SOUL HELP ~ Rev. Mr. Beverly Carradine

THE SOULAMONG the mysteries there is none profounder than the human soul.Everything about it savors of the unknown. The inexplorable andunexplainable meet us at every turn in spite of much that is known, andthat is being discovered.Every night hundreds if not thousands of telescopes are pointed at distantstars and planets in the endeavor to understand better the nature, and todiscover new secrets about these faraway ramblers in space. Some thingshave been learned about them, but much remains to be found out. Thevastness of their distance from us is the explanation of our ignoranceconcerning them.In like manner the gaze of innumerable eyes and the energies of countlessminds are directed in investigation of the human soul. Hour after hour, andminute after minute, the telescopes of thought and study are turned uponit, and while much has been discovered, much remains to be revealedconcerning the invisible stranger, that, unlike the stars, is in a few inches or feet of us, and yet in many respects is as profoundly unknown.Mystery after mystery rolls up before us in the questions, What is spirit,and how can it act independently of matter? And when does the soul beginits existence; and is it generated or created? Does it exist seminally, or is it a direct creation of God in the womb?Then, where is its location in the body? That it is there we do not doubt,but in what part of the body? Does it fill the physical frame, or is it in theperineal gland, as Wesley thought, or in the brain, or nearer the heart, orwhere?Then other puzzling thoughts arise as to the nature of the soul’s existencewhen separated from the body, and whether it has powers whichcorrespond to speech, sight, hearing and other faculties, as well as membersof the body. And has it a shape? And does it possess color? etc.,etc.But everywhere we are confronted with closed doors, which are not onlyshut, but locked, and refuse to open to our knock and call. An unsolvablemystery is near us yes, in us; and there is no more answer to us from thatviewless inhabitant about some things we want to know, than if it was adweller upon Jupiter or Saturn.And yet we know something about this invisible tenant of the body. Wehave sailed along part of the coast lines, explored a few of the bays, andstood upon some of the capes and hilltops. We have made a little chartconcerning what has been discovered, with a wavering line showing whatwe know, and great white spaces marked “unknown,” “unexplored,” etc.,declaring what we do not know. We mention a few things that we know:First, It is distinct from the body.We discover that it has longings and desires that are not physical, butspiritual. In the midst of a life of bodily gratification, it is itself perfectly miserable. The bodies lies down satisfied, while this nature starts up unsatisfied, full of unrest, and plaintive inward cries. This is the soul, which has a hunger as keen as that of the body, which thirsts and wantsrest like the physical being, and failing to obtain will surely lead the man to despair and deeds of desperation.Second, It is a thinking something.We have a thought nature in us. It commenced running away back yonderat its beginning, and is destined to run forever. We are told that whenreason is dethroned and one tramps the cell of a lunatic, yet thought goeson; wild, disordered, disconnected, it is true, but not the less is it thought.The mental machine works on faithfully.As far as the soul has been traced and followed from the body, it is foundto be thinking. It thinks in death, and, according to Christ, thinks afterdeath. The rich man’s agony in hell sprang partly from the fact that heremembered his brethren on earth, and the effect of his life upon them.We can conceive of no greater torture than to be compelled to endure theslow, deliberate, steady, faithful grindings of the mind machine, which reproduces all the scenes and events of a sorrowful, sinful, misspent life, and keeps this up forever.Beverly Carradine

Third, It is a beautiful something.As we have said, we neither know its shape or color. The general opinionis that it is white. A confirmation of this thought is that whenever the soulis aroused, there is a flash of light in the face.But of one thing we feel assured, and that is, that every human spirit isbeautiful. Doubtless in this respect the king has no advantage over thebeggar, the civilized man over the heathen, nor one race above another.Made in God’s image, they are all compelled to be lovely.As we view the human family, after an external fashion, we see greatdifferences produced in face and form by clothing, old age, disease,poverty and suffering. And so consciously and unconsciously a very greatvariety of treatment is rendered to people. But the eye of God piercesthese externals of accident and misfortune, and sees within every humanform a beautiful soul. And those who are filled with God’s Spirit have ameasure of the same discernment and recognize the loveliness andpreciousness of this hidden something within, called a spirit. As Angelosaw an angel in a stone, so they see a beautiful possibility beneath a hardand unattractive exterior. They know that an invaluable gem is in thesecrumbling walls of clay.The soul is lovely. Its Maker, and the likeness in which it was fashioned,proves that. But also, its swift and vanishing appearance in the face putsthe matter beyond question. Who has not seen it tremble on the lip, laughin the eye, and at times stretch out its arms to you?When the soul is allowed to have continued rulership over the animal lifeall have observed the cultured, attractive look that appears stamped on thecountenance. Then there are moments when under the mighty influence oftruth perceived or received, some great deed of moral heroism, somesacrifice to man or God, some great influx of the divine life and glory, thesoul appears fairly looking at you out of the face, which is in itselftransfigured by its glorious presence. It is noticeable that even the homelybecome attractive, and the naturally beautiful sweep beyond that into anangelic appearance, when the soul, aroused by the Holy Ghost, stands gazing out into the world through the face, as one stands and looks out from a window.Fourth, It is a lonely something.It came into the world alone; it leaves the world alone, and is made tostand alone before the Judgment Seat of Christ. It is fenced off from allother beings in a body which encases it, and looks out of its clay prisonupon the world, as a man on an island gazes upon the ocean washingaround him.This fact, in addition to others, produces the indescribably solitary feelingwhich every soul has felt with bitterest pangs, and at times came nearsinking under.Fifth, It is a friendless something.We do not mean that a soul does not love, and is not loved. We do not saythere are no such things as attachments and warm, true friendships. Such astatement would be absurd and false. And yet we reiterate the fact of theprofound friendlessness of the human spirit.When we recall that a deep religious experience is to place one at once intoa place where opposition comes alike from friend and foe; when weremember that our own loved ones, with a mistaken affection, try to bringus into amusements, employments and places which are simply ruin anddeath to the spiritual life, some idea of the soul’s friendlessness begins todawn on the reader.Sixth, It is a restless something.No argument is needed here. A glance within, and the study of human lifewithout, confirm the statement. This invisible spirit wants rest, and isafter it. Its actions prove it.The trails in the forest lead down to springs and brooks. The physicalthirst drives animal life to the seeking, finding and frequent return tostreams of water. In like manner the soul, impelled, not to say driven, byits own yearnings, is seen going in every direction for satisfaction. It leaves its trail everywhere. Its track is found by the side of every earthlypool and cistern of pleasure. The pity is that it makes such amazing blunders in searching after spiritual rest and gratification. The marvel is that an animal is truer in its instincts than a spirit in its reasonings and judgments.Beverly Carradine

The only perfect rest for the soul is to be found in God. It was made forHim, is restless without him, and will be wretched as well as undoneforever if it does not find Him. It seems to require years for the soul todiscover that the eye and ear are never satisfied with seeing and hearing,that the spirit may be infatuated for a brief while, but never inwardlycontented and filled by an earthly object. When the discovery takes place,then the life of the misanthrope, and recluse or the suicide is often theresult. Tell the disappointed, soured, embittered man that the cause of hisunhappiness, heart emptiness, and life failure is that he has missed God,and likely as not he will laugh the informer to scorn.Astronomy tells of numerous small bodies flying through space andcircling about the sun. They originally came from that great shining orb,and their only hope of rest is to fall back into the place from whence theycame.The parable is plain. We came from God. He saw to it in our creation thatenough of His nature was implanted in us to make us restless andunhappy until we returned to Him, fell in his embrace, and found thatblessed repose and perfect heart-contentedness only to be realized in GodHimself, through Jesus Christ, His Son.[Transcriber Note: Either the printer or author mistakenly placedtwo “Sixth” points in the original text. The second of those two“Sixth” points follows this inserted comment.]Sixth, It is a dreadfully imperiled something.There is no danger in the universe, frightful as it may seem, that can becompared for a moment to the peril which threatens the soul. The ruin anddestruction of a soul demands, as some one has said, that the heavens areveiled, and the stars hung with crepe.Let the reader think for a moment of what a world we are living in. It is avision of the weak flying from the strong, every form of life trying toescape some kind of danger and death. The insect is avoiding the bird, thedove is flying from the hawk, the fish is rushing from the angler, the smaller animals running from the larger, the larger from the hunter, and destruction and death is on every breeze. The trap, dead fall, baited hook,net, spear, sword, musket and cannon are seen everywhere, and blood istrickling in every field and wood, and life is being gasped out everywhere.Dreadful as is the spectacle, yet the heart-chilling thought at once comesup, that none of these dangers and deaths can be likened to the peril andruin that threaten the soul. A doom and destruction is on the track, and infull pursuit of the human spirit, which transcends in horror all the othersbeyond words to describe.A world of devils are unified to accomplish this destruction. Sin in everyconceivable form is at work to get control of and damn the spirit made inGod’s image. Temptation is lurking on every side to spring upon and dragit down. Traps, pitfalls, baited hooks, painted decoys, every imaginabledevice of hell, is set to deceive, bewilder, overcome and undo forever thesoul made in the image of God. The wonder is how any one can escape,And none would be saved but for the grace of God.Seventh, It is a boundless something.We mean that the invisible Spirit within seems to be endowed withinexhaustible capacities. As long as we observe its life it is learning. Itspossibilities seem to have no end. In a strange sense it has bottomlessdepths and topless heights.Men but faintly realize the value of the soul. If they did, better care wouldbe taken of it. Christ knows its worth, and declares that a man could be theeternal loser, if he exchanged it for the whole world. According to theBible, the soul is more precious than the entire earth, with its continentsand seas, its forests and harvests, its gold and silver mines, and stores ofprecious gems.The way that the soul can receive knowledge of all kinds; thesystematizing and classifying; the ticketing, labeling and putting away inmental drawers for future use; the constant addition of facts with no senseof plethora, but ardent desires for more and boundless room for more,constitutes one of the amazing things about the human spirit.It is evident that the soul from its very nature can make the choice ofhaving a bottomless abyss experience within, and an eternally sinking initself; or it can have the topless height, and be forever rising in all that is pure, true, holy and divine.If a life of sin is chosen, the man will find, sooner or later, that he has asoundless pit within him; and the steady fall from day to day, the constantsinking from mean, meaner to meanest, from vile, viler to vilest, withyawning depths far beneath the present evil doing, and to which he feelshe is going — all this will serve in a measure to show the boundlesscapacities of the soul.We have a river in the South, whose broad powerful current slices offhundreds and thousands of acres of land, sometimes whole plantations at atime, sucks them up in its swirl, and sweeps them far off into the distantocean. Then we have a stream in the mountains which suddenlydisappears and carries with it whatever is floating on its bosom, never tobe seen any more. Besides, we have read of a hole in a large natural cavernthat seems to be bottomless: you may drop a stone and listen for the fall,but you will listen in vain. Again, we all know that if a rock could be castfrom the earth, and laws of gravitation suspended, that rock would fallforever. Into the deep, black, empty, infinite space which underlies theuniverse, it would enter, and sink, sink, sink, forever and forever.It requires all these figures and illustrations to show what is meant by afallen and falling soul. We have all seen sin, like a Mississippi River,cutting away the spiritual acres of a man’s life. Truth was washed away;honor, honesty and purity were swallowed up; reputation departed; andcharacter disappeared.We have also seen iniquity like a sinking hole in the spiritual life.Everything said to and done for the transgressor went immediately out ofsight. Sermons, prayers, conversations, entreaties, warnings, rebukes,tears, all alike fell into the cavernous character, and were heard of no more.We were calling into and trying to fill up a bottomless pit. There seemednothing within to catch and hold up a Gospel message or personal appeal.Then we have seen the sinner falling like the stone descended throughinfinite space.There is no doubt that when Christ spoke of hell being a bottomless pit,he was thinking not so much of locality as a spiritual state or condition.His mind was upon the everlasting sinking into darker moral depths of alost soul.Beverly Carradine

This falling, while going on in life, is unquestionably retarded by therestraining grace of God, and by many extraneous things, like music,literature, public opinion and church influence. But the hour comes whenthe soul, leaving the body and entering eternity, will find itself stripped of all these things, and is left to follow its own bent, which is a perpetualinclination to sink. There is no doubt that when the spirit of a man hasbroken beyond the law of spiritual gravitation and commenced falling, itwill continue to fall eternally. The centripetal power of God’s grace hasbeen cast off; the centrifugal force of self-will set on fire by sin aloneoperates, and means that the man gets farther from God every minute,hour, day, year, century, cycle and age, and through eternity itself. He isfalling, falling, falling; lower and lower; deeper and deeper; sinking onhimself; sinking in himself; and finding to his horror that he himself is abottomless abyss.On the other hand, if the soul chooses God and good, then we begin to seewhat is meant by topless heights in the spirit life.All of us have marked the improvement, development and steadyadvancement of a soul after its conversion and sanctification. The progressin some instances was remarkable and in others wonderful. When filledwith the Spirit we walk in the light steadily and faithfully with God, thereis a constant growth and rise in the spiritual life all the while. People see it,and the soul feels it. It stands thrilled with the consciousness of itsunfolding powers; while the months and years are accentuated and markedby the realization of greater wisdom, deeper love, increased gentleness andtenderness, with a commensurate firmness and power in the things of God.A few years ago, at a college commencement, we saw a schoolgirl who hadcome to the place of learning from a back country neighborhood. Both faceand manner showed the mental and social lack. Grace, knowledge andinstruction had separate works to do in her behalf. About that time hersoul was converted and sanctified, and then followed the training of mindand heart and enrichment of both. Some months ago we met the same girl, 12 but had to be introduced to her. The crude schoolgirl had disappeared, andin her place stood an elegant young woman with refined manners, culturedmind, deeply spiritual face, and noble Christian life. And yet thismarvelous change is but the beginning. Eternity lies before this youngmaiden, with its everlasting progress and development, and as one of thedaughters of the King, she will actually add grace to His palace, and withan increasing glory and honor forever.In one of our largest cities a burglar, who was imprisoned for theft, wasconverted to God in a cell while reading one of Moody’s sermons in anewspaper. After his release, he was sanctified and joined the M. E.Church, South. His life became irreproachable, and his face familiar at anumber of holiness camp-meetings. He had been such a bold criminal, andsuch a terror to the police, that for months and even years after his change,the officers of the law kept watchful eyes upon him. But all at last markedthe change in his life, and above all the wonderful transformation in hisface. We have seen two photographs taken of him, one while he was in thedepths of sin, and the other after he was sanctified and a devoted memberof the church. The contrast was simply amazing, and constituted apowerful sermon in itself. The contrast was so dark, lowering, vicious,animal-like, and even devil-like, that it was hard to believe that the otherphotograph, showing a noble, open countenance, full of gracious light andlove, could be the same man. And yet it was, and thousands who haveseen the pictures and know the man as did the writer, can vouch for it.And yet this improvement is but the beginning. Other heights of grace stilltower above this redeemed man, and remain for all redeemed men. Thereare peaks of knowledge, dizzy elevations of glory, and mountain tops ofgrace and goodness and love and holiness, that shall be seen ascending oneabove another through the never-ending ages of eternity. And we are toascend them forever. Topless heights in heaven over against bottomlessdepths in Hell. An eternal ascension of the soul in holiness and happinessabove, as well as the everlasting sinking of the spirit in wickedness andwretchedness below.It fairly dazes the mind to think what God’s redeemed ones will be andlook like in Heaven, a thousand or ten thousand or a million years fromnow. It does not yet appear what we shall be; we only are told we shall be 13 like Him. But what will He, the King of Glory, be like? So the mystery isnot cleared up. The Glory has not yet been described.A hint comes to us in Revelation, when John falls down to worship atranscendently glorious being, whom he sees and mistakes for a divinepersonage. The rebuking words to him were, “See thou do it not; for I amthy fellow-servant, one of thy brethren, the prophets.”May God help the reader to guard and preserve a soul which has such awonderful appearance and is to enter upon such a glorious destiny abovethe stars.Beverly Carradine

Excerpts:The Way of Salvation When men get really convicted they will soon find God. The burden is sogreat that they must obtain relief, and as none but a divine hand can givethis, that hand must be found. People with any spiritual knowledge worthspeaking of know this, and are sighing for the return of that mental andspiritual distress which fell upon men not only under the preaching of theapostles, but of the Wesleys and Whitefields, and still later under thepreachers who swept this land one and two generations back.It is a blessed sight to see men smite their breasts, and fall down andstruggle in agony on the ground. This is much more impressive andawe-inspiring; than the sight of a congregation of perfectly composedlooking people signing cards to the effect that under the circumstances andconsidering all things they would like to be Christians.To see the genuinely convicted man today, one has to attend a fullsalvation meeting where men preach with the Holy Ghost sent down fromheaven. Some of us are very familiar with the sight of men and womenrushing up the aisles, falling down at the altar, beating their breasts, andfilling the air with cries which pierce every heart. And we also know thatwhen people get this far they are exceedingly close to salvation.Beverly Carradine