1 Sir Henry Jones, Social Powers, 20.
11
1 86 THE DEATH OF THE SOUL
and ill-doing are essentially individual. We cannot any of us live vicariously in the mass around us. We cannot do our duty by substitute. Even so let us remember that if we do ill we commit sin. Let no one think he can escape in the mass. For though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not go unpunished. Of all things sure in life — in the end if not in the beginning, at the last if not at the first — is the course of Divine retribution. It may be delayed, but it will come. It will fall with pain upon the head of the wicked. " The soul that sinneth, it shall die."
TJ " The soul that sinneth, it shall die," — is that a threat ? Is it not the deep utterance of a truth ? Indeed, there cannot be a threat that is not the deep utterance of a truth, for no man can permanently suffer except by the eternal necessities of things, — not by whim, but by law. Is it not, then, as if it said, " The soul that sinneth dies, dies in its sinning, dies because for a soul there is no life but holiness " ? " To sin is just so far to cease to live," we said. May we not also say, " To cease to live is just so far to sin " ? The man who does no duty because he has taught other men and himself to look upon him as an unenterprising, good- natured mortal to whom they are to bring no duties, — the creature who sometimes ventures to demand our respect for the very qualities which make him contemptible, who is conservative be- cause radicalism is troublesome and calm because enthusiasm is a bore ; — all these, when we see them as Christ sees them, we shall know are wicked men. The lazy and labour-saving saint is a sinner. The man who is not vitally good, is bad, for he is shutting his heart against the work of Him who came that men might have life. God teach us all that to be alive is the first condition of being good ! l
II.
The Eetributton of the Individual.
"The soul that sinneth, it shall die."
1. All through Scripture, " spirit " denotes life as coming from
God, " soul " denotes life as constituted in the man. Consequently,
when the individual life is to be made emphatic " soul " is used.
" Soul," in Scripture, freely denotes persons. " My soul " is the
1 Phillips Brooks, The More Abundant Life, 128.
EZEKIEL xviii. 4, 27 187
Ego, the self, and when used, like " heart," for the inner man, and even for the feelings, has reference always to the special individu- ality. " Spirit," on the other hand, seldom or never used to denote the individual human being in this life, is primarily that imparted power by which the individual lives, the innermost of the inner life, the higher aspect of the self or personality. The inner nature is named " soul," " after its special, individual life," and " spirit " " after the living power which forms the condition of its special character."
2. Here then it is the " soul " that is spoken of — " the soul that sinneth, it shall die." The language is metaphorical. Sin is a disease ; the end of the disease of sin is death. All through the earlier history of the Jews, sickness and sin had been associated as effect and cause ; God had taught them by that association the real kinship which we know exists between the two. And disease had come to be the natural analogue of sin, the visible symbol of the invisible, till they came to look forward to their Messiah as a Great Physician of souls. And when the Christ came, He gave His imprimatur to that association of ideas. He healed every sickness and every disease among the people; but His mission was to heal the broken-hearted, to seek and to save the lost.
The thought of sin as a deadly sickness is perhaps more than a metaphor. For what is disease in the body but the failure of the organism to perform its functions aright? Life, in the language of biologists, is perfect correspondence to environment ; and disease, which is imperfect correspondence, is incipient death. And if, as our heart tells us, God has made us for Himself — made us to find our own true life in Him — then sin is, in a very real sense, like a disease, and leads on to dissolution.
3. If physical life may be defined as " the sum total of the functions which resist death," then spiritual life, in like manner, is the sum total of the functions which resist sin. As it is life alone that gives the plant power to utilize the elements, and as, without it, they utilize it, so it is the spiritual life alone that gives the soul power to utilize temptation and trial; and without it they destroy the soul. This destroying process goes on quite
188 THE DEATH OF THE SOUL
independently of God's judgment on sin. God's judgment on sin is another and a more awful fact of which this may be a part. But it is a distinct fact by itself, which we can hold and examine separately, that on purely natural principles the soul that is left to itself unwatched, uncultivated, unredeemed, must fall away into death by its own nature. " The soul that sinneth, it shall die." It has neglected "the functions which resist death," and has always been dying. The punishment is in its very nature, and the sentence is being gradually carried out all along the path of life by ordinary processes which enforce the verdict with the appalling faithfulness of law.