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I. THE VALUE OF THE HUMAN SOUL.

1. "All souls are Mine" appears to imply a distinction and dignity as to their origin. Father and son may share together flesh and blood, but the soul is a direct creation from God. It has personality; for it is — each soul is — a separate creation of Almighty God.

2. Creationism appears to protect the soul's spirituality and its solitariness in a way Traducianism certainly does not; though it accentuates the mysteriousness of the doctrine of the Fall. The soul comes from God, not as a part of His substance, which is heresy, but by a creative act of His will. This infusion of the soul puts man, "as distinguished from the brute, in a conscious relation to God" (Aubrey Moore), and this is the very root of religion.

3. Souls, too, belong to God in a way the material creation does not — they are made in His image "and likeness"; they are a created copy of the Divine life. They find in Him not only the beginning, but the end of their being. They hold communion with Him, can be conscious of His presence and touch, and can respond to His love. The soul possesses faculties and moral qualities "which are shadows of the infinite perfections of God" (Pusey).

4. The soul's value may be further estimated by the Infinite Love of the Son of God in dying to save us.

II. THE SOUL'S SEPARATE ACCOUNTABILITY. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die."

1. These words are repeated in verse 20, with the addition, "The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father." But in Lamentations 5:7 it is written, "Our fathers have sinned, and we have borne their iniquities."

2. There are two limits to the declaration, "The son shall not bear," etc. One is that it refers only to personal sin, and not to original sin; for we are conceived and born in sin, because of the disobedience of our first father, Adam. This is a fundamental doctrine of the Christian Faith (Romans 5:12-21). Another is that the words only refer to the temporal penalties of sin, not to the guilt (culpa); even with regard to results of sin, the tenor of the commandment, "visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me," or "to those that hate Me," appears to imply that the children are imitators of their parents' sins, and so become themselves accountable. They only share the iniquities of their fathers "if the children imitate the evil example of the parents" ( St. Gregory, Moral., 15:41). But "external" consequences of sin, which do not affect the relation of the soul to God, do descend from father to son, entailing suffering or defect. The destruction of Jerusalem is the turning point of the Book of Ezekiel, and a great number of infants who had no responsibility perished in the siege.

3. But the prophet does not touch upon these exceptions, as he is occupied with emphasising "that aspect of the question" which the proverb ignored, "and which, though not the sole truth, is nevertheless an important part of the truth, viz., that individual responsibility never ceases" (Driver). No actual sin is ever transferred from one soul to another, nor eternal penalty incurred through the misdeeds of ancestors.

4. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." In other words, sin is personal fault, not misfortune; sin is a free act of the soul, not a necessity: "the soul that sinneth." Sin is "the misuse of freedom" (Luthardt). Sin, deadly sin, separates the soul from God, the Source of life, and so brings about spiritual death, as the separation of the soul from the body brings about physical death.

5. Each soul is accountable before God, and cannot attribute justly its misdeeds to some ancestral strain which makes for anything but righteousness, nor to present circumstances.

III. LESSONS.

1. To be careful, amid the seeming perplexities of God's providence, not to impugn the Divine justice or equity (ver. 25).

2. To strive to realise the value of the soul, and how it belongs to God, and to make God the Beginning and End of our being; also to reflect upon the separateness of our existence, whilst outwardly so much mingled with the lives of others.

3. The heinousness of sin, the only real evil, which injures or kills the soul's life, should lead to hatred of sin and watchfulness against it.

4. Whilst the innate responsibility of each soul before God should prevent us from making excuses for sin, and from resorting to the meanness and injustice of charging others with being the cause of our iniquities, for which we alone are personally accountable (Romans 14:12).

(The Thinker.)

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KJV: Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die.

WEB: Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul who sins, he shall die.