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to the saving of the animal life. He that converteth a sinning 
brother from the error of his ways shall save a soul from 
death, and shall hide the multitude of sins which that erring one 
hath committed. When the apostle John prays that Gaius 
may prosper and be in health, even as his soul prospers, the 
soul is contemplated as possessed of both grace and intelli- 
gence. Soul, we have seen, belongs to the Blessed God 
Himself. One inference, we think, is clear, that if “ soul ” is 
used in Scripture for the mere animal life, it is also used in a 
sense which implies the mind and spirit. 
51. Any argument drawn against the immortality of the 
soul, because the word is used in Scripture for life, lies equally 
against the immortality of the spirit. In Eccles. iii. 19, beasts 
and men are said to have one spirit (ruach). In ver. 21 it is 
asked, WIlo knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, 
and the spirit oi the beast that goeth downward to the 
earth V 3 Again the word used is ruach. Nephesh and ruach, 
psyche and pneuma, and the Latin animus and anima, have all 
one radical idea, that of breath or wind, all seeming to carry 
m them a memorial of the revealed fact, that God at the first 
breathed into man the breath of lives. 
52. Conceding that many inferior animals possess a measure 
or intelligence, still it is clear that in them an unreasoning 
instinct is in the ascendant. The soul of man, in the sense in 
which we contemplate it, while distinguished by a moral and 
religious nature, is also separated from that of the beast by 
reason. In him reason holds the higher place; instinct the 
lower. Reason is the great instrument by which he maintains 
his lordship in creation. The Arctic fox stores up provisions 
ior the winter. Instinct is to him a safer guide in this respect 
than reason to the Esquimaux. Nevertheless the Esquimaux 
defectively developed as their reasoning faculty is, are so- 
vereigns over him and all other creatures in the regions in 
which they live. 
53. The inferiority of instinct to reason is seen in the tame 
beaver, which will build a dam in the corner of a room, with 
brushes, _ fire-irons, and books, and then sit down behind it. 
Reason, m its higher sense, is peculiar to the human soul. It 
is that power which it has of deducing universal truths from 
particular appearances, or of contemplating the ideal relations 
ot things. Hence the human soul, in this lower creation 
stands peerless. 9 
o4. The rational soul is a magazine in which knowledge 
can be stored almost without limit. But it is more • it is a 
living plant, whose nature is to grow, to bud and shoot out 
m all directions. The soul of man is naturally curious and 
VOL. VI. g 
