element or nature belonging to the body.  Man is essentially one;[3] but there is both a material and a non-material, a physical and a spiritual element, in the one nature.  But, being a spiritual element, that part of our nature necessarily has two sides (so to speak).  It has its point of contact with self and the world of sense, and its point of contact with the world of spirit and with the Great Spirit of all, from whom it came. Because of that higher “breath of lives” given by the Most High, man possesses the faculty of consciousness of God (i.e., the higher spiritual faculties), besides the consciousness of self, or merely intellectual power regarding self and the external world.  Therefore, when an Apostle desires to speak very forcibly of something that is to affect a man through and through, in every part and in every aspect of his nature, he speaks of the “whole spirit, soul, and body.”  To sum up:  all that we know from the Bible is that God gave a “soul” (nephesh) to the animals, in consequence of which (when united to the physical structure) the functions of life and the phenomena of intelligence are manifested.  So God gave a non-material, and therefore “spiritual,” element to human nature; and this being of a higher grade and capacity to that of the animal world, not only in its union with physical structure, makes the man a “living soul”—­gives him an intelligence and a certain reason such as the animals have, but also gives him, as a special and unique endowment; the consciousness of self (involving—­which is very noteworthy—­a consciousness of its own limitations) and the consciousness of God.  Hence man’s power of improvement.  If the man cultivates only the self-consciousness and the reason that is with it, the Scriptures speak of him as the “natural or psychic man;” if he is enabled by Divine grace to develop the higher moral and spiritual part of his nature, and to walk after the Spirit, not after the flesh, he is a “spiritual man.”

[Footnote 1:  1 Thess. v. 23.]

[Footnote 2:  Matt. x. 28.]

[Footnote 3:  The well-known argument of St. Paul regarding the resurrection in 1 Cor. xv. (ver. 45, &c.) is well worthy of consideration in this connection.  He deals with man as one whole; nothing is said about a man being (or having) a spirit separate from his soul and his body, and that spirit being given a higher body than it had upon earth; but of the whole man, soul and body, being raised and changed into a man, also one whole, with a more perfect body—­a body more highly developed in the ascending scale of perfection.  I do not forget the passage where the same Apostle (2 Cor. v. 6) speaks of being in the body, and absent from the Lord; and of being “clothed upon;” but this does not in any way detract from the importance of the treatment of the subject in the First Epistle.]