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. 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 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.
Pages:
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40