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physical existence the connexion is indisputable. Up to this limit ‘the dead’ do indeed ‘rule the living.’ And their sovereignty witnesses to an essential truth which lies at the foundation of society. The individual man is not a complete self-centred being. He is literally a member in a body. The connexions of the family, the nation, the race, belong to the idea of man, and to the very existence of man.

But at the same time it is obvious that if this view gives the whole account of man's being, he is a mere result. He is made as it were a mere layer— tradux —of a parent stock, and owes to that his entire vital force. He is bound in a system of material sequences, and so he is necessarily deprived of all responsibility. Thus another aspect of his being is given in Heb. 12:9. Here a distinction is drawn between ‘the fathers of our flesh,’ of our whole physical organisation, with its ‘life,’ and ‘the Father of spirits,’ among which man's spirit is of necessity included. There is then an element in man which is not directly derived by descent, though it may follow upon birth. And in the recognition of this reality of individuality, of a personally divine kinsmanship, lies the truth of Creationism. We are not indeed to suppose that separate and successive creative acts call into existence the ‘spirits’ of single men. It is enough to hold that man was so made that in his children this higher element should naturally find a place on their entrance into the world. That such an issue should ensue when the child begins his separate life is neither more nor less marvellous than that the power of vision should attend the adequate preparation of an organ of vision. So also, to continue the same illustration, the power of vision and the power of self-determination are modified by the organisms through which they act, but they are not created by them. The physical life and the spiritual life spring alike from the one act of the living God when He made man in His own image; through whatever steps, in the unfolding of time, the decisive point was reached when the organism, duly prepared, was fitted to receive the divine breath.

But without attempting to develop a theory of Generationism, as it may be called, as distinguished from Traducianism and Creationism, it is enough for us to notice that the writer of the Epistle affirms the two antithetic facts which represent the social unity of the race and the personal responsibility of the individual, the influence of common thoughts and the power of great men, the foundation of hope and the condition of judgment.

The analysis of man's constitution given by implication in the Epistle corresponds with the fundamental division of St Paul (1 Thess. 5:23 body, soul, spirit ).

The body is noticed both in its completeness (Heb. 10:5) and in respect of the conditions of its present manifestation ( flesh , 5:7, 10:20, 12:9; blood and flesh , 2:14). It is unnecessary to repeat what has been said in the notes on these passages. A comparison of Heb. 5:7 with Heb. 10:5 will place in a clear light the difference between ‘the body,’ which represents the whole organisation through which the growth and fulness of human life is represented according to the conditions under which it is realised (notice 1 Cor. 15:44 sw'ma yucikovn, sw'ma pneumatikovn ), and the ‘flesh,’ which represents what is characteristic of our earthly existence under the aspect of its weakness and transitoriness and affinity with the material world. The moral sense of ‘flesh,’ which is prominent in St Paul, does not occur in the Epistle. The soul, the life ( yuchv ), is an element in man which from the


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