“Man is a living being, intrinsically and properly one individual,
not compound and separable, not, according to the common opinion,
made up and framed of two distinct and different natures, as of
body and soul, but the whole man is soul, and the soul, man; that
is to say, a body or substance, individual, animated, sensitive,
and rational.”
In this sense the word is employed many times; but whoever will trace the
use of the words “soul” and “spirit” through the Bible, will find them
applied also to a great variety of objects; as, person, mind, heart, body
(in the expression “a dead body”), will, lust, appetite, breath, creature,
pleasure, desire, anger, courage, blast, etc., etc., in all nearly fifty
different ways. But it is a fact which should be especially noted, that in
not a single instance is there the least hint given that anything
expressed by these terms is capable of existing for a single moment, as a
conscious entity, or in any other condition, _without the body_! This
being so, none of these, according to the Bible, are the agency claimed to
be present in Spiritualism.
Another fact in reference to this point, should be allowed its decisive
bearing. The question now under investigation is, Is the soul immortal, as
Spiritualism has taken upon itself to teach, and claims to demonstrate?
The Bible is found to be so lavish in the use of the terms “soul” and
“spirit,” that these words occur in the aggregate, _seventeen hundred
times_. Seventeen hundred times, by way of description, analysis,
narrative, historical facts, or declarations of what they can do, or
suffer, the Bible has something to say about “soul” and “spirit.” The most
important question to be settled concerning them, certainly, is whether
they are immortal or not. Will not the Bible, so freely treating of these
terms, answer this question? Very strange, indeed, if it does not. But
does it once affirm that either the soul or the spirit is immortal?—_Not
once!_ Does it ever apply to them the terms “eternal,” “deathless,”
“neverdying,” or any word that bears the necessary meaning of
immortal?—Not in a single instance. Does it apply to them any term from
which even an inference, necessary or remote, can be drawn that they are
immortal? Even reduced to this attenuated form, the answer is still an
emphatic and overwhelming, _No!_ Well, then, does it say _anything_ about
the nature and capabilities of existence of that which it denominates soul
or spirit?—Yes; it says the soul is in danger of the grave, may die, be
destroyed, killed, and that the spirit may be wounded, cut off, preserved,
and so, conversely, made to perish.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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