Immortal spirit

“ With these facts before you, that man is mortal, and that the soul and spirit of man are never spoken in the Scriptures as immortal, we may now ask you to listen to the use of the word immortal, so that you may more fully see that immortality is in no sense man's present possession, and that therefore "immortal soul" and "immortal spirit" are invented phrases--not scriptural. ”

“ Look upward, Feeble Ones! look up, and trust
That He, who lays this mortal frame in dust,
Still hath the immortal Spirit in His keeping.
In Jesus' sight they are not dead, but sleeping. ”

“ The immortal could we cease to contemplate, The mortal part suggests its every trait. God laid His fingers on the ivories Of her pure members as on smoothèd keys, And there out-breathed her spirit's harmonies. ”

“ I shall, however, remark upon this subject, that the writers in favour of the immortality [21] of the soul have done that truth great injury, by connecting it necessarily with its immateriality. The immortality of the soul depends upon the will of the Deity, and not upon the supposed properties of spirit. Matter is in its own nature as immortal as spirit. It is resolvable by heat and mixture into a variety of forms ”

“ the immortal waters quench the spirit's longing.
Art thou not now, bright one, all sorrow past, in elation,
Made young with joy, grown brother-hearted with the vast,
Whither thy spirit wending flits the dim stars past
Unto the Light of Lights in burning adoration. ”

“ Trembling I sit day and night, my friends are astonish'd at me.
Yet they forgive my wanderings, I rest not from my great task!
To open the Eternal Worlds, to open the immortal Eyes
Of Man inwards into the Worlds of Thought: into Eternity
20Ever expanding in the Bosom of God. the Human Imagination
O Saviour pour upon me thy Spirit of meekness & love:
Annihilate the Selfhood in me, be thou all my life! ”

“ He felt an inner secret joy!
A spirit of unfettered will
Through light and darkness moving still
Within the All to find its own,
To be immortal and alone. ”

“ I believe that the mind may make its own immortality: thought is the spiritual part of existence; and so long as my mind influences others, so long as my thoughts remain behind, so long shall my spirit be conscious and immortal. The body may perish—not so the essence which survives in the living and lasting page." ”

“ In the spirit's perfect air, In the passions tame and kind, Innocence from selfish care, The real Eden we shall find.
When the soul to sin hath died, True and beautiful and sound, Then all earth is sanctified, Upsprings paradise around.
From the spirit-land, afar All disturbing force shall flee; Stir, nor toil, nor hope shall mar Its immortal unity." [N] "'Tis well known that according to the sense of antiquity, these two considerations were always included in that one opinion of the soul's immortality—namely ”

“ The mistake is that we cling to the body when it is the spirit that is really immortal. ”

“ In the bowels of love and mercy, let me beg thee to ask thy soul this question, How long will this life and the comforts of it last? Thy soul is immortal, and must never die, but it must have a being somewhere to all eternity. ”

“ But do you not think this should strengthen one’s faith in the soul’s immortality? Are we not spirits living in material bodies? And when the material body dies, if our spirits are immortal, why should not they seek to manifest themselves to their friends on earth? ”

“ But here's the thing I could never get out of the way—and if I only could! If my soul is immortal, why did it have a beginning? If I'm to know eternal life, why don't I reach out to infinity behind as well as before? How can a thing be immortal that has its moment of birth? ”

“ That is the heritage of the immortal soul. And this soul must feel, and sometimes reveal itself, whether by visions that transcend the real, by aspirations that out-soar the possible, by storms, or by tears. ”

“ First of all, because, be it gentle or simple, the same great Creator breathed into it the breath of life, that gave me 'life and breath and all things.' An immortal soul is God's trust to those who have to train it, or help in nursing it for Him. ”

“ Ponder over the following questions and see the folly of the doctrine of the immortality of the soul:
Since the Bible speaks of a living man (Gen. 2:7) as a living soul, and a dead man as a dead soul, (Num. 6:6; 9:10) (the word body in these verses is from nephesh) , and since Paul defines a living soul to be a natural body (I Cor. 15:44, 45) , how can you speak of the soul as immortal, deathless? ”

“ Can it be? to live for ever! I have heard of enchantments, in which the victims were plunged into a deep sleep, to wake, after a hundred years, as fresh as ever: I have heard of the Seven Sleepers--thus to be immortal would not be so burthensome: but, oh! ”

“ Thy glorious immortality in man:
A theme for ever, and for all, of weight,
Of moment infinite! but relish’d most
By those who love Thee most, who most adore. 670
Nature, thy daughter, ever-changing birth
Of Thee the Great Immutable, to man
Speaks wisdom, is his oracle supreme;
And he who most consults her, is most wise.
Lorenzo, to this heavenly Delphos haste;
And come back all-immortal, all-divine:
Look nature through, ’tis revolution all;
All change; no death. Day follows night; and night
The dying day; stars rise, and set, and rise;
Earth takes th’ example. ”

“ Swept on and up in ecstasy, perception becoming ever clearer, he beheld the so-called soul-self of man unravelled into its component parts and laid before him like the unwoven threads of a garment, and behold in these was no durability nor immortality, for there is but one Immortal, one Infinite, and the man who claims his own, his separate immortality, is dying and reborn through the ages and but the fierce desire of life gives him its simulacrum and the long-linked chain of births and deaths and griefs immeasurable. ”

“ Consult your nature, examine your own heart, consider what you are, what you want, what you feel, deeply want, keenly feel, and then say whether the Revelation of a God, a Father, and an immortal life, satisfies you as nothing else can. Take them away, and would there not be a dreary and overwhelming void? And because you have not seen God, because you have not realized immortality, because they reach beyond your present vision, because the grave shuts you in, because they are high and transcendent truths, will you reject them? ”

“ To those who Dream of Immortality.—So you desire the everlasting perpetuity of this beautiful consciousness of yourselves? Is it not [pg 225] shameful? Do you forget all those other things which would in their turn have to support you for all eternity, just as they have borne with you up to the present with more than Christian patience? Or do you think that you can inspire them with an eternally pleasant feeling towards yourself? A single immortal man on earth would imbue everyone around him with such a disgust for him that a general epidemic of murder and suicide would be brought about. ”

“ But God bestowed upon us an immortal soul, to watch as a guardian angel over the body, and placed it in the loftiest part of our frame, to teach us to look upward, and remember our birth,—that men are not creatures of clay but children of God and heirs of immortality. ”

“ Who has ever felt in dreams his soul torn from hell, and borne by angels into heaven? Who has ever known what it was to be God's own child for a fleeting moment—felt the lightning flash of heaven-bliss gleam through his heart? He had expected to meet one faithless to her vows; but as the voice of simple truth and love thrills through his innermost being, he grows omnipotent, immortal. ”

“ We watched the women, drank a great deal, and conversed on the immortality of the soul.
“It’s foolish,” said one of my comrades who was older than I, “it’s foolish to believe that it would be a blessing to have an immortal soul. Look at that old harridan dancing there, whose head and hands tremble if she stays still a moment. One sees directly that she is wicked and ugly and entirely worthless, and that she’s getting more and more so every day. How ridiculous it would be to imagine that she had an immortal soul! ”

“ Still, again, there is immortality, and an infinitely hospitable immortality, which the hand and the whole body and the soul, be it yours or be it mine, all have a place and a part in. There is immortality, and, besides those things that were just named, divinity is also immortal. But even a God dies, this being just one of the things that make him God. Any man, then, or any being, or any thing, may say, "I am immortal." ”

“ It is a fanciful idea, that whatever we say or think, is immortal; that every word we utter goes ringing through the universe forever; that every thought of the heart becomes a creation, a thing of vitality in some shape, starting forward among the things of some sort of life, never to die! I have sometimes, in my dreamy hours, speculated upon the truth of such a theory, and reasoned with myself in favor of its reality. ”

“ Yes, and that it was immortal, too! You see a body, and therefore you believe in it. You see that it is mortal and therefore you believe in its mortality. You do not see the soul--therefore you believe in one? ”

“ Once more, in the haunts of earth, thy soul charms me to thy side. Wiser now, in the moment when thou comprehendest Death, than when thy unfettered spirit learned the solemn mystery of Life; the human affections that thralled and humbled thee awhile bring to thee, in these last hours of thy mortality, the sublimest heritage of thy race,—the eternity that commences from the grave. ”

“ They believe the soul to be both immaterial and immortal. They say that it keeps fluttering about the lips during the pangs of death; and that then it ascends and mixes with, or, as they express it, is eaten by the deity. ”

“ Our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.—II. Timothy, i. 10.
Immortal honour, endless fame
Attend the Almighty Father’s name.
Dryden.
Thy nature, immortality! who knows?
And yet who knows it not? It is but life
In stronger thread of brighter colour spun,
And spun for ever, dipt by cruel fate
In Stygian die, how black, how brittle here! ”

“ What has time to do with our immortal soul? and if the soul be immortal, will not the best part of our life, our love, all that we have striven, and yearned for be purified and increased, and remain ours for ever. ”

“ But in those skyey spaces what dread change!
⁠Thus have we seen the mortal turn immortal;
⁠So doth the day's soul die, as through death's portal
The soul of man takes up its heavenward range.
⁠A million orbs endue
⁠The unfathomable blue—
Till, the long miracle of night withdrawn,
The world beholds once more the miracle of dawn. ”

“ DOES NATURE TEACH THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL?
We behold man a living, breathing, thinking creature, possessed of what we call the five senses--seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling and tasting. Viewing him as we see him in the exercise of his various functions, forbidding the play of imagination, and excluding the influence of theological training, do we find anything in him that may be set down as proof that he is possessed of an immortal, or immaterial soul? ”

“ Then were he indeed to give her the gift of immortal life, what value were life to one whose beauty had withered as the leaves in autumn, whose heart was tired and dead? What uglier fate than this, to endure an endless existence in which no life was, yoked to one whose youth was immortal, whose beauty was everlasting? ”

“ Souls are indeed immortal—why should we ever have imagined otherwise? They are immortal, and what of it? I see the death-side now as I saw the life-side then; and one has as little meaning as the other. As it has been, so it will be, now, henceforth, and for ever, in and out, in and out, without pause or stint, futile, trivial, silly, stale, tedious, monotonous, and vain!' The long pre-occupation of men with religion, philosophy, and art, seemed to me now as incomprehensible as it was ridiculous. ”

“ Holding so fast by Thine infinity;
So surely anchored on
The steadfast rock of immortality. [134]
With wide-embracing love
Thy spirit animates eternal years,
Pervades and broods above,
Changes, sustains, dissolves, creates, and rears.
Though earth and man were gone,
And suns and universes ceased to be,
And Thou were left alone,
Every existence would exist in Thee.
There is no room for Death,
Nor atom that his might could render void:
Thou—Thou art Being and Breath,
And what Thou art may never be destroyed. ”

“ While in this life your immortal soul is wrapped about with a veil of mortality; but God wants to shine such a radiant light and amaranthine glory into your soul that the veil of mortality will not be able wholly to obscure it. It will shine out through the material part and glow in transparent beauty upon the surface.
If you will follow where he leads, he will lead you on from virtue to deeper, truer virtue; he will lead you on to fountains of sweeter joy. ”

“ In that realm of higher knowledge to which the spirit ascends in its nearer approach to the infinite Source of all wisdom and love, no dross of earthly corruption will be permitted to shroud its vision, or dim the glow of affection's golden chain whose indissoluble links bind mortality to immortality. ”

“ Why should mortals, whom conscience tells that they are immortals, bewildered and bewildering ponder upon the dust! Do your duty to God and man, and fear not that, when that dust dies, the spirit that breathed by it will live for ever. Feels not that spirit its immortality in each sacred thought? ”