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THE
ENDOWMENTS OF MAN
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THE
ENDOWMENTS OF MAN
CONSIDERED IN THEIR RELATIONS WITH HIS- FINAL END,
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BY
BISHOP ULLATHORNE.
THIRD EDITION.
London: BURNS & GATES, Limited.
New York: CATHOLIC PUBLICATION SOCIETY CO. 1888.
PREFACE.
These Lectures were delivered in their original form to the clerics of St Bernard's Seminary, but have since been recon- structed and enlarged for a wider audience. They are an example of that constructive method of teaching, which, so far from neglecting the analytical method, absorbs it in the edifice built up of large and harmonious truths. Two objects are contemplated in this work. The first and chief is to fortify the Catholic mind against the errors respecting man and his endow- ments which so widely pervade the world of thought in our day, not so much by direct confutation of them, as by confronting them with the Catholic view of man, as revealed by God, and drawn out by Catholic thinkers through the long ages of Chris- tianity. It has for some time been the fashion with the infidel school to leave God aside, to declare that the Divine Author of their being is unknown to them, and is inaccessible to their knowledge. By thus confessing their mental and moral blindness, these men, who profess, notwithstanding, to be the enlighteners of their age, put themselves to shame before the common sense and conscience of mankind at large. Nevertheless the poison of their writings makes its way into many unguarded minds; and whilst they profess not to have God in their knowledge, they are mischievously employed in endeavouring to pull man to pieces, and as far as the theories of the brain can destroy the facts of creation, to efface from him the testimonies of God, and the witnesses of his noble origin and sublime destination. What they endeavour to destroy is the subject of this book.
vi PREFACE.
My second object may be expressed in a few words. I have for some years contemplated a book on certain fundamental virtues which belong to the Church of Christ, but not to the world. But I deeply felt that the book I contemplated required a certain preparation of mind, as the virtues of faith, humility, and Christian magnanimity rest on very deep foundations. I there- fore composed this book, although complete in itself, by way of preface to another book, should the goodwill of God enable me to bring it to a conclusion.
I have only to add, that I have freely used the materials of more authoritative writers, where they suited my purpose, without always expressing my obligations.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
PAQB
On the Nature of Man i
LECTURE n. Why Man is made in the Image of God . . .27
LECTURE in. The Secondary Image of God in Man . . -53
LECTURE IV. Creation and Providence 81
LECTURE V. Self and Conscience n6
LECTURE VI. Self and Conscience as Unveiled in the Book of Job 147
LECTURE VII. On Evil and the Origin of Evil . . . .169
LECTURE VIII.
On Justice and Moral Evil 195
LECTURE IX. On Penal Evil or Punishment 220
LECTURE X.
Why Man was not Created Perfect . . .251
viii CONTENTS.
LECTURE XI.
PAGE
The Fall of Man in Connection with the Fall of the Angels and the Redemption of Christ . .279
LECTURE XIL
The Restoration of Man 309
LECTURE XIIL
The Regeneration of Man 340
LECTURE XIV.
From the Beginning to the End of Man . . . 374
LECTURE I.
ON THE NATURE OF MAN.
"What is man that thou shouldst magnify him ? or why shouldst thou set thy heart upon him ? " — Job vii. 17.
THE world repeats the saying of the poet, that the proper study of mankind is man ; but whilst the men of the world commend this study as of chief importance, they pronounce their own condemnation. For what man of the world cares to know himself? And how can any one know man who is ignorant of himself? The knowledge of his earthly frame is not the knowledge of man ; nor the natural history that marks the ex- ternal diversities of the various branches of the human family ; nor the science of his mental faculties and their operations; nor those other sciences that investigate by parts the several elements that enter into his composition. When these sciences are pur- sued with loyalty to the facts, and the mind of the investigator is free from imaginative theories, they confirm the essential unity of the human race, notwithstanding accidental differences that only mark the diversities within the species. But those partial studies of the components of human nature will not teach us the pro- founder things that belong to our humanity; on the contrary, from the mind absorbed in the study of the external man, the internal man is but too apt to escape, so that what constitutes the dignity of man is lost from view.
There is also a certain practical knowledge of man that is called the knowledge of the world, and the knowledge of life. But unhappily this knowledge of the world is more occupied with the deviations of men from the true standard of manhood, than
X
2 ON THE NATURE OF MAN
with what concerns his real dignity; and there is truth in the words of the sage who said, " I never return from among men, but I find myself less a man ".
There is but one science in which man is comprehensively and completely known, and that is the science of God. For God alone knows with a complete knowledge how He has made man, and for what end He has made him. It may be said, therefore, with perfect truth that the simple-hearted man who lives humbly in the light of divine revelation, has a more profound and exalted knowledge of man than all these sciences could teach him. For the true man is within us, and this man can neither be reached by the scalpel of the anatomist, nor by the investigator of our mental operations, nor by the observer of man's social conduct. The soul is more than the body, and the light is more than the soul, and the life is more than the light. To find the light of truth, we must close the five windows of the senses, that the interior house may be lighted up. To find the life of the soul, we must open the door of our inward sense, that the Divine Giver of our life may find no resistance.
God is not only the creator, but the illuminator of man ; it is His light that reveals us to ourselves. He who knows himself through this illumination has a light by which to know all man- kind. But this knowledge is rare, because men as a rule look outwards, and not inwards. There is much within us, neverthe- less, that self-knowledge never reaches, and that is known to God alone. Even of what we do know, there is much that comes not to the surface whether through action or speech. The outward man is not the full expression of the inward man. If men who limit their studies to the exterior man are often led into absurd theories respecting his nature and origin, other men who desert the knowledge of God are carried away into theories as far from the truth, through their ignorance of what is mysterious in his soul.
To understand what man is, we must know the fundamental principle of his constitution. Without this principle we have no key to his nature. Composed of a spiritual soul and a material body, the body is the organ of the soul and the soul is the vital form of the body. The body of man is the immediate subject of his soul, and his soul is the immediate subject of God. This, then, is the fundamental principle of his constitution, that man is a subject
ON THE NATURE OF MAN. 3
made for an object, and without knowing the object we cannot understand the subject. Let us explain this by some familiar example. The eye of man is the subject of light. The eye is the subject ; light and the forms of things contained in light are the object of the eye. If we had never known light, we should never have understood the nature of the eye, or why it was made as it is made. But the light itself teaches us, and from it we know that the eye is a subject receptive of light, and of the things contained in light, which are its object. The heart, again, as taken for the seat of our affections, is the subject of love ; but if we had never had an object to love, we should never have known the nature of the heart. But as there is an instinct and an appetite in the heart that craves for love, we should have been unhappy in the sense of our want, without knowing why we were unhappy.
Man is a subject made for an object, and nothing can satisfy him but the object for which he is made. It is, therefore, im- possible to know what he is as a subject until we know for what object he is made. When he finds his true object, he under- stands himself. When the question is asked : Is life worth living ? it can only be answered by him who understands what is the true object and the final end of life. The object of life and the final end of life are one and the same. There may be, and there are, intermediate objects of life, in which our present duties are involved ; but to the man who knows God, and whose mental eyes are clear, the final object of life shines through them all. Those intermediate objects, as he knows from the light that beams from God as his final end, must be either overcome or be so mastered as to become the means to help him on to the one true object of his life. This is the solution of the trials and contests of our present life in this world. Our present life is so devised as to quicken and bring out our faculties, and to energize our will by opposition in the exercise of the virtues, and to rouse our courage and magnanimity, that we may pass, with God's help, through all intermediate objects to the final object of our life — to that supreme object of desire for which our nature is constituted, as an humble subject made for a divine object.
Man is made for God. He is therefore made with a great capacity for eternal truth and for eternal things, and has an ap- petite implanted in his soul for unlimited good. It follows, as a
4 ON THE NATURE OF MAN.
matter of course, that man is not an independent being ; and of this he is full conscious. He is constituted under special relations of dependence on his Divine Creator, from whom he receives both light and good, and who is the final end of his existence. It is utterly impossible to understand what man is, unless we consider his relations with God ; and he may always find them in the summit of his intelligence, at the root of his will, and in the light of his conscience. Even in the most perverse of men these tes- timonies of God cannot be effaced : the more he struggles against them, the more they assert their presence and their power. The chief purpose of his intelligence is to light him on to the know- ledge of God ; the chief purpose of his will is to move him on towards God, as the supreme object of desire ; the one purpose of his conscience is to regulate his mind and will according to the pre-established order of justice, which is founded in the relations of his dependence on God, both as the perfecter of his being and as the final end of his existence.
The man who fancies that he is his own object, and that he is capable of giving content to himself, is utterly ignorant of the constitution of his nature. He is not the giver but the receiver of that good which gives happiness ; he is the container, but not the content. God is the contenter of man ; He gives him his light and his life, and the good that belongs to life ; and the pre- sent light and life have for their object to bring him into the open presence of God, where God will be his light, life, and happiness. Hence the nearer a man approaches to God, the more light he has by which to know himself ; but the further he recedes from God, the less light he has to understand himself. For God is to man what the sun's light and warmth are to the world ; if he turns from God he is darkened and chilled with his own shadows.
A subject without its object is in a rudimentary condition, for the object completes the subject. For this reason the man who is in his just order and right relations with God is advancing towards his completion, and in him the plan of human nature is being ful- filled. For however complete a man may be in his own nature, he is not complete as a subject, which is the fundamental principle of his nature, unless he is brought into union with God as His Divine Object, and possesses the good for which he is made ; that is to say, he is without his perfection and content. As God is both the Author and the Perfecter of man, He alone can teach
ON THE NATURE OF MAN 5
man what he is ; for which reason Job asks of God : " What is man that Thou shouldst magnify him ? Or why dost Thou set Thy heart upon him ? " As David also asks : *' What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? or the son of man, that Thou visitest him?"
If we want proof of the extent to which men may go into error respecting the nature of man, when they reject the knowledge of God, we have only to consider the number, the extravagance, and the contradictory character of the theories of human nature which have been put forth in this unbelieving age, by men who profess to make the nature and history of man their special study. We are invited by men of culture and science to accept such theories as the following : —
One tells us that man is an animal ; another that he is a sen- tient, self-conscious machine. A third, that he is a conscious manifestation of an unconscious universal being. A fourth in- forms us that he is a mind invested with delusion. A fifth main- tains that he is thought and nothing but thought. A sixth would have us understand that he is individually the one and only mind, and that all things else are but the phenomena of his mind. A seventh theory upholds that man is descended from the lowest brutal existence, either from a jelly-fish or some kind of worm, or, which is the newest theory, from a microscopic cell that lies buried at the bottom of the ocean. In a word, that the first ancestor of man was bathybius, which means the bathos of life. But when these men of science come to the immediate ancestor of man, there is again a sectarian division, one maintaining that he is descended from the ape, another from the kangaroo, although both maintain that there is a link still wanting to connect him with either of these animals.
An eighth theory makes man an evolution of the eternal mind. A ninth pronounces him to be a spark of the divinity. A tenth allows him to be a rational animal, but altogether material, secreting his thoughts from some bundle of nerves, or from some interior organ of the body. An eleventh pronounces positively that man is altogether mortal and ends in the grave, but that nevertheless collective humanity is our divinity, and the true object of our worship. A twelfth philosophy tells us that man has no free will, or choice of thought or action. A thirteenth refuses him all knowledge of God, and all power of communicating
6 ON THE NATURE OF MAN.
with Him. A fourteenth maintains that man's conscience is an error, and even a blunder, and the cause of all his misery, and that it requires to be reconstructed by the authority of the civil state. And to conclude this amazing list of scientific heresies, the latest school of German infidelity has come to the conclusion that man is nothing but will, not personal will, but will of the species with imaginative presentation, and that he is nothing but hopeless misery, although an element of divinity.
Such are the consolations of modern philosophy; such the scientific dreams of "men who refuse to have God in their know- ledge. Their treason against God has destroyed their dignity as men. Like Satan in the Book of Job, they have gone round the earth and through it to seek the knowledge of man, yet what is open even to the ignorant and poor has escaped them. We may Avell say to these friends of humanity as Job said to his con- solers : " Miserable comforters are ye all ". If they only knew something of themselves, they might know God. If they only knew something of God, they might know themselves.
When Plato forgot his high speculations for a moment, and defined man to be a two-legged animal without feathers, Diogenes presented his man to him in the shape of a plucked fowl. The irony was perfect, and Diogenes is much wanted among our new philosophers. Plato's amendment, that man has broad toe and finger nails, completes the likeness of the old absurdity to the new ones. When naturalists tell us that man differs from the very noblest ape by a thumb, a planted foot, or a larger convolution of brain, we do not deny these or any other distinctions of the kind ; but we feel our nature insulted. When the Positivists come with eloquent pens to assure us in glistening sentences that we have no soul or life beyond the grave, we are reminded of the glistening folds of the serpent in which Satan came to ruin man- kind. For heaven they give us a skull decked with flowers, and for our present consolation they offer us the worship of a corrupt and perishing humanity. But the immortal life within us springs up with indignation to repel these horrors. When the Pantheist tells us that man, with all his weakness, with all his evil propen- sities and vices, is an emanation, or an evolution, or a scintilla- tion, or some other manifestation of the one Divine and Eternal Being, we know that reveries like these come of the high fever of intellectual pride, confusing the object with the subject, and
ON THE NATURE OF MAN. 7
attended by some grievous disorder of the moral sense. We turn from these brainsick reveries to the light of common sense for refreshment, and seek comfort in the revelations of God. If these monstrosities of the mind strike sensible men with astonish- ment, they may also teach the great lesson, that we stand as much in need of the virtue of humility to keep us reasonable and safe in our common sense, as to keep us in faith with God.
But the Church, however saddened by these spectacles, is most certainly not taken by surprise. All these things are familiar to her philosophy as well as to her theology, ^he has great age and experience, and a long memory. Her earliest Fathers had to encounter most of these theories in one shape or another, in the Gnostic sects, or in the pagan philosophers, and she has had every one of them to encounter at one time or another. The mode of their presentation may be different, but the errors themselves are the same, and with no greater cogency than they formerly possessed. But what calls for special remark, because it conveys a great instruction, is the fact, that the nature of man has become as much a ground of dispute as the sense of the Scriptures, and by a very similar process. The Scriptures were taken out of the hands of that authority to which God committed them for their safety, and man has been taken out of the hands of God. After this the process of dissolution began, destructive criticism was first applied to the Scriptures, and after- wards to man ; the diviner elements were first eliminated from the Scriptures, and next we see the effort to eliminate the diviner elements from man. The same false principle is at the root of both these procedures. The subjective man, with his own small measure of reason encompassed with imagination, and impas- sioned with the love of independence, has made his personal judgment the standard and the measure of all things both human and divine. The result of this anti-principle of private and sub- jective interpretation has been, from the nature of things, the destruction of faith, and has left almost as many opinions as heads, until it has annihilated the revelation of God in the souls of a great number of men.
By a like method destructive criticism has taken hold of man. The subjective man has withdrawn himself from God as his divine object, has taken himself out of the hands of God, and after renouncing His authority, has undertaken to interpret the
8 ON THE NATURE OF MAN.
nature of that divine work which we call man, who is himself a revelation of *God. Upon this text he exercises his rationalistic views, which are never rational, because he always leaves out of his premises certain elements that are essential and proper to man. Then the more accurately he reasons from his defective premises, the greater is the monster that comes forth in the con- clusion. Either the objective truth is confounded with the sub- jective man, and then we have pantheism ; or the soul is con- founded with the body, and then we have materialism ; or the image of God is rejected from the soul, and then God is declared to be unknown and unknowable.
The first distinction of man from the animal is his spiritual nature, of which he is fully conscious. The second is his posses- sion of the light of intelligence, by which he has the perception of universal and unchangeable truth. He is the subject of that truth ; the truth commands him, and calls for his submission ; he cannot command or change the truth. The animal has the per- ception of particular things ; can imagine them, remember them, compare them, and conclude from them ; but the animal has not the knowledge of principles or universals, which belong to the light of intelligence. The animal has images of things, man alone can ascend from images to universal ideas ; the animal can feel that this fruit is sweet, man alone can form the general idea of sweetness. His spiritual sense and aspiration after unlimited good is the third distinction of man. For the animal is limited in sense and desire to a narrow compass of material things. His conscience, enlightened with the law of justice, and with the sense of God's presence, and of his own responsibility, is his fourth distinction. His gift of language is the fifth distinction, for this gift the animal can never possess, as it depends for its exercise on the light of intelligence, and on the possession of universal ideas. His capacity for art and science is the sixth. How is it, for example, that the advocates of man's descent from animal life have never dreamed of ascribing those primitive tools, weapons, and artistic drawings of animals to any creature but man ? His seventh distinction is his capacity as God's image for the gifts of supernatural truth and divine grace. His eighth distinction is that sense of duty to God which inclines him to religion. Cicero spoke the voice of all humanity when he said : " There is no animal but man that has the consciousness of God; and no
ON THE NATURE OF MAN. 9
nation of men so wild and ferocious as not to know that they ought to have a god, even though they may not know what god they ought to have ".* Finally, man is erect by nature, while the animals are curved towards the earth ; his countenance, which looks towards the heavens, beams with light and intelligence, and he exercises dominion over all the animals that God has created.
To define man without giving the first place to his spiritual nature, and some indication of his relations with God, is to leave out what is principal in him, and chief in his distinctions. JMany philosophers, following Aristotle, define him to be a rational animal. Others define him to be a social animal. Some, again, designate him as a religious animal. But these definitions seem to be defective, and to do him wrong in classing him with the genus animal. His first substantial principle is not animal but spiritual, and ration- ality is not the distinctive qualification of the animal but of the spiritual part of man. Reason is in no sense the qualification of animal. In this definition rationality is not only made the dis- tinctive quality of the animal man, but the spiritual nature or soul of man is left to be inferred from one of its qualities, which in the form of the terms is ascribed to the animal part of man. But it has long been the fashion among free-thinkers to maintain that animals are endowed with reason ; and that man, as nowadays not a few of them contend, is nothing more than an animal with, a more developed reason. They are quite ready to accept this definition, and to thank us for it as the complete expression of their own conclusion ; for with them man is neither more nor less than a rational animal.
But when the Almighty made man. He did not rank him with the animals, He completed the animal kingdom and then closed that period of creation. He then opened another period, in which He did not say, as He did in the successive creations of the animal world. Let the earth produce the rational animal. But he introduced a new and more solemn form of creation in the words : " Let us make man ". And when man was made from two distinct sources, his body from the earth and his spirit from the creative breathing of God's will, the Scripture says : " And man became a living soul ". He is called man and a living soul, but not an animal. Man is never called an animal in the
* Cicero, De Legibtis, L. 11. c. viii.
lo ON THE NATURE OF MAN.
Scriptures in the simple and primary sense of the word, but either in a comparative sense or with some addition ; as when St. Paul speaks of the animal man, where he includes not the whole man, but only the inferior as opposed to the superior man. Where man is likened with the nobler animals for his nobler qualities, their animality is kept out of sight.
Having a spiritual nature endowed with reason and capable of divine things like the angels, but distinguished from them by the possession of an earthly body, which he has in common with the animal creation, man cannot be called an animal in the sense in which the latter are animals. His soul is the form and vital prin- ciple of his body, the mover of its actions, and the term of its sensations. The soul contains and carries the body, not the body the soul; so that when the soul departs, the body falls lifeless to the ground, and dissolves into its kindred dust. It would therefore be quite as reasonable to place man in the angelic genus because of his immortal spirit, as to place him in the animal genus because of his mortal body ; but in fact he belongs to a kingdom apart both from the angels who have not bodies, and from the animals that have not souls, and that after their death have no resurrec- tion. St. John Chrysostom therefore attacks the Aristotelian defi- nition of man, and that repeatedly and even vehemently. He says that the pagan advocates of this definition are outsiders, and that the Scriptures do not agree with them.
The celebrated French anthropologist, Monsieur De Quatrefages tells us, that the question of the human kingdom as distinguished from the animal kingdom has been long and seriously discussed by the Anthropological Society of Paris. And he himself advocates the distinction of the human from the animal kingdom on the ground of the moral and religious faculties in man, of which there are no signs in the animal kingdom. He observes that man has the perception of moral good and evil, independently of all physical welfare or suffering. That man believes in superior beings who can exercise an influence over his destiny. And that man believes in the prolongation of his destiny after this life.*
Let us here briefly sum up the broad distinctions between man
and the animal. Man has intelligence, the animal has but instinct ;
man has articulate speech, the animal is dumb ; man reflects and
knows himself, the animal does neither ; man is the subject of
*De Quatrefages, The Human Species, c. i.
ON THE NATURE OF MAN. ■ n
truth, the animal of sense ; man has the abstract notions of good and evil, the animal has but the sense of pleasure and pain ; man has conscience, the animal has no sense of responsibility ; man knows God and believes in a world to come, the animal has no knowledge of God, but after serving the requirements of man it perishes utterly. The soul of man is an immortal spirit ; but, as the Scriptures says, the soul of the animal is in its blood.
Although the body of man is formed of mineral substances, we do not call him a mineral. Although he has vegetative powers, we do not call him a vegetable. Although like the animals he has '^ flesh, bone, and blood, yet outside the schools, you can offer no greater insult to a man than to call him an animal. To call him a rational animal will not help the matter, because his common sense tells him that as an animal he is not rational. Schools of [philosophy argue out the conclusion, that a rational animal must necessarily have a soul, but this commits what is most substantial and essential in the composition of man to an inference : and to an inference which both the materialist and the pantheist will promptly deny.
Leaving the Aristotelian definition, then, to the schools that prefer it, I cannot but think the method of the Scriptures, of the Councils, of the Fathers and the Catechisms, which present man to us as a composite creation of soul and body, with the soul as the form of the body, to be far the more philosophical. It pre- sents to us the complete idea of man in the comprehension of his genus and the distinction of the species, with the due relation of the superior or spiritual part of man to the inferior or material part of him. It likewise provides at the outset of all controversy against giving the ground in common to the theories of materialists, pantheists, and other erroneous speculators on the nature of man.
Although Plato has given us a wild and fanciful theory of human creation, which is as extravagant as that of the Gnostics, he has nevertheless given us a correct definition of man as a soul in- vested with a body. Although some of the Fathers use the Aristotelian definition, yet not a few of the weightiest have defined man to be an immortal or an intelligent soul served by an organized body. St. Augustine, for example, says that "man is a rational soul using an earthly and mortal body ".* This mode of definition is given, with some diversity of terms, by Origen,
* S. August., De Moribus Ecclcsice Cath. c. xxvii. n. 52.
12 ON THE NATURE OF MAN
Arnobius, St. Methodius, St. Basil, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Ambrose, and St. Gregory the Great.*
Seeing the use made of the Aristotehan definition by the ma- teriahsts of France, at an early period of this centur}', the cele- brated Viscount de Bonald wrote a defence of the form of definition here adopted that is worthy of attention. " I venture," he says, "to assert that this definition, 'man is an intelligence served by organs,' presents the first of creatures under the noblest, simplest, and most extensive point of view ; that it brings all that man is by nature and by reason within the compass and prevision of an axiom of science. It expresses the two substances of which man is composed in their union and distinction. It exhibits both the principle and the moral reason of their union, and expresses the superiority of the intelligent soul over the body, as the soul is ordained to command and the body to serve."
We may remark, however, that if the author had expressed the two substances instead of leaving them to be inferred from the properties of intelligence and organization, his definition, like that of the Fathers cited above, would have been more perfect and complete. But his remarks on the Aristotelian definition are worth listening to. "The definition," he says, " that calls man a rational animal is not sufficient to distinguish that noble creature, especially in days where there is a disposition to maintain that animals are endowed with intelligence and reason. This defini- tion reverses the order of the faculties, putting the part of man that receives movement before that which gives movement. It reverses the eternal order of being in putting matter before spirit. But the definition that puts the intelligent part first, and that designates man by what is noblest in him, makes the intelligence the master, and the corporal organs the servants ; and reminds the man that he must cultivate his intelligence to maintain the natural superiority of the soul over the body ; and that he must exercise the bodily organs to make them serviceable to his intel- ligence ; in short, that he ought not to suffer them to behave like a riotous mob, and to usurp the place of intelligence." t
But to know man truly we must know what is noblest in him, and what is the final object or end for which he has received that noble gift. We should have a very defective knowledge
* See Klee's History of Dogmas.
+ De Bonald, Recherches Philosophiqucs, c. v.
ON THE NATURE OF MAN 13
of the horse or the dog, if we knew nothing of their relations with man. We should have an equally defective knowledge of any instrument or machine, if we knew not for what object or purpose they were invented. Not to know the ultimate object or final end for which man is created, is to leave the principle of his con- stitution unaccounted for; whilst to know him in his ultimate object is to know him in his first principle. The noblest thing in man as a creature is the image of God, and he is created in the image of God because he is made for union with God. The knowledge of this is the science of human life.
The profane speculators, whose theories of man we have quoted, think to know him best when they separate him as a subject from his object, when they detach man from God ; but this is like separating the earth from the sun, it leaves us in the dark. We must get above these never-ending disputes and opinions, which come of refusing to hear the voice of Him who made man, and who alone has the perfect knowledge of what He has made, and for what purpose He has exercised His creative power. "Man partakes of all creatures," as Theophylact observes, "and he is the most perfect of them; but there is some- thing in him yet more sublime."* It is this something in him yet more sublime which can alone explain his nature, and what that is we must go to his Creator to learn.
In the first chapter of Genesis we read : " And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kind, and cattle and every- thing that creepeth on the earth, after its kind. And God saw that it was good. And He said : Let us make man to our image and likeness ; and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creeping thing that moveth on the earth. And God created man to His own image ; to the image of God He created him : male and female He created them. And God blessed them, saying : Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it." Then to show that man is made of two distinct substances, the one earthly, the other spiritual, the sacred Scripture adds these words : " And the Lord God formed man of the slime of the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul ".
Here is a creation distinct and apart from that of the anima
• Theophylact, In Lucam, c. x.
14 ON THE NATURE OF MAN
world, of a being who receives dominion over that world. It is most clearly stated that each order of the animal world was created after its kind, and in none of those kinds is man included. After all the kinds of animal life are created, there is a pause, and then the last epoch of creation is introduced, and before man is made, there is a solemn deliberation of more than one person in the Divine Creator. The Father of all things speaks to an equal within Himself, who is also man's creator. We hear the words : " Let us make man to our image and likeness ". The Divine Artist moulds the body of man, not from some pre-existing animal, but from the finer particles of the earth. His spirit is a separate creation, nearer to God as spirit is more like to God. This creative act is expressed by the term breathing, as expressing both the formation of the spirit and the communication to that spirit of spiritual light and life. Man rose up from the earth " a living soul," after the image and likeness of God. He received more than a natural life, he received that life of grace that brought him into a living communion with God as his final end.
The Sacred Record carefully adds the words : " To the image of God He created him, male and female He created them " ; making it clear against all Rabbinical or Mahometan cavil, that the two sexes were equally created to the image of God, and have consequently one and the same divine end.
Here then we come at the true dignity of man, as well as to his chief distinction. The image of God enters into the composi- tion of his nature, and is therefore ineffaceable. This noble prerogative exalts him into an order so immeasurably above that of the animal world, that there can be no kind of equality between them. For as every part of the man belongs to his personality, it shares in his highest prerogatives. But his spiritual nobility ascends higher in degree in proportion to the grace and benignity with which the Sovereign Lord of man exalts this image by His grace into the likeness of the Eternal Majesty, in raising him from virtue to virtue. Every other distinction fades before the grandeur of this divine resemblance, for which the image of God is the natural preparation. But this likeness is a supernatural gift, for it is far above the force of nature, and is implanted as a living seal from the divine light upon the faith of man, and as a fiery impress from the divine charity upon his soul, that he may be able to love God above all things.
ON THE NATURE OF MAN. 15
The prerogative of bearing God's image in his soul constitutes the capacity of man for receiving His likeness, and of coming into union with Him. Proclaimed to be his chief distinction at his creation, it is repeated on other solemn occasions, that it may be always kept in sight. In recording the genealogy of the race of Adam for the first time, the Scripture begins with this heading : " This is the book of the generation of Adam. In the day that God created him, he made him in the image of God." When the sacredness of human life was first violated by Cain, the great- ness of the crime was shown to consist in the violation of God's image. " Whosoever shall shed man's blood, his blood shall be shed; because man was made in the image of God." The Book of Wisdom associates this image of God with the soul's immor- tality : " God created man incorruptible, and to the image of his own likeness He made him ".
Taking this profounder view of the nature of man, St. Basil defines him to be "a rational creature made to the image of his Creator ".* St. Gregory of Nyssa defines him as " a creature of God endowed with reason and made to God's image ".f Although St. Athanasius begins his descriptive definition of man from his animal nature, he takes the highest theological measure of him. " Man," he says, " is an animal endowed with intellect, and with a sense of the divine mind, although mortal through the spoliation of the body. He is intelligent through the principality of the mind as he is a partaker of the Divinity." % St. Augustine, in like manner, places the dignity of man in the image of God. " Great indeed is man's dignity," he says, "because he bears the image of God, and heboid's God's countenance within him, and through contemplation has God ever present with him."§
But the Psalmist says : " Man when he was in honour, did not understand : he was compared to foolish beasts, and was made like to them ". He was exalted in honour above the animal world, which was subjected to his dominion, but by deserting his spiritual dignity he makes himself like the animals. On this text St. Basil has a comment which shows how great man is when he cleaves to God, and how degraded when he cleaves to his own
* S. Basil, Hcxameron, Horn. 10.
t S. Greg. Nyssa, Orat. i. in Verb. Faciamus horn.
J S. Athanas., De Communi Essentia, n. 53.
§ S. August., De Spiritu et Aninia.
i6 ON THE NATURE OF MAN.
inferior nature. " Man is a great thing," he says, "and a precious thing is the merciful man ; he has his excellence and dignity in his own constitution. What earthly thing besides him is made in its Creator's image? He has power and command over every living thing, on earth, in the air and the waters. He is a little lower than the angels, because he is united to a body that God made from the earth, whereas He made His ministers a flame of fire. But man most certainly knows his Creator, for God breathed into his face, and gave him through that breathing some part of His grace, that like might know like. Yet when he was so greatly honoured as to be created in God's image, when in greater honour than the heavens, the sun, or the stars — for what image of God have things without mind or will ? — in this great honour he did not understand. He neglected following his Creator that he might be like to Him, and became the slave of his cupidities, and was compared to foolish beasts, and became like to them. It is the heaping of folly, it is a bestial want of sense, for man made in God's image, to have no care to under- stand the great and many mysteries dispensed for his advantage. When he forgets these, he discards the heavenly image to take up with the earthly one." *
How shall we draw the distinction between the image and the likeness of God in man ? These are two distinct terms, and as St Augustine remarks, God would not use two distinct terms one after the other to express one and the same thing. We have no right, observes St. Gregory of Nyssa, to accuse the Scriptures of putting a second word without intending a second meaning. An image is a distant resemblance ; a likeness is a resemblance in life. We have the image of a man in his statue, it is like him in form and proportion, but the statue is devoid of life. We have the likeness of a man in his son, who resembles him in life as well as in form. The image of God is formed in the constitution of the human soul. But the likeness of God, which rests in resemblance of life, is derived from God through the implanted gift of His divine grace, which is an element above his nature, and by responding to which, man is raised to a supernatural life in God. The image of God is according to man's reason ; but the likeness of God is according to the divine gift. The image is according to truth ; but the likeness is according to love in the truth ; for truth * S. Basil, Horn, in Psalm xlviii.
ON THE NATURE OF MAN. 17
is form, and love is life. Man is in the image of God, therefore, in so far as he is rational ; and in the likeness of God in so far as he is spiritual.
Let us speak first of the image, and then of the likeness. The image of God is expressed in the one and threefold character of the soul. We must here lay down the fundamental principle, that spiritual unity is perfected in distinction. What is incapable of distinction can never have that rich and high order of unity which embraces perfect distinction of number in perfect unity. Boetius made the profound remark, that there is no perfect unity without plurality. Plurality is essential to intellectual and moral life. Three united in one forms a more absolute order of unity than the rudimental unit which is incapable of distinction. Hence the maxim that every triune is perfect. The difficulty of realizing this truth to the understanding arises from the obtruding of material images through the imagination when we are thinking of spiritual life. Yet there are many reflections of this unity in plurality in nature. For example, a triangle presents a more per- fect unity than one of its lines, a circle than one of its points, a cube than one of its planes. The features of the human countenance in their entire harmony are more expressive of the unity of life than any one of them taken separately ; but if there is internal division it will be otherwise, because the countenance reflects the soul. This unity is the secret of the beauty and sweetness of spiritual faces.
God is not a solitary Being. He has an infinite society in His own divine nature. His action is infinite. His knowledge of Himself is infinite. His love of His own most perfect Being and Intelligence is infinite. Here are three infinitudes in one perfect nature. The first principle of God's infinite action is His power ; the terminal of His knowledge is His wisdom ; the terminal of His power and wisdom is His goodness. His power is infinite, His wisdom is infinite, and His goodness is infinite; yet these three distinctions exist in the one infinite spiritual nature and indivisible substance of the One Eternal God. But power is not knowledge, nor is knowledge will ; the will moves, knowledge is the law of movement, power is the source of movement. With- out the three nothing can be effected, nothing can be perfected in spiritual life and action. If you think of God as He is almighty and unchangeable in Himself, although He moves all
1 8 ON THE NATURE OF MAN.
things, that is His power. If you think of God as all-seeing, all- providing, and all-judging, that is His wisdom. If you think of God as all-loving, compassionate, and merciful, that is His good- ness. To the Father we ascribe power, to the Son wisdom, and to the Holy Spirit goodness. The Father is the fountain of wisdom and goodness as well as of power. The Son is the gene- rated wisdom inseparable from that power and goodness. The Holy Spirit is the goodness breathed in love from the Father and the Son, and is inseparable from that power and wisdom.
The Father is the fontal principle of all. His perfect know- ledge of Himself is one absolute and complete conception, which constitutes the Word of His power, and is another self within His bosom — one with Him in substance, and co-equal with Him. The Word of the Father is His Son, the express image of the Father's substance, and the character of His glory, born eternally of His contemplation. In contemplating the whole perfection of His Being in His Son, the Father infinitely loves the Son, and the Son the Father ; whence from the Father, and through the Son, and "therefore from the Son as well, the Holy Spirit proceeds in that infinite breathing of love, the third Person of the Sacred Trinity, in whom the perfection of the divine life is completed. For the Holy Spirit is co-equal and consubstantial with the Father and the Son. Through the Father's power all things are created ; through the Son's wisdom all intelligent creatures are illuminated : through the Holy Spirit's love all spirits are perfected that partake of His sanctity, whether in Heaven or on earth. Yet, though we ascribe these works to the three Divine Persons severally, they are each the work of the whole adorable Trinity, whose operations are inseparable.
Profound beyond the intelligence of every created intellect is the unfathomable mystery of the Holy Trinity ; and he who searches into its Majesty will be overAvhelmed with its glory. Yet, although the Holy Trinity is the mystery of mysteries, and the source of all the mysteries that prove the limitation of our reason, a certain knowledge of that mystery is vouchsafed to our faith. Our first preparation for that knowledge is laid in the con- stitution of our soul as created in the image of God ; but the revelation of that mystery is given to our faith. The best of the ancient philosophers obtained a certain perception that the soul of man is one in nature and three in powers; but when the
ON THE NATURE OF MAN. 19
mystery of the Divine Trinity became fully revealed to us, the light of that unspeakable mystery enabled us to see with clear- ness the triune constitution of our own soul ; and, to use the words of St, Augustine : " Whilst we see the trinity in ourselves, we believe without seeing the Trinity of God ".
For in the human soul there are three fundamental powers in one spiritual nature, and this constitutes the soul in the image of God. In the Holy Trinity there is a fontal principal of all things, which St. Athanasius calls " the treasury of life and intelli- gence ". And in the human soul there is the receptive mind, endowed with the light of principles, and stored with all the truth and images of truth that have been presented to its wonderful capacity. This fontal mind the Fathers call the memory, which is not the mere faculty of remembering, but the treasury of the mind, out of which we call things by remembering. This store- house or treasury of light and truth, this memory, is the first of the three powers of the soul.
But it is one thing to have this treasure of light and truth in the mind, it is another thing to bring it out by conception or thought into our understanding, so that we may see with our understanding what is contained in our mind ; just as it is one thing to have a truth in our mind, and another to see it in writing before our eyes. For as it is one thing to have a truth in our mind, and another to put it in words, so it is one thing to have that truth in our mind, and another to have it in our understanding. But when we draw a truth from our mind into our understanding, that which is in the understanding is the word or image of that which is in the mind. Observe, for instance, when any one calls your attention to something that you ought to know, you search your memory, that something you at last see, and then you say : Now I understand. This word of understanding is an image of the truth in your mind. The understanding is the second power of the soul, and is generated from the first.
As the Father by His intelligence contemplates His infinite wealth of perfection, He generates His Word, the eternal image of Himself, so the mind or memory of man produces the power of understanding, that interior word of our soul which we call our conception, or our thought, which is the living image of things. This animated picture of things conceived in the understanding from the mind, St. Augustine calls "the son of thy heart ". It is
20 ON THE NATURE OF MAN.
the spiritual generation of the word of understanding from the truth stored in the memory.
But whatever good we understand through our mind, we love with our will. Thus, from the treasury of our memory, through the act of our understanding, our will, which is our third power, is set in motion. But this third power of our soul resembles the third Person of the Blessed Trinity. For from the Father, who is the fontal treasure of the Trinity, and from the Son, who is the Word or image of His infinite intelligence, proceeds the Spirit of love, who is the final term of the divine operations.
As the Father loses nothing by what He communicates to the Son, so our memory loses nothing by what it communicates to the understanding, but is always fertile. As the Holy Spirit neither diminishes the Father nor the Son in proceeding from them, neither does our will diminish by its love either the light of truth in our memory, or the word of truth conceived in our understanding, but each fertilizes the other.*
These three powers, the memory, understanding, and will, act together in the one simple and indivisible substance of the soul. The memory is receptive of truth, the understanding does not conceive the truth without the will, the will does not act without the understanding. And although in imperfect souls these three powers are unequal, and act unequally, yet, as St. Augustine ob- serves, in perfect souls they act equally. This equality is the secret of that peace and harmony which reign in perfect souls. For the love of the will and the contemplation in the understand- ing are at one with the most perfect good presented to the mind. But when we compare the trinity of powers in the human soul with the Trinity of Persons in God, to quote the words of an ancient Father : *' God is so far above the human soul, that in Him all goodness and the sweetness of all goodness is from Him- self; whilst in the creature, both what he is and the whole manner of what he is, is from God ".
From the image of God in man let us pass to the likeness. This likeness is a life-like resemblance to God. The image of God, as we have said, is the natural preparation for His likeness, which is supernatural. The first foundation for this divine likeness is the supernatural gift of faith, and the inspiration of hope ; but the likeness itself is in the supernatural gift of charity, giving to the
• See Bossuet's admirable Sermon Sur la Saitttc Triniti-.
ON THE NATURE OF MAN. 21
soul the life of divine love. When these gifts are freely accepted by the mind and will, and freely worked with, they draw the soul towards God in faith, hope, and charity, whereby we enter into the light of eternal truth, are inspired with trust in God's promises, and are animated with the love of God. The love of God is the life of the soul, and then faith becomes the light of love, and hope looks to the consummation of that love.
St. Gregory of Nyssa has so well expressed the difference between the image and likeness of God, that we shall here abridge his words: "The image," he says, "is in creation, the likeness is in election. As we have the image of God already, that image calls upon our will and choice to seek His likeness. Yet, unless God gives us the power, we can never ascend to His likeness by our own strength. He makes us to be like Him by giving us the power to become like Him. But he has left to us the task of working ourselves into that likeness; and that we may not lose the praise that is its due, He has left to us the reward of that likeness. If you see a good portrait, a faithful representation of the original, you give your praise to the artist more than to the work ; and that you may have the praise of it rather than another, God has left it to you to form yourself to His likeness. As it is from God's image that you are endowed with reason, it is by His likeness that you are made good. When you hear Christ saying : * Be ye perfect, as your Heavenly Father is perfect,' you know that He invites us to become His likeness. . . . Whence comes grace? How art thou crowned? If thy Creator gives thee everything, how art thou to reach heaven? He hath given thee one resemblance. He has left the other incomplete, that by perfecting thyself thou mayest become capable of receiving His reward. How then are we to be made like to God ? Through the Gospel ; for what is the being a Christian but the being made like to God, even as far as nature can re- ceive the likeness ? But how canst thou put on Christ unless thou receive the mark of Christ ? Unless thou receive His baptism ? Unless thou accept the garment of incorruption ? " *
The object of an image is to carry us to its original, and its significance is in what it represents. St. Hilary says in his pro- found work on the Trinity, that " as the sovereign imprints his image on the coin, so God imprints His image on man, with a
* S. Greg. Nyssa, Oral, in verb. Faciamus hominem.
22 ON THE NATURE OF MAN.
likeness proportioned to the depth of the impression".* But the life of God is love, and the likeness of His life is love in the living image looking towards the divine original. We are only like to God in the degree of charity which God implants in grace, and by which we love Him in virtue of that grace. The image of God is therefore transformed into His likeness in pro- portion to the earnestness with which we draw near to God in our affections, and thereby receive more from Him of the prin- ciple of life. But the true test of the amount and intensity of this spiritual life of divine love, is less in our sensibilities than in the calm vigour of our will, as it enters more completely into the will of God; is less in the consciousness of ourselves than in the consciousness of having God with us ; and in the greater subjection of our nature to God, proving the generous devotion of our love.
The two enemies of this divine likeness are pride and sensuality. Pride turns from God and looks to self; in its venial form it disturbs the divine likeness, in its virulent and mortal form it utterly effaces that likeness. The sensual life, which is the carnal form of selfishness, blurs, defiles, or utterly effaces the bright re- semblance with the disordered stainings of concupiscence. For, as St. Augustine says with his usual profundity : " It is not because a man remembers himself, knows himself, and loves him- self, that he is the image of God ; he is truly the image of God in so far only as he looks towards his Original, and reflects that Divine Original of whom he is the image. He is like to God in so far as his memory, understanding, and will look towards God, and move towards God."
St. Thomas gives the three degrees in which we move towards God in these terms : " First, there is the appetite to know and love God that is formed in our nature. Secondly, there is the actual or habitual knowledge and love of God, formed by grace in our soul. Thirdly, there is the soul advanced to the image and likeness of God's glory. The first image is in all men ; the second is in the just; the third is in the blessed." t In this world the likeness of the just to God is still obscure, because the soul reflects not the divine vision ; but in Heaven the blessed have the obscuring veil removed, and the likeness will be
• S. Hilar., Dc Trinitatc, L. II. c. ii.
t S. Tbom., Sum. i. q. xciii. a. i. ,
ON THE NATURE OF MAN.
n
perfected ; as St. Paul says : " We shall be like to him, because we shall see him as he is ".
We must not however suppose that God is like us because we are like to Him. We have received but a created, communicated, and limited likeness, and that not in a divine but in a human subject. The One All-perfect Being cannot be compared with any subject, however good and wilightened, for every created subject is external to His infinite perfection. On this essential distinction the Book on the Divine Names ascribed to St. Dionysius speaks as follows : " The theologians say, that God, the Being who is very being, the Being above all, is like to no one. But He gives likeness to them who turn with all their power to Him who is above all definition and reason ; and the force and virtue of this resemblance attracts created things to their Creator. It must therefore be said, that they who are formed to the image and likeness of God, have resemblance to God, but not that God is like to them. For even man is not like his picture." *
But the picture is like the man; and although God's image in man is at an infinite distance from what God is, yet because the Most Holy Trinity has formed that image in our creation, and has esta- blished that likeness by His grace, they cannot but be most noble and excellent, especially as the three powers of the soul reflect in their degree the three Persons of the Holy Trinity, and imitate their action. The Persons of the Holy Trinity appeared therefore at our creation, saying with one accord : " Let us make man to our own image and likeness ". The three Persons of the Holy Trinity are heard again in our regeneration, when we are baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost For as in the beginning the Father created all things through the Son, and the Holy Spirit, brooding over the waters, brought all things to their order and perfection ; in like manner for our restoration Christ tells us : " Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God ". For by the Father's power the Son both creates and regenerates ; by His own wisdom the Son enlightens, and by the Holy Spirit's love life is made perfect. Moreover, in all subsequent sacraments, sacramentals, and prayers, that raise the soul above herself, and brighten and transform her into greater likeness of God, the three Divine Persons in one God are unceasingly invoked.
• De Divinis Nominibus, c. ix.
24 ON THE NATURE OF MAN.
Here then we behold what grand relations exist between the mysteries of the human soul and the eternal mysteries of God. We begin to comprehend with some clearness how man is a subject created for an object ; how God Himself is the true object of man, and the final end of man ; and how mysteriously man is created and prepared for that final end. Bearing God's image from our Creator, and raised anew to the lost likeness of God by regeneration, the inward man recovers his just relations with God, and the beginning of that eternal life for which he was made. At our creation the mystery of the Divine Trinity was obscurely revealed, but in our regeneration, that greatest of mysteries, the key to the mysteries of our own soul, was fully revealed to us. Then the Son of God replaced us in our original dignity, directed us anew to our final end, and repaired in us that image of the Trinity, which we received in our creation, but which sin had weakened and deformed.
Nevertheless, there are still profound mysteries in the soul of man, of which God alone holds the secret. Of this every one who gravely reflects within himself is conscious. The more he examines himself the more will every one become conscious that the interior man is something incalculably greater than the exterior man ; and that he has even already lights, aspirations, and relations with an invisible order of things that extend to what is infinite and eternal. In those invisible elements of his soul he discovers the higher principles of his humanity, com- pared with which the material body, and the interests of this visible world, are but the prison walls and the chains of a captive, who yearns for that open freedom in which all his powers may reach their object, and all his affections their exercise.
To separate what is mysterious in man from what is obvious, and to attempt his reconstruction by a process of elimination, is the most unphilosophic, the most unscientific, of all methods of investigation. The materialists know well, that in their own proper science of matter, they cannot put aside the unknown qualities and quantities for which they are unable to account. If some scientists give their thoughts so exclusively to material things, and immerse their minds in material imagery, until they can no longer recognize the operations of spiritual natures, not even their own; there is another class who pursue their mental
ON THE NATURE OF MAN 25
abstractions, and who live so exclusively on the phenomena of their mind and imagination, that they no longer recognize material substance. Turned from God upon themselves, and involved within their own shadows, they see not half themselves ; confounding the subjective mind with the objective truth, they sink into the miserable gulf of pantheistic delusion. But whether by dwelling exclusively in sense and losing sight of soul, men become materialists ; or whether by dwelling exclusively in mental abstractions men lose sight of matter, and become phenomenists ; or whether by confounding subject with object, they become pantheists ; they in each case present us with a monster at which our reason revolts, and which our common sense refuses to recognize as man. The positivists, by a similar deficiency of in- tellectual light, confound God with universal humanity, but with a humanity that they pronounce to be mortal in every part, yet they impiously set up this humanity for our deification. What can we learn from these dreary, barren, and inflated speculations, but that, as we have said already, we stand in need of Christian humility to know both God and ourselves ?
The Almighty, whose happiness cannot be increased, because He is perfect, and cannot be diminished, because He is un- changeable, from no necessity, but from pure goodness, has created two orders of intelligent spirits. Their happiness depends upon their acknowledging the grace of their Creator, through which alone they can be glorified. He has been pleased to give them in their first creation an intimation in shadow of what, through His divine condescension. He would finally make them. In contemplating those countless spirits, He ordained that some of them should remain in their purely spiritual nature, whilst others, in their creation, should be clothed with earthly bodies, causing earth itself to vegetate and be animated with life, by the force of the spirit to which they are united. Through this intimate society of body with spirit in one life, God has shown the possibility of a future condition in which man shall be glorified. For if the Lord and Giver of life can frame the rude elements of this earth into a body, receiving life from the spirit that dwells within it as a mansion, it cannot be impossible for Him to exalt the spirit herself into a living abode of His Holy Spirit, and to make her the partaker of His glory. If, again, such a pleasure and a joy can be obtained in this mortal life from the presence of the soul
26 ON THE NATURE OF MAN.
in the corruptible body, how much pleasure and joy may we not expect from the presence of God in the soul.
If, in this present dispensation, our spirit is brought down into the humble society of an earthly body, and is made a spectacle to the universe of intelligent spirits, God has nevertheless decreed to bring all the souls that do His will, together with their glorified bodies, into the society of those angelic spirits who have kept their purity ; and what we have received less than those spirits in our creation will be made up in the grace of glorification. Upon both orders of spirits, upon the angels who stood firm in their purity in Heaven, and upon the souls placed in earthly bodies in this world, their Divine Creator imposed a command and a law for their obedience. He commanded the angels to stand firm in the truth, and not to desert their principality ; He commanded the souls on earth to look up to Him, and to seek Him with all their mind and spirit ; that the one order by not falling from Heaven, and the other by ascending to Heaven, might advance from the condition in which they were created unto the Supreme Good for whom they were created, and might dwell everlastingly together with the God by whom they were created.*
* See Hugo de S. Victore, Dc Sacramcntis, pars. i. c. i.
LECTURE II. -
WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD.
"Jesus said to them : Whose image and inscription is this ? They say to him : Caesar's. Then he said to them : Render therefore to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's." — Matthew xxii.
THE coin of the realm is the creation of the sovereign ; it proceeds from his authority and is called in by his authority, in token of which it bears his image and the inscription of his name. The soul of man is the spiritual creation of God, and, what is incomparably greater, the soul is created for union with God, of which she bears the sign in the image of God and in the inscription of His law, graved with light upon her spirit. The image and name of the sovereign are cast on perishable metal, but whilst the metal lasts it asserts his sovereign claim. The soul received from God bears His image and His law, the signet of His sovereign claim upon that soul. The coin of the sovereign bears his image on the surface ; the image of God is in the inmost constitution of the soul, the soul herself is that image, and the light of God's law sealed therein is the direction of the soul to her Divine Original.
" Let us make man to our own image and likeness." In these creative words we read the constitution of the human soul : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind ". This is the interpretation of the law written within the soul. The inscription explains the image.
It is an obvious principle that whatever is made, is the subject of its maker. It is another universal principle, founded in the nature of things, that whatever is made, is made for something greater than itself. The inventor of a machine makes it for the
28 WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD.
use and service of man. The builder of a house looks to man's accommodation. The planter of a tree has his own use or pleasure in view. The artist makes not his picture for itself, but to give instruction and delight, to awaken the feeling of beauty or sublimity in the human mind. The author has not the book for his end, but the enlightenment of his readers. All material things are for the service of spiritual life. That the meat is for the body, and the body for the life, is beyond dispute or question. That the soul of man is made for something far greater than herself, every one can see who chooses to compare what the soul is with what the soul desires. She has the capacity for infinite things ; she feels their attraction, and her own impulse towards them. Her great wants are the measure of the great things for which she is made.
The principle that everything is made for something greater than itself involves the great principle of final causes. The doctrine of final causes is but the expression of that principle ; for the final cause of anything is the object or end for which it is made, or for which it is done.
The exclusion of final causes from scientific investigation is the destruction of what is most noble in knowledge, and the cause of a great amount of that infidel theorizing which besets the scien- tific men of our age. Nothing has so much darkened the specu- lations of the sophists of recent times, who bring up the works of God against God Himself, as this rejection of final causes. They do not cease to exist because excluded from thought, and to reject them from consideration is to strive against one of the most fun- damental and indestructive principles of common sense ; but it is the character of sophistry to contend against common sense.
We cannot understand the nature of anything until we know the ultimate end for which it exists ; that end is both the reason of its existence and the reason of its being what it is. It has some object for which it exists, and it is formed and shaped with refer- ence to that object. To make anything or do anything without an object and end is to act without reason or intelligence. And to be ignorant of the relations established between any subject and its final object, between created beings and the ends for which God destines them, is to be ignorant both of the first and of the last reason of their existence. For the object or end for which any- thing is made is the first consideration, the first intention in the mind of its maker, who shapes and forms his work with a view to
WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD. 29
that end. The man who devised the locomotive steam-engine contemplated the rapid movement of a train of carriages from place to place. This was his immediate object. But his final object was to transfer passengers and goods from place to place with rapidity and security. Everything in the engine, road, and carriages was so devised as to be the most effective to this end, and the end explains the construction of the engine and all the rest. It was not made for itself, but for the service of man,
I have deliberately used the name sophist instead of philosopher for those sciolists who reject the consideration of final ends from their investigations into the nature of things, because philosophy is the love of wisdom, and wisdom is concerned with the first and final cause of things, or with the Supreme Good. The distinction is a very old one. And Varro classed the old philosophers in writing their history according to their view of the Supreme Good, that is, according to their view of the final end of man and the creation. But whoever rejects final causes is not entitled to be called a lover of wisdom, because he rejects both the wisdom of things and the wisdom of their Creator, and so cannot have them in his knowledge.
God made the earth for man. He made it for the first stage of human life, and as a place of probation for a higher and nobler life in another sphere of existence. The earth with its surround- ing sphere supplies him with his body, his habitation, his nourish- ment, his instruction, his pleasure, and his trials. As a place of probation and discipline, it must, if it is to accomplish that object present him with difficulties, both mental, physical, and moral ; and with obstacles to be overcome ; and with things to be denied as well as with things to be accepted ; and with pains as well as pleasures ; because all these things belong to probation and moral discipline, and to the exercise of the virtues, of which faith, hope, patience, self-denial, humility, and charity are the chief.
But man is made for God, He is therefore so formed in all his spiritual nature as to make him capable of union with God, But this union he obtains as a free agent, and by using the means which God puts at his disposal. These means are partly natural and partly supernatural, the natural being subordinate to the supernatural, which alone can bring him to his final end. God is therefore the final as well as the first cause of man, and it is this which explains his nature, and gives to him his nobleness. And
30 WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD.
as the inferior creation was made for the service of man, and man was made for God, God is the ultimate end of all things. Hence the Scripture says that "God made all things for himself".
Nothing demands to be more carefully distinguished than the difference between intermediate objects and ends, and the final object and end of man ; because intermediate ends are but the means placed at our disposal to help us towards our final end. All moral errors spring either from our taking intermediate objects for our final end, or from taking the wrong means for gaining our final end. We either blindly mistake the one true and final object of our soul in practice, choosing the less good for which we were not made for the greater good for which we were made ; or we take other means of our own choosing, in place of those which God has provided, and which alone are effective, to bring us to God as our final end. But in either case we become failures.
The whole wisdom of things is in their final end, which is the first and last reason of their existence. Without this knowledge we are incapable of rising to the grandeur of God's eternal plan, and have no key to His providence. We cannot understand the divine patience that waits upon the works of His wisdom, and gives to the things of time their due course of time to obtain their ultimate results in eternity. Looking at each thing, or each order of things, in their mere subjective condition, and as though they were isolated, whereas they are all related, our minute philosophers, having no wise regard to their final ends, are men- tally engaged in separating all that God has united in mutual relations and just dependencies, and destroy the cosmical order of the universe. This is the mortal weakness that cleaves like a blinding veil to a great deal of modern science, than which nothing has done more to bring down the minds of men from their just elevation, and to eclipse their views of the amplitude and the splendour of God's design in the creation. Not only do these minute philosophers make an isolation between the creation and its final cause, but they isolate it from its history, whether the records thereof be human or divine, and so reject the study of God's providence. Yet are they ever ready with their small facts and large imagination to reconstruct both man and the universe.
Let us return to the final cause of man, and consider how God has prepared his nature for its final end. The difference between what we are at this moment, and what with our inmost aspirations
WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD. 31
we long to be, must be measured by our capacity. How won- derful is the capacity of the human mind for truth ! Who can circumscribe its boundaries ? It extends over worlds and their contents, over time and its histories, over science with all its facts and theories. It reaches up to truths that are infinite, unchange- able, and eternal. But how comes a creature so limited in time, place, and substantive existence, and so changeable withal, to obtain perception of eternal and unchangeable truth ? We see that truth as from a distance, we salute its presence from afar off, we desire its nearer approach, we confess that we are still far away from its perfect illumination. And yet this eternal truth seems less distant from our mind than from our power of under- standing.
Our will, that free and spontaneous power of the soul to desire, to resolve, to act, and to love, in our present condition, is in some respects more capacious than our mind. Its object is both truth and good, and we can desire more truth than we see, and long for more good than the truth we know reflects to us. The object of the will is unlimited good ; unlimited truth is welcome there- fore to the will, as the bright shadow cast towards us from unlimited good, awakening our desire for its presence. The light of faith is the argument of eternal things unseen ; hope stretches with desire towards those things unseen ; and love embraces the eternal good as yet unseen with the desire of possession. The love for eternal good reveals both the capacity and the appetite for that good ; makes us wise in the judgment of the truth that leads to that good ; and wise in using the means that advance us to our supreme good. Our capacity of soul, therefore, for loving infinite good is in nowise more limited than our capacity of mind for infinite and eternal truth. Yet by a certain contact of soul with the grace of eternal good, we can often embrace more with desire and love than we can see with our understanding.
However he .may hold to the world by the body, man is cer- tainly not made for this world, were it but for this reason, that his soul is so much greater than this material world with all that it contains. The world in fact is made for him. He is housed in a mortal body that with all repairing lasts but a short time. His soul ripens whilst his body decays. An intellectual creature is of another order of being than things without mental light, as a person among impersonal creatures there is no comparison between
32 WIfV MAN' IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD.
them. The Scriptures, the philosophers, the poets, the examples of history and the whole voice of human experience, unite in teaching us, that after man has gained every object of ambition in this world, his hopes are defeated by his success. He has simply gained the knowledge that the wants of his soul are of another kind. In the hour in which he enters into himself, if he have such an hour, the truth comes back to him with all the force of experience : " What does it profit a man if he gain the whole world, and lose his own soul ; or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul ? "
The loss of the soul is not the loss of her existence, but the loss of her good. To lose that eternal good for which the soul was made, is truly to lose the soul, which is but a poor subject when deprived of its objective good. Yet the image of God in that soul cannot perish, for that would be the destruction of the soul.
Secretly or openly, that image of God will make its presence known through all encumbrances, and will confess its Divine Original, even in reprobation tending towards greater reprobation.
If prosperity in this world fails to bring back that image to God, sufferings and privations may achieve what prosperity has failed to do. When this world is loved too much, it obscures the image of God ; when loved with passion it effaces His likeness ; and as this image and likeness are the noblest qualities of manhood, the very manhood of man is lowered and debased in proportion to the lowering of that image and the effacing of that likeness.
Let us put this clearly once for all, in doing which we shall borrow the language of a profound theologian. The human soul, created by God, and capable of God, finds nothing among created things, however rich or beautiful, that can really make her happy. They cannot enter into competition with the Divine Goodness, who is pleased in His condescension to be the one predeterminate object of human happiness. If you impress the image of a seal in soft Avax, and then put some other kind of seal upon that which has already been deeply imprinted, you will not succeed in giving that new impression, but will only spoil the one already made. But if you take the first seal, and fit it into the impression anew, it will exactly correspond in all its reliefs to the hollows left by the first impression. Impress that seal with greater force, and the image of that seal will have greater depth and vividness. So in creating the soul of man, God imprinted His image upon her as with His own
WJIV MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD. n
divine seal, producing His likeness, and leaving those hollows in her spiritual powers, that can only be filled up and fitted to make her happy by the reliefs of His own divine perfection ; and when- ever the impression of the image from that divine seal is renewed with greater force, the form of that divine image enters more sharply into the soul, and penetrates to greater depths. But if you let any created thing try to seal its image in your spiritual nature, so as to aflFect you with the attachment of a greater affection, the beautiful image of God will be blurred and spoiled ; and the soul, made neither of wax or other earthly matter, will feel herself oppressed and deformed. This is the reason why a man may abound in wealth and earthly delights, and yet be subject to trouble, disgust, and sadness. But what sort of happiness is that which cannot keep trouble, disgust, and sadness at a distance?*
The reason of this is as clear as it is exalted, and is thus ex- pressed by St. Thomas : " The will is the human appetite, and the object of the will is universal good, and this is not to be found in any creature, but only in God ; because no creature has anything more than a certain limited participation of good".t If man were made for this world, he would not be made in God's image but in the world's image, and his three concupiscences would constitute his three principal virtues, which, instead of disordering, darkening, and staining his soul, as all men confess they do, would be his three crowning excellences, and, what is horrible to imagine, they would take the place of faith, hope, and charity in perfecting his character, giving peace to his powers, and redounding to his praise. But as the soul is not made in the world's image, but in God's image, God alone can perfect the soul. St. John had this truth in view when he exhorts us in these words : " Love not the world, nor the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the charity of the Father is not in him. P'or all that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes and the pride of life, which is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the coucupiscence thereof, but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."
There is a very simple test for proving that man is not made for himself, and can never be his own good. When he has separated himself from God, let him be separated from this world ; shut him
* Brienza, S. Tomaso Spiritual Direttore, p. i, c. xviii. t S. Thorn., Sum, i, 2, q. 2, a. 8. 3
34 WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD.
up in solitude, deprive him of society, of books, and of external nature, and he will pine and starve in misery and inanition. Feed him as you will, and still the question will be how long his mind will last without breaking down for want of objects on which to rest. Why do men weary of monotony, and weary the more if they have quickened their minds with large culture ? It is because after a short time every limited thought and object wearies the soul that is made for an infinite good. Man is the most dependent of all beings, because his capacity is so great in com- parison with what he possesses. Whilst his body is dependent on God's providence in a thousand ways, his soul is dependent on God Himself for its light and spiritual good. Not being an object to himself, man is always in search of an object to which he may attach himself, on which he may rest, and in which he may find content. I say content, because content is fulness, and fulness leaves no suffering void. But man is the subject of God, bearing God's signature upon him as the wax bears the image of the seal, or as the mould bears the figure into which the molten gold is poured. The wax is subject to the seal, the mould to the gold, and man to God, who alone can content him, because He alone can fill his powers.
An empty vessel boasting its fulness is the figure of a soul that looks to herself for her completion. To strive to fare well upon herself and her environment is the very delirium of human pride, and reminds us of the miserable Ugolino gnawing with everlasting hunger upon the bare and bleeding skull of his destroyer. Self- love with her hungry offspring finds but a bare table when she turns to feed upon herself, and finds her chief fare in the bitter diet of disappointment. "Thy own wickedness shall reprove thee," says the Prophet, "and thy apostasy shall rebuke thee. Know, then, and see that it is an evil and a bitter thing for thee to have left thy God." When the soul turns herself from the Divine Fountain of light and the Eternal Source of her spiritual life, and trusts to herself for light and life, she suffers those pains of thirst and pangs of want that strain her spirit to the very roots, and harass her with the divining fears of greater miseries to come. No soul was ever made to live upon herself.
Because man is made for God, there is in his spiritual essence the rational image of the Supreme Life, the Divine Intelligence, and the Sovereign Will of God : and by this constitution of his
TVHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD. 35
spiritual nature he is fitted and prepared to partake by grace of that good which God is by nature. He is made to the image of God in his reason that he may become the likeness of God in his love. In reflecting God's truth, as a mirror reflects the light, he reflects the order of God's law, that he may delight in the virtues that make his own will resemble the will of God. For God made him thus, that he might know Him, and knowing Him might love Him, and loving Him might delight in Him, and delighting in Him might come to the open vision of God, and to that intimate union with Him which is the final end of all desires.
Wherefore the image of God is given to our nature to make us capable of God, and of eternal things. Framed in the substance of the soul, that image is a mirror, but a mirror that is living, spiritual, and highly sensitive. It is sensitive to the touches of that divine light of truth which is itself a luminous image of God ; it is sensitive to the touches of divine grace, from the finger of God's Holy Spirit, which give the sense of God ; and thus we obtain the deeper sense of His divine presence, and the more intimate consciousness of His loving communication. When, therefore, the warmth of His charity comes with the ray of His light, the soul is moved in her inward sense to ascend towards the Divine Author of her gifts, and is gratefully inclined to return love for love.
The sun shines upon our mortal bodies in three beneficent elements, giving light to the eyes, warmth to the system, and electric vigour to the nerves. Yet warmth comes not always with light, nor energy with warmth. The three elements are distinct from each other, at least in the medium through which they pass. So from the Father of Lights, from whom is every good and perfect gift, we receive the light of faith, the life of justice, and the warmth of charity. The Psalmist has drawn the grand distinction between the gifts where he says : " The light of Thy countenance is sealed upon us, O Lord; Thou hast given joy in my heart". The light seals the supernatural image of God upon the natural image already in the soul, and the gladness fills that image with the joy of life in the warmth of charity. Again, in his penitential Psalm, after recovery from his fall, the Psalmist prays : " Create a clean heart in me, O God; and renew a right spirit within me". He asks that his heart, the seat of God's love, may be created clean, but for his spirit he only asks that it may be renewed in rectitude. Rectitude of spirit comes of right reason, as Hugo
36 WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD.
of St. Victor observes: but cleanness of heart comes of perfect charity.*
When we weigh the value of things by truth rather than imagination, we find the image of God in spiritual natures to be the grandest of all creations, and that in virtue of this image one individual soul is a nobler production than the sum of all the creations that have not this image. For by what test of ex- cellence is any creature to be valued, except by its nearer resem- blance to its Creator ? We are not merely to estimate that image of the Holy Trinity by what it is now, but much more by what it is capable of becoming when it receives its fulness from the Holy Trinity.
Every work of God bears some signs of the character of the Divine Workman, such as its nature is capable of receiving. Even in the material creation we find certain traces and shadows of the power, wisdom, and goodness of God, and traces that are unmistakably the work of the Holy Trinity. The composition of every work rests upon a threefold basis. Thus we see the threefold dimensions of space, and the threefold dimensions of all matter resting in space ; the three elements in light ; the three primary colours ; the three fundamental sounds or tones in music ; the three fundamental states of matter, solid, fluid, or aerial ; and so on through all nature, and through all art which copies nature. In material things such traces of the Holy Trinity can only be remote and lifeless. But when we come to the free and active power, intelligence and life in the human soul, we see the spiritual impress of the Holy Trinity in a spiritual substance, the three powers in one life, capable of divine and eternal things.
We may now resume much of what we have said in the instruc- tive words of St Augustine. " The rational creature," he says, " whether angel or human soul, is so constituted that it cannot be a good to itself. But if the changeable soul will turn herself to the unchangeable good, she will make her will good, and will be thus made happy. But if she turn herself from the unchangeable good, she will become miserable. To turn to this good is virtue ; to turn from this good is vice. It is not our nature, then, that is evil, because the spiritual creature has rational life. Even when she
• See Hugo de S. Victore, De Sacramentts, p. 6, c. I
WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD. 37
deprives herself of that good to partake of which is happiness, and becomes vicious, the spiritual creature is still preferable to even the most perfect of material things, better even than the light of our eyes, which we know to be material. The least of spiritual creatures is incomparably more excellent than the most perfect of bodily things, not by reason of quantity, for that belongs only to bodies, but in virtue of a certain force by which the spiritual creature ascends to a much greater elevation, higher than the imagination, because the imagination is drawn from the senses, and the mind exercises itself upon it. Even bodies, and inferior bodies, such as earth, water, and air, become better by partaking of what is better, as when the light, for example, illuminates them, or heat makes them vegetate. But the spiritual and rational creature is made better by partaking of her Creator, and by cleaving to Him in pure and holy charity. When souls are wholly devoid of this charity they become darkened, and after the manner of a spiritual nature they grow hardened. Hence, unbelieving men are darkness, but when they turn to God, through a certain force of illumination they become light. And to such the Apostle says : ' Ye were darkness, but now light in the Lord '." *
God has so configured our soul to His image, that our memory, which St. Augustine calls "the womb of the mind," and St. Isidore " the treasury of things," is nearest to God in commu- nication. Our understanding actively seeks knowledge through the receptive mind or memory ; and our will cleaves in assent to the truth which its Divine Author presents to us. This is the triune form of the soul, the three united powers in one spirit, that makes her the image of the Holy Trinity. The mind or memory receives the truth, the understanding elicits the truth and makes it knowledge, the will cleaves to the truth by its assent. When we follow this truth upwards to its divine source, it leads the soul on to God, and the truth itself is some reflection of the purity, the beauty, and the grandeur of God's Eternal Majesty. Every nature has its proper motion in its proper element. To the birds of the air wings are as feet, they soar at will on their light pinions into the regions of light, where they expand themselves in gladness. God gives wings to the soul in the gift of light, by the help of which she rises at will into the regions of divine truth, where her heart may expand in joy in the warmth of eternal charity.
* S. August., De Gratia Nov. Test. c. xxxiii.
38 WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD.
Yet nothing can rise by its natural force above itself; to effect this a greater force must descend from a higher power. Man is by nature capable of God, but by nature alone he cannot enter into union with God. He must first receive a divine element, that through its means the image of God may be brought to His living likeness, and he may have that within him which may dispose him for union with God. For as mere created nature is at an infinite remove from the divine perfection, the divine element of grace must first descend into the soul, and enter into her life and action, and set her face to face with God, and give her a motion towards God, before she can be rightly and duly disposed for union with His divine goodness. Nature, again, cannot have the sense of that of which she does not possess some element. God Himself must first condescend to His creature, and give her a certain supernatural element, a certain force and strength, whereby she will not only receive a sense of God, but a power also to rise above herself and move towards Him. Divine light and power must give us a foundation for the sight and sense of divine things. "He hath given us a sense," says St. John, " that we may know the true God, and be in His Son."
But the divine order established in human habits is not the same as the natural order; here we must take St. Bonaventure for our guide. As we are the natural image of God, understanding is generated from the mind or memory, and from memory and under- standing love proceeds. But in our reparation the divine order is established in us after a different manner. The light of faith planted in our mind does not generate complete understanding, but only obscure knowledge. We see darkly as through a glass. Yet light and grace generate a complete goodwill in us, so that we embrace by love incomparably greater things than we see with our understanding. But love itself is a great quickener of the under- standing, which, when it is prompted by a great love, sees much further into divine things than when only acting by its own power. Still love always embraces incomparably more than the under- standing can reach. The Scripture therefore says, that " the eyes of God are upon them that love Him"; and that the Eternal Wisdom enriches them that love Him, and fills their treasuries. Hence the divine precept to the man of faith : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, with thy whole soul, with all thy strength, and with all thy mind ". We love God with our
WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD. 39
whole mind when with a good will we adhere to Him in faith ; we love God with our whole soul when with a good will we hope all things from Him; we love God with our whole heart when with a good will we love Him above all things and in all things. By the force of this threefold love of God, this living likeness is generated in us, it penetrates the essence of the soul, and radiates through the man in the sweet and gentle flame of charity.*
Thus, whilst man is created to the image of God he is con- stituted in the divine likeness by the grace of the Holy Spirit- But in falling from obedience he fell from subjection, and in losing his dependence on the divine gifts he lost the gifts them- selves. Then the divine likeness faded from him, and even the natural image of God was wounded by his fall, obscured in its lineaments, and weakened in its rational and moral strength. He ceased to be that integral man who is completed in design through his initial union with God, until through a wonderful dispensation of divine mercy and justice God restored him to dependence on His goodness.
Of these two states of man, our English St. Aelred of Rivaux gives a luminous description in the following terms: "The rational creature is alone capable of beatitude; made to his Creator's image, he was formed for adhering to God whose image he is ; this is the one good of the rational creature, for, as David sings : ' My good is to adhere to God'. It is not the body but the soul that adheres to God, who has planted three powers in her, through which she may be the recipient of eternity, the partaker of wisdom, and the enjoyer of sweetness. These powers are memory, understanding, and will or love. The man created in these three powers to the image of the Trinity, had his memory retentive of God without forgetfulness ; his understanding given to know God without error, and his love embracing God without cupidity for other things. And so he was blessed. But after he had thirsted for a likeness of God that was in direct contradiction to God, and had resolved through curiosity to obtain this closer resemblance, it most justly fell out that he came down into unlikeness. Thus was God's image corrupted in man, although not utterly destroyed : he still has memory, but it is prone to forgetfulness ; he still has understanding, but it is subject to error ; he still has love, but it is given to concupiscence." f • S. Bonavent., 2 Sentent., d. 16, q. i, et alibi. t S. Aelred, Speculum Charitatis, in Bib. Max. Patrum.
40 mffV MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD.
An image however deformed has still the character of an image, and a tendency to imitate its original, if not rightly, then wrongly, offensively, and as it were in caricature. In a dark, preposterous, and sinful way, he takes himself for his object in place of God, and under a veil of seeming good he mocks the supreme order of things. The vices take in him the place of the virtues, veiling their unlawful objects under the appearance of better things. Pride affects divinity ; curiosity affects the love of truth ; cupidity wears the semblance of charity ; avarice pretends the pursuit of good; ambition affects eternity; and indolence beatitude. We are so essentially made to imitate God, that our very sins, the fruits of our perverted powers, affect to imitate the just action of those powers when they tend to God as the truth, goodness, and beatitude of our souls. It is the perverted use of our powers in the face of God's light and law that reveals in a special manner the deformity of our sins, and the dark depths of their guilt.
Although you have already heard St. Aelred contrasting the just and beautiful order of the man of grace with the disorder and deformity of the fallen man, you will not regret listening to a yet more luminous extract from his great contemporary St. Bernard. He says : " That Blessed and Eternal Trinity, the one God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the Supreme Power, Wisdom, and Benignity, created to His own image and likeness a certain trinity in the rational soul, which bears a resemblance to the Supreme Trinity. This resemblance consists in the memory, understanding, and will. God created the soul in this form to abide in Him and partake from Him, that man might be happy. But this created trinity chose nevertheless to fall away in the free exercise of its will, rather than to adhere to God in the free accept- ance of the grace of its Creator. Through suggestion, delight, and consent, man fell from his high and beautiful trinity of power, wisdom, and purity into a degraded and contradictory trinity of infirmity, blindness, and uncleanness. For the memory became weak and powerless, the understanding dark and imprudent, and the will un- clean. . . . Yet that Most Blessed Trinity, remembering His mercy and forgetting our guilt, did nevertheless repair the grievous, darksome, and unclean lapse of our nature. The son of God, sent with this view from the Father, gave us faith ; and after the Son, the Holy Spirit was sent, and He gave us charity; and
WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD. 41
through faith and charity hope arose of returning to the Father. Through this trinity of faith, hope, and charity, that blessed and unchangeable Trinity brought back our inconstant, fallen, and miserable trinity, as with a trident, from the deep void to our lost happiness. Faith illuminates our reason, hope lifts up our understanding, and charity purifies us." *
The divine power that operates in the soul, and exalts her native powers with the supernatural virtues, we call grace, because it is the free and unpurchasable gift of God, to which nature can assert no right or claim. It comes of God's pure condescension and benevolence. The Prophets, Christ our Lord, the Fathers, the Church in her prayers as well as her teaching, all instruct us that this divine gift of grace comes of the direct operation of God's Holy Spirit within the soul. In creating the soul of Adam, God breathed from His Holy Spirit into the face of the man, and he arose a living soul, having the life of grace from God, through the communication of His Holy Spirit. For our reparation Christ breathed into the face of His Apostles and said : " Receive ye the Holy Ghost ". By this solemn act the Son of God recalled the breathing of the grace of the Holy Spirit into Adam, and gave power to the Apostles to cleanse human souls from sin, and to restore them to the grace of the Holy Spirit. By the same expressive mode of action, God as our Creator gave His Spirit to sanctify the first man, and as our Redeemer gave His Spirit to repair the ruin of the fallen man, and to sanctify him anew. St. Cyril of Alexandria says : " As we are formed to the likeness of our Creator through partaking of His Holy Spirit, it is manifest that no one can obtain God's likeness without partaking of His Holy Spirit. When our Redeemer would restore God's likeness to man, He also breathed on His disciples, and said : ' Receive ye the Holy Ghost '. What this partaking of the Holy Spirit gives to man is the perfect expression of the image of the divine substance." f
In describing from what man falls when he loses the state of grace, St. Paul has given us a perfect description of this divine grace, and of its operations and effects in the soul. " Who," he says, "were once illuminated, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, have tasted the
* S. Bernard, Serm. 45, De Varia Trinitate Dei et hominis. t S. Cyril Alexand., Thesaurus, apud Petav.
42 WBY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD.
good word of God, and the power of the world to come." A saint has said with beautiful truth, that if reason is the eye of the soul, faith is the pupil of the eye. And we may add that if the spiritual sense is the heart of the soul, the grace of divine love is the life of the heart. Faith illuminates, love tastes the heavenly gift, and the power of the world to come. How by present grace we taste the power of the world to come, St. Peter has explained in equally exalted language. He says : " All things of divine power which appertain to life and godliness, are given to us through the knowledge of Him who has called us by His own l)roper glory and virtue. By whom He hath given us most great and precious promises ; that by these you may be made partakers of the divine nature ; flying the corruption of that concupiscence which is in the world."
The gift of charity makes the soul of the just man godlike. The principle of that charity is the divine action of the Holy Spirit in the soul ; and hence the Fathers, following St. Peter, call it a certain partaking of the divine nature, not of the substance but of the operation of the Holy Spirit. St. Thomas teaches that the grace which makes man pleasing to God, not only exalts him with supernatural virtue to a higher mode of existence, but that it is the root and principle of the infused virtues. He argues that, as the natural light of our reason is something beyond our acquired virtues, which virtues are the ordering of our nature according to the light of reason, so that light of grace which is a partaking of the divine nature is something beyond the infused virtues, which derive themselves from that light, and are regulated with respect to that light, as the Apostles says: "Ye were once darkness, but now light in the Lord ". From which the Prince of theologians concludes, that as by grace we are regenerated to become the sons of God, the grace which is the principle of this regeneration is implanted in the substance of the soul, like a life within a life, or a soul within a soul. For as man participates of divine knowledge in his mind through the virtue of faith, and of divine love in his will through the virtue of charity, so, after a certain similitude, through regeneration or a new creation, he par- ticipates of the divine nature within the nature of the soul. And as the powers of the soul, which are the principles of her acts, flow from her essence, so from the grace of regeneration, re- ceived into the essence of the soul, flow the graces of the virtues
WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD. 43
into her powers, exalting those powers to perform their super- natural acts.*
This exposition of the Angelic Doctor deserves our deep medi- tation. It is an admirable exposition of the way in which the grace of justification, that is, of divine charity, is fitted to the nature of our soul, to her unity of essence and trinity of powers. It shows in a special manner, that as the unity of the soul's essence is the principle of the unity of her powers, so the unity of the divine grace of justification is the principle of the unity of the supernatural virtues that are exercised in those powers. It also enables us to enter into the profundity of St. Paul, when he calls charity the bond of perfection. Long before St. Thomas, the great St. Leo had said, that "the plenitude of justice, and the sum of the virtues, spring from that love whereby we love God ".f
What is life without love? Apathy is deadness, enmity is a killing bitterness, love is the wealth of the soul, making her rich with life and glowing with good in proportion to the goodness of that life to which she devotes her own. What we see instructs us, but what we love works a change in us. Our love is both an active and attractive force; it draws to us the qualities of the object that we love, those qualities change our qualities, and make us like the object that we love. The life we love enters into our life and changes our spirit and character into something of the goodness, greatness, and dignity of the object to which we give our love. With love our soul expands, and is enlarged with the greater life that attracts our affections, and is purified with its purity, and the soul goes forth out of herself to live in the object of her love. God is love, and to love God is life.
Pride is not love, it is pure selfishness, and selfishness is destructive of love : pride is the very reverse of love, it is the most spurious and ungenerous of all affections. Pride is not only the most selfish, but it is the most unreasonable and most odious of affections, the effect of which is to contract, and blind, and harden the soul, which makes her equally unreceptive both of truth and of good. But love is both generous and ingenuous, opening the soul to bring forth whatever is most dear or secret within her, and bringing it into the sunshine of the divine life of God, which makes that soul dear to Him.
Concupiscence is not love, it is but a vile and degrading
* S. Thorn., Sum. i, 2, q. iio-iii. f S. Leo, Servi. dc S. Laurent.
44 WJ^y MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD.
passion that gives sway to the body over the soul. Concupiscence defiles and debases the soul, disorders her powers, and weakens them. But that true love for which man was created, and which is alone worthy of him, is charity, which begins in God, and tends to God, and embraces, purifies, and perfects every love of the creature. It gives a divine motive, and power, and a certain sweetness of its own even to the natural affections, and has its final end in God.
God is charity ; charity is His nature. His life, and the unceas- ing action of His goodness. His charity moving through His Holy Spirit moves in all the charity that circulates in the soul from her first movement towards divine things. It is a most sacred and unspeakable operation, whereby a divine state is established in us. Hence St. Paul calls charity "the more excellent way," and "the bond of perfection," and "the fulfil- ment of the commandments". Man is perfected therefore by the love of God : this love puts his relations with God in their just, due, and happy order, and regulates his love and duty towards every person and thing that is less than God.
We are now in a position to take the measure of manhood by the one true standard with which man is measured by his Creator. The man of nature is the man begun ; he is still in the rudi- ments of manhood. The man of grace is the man brought into living relations with the supreme object of his existence, his soul is in communion with the good that perfects his nature. He is regenerated to that life for which he was created, and having in him the rudiments of spiritual life, as a living subject he begins to advance towards God as his living object. The man of faith and charity continues to perfect his manhood with greater light and charity, raising his life to higher life, and approaching nearer to the greater good ; and when the hour comes in which God calls him, he leaves his mortal frame behind him, and purified from the dross of his mortal life he enters into the vision of God ; where the flame of his charity is attracted by the divine flame of God's eternal charity, and the man is completed and consummated in perfection according to God's eternal plan. Yet he is not absolutely perfected to the full measure until his body is raised from the dust, and regenerated, spiritualised, and immortalised, and made the responsive instrument of his glorified soul.
WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD. 45
This is the true progress of man, and God is the object of his progress. The men of this world, who are truly so called when they rarely look beyond it, never tire to speak of human progress. Yet strange to say, they invariably omit the object, aim, or end of that progress : progress with them is the accumula- tion of natural knowledge, human inventions, the fruits of industry, and the resources of earthly pleasure — all that, in a word, which the man leaves when he quits the body. Even the pagan philosophers were wiser in principle when, conscious of their immortality, they sought the supreme good of the soul. The path marked out by God for man's advancement is from his first rudimental and natural existence to the final filling up and perfecting of his nature in the highest life and divinest good. This is not merely a personal but a social advancement, begun in the great society of God's Church here below, where the Son of God reigns, and the Holy Spirit operates, and the whole society mutually help each other onwards ; and from the Church on earth the advancement is to the society of God in Heaven, and the company of the angels, and of the spirits of the just made perfect. Progress in any other direction than the way of the just, whatever shows it may give to the imagination, with whatever flatteries it may soothe the pride of life, whatever con- cupiscences it may excite in the inferior man, with whatever diversions it may amuse his vanity, is progress downwards. It is a descent, and a shameful descent, from the appointed order of human progress, and a failure from the divine standard of manhood. This divine philosophy pervades the Scriptures, and finds its confirmation in the constitution of the soul, in the light of the mind, and in the deepest aspirations of our inward nature. But nowhere has this divine philosophy of human progress been more strongly inculcated than by St. Paul, who exhorts us to advance from image to image and from likeness to likeness, as from the Spirit of the Lord, that we may reach to the stature of the perfect man.
The Scriptures draw a perpetual distinction between two kinds of men, between the just and spiritual man and the carnal or animal man. The one is raised to that height of manhood which God designed for him, the other has descended to greater or less proximity of life with the animals beneath him, to the grievous deforming of his nature. For whilst the animals are
46 WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD.
in the due order of their nature, the man has left the due order of his nature, whether he subjects his soul against his reason to his animal propensities, or whether by the abuse of his light he corrupts his imagination to his ignominy.
Let us sum up the attributes proper to man, which, when the •will keeps them in their due order and exercise, give him the becoming elevation of manhood. The first is the unspeakable superiority of his soul over his body, a superiority founded in the very nature of things, so that the subjection of the body to the soul is the first principle of human order. The second is man's attribute of reason, which requires him to be in all things reasonable, to obey the truth, and to observe the law of reason. The third is his conscience and sense of God, which commands him to be obedient to the internal voice of God. But the fourth is his noblest distinction, and that is the constitution of his soul in the image of God, which reflects the Holy Trinity in his spiritual nature, and gives him the capacity for God, and for the reception of divine and eternal things. This living image of God requires him to seek first the things that are above, and not the things beneath him, that he may do justice to his nature, and justice to God ; and that by seeking and obtaining the gifts of God he may be transformed from a less perfect to a more perfect image of God by obtaining the divine likeness. He thus ascends from animal to reasonable life, and from reasonable to spiritual life, by working with God to perfect his nature.
It is upon this standard of humanity, as held out by God, that the Fathers take the measure of man. St. Augustine says : " When a man adheres to God he is something ; but when he departs from God he is nothing".* That is to say, man without God is a subject without its object; his chief capacity, that for eternal good, is empty and void ; without the end of his existence he is a failure. St. Hilary writes in these searching terms : " What is so difficult to find, or so great when found, as a man who keeps in mind that he is made to the image and likeness of God ? The man who attends to the divine word, who knows the reason of his soul and body, and contemplates their origin and motive, under- stands for what end they exist and were created. But the man who neglects this knowledge loses his right to the name of man, and is unworthy the name of man. For this reason, when the • S. August. , Super Psalm Ixxv.
WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD. 47
Prophets and Apostles have to speak vehement reproach, they drop the name of man, who loses his chief properties with his innocence, and change it to some other, such as horse, mule, fox, serpent, or viper." *
St. John Chrysostom applies the divine standard of manhood to man in a number of places. Commenting, for example, on the character of Job, he says : " The profane who do not belong to us are wont to define man. What is man ? Consult the definitions of philosophers, and they will say that man is a rational and mortal animal. But the Scriptures agree not with their definitions. What is man ? He is just, irreproachable, truthful, departing from evil works, so that what is not approved by the witness of good works is not man. Such a one bears the stamp and form of man's nature, but he is deformed by malicious intentions. Hear it from the Prophet : * Man when he was in honour did not understand ; he is compared to foolish beasts, and is made like to them'." f In another homily the Golden-mouthed Doctor says : To have a man's body and voice is not to be a man ; to be a man is to have the soul of a man and the affections proper to a soul. There is no sign more sure of a man having a soul than when he loves to hear God's truth, as there is no greater proof of an irrational animal soul than to despise God's truth.
The Prophet Isaias says of a populous city : *' There is not in it a man ". Losing the courage of obedience at a trying moment, they lost their reasonableness, and their manhood could not be reckoned upon. The tendency of Inspired Truth is to contemplate the carnal man as actually sharing the blind passions and degrading habits of the beasts to which they are likened. For, as St. Gregory of Nyssa remarks : " The man who comes down from his manhood into an irrational and animal life, partakes of the habits of some animal or other in whatever passion or vice he may suffer to torment his soul, be it the deaf adder, the crafty serpent, the proud peacock, or the dog returning to his vomit ". The Scriptures call destructive men wild boars ; the sly and cunning are called foxes ; despoilers are rapacious eagles 3 false teachers are likened to ravening wolves ; and there is a yet more terrible comparison of lascivious men with another example of the animal creation. In short, the man whom the Scriptures regard as less than man is he
* S. Hilarius, Tract, in Psalm cxviii. t S. J. Chrysost., Horn. ii. in Job
48 WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD.
who has descended below the dignity of his nature, and has lost sight of his final end. St. Chrysostom judges the man by the soul, and the soul by the grace and truth of which it partakes. Our Lord Himself has given a like measure of humanity, where he says : " Not in bread alone doth man live, but in every word that proceedeth from the mouth of God ".
The Hebrew Scriptures have an emphatic way of expressing the complete man, the man endowed with light and power from above: they call him "a man and a man". Philo the Jew says, in his Book on the Giants, that *' this double man has no reference to the composition of body and soul, but it signifies the man endowed with the virtues ". This twofold man is the super- natural added to the natural man. This is what the Fathers understand by it, as well as some of the Rabbinical writers. In the Book of Numbers there occurs this text : " The man and the man whosoever shall vow his vow to the Lord ". Upon which Origen thus comments : " Why is the name of man repeated, as if it were not sufficient to say the man who vows ? The Apostle teaches that there is an exterior man and an interior man, and that the interior man is renewed day by day in the image of God who created him, whilst the exterior man is subject to corruption. When we come to the perfect man, we come to the man who accepts God's laws, and offers his vows to the Lord. But no man can offer these vows unless he have something within him, something even within his substance that he can offer to God. The exterior man will not suffice to receive God's law, nor can he offer his vows to God, because he has nothing worthy of God ; but the interior man has that within him that he may offer to God. In him the virtues dwell, in him there is know- ledge and understanding, and the renewal of the divine image. When he has regained the fair grace that he had in the beginning, and has recovered the former beauty of the virtues, then he can once more offer vows to God, and may not only be called a man, but a man and a man. But he who does not cultivate the interior man, who hath no care of that man, who builds not himself in the virtues, who does not take to discipline, who is not exercised in the Scriptures, such a one cannot be called a man and a man, but only a man and an animal." *
St. Macarius of Egypt explains this twofold man in beautiful * Origen, Horn, xxv. in Nunieros.
JVB-y MAN /S MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD. 49
terms : " If any man love God," he says, " God infuses His love within him; and when once he puts a generous confidence in God, God superadds the heavenly faith, and from this addition he becomes a twofold man. Into whatever you offer in any of your members to God, God mingles something of His own, that you may do everything with purity, both in loving Him and in praying to Him. This makes man of great value." * Omitting the reasoning of St. Basil, which St. Ambrose likewise follows, we will give his conclusion. " We have," he says, " the hidden man inclosed within us, and after a certain manner we are under- stood to be a twofold man ; for the common saying, that the man is within us, is true. This doubling of the name of man to express the perfection of manhood, of the man who is both the image and likeness of God, is pre-eminently applicable to the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one type and form of the perfect man, concerning whom the Psalmist asks : ' Shall Sion say : A man and a man is born in her ? ' "
These two men, the new, interior, and regenerated man, and the old exterior man reformed by the new, are perfectly distinguished and described by St. Paul. "That was not first," he says, "which is spiritual, but that which is natural : afterwards that which is spiritual. The first man was of the earth, earthly : the second man from heaven, heavenly. Such as is the earthly, such also are the earthly : and such as is the heavenly, such also are they that are heavenly. Now this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God, neither shall corruption possess incorruption." Again he says: "Put off, according to the former conversation, the old man who is corrupted according to the desires of error, and put on the new man, who, according to God, is created in justice and holiness of truth". The old man is not therefore destroyed according to nature, but reformed according to God; and receiving the new man Christ into the old man Adam, he becomes a man and a man.
You have now had placed before you the true type of manhood, not as the world estimates man, not as profane philosophy takes the measure of his dignity, but as his Creator has planned his - nature in the view of his final end, and has provided for him the means to accomplish that final end. He gives him first a rudi- mental existence, complete, nevertheless, in itself, and distinct * S. Macarius, Horn. xv. 4
50 WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD.
from every other; then He gives him a development through the gifts of His providence ; then an advancement dependent on His own will by the gifts of grace towards eternal things. Finally, he is delivered from this world of probation, and if he has been faithful, he enters into union with God as the Supreme and Eternal Object of his inmost desires. Solomon has not hesitated to express this union of the soul with God in perfect love, under the allegory of a happy human marriage. Christ our Lord has also described the entrance into the Kingdom of God under the parable of a marriage feast. And to St. John the final union of souls with God was portrayed under the figure of the marriage feast of the Lamb.
It is the modern fashion of innumerable writers, and the passion of still more innumerable readers, to contemplate human life, in every mythical form, as being absorbed in the earlier days of manhood in a struggle through difficulties, the object of which is a happy union in which the purpose of hfe is gained, and its trials brought to an end. How far these fictions most com- monly are from the realities of life, and to what extent they falsify the minds that widely indulge in them, and take them for the ways of wisdom, is best known to those who have studied human life the most. But this may be said with most certain truth, that the happiest union of mortal with mortal, where each supplements what the other requires, is a very faint, remote, and imperfect figure of that union of the soul with God, in which the image of God comes to its Divine Original, and every want ceases, and every desire is accomplished.
And now, by way of conclusion, let us look at the law of human progress through the eyes of St. Hilary. Earthly and imperfect causes, he observes, have this character, that they are changeable. Grief troubles joy, anger disturbs peace, offence interrupts good- will, envy disturbs equanimity, and anxiety our sense of security. When some appetite creeps into our weak and inconstant affec- tions, we are no longer what we were. A sudden change comes over us and turns us from what we were into what we have so suddenly become. But the blessed God is perfect He needs no progress, because there is nothing wanting to Him. He has no beginning; He knows no change; He is ; and what He is comes from no other source than Himself. He is ; and is in Himself, and with Himself, and to Himself, and is Himself unto Himself,
WB Y MAN IS MADE TO THE IMA GE OF GOD. 51
and all things are unto Him. Nothing can be added to Him, because He Himself is all, and all things are unto Him.
From this best and most benevolent beatitude, through His Word, our Lord Jesus Christ, all creations of invisible and heavenly creatures are made, and also the constitution of spiritual with corporal creations. He gains nothing to Himself from these creatures ; no one hath need of what He gives away from Himself, or profits by what He imparts to another. But the things that profit us come from an external source ; what heals our wants is not what we have, but what we have hitherto lieen strangers to. The God from whom all things are has no need, therefore, of a single thing that He creates, but He has created them all for them who are born into life. As it would be long to treat of celestial creatures, let us speak of ourselves.
God constituted man, not because He required his service, but because He is good, and made man to partake of His beatitude. He perfects this rational creature in life and sense to share His eternity. This is absolutely clear from His own words : " And now, O Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but that thou fear the Lord thy God, and walk in His ways, and love Him, and serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and all thy soul ; and keep His commandments, and His justifications, which I command this day, that it may be well with thee ". God asks no service of us but faith, innocence, and religion. He demands our love and service, that through them we may be judged worthy to be rewarded with His goodness and beatitude. But the com- munication of His goodness, like the sun's splendour, the fire's warmth, or the flower's sweetness, profits not Him who gives, but him who receives. As he is not jealous of that good which with Him is eternal, He takes us up to the sense and enjoyment of that good.
Yet the good and perfect God gives not that good to us without reason and measure. What He gives first to each one is his sense and freedom of life, not imposing any necessity, that each one's good and evil may be decided by law. Having created us from benevolence to obtain beatitude. He has ordained our progress to that beatitude through a just and innocent life. Were He to withhold us from evil by putting a constraining necessity upon us, what honour, what goodness could such a necessity deserve ? Goodness is therefore offered to our free will and choice, and as
52 WHY MAN IS MADE TO THE IMAGE OF GOD.
the reward of free will, not as the result of a necessity uninspired by law. Yet whilst our God invites and attracts us to good and to upright living that we may hope to enjoy His goodness, He adds pain and suffering to the deserting and despising of that goodness, that as necessity could do nothing for us, the terror of pain and suffering may act as a reasonable control of our liberty. Liberty is given us in view of reason and in view of just reward, whilst the unruliness of liberty is kept in order by the ordinance of fear ; that whilst the hope of reward encourages us to will what is good, the fear of vindictive punishment may dissuade us from willing evil.*
Wherefore, to omit many things that might be said, after con- sidering why man was made in the image of God, we point the sum of this lecture in the words of St. Augustine : " Any one may call himself a man, or think himself a man, but he who neither obeys God nor fears Him is unworthy the title of man ". Or as the Christian philosopher Boetius puts it more comprehensively : " It comes to this : you cannot account him to be a man who is deformed with the vices; for where goodness is abandoned the man ceases to be ; unable to ascend to a divine condition, he descends into the state of the irrational creation".! This also is the conclusion of Solomon : " Fear God, and keep His command- ments, for this is the whole man ".
* S. Hilarius, Ennaratio in Psalm ii.
t Boetius, De Consolatione Philos., Lib. IV. prosa iv.
LECTURE III.
THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. "And let him have dominion over .... the whole earth." — Genesis i. 26.
IF the Hebrew tongue was blessed with a name for God which expressed His absolute Being, our own is happy in a name that expresses His nature. For God and good are the same word with a different spelling. God is the good, the one good, the absolute good, the fontal good, from whom is all good that is or can exist. When a certain person addressed our Lord as " good master," not knowing His Divinity, Christ said to him : " Why askest thou me concerning good? one is good, God ". If, then, we would use the Sacred Name of God with reverent intelligence, we must fill it with its divine sense, that it may have the habitual power of awakening our mind and heart to the One Divine and All-perfect Good.
It is of the nature of an intelligent being to do all things for a reasonable end ; and the nature of a good intelligence to do all things for a good and wise end. But the God of infinite perfection must always contemplate in His actions the most perfect end, and that most perfect end is Himself. He acts not for a greater end in the greatest things, and for a lesser end in the lesser things; but He designs, creates, upholds, provides, and rules all things to His own eternal glory. Whatever may be the subjective or the relative value of His various works, taken in themselves, His act in them is perfect, because of the perfect end to which they are ordained. Yet God is not as man that He should covet glory : He is Himself the perfect glory, to which nothing can be added, and from which nothing can be taken. From His Divine Dignity and perfect Ma- jesty comes the just and essential order of things, and this order requires that the Author of all things should have the glory of all
54 THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN.
things. As God is the First Cause of all things and the Exemplary Cause of all things, He is also the Final Cause of all things. The divine intention is the motive of creation, this intention is the end contemplated, and the end contemplated is God Himself. He is the beginning and the end of all, and therefore whatever He creates that moves in its just order, moves as it were in a circle having its beginning from God through His creative Word in time, and moving through the course of time towards the same God as its final end.
God is the reason of all created things, and this reason is three- fold. As the first principle of all, God the Father is the First Cause of all. In His Word or Reason are the intelligible forms of all things, and therefore God the Word is the Exemplary Cause of all things. As He is the Final Cause of all things, God the Holy Spirit, the Perfecter, operates in bringing His faithful works to the honour and glory of the Holy Trinity as to their Final Cause. As the reason of all things, God imparts the light of reason to His intelligent creatures, that in Him they may find the reason of their reason, the final object and end of all their searches after truth and goodness. This is expressed in the inspired proverb of Solomon : "God hath made all things for Himself"; but to provide an order for them who with perverse wills turn their reason away from the divine reason, this clause is added to the inspired word : " The wicked also for the evil day ".
It is because God is the final cause of all things, and all are made for His glory, that He also contemplates an intermediate end of His creation; and this end is to impart to His creatures, according to their nature, some reflection of His Being, some vestige or resemblance of His goodness. Material things reflect His Being in their existence, intelligent creatures reflect His intelligence in their reason, and just spirits reflect His life, beauty, and goodness in their love.
If we contemplate the created universe as a whole, the whole is made for God. If we consider it part by part, each part of the great whole has also its special and immediate end ; for whatever is inferior in the nature of things is ordained to minister to what is superior. As the superior part of this world, and as the subject of Heaven, man is immediately subject to God, and what is inferior to man is ordained to the immediate service of man.
Yet whilst the inferior creation has its immediate end in the
THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 55
nobler creation of rational souls, whose direct end is God Him- self, this does not prevent the inferior creatures from representing the being and goodness of God in what they are ; or from having their final end in God. For although the material creature is made for the spiritual creature, it is not the less made for the Divine Goodness. For whilst the whole universe of created things forms one grand construction, reflecting in its countless dependencies and harmonies the manifold wisdom and glory of God, each part of this wonderful construction is made with reference to the whole ; and whilst each inferior part is subject to what is superior, which gives an inexhaustible lesson to rational man, the whole creation is one complete organization, whose immediate end is the manifestation of God, and whose final end is the glory of God.*
God alone has the supreme power and sovereign dominion over all His creatures. He is the fontal source of all power, authority, right, and rule. Human rights have their authority in divine rights, and human dominion obtains its authority from the divine dominion. The just laws that regulate and secure the rights of man spring immediately from human reason and the divinely constituted order of things, and these have their founda- tion in the divine reason. But man's dominion over the earth, and what the earth contains, is so familar to him, that he rarely reflects on the origin of the authority with which he is invested to wield that dominion. That God designed man to exercise this dominion is visibly written in the volume of creation, in which we see the aptitude of the sensible world to be subject to the service of the spiritual creation, and the capacity of the spiritual creature to subject the inferior works of God to his dominion and use.
But the right to exercise this dominion was a formal grant from God to man, expressed by a sovereign decree of His supreme authority. This grant is coeval with the creation of man, was renewed after its forfeiture at the Deluge, and is contained in the most ancient of legal documents. "And God said : Let us make man to our own image and likeness ; and let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the birds of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth, and every creature that moveth on the earth." And " God blessed them, saying : Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it ".
• See S. Thomas, Sum., p. i, q. 44, a. 4, q. 65, a. 2.
56 THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN.
The dominion of the earth with all it contains was given to man with the divine blessing. What is this blessing? It is the fruitful influence which God sheds upon His creatures from His goodness, giving them vigour, growth, and the power to multiply. It is the fertilizing gift which augments the gifts of existence and of vitality.
The key to the understanding of this world is the divine purpose comtemplated by its Author ; it was designed for the training of immortal souls for an eternal life with God. It is therefore en- dowed with a great diversity of offices and aptitudes for this purpose. Framed for the abode of man from the dawning of his existence to the end of his probation, it is wonderfully fitted and tempered to the requirements of his body, as his body is yet more wonderfully fitted to his soul. It is provisioned with all things good and suitable for his use, instruction, and pleasure. After each order of creation had risen up into existence at the Omnipotent command, "God saw that it was good". After the whole visible creation was evolved from chaos and completed, ^' God saw all things which He had made, and they were exceed- ingly good ". The whole creation, viewed in its manifold relations, harmonies, uses, and dependencies, was a good exceedingly greater in its unity than were the several creations viewed separately. They were exceedingly good for the end for which they were made.
But when God made man, He did not say that man was good, because God Himself is the good of man. The good of man is exterior to this world, and he can only reach that good by his own choice, and by the free exercise of his will. But the inferior creation was made good for the service and instruction of man.
By one and the same decree of His sovereign will, God both created man and gave to him and his descendants dominion over the earth, to subdue it, and dominion over all the creatures it contains, that they might do him service. The earth has no in- telligence to know its existence ; its mineral treasures know not their own wealth ; its vegetable glories have no consciousness ; the animal world has no light of reason whereby to know its Creator. The visible world knows not from what it exists, or for what end it exists, or that it does exist. This knowledge God has implanted in man for the whole creation that exists around
THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 57
him. He is a will to the creatures of the earth, and, as it were, a god to them. " The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world and all that dwell therein." And the Lord of the universe has made man to be His viceroy over every other creature that the world contains. He is a mystery to them, as God is a mystery to him. Nevertheless, he rules them within certain limits ; he commands them, and they obey his will.
If a reason is asked for this grand dispensation, the profoundest reason, as of all divine dispensations, is hidden with God in His eternity. But even our human reason has light enough to see that it is far more magnificent and glorious to God that He should create intelligent beings with a capacity to exercise dominion, and a power to rule the inferior creation, than if He had reserved all power and dominion in this world to Himself. To this we must add, that the responsibility imposed on man, as the delegate of God's authority, constitutes a large element in his moral training for the Kingdom of Heaven, where justice and mercy reign supreme.
The parable of the master who called his servants and gave them his goods, a portion to each, according to his ability, that all might fructify them until he came to take the reckoning, may be taken to illustrate the end for which God has imparted a share to man of His dominion over the creation. And the sentence pronounced upon their just or neglected stewardship reveals the moral end of the plan upon which this human admini- stration of God's creation is founded. "Well done, thou good and faithful servant ; because thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will set thee over many things ; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord."
This delegated right of dominion over God's creations is not a mere prerogative of human dignity, it is also a trust, to be exer- cised in dependence on God, and with accountability to Him, not only as a great element of moral training, bnt as a source of moral worth, which is the true wealth of the soul. Yet over all things God holds the dominion in chief, and to every created thing He gives its force, its qualities, its limits, the order in which it acts, or is acted upon, and His own overruling providence. But to men He likewise gives His law, in which the rightful use and ruling of His creatures is prescribed to them.
The action of God is clearly visible in the ordering of the
58 THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN.
world ; and where the h'ght of reason is not utterly perverted, all men at times feel His power in the creation. What but the con- tinuance of God's creative will upholds the world in existence ? What but His regulating providence makes the elements of the world keep their place, their proportions, and their equable balance, so admirably tempered to human needs ? What but His will and wisdom have ordained all things in number, weight, and measure ? What makes the earth and the orbs of Heaven to move in their appointed courses? What makes the sun to glow with a splendour softened to the requirements of human eyes and human life ? What causes the moon and the glittering stars to illuminate our night ? What causes the winds to breathe in gentle gales, or to blow with purging vehemence ? What makes the ever-changing clouds, those curtains from the solar heat and revivers of the earth, to muster in their squadrons, and career before the winds ; the showers to fall ; the streams to flow ; the seas to agitate their purifying waves ; the earth to germinate in flowers and fruits ; the air to feed the flame of mortal life ; the waters to fertilize ; all nature to bring forth ? To give names to hidden causes is to confess their existence, but not to discover what they are. Science may trace the dependencies of things upon each other, at least, on the visible side of them that is ex- posed to human sight, and may follow the links of the lower end of the chain of causation. But what, and where, is the primal force from which all causation springs ? What primal force moves all material things that are in their nature passive ? What keeps them orderly, temperate, and measured in their movements, whether worlds, or elements, or things that vegetate, or that move with the force and harmony of animal life ? We may ask what, and what, in vain, so long as we search for their causes in material nature. The Divine Author of all is the first mover of all, whilst He /is Himself immovable ; and the creation receives its energies and modes of movement from the most tranquil, yet ever-acting, will of God, " who maketh His sun to shine over the good and the bad, and raineth upon the just and the unjust ".
There is no method of thought more disloyal to truth, no style of speech more uncongenial with the religious sense, none more deceptive in its results, than that low method of thought and expression so common in the world, that makes material nature the seat of those laws which have their presence in the mind of
THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN 59
God, and their force in His will. How can things -without in- telligence or will be in any reasonable sense the subjects of law ? Law is a moral rule existing in some mind. Material things are passive in the hands of God, as they are passive in the hands of man. It is their nature to be passive, and to move as they are moved. All motion has its origin in the will of some spiritual being ; no other explanation of its existence is possible. God is the prime mover of all things. The law of that movement is in God ; the order and measure of that movement is in the unconscious creature. The correct mode of speaking, where material things are in question, is to speak of the order rather than of the laws of nature, because the laws of nature are in the wisdom of God, whilst the orderings of nature are the signets of His will and wisdom impressed on His creation.
When we look no higher than nature for the laws that give order, regularity, measure, and mutual dependence to its ele- ments, we ascribe to that insensible nature what belongs to God, and so forget that in His works we behold the signs of His power and wisdom. Nothing can be more unphilosophical than the constant use of language in which material effects are put for their living cause, or in which material order and sequence are confounded with law. When we ascribe laws to material nature ; when we say that nature does this, or nature does that, we transfer the exalted honour of law, the attribute of intelligence, from God to unconscious matter ; this way of speaking generates a like way of thinking, and of looking to the creature for what belongs to the Creator.
There is a law of nature, but that law is implanted in human reason, and regulates the conduct of man. " Nature acts in order," observes St. Gregory of Nyssa, " but the force of that order depends upon that first command of God, which, once given, goes on through all that is procreated to the end."* If under its natural conditions the order of nature is uniform, that is ordained for its conservation, and also for the benefit of man, that from the ordinary course of nature he may know on what he may rely. But as the force that moves nature is the act of God's will, directing all things to their appointed ends ; as nature is made for man, not man for nature ; as the ends of nature are subservient to the moral and the supernatural end of man ; and as the whole ordering of nature * S. Greg. Nyssa, in Verb. Faciamus horn. Orat. i.
6o THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN.
depends on the sovereign will of God ; it is most reasonable to ex- pect that from time to time God should express His free power over nature, and exhibit His condescension to man by subordinating the natural to the supernatural order of things, whether to confirm His revelations, or to answer the prayers of His servants. The natural was created for the supernatural, and strange would it be if this subordination were never brought to visible proof.
God, who made all things ultimately for Himself, made them intermediately and in a special manner for the just who obey His voice. For though they also serve the unjust, that is but imper- fectly, and for a time that passes quickly. This world may be considered as a school whose immediate object is to train the just for eternal life. " From His gratuitous goodness," says St. Bernard, " God made all things for Himself; He made all things to serve His elect. This goodness is their effective cause ; but the service of the elect is their terminal cause.'' * In disposing the elements of creation, therefore, in a natural and uniform order, God reserved the sovereign right of acting upon a higher law to higher ends ; and He is not at all seasons inexorable to the humble prayer of faithful souls, as His own revelations, the frequent acts of history, and the common belief of mankind bear witness.
God made the world as much for the instruction as for the use of man during the course of his probation. And as the just man is trained by faith for the vision of God, who would have us love Him as He deserves before we see Him as He is, the visible world is the veil drawn between the human spirit and the eternal mysteries. Still it is a luminous veil, partly concealing and partly revealing the wondrous ways of God. When with spiritual eyes we look upon the marvellous diversities of things spread out beneath the canopy of heaven, and with a reverential spirit explore the mysteries hidden in the world, we everywhere see the shadows of the Divine Attributes, and the footsteps of the Eternal Wisdom. " For the invisible things of God are clearly seen from the things that are made. His eternal power also and divinity." To the eyes that are cleared by humility, the providence of God is everywhere visible in its action, and everywhere His care is manifest. " This visible universe," says St Basil, " is like a written book that bears ■witness to God and preaches His glory. To the intelligent • S. Bernard, Serm. iii. De Pentecoste.
THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 6i
creature it eloquently proclaims that August Majesty who might otherwise be concealed from our knowledge. The heavens show forth the glory of God; and the firmament the work of His hands."*
When a certain philosopher put the question to St. Antony : "How can you live in this solitude without books?" the holy hermit replied : " My books are the nature of things that God has created. It gives me the choice of the volumes which God Him- self has written." Those books are always open to us, but as they demand the light of God to read them in the sense of God, there are but few persons who read them in the ample sense of their Divine Author.
Besides the natural ends which the inferior creation fulfils, God calls this creation to accomplish a supernatural end, when He em- ploys its elements with which to express His supernatural revela- tions, and also when man is called to employ them in His divine worship and service. In the first instance all nature becomes an imagery and a language in the mouth of God, whereby to make known His eternal truth, as we see in all the Scriptures, In the second instance, the elements of nature as appointed by God, and with the consecration of sacerdotal power, are made the expressive veils and localizing envelopments of the Divine Sacrifice, and of the sacraments, that bring grace to man; as in other religious uses they give a symbolic splendour to God's worship, and are the visible expression of innumerable benedictions. We cannot, therefore, rise to the full significance of that dominion which God has given to man over His creation, unless we embrace the super- natural as well as the natural ends for which that dominion is given.
Man was made in the image of God, then, not only that he might be capable of union with God, but also that he might be capable of receiving, as God's representative, a certain power and dominion over the inferior creation. And this authority to sub- ject the irrational creatures of God to his will and dominion con- stitutes that secondary image of God, which is founded on the first, in which he bears a living resemblance to the Holy Trinity. The image of God by nature, and His likeness by grace, he is also the vicegerent of the Sovereign Lord of nature by divine ap- pointment. He is the image of the Eternal King in his authority over a portion of His dominions, over that part of creation which * S. Basil, Exameron, Horn. xi.
62 THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN.
is made inferior to him. The knowledge of these inferior crea- tures is in him, and not in them; their use and service is for him ; and he is as a god to them. By the divine command the whole world labours to serve him day and night without cessation ; either supplying his wants and pleasures without his intervention, or ready at his call to do his will; hence St. Basil calls man "a creature of empire ".
Certain of the Fathers, especially those of the literal school of Antioch, point to the intimate connection between the words of Genesis : " Let us make man to our own image and likeness," and the succeeding part of the sentence : " And let him have dominion over the fishes of the sea, and the birds of the air, and the beasts, and the whole earth". They observe that man was thus made to the image of God as He is the Lord and Ruler of the visible creation. It will be sufficient to quote St. Gregory of Nyssa and St. John Chrysostom.
St. Gregory says : " As human craftsmen give such forms to their implements as are most fitted to their purpose, so the Divine Artificer has made of our nature a most suitable instrument to administer a kingdom. To make man capable of this, He adorned him with excellent gifts of mind, and with that form of body that we see. His mind proclaims a certain high and royal dignity in him, far exceeding what belongs to a private condition. His soul knows no master in this world ; he does all things as he w^ills, and governs himself as he chooses with a sovereign com- mand. To whom can this belong but to a king ? Man is more- over the image of the Divine Nature, whose empire all things obey. In this image we see the princely dignity that was given him at his creation. When human artists make the images of princes, they carve their lineaments after nature, clothe them with the royal purple, and when this image is completed it is called a king. But man was by nature framed and made erect to be the image and resemblance of the King of the universe, and he re- ceives a dignity and title from his Divine Archetype to be the lord of creatures. This image is not clothed with purple, nor is this dignity set forth with diadem and sceptre, because the Divine Exemplar whom he represents has none of these things ; but instead of purple he has virtue for his clothing, instead of a diadem he wears the crown of justice, and instead of a sceptre he has im- mortal happiness." St. Gregory then observes that as artists take
THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 63
the likeness of men with colours, God depicts His likeness in souls with the virtues ; and that it is purity, peace, exemption from evil, and a happy content that make men like to God. He then concludes : "As God sees all, hears all, and searches all things ; man is also like God in that he sees and hears many things, and searches them with intelligence." *
St. John Chrysostom has treated the subject on four distinct occasions, and although, contrary to the common exposition, he regards the dominion of man as his chief resemblance to God, this does not lessen the value of his argument. We shall give them in abridgment, first observing that he never loses sight of the fact that this dominion has to be especially exerted over our own inferior and sensual nature.
Man is God's image, he says, in the empire which he holds over the inferior creation, and he is God's likeness according to the measure of human power, by meekness, gentleness, and the virtues; even as Christ has said : " Be ye like to your Father who is in Heaven ". As in this wide and spacious earth some animals are tame and others fierce ; so in the breadth of our soul some thoughts are irrational, flocking like silly sheep, others are wild and fierce. They need to be ruled and to be brought under the dominion of reason. If men can overcome lions and bring them to gentleness, is it to be doubted that they can subdue their own wildness ? The beast, that is fierce by nature, can be made gentle beyond his nature : man, who is gentle by nature, can make him- self fierce beyond his nature. Yet if you can take from the lion what belongs to his nature, and can put in him a gentleness that does not belong to him, you may surely recover that gentleness which properly belongs to your own nature. There is a prodi- gious obstacle to the taming of a lion, for he has not the light of reason, and yet men by using their own reason can succeed in making him subject and obedient, and can exhibit this skill of theirs for money. But God has given reason to you, and the fear of Hin), and all kinds of help, so that if you choose to have dominion over your inferior nature, you may become meek, and gentle, and equable.
The unbeliever will say that God has not given dominion to man over the beasts, and that they have more power over him than he has over them. This is not true, because they fly before
* S. Greg. Nyssa, Dc Humano Opificio, cc. iv. v.
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him. If when pressed by hunger they rend and tear him to pieces, that is not because he did not receive dominion over them, but because he has become a criminal. We now hold those wild creatures in fear and dread, but this does not falsify the promise of God. It was not so from the beginning ; for then all the beasts feared and reverenced their master ; but when through our own disobedience we lost confidence before God, our sovereignty over these creatures became weakened. That they were all subject to man in his innocence we learn from the Scriptures : " The Lord God brought them before Adam to see what he would call them : for whatsoever Adam called any living creature, the same is its name ". He shrank not from their presence, but he gave names to them as a master names his servants, and that in token of his dominion over them. When Eve was innocent, the serpent inspired her with no terror ; but when sin entered into man this dignity and power sank into weakness. So long as he trusted in God all creatures feared him, but when he transferred his trust from God to himself, he not only had to fear the excesses of the beasts, but even those of his fellow- creatures.
These very fears prove the benignity of God to him, for if he had been left in all his honour and power, it would not have been so easy for him to rise from his fall. With what an unspeakable benignity was he treated ! Adam trangressed the whole law of God and subverted His whole commandment ; yet in His merciful goodness God took not all his honour from him. He cast him not down from all his sovereignty. He withdrew from us a great measure of our power over those animals that con- tribute but little to the service of our life, whilst he still left those under our complete dominion that are most useful and necessary for our service. In punishing man for his disobedience. He said : " In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat thy bread " ; yet lest that sweat and labour should become intolerable, our God alleviates our toil and suffering through the multitude of His creatures that both toil for us and suffer with us. *
If the wild animals when clothed in their strength inspire us
with fear, they also remind us of the strength and the wisdom that
we ourselves have lost by our disobedience, and of the dignity that
we have lost with the loss of innocence. But in punishment for our
• S. J. Chrysost., Horn. 9 in i Genes.; Serm. i et 2 in Genes.
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trifling with God's divine sovereignty, we are subject to still greater humiliations, and the smallest of living creatures have the power to annoy us with their noxious importunities ; and as the executioners of our mortality, they breed in us the most terrible diseases.
Yet when we look through the history of faith and sanctity, we find many examples of the restoration of that prerogative of dominion to man over the wildest and the most ferocious creatures, that recall to our minds what power he had in the state of innocence. Noah by faith commanded all the animals in the ark. Elias was served by ravens and protected by bears. Daniel commanded the lions in their hunger and ferocity. St. Paul held the viper in his hand without injury. Lions and wolves were obedient to the holy hermits of the desert. The most ferocious animals in their most ravening moments were seen by fifty thousands persons in the Roman amphitheatres, crouching meekly at the feet of the Christian martyrs, and refusing to do them any harm. Even the devouring element of fire sometimes refused its oflSce of destruction. But cruel man, left ever to his own free will, stepped in to inflict their martyrdom upon the saints with tortures and the sword. " The time would fail me," says St. Paul, " were I to speak of Gideon, Barac, Samson, Jephtha, Samuel, and the Prophets : who by faith conquered kingdoms, wrought justice, obtained promises, stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, recovered strength from weakness, became valiant in battle, put to flight the armies of foreigners : women received their dead raised to life again."
The second Adam, Christ our Lord in His humanity, who was the full image of God with perfect innocence, commanded all nature at His will ; yet he withheld this will from command when His object was to be hidden or to suffer. And this power over the inferior creation He promised to the obedience of perfect faith, to that faith which with unwavering constancy trusts wholly in God and nothing in self. When the disciples saw the unfruitful fig-tree withered up at their Lord's command, and wondering said, " How is it presently withered up ? " Jesus said to them : " Amen, I say to you, if you shall have faith, and stagger not, not only this of the fig-tree shall you do, but also if you shall say to this mountain : Take up and cast thyself into the sea, it shall be done. And all things whatsoever you ask in prayer believing, it
5
66 THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN.
shall be done to you." Among His last words on earth He also said : " These signs shall follow them that believe. In My name . . . they shall take up serpents : and if they shall drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them : they shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover."
The justice, therefore, that comes to us through mercy has ordained that, on our return to perfect faith and obedience, some portion of our lost dominion shall return to us, sufficient, at least, for our edification and instruction, and for a visible proof that God is with His servants. When, however, the wildness of nature and the adverse elements of the world continue their hostility against the holy servants of God, they are still the servants of the Cross of Christ, and the ministers to that patience by which the Kingdom of Heaven is won. But all the creatures that serve our will, or administer to our wants, or to the work of our probation, have their force from Him without whose providence they can do nothing. But as God works without ceasing in them, for our use and benefit, why should we refuse to work with them for His service, and to His glory ?
God has not only devoted the inferior creation to our service, but also the superior creation. For, not to speak of the countless services which, under the direction of God's providence, men render to each other, both with intention and without intention, from His Heavenly Hosts our Divine Father sends His angels to us, to help, guide, and protect us; so that we are served from Heaven as well as from the earth. Considering, therefore, what innumerable servants God puts at our disposal, both conscious and unconscious, we may conclude what great service we owe to Him, whose chief object in all these helps is to draw us gratefully to Him ; that to Him may be given the honour and the glory that is due from all His creatures.
That we may take a deeper and wider view of the divine plan of this earthly creation, let us consider more carefully what is the position of man in the midst of it. Composed in such a manner of soul and body, that of the body the soul is the form, life, and animating principle, whilst the body, as the instrument of the soul, holds commerce with the whole exterior and visible creation, this intellectual spirit and mortal flesh exist together in a wonderful and inexplicable communion of life and personality. The soul lives in herself, yet dependent on God ; lives with the light of God's
THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 67
truth in her mind, with the greater light of God in her faith, and with a spiritual sense that feels after divine things. She lives also in the body, giving life and animation to its senses and activities, which are in contact with the whole visible creation. The soul thinks through the mind, feels through the senses, and acts from the will. But whilst the truths of the invisible world are imparted to the mind, and terminate in the superior soul that looks to truth, the messages from this visible world come through the senses, and terminate in the imagination, that inferior side of the soul that is in commerce with the body.
But as the soul herself is one and simple, the imagination, which receives the images of things from the external world is intimately united with the intelligence in which dwells the light of truth. Thus, whilst the light of truth in the intelligence tests the truthful- ness of those images that are present in the imagination, the ima- gination itself has an office to perform towards the purely spiritual truths that are given to the mind ; for the wealth of imagery in the imagination obtained from the visible world serves to illustrate those pure truths with the earthly shadows of them that abound in this material world. Thus, whilst the soul is one and simple in herself, on her superior side she holds to spiritual truth, and gains the sense of spiritual things ; whilst on the inferior side she holds to the body, and receives the impress of those earthly things in their images, which divide her attention, and which either enrich her when she uses them justly and wisely, or trouble her when she uses them unjustly and unwisely. She is therefore spiritual when she subjects her senses to her spiritual will, and carnal when she subjects her spiritual to her sensual life.
Like understands like. When the soul, made in God's image, is subject to the light of faith^ and in obeying the grace of charity receives the likeness of God, man becomes an ouranos, a little heaven, according to his measure and quality reflecting the heavens that are above. As in the composition of his body he has the elements of this visible world, the inferior man is a likeness of this world, receives the images of all visible things, and is thus a cosmos, a. little world reflecting the great world around him. Thus Heaven and earth meet in the soul of the just and faithful man, that in his superior soul he may serve and worship God, and through his in- ferior soul the elements of this world may be brought into sub- jection to God through him.
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This is the primary reason of that secondary image of God in man which consists in his delegated dominion over the inferior creation. The man of faith, who is just to the divinely established order of things, is the living link between earth and Heaven, the spiritual bond of communion between the creature and the Creator. He subjects the world to himself, and himself to God. As God's representative he administers the things of this world, as they are committed to his keeping, and according to the will of his Lord. God has made him both king and priest, to rule them reasonably, and to offer them devoutly, to the praise and glory of their Creator and Lord. As they are devoid of reason, his reason supplies for them by his faith, and his devotion ; in him as in a living temple God's image is set up. His likeness is exhibited, and His authority represented, that through him the inferior creatures may do homage to God, and render obedient service.
Taking this just view of man's position, the Fathers of the Church rival each other in finding terms to express the dignity of man in his offices to the world. They call him " the abridgment of the world " and " the word of the world ". St. Gregory Nazianzen calls him "the observer of the visible world" and "the pontiff of visible things ". Asterius designates him as " the interpreter of the Creator ". St. Gregory of Nyssa calls him " the consecrator of the universe ". Lactantius says : " He is in the world as a priest in a holy temple, where all things are made for him, as he is made for God ; and where he contemplates the divine works that he may refer them to God ".* These are not the exaggerated expressions of poets or enthusiastical humanitarians ; they are the grave and well-pondered conclusions of theologians, who have weighed the sense of divine revelations, who exhibit the offices of men in the dignity which God has assigned to them, and who put them forth to enforce on man the sense of his responsibilities.
The Prophets are full of this view of man's position in the creation as its king and priest, and the inspired Psalmody, that divine song both of the Hebrew Temple and of the Christian Church, is deeply imbued with that spirit of devotion by which a tongue of praise and a voice of thanksgiving is given to man, with which to speak the language of gratitude to God for the whole creation. Take, for example, the 148th Psalm, or the Canticle of the three children in the fiery furnace, both of which * See Klee's Manual of Dogmas, pt. ii. c. iii.
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are used in the morning Lauds of the Church. There the tongue of man gives a voice both to the animate and inanimate creatures of God, that through him all mute and unconscious creatures, called upon each by name, may praise the Lord of Heaven and earth, and bless Him, and superexalt Him above all for ever. Whosoever shall enter into the spirit of this devotion and carry it out, as the saints have done, into their daily commerce with God's creatures, will comprehend the office and dignity with which God has invested man, of being the mind, the heart, and the voice of the dumb creatures of this earth to their Creator and Lord in Heaven.
If man would only rise up in mind and soul to the higher position which God has assigned to him in this earthly creation ; if he would but understand the high honour and great prerogative which God has conferred on him, as His representative to the creatures that are made subject to his dominion; if he would enter into the design of God in making him the immediate end of those creatures ; if he would only take it to heart that God has made them to do him service, that he may be able to serve God better, and to bring all God's works to do Him their service ; if he would only use his intelligence to understand and feel that God has placed him, a spirit endowed with mind and law, in an earthly body, that through him all the earth and the heavens around the earth might do homage to God ; if he would but fulfil this solemn office which God has assigned to him, ruling all things that God has made subject to him in the name of God, and by the law of God ; accounting for all with God, and offering all to God ; then would he be, what the saints with their keen intuition have always been, the faithful and disinterested stewards of God over the inferior creation, and the assiduous ministers of that creation unto God. But " when man was in honour, he did not understand ; he was compared with foolish beasts, and became like to them ",
He who rules not himself can rule nothing rightly. Remem- ber, then, that the earth begins for us in our own body, and that the beginning of our dominion over the earth is the subjection of the body to the soul. The senses are the instruments of the soul in her communications with the inferior creation, and the body is the minister of her will, but how can we govern wisely through a rebellious minister and with indocile instruments ? The first principle of dominion, therefore, is the subjection to the soul
70 THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN.
of that quickened earth which forms our own body. This sacred duty is founded in the nature of things as well as in the command of God. It is essential to the internal order and to the intel- lectual as well as the moral strength of man. It is imposed upon us by the eternal law of justice. It is absolutely indispensable to our own wellbeing. Unless our body, with its senses, appetites, and passions, is made subject to the law of our mind, what have we in contact with the external world that is not disordered, enfeebled, and let loose from responsibility ? The spiritual soul, whose proper endowments are light, law, and love, suffers an in- vasion of dark, earthly, and lawless things, that break down her unity, put out her light, and defile her love. What is left to the soul after that, which is not weak and unsuited to her nature and aspirations ?
The inferior nature takes God's place in the soul ; and, in one way or another, earth usurps the dominion of spirit, and death of life. The man becomes "carnal, sold unto sin". Yet the divine gifts of God are not for the earthly man, nor can they be ; the carnal man cannot receive them ; as they are in their nature spiritual, and their end is God, they can only be received by the spiritual man. When a soul deserts her place, and comes down into the body to be inebriated and saturated with earth and car- nality, that soul deserts her spiritual office, and is a traitor to her spiritual nature. How can such an one rule the inferior creation when that lower creation is ruling her ? Instead of being the image of God, the Lord and Master of all dominion, the soul becomes the image of things viler than her nature, and created for her service. It follows, therefore, as a matter of course, that when man fell from God, and lost his spiritual strength, and the dominion of his own body, he of necessity lost the first great power that he had over the exterior creation. But in the pro- portion in which he recovers dominion over himself, he recovers dominion over the world around him, for the secret of that dominion lies in his own subjection to God.
The first great crime after the fall sprang from the pride engen- dered by dissent from the true worship of God. Whilst the evil yet brooded in the heart of the criminal, God proclaimed to him the law of self-dominion. Of the two sons of Adam, Abel offered a sacrifice pleasing to God. It was divinely accepted, because it was an obedient worship. For God alone can prescribe how He
THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN. 71
will be worshipped, and it is not for man to choose. Abel offered a bleeding victim in faith and in figure of the promised Redeemer. Cain made his own choice of an offering, presenting the fruits of the earth ; but when Cain saw that his brother's sacrifice was accepted, whilst his own offering was rejected, his pride was fired, and his wrath enkindled, and he meditated the destruction of his brother. Then God said to Cain : " Why art thou angry ? And why is thy countenance fallen ? If thou do well, shalt thou not receive ? But if ill, shall not sin forthwith be present at the door ? But the lust thereof shall be under thee, and thou shalt have dominion over it."
It is impossible for us to realise how much the body has been enfeebled, and its obedient flexibility to the will diminished, through the loss of immortality. From the effects of original and even of actual sin, there is also a great weakening of its vital energy; the soul has less power over it; the functions of the senses are lowered in strength, the active offices of the earthly frame are less energetic, the sure and ready command of the will over the body is checked and resisted both by its dulness and its adverse inclinations. Above all, the body has become dis- ordered and indocile through the lurid flame of concupiscence, that lusts against the spirit : and what is most humiliating, the feeding of the body is the feeding of that concupiscence; the very resting of the body overmuch is the quickening of that con- cupiscence. To this again we must add those inherited dis- orders and enfeeblements contracted from unwise and unre- strained habits that are transmitted from father to son to the third and fourth generation, and all those undefinable evils that flesh is heir to. As, therefore, our mortal bodies are not regene- rated in- baptism like the soul, but must wait for its regeneration in the resurrection, the exercise of dominion over the body, its senses, appetites, passions, and resistances, has become a work of great labour, watchfulness, and virtue, the power of which is only to be gained through the grace of God and obedience to the law of self-denial.
The external senses are far from being the full account of the sensual man. Let me, therefore, invite your special attention to what follows. We have internal as well as external senses, and to these internal senses those that are external are subservient. Then there is the imagination, that beautifying, that terrifying,
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that exaggerating faculty, especially exaggerating when not duly governed, in which the objects transmitted in their images from the corporal senses touch upon the soul and the intellectual light of the mind. It is in the imagination that the objects of sense, concupiscence, and passion meet and conspire together, and by their united influence often gain the mastery over us, when not kept in just and due control.
It is chiefly the tide of our internal sensations, however little noticed, that gives us the consciousness of our animal life. This tide of internal sensations is intimately connected with the fluids and their circulations, giving us pleasure in their healthy flow, and trouble or distress in their languor, obstruction, or derange- ment. The coursing of the blood through the arteries and veins ; the flashing of electric force through the centres and countless branches of the nervous system ; the pulsations of the heart with their measured music; the working of the machinery of 'respi- ration with its dependence on atmospheric conditions ; the action of the glands in their functions of secretion; the complicated laboratory of digestion ; the removal of wasted tissues ; the flame of animal life with its ever-varying temperatures — all these concur to keep alive in us the sense of our animal life, in its har- monies or discords, according to our state of health or derange- ments, of calmness or excitement, of subjection to the soul's dominion, or of rebellion against the soul's authority. This is but a brief and rough account of the elements of that internal sensation which are fed by the external senses ; and to this we must add the active operations and exertions of the body, as it is the subject of the will, or as it is the instrument of our earthly desires and appetites. We do not even perform the spiritual operation of thinking in our present state, without the co-opera- tive action of the brain, which depends for its healthy working upon the whole condition of the body.
We see, then, what a vast, what a varied, what a multiplied sense and movement exert their action within the body upon the soul, as she pervades and animates the body. When that com- plicated action is healthy, harmonious, and subordinate to the powers of the soul, then all is order and peace; but when that action is inflamed by concupiscence, excited by passion, dis- ordered by unlawful appetite, or has lost the balance of tem- perance, the soul that gives herself to these ignominious move-
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ments deserts her supremacy, surrenders her control, and falls in trouble and disorder under the dominion of the body. The soul becomes sensualised ; her power of seeing truth is no longer the same, and she becomes averse and alien from the spiritual life, especially when she is not in the habit of denying or mortifying the body, or of abstracting herself from its restless solicitations.
But the things of sense obtain their power over the soul through their subtle union in the ill-regulated imagination, where, as we have said, they gain a prodigious exaggeration of their value, through the contact of their presence in the imagination with the intellectual light in the mind. By an abusive subjection of our mental and spiritual light to the images of these earthly things, they obtain a semblance of good and of greatness that does not belong to them, but only to the spiritual and eternal things which that intellectual light illuminates ; and thus the poor soul, in losing her proper elevation and dominion over the body, loses her government over both sense and imagination, and falls under the vile things beneath her which God made her to com- mand. " The lust thereof shall be under thee, and thou shalt have dominion over it."
From this great force of the human imagination ; from the misapplication of the light of intelligence to exaggerate the object of imagination ; and from the vast range of objects pre- sented by the external world to human appetite and concu- piscence, man is the unhappy subject of so many temptations and passions. And where there is no habitual conflict of the soul with the body ; where there is no rule of discipline to control its importunities ; where the appetites and tempers of the body are allowed their sway, there is such a subtlety in winding to their objects, such an exaggeration of their value, such a mask of delusive motive raised in the imagination, such a curiosity for new experiences, such a fancy and hope of pleasure in them, such a pride of anticipated possession to be got out of them, such a vanity in the expected display of them, such a sensitive con- sciousness in self-love of the coming enjoyment from them, however quickly it may fade upon possession, that the over- mastered soul finds her spiritual strength dissolved in the carnal concupiscences of the eyes, the flesh, and the pride of life.
With his deep insight into the relations of soul and body, and of what originates in each of them, St. Paul has declared a number
74 THE SECONDARY IMAGE OF GOD IN MAN.
of vices, that seem at first sight to originate in the soul, to be manifest works of the flesh. Among these he enumerates " enmities, contentions, emulations, wraths, quarrels, sects, envies ". He even ascribes heresies and false philosophies to the same carnal origin. "Beware," he says, "lest any man cheat you by philosophy and vain deceit ; according to the traditions of men, according to the elements of this world, and not according to Christ." Again he says : "Let no man seduce you willingly in humility and religion of angels, walking in things which he hath not seen ". These passages refer to the errors of Simon Magus and the earliest Gnostics, who imported the philosophic imaginations of the East into Christianity. In false humility and real self-will, they asserted that man was too low a creature to be created by God, and that he was consequently made by inferior gods, eons or angels, and that he was not redeemed by the Son of God, but by an angel in human appearance. But when the Apostle explains how a heretic of this kind corrupts the faith with false philosophy, he tells us that he is " in vain puifed up by the sense of the flesh ".
It is obvious that the immediate cause of the vices enumerated by St. Paul, as manifest vices of the flesh, is pride. But this pride is generated from that sensual self-love which oppresses the soul through the heat and swelling of the imagination, which has its source in the untamed spirit of the flesh. From this springs a false and fanatical enthusiasm, that takes a hot pride in self-opinion, and resists and opposes accepted truth as well as the authority on which it rests. For it is the nature of pride to withstand authority and to set up its own opinion against accepted faith. No one who has watched the rise of a heresy, or of a false philosophy opposed to religious authority, can fail to observe that it is accom- panied with an imaginative and an animal enthusiasm, fertile in glowing words and sentences, angiy against opposition, and the very opposite to that peace in believing which faith and true religion inspire, yet it always takes the shape of negation and protest. But this fervid ebullition of animal enthusiasm fails not to make the new opinions contagious among sensual minds ; for the clouds that spring up from the earthly senses eclipse the light of faith, and generate that pride which contracts the mind, and narrows the perception of the large spectacle of truth. Pride of intellect, mistaken for inspiration, is the immediate cause of error, but sensitive self-love, engendered by the spirit of the flesh, is the
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instigator of that pride. These victims of error are "in vain puffed up by the sense of the flesh ''.
Could we have stronger proof of the importance of keeping the body in subjection to the soul ? The subtle emotions of the inward senses, fed into exaltation by the outward senses, when not mortified and subdued, inflate the soul through the imagination, and breed delusion and error in the mind, which the carnal heart accepts. These errors are not objective, then, but subjective, in their origin, springing not from the truth but from the man, as their negative character reveals. But when once formulated and accepted by numbers, on the authority of their originators, they obtain a certain objective appearance of the weight of authority, however devoid of solidity. Here let me observe, for the remark is of extreme importance, that the skilful physician of souls ought not only to understand the action of the soul within herself, but also the action and reaction of soul on body and body on soul, otherwise in mistaking the origin of internal troubles and delusions he will be apt to mistake their remedies.
Profound, therefore, is the significance and great the purpose of that conservative law which commands us to subdue the body and bring it under servitude. The man is chiefly in the soul, and pre-eminently in the image and likeness of God. To tame and rule the body is to assert the sovereignty of the soul, and to exalt the image of God. In this we see the incalculable value of the self-preserving laws of temperance, of abstinence, and of mortifica- tion, of all that is summed up in the divine words ; " If any man will follow me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me". The spiritual combat of the superior against the inferior man is the law of self-restoration that follows the law of our redemption. " The lust thereof shall be under thee, and thou shalt have dominion over it," dominion not only over the gross and palpable lusts, but also over those subtle and secret lustings and inflations that prompt to pride and lead to error. This discipline of the body gives a concentrated force and vital energy to the soul, one great result of which is to change an insolent and dangerous enemy into an obedient and useful servant. But this cannot be done . without long efforts conducted by rule and method; it cannot be per- fected without that abstention from many things which the coun- sels of God prescribe as well as His commandments ; it cannot be done effectually without sharp and vigorous appliances ; nor without
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habitual abstraction of soul from many things of a sensual nature that besiege the imagination. Still less can the conquest of the sensual man be won without habitual dependence on God for help. He who has never tried to win this victory can have but a poor notion of what there is within him to tame and to subdue, before he can obtain that freedom of spirit which makes us free in ourselves and free in God. But whoever has won this freedom will see all things in a new light, and will understand them in a new sense.
Philosophy may dream of obtaining such a discipline in the abstraction of the mind from the senses. For how many ages has philosophy indulged in this dream ? But abstraction of mind is not life. Without the charity that unites the soul with God, mere abstraction has nothing solid on which to rest. After all the soul is a spiritual substance and stands in need of a substan- tial good. But the mere philosophic abstraction of the mind from the senses is seldom more than a self-suspension for a time in the pride of intellect, after which there comes a terrible rebound and revulsion to the sensual man. A Plato may soar into lofty specu- lations, and may carry them far ; but was there ever such a licen- tious system of morals as that which he drew up for his ideal republic? The natural man, however sublime in genius, is still the natural man, too weak in himself to effect his own liberation. Detached from faith and from God, he may entertain the most seductive speculations on what befits humanity, but we have too often seen what comes of human freedom, of human dignity, and of human safety, when the attempt is made to reduce these specu- lations to practice. It is only by obedience to faith and to God's will that man is able to regain the lost supremacy of soul over body.
St. Paul has put the subject of this conflict before us in these searching terms: "I am delighted," he says, "with the law of God, according to the inward man ; but I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind, and captivating me in the law of sin, that is, in my members. . . . For they that are according to the flesh, mind the things that are of the flesh ; but they that are according to the spirit, mind the things that are of the spirit. For the wisdom of the flesh is death, but the wisdom of the spirit is life and peace. Because the wisdom of the flesh is an enemy to God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither can it be. And they who are in the flesh cannot please God. . . . Therefore, brethren, we are debtors, not to the
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flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you shall die ; but if by the spirit you mortify the deeds of the flesh you shall live. For whosoever are led by the spirit of God, they are the sons of God."
It is an inexorable condition of human nature that no one can work out his internal freedom without the help of God. It is the liberating grace of God that takes him out of bondage to himself, and gives freedom to his mind in the light and to his heart in the love of God.
But whilst God has given us this secondary image of Himself in the dominion over the body and the inferior creation. He has not given us this kind of dominion over those who are equally the image of God with ourselves. Wherever that image exists, it claims our respect, reverence, and fraternal service ; but the image of God in one man is not to be the servile subject of another. This is the error of unregenerated man, or a very great abuse among regenerated men. The government of Christian men is more a kindly service than an exercise of dominion. And our Lord, who has rectified all things, has said : " You know that they who seem to rule over the Gentiles lord it over them ; and their princes have power over them. But it is not so among you ; but whosoever will be greater, shall be your minister, and whosoever will be first among you, shall be the servant of all." " In the just man's house/' says St. Augustine, " they who govern are the servants of those whom they seem to command. For God would not have the rational man, made in His image, to hold dominion over others than the rational creatures — not man over man, but man over the beasts of the field." *
The subject would be incomplete were we to conclude without pointing out how the grace of Redemption tends to restore the earth to God through the regenerated, in whom the former dominion over the earth revives. This has been already shown in the power given to the martyrs and saints over wild and destructive animals. It might be equally shown in the miraculous powers promised and given to men of great faith over the order of nature. Everywhere great monuments exist, or have existed, of the priesthood which men have exercised on the part of the inferior creation towards God, as well as on the part of their own souls. The land of the Patriarchs received the divine blessing, and its first-fruits were * S. August., De Civitate Dei, Lib. XIX., c. xv.
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offered to God, or to man in his needs as the image of God. The choicest of the flocks and herds were immolated to God in the sacrifice of faith, and in the hope and expectation of human re- demption. The whole Mosaic dispensation rested on this prin- ciple, that the land which God gave them was under His own sovereign dominion, and that their judges and kings were but the lieutenants of God, to order the land and govern the people according to His divine law. One tribe of twelve was consecrated to God's service : and whilst the land was placed under the divine benediction, one-tenth of its produce was devoted to God's service. \Vhatever was most beautiful or precious in the material creation was raised to greater beauty and expressiveness by the feeling and skill of the best artists, and was consecrated to the honour and worship of God. The princes and people in their tribes and families were constantly realising in their life and wor- ship, that "the earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof". Their prophets kept ever before them, that on their obedience to the law depended their dominion over the land and their enjoy- ment of its fruits.
But in this faithful restoration of the silent creation to its Divine Creator, what did faith in the expected redemption accom- plish, when compared with what faith in our redemption received has accomplished? Wherever that faith has appeared in its Catholic fulness, whether in rude or civilised nations, one of its great instincts has been to devote all things best in the creation to God, whether to His immediate worship, or to His service in the exercise of charity to the helpless and the ignorant. Great souls made great by great faith and charity have been the great Chris- tian providences of the world in restoring something of that equality of goods, which has been made far more unequal by the selfish ambitions, cupidities, and other sins of men, than by the natural inequalities of skill and labour ; whilst the faith of the multitude has followed in its degree the faith and works of the Saints.
Christ Himself ordained that the water which descends on the earth, the wheat that grows in the fields, the sun-nourished vine, and the oil expressed from the fertile olive, should become the expressive veils of spiritual sacraments. And all things most beautiful, precious, touching, or sublime in this visible world, enter into the language of faith for the illustration of eternal
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things. Christ Himself made all things that are most homely and familiar to man in the creation the parables of his path, and conduct on the way to Heaven. The noblest inventions of the human mind and heart are industriously combined with the best materials the earth can afford to honour God in His temples and Church. Wherever a few faithful men are gathered, the Church soars above all human habitations, and proclaims the dominion of God and the supremacy of faith. In a country of faith, every point in the landscape that meets the eye is consecrated by a Church where God is honoured, or by the saving Cross, the symbol of the soul's dominion over the sensual part of man.
It would be long to tell how the promise of Christ has been fulfilled even on this earth, that " blessed are the meek, for they shall possess the land ". But we may recall the long ages when monasteries of meek men, the practical philosophers of Christianity, devoted to the law of perfection, and convents of tender women, made strong by a like consecration and discipline, raised their great structures in every town and city ; on the mountain side, in the green valley, and by the murmuring stream. These were the strongholds of God's law and counsels, and of the works of mercy spiritual and corporal. These were the mansions of peace, where prayer went up to God for all man- kind, and the ignorant found light, the sorrowing comfort, the needy relief, and the houseless shelter; and all was done and given for the love of God. Hospitals opened their doors to the aged, the maimed, and the sick, providing all things both for body and soul. It would be long to tell how much of this world's goods was devoted by faith, and even in these unbelieving times is still devoted by faith, to charity.
The redemption of Christ has therefore brought a certain de- liverance even to the inferior creatures, and an exaltation of them towards their final end. Man repaired in the image of God, and reformed to His likeness, has recovered not a little of that secondary dominion both over himself and over the inferior creation, especially by the law of self-denial. The more of spiritual life he recovers, the higher his dominion rises over sen- sible things, the more he spiritualises even those material and earthly things, and makes them the servants of his faith and charity. He thus becomes the true representative of God to the inferior creation, and the mind and voice of the inferior creation
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to God. By the gift of faith he sees God more clearly in His works, and by the gift of charity he learns how best to use the works of God to their noblest ends. From the bosom of creation his sanctity can draw secrets that are hidden from the ungodly and the proud. A Saint Bernard will learn more of God among the rocks, woods, and solitudes of nature than from all his books. A Saint Francis will see God's love and tenderness in every living creature, however insignificant to less faithful eyes, and will converse with them as though they were his brethren. Saints have risen to God in rapture from looking into the serene heavens, or from comtemplating the beauty of a flower. To read the Psalms with a Christian heart is to feel how the inspired king made a harp out of the whole creation, on which to celebrate the power and the majesty, the goodness and the mercy, the tenderness and condescension of our Divine Creator and Provider. The Christian poets and saints have followed the example of the royal Psalmist, and, as the priests of nature, have given a tongue to all the mute creation, that through the heart of man they might render glory to their Sovereign Lord.
LECTURE IV.
CREATION AND PROVIDENCE. •' There is no other god but Thou, who hast care of all." — Wisdom xii. 13.
GOD is the one self-subsisting Being, the reason of whose being is Himself. He is the one all -perfect Being, than whom nothing more perfect can be thought of. His Being and Goodness are one and the same, without beginning, limitation, or end of being. He has expressed His own absolute Being by the incommunicable name Jehova — I am who am. He has expressed His perfect unity by the term / a7n, and there is no other. The word being in its absolute sense belongs to God alone : the word existence properly belongs to the creation. God is, the creation exists from Him.
To define is to mark out the limitations of what is defined. It is obvious, therefore, that God is undefinable. To attempt to irieasure God by the light of human reason is to assume that He is not greater than the measure of human reason ; but this is equivalent to denying Him. St. Athanasius observes with pro- found truth : " God is the definer of all definitions ; He defineth all things, but cannot Himself be defined. He cannot be defined because His essence comes under no terms by which He can be expressed."*
Yet it does not follow because we know not God in Himself that we do not know Him in His manifestations of Himself. What do we know of any human being but what he makes known to us ? We cannot see his spirit, or take the measure of his soul. We are not ignorant of God, of His attributes, or of His ways. God is present to our existence, which could not be without His presence.
* S. Athanasius, L. Via Duds, c. ii. 6
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He is present to the light of our reason that leads us up to Him : He is present to our conscience that proclaims to us His moral law : He is present to our life that derives its force from Him. God is present in His truth, is present in His law, is present in His providence and care of all things. He is present in an unspeakable manner in the splendour of His supernatural truth, mercy, and goodness, to our faith and love. For although the essential Being of God is to us incomprehensible, and His divine life inaccessible, yet he sends forth His light and His truth, and they lead and guide us to know more of God than of ourselves, or of any creature whatsoever. For what know we of any of His creatures but their surface qualities ? What know we of ourselves, except what God has taught us? The inward nature and sub- stance of all things are hidden from our sight. But in the light of God we see light, and in that light, which is its own evidence, we know that God is, and that whatever He is beyond our compre- hension, to our most certain knowledge He is the Infinite Spirit and Eternal Life, and is Almighty, All-wise, and All-good. We also know that God is the Creator, Lord, and Father of all things, and that He beholds all things, governs all things, and provides