The name of the immortal element (in man) was not given to man as a gratuitous gift. It had to be gained, like the name of God, in the sweat of his face. Before man could say that he believed his soul to be immortal, he had to discover that there was a soul in man. It required as great an effort to form such a word as anima, breath, and to make it signify the infinite in man, as to form such a word as diva, bright, and to make it signify the infinite in nature.

Gifford Lectures, III.

To us the two words 'body and soul' are so familiar that it seems almost childish to ask how man came at first to speak of body and soul. But what did he mean by soul? What do we ourselves mean by soul? Think of the many meanings contained in our word soul. Our soul may mean the living soul; it may mean the sentient soul; it may mean the seat of the passions, whether good or bad; it may mean the organ of thought; and lastly, the immortal element in man. The question we have to ask is not how man arrived at a name for soul, but how he came for the first time to speak of something different from the body.

Gifford Lectures, III.

The discovery of the soul, the first attempts at naming the soul, started everywhere from the simplest observations of material facts. The lesson cannot be inculcated too often that the whole wealth of our most abstract and spiritual words comes from a small number of material or concrete terms.

Gifford Lectures, III.

We see that the way which led to the discovery of a soul was pointed out to man as clearly as was the way which led him to the discovery of the gods. It was chiefly the breath, which almost visibly left the body at the time of death, that suggested the name of breath, and afterwards the thought of something breathing, living, perceiving, willing, remembering, and thinking within us. The name came first, the name of the material breath. By dropping what seemed material even in this airy breath, there remained the first vague and airy concept of what we call soul.

Gifford Lectures, III.

The worship of the spirits of the departed which, under various forms, was so widely spread over the ancient world, could not but accustom the human mind to the idea that there was something in man which deserved such worship. The souls of the departed were lifted higher and higher, till at last they reached the highest stage which existed in the human mind, namely, that of divine beings, in the ancient sense of that word.

Gifford Lectures, III.

The problem of uniting the invisible and visible worlds presented itself under three principal aspects. The first was the problem of creation, or how the invisible Primal Cause could ever come in contact with visible matter and impart to it form and meaning. The second problem was the relation between God and the individual soul. The third problem was the return of the soul from the visible to the invisible world, from the prison of its mortal body to the freedom of a heavenly paradise. The individual soul as dwelling in a material body forms part of the created world, and the question of the return of the soul to God is therefore closely connected with that of its creation by, or its emanation from, God.

Gifford Lectures, IV.

When the original oneness of earth and heaven, of the human and the divine natures, has once been discovered, the question of the return of the soul to God assumes a new character. It is no longer a question of an ascension to heaven, an approach to the throne of God, an ecstatic vision of God, and a life in a heavenly Paradise. The vision of God is rather the knowledge of the divine element in the soul, and of the consubstantiality of the divine and human natures. Immortality has no longer to be asserted, because there can be no death for what is divine, and therefore immortal, in man. There is life eternal and peace eternal for all who feel the divine Spirit as dwelling within them, and have thus become the children of God.

Gifford Lectures, IV.

No doubt the soul must find it difficult in childhood to accustom itself to the human body, and it takes many years before it is quite at home. Then for a time all goes well, and the soul hardly knows it is hidden in a strange garment till the body begins to be weakly, and can no longer do all the soul wishes, and presses it everywhere, so that the soul appears to lose all outward freedom and movement. Then one can well understand that we long to be gone, and death is a true deliverance. God always knows best when the right time comes.

Life.

Let us remember that we do not know what the soul was before this life—nay, even what it was during the first years of our childhood. Yet we believe on very fair evidence that what we call our soul existed from the moment of our birth. What ground have we, then, to doubt that it was even before that moment? To ascribe to the soul a beginning on our birthday would be the same as to claim for it an end on the day of our death, for whatever has a beginning has an end. If then, in the absence of any other means of knowledge, we may take refuge in analogy, might we not say that it will be with the soul hereafter as it has been here, and that the soul after its earthly setting will rise again, much as it rose here? This is not a syllogism, it is analogy, and in a cosmos like ours analogy has a right to claim some weight, in the absence of any proof to the contrary.

Last Essays.

There is a question which has probably been asked by every human heart—Granting that the soul cannot, without self-contradiction, be mortal, will that soul be itself, know itself, and will it know others whom it has known before? For the next life, it is said, would not be worth living if the soul did not recollect itself, recognise not only itself, but those whom it has known and loved on earth. Here analogy alone can supply some kind of answer: 'It will be hereafter as it has been' is not, in the absence of any evidence to the contrary, an argument that can be treated with contempt. Our soul here may be said to have risen without any recollection of itself and of the circumstances of its former existence. But it has within it the consciousness of its eternity, and the conception of a beginning is as impossible for it as that of an end, and if souls were to meet again hereafter as they met in this life, as they loved in this life, without knowing that they had met and loved before, would the next life be so very different from what this life has been here on earth—would it be so utterly intolerable and really not worth living?

Last Essays.

When the soul has once reached that union with God, nay, when it lives in the constant presence of God, evil becomes almost impossible. We know that most of the evil deeds to which human nature is prone are possible in the dark only. Before the eyes of another human being, more particularly of a beloved being, they become at once impossible. How much more in the real presence of a real and really beloved God, as felt by the true mystic, not merely as a phrase, but as a fact? As long as there is no veil between him and God, evil thoughts, evil words, and evil deeds are simply impossible to one who feels the actual presence of God. Nor is he troubled any longer by questions, such as how the world was created, how evil came into the world. He is satisfied with the Divine Love that embraces his soul; he has all that he can desire, his whole life is hid through Christ in God, death is swallowed up in victory, the mortal has become immortal, neither death nor life, nor things present, nor things to come, is able to separate his soul from the love of God.

Gifford Lectures, IV.