I do not
forget the passage where the same Apostle (2 Cor. v. 6) speaks of being
in the body, and absent from the Lord; and of being "clothed upon;" but
this does not in any way detract from the importance of the treatment of
the subject in the First Epistle.]
It is idle to speculate whether the "nephesh" of the animals, or the
"living self" of the man, is an entity separate from the body, and
capable of existing _per se_--of its own inherent nature--apart from
it. We do not know that animal forms are the clothing of a lower-graded
but separate spiritual form, or that such an animal soul or spirit can
exist separately from the body; and we do not _know_ (from the
Bible)--whatever may be the current language on the subject--that man's
spirit is in its nature capable of anything like permanent separate
existence.[1] Man is essentially one; and when the physical change
called death passes over him, it does not utterly obliterate the whole
being. The non-material element is not affected any more than it is by
the sleep of every night; and the man will be ultimately raised, not a
spiritual or immaterial form, but provided, as before, with a body, only
one of a higher capacity and better adapted to its higher
environments--the "spiritual body" of St. Paul, in a word. The original
union of mind and matter is, on any possible theory, mysterious; and the
separation of them for a time is neither less so, nor more.
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