Reflections on Genesis 1:26-27 – Part 4

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. (Psa_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 (Gen_1:26-31; 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” (Mat_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 (Gen_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 Rom_8:29; Col_1:15; Rev_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 (Psa_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 (1Co_3:21-23).
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 (2Co_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 (1Co_15:47-49). (G. D.Boardman.)

 

Reflections on Genesis 1:26-27 – Part 3

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” (Eph_4:24). In another passage he says that it is “renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him that created him” Col_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.
 
 

Reflections on Genesis 1:26-27 – Part 2

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 Gen_9:6; Jam_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 (Col_3:10; Eph_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 (Eph_4:21); without this we do not, cannot glorify God, but dishonour Him (Rom_2:23-26); without this, we cannot be happy here, we cannot be admitted into heaven Heb_12:14; Mat_5:8; 1Jn_3:3; Rev_7:14, Mat_22:11.; 2Co_5:3). In order to recover this lovely image of God, we must look at it, as Eve looked at the fruit (2Co_3:18); we must long for it, must hunger and thirst after it Mat_5:6); we must exercise faith in Christ (Act_26:18), and in the promises (2Pe_1:4); and thus approach the tree of life, and pluck, and eat its fruit; we must pray for the Spirit (Tit_3:5; Eze_36:25; Eze_36:27; 2Co_3:18); we must read the word, hear, meditate, etc. (Joh_8:31-32; Joh_17:17; 1Pe_1:22-23; Jam_1:18); we must use self-denial, and mortification (Ro Gal_5:16), and watchfulness (1Pe_5:8; Rev_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)” (Ecc_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.)

 

Reflections on Genesis 1:26-27 – Part 1

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”
 
So God created man in His own image;
    in the image of God He created him;
    male and female He created them.
Genesis 1:26-27 Modern English Version (MEV)
 
****************
 
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” (Gen_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.)

Job 4:12-21

“Now a word was brought to me secretly,
    and my ear received a whisper of it.
Amid disquieting thoughts from night visions,
    when deep sleep falls on mortals,
terror and trembling came to me,
    which made all my bones shake.
A breath of wind was passing before my face,
    and the hair on my body was standing up.
It stood still,
    but I could not recognize its appearance;
a form was in front of my eyes,
    there was stillness, then I heard a voice saying:
‘Can a mortal be more righteous than God?
    Can a man be more pure than his Maker?
He does not trust in His servants,
    and He charges His angels with error;
Even more, those who dwell in houses of clay,
    whose foundation is in the dust,
    who are crushed before the moth.
They are broken in pieces from morning to evening;
    they perish forever without anyone regarding it.
Are not their tent ropes plucked up,
    so they die, even without wisdom?’
Job 4:12-21 Modern English Version (MEV)
 
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Eliphaz, having undertaken to convince Job of the sin and folly of his discontent and impatience, here vouches a vision he had been favoured with, which he relates to Job for his conviction. What comes immediately from God all men will pay a particular deference to, and Job, no doubt, as much as any. Some think Eliphaz had this vision now lately, since he came to Job, putting words into his mouth wherewith to reason with him; and it would have been well if he had kept to the purport of this vision, which would serve for a ground on which to reprove Job for his murmuring, but not to condemn him as a hypocrite. Others think he had it formerly; for God did, in this way, often communicate his mind to the children of men in those first ages of the world, Job_33:15. Probably God had sent Eliphaz this messenger and message some time or other, when he was himself in an unquiet discontented frame, to calm and pacify him. Note, As we should comfort others with that wherewith we have been comforted (2Co_1:4), so we should endeavour to convince others with that which has been powerful to convince us. The people of God had not then any written word to quote, and therefore God sometimes notified to them even common truths by the extraordinary ways of revelation. We that have Bibles have there (thanks be to God) a more sure word to depend upon than even visions and voices, 2Pe_1:19. Observe,
I. The manner in which this message was sent to Eliphaz, and the circumstances of the conveyance of it to him. 1. It was brought to him secretly, or by stealth. Some of the sweetest communion gracious souls have with God is in secret, where no eye sees but that of him who is all eye. God has ways of bringing conviction, counsel, and comfort, to his people, unobserved by the world, by private whispers, as powerfully and effectually as by the public ministry. His secret is with them, Psa_25:14. As the evil spirit often steals good words out of the heart (Mat_13:19), so the good Spirit sometimes steals good words into the heart, or ever we are aware. 2. He received a little thereof, Job_4:12. And it is but a little of divine knowledge that the best receive in this world. We know little in comparison with what is to be known, and with what we shall know when we come to heaven. How little a portion is heard of God! Job_26:14. We know but in part, 1Co_13:12. See his humility and modesty. He pretends not to have understood it fully, but something of it he perceived. 3. It was brought to him in the visions of the night (Job_4:13), when he had retired from the world and the hurry of it, and all about him was composed and quiet. Note, The more we are withdrawn from the world and the things of it the fitter we are for communion with God. When we are communing with our own hearts, and are still (Psa_4:4), then is a proper time for the Holy Spirit to commune with us. When others were asleep Eliphaz was ready to receive this visit from Heaven, and probably, like David, was meditating upon God in the night-watches; in the midst of those good thoughts this thing was brought to him. We should hear more from God if we thought more of him; yet some are surprised with convictions in the night, Job_33:14, Job_33:15. 4. It was prefaced with terrors: Fear came upon him, and trembling, Job_4:14. It should seem, before he either heard or saw any thing, he was seized with this trembling, which shook his bones, and perhaps the bed under him. A holy awe and reverence of God and his majesty being struck upon his spirit, he was thereby prepared for a divine visit. Whom God intends to honour he first humbles and lays low, and will have us all to serve him with holy fear, and to rejoice with trembling.
 
II. The messenger by whom it was sent - a spirit, one of the good angels, who are employed not only as the ministers of God's providence, but sometimes as the ministers of his word. Concerning this apparition which Eliphaz saw we are here told (Job_4:15, Job_4:16), 1. That it was real, and not a dream, not a fancy. An image was before his eyes; he plainly saw it; at first it passed and repassed before his face, moved up and down, but at length it stood still to speak to him. If some have been so knavish as to impose false visions on others, and some so foolish as to be themselves imposed upon, it does not therefore follow but that there may have been apparitions of spirits, both good and bad. 2. That it was indistinct, and somewhat confused. He could not discern the form thereof, so as to frame any exact idea of it in his own mind, much less to give a description of it. His conscience was to be awakened and informed, not his curiosity gratified. We know little of spirits; we are not capable of knowing much of them, nor is it fit that we should: all in good time; we must shortly remove to the world of spirits, and shall then be better acquainted with them. 3. That it puts him into a great consternation, so that his hair stood on end. Ever since man sinned it has been terrible to him to receive an express from heaven, as conscious to himself that he can expect no good tidings thence; apparitions therefore, even of good spirits, have always made deep impressions of fear, even upon good men. How well it is for us that God sends us his messages, not by spirits, but by men like ourselves, whose terror shall not make us afraid! See Dan_7:28; Dan_10:8, Dan_10:9.
 
III. The message itself. Before it was delivered there was silence, profound silence, Job_4:16. When we are to speak either from God or to him it becomes us to address ourselves to it with a solemn pause, and so to set bounds about the mount on which God is to come down, and not be hasty to utter any thing. It was in a still small voice that the message was delivered, and this was it (Job_4:17): “Shall mortal man be more just than God, the immortal God? Shall a man be thought to be, or pretend to be, more pure than his Maker? Away with such a thought!” 1. Some think that Eliphaz aims hereby to prove that Job's great afflictions were a certain evidence of his being a wicked man. A mortal man would be thought unjust and very impure if he should thus correct and punish a servant or subject, unless he had been guilty of some very great crime: “If therefore there were not some great crimes for which God thus punishes thee, man would be more just than God, which is not to be imagined.” 2. I rather think it is only a reproof of Job's murmuring and discontent: “Shall a man pretend to be more just and pure than God? more truly to understand, and more strictly to observe, the rules and laws of equity than God? Shall Enosh, mortal and miserable man, be so insolent; nay, shall Geber, the strongest and most eminent man, man at his best estate, pretend to compare with God, or stand in competition with him?” Note, It is most impious and absurd to think either others or ourselves more just and pure than God. Those that quarrel and find fault with the directions of the divine law, the dispensations of the divine grace, or the disposals of the divine providence, make themselves more just and pure than God; and those who thus reprove God, let them answer it. What! sinful man! (for he would not have been mortal if he had not been sinful) short-sighted man! Shall he pretend to be more just, more pure, than God, who, being his Maker, is his Lord and owner? Shall the clay contend with the potter? What justice and purity there is in man, God is the author of it, and therefore is himself more just and pure. See Psa_94:9, Psa_94:10.
IV. The comment which Eliphaz makes upon this, for so it seems to be; yet some take all the following verses to be spoken in vision. It comes all to one.
 
1. He shows how little the angels themselves are in comparison with God, Job_4:18. Angels are God's servants, waiting servants, working servants; they are his ministers (Psa_104:4); bright and blessed beings they are, but God neither needs them nor is benefited by them and is himself infinitely above them, and therefore, (1.) He puts no trust in them, did not repose a confidence in them, as we do in those we cannot live without. There is no service in which he employs them but, if he pleased, he could have it done as well without them. he never made them his confidants, or of his cabinet-council, Mat_24:36. He does not leave his business wholly to them, but his own eyes run to and fro through the earth, 2Ch_16:9. See this phrase, Job_39:11. Some give this sense of it: “So mutable is even the angelical nature that God would not trust angels with their own integrity; if he had, they would all have done as some did, left their first estate; but he saw it necessary to give them supernatural grace to confirm them.” (2.) He charges them with folly, vanity, weakness, infirmity, and imperfection, in comparison with himself. If the world were left to the government of the angels, and they were trusted with the sole management of affairs, they would take false steps, and everything would not be done for the best, as now it is. Angels are intelligences, but finite ones. Though not chargeable with iniquity, yet with imprudence. This last clause is variously rendered by the critics. I think it would bear this reading, repeating the negation, which is very common: He will put no trust in his saints; nor will he glory in his angels (in angelis suis non ponet gloriationem) or make his boast of them, as if their praises, or services, added any thing to him: it is his glory that he is infinitely happy without them.
 
2. Thence he infers how much less man is, how much less to be trusted in or gloried in. If there is such a distance between God and angels, what is there between God and man! See how man is represented here in his meanness.
(1.) Look upon man in his life, and he is very mean, Job_4:19. Take man in his best estate, and he is a very despicable creature in comparison with the holy angels, though honourable if compared with the brutes. It is true, angels are spirits, and the souls of men are spirits; but, [1.] Angels are pure spirits; the souls of men dwell in houses of clay: such the bodies of men are. Angels are free; human souls are housed, and the body is a cloud, a clog, to it; it is its cage; it is its prison. It is a house of clay, mean and mouldering; an earthen vessel, soon broken, as it was first formed, according to the good pleasure of the potter. It is a cottage, not a house of cedar or a house of ivory, but of clay, which would soon be in ruins if not kept in constant repair. [2.] Angels are fixed, but the very foundation of that house of clay in which man dwells is in the dust. A house of clay, if built upon a rock, might stand long; but, if founded in the dust, the uncertainty of the foundation will hasten its fall, and it will sink with its own weight. As man was made out of the earth, so he is maintained and supported by that which cometh out of the earth. Take away that, and his body returns to its earth. We stand but upon the dust; some have a higher heap of dust to stand upon than others, but still it is the earth that stays us up and will shortly swallow us up. [3.] Angels are immortal, but man is soon crushed; the earthly house of his tabernacle is dissolved; he dies and wastes away, is crushed like a moth between one's fingers, as easily, as quickly; one may almost as soon kill a man as kill a moth. A little thing will destroy his life. He is crushed before the face of the moth, so the word is. If some lingering distemper, which consumes like a moth, be commissioned to destroy him, he can no more resist it than he can resist an acute distemper, which comes roaring upon him like a lion. See Hos_5:12-14. Is such a creature as this to be trusted in, or can any service be expected from him by that God who puts no trust in angels themselves?
 
(2.) Look upon him in his death, and he appears yet more despicable, and unfit to be trusted. Men are mortal and dying, Job_4:20, Job_4:21. [1.] In death they are destroyed, and perish for ever, as to this world; it is the final period of their lives, and all the employments and enjoyments here; their place will know them no more. [2.] They are dying daily, and continually wasting: Destroyed from morning to evening. Death is still working in us, like a mole digging our grave at each remove, and we so continually lie exposed that we are killed all the day long. [3.] Their life is short, and in a little time they are cut off. It lasts perhaps but from morning to evening. It is but a day (so some understand it); their birth and death are but the sun-rise and sun-set of the same day. [4.] In death all their excellency passes away; beauty, strength, learning, not only cannot secure them from death, but must die with them, nor shall their pomp, their wealth, or power, descend after them. [5.] Their wisdom cannot save them from death: They die without wisdom, die for want of wisdom, by their own foolish management of themselves, digging their graves with their own teeth. [6.] It is so common a thing that nobody heeds it, nor takes any notice of it: They perish without any regarding it, or laying it to heart. The deaths of others are much the subject of common talk, but little the subject of serious thought. Some think the eternal damnation of sinners is here spoken of, as well as their temporal death: They are destroyed, or broken to pieces, by death, from morning to evening; and, if they repent not, they perish for ever (so some read it), Job_4:20. They perish for ever because they regard not God and their duty; they consider not their latter end, Lam_1:9. They have no excellency but that which death takes away, and they die, they die the second death, for want of wisdom to lay hold on eternal life. Shall such a mean, weak, foolish, sinful, dying creature as this pretend to be more just than God and more pure than his Maker? No, instead of quarrelling with his afflictions, let him wonder that he is out of hell.
 
Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Whole Bible
 
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An important lesson for us to learn is a two-fold one. On the one hand it is entirely possible for us to learn important truths, then use those truths inappropriately. On the other hand, it is entirely possible for us to learn important truths even if it comes to us from sources we disagree with or dislike.