God’s Image in Man

The essential Christ is the everlasting manifestation of God’s love to man, of which the historic Jesus was an expressive incarnation. The emphasis, from the local and temporary, is being transferred to the unchanging and unseen. Jesus of Nazareth was a divine translation to material man; but the spiritual man, as Paul declared, does not necessarily need to know Christ “after the flesh.” His mission was not to placate, purchase, nor to act as a substitute, but to bring abundant life; to interpret divine love, and awaken the already existent divine image.

The Church is viewed less as an “ark of safety,” and more as a means in the development of a higher life. It is useful to just that degree in which it awakens spiritual consciousness, and transforms character into harmony with the divine standard.

The drift is away from a Bible which is an oracle and a fetich, and towards the more honorable concept of a Book which is profitable and progressive. It is the record of glimpses and perceptions which eminent men of old had of God, and of human relations to Him. It is a literature which contains human limitations, but underneath and through them shines the Spirit of Truth. Literalism has dishonored it, and so wrought its letter into external systems that numerous opposing sects all claim the same foundation.

The higher life is finding new forms for manifestation, many of which are outside of the boundaries of the organized church. The “Fatherhood of God” and the “brotherhood of man” are brightening in human consciousness. The channels for mutual brotherly aid and sympathy are being deepened, and the links of interdependence are growing stronger. The term neighbor is broadening in significance, and the exuberant overflow of the altruistic spirit is submerging selfish limitations.

The intermingling of divine and human love-currents is becoming more complete by the melting away of man-made barriers. It is axiomatic that man is restless until he finds God, and this he often fails to do because he loses his way among the mazes of scholastic theology. Human systems instead of teaching the divine indwelling have built innumerable by-ways which lead outward. Poets, Mystics, and Quietists, by a more profound insight, have excelled theologians in their interpretations of the divine character. Notwithstanding all the anxiety regarding the great drift, the world is more truly religious to-day than at any time in the past.

The researches of modern science in astronomy, geology, and especially in biology, have greatly broadened recent religious thought. True science is becoming more religious, and religion is seen to be scientific. The traditional theory of the Creation has been obliged to give way to positive evidence that it is continuous and progressive. The grand cycle of progress is found to be a continual involution of primal energy from God, followed by its return in grand, ascending, evolutionary steps. Science is taking in the unseen, as well as the seen universe. Religion, Christianity, and spirituality are as amenable to Law as chemistry and molecules. Man can only be fully interpreted from an evolutionary standpoint. He is a creature of relations. The unit of his history, constitution, development, and destiny is racial in its scope. He cannot be disconnected from his place in the evolutionary scale, for he has vital ties both above and below. The microcosm can only be interpreted by the macrocosm. Evolution is the grand highway which leads to ideals, and ideals are divine standards. When, in the ascending series, man’s place is reached, ideals from above become attractive, and he voluntarily co-operates and helps to lift himself; while lower in the scale the pressure is involuntary and from below.

The drift has broadened the domain of biology to a hitherto undreamed- of expansiveness. All life is now recognized as One Principle, differentiated and expressed in an infinite variety of forms and mediums, but still one in essence. God, when considered as Universal Life, is brought into His universe, and into man and all his relations. No new life is created and none destroyed. Life cannot die. Forms perish; but the great universal stream of vitality surges on, unspent and undiminished. Its outward manifestations are kaleidoscopic in swiftness and variety of combination, but there is but One Energy.

In what degree and quality must life be individuated to build up a personal consciousness which will survive the dissolution of its external form? When the form perishes, must not that peculiar personal quality which has identified itself only with outward expression perish also? Physical sensation vanishes, and, so far as that has been counted as the life, that life is “lost.” All falsities must dissolve, but the real will survive. Only the true life, which is on a plane above and independent of the physical form, can have conscious personal immortality. None of the lower life-force is lost; but may it not be re-absorbed into the great stream of unconscious energy? It is not the life, but the consciousness, that may not endure. That which is linked to an environment must share its destiny. The divine image is man’s ideal self. In the degree to which his ego is wrought into this indestructible part of his economy his personality has an immortal basis. When he says, “I,” to what does he refer? If to his body, or to his external and sensuous mind, he is in danger of losing what, to him, is himself. The external and that which adheres to it is subject to disintegration. The ideal in man is immortal, and the ego must be bound to it—yes, be it—in order to share its divine permanence. As man links himself to God and Spirit, his ego takes on their eternal attributes. That life, if such there be, which is essentially base and external, when the form is dropped will gradually lose its unreal personality.

Its unconscious vital force will mingle with the great current of energy which, in due time, will build up other forms and new personalities, until a fitness for survival is finally gained. Thus that familiar aphorism, “The survival of the fittest,” when rightly applied, becomes of startling significance.

Religion is a binding to God, and that bond is normal. God-consciousness in the soul of man is the only force which can awaken and uncover the supremest ideal. God has entered human life, and by orderly steps is working out His grand design. The divine exuberance will flow in and fill every vacancy that is made ready in the human soul. Spiritual evolution is continuous, and life is growing richer, sweeter, and broader. Men are joining hands to lift each other over pit-falls, and mutually aiding each other to a higher outlook and firmer footing. In the ministry of loving service they are learning the process of saving their lives by losing them.

More and more that divine electricity called love is pulsating through man’s nature and manifesting its redundant energy. It is overflowing the distinctions of caste, religion, nation, and race. Altruism is no longer a prosaic obligation, but an ideal privilege.

If the relentless drift is bearing away some traditional and conventional “household gods” and ecclesiastical sanctities, there is abundant compensation in the unveiling of higher ideals, the vitalizing of thought and character, and in the dispersion of rubbish which has almost hidden the divine lineaments of man’s nature. Religious advancement is seen in the increased emphasis which is placed upon those living realities about which men cannot differ.