By the Rev. A. G. DIXON, B.A., D.D. (of the Metropolitan Tabernacle)

Does the invisible part of man continue to exist after the visible part has turned to dust? Every man is his body plus something more, and the something more is greater than his body. Without any fine-spun definitions we will consider the soul as meaning that part of us which thinks, loves, rejoices, suffers, approves the right and condemns the wrong.

Ralph Wells, in defining the soul to a class of ragged children, said, "The soul is that which thinks, loves and feels." "Yes," said a little ragged girl, "and aches so." There are times when the soul does ache, and there are times when it mounts up on wings of joy.

The immortality of the soul is, first of all, suggested by Nature. We plant a seed in the springtime, and in autumn we reap the same kind of seed. The thing that continues in the seed is the vital force, the life. The particles may be different, but the life is the same. Take out the life, and it is all dead matter. The reappearance of this life in bud and leaf and flower at least suggests that the life mental, moral, and spiritual in us may continue after death.

The fact that the soul is not seen is no proof against its existence, but rather presumption in favour of its continuance, for there is no microscope which has yet revealed to the eye the life of the seed.

It is said that while Dr. James Armstrong was preaching on the immortality of the soul, an atheistic physician rose and asked him if he had ever seen the soul. "No," replied Armstrong, "I have never seen a soul."

The physician continued, "Did you ever hear a soul? "

"No."

" Did you ever taste a soul? "

"No."

"Did you ever smell a soul?"

"No."

"Did you ever feel a soul?"

"Yes, thank God," replied the pious preacher.

"Well," said the physician, "there are four of the five senses against one that there is a soul."

Dr. Armstrong then asked, "Did you ever see a pain ? "

The physician had to confess, "No."

" Did you ever hear a pain? "

"No."

"Did you ever taste a pain?"

"No."

11 Did you ever smell a pain ? "

"No."

"Well, then, there are four senses against one that there is pain, and yet you know there is pain. So I know there is a soul."

The preacher might have asked the doctor, "Did you ever see your brain, or smell your brain, or taste your brain, or hear your brain? "

"No."

"Well, there are four senses against one that you have any brain." The invisible part of us is the real part. The unseen is the eternal. The body is the casket which holds the jewel of the soul.

Again, the immortality of the soul is taught by universal consciousness. The rude savage believes in a future state. The Indian buries with his comrade the blanket, the bow and arrow, believing that he will need these things in the happy hunting grounds of the future. Even modern infidelity does not deny it. When the champion blasphemer of America stood over the corpse of his brother, he spoke of the star of hope which the soul sees in the night. The heart is sometimes wiser than the head.

In order to express his hostility to Christianity, one may in a moment of weakness declare that he expects to die like a dog, and that will be the last of him; but if you were to look into his face and tell him that you believe there is nothing in him higher than you find in the dog, he would be insulted. And yet if he continues to assert that he does not belong to a higher grade than the dog, he is apt to degenerate into a dog-like character.

Mr. Spurgeon tells of an English pastor who, after he had preached on the immortality of the soul, was approached by one of his parishioners, who told him that he did not believe in the teaching of his sermon. "There is no difference," he said, "between the man and the dog."

"Well," replied the preacher, "I really thought that I was furnishing food for people who had souls; if I had known that there was a dog among them, I might have brought bones for him." The man did not enjoy this personal and practical application of his own admission.

Suggested by Nature, taught by universal consciousness, the immortality of the soul is confirmed by observation. If you will turn to any first-class book on mental philosophy, you will find instances in which memory has grown stronger while the body has grown weaker. There are cases on record where page after page in foreign languages, long forgotten, have been repeated by men on beds of sickness. A friend told me that, when he was thrown from a horse and almost killed, the panorama of his past life came before him; impressions that had faded from memory, while he was physically strong, were revived during the time of weakness.

So imagination is sometimes most brilliant when the body is weakest. I have known at least two or three men whose reason was as vigorous just a moment before they died as it ever was in their days of physical strength.

If you have ever been in Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, and stood over the River Styx, you will remember that it disappears under the cavern walls. Up to the very point of disappearance the current is swift. Is there a man on earth foolish enough to suppose that there is no river after the swift current has disappeared? Does he not believe, with a conviction that amounts to certainty, that the river, though hidden, continues to flow on? And when up to the point of dying we find memory, imagination, reason, love and conscience as strong, if not stronger, than ever before, is there not a presumption which amounts to a conviction of certainty that these faculties of the soul will continue to live after the body dies? In fact, that the memory is sometimes strongest when the body is weakest goes rather to suggest that the body is a weight which the memory has to carry, and when it gets rid of the body memory will assert its full strength.

The immortality of the soul, suggested by Nature, taught by universal consciousness, and confirmed by observation, is finally established by revelation. The words "immortal" and "immortality" occur six times in the Bible. They are two words in the Greek, one of which means "incorruptible" and the other "deathless." The word meaning "incorruptible" is applied to God Himself in 1 Tim. i. 17, and is so translated by the revisers. In Rom. ii. 7 are the words, "To them who by patient continuance in well-doing seek for glory and honour and immortality, eternal life." The revision correctly renders it "incorruption," which we are to seek diligently.

The word which means "deathlessness" occurs in 1 Tim. vi. 16, and refers to the Lord Jesus, "Who only hath immortality, dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto." The Deity of Jesus, dwelling in this unapproachable light, cannot die. He took upon Him the humanity which could die, but His Deity is deathlessness.

This Scripture does not even intimate that wicked men will cease to exist after death. "It is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment." God cannot die and live again, but man can.

The difference between immortality and eternal life is clearly intimated in these Scriptures. Immortality means everlasting existence, but eternal life is not eternal existence. Dead things exist. I can imagine a piece of steel existing a million years, but after the million years have passed it will be as dead as it is now. Corpses exist. Men dead in trespasses and in sins on this side of the grave exist, and they will exist after death. One does not begin really to live until he has accepted Christ; but he exists.

Eternal life is a present possession, not a future continuity. "He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life." Write the little word HATH in capital letters, for eternal life is in the present tense. It is the gift of God through Jesus Christ. Immortality was imparted when God created man in His own image. Sin brought death, which is separation from God, but it did not bring non-existence. Man continued to exist after he had sinned. To say that the words "perish," "die," "destruction" mean annihilation is to speak unscripturally and unscientifically. Science knows no annihilation; it simply recognises changes of form and substance. Death does not bring about annihilation of the body. We keep it several days after death, and tenderly lay it away beneath the flowers.

Separation from God, Who is the source of life, is the death of the soul in time and eternity. Hence we are told in 2 Thess. i. 9 that the wicked "shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His power."

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus (Luke xvi.) it is made plain that reason, memory and imagination continue to exist after the death of the body. The rich man in Hades uses the word "therefore"; he reasons. Abraham said to him, "Son, remember." And his request that Lazarus shall be sent back to earth, to rise from the dead and startle his brethren into repentance, shows that imagination still exists. This testimony of Jesus that the reason, memory and imagination of the wicked continue to exist after death is final, and settles the question once for all.