6. It includes the understanding, intellect. Mark ii, 8; Luke i, 80, and ii, 40; 1 Corinthians ii, 11, 12; Exodus xxviii, 3; Job xx, 3; Isaiah xxix, 24.
7. A spirit, that is, a simple, incorporeal, immaterial being, possessing higher capacities than man in his present state. Of created spirits, the human spirit, soul, after its departure from the body and as existing in a separate state. Hebrews xii, 23; that is, to the spirits of just men made perfect. Robinson renders it thus: “To the spirits of the just advanced to perfect happiness and glory.”
It is spoken of God in reference to his immateriality. John, [pg 154] iv, 24. Of Christ in his exalted spiritual nature in distinction from his human nature. In Hebrews, ix, 14, in contrast with perishable nature. “The eternal spirit,” Holy spirit, spirit of God.—Robinson's Lexicon.
From all this it will be seen that it is impossible to limit the term spirit to its ancient physical currency. Our term mind is, for two reasons, a better word for its place in modern literature. First, it never had a physical application. Second, the terms are used indifferently in the New Testament when they relate to man. See Romans, i, 9 and vii, 25. All spirits are one in kind; in character the difference lies; that is, spirits are all imperishable. It is not in the nature of a spirit to cease to be. If it is, then there is no imperishable nature that is revealed to man. I submit for consideration the thought that there is no difference in the final results between the man who denies the existence of spirits altogether and the man who allows that spirits may cease to exist.
“We are cognizant of the existence of spirit by our direct consciousness of feelings, desires and ideas, which are to us the most certain of all realities.”—Carpenter.
“The body continually requires new materials and a continued action of external agencies. But the mind, when it has been once called into activity and has become stored with ideas, may remain active and may develop new relations and combinations among these, after the complete closure of the sensorial inlets by which new ideas can be excited ‘ab externo.’ Such, in fact, is what is continually going on in the state of dreaming.... The mind thus feeds upon the store of ideas which it has laid up during the activity of the sensory organs, and those impressions which it retains in its consciousness are working up into a never ending variety of combinations and successions of ideas, thus affording new sources of mental activity even to the very end of life.”—Carpenter.
In death the spirit returns to God, who gave it, retaining, doubtless, all its store of ideas and all its own inherent activities, which will continue while eternity endures.