03.01. Chapter 1

THE SPIRITUAL NATURE OF MAN

Revelation assumes the spiritual nature of man. It may be said that the Bible never formulates the doctrine, but reveals it in the account it gives of the origin of man, in the perpetual reference it makes to the nature of man, and in the whole of its teaching concerning the redemption of man. The psalmist, after contemplation of the vastness of the universe, exclaimed, “ When I consider Thy heaven, the work of Thy fingers, The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained, What is man?” The question was not asked in order to suggest the inferiority of man, but to introduce a statement which reveals his superiority to that universe, with which the psalmist suggested the comparison.

“For Thou hast made him but little lower than God, And crownest him with glory and honour.” The same question was asked by quotation, by the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, and he answered finally thus: “ But now we see not yet all things subjected to him. But we be hold Him Who hath been made a little lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the suffering of death crowned with glory and honour, that by the grace of God He should taste death for every man.” In each case the answers reveal man’s relation to the spiritual world primarily and fundamentally. The answer of the psalmist declares that man is but little lower than God, and affirms his superiority even to. that vast universe, which had made the psalmist enquire “ What is man? “ The outstanding words of the Bible agree with this central statement. The story of creation declares that after all preliminary processes, God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.” At the very heart of New Testament teaching the great apostle describes man as “ spirit, soul, and body.” In these passages to which I am only making passing reference it is evident that the Bible recognizes the fact that man is essentially spirit. In making reference to the passage in Thessalonians, in which the apostle speaks of “ spirit, soul, and body,” we need to be careful not to imagine that three absolutely distinct entities are referred to as existing within man’s being. The apostle speaks of the spirit of the soul or mind, and of the body. He begins with the essential, which is the spirit; he then refers to the consciousness, the mind, the soul; and finally to the body. There is the most intimate interrelation between the three. The spirit is the essential, the body is the expressional, and the mind is the consciousness, which is either spiritual or fleshly, according to whether spirit pr flesh is in the ascendant in the life. The distinction between spirit and soul is sharply maintained throughout the Scriptures. In one of the hours of his greatest anguish, Job broke out into these words, “ I will speak in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.” In the great Magnificat Mary sang, “My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.’’ In the psalm of perfect praise there is a subconscious recognition of the same distinction, “ Bless the Lord, O my soul, And all that is within me, bless His holy name.’’ The speaker there is not the soul. The soul is addressed. The essential personality is that of the one speaking to the soul. In the final injunction of the Roman letter concerning worship, the apostle wrote, “ I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies,” so that neither is the body the final fact in personality. The body is to be presented by the person, the body is the property of the person, but it is not the person. The marginal reading of the passage already quoted runs, “present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.” The essential fact in personality is thus seen to be that of spirit; and the spirit’s highest act of expressed wor ship is the dedication of the body, and in the dedication of the body by the spirit there is a renewing of the mind. The difference between soul and spirit is recognized in the words of our Lord Himself. At the coming of the Greeks He said, “ Now is My soul troubled,” and a little later as He came nearer to the darkness of the awful passion, John declares that “ He was troubled in the spirit.” The teaching of revelation concerning the nature of man was most lucidly expressed by Justin Martyr, “ As the body is the house of the soul, so is the soul the house of the spirit.” In that sentence is crystallized the conception of man which the Bible presents. For the sake of illustration only, think of the ancient. He brew Tabernacle, with its outer court, with its holy place, with its holy of holies. I do not say that it was intended so to be, but it certainly may be used as a representation of individual human life. There is the outer court of the material, the physical, the body. There is the holy place of the consciousness, the mental, the soul. But there is the holy of holies, the spiritual essence, the central fact. Man essentially is spirit. He possesses a body and a mind; that mind being fleshly or spiritual, according to whether in the inner spiritual life he yield to the cry of the flesh, or answer the upward call of the spirit. God is a Spirit, and requires spiritual worship, which can only be rendered by spirit. Man is offspring of God. Man is therefore a spirit, and can worship God. Man is made in the image and likeness of God. God is Spirit, and man therefore essentially is not material, but spiritual.

We are in the habit of using the word spiritual as an adjective, qualifying life, and describing it at its best; but everyone is living a spiritual life, all life finally being spiritual. I do not desire for a moment to deny the important and necessary distinction between the carnal and the spiritual life which Paul makes, but the carnal life is spiritual life, degraded to carnal things. At the centre of all human life, motiving it, impulsing it, driving it, is the spiritual fact. We may prostitute the spiritual to base uses. We may degrade the high and noble and essential to devilish purposes, but the supreme truth of human life, according to the teaching of the Word of God, is that as God is a Spirit, man also is a spirit.

Now let us enquire, what are the connotations of spirit, or in other words, what is the aggregation of attributes expressed by the word? This is a question which it is very difficult to answer, perhaps impossible in words that must necessarily be uttered by material lips. Our word spirit has come to us through processes from the Latin word spiritus, which simply means a breathing, and is therefore the exact translation, as to intention, of the Greek word, which is a parabolic word. A parable consists of the placing of something by the side of something else. Here is something that I cannot see or understand perfectly, and I place by the side of it something similar to it, in order that I may understand the thing I can not see. “ The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth; so is everyone that is born of the Spirit.” In that passage the Greek word for “ wind “ and the Greek word for “ Spirit “ are exactly the same. Yet it is perfectly evident that Jesus was using the wind as a parable of the Spirit, something put by the side of the Spirit which Nicodemus could not see, in order that he might understand something of His law, and something of His working. Canon Liddon with fine imagination has suggested that as Jesus sat on the housetop with Nicodemus in the silent hours of the night, the moaning of the wind was heard down the narrow streets of Jerusalem, and Christ, with that perfect and artless naturalness which always characterized His parabolic teaching, said in effect, Listen, you hear the wind as it blows. You hear the sound thereof, but know not whence it cometh and whither it goeth, so is everyone that is born of the Spirit. Spirit is a word signifying breathing. The wind is laid by the side of this tremendous and essential fact, in order that we may have some faint idea of its meaning.

Yet wind, breath, air, are gross material things in the last analysis. We hear to-day of ether, permeating all material things, and scientists tell us that we may speak of the ether as a medium, which nevertheless permeates all substances, and is the medium of light and heat. Ether is far finer and rarer and more wonderful than air, and yet it also is gross and material by the side of spirit. It is, how ever, the simplest symbol of spirit for common man, that which most easily enables him to grasp the true idea.

Spirit then, is immaterial being, but it is being. Immaterial, that is, imponderable, we cannot weigh it; intangible, the hand of the material cannot touch it; invisible, with the eyes of sense it cannot be seen. Then, says the materialist, it is non-existent, but does that follow?

What are the evidences that man is spiritual? The very things which to-day are asserted as demonstrations of personality in man are as a matter of fact demonstrations that he is spiritual. Let us take three of these. First, unity; secondly, continuity; and finally, activity. These are the peculiar qualities of personality. The psychologist in his analysis of personality speaks of these things, not in such simple and easy terms, and consequently in more accurate terms. I claim that the very things that demonstrate personality are those which demonstrate spirituality.

Think first of its unity. I am told that man has power to think, to love, and to choose. But these are not three separate and distinct matters, for they are three powers, or to use the term of the older metaphysicians, faculties.

They are faculties possessed by one personality, and whether I think, or love, or choose, it is I who think and love and choose. I can not think and love and choose out of harmony with myself. I may contradict my thinking in my loving, I may violate my loving in my choosing; but it is I who have done it, and I am greater than my thinking, loving, or choosing. Every man is in himself a unity. The personality of any man may be broken up into its component parts, but the unity remains, and it is not fleshly, for this body of mine may be mutilated without the unity of my personality being disturbed by a hair’s breadth. It has often been pointed out, and is I know an old and commonplace illustration, but I use it again without hesitancy, that there is not one single material particle standing confronting you in the speaker which would have confronted you if the same man had occupied this position seven years ago. But the preacher is the same man. What is this then, which sloughs off the effete and reconstructs the new temple every seven years? Personality, and that is not material. I am not that at which men look. I am hidden by the things they see, a spiritual being. I can do without my body. My body cannot do without me. I am not my body. My body is not me. It is this doc trine of the spiritual nature of man that illumines for us the day of bereavement and sorrow. Then there is activity. All activity is primarily and fundamentally spiritual. I shall certainly carry you with me when I say that you have not exercised your hand within the last twenty-four hours without an activity of personality prior to the physical. There is an old riddle which we used to ask when we were children, Why does a man cross the road? the answer being, To get to the other side. That illustrates my argument. Crossing the road is not an accidental activity of the material, neither is it the result of wish or will within the realm of the physical. It is the result of thought preceding action, and because I do not believe that the seat of thought is the brain, but the spirit, the brain being the instrument only, I affirm that all activity is fundamentally spiritual, and that whatever a man does, he does as the result of spiritual decision. Deny the spiritual existence, and think of man as matter merely, then where is the principle of unity? where the secret of continuity? and where the origin of activity? The spiritual nature of man has its essential manifestations of thought and feeling and choice; or if we may once more make use of Kant’s analysis of personality, spiritual nature is intellectual, emotional, and volitional. All these act in concert, and we name the result reason. They act under a sense of a standard of right and wrong, and we name the result conscience.

They recollect things of the past, and we call the result memory. They forecast the future, and we call the result anticipation. They are not the powers of the material, they are the activities of the spiritual.

What then is the relation between spirit and body according to the revelation of Scripture? The body is the instrument of the spirit, its medium of impression and expression, that through which the spirit to-day gives expression of itself to things beyond itself, through other material media to other spiritual beings.

Death, therefore, is simply the laying aside of a medium of expression, the act by which the spirit lays down the body. The Christian doc trine of resurrection declares, not that the self same body will be raised, but that out of the same body a new one will be formed. By some mysterious process that I do not profess to understand, out of the same body there will come another. The apostle’s argument by illustration from the bare grain in Corinthians, teaches that life clothes itself with that bare grain, and yet the bare grain dies, and out of itself reconstructs another and a fuller, and a larger medium of manifestation. Not the same grain comes again, but another out of it. So also concerning the resurrection of the body.

He does not teach the actual and absolute restoration of the same particles, for if he did, we might with reason enquire which particles, those of to-day, or of seven years ago? He does, however, teach that out of this very body, by a method which he cannot explain, will come the new. If it be affirmed that this is beyond the possibility of belief, it is perfectly fair to enquire whether we believe that the bare grain reproduces itself a hundred fold. There is no necessity for me here to stay to discuss the question of bodily resurrection. I have but referred to it in order to emphasize the truth that man is not a body, that death is but an event in which the spirit lays down one medium of manifestation. It may be that in what we speak of as the intermediate state, the spirit holds communion only and actually with spiritual things, and consequently does not need anything in the nature of a material medium. Out in the ultimate, in the life which is to come, the spirits are to be “ clothed upon,” to use Paul’s great word, with a new medium.

It may be on the other hand that between the unclothing that we call death, and the ultimate clothing at the resurrection, there is some spiritual body in which the departed spirits dwell. I cannot tell, but this I know, that when my loved one lays down the body, that casket of clay is not my loved one. For forty four years these eyes had looked at one face with reverence and with love, and I looked at it for the last time on the last day of 1907, and I said, No, that is not my father. Dear sacred dust, very precious, but my father broke the fetter, and passed on. That was all. During the last few days of his life he did not see quite clearly, and did not know perfectly those who stood about him. Oh, yes, says the materialist, everything was ending. No, says the Christian, the instrument was becoming imperfect, that is all. There are times when I cannot see quite clearly because the rain has fallen upon, or the fog has blurred the glasses that I wear. Do not blame me, blame the instrument. Thank God for the hour in which my father escaped from the worn-out medium of the earthly body, and went into life.

I am not now dealing with the things which lie beyond, but it is well to remember that man makes his testing in the period in which his spirit inhabits the body in this earth. The breaking of the medium and the flinging of it away may be an awful thing. It may be a great and gracious thing. A closing word. We have touched the fringe of all this, but if it be true, if — and allow me once again to go back to Justin Martyr — if, as the body is the house of the soul, the soul is the house of the spirit, if in very deed and truth the essential and final thing is the spirit, what then? Then the message of Christianity is the supreme message, and all the things we preach are the supreme things. Then the first business of every human life is not to enquire What shall I eat, or what shall I drink, or wherewithal shall I be clothed? The first business of human life is the culture of the spirit; and because of sin the very first necessity thereto is the salvation of the spirit. A far more important thing than that I should have a place to lay my head, or bread to eat, is that this spirit of mine should be right with God. That is the meaning of the Bible; that is the message of Christianity; that is the reason of Calvary; that is the value of Pentecost. All these recognize the dignity of human life.

They protest against the degrading influences of the materialistic ideal which treats a man as merely dust. What then of the body? This conception does not issue in the degradation of the body. It demands its ennoblement.

“ Know ye not that ye are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you? “was spoken to saints. But how does the body become the temple of the Holy Spirit? By the fellowship of the spirit of a man with the Spirit of God. The obvious deduction is that the body must be fitted for the spirit, and used by the spirit. The body is the medium through which the spirit, which is the essential life, makes its impression on others, and receives its impression from others. Then how careful I should be of the body. It must be guarded from all abuse, in order that it may be the fitting instrument of the spirit. And relatively, what is the application of this truth? If man is a spirit, the offspring of God Who is Spirit, the supreme thing in every human life is that man should answer God in fellowship of friendship, of service, of suffering if need be, and of ultimate victory. Some people professed irritation with a little card which was widely circulated in England during a great evangelistic campaign, conducted there a little while ago, on which was printed the words, “ Get right with God.” But that is the essence of the message which Christianity gives, and which the world needs to-day, in individual, social, and national life. All life out of harmony with God issues in dire disaster. And yet again, a man who is right with God is always right with his brother. A man who speaks about being right with God, yet who has had no consciousness or care about being right with others is a liar. I borrow that forceful description from inspired Writ, and it is interesting to remember that it was not Peter who wrote it. It was John of the mystic vision, of the beating heart, the man who wrote of love perpetually. It was he who said that a man who declares he loves God and does not love his brother, is a liar. Let the word burn itself upon our conscience, in case we forget it. The basis of brotherhood is not material, but spiritual. No man will have learned what it is to live as he ought to live with his fellow man until he has discovered his own spiritual nature, and that of his brother, in the discovery of the spiritual relationship between man and God.

Here, as always, everything centres in Christ. He is the Revelation of the spiritual.

Listen to His words, not merely His set discourses, but those incidental things that fell from His lips, and it will be seen how He lived perpetually in the spiritual, recognizing His relation to God, seeking first His Kingdom, speaking of Him as of His Father, for ever more at the centre of His life related to Him, and recognizing that relationship. It will be seen moreover, how that recognition of the fact affected His relation to others. He was no ascetic, shutting himself away from the af fairs of men, and attempting to realize His own sanctity by the guardianship of bricks and stones and mortar. He mixed familiarly among men, and so lived that the ascetics of His age said of Him that He was a gluttonous man and a wine bibber. Yet by His spiritual relationship He made things material flame and flash with glory, and shine in radiant purity. But He did more. He not only gave us a revelation, He acted in mediation, and when He through the eternal Spirit offered Himself to God, He made a way by which His banished ones might return, by which the spirits who had lost their way through their own rebellion might be brought back again into fellowship, and in the reconsciousness of the spirituality of their nature might begin to live from the true centre, and so affect in truth the whole circumference.