touched.  By the soul the apostle means our powers natural—­the powers which we have by nature.  Herein is the soul distinguishable from the spirit.  In the Epistle to the Corinthians we read—­“But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.  But he that is spiritual judgeth all things.”  Observe, there is a distinction drawn between the natural man and the spiritual.  What is there translated “natural” is derived from precisely the same word as that which is here translated “soul.”  So that we may read just as correctly:  “The man under the dominion of the soul receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God; for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned.  But he that is spiritual judgeth all things.”  And again, the apostle, in the same Epistle to the Corinthians, writes:  “That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural:”  that is, the endowments of the soul precede the endowments of the spirit.  You have the same truth in other places.  The powers that belong to the Spirit were not the first developed; but the powers which belong to the soul, that is the powers of nature.  Again in the same chapter, reference is made to the natural and spiritual body.  “There is a natural body and there is a spiritual body.”  Literally, there is a body governed by the soul—­that is, powers natural:  and there is a body governed by the Spirit—­that is, higher nature.

Let then this be borne in mind, that what the apostle calls “soul” is the same as that which he calls, in another place, the “natural man.”  These powers are divisible into two branches—­the intellectual powers and the moral sense.  The intellectual powers man has by nature.  Man need not be regenerated in order to possess the power of reasoning, or in order to invent.  The intellectual powers belong to what the apostle calls the “soul.”  The moral sense distinguishes between right and wrong.  The apostle tells us, in the Epistle to the Romans, that the heathen—­manifestly natural men—­had the “work of the law written in their hearts; their conscience also bearing witness.”

The third division of which the apostle speaks, he calls the “spirit;” and by the spirit he means that life in man which, in his natural state, is in such an embryo condition, that it can scarcely be said to exist at all—­that which is called out into power and vitality by regeneration—­the perfection of the powers of human nature.  And you will observe, that it is not merely the instinctive life, nor the intellectual life, nor the moral life, but it is principally our nobler affections—­that existence, that state of being, which we call love.  That is the department of human nature which the apostle calls the spirit; and accordingly, when the Spirit of God was given on the day of Pentecost, you will,