purgatory, you destroy the argument wherewith Christ and Paul prove the resurrection. . . . If the souls be in heaven, tell me why they be not in as good case as the angels be? And then what cause is there of the resurrection?" The following comments and illustration from the pen of a prominent author are so directly to the point that we give them in full:— "It is absolutely impossible to give any definition of the word "soul," which will cover every instance of its use in the Bible. From 1 Thess. 5:23, where Paul says, I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless,' we know that human beings are composed of body, soul, and spirit; yet sometimes one part is put by a figure of speech for the whole or a part. Thus, in Gen. 12:5 'soul' is used for the whole person. But to find the primary use, from which all other meanings are but deviations, we must look to the must look to the beginning,- to the making of man. "Gen. 2:7 presents the making of man, and gives his three constituent parts. God made man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man BECAME a living soul. From this it is plain that the dust (forming the body) and the breath (the spirit of life) both existed before they were united in man; but the soul was not. It was formed by the union of the dust and the breath. "No one can imagine that either the dust or the breath had any consciousness in their original state, any more than the soil and the air have now; but the combination of the two made an entirely new thing, and resulted in consciousness. No portion of dust or of breath has anything in itself to distinguish it from any other portion of dust or air; but when the two are combined, as God alone can combine them, so that the very dust is animated, we have individuality,-no two persons in the universe being exactly alike, because there are innumerable combinations, all distinct, according to the infinite wisdom of God. "With Gen. 2:7 we must connect Eccl. 12:7, which describes the unmaking of man. The dust returns to the earth 'as it was,' and is not distinguishable from any other dust; the spirit (the breath, compare Gen. 2:7; Job 27:3, 4; 32:8; 33: 4) returns to God, who gave it, and is in no respect different from any other air; in fact, even in life the same breath is used by many different people, as is well known; but when God gathers to Himself His spirit and breath (see Job 34:14, 15), and the combination of the dust and the spirit no longer exists, where is the soul?—It simply is not. "This matter of the spirit, body, and soul may be almost perfectly represented by an illustration that will appeal to you as a musician. Here is an organ and a master musician. For simplicity's sake we will consider only a single pipe. When the organist breathes (artificially of course) into the pipe, and by the action of his hands makes it alive, sound is produced. Now let the musician take his hands from the instrument the air no longer acts upon it, yet both pipe and air have the same existence as before; but where is the sound that was made by their previous combination? It is not. It never was a distinct en tity, it had no independent existence; it was brought into being by a certain combination, and when that combination is broken it is no more. "This you will see is an excellent illustration, conforming closely to Gen. 2:7 and Eccl. 12:7. From this it is evident that to speak of the soul as either mortal or immortal is an anomaly. It is neither mortal nor immortal, and it does not sleep in death; it simply is not. But although it is not, IT CONTINUES IN THE MIND OF GOD, just as .the harmonious sound does in the mind of the musician long after the vibration has ceased; and it can be reproduced at any time. "The musician had the harmony in mind before it ever had expression; he knew what tones he would produce before he sat down to the instrument. So God had all our different personalities distinct in His mind before we had any existence (compare Ps. 139: 15, 16; Jer. 1:5); and after the union is dissolved He still keeps all the different souls in His mind (Job 12:10), even as the musician will carry whole oratorios in his mind both before and after they are written or played, able to reproduce them again at will. "Carry the figure farther: the true musician thinks in harmony: a discord is a thing foreign to his mind. So God's thought, uninterfered with, produces perfect souls from the combination of spirit and dust; the imperfect soul-discord - results when human beings do not act in harmony with God's thought "Apply this to the explanation of Matt. 10:28. Men cannot destroy God's thought. Though they cut off the spirit of life, and burn the body to ashes, God's mind retains His original thought, and He is . able to reproduce *the individual at any time He chooses. Man can not destroy the soul of man, but God can and will destroy the soul that sinneth (Eze. 18:4), because His mind can not perpetuate discord. For a time He patiently endures the discord which others make; but at last, when endurance can no longer avail anything, He forever withdraws His breath from those who are determined to be out of harmony with Him; and since He can not be out of harmony with Himself, and will not reproduce the discordant souls, they will be as though they had not been.' See Obadiah 16." *From Ps. 139: 16, we see how God will reproduce each individual in the resurrection with perfect personal identity. Here David says, "In Thy book all my members were written, when as yet there was none of them." Now take an illustration: If our negative is in the gallery of an artist, a perfect picture can be made, even though we may have been dead any number of years. So the resurrection of every believer is assured, for, so to speak, our negative is above in the keeping of the great Master Artist. |
