the words above mentioned, ^53, rm, and nx^^b in Hebrew, if/vx'') and TTceC/xa in Greek, and soul and spirit in English, are used in the Scriptures indiscriminately of men and of irrational animals. If the Bible ascribed only a ij/vxyj to brutes, and both i/'u^i? and ^re)j,u,a to man, there would be some ground for assuming that the two are essentially distinct. But such is not the case. The living principle in the brute is called both it'^p and n^"^, 4^vxv and Trvevfj.a. That princij)le in the brute creation is irrational and mortal ; in man it is rational and immortal. " Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of the beast that goeth downward to the earth?" Eccles. iii. 21. The soul of the brute is the immaterial principle which constitutes its life, and which is endowed with sen- sibility, and that measure of intelligence which experience shows the lower animals to possess. The soul in man is a created spirit of a higher order, which has not only the attributes of sensibility, memory, and instinct, but also the higher powers which pertain to our intellectual, moral, and religious life. As in the brutes it is not one substance that feels and another that remembers ; so it is not one substance in man that is the subject of sensations, and another substance which has intuitions of necessary truths, and which is endowed with conscience and with the knowledge of God. P!;i- losophers speak of world-consciousness, or the immediate cognizance which we have of what is without us ; of self-consciousness, or the knowledge of what is within us ; and of God-consciousness, or our knowledo;e and sense of God. These all belonix to one and the same immaterial, rational substance. (4.) It is fair to appeal to the testimony of consciousness on this subject. We are ccmscious of our bodies and we are conscious of our souls, i. e., of the exer- cises and states of each ; but no man is conscious of the ij/vxv as dis- tinct from the irvevixa, of the soul as different from the spirit. In other words consciousness reveals the existence of two substances in the constitution of our nature ; but it does not reveal the exist- ence of three substances, and therefore the existence of more than two cannot rationally be assumed.
Doubtful Passages Explained. (^5.) The passages of Scriptures which are cited as favouring the opposite doctrine may all be explained in consistency with the cur- rent representations of Scripture on the subject. When Paul says to the Thessalonians, " I pray God your whole spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ " (1 Thessalonians v. 23), he only uses a periphrasis for