Excerpt from The Anglican Pulpit Library, Vol. 9: Whitsunday, Trinity Sunday, First Sunday After Trinity, Second Sunday After Trinity

Now this state of mind is in fact due to a fundamental mistake which a little steady thinking ought to uproot.

To consider the question as a matter of language, spiritual' in the New Testament is never, in fact, opposed to what is material or visible, but only to what is carnal - to that in which the higher part of our nature is dragged at the heels of the lower. Thus the birth of Isaac is spiritual he was born, ' S. Paul says, after the spirit'; while the birth of Ishmael is carnal after the flesh, ' not because the birth of Isaac was one whit less visible or material than the birth of Ishmael, but because it came about so as to express a spiritual and divine purpose, and not as the outcome of mere physical passion. Or, again, what is spiritual may be opposed to what is formal - to an act, that-is, which is external only and has no moral meaning behind it. So S. Paul speaks of circumcision which is 'in the letter, ' that is in external form only, and not 'in the spirit, ' as having nothing moral corresponding to it; but, on the other hand, the supremely spiritual act, the act of Christ when in His eternal spirit He offered Himself without spot to God, ' gains its meaning through its being visible and enacted in the flesh it was an offering of the Body of Jesus Christ once for all.' Once again there is one passage where spiritually means metaphorically or allegorically in the matter of interpretation, the passage in the Apocalypse in which the city is spoken of, which spiritually' is called Sodom or Egypt, where it is implied that these sinful cities have a mystical meaning, because their sinfulness repre sented a principle wider than themselves. But this use of the word Spiritually is unique in the New Testament, and in itself it only implies that certain definite outward objects and incidents enshrine eternal principles.

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