“God made man in His image.” There is surely no bolder sentence in all human speech. It takes an infinite liberty with God! It is blasphemy if it is not truth. We have been accustomed to look at the statement so much from the human standpoint, that we have forgotten how deeply the Divine character is implicated.
To tell us that all the sign-boards of Italy were painted by Raphael is simply to dishonor and bitterly humiliate the great artist. We would resent the suggestion that Beethoven or Handel is the author of all the noise that goes under the name of music.
Yet we say God made man. Look at man, and then repeat the audacity if you dare! Lying, drunken, selfish man; plotting, scheming, cruel man; foolish, vain, babbling man; prodigal man, wandering in wildernesses in search of the impossible, sneaking in forbidden places with the crouch of a criminal, putting his finger into human blood and musing as to its probable price per gallon—did God make man? Verily then, a strange image is God’s! Leering, gibing, mocking image; a painted mask; a vigor meant to deceive.
See where cunning works in its own well-managed wrinkle—see how cold selfishness puts out the genial warmth of eyes that should have beamed with kindness; hear how mean motives have taken the music out of voices that should have expressed more truthful frankness; then look at the body, misshapen, defiled, degraded, rheum in every joint, specks of corruption in the warm currents of the blood, leprosy making the skin loathsome, the whole body tottering under the burden of the invisible, but inseparable companionship of death! Is this the image, is this the likeness of God? Or take man at his best estate—what is he but a temporary success in art, clothier’s art, schoolmaster’s art, fashion’s art? He cannot see into to-morrow; he imperfectly remembers what happened yesterday; he is crammed for the occasion, made great for the little battle, careful about the night air, dainty as to his digestion, sensitive to praise or blame, preaching gospels and living blasphemies, praying with forced words, whilst his truant mind is uneasy in the thick of markets, or the complicity of contending interests.
Is this the image of God? Is this incarnate Deity? Oh, how we burn under the sharp questioning! Yet there are the facts. There are the men themselves.
Write on the low brow— “the image and likeness of God;” write on the idiot’s leering face—“the image and likeness of God;” write on the sensualist’s porcine face—the image and likeness of God;” do this; and then say how infinite is the mockery, how infinite the lie! Yet here is the text Here is the distinct assurance that God created man in His own image.
This is enough to ruin the Bible. This is enough to dethrone, God. Within narrow limits any man would be justified in saying, “If man is made in the image of God, I will not worship a God who bears such an image.”
What is to be done? We are driven back upon our-selves—not ourselves as outwardly seen, but our inner selves, the secret of our soul’s reality.
Aye; we are now nearing the point We have not been talking about the right man at all. The man is within the man; the man is not any one man; the man is Humanity.
ºº We have never seen the true man; he has been seen only by his Maker. As to temper and action, we are all bankrupts and criminals. But the man is greater than the sin.
When I see the sinner run into sin, I feel as if he might have been made by the devil, but when he stands still and bethinks himself; when the hot tears fill his eyes; when he sighs toward heaven a sigh of bitterness and true penitence, when he falls down to pray without words; then I see a dim outline of the image and likeness in which he was created. In that solemn hour I begin to see man—the man that accounts for the Cross, the man who brought down Christ. —PARKER.
