give its whole undivided strength 
 to subdue the soul. To bring not our animal desires 
 only, but every thought, into subjection to the mind 
 of Christ, is the idea of sanctification not attainable 
 here. By and by it will be possible. The blissful 
 and unbroken communion with Christ which the spirit 
 will enjoy during the interval between death and the 
 resurrection may be intended to procure us advances in 
 holiness which are impossible in our present low con¬ 
 dition of being. The wonder is that creatures with 
 capacities so little above the brute can be sanctified at 
 all while in such bodies of corruption as those we now 
 possess. But after death these unfavourable con¬ 
 ditions will be withdrawn, and then our advances in 
 holiness will be proportionately rapid. In the light of 
 Christ’s countenance, every mist of doubt and pre¬ 
 judice will be lifted off, as the fog before the rising 
 sun. Things now difficult and contradictory will then 
 seem plain and perspicuous. Order will reign in our 
 moral nature, and our faculties will fall into their right 
 
288 
 
 The Intermediate State. 
 
 places, without much marshalling on our part. Our 
 affections will not then be heated by fancy, nor our 
 judgment warped by prejudice. Reason will not then 
 stagger as now under a load of self-made difficulties 
 about the character and purposes of God. We shall 
 not be enslaved by the systems of men, or afraid of 
 looking a question in the face for fear of some awk¬ 
 ward conclusion which does not comport with ortho¬ 
 doxy. The opinion of the religious world will then 
 trouble us as little as that of any other mere secular 
 society. We shall see all things in the light of God’s 
 love, and so, in the words of a Moravian poet, make 
 one thing of all theology. 
 
 The late Isaac Taylor,* in his “ Physical Theory of 
 a Future Life,” handled the subject of the intermediate 
 state with much originality and freshness of view. The 
 principal point which he made out was that, connected 
 as our emotions are with the physical system, it 
 would be impossible to know God as He is without 
 the emotions undergoing a preparatory training out 
 of the body. To see God as He is would rather dis¬ 
 tract us and drive us mad in such weak and excitable 
 frames as our present mortal bodies. Our nervous 
 system, as strung at present, would not bear the strain, 
 for no man can see God and live. Thus the Apostle 
 
 * See Tsaac Taylor’s “ Physical Theory of Another Life.” His argument 
 was almost exclusively directed to the one point of the emotions, and the un¬ 
 conscious control which the will exertsover them at present. If with our present 
 emotional system, which is principally, if not exclusively, physical, we were 
 to behold the glory of God and divine things, the mind would be thrown off 
 its balance. But there are other uses of the intermediate state besides this 
 suspense of the excito-motor system, and it is to these other uses that we call at¬ 
 tention in the text. 
 
'The Intermediate State. 289 
 
 Paul, when caught up to the third heaven, saw things 
 which it is not possible (sgoi/, 2 Cor. xii. 4) for a man to 
 utter; and this strain on the nervous system was pro¬ 
 bably connected with, if not the direct cause of, the 
 thorn in the flesh which left him a shattered broken 
 man. St John, too, fell as dead when he beheld the 
 glory of Christ in the vision in Patmos. Such being the 
 case, there is need of a state in which, the excito-motor 
 system being set at rest, the emotions may be exer¬ 
 cised at first without tearing to pieces the framework 
 of flesh in which they are now contained. Thus the 
 intermediate state is, as Isaac Taylor conceives it, a 
 preparation for a state in which we shall know God 
 through the organs of sense-perception in a way that 
 we cannot bear to do now. 
 
 To this view of the subject we have no objection 
 whatever; on the contrary, we think it as probable 
 as any conjecture on a subject so remote from present 
 interests. But the view we here commend is less 
 speculative and more practical. The intermediate 
 state will doubtless be a preparation for a higher state 
 of being, and one of its uses will be to inure the spirit 
 to assert its mastery over the lower or emotional 
 nature, so that when clothed upon with a spiritual 
 body, all danger of a revolt of the lower against the 
 higher nature, like that which occurred with oar first 
 parents, will be excluded. But while this is so, we 
 think it even more important to see that a discipline 
 will be completed there, which is here only begun in 
 certain cases, and in others not attempted at all. If 
 man were only body and soul, then there would be no 
 
 T 
 
290 
 
 'The Intermediate State. 
 
 room for this discipline, when the soul is separated 
 from the body. The disembodied soul would have 
 little else to do than to drink deep of the knowledge 
 of God, and bask itself in the eternal sunshine of his 
 love. This is nearly the sum total of what is usually 
 thought to be the occupation of those who are absent 
 from the body, and present with the Lord. They see 
 his countenance and are satisfied therewith. But we 
 can conceive of some discipline, probation, or piepaia- 
 tion, whatever we choose to call it, superadded to 
 this state of blissful rest. The distinction of soul and 
 spirit implies self-consciousness as well as God-con¬ 
 sciousness | introspection as well as intuition , and a 
 growth in holiness proportionate to our growth in the 
 likeness of God. If we might distinguish holiness 
 from heavenly-mindedness, we should say that the 
 latter is the exercise of the spirit, the former of the 
 soul. As the spirit governs the soul, so heavenly- 
 mindedness produces holiness. The one is the painter s 
 eye, the other the painter’s hand. Without looking 
 long the artist would never get the ideal stamped on the 
 brain ; and, without handling the palette and brush, 
 he could never succeed in transferring that conception 
 to the canvass. u Mere in the body pent, we are like 
 artists whose conceptions are poor, and their execution 
 poorer still. We want, in the first instance, the con- 
 ceptive faculty raised, and, in the next, the cunning of 
 hand, to translate our thoughts into action. But this 
 we never can attain to while this muddy vesture of 
 decay wraps us in. Our spirits seldom rise at all, and 
 then not for more than a moment or two, to the state 
 
The hitermedicite State. 
 
 291 
 
 of silent ecstacy when we hold real communion with 
 God. These Tabor glimpses of God and Christ are 
 too transitory to enable us to shew more than a 
 shadowy reflection in our own life, of the unseen 
 beauty of holiness. Like Moses coming down from 
 the mount, though our faces shine, yet it is with a 
 passing brightness. It dies away in the light of com¬ 
 mon day. Neither heavenly-mindedness nor holiness, 
 neither the contemplative nor the active side of Chris¬ 
 tian character, ever attain to their full growth in the 
 unfriendly soil of our present animal nature. The 
 fault is inseparable from our present condition of 
 being; a fallen world and a treacherous evil heart are 
 not friendly to the development of the inner and higher 
 I life in man. 
 
 But, let the conditions of our moral and spiritual 
 existence be altered in this one important respect; 
 let the attractions which draw us to earth disappear 
 altogether, and those which draw us to God be not 
 only strengthened, but actually replace them, and 
 then our growth in holiness and heavenly-minded- 
 ness will be as sudden as if we were transformed in 
 a moment, in the twinkling of an eye. We need 
 not suppose that in the intermediate state, we shall 
 climb up the way of holiness step by step, with many 
 a stumble, and many a relapse, as the Christian pilgrim 
 now does. One moment of the presence of Christ will 
 do more to ripen our character than years of self-disci¬ 
 pline here on earth. We believe in cases of sudden 
 conversion on earth, there are transformations of 
 character even here, wrought by one look of faith at 
 
The Intermediate State. 
 
 292 
 
 the cross of Christ. But this is nothing to the sudden¬ 
 ness with which our whole soul shall be melted and 
 fused into the mould of holiness, when the full blaze of 
 Christ’s love breaks in at once on the departed spirit, 
 and when found in the spiritual image of Christ, we 
 shall also rapidly grow into his moral likeness. 
 
 The author of “The Religion of Common Life,”* 
 very truly said, that the fret and care of life in its round 
 of common duties and worldly occupations were the 
 very means wisely made use of by our Heavenly 
 Father to sanctify us, his children. He compared them 
 to the weights of a clock, which, so far from impeding 
 its movements, are actually the source of its movement. 
 This may be very true, though the illustration is more 
 ingenious than solid. The weights of a clock are its 
 forces ; they are to a clock what the elastic force of a 
 steel mainspring is to a watch, or the expansive force 
 of steam in a boiler. Now no one will say that the 
 duties and troubles of life are the mainspring or motive 
 power of the divine life in the soul. There is a need 
 he for them, no doubt, and it is certain that, so long as 
 we are in the body, we cannot do without them. But 
 we must not make them the efficient instrument of our 
 sanctification; they are its condition, not its cause. 
 The true and only cause of sanctification is the pre¬ 
 sence of the Holy Ghost, the sanctifier, in our hearts, 
 taking of the things of Christ, and shewing them unto 
 us. All other discipline, however providential and 
 necessary, is only to keep down the undergrowth of 
 
 * See Dr. Caird’s Sermon, preached before the Queen. 
 
The Intermediate State. 293 
 
 earthly-mindedness. The body is thus kept under by 
 the care of providing for our daily bread or by those 
 public and professional engagements and duties of life, 
 which, however little profitable to holiness in them¬ 
 selves, are necessary as means to keep the body under- 
 But when the body itself is laid aside in the grave 
 there will be no need then of counterpoises to the over¬ 
 whelming attraction of earthly things. When the 
 weights which draw us to pleasure and self-indulgence 
 will be gone, then those other weights made up of the 
 cares and duties of life will be taken off, and it will be 
 seen that the soul only wanted the one to right the 
 balance which the other had unduly disturbed. There 
 is nothing sanctifying per se in the occupations of life 
 —quite the contrary—though we admit that with 
 animal natures such as ours to keep in check, the dis¬ 
 cipline of worldly duty cannot be dispensed with. Still 
 we must not confound, as Mr. Caird seems to have 
 done, the sanctifying Agent himself with the discipline 
 he at present makes use of. It is very natural for us 
 to say, because we see human nature sanctified under 
 circumstances like the present, that these conditions are 
 indispensable, and that men could not be sanctified 
 unless under precisely the same conditions, i. e ., by the 
 flesh striving against the spirit, and the spirit against 
 the flesh. We can only repeat, that the conditions of 
 an experiment are not the same as the cause, and that 
 we can conceive the same experiment carried out under 
 much more favourable conditions. Let the body be 
 disposed of in the grave, and the spirit brought into 
 the presence of God with the reasonable soul sub- 
 
294 77 ? <? Intermediate State 
 
 dued so far as to obey its godly motions, in this case 
 sanctification will be both rapid and complete. The 
 likeness of God in the spirit, and his image in the soul 
 will then be so much more perfect on account of the 
 disturbing element brought in by animal nature being 
 laid at rest in the grave. 
 
 This is the use then of the intermediate state in the 
 case of believers. When man was made of body, soul, 
 and spirit, the lower was intended to serve the higher. 
 But ever since the entrance of sin it has been other¬ 
 wise. God has then brought in death to right the 
 balance which sin has disturbed. Through sin the 
 spirit dies, the body or the flesh reigns, and the soul 
 serves the body ; all is thus confusion and wrong. 
 Death then comes in as a stage in the redemptive work 
 for those who are saved. In death the body dies, the 
 spirit lives, and the soul serves not the body, but the 
 spirit. Thus the right order returns. The balance is 
 restored, and all traces of the former anarchy are re¬ 
 moved. The spirit during the interval is so deeply 
 settled in its allegiance to God, and the soul brought 
 under subjection to the spirit, that when at the resur¬ 
 rection morning we are given a new and incorruptible 
 body there will no longer be any danger of a disturb¬ 
 ance, the balance will be righted for ever, and through 
 the ages of eternity we shall perfect holiness in the fear 
 
 of the Lord. 
 
THE RESURRECTION AND SPIRITUAL 
 
 BODY. 
 
 We have seen that the use of the intermediate state 
 was to carry on, out of the body, that work of sanc¬ 
 tification which is begun, but never reaches completion, 
 in the body. It is the opposite thus to the state of the 
 carnal mind into.which we enter at our biith : it com¬ 
 pensates its defects. In the one the body lives and 
 reigns, the soul lives and serves, and the spirit sleeps. 
 In the other the spirit lives and [reigns, the soul lives 
 and serves—but serves its rightful master, the higher, 
 not the lower principle—and the body sleeps. Phy¬ 
 sical death is thus a stage in the work of redemption, 
 not as we sometimes hear it described, its full triumph. 
 It is only when this corruptible body shall have put on 
 incorruption, and this mortal have put on immoitahty, 
 that shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, 
 “ Death is swallowed up in victory.” Sanctification, 
 or the conflict of the spirit against the flesh, is begun 
 the moment the pneuma is awakened; but it is never 
 complete until the flesh is dead in fact, as it is alieady 
 dead in idea. Death is thus a stage in our sanctifica¬ 
 tion, the midway passage between grace and gloiy. 
 
2g6 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 This is why sanctification and death are so constantly 
 associated in St. Paul’s Epistles. “Ye are dead, and 
 your life is hid with Christ in God.” Baptism is both 
 death and burial. “We are buried with Christ by 
 baptism unto death.” “ He that is dead is freed from 
 sin.” Man’s redemption, thus including in that term 
 not only the forgiveness of sins, but also renewal in the 
 image of God, is never complete on this side the grave. 
 While this body of sin lives we are only saved by hope, 
 and groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, 
 to wit, the redemption of the body. But as soon as 
 the body, and with it all carnal lusts and affections, are 
 laid in the grave, that instant our redemption is com¬ 
 plete, and we enter on a state of sinless perfection, 
 which is unattainable so long as we are in the flesh. 
 The state of death is thus seen to be the only saving 
 antidote from the poison of sin. As sin reigned unto 
 death, so death now reigns unto holiness. In the one 
 case, man was in a state of outward life, and inward 
 death. Now, he is in the state of outward death, but 
 of inward life. The intermediate state is the sabbatiz- 
 ing of the people of God (Heb. iv. 6), the compensa¬ 
 tion for a lifelong conflict with indwelling sin. Now 
 our life is all outward—then it will be all inward. We 
 groan now because the senses are so strong, and the 
 spirit life so weak. It will be a glorious retribution to 
 lay the senses by for a little, and enjoy a life that is 
 inward only. 
 
 This is why the intermediate state is described as a 
 state of rest. As a compensation for the over activity 
 of the body, and the distraction of earthly cares and 
 
The 'Resurrection Body. 297 
 
 duties, we shall be given a season when we rest from 
 these labours , while our works do follow us. The x 6 mg 
 and the sgyov in this passage in Rev. xiv. 13, are per¬ 
 haps thus distinguished: the one refers to flesh and 
 its busy-bodiness about what is, after all, nothing at 
 all, a xoTog, in which it is all toil and no result, the 
 other to that svsgyzia of the spirit, which results in a 
 egyov, something definite, real, and enduring. Thus as 
 Noah was given his name, with reference doubtless to 
 that rest from the toil and moil of a wicked world 
 which the waters of Noah brought with them, so death 
 shall be a rest or a comfort to us from all the work 
 and toil of our hands. Death is the needful antidote 
 of that worldly-mindedness which is the peculiar bane 
 of life. “So he giveth his beloved sleep,” that they 
 may not for ever eat of the bread of carefulness. Re¬ 
 demption from sin will never be entire till we lay down 
 the burdens of daily life which the entrance of sin has 
 laid on us. 
 
 Thus far we see the need of the intermediate state. 
 It is the sabbath of man’s existence, without which his 
 week day of life on earth would be miserably incom¬ 
 plete. But the Sabbath being past, the first day of 
 the week, the Easter-day of a new creation, must begin 
 to dawn. On the Sabbath, the activity of man is 
 turned into a new direction, and the body rests, that 
 the spirit may bestir itself. But the Sabbath is the 
 last day of the old week, not the first day of the new. 
 The resurrection morning will bring in a new order of 
 things. As with Christ the first fruits, so with us his 
 people. He was put to death in the flesh, and 
 
298 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 quickened in the spirit, and in that spirit passed into 
 the intermediatede state. But to be made like his 
 brethren in all things, He rose again on Easter morning 
 in the completeness of human nature, body, soul, and 
 spirit. He is thus the first fruits of them that sleep. 
 All his people, without exception, are either one or 
 two removes behind Him in the process by which 
 mortality is swallowed up of life. We who are in the 
 body are two removes behind Him, these in the inter¬ 
 mediate state are only one. But none as yet, not even 
 Moses and Elias, have yet put on the resurrection 
 body. They are only conformable to his death, but 
 have not yet attained to the resurrection from the dead. 
 
 The nature of the resurrection body has not been 
 revealed to us. It doth not yet appear what we shall 
 be. All we know is, that our present bodies of 
 humiliation shall be changed, to be made like unto his 
 glorious body. Farther than this we cannot go—we 
 know u that we shall be like him, for we shall see him 
 as he is.” It does not throw the least light on this 
 mystery to speculate on the nature of the Lord’s re¬ 
 surrection body. It is only obscurumper obscurius. Of 
 the two, indeed, it is less mysterious to think of the 
 nature of our resurrection body. We know, at least, 
 that we shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more— 
 that we shall neither marry nor be given in marriage— 
 that it will not be a body of flesh and blood, and that it 
 will be subject to none of the present laws of pain, decay, 
 and death. But in the case of the Lord’s resurrection 
 body there is this added difficulty, that it was the same 
 body, i.e., of the same identical particles of matter 
 with the body laid in the sepulchre, and yet transfigured 
 
The Resurrection Body. 299 
 
 and spiritualized, in some way which is at piesent 
 inconceivable to us. In the case of our bodies of flesh 
 and blood which are laid in the grave, and see conup- 
 tion, they are like the seed which dies in the ground, 
 and never reappears at all, but sends up instead that 
 which is to the old body what the shoot is to the root 
 buried beneath the earth. We have thus an analogy 
 to help us to conceive of the nature of our resunection 
 bodies. There is not any identity of particles in our 
 case as in the case of the Lord s body. Thus, of the 
 two, the resurrection of Christ is much more unintelli¬ 
 gible to reason even than ours. We have analogies 
 for the one, but none for the other. The apostle was 
 able to rebuke the folly of the Corinthian sceptics by 
 the comparison of the seed corn. u Thou fool, that 
 which thou sowest is not quickened except it die. 
 But how could he have confuted a questioner who 
 asked for an explanation of how Christ rose from the 
 dead, not as the revivification only of a dead man,* but 
 as the type of those who shall be changed in a moment, 
 in the twinkling of an eye. If the alchemist s dream 
 
 * Christ’s resurrection has been said to have been both a revival and z. resur¬ 
 rection. The distinction is founded on Rom. xiv. 9 ; but as the reading is 
 doubtful—the best MSS. omitting ica 1 avearr] —nothing certain should be 
 founded on it. That our Lord’s was a revival as well as a resurrection is probable 
 from the nature of the case, for, 1. it was not possible that He should be 
 holden of death. 2. His body, after his resurrection, was identical in matter, 
 as well as in form, with the body in which He suffered. Less evidence than 
 this failed to satisfy Thomas. 3. Unless He had taken the very body which 
 death had destroyed He could not be said to have destroyed death by dying. 
 A glorified body only veiled for a time under a mantle of flesh, wou d not 
 satisfy the conditions of his meritorious death. Hence we conclude that in 
 his case it was both a revival and a resurrection ; but the higher truth whic 
 is to reconcile these two views, we do not see. 
 
300 The Resurrection Body . 
 
 of the transmutation of metals were to become a reality 
 of modern science—if the chemist who can reduce a 
 diamond to carbon could raise the carbon back again 
 to the diamond, we should then have an analogy on 
 which to ground our conceptions of the change which 
 the Lord’s body underwent in the grave. The Lord’s 
 resurrection then is a pledge that we shall rise; but it 
 is more than a pledge, it actually prefigures the nature 
 of the resurrection of those who are alive at the last 
 day, and are changed in a moment of time. A change 
 it will be in both cases, not a mere re-collection of 
 particles and revivification of them. The vision of 
 Ezekiel is thus quite inapplicable to the resurrection of 
 the body. It was meant to teach a different truth, 
 the national restoration of Israel, and when applied to 
 illustrate another subject, loses its peculiar beauty, and 
 only misleads us, by suggesting another class of con¬ 
 ceptions. In the vision of Ezekiel there is a re-collec¬ 
 tion of particles, it is a revival like that of Lazarus, 
 or Jairus’ daughter. Divines, in many cases, have not 
 paid sufficient attention to this distinction. Hence the 
 common objection of infidels of the old school falls 
 pointless against the right view of the resurrection of 
 the body. If it were the resurrection of relics ; if the 
 sea were to give up its dead in the sense that we have 
 seen depicted in an old picture, in which great fishes, 
 like Jonah’s whales, are swimming up with the heads 
 and arms of those who perished in the sea centuries 
 ago, then, indeed, the miracle of the resurrection 
 would not only be stupendous, but out of harmony 
 with all the other miracles and works of God. But 
 
3 QI 
 
 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 the resurrection is more than a revivification, it is a 
 new creation. God, in the new creation, uses up the 
 particles of the old; but so we see it has been in all 
 the advances of life on the world, of which geology 
 tells such a wondrous tale. We have every day an 
 instance of something analogous to it, for creation is 
 continuous, not occasional. The plant, in its lowest 
 form, rises out of the rock or mould, animal life follows 
 on the vegetable, and the forms of one rise step by 
 step with the forms of the other, so that we can 
 measure exactly how many steps we have risen in the 
 scale of organic life in the plant world, by comparing 
 what corresponding stage we have reached in the 
 animal world. In man, we have reached the top of 
 the scale, so far as we know at present. But why 
 should we assume that the upward growth is abruptly 
 to end here ? If the next step in the ascent should be 
 the new heavens and the new earth, with man in his 
 resurrection body as its occupant, why should it, in 
 this point of view, seem a thing incredible, that God 
 should raise the dead ? 
 
 The resurrection body is said in Scripture to be a 
 spiritual body. The expression, if it does not clear up 
 the difficulty, throws light at least on one corner of it. 
 It teaches us that the spirit will be so supreme in the 
 new nature of man, that man may be described or de¬ 
 fined by it, as in logic each species is by its differentia. 
 When we speak of man’s body now, we think of a 
 framework of flesh and blood, strung together with 
 sinews, muscles, and nerves, and served by certain 
 special organs, that we call organs of sense. There 
 
302 Bhe Resurrection Body. 
 
 have been many definitions of man. He has been 
 called by BufFon, an intelligence using organs—that 
 is to say too much for him. He has been defined as 
 a cooking animal, a two-legged animal without feathers, 
 that is to say too little for him. The one definition 
 rather describes what man will be, the other what he 
 is ; the one exalts him before his time, the other keeps 
 him down at the same low state in which he begins 
 existence. 
 
 But while we object to call man as he is at present, 
 an intelligence using organs, we think it an excellent 
 definition of what we conceive a spiritual body to be. 
 God is a pure intelligence, as far as we can see. He 
 is alone in this, as in his other attributes. He is the 
 only intelligence that knows without any helps to 
 knowledge, and to whom all things are naked and open, 
 not by sight, but by insight, for all things live to Him, 
 and in beholding them, he only beholds Himself as in 
 a mirror. The creature can only know by observing, 
 and we can observe only by the aid of instruments. 
 We do not deny the possibility of pure thought, or 
 pure reason, though the logic of pure reason, we take 
 to be a contradiction, ex vi terminis. Logic being the 
 discourse of reason, or the application of thought to 
 things, transcendent logic is like Socrates slung in a 
 basket—something neither of the earth nor the 
 heavens. Pure thought, or the mind using organs of 
 its own, is conceivable. But in that case the mind 
 cannot travel out of itself. It is in a charmed circle, 
 and has no test of truth but the agreement of its own 
 thoughts one with another. But as soon as an intelli- 
 
3°3 
 
 I he Resurrection Body. 
 
 gence wishes to perceive anything outside itself, it must 
 use organs suitable to that perception. To each special 
 perception there is, as far as we know at present, a 
 special organ. The eye can only see; and again, it 
 cannot choose but see, i.e., it is the alone organ of 
 sight, and it can discharge this function only. The 
 organ is unique, and its function is uniform. So again 
 with the other special senses. Thus, as knowledge is 
 of two kinds, internal and external, an intelligence that 
 wishes to know must use two classes of organs—the 
 laws of thought, or thought organs, as we may call 
 them, to arrive at internal knowledge ; and organs of 
 sense-perception, to attain to any knowledge of the 
 external world. Cut off either of these two sources 
 of knowledge, and man at once ceases to be an intelli¬ 
 gence in the full sense of the word. Deprive him of 
 the gateways of knowledge which open inward, let him 
 have no sense of the laws of thought and self-consci¬ 
 ousness, and he becomes at once an animal, as very 
 young children and idiots are. Deprive him again of 
 the gateways of knowledge which open outward, and 
 man is cut off at once from the external world, and 
 “ for the face of nature, presented only with a univer¬ 
 sal blank.” 
 
 We do not stop here to discuss which of the two 
 losses would be the greater. Such discussions are idle, 
 and rest on wrong assunptions on both sides. The 
 fact is that man’s nature is incomplete without the two 
 gateways of knowledge—the one opening inward, the 
 other outward. Now in death, as we have described 
 it in the previous chapter, one gateway is closed, and 
 
304 The Resurrection Body . 
 
 not the other. The lines of “In Memoriam,” though 
 enigmatic in themselves, probably describe this :— 
 
 “ How fares it with the happy dead ? 
 
 For here the man is more and more, 
 
 But he forgets the days before : 
 
 God shuts the doorway of the head.” 
 
 The doorway of the head, that opens outward, is 
 closed. Hence the intermediate state is one of uncon¬ 
 sciousness of the external world. Without the organs 
 of sense-perception, it is impossible to conceive of im¬ 
 pressions from without entering the mind, or that we 
 can hold communion with any of the works of God. 
 It is the use of the intermediate state, as we have seen 
 in the previous chapter, that man should be cut off for 
 a while from intercourse with the external world, to 
 spend a Sabbath in silent communion alone with God. 
 The balance between our outer and our inner life will 
 thus be righted, and that tendency to look to the 
 things which are seen and temporal, which is very im¬ 
 perfectly overcome here even in the regenerate, will 
 be then subdued. As Christ must reign till He hath 
 put all enemies under his feet, so the carnal mind, 
 which is the enemy with which the believer struggles 
 to the very brink of the grave, will then finally and for 
 ever be put under. During the intermediate state, 
 reason will get the victory over desire, and faith over 
 reason. It will then become our settled habit of mind 
 to look to the things which are unseen and eternal. 
 As death will be swallowed up in victory at the resur¬ 
 rection morning, so the nature of the first Adam, 
 which was of the earth earthy, will be swallowed up 
 
The Resurrection Body. 305 
 
 in that of the Second Adam. At our baptism we 
 profess to put on Christ, and to make no provision for 
 the flesh to fulfil the lusts thereof; but the carnal 
 nature remains, yea, even in the regenerate, mortified, 
 but not yet quite dead ; cast down, but not destroyed, 
 till the moment of death, when the balance is righted 
 in an instant, and the spiritual nature becomes at once 
 and for ever supreme. 
 
 But sanctification being completed by dissolving 
 the present adulterous union which obtains between 
 the desires of the flesh and the mind,* the plan of 
 salvation would not be complete if, after the destruc¬ 
 tion of the flesh through death, a new union of spirit, 
 soul, and body were not formed by God, even as the 
 world, which was once destroyed by water, and will 
 yet be destroyed by fire, was baptized unto death and 
 renewed thereby. Hence it is that the resurrection 
 of the body was reserved as the crowning mystery 
 of the Christian dispensation. Existence after death 
 the philosopher could anticipate; the immortality of 
 the rational and moral part of man seemed to him 
 more than a surmise. Mind was an uncreated thing, 
 a spark of the divine and eternal Nous ; hence the 
 expectation which all looked for except those whose 
 wicked lives led them to wish that death might be 
 an eternal sleep.f But the resurrection of the body 
 
 * “O beatum connubium si non admiserit adulterium.”— Tertull. de Anima. 
 
 + Cicero’s well known words—“O proeclaram diem cum ad illiud divinum 
 animornm concilium csetumque proficiscar, cumque ex hac turba et collu- 
 vione discedam”—shew that the idea of future existence rested on that of 
 the immortality of mind. It was a mistake, but at least a generous and a 
 noble one. It is spirit, or the image of God reflected in us, which alone will 
 
 U 
 
^o 6 The Resurrection Body ♦ 
 
 lay altogether out of the horizon of the wisest 
 thinkers of the ancient world. We do not say that 
 in Egypt the belief in existence after death was 
 not mixed up with certain crude conceptions of the 
 revivification of the flesh, and that this belief led to 
 the practice of embalming the dead. But in India, 
 and afterwards in Greece, this notion that the spiiit 
 or ghost could only exist in the same body it once 
 had tenanted was rejected, and they held that the 
 ghost hovered over the place where the corpse lay 
 till it was decently buried or burned, and then reluc¬ 
 tantly took an eternal leave of the body, and w'ent to 
 the world of shades. The two expressions used of 
 David, that “ he was gathered to his fathers,” and 
 u saw corruption,” express all that was known of 
 the hereafter of man till the resurrection of Christ 
 had rolled away the stone from the door of the 
 sepulchre. He was “ gathered to his fathers” ex¬ 
 presses what was thought of the state of the soul; 
 he “ saw corruption,” what was known to become of 
 the body. The soul might live on, but that the 
 body should rise again seemed to them more than 
 improbable; it was impossible. Death was not the 
 end of the whole of man, but it was the end of a 
 principal part. Body and soul then parted, like the 
 Israelites and Egyptians at the brink of the Red 
 
 Sea_to see each other again no more. Death 
 
 might be a deliverance from the burden of the flesh, 
 
 enable us to say, “Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt thou 
 suffer thine holy one to see corruption.” “ Blessed are the pure in heart, for 
 they shall see God ” 
 
The Resurrection Body . 307 
 
 the terminus of all man’s hopes and fears ; but they 
 could not look on it as a stage in the work of re¬ 
 demption, a discipline preparatory to a yet higher 
 state of being. It was enough for the saints of the 
 Old Testament if they could look down into the 
 grave and feel that even in Hades they should not 
 be cut off from His presence, which is better than 
 life itself. We can look farther on, and see beyond 
 this sheol or paradise a state of existence awaiting 
 us, when body, soul, and spirit, all purified, and all 
 perfected, shall be united together, to be for ever 
 with the Lord, and in the midst of his works.* 
 
 As death is the deliverance from the burden of 
 the flesh, we see that the resurrection must imply 
 some great and corresponding change in the nature 
 of the body. At present, body and flesh, <rw/xa and 
 a are indistinguishable. It is not enough to say that 
 flesh has now become sinful flesh , and thus, as Bishop 
 Ellicott remarks, that flesh is used in Scripture in malam 
 partem. That is very true, and only makes the case 
 
 * That the dead in Christ are now with Christ, and in paradise, admits of 
 no doubt after our Lord’s words to the dying thief. But it is by no means so 
 clear that paradise is the same as the third heaven to which the apostle says 
 he was caught up. Oertel (see his Hades) contends that all who die, go to 
 hades, or the under world, resting this view on the parable of Dives and 
 Lazarus. Delitzsch, on the other hand, argues that as Christ descended into 
 hades, and afterwards ascended into heaven, so He first proclaimed the gospel 
 to the waiting spirits in hades (i Pet. iii. 19), and then led captivity captive, 
 leading with Him a train of spirits released from hades, and now first admitted 
 into paradise. This is the explanation, he adds, of the fact that many of the 
 bodies of the saints which slept arose and showed themselves after His resur¬ 
 rection in the holy city. There is much to recommend this view of Delitzsch. 
 It agrees very well with the words of the Te Deum , “Tu, devicto mortis 
 aculeo, aperuisti credentibus regna coelorum”—when thou hadst overcome the 
 sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. 
 
^o8 The Resurrection Body . 
 
 still worse ; but the mystery still remains how the <rdg% 
 is ever to be changed into a. It is the mystery, for 
 instance, of our Lord’s resurrection body, which we 
 have seen above is the case of sinless flesh being changed 
 in the grave into an incorruptible body. Man is now 
 flesh not only in the sense that he is carnal, corrupt, 
 and earthly-minded*—the depraved sense of the word 
 flesh —but also in the sense that when created in 
 innocence he still had an animal nature of flesh and 
 blood, which the apostle says cannot inherit the kingdom 
 of God ex vi terminis —as he adds the reason, neither 
 doth corruption inherit incorruption. Corruption and 
 incorruption are logical contradictions, they each ex¬ 
 clude the other, and thus it is that we stand at the brink 
 of the grave unable to see how the body of flesh and 
 blood that we lay there can ever be changed, even by 
 the power of the Almighty God, into an incorruptible 
 body. This is the point in the doctrine which trans¬ 
 cends reason, and where all analogies from the seed- 
 
 * Luther has profoundly remarked, “ Die Seele ist so tief gesunken in das 
 Fleisch, dass sie mehr Fleisch ist denn das Fleisch selber (quoted by Caspers 
 Fusstapfen Christi, p. 1S1). Thus it is, that if the body degrades the soul 
 in the first instance, the soul again, by becoming carnal-minded, makes the 
 body “ twofold more the child of hell than before.” Hence the irreconcile- 
 able opposition between the flesh and the spirit, so that without death an 
 entire deliverance of soul and spirit from sin would be impossible. Bishop 
 Ellicott (Destiny of the Creature, sermon v.) has well remarked that the 
 contrast in Scripture is between body and soul, flesh and spirit, not between 
 soul and flesh, or body and spirit. Luther has explained this double contrast, 
 that flesh and spirit are the ideal states , the forms , so to speak, under which our 
 nature ranges itself. Having described the three parts of man as spirit, soul, 
 and body, he adds, “ und ein jegliches dieser dreyer sammt dem Ganzen 
 Menschen wird auch getheilet auf eine andere weise in zwey Stucke, die da 
 heissen Geist und Fleisch,”—see the Auslegung des Magnificat, quoted by 
 Delitzsch. 
 
3° 9 
 
 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 corn wholly fail us. The seed-corn is sown in corrup¬ 
 tion, but it is not raised'in incorruption ; it is changed, 
 beautified, multiplied if you will, but as vegetable 
 matter it went into the grave, and as the same vegetable 
 matter it rises again, possessing the same organism as 
 before, and subject to the same laws of reproduction 
 and decay. In all this our spiritual body is wholly 
 unlike our natural. It will neither have organs of 
 assimilation—for we shall hunger no more, neither 
 thirst any more—nor will it have organs of reproduc¬ 
 tion—for we shall neither marry nor be given in 
 marriage. If it was difficult to conceive of the Lord 
 Mayor without his fur tippet, gold chain, and glass 
 coach, who can say how far we can abstract oui idea 
 of a body from the desires and instincts of the flesh 
 which belong to it at present, and conceive of a spiritual 
 body as our present body, without its appetites and 
 the organs which administer to these appetites ? What 
 remains of our body, it will be asked, after the flesh 
 and its desires are withdrawn ? Anatomists give us 
 drawings in outline of the muscular and neivous 
 system. Besides the organs of the nutritive or animal 
 life, which, according to Bichat’s well-known genera¬ 
 lization, are single, there are the organs of the excito- 
 motor system, which are duplicate, and the nerves of 
 which run in converging lines to the brain. The 
 vertebral column divides the trunk of the body into 
 two equal parts, of which the legs and arms are con¬ 
 tinuations, and along which the muscles and nerves are 
 laid in lines, corresponding on each side exactly the one 
 to the other. Thus, accepting Bichat’s generalization 
 
310 !The Resurrection Body. 
 
 as correct in the main, all the organs of the body fall 
 under these two classes—they are either organs of the 
 nutritive life, including under that the organs of 
 reproduction, or they are organs of the excito-motor 
 class, by which intelligence is served, and the connec¬ 
 tion between mind and body kept up. As we might 
 expect, the control of the will is more complete over 
 the latter than over the former. The functions of the 
 nutritive life are non-voluntary, and, unless in cases of 
 pain and derangement, we are unconscious of their 
 action. It is only in disease, or in cases of strong 
 excitement, that we are conscious of the circulation of 
 the blood, of the digestion of our food, or the functions 
 of the liver, spleen, &c. 
 
 Now, we have to suppose either of two cases in 
 order to see how near man approaches to Buffon’s 
 definition of an intelligence using organs, and what at 
 present causes him to fall short of it. The one is the 
 case of an unbroken health, such as Adam enjoyed in 
 a state of innocence, when the organs of the nutritive 
 life, the heart, stomach, lungs, &c., discharge the 
 functions of circulation, digestion, and repair of tissue, 
 without conveying through the sympathetic ganglia any 
 special sensation to the brain except that which, as the 
 opposite to disease, we may describe as ease. In the 
 other case, which is that to which our argument leads 
 up, the nutritive life shall cease altogether; and in 
 some way at present incomprehensible to us, we shall 
 be given pneumatical bodies, i.e., with the excito-motor 
 system, but without the nutritive, or that burden of 
 the flesh, which now weighs us down, and forms the 
 
The Resurrection Body. 311 
 
 inlet for passion and pain, disease and death. The 
 former is the case of the first Adam, the lattei that of 
 
 the second. 
 
 It is because our control of the excito-motot system 
 is not as strict as it ought to be, in consequence of the 
 will being depraved by the fall, that our nutritive 
 system suffers from indulgences which are not called 
 for by the wants of nature. We overload the stomach, 
 we indulge our passions, we excite the brain through 
 inflaming the imagination, and so a thousand forms of 
 disease and pain are produced—some chronic, some 
 acute, some hereditary, and some peculiar to the sufferer, 
 which puzzle the physician, and make the philosophy 
 of health unattainable by the physician, because he 
 cannot minister to a mind diseased. The laws of 
 hygiene presuppose certain higher laws which lie out¬ 
 side the province of the physician, and of which, unless 
 he is a philosopher and a Christian, he cannot take 
 
 account. 
 
 But suppose, in a new state of being, all the single 
 and nutritive organs were withdrawn as unnecessary, 
 and all the excito-motor organs placed under the strict 
 control of the will, we should then have the conditions 
 of a body without pain or want, disease or death, such 
 as Scripture tells us the resurrection body will be. 
 Even at present, when the control of the will ovei the 
 excito-motor system is strict and unflagging, when the 
 lust of the eye does not lead to the lust of the flesh, 
 what a train of diseases and ailments are at once cut 
 off? True, that we suffer from the sins of our former 
 unconverted state, and thus disease once produced will 
 
312 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 run on with the race and scourge us to the third and 
 fourth generation. So it is that gout, scrofula, epilepsy, 
 and many other diseases become congenital. The ex- 
 cito-motor system, which is under the control of the 
 will, when disordered will not only derange the nutri¬ 
 tive organs, but also transmit disease in these organs to 
 our innocent descendants. Thus it is that man is 
 plagued in the flesh for the sins of the flesh. Our 
 pleasant vices thus become our scourges, and every 
 transgression receives its due recompense of reward. 
 Thus the excito-motor system is the occasion of sin, 
 and the nutritive only the nidus in which sin is laid 
 and the means whereby it is afterward punished. The 
 one is directly under the control of the will, and the 
 other only remotely so, but we cannot u trammel up 
 the consequence,” and so cut off the punishment of 
 self-indulgence. Could we recall the debauch the 
 instant we felt the pains of indigestion, or the nervous 
 rackings which follow on drunkenness, then indeed we 
 should add “ drunkenness to thirst,” without fear of 
 remorse, and the warning which bodily pain gives 
 against indulgence of our animal lusts would be lost. 
 It is wisely ordered that the instant an act passes 
 beyond the excito-motor system, it passes out of our 
 control. If by an act of the will we take poison into 
 the body, once it has entered the nutritive organs it is 
 beyond our control. We must eat of the fruit of our 
 own ways. 
 
 This is the discipline of life which teaches us the 
 necessity of controlling our wills and appetites. But in 
 a higher state of being, in which there shall be no un- 
 
The Resurrection Body. 3 T 3 
 
 ruly wills and affections,^ it is supposable that the 
 excito-motor system may then be restored to us with¬ 
 out those lower nutritive organs, which are like a dead 
 weight at present to keep us in bounds, and to wain 
 us against indulging our passions. It is tiue that the 
 excito-motor system itself is at present imbedded in the 
 flesh, and dependent on the nutritive life of which it is 
 a manifestation. The nerves are composed of white 
 filaments which always rise from and lead to a gang¬ 
 lion or collection of gray matter, and it has been sup¬ 
 posed that the organised white filaments or fibres are 
 the working part of the brain and nervous system 
 generally, and that the gray mass of unorganised glo¬ 
 bules was the “matrix of the medullary filaments, 
 that is, the source or origin of the nervous force trans¬ 
 mitted outwards by certain nerves, and receiving the 
 impressions conveyed inwards by others. Not only 
 thus is the substance of the brain and nerves a pulpy 
 mass adapted to conveying perceptions to the mind, 
 but in addition, the brain itself, as the seat of intelli¬ 
 gence and will, is dependent on the nutritive system foi 
 the immense quantity of blood which it requires for its 
 healthy action. The only conclusion which we should 
 draw from this fact is this, that in the body, as we 
 know it at present, the excito-motor system is depen¬ 
 dent on and inseparable from the nutritive system. 
 Man is thus at present only at the head of the scale of 
 animal life. His nature is divided between the angel 
 and the brute (yi fyplov r\ 6sog } Arist. Nic. Eth. vii. i). 
 Even the wise ancients saw this middle state of man: 
 but what they could not see was, that his probation 
 
314 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 depended upon it—much less that as the balance 
 between flesh and spirit was destroyed by the first 
 Adam, so it has been redressed by the second, and 
 that u as we have borne the image of the earthy we 
 shall also bear the image of the heavenly.” As man 
 exists at present he cannot exercise his higher organs 
 of sense perception without the lower or nutritive life 
 rightly discharging its functions. The heart must 
 beat, the lungs must breathe, the organs of digestion 
 must make blood, if the brain is to think and the 
 senses perceive and know. But because the higher or 
 intelligent organs are in our present body made depen¬ 
 dent on the lower, or organs of nutrition, we are not 
 therefore to conclude it must always be so. We can 
 conceive of an organism as superior to our present as 
 the animal life is above the life of a plant. The dis¬ 
 tinction between the plant and the animal is this, that 
 a nervous system is wholly wanting even in the highest 
 forms of the one, and never absent even in the lowest 
 forms of the other. Volition manifesting itself by cer¬ 
 tain acts of co-ordinated motion of the limbs, and these 
 acts the result of certain previous emotions of desire 
 and pain, are the unerring marks of the presence of a 
 nervous system. The lower we descend in the scale 
 of animal life the more imperfect the nervous system 
 becomes, till, in the zoophytes, which stand, as it were, 
 on the verge of the vegetable kingdom, and spend their 
 lives attached to the spot where they had their origin, 
 the body presents a uniform pulpy appearance, in 
 which muscles and nerves seem equally wanting. Thus 
 the advance from the plant to the animal is seen in this, 
 
The Resurrection Body. 3 1 5 
 
 that in the one the organs^ of nutrition make up the 
 whole of its life, in the other they make up only a 
 part. There is a higher life by which the animal 
 becomes an intelligence using organs. The will, and 
 the intelligence localized in the brain, receive impres¬ 
 sions from without, and then these impressions pro¬ 
 ducing pleasure or pain excite to action. The beautiful 
 discovery of Sir Charles Bell, that the nervous system 
 is duplicate—that for every afferent there is a corre¬ 
 sponding efferent nerve, the one the organ of sensation 
 the other of motion, has raised the excito-motor system 
 into a class of organs quite distinct from those of the 
 mere nutritive. There is in every animal a plant life, 
 a system of organs whose functions are adapted solely 
 to the ends of assimilation kind reproduction, but over 
 and above there is in every animal, even the lowest, a 
 life by which it deserves to be classed apart as an in¬ 
 telligence using organs and the higher life is contained 
 in the nervous system. The amount of that life is 
 measured by the advance of the nervous system from 
 the lowest and most imperfect ganglia of the insect to 
 the high organisation and complexity of the human 
 brain. 
 
 The sensitive life in man at present depends upon 
 the nutritive : but whether it could have been other¬ 
 wise, it is not for us to say. But at least we may 
 conjecture that the nature of the resurrection body, 
 in which we shall be equal with the angels, will be 
 of this kind, that the nutritive life will then be laid 
 aside altogether, and the sensitive, or excito-motor 
 system, become as much higher than it is now, as 
 
316 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 the animal is now above the plant. In the plant, 
 we see nutritive life only, with the absence of all 
 organs of intelligence. In the angel, at the other 
 extreme, there are the organs of intelligence in their 
 highest degree, with the entire absence of the nutri¬ 
 tive life. Man is at present at the midway point 
 between these two extremes. As an animal, he is 
 not released from the condition of all animal life, 
 that the higher shall depend on the lower—the 
 excito-motor on the nutritive system. It is on ac¬ 
 count of this dependence of the higher on the lower, 
 that he is said to be in the flesh. He was made 
 lower than the angels for a little while, and the 
 nature of his probation, unlike theirs (who, as spi¬ 
 ritual beings, were capable of spiritual wickedness 
 only) consisted in this, that the organs of intelligence 
 were enabled to resist the nutritive. He should have 
 subdued his appetites to his reason, and submitted 
 his reason to the expressed will of God. This he 
 failed to do, and from that first fatal act of weakness, 
 his nature has been thrown off its balance. It has 
 become more animal than it was intended to be; the 
 desires of the lower life have become more imperious, 
 and the body, which was flesh in the sense only that 
 it was frail, has become sinful flesh, and hence subject 
 to all kinds of diseases, which end in death. 
 
 Redemption has delivered us from this bondage of 
 corruption, and hence the crowning work of redemp¬ 
 tion will be to restore us our bodies, but so raised 
 in the scale of being that we shall never come under 
 the like conditions of frailty in which our first parents 
 
3 T 7 
 
 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 found themselves. They fell, through the desires of 
 the nutritive system, as well as the weakness of the 
 excito-motor. In the resurrection body there will be 
 no nutritive system at all; no appetite or desire of 
 food, through which we can be tempted; and the 
 nervous system, which we have reason to think will 
 be restored to us, will become, as it ought to be, 
 the organ of the intelligence, an intelligence purified 
 from carnal desires, and filled with the love of God.* 
 
 There are some interesting confirmations of this 
 conjecture, as to the nature of the resurrection body, 
 to be gathered from Scripture. We infer that the 
 nutritive system, or the plant life of the body, will 
 not reappear in our resurrection bodies, from the 
 mention of such points as these, that in the resurrec- 
 
 * For want of this proper distinction between the nutritive and the ex¬ 
 cito-motor life in man, the views of the early Church, on the resurrection of 
 the body, wavered between the allegorizing system of the Alexandrian fathers 
 and the Materialistic views of Tertullian and the North African School. Ter- 
 tullian (De Resurrect. Carnis, c. 61) enumerates all the parts of the body. 
 The mouth, he says, is not only for eating and drinking, but also to praise 
 God ; the teeth, not only to chew food, but also to bridle the tongue, and 
 to regulate the respiration of breath. He would even give the stomach its 
 place in the resurrection body, although he recognized with the Apostle, i 
 Cor. vi. 13, that God will destroy both it and them, and adapt it to higher 
 uses than for the consuming of food. It is only changed, he adds, not de¬ 
 stroyed, for the Apostle’s words, 1 Cor. x. 31, suppose the case of eating and 
 drinking being done for the glory of God, and that even the weakest and 
 least esteemed members of the body should have their becoming honour, 1 
 Cor. xii. 22. Lactantius, also, De Opificio Dei, took the same views of the 
 entire identity of the new with the old. The controversy of the early Church 
 with the Gnostics, inclined them to take the most realist views of the resur¬ 
 rection body, in opposition to the idealising spirit of the Gnostics, who either 
 said that the resurrection was past already, or supposed that the soul, in pass¬ 
 ing out of the flesh, put on a new and incorruptible body. Both sides seemed 
 to miss the essential truth, that the body we put into the grave is to the re¬ 
 surrection body what the bare grain is to tire ear that springs from it. 
 
318 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 tion, we shall hunger no more, neither thirst any 
 more, neither marry. But we may also further infer, 
 that the excito-motor will be given to us, from the ex¬ 
 pressions which speak of the songs of the redeemed. 
 Heaven, it has been said, has been described by nega¬ 
 tives, by the absence of pain, hunger, death, or sin. 
 This is very true, but not the whole truth. Exceptio 
 probat regulam. The exception is indeed not a little 
 remarkable. The only material occupation, if mate¬ 
 rial it can be called, which the blessed are said to en¬ 
 gage in, is music; they have harps in their hands, 
 and a song as a sound of many waters on their lips. 
 Now music is to speech what feeling is to thought. 
 Music is the speech of the affections, as language is 
 of the understanding. The critical faculty, which 
 observes the properties of things, and their relation 
 to each other, and, out of these relations, constructs 
 its systems of science and art, uses speech. The 
 emotional faculty inclines to another form of speech, 
 the best adapted to convey its sentiments. The ear¬ 
 liest expression of thought is the monosyllable : usu¬ 
 ally it is the imitation of the sound which some ani¬ 
 mal makes, or of the impression it produces on our¬ 
 selves, as the hiss of the serpent, and our cry of fear, 
 as the roar of thunder, or the awe which it inspires in 
 us. But as our perceptions increase, and the judg¬ 
 ment strengthens with them, so our vocabulary in¬ 
 creases also; language grows with the growth of the 
 mind, and speech, or the discourse of reason, becomes 
 the mode of communicating our thoughts, one to the 
 other. Now, the emotions, however allied to the 
 
!The Resurrection Body. 319 
 
 judgment, are, by all psychologists, classed by them¬ 
 selves. We can cultivate them as we do the under¬ 
 standing. As they increase in depth and variety, the 
 mode of expressing them must increase also. The 
 simplest form of expressing feeling is the cry or inter¬ 
 jection; and were man only an animal, he would 
 never get beyond the first step, or express more 
 than the single emotions, as they were excited by 
 pleasure or pain. It is the mark of man’s superiority 
 to the brute, that his emotions become co-ordinated 
 and governed by reason, as well as his thought. In¬ 
 stead of the first wild cry of pleasure or pain, the 
 scream of the child, or the yell of the savage, he 
 learns to modulate these sounds. Thus melody be¬ 
 gins, then harmony; first the single or unison song, 
 then part singing, with its combination of voices, and 
 all the skilful devices for increasing the effect, by 
 majors and minors, fugues, contrepoint and thorough 
 bass. Music is thus the language of the emotions, 
 co-ordinated and combined, in the same way that 
 speech is the language of the intellect. There is a 
 grammar of the one as much as of the other, and 
 the laws of music are as definite as those of speech. 
 When we articulate our thoughts connectedly, the 
 result is speech. When we articulate our feelings 
 connectedly, the result is song. As by the use of 
 the understanding we make language, so by the right 
 use of the emotions we make music. Hence it is, 
 that whatever stirs the emotions, whether the pas¬ 
 sion of love, or the clash of arms in battle, seems 
 to require the aid of music. The hero s harp, the 
 
320 The Resurrectio?! Body. 
 
 lover’s lute; from the highly-trained brass band of a 
 crack regiment, down to the war-dance of the savage 
 New Zealander, music responds to that instinct of our 
 nature, which seems to suggest that we must sing our 
 feelings, as we speak our intelligent perceptions. 
 
 Now, though we believe that the understanding 
 will be exercised in heaven in a degree beyond our 
 present capacities, the emotions will be even more fully 
 exercised. The difference perhaps will be this, that 
 we shall perceive at once the relations of things, as we 
 only dimly do at present, after much toil and labour. 
 We weary our intellect so much by study now, that 
 when we break off from some long and difficult calcu¬ 
 lation, we seldom do so with the freshness of feeling 
 of the apostle. Where is our “ Oh Altitudo,” as an 
 old writer expresses it at the end of a disquisition, as 
 deep and exhaustive as that in Rom. xi. 33. The ex¬ 
 planation is, that we have exhausted ourselves over the 
 differentia of things, and have no more admiration left 
 for their unity. Difference lying on the outside of 
 things, unity within ; we have been so long piercing 
 the rind that we lose our relish for the fruit. The 
 critical faculty has been exercised at the expense of 
 the emotional; we have no spirit left for praise, for 
 we have spent our strength in abstruse thought. This 
 is why the mathematics of astronomy kill its devotional 
 aspect. The undevout astronomer is mad, says the 
 rhetorical poet, Young. It would be more just to say, 
 with Solomon, that much study is a weariness of the 
 flesh, and that, as there is a limit to our powers of 
 thinking and feeling, we may rob God of his due, by 
 
3 21 
 
 The 'Resurrection Body. 
 
 giving too much thought, and too little feeling, to the 
 contemplation of his works. But in heaven this dis¬ 
 proportion between our intellect and our emotions will 
 be at an end; for with perceptions increased, and our 
 judgment undisturbed by sin, we shall praise Him with 
 joyful lips, when we shall have learned the judgments 
 of his mouth. Linnmus, falling down on his knees and 
 thanking God for having allowed him to see an English 
 moor covered with broom in full blossom, is an instance 
 of how the emotions will then not be unnaturally 
 divorced from the intellect. Hereafter, to comprehend, 
 to admire, and to adore, will accompany one another, 
 as they do not now. Between presentative and re¬ 
 presentative knowledge, to use Sir Wm. Hamilton’s 
 distinction, there is now a wide gap, which can scarcely 
 be got over at all, and which when overcome, leaves 
 the mind pleased with its own success, and averse to 
 do any thing more than tabulate the results of its own 
 discoveries. The saying of the founder of the Posi¬ 
 tive School, that the heavens declare the glory of 
 Newton and Hipparchus, is what the fool has said in 
 his heart long ago—the only difference being that the 
 folly has now risen to the lips. It is this disposition 
 to rob God of His glory, which is not a result of 
 science, but only the disease of certain overwrought 
 minds, diseased with study, and unrelieved by prayer 
 and praise. 
 
 But, in the future world, this disproportionate culti¬ 
 vation of the intellect, at the expense of the emotions, 
 will not occur. As we shall understand without effort, 
 so we shall praise without ceasing. Hence we see 
 
 x 
 
2 2 2 The Resurrection Body ♦ 
 
 how it will be, that, with heightened emotions, we 
 shall require more perfect instruments of praise than 
 those we use at present. If it is a good thing on earth 
 to sing praises unto the Lord ; if it is a pleasant thing 
 to be joyful, how much more pleasant to think that 
 music will form one of the chief enjoyments and em¬ 
 ployments of the redeemed ? As the Israelites stood 
 by the waters of the Red Sea, smooth as glass, and 
 glittering with the rays of the morning sun, to sing 
 the song of Moses ; so the redeemed are described as 
 standing on, or beside* a sea of glass, mingled with 
 fire, having harps in their hands, to sing the praises of 
 Him who has triumphed gloriously, and has cast the 
 pale horse, and his rider, death, into the sea of the 
 second death, as Pharaoh and his horsemen were into 
 
 the Red Sea. 
 
 There is a remarkable analogy in the metamor¬ 
 phosis of insects to suggest to us what the nature of 
 the resurrection body will be. It is not only the 
 general change from the larva to the imago, but also 
 the pupa or middle state of death, which suggests the 
 possibility of a like transformation in the case of man. 
 The analogy, though imperfectly applied, has been 
 often used before, and lies at the foundation of the 
 well-known fable of Cupid and Psyche. But the 
 allegorists generally went wrong in their application 
 of the analogy. Not knowing the resurrection of the 
 body, they supposed that, as the butterfly (Psyche) 
 sprang out of the chrysalis, so the soul (Psyche) disen- 
 
 * ecrrCras iirl tt)V OaXacraav, Rev. xv. z. 
 
 See Dean Alford’s note. 
 
The Resurrectiott Body . 323 
 
 gaged itself from the dead body, and thus they misread 
 the type, and inferred a wrong doctrine from it. The 
 larva, the pupa, and the imago state correspond exactly 
 to the present psychical body, the intermediate state, 
 and the pneumatical or resurrection body. But if 
 there be no resurrection of the body, as the philoso¬ 
 phers thought, then the metamorphosis of insects 
 suggests either the Hindoo and Pythagorean idea of 
 transmigration, or the Platonic and Neo-Platonic theory 
 of the immortality of the disembodied Psyche. Now, 
 the analogy from the transformation of insects breaks 
 down either with the doctrine of the metempsychosis, 
 or of the natural immortality of the Psyche. In the 
 one case, the individuality is lost in the migration of 
 the psyche from one body to the other. And in 
 the case of the immortality of the Psyche, there is 
 nothing analogous to the coma or chrysalis state of the 
 insect. To make the parallel exact, there must be 
 ' three distinct stages of being corresponding each to 
 each. In the case of the insect there are two lives, 
 one earthly, the other ethereal, divided from each other 
 by an interval of death. Now if the analogy is to 
 teach anything, it must suggest two such lives, with 
 an interval of death between. This the ancients failed 
 to see. 
 
 Their legend of the Phoenix illustrates much better 
 their conception of man’s future state of existence. 
 The phoenix makes its own funeral pyre, and after 
 flapping its wings, rises from its ashes with a new life. 
 So they conceived of the soul as springing out of the 
 urn in which the body was burned to ashes. The 
 
324 Tbe Resurrection Body. 
 
 tongue of fire, which we are familiar with in the design 
 of the funeral urn, depicts their conception of the im¬ 
 mortal soul taking its leave of the mortal body. 
 Whether the immortality of the soul suggested the fable 
 of the phoenix, or the converse, is unimportant. In 
 all probability, one hasty conjecture suggested another. 
 Ignorance of revelation in the two books of nature and 
 of grace lay at the root of all their other errors, and of 
 this as well.”* Had they observed nature more closely, 
 they would have seen that the butterfly does not spring 
 out of the pupa state at once. Death is not the libera¬ 
 tion of the Psyche out of the larva, but the process by 
 which the larva is gradually transformed into a full- 
 grown insect. The analogy of the seed corn, which 
 dies and is buried, should have suggested the right 
 conception of how the natural body rises into a 
 spiritual body. As far as the general thought went, 
 the analogy was rightly seized; but when they tried 
 to apply it in details, the ancients went wrong from 
 not knowing the resurrection of the body, and modern 
 writers too often sanction their error by repeating the 
 play on words between the immortality of the butterfly 
 and the soul or Psyche in the disembodied state. But 
 the true Psyche in the case of man is the resurrection 
 
 * The fable of the phoenix is used by Clement, Tertullian, Cyril, and other 
 fathers as an argument for the resurrection of the body. Clement (v. ad Cor. 
 I. cap. 25) relates the story at length, and with entire faith in its historical 
 truth. He even goes beyond Herodotus, who throws in a caveat against the 
 story of the phoenix carrying the egg of the future bird to the temple of the 
 sun which, “ in my opinion,” old Herodotus says, “ is not credible.” Clement 
 adds that the priests in Egypt compute a period of five hundred years by the 
 return of the bird, though he does not say that he has seen a phoenix. The 
 fable of the phoenix suggests no metamorphosis at all from the natural to the 
 spiritual body. It is revival only, not resurrection. 
 
3 2 5 
 
 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 body, not, as the ancients thought, the disembodied 
 soul. From inattention to this, too many writers have 
 failed to see the beautiful appropriateness of the parable 
 teaching of nature. Thus the Rev. W. Kirby, in his 
 chapter on the subject, observes that, “although the 
 analogy between the different states of insects and the 
 body pf man is only general, yet it is much more com¬ 
 plete with regard to his soul.”* If he had said almost 
 the reverse he would have come nearer to the mark. 
 It is to the resurrection body, not to the immortal 
 soul, that nature suggests her parable teaching. With 
 happy inconsistency this excellent writer goes on to 
 contradict his own assertion, and points out very truly 
 the analogy between the resurrection body and the 
 imago. He also adds an additional point of resemblance, 
 which Archbishop Whately has also very well applied 
 in his Lectures on the Future State. The butterfly, he 
 says, the representative of the soul, is prepared in the 
 larva for its future state of glory; and if it be not 
 destroyed by the ichneumons and other enemies to 
 which it is exposed, symbolical of the vices that destroy 
 the spiritual life of the soul, it will come to the state of 
 repose in the pupa which is its Hades, and at length, 
 when it assumes the imago , break forth with new 
 powers and beauty to its final glory and the reign of 
 love. So that, in this view of the subject, well might 
 the Italian poet exclaim :— 
 
 “ Non v’accorgete voi che noi siam vermi 
 Nati a formar l’angelica farfalla ? ” 
 
 * Vld. Kirby and Spence’s “Entomology,’ p. 3^> new et ^ 
 
3 2 6 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 u Do you not perceive that we are worms, born to 
 form the angelic butterfly ? ” 
 
 Thus the analogy from the insect to the man 
 suggests three states, not two. In the insect there is 
 the grub and the butterfly, with an intermediate state 
 of death between. In man there is the natural body 
 and the spiritual body, with an existence of the dis¬ 
 embodied spirit-soul in hades, corresponding to the 
 pupa state. The old dichotomy, which divided man 
 into body and soul, the one mortal, the other immortal, 
 failed to see the true analogy which the transformation 
 of insects suggests. This is not to be wondered at in 
 pre-christian times; but it is not a little extraordinary 
 that Christian philosophers should have failed to see 
 that the doctrine of the resurrection of the body did 
 not fit in with the old dichotomy of man into body and 
 soul. The analogy from insect life should have set 
 them on the right track, if it were not too often the 
 case that an error once stereotyped goes on repeating 
 itself by the mere vis inertiae. Men go on repeating 
 words without weighing their meaning, or suspecting 
 that with a change of sense they cease to connote the 
 ideas they formerly did. Thus the psyche of Apulaeus 
 has furnished illustrations for sermons innumerable on 
 the nature of man’s existence after death. To do Locke 
 and the school of Christian materialists justice, they have 
 reasserted the doctrine of the resurrection of the body 
 as against the prevailing conception of the immortality 
 of the soul. But failing to grasp the higher truth of 
 the pneuma or life of God in man, they have missed 
 altogether the meaning of the intermediate state. They 
 
The Resurrection Body. 
 
 3 2 7 
 
 have reduced it to a state of entire unconsciousness, 
 which is quite as far from the mark in one extreme as 
 the popular doctrine of an immortal pysche is m the 
 
 other. , • i . 
 
 The transmutation of insects suggests the right 
 
 conception on this subject. There are three stages o 
 
 being in man, as there are in the insect, correspon mg 
 
 each to each. The larva, pupa, and imago, correspoiu 
 
 to the natural body, the disembodied soul, and the 
 
 spiritual body in man. The trichotomy is the only 
 
 view which rightly represents this, or makes e 
 
 metaphor from insect life at all applicable as a parable 
 
 of the stages man is to pass through. 
 
 Dichotomists fail to apprehend one of two trut ts- 
 either they fail to see the meaning of the intermediate 
 state, or of the resurrection body. On the one han , 
 those who hold with Locke and the materialists that 
 the brain is the organ of thought in as full a sense as 
 that the tongue is the organ of speech, describe t e 
 intermediate state as one of entire unconsciousness, ant 
 so miss the meaning of that stage of man s being. On 
 the other hand, the spiritualist school of Descar es 
 generally think of the disembodied soul as in heaven 
 or in glory ; and so, instead of the resurrection of the 
 body being the full redemption of man it is raner 
 something superadded to it, and a difficu ty mste,. o 
 an evidence for the truth of the Christian revelation. 
 It is only on the theory of the trichotomy of human 
 nature into body, soul, and spirit that we can give its 
 due emphasis either to the intermediate or the state o 
 final blessedness. Man, like the insect, is destined to 
 
328 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 pass through three stages of being, the first preparatory 
 to the second, and the second to the third. He does 
 not lose his identity in passing from the state of the 
 psychical body to that of a psychical pneuma in hades, 
 and from that on to the full perfection of being as a 
 pneumatical body at the resurrection morning. It 
 would be a wrong application of the analogy to say 
 that because the chrysalis state of the ins’ect is one of 
 entire insensibility, it must be so in man. 
 
 “ If sleep and death be truly one, 
 
 And every spirit’s folded bloom, 
 
 Through all its intervital gloom, 
 
 In some long trance should slumber on. 
 
 “ So then were nothing lost to man, 
 
 So that still garden of the souls, 
 
 In many a figured leaf enrolls 
 The total world since life began.” 
 
 We need not suppose that because the chrysalis sleeps 
 man is therefore unconscious in hades. That, like so 
 many cocoons hanging on the twigs in a garden, the 
 spirit-soul life of the departed is 
 
 “ Unconscious of the sliding hour, • 
 
 Pure of the body, might it last; 
 
 And silent traces of the past 
 Be of the colour of the flower.” 
 
 The analogy from the insect would rather suggest 
 another thought. The cocoon is not dead, or even 
 sleeping, though it seems to be so. Under its silky 
 cerements the butterfly is forming. Just as the plant 
 
The Resurrection Body. 329 
 
 in winter is collecting its forces from underground for 
 a fresh shoot upward in spring, or the egg is developing 
 into the chick, so the cocoon is really alive. In sleep, 
 to use Delitzsch’s somewhat cabbalistic theory of the 
 seven powers of life, the fifth, sixth, and seventh, which 
 are the powers of sentient life, fall into inaction 5 while 
 the other four classes of nutritive life continue in 
 operation. Thus the sleep of the insect and of the 
 human psyche is a life in death—it is only appaient 
 death. Dissect the cocoon and examine it with the 
 microscope, and the future butterfly may be detected, 
 ^ the wings rolled up into a sort of cold aie lodged 
 between the first and second segment of the caterpillar 
 —the antennae and trunk are coiled up in front of the 
 head, and the legs, however different their form, are 
 actually sheathed in its legs.”* For aught we know 
 to the contrary, the resurrection of a pneumatical body 
 may spring out of the psyche-pneuma of the inter¬ 
 mediate state, as the imago from the chrysalis. It is 
 certainly incorrect and unscriptural to conceive of it as 
 springing from the sarx or flesh which we lay in the 
 grave. That appears to be like the skin or shell of 
 the larva, a mere mask to hide the inner and higher 
 life, and is shed in the grave, as insects and many 
 reptiles shed their skin. The psyche-pneuma, which 
 is the real life and individuality of man, then passes into 
 Hades, as the cocoon into its winding sheet, but then 
 either to rise again with a resurrection and immortal 
 body, or not, according as it has put on Christ, and is 
 quickened by His quickening Spirit or not. We have 
 
 * Kirby and Spence’s Entomology, p. 36, new ed. 
 
330 The Resurrection Body . 
 
 only to repeat what we have said before, that Christ 
 is onr life and our resurrection, and that the indwelling 
 of the Spirit quickening our spirits is (Rom. viii. 11) 
 the efficient as Christ is the meritorious cause of the 
 quickening of our mortal bodies. 
 
 That all are raised to be judged at the last day, but 
 that all are not raised with pneumatical or immortal 
 bodies seems to be a fair inference if we compare John v. 
 25-9 with 1 Cor. xv. The resurrection of damnation 
 is distinctly declared, but it is not said that the wicked, 
 whose bodies are sown in corruption, shall be raised in 
 incorruption. It may be so, but the argument e silentio 
 rather tells the other way, and instead of inferring, as 
 many divines do, that because the saved shall be given 
 immortal bodies the lost must also be immortalized— 
 “ salted with fire,” as the expression is incorrectly ap¬ 
 plied—we rather infer the contrary, and throw on the 
 other side the onus probandi , that it must be so. When 
 Scripture is not decisive between two theories surely 
 it is wisdom to take the one which exhibits the 
 character of God as most just and most merciful. 
 
 u It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” This 
 only is revealed. It is not told us whether many shall 
 be saved or few, or whether any of the many who now 
 are on the broad path which leadeth to destruction may 
 not be saved—so as by fire, i. e ., in spite of and out 
 of the burning of the last day. Our inquiries on this 
 subject are critical only and not dogmatical. We under¬ 
 take rather to point out where others have gone 
 wrong, not to lay down what must be the right theory 
 of the resurrection body. 
 
33 1 
 
 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 There are two ways of thinking on this subject 
 the one mediaeval, the other modern, which seem to us to 
 miss the mark in opposite extremes. The conception 
 of the resurrection body which has come down from t le 
 Fathers through the schoolmen, and is not abandoned 
 yet, is, that the same sarx which is put into the grave 
 is raised again at the morning of resurrection, 
 notion, which led the Egyptians to resort to the prac¬ 
 tice of embalming, took a new form m the Christian 
 Church. As St Paul had treated the thought of the 
 resurrection of the same identical particles as an ab¬ 
 surdity, “Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not 
 quickened except it die,” materialistic conceptions on 
 this subject took a different direction. It was the 
 burial , not the embalming of the body, which was now 
 regarded as the point to be attended to. Hence the 
 strong desire to be buried in holy ground,—earth, 1 
 possible, as in the case of the Campo Santa of Pisa, 
 which was actually brought from Palestine. As the 
 Tew desired to die in Jerusalem, to be near the place 
 where the Messiah should touch the earth first on the 
 Mount of Olives, so Christians thought of burial m 
 crypts near the bones of martyrs and underneath the 
 altar, where the miracle of the Incarnation m the host 
 was daily repeated. The resurrection of the very 
 particles put into the grave is the point insisted on y 
 Tertullian against the Gnostics in his day, who allego¬ 
 rised the resurrection away altogether. Tertullian s 
 conception became the orthodox one. No other was 
 known to the mediaeval Church. Her painters, who 
 were the divines of the people, have expressed this m 
 
33 2 d^he Resurrection Body . 
 
 the coarsest and most theatrical form. To object to 
 this view of the resurrection was to incur the suspicion 
 of heresy. Even in modern times the resurrection of 
 the flesh is often confounded with the resurrection of 
 the body.* 
 
 This arises from not distinguishing between sarx 
 and soma. The resurrection of Christ (although His 
 was not sinful flesh) was a resurrection, not a revival. 
 So also must ours be. “Thou sowest not that body 
 that shall be, but bare grain.” This is decisive on the 
 subject, and whatever the change may be (on which we 
 are as much in the dark as the man who sowed the 
 first grain of wheat) it is certainly not the same par¬ 
 ticles of matter which reappear, either in the wheat 
 plant or the man. 
 
 The other erroneous opinion in the opposite extreme 
 is, that the spiritual body underlies the natural in our 
 present state of being, and consequently that we have 
 only to be magnetised in some way in order to be en 
 rapport with the world of spirits, even while in the 
 flesh, f This is the theory of Swedenborg, on which 
 
 * It is true that the original of the creed is crapKbs avaaracnv, carnis resur- 
 rectionem , and even in the Church of Aquileia hujus carnis resurrectionem , but 
 Jerome accounts for this on account of some of the Gnostics saying that as 
 there were bodies celestial air and light, the expression, the resurrection of the 
 body, did not seem definite enough to meet their opinion.—See Pearson on the 
 Creed, Art. XI. 
 
 f “ The soul of man is his spiritual body. The body of flesh and blood is 
 only half the human body. Another body underlies it. There is a natural 
 body, the Apostle says, and there is a spiritual, and by this he plainly means a 
 body altogether different from the natural, which is the material, or as Wiclif 
 calls it, the “ beestlie ’’ body. Yet, by speaking of both in the present tense, 
 saying of each that it now is, he gives us to understand that the two bodies are 
 contemporaneous and co-existent, so long, that is, as the natural one may 
 
333 
 
 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 modern spiritualism has based its delusions. Error is 
 endless, truth is only one—hence we see that the age 
 in shaking off the cold materialism of the French school 
 has fallen in with the fantastic spiritualism of Sweden¬ 
 borg and others. From believing in neither angel nor 
 spirit it has passed at a bound into the other extreme, 
 and now is ready to say with the Apostle, but in a very 
 different sense, “ there is a natural body, and there is 
 a spiritual body.’' The Apostle adds, “ Howbeit that 
 was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, 
 and afterward that which is spiritual.” The first man 
 is of the earth earthly, the second man is the Lord 
 from heaven. The neo-spiritualists of our day quite 
 overlook this important distinction. They represent 
 the spiritual body as underlying the natural. Accord¬ 
 ing to Swedenborg, man is an imperishable spiritual 
 body, placed for a season in a perishable material body. 
 The soul, the true man, is its own organised and 
 spiritual body, and when it leaves the earthly house of 
 flesh it enters at once on its resurrection and final state. 
 The Swedenborgian universe, moreover, is divided into 
 four orders of abodes. In the highest or celestial 
 world are the heavens of the angels. In the lowest or 
 infernal world are the hells of the demons. In the 
 intermediate or spiritual world are the earths inhabited 
 by men, and surrounded by the transition state through 
 which souls departing from their bodies after a while 
 
 endure. By adding that it is to be raised, he intimates that this spiritual 
 body is the immortal portion of our being.” Hence, the writer goes on to 
 argue that resurrection occurs (?) in each case at the moment of death.”—See 
 Life and its Nature, by Leo Grindon, p. 146. 
 
334 
 
 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 soar to heaven, or sink to hell, according to their fit¬ 
 ness and attraction. In this life man is free, because he 
 is an energy, an equilibrium, between the influences of 
 heaven and hell. The middle state surrounding man 
 is full of spirits, some good and some bad. Everyman 
 is accompanied by swarms of both classes of spirits con¬ 
 tinually striving to make him like themselves. Fuither, 
 there are two kinds of influx on man : mediate influx, 
 which is when the spirits in the middle state flow in on 
 man’s thoughts and affections—immediate influx is 
 when the Lord, the pure Spirit of truth, flows into 
 
 every organ and faculty of man. 
 
 It is easy to see that American spiritualism is only 
 this Swedenborgian theory carried out into details. 
 Spirit-rapping, clairvoyance, and the theory of the 
 medium to convey communications from departed 
 spirits to those who are still in the body are addi¬ 
 tions to Swedenborg’s theory, and additions for the 
 worse. His own notion of immediate influx, or di¬ 
 rect inspiration from God, though more extravagant, 
 was in reality far less mischievous than the delusion 
 of modern psychomancy. The root of all these errors 
 seems to lie in the confusion between the intermediate 
 and final state, as if the spiritual body lay under the 
 natural in this present life. If we discard the mysti¬ 
 cal language in which it wraps its meaning, Sweden¬ 
 borgian spiritualism only amounts to this, that there 
 is an immortal soul which is liberated at death, and 
 lives then in the world of spirits, and perhaps leturns 
 to visit this world, and holds communication with its 
 inhabitants. It is thus only an old opinion under a new 
 
335 
 
 The Resurrectioji Body. 
 
 name. Swedenborg chose to call the soul a spiritual 
 body or organism. His strange theory that every 
 thing consists of a great number of perfect leasts like 
 itself, every heart is an aggregation of little hearts, 
 every lung is an aggregation of little lungs, every eye 
 an aggregation of eyes, may have perhaps suggested 
 that the soul in the same way is only the homuncule 
 within the man. In this corpuscular theory of the 
 soul it is easy to see that at death the soul or spiritual 
 body survives. But this is not only a different truth 
 from the Christian doctrine of the resurrection, it is 
 directly opposed to it. We have seen how the Pla¬ 
 tonic theory of the immortality of the soul is opposed 
 to the Apostle’s teaching on this subject. This new 
 Platonic theory of a spiritual body is quite as unlike 
 the true doctrine of the resurrection A The Platonic 
 theory is at least intelligible, but this latter is irra¬ 
 tional as well as irreligious. It is an old device to 
 
 * Man, according to this theory, is a series of forms, one within the 
 other, and successively more perfect, skeleton, muscles, veins, nerves, each 
 forms an Eidolon or mask, underneath which is the true or spiritual body. 
 The true eikon basilike of mind is body. Hence, if you want to see what the 
 soul is like, instead of taking a microscope or an essay on immortality, all we 
 have to do is to contemplate the living, moving human figure in its ripeness 
 and perfection. So Shelley of Ianthe— 
 
 Sudden arose 
 Ianthe’s soul, it stood 
 All beautiful in naked purity, 
 
 The perfect semblance of its bodily frame, 
 
 Instinct with inexpressible beauty and grace. 
 
 Each stain of earthliness 
 Had passed away, it reassumed 
 Its native dignity, and stood 
 Immortal amid ruin. 
 
 —See Life, its Nature, &c., by Leo Grindon. 
 
The Resurrection Body. 
 
 vamp up worn-out theories under new names. When 
 we profess to believe in the resurrection body, it is a 
 poor evasion to be put off with the old-world belief 
 in the ghost of the deceased, which is a kind of 
 body in the mystical language of Swedenborg. The 
 immortality of the thinking principle is one thing, the 
 resurrection of an organism adapted to it is anothei 
 thing. To confound the two together as modern 
 spiritualists do is to make an alloy between Plato and 
 Paul, and to pass off an old error under a new name. 
 If this fantastic theory of a resurrection immediate on 
 the moment of death were found only among the pro¬ 
 fessed followers of Swedenborg, we might leave it as 
 a singular error to die out of itself. But as it is 
 creeping into favour among writers not inclined to 
 agree with Swedenborg’s other opinions, and is by 
 them put forward in apparent good faith, as their 
 sense of the real meaning of the Apostle’s teaching,''' 
 it is well to point out that it is only the Platonic doc¬ 
 trine of man’s natural immortality disguised in a Chris¬ 
 tian dress. A philosophical opinion is never so dan¬ 
 gerous as when it uses Scriptural language, and passes 
 off, under the form of sound words, conceptions of 
 quite a different character. 
 
 Thus, though it doth not yet appear what we shall 
 be, we at least can gather from Scripture what the 
 resurrection body will not be. It will not be the old 
 body of flesh revived, which is the error of one ex¬ 
 treme_it will not be the soul liberated at the moment 
 
 * See Leo Gnndon. 
 
The Resurrection Body. 337 
 
 of death, and becoming thus a spiritual body, which 
 is the error of the other extreme. 
 
 Flesh and blood, we are told on the one hand, can- 
 not inherit the kingdom of God ; on the other hand, 
 the apostle’s teaching is, that this body of corruption 
 is the buried genii or seed of a resurrection body. 
 The one opinion makes too much of the remains we 
 lay in the grave; the other makes too little of them. 
 To the one they are the base materials of the resur¬ 
 rection body, to be transmuted into precious at the 
 last day ; to the other they are mere exuvim, like the 
 celts, bones, and hatchet-heads of the world’s abori¬ 
 gines, to be set in museums hereafter, as relics of a 
 past and lower stage of being. We reject both these 
 theories, the mediaeval and the modern, as equally un- 
 scriptural. The one reduces the resurrection to be a 
 mere revival of the body that once was; the other 
 destroys the significance of death as the wages of sin. 
 Scripture declares both that we are to be unclothed, 
 and again clothed upon. If the nature of the un¬ 
 clothed state is mysterious, much more may we expect 
 to feel in the dark as to what the clothing upon must 
 mean. If we cannot conceive of spiritual existence 
 out of the body, much more difficult it is to conjec¬ 
 ture what the resurrection from the dead can mean. 
 If we cannot see into hades, much less into heaven 
 itself. If the intermediate state is involved in obscu¬ 
 rity, much more the final. 
 
 Yet the analogy of the butterfly comes to our help, 
 as far as negative conceptions go. We look in vain 
 among the higher forms of animal life for an organism 
 
 Y 
 
I 
 
 338 The Resurrection Body ♦ 
 
 endowed with the excito-motor system, without the 
 nutritive. In all cases, the fable of the belly and the 
 members is the rule of animal life. Organs of motion, 
 of prehension, even of voice, are all given that the 
 creature may find its food, or capture its prey, as the 
 case may be. The lion roars because excited by hun¬ 
 ger, and perhaps all other animals utter their cries 
 under similar conditions—to call their mates, or to 
 warn of danger. The beak of a bird is so adapted for 
 the food it consumes, that an ornithologist can either 
 construct the beak from knowing the food, or describe 
 the food from having seen the beak. In all vertebrates, 
 up to and including man, the intestinal canal is the 
 centre of life, and all its other organs, wings, legs, 
 claws, beak, are but instruments to assist it in finding 
 and securing its food. But in the case of man we find a 
 class of organs capable of higher uses. The human 
 hand, for instance, is such an organ. It helps us to 
 carry food to the mouth, but this is the least and basest 
 of its uses. Man would indeed be only an improved 
 ape, if this were all which the hand could do. It can 
 handle the pen of the ready writer, and the brush of 
 the painter—it can touch the chords of the harp or 
 organ, and so discourse most exquisite music. Even 
 the sensualist school allow that the human hand is that 
 which differentiates between man and the monkey. 
 But they fell into the old post hoc propter hoc fallacy, 
 and held that because the hand is an instrument of 
 thought, that it produces thought. It is the mind 
 within which makes the hand what it is, not the hand 
 which makes-the mind. Our right hand would soon 
 
339 
 
 The Resurrection Body . 
 
 forget its cunning, if the brain did not think for it. 
 Handicraft is the earliest manifestation of mind, but the 
 mind itself is older than that which it produces. That 
 which we have said of the hand is true of other organs 
 of the body—the voice in particular. These are not 
 essential to the nutritive life, as such. The higher 
 powers of the eye, the ear, and the touch, and the 
 smelling (of which taste is only a variety, serving a 
 temporary purpose) are less animal than intellectual. 
 They are the organs of an intelligent being, and if 
 that being is to enjoy a life hereafter, and to be placed 
 in the midst of the works of God, to see, hear, and 
 understand them, then it seems to be required, from 
 the nature of the case, that he should be given back 
 these organs, only purified, elevated, and the residuum 
 of what is animal strained off from them. The eye, 
 for instance, is a perfect optical instrument, designed 
 to disclose to us the wonders of creation, not to be 
 used as an occasion to the flesh, or for the mere lust 
 of the eye. The ear, again, is adapted to catch divine 
 harmonies, not to drink in slanders and the distilled 
 poison of wicked or voluptuous speech. The tongue 
 and voice will be given to bless God, and not to curse 
 men, who are made in the image of God. ' The proper 
 use of the hand is not to reach forth to violence, but 
 to touch the harp, to weigh and test the properties of 
 bodies, and to serve as a general instrument of intelli¬ 
 gence. 
 
 But what analogy have we in nature for organs 
 thus etherealised and purified from the dross of mere 
 animalism? None in the higher forms of life: the 
 
340 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 vertebrate kingdom teaches us only this lesson, “Meats 
 for the belly and the belly for meats, and God will 
 destroy both it and them.” But when we descend to 
 the insect, we find, to our surprise, a transformation 
 which not only suggests the possibility that death is 
 only sleep, but also suggests the mode by which organs 
 which serve the nutritive life now may be elevated 
 into exclusively sensitive and percipient oigans by and 
 by. The grub is, as its name implies, that which is 
 grob or gross—that buries itself ( graben , hence the 
 word grave) in the carcase, as Australian savages are 
 said to do in that of a whale cast ashore, and gorge 
 themselves there till, sickened with their disgusting 
 meal of rancid blubber, they lie down and sleep off its 
 effects. In the grub state the insect’s nutritive life is 
 the all, and there are no limbs at all, or the fewest 
 possible. An enormous pair of jaws, no wings, feet 
 only adapted to crawl slowly from one part of the leaf, 
 when gnawed, to the other—this is the insect in its 
 lowest stage of being. But what a contrast when the 
 larva passes into the imago. The jaws are now replaced 
 by a delicate proboscis, with which it but sips of a 
 sweet, and then flies to the rest. It is a beautiful 
 winged creature, full of eyes, for in its rapid flights it 
 needs quick powers of perception. Its powers of mo¬ 
 tion are as great as its appetite for food once was. 
 There is now the maximum of sentient with the mini¬ 
 mum of the nutritive life, as before in the grub. state 
 it was the converse. That the provision in the insect 
 is with a view to the reproduction of its kind does not 
 in the least mar the justness of the analogy; for each 
 
The Resurrection Body. 341 
 
 insect, as an individual, passes through three stages— 
 one of nutritive life only; another of coma, in which 
 the nutritive organs die and the sentient are developed ; 
 and a third, of sentient life in its highest degree. Man, 
 too, is intended to pass through three such stages; 
 but the last in his case is to be the final one. Whether 
 it would be so but for the incarnation and continued 
 humanity of Christ may fairly admit of question. But 
 Christ having linked his nature to ours, the transfor¬ 
 mation of the natural into a spiritual body will be the 
 final one. With the resurrection body made like unto 
 his glorious body, we not only die no more, death 
 hath no more dominion over us, but we shall be tempted 
 no more. At the second death, death and hell are 
 cast into the lake of fire; the devil and his angels are 
 there consigned to chains of darkness for ever. And 
 so as there is no place found for the repentance of the 
 incorrigibly wicked, so there is no place found for the 
 temptation of the glorified saints. 
 
 Thus on the distinction between sentient and nutritive 
 life we ground our conception of the nature of the resur¬ 
 rection body. It is the scriptural distinction between 
 <rw,a« and <r<£gg. At present not only have we organs of 
 the flesh, but through the entrance of sin even our 
 organs of sense-perception have yielded themselves as 
 instruments of unrighteousness unto iniquity. Re¬ 
 demption then supervenes, and by the sanctification 
 and indwelling of the Holy Spirit the evil is partly but 
 not yet entirely redressed. The organs of the body 
 are turned to their right use, as instruments of righte¬ 
 ousness unto God. The flesh is taken prisoner and 
 
34 2 7/6 <? Resurrection Body. 
 
 subdued and kept under ; and by the higher organs 
 of sense-perception, the eye, the hand, the voice being 
 turned to the service of God, one great source of sin, 
 on z fames peccati is cut off at once. The lust of the 
 flesh has no longer the lust of the eye and the pride 
 or wantonness of life to act as a feeder. 
 
 But the carnal mind remains, yea, even in the 
 regenerate. Death alone will deliver us entirely from 
 this body of death. As we have before seen, our 
 sanctification or entire separation from sin can only be 
 brought about by the death of that which has become 
 contaminated by sin. The animal nature may be sub¬ 
 dued and kept under for a little degree by the living 
 and regenerate spirit; but “ we groan within ourselves, 
 even we who have received the first fruits of the Spirit, 
 waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the 
 body. Then at last the e&g, the appetitive animal 
 nature, will disappear altogether, and a new <r2/*a, or 
 organism, will be given to us, corresponding to the 
 wants of a nature altogether spiritual and Godlike. 
 
 Thus the pneumatical body is less related to the 
 flesh which is laid in the grave, than to the pneuma 
 itself, which, during the intermediate state, is with 
 Christ. The first man is of the earth, earthy, Adam 
 from Adamah; the second man is the Lord from 
 heaven. As is the earthy, such are they also that are 
 earthy, and as is the heavenly, such are they also that 
 are heavenly. The resurrection body is thus spiritual, 
 not carnal, and if spiritual, then the spirit and not the 
 animal nature, which we lay in the grave, is to be 
 regarded as the nucleus around which it will gather. 
 
343 
 
 'The Resurrection Body. 
 
 To be “ unclothed,” and then “clothed upon,” with 
 our house, which is from heaven, are the two states 
 which await us after death. Now this clothing upon 
 clearly implies more than resuming the old clouts of 
 humanity, which we laid aside in the grave. Our 
 present is a body of humiliation. In all probability, 
 the state of animalism was one into which the first 
 Adam was put, as a test of submission, and as a 
 preparation for a higher and angelic state of being. 
 Flesh and blood could not inherit the kingdom of 
 God, and flesh and blood was the body of humilia¬ 
 tion into which Adam was put, in order to prove 
 him, and show what was in his heart. Sin has en¬ 
 tered in, and made that which was only earthly and 
 animal to become sensual or psychically wicked and 
 devilish, or depraved by the devil. It cannot, there¬ 
 fore, be, that this body of flesh can ever become 
 the fit receptacle for the resurrection life. It will be 
 a new body, not the old made new. The house 
 from heaven will not be a house rebuilt with the old 
 bricks, but on an enlarged and beautified plan. The 
 materials will be new as well as the design, and the 
 chief, if not the only point of identity with the old, 
 will be this, that it will enshrine and shelter the 
 spirit in the same way that the trembling house of 
 clay we at present inhabit does. St Paul compares 
 the one to a tent, the other to a building of God. 
 The tabernacle and the temple were identical, not in 
 the sense that the materials were one and the same, 
 much less that the old materials were worked up into 
 the new edifice ; but, in the sense that they were put 
 
344 Resurrection Body. 
 
 to the same uses, were adorned with the same pre¬ 
 cious vessels, and, above all, were the shrine where 
 Jehovah, manifested himself, by the ark of his pre¬ 
 sence, by the Shekinah of glory, and by the cherubim 
 overshadowing the mercy-seat. Or, to take another 
 comparison, whether Paul, the tentmaker, lay out on 
 his travels in a tent of Cicilian goat’s hair, or dwelt 
 two whole years in his own hired house in Rome, 
 the dwelling might be equally described as Paul’s 
 house. The identity of the dwellings consisted in 
 this, that they were both the homes of the same man, 
 though very unlike in outward shape, and of very 
 different degrees of durability: so of the present 
 psychical and the future pneumatical body. Their 
 fitness to be the home of the soul-spirit is the point 
 of their identity, not so much any material resem¬ 
 blance between them. It is not necessary, Dr Hich- 
 cock says, that the resurrection body should contain a 
 single particle of the body laid in the grave, if it only 
 contain particles of the same kind, united in the same 
 proportion, and the compound be made to assume the 
 same form and structure as the natural body.* This 
 statement is partly right, but does not go far enough. 
 We object to the thought that the resurrection body 
 is to contain particles of the same kind , united in the 
 same proportion, for that would amount to a resurrec¬ 
 tion of the flesh, which, however patristic, is far from 
 a scriptural truth. 
 
 Bonnet’s theory, that within our material system 
 there lurks an exquisite spiritual organisation, invisibly 
 
 * The Resurrection of Spring, p. 26. 
 
345 
 
 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 pervading it, and constituting its vital power, seems to 
 be the first conception on the nature of the spiritual 
 body, which is at once philosophical and Christian. ■ 
 There is much in the Palingenisie Philosophique* which 
 is suggestive of the right analogy of what the spiritual 
 body will be, but he has gone too far in maintaining 
 the immortality, not of men only, but of animals as 
 well, and carries the idea of development in nature to 
 such an extent, as to imagine that plants may become 
 animals, and animals men, and men angels. But 
 Bonnet, who was at least a profound entomologist, 
 seems to have struck on the right theory of the re¬ 
 surrection, by adhering closely to the analogy of the 
 butterfly rising out of the chrysalis. Bichat had not 
 suggested the distinction between organic and animal 
 life, and Bell’s discoveries on the nerves had yet to 
 be made. But by the light of Bichat and Bell’s dis¬ 
 coveries, we can see one way to a theory of a Palin¬ 
 genesis of man, in which the flesh and blood of St 
 Paul, the animal life of Bichat, is eliminated, and 
 the pneumatical body or organic life, the senso-motor 
 nervous system, as distinct from the mere ganglionic, 
 is retained. Now Bonnet, as an entomologist, ob¬ 
 served correctly enough that the butterfly was en¬ 
 cased, not in the cocoon only, but even in the larva. 
 Swammerdam had already observed this. By plung¬ 
 ing into vinegar or spirit of wine a caterpillar about to 
 assume the pupa state, and letting it remain there a 
 
 * La Palingenesie Philosophique ou Idees sur l’etat passe et sur letat futur 
 des etres vivans. Geneve 1767. 
 
346 The Resurrection Body 
 
 few days, he then dissected the insect, and detected 
 the future butterfly. He found the wings rolled up 
 into a sort of cord, and lodged between the first and 
 second segment of the caterpillar, the antennas and 
 trunk coiled up in front of the head, and the legs, 
 however different their form, actually sheathed in its 
 legs.* It was a correct conjecture, therefore, of Bon¬ 
 net’s, that as in the insect, so in the man, there might 
 be an exquisite spiritual organisation invisibly pervad¬ 
 ing it, and constituting its vital power. Death might 
 be the stage during which the spiritual body rose out 
 of the animal, as the imago develops itself from the 
 larva under the winding-sheet of the cocoon. Bichat’s 
 and Bell’s generalisations have come since to illustrate 
 still farther what was a simple analogy or anticipation 
 of reason in Bonnet’s hands. We now know, as he 
 did not, how much of our present organisation is spi¬ 
 ritual, and what is animal only. The nervous system 
 or organic life, though at present indivisible from the 
 flesh or nutritive life, is clearly distinguishable in idea, 
 and will be one day distinguished in fact, as the but¬ 
 terfly is from the grub. 
 
 There is another analogy for the possibility of the 
 separation between the nutritive and the sentient life 
 in the resurrection body. The structure of bone is 
 this, that it consists of earthy matter and gelatine so 
 intimately incorporated, that although the substances 
 are really .two, they seem only one ; atom answering 
 so to atom, that the whole of the gelatinous matter 
 
 * rid. Kirby and Spence’s “ Entomology,” p. 36. 
 
347 
 
 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 may be burned off by calcination, or the whole of the 
 earthy matter be dissolved by acid, and yet the form 
 of the bone will remain unchanged, as in the case of 
 an ordinary petrifaction under a dropping well. Now, 
 suppose the spiritual body to retain the sentient with¬ 
 out the nutritive life, we have the case of the bone, 
 with either the gelatine calcined by heat, or the earthy 
 matter dissolved by acid. 
 
 Thus, instead of the old carnal conception of the 
 resurrection of relics, which has come down through 
 the schoolmen from the fathers, and which the Coun¬ 
 cil of Trent has endorsed in its Catechism,* we hold 
 the resurrection of the spiritual body in man, which 
 is embedded at present in the flesh, and inseparable 
 from it, but which shall be recalled from the grave at 
 the last day. The flesh goes to corruption, is lost in 
 the circle of matter, and its particles will never be re¬ 
 collected or revived, as divines once thought. It is 
 foolish to rest the resurrection of the body on the 
 fancied indestructibility of any particle of matter, as 
 Tertullian does with the teeth, or the Rabbins on 
 the bone Luz, the os coccygis, which they fancied 
 was indestructible. “Pound it,” they said, “furi¬ 
 ously on anvils with heavy hammers of steel, burn 
 it for ages in the fiercest furnaces, soak it for cen¬ 
 turies in the strongest solvents—all in vain; its 
 magic structure will remain.” The bones areas much 
 
 * See “ Catechismus Concil Trident,” p. x, 2, ix. “The identical body 
 shall be restored without deformities or superfluities, restored, that as it was a 
 partner in the man’s deeds, so it may be in his punishment.” The authority 
 quoted to support this is Augustine. See his “ De Civ. Dei,” xxi. 19-21. 
 
348 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 part of the nutritive life in man as the flesh and 
 blood. They are permeated with blood vessels, and 
 grow and decay as well as the other organs of the 
 nutritive life. So also, we admit, it is with the ner¬ 
 vous system at present; it has its roots in the flesh, 
 and not only serves the flesh, but is also nourished by 
 it. But it may not be so hereafter. We may then be 
 given a nervo-motor system, which shall be pneumati- 
 cal, and not psychical; from heaven, and not from 
 earth ; and which shall grow around the pneuma and 
 fit itself to its wants, as the fleshly body now grows 
 around the psyche or animal life, and is fitted to it. 
 
 This conception of resurrection of the body is in 
 analogy with all the works of God, which the other 
 is not. The mechanico - theatrical description of 
 Young carries the popular view to the verge of ab¬ 
 surdity:— 
 
 “ Now charnels rattle ; scattered limbs, and all 
 The various bones, obsequious to the call, 
 
 Self-moved advance—the neck, perhaps, to meet 
 The distant head; the distant head, the feet. 
 
 Dreadful to view ! See, through the dusky sky, 
 
 Fragments of bodies in confusion fly 
 To distant regions, journeying there to claim 
 Deserted members, and complete the frame.” 
 
 How unworthy such a theory is of the power and 
 wisdom of God. It is not a question whether the 
 resurrection be a miracle, but a miracle must be at 
 least worthy of its author ; it must be a sign, and 
 something more, a sign from heaven. No one 
 
349 
 
 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 questions that God could re-collect the dust, and set 
 bone to his bone, as in the vision of Ezekiel. But 
 the question is, what has God said that He will do, 
 and what do His other works lead us to suppose He 
 will do? The analogy by which the psychical life 
 clothes itself with flesh in the womb is to the point. 
 It is wonderful how we are fashioned in the secret 
 parts of the earth when as yet there is none of them. 
 The younger Fichte has advanced the theory of a 
 preconscious life, to account for the way in which 
 the Psyche clothes itself in flesh, as we grow before 
 and after birth. This may or may not be a sound 
 conjecture. But we may at least speak of a post¬ 
 conscious life, a psycho-pneumatical life, after the 
 body is laid in the grave; and the Scriptures tell us 
 that this soul or life is to gather to itself at the last 
 day a body or house not made with hands, and pro¬ 
 bably by an act of creation on God’s part, analogous to 
 that by which the psyche is quickened in the womb, 
 and begins to clothe itself with flesh. 
 
 Farther than this we may not push our inquiries. 
 We have seen that the spiritual body is something 
 different from the disembodied soul or the body of 
 flesh. These are the two contrary errors on the 
 subject, which our inquiries have led us to reject, 
 and here we leave the question. There are not 
 only the direct words of Scripture on which to 
 ground our faith, but also certain analogies from the 
 transformation of insects, and the modern physiolo¬ 
 gical distinction of the nutritive and organic life by 
 
350 The Resurrection Body. 
 
 which to confirm and strengthen our hopes. Thus 
 the testimony of revelation and nature rightly inter¬ 
 preted bear in the same direction, and when this is 
 the case, we feel that we cannot be very far from the 
 truth. 
 
SUMMARY. 
 
 We have now reached the point where we may take 
 a survey of the ground which we have travelled over, 
 and point out the conclusion to which our inquiry leads. 
 Put in the fewest possible words, our argument may 
 be summed up under the following heads :— 
 
 I. We have seen from comparing Gen. ii. 7 with 
 1 Thess. v. 23, Heb iv. 12, and other passages of 
 Scripture, that man is a rpt[izpr\s vKoeraoig, a union of 
 three, not of two natures only. These are, body or 
 sense-consciousness: soul or self-consciousness, and 
 spirit or God-consciousness. 
 
 II. We have seen that out of the union of three 
 natures in one person, there result two tendencies 
 called in Scripture the flesh and the spirit. Soul or 
 self-consciousness, as the union point between spirit 
 and body, was created free to choose to which of 
 these two opposite poles it would be attracted. This 
 equilibrium between flesh and spirit is the state of in¬ 
 nocence in which Adam was created, and which he lost 
 by the fall. 
 
 III. We have seen that the fall was not a solitary 
 act of disobedience, but an inclination given to the 
 
252 Summary. 
 
 whole nature of Adam in the direction of the flesh by 
 which the spirit or image of God was deadened in him, 
 and that this carnal mind, or natural bias to evil, must 
 descend by the law that like produces like from Adam 
 to his posterity, through all time. 
 
 IV. We have seen that the posterity of Adam, 
 though spiritually dead, still retain the germ of the 
 pneuma. That germ of God-consciousness, more 
 than reason or intellect, is that which distinguishes 
 man from the brute. It is conscience or the remains 
 of the fallen pneuma which witnesses for God in us, 
 and whispers that “ He is not far from any one of us.” 
 It is as conscience that the Spirit works in the unre¬ 
 generate, accusing or else excusing, but never unless 
 blinded by self-righteousness approving our conduct. 
 It is through the conscience that the Holy Spirit con¬ 
 vinces the world of sin, and though the world cannot 
 discern this witness for God, it is nevertheless the 
 standing testimony that God has not left Himself with¬ 
 out a witness within as well as without, that we were 
 “made for God, and that the heart is restless till it 
 rests in Him.” 
 
 V. We have seen that the new birth is the quick¬ 
 ening of that conscience or pneuma by the Divine 
 Spirit, the Lord and giver of life. The Person and 
 work of the Holy Spirit is thus evidenced by His 
 indwelling in our spirit. So that believers have the 
 witness within that they are born again—the Spirit 
 witnessing with their spirits that they are the sons of 
 God. 
 
 VI. We have seen that the grounds on which 
 
Summary. 353 
 
 reason rests its hopes of existence after death are 
 either fallacious or prove too much. Of the soul or 
 the seat of self-consciousness we cannot say either that 
 it is mortal or immortal. Life is not an inherent and 
 essential property of mind any more than of matter. 
 The soul or self-consciousness can only exist through 
 its union with spirit or God-consciousness, so that the 
 proofs of the life everlasting must rest, not on the 
 argument for the natural immortality of the psyche, 
 but on the gift of eternal life to the pneuma, when 
 quickened and renewed in the image of God. 
 
 VII. We have seen that while the separation of 
 soul and body would lead to the inference that the 
 intermediate state is a state of unconsciousness, the 
 contrary inference results from the view that, the 
 disembodied soul, when put to death in the flesh, is 
 quickened in the spirit, so that the spirit-soul is con¬ 
 scious even while absent from the body. Thus as our 
 lower or psychical life is maintained by the union of body 
 and soul before the spirit is quickened, so the higher 
 or pneumatical life is continued by the union of soul 
 and spirit although the body sleeps in the grave. 
 
 VIII. Lastly, we have seen that the distinction of 
 spirit, soul, and body, suggests the nature of the spiri¬ 
 tual or resurrection body. In our present bodies of 
 humiliation there are two classes of organs with distinct 
 and peculiar functions. The one class of single organs 
 makes up what is called our nutritive life. The other 
 class of organs, placed in pairs on opposite sides of the 
 spinal cord, make up our organic life, properly so called. 
 To the plant belongs the nutritive life only, to the 
 
 z 
 
354 Summary. 
 
 animal the nutritive and sentient, with the germ of the 
 rational, to man the nutritive, sentient, and rational, 
 with the germ of the spiritual, and to angels the sen¬ 
 tient, rational, and spiritual, without the nutritive. 
 Thus plant life is at one extreme and angel life at the 
 other, and since man hereafter is to be equal with the 
 angels, the nutritive or plant life cannot form part of 
 his resurrection body. To this agree the words of 
 the Apostle, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the ' 
 kingdom of God (i Cor. xv. 50). This transforma¬ 
 tion of man from a psychical to a pneumatical body is 
 analogous to the transformation of insects. In the larva 
 the nutritive life is at its height, in the imago the sen¬ 
 tient. The imago or butterfly is thus a type, not of 
 the disembodied psyche as the ancients thought, but 
 of the resurrection body. The resurrection is thus 
 not a rising again , but a rising from or out of the dead 
 world of matter. Thus, u though it doth not yet 
 appear what we shall be,” the Christian doctrine of 
 the resurrection is equally opposed to the Greek theory 
 of the resurrection of the disembodied psyche at the 
 moment of death, or the Egyptian theory of the re¬ 
 vival of relics. The latter is the notion of the 
 mediaeval Church, the resurrectio carnis of the creed; 
 the former is the opinion of modern spiritualising 
 philosophers. To the one we oppose the avdffratfig 
 tov (tui^UTog, not tfapx/jg, tO the Other the dvdffragig lx tuv 
 vexpwv. 
 
 That the psychology of the Bible should thus throw 
 light on its theology is only what we might expect. 
 In an age when the lands of the Bible have been ex- 
 
Summary. 355 
 
 plored, and its geography, geology, antiquities, and 
 natural history described by able and scientific observers 
 —in an age when a Palestine exploration fund has 
 been set on foot to make systematic research—and 
 nothing connected with the lands of the Bible is over¬ 
 looked, “ from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop 
 that grows on the wall,” it would be strange indeed if 
 the psychology of the Bible were not sought out, to 
 explain certain points in its theology, which, even an 
 apostle admits, are hard to be understood (2 Pet. iii. 
 16). The Bible, taken as a whole, is neither a book 
 of pure psychology, nor even of pure theology. 
 Neither the absolute nature of God, nor the absolute 
 nature of man, is its proper subject, but the relation of 
 the two to each other. Just as astronomy rests on our 
 knowledge of the laws of light, and of celestial 
 mechanics, so with the Bible ; its data are a few 
 psychological, and a few theological truths, and our 
 right understanding of the book itself will mainly 
 depend on our understanding the data with which it 
 sets out. The illustration may be carried a point 
 further. As in astronomy, discovery came to a stand, 
 when, two thousand years ago, the Alexandrian mathe¬ 
 maticians had discovered the principal laws of geometry 
 and their application to celestial mechanics. No 
 further advance could be made till the discovery of the 
 laws of the refraction and diffraction of light, in the 
 seventeenth century, gave the science a fresh start for¬ 
 ward, so that, within a single lifetime, the true theory 
 of the universe was discovered, and La Place admitted 
 that there could be only one Newton, because the law 
 
Summary . 
 
 35 6 
 
 of gravity could be only once discovered. Bacon 
 speaks of deserts in history, where discovery comes to 
 a stand still, and, instead of philosophers we have 
 schoolmen, and for discoverers only doctors. In 
 speculative theology, there has been a deseit of this 
 kind, from Augustine’s day, almost down to our own. 
 The Reformation, blessed be God, came to stir up the 
 stagnant pools of scholastic divinity, and sent thnstmg 
 spirits to the fountainhead of truth. But the tendency 
 to stagnation soon returned. More Calvinist than 
 Calvin; more Lutheran than Luther; more Anglican 
 than our Anglican reformers, is the verdict which his¬ 
 tory passes on the divines of the second geneiation 
 after the reformers. “ Catenas,” and “ Common 
 Places,” and creeds and confessions, soon took the 
 place of a free and open Bible. Scholasticism 
 returned under another name, and, to this day, the 
 inductive method is scarcely understood. By the 
 Patristic school, it is openly set aside, as they pin their 
 faith to what they call Catholic consent. Even pro¬ 
 fessed Protestants interpret the Bible too little by its 
 lexical meaning, and too much by the analogy of the 
 faith found in their favourite body of divinity. For 
 almost all questions outside the directly personal one, 
 “What must I do to be saved?” we are still confined 
 to the scholastic method, and try our conclusions by 
 the dicta of this or that Catholic father, this or that 
 Anglican doctor, this or that Puritan divine. With 
 the single exception of unfulfilled prophecy, on which 
 there has been some speculative activity, we are still 
 bound in by the formularies of a few vigorous minds. 
 
Summary . 357 
 
 Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, would be sur¬ 
 prised to find their private opinions raised into dogmas, 
 to question which borders on presumption. The 
 inferences which these good men drew from the Bible 
 are raised to a kind of quasi-parity with the Bible. 
 They are given, as it were, a seat on the bench 
 with the judge, and may give their opinion after the 
 court has summed up the case. The result of this 
 cannot but be prejudicial to truth. An erroneous, 
 because indolent, opinion has crept in, that what 
 Augustine and Calvin, for instance, could not see with 
 regard to God’s purposes in election, is, therefore, not 
 to be found in the Bible. Thus, the doctrine of elec¬ 
 tion, misunderstood by some divines, led to its rejec¬ 
 tion by others. Thus controversies have sprung up, 
 blazed and died out, like fires in an Eastern city, no 
 one knowing who first caused the conflagration, and 
 no one attempting to put the fire out, till it has burnt 
 all before it. The only result of these unprofitable 
 controversies is, that this age has settled down to the 
 conclusion, that as free will and predestination are both 
 found in the Bible, but cannot be reconciled, we must 
 believe both as regulative truths, to use the language 
 of Mansel, borrowed from Kant. Thus, a scepticism 
 creeps over the mind as to the use of theology. The 
 cloud under which systematic divinity now rests, must 
 obscure to some extent men’s personal faith, and if 
 not, must at least indispose them to fresh and system¬ 
 atic study of those lively oracles, which seem to give 
 answers as oracular and undeterminate as those of 
 Dodona or Delphi. All the while the blame may lie 
 
gy8 Summary. 
 
 with ourselves. We depreciate what we do not under¬ 
 stand. From blind submission we have subsided into 
 blank indifference. We are in one of those deserts of 
 time with regard to theology. 
 
 The way of recovery for divinity is the same as in 
 the physical sciences, which profess to follow the induc¬ 
 tive method. Bishop Butler did not overlook this. 
 In a passage in the Analogy, which has been often 
 quoted, he says : “ As it is owned, the whole scheme 
 of Scripture is not yet understood, so if it ever comes 
 to be understood before the restitution of all things, 
 and without miraculous interpositions, it must be in the 
 same way as natural knowledge is come at, by the con¬ 
 tinuance and progress of learning and liberty, and by 
 particular persons attending to comparing and pursuing 
 intimations scattered up and down it, and which are 
 overlooked and disregarded by the generality of the 
 world.” * Thus, the way of discovery still lies open 
 to us in divine things, if we have only the moral cour¬ 
 age to go to the fountainhead of truth, instead of fill¬ 
 ing our vessel out of this or that doctor’s compendium 
 of truth. Creeds and catechisms should be used as 
 lighthouses are by sea, and landmarks by land, not to 
 stop inquiry, but to point us on our way, and to warn 
 us off sunken reefs, where errorists have struck before. 
 Were Bishop Butler’s method of inductive research 
 into Scripture more common than it is we should not 
 have stood still so long, as if spell-bound by the shadow 
 of a few great names. “ It is not at all incredible,” 
 
 * Analogy, p. ii. ch. 3. 
 
Summary. 
 
 359 
 
 the Bishop adds, “ that a book which has been so long 
 in the possession of mankind should contain many 
 truths as yet undiscovered.” Such a saying is worthy 
 of Butler. It is only a philosopher who can allow for 
 time and prescription. The majority of mankind 
 think that they think. They acquiesce, and suppose 
 that they argue. They flatter themselves that they 
 are holding their own when they have actually grown 
 up to manhood, with scarcely a conviction which can 
 be called their own. So it always was, and so it ever 
 will be. Divine things are no exception, but rather 
 an instance. The more difficult the subject, and the 
 more serious the consequences of error, the more 
 averse the majority are to what is called “unsettling 
 men’s minds,” as if truth could be held in any other 
 tenure than the knight’s fee of holding its own against 
 all comers. Protestantism has brought us no relief 
 against this torpid state of mind, for, as the enoi is 
 as deep as the nature of man, we cannot expect any 
 deliverance from it, so long as the nature of man con¬ 
 tinues the same, and his natural love of truth almost 
 as depraved as his natural love of holiness. 
 
 But the way of discovery, as Bishop Butler has told 
 us, still lies open in theology, if we will but enter on 
 it. Let “ thoughtful persons trace its obscure hints ; ’ 
 for the Bible, like nature, whispers some of its secrets, 
 and theology itself is but the “ science of inferences.” 
 If the good textuary is the good theologian, it is only 
 because he knows how to handle the texts, turn them 
 over, as it were, and read the Bible from within as 
 well as from without. One truth of the Bible again 
 
360 Summary. 
 
 throws light on another. We have seen that astro¬ 
 nomy stood still until the science of optics had over¬ 
 taken geometry ; and so Newton, armed with a new 
 instrument, leaped in and took at a rush the citadel, 
 before which twenty centuries had sat down in vain. 
 The psychology of the Bible is the organ by which to 
 unlock the mysteries of its theology. We do not say 
 that the tripartite nature of man explains the mystery 
 of the Trinity. But we set the one over against the 
 other—the three natures in one person of psychology 
 against the Three Persons in one nature of theology. 
 Coupling this with the truth that man was made in 
 the image of God, we have here* something more 
 than a mere coincidence. The psychology of the 
 Bible seems to open to us a door by which we enter 
 in to explore its theology. So again the nature of 
 original sin and the new birth. These are theological 
 truths on which the Church has stood still since 
 Augustine’s memorable conflict with Pelagius. We 
 call it orthodox to agree with Augustine, though of 
 those who repeat that phrase, numbers, without know¬ 
 ing it, are Pelagians, or at least semi-Pelagians. We 
 say this of them, not in reproach, but 'to caution 
 
 * Mason, the author of “Self-Knowledge,” after observing that man is 
 complex, being made up of three parts, remarks on this correspondence with 
 the other mystery of the Trinity. “This consideration,” he says, “may 
 serve to soften the prejudice of some against the accouut which Scripture 
 gives us of the mysterious manner of the existence of the divine nature, of 
 which every man (as created in the image of God) carries about him a kind 
 of emblem in the threefold distinction of his own, which, if he did not every 
 minute find it by experience to be a fact, would doubtless appear to him 
 altogether as mysterious and incomprehensible as the Scripture doctrine of the 
 Trinity.”— Self-Knowledge , Part I. ch. ii. 
 
Summary. 361 
 
 against allowing themselves to be the u servants of 
 men.” From disregarding the Scripture distinction 
 between psyche and pneuma, Augustine closed the 
 door against the Pelagian party, and the result is a 
 strife of fourteen centuries between moralists and 
 divines—the moralists all taking the side of Pelagius, 
 divines of Augustine. As in other controversies, both 
 sides are right in what they affirm, but wrong in what 
 they deny; and the only settlement of this dispute of 
 long standing is to break up the lists, and, dropping 
 our arms, go to the Scriptures with teachable minds. 
 Moralists and divines have tilted long enough without 
 deciding the fray. The remains of good in fallen 
 human nature are not to be found so long as we des¬ 
 cribe man’s nature incorrectly as made up of body and 
 soul only. Till Scripture psychology is brought to 
 throw light on its theology, Augustinians and Pelagians 
 will dispute for ever, and come no nearer a settlement. 
 One simple law in optics, the refraction of light in 
 passing through media of different density, led to the 
 discovery of the telescope, and so created modern 
 astronomy. The element of chance in this was the 
 accident that a Dutch maker of instruments should 
 put two lenses together in the right direction, eighteen 
 hundred years after astronomy had fallen asleep in the 
 arms of the Alexandrian school of Ptolemy. In the 
 same way there are hints in the Bible with regard to 
 original sin and the new birth which have been over¬ 
 looked for centuries. Our age, by paying more atten¬ 
 tion to the psychology of the Bible, has come to the 
 right point of view to understand its theology, and so 
 
36 2 Summary. 
 
 controversies which have vexed the Church for cen¬ 
 turies, disappear like the Ptoloraean cycles and epi¬ 
 cycles, when Galileo’s telescope and Newton’s spectrum 
 had put the key of the universe into the hands of 
 science. What the naked eye is to the telescope, that 
 the popular dichotomy of body and soul is to the 
 Christian trichotomy of spirit, soul, and body. We 
 can scan the heavens with the naked eye, and under¬ 
 stand the motions of the sun, moon, and stars for all 
 practical purposes of navigation and agriculture. So 
 for the saving knowledge of God and Jesus Christ, 
 mortal body and immortal soul is not so untrue as to 
 vitiate a plain man’s understanding of the work of 
 salvation. But for those who are teachers of the 
 Word, and not learners only, defective psychology is 
 more than a psychological error ; it emerges in theo¬ 
 logy, and begins a confused way of thinking on the 
 nature of man, which must end in impairing our con¬ 
 ceptions of God. Thus what Sir William Hamilton 
 has said of philosophy in general is now true of 
 psychology as well. A defective psychology must 
 issue in a defective theology. The error may not 
 result in heresy; for, as Augustine has finely said, 
 heresy is of the will, pot of the intellect only; Err are 
 possum hosreticus esse nolo. Still no error is without its 
 evil consequence, if not in the case of those who hold 
 it, yet in the case of others, whom it causes to stumble 
 and to err from the truth. Much of the unhappy 
 humanitarianism which has affected all churches, par¬ 
 ticularly those in America, arises from unwise teaching 
 on the divine attributes, and a doctrine of God’s 
 
Summary. 363 
 
 sovereignty which, in any other than good men, we 
 should call blasphemy. We are far from supposing 
 that a sound and scriptural psychology will cure men’s 
 errors in theology, but it will at least go some way to 
 allay them. We may even venture to say that it will 
 not be possible without this, though we do not say 
 that by itself it will be enough. Just as the science 
 of optics by itself did not create the Newtonian astro¬ 
 nomy, though without the aid of the telescope and the 
 spectrum Newton would never have divined the law of 
 gravity. So one truth in the Bible will help us on to 
 discover another. Controversies arise • about things 
 half known. With the key of human nature in our 
 hand, in Gen. ii. 7, it is our own fault if we do not 
 unlock many other doors in the Bible. The hardest 
 dogmas of all, original sin and the new birth, the 
 mystery of existence in the disembodied state, and the 
 greatest mystery of all, the glorified body, are not ex¬ 
 plained by psychology; but they are at least set in a 
 new light, their contradictions disappear, and we see 
 far enough to feel that all is well, 
 
 “ And hear at times a sentinel, 
 
 That moves about from place to place, 
 
 And whispers through the worlds of space, 
 
 In the still night, that all is well.” 
 
 Turnbull izf Spears , Printers , Edinburgh. 
 
Princeton Theological Seminary Libraries 
 
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