d man of the
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,
and man became a living soul." {35d} This breath of GOD could be nothing
less than the spirit, which came from GOD Himself. It is that higher
endowment by which man is a spiritual being, and therefore has an
affinity to GOD. It is that which makes him GOD-like, even by nature, at
least by his nature as it was before the fall. But even the fall did not
utterly dissolve that nature; man still remained a spiritual being,
although the spiritual part of him was subject to the sway of the animal
in him, and to the senses of the lower nature. Until that creative act
of GOD, man's body and soul were scarcely higher in the order and rank of
being than the body and soul of the brute. It was the gift of the divine
spirit which caused man's soul truly to live, so that he became then "a
_living_ soul." Herein, henceforth, the soul of man differs from the
soul of the lower creature. In man the soul is in contact with the
spirit. The beast shares with man the possession of an animal soul. It
is the prerogative of man to be endowed also with spirit. By the spirit,
man is capable of apprehending GOD, can commune with GOD, can long for
Him. Herein lies his capacity for religion. His soul is incorporeal no
less than his spirit. It is, as it were, midway between the body and the
spirit. It touches the body on the one side, on the other side it
touches the spirit. The desires and the thoughts of the soul may become
enslaved by the body, or they may become the servants of the spirit. The
soul is the prize, for the mastery of which the spirit strives, and the
flesh or body strives. The spirit may gain the soul, or the flesh may
gain the soul. If the spirit loses the soul, it is a loss fatal and
irreparable. The soul is drawn now this way by the baser longings of the
flesh, now that way by the nobler appeals of the spirit. It is the
"debateable ground" {37} on which the real battle of life is fought. "The
flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh." The
gaining of the soul is the gaining of the whole man. The losing of the
soul is the losing of the whole man. Those have degraded and brutalized
their life whose human spirit has yielded up its supremacy, whose soul
has been swept along in captivity by the bodily desires. For as in some
the spirit shapes the whole soul, so in others the soul, enslaved by the
flesh, s