y of
men, by no means in proportion to guilt, since even the innocent
thereby sometimes suffer. Now, as all {50} human deeds and experience
are taken cognizance of in the great day of judgment, it must be
admitted that sufferings of the kind just mentioned will be included in
the account. In what way, and with what effect, will, I think, be to
some extent indicated by the following considerations.

Besides the principle of animal life (_psyche_) which man partakes of
in common with the creatures of a lower order, there is within him a
spirit (_pneuma_) which is being formed, educated, and built up, all
the time that it is the tenant of a corporeal "vessel." On account of
this law of progressiveness, the spirit of a child, as we can all see,
differs in its feelings and its understanding from that of a man. In
short, spirit perfected is the principle of immortal life. Now, during
our waking hours our spirits are replete with consciousness and
thought, which, however, at the moment of falling asleep depart from
us. The spirit is then taken into the keeping of the angels of God, to
be by them restored into its place in the body at the moment of waking
up and of return to consciousness. In like manner at death the spirits
of all men, good and wicked, pass into the custody of the Creator of
spirits, to wait for the return to consciousness by being on the
morning of their resurrection again united with body,--not, however,
with the same natural body, but with a spiritual body (1 Cor. xv. 44).
The union of spirit with bodily essence appears to be a {51} necessary
condition of human consciousness, and to have been ordained for the
special reasons that we are destined to live hereafter not only
individually, but in _social_ relations also, and that only through the
medium of body is there communion between one man's spirit and that of
another.

This being understood, it is next to be observed that in the forming
and building up ("edification") of spirit, the human _will_ is
concerned, and that, according to a man's choice of action, his spirit
may be educated for being good or for being wicked, may be sanctified
or defiled. There is, in short, no act or experience in human life
which in this respect is indifferent. But what the spirit is thus made
during its passage through this life, such it is when it is taken into
the hands of its Creator, and such, as we may conclude from the
teaching of Scripture and from its havi