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JAINISM, CHRISTIANITY & SCIENCE
"... Consequently, as the spirit neither of God 'nor of the devil is naturally planted with a man's soul at his birth, this soul must evidently exist apart and alone, previous to the accession to at of either spirit: if thus apart and alone, it must also be simple and uncompounded as regards its substance; and therefore it cannot respire from any other cause than from the actual condition of its own substance."-(Tertullian) A.N.C.L. vol. xv. p. 435.
"... we have in a former passage stated as & preliminary fact, that the mind 18 nothing else than an apparatus or instrum of the soul, and that the spirit is no other faculty, separate from the soul, but us the soul itself exercised in respiration; although that influence which either God on the one hand, or the devil on the other, has breathed upon it, must be regarded in the light of an additional element."-(Tertullian) A.N.C.L. vol. xv. p. 451.
The explanation of the text in Genesis ii. 7. which implies that God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life whereby man became a living soul is allegorical. It only means the coming of the soul under divine influence whereby it is enlivened. In other words, the inception of the aspiration for divine life, which revives the soul that was dead on account of ignorance.
The allegorical significance of the six days' creation' will be found in greater detail in the 9th chapter of my Key of Knowledge which may be read there; but it is necessary to point out that the ' Seventh Day' was interpreted by Methodius (A.N.C.L. vol. xiv. p. 100) to mean “ The millennium of rest which is called the Seventh Day, even the true Sabbath." This is certainly in keeping with the idea of the restoration of the Kingdom of Israel, as stated above; and has got to be understood in the sense of Israel standing for the soul itself. In plain language, what is meant is the reinstatement of the soul in its divinity, the completion of which means 'Eternal Sabbath and Peace.'
