320 Life and Immortality. 



things. It penetrates where neshemet el cannot penetrate, but 

 when speaking of the motivity and sustentation of organized 

 dust, or souls, they co-exist with them, the Ruach Elohim 

 becoming the ruach chayim, or spirit of lives; the neshemet el, 

 the neshemet chayim, or breath of lives, and both together in 

 the elaboration and support of life, the neshemet ruach chayim, 

 or breath of the spirit of lives. Living creatures, or souls, are 

 not animated, as is erroneously supposed, by a vital principle 

 which is capable of disembodied existence. On the contrary, 

 souls are made living by the coetaneous operation of the 

 ruach chayim and the neshemet chayim upon their organized 

 tissues according to certain fixed laws, called natural laws. 

 When the as yet occult laws of the all-pervading ruach, or 

 spirit, shall be made known, men will be astonished at their 

 ignorance respecting living souls, as we are at the notion of 

 the ancients that their immortal gods resided in the stocks 

 and the stones they so ignorantly worshipped. 



Though lent to the creatures of the natural world for the 

 allotted period of their living existence, yet the ruach chayim 

 and neshemet chayim are still God's breath and God's spirit, 

 and to distinguish them from the expanse of air and spirit 

 in their totality, they are sometimes specifically styled " the 

 spirit of man" and "the spirit of the beast," or collectively 

 "the spirits of all flesh," and "their breath." Thus it is 

 written in Ecclesiastes, " they have all one ruach, or spirit, 

 so that man hath no preeminence over a beast; for all is 

 vanity or vapor." " All go to one place ; all are of the dust, 

 and all turn to dust again." And in the sense of supplying 

 to every living creature, or soul, spirit and breath, Jehovah 

 is styled by Moses in the book of Numbers, " God of the 

 spirits of all flesh" 



Enough has been advanced to show the Scriptural import 

 of the text already quoted, that " the Lord God formed man, 

 the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the 

 breath of lives ; and man became a living soul." The sim- 

 ple, obyious and undogmatic meaning of this is, that the 



