We hardly need being told that man is composed of body and soul; that
the body is the visible, material part of man, in which the soul,
man's invisible part, finds its home. Man's material part is but
little superior to that of the rest of the animal creation. It is
subject to the same laws. It must be fed and sheltered. It finds
enjoyment in food and drink, and comfortable surroundings, very nearly
akin to what we see in the life of brutes. Like them it is subject to
natural decay, liable to disease; and like them, must die. But man is
in possession of capacities and capabilities infinitely superior to
anything the rest of God's sentient creation enjoys. He has a soul
which is capable of unlimited attainments in the knowledge and love of
God, and in the knowledge and love of his fellowman. The heathen
philosophers supposed they had done their whole duty to themselves and
the world when they could vainly believe that they had realized in
their experiences what they thought a compliance with their favorite
maxim: "Know thou thyself." Whilst Christians believe and feel that
self-knowledge, or the knowledge of one's self, is very important, at
the same time they have longing aspirations to know all they can of
the Being who created this self, this thinking, reasoning, loving,
restless thing within them, called a living soul. Brutes have no
aspirations, no desires of this kind.

Right here we may see what God loves. It was not man's animal or
bodily life that brought the Lord into our world, for this is not the
man. It is the soul or spirit within the body that is the real man,
and all these souls collectively make the world that God so loved that
he gave his only begotten Son to save it. God never loved trifles. The
fact that God loved the world of man is proof that man, as a being
capable of glorifying God by reciprocating his love, was worthy of it.
This key opens the way to a glimpse of man's high destiny, attainable
by his taking hold of the Hand reached down in love to lift him up.
God's Word is the only book that can give man a true knowledge of
himself. It is the only source from which he can learn that he is a
sinner by his habitual transgressions of the great, law of love that
would bind all the units of God's intelligent creation into a
brotherhood of ineffable and eternal happiness. It was to redeem man
from this deplorable state, and deliver him from the destroying power
of sin, that Jesus came into the world.