Page:The New View of Hell.djvu/201

 religious. And the highest or God-like part of his nature—the spiritual and truly human—the angel (for this is "the measure of a man," Rev. xxi. 17) is unfolded last of all. But this takes place only when the man is " born from above," or created anew in the image of his Maker. In this case, none of the passions or propensities of the natural man are destroyed, but simply brought under subjection to the spiritual and more regal part of his nature—to the true and heaven-born man. In due subjection and subordination to the divine human love, everything belonging to the natural man is good and useful.

This is plainly taught in the spiritual sense of the very first chapter of the Bible; in which sense this chapter treats of a spiritual creation, that is, of the normal development of the human soul from its natural, dark, chaotic state, into one of heavenly order and life—into the image and likeness of God himself. Note the order in this creation. First, we have the earth without form, and void,—and darkness brooding over it. Then comes the grass, and the herb yielding seed, and the fruit-tree yielding fruit. Then the fishes and the fowls—the "living creatures which the waters brought forth abundantly after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind." Then "the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and everything that creepeth upon the earth after his kind." And last of all the man—a living soul—created in the image and likeness of his Maker.

"So God created man in his own image; in the