Page:Heaven Revealed.djvu/52

 would not be in the image of God. Stretch your imagination to the utmost, and you cannot conceive of an order of beings superior to man, yet differing from him in outward form. For in so far as their form should differ from the human, they would not be in the image of their Creator; and therefore they would be inferior to man, unless we admit that an order of beings created in the Divine likeness, may be inferior to another order created in the likeness of something else—an admission which would be most absurd. For God is the only perfect One. Among finite beings, therefore, those must be most exalted and perfect who most nearly resemble Him.

Is it said that a moral likeness to his Maker is what is referred to in Gen. i. 27? Be it so. But who needs to be told that, among created objects, the form is ever in correspondence with the essence?—That this is a sovereign and universal law in creation? Even children know that the properly human characteristics cannot exist under the form of a fish or a crocodile—under any form, indeed, other than the human.

No. We can conceive of a race of wiser and better men than any now existing, but they will not be a different order of beings. They will be simply an improved variety of the same order, more truly human, more perfect men both in their internal character and their outward form. They will still be men, and all the more so for being truer likenesses of their Maker. The text in Genesis, therefore, warrants the assertion that there is not and cannot be any such order of beings between God and man as Christians have supposed an-