The soul is the immaterial, immortal element of man—the living principle and immaterial self—created by God, united to the body to form the whole person, and surviving the body’s death to live consciously until the resurrection. When God formed man of the dust and breathed into him the breath of life, man became a living soul; the soul is thus not a pre-existent thing imprisoned in flesh, but the life-principle given by God to animate and inhabit the body. Scripture ascribes to the soul the seat of life, of the affections and desires, of the will and the understanding—it loves and longs, grieves and rejoices, chooses and reasons; the whole inner life of man is the life of his soul. The soul is of incomparable worth: what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? It is immortal, not by its own nature as God is, but by God’s creation and will—those who kill the body cannot kill the soul, which continues in conscious existence after death, the believer’s soul passing into the presence of Christ and the unbeliever’s into woe, both awaiting reunion with the body at the last day. The soul must be carefully distinguished from the modern and pagan caricatures: it is not a ghostly fragment that alone matters while the body is despised (the Greek error), nor a mere function of the brain that perishes with it (the materialist error). It is the real, immaterial, God-given self, for whose salvation Christ died, which the gospel addresses, which is regenerated by the Spirit, and which shall be reunited with a glorified body in the resurrection. To care for the soul above the body, and to commit it to the faithful Creator and Redeemer, is the truest wisdom.