The work of the Holy Spirit - pagina 506

SANCTIFICATION

466

he alone was the bearer of the divine image. Dominion over all the earth was given to him he is even " The Son assumed the nature, not of angels, to judge the angels. but of man." To say that this means that man is only a mirror reflecting the pointed to him

in Paradise

;

;

divine nature

is

the vain effort of this sickly mysticism to reconcile

man's significance with its own pantheistic theories. The Scripture teaches, not that God reflects something in us, but that He imparts it to us. The love of God by the Holy Spirit is shed abroad The Lord makes us His temple and enters therein. in our hearts. A divine seedKs placed in the soul. Pure water is sprinkled upon us. The Scripture uses many other images to warn us against the false theory that denies the inherent disposition in the soul and reduces man to a mere looking-glass. The branch is not a reflection of the A child is vine, but grows from the trunk bearing leaf and cluster. being possessed of life and the father, but a not a mere mirror of merely fails one who to reflect correctly, not An enemy is quality. but a being endowed with real existence. To make man, even as God's instrument, a mere mirror in prin-

and changes

ciple denies sin, destroys the sense of responsibility,

actual life

The

into the fancies of a dream.

God man

Scripture teaches on this point that before

nothing; that only through

God man

is

something; and that

is

all in-

herent and acquired goodness comes only from the Fountain of

all

good. And, following in the steps of the Reformed fathers, we must maintain this doctrine. But to deny man's real and peculiar being is inconsistent with Scripture and with the Confession.

Thus escaping from the chaos ing to the purified

and ordained

of a false mysticism,

truth,

we

find

no more

and returndifficulty in

Of course, if God's child is but a polished mirror, sanctification. then they who deny the inherent, holy disposition are right, and such disposition

and

all

is

that can be seen in

of the

image

of his

own

qualities.

of God.

kind,

A

As a

out of the question.

it is

But

if

mirror,

man

is

dead,

but a faint and passing reflection man, as God's instrument, has being

him

is

natural that besides being,

being without qualities

is

God gave him

unthinkable.

qualities in every sphere: in the material world, for

also

There are

man

eats,

drinks, walks, and sleeps; in the intellectual world, for he thinks,

judges, and decides

;

in matters of taste, for

he judges things to be

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