or false, it is not necessarily a doctrine self-contradictory.  Let them be assured of this, in all modesty, that such men never could have held it unless there was latent in the doctrine a deep truth,—­perchance the truth of God.

We pass on now to the consideration of this verse under the following divisions.  In the first place, we shall view it as a triad in discord:  “I pray God your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless;” in the second place, as a Trinity in Unity:  “the God of peace sanctify you wholly.”  We take then first of all for our consideration the triad in discord:  “I pray God your whole body and soul and spirit be preserved blameless.”

The apostle here divides human nature into a three-fold division; and here we have to observe again the difficulty often experienced in understanding words.  Thus words in the Athanasian creed have become obsolete, or lost their meaning:  so that in the present day the words “person,” “substance,” “procession,” “generation,” to an ordinary person, mean almost nothing.  So this language of the apostle, when rendered into English, shows no difference whatever between “soul” and “spirit.”  We say, for instance, that the soul of a man has departed from him.  We also say that the spirit of a man has departed from him.  There is no distinct difference between the two; but in the original two very different kinds of thoughts—­two very different modes of conception—­are represented by the two English words “soul” and “spirit.”

It is our business, therefore, in the first place, to understand what is meant by this threefold division.  When the apostle speaks of the body, what he means is the animal life—­that which we share in common with beasts, birds, and reptiles; for our life my Christian brethren—­our sensational existence—­differs but little from that of the lower animals.  There is the same external form, the same material in the blood-vessels, in the nerves, and in the muscular system.  Nay, more than that, our appetites and instincts are alike, our lower pleasures like their lower pleasures, our lower pain like their lower pain, our life is supported by the same means, and our animal functions are almost indistinguishably the same.

But, once more, the apostle speaks of what he calls the “soul.”  What the apostle meant by what is translated “soul,” is the immortal part of man—­the immaterial as distinguished from the material:  those powers, in fact, which man has by nature—­powers natural, which are yet to survive the grave.  There is a distinction made in scripture by our Lord between these two things.  “Fear not,” says He, “them who can kill the body; but rather fear Him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.”

We have again, to observe respecting this, that what the apostle called the “soul,” is not simply distinguishable from the body, but also from the spirit; and on that distinction I have already