p. 166 | TRUTH SPREADING

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 9, 1860

TRUTH SPREADING.

THE following sensible remarks are extracted from Dr. J. K. Finley’s “letter to a clergyman,” published in the Bible Examiner. Dr. Finley was an Elder in the Presbyterian church at Niles, Mich. He says:

“In endeavoring to ascertain the true nature and constitution of man, it is most reasonable and proper for us to go to the account which God himself has given in the history of his creation; and we will find the inspired record very plain and very explicit on the whole subject.

In Gen. ii, 7, we read, ‘The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.’ Examine the expression carefully, ‘he became,’ not ‘he received,’ not ‘was put into him;’ but he became a living soul. Man was made of the dust,—the whole man, not a part of him—and when the breath of lives was put into his nostrils—the same breath that sustained the lives of all other animals, or in other words, when he was caused to breathe, henceforth he was a living soul. Previous to this he had been a lifeless soul. ‘Here we see an organized creature, a lifeless soul, which by a specified process becomes a soul alive, and therefore begins to perform the functions peculiar to his rank in the universe.’

“How different is this, the inspired account, from the common notions on the subject of the human constitution. Not a word is said about any immortal, immaterial entity put into the man to complete the process; nothing hinted at except organization, formed from existing world elements. When God would remind Adam of what he was constituted, he says, without the remotest allusion to anything else, ‘Dust thou art.’ Our brethren who claim to be ‘par excellence’ the orthodox, say, that this is not him at all, it is only the shell that encases him—or as some say, the house in which he dwells temporarily—thus ‘perverting the truth at the bidding of a dogma which has not been merely enshrined, but enthroned, in the temple of our divine religion.’

“Did it never strike you, my dear sir, as very singular, to say the least, that when God inspired Moses to give an account of the formation of man, he should have thought his mission completed, when he had told how the case was made in which the man was confined? If a mechanician had undertaken, by the direction of some mighty potentate of earth, to give an account of the construction of a watch, and had pronounced his work completed after describing the case, would it be esteemed satisfactory, do you suppose? And if not in this instance, Why should it in the other? And yet no other part of the Bible professes to give any further account of the matter.

“A soul then is no mystery, so far as its origin and composition is concerned. It can be seen and felt, and weighed; but it is an astonishing mystery, beyond our highest conceptions, how that out of the dust of the ground such a complex being could be formed; a being capable of such varied and sublime functions, such intense sufferings and enjoyments.

“But let us inquire more particularly, what is meant by man’s being a soul? The word soul is, as you well know, the English translation of the Hebrew word nephesh, and this word comes from a verb nesme, signifying to breathe. Man, then, is a soul, a nephesh, because he lives by breathing; the man became a living soul, or breathing creature—a creature to live by breathing vital air. Such being the case, we would reasonably expect that all creatures in the world, which live by breathing, would have the same designation, and such we find to be the fact.

“In the following passages, and many others that might be specified, the same word occurs and is used to describe the various orders of inferior animals. Gen. i, 21. ‘And God created great whales and every living creature’ (nephesh). Verse 24. ‘Let the earth bring forth the living creature’ (nephesh). Gen. ix, 10. ‘Every living creature (nephesh) that is with you.’ Lev. xi, 46. ‘Of every living creature (nephesh) that moveth in the waters.’ And by referring to Gen. i, 30, you will find it designates ‘every beast of the earth, and every fowl of the air, and everything that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is nephesh;’ our translation says, ‘wherein there is life.’ Every living creature, then, of birds, reptiles, fishes, and beasts, that lives by breathing, is a nephesh, a soul, as certainly as man is; and he is not more soul than they are. They are all souls because they have life maintained by inspiring the common electrified air, which is, therefore, called the breath or spirit of lives. ‘Man’s superiority to the other breathing tribes consists, not in his being a soul, but in the magnitude of his powers; in other words, in the loftier position he occupies in the scale of existence, as an intellectual, moral, and responsible agent.’

“As it is impossible for me, in the limits of such a communication as this, to give all the proofs by which the non-immortality of the soul is established: I will only further suggest one, which to a scholar like yourself, or, in fact, to any man of ordinary good sense, who is honestly searching for the truth, must be irresistible. Indeed, it may be said in the language of a powerful writer on the subject, in England, ‘It may be regarded as removing the question of the immortality of the soul entirely out of the arena of controversy.’ It is this. The word nephesh is translated by the inspired writers of the New Testament into the Greek, by the word psyche. Psyche, then, is the equivalent of nephesh. Now, if you refer to 1 Cor. xv, 44, where Paul is treating of the resurrection, you will find he uses the adjective, psychikon, literally soulcal, to designate the natural, corruptible body, in contradistinction from the word pneumatikon, which designates the spiritual and immortal body which Christians will receive at the resurrection. You see, here, the Spirit of God takes the very word psyche, which orthodoxy says indicates the immortal soul, and from it constructs an adjective by which to teach that the soul is corrupt, and mortal, and perishable. Can any article be more conclusive?”—World’s Crisis.