Enough has been advanced to show the Scriptural import of the text already quoted, that “the Lord God formed man, the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives; and man became a living soul.” The simple, obvious and undogmatic meaning of this is, that the dust being animalized, and then organized, was next set in motion by the inrush of the air through his nostrils into his lungs according to natural laws. This phenomenon was the _neshemet el_, or “breath of God,” breathing into him; and as it was the pabulum of life to all creatures constituted of dust, it was very expressively styled the “breath of _lives_,” and not the “breath of _life_.” God breathes into every man at his birth the breath of lives to this day, and there can be no reason, Scriptural or otherwise, why we should deny that He breathed it into Adam as He hath done into the nostrils of his posterity by the operation of natural laws. Man, as soon as he began to respire, like the embryo passing from fœtal to infant life, “became a _living soul_,” that is, _nephesh chayiah_, a living, breathing frame, or _body of life_. All kinds of flesh, whether of man, beast, fowl and creeping thing, are made alive by the same breath and spirit. They all become, in consequence, living souls, so that, having a _oneness of spirit_, a man hath no superiority over a beast. Having now proved, as we think, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that men and beasts “have all one _ruach_, or spirit,” and hence are all living souls, we now approach a form of life, termed vegetable life, about which the Scriptures have little to say. _Neshemet el_, or atmospheric air, is just as essential to plants as to animals. Deprived of it they wither and die. No less necessary is the all-pervading _ruach_, or spirit. It is in the air, though not of the air. Plants, equally with animals, breathe it, but it is not their breath. Without it, even though filled with air, they would perish. Perhaps it is the base of each of the elementary constituents of the air. Uncombined, may it not be that wonderful fluid whose explosions are heard in the thunder, whose fiery bolts overthrow the loftiest towers and rive the sturdy monarchs of the woods, and whose influence, though in less intensity, gives polarity to light, the needle, and the brain?