LIVING SOULS.
All things were made by the Word of God. In this Word was life, spirit or energy. Without it was not anything made that was made. Hence, says Elihu, “the Spirit of God hath made me, and the breath of the Almighty hath given me life;” or, as Moses testifies, “the Lord God formed man, the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives; and man became a Living Soul.”
Now, if it be asked what the Scriptures define a living soul to be, the answer is a living natural, or animal body, whether of beasts, birds, fish or men. The phrase living creature is the exact synonyme of living soul. The words nephesh chayiah are in Hebrew the signs of the ideas expressed by Moses, nephesh signifying creature, life, soul, or breathing frame from the verb breathe, and chayiah, a noun from the verb to live, of life. Nephesh chayiah is the genus which includes all species of living creatures. In the common version of the Scriptures, it is rendered living soul, and, therefore, under this form of expression they speak of all flesh which breathes in air, earth and sea.
From the evidence adduced a man then is merely a body of life in the sense of his being an animal or living creature—nephesh chayiah adam. Therefore, as a natural man, he has no preëminence over the creatures God has made. Moses makes no distinction between him and them, for he calls them all living souls, breathing the breath of lives. His language, literally rendered, says, “and God said, the waters shall produce abundantly sheretz chayiah nephesh the reptile living soul;” and again, “kal nephesh chayiah erameshat every living soul creeping.” In another verse, “let the earth bring forth nephesh chayiah the living soul after its kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after its kind,” and “lekol rumesh ol earetz asher bu nephesh chayiah to everything creeping upon the earth which has in it living breath,” that is, the breath of lives. And lastly, “whatsoever Adam called nephesh chayiah the living soul that was the name thereof.”
Not even are quadrupeds and men living souls, but they are vivified by the same breath and spirit. Neshemet chayim, or the breath of lives, and not the breath of life as the text of the common version has it, is said to be in the inferior creatures as well as in man. Chayim in the Hebrew is in the plural number, and therefore the words neshemet chayim should be rendered as above. Thus, God said, “I bring a flood of waters upon the earth to destroy all flesh wherein is ruach chayim spirit of lives.” And in another place, “they went in to Noah into the ark, two and two of all flesh, in which is ruach chayim spirit of lives.” And all flesh died that moved upon the earth, both of fowl, and of cattle, and of beast, and of every creeping thing, and every man; all in whose nostrils was neshemet ruach chayim, BREATH OF SPIRIT OF LIVES. Now, as has been previously affirmed, it was the neshemet chayim with which God, according to the testimony of Moses, inflated the nostrils of Adam. If, therefore, this were a particle of the divine essence, as it is declared, which became the immortal soul in man, then all other animals have likewise immortal souls, for they all received breath of spirit of lives in common with him. Begotten of the same Invisible Power, and formed from the substance of a common earth mother, man and beasts were animated by the same spirit, and constituted to be living breathing frames, though of different species, and in God they lived, and moved, and had their continued being.
Returning to the philology of our subject, it is to be remarked that by a metonymy, or a figure of speech where the container is put for the thing contained, and conversely, nephesh, breathing frame, is put for neshemet ruach chayim, which, when in motion, causeth the frame to respire. Hence nephesh signifies not only breath and soul, but also life, or those mutually affective, positive and negative principles in all living creatures, whose closed circuits cause motion of and in their frames. By Moses these principles, or qualities of the same thing, are apparently styled the Ruach Elohim, or by Timothy the Spirit of Him “who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto, whom no man hath seen, nor can see,” and which, when the word was spoken, first moved upon the face of the waters, and afterwards disengaged the light, evolved the expanse, gathered the waters together, brought forth the green vegetation, manifested the celestial universe, vitalized the breathing frames of the dry land, the firmament and the seas, and formed man in His own image and likeness. This ruach, or spirit, was the instrumental principle commissioned by the glorious Increate for the elaboration of the natural world, the erection of this earthly house, and its equipment with living souls of every species; and it is this same instrumentally formative power that, together with the neshemeh, or breath, that keeps them from perishing, or returning to the dust. “If God set his heart against man, He will withdraw to himself ruachu veneshemetu, that is, His spirit and His breath; all flesh shall “perish together, and man shall turn again to dust.” “By the neshemet el,” or breath of God, “frost is given.” Speaking of reptiles and beasts, David saith, “thou withdrawest ruachem—their spirit—they die; and to their dust they return. Thou sendest forth ruheck—thy spirit—they are created.”
REPRESENTATIVE LIFE OF WESTERN ASIA.
Illustrating the Scriptural Idea of Living Souls.
From this cumulative evidence it is manifest that the ruach is all-pervading. It is in heaven, in sheol, or in the dust of the deepest hollow; in the uttermost depths of the sea; in the darkness as well as in the light; in all things animate and inanimate. In the broadest, or I may say, in an illimitable sense, it is an universal principle. It is the substratum of all motion, whether manifested in the revolutions of the planets, in the ebb and flow of the sea, in winds and storms and tempests, or in the organisms of plants and animals. The atmospheric expanse is charged with it; but it is not the air. Animals and plants breathe it, but it is not their breath; yet without it, though filled with air, they would die. Neshemet el, or atmospheric air, is the breath of God, as Job puts it, or the mighty expanse, as affirmed by Moses. What the ruach, or spirit, is, none with certainty can say. Extending from the centre of the earth, and thence in all directions through the immensity of space, is the Ruach Elohim, whose existence is demonstrable from the phenomena of the natural order of things. It penetrates where neshemet el cannot penetrate, but when speaking of the motivity and sustentation of organized dust, or souls, they co-exist with them, the Ruach Elohim becoming the ruach chayim, or spirit of lives; the neshemet el, the neshemet chayim, or breath of lives, and both together in the elaboration and support of life, the neshemet ruach chayim, or breath of the spirit of lives. Living creatures, or souls, are not animated, as is erroneously supposed, by a vital principle which is capable of disembodied existence. On the contrary, souls are made living by the coetaneous operation of the ruach chayim and the neshemet chayim upon their organized tissues according to certain fixed laws, called natural laws. When the as yet occult laws of the all-pervading ruach, or spirit, shall be made known, men will be astonished at their ignorance respecting living souls, as we are at the notion of the ancients that their immortal gods resided in the stocks and the stones they so ignorantly worshipped.
Though lent to the creatures of the natural world for the allotted period of their living existence, yet the ruach chayim and neshemet chayim are still God’s breath and God’s spirit, and to distinguish them from the expanse of air and spirit in their totality, they are sometimes specifically styled “the spirit of man” and “the spirit of the beast,” or collectively “the spirits of all flesh,” and “their breath.” Thus it is written in Ecclesiastes, “they have all one ruach, or spirit, so that man hath no preëminence over a beast; for all is vanity or vapor.” “All go to one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.” And in the sense of supplying to every living creature, or soul, spirit and breath, Jehovah is styled by Moses in the book of Numbers,—“God of the spirits of all flesh.”
Enough has been advanced to show the Scriptural import of the text already quoted, that “the Lord God formed man, the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives; and man became a living soul.” The simple, obvious and undogmatic meaning of this is, that the dust being animalized, and then organized, was next set in motion by the inrush of the air through his nostrils into his lungs according to natural laws. This phenomenon was the neshemet el, or “breath of God,” breathing into him; and as it was the pabulum of life to all creatures constituted of dust, it was very expressively styled the “breath of lives,” and not the “breath of life.” God breathes into every man at his birth the breath of lives to this day, and there can be no reason, Scriptural or otherwise, why we should deny that He breathed it into Adam as He hath done into the nostrils of his posterity by the operation of natural laws. Man, as soon as he began to respire, like the embryo passing from fœtal to infant life, “became a living soul,” that is, nephesh chayiah, a living, breathing frame, or body of life. All kinds of flesh, whether of man, beast, fowl and creeping thing, are made alive by the same breath and spirit. They all become, in consequence, living souls, so that, having a oneness of spirit, a man hath no superiority over a beast.
Having now proved, as we think, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that men and beasts “have all one ruach, or spirit,” and hence are all living souls, we now approach a form of life, termed vegetable life, about which the Scriptures have little to say. Neshemet el, or atmospheric air, is just as essential to plants as to animals. Deprived of it they wither and die. No less necessary is the all-pervading ruach, or spirit. It is in the air, though not of the air. Plants, equally with animals, breathe it, but it is not their breath. Without it, even though filled with air, they would perish. Perhaps it is the base of each of the elementary constituents of the air. Uncombined, may it not be that wonderful fluid whose explosions are heard in the thunder, whose fiery bolts overthrow the loftiest towers and rive the sturdy monarchs of the woods, and whose influence, though in less intensity, gives polarity to light, the needle, and the brain?
Living plants are a part and parcel of the life of our globe. They preceded in the grand scheme of creation animal existences. Low down in the scale of life are forms about which it cannot be predicated these are plants and these are animals. Scientists are unable to say where plant-life ends and animal-life begins. No hard-and-fast line can be drawn between the two vast kingdoms of life, and it is often wholly impossible to decide whether we are dealing with an animal or a plant. There can be no question that the earliest life was vegetable by nature, and that its habitat was the primeval ocean. This is no less the teaching of science than that of the Scriptures. From some such life, originating de novo as the Spirit of God passed over the waters, the two great branches of animate nature may have taken their rise. What the form of this life may have been, whether cellular or a mere mass of formless protoplasm, the mind of man cannot asseverate. It is a mystery, and will doubtless ever remain as such to finite intelligence. That this life, no matter how apparently insignificant it must have been, breathed in its own simple fashion, that is, by the coetaneous operation of the ruach chayim and the neshemet chayim upon its simple substance in accordance with natural law, there can be no dispute. Breathing is not always conditioned by the existence of nostrils. Plants respire, or, in other words, take in carbonic acid from the air through their stomata, or mouths, which they separate into its components of carbon and oxygen, appropriating the former, which they build into solid matter, but usually throwing off the latter into the great receptacle of atmosphere from which it was extracted. Even a moner, which has no distinction of parts, may be said to breathe, but it breathes by means of its whole external surface, for neshemeh and ruach are as necessary to it as to man himself. It will thus be obvious that plants are living, breathing frames, or bodies of life, and hence are as much entitled to be considered as living souls as animals are. Let but God withdraw his ruach, or spirit, from them, and they die and to their dust return. Surely no more could be predicated of animals.