Thus our life is something that we can commit to another for safe keeping; it can be taken away from us; we can give it up, or lay it down. Is it, therefore, a distinct entity, conscious in death? If it is not, then equivalent expressions applied to the spirit do not prove that to be conscious in death and immortal; for they prove the same in the one case as in the other; and whatever they fail to prove in the one case, they fail to prove also in the other. But if the spirit, as is claimed, lives right along after death, just as conscious as before, and a hundred-fold more active, capable, intelligent, and free, where would be the propriety of committing it to God in the hour of death, any more than at any point during its earthly existence? There would be none whatever. Entering upon that permanent higher life, it would be much more capable of caring for itself than in this earthly condition. The expression bears upon its very face evidence that those who used it desired to commit something into the care of their Maker which was about to pass out of their possession; to commit something into his hands for safe keeping until they should be brought back from the state of unconsciousness and inactivity into which they were then falling. And what was that? It was what they were then losing, namely, their life, their _pneuma_, which Robinson defines as meaning, among other things, “The principle of life residing in the breath, breathed into man from God, and again returning to God.” And when the life is thus given up to God by his people, where is it? “Hid with Christ in God.” Col. 3:3. And when will the believer receive it again? “When Christ who is our life shall appear.” Verse 4. Then Stephen will receive from his Lord that which while dying he besought him to receive. Then they who for Christ’s sake have lost their life (not merely their bodies while their life continued right on) will have that life restored to them again. CHAPTER X. THE SPIRITS OF JUST MEN MADE PERFECT. “But ye are come,” says Paul, “unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn which are written in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.” Heb. 12:22-24.