Biblical Psychology

(c) Blood Circulation. Gen. 9: 4; Lev. 17: 10, 14.

(1) Sense of Seeing. Ps. 119: 37.

(3) Sense of Tasting. Ps. 119: 103.

(4) Sense of Smelling. Gen. 8: 21; 2 Cor. 2: 14, 16.

(5) Sense of Touching. Acts 17:27; 1 John 1:1.

(f) Hilarity of Life. Eccl. 11:9, 11; Luke 6:45.

(g) Himself. Judg. 8: 18; Luke 2: 40, 52; Eph. 4: 13.

We do not mean what the Apostle Paul meant when he used the word "fleshly" in his Epistles; we are using the word to mean this natural body.

The subject is divided under three headings: In Embryo, in Evolution, and in Expression. In Embryo, means in the beginning; Evolution means growth, growth of the human soul; (evolution is a fact both scientific and Scriptural, if by that word is meant that there is such a thing as growth in every;

species, but not from one species into another. For instance, there is growth in a plant, there is growth in an animal, and there is growth in a man, and that is the only way we are using the word.) The last division simply means the Expression of my soul in, and through, my body.

(a) Before Consciousness, (b) Breath Consciousness, and (c) Blood Circulation. (Hos. 12:3; Gen. 25:22; Luke 1:41.) In the very beginning of human life, body, soul and spirit are together. (Psa. 139: 15.) Modern tendencies of thought which are doing great havoc, indicate that a child has not a soul until it is born into this world. The Bible says that body, soul and spirit develop together. This may not appear to the majority of us as being of any importance, but it will soon, if you are going to come in contact with the views that are abroad to-day, even among some who call themselves Christians, but who are really wolves among the sheep, and whose teachings come from the bottomless pit.

'(b) Breath Consciousness. (Gen. 2:7; Isa. 2:22.) In a multitude of verses in the Bible, the soul life and the breath of the body are identified. You will find the Biblje teaches that it is not the body that breathes, but the soul. The body did not breathe in the beginning, before God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life, so as far as conscious soul life is concerned, it depends on our breathing, and you will find that all through God's Book the soul life is connected with the breathing, in fact it is incorporated into everybody's idea of life that when breath is suspended life is gone, "the soul is departed" is the popular phrase. Then take the next (c) Blood Circulation. (Gen. 9: 4; Lev. 17: 10-14.) The whole soul is connected in the Bible and identified with breath and blood, two fleshly, physical things. In Genesis 9: 4 blood and soul are alternate terms, they are identified entirely, and the verses that go to prove this in God's Book are innumerable. When the blood is spilt, the soul is gone; when the breath is taken, the soul is gone. The whole life of a man, physically, consists in his breath and in his blood. The soul, in working itself into the blood, never fails to impart to it the peculiar character of its own life. This psychologically is brought out very clearly by our Lord's statement in John 6, "Unless ye eat My flesh and drink My blood, ye have no life in you." The ruling disposition of the soul will show itself in the blood, the physical blood. In all our languages, and meanings, and statements, we speak about good or bad, merciful or tender, hot or cold blood. This is all based on Scriptural teaching, and Jesus Christ's teaching reveals that the fact that men are His disciples is shown in the blood, the physical life. The old soul tyranny and disposition, the old selfish determination to seek my own ends, manifests itself in my body, through my blood, and when that disposition of soul is altered it shows itself at once in the blood also. Instead of the old tempers and the old passions being manifested in my physical blood, the good temper reveals itself. It never does to remove Jesus Christ's spiritual teaching into the domain of the inane and vague, it must come right down where the devil works, and as the devil does not work in vagueness, but through flesh and blood, neither does the Lord, and the characteristics of the soul for better or for worse are shown in the blood. The first fundamental reference in the verse, "Without shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins," is unquestionably to our Lord, yet it has a direct reference to ourselves. Do we begin to know what the Bible means by the "blood of Jesus Christ"? Blood and life are absolutely inseparable. The two experimental statements of salvation and sanctification are never separated as we separate them; they are separable in experience, but God's Book always speaks in terms of entire sanctification when it talks of being "in Christ." "Whenever Paul deals with personal experience he begins to show where people have gone wrong. When we refer to the blood of Jesus Christ, we are apt to look upon it as a kind of magic-working thing, instead of its being an impartation to us of the very life of the Lord Jesus Christ. The whole meaning of being "born again" and identified with the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, and with His life, is that His blood may flow through my mortal body. Literally then, the tempers, and the affections, and the dispositions, that were manifested in the life of the Lord will now be manifested in some degree. Our present day "wise talk" is to push all the teaching of Jesus Christ into something that is remote; yet the New Testament drives its teachings straight down to the essential necessity of physical expression of spiritual life, that just as bad soul life shows itself in the body, the good soul life shows itself there too. There are always two sides to Jesus Christ's atonement in my life — not only His life for me, but His life in me for my own; no Christ for me if I do not have Christ in me. All through, there is this strenuous, glorious practicing in my bodily life, the changes which God has wrought ip my soul through His Spirit, and the only test that I am in earnest is that I "work out what He works in." Let us apply this truth to ourselves, and you will find in practical experience this, that God does alter passions, God does alter nerves, God does alter breathing, God does alter tempers, God alters every physical thing the devil has used, God alters every physical thing a human being can use, and we can use these bodies, as Paul says, as slaves to the new disposition. We can make our eyes, and ears, and every one of our bodily organs express, as slaves, the altered disposition of our soul. Kemember, then, that blood is the manifestation of the soul life, and you will find all through God's Book that God applies moral characteristics to the blood — "innocent blood," "guilty blood" — that rerefers to the soul, and the soul life must show itseH in this physical connection.

(d) The "Hub of Life." (Prov.4:23.) The "hub" literally means the center of the wheel, and the center of my soul life, my personal life and my spirit life, is mentioned in Proverbs 4: 23. We will deal with this fully when we come to the chapters on " Heart."

The Bible has placed in the heart everything that the modern psychologist puts in the "head."

(e) "Hubbub of Life. " By "hubbub " is meant exactly what the word says, a tremendous confusion. This confusion in the soul life is brought about by the exercise of our senses. "In the Bible, psychological terms are not merely metaphors, but reflect the organic condition of the soul." The body makes itself inward by means of the soul, and the spirit makes itself outward by means of the soul. The soul is the binder of these two together. There is not one part of the human body left out in God's Book; every part, inside and outside, physically, is dealt with and made to have either a direct connection with sin, or a direct connection with holiness. That is not an accident, it is part of the Divine revelation. The senses of sight, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, to the majority of us do not seem to have any meaning whatever spiritually; but in the Bible they have. In the Bible they are dealt with in anything but a slight manner; they are dealt with as being expressions of your soul life. The Bible teaches that every part of man's physical life, inside and out, is either closely connected with sin or with salvation and anything that sin can put wrong, Jesus Christ can put right. "We are dealing with soul as it expresses itself through the body. The organs of the body are not used as pictures, but as indicators of the state of the spiritual life. We mentioned before, in connection with breathing, that the internal part of a man's nature is affected by his spiritual connection. If his spiritual connections are not right with

God, his bodily condition will follow, sooner or later, the disorganization. It is proved over and over again in mental diseases. In most insane persons a bodily organ is seriously affected, and the old method of dealing with insanity was to try and get that organ healed. The modern method is simply to leave the organ alone as far as trying to get that right, and concentrate on the brain. "When the mind is right, the disease in the organ goes.

Take first of all (1), the sense of seeing. (Psa. 119: 37.) That is not a figure of speech; it is the literal things we look at. How am I going to have those things, called my eyes, kept from beholding vanity? By having the disposition of my soul altered. God controls the whole thing, and you find that you can control it too, when once He gives you the start. That is the marvelous impetus of the salvation of Jesus Christ. Our eyes record to the brain what they look at, but our disposition makes our eyes look at what it wants to look at, and soon it will pay no attention to anything else. "When your disposition is right, you may place the eyes, literally the body, where you may, and the disposition will guard what it records. So this is not a figure of speech; it is a literal experience. God does »alter the desire to look at the things we used to, and we find that we can guard our eyes, because He has altered the disposition of the soul life.

Then take (2), hearing. (Job 12:11.) Jesus Christ Himself continually refers to hearing. "He that hath ears to hear, let him hear." We always say He means the ears of our heart, but that is very misguiding. He means these physical ears which are trained by the disposition of your soul life. For instance, God spoke to Jesus once, and the people said it thundered. Jesus did not think it thundered. His ears were trained, by the disposition of His soul, to know His Father's voice. You can elaborate that endlessly for yourself all through God's Book. I will always hear what I listen for, and my disposition determines what I listen for, just as the ruling disposition of the soul either keeps the eyes from beholding vanity, or makes them behold nothing else. When Jesus alters your disposition, He gives you the power to see things as He sees them, and to hear as He hears. A telegraph operator does not hear the ticking of the machine which we do. "Why? The ears are trained; the disposition detects the message; we cannot; we detect the jingle and the tapping of the machine and make nothing of it. When God speaks, some people say, " Thank God, I heard His voice!" How did they hear it? The disposition of the soul enabled the ears to hear something that the soul interpreted at once. Isaiah 55: 1, "Who hath believed our report?" That literally means, "Who hath believed the things we are talking about, to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" You have a disposition of soul that can discern the "arm of the Lord," or you are just like the beasts of the field who take things as they happen, and nothing more. The Psalmist said, "0 Lord, I am even as a brute before you." I live without any spiritual intelligence. The disposition of my soul determines what I see, and the disposition of my soul determines what I hear.

(3), Tasting. (Psa. 119:103.) We are getting still more and more remote, and difficult to understand, from our ordinary unspiritual experiences because we have divorced entirely, tasting and smelling, seeing and hearing, and touching, from spiritual conditions, because the majority of Christian workers have never been trained in what the Bible has to say about ourselves. It can be proved over and over again, not only in personal experience, but all through God's Book, that He does alter the tastes. Not mental tastes merely but taste in physical things. He alters the physical taste for foods and drinks, but something far more practical than that, the blessing of God on our soul life gives us the sensible feeling akin to taste, or akin to sight, or akin to hearing.

(4), Smelling. (Gen. 8:21; 2 Cor. 2:14-16.) The Bible has more to say about the sense of smell than any other, and it is the only sense we make nothing of. This sense of smell to the majority of us has only the meaning, viz., an olfactory nerve that makes me conscious of pleasant things, or exactly the opposite; but the Bible deals with the sense of smell in another way. Read this quotation from a book written by Helen Keller, entitled "The World I Live In," the chapter she calls "Smell, the Fallen Angel." Remember, she writes as one who cannot see, nor hear, nor speak.

"For some inexplicable reason the sense of smell does not hold the high position it deserves among its

sisters. There is something of the fallen angel about it. "When it woos us with woodland scents and beguiles us with the fragrance of lovely gardens, it is admitted frankly to our discourse. But when it gives us warning of something noxious in our vicinity, it is treated as if the demon had the upper hand of the angel, and is relegated to outer darkness, punished for its faithful service. It is most difficult to keep the true significance of words when one discusses the prejudices of mankind, and I find it hard to give an account of odor-perceptions which shall at once be dignified and truthful.

"In my experience, smell is most important, and I find that there is high authority for the nobility of the sense which we have neglected and disparaged. It is recorded that the Lord commanded that incense be burnt before Him continually with a sweet savor. I doubt if there is any sensation arising from sight more delightful than the odors which filter through sun-warmed, wind-tossed branches, or the tide of scents which swells, subsides, rises again wave on wave, filling the wide wo-rld with invisible sweetness. A whiff of the universe makes us dream of worlds we have never seen, recalls in a flash entire epochs of our dearest experiences. I never smell daisies without living over again the ecstatic mornings that my teacher and I spent wandering in the fields, while I learned new words and the names of things. Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across a thousand miles and all the years we have lived. The odor of fruits wafts me to my Southern home, to my childish frolics in the

peach orchard. Other odors, instantaneous and fleeting, cause my heart to dilate joyously or contract with remembered grief. Even as I think of smells, my nose is full of scents that start awake sweet memories of summers gone and ripening grain-fields far away."

* Helen Keller's sense of smell takes the place of sight. That is a case which brings the Bible idea more home to us. Let this subject be revised in all our Bible study and enable us to see whether we are leaving whole tracts of our sense-life indifferently, not understanding that we can develop and cultivate eyes, and nose, and mouth, and ears, and every organ of the body to manifest the disposition Jesus Christ has put in us. Not one that has been disorganized, but can be reorganized; not only these senses that we are dealing with, but the senses we cannot deal with, every one of them, internal and external, is mentioned in God's Book, and is either regulated by the Spirit of God, or by the spirit of Satan. Paul, when he refers to lust, never places it in the body; he places it in the disposition of the soul. "Let not sin reign in your mortal bodies, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof." Jesus Christ had a fleshly body like I have, but lust resides in the ruling disposition of the body, and when God changes that ruling disposition, the same body that was used as the instrument of sin to work all manner of uncleanness and unrighteousness, is now used as the slave of the new disposition. Not a different body; the same body, but a new disposition.

* The most fascinating and literary of such unscriptural speculations is found in "The Child of the Dawn" by A. C. Benson.

Now last, take (5), the sense of touch. (Acts 17: 27; 1 John 1:1.) There the reference is not to a mental feeling, but to real, downright bodily feeling. The disciples had felt God incarnate in Jesus Christ. That is where the issue is so strong between Unitarian teaching and the New Testament teaching, and you will find that God does not ignore feeling. God does not ignore the sense of touch, He elevates it. The first effort of the soul, with its new disposition, towards bringing the body into harmony is a dark effort of faith. It has not yet gotten the body under way, therefore feeling has to be discounted. When the new disposition from God has entered the soul, it takes its first steps in the dark of faith, without feeling. But immediately it has gained control, all these bodily organs are brought into physical harmony with the ruling disposition.

(f) "Hilarity of Life." (Eccl. 11:9; Luke 6: 45.) Both these passages have reference to the full physical hilarity of life. Remember, a bad man whose life is bad has a hilariously happy time, and a good man whose life is right has a good and hilarious time. All in between are diseased and more or less sick, there is something wrong somewhere: but the healthy pagan and the healthy saint are the two that are described all through God's Book as hilarious. The New Testament and especially the apostle Paul is intense on this hilarity of life. Enthusiasm has the idea — intoxicated with the life of God. Watch human nature. If men do not get thrillings in the right way, they will get them in the wrong way. If they do not get thrilled by the Spirit of God, they will try to get thrilled with strong drink. "Be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess/ ' says Paul, "but be filled with the Spirit." We have no business to be spiritually half dead, to hang like clogs on God's plan; we have no business to be sickly unless it is only a preparatory stage for something better, unless God is nursing us through some spiritual illness; but if it is the main characteristic of life, there is something wrong somewhere. Psalm 73 describes the bad man as having all that heart can desire; this is the expression of the soul satisfaction without God; yet in another Psalm, the Psalmist says his "bones delight themselves in marrow and fatness." He is talking about the physical bones, which are affected amazingly by the condition of the soul life. Luke 11 gives a description of the bad man: "When the strong man armed guardeth his palace, his goods are in peace." The context there refers to the prince of this world, when Satan guards this world, his goods — the souls of men — are in peace; they 'are quite happy, quite hilarious and full of life. One of the most misleading statements to make is that worldlings have not a happy time; they have a thoroughly happy time. The point is that their happiness is on the wrong level, and when they come across Jesus Christ, who is the enemy of all that happiness, they experience annoyance. People have to be persuaded that Jesus Christ has a higher style of life for them, otherwise they feel they had better not have come across Him. When a worldly person who is happy, moral, upright, cornea in contact with Jesus Christ, who will destroy the whole thing, and put him, and his happiness and peace, on a different level, he has to be persuaded that He is a Being worthy to do it, and instead of the Gospel being attractive, it is the opposite. Immediately the Gospel is presented to a healthy, happy, hilarious unsaved person, there is violent opposition straight off. "No, thank you; we will agree with you if you will agree with these things; but if you are going to tell us we have to be made all over agaiir, no thank you!" The Gospel of Jesus Christ does not present what men of the world want, but exactly what they need. As long as you talk about being happy and bright, they like to listen to you-, but talk about having the disposition of the soul altered, and that the garden of the world has to be turned into a wilderness by God and afterward into a garden of the Lord, then you find the opposition.

Lastly (g), " himself.' ' I mean by " himself J not God, but man. ( Judg. 8: 18; Luke 2: 40, 52; Eph. 4: 13.) There is the description splendidly given of a fullorbed man, bad or good. A full-orbed man or woman bad (bad in God's sight) may be a wonderful being to look at, and full-orbed men and women right with God may also be wonderful beings to look at. The rest of us are simply beings in the making. There is a tremendous fascination about a completely bad man; there is nothing more desirable for this world than a thoroughly well-trained bad man or woman, but they are the opponents of Jesus Christ, they hate Him with every power of the soul; I mean the Jesus Christ of the New Testament.

God grant that we may get the ruling disposition of our souls so altered that we will practically work it out. How many of us have had experimental touch with the grace of God? how many of us have received the Spirit of God? Are we working it out? Is every organ of the body enslaved to that new disposition? Or are we using our eyes for what we want to see, using our body for our right to ourselves? If so we are receiving the grace of God in vain. God grant that we may be Christian men and women who are determined to work out through these bodies the life that Jesus Christ has put in by His Spirit.