The “image” or likeness of God in which man was made has, by some, been assigned to the body; by others, to the soul. It has, also, been placed in the circumstance of his having “_dominion_” over the other creatures. As to the body, it is not necessary to prove that in no sense can it bear the image of God; that is, be “_like_” God. An upright form has no more likeness to God than a prone or reptile one; God is incorporeal, and cannot be the antitype of any thing material.
Equally unfounded is the notion that the image of God in man consisted in the “dominion” which was granted to him over this lower world. Limited dominion may, it is true, be an image of large and absolute dominion; but man is not said to have been made in the image of God’s dominion, which is an accident merely, for, before creatures existed, God himself could have no dominion:--he was made in the image and likeness of God himself. Still farther, it is evident that man, according to the history, was made in the image of God _in order_ to his having dominion, as the Hebrew particle imports; and, therefore, his dominion was consequent upon his formation in the “image” and “likeness” of God, and could not be that image itself.
The notion that the original resemblance of man to God must be placed in some one essential quality, is not consistent with holy writ, from which alone we can derive our information on this subject. We shall, it is true, find that the Bible partly places it in what is essential to human nature; but that it should comprehend nothing else, or consist in one quality only, has no proof or reason; and we are, in fact, taught that it comprises also what is so far from being essential that it may be both lost and regained. When God is called “the Father of spirits,” a likeness is suggested between man and God in the _spirituality_ of their nature. This is also implied in the striking argument of St. Paul with the Athenians: “Forasmuch, then, as we are the OFFSPRING of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art and man’s device;”--plainly referring to the idolatrous statues by which God was represented among Heathens. If likeness to God in man consisted in bodily shape, this would not have been an argument against human representations of the Deity; but it imports, as Howe well expresses it, that “we are to understand that our resemblance to him, as we are his offspring, lies in some higher, more noble, and more excellent thing, of which there can be no figure; as who can tell how to give the figure or image of a thought, or of the mind or thinking power?” In _spirituality_, and, consequently, immateriality, this image of God in man, then, in the first instance, consists. Nor is it any valid objection to say, that “immateriality is not peculiar to the soul of man; for we have reason to believe that the inferior animals are actuated by an immaterial principle.” This is as certain as analogy can make it: but though we allow a spiritual principle to animals, its _kind_ is obviously inferior; for that spirit which is incapable of induction and moral knowledge, must be of an inferior order to the spirit which possesses these capabilities; and this is the kind of spirit which is peculiar to man.
