meant that the animal man began then to use his organs of respiration, began to breathe, why is the case mentioned at all in contradistinction from the creation of the unintellectual animals? While, then, man is possessed of the breath of animal life, the plan, the design, the circumstances of his creation, and especially the Divine origin of the higher principle of the life that is within him, render the conclusion inevitable, that superadded to his merely animal life is another life-that of the soul. It will be seen by the above, that we are not to look exclusively to the philological meaning of the words employed to express soul or spirit, to demonstrate this higher endowment in the life of man; we claim simply that there is nothing, so far as is known, in the philological meaning of the words that would lie in the way of this use; we claim that the terms were actually employed to express this higher endowment; and that the distinction of spirit, as something different from the body; something different from animal life; something more Divine, more nearly allied to God, and with different relations to eternity, is brought to light in a thousand ways all through the Bible. In fact, it is a doctrine that permeates all revelation, and gives to it its sublime applicability and force of teaching. No one can read the Bible without being impressed with the fact that it as fully recognizes the soul as a distinct. essence, as it does the body. The inference, then, made by some, that because the term living soul is sometimes applied to animals, reptiles, vegetables, etc., therefore each is endowed with intellectual and immortal faculties, or that none are thus endowed, is equally invalid. It no more follows, than it does when you say of a wrecked ship, every soul on board perished, that the spiritual nature of each one was annihilated, rather than their lives lost. The full force and contents of the term "living soul," as applied to man, is seen only when we place it by the side of that declaration of that God who is both "life" and "spirit," "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." (Gen. i, 26.) This certainly means something more than that man was made an UPRIGHT ANIMAL WALKING ON TWO FEET! Man became a living soul. The Greek term gun has for its dominant meaning, life, as indicated by the act of breathing. It is distinguished from another Greek term, wn, which is also rendered life. In John xii, 25, we meet those two terms in a connection which goes very far toward determining the original sense in which each was used: "He that hateth his life (77) in this world shall keep it unto life (wn) eternal." It is evident, then, that the former has special reference to the principle of life manifested in connection with bodily organization; the latter to the higher element of spiritual existence. The terms living soul-or, as more frequently used, the simple term soul-indicate, as applied to man, a higher than mere animal life. This is the term employed by the apostle when he said, speaking of the "first Adam," the type of humanity, that he was made a living soul (el5 4ʊyǹv (õcav.) We use the term soul to express the spiritual element of our nature that element which knows, and thinks, and reasons, and possesses a judgment of right and wrong. The operations of the soul are diversified, but its distinct individuality and the unity of its nature rest upon the firmest basis of reason and truth. Sensation, reason, memory, imagination, will, and conscience are expressive of so many different modes of the soul's action. But they leave its unity untouched. They are so many capabilities, properties, or manifestations of the intelligent substance whose being and action are made known by them. These are the phenomena through which we are introduced to the knowledge of the soul, and in the light of which we must study its character. It must not be thought amiss, nor awaken surprise, if we confess that we know not in what the essence of soul or spirit consists. We readily acknowledged our ignorance of the essence, the subject-being of matter. We make the same confession-and under the same limitations-concerning the soul. But though we were unable to tell what matter is, yet we found ourselves able to describe or define it by the sensible properties it possesses and the laws by which it is governed. So it is with the soul. Though we are unable to throw aside the vail and gaze upon its essence, yet we may discover its existence, and something of its nature and qualities, from our consciousness of its operations and our knowledge of its effects. Every one is conscious of a principle within him superior to the frame it inhabits. There is something that warms into life and excites to motion the machinery of our bodies, which is beyond the artist's skill or the chemist's power. There is a beauty lit up in the expressions of the human countenance which the painter's skill can never reach, for it is not an attribute of matter. It is the high and indisputable proof of the divinity that dwells within us. "It is a flame from heaven purer than Promethean fire that vivifies and energizes the breathing form. It is an immaterial essence, a being that quickens matter and imparts life, sensation, motion to the intricate frame-work of our bodies, which wills when we act, attends when we perceive, looks into the past when we reflect, and, not content with the present, shoots with all its aims and with all its hopes into the futurity that is forever dawning upon it." The properties of mind are manifested in perception, thought, feeling, volition, reason, the passions, and the moral judgments. That every one intuitively recognizes a something in his breast which puts forth the distinct operations or experiences the distinct feelings indicated by these words the universal testimony of man abundantly proves. They are not the acts, the operations of matter; they can not be predicated concerning the body. Thought is intangible; you can not see it as you can see light; you can not cause it to travel the magnetic wires as you may cause electricity to travel. But just as the magnetic telegraph is only the vehicle of thought, of ideas, which it neither originates nor constitutes, so are our physical organs only the media for the transmission, the outward expression of ideas which they have no power to originate. It becomes, then, one of the clearest dictates of reason that, if there is that wide difference between the properties, the characteristics of matter and spirit, these two principles must be essentially different in their nature. No one can prove infidel to what he feels; and he who marks the swellings of human thought, passion, and desire, expanding and enlarging to the grasp of infinity and eternity, can not fail to discern within him the elements of a spiritual and eternal existence: "Who reads his bosom reads immortal life; Thus are we led to the indubitable conviction that there is a spirit in man distinct from the body it inhabits, and therefore he has become a living soul. III. PRACTICAL SUGGESTIONS. With the mention of a few of the practical suggestions growing out of the subject, we close this discussion: 1. The possession of a physical nature is not necessarily an evil. What is said, by inspiration, of the vegetable body is also true of the animal creation, that "God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him." The ancient philosophers were often accustomed to regard the body as an incum brance to the soul-a sort of jail in which the spirit was imprisoned, and from which it longed for deliverance. Such also seems to be a too prevalent notion among many religious persons of the present day, especially those whose minds are of a mystical cast. But the fact that God gave us these bodies, and that they, in our resurrection state, are to be the inheritance of the children of God, sufficiently demonstrates that the human body is not an evil in itself. God intended man to be, not a seraph, but a human being; and therefore endowed him with a body as well! as a spirit. 2. This union of soul and body, though mysterious, is by по means incredible. The combination of material substances, the impenetration of the one by the other, are scarcely less mysterious; and yet they are facts observable every day. How the electricity of thought can find expression in the movement of the tongue or of the hand is no more wondrous than that the electricity of nature, conducted by the metallic wire, shall give expression to its message thousands of miles distant in an instant of time. As with a thousand other things, our inability to comprehend the mode is no argument against the fact. The endowment or connection of animal life with a material body is of the same sort of mystery, and yet the fact of such connection is too palpable for denial. 3. This union of soul and body is essential to the objects of our humanity. A physical organization was necessary to adapt man to the physical world designed to be the theater of his action and the scene of his embryo growth and development. But, without the spiritual element, the higher link that united him to his God, and made him in fact the representative of the image and likeness of the Divine Being in this lower state, would be wanting. Nor is the material body without its uses. It is the inlet of numerous |