hrown into a death-like trance, during which he,
as a liberated soul, travelled through the invisible world, returning
and reviving the body after three days. And in the life-story of the
individual, who is becoming a Christ, we shall find, as we study it,
that the dramas of the Resurrection and Ascension are repeated.

But before we can intelligently follow that story, we must master the
outlines of the human constitution, and understand the natural and
spiritual bodies of man. "There is a natural body, and there is a
spiritual body."[239]

There are still some uninstructed people who regard man as a mere
duality, made up of "soul" and "body." Such people use the words "soul"
and "spirit" as synonyms, and speak indifferently of "soul and body" or
"spirit and body," meaning that man is composed of two constituents, one
of which perishes at death, while the other survives. For the very
simple and ignorant this rough division is sufficient, but it will not
enable us to understand the mysteries of the Resurrection and
Ascension.

Every Christian who has made even a superficial study of the human
constitution recognises in it three distinct constituents--Spirit, Soul,
and Body. This division is sound, though needing further subdivision for
more profound study, and it has been used by S. Paul in his prayer that
"your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless."[240] That
threefold division is accepted in Christian Theology.

The Spirit itself is really a Trinity, the reflexion and image of the
Supreme Trinity, and this we shall study in the following chapter.[241]
The true man, the immortal, who is the Spirit, is the Trinity in man.
This is life, consciousness, and to this the spiritual body belongs,
each aspect of the Trinity having its own Body. The Soul is dual, and
comprises the mind and the emotional nature, with its appropriate
garments. And the Body is the material instrument of Spirit and Soul. In
one Christian view of man he is a twelve-fold being, six modifications
forming the spiritual man, and six the natural man; according to
another, he is divisible into fourteen, seven modifications of
consciousness and seven corresponding types of form. This latter view is
practically identical with that studied by Mystics, and it is usually
spoken of as seven-fold, because there are really seven divisions, each
being two-fold, having a life-side and a form-side.

These divisions and sub-divisions are somewhat