The trouble now is that men take these meanings which have been devised and fostered into Page 40 stupendous strength outside the pale of Bible teaching, and attach them to the Bible terms of "soul" and "spirit." In other words, the mongrel pago-papal theology which has grown up in Christendom, lets the Bible furnish the terms, and pagani** the definitions. But from the Bible standpoint, these definitions do not belong there; they are foreign to the truth, and the Bible does not recognize them. They are as much out of place as was the inventor of them himself in the garden of Eden. Let the Bible furnish its own definitions to its own terms, and all will be clear. The opinion of John Milton, the celebrated author of Paradise Lost, is worthy of note.
In his "Treatise on Christian Doctrine," Vol. I, pp. 250, 251, he says:
-- "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 Page 41 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 exist- Page 42 ence 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.
It is sometimes claimed that it is not necessary that the Bible should affirm the immortality of the soul, because it is so self-evident a fact that it is taken for granted. But no one surely can suppose that the immortality of the soul is more self-evident than that of Jehovah; yet the Bible has seen fit to affirm his immortality in most direct terms. 1 Tim. 1: 17:
"Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen." 1 Tim. 6:16: "Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto;whom no man bath seen, nor can see: to whom be honor and power everlasting.
Amen." Let, then, similar Bible testimony be found concerning the soul;that is, that it is "immortal," or "hath immortality," and the taken-for-granted device will not be needed.
Modern Spiritualism: A Subject of Prophecy and a Sign of the Times.
Chapter 3Page 43 CHAPTER THREETHE DEAD UNCONSCIOUS FROM the fact now established that the soul is not immortal, it would follow as an inevitable conclusion, that the dead are not conscious in the intermediate state, and consequently cannot act the part attributed to them in modern Spiritualism. But there are some positive statements to which the reader's attention should be called, and some instances supposed to prove the conscious state which should be noticed.
