At the opposite extreme stands the opinion which discovers in the account of the Divine inbreathing no history of the origin of the animal life, but only of the spiritual. The animal soul, or life principle, is assumed to have been already existing, either in conscious activity, or, as Rudloff teaches, as a slumbering potentiality, incapable of manifesting itself until awakened to actuality by the inspiration of Jehovah. The supporters of the various forms and shades of this interpretation, must either place the whole emphasis in the phrase upon the word "living," thus implying the previous unconsciousness of the soul conceived to exist, or must give to the verb in the last clause of the verse a meaning different from the commonly received one, though probably admissible, thereby finding in the passage, not merely one, or two, but three distinct affirmations, viz.: 1. God formed man's body out of the dust. 2. He breathed into his nostrils the life-breath. 3. Man was already, before this last act, a living soul.

But without stopping to examine more critically, or define more particularly, any of those views, whose common differentia is the refusal to regard the inbreathing of Jehovah as the origin of the soul, or principle of animal life, we observe generally that they are all open to the same fatal objection as the first mentioned exegesis. They deprive of their chief force and significance those numerous passages of Scripture which seem clearly to imply, or assume, that it was the impartation of a quickening spirit which constituted man a living soul. And farther, this doctrine leads logically to conclusions from which its ablest advocates shrink. If man had his physical or soul nature prior to the bestowment by the breath of the Almighty of his pneumatic or spirit nature, and if, as is generally held, this soul is identical with the life principle of the lower animals, then on what grounds can it be believed to be the same in substance or essence with the immortal God-breathed and God-like spirit? If the human soul and brute soul are identical in nature and origin, then surely, whatever elevation in the scale of being, whatever adaptation to expanding and unending existence inheres in the one, must belong also, in its degree, to the other. If the soul of Adam existed apart from, and independently of, his spirit, do not reason and logic shut us up to the natural, almost inevitable conclusion, that it was something quite distinct from it, in substance and essence, in origin and destiny? Such a conception of man as a triad, is, of course, too unscriptural for serious consideration, and orthodox holders of the view in question, generally adopt the explanation which regards the soul as but a side, or aspect, or manifestation of the spirit. In what

sense, and to what extent this view may be accepted, will be presently considered. We are here concerned simply with the mode in which it is reached. What text or tenor of Scripture demands our belief in a transformation so incomprehensible, so alien to all our inborn habits of thought, as that the infusion of spirit into soul should leave the spirit spirit still, but so metamorphose the soul that it is henceforth spirit too-no longer the mysterious element, the universal life-principle, common to men and animals, but now a constituent, essential part, the earthward side, of the spiritual nature? Passing by other interpretations that have obtained in different ages, such as that held, perhaps, by Origen, that "the spirit of man is a portion of Divinity incapable of sin," that of Hoffman, and others, which "denies to man in himself a spirit-being," regarding him only as spiritual in the sense of being enlightened by the Divine Spirit, and the Hegelian view, which regards the soul as simply "the band that connects body and spirit," we pass to that which we have already indicated as, to our mind, the only satisfactory one, and which is maintained by some of the ablest critical commentators, as Delitzsch, Lange, etc. It was the inbreathing of the "breath of lives" by God, which made or gave man a living soul. Herein, we conceive, we discover a great gulf separating man from all those animals which God had caused the earth to bring forth with the breath of life. They were animated by some mysterious vital force, common to them all, and imparted to them in the process of their production. Man, on the contrary, the predestined climax in the ascending scale, Jehovah's master-piece on earth, the exalted recipient of the impress and image of his great Creator, is broadly distinguished from them all, in that first, his physical frame, his spirit's earthly temple, bears in its exquisite lineaments and proportions the stamp and sign manual of God's special handiwork; and secondly, that the celestial and inextinguishable altar-fire within it, is enkindled by the breath of Jehovah himself. It becomes us to speak with profound humility of these mysterious operations of the Allwise Architect, and neither to attempt, nor pretend, to be wise above what is written. But yet this deep utterance of inspiration was, doubtless, as we have said, intended to convey to us some information concerning the mode in which "the Spirit of God hath made us, and the breath of the Almighty given us life." Without falling into an irreverent anthropomorphism, or for a moment supposing that the actual mode of operation of creative Omnipotence can, in any wise, be grasped by our feeble, finite conceptions, we yet cannot resist the conviction that a fundamental line of distinction is here drawn, and

intended to be drawn, between the means and modes by which God. called the lower orders of living creatures into existence, and those by which he called into life and activity the wondrous powers and capacities of the being formed in His own image.1

From the foregoing considerations, and others, which we proceed to adduce, we hold

III. That the Scriptures do not warrant the belief that the soul has, in any real or intelligible sense, an existence distinct from the spirit. Much has been said, in different ages of the church and of theological controversy, upon the question whether the nature of the homo is to be considered as twofold or threefold. Yet we fail to find, at least in the present day, any difference of opinion so broad, or so clearly marked, as the vehemence of the controversialists would sometimes lead us to expect. We do not find the warmest advocates of human triplicity claiming that man is, in philosophical strictness, composed of three primary and distinct elements or essences. If the language of some advocate of man's threefold nature would lead us to expect to find him committed to such a theory, we shall probably have his own emphatic caveat directly assuring us of the contrary. Nevertheless it must be admitted that many of the most eminent authorities, amongst whom it is sufficient to mention such names as Delitzsch and Olshausen, Alford and Ellicott, hold firmly to the opinion that the Scriptures teach the fact of such a real and important distinction between soul and spirit as not only justifies, but imperatively demands, recognition by a trichotomous mode of expression. In venturing upon a brief examination of this view, it would seem hardly necessary to allude to what is sometimes urged as a reproach to the dichotomous theory, that it has a Pagan origin, or is, at least, in accord with the Pagan philosophy. To this it might be sufficient to reply, as Delitzsch has done to an objection precisely the opposite, "Is what Plato or Plotinus taught to be branded absolutely, simply because Plato or Plotinus taught it?" But the objection is open to the still more crushing reply that precisely the same reproach of a heathen origin has been cast upon the opposite view, and it appears demonstrable, as Ellicott admits, that Plato and Philo, and we may add Plotinus, taught a system of trichotomy substantially the same as that now

of pro

1 We cannot but think the distinction here dwelt upon one which, if made out, found importance in any system of Biblical psychology. We refer the reader to the following and similar passages, in further illustration of the position that the inspired writers everywhere conceive of the human spirit as the foundation, the secondary source, of the human life 1 Sam. xxx. 12; Job xxxiii. 4; Eccles. viii. 8; xii. 7; Is. xlii. 5; Luke viii. 55; Jas. ii. 26.

2 See Ellicott on 1 Thessalonians v. 23.

in question. But our inquiry is not, What say the philosophers? but, What saith the Scripture ?

As to the precise nature of the third constituent of the human entity, there seem to be wide diversities of opinion amongst the believers in the theory of a triplicity. All agree, however, in regarding the soul as a third something, intermediate somewhere between body and spirit. The important question immediately arises: If this is so, and it is nevertheless denied an independent existence, or a distinct nature, to which of the two does it belong by creation and kinship, to the material or the immaterial side of our complex being? Those who speak of it as the "animal soul," as, for instance, Alford, might, at first thought, be supposed to accept the former alternative. But here arises the awkward dilemma already hinted at. If the soul of man is identical in kind with that of the brute, a thing belonging to and characterized by the bodily side of our nature, it would seem but reasonable to infer that it should have a similar destiny. Is it then perishable, or is the brute soul too immortal? Shrinking from either consequence, the holder of this view is generally forced to the rather incomprehensible position before alluded to, viz., that in man the animal soul is exalted, spiritualized, immortalized, by its union with the spiritual nature.

In considering this question a little more fully, we venture to suggest, in the first place, that a good deal of the difficulty and complication has arisen from the habit of assigning too abstract a signification to the word usually translated "soul." We can by no means admit that the meaning of the word w in the Old Testament, and uz in the New, is adequately represented by such expressions as "the vital principle," "the seat of the animal passions," "the sphere of the will and the affections," etc. The term, we hold, usually, if not uniformly, denotes not that which constitutes its possessor a living being, but the living being itself,—not a subtle, mysterious principle, or force, which expressions, whatever they mean, have too much of the mistiness of human metaphysics for Scripture use, but that principle, or force, as manifested and embodied, "the individual life in its conditioned state." This distinction, seemingly narrow perhaps at first sight, is by no means unimportant. It frees us from the necessity of recognizing the underlying principle of life as the same in all living souls. Because what we call "life" has many common, or at least similar, characteristics in man and in the lower animals, it by no means follows that its origin and nature are the same in each. The same expression may, with perfect propriety, be used to denote the actualized effect of the life principle in animals and of the life-giving spirit in man. We must

not generalize too hastily. No usage is more deeply stamped upon language than that which recognizes by identity of terms, resemblance, or fancied resemblance, in quality or manifestation. It is the office of language, popular language at least, to characterize things not as they are, but as they appear. It has its origin in the facts and phenomena of every-day life, not in the requirements of logical technicalities, or philosophical analysis. What, for instance, is more common than to find the words "life" and "living," with their equivalents in other languages, applied indiscriminately to the members of the animal and vegetable kingdoms? And, indeed, it may be questioned whether the points of similarity are not as numerous, and the resemblance as close, between some of the higher orders of plants and the lower orders of animals, as between the most sagacious tribes of the latter and the most degraded specimens of the genus homo. The zoophytes furnished to the naturalist a more difficult problem in classification than any tribe of baboons or gorillas yet discovered. The plant life is the result of some mysterious, organizing, directing and controlling force, very similar in some respects to that ruling in the animal. The lily turns its green palms sun-ward, the ivy fastens its clinging fingers to the wall, the mimosa sensitiva shrinks instinctively from the rude touch, with as close a semblance of the lowest phases of sentient life as that with which the chattering ape, the skillful beaver, or the sagacious elephant imitates the motions, the architecture, or the contrivance of the lowest savage. Prof. Huxley assures us, upon the authority of De Bary's investigations, that the Ethalium septicum, a body which appears upon decaying vegetable substances, and is "in this condition, to all intents and purposes, a fungus, . . . in another condition. . . . is an actively locomotive creature, and takes in solid matters, upon which, apparently, it feeds, thus exhibiting the most characteristic feature of animality." Indeed, this distinguished man of science is ready, not only to infer but "to demonstrate," that "a threefold unity-namely, a unity of power, or faculty; a unity of form; and a unity of substantial composition-does pervade the whole living world." Reasoning on the same principles, why may not some philosopher of the future, with proclivities for still broader generalizations, affirm that the sentient life is the same in all things, and write elaborate treatises to show the cruelty of applying the pruning knife to our fruit-trees, or descant with touching pathos upon the possible agonies of a mutilated plant, or bleeding vine-agonies none the less bitter because the sufferer, through a defective organism, may be powerless to elicit sympathy by contortion or groan?