Christian Purity of Soul
The nature of man, according to the distinct teaching of the Apostle, must be considered under the three divisions of Spirit, Soul, and Body. “May your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame” (1 Thess. v. 23). This division is not made in One passage only, for in 1 Cor. ii. 13, 14; iii, 1; vi. 19, it is the basis of a prolonged argument for a transfigured character.
The spiritual, the carnal or soulish, and the physical, are in turn referred to as playing a very distinct part in the economy of a holy life.
Throughout Old and New Testament the soul may be taken as signifying the animal life, which in its lower ranges we share with the inferior orders of creation, but which in man attains to heights of reason and moral perception, to which these have no claim. Probably, therefore, we may take the soul as representing our individuality. It is the sum-total of our emotional, rational, and moral consciousness. The soul is the seat and centre of the “I,” the ego, that which gives each one of us our specific character. But when we have said all, how little we have said! How little we know! What profound depths are unexplored! We are
as those who hold a torch over a deep, dark well — its glimmer only reaches for a few feet, making the abyss beyond more Opaque and impenetrable than ever.
The soul opens upward to the Infinite and Eternal through the Sgzrz¢, with its capacity for God, and downward to the Finite and Temporal through the Body, with its capacity for material objects. The spirit stands for our heavenly aptitudes, the body for our earthly ones. By the one we are able to seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated on the right hand of God; through the other we are apt to become entangled with the things that pertain to earth (Col. ili, I-5).
Probably the prime reason for our having been sent into the world is to test the true quality of our souls, and to give us the
opportunity of making the supreme choice as to whether we will yield to the attraction of the Divine, the Eternal, and the Infinite, which appeal to us through our spirits, or to the fascination of the earthly, the material, and the transient, which appeal to us through our bodies. The soul has to choose which it will serve, God or Baal, the voices of the stars or of the clods, of the zons or the throbbings of earth’s chronometers; and according to its choice will be its lot when it goes out from this strange experience which we are accustomed to call “fe, but which is probably only the vestibule to life.
From the hour of our birth into this material sphere, the soul for the most part yields itself to its environment, of which it is aware through its senses. It becomes
subject to vanity, the Apostle says. It serves divers lusts’ and pleasures. It is enslaved to the domineering caprice of appetite, passion, and desire. If the fruit of the tree appears to be good for food, and is a delight to the eyes, and seems likely to make one wise, it is enough, the hand is reached out to take, and eat, and the eyes are opened to know good and evil. This is the life-story of untold myriads of human beings, Their souls have become enslaved to their senses, so that in the words of Peter’s second Epistle, they are the hapless bond-slaves of corruption. Whatever suggestion is made to them through the gateways of sense elicits from the soul a ready and immediate response. The kingly faculty, which should rule, is carried captive by its lusts. And surely lusts are the lawless exaggeration of
what in our original creation was perfectly natural and innocent, but which by inheritance from past generations, and by our own wanton indulgence, has become depraved and tyrannical?
Such a life is necessarily a divided one. The soul is torn hither and thither. Like a surge of the sea it is driven by every wind, now in this direction and again in that. It is careful and troubled about many things. The cares of the world, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the lusts of other things enter in and choke the word, so that it becomes unfruitful. A multitude of fleshly lusts war against the health and peace of the soul. The vision becomes double, and the soul like a country torn with faction and revolt. Most fitly does the Book of Judges precede that of the Kings, for the
earlier state with most of us is that in which powerful impulses do what is right in their own eyes, not brooking other supremacy than their own wild will. Through all those experiences the soul is not destitute of spiritual impressions. The reign of sense is not absolute. At times the voice of God is heard calling from the heights, and the knock of the spiritual world is detected loudly at the door which opens out to the Infinite. Sometimes, indeed, it seems as though the soul were about to break from its bondage, and stand free and glad before the Throne of God and the Lamb. For a brief space it escapes the defilements of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour, though, alas, often it is again entangled therein and overcome; it turns back from the holy commandment which had been delivered unto it, so that the last end becomes worse than the first. It happens according to the true proverb, the dog turning to his own vomit again, and the sow that had been washed to wallowing in the mire. The rent condition of the soul, which is at the beck and call of every imperious desire, aroused by some outward and earthly solicitation, is well depicted in the vehement ejaculations of another Apostle: Whence come wars and whence come fightings among you? Come they not hence, even of your pleasures, that war in your members? Ye lust and have not: ye kill and covet and cannot obtain: ye fight and war. Ye adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God?
What purity, what peace, what concentration of soul, are possible under such conditions! The inner kingdom is divided against itself, and cannot stand. The soul’s vain attempt to serve two masters is a bitter failure. Now it loves the one and then the other. Love and hatred, attraction and repulsion, the tendency toward God and toward evil, alternately assert themselves, and the harassed soul cries in its tempestuous inner dialogue: I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see a different law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of this body of death!
It is often after such an experience, when the soul anguish has been more acute than
usual, that we are delivered. The soul, sickened with its long and bitter experiences, and conscious of the gracious wooing of its Immortal Lover, turns towards the spiritual side of its nature, throws open the door to the breath of Eternity, and uncurtains its windows to the Eastern sky, flushed with the first touch of dawn. So it stands there with wistful, lingering, longing gaze fixed on God, crying, Umzte my heart to fear Thy name. The Divine Master comes in sight, majestic, radiant, fairer than the sons of men. Instantly the soul recognises its affinity, moves towards its Lover and Friend, saying —
“Jesu, Lover of my soul,
Let me to Thy bosom fly.”
From that moment it enters into Peace that passeth understanding. When it yields itself
to Christ, its supreme Master, surrenders to
Him all the keys of the inner kingdom,
confesses its desire that He should henceforth be its Over - Lord, and bids Him welcome to the throne, a voice as of angels harping on their harps and singing is heard through the soul, saying, Now is come Salvation and the Kingdom of our God: these inner kingdoms are become the Kingdom of God and of His Christ: Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive Power: Hallelujah, for the Lord God, the Omnipotent reigneth. Then as the King Emmanuel enters the city of Mansoul its light becomes that of the crystal, and its happy populations crowd around Him, crying, Rejoice greatly, the King cometh, having salvation! And as the advent of the King supersedes that of the former despotic passions which had wrought
their wild will, there comes to the soul a blessed Unity, a oneness of aim and purpose which gathers up the entire being into a well-ordered and harmonious whole.
The most striking image of this transformation is suggested by the figure of the Temple, used originally by our Lord and afterwards by His great Apostle. In the Temple there were three parts: the Holy of Holies, the Holy Place, and the Outer Court, corresponding respectively to the Spirit, Soul, and Body. As the Soul is central in our nature, so the Holy Place, with its candelabra, its incense-altar, and its shew-bread table, stood between the Most Holy Place on the one hand and the Outer Court on the other. In the Most Holy Place, answering to the human spirit, the Shechinah glory shone as once in the Burning Bush of the Desert and the Beaconcloud of the Wilderness March; but too
often the heavy veil which hung between the Most Holy and the Holy Place obliterated from the mind of Israel that radiant splendour, and the people lived as though: the Outer Court were all, with its sacrifices of bulls and calves, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean.
But when Jesus died on the Cross, the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from top to bottom, the sacred inner shrine stood revealed, the light that had never shone on sea or shore was unveiled, and if it were shining there at that hour, it was set free to flood the Holy Place and the exterior Court. So, when the soul awakens to its true destiny, and resolves that the old man — ze. the former habit of life — shall be surrendered to the Cross, the veil which had hidden the Inner Light is torn in twain, the soul and spirit, like the Holy and Most Holy Place, are thrown into one, and the Light of the Eternal flows through the whole nature from its Divine Fountains, irradiating first the spirit, then the soul, and finally the physical body, until the whole nature becomes one in expectancy, in faith, in desire, in impulse. Then Glory is rendered to God in the Highest, and in the Heart there is Peace. The government is placed on the shoulders of Emmanuel, who is Christ the Lord, and of the increase of His government and of Peace, there is no end,