The heart is the center of the spiritual and spiritual life of the Tik man," the heart is conceived and the determination of the Chsloka to do this or that action is born; a variety of intentions and desires arise in him; It is the seat of Noli and her desires. These actions of intention, desire, and determination are denoted by the expressions: "And I have breathed my heart" (Yoccles 1:13); and put Daniel on his heart. (Dan. 1:8); and it shall be in the hearts of my father David" (3 Kings 8:17). The same is said by the expressions: good will of the heart (Romans 10:2), will of the heart (2 Corinthians 9:7, Acts 11:23). Ancient Israel had to bring gifts for the building of the tabernacle, each according to the will of his heart (Exodus 35:5), and having brought it to the table that thou shalt love their heart (v. 21). Whoever expressed his desires spoke all that was in their hearts (1 Kings 10:2). When we do something willingly, our action comes from the heart (Romans 6:17). Whom we love, to him we give our heart, and vice versa, that we have in our heart: give me thy heart unto my son (Proverbs 23:26); in our hearts you eat (2 Corinthians 7:3); for what I have in your hearts (Phil. 1:7).

The heart is the seat of all the cognitive actions of the soul. Meditation is the suggestion of the heart (Proverbs 16:1), the counsel of the heart: and my heart is in me (Neh. 5:7). To understand with the heart means to understand (Deuteronomy 8:5); to know with all one's heart — to understand it wholly (Joshua 23:14). He who does not have a heart to understand, has no sight to see, and ears hear (Deut. 29. 4). When the heart becomes numb, then a person loses the ability to notice and understand the most obvious manifestations of God's providence: he hears his ears hard, and he closes his eyes (Isaiah 6:10). In general, everyone thinks in his heart (Gen. 6:5). An evil man has a heart that forges evil thoughts (Proverbs 6:18). Lying prophets prophesy the arbitrariness of their hearts (Jeremiah 14:14), they speak the sight from their hearts, and not from the mouth of the Lord (Jeremiah 23:16). Thoughts are counsels of the heart (1 Corinthians 4:5). The Word of God is judged by the thoughts and thoughts of the heart (Hebrews 4:12). What we firmly remember, imprint in our souls, and assimilate, we put in, believe, compose, and write in our hearts: put these words into your hearts (Deuteronomy 11:18); put me as a seal upon thy heart" (Song of Songs 8:6); Mary, who have kept all these words, composing them in their hearts (Luke 2:19); write (words of wisdom) on the tablet of thy heart (Proverbs 3:3). Everything that comes to our mind or memory comes to our hearts. In the kingdom of glory the ascetics, who suffered for the sake of righteousness and faith, shall not remember the former, but shall ascend lower into their hearts (Isaiah 65:17); and in the heart of man hath not ascended, which God hath prepared for them that love him" (1 Cor. 2:9).

As the word is a manifestation or expression of thought, so it also is worn out of the heart (Job 8:10); for out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh (Matt. 12:34). And since thinking is a conversation of the soul with itself, so he who meditates conducts this inner conversation in his heart: "I speak in my heart" (Ecclesiastes 1:16); I spoke in my heart (Ecclesiastes 2:1); saith that wicked servant in his heart (Matt. 24:48).

The heart is the focus of diverse spiritual feelings, excitements, and passions. All degrees of joy are assimilated to the heart, from complacency (Isaiah 65:14) to rapture and exultation in the presence of God (Psalm 83:3, Acts 2:46); all degrees of sorrows, from a sad mood — when a fallen passion in the heart offends the heart, and when sorrow harms the husband's heart (Proverbs 25:20-21) — to crushing grief, when a man cries out in the pain of his heart (Isaiah 65:14) and when he feels that his heart is troubled and cut off from his place (Job 37:1); all degrees of enmity, from jealousy and bitter envy (Proverbs 23:17, James 3:14) to fury, in which a man gnashes his teeth (Acts 7:54) and from which his heart burns with vengeance (Deuteronomy 19:6); from anxiety, when the heart is troubled (Proverbs 12:25), to despair, when it renounces all strivings (Ecclesiastes 2:20); and finally, all forms of fear, from awe (Jeremiah 32:40) to overwhelming terror and confusion (Deuteronomy 28:28, Psalm 142:4). The heart faints and is tormented with anguish (Joshua 5:1, Jeremiah 4:19), according to the difference of sufferings it becomes like wax melting (Psalm 21:16), or dries up (Psalm 101:5), warms up and is kindled (Psalm 38:4, 72:21), or becomes contrite and contrite (Jeremiah 23:9, Psalm 146:3). In despondency a person is fearful and weak in heart (Deuteronomy 20:8). From compassion the heart is transformed (Hos. 11:8). The grace-filled word of God works in the heart like a burning fire (Jeremiah 20:9); the heart is inflamed and burns when the ray of the divine word touches it (Luke 24:32).

Finally, the heart is the focus of man's moral life. In the heart are united all the moral states of man, from the highest mysterious love for God, which cries: "God of my heart, and my part is God for ever" (Psalm 72:26), to that arrogance which, adoring itself, sets its heart as the heart of God, and says: "I am God" (Ezekiel 28:2). According to the difference in moral ailments, the heart is darkened (Rom. 1:21), whitened (Isaiah 6:10), made hard (Isaiah 63:17), stony (Ezekiel 11:19), inhuman, bestial (Dan. 4:13). There is an evil heart (Jeremiah 16:12), a vain heart (Psalm 5:10), a foolish heart (Romans 1:21). The heart is the starting place of all that is good and evil in the words, thoughts, and deeds of man, it is the good or evil treasure of man: the good man will bring forth the good of the good treasure of his heart: and the evil man will bring forth evil from the evil treasure of his heart (Luke 6:45). The heart is the tablet on which the natural moral law is written; wherefore the Gentiles manifest the work of the law, which is written in their hearts (Rom. 2:15). On this tablet is also written the law of grace: "My people, saith the Lord, whose law is in your hearts" (Psalm 51:7); and on their hearts I will write (the laws of grace) (Jeremiah 31:33). For this reason the word of God is sown in the field of the heart (Matt. 13:19); conscience has its seat in the heart (Heb. 10:22); Christ dwelleth in our hearts with faith (Ephesians 3:17), and also grants the betrothal of the Spirit in our hearts (2 Corinthians 1:22). And let the peace of God dwell in your hearts (Col. 3:15); for the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). The grace-filled light of God has risen in our hearts (2 Corinthians 4:6). "But, on the other hand, the devil puts evil beginnings into the heart of the sinner (John 13:2), fills his heart with evil thoughts (Acts 5:3). Satan comes to the inattentive hearers of the word of God, and takes away the word that is in their hearts (Mark 4:15).

As the center of all the bodily and diverse spiritual life of man, the heart is called the outflow of life or the source of life: "Guard thy heart with every preservative: for from these proceed the life" (Proverbs 4:23); it is the beginning of our birth (James 3:6), that is, the circle or wheel in the rotation of which our whole life consists. Therefore it is the deepest part of our being: deep is the heart of man more than all, and who knows it (Jeremiah 17:9). Never do external manifestations of words, thoughts, and deeds exhaust this source; the secret of the heart of man (1 Pet. 3:4) is open only to God: for this is the secret tidings of the heart (Psalm 43:23). The state of the heart expresses the entire state of the soul (Psalm 50:12; 83:3). Man must give his heart to God alone, in order to become faithful to Him in thoughts, words, and deeds: "Give me thy heart unto my son," God's wisdom cries out to man (Proverbs 23:25).

In accordance with this view of the dignity and significance of the heart in the human being, the sacred writers speak figuratively of the heart of heaven (Deuteronomy 4:11), the heart of the earth (Matt. 12:40), and the heart of the sea (Jonah 2:4). In the same way, they sometimes designate a spiritual change in the heart in a figurative sense, as a bodily change. Thus, we read in one of the most remarkable passages of the Prophet Ezekiel: "And I will pluck out a heart of stone from their flesh, and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my folds, and keep my righteousness" (<Ezekiel 11:19<-20). The Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthians: "Ye are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read from all men: we are manifest as the Epistle of Christ, which we have ministered, not written with ink, but by the living Spirit of God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of the heart of flesh" (2 Corinthians 3:2-3). These expressions show quite definitely that the sacred writers recognize as the center of all bodily life and the organ of all spiritual life that very fleshly heart, the beating of which we feel in our breast. When a person suffers spiritually, this carnal heart is cut off from its place (Job 37:1). We direct these remarks against those interpreters of the word of God who see in the texts we have quoted an accidental image of verbal expression, which was not controlled by a definite thought, and in which, therefore, we would search in vain for an integral view of the sacred writers on the essence of the subject we are considering. A mere reading of the sacred texts, unless we reinterpret them according to preoccupied ideas, convinces us directly that the sacred writers definitely and with a full consciousness of the truth recognized the heart as the center of all phenomena of human bodily and spiritual life.

Thus exalting the importance of the heart for human life, the sacred writers knew clearly and definitely that the human head, which science recognizes primarily as the seat of the soul, has a really close and close connection with the phenomena of mental life and serves as their most important organ. Thus, since the human body ends with the head, and since, in relation to the goals of life and their attainment, it is not the body that bears the head, but the head the body that governs it, Jesus Christ is called the head of the Church as his body (Heb. 5:23, Col. 2:19). The one who blesses lays his hands on the head of the one who is blessed (Gen. 48:14; 49:26), and the blessing of the Lord on the head of the righteous (Prov. 10:6); also the initiator lays his hands on the head of the initiate (Lev. 8:10). Blessing and consecration, like the oil of anointing (Psalm 132:2, Lev. 8:12), must extend from the head to the entire human being and penetrate it in all directions. The Holy Spirit descended in the form of tongues of fire on the heads of the apostles, and by this miraculous ordination revived and enlightened their entire spiritual being (Acts 2:3-4). In the same way, the physician lays his hand on the head of the one being healed (Matt. 9:18). The governmental dignity of the high priest in the Church is marked by the adornment of his head (Lev. 8:9). As the king is the head of the public body, as a sign of this, a stone of honor is placed on his head (Psalm 20:3).

The face of the head serves as an expression and, as it were, a living mirror of the spiritual states of a person, so that in general from the sight of the poenan will be a man, and the face of the face of Knowledge will be wise (Sir. 19:26). A man's wisdom shall shine upon his face, but he that hath no cold shall hate his face (Ecclesiastes 8:1). Communion with God, which Moses was vouchsafed on Sinai, was revealed in the special illumination of his countenance: the flesh of his face was glorified (Exodus 34:29). In the most glorious transfiguration of our Lord, His face shines forth like the sun (Matt. 17:2). The joy and triumph of the angel, sent down to the Lord's tomb to bear witness to people about the resurrection of the Savior, were reflected in his luminous face: "His vision was like lightning" (Matt. 28:3). Therefore the face of God signifies the full revelation of God's glory, which man is incapable of receiving in this life: "Thou shalt not be able to see my face," said the Lord to Moses, "for man shall not see my face, and he shall live" (Ysh. 33:20).

Thus, the sacred writers knew about the high importance of the head in the spiritual life of man; Nevertheless, we repeat, they saw the center of this life in their hearts. The head was for. they seem to be the visible summit of that life which is originally and immediately rooted in the heart. "The head," says one interpreter of the Holy Scriptures, "is to an external phenomenon what the heart is to the inner activity of the soul, and only in this respect is it ascribed a dominant significance from the biblical point of view." Incidentally, the above-quoted passages of Holy Scripture give a very definite idea that the head has the significance of an organ intermediating between the integral essence of the soul and those influences which it experiences from within it or from above, and that at the same time it has a governmental dignity in the integral system of mental actions. Psychology cannot but agree with these general definitions, whatever may be its special conceptions of this subject. But it can also be assumed in advance that the phenomena of mental activity shown in the head do not yet exhaust the entire essence of the soul; By the necessity of thinking, we must admit a certain primordial spiritual essence, which needs the named mediation and governmental action of the head. This primordial spiritual essence, according to the teaching of the word of God, has the heart as its closest organ. In the following explanations we shall see more definitely the meaning and foundations of these propositions, and now we will say, as a consequence of the preceding, that if Jesus Christ is called the head of the Church, then this does not yet fully and completely designate His relationship to the Church. He is the head (Ephesians 8:23) and the foundation (1 Corinthians 3:11), the light and life of the Church (John 1:4). He is the Creator of the Church (Matt. 16:18), and for this reason Her extraordinary Head, from Whom all the flesh and sorrows are given and supposed, brings forth the return of Her (Col. 2:19). These remarks show how harmonious and consistent the Biblical teaching on the human mind is, not only in itself, but also in its applications to the explanation of higher dogmas. It is obvious that we have here a definite psychological view which does not agree with many of the propositions of the modern science of the soul. We consider it useful to enter into an examination of the reasons on which science does not agree with the biblical teaching about the heart as the seat and center of man's spiritual life. Perhaps it will be revealed that the biblical view is not so indifferent to the interests of our knowledge that we can ignore it in the study of the soul. Perhaps we shall also find an inner correlation between this view and our moral and religious demands, which in this case will give it special significance, if not within the narrow confines of the sciences, then in the sphere of the unlimited strivings of the human spirit for the perfect, for the good, for God.

On the basis of indubitable physiological facts, which we shall point out below, psychology teaches that the head, or the brain with its nerves leading to it, serves as the necessary and immediate bodily organ of the soul for the formation of ideas and thoughts from the impressions of the external world, or that this organ alone is the direct conductor and bearer of mental phenomena. This indisputably true doctrine of the bodily organ of psychic phenomena has long united in psychology a special view of the essence of the human soul, a view which, incidentally, could have had to a certain extent an independent, independent development. When the nerves concentrated in the head are set in motion by the influences and impressions of the external world, the immediate and immediate consequence of this movement is the origin in the mind of ideas, concepts, or knowledge of the external world. From this it was easy to come to the assumption that the essential faculty of the human soul is precisely this ability to generate or form ideas about the world in relation to the movement of nerves excited by an external object. That which exists in the nerves as motion is revealed, appears, and exists in the mind as a representation. Accordingly, philosophy has long been dominated by the view that the human soul is originally a being, that thought is the very essence of the soul, or that thought constitutes the whole of spiritual man. The will and feelings of the heart were understood as phenomena, modifications, and accidental states of thought. with thought, disappear in it and thus lose every kind of originality and essentiality. In these definitions the essence of the soul is made as open and easily observable as those forms of thought which, among other phenomena of mental life, are distinguished by their peculiar transparency and clarity. Thus, for the first time, we can see here at least a tendency to explain phenomena in such a way as not to give an essence of a greater and more significant content in comparison with its phenomena accessible to our observation; and whoever, on the contrary, thinks that in the human soul, as in every creation of God, there are aspects inaccessible to the limited means of our knowledge, can already see in advance the significance of the Biblical teaching about the deep heart, the mysteries of which only the divine mind knows.

Yet it is clear that the psychological doctrine we are considering cannot easily explain the possibility and reality of free will in man, nor can it easily recognize the moral dignity and significance of human action, which follows from the immediate inclinations and feelings of the heart, and is not determined by abstract thought about duty and duties. That is why philosophy has so often denied freedom in man, so often asserted that in man and mankind reigns the same irresistible necessity as in the logical deductions of thought, in which the conclusion is not determined freely, but necessarily, according to the quality and significance of the premises. In the same way, philosophy replaced the warm and vital commandment of love, a commandment that is so meaningful to the heart, with an abstract and cold consciousness of duty, a consciousness that presupposes not inspiration, not a fiery inclination of the heart to good, but a simple, indifferent understanding of phenomena. Finally, since our knowledge of God is anthropomorphic, this philosophy has necessarily arrived at an abstract concept of the essence of God, defining all the inexhaustible richness of God's life as an idea, as a thought that is always unchangeable, equal to itself, a thought that creates the world without will, without love, according to logical necessity alone.

These one-sided theories, to which we only slightly point here, are made intelligible by the proposition that the essence of the soul is thought, and nothing more; therefore, they serve for us as an indirect refutation of the very proposition that underlies them. Thinking does not exhaust the fullness of human spiritual life, just as the perfection of thinking does not yet designate all the perfections of the human spirit. Whoever asserts that "thinking is the whole man," and hopes to explain all the variety of psychic phenomena from thought, will succeed no more than the physiologist who would explain the phenomena of hearing—sounds, tones, and words—from the phenomena of sight, such as extension, figure, color, etc. In accordance with this, we can already assume that the activity of the human mind has as its direct organ in the body more than one head or brain with nerves leading to it. but extends much further and deeper into the bodily organism. Both the essence of the soul and its connection with the body must be much richer and more diverse than is usually thought. This, of course, general and as yet undefined idea of a many-sided, and not one-sided, connection between the soul and the body is contained in the biblical teaching about the heart as the immediate and closest organ of spiritual activities and states. The bodily organ of the soul can be none other than the human body. Therefore, just as the heart unites in itself the forces of this body, it also serves as the closest organ of spiritual life. The body is an expedient organ of the soul, not in its part alone, but in its entirety of composition and structure.

We have said above that the physiological facts by which it is proved that the brain is the seat of mental actions are beyond doubt. One of the most certain truths of physiology is that the conscious activity of the soul has its immediate organ in the brain. Thus, after prolonged and intense reflection, we feel heaviness and pain in our heads, and vice versa, heaviness and pain make a person incapable of thinking. A strong blow to the head often causes the loss of memory or one of the series of ideas. When the optic nerve is separated from the brain, even though the eye reflects objects in its mirror, there can be no sensation, vision, or consciousness of these objects. The same must be said of all the other sense-organs, on the basis of precise physiological experiments. However, from these undoubted experiments of physiology, very little follows for the psychological doctrine of the soul's presence in the body. We can only say that the activity or, more precisely, the movement of the brain is a necessary condition for the soul to be able to give birth to sensations and ideas about the world. Or, in order for a movement communicated to an organ to become a psychic sensation and representation, it must extend to the brain. If, however, it is further inferred that the soul must reside in the brain by its being, then this assumption is based on an extraneous observation taken from the world of the senses. In this world, where the two terms of interaction that are only subject to our observation are equally sensible, motion passes from one to the other by means of pressure or push; The moving body must produce a pressure or push on the spatial side of the body being moved, which on this occasion develops in itself these or other types of motion. But this pressure, this impulse, is impossible in the interaction between the soul and the body, where one member is the non-spatial being of the soul. The soul has no spatial side to which it could receive impulses from the spatial movements of the brain. Therefore, although the activity of the brain is a necessary condition for the soul to give birth to sensations and ideas, we do not see the necessity by virtue of which the soul should be in the brain as its place for this purpose. The connection between the movement of a certain part of the brain and the idea formed by the soul on this occasion is not a mechanical connection of pressures and impulses, which would indisputably presuppose the spatial unity of the connecting members, but a purposeful, ideal, spiritual connection; The soul experiences impressions not from the spatial movements of the brain mass, but from its purposeful activity, which, as is obvious, does not require the spatial compatibility of the members acting on each other.