But here is a pamphlet of no less than four small pages purporting to prove that man is all soul.The first sentence of this pamphlet is: "What, in the language of the Bible, constitutes the living soul ? "Answer: "The man." The next is: "Is not the soul distinct from the man as the jewel from the casket ?" Again: "And does it not reside in the body as a bird in a cage ?" Answer: "No; for the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and MAN became a LIVING SOUL. Gen. 2:7; I Cor. 15:44, 45." He adds: "This is God’s definition."

So publishes to the world a very sincere Adventist of the Miller school, baptized into Elder Storrs’ newly improved system of spiritual mortality, enlarged and improved by one of the most gifted "investigators" of the school of Dr. Priestley. It is then the quintessence of what was formerly called "materialism," refined and condensed into a single tract of four small pages from the pen of Elder J. C. Cook, a good and excellent man for whom I entertain a very high regard.

But our friend Cook, in the warmth of his feeling, assures us that he has given us "God’s definition" of the soul. It is neither Storrs’, nor Priestley’s, nor the more profound Thomas’, but "God’s own definition." Of course, in that view of it, it is scarcely a proper subject of examination. I must, then, powerful though it be, respectfully say that God has never given us a definition of the human soul, much less such a one as defines man to be the soul, and then the soul to be the man.

I am obliged to take this ground before I dare object to a definition purporting to be of such awful authority. It is, then, but Elder Cook’s definition, unless we may suppose that every so-called definition is God’s own definition to which any one may please to append a passage of Scripture.

This new class of destructionists are very adroit in this mode of assault upon the citadel of truth, but their logic is as frail as their tenents discreditable to human nature. They presume that the human consitution is wholly revealed and developed in the words: "The Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of lives, and man became a living soul." This "living soul" is immediately placed before their inquisition, and tried by scourging. It is easily proved that this "living soul" is a mortal soul, and a mortal body. That the whole man is but one living soul, is again reiterated, and a text is summoned that convicts it of sin worthy of death, in the words, "The soul that sinneth IT shall die." (Ezek. 18 :4). Thus the human soul is easily disposed, dissipated, and annihilated by the sheer force of one or two philological criticisms.

A little Hebrew would have much facilitated the operation. The gloss put upon ruach chaiyim by the aforesaid commentators could be shown off to great advantage by citing three other passages, the only ones where chaiyim is construed with ruach—Gen. 6:17; 7:15 and 22—where it is applied to animals destroyed by the flood. Might not a shrewd advocate of this theory now say with an air of triumph: "Now if breath of LIVES indicates intellectual and immortal spirits, then were they imparted to brutes, and did they "perish" in the flood? And let us help them a little more. In Genesis 1:20 and 30 we find the Hebrew nepash, a word generally and correctly translated "soul." And it is descriptive of fish, birds, and reptiles. We could give many instances in which nepesh is translated soul, blood, the animal body (alive or dead). And in these respects it exactly resembles its Greek representative psuchee, and its Latin converse anima. It often denotes any, creature that lives by breathing. But all this counts nothing for those who contend that man is a mere biped animal with a superior organization, but in no way constituted different from the brute. The language thus far considered is not a definition of man, not even a definition of soul, body, or spirit.