We now invite the attention of the reader to a little of the evidence that may be presented to show that God is a person, and so that man, though of course in an imperfect and finite degree, may be an image, or likeness of him, as to his bodily form.
1. God has made visible to mortal eyes parts of his person. Moses saw the God of Israel. Ex. 33:21-23. An immaterial being, if such a thing can be conceived of, without body or parts, cannot be seen with mortal eyes. To say that God assumed a body and shape for this occasion, places the common view in a worse light still; for it is virtually charging upon God a double deception: first, giving Moses to understand that he was a being with body and parts, and, secondly, under the promise of showing himself, showing him something that was not himself. And he told Moses that he would put his hand over him as he passed by, and then take it away, that he might see his back parts, but not his face. Has he hands? has he back parts? has he a face? If not, why try to convey ideas by means of language?
Again, Moses, Aaron, Nadab, Abihu, and seventy of the elders, saw the God of Israel. Ex. 24:9-11. “And there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone.” Has he feet? Or is the record that these persons saw them, a fabrication? No man, to be sure, has seen his face, nor could he do it and live, as God has declared. Ex. 33:20; John 1:18.
2. Christ, as manifested among men, is declared to be the image of God, and in his form. Christ showed, after his resurrection, that his immortal, though not then glorified, body, had flesh and bones. Luke 24:29. Bodily he ascended into Heaven where none can presume to deny him a local habitation. Acts 1:9-11; Eph. 1:20; Heb. 8:1. But Paul, speaking of this same Jesus, says, “Who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature.” Col. 1:15. Here the antithesis expressed is between God who is invisible, and his image in the person of Christ which was visible. It follows, therefore, that what of Christ the disciples could see, which was his bodily form, was the image, to give them an idea of God, whom they could not see.
Again: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God.” Phil. 2:5, 6. It remains to be told how Christ could be in the form of God, and yet God have no form.
Once more: “God who at sundry times, and in divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person,” &c. Heb. 1:1-3. This testimony is conclusive. It is an inspired declaration that God has a personal form; and to give an idea of what that form is, it declares that Christ, just as we conceive of him as ascended up bodily on high, is the express image thereof.
The evidence already presented shows that there is no necessity for making the image of God in which man was created to consist of anything else but bodily form. But to whatever else persons may be inclined to apply it, Paul in his testimony to the Romans, forever destroys the possibility of making it apply to immortality. He says, Rom. 1:22, 23: “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.” The word here rendered uncorruptible is the same word that is translated immortal and applied to God in 1 Tim. 1:17. Now if God by making man in his image[his image] stamped him with immortality, man is just as incorruptible as God himself. But Paul says that he is not so; that while God is uncorruptible or immortal, man is corruptible or mortal. The image of God does not therefore, confer immortality.
CHAPTER IV.
THE BREATH OF LIFE.
Gen. 1:27, states, in general terms, the form in which man was created, as contrasted with other orders of animal life. In Gen. 2:7, the process is described by which this creation was accomplished. Finding no proof in the former passage that man was put in possession of immortality (see preceding chapter) we turn to the latter text to examine the claims based upon that. The verse reads: “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.”
Here the advocates of man’s natural immortality endeavor to make a strong stand, as it is very proper they should do; for certainly if in that inspired record which describes the building up of man, the putting together of the different parts or constituent elements of which he is composed, there is no testimony that he was clothed with immortality, and no hook furnished upon which an argument for such an attribute can be hung, their whole system is shaken to its very foundation.