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of its substance, of its division, and of its order; the Author also of the stellar universe, who has placed His mark of uniformity and harmony on all the parts, and bound them together in the unrupturable bond of gravitation; as the Author also of man, whose body He has made of the same substance as the earth, and whose spirit He has endowed with the same qualities as His own. The resemblance in nature of the human spirit to the Divine is evident from our ability to find His modes of operation, and the qualities and forces with which He has endowed His creatures; especially as in all the decisions to which we come on the nature and measure of force, we have to appeal to our own modes of operation for our idea and unit; nor can we conceive of any certainty without such appeal. Thus our nature is the starting-point from which we ascend to our knowledge of the Divine. As to the intellect, therefore, man was made in the image of God.

In the emotional side of humanity, we see not only sameness, but reciprocity. The reason for creation is thus expressed in the Scriptures:

Thou hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are and were created.' And as

we see the whole course of creation tending to and perfected in the creation and consequent career of man, we may look for 'the delights' of the Creator 'among the sons of men.' Man is the only creature on the earth capable of reciprocating the pleasure and of responding to the delight. From the infinity of the Creator, we cannot infer the absence of pleasure and delight in man, because every normal human father has the same pleasure and delight in the infantile intelligence and emotion of his child; and the abandon of that delight is perfect in proportion to the infantile condition of the child. In the ability of the infant to recognise the desire to give pleasure, and in the response, we have the first exercise of intelligence and emotion. In like manner man, who in the maturity of his life is an infant of days before his Creator, is able to discern the love and delight of the Father of his spirit, and to respond to it in a grateful and triumphant joy. There is not an emotion of our nature which is not in the Scriptures ascribed to the great Father. And this ascription is not merely in name, but anger, joy, love, and all other emotions produce the same fruits as in us. And as the intelligence, which is the

fountain of human emotion, is capable of continual increase, so also the emotion may grow in intensity and breadth, until it 'comprehends (or takes hold on) the breadth and length and depth and height, and knows the love of Christ which passeth knowledge, and is filled with all the fulness of God.' And it is not in this direction only, when the emotion has an infinite object, that it overpowers and uses the whole nature. Fear is sometimes sufficiently intense to paralyze; a triumphant joy prompts to superhuman labour; while a fervent brotherly love to man consecrates the life to his service. Thus, on the emotional side, man is in the image of God.

The capability of spontaneous action in the Creator is shown in the creation. He has endowed us with a similar power of spontaneous action,-action springing from our own apprehension and emotion, and has so constituted us that all our action must proceed from our individual determination. If, from an abnormal condition of the brain, thought is interrupted or distorted, and the emotion and action are consequently irregular and absurd, we do not hold the immaterial self responsible for the faults in the imperfect and distorting instru

ment of its operation. Compelled action ceases to be ours. Under coercion, we are as merely instruments as the pen which writes this is the instrument of the mind which conceives it. We do not say that another order of being could not exist, in which intelligence and emotion in a large measure might be possessed, without the power of self-determination; but we cannot conceive of these powers existing in a degree approaching to the human measure without the power of spontaneous action, because they stand in as true a correlation to action as light to the eye. We thus learn, that the final essential quality of the Divine nature-agency -is found in man also.

The above are the essential qualities of a person who possesses also an abiding individual consciousness of identity. Direct intercourse is only possible between persons. Here we have two personalities,-one possessed of unlimited ability of thought, emotion, and action, the Creator of all things, and the Father of the human spirit; the other, the human personality, has the same attributes in a smaller measure, distributed through countless numbers, every one of which not only possesses the ability of com

municating his thoughts and emotions to others, but is compelled so to do, that he may enjoy a full life. If we can receive a revelation of our fellow-man, and thus have fellowship with him, what can prevent our receiving a similar revelation of his Creator, in whom every attribute of the human soul is in infinite measure? And if the Creator has endowed every man with the power of revelation, by imparting to him attributes similar to His own, then of necessity He possesses the same ability of making Himself

known to man.

Nor can this necessary conclusion be evaded by the objection, that men are compounded of matter and spirit, and all their intercommunion is primarily by their bodily senses, which testify only of matter; whereas we can only conceive of the Creator as a Being of pure spirituality, so that we have no example strictly parallel to the case supposed. This objection, from the form in which alone it can be put, cannot be valid against our contention; because, if it be affirmed that the difference between an embodied and pure spirit is essential, and that therefore we cannot infer the action of the one from the other, then plainly the difference can say nothing on either side. And it must be

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