But some have met us here in this manner: “Materialists tell us that soul means the whole man, then let us see how it will read in Gen. 35:18; ‘And it came to pass as the whole man was in departing; for she died.’” Or they will say, “Materialists tell us that soul means the breath; then let us try it in Gen. 2:7: ‘And Adam became a living breath.’” Such a course, while it is no credit to their mental acumen, is utterly disastrous to all their claims of candor and honesty in their treatment of this important subject. While we are not at liberty to go beyond the latitude of meaning which is attached to the words soul and spirit, we are at liberty to use whatever definition the circumstances of the case require, varying of course in different passages. But in the whole list of definitions, and in the entire use of the words, we find nothing answering to that immaterial, independent, immortal part, capable of a conscious, intelligent, active existence out of the body as well as in, of which the popular religious teachers of the day endeavor to make these words the vehicle. And now we would commend to the attention of the reader another stupendous fact, the bearing of which he cannot fail to appreciate. We want to know if this soul, or spirit, is immortal. The Hebrew and Greek words from which they are translated, occur in the Bible, as we have seen, _seventeen hundred times_. Surely, once at least in that long list we shall be told that the soul is immortal, if this is its high prerogative. Seventeen hundred times we inquire if the soul is once said to be immortal, or the spirit deathless. And the invariable and overwhelming response we meet is, _Not Once!_ Nowhere, though used so many hundred times, is the soul said to be undying in its nature, or the spirit deathless. Strange and unaccountable fact, if immortality is an inseparable attribute of the soul and spirit! An attempt is sometimes made to parry the force of this fact by saying that the immortality of the soul, like that of God, is taken for granted. We reply, The immortality of God is not taken for granted. Although this might be taken for granted if anything could be so taken, yet it is directly asserted that God is immortal. Let now the advocates of the soul’s natural immortality produce one text where it is said to have immortality, as God is said to have it, 1 Tim. 6:16, or where it is said to be immortal, as God is said to be, 1 Tim. 1:17, and the question is settled. But this cannot be done; and the ignoble shift of the taken-for-granted argument falls dead to the floor. CHAPTER VII. THE SPIRIT RETURNS TO GOD.