The consultation of God, if we may so speak, on the formation of man, "Let us make man ;" the breathing of a soul, the "now into his frame, which was done in his instance alone; his declared production by the hand of God, while all the inferior animals were brought forth by the earth and waters; his limitation to a single species, and of that species but two individuals, while the other living creatures were brought forth in multitude and variety, abundantly after their kinds;" establish a strong physical distinction between the human race and all the other inhabitants of the globe.

His formation in the "image of God" establishes a distinction of a higher kind. The "image" has been variously argued to imply form, intellect, and immortality. It probably means none of the three. It cannot be form, for what has form to do with the Divine mind? The form of the Redeemer was borrowed from human nature. It cannot be intellect, for man shares intellect with the lower animals; nor immortality, for man, before the fall, was not essentially immortal. It is clearly some power or property shut up from all lower existence. The only known attribute of this order is moral perception. Brutes intellectually differ from man less in kind than in degree. They partially reason and remember, they love, hate, desire, and fear. But who has ever discovered a moral sense among the inferior races? Who talks

of the sin or virtue of a brute? Duty, merit, right and wrong, are words inapplicable to all below man: yet on those words is founded incomparably the largest share of the motives, obligations, and stimulants to effort among mankind. They are the names of the great provinces of human action. But Revelation decides the question at once. The express language of Christianity is, that the renewal of holiness in the human heart is the renewal of the Divine image'. "Put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge, after the image of Him that created him." Holiness and the Divine image are identical; "Be renewed," again says the Apostle, "in the spirit of your mind, and

1

1 Even in the succinct narrative of Genesis there is a palpable distinction. The passage in which the formation "in the image of God" is declared, is fully separated from that which states his physical formation. In the former the language is, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, and let him have dominion" over all that the earth produces; thus qualifying him to exercise every duty that government implies,-direction, protection, provision, &c. as much as enjoyment for his own use, over the world: a moral exercise, as well as a physical possession. The image is also expressly extended to both sexes. (Gen. i. 26. 27.) But, in the subsequent chapter the process of man's formation is described, without any mention of his authority: "And 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;" the expression living soul, V, is equally applied to brutes, (Gen. i. 30.) In the Septuagint it is ψυχη ζωής.

' Colos. iii. 10.

put on the new man which is created after God, in righteousness and true holiness'." The act of being created anew after God (or after the pattern of the Divine perfection) is here designated the adoption of sanctity. But the power of this adoption itself depends upon an exclusive faculty -conscience; of all the functions of the spirit of man, the most sensitive, sleepless, and universal; of all his faculties, that which seems the most keenly connected with the impressions of higher worlds; the perpetual check on the passions and frailties of our nature, the instant warning of crime in its birth, the vivid avenger of crime in its completion, the irresistible retributor of evil for evil to the pillow of the oppressor, the cheerer of the chain and the scaffold to the sufferer in the righteous cause, the great earthly anticipator of the Divine tribunal; an accuser seldom capable of being totally silenced, even in the loudest triumphs of human guilt, but, in the hour of misfortune, or of natural decay, often returning with terrible infliction, awakening the memory to a sense of evil unmatched by the rack and the scourge, and breaking up life in an agony of the whole bodily and mental frame of man.

THE SEVENTH DAY.-The work of creation was now complete; and it was to be crowned by an act exclusively addressed to man, and to him

'Ephes. iv. 24.

in the highest capacity of his nature'—The consecration of the Sabbath, a great moral observance, by which man, in every period of his life, and every age of the world, was to be constantly recalled to the acknowledgment that he and all things round him were the creatures of the Divine will. Thus," concludes the sacred historian, "the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them."

'The Sabbath also had reference to the inferior animals, but only to those classes whose natural liberty is impaired, for the benefit of man; and, of course, to those only as a means of physical relaxation.

CHAPTER III.

CREATION.

THE primary question, Why the material universe was created; belongs to the councils of Heaven. But we know that it could not have been essential to the happiness or the glory of the Supreme Lord; for the perfection of His nature, must be independent of all things external-nor to the occupation of his angels, for the Lord of infinite wisdom must be enabled to command countless resources for the activity of the highest of his creatures. Yet, from the occasional and remote intimations in Scripture of the revolt of evil spirits, we may perhaps form some conjecture of the Divine design. It is evidently among the first principles of the Providential Government, to show the course of beneficence uncontrolled, to force good out of evil, and to transmute even the utmost violence and malignity of its opponents into the final instruments of its supremacy and mercy. It may thus have been among the purposes of the creation, to give an evidence to the angels