They are strengthened, as were Buddha and Christ, by suppressing the sensual fires for forty days and nights in the wilderness of trial and temptation. They number a few, and are never disappointed, while the former number millions.
Nature is three-fold, so is man; male and female, son or soul. The union of one and two produce the triad or the trinity which underlies the philosophy of the ancients.
Man has a physical or visible body, an atom of the physical or visible earth. He has a soul the exact counterpart of his body, but invisible and subjective; incomplete and imperfect as the external man, or vice versa.
The soul is not only the son or creation of man, but it is the real man. It is the inner imperishable double or imprint of what has outwardly and inwardly transpired. All thoughts, desires and actions enter the soul through the objective mind.
The automaton of the body responds as quickly to the bat of the eye as it does to the movement of the whole body. By it the foot-steps of man and the very hairs of his head are numbered. Thus it becomes his invisible counterpart. It is therefore the book of life or death, and by it he judges himself or is already judged. When it is complete nothing can be added or taken from its personnel. It is sometimes partly opened to him in his dreams, but in death is clearly revealed.
Man has also a spiritual body, subjective to, and more ethereal than the soul. It is an infinitesimal atom, and is related in substance to the spiritual or infinite mind of the universe. Just as the great physical sun, the center of visible light, life and heat, is striving to purify the foul miasma of the marsh and send its luminous messages of love into the dark crevices of the earth, so the Great Spiritual Sun, of which the former is a visible prototype or reflection, is striving to illuminate with Divine Wisdom the personal soul and mind of man, thus enabling him to become cognizant of the spiritual or Christ presence within.
The heresy and Herod of wanton flesh, degenerate victim of the sensuous filth and fermentation of self-indulgence, is ever striving to exile and suppress, from the wilderness of sin, the warning cry of the Nazarite voice by intriguing with the cunning, incestuous daughters of unholy thoughts and desires.
The objective mind is most active when the body is awake. The subjective influences are most active, and often fill the mind with impressions, while the physical body is asleep. The spiritual intelligence can only intrude itself when the human will is suspended, or passive to external states. A man who lives only on the sensual plane will receive his knowledge through the senses, and will not, while in that state, receive spiritual impressions or warning dreams.
Men and women rarely ever degrade themselves so low that the small voice of the desert does not bring them a message. Sodom and Gomorrah, vile with the debauchery of a nameless crime, were not deserted by the angel of love until the fire which they had lighted in their souls had consumed them. The walls of Jericho did not fall until Rahab, the harlot, had been saved and the inmates had heard for several days the ram's-horn and the tramp of Joshua's infantry.
The evangelist Jonah, the Sam Jones of Hebrew theology, exhorted the adulterous Nineveh many times to repentance before it fell.