p. 567 | Her Spirit Came Again by W. N. Glenn

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, Cal. · Dec 21, 1882

“Her Spirit Came Again.”

By W. N. Glenn

BY W. N. GLENN.

A CERTAIN ruler named Jairus, once called upon Jesus to come and heal his sick daughter. But when the great Healer arrived at the house the maiden was dead, and a demonstrative scene of mourning was presented. However, as stated in Luke 8: 54, 55, Jesus “took her by the hand and called, saying Maid, arise; and her spirit came again, and she arose straightway.”

This text has been cited as positive proof that the spirit of man is an independent entity, which leaves the body at death, and, maintaining conscious existence, goes somewhere else to dwell; and which, in this instance, returned at the call of the Master.

I do not presume to discuss the nature of the spirit of man, in all its varied phases; we have books and tracts which treat that subject to the satisfaction of any one who will read them with unbiased desire for truth. But to answer a friend (and others of like mind), who evidently deems this a clincher for the doctrine of inherent immortality, I will merely refer to two other instances mentioned in the Bible.

After Samson had ended his terrible conflict with the Philistines, in which he slew a thousand with the jaw-bone of an ass, he “was sore athirst,” and called upon God in his distress. “But God clave a hollow place that was in the jaw, and there came water thereout; and when he had drunk, his spirit came again, and he revived.” Judges 15: 19.

The Amelekites had smitten Ziklag and burned it, and David, with four hundred men, was pursuing them. “And they found an Egyptian in the field and brought him to David, and gave him bread and he did eat; and they made him drink water, and they gave him a piece of a cake of figs, and two clusters of raisins; and when he had eaten, his spirit came to him again.” 1 Sam. 30: 11, 12.

Here are two instances of men’s spirits going and coming again, without the intervention of death. To come again, these spirits must have departed in some sense, and yet these men had not died nor lost their reason. Do these instances show that man has within him two conscious entities? or that the popular idea of the spirit is unscriptural?