The Ascent of the Soul by Amory H. Bradford
page 9 of 170 (05%)
page 9 of 170 (05%)
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The problem of life is the right adjustment of spirit and body, so that
the former shall never be the servant but always the master of the latter. We are on this earth, in the midst of darkness, with nothing absolutely sure except that in a little while we must die. We are two-fold beings in which there is war almost from the cradle to the grave, and that war is caused by the effort of the body to rule the soul and of the soul to conquer the body. At the gates of this mystery we continually do cry, and little light comes from any quarter; indeed, it may be said no light except that of the Christian revelation, and the, as yet, not very pronounced prophecies of evolution. One of the questions, which in all ages has been most persistently asked, concerns the origin of the soul. Perhaps, in reality, that is no more mysterious than the genesis of the body; but the body is material and we live in a world of matter, and it is comparatively easy to see that our bodies are from the earth which they inhabit. Our souls, however, are invisible, immaterial, ethereal. There is no evident kinship between a thought and a stone, between love and the soil which produces vegetables, between a heroic choice and the stuff of the earth, between spirit and matter. Well, then, whence does the soul come? It will be interesting at least to recall a few of the many answers which have been given to this inquiry. One theory of the genesis of the soul is called Emanation. That means that in the universe there is really but one source of spiritual being, |
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