GENESIS I. 26, 27 51
them ; . . . and called their name Adam, in the day when they were created. And Adam . . . begat a son in his own likeness, after his image; and called his name Seth" — meaning that, as Adam was created in the image of God, Seth inherited that image. After the flood, God is represented as saying to Noah, " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed : for in the image of God made he man." Murder is a kind of sacrilege ; to kill a man is to destroy the life of a creature created in the Divine image; the crime is to be punished with death, James, too, in his epistle, insists that the desperate wickedness of the tongue is shown in its reckless disregard of the Divine image in man, " Therewith bless we the Lord and Father ; and therewith curse we men, which are made in the image of God " ; in cursing men we therefore show a want of reverence for God Himself, in whose image they were made, and are guilty of a certain measure of profanity. The " image of God," therefore, according to these ancient Scriptures, does not necessarily include moral and spiritual perfection; it must include the possibility of achieving it; it reveals the Divine purpose that man should achieve it ; but man, even after he has sinned, still retains the " image of God " in the sense in which it is attributed to him in the Hebrew Scriptures. It belongs to his nature, not to his character. Man was made in the " image of God " because he is a free, intelligent, self-conscious, and moral Personality.
^ I have been told that there is in existence, amongst the curiosities of a Continental museum, a brick from the walls of ancient Babylon which bears the imprint of one of Babylon's mighty kings. Eight over the centre of the royal cypher is deeply impressed the footprint of one of the pariah dogs which wandered about that ancient city. It was the invariable custom in ancient Babylon to stamp the bricks used for public works with the cypher of the reigning monarch, and while this particular brick was lying in its soft and plastic state, some wandering dog had, apparently accidentally, trodden upon it. Long ages have passed. The king's image and superscription is visible, but defaced — well-nigh illegible, almost obliterated. The name of that mighty ruler cannot be deciphered ; the footprint of the dog is clear, sharply defined, deeply impressed, as on the day on which it was made. So far as any analogy will hold (which is not very far), it is an instructive type of the origin and the dual construction of the human race. Suiffer the imagination to wander back — far, far back — into the unthink-
52 IN THE IMAGE OF GOD
able past, and conceive the All-creating Spirit obeying the para- mount necessity of His nature, which is Love, and bringing into existence the race called man. As the outbirth of God — as Divine Spirit differentiated into separate entities — man could not be other than deeply impressed, stamped with the cypher of his Father's image and likeness ; the mark of the King is upon him. Obviously, however, he is not yet ready to be built into that great temple of imperishable beauty, fit to be the habitation of the Eternal, which is the ultimate design of God for man. A responsible being, per- fected and purified, tested and found faithful, cannot be made ; he must grow ; and to grow he must be resisted. He must emerge pure from deep contrasts ; contradiction being a law of moral life, contradiction must be provided. And therefore, while still in his plastic state, while still in the unhardened, inchoate condition indicated in the sweet pastoral idyll of the Garden of Eden, there comes by the wandering dog — the allegorical impersonation of the animal nature, the embodiment of the lower appetite, the partial will, the Ahriman of the Zoroastrian, the Satan of post-captivity Judaism — and he, metaphorically, puts his foot upon him. Eight over the King's impress goes the mark of the beast, apparently defacing the cypher of the Kiug ; in other words, humanity gave heed to the lower psychical suggestion, in opposition to the higher dictate of the Divine Spirit. The partial will severed itself from the universal will, and, as it is expressed in theological language, though not in scriptural language, man fell.^
Why do I dare love all mankind? 'Tis not because each face, each form
Is comely, for it is not so; Nor is it that each soul is warm
With any Godlike glow. Yet there's no one to whom's not given Some little lineament of heaven. Some partial symbol, at the least, in sign Of what should be, if it is not, within, Reminding of the death of sin
And life of the Divine. There was a time, full well I know,
When I had not yet seen you so; Time was, when few seemed fair; But now, as through the streets I go,
There seems no face so shapeless, so
Forlorn, but that there's something there
» B. Wilberforofc
GENESIS I. 26, 27 53
That, like the heavens, doth declare