Page:The Last Judgement and Second Coming of the Lord Illustrated.djvu/140

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From these considerations of spiritual philosophy, and the indications of revelation, we learn that the human soul is a spiritual body; thet it is this which constitutes the man, and which is distinguished by immortality: also, that death is simply the removal from him of his earthly covering, when he passes into the spiritual world, a spirit among spirits; and where, until the judgment, he continues to live, not a phantom or a vapour, but as a real man, possessing all the faculties and powers which had ever belonged to him as such, with the mere exception of his material covering; and which, because he has performed in it his probationary uses, he can want no more, and will, therefore, never be resumed.

This conclusion is supported by some historical facts of revelation. Were they not the spiritual bodies of Moses and Elias that were seen by the three disciples at the Lord's transfiguration? Those remarkable men had long departed from the natural world; we do not read anything about their having resumed their material bodies, and yet they were distinguished by all the forms proper to humanity and necessary for their identification. They evidently were


    original term, have introduced what must be a source of much perplexity to the merely English reader, who attaches to the word soul no other idea than what it commonly bears in his own language. The original Greek word which properly means the Lord's 'life,' is ζωη (zoe). This is the word employed when it is said, 'In Him was life; and the life was the light of men,' and also, when of Himself He said, I am 'the life.' Hence it is easy to perceive the distinction between the soul which was 'the life' of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the soul which was the anima of His manifested body. The soul which was exceeding sorrowful even unto death, which was troubled, and which was laid down, was ψυχη, the anima of the manifested body derived from the mother, and not ψυχη, the Lord's principle of Divine and eternal life." See the author's work. The Deity of Jesus Christ Asserted.