The Scriptural Idea of Man; Six Lectures Given Before the Theological Students at Princeton on the L. P. Stone Foundation (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1883 Excerpt: ... II. MAN IN THE IMAGE OF GOD. IN KNOWLEDGE. The Scriptural proposition, that God created man, we have considered. We now proceed to consider the further proposition, that He created him in his own image. In what did this image consist? If we would get the Scriptural idea we must go to the record. Doing this, we observe, in the first place, the prominence and significance given to the creation of man by the form of the narrative. Everything below him had been finished and pronounced good, but now the work was to be completed. The great work, the crowning work, the light upon the top of the lighthouse, that towards which all the rest had looked forward and converged, was now to be done, and nothing could better indicate the greatness of this work than the arrest in the progress of the narrative, and the grandeur of the characteristic to be given to it. What had before been done manifested the attributes of God unconsciously, but now there was to be a being in his very image, capable of gathering up and consciously expressing the inarticulate praise of all that was below him. Looking further at the narrative, the plain impression from it is, that the image of God to be thus created was not anything incidental, or that could be separated from man, but must consist in something so essential to him that if he should lose it he would cease to be man. "And God said, Let us create man in our image," the idea of the image evidently entering in as an element in the conception of the creative act, so that when the creative act was completed, and before Adam had acted in any way, he was in the image of God. If not, it cannot be said that God created man in his image. If we suppose, as we must, that there was a time when God completed his work, and gave the man over to hi...