Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 edition. Excerpt: ... theological meaning of aap% has a certain reasoned connection with its primary or natural meaning. But we make no apology for any want of complete continuity in the transition. It is not our view of the thoughts and language of the Bible that the religious or spiritual is developed by the human writers of it out of the natural or philosophical language of their time, and that critics can trace the development. We hold it a worthier view that the Spirit of revelation poured new and intenser meanings, as revelation advanced, into the earlier and simpler language. The rise of the Pauline phrase, "the flesh," for human nature under sin, is in our view another striking instance of this method of the inspired writers, or rather of the Spirit of inspiration in them. The last of the leading terms in biblical psychology which I shall notice here is Heart (s?, KapBUt). This term is the one least disputed in its meaning, and which undergoes the least amount of change within the cycle of its use in Scripture. Indeed, it may be held to be common to all parts of the Bible in the same sense. It only concerns the modern reader to note what that sense is, and to distinguish it, in one or two particulars, from the modern use of the word. Its prominence as a psychological term in the Bible and in other ancient books is due, doubtless, to the centrality of the physical organ which it primarily denotes, and which, to the mind of antiquity, bulked so much more in the human frame than the brain. Since, in Bible phrase, "the life is in the blood," that organ which formed the centre of the distribution of the blood must have the most important place in the whole system. By a very easy transition, therefore, "heart" came to signify the seat of man's collective...