The Return from Rome

133:6.1On leav­ing Athens, the trav­el­ers went by way of Troas to Eph­esus, the cap­i­tal of the Ro­man prov­ince of Asia. They made many trips out to the fa­mous tem­ple of Artemis of the Eph­esians, about two miles from the city. Artemis was the most fa­mous god­dess of all Asia Mi­nor and a per­pet­u­a­tion of the still ear­lier mother god­dess of an­cient Ana­to­lian times. The crude idol ex­hib­ited in the enor­mous tem­ple ded­i­cated to her wor­ship was re­puted to have fallen from heaven. Not all of Ga­nid’s early train­ing to re­spect im­ages as sym­bols of di­vin­ity had been erad­i­cated, and he thought it best to pur­chase a lit­tle sil­ver shrine in honor of this fer­til­ity god­dess of Asia Mi­nor. That night they talked at great length about the wor­ship of things made with hu­man hands.

133:6.2On the third day of their stay they walked down by the river to ob­serve the dredg­ing of the har­bor’s mouth. At noon they talked with a young Phoeni­cian who was home­sick and much dis­cour­aged; but most of all he was en­vi­ous of a cer­tain young man who had re­ceived pro­mo­tion over his head. Je­sus spoke com­fort­ing words to him and quoted the olden He­brew proverb: “A man’s gift makes room for him and brings him be­fore great men.”

133:6.3Of all the large cities they vis­ited on this tour of the Med­i­ter­ra­nean, they here ac­com­plished the least of value to the sub­se­quent work of the Chris­tian mis­sion­ar­ies. Chris­tian­ity se­cured its start in Eph­esus largely through the ef­forts of Paul, who resided here more than two years, mak­ing tents for a liv­ing and con­duct­ing lec­tures on re­li­gion and phi­los­o­phy each night in the main au­di­ence cham­ber of the school of Tyran­nus.

133:6.4There was a pro­gres­sive thinker con­nected with this lo­cal school of phi­los­o­phy, and Je­sus had sev­eral prof­itable ses­sions with him. In the course of these talks Je­sus had re­peat­edly used the word “soul.” This learned Greek fi­nally asked him what he meant by “soul,” and he replied:

133:6.5“The soul is the self-re­flec­tive, truth-dis­cern­ing, and spirit-per­ceiv­ing part of man which for­ever el­e­vates the hu­man be­ing above the level of the an­i­mal world. Self-con­scious­ness, in and of it­self, is not the soul. Moral self-con­scious­ness is true hu­man self-re­al­iza­tion and con­sti­tutes the foun­da­tion of the hu­man soul, and the soul is that part of man which rep­re­sents the po­ten­tial sur­vival value of hu­man ex­pe­ri­ence. Moral choice and spir­i­tual at­tain­ment, the abil­ity to know God and the urge to be like him, are the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the soul. The soul of man can­not ex­ist apart from moral think­ing and spir­i­tual ac­tiv­ity. A stag­nant soul is a dy­ing soul. But the soul of man is dis­tinct from the di­vine spirit which dwells within the mind. The di­vine spirit ar­rives si­mul­ta­ne­ously with the first moral ac­tiv­ity of the hu­man mind, and that is the oc­ca­sion of the birth of the soul.

133:6.6“The sav­ing or los­ing of a soul has to do with whether or not the moral con­scious­ness at­tains sur­vival sta­tus through eter­nal al­liance with its as­so­ci­ated im­mor­tal spirit en­dow­ment. Sal­va­tion is the spir­i­tu­al­iza­tion of the self-re­al­iza­tion of the moral con­scious­ness, which thereby be­comes pos­sessed of sur­vival value. All forms of soul con­flict con­sist in the lack of har­mony be­tween the moral, or spir­i­tual, self-con­scious­ness and the purely in­tel­lec­tual self-con­scious­ness.

133:6.7“The hu­man soul, when ma­tured, en­no­bled, and spir­i­tu­al­ized, ap­proaches the heav­enly sta­tus in that it comes near to be­ing an en­tity in­ter­ven­ing be­tween the ma­te­rial and the spir­i­tual, the ma­te­rial self and the di­vine spirit. The evolv­ing soul of a hu­man be­ing is dif­fi­cult of de­scrip­tion and more dif­fi­cult of dem­on­stra­tion be­cause it is not dis­cov­er­able by the meth­ods of ei­ther ma­te­rial in­ves­ti­ga­tion or spir­i­tual prov­ing. Ma­te­rial sci­ence can­not demon­strate the ex­is­tence of a soul, nei­ther can pure spirit-test­ing. Not­with­stand­ing the fail­ure of both ma­te­rial sci­ence and spir­i­tual stan­dards to dis­cover the ex­is­tence of the hu­man soul, ev­ery morally con­scious mor­tal knows of the ex­is­tence of his soul as a real and ac­tual per­sonal ex­pe­ri­ence.”