within him. He found himself divided. One less conscious than he was, that the influence which gave men power to be at any time victorious over the evil within them came from without, might have described his moral sensations by saying that he felt himself sometimes on the side of good and sometimes on the side of evil. But the apostle was not sometimes one kind of man and sometimes another; he was two men, or there were two men within him. There was an old man and a new man, an inner man and another. And where the fervour of the religious imagination produced creations like these, it may easily be conceived to have spoken of two aspects of the one thing, the mind, as if they were two things. Elsewhere, both with St. Paul and with the author of Hebrews, we find human nature spoken of as consisting of two elements only. The one speaks of "cleansing ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God" (2 Cor. vii. 1); and the other, of our drawing near unto God, "having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water" (x. 22). It is most likely, therefore, that the trichotomy which appears in some other passages is rhetorical, and not to be taken literally.

2. The terms' Body' and 'Flesh:

If we return now to the Old Testament and inquire how the three terms, body, soul, and spirit, are employed there, the following may be taken as an outline of what the usage is:

As to the body. The Hebrew word for 'body' is, which is sometimes used for the living body (Ezek. i. 11, "bodies of the Cherubim"; Gen. xlvii. 18; Neh. ix. 37), but usually for the dead body or carcase. This term hardly corresponds to the Greek σῶμα. Properly speaking, Hebrew has no term for body.' The Hebrew term around which questions relating to the body must gather is flesh,. Now, the only question really of interest in

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regard to this term is the question whether in the Old Testament an ethical idea had already begun to attach to it? Such an ethical use of the word 'flesh,' σáp, is very characteristic of the New Testament, at least of the Pauline Epistles; and it is of interest to inquire whether it be found also in the Old Testament.

The word 'flesh' is found in the Old Testament used of the muscular part of the body in distinction from other parts, such as skin, bones, blood, and the like, especially such parts of animals slain for food or for sacrifice. Hence it is used for food along with bread (Ex. xvi. 3), or wine, -eating flesh and drinking wine (Isa. xxii. 13),—and forms the main element of the sacrifice. The fact that it is used for sacrifice, and offered to the Lord as His fire-food, shows that no uncleanness belongs to the flesh as such. The distinctness of clean and unclean among animals is not one due to the flesh, for they are all alike flesh. The flesh in itself has no impurity attaching to it; it is of no moral quality.

In living creatures the same distinctions are drawn between the flesh of the body and other parts of it" this is bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh." But the flesh being the most outstanding part of the living creature, covering the bones and containing the blood, it naturally came to be used, the part being taken for the whole, of the living creature in general. In this sense it represents the creature as an organised being, flexible, smooth, and possessing members. In Arabic the corresponding word is used of the surface of the body as smooth and fresh; and it is curious that in Hebrew flesh in this sense does not seem to be employed of animals covered with feathers or hair, and probably the soft, fresh muscle and the smooth surface of the animal body is the prominent notion. Hence a usage which is as far as possible from casting any aspersion of an ethical kind upon the flesh, in the prophet Ezekiel, who says: "A new heart will I give unto you . . . I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh" (xxxvi. 26).

This usage forms the transition to a wider one, according to which sensuous creatures, particularly mankind, are called all flesh. This remarkable expression for mankind, or for sensuous creatures in general, is usually, however, employed in a way that may suggest its origin. It is generally, or at least very often, used when there is an antithesis of some kind suggested between mankind and God. And it is possible that this antithesis gave rise to this way of naming mankind. The suggestive passage Isa. xxxi. 3, "The Egyptians are men, and not God: and their horses are flesh, and not spirit," perhaps gives a key to the kind of idea underlying the usage. The idea must be carefully observed. The passage begins: "Woe to them that go down to Egypt for help; that stay (trust) on horses, and look not unto the Holy One of Israel." The question with the prophet is a question of help, or where real strength lies. Therefore when he says, "their horses are flesh, and not spirit," his point is not what the horses are composed of, but what they are able to accomplish.

When Jehovah is called Spirit, it is not a question of His essence, but of His power. And when men are spoken of as all flesh, the emphasis does not fall on that which they are made of, but it rather expresses a secondary idea, no doubt suggested by this, the idea of their weakness. Flesh as one sees it is perishable, and subject to decay; when the spirit is withdrawn it turns into its dust. As thus feeble and subject to decay, in contrast with God who is eternal, mankind and all creatures are spoken of as all flesh. The primary sense may perhaps be seen in Deut. v. 26: "For what is all flesh, that it might hear the voice of the living God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as we, and live?" And, similarly, Isa. xl. 6, 7: “ All flesh is grass. . . the grass withereth . . . but the word of our God shall stand for ever." Naturally, supposing this to be the origin of the expression, it came also to be used when no such antithesis between mankind and God was designed to be expressed. The phrase might have arisen from the fact that the flesh or body of

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animated creatures is the prominent thing about them to the eye; but in any case the expression denotes usually the weakness and perishableness of those creatures called 'flesh.' Mankind is also called ; but this phrase denotes every individual of mankind, whereas all flesh is rather the whole race; the characteristic of which is that it is flesh, and therefore weak and perishable.

Now this leads to the last point, namely, whether the term 'flesh' is used in an ethical sense, to imply moral defect, or to be the source of moral weakness. The Hebrews are rather apt to confuse the physical and the moral. There was, of course, no tendency among them, as with us, to resolve the moral into the physical, and obliterate the moral idea altogether. The tendency was the contrary one, to give moral significance to the physical or material; to consider the physical but a form or expression of the moral. So specific forms of disease acquired a moral meaning, and were religious uncleannesses. To touch the dead created a religious disability. This arose from their mixing up the two spheres, and their thinking of them in connection with one another; or it led to it. And this being the case, it might be very natural for them to give to the physical weakness of mankind as flesh' a moral complexion. Whether they did so is difficult to decide. They often couple the two together-man's moral and his physical weakness. The Psalmist, in Ps. ciii., blesses God, who healeth all our diseases and forgiveth all our sins. here the things, though combined, are still distinct. so in another beautiful passage, Ps. lxxviii. 38, 39: “But He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity yea, many a time turned He His anger away. . . . For He remembered that they were but flesh; a wind that passeth away, and cometh not again." Here flesh and iniquity are by no means confounded; on the contrary, He forgave their iniquity because He remembered that they were flesh-that is, transitory beings, a wind that passeth away and cometh not again.

Yet

And

It is possible that in such passages, where sin and flesh

go together, the feeling appears that it is to be expected that beings so weak physically should be weak morally, and liable to sin. This seems to be the view in Job xiv. 1-4: "Man, born of woman, is of few days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth as a flower, and withereth: he fleeth as a shadow, and continueth not. And dost thou open thine eyes upon such an one, and bringest me into judgment with thee? O that a clean could be out of an unclean! there is not one." Here the two things, physical frailness and moral uncleanness, again go together; but they do not seem confused. Neither are they confused in the words of Eliphaz, chap. iv. 17-19: "Shall man be righteous with God? Behold, He charges His angels with error; how much more man, that dwelleth in houses of clay, which are crushed before the moth." And there is a similar passage in chap. xv. 14. In all such passages the universal sinfulness of mankind is strongly expressed, and his physical weakness and liability to decay serve to strengthen the impression or assurance of his moral frailty. It is this moral fallibility that is insisted on. There is also reference to his physical frailty and brief life; he is called flesh, and said to dwell in houses of clay and the like. It is considered natural that one physically so frail should also be morally frail and sinful. Physical frailty is pleaded as a ground of compassion for moral frailty. But the two do not seem to be confounded; neither is it taught that the cause of man's moral frailty is to be found in his physical nature, or that the flesh is in itself sinful, or the seat of sin.

3. The term 'Spirit.

The words spirit,, and soul, p, are often put in antithesis to the flesh, and express the invisible element in man's nature the separation of which from the body is death. In the Old Testament the word, spirit, is the more important term. In the New Testament, spirit, TVEûμa, is little used of any natural element in man; it