I dare not affirm that this is erroneously said; but it is one of the
comparatively few passages that are of service as reminding me that it
is not the Scripture that I am reading. Not the qualities merely, but
the root of the qualities is trans-created. How else could it be a
birth,--a creation?
Ib. p. 170.
This natural life is compared, even by natural men, to the vainest
things, and scarce find they things light enough to express it vain;
and as it is here called grass, so they compare the generations of men
to the leaves of trees. * * * 'Man that is born of a woman is of few
days, and full of trouble. He cometh forth like a flower and is cut
down. Job' xiv. 1, 2. Psalm xc. 12; xxxix. 4.
It is the fashion to decry scholastic distinctions as useless
subtleties, or mere phantoms--'entia logica, vel etiam verbalia solum'.
And yet in order to secure a safe and Christian interpretation to these
and numerous other passages of like phrase and import in the Old
Testament, it is of highest concernment that we should distinguish the
personeity or spirit, as the source and principle of personality, from
the person itself as the particular product at any one period, and as
that which cannot be evolved or sustained but by the co-agency of the
system and circumstances in which the individuals are placed. In this
latter sense it is that 'man' is used in the Psalms, in Job, and
elsewhere--and the term made synonymous with flesh. That which
constitutes the spirit in man, both for others and itself, is the real
man; and to this the elements and elementary powers contribute its bulk
([Greek: to] 'videri et tangi') wholly, and its phenomenal form in part,
both as co-efficients, and as conditions.
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