Him who "inhabiteth eternity," and who is "without body, parts, or passions."

It is in this view, accordingly, we infer that the image and likeness of God in man should be referred, not to the invisible, but to the incarnate Deity; to that perfect “image and likeness" of human nature, which was borne by Jesus Christ, and which is now taken up into the Godhead. But this proposition will form the argument of the succeeding chapter.

CHAPTER II.

"The Image," indicative of Man's Nature and Constitution, corporeal and intellectual-Account of Man's Creation by Moses, compared with the same Account in the New Testament - Christ the Creator of Man-Christ the Image of God-The Perfect Man-The Second Adam— Man the Image of God-Man the Image of Christ.

THROUGHOUT the foregoing expositions of the Divine "image and likeness" in which man was originally created, there is one radical and pervading defect-they present no picture or delineation of human nature. The character of man, as he is distinguished from other intelligent beings, must consist in the range and composition of his faculties, whether moral or intellectual; and more especially, in that union of corporeal and mental functions which appears to form the leading peculiarity of our species. But to select the immortality of the soul, the freedom of the will, or any other single and solitary endowment of human nature, as “ the image and likeness" of man, were to take a stone or brick from an edifice, and

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to dignify it with the name of a house or a temple.

The force of this observation, with reference to the nature of man as he is treated and contemplated by Christianity, is very clear and striking. Unlike the philosophy of Plato or Zeno, our religion does not affect to despise our bodies, or to treat them as if they were not a real and necessary part of human nature. It does not attempt to found the immortality of the soul on the destruction and demolition No: it takes the of our corporeal forms. entire manhood, "body, soul, and spirit," and teaches man to view himself, as created "of a reasonable soul, and human flesh subsisting." It regards all the actions done in the body, whether good or evil, as the tests and criterions of our moral and spiritual condition; and it teaches us to believe that, even in a glorified state, we shall still be united to a glorified body, nor ever exhale into a purely immaterial existence. It will even then be the manhood glorified.

By the birth and incarnation of Jesus Christ-by his appearance "in the likeness of sinful flesh,”—above all, by the sufferings which he endured, the atonement he effected, and the resurrection he accomplished in his

bodily form and visage, he has for ever divorced matter from the contempt and disdain to which it was subjected by the ancient moralist. And hence "the image of God in man" should never be construed by the Christian independently of our corporeal substance. "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul." Such is the economy of human nature.

Let us inquire, then, whether the Christian Revelation hath furnished us with any means of acquiring a more clear, definite, and distinct view of this sublime and majestic description of man, as he at first came from the hand of his Maker-"So God created man in his own image." And here it is natural at once to refer to the counterpart of creation in the history of redemption, and to observe how far the doctrines and discoveries of the New Testament may throw light on the darkness and obscurity of the first and original record.

Now, the opening of St. John's Gospel will almost involuntarily suggest itself to every Christian as an inspired paraphrase and comment on the words of Moses-" In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him. was not any thing made that was made." John i. 1-3.

And if a doubt could exist whether we are authorized in this appeal from the New Testament to the Old, it would be determined by the following citation of St. Paul from the Psalms-"Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of thy hands." Heb. i. 20; Psalm cii. 13. And these words, it should be remembered, are applied directly, and in the way of argument, not by way of accommodation, to Christ, as the Son of God. The same argument is employed, though somewhat more circuitously, in Heb. ii. 6-9, compared with Psalm viii. 4-6.

But to perceive the full evidence and importance of this doctrine, it is necessary to adduce the principal passages from the New Testament in which the creation, not only of our world, but of the universe, is positively and directly ascribed to the divinity of Jesus Christ.

By him were all things created that are in heaven and in earth, visible and invisible,