The Life of the Waiting Soul in the Intermediate State | Page 8

perhaps we may add, of the being of GOD; the being of GOD, I mean, considered apart from His nature and attributes. Yet we cannot form any intelligent conception of these realities. We cannot shape to our apprehension the faintest rational conception of the Personality of GOD, of His Omniscience, of His Omnipresence. Yet we are able, and indeed are forced to believe, as Christians, in these attributes of His Nature, although we cannot comprehend them.
In the same sense, we can be reasonably sure that the spirit can still live after it has left the body, even though we are unable to form to our minds any clear conception of the existence of the disembodied spirit. We can do more. On the assumption of the existence of the disembodied spirit, we are able, to some extent also, to reason upon the laws and limits of that separate and secluded life.
We are, no doubt, in so doing, dealing with a profoundly mysterious subject. But it does not therefore follow that we are thereby really intruding into things which ought not to be enquired into. For the questions raised in the search concern us very closely; and, moreover, it is a matter about which GOD has made a revelation. And to know more about it than many people even care to know is a safeguard against many an unwholesome fear, against many a mischievous deceit.
On the very threshold of this enquiry we are confronted with this question: "Is the soul the same thing as the spirit? If not, what is the soul, and what is the spirit?" That the Bible regards them as distinct is sufficiently clear from the language used by S. Paul in his first Epistle to the Thessalonians: "I pray GOD your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ." {34a} The same distinction is marked in the Epistle to the Hebrews: "The word of GOD is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit." {34b} It is thus that we understand the contrast which S. Paul enforces between things of the spirit and things of the soul. "The natural man,"--i.e., the psychical man, the man who yields to the sway of the soul,--"receiveth not the things of the spirit of GOD." {34c} And again, speaking of the resurrection, he writes: "It is sown a natural body,"--i.e., literally a psychical body, a body which is subject to the sway of the soul,--"it is raised a spiritual body,"--i.e., a body subject to the sway of the spirit. "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." {35a} When again S. James says: "This wisdom . . . is earthly, sensual, devilish,"--the word translated "sensual" is the same word "psychical," i.e., subject to the sway of the soul. {35b} S. Jude speaks of those who are "sensual," i.e., psychical, "not having the spirit." {35c} Enough has been said to show that, according to the Bible, the soul is the seat of the senses, the desires, the will, the reasoning and intellectual faculties, the thoughts of the mind. What then is the spirit in man? We seem to have the answer given to us in the account of man's creation, when we are told that "GOD formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." {35d} This breath of GOD could be nothing less than the spirit, which came from GOD Himself. It is that higher endowment by which man is a spiritual being, and therefore has an affinity to GOD. It is that which makes him GOD-like, even by nature, at least by his nature as it was before the fall. But even the fall did not utterly dissolve that nature; man still remained a spiritual being, although the spiritual part of him was subject to the sway of the animal in him, and to the senses of the lower nature. Until that creative act of GOD, man's body and soul were scarcely higher in the order and rank of being than the body and soul of the brute. It was the gift of the divine spirit which caused man's soul truly to live, so that he became then "a living soul." Herein, henceforth, the soul of man differs from the soul of the lower creature. In man the soul is in contact with the spirit. The beast shares with man the possession of an animal soul. It is the prerogative of man to be endowed also with spirit. By the spirit, man is capable of apprehending GOD, can commune with GOD, can long for Him. Herein lies his capacity for religion. His soul is incorporeal