2. Dust, or the body, and spirit are spoken of as two distinct things. Granted.
3. At death, the spirit leaves the body. Granted.
4. The spirit is disposed of in a different manner from the body. Granted.
5. This spirit returns to God, and is therefore conscious, after the dissolution of the body. Not granted. Where is the proof of this? Here our paths begin to diverge from each other. But how could it return to God if it was not conscious? Answer: In the manner Job describes. “If he [God] set his heart upon man, if he gather unto himself his spirit and his breath, all flesh shall perish together, and man shall turn again to dust.” Job 34:14, 15. This text speaks of God’s gathering to himself the “breath” of man; something which no one supposes to be capable of a separate conscious existence. Over against this proposition we are compelled to mark, Assumption.
6. This spirit is therefore to exist forever. This conclusion also we fail to see, either expressed, or even in the remotest manner, implied. Thus the vital points in the evidence are wholly assumed.
But if the spirit here does not mean what it is popularly supposed to mean, what is its signification? What is it that returns to God? It will be noticed that it is something which God “gave” to man. And Solomon introduces it in a familiar manner, as if alluding to something already recorded and well understood. He makes evident reference to the creation of man in the beginning. His body was formed of the dust; and in addition to this, what did God do for man or give unto him? He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. This is the only spirit that is distinctly spoken of as having been given by God to man. No one claims that this, like the body, was from the dust, or returns to dust; but it does not therefore follow that it is conscious or immortal.
Landis, p. 133, falls into this wrong method of reasoning. He says:--
“If the soul were mortal, it too would be given up to the dust, it would return also to the earth. But God affirms that it does not return to the earth; and therefore it is distinct from the mortal and perishable part of man.”
The breath of life is distinct from the body, and did not come from the dust of the ground; but to say that it can exist in a conscious state independent of the body, and that it must live forever, is groundless assumption.
If spirit here means “the breath of life,” how, or in what sense, does it return to God? Landis, p. 150, thus falsely treats this point also: “How can the air we breathe,” he asks, “return to God?” Between the breath of life as imparted to man by God, vitalizing the animal frame, and air considered simply as an element, we apprehend there is a broad distinction. Solomon is showing the dissolution of man by tracing back the steps taken in his formation. The breath of life was breathed into Adam in the beginning; by which he became a living soul. That is withdrawn from man, and as a consequence he becomes inanimate. Then the body, deprived of its vitalizing principle, having been formed of the dust, goes back to dust again.