By a dishonorable perversion on this point some have tried to hold up to ridicule the advocates of the view we here defend. Thus, when we read in Gen. 2:7, that Adam became a living soul, the sense demands, and the meaning of the word soul will warrant, that we then apply it to the whole person; Adam, as a complete being, was a living soul. But when we read in Gen. 35:18, “And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, for she died,” we give the word, according to another of its definitions, a more limited signification, and apply it, with Parkhurst, to the breath of life.
But some have met us here in this manner: “Materialists tell us that soul means the whole man, then let us see how it will read in Gen. 35:18; ‘And it came to pass as the whole man was in departing; for she died.’” Or they will say, “Materialists tell us that soul means the breath; then let us try it in Gen. 2:7: ‘And Adam became a living breath.’”
Such a course, while it is no credit to their mental acumen, is utterly disastrous to all their claims of candor and honesty in their treatment of this important subject. While we are not at liberty to go beyond the latitude of meaning which is attached to the words soul and spirit, we are at liberty to use whatever definition the circumstances of the case require, varying of course in different passages. But in the whole list of definitions, and in the entire use of the words, we find nothing answering to that immaterial, independent, immortal part, capable of a conscious, intelligent, active existence out of the body as well as in, of which the popular religious teachers of the day endeavor to make these words the vehicle.
And now we would commend to the attention of the reader another stupendous fact, the bearing of which he cannot fail to appreciate. We want to know if this soul, or spirit, is immortal. The Hebrew and Greek words from which they are translated, occur in the Bible, as we have seen, seventeen hundred times. Surely, once at least in that long list we shall be told that the soul is immortal, if this is its high prerogative. Seventeen hundred times we inquire if the soul is once said to be immortal, or the spirit deathless. And the invariable and overwhelming response we meet is, Not Once! Nowhere, though used so many hundred times, is the soul said to be undying in its nature, or the spirit deathless. Strange and unaccountable fact, if immortality is an inseparable attribute of the soul and spirit!
An attempt is sometimes made to parry the force of this fact by saying that the immortality of the soul, like that of God, is taken for granted. We reply, The immortality of God is not taken for granted. Although this might be taken for granted if anything could be so taken, yet it is directly asserted that God is immortal. Let now the advocates of the soul’s natural immortality produce one text where it is said to have immortality, as God is said to have it, 1 Tim. 6:16, or where it is said to be immortal, as God is said to be, 1 Tim. 1:17, and the question is settled. But this cannot be done; and the ignoble shift of the taken-for-granted argument falls dead to the floor.
CHAPTER VII.
THE SPIRIT RETURNS TO GOD.
Ecclesiastes 12:7: “Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was, and the spirit shall return to God who gave it.” It is natural for men to appeal first and most directly to those sources from which they expect the most efficient help. So the advocates of man’s natural immortality, when put to the task of showing what scriptures they regard as containing proof of their position, almost invariably make their first appeal to the text here quoted.
In the examination of this text, and all others of a like nature, let it ever be remembered that the question at issue is, Has man in his nature a constituent element, which is an independent entity, and which, when the body dies, keeps right on in uninterrupted consciousness, being capable of exercising in a still higher degree out of the body the functions of intelligence and activity which it manifested through the body, and destined, whether a subject of God’s favor, or of his threatened and merited wrath, to live so long as God himself exists.
Does this text assert anything of this kind? Does it state that from which even such an inference can be drawn? We invite the reader to go with us, while we endeavor to consider carefully what the text really teaches. Our opponents appeal to it as direct testimony. Let us see how far we can go with them.
1. Solomon, under a series of beautiful figures, speaks in Eccl. 12:1-7, of the lying down of man in death. Granted.