“To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.”—Rom. viii. 6.

So far we have examined the witness which the Bible affords in support of the truth that there is such a sphere as the Intermediate State, in which the spirit dwells alone, apart from the body, awaiting the Day of Judgment. We have now to see what can be known as to the condition of the spirit in that disembodied state. It is one thing to be assured on good grounds that there is such a life, and quite another thing to be assured what sort of life it is. Can we fully understand what is meant by the life of the spiritual part of our being when it is separated from the body? We cannot. We cannot understand that of which we have had no experience. In speaking, therefore, of the disembodied spirit, we are speaking of that which we cannot explain. Yet it does not in consequence follow that it is impossible to believe it to be. For we are bound in reason to be assured of many things of which we can form no conception. Reason compels us to be assured of the reality of space, of eternity, of the creation of the universe out of nothing, and, perhaps we may add, of the being of God; the being of God, I mean, considered apart from His nature and attributes. Yet we cannot form any intelligent conception of these realities. We cannot shape to our apprehension the faintest rational conception of the Personality of God, of His Omniscience, of His Omnipresence. Yet we are able, and indeed are forced to believe, as Christians, in these attributes of His Nature, although we cannot comprehend them.

In the same sense, we can be reasonably sure that the spirit can still live after it has left the body, even though we are unable to form to our minds any clear conception of the existence of the disembodied spirit. We can do more. On the assumption of the existence of the disembodied spirit, we are able, to some extent also, to reason upon the laws and limits of that separate and secluded life.

We are, no doubt, in so doing, dealing with a profoundly mysterious subject. But it does not therefore follow that we are thereby really intruding into things which ought not to be enquired into. For the questions raised in the search concern us very closely; and, moreover, it is a matter about which God has made a revelation. And to know more about it than many people even care to know is a safeguard against many an unwholesome fear, against many a mischievous deceit.

On the very threshold of this enquiry we are confronted with this question: “Is the soul the same thing as the spirit? If not, what is the soul, and what is the spirit?” That the Bible regards them as distinct is sufficiently clear from the language used by S. Paul in his first Epistle to the Thessalonians: “I pray God your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” [34a] The same distinction is marked in the Epistle to the Hebrews: “The word of God is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit.” [34b] It is thus that we understand the contrast which S. Paul enforces between things of the spirit and things of the soul. “The natural man,”—i.e., the psychical man, the man who yields to the sway of the soul,—“receiveth not the things of the spirit of God.” [34c] And again, speaking of the resurrection, he writes: “It is sown a natural body,”—i.e., literally a psychical body, a body which is subject to the sway of the soul,—“it is raised a spiritual body,”—i.e., a body subject to the sway of the spirit. “There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” [35a] When again S. James says: “This wisdom . . . is earthly, sensual, devilish,”—the word translated “sensual” is the same word “psychical,” i.e., subject to the sway of the soul. [35b] S. Jude speaks of those who are “sensual,” i.e., psychical, “not having the spirit.” [35c] Enough has been said to show that, according to the Bible, the soul is the seat of the senses, the desires, the will, the reasoning and intellectual faculties, the thoughts of the mind. What then is the spirit in man? We seem to have the answer given to us in the account of man’s creation, when we are told that “God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” [35d] This breath of God could be nothing less than the spirit, which came from God Himself. It is that higher endowment by which man is a spiritual being, and therefore has an affinity to God. It is that which makes him God-like, even by nature, at least by his nature as it was before the fall. But even the fall did not utterly dissolve that nature; man still remained a spiritual being, although the spiritual part of him was subject to the sway of the animal in him, and to the senses of the lower nature. Until that creative act of God, man’s body and soul were scarcely higher in the order and rank of being than the body and soul of the brute. It was the gift of the divine spirit which caused man’s soul truly to live, so that he became then “a living soul.” Herein, henceforth, the soul of man differs from the soul of the lower creature. In man the soul is in contact with the spirit. The beast shares with man the possession of an animal soul. It is the prerogative of man to be endowed also with spirit. By the spirit, man is capable of apprehending God, can commune with God, can long for Him. Herein lies his capacity for religion. His soul is incorporeal no less than his spirit. It is, as it were, midway between the body and the spirit. It touches the body on the one side, on the other side it touches the spirit. The desires and the thoughts of the soul may become enslaved by the body, or they may become the servants of the spirit. The soul is the prize, for the mastery of which the spirit strives, and the flesh or body strives. The spirit may gain the soul, or the flesh may gain the soul. If the spirit loses the soul, it is a loss fatal and irreparable. The soul is drawn now this way by the baser longings of the flesh, now that way by the nobler appeals of the spirit. It is the “debateable ground” [37] on which the real battle of life is fought. “The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.” The gaining of the soul is the gaining of the whole man. The losing of the soul is the losing of the whole man. Those have degraded and brutalized their life whose human spirit has yielded up its supremacy, whose soul has been swept along in captivity by the bodily desires. For as in some the spirit shapes the whole soul, so in others the soul, enslaved by the flesh, shapes the spirit.

Death at length steps in, and tears asunder the flesh from the incorporeal part of us; and soul and spirit, still united, pass together to the life which awaits them in the world unseen.