Genesis 1:26-27

Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness

The creation of man

I. THAT THE CREATION OF MAN WAS PRECEDED BY A DIVINE CONSULTATION.

1. This consultation was Divine. Held by the Three Persons of the Ever-Blessed Trinity, who were one in the creative work.

2. This consultation was solemn Man, unlike the rest of creation, is a being endowed with mind and volition, capable even of rebellion against his Creator. There must be a pause before such a being is made. The project must be considered. The probable issue must be calculated. His relation to heaven and earth must be contemplated.

3. This consultation was happy. The Divine Being had not yet given out, in the creative work, the highest thought of His mind; He had not yet found outlet for the larger sympathies of His heart in the universe He had just made and welcomed into being. The light could not utter all His beneficence. The waters could not articulate all His power. The stars did but whisper His name. The being of man is vocal with God, as is no other created object. He is a revelation of his Maker in a very high degree. In him the Divine thought and sympathy found welcome outlet. The creation of man was also happy in its bearing toward the external universe. The world is finished. It is almost silent. There is only the voice of the animal creation to break its stillness. But man steps forth into the desolate home. He can sing a hymn--he can offer a prayer--he can commune with God--he can occupy the tenantless house. Hence the council that contemplated his creation would be happy.

II. THAT MAN WAS CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. Man was originally God-like, with certain limitations. In what respect was man created after the image of God?

1. In respect to his intelligence. God is the Supreme Mind. He is the Infinite Intelligence. Man is like Him in that he also is gifted with mind and intelligence; he is capable of thought.

2. In respect to his moral nature. Man is made after the image of God, in righteousness and true holiness. He was made with a benevolent disposition, with happy and prayerful spirit, and with a longing desire to promote the general good of the universe; in these respects he was like God, who is infinitely pure, Divinely happy in His life, and in deep sympathy with all who are within the circle of His Being.

3. In respect to his dominion. God is the Supreme Ruler of all things in heaven and in earth. Both angels and men are His subjects. Material Nature is part of His realm, and is under His authority. In this respect, man is made in the image of God. He is the king of this world. The brute creation is subject to his sway. Material forces are largely under his command.

4. In respect to his immortality. God is eternal. Man partakes of the Divine immortality. Man, having commenced the race of being, will run toward a goal he can never reach. God, angels, and men are the only immortalities of which we are cognizant. What an awful thing is life.

5. In respect to the power of creatorship. Man has, within certain limits, the power of creatorship. He can design new patterns of work.

III. THAT THE CREATION OF MAN IN THE DIVINE IMAGE IS A FACT WELL ATTESTED. “So God created man in His own image” (Genesis 1:27). This perfection of primeval manhood is not the fanciful creation of artistic genius--it is not the dream of poetic imagination--it is not the figment of a speculative philosophy; but it is the calm statement of Scripture.

1. It is attested by the intention and statement of the Creator. It was the intention of God to make man after His own image, and the workman generally follows out the motive with which he commences his toil. And we have the statement of Scripture that He did so in this instance. True, the image was soon marred and broken, which could not have been the case had it not previously existed. How glorious must man have been in his original condition.

2. It is attested by the very fall of man. How wonderful are the capabilities of even our fallen manhood. The splendid ruins are proof that once they were a magnificent edifice. What achievements are made by the intellect of man--what loving sympathies are given out from his heart--what prayers arise from his soul--of what noble activities is he capable; these are tokens of fallen greatness, for the being of the most splendid manhood is but the rubbish of an Adam. Man must have been made in the image of God, or the grandeur of his moral ruin is inexplicable. Learn:

1. The dignity of man’s nature.

2. The greatness of man’s fall.

3. The glory of man’s recovery by Christ. (J. S. Exell, M. A.)

What is the image of God in which man was created?

I. NEGATIVELY. Let us see wherein the image of God in man does not consist. Some, for instance, the Socinians, maintain that it consists in that power and dominion that God gave Adam over the creatures. True, man was vouched God’s immediate deputy upon earth, the viceroy of the creation. But that this power and dominion is not adequately and completely the image of God is clear from two considerations.

1. Then he that had most power and dominion would have most of God’s image, and consequently Nimrod had more of it than Noah, Saul than Samuel, Caesar than Christ--which is a blasphemous paradox.

2. Self-denial and humility will make us unlike.

II. POSITIVELY. Let us see wherein the image of God in man does consist. It is that universal rectitude of all the faculties of the soul--by which they stand, act, and dispose their respective offices and operations, which will be more fully set forth by taking a distinct survey of it in the several faculties belonging to the soul; in the understanding, in the will, in the passions or affections.

1. In the understanding. At its first creation it was sublime, clear, and inspiring. It was the leading faculty. There is as much difference between the clear representations of the understanding then, and the obscure discoveries that it makes now, as there is between the prospect of landscape from a casement, and from a keyhole. This image was apparent--

(1) In the understanding speculative.

(2) In the practical understanding.

2. In the will. The will of man in the state of innocence had an entire freedom to accept or not the temptation. The will then was ductile and pliant to all the motions of right reason. It is in the nature of the will to follow a superior guide--to be drawn by the intellect. But then it was subordinate, not enslaved; not as a servant to a master, but as a queen to her king, who both acknowledges her subjection and yet retains her majesty.

3. In the passion. Love. Now this affection, in the state of innocence, was happily pitched upon its right object; it flamed up in direct fervours of devotion to God, and in collateral emissions of charity to its neighbour. Hatred. It was then like aloes--bitter, but wholesome. Anger. Joy. Sorrow. Hope. Fear. The use of this point--that man was created in the image of God--might be various; but it shall be two fold.

(1) To remind us of the irreparable loss we have sustained by sin.

(2) To teach us the excellency of the Christian religion. (R. South, D. D.)

The Divine image in man

It is not too much to say that redemption, with all its graces and all its glories, finds its explanation and its reason in creation. He who thought it worth while to create, foreseeing consequences, can be believed, if He says so, to have thought it worth while to rescue and to renew. Nay, there is in this redemption a sort of antecedent fitness, inasmuch as it exculpates the act of creation from the charge of short-sightedness or of mistake. “Let us make man in our image,” created anew in Jesus Christ, “after the image of Him that created him.” Notice three respects in which the Divine image has been traced in the human.

I. “God is Spirit,” was our Lord’s saying to the Samaritan. Man is spirit also. This it is which makes him capable of intercourse and communion with God Himself. SPIRITUALITY thus becomes the very differentia of humanity. The man who declares that the spiritual is not, or is not for him, may well fancy himself developed out of lower organisms by a process which leaves him still generically one of them; for he has parted altogether from the great strength and life of his race.

II. Spirituality is the first Divine likeness. We will make SYMPATHY the second. Fellow suffering is not necessarily sympathy. On the other hand, sympathy may be where fellow suffering is not. Love is sympathy, and God is love. Sympathy is an attribute of Deity. When God made man in His own likeness, He made him thereby capable of sympathy. Spirituality without sympathy might conceivably be a cold and spiritless grace; it might lift us above earth, but it would not brighten earth itself.

III. The third feature is that which we call INFLUENCE; the other two are conditions of it. Influence is by name and essence the gentle flowing in of one nature and one personality into another, which touches the spring of will and makes the volition of one the volition of the other. It is indeed a worse than heathenish negation of the power and activity of God, the source of all, if we debar Him alone from the exercise of that spiritual influence upon the understanding, the conscience, and the heart of mankind, which we find to be all but resistless in the hands of those who possess it by His leave. (Dean Vaughan.)

Man in God’s image

The small can represent the great. Is not the sun reflected in the hues of the smallest flower, and in the greenness of the finest blade of grass? Yet that sun is distant from our earth ninety-five millions of miles, and is larger than our earth one hundred thousand times.

I. IN WHAT THE IMAGE OF GOD UPON MAN CONSISTS.

1. In the possession of moral powers and susceptibilities.

2. In the pure and righteous state of his whole nature.

3. In his relative position toward other terrestrial creatures.

II. GREAT BLESSEDNESS WAS INVOLVED IN THE POSSESSION OF GOD’S IMAGE.

1. In the possession of the Divine image human nature had within itself a mirror of God.

2. It led to fellowship with, God.

3. It was a mirror of God to other creatures.

4. It was a mirror in which God saw Himself.

In this was involved--

(1) Supreme good to man himself.

(2) High satisfaction and glory to God.

Reflections:

1. How sadly changed is human nature.

2. How elevated is the Christian.

3. How blessed is God. (S. Martin.)

The image of God in man

In man two widely different elements are blended, of which only the one could be moulded in the image of God. God is a Spirit: but man is material as well as spiritual. God “breathed into (man’s) nostrils the breath of life”: but He had previously “formed (him) of the dust of the ground.” Man therefore is like a coin which bears the image of the monarch: when we would describe the features of that royal likeness, we take no thought of the earthly material of the metal on which it is impressed.

1. In the first place, then, man bears God’s image, because God gave him a freewill, by the force of which gift he is entrusted with individual responsibility, and exercises a sort of delegated power. This freewill was made separate from that of God, or the gift would not have been complete. But it was never meant to be independent of that of God, or the gift to a creature would have been fatal; as indeed man made it, when he started aside into the rebellion of a self-seeking and isolated will. God is the great First Cause.

2. But what are the next features of God’s image, in addition to this gift of will? It might resemble mere force committed to some powerful but lawless body, which could move without the help of sense or sight. Thus the madman, for instance, retains will with its full originating power. But it impels him blindly and irrationally; it may impel him to do himself an injury, or to injure those whom he once loved most dearly. And this would be an instance of will without light. Or again, the thoroughly abandoned man, who is given over to a sort of moral madness, he too retains the power of will; but it has lost all moral guidance; it no longer obeys the laws of rectitude; it has become, by the loss of that guidance, more dangerous, because more mischievous, than even the mightiest of the powers of nature. And this would be an instance of will without law. To complete our notion of God’s image, therefore, we must add to the power of will the law of conscience. Whatsoever is right is our bounden duty, which the strict harmony of our nature enjoins; whatsoever is wrong must be firmly shunned, as a contradiction to that nature, as a new discord in the place of harmony, as a new dishonour to the image of God,

3. But in the third place; it is not sufficient to have added the law of conscience, unless we add the light of reason too. For we could imagine a creature, possessing something like both will and conscience, who might nevertheless be far less richly endowed than man. The will of such a being might be unenlightened: the conscience might be no more than a sort of stolid sensation of mindless and unreasoning fear. The gift of intellect, then, is a third essential feature in our nature; and a third trace of the image of God. Our first parents had dominion, for God “endued them with strength by themselves, and made them according to His image, and put the fear of man upon all flesh, and gave him dominion over beasts and fowls.” They had intelligence, for “counsel, and a tongue, and eyes, ears, and a heart gave He them to understand.” They had intercourse with God, for “He made an everlasting covenant with them, and showed them His judgments.” Now I need scarcely point out how precisely and accurately this threefold division corresponds with what we had reached through an altogether different process. It was as an image of God’s will that man possessed dominion: as an image of God’s mind that he was capable of knowledge: as an image of God’s moral nature, that he was admitted to intercourse with God. (Archdeacon Hannah.)

The creation of man in the Divine image

I. WHAT BELONGS TO THE IMAGE OF GOD, OR TO THE UPRIGHTNESS IN WHICH MAN IS HERE SAID TO BE CREATED? The principal question here to be considered is, whether the expressions in the text relate to the nature or to the character of man. Perfection of original constitution is one thing; perfection of action and of moral character is a different thing. Now we understand the expressions in our text to be employed with exclusive reference to the nature of man, to the essential being and constitution of his powers. We suppose the meaning to be, that God created man with certain spiritual faculties, which are an image or likeness of what exists in the Maker Himself.

1. We include here, first, reason, or the intellectual powers by which knowledge is acquired.

2. Intimately connected with these intellectual faculties, is the power of feeling moral obligation and of recognizing moral law; and we therefore name this as a second thing embraced in the Divine image, which belongs to man by creation. If the first is an image of the Divine knowledge, this is an image of the Divine holiness.

3. Still another part of the image of God in the soul is the power of free will, or the faculty of determining our actions, and so forming our character. This constitutes the executive power in man, or that by which he gives being and direction to his actions.

4. We may further include in the Divine image in man the power of exercising certain affections. There are decisive indications in nature, and most emphatic declarations in Scripture, that God is compassionate, and loves His creatures. We are, therefore, justified in regarding the feelings of which we are capable of love to God, and of love and piety towards other persons, as still another part of the image of God in the soul.

II. WE INQUIRE WHETHER THE LANGUAGE OF OUR TEXT OUGHT TO BE UNDERSTOOD OF OUR FIRST PARENTS MERELY, OR OF MANKIND IN GENERAL? We think it applies essentially (though possibly with some modification in respect to the original constitution in the descendants of Adam) to all human beings. Much which we have already said has, in fact, assumed this view; but we shall here state the reasons of it more fully.

1. The passage in Genesis is most naturally viewed as relating to the human nature generally, which then began its existence in Adam and Eve.

2. The Scriptures in several places speak of men generally as made in the image and likeness of God (See Genesis 9:6; James 3:9).

3. We conclude with a few brief remarks.

1. The discussion through which we have passed enables us to see the ground on which Paul could say of the Gentile nations, who have no written revelation, that they are a law unto themselves. Endowed with spiritual faculties which enable them to determine for themselves the main substance of their duty. Made in image of God; so moral and accountable beings.

2. We see also that natural religion, or the religion which developes itself out of the conscience, must be the foundation of the religion of revelation.

3. All men need much and careful instruction. (D. N. Sheldon, D. D.)

Our ancestors

I. WHEN did God make man?

1. After He had created the world.

2. After He had enlightened the world.

3. After He had furnished and beautified the world.

II. How did God make man?

1. Consultation amongst the Persons of the Godhead.

2. Process.

3. Breath of life.

III. WHAT did God make man?

1. A creature comely and beautiful in his outward appearance.

2. Dignified in his soul.

3. Princely in his office.

4. Probationary in his circumstance.

Concluding reflections:

1. How happy must have been the state of man in Paradise!

2. How keenly would they feel the effects of the fall!

3. How visibly do we see the effects of the fall in our world!

4. How thankful ought we to be for the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ! (Benson Bailey.)

The image of God

I. IN WHAT RESPECTS GOD CREATED MAN AFTER HIS IMAGE.

1. After His natural image.

(1) A spiritual being.

(2) Free.

(3) Immortal.

2. After His political image. Man is God’s representative on earth.

3. After His moral image. This consists in knowledge, holiness, righteousness, and happiness resulting therefrom (Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24).

II. WHETHER MAN HAS LOST THIS IMAGE OF GOD, IN WHICH HE WAS CREATED; AND, IF SO, HOW FAR, AND BY WHAT MEANS HE HAS LOST IT.

III. WHETHER MAN MAY, AND MUST RECOVER THIS IMAGE OF GOD; HOW FAR, AND BY WHAT MEANS.

1. Man may certainly recover the moral image of God. His ignorance as to spiritual and Divine things, his unreasonableness and folly, may be removed, and he may be enlightened with knowledge and wisdom. As to the necessity of thus recovering the Divine image. Without this we do not learn Christ aright; the gospel and grace of God do not answer their end upon us, nor are we Christians (Ephesians 4:21); without this we do not, cannot glorify God, but dishonour Him (Romans 2:23); without this, we cannot be happy here, we cannot be admitted into heaven Hebrews 12:14; Matthew 5:8; 1 John 3:3; Revelation 7:14, Matthew 22:11.; 2 Corinthians 5:3). In order to recover this lovely image of God, we must look at it, as Eve looked at the fruit (2 Corinthians 3:18); we must long for it, must hunger and thirst after it Matthew 5:6); we must exercise faith in Christ (Acts 26:18), and in the promises (2 Peter 1:4); and thus approach the tree of life, and pluck, and eat its fruit; we must pray for the Spirit (Titus 3:5; Ezekiel 36:25; Ezekiel 36:27; 2 Corinthians 3:18); we must read the word, hear, meditate, etc. (John 8:31; John 17:17; 1 Peter 1:22; James 1:18); we must use self-denial, and mortification (Ro Galatians 5:16), and watchfulness (1 Peter 5:8; Revelation 16:15). (J. Benson.)

Man’s creation and empire

I. MAN CREATED; THE GODLIKE CREATURE. We are justified in emphasizing man’s entrance into the world as a creation. In the first chapter of Genesis a distinct word is used to denote three separate beginnings: first, when matter was created; second, when animal life was created; third, when man was created. Man only approaches the animal when he is under the control of the spirit that tempted him at the fall. Man is, however, connected with the earth and the animal. The added mental and spiritual endowments consummated the likeness of God upon the earth. When Christ came into the world it was in the same image.

II. THE EMPIRE AND THE GRANARIES FOR MAN. That kingship which came to man from his likeness to God he has kept as he has retained the Divine image. Single-handed man was not equal to a contest with the monsters that filled the deep. The beasts that roamed the primeval forests could not be conquered, even by the giants who were on the earth in those days, by sheer strength of arm. The sea, the winds, the creeping, flying, browsing mammoths have always been man’s master, save as he used mind and heart to secure his dominion. What, then, makes man the master? Mind, reason, judgment, like God’s.

III. THE UNFINISHED DAY. Of each preceding evening and morning God said: “And there was evening and there was morning, one day,” but no such record has come to us respecting the seventh day. This is the Scripture: “And on the seventh day God finished the work which He had made; and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it.” We are still in that day. (W. R. Campbell.)

The Divine in man

The heathen, recognizing in their own way the spiritual in man, tried to bridge over the chasm between it and the earthly by making God more human. The way of revelation on the contrary is to make man more godlike, to tell of the Divine idea yet to be realized in his nature. Nor have we far to go to find some of the traces of this Divine in human nature.

1. We are told that God is just and pure and holy. What is the meaning of these words? Speak to the deaf man of hearing, or the blind of light, he knows not what you mean. And so to talk of God as good and just and pure implies that there is goodness, justice, purity, within the mind of man.

2. We find in man the sense of the infinite: just as truly as God is boundless is the soul of man boundless; there is something boundless, infinite, in the sense of justice, in the sense of truth, in the power of self sacrifice.

3. In man’s creative power there is a resemblance to God. He has filled the world with his creations. It is his special privilege to subdue the powers of nature to himself. He has turned the forces of nature against herself; commanding the winds to help him in braving the sea. And marvellous as is man’s rule over external, dead nature, more marvellous still is his rule over animated nature. To see the trained falcon strike down the quarry at the feet of his master, and come back, when God’s free heaven is before him; to see the hound use his speed in the service of his master, to take a prey not to be given to himself; to see the camel of the desert carrying man through his own home: all these show the creative power of man, and his resemblance to God the Creator. (F. W. Robertson, M. A.)

Wherein can the image of God, in a finite creature, consist? To this question some answer, that the image of God consisted in the superiority of man’s physical faculties, in the admirable conformation of his body. This answer is unworthy of our text and God. Is God a material being? Has He a body, in the image of which lie could create man? Others, on hearing the question, answer, that the image of God in man consisted in the dominion which was given him over all created beings. But can this be the whole of God’s image? Others, again, reply to our question, that the image of God consisted in the faculty of the understanding with which man is endowed, and which so eminently distinguishes him from all other creatures. This answer is less remote from the truth, but it is incomplete. In the fifth chapter of Genesis we find the two words, image and likeness, employed in a manner calculated to make us understand their meaning in our text. There it is said, that “Adam begat a son in his own likeness, after his image, and called his name Seth.” Now is it not evident, that these words ascribe to Seth all the qualifies, physical, intellectual, and moral, which his father possessed? And, can we, without doing violence to the grammar itself, restrain the meaning of these expressions in our text to a certain superiority by which man is distinguished? We think, then, that we are authorized to extend these words to all that which constitutes the character of God, with all the restrictions which the finite nature of man requires. Man resembled his Creator with regard to his intellectual and moral qualities. Doubtless there are, in God, incommunicable perfections which belong to His eternal essence; and, indeed, it is for having arrogated to himself these august perfections, that man unhappily excavated an abyss of woe beneath his feet. But there are in God moral perfections which He communicates to His creatures, endowed with an understanding to know, and a heart to love. In this sense, man was a reflection, feeble, no doubt, and finite, of the Divinity Himself. He was, St. Paul tells us, created in “righteousness and true holiness.” But that we might be able still better to distinguish the traits of this image, God has not contented Himself with merely giving us an exact description of them in the words which we have just considered. Bead the Gospels; there is developed before our eyes the life of one whom the Bible calls the second Adam, one who is designated the image of God, the express image of the person of God, the image of the invisible God. What Divine traits does that image bear! What a reflection of the Divine perfections! What wisdom! What level What devotion! What holiness! There, my brethren, we clearly behold the being made “after God in righteousness and true holiness,” of which the apostle speaks. Now see how the image of God in man develops itself in the idea of the inspired apostle, and in the manifestation of the Son of God on earth. We too, place some traits of this image in the understanding. Not, indeed, in the understanding which requires to be “renewed in knowledge,” because it has forgotten the things which are above, and has lost the knowledge of the name of its heavenly Father; but in the clear and enlightened understanding of the first man, created after the image of God; a spiritual understanding, the reflection of the supreme intelligence, capable of rising to God, of seeking God, of adoring God in His works, and in all His moral perfections; an understanding without error and without darkness, possessing a full knowledge of the author of its being, and all the means of continually making new progress in that knowledge by experience. Now to know God is life eternal; it is the perfection of the understanding; it is the image of God. We do not, however, mean to represent man, created in the image of God, notwithstanding the superiority of his understanding, as a savant, in the ordinary meaning of that word, nor as a philosopher, or metaphysician: it was not by the way of reasoning that he arrived at the knowledge of things; he had no need of such a process. The superiority, even of his understanding, consisted, perhaps, chiefly in its simplicity, its ignorance of what is false, its inexperience of evil, in that practical ingenuousness, which constitutes the charm of the unsophisticated character of a child, a character which Jesus commands us to acquire anew. Always disposed to learn, never presuming upon itself, plying those around it with questions, listening to their answers with an entire confidence--such is the child in the arms of its father, such was Adam before his God, who condescended to instruct him, and whose word was never called in doubt. The Scripture confirms us in the idea, that this was indeed an admirable feature of God’s image, when it tells us, that “God made man upright, but that (afterwards, alas!) they sought out many inventions (reasonings)” (Ecclesiastes 7:29). The Apostle Paul also countenances this opinion, when, in his tender solicitude for the Christians at Corinth, who were exposed to the sophistry of a false philosophy, he writes to them, with an evident allusion to the seduction of our first parents, “I fear lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” Finally, Jesus Christ also establishes it, when, showing us, in this humble and noble simplicity, this child-like candour, full of openness and confidence, characteristic feature of the children of His kingdom, He addresses to His still presumptuous disciples this solemn declaration: “Verily, I say unto you, except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” This feature of character leads us to another, which is inseparable from it. This simplicity in the mind supposes or produces simplicity in the heart. When an individual is straightforward in thought, he is straightforward in his actions. Hence, when the Bible tells us that “God made man upright,” it employs a word which, in the original language, means straightness, as, for example, of a way or a line; and to be upright, is to follow, without deviation, this way, or this line. Now, man created after the image of God, followed without effort, as by instinct, this way of uprightness. This feature, so beautiful and so noble, is reproduced in the new man, which, according to the apostle, is “created after God in righteousness,” that is, in uprightness of mind and of heart. Finally, let us not forget (and this consideration includes all that remains for us to say on the image of God in man), that this being, “created after God in righteousness and true holiness,” bore in him a heart capable of loving. And what is the feature of His glorious perfections, that God takes the greatest pleasure in engraving upon His creature, if it be not His love? Is not God love? And shall not he, who bears impressed upon his whole being the image of God, who places his glory in being loved, be capable of loving? Yes, lively, deep, powerful affections filled the heart of the first man, since, even to this day, these affections exercise so great an influence over us, and are often, without our knowing it, the real motives of our actions. But in Adam these affections were pure, as his whole being, they partook of that “true holiness” which constitutes the image of God. To man, still innocent, to love God was life. But love is an all-powerful principle of activity, devotedness, and energy. In the first man it must have been the motive of his devotion to God, the mysterious bond of his intimate communion with Him, the sure guarantee of his filial obedience, the ineffable charm which made him find in that obedience all his happiness. So sweet is devotedness to that which we love! Ah! that servile obedience which makes us tremble before the law, because the commandment came forth with thunderings from the smoking summits of Sinai, was unknown in Eden; that tardy, imperfect obedience, which costs our selfish, grovelling hearts so much, was unknown; it was unknown, because that same love reigned there, which makes the seraph find his happiness in flying at the will of Him who pours life and felicity over him in an unceasing stream. Thus, the understanding of man, always enlightened in the will of God, who spake to His creature as a man speaks to his friend; and the heart of man, which loving that sovereign will above all things, made him find liberty in perfect submission and happiness in ready obedience; so that, in him, thought, will, and affection, all united in one holy harmony, to the glory of Him that had “created him in righteousness and true holiness.” (L. Bonnet.)

Man created in the image of God

I. To inquire wherein this “image of God” consisted.

II. To suggest some useful inferences from the inquiry.

1. In the first place, then, we may venture to affirm that man’s resemblance to his Maker did not, as some have strangely imagined, consist in the form or structure of his body, though “fearfully and wonderfully made,” and reflecting, as it does in an eminent degree the wisdom and goodness of the Creator. For with what propriety can body said to be “the image” of spirit?

(1) His understanding--the ruling faculty--was made capable of clearly discerning what is really good, of accurately discriminating between right and wrong, of ascertaining correctly, and as it were intuitively, the boundaries of good and evil; the former as consisting in conformity to the Divine will, the latter in deviation from that will. Doubtless Adam possessed, in his original state, a perfect knowledge of his Maker; that is, a knowledge morally perfect--perfect in kind, though in degree necessarily imperfect, as must ever be the knowledge which a finite being possesses of one that is infinite. His understanding was free from error, his judgment from corrupt bias.

(2) And as his intellect perceived, so his will approved and chose, that which was good. His will implicitly followed the dictates of his understanding; cleaving to, and taking complacency in, all that his judgment saw to be right; rejecting and shunning all which is pronounced to be wrong. The affections also, and appetites, and the subordinate movements and inclinations of the soul, were regulated and controlled according to this standard. There was no war between the decisions of the judgment and the inclinations of the will.

(3) That the image of God in the soul of man consisted, primarily at least, in the right state of the understanding and will, as it regards moral excellence, will appear further by what is said by St. Paul respecting the new man, or that new nature which in regeneration is imparted to the soul. The “new man,” he tells us, in one passage of his Epistles, is “created after God”--i.e., after the likeness of God--“in righteousness and true holiness” (Ephesians 4:24). In another passage he says that it is “renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him that created him” Colossians 3:10). Knowledge, then, and holiness--knowledge not speculative but practical, holiness not relative but real; the one illuminating the mind, the other governing the heart--constituted, in the apostle’s view, that “image of God” in which our text declares that He created man. From all these considerations we may infer that the image of God in which Adam was created consisted in an understanding prepared to imbibe true knowledge, a judgment free from corrupt bias, a will disposed to obedience, and affections regulated according to Divine reason and moral truth. From such a state of mind, godliness, in its internal exercises and outward expressions--righteousness, truth, benevolence, purity, and an exact regulation and government of every appetite and passion--must necessarily result, and every duty to God and man be constantly and delightfully performed. The same disposition would ensure belief of every truth which God should afterwards reveal, obedience to every precept which He should enjoin, a cordial acceptance of every proposal which He should make, and admiration of every discovery of the Divine glory at any time vouchsafed. Nor let this be deemed an uninteresting or unimportant subject of consideration. The contrary will, I trust, appear if we proceed--

2. To suggest some practical inferences from the inquiry which has been made.

(1) We may learn hence the worth of the soul. Of what other of the works of God is it said, that they were created “after His own image”? Has God put such honour upon our souls, and shall we cover them with dishonour? You employ a great deal of time and thought about your bodies, which were made of dust, and will quickly return to dust; but of your souls, your immortal souls, formed of heavenly materials, and moulded after the Divine likeness, you take scarcely any thought at all. Accidents and dangers, sicknesses and diseases that befall the body, are carefully guarded against and carefully remedied; whilst the moral disorders of the soul, the certain danger to which it is exposed from the wrath of God and the bitter pains of eternal death, are forgotten, made light of.

(2) But, further, we are led to consider, from the subject before us, the true end of our being, and the perfection of our nature. Why did God form us after His own image, in knowledge and holiness? Doubtless that we might be capable of knowing, loving, and serving Him; that we might adore His perfections, obey His will, glorify His holy name. This was Adam’s highest dignity before he fell in the earthly paradise. And this, we have reason to believe, will constitute the happiness of the redeemed in the paradise above. Suffer me then to ask, my brethren, are you mindful of the end for which you were created? Do you count the knowledge of God, and conformity to Him, your highest good, and seek your truest happiness in His favour?

(3) Again--let the subject we have been considering remind us how awful are the effects of sin; and how low we are fallen in consequence of sin. What marred the honour and dignity of our first estate? Sin. What defaced and obscured the lineaments of the Divine image in our souls? Sin. What cut us off from that blissful communion with the Father of spirits--the source of perfection and fountain of light--in which our highest happiness originally commenced? Sin. Sin is the separation of the soul from God, as death is that of the body from the soul.

(4) And this leads me to remark in the last place, the absolute necessity of an entire change of nature, if we wish to go to heaven when we die. The image of God, which sin has effaced, must be restored before we can be admitted into His presence above. (Archdeacon Hodson, M. A.)

The antiquity of man historically considered

I. The problem of the antiquity of man has to the historian two stages. In the first, it is a matter wholly within the sphere of historical investigation, and capable of being determined, if not with precision, at any rate within chronological limits that are not very wide, i.e., that do not exceed a space of two or three centuries. In the further or second stage, it is only partially a historical problem; it has to be decided by an appeal to considerations which lie outside the true domain of the historian, and are to a large extent speculative; nor can any attempt be made to determine it otherwise than with great vagueness, and within very wide limits--limits that are to be measured not so much by centuries as by millennia. The two stages which are here spoken of correspond to two phrases which are in ordinary use--“Historic man” and “Prehistoric man.” In pursuing the present inquiry, we shall, first of all, examine the question, to what length of time history proper goes back--for how many centuries or millennia do the contemporary written records of historic man indicate or prove his existence upon the earth? The result is, that for the “Old Empire” we must allow a term of about seven centuries or seven centuries and a half; whence it follows that we must assign for the commencement of Egyptian monarchy about the year B.C. 2500, or from that to B.C. 2650. This is the furthest date to which “history proper” can be said, even probably, to extend. It is capable of some curtailment, owing to the uncertainty which attaches to the real length of the earlier dynasties, but such curtailment could not be very considerable. The history of man may then be traced from authentic sources a little beyond the middle of the third millennium before our era. It is true and safe to say that man has existed in communities under settled government for about four thousand five hundred years; but it would not be safe to say that he had existed in the condition which makes history possible for any longer term.

II. What is the probable age of “prehistoric man”? for how long a time is it reasonable to suppose that mankind existed on the earth before states and governments grew up, before writing was invented, and such a condition of the arts arrived at as we find prevailing in the time when history begins, e.g., in Egypt at the Pyramid period, about B.C. 2600, and in Babylonia about two centuries later. Professor Owen is of opinion that the space of “seven thousand years is but a brief period to be allotted to the earliest civilized and governed community”--that of Egypt; nay, he holds that such a period of “incubation,” as he postulates, is so far from extravagant that it is “more likely to prove inadequate” for the production of the civilization in question. This is equivalent to saying that we must allow two thousand five hundred years for the gradual progress of man from his primitive condition to that whereto he has attained when the Pyramid kings bear sway in the Nile valley. Other writers have proposed a still longer term, as ten thousand, fifteen thousand, or even twenty thousand years. Now, here it must be observed, in the first place, that no estimate can be formed which deserves to be accounted anything but the merest conjecture, until it has been determined what the primitive condition of man was. To calculate the time occupied upon a journey, we must know the point from which the traveller set out. Was, then, the primitive condition of man, as seems to be supposed by Professor Owen, savagery, or was it a condition very far removed from that of the savage? “The primeval savage” is a familiar term in modern literature; but there is no evidence that the primeval savage ever existed. Rather, all the evidence looks the other way. “The mythical traditions of almost all nations place at the beginnings of human history a time of happiness, perfection, a ‘golden age,’ which has no features of savagery or barbarism, but many of civilization and refinement.” The sacred records, venerated alike by Jews and Christians, depict antediluvian man as from the first “tilling the ground,” “building cities,” “smelting metals,” and “making musical instruments.” Babylonian documents of an early date tell, similarly, of art and literature having preceded the great Deluge, and having survived it. The explorers who have dug deep into the Mesopotamian mounds, and ransacked the tombs of Egypt, have come upon no certain traces of savage man in those regions, which a widespread tradition makes the cradle of the human race. So far from savagery being the primitive condition of man, it is rather to be viewed as a corruption and a degradation, the result of adverse circumstances during a long period of time, crushing man down, and effacing the Divine image wherein he was created. Had savagery been the primitive condition of man, it is scarcely conceivable that he could have ever emerged from it. Savages, left to themselves, continue savages, show no signs of progression, stagnate, or even deteriorate. There is no historical evidence of savages having ever civilized themselves, no instance on record of their having ever been raised out of their miserable condition by any other means than by contact with a civilized race. The torch of civilization is handed on from age to age, from race to race. If it were once to be extinguished, there is great doubt whether it could ever be re-lighted. Doubtless, there are degrees in civilization. Arts progress. No very high degree of perfection in any one art was ever reached per saltum. An “advanced civilization”--a high amount of excellence in several arts--implies an antecedent period during which these arts were cultivated, improvements made, perfection gradually attained. If we estimate very highly the civilization of the Pyramid period in Egypt, if we regard the statuary of the time as equalling that of Chantrey, if we view the great pyramid as an embodiment of profound cosmical and astronomical science, or even as an absolute marvel of perfect engineering construction, we shall be inclined to enlarge the antecedent period required by the art displayed, and to reckon it, not so much by centuries, as by millennia. But if we take a lower view, as do most of those familiar with the subject--if we see in the statuary much that is coarse and rude, in the general design of the pyramid a somewhat clumsy and inartistic attempt to impress by mere bulk, in the measurements of its various parts and the angles of its passages adaptations more or less skilful to convenience, and even in the “discharging chambers” and the “ventilating shafts” nothing very astonishing, we shall be content with a shorter term, and regard the supposed need of millennia as an absurdity. There is in truth but one thing which the Egyptians of the Pyramid period could really do surprisingly well; and that was to cut and polish hard stone. They must have had excellent saws, and have worked them with great skill, so as to produce perfectly flat surfaces of large dimensions. And they must have possessed the means of polishing extremely hard material, such as granite, syenite, and diorite. But in other respects their skill was not very great. Their quarrying, transport, and raising into place of enormous blocks of stone is paralleled by the Celtic builders of Stonehenge, who are not generally regarded as a very advanced people. Their alignment of their sloping galleries at the best angle for moving a sarcophagus along them may have been the result of “rule of thumb.” Their exact emplacement of their pyramids so as to face the cardinal points needed only a single determination of the sun’s place when the shadow which a gnomon cast was lowest. Primitive man, then, if we regard him as made in the image of God--clever, thoughtful, intelligent, from the first, quick to invent tools and to improve them, early acquainted with fire and not slow to discover its uses, and placed in a warm and fruitful region, where life was supported with ease--would, it appears to the present writer, not improbably have reached such a degree of civilization as that found to exist in Egypt about B.C. 2600, within five hundred or, at the utmost, a thousand years. There is no need, on account of the early civilization of Egypt, much less on account of any other, to extend the “prehistoric period” beyond this term. Mere rudeness of workmanship and low condition of life generally is sometimes adduced as an evidence of enormous antiquity; and the discoveries made in cairns, and caves, and lake beds, and kjokkenmoddings are brought forward to prove that man must have a past of enormous duration. But it seems to be forgotten that as great a rudeness and as low a savagism as any which the spade has ever turned up still exists upon the earth in various places, as among the Australian aborigines, the bushmen of South Africa, the Ostiaks and Samoyedes of Northern Asia, and the Weddas of Ceylon. The savagery of a race is thus no proof of its antiquity. As the Andaman and Wedda barbarisms are contemporary with the existing civilization of Western Europe, so the palaeolithic period of that region may have been contemporary with the highest Egyptian refinement. Another line of argument sometimes pursued in support of the theory of man’s extreme antiquity, which is of a semi-historic character, bases itself upon the diversities of human speech. There are, it is said, four thousand languages upon the earth, all of them varieties, which have been produced from a single parent stock--must it not have taken ten, fifteen, twenty millennia to have developed them? Now here, in the first place, exception may be taken to the statement that “all languages have been produced from a single parent stock,” since, if the confusion of tongues at Babel be a fact, as allowed by the greatest of living comparative philologists, several distinct stocks may at that time have been created. Nor has inductive science done more as yet than indicate a possible unity of origin to all languages, leaving the fact in the highest degree doubtful. But, waiving these objections, and supposing a primitive language from which all others have been derived, and further accepting the unproved statement, that there are four thousand different forms of speech, there is, we conceive, no difficulty in supposing that they have all been developed within the space of five thousand years. The supposition does not require even so much as the development of one new language each year. Now, it is one of the best attested facts of linguistic science, that new languages are being formed continually. Nomadia races without a literature, especially those who have abundant leisure, make a plaything of their language, and are continually changing its vocabulary. “If the work of agglutination has once commenced,” says Professor Max Muller, “and there is nothing like literature or science to keep it within limits, two villages, separated only for a few generations, will become mutually unintelligible.” Brown, the American missionary, tells us of some tribes of Red Indians who left their native village to settle in another valley, that they became unintelligible to their forefathers in two or three generations. Moffatt says that in South Africa the bulk of the men and women of the desert tribes often quit their homes for long periods, leaving their children to the care of two or three infirm old people. “The infant progeny, some of whom are beginning to lisp, while others can just master a whole sentence, and those still further advanced, romping together through the livelong day, become habituated to a language of their own. The more voluble condescend to the less precocious, and thus from this infant Babel proceeds a dialect of a host of mongrel words and phrases, joined together without rule, and in the course of one generation the entire character of the language is changed.” Castren found the Mongolian dialects entering into a new phase of grammatical life, and declared that “while the literary language of the race had no terminations for the persons of the verb, that characteristic feature of Turanian speech had lately broken out in the spoken dialects of the Buriatic and the Tungusic idioms near Njestschinsk in Siberia.” Some of the recent missionaries in Central America, who compiled a dictionary of all the words they could lay hold of with great care, returning to the same tribe after the lapse of only ten years, “found that their dictionary had become antiquated and useless.” When men were chiefly nomadic, and were without a literature, living, moreover, in small separate communities, linguistic change must have proceeded with marvellous rapidity, and each year have seen, not one new language formed, but several. The linguistic argument sometimes takes a different shape. Experience, we are told, furnishes us with a measure of the growth of language, by which the great antiquity of the human race may be well nigh demonstrated. It took above a thousand years for the Romance languages--French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Wallachian, and Roumansch, or the language of the Grisons--to be developed out of Latin. Must it not have taken ten times as longto develop Latin and its sister tongues--Greek, German, Celtic, Lithuanian, Sclavonic, Zend, Sanskrit--out of their mother speech? Nor was that mother speech itself the first form of language. Side be side with it, when it was a spoken tongue, must have existed at least two other forms of early speech, one the parent of the dialects called Semitic--Hebrew, Arabic, Syriac, Phoenician, Assyro-Babylonian, etc.

The other bearing the same relation to the dialects of the nomad races scattered over Central and Northern Asia--the Tungusic, Mongolic. Turkic, Samoyedic, and Finnic--which are all “radii from a common centre,” and form a well-established linguistic family. But these three mighty streams, which we may watch rolling on through centuries, if not millennia, distinct and separate one from another, are not wholly unconnected. If we trace them back as far as the records of the past allow, we shall find that “before they disappear from our sight in the far distance, they clearly show a convergence towards one common source.” Widely different, therefore, as they are, both in grammar and vocabulary, they too must have had a common parent, have been developed out of a still earlier language, which stood to them in the relation that Latin bears to Italian, Spanish, and French. But in what a length of time? If the daughter languages of the Latin were only developed in the space of a thousand years, and Latin, with its sister tongues, required ten or twenty times as long to be developed out of the primitive Aryan speech, how much longer a time must have been needed for the formation from one common stock of the primitive Aryan, the primitive Semitic, and the primitive Turanian types! When from reasoning of this kind--regarded as valid--the conclusion is deduced, that “twenty-one thousand years is a very probable term for the development of human language in the shortest line,” we can only feel surprise at the moderation of the reasoner. But the reasoning is invalid on several grounds.

(a) The supposed induction is made from a single instance--the case of Latin and its daughter tongues. To prove the point, several cases parallel to that of Latin should have been adduced.

(b) The time which it took for Latin to develop into Italian, Spanish, Wallachian, etc., assumed to be known, is not known. No one can say when Italian was first spoken. All that we know is, when it came to be a literary language. The fact seems to be that the Gauls and Spaniards, even the provincial Italians, learnt Latin imperfectly from the first, clipped it of its grammatical forms, corrupted its vocabulary, introduced phonetic changes consonant with their own habits and organs of speech. Languages nearer to Spanish and Italian than to classical Latin were probably spoken generally in Spain and Italy, while Latin was still the language of the capital and of polite society.

(c) Linguistic development is not, in fact, equal in equal times. On the contrary, there are periods when changes are slow and gradual, while there are others when they take place with extraordinary rapidity. English altered between Chaucer and Shakespeare very greatly more than it has changed between Shakespeare and the present day. Changes are greatest and most rapid before there is a literature; consequently, in the early stages of a language’s life. And they are facilitated by the absence of intercourse and isolation of tribe from tribe, which is the natural condition of mankind before states have been formed and governments set up. In the infancy of man linguistic change must almost certainly have progressed at a rate very much beyond that at which it has moved within the period to which history reaches back. It is as impossible, therefore, to measure the age of language by the period--supposing it known--which a given change occupied, as it would be to determine the age of a tree by the rate of growth noted at a particular time in a particular branch. The diversities of physical type have also been viewed as indicating a vast antiquity for man, more especially when taken in connection with supposed proof that the diversities were as great four thousand years ago as they are now. The main argument here is one with which history has nothing to do. It is for physiologists, not for historians, to determine how long it would take to develop the various types of humanity from a single stock. But the other point is an historical one, and requires to be considered here. Now, it is decidedly not true to say that all, or anything like all, the existing diversities of physical type can be traced back for four thousand years, or shown to have existed at the date of B.C. 2100. The early Egyptian remains indicate, at the most, five physical types--those of the Egyptians themselves, the Cushites or Ethiopians, the Nashi or negroes, the Tahennu or Lybians, and the Amu or Asiatics. The Egyptians are represented as of a red-brown colour, but their women as nearly white. They have Caucasian features, except that their lips are unduly thick. The Ethiopians have features not dissimilar, but are prognathous and much darker than the Egyptians, sometimes absolutely black. The negroes are always black, with crisp, curly hair, snub noses, and out-turned lips; but they are not represented until about B.C. 1500. The Tahennu or Lybians of the North African coast have features not unlike the Egyptians themselves, but are fair-skinned, with blue eyes and lightish hair. The Ainu have features like those of the Assyrians and Jews: they vary in colour, being sometimes reddish, sometimes yellow, and having hair which is sometimes light, sometimes dark. The diversities are thus considerable, but they are far from equalling those which now exist. And it may be suspected that each type is exaggerated. As there cannot have been the difference of colour between the Egyptian men and the Egyptian women which the monuments represent, so it is to be supposed that in the other cases the artists intensified the actual differences. The Ethiopian was represented darker than he was, the Lybian lighter; the negro was given crisper and bushier hair, a snubber nose, and thicker lips. Art, in its infancy, marks differences by caricaturing them. We must not argue from caricatures, as if they had been photographs. We are not obliged, then, to relegate the entire development of existing physical types to the prehistoric period, and on that account to give it, as has been proposed, a vast enlargement. History shows us five types only as belonging to its first period. The rest may have been developed subsequently.

III. Further, there are a certain number of positive arguments which may be adduced in favour of the “juvenility” of man, or, in other words, of his not having existed upon the earth for a much longer period than that of which we have historical evidence. As, first, the population of the earth. Considering the tendency of mankind to “increase and multiply,” so that, according to Mr. Malthus, population would, excepting for artificial hindrances, double itself every twenty-five years, it is sufficiently astonishing that the human race has not, in the space of five thousand years, exceeded greatly the actual number, which is estimated commonly at a thousand millions of souls. The doubling process would produce a thousand millions from a single pair in less than eight centuries. No doubt, “hindrances” of one kind or another would early make themselves felt. Is it conceivable that, if man had occupied the earth for the “one hundred or two hundred thousand years” of some writers, or even for the “twenty-one thousand” of others, he would not by this time have multiplied far beyond the actual numbers of the present day? Secondly, does not the fact that there are no architectural remains dating back further than the third millennium before Christ indicate, if not prove the (comparatively) recent origin of man? Man is as naturally a building animal as the beaver. He needs protection from sun and rain, from heat and cold, from storm and tempest. How is it that Egypt and Babylonia do not show us pyramids and temple towers in all the various stages of decay, reaching back further and further into the night of ages, but start, as it were, with works that we can date, such as the pyramids of Ghizeh and the ziggurat of Urukh at Mugheir? Why has Greece no building more ancient than the treasury of Atreus, Italy nothing that can be dated further back than the flourishing period of Etruria (B.C. 700-500)? Surely, if the earth has been peopled for a hundred thousand, or even twenty thousand years, man should have set his mark upon it more than five thousand years ago. Again, if man is of the antiquity supposed, how is it that there are still so many waste places upon the earth? What vast tracts are there, both in North and South America, which continue to this day untouched primeval forests?

IV. The results arrived at seem to be that, while history carries back the existence of the human race for a space of four thousand five hundred years, or to about B.C. 2600, a prehistoric period is needed for the production of the state of things found to be then existing, which cannot be fairly estimated at much less than a millennium. If the Flood is placed about

B.C. 3600, there will be ample time for the production of such a state ofsociety and such a condition of the arts as we find to have existed in Egypt a thousand years later, as well as for the changes of physical type and language which are noted by the ethnologist. The geologist may add on two thousand years more for the interval between the Deluge and the Creation, and may perhaps find room therein for his “palaeolithic” and his “neolithic” periods. (G. Rawlinson, M. A.)

The Jewish and the Christian thought of man

I. THE JEWISH CONCEPTION OF MAN. It involved--

1. A similarity of nature to that of God Himself.

2. Likeness of character to the Divine.

3. A share in Divine authority.

4. Divine interest and attention.

5. Privilege of approach to the Most High.

6. A sense of man’s degradation and misery through sin. The same heart that swelled with loftiest hope and noblest aspiration, as it felt that God was its Father and its King, was the heart that filled with tremor and shame, as it saw the heinousness of its guilt and the depth of its declension.

II. THE DISTINCTIVELY CHRISTIAN VIEW. What has Christ added to our thought about ourselves?

1. He has led us to take the highest view of our spiritual nature. A treasure of absolutely inestimable worth.

2. He has drawn aside the veil from the future, and made that long life and that large world our own.

3. He has taught us to think of ourselves as sinners who may have a full restoration to their high estate. (W. Clarkson, B. A.)

The creation of man

I. SOME GENERAL CIRCUMSTANCES CONNECTED WITH THE CREATION OF MAN. There is something striking--

1. In the manner of his creation.

2. In the period of his creation.

3. The exalted scale in the rank of beings in which he was placed.

4. The perfect happiness he possessed.

II. THE EXPRESS IMAGE IN WHICH MAN WAS CREATED. “The image of God.”

1. The image of His spirituality.

2. The image of His perfections.

3. The image of His holiness.

4. The image of His dominion.

5. The image of His immortality. “A living soul.”

Application:

1. Let us remember with gratitude to God the dignity He conferred upon us in creation. “What is man,” etc. (Psalms 8:4).

2. Let us shed tears of sorrow over the fallen, ruined state of man.

3. Man is still a precious creature, amid all the ruin sin has produced.

4. In redemption, we are exalted to dignity, happiness, and salvation.

5. Let us seek the restoration of the Divine image on our souls; for without this, without holiness, no man can see the Lord. (J. Burns, D. D.)

The Divine image in man

I. LET US INQUIRE, IN WHAT DID THE DIVINE IMAGE CONSIST?

1. In immortality.

2. Intelligence.

3. Righteousness.

4. Blessedness.

II. NOTICE THE PAINFUL TRUTH THAT THE DIVINE IMAGE HAS BEEN DEFACED IS MAN.

1. This is seen in the body of man. Disease; death.

2. It is seen more painfully in his soul. God will not dwell in the heart which cherishes sin.

III. THE PROVISION MADE FOR RESTORING THE DIVINE IMAGE TO MAN. Christ, the second Adam. (The Evangelical Preacher.)

Man created in the Divine image

I. THE MORAL CONSTITUTION OF MAN. Man has sometimes been called a microcosm, a little world, a sort of epitome of the universe. The expression is not without meaning; for in man unite and meet the two great elements of creation, mind and matter; the visible and the invisible; the body, which clothes the brute, and the spirit, which belongs to angels. Now, it is a law and property of this outward purl that it should perish and decay; whilst it is the privilege and designation of this inward part, that it should be renewed and strengthened day by day. And this we shall see, as we examine this immaterial part of man’s nature more closely. Take, for example, the operation of the thinking principle. Although we often think to a very bad purpose, yet in our hours of waking and consciousness we always do think. The mind is an ocean of thought, and, like the ocean, is never still. It may have its calm thoughts, and its tumultuous thoughts, and its overwhelming thoughts; but it never knows a state of perfect rest and inaction. Of no material or visible thing could this be affirmed. No one expects to find amongst the undiscovered properties of matter the power of thought. Again: we see this with regard to the freedom of moral agency which we possess; the power we have to follow out our own moral choice and determination. Man was formed first for duty, and then for happiness; but without this liberty of action he could not have fulfilled the designation of his being in either of these respects. I must be capable of choosing my own actions, and must be capable of determining the objects towards which they shall be directed, or I could never become the subject either of praise or of blame. I should be “serving not God, but necessity.”

II. IN SO CREATING MAN, GOD HAD RESPECT TO CERTAIN MORAL RESEMBLANCES OF HIMSELF.

1. Man’s created bias was towards purity and holiness.

2. Man was created in a condition of perfect happiness. He had a mind to know God, and affections prompting to communion with Him.

3. And then, once more, we cannot doubt that man is declared to be made in the image of God, because he was endowed by his Maker with perpetuity of being, clothed with the attribute of endless life, placed under circumstances wherein, if he had continued upright, ample provision was made for his spiritual sustentation, until, having completed the cycle of his earthly progressions, he should be conveyed, like Enoch, in invisible silence, or like Elijah, on his chariot of fire, or like the ascending Saviour, in His beautiful garments of light and cloud, to the mansions of glory and immortality. For there was the “tree of life in the midst of the garden.” He was permitted to partake of that; it was to be his sacrament, his sacramental food, the pledge of immortal being, the nourishment of that spiritual nature which he had with the breath of God. Thus man’s chief resemblance to his Maker consisted in the fact, that he was endued with a living soul--something which was incapable of death or annihilation. He had an eternity of future given to him, coeval with the being of God Himself. (D. Moore, M. A.)

Genesis of man

I. THE CREATION ARCHIVE TWO FOLD (Genesis 1:26; if. 5-22).

II. PANORAMA OF EMERGENT MAN.

III. MAN, GOD’S IMAGE.

1. Jesus Christ the image of God. He becomes this in and by the fact of His Incarnation. In Ecce Homo is Ecce Deus.

2. Man the image of Jesus Christ. In the order of time, the Son of God made Himself like to man; in the order of purpose, the Son of God made man like to Himself. It was an august illustration of His own saying when incarnate: “The first shall be last, and the last first” (Matthew 20:16). Do you ask in what respect man was made in the image of Christ? Evidently, I answer, in substantially the same respects in which Christ became the image of God. Thus: in respect to a spiritual nature: When

Jehovah God had formed the man of dust of the ground, He breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. The language, of course, is figurative. Nevertheless it must mean something. What, then, does this inbreathing by the Creator mean, if not the mysterious communication of Himself--the eternal Air or Spirit--into man? As Christ, surveyed man-wise, was born of the Spirit in Nazareth, so man, made in His image, after His likeness, was born of the Spirit in Eden. Again: a spiritual nature necessarily involves personality; and personality, at least finite, as necessarily involves what I have called secular attributes, e.g., attributes of sensation, cognition, passion, action, etc. All these belonged to Christ; and through these He declared and interpreted the Father, being in very truth the Word of God, or Deity in articulation. And the Word has existed from the beginning, being the God-Said of the creative week. In man’s potencies of whatever kind--moral, intellectual, emotional, aesthetic--whatever power or virtue or grace there may be--in all this we behold an image of the Lord from heaven. Once more: personality cannot, at least in this world, exist apart from embodiment, or some kind of incarnation, which shall be to it for sphere and vehicle and instrument. Some kind of body is needed which, by its avenues and organs, shall awaken, disclose, and perfect character. And as Christ’s body vehicled and organed His Personality, and so enabled Him to manifest the fullness of the Godhead which dwelt in Him body-wise, so man’s body was made in the image of Christ’s, even that body which in His eternal foreknowledge was eternally His. This, then, was the image in which man was created, the image of Christ’s human Personality, or Christ’s spirit and soul and body. Man is the image of Christ and Christ is the image of God; that is to say: Man is the image of the image of God, or God’s image as seen in secondary reflection.

IV. MAN GOD’S INSPIRATION (Genesis 2:7). On his body side he sprang from dust: on his soul side he sprang up with the animals: on his spirit side he sprang from God. Thus, in his very beginning, in the original makeup of him, man was a religious being. Coming into existence as God’s inbreathing, man was, in the very fact of being Divinely inbreathed, God’s Son and image. Well, then, might man’s first home be an Eden--type of heaven, and his first day God’s seventh day--even the Creator’s Sabbath.

V. THE PRIMAL COMMISSION.

1. Man’s authority over nature. It was man’s original commission, humanity’s primal charter. And history is the story of the execution of the commission, civilization the unfolding of the privileges of the charter.

Wherever civilized man has gone, there he has been gaining dominion over the fish of the sea, and the fowl of the air, and every living thing that moveth on the earth, ay, subduing earth itself. See, e.g., how he makes the fish feed him, and the sheep clothe him, and the horse draw him, and the ox plough for him, and the fowl of the air furnish him with quills to write his philosophies and his epics. Again: see man’s supremacy over the face of Nature; see, e.g., how he dikes out the ocean, as in Holland; and opens up harbours, as at Port Said; and digs canals, as at Suez; and explodes submarine reefs, as in East River; and builds roads, as over St. Gothard; and spans rivers, as the St. Lawrence; and stretches railways, as from Atlantic to Pacific; see how he reclaims mountain slopes and heaths and jungles and deserts and pestilential swamps, bringing about interchanges of vegetable and animal life, and even mitigating climates, so that here, at least, man may be said to be the creator of circumstances rather than their creature. Again: see man’s supremacy over the forces and resources of Nature; see how he subsidizes its mineral substances, turning its sands into lenses, its clay into endless blocks of brick, its granite into stalwart abutments, its iron into countless shapes for countless purposes, its gems into diadems; see how he subsidizes its vegetable products, making its grains feed him, its cottons clothe him, its forests house him, its coals warm him. See how he subsidizes the mechanical powers of nature, making its levers lift his loads, its wheels and axles weigh his anchors, its pulleys raise his weights, its inclined planes move his blocks, its wedges split his ledges, its screws propel his ships. See how he subsidizes the natural forces, making the air waft his crafts, the water run his mills, the heat move his engines, the electricity bear his messages, turning the very gravitation into a force of buoyancy.

2. But in whose name shall man administer the mighty domain? In his own name, or in another’s? In another’s most surely, even in the name of Him in whose image he is made. The Son of God alone is King, and man is but His viceroy; viceroy because His inspiration and image. Man holds the estate of earth in fief; his only right the right of usufruct.

VI. CONCLUDING OBSERVATIONS.

1. Jesus Christ the archetypal Man. Jesus the form, mankind the figure. See Romans 8:29; Colossians 1:15; Revelation 3:14.

2. Man’s incomparable dignity. His starting point is the Eternal, Infinite One. A genuine coin, stamped in effigy of Kaiser or President, is worth what it represents. Man, stamped in the effigy of the King of kings and

Lord of lords, is worth, let me dare to say it, what he represents, even Deity. Little lower than the angels, little lower than Elohim, did Elohim make him (Psalms 8:5). All this explains why this earth, cosmically so tiny, morally is so vast. Jesus Christ came not to save the worthless. He came to save Divine imageship: that is to say, all Godlike potentialities. He came to save Divine imageship itself.

3. Imageship the die of race unity. May it ever be ours to recognize lovingly every human being, whether Caucasian or Mongolian, as a member of mankind, and so our kinsman! When all men do this, mankind will not only be the same as humanity; mankind will also have humanity.

4. We see the secret of man’s coming triumph: it is imageship. Jesus Christ is the image of God; as such, He is the Lord of all. Mankind is Christ’s image lost. The Church is Christ’s image restored: as such, she, like her image, is lord of all. All things are hers; whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come: all are hers; and she is Christ’s, and Christ is God’s (1 Corinthians 3:21).

5. Would you know how to be restored in the image of God? Then gaze on the character of Him who is the brightness from His Father’s glory, and the express image of His Person. Enter into the fellowship of that character. Be everlastingly closeted with Him in the kinships and intimacies of a perfect friendship. Lovingly study every feature of that beaming Image (2 Corinthians 3:18). Thus gazing, and thus changed, it matters little what our earthly fate be, whether renown or obscurity, wealth or poverty, long life or early death. Enough that on the resurrection morn we shall perceive that as we had borne the image of the earthly, even of the first man Adam, so henceforth we shall bear the image of the heavenly, even of the Second Man, the Lord from heaven (1 Corinthians 15:47). (G. D.Boardman.)

The image of God

I. GOD’S DECREE. God consults with Himself. Complex nature of Deity.

II. MAN’S DIGNITY. Nearer to God’s own nature than other animals. A moral being.

III. MAN’S DOMINION. Lessons:

1. Our position of dignity should strengthen our sense of duty.

2. Our relationship to God should encourage us to noble aims.

3. In Jesus Christ man is restored to the image of God and to the hope of a high and blessed destiny. (W. S. Smith, B. D.)

The vastness of man

“Let Us make man in Our image.” Such is man’s height, and depth, and breadth, and mystery. He has not come from one principle or distinction of the Divine nature, but out of all principles. Man is the image of the whole Deity. There is in him a sanctuary for the Father, for the Son, and for the Holy Ghost. (J. Pulsford.)

The making of man

There is surely no bolder sentence in all human speech. It takes an infinite liberty with God! It is blasphemy if it is not truth. We have been accustomed to look at the statement so much from the human point that we have forgotten how deeply the Divine character itself is implicated. To tell us that all the signboards in Italy were painted by Raphael is simply to dishonour and bitterly humiliate the great artist. We should resent the suggestion that Beethoven or Handel is the author of all the noise that passes under the name of music. Yet we say, God made man. Here is the distinct assurance that God created man in His own image and likeness; in the image of God created He him. This is enough to ruin any Bible. This is enough to dethrone God. Within narrow limits any man would be justified in saying, If man is made in the image of God, I will not worship God who bears such an image. There would be some logic in this curt reasoning, supposing the whole case to be on the surface and to be within measurable points. So God exists to our imagination under the inexpressible disadvantage of being represented by ourselves. When we wonder about Him we revert to our own constitution. When we pray to Him we feel as if engaged in some mysterious process of self-consultation. When we reason about Him the foot of the ladder of our reasoning stands squarely on the base of our own nature. Yet, so to say, how otherwise could we get at God? Without some sort of incarnation we could have no starting point. We should be hopelessly aiming to seize the horizon or to hear messages from worlds where our language is not known. So we are driven back upon ourselves--not ourselves as outwardly seen and publicly interpreted, but our inner selves, the very secret and mystery of our soul’s reality. Ay; we are now nearing the point. We have not been talking about the right “man” at all. The “man” is within the man; the “man” is not any one man; the “man” is Humanity. God is no more the man we know than the man himself is the body we see. Now we come where words are of little use, and where the literal mind will stumble as in the dark. Truly we are now passing the gates of a sanctuary, and the silence is most eloquent. We have never seen man; he has been seen only by his Maker! As to spirit and temper and action, we are bankrupts and criminals. But the sinner is greater than the sin. We cannot see him; but God sees him; yes, and God loves him in all the shame and ruin. This is the mystery of grace. This is the pity out of which came blood, redemption, forgiveness, and all the power and glory of the gospel. We cannot think of God having made man without also thinking of the responsibility which is created by that solemn act. God accepts the responsibility of His own administration. Righteousness at the heart of things, and righteousness which will yet vindicate itself, is a conviction which we cannot surrender. It is indeed a solemn fact that we were no parties to our own creation. We are not responsible for our own existence. Let us carefully and steadily fasten the mind upon this astounding fact. God made us, yet we disobey Him; God made us, yet we grieve Him; God made us, yet we are not godly. How is that? There is no answer to the question in mere argument. For my part I simply wait, I begin to feel that, without the power of sinning, I could not be a man. As for the rest, I hide myself in Christ. Strange, too, as it may appear, I enjoy the weird charm of life’s great mystery, as a traveller might enjoy a road full of sudden turnings and possible surprises, preferring such a road to the weary, straight line, miles long, and white with hot dust. I have room enough to pray in. I have room enough to suffer in. By-and-by I shall have large space, and day without night to work in. We have yet to die; that we have never done. We have to cross the river--the cold, black, sullen river. Wait for that, and let us talk on the other side. Keep many a question standing over for heaven’s eternal sunshine. If we would see God’s conception of man, we must look upon the face of His Son--Him of whom He said, “This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” That is man; that is the ideal humanity. It is useless to look in any other direction for God’s purpose and thought. (J. Parker, D. D.)

God makes man near to Himself

Earthly sovereigns perpetuate and multiply distinctions between themselves and their subjects. In Great Britain the monarch is removed from the rank of the people by princes of the blood royal, dukes, marquises, earls, barons, viscounts, baronets, knights, esquires; and outward appearances, especially on public occasions, are so regulated, as to impress the people with their own distance; while an audience with the sovereign, or any correspondence or intercourse is, except to the favoured few, a thing impossible. All this may be necessary and even useful, where the ruling power is but earthly and human. In bold contrast with this political policy is the conduct of the supreme Sovereign--God. The King of kings formed His first earthly subjects with affinitiesbetween them and Himself most near and intimate. (S. Martin.)

Fellowship with God

The possession of the image of God led to fellowship with God. It was a means of knowing God, and a power to love God. Looking into themselves they saw God, and looking out of and beyond themselves they saw God. They were drawn to God by cords of love, and enjoyed with God the communion of mind and heart. God was in all their thoughts. God sat enthroned over all their feelings. He was to them the first, and He the last. God spake, they listened, understood, and believed. God wrought, they saw and rejoiced in His works. They spake to God, and knew that God heard and understood. They laboured and knew that God had pleasure in their doings. They walked with God--yea, dwelt in God, and God in them. Separation from their Creator they knew not. Clouds and darkness were never about Him. The light of love was always in His countenance. A filial character was given by likeness to God to the entire religion of our first parents. Their notion of Deity was the idea of a father--their feelings toward God were those of children--and their service to God was that of a son and of a daughter. The inward moulded the outward. Without doubt the very body sympathized with the spirit, Remorse did not turn their moisture into the drought of summer. Jealousy did not mock and feed upon their flesh. Sorrow did not cause their bones to wax old. Grief did not furrow the cheek, or blanch the hair. Shame brought not confusion on the face. There was no inward fire to consume--no worm to gnaw and devour. A glowing conscience, a joyful heart,and a peaceful mind, were marrow to the bones, health to the flesh, and beauty to the countenance. (S. Martin.)

God manifests Himself through man

By reason of His complacency in His own nature, God desires to manifest Himself--to express and to make known His own being--to develope His own character of life. God is also disposed to hold fellowship with His spiritual universe. Had He preferred solitude, He could have dwelt alone in His own eternity, or have created merely these material forms which, like a sea of glass, should have reflected His nature in the cold distance of an unconscious and inanimate likeness. But willing to hold fellowship with His creatures, determining to make Himself visible, and delighting in His own nature with infinite complacency--He made man in His own image. This reflection of Himself was pleasant to God. He rejoiced in this work. He looked upon what He had made, and to Him it seemed good. He ceased to create when He bad made man, and entered on His sabbath satisfied with this masterwork of His hand. His own blessedness was increased because livingly reflected. As the artist rejoices when his metal, or marble, or canvas expresses his ideal--as the poet leaps with pleasure when his metaphor and rhythm breathethe inspiration of his heart--as the father glows with gladness to behold in his firstborn boy his own features--so God delighted in the image of Himself in man. Distance from God! Distance! Where was distance then? As the shadow to the form--as the fruit to the tree bough--as the recent born to the mother--man in God’s image was to God. (S. Martin.)

The Divine image a thought experimentally useful

And of what special importance is this subject to you--Christians? It is profitable for doctrine, and it is profitable for reproof--it rebukes that self-conceit, that vanity, that pride, that self-importance which not a few Christians exhibit. How can men think of themselves more highly than they ought to think, when they remember that their characteristic should be the image of God! It is profitable for correction--it may correct the grovelling of the willingly ignorant, and of the worldly, and of the fleshly, and of the low-minded; it may correct the false ambition of such as make money, and earth’s honour their goal--it may correct the self-complacency of the self-righteous, and the error of those who hold that man has not fallen. And it is profitable for instruction in righteousness; it saith, Make not orthodoxy your goal, neither benevolent activity, but make a nature renewed by the Holy Ghost the mark of the prize of your high calling of God in Christ Jesus. (S. Martin.)

Man a creation, not an evolution

The theory holds that, in the struggle for existence, the varieties best adapted to their surroundings succeed in maintaining and reproducing themselves, while the rest die out. Thus, by gradual change and improvement of lower into higher forms of life, man has been evolved. We grant that Darwin has disclosed one of the important features of God’s method. We deny that natural selection furnishes a sufficient explanation of the history of life, and that for the following reasons:

1. It gives no account of the origin of substance, nor of the origin of variations. Darwinism simply says that “round stones will roll down hill further than flat ones” (Gray, “Natural Science and Religion”). It accounts for the selection, not for the creation, of forms.

2. Some of the most important forms appear suddenly in the geological record, without connecting links to unite them with the past. The first fishes are the Ganoid, large in size and advanced in type. There are no intermediate gradations between the ape and man.

3. There are certain facts which mere heredity cannot explain, such for example as the origin of the working bee from the queen and the drone, neither of which produces honey. The working bee, moreover, does not transmit the honey making instinct to its posterity; for it is sterile and childless. If man had descended from the conscienceless brute, we should expect him, when degraded, to revert to his primitive type. On the contrary, he does not revert to the brute, but dies out instead.

4. The theory can give no explanation of beauty in the lowest forms of life, such as molluscs and diatoms. Darwin grants that this beauty must be of use to its possessor, in order to be consistent with its origination through natural selection. But no such use has yet been shown; for the creatures which possess the beauty often live in the dark, or have no eyes to see. So, too, the large brain of the savage is beyond his needs, and is inconsistent with the principle of natural selection which teaches that no organ can permanently attain a size as required by its needs and its environment. See Wallace, “Natural Selection,” 838-360.

5. No species is yet known to bare been produced either by artificial or by natural selection. In other words, selection implies intelligence and will, and therefore cannot be exclusively natural.

I. UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE.

1. The Scriptures teach that the whole human race is descended from a single pair.

2. This truth lies at the foundation of Paul’s doctrine of the organic unity of mankind in the first transgression, and of the provision of salvation for the race in Christ.

3. This descent of humanity from a single pair also constitutes the ground of man’s obligation of natural brotherhood to every member of the race. The Scripture statements are corroborated by considerations drawn from history and science.

Three arguments may be briefly mentioned:

1. The argument from history. So far as the history of nations and tribes in both hemispheres can be traced, the evidence points to a common origin and ancestry in central Asia.

2. The argument from language. Comparative philology points to a common origin of all the more important languages, and furnishes no evidence that the less important are not also so derived.

3. The argument from psychology. The existence, among all families of mankind, of common mental and moral characteristics, as evinced in common maxims, tendencies, and capacities, in the prevalence of similar traditions, and in the universal applicability of one philosophy and religion, is most easily explained upon the theory of a common origin.

4. The argument from physiology.

(1) It is the common judgment of comparative physiologists that man constitutes but a single species. The differences which exist between the various families of mankind are to be regarded as varieties of this species. In proof of these statements we urge--

(a) The numberless intermediate gradations which connect the so-called races with each other.

(b) The essential identity of all races in cranial, osteological, and dental characteristics.

(c) The fertility of unions between individuals of the most diverse types, and the continuous fertility of the offspring of such unions.

(2) Unity of species is presumptive evidence of unity of origin. Oneness of origin furnishes the simplest explanation of specific uniformity, if indeed the very conception of species does not imply the repetition and reproduction of a primordial type-idea expressed at its creation upon an individual empowered to transmit this type-idea to its successors. (A. H. Strong, D. D.)

The creation of man

I. MAN WAS THE LAST OF GOD’S WORKS.

1. He was not made to be in anywise a helper to God in creation. There is nothing that we see around us, or behold above us, or that we trample on with our feet, that was created by us. The most insignificant insect that crawls, the meanest among herbs, had their first origin from the Almighty.

2. But, again, as the order of the universe shows clearly to us that we had no share either in the formation or design of anything that we see, so does it lead us to grateful reflections upon God’s goodness and wisdom in our creation. He did not place our first parents in a void, empty, and unfurnished dwelling, but He garnished the heavens with light, and clothed the earth with beauty, ere He introduced into it that creature who should dress and keep it, and be allowed to have dominion over every living thing.

II. THE PECULIAR DELIBERATION WITH WHICH GOD APPLIED HIMSELF TO THIS HIS NOBLER WORK. “Let Us make man in Our image, after Our likeness.” Whence this altered form of expression? What other view can we take of it, than that it is a token of man’s greater dignity and higher worth? Should it not excite us to soar above our fallen state--to rise superior to the ruin in which we find ourselves involved--to recollect the glory of our first creation, and the honour which was put upon us in this deliberate purpose and counsel of the several persons of the blessed Trinity in our creation.

III. MAN WAS CHEATED IN GOD’S IMAGE, AFTER HIS LIKENESS. Let us, in concluding the subject, consider what practical improvement may be derived from it. Is God our Maker, and shall we not worship and adore Him? Again, ought not the image of God in man to be prized above all beside? The body decays and moulders into dust: the spirit is indestructible. Whence is it that this dying body exercises our chief care and thought, while the immortal spirit is neglected and forgotten? Shall the tongue be allowed to utter lies, seeing that it is given us by the God of truth? Shall we curse man, that is made after the image and likeness of God? Again, are we distinguished from the beasts that perish by the noble gift of reason, and understanding, and conscience, and shall we allow the members of the body to “usurp a wretched dominion over us? (H. J. Hastings, M. A.)

Man created in God’s image

1. Whatever may be the difficulties this text of ours presents to expositors and divines, the main fact it embodies and sets forth is so clearly expressed as to exclude the possibility of a difference of opinion respecting it. And this fact is none other than that our first parents were created by God, and this in His image and likeness. This plain statement of Holy Writ, that man has been created, is nevertheless considered by many scientists of our days as being utterly erroneous and untenable.

2. It must have been a most solemn moment in the history of creation when, at the close of it, God undertook to create man, who was to complete and crown His marvellous six days’ work. What this world would have been without man we can easily picture to ourselves when we read the descriptions by explorers and travellers of those parts of our globe never inhabited or cultivated by man. We know that without man’s care and attention many things in nature would have gradually disappeared, others again would not have developed to such a state of perfection as they have attained to. Besides this, nature without man, who combines in himself the material and spiritual, the natural and supernatural, and thus forms a reasonable and necessary link between nature and its Creator, would have lacked a high and noble aim worthy of the great Creator.

3. God created man in His image, after His likeness. (A. Furst, D. D.)

Love in the creation of man

In man animal organization is carried to its highest. That which in the quadruped is a comparatively insignificant member becomes in man the hand, so wonderful in its powers, so infinitely versatile in its applications. That tongue, which the rest of animal creation possess, but which the highest among them use only for inarticulate signals, becomes in him the organ of articulate speech, so marvellous in its construction, and its uses. And of the same rich bestowal of the best of God’s gifts of life and life’s benefits on man, many other examples might be, and have been given. But it is not in man as the highest form of organized animal life that we are to seek for exemplification of the declaration in my text. His erect form, his expressive eye, his much-working hand--his majesty in the one sex, and beauty in the other--these may excite our admiration, and lead us to praise Him who made us; but in none of these do we find the image of God. God is without body, parts, or passions. He is above and independent of all organized matter: it sprung from the counsel of His will, it is an instrument to show forth His love and praise, but it is not, and cannot be, in His image. But let us advance higher. God bestowed on man, as on the tribes beneath him, a conscious animal soul. And here let me remind you that I follow, as I always wish to do, that Scriptural account and division of man, according to which the soul, the ψυχὴ of the New Testament, is that thinking and feeling and prompting part of him, which he possesses in common with the brutes that perish; and which I will call for clearness, his animal soul. Now here again, though he possesses it in common with them, God has given it, in him, a wonderfully higher degree of capability and power. The merely sentient capacities of the animal soul in the most degraded of men are immeasurably above those of the animal soul in the most exalted of brutes,--however he may be surpassed by them in the acuteness Of the bodilysenses. And again, in speaking of man, we cannot stop with these animal faculties. To the brute, they are all. It is obvious, then, that we must not look for God’s image in man in this his animal soul, because this is confessedly not his highest part; because it is informed and ennobled by something above it: moreover, because it is naturally bound to the organization of his material body. And this point is an important one to be borne in remembrance. It is not in our mental capacities, nor in any part of our sentient being, that we can trace our likeness to God; whenever we speak of any or of all of these in the treatment of this subject, we must look beyond them, and beyond the aggregate of them, for that of which we are in search. What, then, is that part of man at which we have been pointing in these last sentences? that soul of his soul, that ennobler of his faculties, that whose acknowledged dignity raises him far above the animal tribes, with whom he shares the other parts of his being? Let us examine his position, as matter of fact. By what is he distinguished from all other animals, in our common speech and everyday thought? Shall we not all say that it is by this--that whereas we regard each animal as merely a portion of animatedmatter, ready to drop back again into inanimate matter, the moment its organization is broken down--we do not thus regard ourselves or our fellow men, but designate every one of them as a person, a term which cannot be used of any mere animal? And is it not also true, that to this personality we attach the idea of continuous responsibility--of abiding praise or blame? To what is this personality owing? Not to the body, however perfect its organization; not to the animal soul, however wonderful its faculties; but to the highest part of man--his spirit. And here it is that we must look for man’s relation to God. God is a Spirit; and He has breathed into man a spirit, in nature and attributes related to Himself: which spirit rules and informs, and takes up into itself, and ennobles, as we have seen, his animal soul. This spirit is wonderfully bound up with the soul and the body. The three make up the man in his present corporeal state--but the spirit alone carries the personality and responsibility of the man. The body, with its organization and sentient faculties, is only a tent wherein the spirit dwells; itself is independent of its habitation, and capable of existing without it. The spirit of man makes the essential distinction between him and the lower animals. His spirit, his divine part, that Whereby he can rise to and lay hold of God, was made in the image of God. And this leads us to the second division of our inquiry, How was man’s spirit created in the image of God? What ideas must we attach to these words, “the image of God”? To this question but one answer can be given, and that in simple and well-known words. God is love: this is all we know of His essential character. He Who is Love, made man, man’s spirit, after His own image. That is, He made man’s spirit, love--even as He is love. In this consisted the perfection of man as he camefrom the hands of His Creator--that his whole spirit was filled with love. Now what did this imply? clearly, a conscious spirit; for love is the state of a knowing, feeling, conscious being. What more? as clearly a spirit conscious of God; knowing Him who loved it, and loving Him in return. Faith is the organ by which the spirit reaches forth to God. We never can repeat or remember too often, that faith is “appropriating belief”; not belief in the existence of God as a bare fact, distant and inoperative, but belief in Him as our God--the God who loves us--the God who seeks our good--the God to whom we owe ourselves--the God who is our portion andour exceeding great reward. And it is essential to faith, that we should not, speaking strictly, know all this--not have hold of every particular detail of it--not master the subject, as men say; this would not be faith, but knowledge. We are masters of that which we know; but we are servants of that which we believe. And therefore man, created in the image of God, loving God, dependent on God, tending upwards to God, is created in a state of faith. By this faith his love was generated--by believing God as his God--by unlimited trust of His love, and uninterrupted return of that love. And O what does not this description imply, that is holy, and tending to elevate and bless man? “Love,” says the apostle, “is the bond of perfectness”; and the same command of our Lord, which we read in one place of the Gospel, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect”; in another runs, “Be ye merciful,” i.e. loving, “even as your Father is merciful.” One remark more. On this image of God depends the immortality of man’s spirit; not on its own nature, as some have dreamed. As it had a beginning, so it might have an end. It can only be immortal by being united to Him who liveth forever. God’s love called into being those who were in its own image, kindred to itself, bound to itself by love; how can we conceive that love annihilating again such kindred objects of its own good pleasure? And this immortality is not removed by sin: for it lies at the root of the race--is its essential attribute, not an accident of its being. (Dean Alford.)

The state of innocence

The name of Adam suggests to us at once the estate from which the human race has fallen, the cause of that fall, the vast forfeit that one man made to God; and naturally awakens in our own minds questions as to our lost inheritance. Would Adam have died if he had never fallen? If he had lived, would he have continued in paradise, or been translated into heaven? What was his condition in paradise? Was it one of probation and of interior sufferings dependent on such a state, or was it one of entire freedom from all such trial? And lastly (and this is most important in such probation), was Adam indued with a supernatural power, or did he simply depend on the gifts of his original creation? To these four questions I will append one brief inquiry in addition. Had our first parents a claim to eternal happiness by the right of their original creation, or in virtue of some covenant made with them by God?

1. With regard then to the first of the above questions, a very slight examination of Holy Scripture will assure us that Adam would not have died in an unfallen state. As is always the case in the direct intercourse of God with His creature, a covenant was made between the two, the terms of which were clearly defined. “Of the tree of knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat; for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die”; and the woman, in stating the terms of the covenant, says, “God hath saith, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.” Now these propositions clearly involve the power of inversion, and imply that, in the event of their not eating the forbidden fruit, they shall live and not die; that is, their death was simply and only dependent on breach of the covenant. The same point is clearly ascertained by a comparison of 1 Corinthians 15:1 and Romans 5:1, both with the separate parts of each and one with another.

2. I will now approach the second branch of the subject, namely, the question, whether Adam would have remained, had he not fallen, an inhabitant of paradise; or been translated into the immediate presence of God in heaven. There seem to be four especial reasons, amongst many others, for concluding that the latter would have been the case; for, in the first place, it is apparent that in the case of all covenants, such as those which God made with man, there is a punishment annexed to the breach of the terms of such covenant, and a reward annexed to their fulfilment; and inasmuch as this punishment would involve a worse condition for the fallen party than the one which he occupied at the period of the ratification of the covenant; so, on the other hand, a superior condition is the reward of the fulfilment of those terms. Now the fall of Adam at once brought upon him the loss of paradise, that is, the inferior condition; and, by parity of reasoning, had he not fallen but endured his probation, it would have secured to him translation to heaven itself, or a superior condition. But I pass on to the second reason on which I base my belief that Adam would have been eventually translated to heaven. He was clearly possessed of the perfect power of self-will; he had vast and manifold opportunities of exercising it; he was placed in the immediate presence of a piercing temptation; be daily passed the tree of knowledge on his visit to the tree of life. So acute was that temptation, that in spite of the continual presence of

Jehovah, of the purity of the nature hitherto innocent, of the innate image of God, be exercised that power of free will, and he fell. For what could all of the powers have been given him? and why should he have been placed in such a position, unless some great attainment beyond what he at that moment enjoyed was to be placed within his grasp? To imagine otherwise would be inconsistent with the whole analogy of God’s providence. But, thirdly, I spoke above of the external support which was continually necessary from the Divine Being for the preservation of Adam’s natural life; a state of continued exertion is unnatural to the Deity; a state of repose is His true condition; consequently we cannot imagine but that the first Adam was eventually to have been placed in a position in which continued life was natural to him. Even the daily visit of the Almighty to the garden of Eden implied a transitory, and not a permanent condition. But, fourthly, though the fact of sinning involved death to the natural body, it by no means follows that the absence of sin leaves that natural body in the same condition, but rather we should expect it would tend to elevate it, as much as the fall into sin depressed it.

3. I will now pass on to the third head, the moral condition of our first parents in Eden. There is a popular impression, not unfrequently given children and ignorant persons, that our first parents were in a state of entire freedom from any kind of suffering. Now the presence of an object highly desirable to the eye and the mind, while the moral agent is fully possessed of the power of free will and yet under a strong bias towards a different direction from that desire, in itself implies a condition of very considerable mental suffering, and in this condition clearly our first parents were placed, for we are distinctly told that the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was in the first place highly desirable to the eye; and secondly, to the mind, inasmuch as it imparted the keenest knowledge of right and wrong; consequently no misapprehension could be greater than that our first parents were without probation, and all its attending trials; nay more, we are bound to consider how intense must have been the desire after knowledge, a thing in itself so innocent and elevated, in so sublime a creature as Adam was, fresh from the hands of the Creator, and having as yet no bias in favour of wickedness; besides which, some exquisite external beauty seems to have arrayed the tree of knowledge, which made it the more fascinating to Adam and Eve, as we gather from the terms that it was desirable to the eye. From all this it is clear Adam was in a state of very keen probation.

4. With what power did Adam approach the scene of his temptation? Was it with the original power of his creation or some supernatural gift of the Spirit? Surely with the latter. (E. Monro, M. A.)

Proofs of the Divine in man

To this day no fact in natural history remains more conspicuous than the strong contrast betwixt man and every other animal, in their relations to nature--particularly in their power to master and utilize the forces of nature. Once man appears upon the globe, no matter how he came there, he reacts upon his environment in a way that is possible to no other organism. In popular language, he is not the mere “creature of circumstances” in the same sense in which that may be affirmed of other creatures. To a large and growing degree, he makes his own world--modifying, conquering, counteracting, utilizing the forces of nature, with its living productions, to his own ends. This process, which the venerable book before us calls “subduing” the earth, and which it regards as a special task assigned to our human family, is due to two faculties peculiar to man. The first is the power to store up his observations upon nature and compare them, until by degrees the laws according to which her forces operate come to be understood: the result of this power is science. Next, is the power to recombine matter in fresh combinations so as to utilize the forces of nature for new ends of his own: the results of this we term the Mechanical Arts. Neither of these two faculties exists in any other animal, save in the most rudimentary form. These two in combination have given birth to human civilization. Man enlarges his power from day to day, while the very ball on which he is a pigmy resident seems to contract itself in his grasp. Space and time are nearly annihilated: seas almost cease to divide; the engineer alters even the face of the land; matter becomes less and less our enemy, more and more our minister. By science and by art, we are entering upon a veritable “dominion” over this globe which God has given us to possess, and a crown is set upon man’s head of “glory and honour.” I do not pause to insist upon the strange foresight exhibited in these ancient words, or how strangely the destiny of our race which was thus foreshadowed in the dim dawn of history has come to be fulfilled in our time. Let me rather ask you to notice how revelation at its outset is not content to recognize this mastery of man over the rest of nature as his preeminent function--it undertakes already to explain it. It assigns a reason for it. It finds that reason in the constitution of human nature itself, viz., in man’s dual nature, and especially in his resemblance on one side of his two-fold being to his Creator. “God made man in His own likeness.” Now, to do justice to this theory, accounting for man’s supremacy and power over nature, we must bear in mind that when it assigns to man a dual origin it is in order to correspond with the dual constitution which he possesses. In the picturesque and poetic style of primitive thinkers, man came in part from the “dust of the ground,” and in part from “the breath of God.” In other words, he is on one side of his being a mundane product, fashioned, or, more probably evolved, out of material nature, under the operation of the same biological laws which account for the origin of other species on the globe; but on another side he is something more than that, a spiritual being possessed of a different order of life from that which we find in other species, a life which natural evolution fails to account for. The truth of that statement depends on facts which lie outside the sphere of biology as one of the physical sciences--lie in the region of metaphysics and of religion. They must justify themselves to other observation than that of the five senses. Nay, we may go further and say: So long as there remains a class of facts in human consciousness, of whose origin biology can give no account--facts, for example, like the sense of duty, the instinct of worship, the feeling of responsibility, the desire to pray, or the yearning after immortality--so long is it only scientific to postulate like Scripture a second origin for man’s nature. The dual constitution of this exceptional creature, so long as it cannot be resolved into unity, calls for a dual cause to account for it. If the breath of the beast, and of the animal life in man too, goeth downward, “returning to the earth as it was,” shall not the spirit of man go upward, “returning to God who gave it”? So much as man possesses in common with the brutes, comes from “the dust of the ground”--that physical science will explain to us. So much as separates man from the brutes and makes him a scientific, inventive, responsible, and religious animal--this demands another explanation. Can we find a better than the old one--“God breathed into man the breath of life,” or “God created man in His own image”? I do not claim this scriptural theory of man’s spiritual origin as a result of the modern science of anthropology. On the contrary, I believe it to be a revelation. At the same time, the facts seem to call for some such extra-physical cause; and so far, nothing equally good even as a working hypothesis has been discovered. The spiritual nature of man is a fact, as I have said, both of metaphysics and of religion: and neither metaphysics nor religion has yet been swallowed up (like the magicians’ rods) by physical science. It was not along the road of metaphysical speculation, however, that the Hebrews reached the great fact that man is a spiritual being akin to his Creator. That road was travelled by the Greek mind. St. Paul found in Greek poetry traces of the same truth; and Greek poetry had learned it from Greek philosophy. That “we are the offspring of Zeus” was the result of observing human nature on its intellectual and ethical side rather than on its religious. But the Hebrews were not a speculative, they were preeminently a religious, people: and when they said, man is akin to Jehovah and wears His likeness, they meant that they were profoundly conscious through their own religious experience of having much in common with a personal God. It was by their devotional instincts, first and chiefly, and by the spiritual fellowship they were conscious of enjoying with the Living Object of their worship, that the great Hebrews, like Moses, David, Isaiah, or Paul, realized man’s kinship with the Eternal, in spite of those obvious ties which link him as an organism to brute life upon the globe. Unquestionably this is, if one can attain it, the surest demonstration of all. The religious man who, in his worship and in the inward crises of his experience, finds that he can fling himself forth upon the unseen, and, in the darkness, where sense avails no longer, can touch One who is a real person like himself--can exchange with that awful invisible One personal confidences and affections, can ask and receive, can love and be loved, can lean and be upheld; he knows with certainty that he is born of God and akin to God. To be conscious from day to day of an interior life, utterly apart from that of sensation, to which life God forms the ever-present conditioning environment, just as nature surrounds and conditions my animal life--this is to be as sure that God is, and that my spirit is kindred with His, as I am sure that nature is, and that my organism corresponds to it. No one who actually leads this super sensuous life of personal intercourse with God will ask or care for any lower proof that man’s spirit wears God’s likeness. But although the religious experience of mankind be the leading proof that we are made in a Divine likeness, it is far from being the only one. From man religious I fall back on man scientific, and inquire if even his achievements do not imply that he is akin to his Maker. Could man be the student and master of nature that he is, were he not in some real sense intellectually akin to nature’s Maker? Does not the dominion which he is come to wield through science over physical forces argue in favour of that anthropology of Genesis which says, God’s own breath is in him. The great masters of science tell us that they experience a very keen intellectual delight in tracing out the hidden unity of forces and of the laws of force by which this vast complex world is reduced to simplicity. It is not from the observation of isolated facts that this intellectual pleasure springs. It arises when the observer becomes aware of something more than a crowd of isolated facts. Of what more? Of some relationship binding facts together--binding together whole classes of facts; as, for example, of an identical force at work in widely sundered departments of being, or of correlated forces; of a type-form running through large families of organisms, underlying their diversities; of universal laws creating cosmical order amid such a multiplicity of details. The studious mind becomes aware of an ordering, designing Mind. The thought with which God began to work leaps up anew for the first time after all these intervening cycles of dead material change, leaps up in a kindred mind. The dead world knew not what its Maker meant, as change succeeded change, and race was evolved out of race, and cycle followed cycle; but I know. Across it all, we two understand each other--He, and I His child. Is not science a witness to the likeness of God in the mind of man? But I cannot dwell on this, for I should like to suggest in a word how the Divine image in man further reveals itself when, from being a student of nature, he goes on to be its imitator. The arts are, one and all of them, so many imitations of nature, that is, of the Divine working upon matter. For example, we discover the dynamical laws of matter, and at once set about imitating their natural applications in our mechanics. We discover the laws of chemical affinity and combination; and we set about bringing into existence such combinations as we require, or resolving compounds into their elements, at our pleasure. We discover the laws of electrical force, and straightway we proceed to utilize it as a motor or a light. In short, we have no sooner learnt His method from the Author of nature (which is the task of science) than we try to copy it and become ourselves workers, makers, builders, designers, modellers, just like Himself, only on our own reduced and petty scale. Thus our artificial products, like our science, bears witness to the ancient word: “There is a Spirit in man; and the breath of the Almighty giveth him understanding.” Here, therefore, I return to the point item which I set out. Along this two-fold road, of science, which traces out the thoughts of God; and of art, which imitates His working in obedience to known laws, man fulfils his destined function according to the ancient oracle of Genesis. He “subdues the earth” and wins dominion over it. He is the solitary creature on earth who even attempts such a function. He is fitted for it by his exceptional nearness to, and likeness to, the Creator. He can be the student and the copyist of God’s works, because he was made in the image of God. Just in proportion as he realizes this godlike lordship over the globe, with its dead and living contents--a lordship based on his deciphering and sharing the Creator’s thoughts--in that proportion does he approach the lofty position which Scripture assigns to him, and in which Scripture recognizes his crown of glory and honour. But “we see not yet all things put under him.” During the long ages past it has been merely a faint shadow of royalty man has enjoyed. In the main, natural forces have mastered him. So they do still over a great portion of the earth. Science and art in this late age of man certainly seem to sweep rapidly to their goal, winning and recording year by year victories such as were never seen before. Notwithstanding, men are still far from satisfied, and complain that the physical ills of life and of society are far from overcome--all things far from being put under man’s feet. What is to be the future condition of humanity, its final condition, in relation to nature? Is its lordship to grow much more perfect than we see it? Shall nature ever yield up all her secrets, or stoop to serve our welfare with all her forces? I know nothing that pretends to answer such inquiries save Christianity. And her answer is: We see Jesus, sole and perfect type of man’s likeness to God, Representative and Forerunner of humanity redeemed; and Him we see already exalted to an ideal height of mastery over nature, crowned with the ancient royalty promised to our race, Head over all, with the world beneath His feet. (J. O.Dykes, D. D.)

Care for the body

If one should send me from abroad a richly carved and precious statue, and the careless drayman who tipped it upon the sidewalk before my door should give it such a blow that one of the boards of the box should be wrenched off, I should be frightened lest the hurt had penetrated further, and wounded it within. But if, taking off the remaining hoards and the swathing-bands of straw or cotton, the statue should come out fair and unharmed, I should not mind the box, but should cast it carelessly into the street. Now, every man has committed to him a statue, moulded by the oldest Master, of the image of God; and he who is only solicitous for outward things, who is striving to protect merely the body from injuries and reverses, is letting the statue go rolling away into the gutter, while he is picking up the fragments, and lamenting the ruin of the box. (H. W. Beecher.)

Man made in the image of God

1. It is the only basis of revelation.

2. It is a rational basis of the Incarnation.

3. A rational basis for the doctrine of regeneration by the Holy Spirit.

4. The foundation of those glorious hopes that are set before us in the New Testament. (M. Gibson, D. D.)

The defaced image

But as the image of a sovereign is effaced from old coins; or as the original expression is lost from the old figure-head on the exposed building; or as “decay’s effacing fingers” soon destroy all beauty from the dead body; so sin speedily and effectually spoiled, or obliterated, the moral image of God from the soul of man. At Bournemouth I lately noticed some stunted, misshapen shrubs, which were neither useful nor ornamental, and which were a degenerate growth of the fine trees abounding in that neighbourhood, or of the yet finer forests of fir in Norway. So what a contrast there is between the lowest and the highest trees of men around us; and between the highest types now and what man was at first. (H. R. Burton.)

Man in God’s kingdom

The king of Prussia, while visiting a village in his land, was welcomed by the school children of the place. After their speaker had made a speech for them he thanked them. Then taking an orange from a plate, he asked: “To what kingdom does this belong?” “The vegetable kingdom, sire,” replied a little girl. The king took a gold coin from his pocket and, holding it up, asked: “And to what kingdom does this belong?” “To the mineral kingdom,” said the girl. “And to what kingdom do I belong, then?” asked the king. The little girl coloured deeply, for she did not like to say, “the animal kingdom,” as she thought she would, lest his majesty should be offended. Just then it flashed into her mind that “God made man in His own image,” and looking up with a brightening eye, she said, “To God’s kingdom, sire.” The king was deeply moved. A tear stood in his eye. He placed his hand on the child’s head and said, most devoutly, “God grant that I may be accounted worthy of that kingdom!”