That the breath of life came from God to man, none will deny. Do they ask how it returns to him? Tell us how it came from him, and we will tell how it returns. In the same sense in which God gave it to man, in that sense it returns to him. That is all there is of it. The explanation is perfectly simple, because one division of the problem is comprehended just as easily as the other. It is an easy thing to turn off with a flippant sneer an explanation which if allowed to stand, takes the very breath of life out of a cherished theory.
But there is a grave objection lying against the popular exposition of this text, which must not pass unnoticed. It is involved in the question, What was the state or condition of this spirit before God gave it to man? Was it an independent, conscious, and intelligent being, before it was put into Adam, as it is claimed that it was after Adam got through with it, and it returned to God? Solomon evidently designs to state respecting all the elements of which man is composed, as is expressly stated of the body, that they resume the original condition in which they were, before they came together to form the component parts of man. We know it is argued that the expression respecting the body, that it returns to the dust “as it was,” is good ground for an inference that the spirit returns not as it was. Every principle of logic requires the very opposite conclusion. For, having set the mind upon that idea of sameness of condition, and then referring us to the source from whence the spirit came, and stating that it goes back to that source, the language is as good as an affirmation that it goes back to its original condition also, and must be so understood unless an express affirmation is made to the contrary. The question is therefore pertinent, Was this spirit before it came into man, a conscious being, as it is claimed to be after it leaves him? In other words, have we all had a conscious pre-existence? Is the mystery of our Lord’s incarnation repeated in every member of the human race? Yes! if popular theologians rightly explain this text. And the more daring or reckless spirits among them, seeing the logical sequence of their reasoning, boldly avow this position.
Mr. Landis (to whom we make occasional reference as an exponent of the popular theory) recoils at the idea of pre-existence, and claims (p. 147) that the spirit does not return as it was, but acquires “a moral character, and so is changed from what it was when first created and given to man”! Oh! then, when Adam’s body was formed of the dust of the ground a spirit was created (from what?) and put into it. Where did he learn this? To what new revelation has he had access to become acquainted with so remarkable a fact? Or whence derives he his authority to manufacture statements of this kind? His soul swells with indignation over some whom he styles materialists, and whom he accuses of manufacturing scripture. Thou that sayest a man should not, dost thou? Nothing is said of the “creation of a spirit” in connection with the formation of Adam’s body. The body having been formed, God, by an agency, not created for the purpose, but already existing with himself, endowed it with life, and Adam became a living soul.
Having thus artfully introduced the idea that the spirit was created for the occasion, Mr. L. takes up this reasoning which shows that if the spirit is conscious after leaving the body, it must have been before it entered it, and, applying to it a term doubtless suggested by his own feelings in view of the assumptions to which he was himself obliged to resort, calls it silly. Nevertheless here is the rock on which their exposition of this text inevitably and hopelessly founders.
There is another consideration not without its bearing on this question. The words, “And the spirit shall return to God who gave it,” are spoken promiscuously of all mankind. They apply alike to the righteous and wicked. If the spirit survives the death of the body, the spirits of the righteous would, as a natural consequence, ascend to God, in whose presence they are promised fullness of joy. But do the spirits of the wicked go to God also? For what purpose? The immediate destination usually assigned to them is the lake of fire. Is it said that they first go to God to be judged? Then we ask, Where does the Bible once affirm that a person is judged when he dies? On the contrary, the Scriptures invariably place the Judgment in the future, and assert in the most explicit terms that God has appointed a day for that purpose. Acts 17:31.
Thus the Bible doctrine of the Judgment is directly contradicted by this view. According to the Scriptures no man has yet received his final judgment; yet, according to the view under examination, the spirits of all who have ever died, good and bad, righteous and wicked, have gone to God. For what purpose have the spirits of the wicked gone to him? Are they there still? Does God so deal with rebels against his government--give them Heaven from one to six thousand years, more or less, and hell afterward? Away with a view which introduces such inconsistencies into God’s dealings with his creatures.
How infinitely preferable that view which alone the record warrants; that is, that the spirit that returns to God who gave it is the breath of life, that agency by which God vivifies and sustains these physical frames; since this, so far as the record goes, is just what God did give to man in the beginning, since the definition of the term sustains such an application, since this spirit, without doing violence to either thought or language, can return to God in the same sense in which it came from him, and, above all, since this view harmonizes all the record, and avoids those inconsistencies and contradictions in which we find ourselves inevitably involved the very moment we undertake to make the spirit mean a separate entity, conscious in death and immortal in its nature.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FORMATION OF THE SPIRIT.
In a search for testimony relative to the nature of man, with the purpose of ascertaining whether or not he is immortal, those texts first demand attention which are claimed as proof that he is above and beyond the power of death. Zech. 12:1, is introduced as positive testimony on this side of the question:
“The burden of the word of the Lord for Israel, saith the Lord, which stretcheth forth the heavens and layeth the foundations of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man within him.”