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Page 3
It is my purpose in a different way to attempt to trace some of the
steps of what may be called the evolution of the spirit, or, in the
light of modern knowledge, the growth of the soul as it moves upward. At
the outset I must make it plain that I am speaking of evolution since
the time when man as a spirit appeared. Given the spiritual being, what
are the stages through which he will pass on his way to the goal toward
which he is surely pressing?
Just here we should ask, What do we mean by the soul? The word is used
in its popular sense, as synonymous with spirit or personality. Man has
a dual nature; one part of his being is of the dust and to the dust it
returns; the other part is a mystery; it is known only by what it does.
Man thinks, loves, chooses, and is conscious of himself as thinking,
loving, choosing. The unity of this being who thinks, loves, chooses in
a single self-consciousness constitutes him a spirit, or personality;
and that is what the word soul signifies in its popular usage. There is
another technical definition which may be true or false but which is of
no importance in our study.
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,
one Infinite Spirit, and that all other spiritual beings have proceeded
from Him as the rays of light are flashed from the sun; and that, in
time, all will return to Him again and be absorbed in the being from
which they have come. Thus all spirits are supposed to have proceeded
from one source--God. As all natural life in the end is but a
manifestation of solar energy, so all human beings are supposed to be
only bits of God, for a time imprisoned in bodies, and some time to
return to the Deity and be absorbed in Him, or in it.
Another answer to the question as to the soul's origin is that of
Pre�xistence. This may be called the Oriental theory, for almost the
whole Orient holds this view. The substance of the teaching is suggested
by Wordsworth, in his "Ode to Immortality," in the following lines:
"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us, our life's star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar."
Many Occidentals have believed in pre�xistence. One of the most
intelligent persons whom I have ever known once affirmed that she had
had thoughts which she was sure were memories of events which had
occurred in a previous life. This answer only pushes the question one
stage further back, and leaves us still inquiring, Where do the souls of
men originally come from?
Another answer to our question affirms that every individual soul is
created by God whenever a body is in readiness to receive it--that when
a body is born a soul is made to order for it. An old poet wrote as
follows:
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