Creation and Its Records by Baden Henry Baden-Powell
page 84 of 207 (40%)
page 84 of 207 (40%)
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[Footnote 2: Though not in the plural of excellence. See Gen. vi 17,
vii. 22, &c.] [Footnote 3: Gen. i. 20, margin of A.V.] St. Paul, it is true, speaks of the "whole spirit, and soul, and body.[1]" But our Lord Himself, in a very solemn passage (where it would be most natural to expect the distinction, if it were absolute and structural, to be noticed), speaks of the "soul and body" only.[2] The fact is that we are only able to argue conclusively that, besides the physical form, we have a non-material soul, or a self. And our Lord, whose teaching was always eminently practical, went no further. We are conscious of a "self"--something that remains, while the body continually grows and changes. There was in _Punch_, some time ago, a picture of an old grandfather, with a little child looking at a marble bust representing a child. "Who is that?" asks the little one; and the old man replies, "That is grandfather when he was a little boy." "And who is it now?" rejoins the child. One smiles at the picture, but in reality it conceals a very important and a very pathetic truth. Nothing could well be greater than the outward difference between the grey hairs and bowed figure and the little cherub face; and yet there was a "self"--a soul, that remained the same throughout. In Platonic language, while the [Greek: eidôlon] perpetually changes, the [Greek: eidos] remains. We have, therefore, evidence as positive as the nature of the subject admits that we are right in speaking of the _body and the soul, or self_. And as we cannot connect the higher reasoning, and, above all, conscience and the religious belief, as a "property" of physical structure, we conclude |
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