Have You A Soul.


A philosopher once asked a little girl if she had 

a soul. She looked up into his face with an air of

 astonishment and offended dignity, and replied,

 "To be sure I have."

"What makes you think you have?"" Because I

 have," she promptly replied.

"But how do you know you have a soul?"

"Because I do know," she answered again.

It was a child's reason; but the philosopher 

could hardly have given a better.

"Well, then," said he, after a moment's 

consideration,

"If you know you have a soul, can you tell me

 what your soul is?"

Why," said she, "I am six years old, and don't 

you suppose that I know what my soul is?"

Perhaps you do; if you will tell me, I shall find

 out whether you do or not."

"Then you think I don't know," she replied, 

"but I do; it is my ‘think.’"

"Your think," said the philosopher, astonished 

in his turn; "who told you so ?"

'Nobody. I should be ashamed if I did not know

 that, without being told."

The philosopher had puzzled his brain a great 

deal about the soul, but he could not have given 

a better definition of it in so few words.

The above we take from the Child's Paper for

 March, 1855. 

The soul is there defined to be "the think,"

 and it is acknowledged that a better definition

 could not be given in so few words. Well, since

 this is the idea the child had of the soul, what

 kind of an idea would she naturally form of its

 condition after death?

When David says [Psalms 146:4.] that when a 

man dies, in that very day “his think" perishes,

 would she have concluded that it flew away to

 the regions of space?  No: it requires all the

 ingenuity of "Philosophers," and many a 

perversion of plain scripture testimony, to make

 people believe this. A child could hardly go 

amiss on the plain truths of scripture, if 

permitted to believe the direct teaching of the

 Bible without mysticism and without comment.

 But the mystical principles have to be 

inculcated by slow degrees, and by a long 

process, before people can be established in 

the belief that the soul is what it isn’t, and goes

 where it doesn’t.  



 u. s.