file yourselves (, your souls)." with a bond," i. e. to bind himself.

66

"To bind his soul "The Lord hath "Think not with

He teareth himself

sworn by himself (, by his soul)." thyself (, with thy soul).” (, his soul) in his anger." So the "losing one's soul," Mat. 10. 30, is distinctly paralleled by "losing one's self," John, 12. 25. This form of diction is very frequent in the renderings of the cognate Syriac and Arabic. Thus, Mat. 28. 6," And he departed and hanged himself." Syr. Hanged his soul." Heb. 10. 12, "By his own blood he entered in once into the holy place." Syr. " By the blood of his soul." Gal. 1. 4, " Who gave himself for our sins." Arab. "Who gave his soul." Gal. 2. 20, "Who loved me and gave himself for me."

Arab. "Gave his soul for me."

John, 21. 17, "When thou wast young thou girdedst thyself" Syr. "Thou girdedst thy soul." Lev. 19. 18, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Syr. "As thy soul." Jer. 3. 11, “The backsliding Israel hath justified herself more than treacherous Judah." Heb. and Syr. "Hath justified her soul." The same usage is to be recognized in the following passages from the apocryphal book of the son of Syrach, or Ecclesiasticus: ch. 2. 1, "Prepare thy soul (yv) for temptation," i. e. prepare thyself. Ch. 29. 19, "Forget not thy surety, for he has given his life (yuz) for thee," i. e. hath given himself. Ch. 37. 7, "From a counsellor guard thy soul (TM'ǹv yvyn guard thyself.

σov),” i. e.

We see not what room can remain for doubt, that the dominant usage of the term soul in the sacred writers makes it equivalent to a man's self, and the great question now before us is the question of Scriptural usage. If then a man's soul is himself, even in the present life, and yet it is the soul which exists after death, is it not inevitable that we must carry the same fulness of import into the usage of the term in its relation to the soul as translated from the body into the world of spirits? The meaning of the word soul must be com

mensurate with the real truth of man's nature as man. If we can satisfy ourselves, on competent grounds, of the true constitutive elements of our being apart from the body, then we virtually attain to a correct definition of the term soul. Now it is clear, from what has been advanced above, that besides the body there enters into the constitution of our nature the two distinct elements denominated yvyn and лVεйμα. These both live after death, and live together. Yet in ordinary parlance it is usual to say that the soul lives when the body dies. The soul therefore cannot be a monad, a simple uncompounded substance, but the term must be understood as representing the complex idea of yvzǹ and лνεйμα, and this notwithstanding that soul is, in a multitude of cases, in actual usage, applied as a designation of the first of these principles in contradistinction from the second. It seems therefore essential to the just idea of the soul, as a term indicative of the future man, that it should embrace both these elements of existence, and we have already given our reasons for believing that the former stands to the latter in the relation of a vehiculum or body. It is no objection to this that we are wholly incompetent to disclose the inner essence of this principle and show how it is that it performs this office. Nothing in the scope or design of the present essay imposes upon us the responsibility of penetrating into the hidden recesses of our being and defining what our faculties cannot grasp. The true question is a question relating to the inferences to be drawn from certain facts which are admitted on every other theory as well as on our own. These facts are, that Scriptural usage makes clearly the distinction which we affirm, and that physiology as clearly recognizes it. For as it is obvious that the body, as such, is not the subject of sensation, this power must inhere in the yuz, which forsakes the body at death, and which can never be proved to have lost its sensitive attributes by such a change of relation. The whole force of the evidence bears in the contrary direction. As the yuz, during the

life of the body, is the true seat and subject of what are ordinarily termed bodily sensations, so we deem the presumption perfectly legitimate, that it remains such when the body is abandoned. What else can be inferred when once it is admitted that the body is not truly the subject of sensation, as it certainly is not of thought? It is the interior man inhabiting the body that sees, hears, touches, tastes, smells. This power is indeed lost to the body when the soul forsakes it. But is it lost to the soul? Can we conceive of a human soul departing in its full integrity from its earthly tenement, and yet leaving behind it or losing in its exit those distinguishing properties which went to constitute it what it was during its connexion with the body? What adequate idea can we form of the disembodied man, if we suppose him, after death, to be an entity incapable of sensation? Admit that in the present life sensation is effected only by means of the senses; yet the senses are not themselves the sentient. The eye does not see-the ear does not hear the hand does not touch-though it is true that they are respectively the mediums through which the interior power of sensation acts, and this power, we contend, is essential to the integrity of the soul or the man, and must go with him where he goes, and abide with him where he abides. We cannot conceive of the perfect man without it.*

If then it be conceded that the bodily senses are the mere organical functionaries of an intelligent percipient power or principle throned within, we say that the conclusion bears down upon us. with commanding urgency, that what man is substantially here, that he is substantially here

*No man can show it to be impossible to the Supreme Being to have given us the power of perceiving external objects without such organs. We have reason to believe that when we put off these bodies, and all the organs belonging to them, our perceptive powers shall rather be improved than destroyed or impaired."-Reid's Essay on the Organs of Sense, ch. I.

after. Must it not be so? Look at the phenomena of death. There is the eye in its perfect integrity, but it does not see. There is the ear in all the completeness of its mechanism, but it does not hear. There is the wondrous apparatus of nerves spread over the whole surface of the body, but it has no feeling. The seeing, hearing, feeling power or person has gone. The house remains, but the occupant has departed. Yet consider what powers, what faculties, what thoughts, what memories, what affections were comprised within the limits of that existence which had just before animated this living, moving, acting mass! Has that perished? Was it not the true man—the actual person in all his distinguishing attributes-which has now passed out of sight? That which is left behind, though it was all that was visible to the senses, was the mere temporary envelope of the indwelling spirit, and we never call it the man. It is now the corpse, and we speak of it, not as he, but it. We lay it out, we deposit it in the grave, we say that it turns to corruption. But the man, with all his distinctive attributes—his varied powers of thought, affection, and will-his true personality and character-survives this dislodgment from the earthly house, and goes in all his integrity into another sphere of being, where he lives subject to the same moral and intellectual laws that governed his existence here. The soul is the man.

Thus far we have seen how remarkably the results of our philological inductions agree with those of physiological science. But we have still more decisive testimony on this head. The narrative of the Apostle, 2 Cor. 12. 1-4, is an invaluable item of Revelation simply on the score of pneumatology. In that he informs that he was caught up to the third heaven and heard unutterable things which it was not lawful (i. e. possible) to utter, and yet he informs us that during the time he "knew not whether he was in the body, or out of the body," thus proving the intrinsic possibility of translation to a state in which the subject shall possess the

power of hearing while the material organs of this sense are in abeyance. Was it not the true person of Paul that was now for a time transferred to the spiritual world, and was he not in full possession of the power of sensation relative to the objects of that world?

The same truth is taught us by our Lord's words to the dying thief: "Verily I say unto thee, this day shalt thou be with me in paradise." Thou-assuredly a designation of the person, for his body was to remain suspended on the cross. This person is denoted in Scripture language by the soul, which therefore is of necessity tantamount to all that we are naturally forced to understand as constituting the integrity of the man.*

It may now be asked how the common doctrine of the Resurrection can be made to consist with the view above

* We insert the following impressive extract in the hope that attention may be called to the volume of beautiful and profound Essays from which it is taken.

"Into the spirit-world man enters at death. While in this lower world his spiritual body was within his natural body, giving it life, and power, and sense. It was always his spiritual eye which saw, his spiritual ear which heard, his spiritual senses which took cognizance of all things about him. But while he lived in the material body, it was only through the material organs of that body, that the eye of his spiritual body could see and its ear could hear; and for that purpose these natural organs were exquisitely fitted to the spiritual organs, which they served as instruments. But when these material organs or coverings fall off, the spiritual eye, the true and living eye, does not lose the power of seeing. It loses the power of seeing the material things for which it once possessed a material organ, and acquires the power of seeing the spiritual substances and forms which this material organ had veiled. So it is with all the senses and all the organs of the body. The man rises from that portion of earth which his soul once vivified; rises with the spiritual body he always had, and rises in full possession of all his senses and faculties, into a world of spiritual substances, of which his spiritual senses and organs now take cognizance in the same manner as the material organs here perceive material things. In a word, Death is Birth, and there a man rises as before, but in a new world; yet with all his organs, limbs, senses, faculties."-Essays by Theophilus Parsons, Jr., p. 30.