12. God Created Man After His Image

FROM the fact of your creation after God's Image springs all true religion, all genuine piety, all real Godliness.

You have passed the stage of the milk-diet of little children, and live on solid food. Thus you understand that calling upon God and walking in the way of His commandments does not by itself make you religious, devout and godly, and that the secret of salvation in all its hidden amplitude is not revealed, until your soul has come to fellowship with the Eternal Being, and you abide in the covert of His wings.

The more outward form of worship is not devoid of worth. Provisionally it is even the only attainable one; and if it does not build for heaven, it exerts a binding influence upon thousands and thousands for the life that now is, and prevents the dissolution of society.

But the plant of genuine godliness outgrows at length the outward form, and in the words of the Apostle goes on unto perfection. It comes to blossom in the gleam of God's Majesty. It is fostered by the outshining of His glow and watered with dew from above. Thus it comes to a personal knowledge of the Lord, as a man knoweth his brother; to a dwelling of the soul in the Tabernacle of the Lord, and to an indwelling of the Holy One in the temple of the heart.

This requires fresh emphasis.

Every outward form of religion can change and pass away, but that which remains the same and which till the end of your life does not weaken but gains in strength, is the blessed fellowship of your soul with your Father in heaven; so that by night you retire with God, and at early dawn find Him again, and follow after Him as your Good Shepherd all the way of your pilgrimage here below.

In this alone consists the more intimate communion of saints.

Truly, it binds you to others when you learn that they are one with you in the faith, that they belong to the same Church, that with thern you break one bread and pour one wine.

But yet on the great journey to the courts of everlasting Light you prefer as fellow travellers those who, under whatever form, have intirnated to you that they live in the communion of holy converse with the living God.

This goes back to your creation.

This means that real religion, yea, the possibility of genuine godliness, springs solely and alone from the fact that you have been created after God's Image and after the likeness of God Almighty.

That you have been conceived and born in sin does not alter this in the least. There is no genuine religion without regeneration, and in re-birth the fundamental trait of your creation after God's Image revives again.

Hence the fact that you have been born in sin needs no consideration here. The subject in hand is the conscious, actual fellowship with your Father in heaven. And this rests upon the necessary harmony which prevails between the original and that which the image shows of it.

The solidarity of the original and the image is felt and understood at once. There is no image apart from the tie that binds it to the original.

See it in the case of a portrait or picture. If the portrait is good, it is so because it is like the person whom it represents.

You feel this even more strongly with a photograph than with a painted portrait or marble statue.

With a painted portrait, or with a bust, the painter or sculptor comes in as a third between you and your picture. But not so with a photograph. Then it is you yourself who by the operation of light upon the sensitive plate create your own picture and form the features after those of your own face.

And what in this way your own person effects in photography expresses only very inadequately what God did when He said: "Let us make man after our likeness," and then so created him.

Only with one's equals one has close fellowship.

But there is also a more distant kind of association. When spring opens, an impressionable mind holds conscious communion with nature in her nameless beauty. This communion is more tender with the world of plants and flowers and fruits than with the starry hosts of the firmament. It is closer still with the world of animals, especially is there a fellow feeling for the horse that you ride, the dog that meets you with a joyful bark, the lark who sings his morning song with tremulous beat.

But yet, with mountain and stream, moon and star, flower and domestic animal it always remains a fellowship at a distance. However intelligent and expressive a look a faithful animal may give you, you do not understand his life, because it is of a different nature from yours.

It only comes to actual fellowship when you come in touch with man. "What man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him?" Paul asks the Corinthians (1 Cor. 2:11). And this is so. Man alone can understand a man, and the more human you yourself are, the better you will understand humanity in others.

The more you are like another, the more the two of you exhibit a selfsame likeness, the more intimate your fellowship will be. A compatriot comes closer to you than a foreigner. One of the same generation, of like business, of like position, of like circumstances and experience in life, comes closer to you than one who in all these particulars differs from you. Among men, like alone fully understands like.

Hence when God said: "Let us make man after our Image and after our Likeness," this expressed of itself the Divine intention, to create beings that would be able to practice fellowship with God, and that would be capable of receiving His glorious communications. If then it is so, that genuine, exalted, glorious religion consists in this mutual fellowship, then it follows that when God created a being after His own likeness He thereby at the same time created religion.

In the creation of nature God glorified His omnipotence, and the more this life in nature was refined from its chaotic state till the splashing of waters ascended to the wing-beat of the nightingale, the more majestically Divine omnipotence revealed Itself in splendor. The whole earth is filled with His glory (Psalm 72:19).

But in all this, there was as yet no self-conscious, responsive fellowship for God with his creation.

God stood above nature and nature was subject to His Majesty, but there was no comprehension, no knowledge, no understanding of God in it, and from it rose no note of thanksgiving, of worship and of fellowship that went back to Him.

There was Power there; but what was still lacking was the thrill of the fellowship of Love.

And this also the Holy One desired, His creation must needs address Him, and He it. Intimate, hidden mutual fellowship with His creation had to come. Knowing, loving, seeking - the Eternal Father willed to be known, to be loved, to be sought. The flame of religion must inwardly gleam through His creation as the sun gleams through the earth in the sphere of externality.

And this could not be, this was neither conceivable nor possible unless He created a being after His own Image and after His own Likeness, a being that would be of Divine generation, that would be His child, and would cleave to Him as Father.

A being that although separated and distinguished from the infinite Majesty by unfathomable depths would yet in its own life feel and know the life of God, would company with God as a friend with his brother, having been introduced and initiated into the secret "walk with God."

Thus, not for your sake but for God's sake, religion is founded in your creation after the Image of God.

Your serious practice of the hidden walk with God is to realize the purpose that was expressed in your creation after His Image.

For though it is true that this exalted endowment renders you supremely rich, happy and blessed, though it anoints you priest and king, baptizes you as child of God, and ennobles you as a princely creature in the sanctuary; yet you fail dismally if you take this to be the root of the matter.

First in rank and order here also is, not, what makes you blessed, but that which causes your God to accomplish His purpose; and that purpose always is that He wills to be known, loved, sought and worshiped; that He wills to have conscious, worshipful fellowship offered Him at the hand of His creation; that He wills not merely to be great, but to be known, as such, and believed, and loved.

For this He created man. For this also He created you. And for this also He created you after His Image and Likeness.