SERMON II.

THE LIKENESS OF GOD.

(Trinity Sunday.)

GENESIS i. 26.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our

likeness.

THIS is a hard saying. It is difficult at times to

believe it to be true.

If one looks not at what God has made man, but at what man has made himself, one will never believe it to be true.

When one looks at what man has made himself; at the back streets of some of our great cities; at the thousands of poor Germans and Irish across the ocean bribed to kill and to be killed, they know not why; at the abominable wrongs and cruelties going on in Poland at this moment—the cry whereof is going up to the ears of the God of Hosts, and surely not in vain; when one thinks of all the cries which have gone up in all ages from the victims of man's greed, lust, cruelty, tyranny, and shrillest of all from the tortured victims of his superstition and fanaticism, it is difficult to answer

the sneer-' Believe, if you can, that this foolish, ' unjust, cruel being called man, is made in the ' likeness of God. 6 Man was never made in the 'image of God at all. He is only a cunninger sort ' of animal, for better for worse-and for worse as ' often as for better.'

Another says, not quite that. Man was in the likeness of God once; but he lost that by Adam's fall, and now he is only an animal with an immortal soul in him, to be lost or saved.

There is more truth in that latter notion than in the former: but if it be quite right; if we did lose the likeness of God at Adam's fall, how comes the Bible never to say so? How comes the Bible never to say one word on what must have been the most important thing which ever happened to mankind before the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ?

And how comes it also, that the New Testament says distinctly, that man is still made in the likeness of God? For St. Paul speaks of man, as 'the likeness and glory of God.' And St. James says of the tongue: "Therewith bless we God, even 'the Father; and therewith' (to our shame) 'curse we men, which are made in the likeness of God.'

6

But the great proof that man is made in the image and likeness of God, is the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ; for if human nature had been, as some think, something utterly brutish and

devilish, and utterly unlike God, how could God have become man without ceasing to be God? Christ was man of the substance of his mother. That substance had the same human nature as we have. Then if that human nature be evil, what follows? Something which I shall not utter, for it is blasphemy. Christ has taken the manhood into God. Then if manhood be evil, what follows again? Something more which I shall not utter, for it is blasphemy.

But man is made in the image of God; and therefore God, in whose image he is made, could take on himself his own image and likeness, and become perfect man, without ceasing to be perfect God.

Therefore, my friends, it is a comfortable and wholesome doctrine, that man is made in the image of God, and one for which we must thank the Bible. For it is the Bible which has revealed that truth to us, in its very beginning and outset, that we might have, from the first, clear and sound notions concerning man and God. The Bible, I say; for the sacred books of the heathen say most of them nothing thereof.

Man has, in all ages, been tempted, when he looks at his own wickedness and folly, not only to despise himself-which he has good reason enough to do but to despise his own human nature, and to cry to God, 'Why hast thou made

'me thus?' He has cursed his own human nature. He has said, Surely man is most miserable 'of all the beasts of the field.' He has said, 'I 'must get rid of my human nature-I must give 'up wife, family, human life of all kinds, I 'must go into the deserts and the forests, and 'there try to forget that I am a man, and become 'a mere spirit or angel.' So said the Buddhists of Asia, the deepest thinkers concerning man and God of all the heathens, and so have many said since their time. But so does the Bible not say. It starts by telling us that man is made in God's likeness, and that therefore his human nature is originally and in itself not a bad, but a perfectly good thing. All that has to be done to it, is to be cured of its diseases; and the Bible declares that it can be cured. Howsoever man may have fallen, he may rise. Howsoever the likeness may be blotted and corrupted, it can be cleansed and renewed. Howsoever it may be perverted and turned right round and away from God and goodness to selfishness and evil, it can be converted, and turned back again to God. Howsoever utterly far gone man may be from original righteousness, still to original righteousness he can return, by the grace of baptism, and the renewing of the Holy Spirit. And what in us is the likeness of God? That is a deep question.

Only one answer will I make to it to-day. Whatever in us is, or is not, the likeness of God, at least the sense of right and wrong is; to know right and wrong. So says the Bible itself: 'Behold 'the man is become as one of us, to know good and 'evil.' Not that he got the likeness of God by his fall, of course not, but that he became aware of his likeness, and that in a very painful and common way-by sinning against it; as St. Paul says in one of his deepest utterances, 'By sin is the know'ledge of the law.'

And you may see for yourselves how human nature can have God's likeness in that respect, and yet be utterly fallen and corrupt.

For a man may-and indeed every man does― know good and yet be unable to do it, and know evil, and yet be a slave to it, tied and bound with the chains of his sins till the grace of God release him from them.

To know good and evil, right and wrong—to have a conscience, a moral sense-that is the likeness of God of which I wish to preach to-day. Because it is through that knowledge of good and evil, and through it alone, that we can know God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. It is through our moral sense that God speaks to us; through our sense of right and wrong; through that I say, God speaks to us, whether in reproof or encourage