Biblical Psychology

1 INCAENATION. Word Made Weak. John 1: 14. God-Man.

(a) Self -Surrender of Trinity. John 17: 5; Mark 13: 32; Eph. 4: 10.

(b) Self -same with Trinity. Matt. 11:27; John 14:9.

(c) Self-sufficiency of Trinity. Prov. 8: 22-32.

2 IDENTIFICATION. Son Made Sin. 2 Cor. 5: 20, 21. God and Man.

(a) Diay of His Death. Matt. 16: 21; Mark 9: 31; Eom.

(b) Day of His Eesurrection. Eom. 6: 5; Phil. 3: 10.

(c) Day of His Ascension. Matt. 28: 18; 2 Cor. 5: 16.

3 INVASION. Sinner Made Saint. Gal. 2: 20. God in Man.

(c) The New Mankind. Eph. 4: 13; 2 Pet. 3: 13.

"Trinity" is not a Bible word. The Triune God is revealed over and over again in. the Bible, and the idea conveyed by the Trinity is a thoroughly Scriptural one. The following distinctions have existed from all eternity:

The Essence of Godhead (esse) usually known as God the Father;

The Existence of Godhead (existere) usually known as God the Son;

The Proceeding of Godhead (procedere) usually known as God the Holy Ghost.

One of the things we have to guard against is the teaching that God became incarnate to realize Himself. That statement is unbiblical. God was selfsufficient before the Son became incarnate. The whole basis and kernel of what is known as New Theology is based on that one fundamental error — that God had to create something in order to realize Himself; and consequently we are told that we are absolutely essential to God's existence, that apart from us God is not. Once starting with that theory, all that is known as New Theology is as easy as A. B. C. The Bible has nothing to do with any such conception. The creation and the incarnation are the outcomes of the overflowing life of the Godhead. Immediately you start with "God is all, " you get another aspect of New Theology. The Bible reveals that God is not all. The Bible distinctly states that our universe is a pluralistic one, not a monistic one; that means that other forces are at work besides one, such as man and Satan. These are not God, and never will be. Man is meant to come back to God and to be in harmony with Him through Jesus Christ; Satan will forever be at enmity with God.

In Philippians 2: 6 the "form" of God is mentioned. What is the form of God? We touched on this point in dealing with the first subject. We found that men had reasoned that because the Bible said man was made in the image of God, therefore God had a body. We proved that it was not a "corporeal form," and that whenever God is mentioned as having human members, the Incarnation is referred to. The term "glory" when referred to the Godhead conveys the idea of "form." The Bible has revealed that the Godhead was absolutely self-sufficient. God did not need to be incarnated to satisfy Himself, nor was the creation needed. The Godhead had a form originally, and the reference* to the "form" of the Godhead may be best implied in the term, ' ' glory. ' '

Jesus Christ is not a Being one-half God and the other half man. That was the line on which George Eliot made shipwreck of her faith. She translated Strauss' life of Jesus Christ, and this impossibility to human reason was represented to her mind by him. The Bible reveals that Jesus Christ is God-man, viz.: God incarnate, the Godhead existing in flesh and blood. The Incarnation is part of (a) the Self -surrender of the Trinity. John 17: 5 refers to this. Jesus Christ was not a being who became divine, He was the Godhead incarnated, the "Word became weak, and Jesus Christ emphatically alludes to His own limitations. St. Paul says that "He emptied Himself of His glory," i. e., He emptied Himself of the "form" of Deity and came right down here as a weak human being and took upon Himself "the likeness of sinful flesh."

Again in Mark 13: 32 we get another indication of His limitations. I am aware of the danger of attempting to sketch out the self-consciousness of Jesus. We cannot do it; we must remember what the Scriptures say about Him, that He was the Godhead incarnate, and that He emptied Himself of His glory in becoming incarnate. It was not God the Son paying a price to God the Father; it was God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost surrendering this marvelous being who became the Lord Jesus Christ, for one definite purpose. Never separate the Incarnation from the Atonement. The Incarnation is for the sake of the Atonement. In dealing with the Incarnation, we are dealing with a revelation fact, not with a speculation. Another allusion to the limitation by incarnation is in Hebrews where the writer is referring to Christ's temptation. To say that Christ was not tempted, flatly contradicts the Word of God, the Bible says He "was tempted in all points like as we are, yet without sin."

(b) Self-same with Trinity. (Matt. 11: 27.) This verse implies that Jesus says, in effect, " I am the only organ for revealing the Godhead; you cannot know God through nature, or through the love of your friends, you cannot know God any other way than through Me." Will you couple with that John 14: 9? There again is the same statement made clear that no one knows anything about Deity in the way of revelation unless he accepts that revelation as Jesus Christ. Such statements come over and over again in our Lord's teaching, and you will find the more you examine His teaching that He makes the final destiny of man depend on his relationship to Him.

(c) The Self-sufficiency of the Trinity. (Prov. 8: 22- 32.) That passage is amazing in the light of the Incarnation. The writer is referring to what he calls 11 wisdom," and if you connect wisdom with the first chapter of John, you will find the very same idea used. The word there is " Logos." The w;ord Logos means God 's Word expressing His thought. The Trinity was self-sufficient; the Incarnation was not meant to satisfy God, but for another purpose altogether. Instead of man and Jesus Christ being necessary to complement God so that He might realize Himself, the thought is exactly the opposite, viz.: that man might realize God and regain adjustment to Him. The whole purpose of the Incarnation is redemption, and to produce a being more noble than the original Adam by overcoming the disasters of the fall and curse. At the climax of everything the Son resumes the original position of the Trinity, the Trinity thus resolving itself into this absolute self-sufficient Deity again. The Son gives all up to the Father. These statements refer to the resumption of the Trinity to the original position of the Godhead.

2. Identification. Son made Sin. (2 Cor. 5:20, 21.)

This is an indication of why God became incarnate, why the "Word was made weak, why the Logos became possessed of a weak human frame. It was that the Son might be identified with sin. Remember the teaching here is not that Jesus Christ was punished for our sins, that is another and slighter aspect than the one we are dealing with. The statement here is astounding: that He was made sin for us. Jesus Christ became identified not only with the disposition of sin, but with the very "body of sin." He had not the disposition of sin, and He had. no connection with the body of sin in Himself; but He became identified with sin, "Him who knew no sin He made to be sin.,, Language can hardly bear the strain, but it may nevertheless convey the thought that Jesus Christ went straight through identification with sin, so that every man and woman on earth may be freed from sin by His atonement. He went through the depths of damnation, through the deepest clepths of death, and Hell, and came out more than conqueror; and consequently everyone of us who is willing to be identified with our Lord will find that he or she is freed from the disposition of sin, freed from their connection with the body of sin, and they can come out more than conqueror because of what the Lord Jesus Christ has done.

(a) The Day of His Death. I mean by "Day" the period of time covered by His life on earth. "Why did He come and live thirty years in Nazareth? "Why was He born as the babe of poor people in such a condition that the mig.htiest empires of the world could simply not be able to detect His existence? "Why did He live three years of popularity, scandal and hatred, and why did He say, "I came here to be killed"? '(Our Lord never presents His life as the life of a martyr. He said, "I have power to lay down my life, and I have power to take it again.' ' "I lay down my life because of the great purpose behind in the mind of God.") The only way you can explain Jesus Christ is the way He explains Himself, (and He never explains Himself away). Why did He live and die? The Scriptures reveal that He lived and died and rose again that we might be readjusted to the Godhead, that we might be brought back into favor and love, and be delivered from sin. To teach that the Lord Jesus Christ cannot deliver from sin may end in nothing short of blasphemy. Present that line of thought before God, tell Him that the atonement cannot deliver us from sin, it can only give us a divine anticipation; and the danger and unscripturalness of it will soon appear. The Book reveals that He became indentified with sin that we might be "made the righteousness of God in Him." Forgiveness is the least outcome from God's standpoint; from my standpoint it is a tremendous thing, but that is not the whole meaning of the experimental part of that wonderful life to me. I have to get where I can be identified with the Lord Jesus Christ, where I know that my connection with the body of sin is severed, where I am "made the righteousness of God in Him," where I am readjusted to God, and free in this life to fulfill the commands of the Lord.

(b) The Day of His Resurrection. By the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, He has power to impart to you and to me the Holy Spirit, which means a totally new life. The Holy Ghost is the Deity in proceeding power who applies the atonement of the Son of God to my experience. Jesus Christ laid all His emphasis on the Holy Spirit — "He will lead you into all truth;" "He will bring to your remembrance what I have said;" "He will not only be with you, He will be in you." We hear on the right hand and on the left that this is the age of the Holy Spirit. Thank God it is, and the Holy Spirit is with all men that we might receive Him. But God the Father was rejected and spurned in the Old Testament dispensation; Jesus Christ the Son was despised and spurned in His dispensation (He was flattered too); and God the Holy Ghost is despised, as well as flattered, in this dispensation. He is not given His right. "We praise Him and talk about Him and say we rely on His power, but the question of receiving Him in that He might make real in my life what Jesus Christ did for me, is too rare an experience nowadays to be formidable. Immediately the Holy Spirit does come in as light and as life, He will chase through every avenue of your mind, and His light will penetrate every recess of your heart; He will chase His light through every affection of your body and make you know what sin is. The Holy Spirit "convicts of sin," man does not. By His resurrection our Lord Jesus Christ can impart Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is that marvelous Spirit that kept our Lord while He was incarnate, spirit, soul and body in perfect harmony with absolute Deity, and Jesus said, "You have not that life in yourself," and you cannot have it unless you get it through Him. "He that believeth on Him hath everlasting life," this is the life He is referring to — Holy Spirit life which will take your spirit, soul and body and bring them back into communion with God, where if you will obey the light the Holy Spirit gives, He will lead you into this amazing identification with the death of the Lord Jesus in a deeper sense, viz.: until you know experimentally that your old disposition, your right to your self, is crucified with Him, and that your human nature is free to obey the commands of God. (The word "substitution" is never used in the Bible, but the idea is Scriptural. Substitution is always two-fold, not only Christ identified with my sin, but I am identified with Christ so that the ruling disposition of Jesus may be put in me. Sin on -the one side and righteousness on the other. The righteousness there means the ruling disposition of the Lord Jesus Christ.)

•(c) In the Day of His Ascension our Lord Jesus Christ became omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent. That means this — all that He was in Himself in the day of His flesh, all that He was able to impart in the day of His resurrection, He now is almighty to bestow without measure on all obedient children of men. He makes us one in holiness with Himself, one in love with Himself, and ultimately one in glory with Himself. He is the supreme Sovereign, and He is able to give unto His people a supreme sovereignty. In the days of our flesh as saints, He says, "Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the end." He is with us in all wisdom, guiding, directing, controlling and sub- duing, and He is with us in all power. He is King of kings and Lord of lords from the day of His ascension until now.

3. Invasion. Sinner Made Saint. (Gal. 2: 20.) By Jesus Christ being identified with sin, I can get back again into perfect harmony with God. God does not remove our responsibility; He puts a new responsibility on us. We are sons and daughters of God by the atonement of Jesus Christ, and we have a tremendous dignity to maintain, and we have no ^business to bow our necks to any yoke but the yoke of the Lord Jesus Christ. There ought to be in us, the scorn of a holy meekness whenever it comes to being dictated to by the dispensation we live in. The dispensation we live in is governed by the ''prince of this world," who hates Jesus Christ. His great doctrine is self-realization; while Christ's great doctrine is Christ-realization. We ought to be free from the yoke of the 11 prince of this world," only one yoke should be on our shoulders — the yoke of the Lord Jesus. He was meek towards all His Father did to and for Him, He let God Almighty do what He liked with His life and never murmured. He never brought sympathy down to Himself, and never awakened self-pity.

Galatians 2: 20 is the Scriptural expression of identification with the Lord Jesus Christ in such a way that my whole life is changed. My old destiny was getting wonderfully like the destiny of Satan — self-realization; now Paul say's it is no longer that destiny for me, it is Christ-identity in me. "The life I now live in the flesh, I live by the faith which is in the Son of God." The very faith that governed Jesus Christ now governs me. He is not talking about the elementary faith in Jesus,, but the very faith that was in Jesus. Paul says also, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." There is only one kind of holiness, and that is the holiness of the Lord Jesus; only one kind of human nature, and that is the human nature of us all, and Jesus Christ by His identification can give me exactly the same disposition He had, and I have to habitually see that I work it out through my eyes, and ears, and mouth, and all the organs of my body and life in every detail. Paul had been identified with the death of Jesus Christ, and his whole life was invaded by a, new spirit. His connection was with a totally new realm, the mystical body of Christ. He had been baptized by one spirit into one body, and had no connection now with the body of sin. The body of sin is that mystical body which ultimately ends with Satan. The mystical body of Christ is ours by sanctification, we are made part and parcel of it. The term " invasion' ' is used because it gives the idea better than that of marriage. Our Lord's description in John 15 of the vine and the branches is a much more satisfactory one in every way than the marriage relationship. The picture from the vine and the branches is that every bit of life in the branch that is bearing fruit is from an invasion by the parent stem; and so with us, the whole life is drawn from the Lord Jesus, not only the spring and the motive of it, but the actual thinking and living and doing. That is the Apostle Paul's meaning when he talks about the "new man in Christ Jesus." After identification and sanctification, that is where the life is drawn from, "all my fountains are in Thee." And have you noticed that God will wither up every other spring you have? He will wither up your natural virtues, He will break up confidence in your own power, and He will wither up your confidence in every respect, in brain, in spirit and in heart and body, until you learn by practical experience that you have no right to draw your life from anything else than the tremendous reservoir of the resurrection life of Jesus Christ. Thank God if you are going through a drying-up experience!

Our Lord never patches up our natural virtues, He replaces the whole man on the inside, until the new man can shew himself in the new manners. God does not give new manners, we make our own; but we have to make them out of the new life. (Eph. 4:22-32.) Every detail of your physical life is to be absolutely under the control of the new disposition that God Almighty has planted in you through identification with the Lord Jesus, and you will no longer be allowed to murmur "can't." There is no. such a word in the Christian's vocabulary when rightly related to God. There is only one word, and that is "I can." Paul says in Philippians, "I can do all things through Christ which strengthened me," and watch the kind of things he could do, "I know how to be abased; I know how to be exalted; I know how to be empty; I know how to be full."

The manners refer to Christian character, and we are responsible for that. God works the alteration on the inside, and now Paul says, "Work out what God works in," and you will find that God will use the machinery of your circumstances when you are right with Him. He is not after satisfying you and glorifying you. He is after manifesting in your edition what His Son can do. Paul says that Jesus is going to be "admired in them that believe." This invasion of the life of Jesus Christ makes us sons and daughters of God. These are things that the angels desire to look into. It is as if they looked down on us and said of that woman, "How wonderfully like Jesus Christ she is, she did not use to be like that, but look at her now. "We know Jesus Christ did it, but we wonder how?" Or, "Look at that man, he is just like his Master, how did Jesus Christ do it?"

Thank God we are not going to be angels, we are going to be something tenfold better. By the full redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ, there is a time coming when our bodies will be in the image of God. The bodies of our humiliation are to be changed to "glorified bodies," and they are to bear the image of God just like our spirits.

(a) Applied to Men and Animals. Gen. 1: 20, 21, 24, 30.

(b) Applied to Men, not Animals. Gen. 2: 7; 1 Cor.

(c) Applied to Men Individually. Gen. 12: 13; 1 Sam.

N. B. — (1) Never applied to angels or to God. (Comp. 2 Cor. 4: 7.) (2) Never applied to plants. (See Job 14: 8, etc.)

N. B. — "The Spirit is the essential foundation of man; the soul his peculiar essential form; the body his essential manifestation. ' '

We take first of all the soul as a term generally and then specifically. The next chapter will be "The Fundamental Powers' ' of the soul, which means the soul as it is influenced either by a degenerate intelligence, or by the Spirit of God, and we will deal also with the varied powers of the soul. Then "The Fleshly Presentation of the Soul" will be considered, that means as the soul manifests itself and expresses itself in the bodily life; and finally we take the "Past, Present and Future" of the soul, in which we deal with all the theses that have gathered round the doctrines of the soul, and are somewhat scriptural, but yet lead to conclusions most unscriptural.

The word "sour' in the Old Testament is mentioned about 460 times, meaning is "animal soul," and by animal soul, the soul that is present only in this order of beings. In the New Testament the word for soul is mentioned about fifty-seven times, with th same meaning. When the Bible mentions a thing over five hundred times it is quite time that Christians examined the teaching about it with care.

"We will take the term "soul" generally, used in three distinct ways. First, the term as applied to men and animals alike as distinct from all other creations; then the more particular use of the word as applied to men distinguished from animals; and then the third use of the term as applied to distinguish one man from another.

<a) (Gen. 1:20, 21, 24, 30.) The term "soul" here includes animals and men to distinguish them from every other form of creation.

(The Bible nowhere says that either angels or God have souls. Angels are never spoken of as having souls, because soul refers entirely to this order of creation, and angels belong to another order. The only way in which the soul of God is referred to is prophetically, in anticipation of the Incarnation. Our Lord emphatically had a soul, but of God and angels the term "soul" is not used.)

Then another thing, soul is never applied to plants. Although a plant has life, the Bible never speaks of it as having soul.

"For there is hope of a tree if it be cut down, that it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease. Though the root thereof wax old in the earth, and the stock thereof die in the ground; yet through the scent of water it will bud, and bring forth boughs like a plant. But man dieth and wasteth away, yea, man giveth up the ghost and where is he?" (Job 14:7-10.)

The distinction there is very clear; you can cut a piece from a plant and the "cut off" part will grow again; you can cut off a limb of an animal and plant it, but it will not grow, or you may cut off "your arm and that will not grow. The reason is that the plant has no soul, and the animal has. There is nothing said in the Bible about the immortality of an animal. The Bible does say that in the regenerated earth there will be animals, but the Bible nowhere says that these animals we see now are immortal and animal. The Bible does say that in the new earth there will be animals, but the Bible nowhere says that these animals we see now are immortal and when they (lie are raised again. "What is indicated is that the spirit of entire nature will be restored by God's mighty redemption, that everything that has been partaker of the curse through the fall will be restored by Jesus Christ through cremation and various ways; nothing will be lost; but nowhere does the Bible teach the immortality of animals.

(b) The term "soul" applied to men and not animals.

"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." (Gen. 2:7.)

"And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit." (1 Cor. 15:45.)

Now what is the soul? Something that is peculiar to men and animals, that angels do not have, that God has not, and that plants have not. Soul is the holder of spirit and body together. Man has soul, and brute has soul. What kind of spirit has a brute? If the soul is the holder of spirit and body together, then there must be a spirit in the brute, otherwise our statement about soul is wrong. There is certainly a spirit in the brute, and the Bible reveals that when the soul of an animal dies, its spirit "goeth down." The spirit of the brute is the spirit of entire nature, and when the brute dies that spirit goes back again into entire nature. What is the spirit of entire nature? A manifest creation of God. Now the spirit in man that holds soul together with his body is something entirely different from the spirit of a brute; it is the human spirit which God created when He breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life. God did not make man a little God, He breathed into his nostrils the spirit which became in man, man's distinct spirit.

Where does man's spirit go when he dies? "The spirit of the brute goeth downward, and the spirit of a man goeth upward." A number df secularists have told us that death is a beautiful "molecular disturbance," and that when we die we are distributed like the animal life into the gases and spirit of entire nature. The Bible does not say so, the Bible says that the spirit of a man goes back to God. That does not imply that man's spirit is absorbed back into God; it is the spirit goes back to Goci with all the characteristics for judgment or for praise. When we deal more narrowly with this subject later on, we shall find that the whole nature of a man's spirit, whether it be "sensual" or "spiritual," is to make itself expressed in soul. The whole effort is to try and express the spirit through the soul; that is, express it in what we understand as our ordinary physical life.

(c) The term "soul" applied to men individually.

"Say, I pray thee, thou art my sister, that it may be well with me for thy sake, and my soul shall live because of thee." (Gen. 12:13.)

"And it came to pass when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan waa knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul." (1 Sam. 18:1.)

These passages refer to the use of the term "soul," to the individual personal soul as distinct from every other soul. In popular language we speak of a person expressing "soul" in music, or literature, or art; or else we refer to him as being hard and mechanical and "soulless." It is this aspect of soul we are referring to. An individual soul cannot be divided or cut up. "When in the Scripture "demon possession" is referred to (see Luke 8:26 to 39) it is the body that is the location or habitation of the many other spirits besides the man's own soul. (Thought takes up no room, and soul partakes of the nature of thought, so that there is, literally speaking, no limit to the number of spirits a man's body m<ay hold during demon possession.) The phrase ' ' beautiful soul ' ' or " mean soul ' ' refers to this individual aspect of soul.

2. The Truth About the Soul. (Specifically.)

(a) What is the relationship between spirit and soul: where did the soul come from? Soul has no existence until spirit and body come together. It holds its existence in fee entirely by spirit, which statement is the needed opposite truth of what we have already stated, viz.: that soul holds spirit and body together.

What is the spirit in a fallen man? (See 1 Cor. 2:11.) Let us approach this subject by making the distinction between "sensual" man and "spiritual" man. The spirit in a fallen or " sensual' ' man is his mind which has vast capacity for God, to whom, however, he is dead, and the spirit of a fallen man is imprisoned in the soul and degraded by the body. A sensual person may have marvelous ideas, and a wonderful intelligence, but the whole life may also be corrupt and "rotten." For instance, take Oscar Wilde, a more flagrant example of gross immorality would be difficult to find, yet Oscar Wilde could write that most amazing book called "De Profundis" in prison, after a life of unthinkable immorality, which book shows a wonderful grasp of our Lord and His teaching. The spirit in Oscar "Wilde is nothing more than an intellectual spirit that has no life in itself, nothing more than what the Hebrew calls it, a "spiritual capacity," and it is surely enslaved by the body through the soul. Instead of fallen man's intelligence being able to lift his body up, it is exactly the opposite; a fallen man's intelligence more and more severs his intellectual life from his bodily life and produces inner hypocrisy. Read the lives of certain poets and literary men and geniuses; the exception is the man who has a clean life as well as a good mind. You can never judge a man by his intellectual flights. You may get the most magnificent and inspiring diction from a man who isf sunk lower than the beasts in moral living. He has a sensual spirit; that is, his soul instead of being able to allow his spirit to lift his body up, has dragged the man down and the man makes a divorce between his intellectual and practical life.

A "spiritual" man is quite different. Jesus Christ was a spiritual personality, because the Holy Spirit filled His spirit, and brought spirit, soul and body into perfect harmony with God. That is the meaning of the atonement in its full application to you and me, that Jesus Christ has power to grant us the Holy Spirit, and that Holy Spirit "has life in itself," and immediately that life is manifested in my soul, it wars against what I have been describing, and slowly and surely if the man will "mind" the Spirit of God, which fills his spirit and re-energizes it, he will find that Holy Spirit will lift his soul, and with his soul his body, into a totally new unity until that old divorce is annulled. In a spiritual personality the "mind of Christ' ' makes the material body of a man show the nature of Christ. The spirit of a man cannot do this, for it has not life in itself. Never judge a man by the fact that he has good ideas, or yourself by the fact that you have stirring visions of things. For instance, it is said that a man cannot teach the doctrine of entire sanctification unless he is entirely sanctified, but he can. The devil can teach entire sanctification when it pleases him. One of the most dangerous powers in your soul and mine is that very power. There is a "sensual" person and a "spiritual" person, and the "sensual" person is the one in whom the great divorce is discernible between mental conception and practical living. The whole solution of the problem is by receiving the Holy Spirit, not complimenting the Holy Spirit, not believing Him only; but receiving Him; because whatever is wrong in my soul or in my body the Holy Spirit has so energized my spirit that it is able to detect all those things that are wrong, and enables me to rectify them if I "mind" them. (This use of the term "mind" is the Scotch use, and means "remember to obey." It carries with it the other Scotch word "lippen," that is, trust.) ' ' Mind ' ' the Holy Spirit, ' ' mind ' ' His light,

"mind." His convictions, "mind" His guidance, then slowly and surely the "sensual" personality will be turned into the "spiritual" one.

(b) The Soul and Body. "For as the soul without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also." (Jas. 2:26.) The body has the earth as its ancestor. "The being of man plants its foot on the earth and the being of earth culminates in man, for both are destined to the fellowship of one history." That means what has been insisted on all through these studies, that the body is the chief glory of a man from God's standpoint. "But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God and not of us." (2 Cor. 4:7.) We have "this treasure," the treasure of God's Spirit being manifested in a human spirit. It cannot be manifested in angels, or in animals, or in plants. It is manifested in human earthen vessels. Do not make that mean that God is pouring contempt on the earthen vessels; it is the opposite. Jesus Christ took on Him the nature of the "earthen vessel" type, not of the angelic type. Of the earth, earthy, is man's glory, not his shame, and it is to the earth earthy that Jesus Christ's full regenerating work has its ultimate reach. Regenerated man's body and the earth on which he treads are to partake in the final restitution. Our soul's history cannot be furthered "in spite of our bodies," but because of our bodies. Nothing can enter the soul but through the senses; the way God enters intb the soul is through the senses.

"The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." Beware of the other type of mysticism, viz.: the quiet vision absorption; it is not presented in the Bible. On the physical side all the soul retains comes through its bodily senses, and when God's Spirit is finding its way into a man's soul, again the senses are acquainted with it. "The Holy Spirit will glorify Me," says our Lord. "Where? In my imagination, in my heart, that is, in and through the intangible part of my body. And again, "He will bring to your remembrance what I have said." How can this be done saving by our material body in brain memory? Beware of all inward impressions. Beware of all instincts that you cannot curb by the wisdom that is taught by God's Book. If you begin to take every impression as a call of the Spirit of God, you will end in hallucinations. (See 2 Thess. 2: 10-12.) Test every such movement by the tests Jesus Christ has given, and they are all tangible, sensible tests. The only way you can test men is, as Jesus teaches, "by their fruit." You say that the fruit of the Spirit has altogether to do with the spiritual, but the spiritual in the Bible must show itself in the concrete physical body. God knows no divorce whatever between the three aspects of a man's nature, spirit, soul and body. They must be at one, and He sayj they are either at one in damnation, or one in salvation, and if a man has not the Spirit of God energizing his spirit, he will come more and more to be judged by the judgment that is to be passed on his bodily life. Beware of the people who teach that a man's body may sin, but his soul does not. No such distinctions and refinements are taught in God's Word. The three go together in God's judgment, and if a man is not enlivened by the Spirit of God, his intelligence has no power to lift him. People cannot lift themselves by ideas, by intelligent notions, by knowledge. That is why intelligence from God's standpoint is never first spiritual. "If any man will know My doctrine," says Jesus, "let him do the will." Performance of the will before perception of the doctrine always in spiritual matters. Immediately you receive the Holy Spirit and get energized by God, you will find your bodies the first place of attack for the enemy, because the body has been the center before for ruling the soul, and dividing it from intelligent standards, and the body is the last "stake" of Satan. It is the battleground, the "margin of the battle" for you and me. The presentation of such facts produces confusion until it is understood; health simply means the perfect balance of my body to the outside circumstances and the outside world; if anything upsets that balance, I become diseased. The Spirit of God will upset that balance; immediately the Spirit of God comes into my soul through my spirit, the balance is upset, and disturbance — morally, physically and spiritually — occurs. Jesus Christ said, "I did not come to send peace, but a sword," and what balance will He give back? The old? No! You can never get the same old balance of health back again; you have to get a new balance of holiness, which is not only the balance of my bodily life, but the balance of my disposition with God's law, which is holiness. You will find the "choppy waters" come there, and the "choppy waters" show themselves physically. So many people seem to misunderstand why it is that their bodies are attacked now that they are spiritual in a way they never were attacked when they were not spiritual. In connection with this subject of the soul, we shall have to deal later with one or two very important subjects, viz.: the difference between demoniacal sickness and natural sickness. The Bible has a lot to say about both of them. The Bible throws the only revelation light there is on your physical condition, and the Bible is the only book that throws light on our soul condition, and the Bible is the only book that throws light on our spiritual condition. Physical effects, like smelling, seeing, etc., are not used as methaphors only in the Bible; they are identified with the nature of the soul's life, and this explains what people call the vulgar teaching of the Bible.

God has safeguarded us in every way. Spiritualistic people have committed the great crime; they have pushed down God's barriers, and come in contact with forces they never can control. And on the other hand, the Spirit of God can do through me anything He chooses if I give myself over to Jesus Christ and am ruled by His Spirit. "I beseech you, brethren, present your bodies a living sacrifice/ ' and bodies means "faculties" as well. "Why should we expect God to deal with less than the devil deals with? A good man is a flesh and blood good man; he is not an impression. The body is the "vessel" of the soul, enabling the soul to turn her inward life into an outward one.