To be near unto God - pagina 149

angel, of the Messiah, or as in Isaiah 6, of the Eternal Being himself, takes place in human form, in human dress, and with the use of human lanWith appearances of angels there is no guage. mention of wings, borrowed from the animal world; of these we read in connection with Seraphs surrounding God's throne. The fixed application of the human form in this connection is significant. The appearance of spirits in human form is immediately connected with the creation of man after God's image. Christ himself is called the Image of the Invisible God, "the express Image of his person." And we are told that man is created after this Image, so that there is a certain likeness between these two.

What then could have been more natural than that the Eternal God, in order to reveal himself to man, either by himself or by his angels, should have passed over from himself to his Image, and from his Image to man? The very thought that there is an Image of God implies that it is a mistake to think that there can be no distinction and no expression in a spirit. It shows that God's life

by

itself

is

not an unbroken sameness, but

that it consists of an infinite yet undivided fulness of distinctions, and that this varied life which is continually present with him in his consciousness, is to him the Image of his Divine Being. In any case it is certain that when God created man after his Image, this Image was there before he could create man after it. And also that this Image has always provided the way by which to reveal himself to man in human form. This was only completed in the fulness of time at Bethle-

hem, though

it

was foreshadowed 145

in

previous

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