It is my purpose to show in this writing, that this spirit of man existed before it was united with the body, that it is an emanation from Deity, and hence the relationship of Fatherhood on the part of God, and sonship on the part of man. It is written by the Apostle Paul that, "God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past unto the fathers, by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds."[B] The palpable meaning of this passage is that God employed the spirit of Jesus Christ in creating worlds—not one world only, but doubtless many. And if it was the spirit of Jesus which acted as God's agent in the creation of the worlds, there can be no doubt as to the spirit of Jesus having an existence before it was tabernacled in the body born of the virgin Mary.
[Footnote B: Hebrews i: 1, 2.]
Nor is the above passage of scripture the only one which sustains the fact of the existence of the spirit of Jesus Christ previous to its union with the body. There are many expressions which fell from the lips of our Lord himself that prove the fact. When some of his disciples murmured at certain doctrines he had been teaching them, he exclaims—"Doth this offend you? what and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before?"[C]—doubtless referring to the place he occupied in the mansions of his Father before the creation of the earth.
[Footnote C: John vi: 61, 62.]
Again, just previous to his betrayal, in his prayer in Gethsemane, he said to his Father, "I have glorified thee on the earth, I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do. And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, even with the glory which I had with thee before the world was."[D] No more direct allusion to his pre-existence could be given than this; and from it we learn that such existence extended back to a period previous to the creation of the earth we inhabit.
[Footnote D: John, xvii.]
To all appearances Jesus was as other men in his physical organism. He was born of woman; nourished in the same manner and with the same food; subject to heat and cold, hunger and thirst and weariness. He was pre-eminently the man of sorrows, and more than other men subject to pain. In short he possessed all the organs, dimensions, passions and attributes of man; but in him the passions were refined and so nicely checked and balanced, and the attributes so developed and made subject to the will divine that he was a perfect man—a God! So nearly did he resemble other men that his countrymen, and especially his neighbors, failed to recognize God in him. And when he began his mission among them they said: "Whence hath this man this wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And his sisters are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things? And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief."[E]
[Footnote E: Matt. xiii, 64-68.]
We may now turn our attention to the more immediate object of this writing—the relationship between man and Deity.
An important inference may be reasonably based upon this similarity between the Son of God and other men, viz: that if the spirit which inhabited the body of Jesus had an existence before it dwelt in the flesh, is it not possible, and, rather is it not probable, that the spirits of other men, or of all men, also existed before they were born into the world? Since Jesus was so much like his brethren in the many respects noted, it requires no great effort to believe that they resemble him in this particular matter of the pre-existence of their spirits.