Chapter II--The Original State of Man

CHAPTER II.

THE ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN.

In determining man's original state, we are wholly dependent npon Scripture. This represents human nature as coming from God's hand, and therefore "very good" (Gen. 1 : 31). It moreover draws a parallel between man's first state and that of his restoration (Ool. 3: 10; Eph. 4 : 24). In interpreting these passages, however, we are to remember the twofold danger, on the one hand of putting man so high that no progress is conceivable, on the other hand of putting him so low that he could not fall. We shall the more easily avoid these dangers by distinguishing between the essentials and the incidents of man's original state.

Gen. 1 : 31—" And God saw everj thing that he hid mads, and, behold, it was verj good "; Col. 3 :10—" the lev man, which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him "; Kph. 4 : 24—" the new man. which after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth."

Philippi, Glaubenslehrc, 2: 837-390— "The original state must be (1) a contrast to sin; (2) a parallel to the state of restoration. Difficulties in the way of understanding it: (1) What lives in regeneration is something foreign to our present nature ("it is no longer I that live, but Christ lireth in me "—Gal. 2 : 20); but the original state was something native. (2) It was a state of childhood. We cannot fully enter Into childhood, though we see it about us, and have ourselves been through it. The original state is yet more difficult to reproduce to reason. (3) Man's external circumstances and his organization have suffered great changes, so that the present is no Bign of the past. We must recur to the Scriptures, therefore, as well-nigh our only guide."

Lord Bacon: "The sparkle of the purity of man's first estate." Calvin: "It was monstrous impiety that a son of the earth should not be satisfied with being made after the similitude of God, unless he could also be equal with him." Prof. Hastings: "The truly natural Is not the real, but the ideal. Made in the image of God—between that beginning and the end stands God made In the image of man." On the general subject of man's original state, see Ziickler, 3: 283-290; Thomasius. Christ! Person und Werk. I: 215-243; Ebrard. Dogmatik. 1: 287-276; Van Oosterzec, Dogmatics, 374-375: Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2: 92-116.

L, Essentials Of Man's Original State.

These are summed up in the phrase "the image of God." In God's image man is said to have been created (Gen. 1 :26, 27). In what did this image of God consist? We reply that it consisted in 1. Natural likeness to God, or personality; 2. Moral likeness to God, or holiness.

Gen. 1: 26, 27—" And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness And God created man in his

own image, in the image of God created he him." It is of great Importance to distinguish clearly between the two elements embraced In this Image of God, the natural and the moral. By virtue of the first, man possessed certain facultie* (Intellect, affection, will); by virtue of the second, he had right tendencies (bent, proclivity, disposition). By virtue of the first, ho was invested with certain power*: by virtue of the second, a certain direction was Imparted to these powers. As created in the natural Image of God, man had a moral nature; as created in the moral image of God, man had a holy character. The first gave him natural ability; the second gave him moral ability. The Greek Fathers emphasized the first element, or ixiiumalUy; the Latin Fathers emphasized the second element, or linliiums.

1. Natural likeness to Ood, or personality.

Man was created a personal being, and was by this personality distinguished from the brute. By personality we mean the twofold power to know self as related to the world and to God, and to determine self in view of moral ends. By virtue of this personality, man could at his creation choose which of the objects of his knowledge—self, the world, or Ood—should be the norm and centre of his development. This natural likeness to God is inalienable, and as constituting a capacity for redemption gives value to the life even of the unregenerate (Gen. 9 : 6; 1 Cor. 11:7; James 3:9).

For definitions of personality, see notes on the Anthropological Argument, page 45; on Pantheism, page 57; on the Attributes, pages 121, 122; and in the chapter on the Person of Christ: "The Heal Nature of this Union. D. No double personality." Here we may content ourselves with the formula: Personality = self-conseiousness i- selfdetermiuution. ^//-consciousness and 8W/-determination, as distinguished from the consciousness and determination of the brute, involve all the higher mental and moral powers which constitute us men. Conscience is but a mode of their activity. Notice that the term 'image' does not, in man, imply perfect representation. Onlv Christ is the " Tery image" of God <Heb. 1: 3), the "image of the inrisible God " (Col. 1 :15-on which see Lightfoot). Christ is the image of God absolutely and archetypally; man, only relatively and derivatively. But notice also that, since God is Spirit, man made in God's image cannot be a material thing. By virtue of his possession of this first element of the image of God, namely, personality, materialism is excluded.

This first element of the divine image man can never lose until he ceases to be man. Even insanity can only obscure this natural image—it cannot destroy it. St. Bernard well said that it could not be burned out, even in hell. The lost piece of money (Luke 15: 8) still bore the image and superscription of the King, even though it did not know it, and did not even know that it was lost. Human nature is therefore to be reverenced, and he who destroys human life is to be put to death: Gen. 9 : 6—" for in the image of God made lie man ";

1 Cor. 11:7—"1 man indeed ought not to hare his head roiled, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God "; James 3 : 9—even men whom we curse "are made after the likeness of God.'' This possession of personality involves boundless possibilities of good or ill, and it constitutes the natural foundation for the love for man as man which is required of us by the law. See Porter, Hum. Intellect, 393, 3W, 401; Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 2:42; Philippi, Glaubenslehre,

2 : 343.

2. Moral likeness to Ood, or holiness.

In addition to the powers of self-consciousness and self-determination just mentioned, man was created with such a direction of the affections and the will, as constituted God the supreme end of man's being, and constituted man a finite reflection of God's moral attributes. Since holiness is the fundamental attribute of God, this must of necessity be the chief attribute of his image in the moral beings whom he creates. That original righteousness was essential to this image, is also distinctly taught in Scripture (Eccl. 7 : 29; Eph. 4 : 24; Col. 3 :10).

Besides the possession of natural powers, the image of God involves the possession of right moral tendencies. It is not enough to say that man was created in a state of innocence. The Scripture asserts that man had a righteousness like God's: Hal. 7:29 —"God made man upright" ; Eph. 4 : 24—"the new man, which after God hath bean created in righteousness and holiness of truth"—here Meyer says: «aru tfeov, "after God," i. e., ad exemplum Dei, after the pattern of God (Gal. 4 : 28—«aTi 'Io-aaic, " after Isaac " — as Isaac was). This phrase makes the creation of the new man a parallel to that of our first parents, who were created after God's image; they too, before sin came into existence through Adam, were sinless—'in righteousness and holiness of the truth.'"

Meyer refers also, as a parallel passage, to Col. 3 :10—" the new man, which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that trailed him. Here the " knowledge " referred to is that knowledge of God which Is the source of all virtue, and which is inseparable from holiness of heart. On Eph. 4 : 24 and Col. 3 :10, the classical passages with regard to man's original state, see also the Commentaries of DeWette, HUckert, Ellicott, and compare Geo. S : 3— "And Idam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his ovn likeness, after his image," f. e. In his own sinful likeness, which is evidently contrasted with the "likeness of God" (verse 1) in which he himself had been created (An. Par. Bible); 2 Cor. 4 : 4—" Christ, who is the image of God" —where the phrase "image of God" is not simply the natui al, but also the moral, image.

This original righteousness, in which the image of God chiefly consisted, is to be viewed:

(a) Not as constituting the substance or essence of human nature,—for in this case human nature would have ceased to exist as soon as man sinned.

Men every day change their tastes and loves, without changing the essence or substance of their being. When sin is called a "nature," therefore (as by Shedd, in his Essay on " Sin a Nature, and that Nature Guilt"), it is only in the sense of being something Inborn (irafuro, from ncucorL Hereditary tastes may just ns properly be denominated a "nature" as may the substance of one's being. Moehler, the greatest modern Roman Catholic critic of Protestant doctrine, in his Symbolism, 58, 59, absurdly holds Luther to have taught that by the fall man lost his essential nature, and that another essence was substituted in its room. Luther, however, is only rhetorical when he says: "It Is the nature of man to sin; sin constitutes the essence of man; the nature of man since the fall has become quite changed; original sin is that very thing which is born of father and mother; the clay out of which we are formed is damnable; the foetus in the maternal womb is sin; man as bom of his father and mother, together with his whole essence and nature, Is not only a sinner but sin itself."

(6) Nor as a gift from without, foreign to human nature, and added to it after man's creation,—for man is said to have possessed the divine image by the fact of creation, and not by subsequent bestowal.

As men, since Adam, are born with a sinful nature, that is, with tendencies away from God, so Adam was created with a holy nature, that is, with tendencies toward God. Moehler says: "God cannot give a man actions." We reply: "No, but God can give man dispositions; and he does this at the first creation, as well as at the new creation <regeneration).

(c) But rather, as an original direction or tendency of man's affections and will, still accompanied by the power of evil choice, and so, differing from the perfected holiness of the saints, as instinctive affection and childlike innocence differ from the holiness that has been developed and confirmed by experience of temptation.

Man's original righteousness was not Immutable or Indefectible; there was still the possibility of sinning. Though the first man was fundamentally good, he still had the power of choosing evil. There was a bent of the affections and will toward God, but man was not yet confirmed in holiness.

(d) As a moral disposition, moreover, which was propagable to Adam's descendants, if it continued, and which, though lost to him and to them, if Adam sinned, would still leave man possessed of a natural likeness to God which made him susceptible of God's redeeming grace.

Hooker (Works, ed. Keble, 2: 683) distinguishes between aptness and ablenoss. The latter, men have lost; the former, they retain—else grace could not work In us, more than in the brutes. Hase: "Only enough likeness to God remained to remind man of what he had lost, and to enable him to feel the hell of God's forsaking." The moral likeness to God can be restored, but only by God himself. God secures this to men by making "the light of the gospel of the glorj of Christ, who is the image of God,... dawn upon them" (2 Cor. 4:4). See Edwards, Works, 2 :19, 20, 381-390; 3 :102, 103; Hopkins, Works, 1:162; Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2 : 50-86; Augustine, De Clvitate Dei, 14:11.

In the light of the preceding investigation, we may properly estimate tw» theories of man's original state which claim to be more Scriptural and reasonable:

A. The image of God as including only personality.

This theory denies that any positive determination to virtue inhered originally in man's nature, and regards man at the beginning as simply possed of spiritual powers, perfectly adjusted to each other. This is the view of Schleiermacher, who is followed by Nitzsch, Julius Muller, and Hofmann.

For the view here eombatted, gee Schleiermacher, Christl. Glaube, sec. 80; Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine, 201; Julius MUller, Doct. of Sin, 2 :113-133, 360-357; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 1:287-291; Bib. Sac, 7 : 409-426. Julius Mtiller's theory of a fall in a preSxistent suite makes it impossible for him to hold here that Adam was possessed of moral likeness to God. The origin of his view of the image of God renders it liable to suspicion. Raymond (Theology, 2 : 43, 132) is an American representative of the view that the image of God consists in mere personality: "The image of God in which man was created did not consist in an inclination and determination of the will to holiness." This is maintained upon the ground that such a moral likeness to God would have rendered it impossible for man to fall—to which we reply that Adam's righteousness was not immutable, and the bias of his will toward God did not render it impossible for him to sin. Motives do not compel the will, and Adam at least had a certain power of contrary choice.

In addition to what has already been said in support of the opposite view,, we may urge against this theory the following objections:

(a) It is contrary to analogy, in making man the author of his own holiness; our sinful condition is not the product of our individual wills, nor is our subsequent condition of holiness the product of anything but God's regenerating power.

To hold that Adam was created undecided, would make man, as Phllippl says, in the highest sense his own creator. But morally, as well as physically, man is God's creature. In regeneration it Is not sufficient for God to give power to decide for good; God" must give new lore also. If this be so in the new creation, God could give love in the first creation also. Holiness therefore is creatable. "Undcrived holiness is possible only in God; in its origin, it is given both to angels and men." Therefore we pray: "Create in me a clean heart" (Ps. 51:10); "Incline mj heart onto thy testimonies" (Ps, 119 : 36). See Edwards, Eff. Grace, sec. 43-51.

(6) The knowledge of God in which man was originally created logically presupposes a direction toward God of man's affections and will, since only the holy heart can have any proper understanding of the God of holiness.

Ubi caritcut, <U clarttas. Man's heart was originally filled with divine love, and out of this came the knowledge of God. We know God only as we love him, and this love comes not from our own single volition. No one loves by command, because no one can give himself love. In Adam love was an inborn impulse, which he could affirm or deny. Compare 1 Cor. 8:3—"If any man loveth God, the same [God] i« known by him"; 1 John 4 : 8~"He that loveth not knoweth not Sod." See other Scripture references on page 3.

(c) A likeness to God in mere personality, such as Satan also possesses, comes far short of answering the demands of the Scripture, in which the ethical conception of the divine nature so overshadows the merely natural. The image of God must be not simply ability to be like God, but actual likeness.

God could never create an Intelligent being evenly balanced between good and evil— "on the razor's edge "—" on the fence." The preacher who took for his text" idam. where art thon?" had for his first head: "It is every man's business to besomewhere." A simple capacity for good or evil is, as Augustine says, already sinful. A man who is neutral between good and evil is already a violator of that law, which requires likeness to God in the bent of his nature. Delitzsch, Bib. Psychol., 31: 78-87—" Personality is only the basis of the divine image—it is not the Image itself." Bledsoe says there can be no created virtue or viciousness. Whedon (On the Will, 388) objects to this, and says rather: "There can be no created moral desert, good or evil. Adam's nature as created was pure and excellent, but there was nothing meritorious until he had freely and rightly exercised his will with full power to the contrary." We add: There was nothing meritorious even then. For substance of these objections, see Phillppi, Glaubenslehre, 2:348.

B. The image of God as consisting simply in man's natural capacity for religion.

This view, first elaborated by the scholastics, is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. It distinguishes between the image and the likeness of God. The former (D^3f—Gen. 1 : 26) alone belonged to man's nature at its creation. The latter (J*i?0"l) was the product of his own acts of obedience. In order that this obedience might be made easier and the consequent likeness to God more sure, a third element was added—an element not belonging to man's nature—namely, a supernatural gift of special grace, which acted as a curb upon the sensuous impulses, and brought them under the control of reason. Original righteousness was therefore not a natural endowment, but a joint product of man's obedience and of God's supernatural grace.

Many of the considerations already adduced apply equally as arguments against this view. We may say, however, with reference to certain features peculiar to the theory:

(a) No such distinction can justly be drawn between the words oSy and rw\. The addition of the synonym simply strengthens the expression and both together signify "the very image."

(6) Whatever is denoted by either or both of these words was bestowed upon man in and by the fact of creation, and the additional hypothesis of a supernatural gift not originally belonging to man's nature, but subsequently conferred, has no foundation either here or elsewhere in Scripture. Man is said to have been created in the image and likeness of God, not to have been afterwards endowed with either of them.

(c) The concreated opposition between sense and reason which this theory supposes is inconsistent with the Scripture declaration that-the work of God's hands "was very good" (Gen. 1 : 31), and transfers the blame of temptation and sin from man to God. To hold to a merely negative innocence, in which evil desire was only slumbering, is to make God author of sin by making him author of the constitution which rendered sin inevitable.

(d) This theory directly contradicts Scripture, by making the effect of the first sin to have been a weakening but not a perversion of human nature, and the work of regeneration to be not a renewal of the will but merely a strengthening of the natural powers. The theory regards that first sin as simply despoiling man of a special gift of grace and as putting him where he was when first created—still able to obey God and to cooperate with God for his own salvation,—whereas the Scripture represents man since the fall as "dead through trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2 : 1), as incapable of true obedience (Rom. 8 : 7—" not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be "), and as needing to be "created in Christ Jesus for good works" (Eph. 2 : 10).

At few points In Christian doctrine do wo see more clearly than here the large results of error which may ultimately spring from what might at first sight seem to be only a slight divergence from the truth. Augustine had rightly taught that In Adam the pause rum peccare was accompanied by a po*we peccare, and that for this reason man's holy disposition needed the help of divine grace to preserve its Integrity. But the scholastics wrongly added that this original disposition to righteousness was not the outflow of man's nature as originally created, but was the gift of grace. As this later teaching, however, was by some disputed, the Council of Trent (seas. 5, cap. 1) left the matter more indefinite, simply declaring man: "Sanotltatem et justitiam in qua amstitutwt fvcrat, amisisse." The Roman Catechism, however (1:2:18), explained the phrase "constitutes fuerat" by the words: "Turn origlnalis justitlip admlrablle donum addidtt." And Bellarmlne (De Gratia, 2) says plainly: "Imago, quae est ipsa natura mentis et voluntatis, a solo Deo fieri potuit; similitude autem, qu» in virtute et probitate con

sistit, a nobu* quoqitz Deo adjuvante perflcitur" .... (5) "Integritas ilia non

fuit naturalls ejus conditio, sed supernaturalls evectio Addidisse homini donum

quoddam insigne, just it jam videlicet originalem, qua veluti aureo quodam frseno pars inferior parti superior! subjecta contineretur."

Moehler (Symbolism, 21-35) holds that the religious faculty = the "Image of God"; the pious exertion of this faculty = the " likeness of God." He seems to favor the view that Adam received "this supernatural gift of a holy and blessed communion with God at a later period than his creation, t, c, only when he had prepared himself for its reception and by his own efforts had rendered himself worthy of it." He was created "just" and acceptable to God, even without communion with God or help from God. He became " holy " and enjoyed communion with God, only when God rewarded his obedience and bestowed the mipcrnaturale donum. Although Moehler favors this view and claims that it is permitted by the standards, he also says that it is not definitely taught. The quotations from Bellarmlne and the Roman Catechism above make it clear that it is the prevailing doctrine of the Roman Catholic church.

So, to quote the words of Shedd, "the Tridentine theology Btarts with Pclaglanlem and ends with Augustlnianism. Created without character, God subsequently endows

man with character The Papal idea of creation differs from the Augustinian in that

it involves imperfection. There is a disease and languor which require a subsequent and supernatural act to remedy." The Augustinian and Protestant conception of man's original state is far nobler than this. The ethical element is not a later addition, but is man's true nature—essential to God's idea of him. The normal and original condition of man (pura naturalia) is one of grace and of the Spirit's indwelling—hence, of direction toward God.

From this original difference between Roman Catholic and Protestant doctrine with regard to man's original state result diverging views as to sin and as to regeneration. The Protestant holds that, as man was possessed by creation of moral likeness to God, or holiness, so his sin robbed his nature of its integrity, deprived it of essential and concreated advantages and powers, and substituted for these a positive corruption and tendency to evil. Unpremeditated evil desire, or concupiscence, is original sin ; as eoncreated love for God constituted man's original righteousness. No man since the fall has original righteousness, and it is man's sin that he has it not. Since without love to God no act, emotion, or thought of man can answer the demands of God's law, the Scripture denies to fallen man all power of himself to know, think, feel, or do aright. His nature therefore needs a new-creation, a resurrection from death, such as God only, by his mighty Spirit, can work; and to this work of God man can contribute nothing, except as power is first given him by God himself.

According to the Roman Catholic view, however, since the image of God in which man was created included only man's religious faculty, his sin can rob him only of what became subsequently and adventitiously his. Fallen man differs from unfollen only as spolintw a nudo. He loses only a sort of magic spell, which leaves him still In possession of all his essential powers. Unpremeditated evil desire, or concupiscence, is not sin; for this belonged to his nature even before he fell. His sin has therefore only put him back into the natural state of conflict and concupiscence, ordered by God in the concreated opposition of sense and reason. The sole qualification is this, that, having made an evil decision, his will Is weakened. "Man does not need resurrection from death, but rather a crutch to help his lameness, a tonic to reinforce his feebleness, a medicine to cure his sickness." He Is still uble to turn to God; and in regeneration the Holy Spirit simply awakens and strengthens the natural ability slumbering in the natural man. But even here, man must yield to the influence of the Holy Spirit: and regeneration is effected by uniting his power to the divine. In baptism the guilt of original sin is remitted, and everything called sin is taken away. No baptized person has any further process of regeneration to undergo. Man has not only strength to cooperate with God for his own salvation, but he may even go beyond the demands of the law and perform works of supererogation. And the whole sacramental system of the Roman Catholic Church, with its salvation by works, its purgatorial fires, and its invocation of the saints, connects itself logically with this erroneous theory of man's original state.

See Dorner's Augustinus, 118; Perrone, Pnelectiones Theologies, 1: 737-748 (the ablest Roman Catholic dogmatist of the present day); Winer, Confessions, 79, 80; Dorner, History Protestant Theology, 38, 39; Glaubenslehre, 1: 61; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 378; Cunningham, Historical Theology, 1: 518-588; Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2: 140-149.

II. Incidents Op Man's Original State.

1. Results of man's possession of the divine image.

(a) Eeflection of this divine image in man's physical form.—Even in man's body were typified those higher attributes which chiefly constituted his likeness to God. A gross perversion of this truth, however, is the view which holds, upon the ground of Gen. 2 : 7, and 3 : 8, that the image of God consists in bodily resemblance to the Creator. In the first of these passages, it is not the divine image, but the body, that is formed of dust, and into this body the soul that possesses the divine image is breathed. The second of these passages is to be interpreted by those other portions of the Pentateuch in which God is represented as free from all limitations of matter (Gen. 11 : 5; 18 : 25).

The spirit presents the divine image immediately; the body, mediately. The scholastics called the soul the image of God j>roprfe; the body they called the image of God Ktynllicatlvc. Soul Is the direct reflection of God; body is the reflection of that reflection. The fuJMmc manifests the dignity of the endowments within. Hence the word 'upright,' as applied to moral condition. Compare Ovid, Metaph., bk. 1, Dryden's transl.: ** Thus while the mute creation downward bend Their sight, and to their earthly mother tend, Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes Beholds his own hereditary skies." <<i»-t*pwiro?, from ava, avo}, sufBx tra, and u»^, with reference to the upright posture),

Bret8chnoider (Dogmatlk, 1 : 682) regards the Scripture as teaching that the image of God consists in bodily resemblance to the Creator, but considers this as only the imperfect method of representation belonging to an early age. So Strauss, Glaubonslehre, 1 : 887. They refer to Gen. 2 : 7—" And the lord God formed man of the dust of the ground " ; 3 : 8—" the lord God walking in the garden." But see Gen. 11 : 5—" and the lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men bnilded "; Is. 66 :1—" The heaven is my throne, and the earth is my footstool"; 1 L 8 : 27—" behold heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee." On the Anthropomorphites, see Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 1 : 103, 308, 491. For answers to Bretschneidor and Strauss, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2 : 364.

(b) Subjection of the sensuous impulses to the control of the spirit.—

Here we are to hold a middle ground between two extremes. On the one

hand, the first man possessed a body and a spirit so fitted to each other that

no conflict was felt between their several claims. On the other hand, this

physical perfection was not final and absolute, but relative and provisional.

There was still room for progress to a higher state of being (Gen. 3 : 22).

Here we hold to the aujuale temjicramcntiim. There was no disease, but rather the joy of abounding health. Labor was only a happy activity. God's Infinite creatorshlp and fountalnhead of being was typified in man's powers of generation. But there was no conoreated opposition of sense and reason, nor an imperfect physical nature with whose impulses reason was at war. With this moderate Scriptural doctrine, contrast the exaggerations of the Fathers and of the scholastics. Augustine says that Adam's reason was to ours what the bird's Is to that of the tortoise; propagation in the unfallen state would have been without concupiscence, and the new-born child would have attained perfection at birth. Albertus Magnus thought the first man would have felt no pain, even though he had been stoned with heavy stones. Scotus Erigena held that the male and female elements were yet undistinguished. Others called sexuality the first sin. Jacob Boehme regarded the intestinal canal, and all connected with it, as the consequenoe

of the fall. South, Sermons, 1:24, 25—" Man came into the world a philosopher

Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam." But the Scripture presents to us, on the contrary, a being as yet inexperienced; see (ton. 3 : 22—"Behold, the nun is become as one of as, to know good end evil."

(c) Dominion over the lower creation.—Adam possessed an insight into nature analogous to that of susceptible childhood, and therefore was able to name and to rule the brute creation (Gen. 2 : 19). Yet this native insight was capable of development into the higher knowledge of culture and science. From Gen. 1 : 26 (c/. Ps. 8 : 6-8), it has been erroneously inferred that the image of God in man consists in dominion over the brute creation and the natural world. But, in this verse, the words "let them have dominion" do not define the image of God, but indicate the result of possessing that image. To make the image of God consist in this dominion, would imply that only the divine omnipotence was shadowed forth in man.

Gen. 2 :19—" the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the sir: and brought them unto the man to see what he would call them "; 20— " And the man gave names to all cattle "; Gen. 1:26—" Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them hare dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle"; cf. Ps. 8 : 5-8—"thou hast made him but little lower than God, And crownest him with glory and honor. Thou madest htm to have dominion over the works of thy hands; Thou hast put all things under his feet: ill sheep and oxen, Yea, and the beasts of the field." Adam's naming the animals implied insight into their nature; see Porter, Hum. Intellect, 393, 394, 401. On man's original dominion over (1) self, (2) nature, (3) fellow-man, see Hopkins, Scriptural Idea of Man, 105.

Socinlan writers generally hold the view that the image of God consisted simply in this dominion. Holding a low view of the nature of sin, they are naturally disinclined to believe that the fall has wrought any profound change in human nature. 8ee their view stated In the Racovian Catechism, 21. It is held also by the Arminian Limborch, Theol. Christ., ii, 24 :2, 3,11. Upon the basis of this interpretation of Scripture, the Encratltes held, with Peter Martyr, that women do not possess the divine image at all.

(d) Communion with God.—Our first parents enjoyed the divine presence and teaching (Gen. 2 : 16). It would seem that God manifested himself to them in visible form (Gen. 3 : 8). This companionship was both in kind and degree suited to their spiritual capacity, and by no means necessarily involved that perfected vision of God which is possible to beings of confirmed and unchangeable holiness (Mat. 5 : 8; 1 John 3 : 2).

Gen. 2 :16—" Ind the Lord God commanded the man" ; 3 ■ 8—" and they heard the voioe of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day "; Hat. S : 8—" Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God "; 1 John 3 : 2 —" We know that, if be shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him even as he is "; Rev. 22 : 4— "and they shall see his faoe."

2. Concomitants of man's possession of the divine image.

(a) Surroundings and society fitted to yield happiness and to assist a holy development of human nature (Eden and Eve). Eden = pleasure, delight. Tennyson: "When high in Paradise By the four rivers the first roses blew." Streams were necessary to the very existence of an oriental garden. Hopkins, Scriptural Idea of Man, 107—" Man includes woman. Creation of a man without a woman would not have been the creation of man. Adam called her name Eve, but God called their name Adam." Mat. Henry: "Not out of his head to top him, nor out of his feet to be trampled on by him; but out of his side to be equal with him, u nder his arm to be protected by him, and near his heart to be beloved."—" The golden conception of a Paradise is the poet's guiding thought." There is a universal feeling that we are not now In our natural state; that we are far away from home; that we are exiles from our true habitation. Poetry and music echo the longing for some possession lost. Jessica, in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice: "I am never merry when I hear sweet music." All true poetry is forward-looking or backward-looking prophecy, as sculpture sets before us the original or the resurrection body.

Hegel claimed that the Paradisaic condition is only an ideal conception underlying human development. But may not the traditions of the gardens of Brahma and of the Hesperides embody the world's recollection of an historical fact, when man was free from external evil and possessed all that could minister to Innocent joy? The "golden age " of the heathen was connected with the hope of restoration. So the use of the doctrine of man's original state is to convince men of the high ideal once realized, properly belonging to man, now lost, and recoverable, not by man's own powers, but only through God's provision in Christ. For references in classic writers to a golden age, see Luthardt, Compendium der Dogmatlk, 115. He mentions the following: Heslod, Works and Days, 109-208; Aratus, Phenora., 100-184; Plato, Tim., 233; Vergil, Ec., 4, Georgics, 1:135, Aeneld, 8 :814.

(6) Provision for the trying of man's virtue.—Since man was not yet in a state of confirmed holiness, but rather of simple childlike innocence, he oould be made perfect only through temptation. Hence the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" (Gen. 2 : 9). The one slight command best tested the spirit of obedience. Temptation did not necessitate a fall. If resisted, it would strengthen virtue. In that case, the posse non peccare would have become the non posse peccare.

Thomaslus: "That evil is a necessary transition-point to good, is Satan's doctrine and philosophy." The tree was mainly a tree of probation. It is right for a father to make his son's title to his estate depend upon the performance of some filial duty, as Tbaddeus Stevens made his son's possession of property conditional upon his keeping the temperance-pledge. Whether, besides this, the tree of knowledge was naturally hurtful or poisonous, we do not know.

(c) Opportunity of securing physical immortality.—The body of the first man was in itself mortal (1 Cor. 15 : 44). Science shows that physical life involves decay and loss. But means were apparently provided for checking this decay and preserving the body's youth. This means was the "tree of life" (Gen. 2 : 9). If Adam had maintained his integrity, the body might have been developed and transfigured, without intervention of death. In other words, the posse non mori might have become a non posse mori.

The tree of life was symbolic of communion with God and of man's dependence upon him. But this, only because it had a physical efficacy. It was sacramental and memorial to the soul, because it sustained the life of the body. Natural immortality without holiness would have been unending misery. Sinful man was therefore shut out from the tree of life, till he could be prepared for it by God's righteousness. Redemption and resurrection not only restore that which was lost, but give what man was originally created to attain: 1 Cor. 15 : 45—" The first man Adam became a living soul. The last man Adam became a liie-giriiig Spirit"; Her. 22 :14—" Blessed are thej that wash their robes, that the; may hare the right to come to the tree of life."

The conclusions we have thus reached with regard to the incidents of man's original state are combated upon two distinct grounds:

1st. The facts bearing upon man's prehistoric condition point to a development from primitive savagery to civilization. Among these facts may be mentioned the succession of implements and weapons from stone to bronze and iron; the polyandry and communal marriage systems of the lowest tribeB; the relics of barbarous customs still prevailing among the most civilized.

For the theory of an originally savage condition of man, see Sir John Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, and Origin of Civilization: "The primitive condition of mankind was one of utter barbarism"; but especially L. H. Morgan, Ancient Society, who divides human progress into three great periods, the savage, the barbarian and the civilized. Each of the two former has three states, as follows: I. Savage: 1. Lowest state, marked by attainment of speech and subsistence upon roots, 2. Middle state, marked by fish-food and fire. 3. Upper state, marked by use of the bow and hunting. II. Barbarian: 1. Lower state, marked by invention and use of pottery. 2. Middle state, marked by use of domestic animals, maize, and building stone. 3. Upper state, marked by Invention and use of iron tools. III. Civilized man next appears, with the introduction of the phonetic alphabet and writing.

With regard to this view we remark:

(a) It is based upon an insufficient induction of facts.—History shows a law of degeneration supplementing and often counteracting the tendency to development. In the earliest times of which we have any record, we find nations in a. high state of civilization; but in the case of every nation whose history runs back of the Christian era—as for example, the Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians—the subsequent progress has been downward, and no nation is known to have recovered from barbarism except as the result of influence from without.

Lubbock seems to admit that cannibalism was not primeval; yet he shows a general tendency to take every brutal custom as a sample of man's first state. And this, In spite of the fact that many such customs have been the result of corruption. Bride-catchIng, for example, could not possibly have been primeval, in the strict sense of that term Tylor, Primitive Culture, 1: 48, presents a far more moderate view. He favors a theory of development, but with degeneration "as a secondary action largely and deeply affecting the development of civilization." So the Duke of Argyll, Unity of Nature: "Civilization and savagery are both the results of evolutionary development; but the one Is a development in the upward, the latter in the downward direction; and for this reason, neither civilization nor savagery can rationally be looked upon as the primitive condition of man."

Modern nations fall far short of the old Greek perception and expression of beauty. Modern Egyptians, Bushmen, Australians, are unquestionably degenerate races. See Lanke8ter, Degeneration. The same is true of Italians and Spaniards, as well as of Turks. Abyssinians are now polygamists, though their ancestors were Christians and monogamists. The physical degeneration of portions of the population of Ireland is well known. Sec Mivart, Lessons from Nature, 146-160, who applies to the savage-theory the tests of language, morals, and religion, and who quotes Herbert Spencer as saying: "Probably most of them [savages], if not all of them, had ancestors in higher states, and among their beliefs remain some which were evolved during those higher states

It is quite possible and I believe highly probable, that retrogression has been as

frequent as progression." Spencer, however, denies that savagery is always caused by lapse from civilization.

Bib. Sac, 6 : 715; 29: 282—" Man as a moral being does not tend to rise but to fall, and that with a geometric progress, except he be elevated and sustained by some force from without and above himself. While man once civilized may advance, yet moral ideas are apparently never developed from within." Had savagery been man's primitive condition, he never could have emerged. See Whately, Origin of Civilization, who maintains that man needed not only a divine Creator, but a divine Instructor. Pres. J. H. Seelye, In A Century of Dishonor, page 3—" The first missionaries to the Indians in Canada took with them skilled laborers to teach the savages how to till their fields, to provide them with comfortable homes, clothing, and food. But the Indians preferred their wigwams, skins, raw Hcsb, and filth. Only as Christian influences taught the Indian his inner need, and how this was to be supplied, was he led to wish and work for the improvement of his outward condition and habits. Civilization does not reproduce itself. It must first be kindled, and it can then be kept alive only by a power genuinely Christian." So Wallace, in Nature, Sept. 7,1876, vol. 14 : 408-412.

(6) Later investigations have rendered it probable that the stone age of some localities was contemporaneous with the bronze and iron ages of others, while certain tribes and nations, instead of making progress from one to the other, were never, so far back as we can trace them, without the knowledge and use of the metals. It is to be observed, moreover, that even without such knowledge and use man is not necessarily a barbarian, though he may be a child.

On the question whether the arts of civilization can be lost, see Arthur Mitchell, Post and Present, 201: Kude art is often the debasement of a higher, instead of being the earlier; the rudest art in a nation may coexist with the highest; cave-life may accompany high civilization. Illustrations from modern Scotland, where burial of a cock for epilepsy, and sacrifice of a bull, were until very recently extant. Certain arts have unquestionably been lost, as glass-making and iron-working in Assyria (see Mivart, referred to above). The most ancient men do not appear to have been inferior to the latest, either physically or intellectually. Hawlinson: "The explorers who have dug deep into the Mesopotamlan mounds, and have ransacked the tombs of Egypt, have come upon no certain traces of savage man In those regions which a wide-spread tradition makes the cradle of the human race." The Tyrolese peasants show that a rude people may be moral, and a very simple people may be highly intelligent. See Southall, Recent Origin of Man, 386-449; Schliemann, Troy and her Remains, 274.

(c) The barbarous customs to which this view looks for support may better be explained as marks of broken-down civilization than as relics of a primitive and universal savagery. Even if they indicated a former state of barbarism, that state might have been itself preceded by a condition of comparative culture.

Mark Hopkins, In Princeton Rev., Sept., 1882:194—" There Is no cruel treatment of females among animals. If man came from the lower animals, then he cannot have been originally savage; for you find the most of this cruel treatment among savages." Tylor instances " street Arabs." He compares street Arabs to a ruined house, but savage tribes to a builder's yard. See Duke of Argyll, Primeval Man, 129,133; liushnell. Nature and the Supernatural, 223; McLennan, Studies in Ancient History.

(d) The well-nigh universal tradition of a golden age of virtue and happiness may be most easily explained upon the Scripture view of an actual creation of the race in holiness and its subsequent apostasy.

For references in classic writers to a golden age, see Luthardt, Compend. der Dogtnatuc, 115.

2nd. That the religious history of mankind warrants us in inferring a necessary and universal law of progress, in accordance with which man passes from fetichism to polytheism and monotheism,—this first theological stage, of which fetichism, polytheism, and monotheism are parts, being succeeded by the metaphysical stage, and that in turn by the positive.

This theory is propounded by Comte, in his Positive Philosophy, English transl., 21, 26; 515-636.

This assumed law of progress, however, is contradicted by the following facts:

(a) Not only did the monotheism of the Hebrews precede the great polytheistic systems of antiquity, but even these heathen religions are purer from polytheistic elements, the further back we trace them; so that the facts point to an original monotheistic basis for them all.

On the evidences of an original monotheism, gee Martlneau, Essays, 1: 24, 81: Max MUller, Chips, 1:337; Rawllnson, In Present Day Tracts, no. U; Legge, Religions of China, 8,11; Diestel, in Jahrbuch fUr deutsche Theologie, I860, and vol. 5 : 669; Philip Smith, Anc. Hist, of East, 65, 195; Warren, on the Earliest Creed of Mankind, In the Metb. Quar. Rev., Jan., 1881.

(6) "There is no proof that the Indo-Germanic or Semitic stocks ever practised fetich worship, or were ever enslaved by the lowest types of mythological religion, or ascended from them to somewhat higher" (Fisher).

See Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 545; Bartlett, Sources of History in the Pentateuch, 36-115.

(c) Some of the earliest remains of man yet found show, by the burial of food and weapons with the dead, that there already existed the idea of spiritual beings and of a future state, and therefore a religion of a higher sort than fetichism.

Idolatry proper regards the idol as the symbol and representative of a spiritual being who exists apart from the material object, though he manifests himself through it. Fetichism, however. Identities the divinity with the material thing, and worships the stock or stone; spirit is not conceived of as existing apart from body. Belief In spiritual beings and a future state is therefore proof of a religion higher in kind than fetichism. See Lyell, Antiquity of Man, quoted in Dawson, Story of Earth and Man, 384; sec also 368, 372,386—" Man's capacities for degradation are commensurate with his capacities for Improvement" (Dawson). Lyell, in his last edition, however, admits the evidence from the Aurignac cave to be doubtful. Sec art. by Dawklns, in Nature, 4 : 208.

(d) The theory in question, in making theological thought a merely transient stage of mental evolution, ignores the fact that religion has its root in the intuitions and yearnings of the human soul, and that therefore no philosophical or scientific progress can ever abolish it. While the terms theological, metaphysical, and positive may properly mark the order in which the ideas of the individual and the race are acquired, positivism errs in holding that these three phases of thought are mutually exclusive, and that upon the rise of the later the earlier must of necessity become extinct.

John Stuart Mill suggests that "personifying " would be a much better term than "theological" to designate the earliest efforts to explain physical phenomena. On the fundamental principles of Positivism, see New Englander, 1873 : 323-386; Diman, Theistlc Argument, 338—"Three coexistent states are here confounded with three successive stages of human thought; three aspects of things with three epochs of time. Theology, metaphysics, and science must always exist side by side, for all positive science rests on metaphysical principles, and theology lies behind both. All are as permanent as human reason itself." See also Glllett, Ood In Human Thought, 1:17-23; Rawllnson, In Journ. Christ. Philos., April, 1883 : 353.