Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/183

 est grade of vegetable is a little lower than the lowest grade of animal life, because animal life, even in its lowest forms, has intelligence enough to be conscious of existence. Like- wise man, though the highest of animal or earthly beings, is " a little lower than the angels," because angels are spir- itual or heavenly beings.

There is a wonderful contrast between man as we now see him, degraded by sin, and the perfect man that God made in his image. Sin has gradually changed his features, as well as his character. Multiplied generations, by igno- rance, licentiousness and general depravity, have so blurred and marred humanity that in the large majority of the race the likeness of God is almost obliterated. The moral and intellectual qualities are dwarfed ; and the animal instincts, unduly developed, are no longer balanced by the higher, Man has lost physical strength to such an extent that, with all the aid of medical science, his average length of life is now about thirty years, whereas at first he survived nine hundred and thirty years under the same penalty* But though thus defiled and degraded by sin and its penalty, death, working in him, man is to be restored to his original per- fection of mind and body, and to glory, honor and domin- ion, during and by the Millennial reign of Christ. The things to be restored by and through Christ are those things which were lost through Adam's transgression. (Rom. 5 : 1 8, 19.) Man did not lose a heavenly but an earthly par- adise. Under the death penalty, he did not lose a spiritual but a human existence ; and all that was lost was purchased back by his Redeemer, who declared that he came to seek and to save that which was lost. Luke 19 : 10.

In addition to the above, we have proof that the perfect man is not a spiritual bdng. *We are told that out Lord, before he left his glory to become a man, was "in, a fcrm of God" a spiritual form, a spirit being; but since

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