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GOD'S FAITH IN MAN*

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth."-GEN. i. 26.

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HAVE chosen this text because it empha

sizes, it seems to me, one of the constantly overlooked truths of the Bible, of history, of experience. We make much of man's faith in God; and in this we do well, for without faith it is impossible to please either God or man. Now man's faith in God is one of the imperial and creative facts of history; it speaks for itself; it is the genius of salvation, the father of heroism, the mother of sacrifice, the brother of service, the sister of mercy. Studying the characters and achievements of men and women fed on the breasts of faith, we seem to realize at least a part of the truth of our Lord's declaration "that all things are possible to him that believeth." "The root of all theology," says Principal Forsyth, "is real religion; of all Christian theology, and even apologetic, it is Christian religion, it is saving faith in Jesus Christ. It is justifying faith, in the sense of faith in a forgiving God through the

*Delivered before the Interdenominational Ministers' Association of Toronto, Canada, January 20, 1919.

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cross of Jesus Christ." Thus faith in God is the crucial point for each of us. Moreover, it must be a definite faith, if we are to vividly experience the glow of divine sonship in our spiritual consciousness. It is not just faith in God; it is faith in the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. "The essential thing in a New Testament Christianity," says the author just quoted, "is that it came to settle in a final way the issue between a holy God and the guilt of man." Much of our present-day Christianity endeavors to escape from this pressing problem; and every individual and national attempt to do so results in disastrous confusion. Men talk glibly of a final religion as if it were something to be finally evolved in the far-off future. "Evolution is within Christianity, but Christianity is not within evolution." Vaster than the physical universe, Christianity takes no orders from matter; it gives meaning to the cosmos while it illuminates Time and Eternity. Once and forever God has given us the final religion in the Son of His Bosom; every soul who receives Him knows His finality; and He is received by faith, and faith alone. Therefore, without lightening, by the weight of a breath, the necessity for placing increasing emphasis upon man's faith in God, I wish to consider with you another side of the shield of faith; I had almost said the dustcovered side, the side which discloses God's faith in man.

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The supreme proof of God's faith in man is furnished by God Himself. The field is large, asking for a wide survey; yet there is a certain advantage in concentration, even restriction. Therefore, let us approach this phase of our study along a twofold path.

First, God's faith in man is evidenced by the place man occupies in the scale of being. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." Thus are we splendidly challenged to consider man's claim to distinction, to uniqueness, in the wide-ranging creations of the Almighty. What is it? It consists in the fact that man is made in the image of God: He thinks, he wills, he reasons, he loves, he creates, he bears the weight of Godhood, for glory or for shame, through all the epochs of his deathless career. As a youngster, I read an impressive, if somewhat fancifully picturesque, description of man's creation. When God, in Holy Counsel, resolved to make man, some of the other and older orders of the universe desired that man should be patterned after them. The Evening Star said: "Make him like me." Aurora, goddess of the dawn, said: “Make him like me." Helios, god of the sun, said: "Make him like me." Finally, an archangel, robed in majesty, sublimely stood in the presence of God, and said: "Make him like me." But God refused them all, saying: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness."

The picture is at least luminous with this truth: Man occupies a position of solitary grandeur in the scale of all created being. He asks no favors of a measureless universe of matter; the worlds may crush his body, and man can still get on-gloriously and unhinderingly on— without corpuscles or atoms, unceasingly chanting his music of Love and Mind as he journeys the mystic ways of being. Man asks no odds of the angels; God never intended that man should imitate even the angels; He desires that man should be his wonderfully human self-a little god, a junior partner in the work of making earth and time spheres of high conduct and worthful achievement. "But," you ask, "what has all this to do with God's faith in man?" Well, I assume that the Almighty, thoroughly understanding His business, never would have placed man in such an august scale in creation, without having entire faith that man is capable of meeting the demands required by his exceptional rôle. It was as if the good God had said: "O man, My frail human child, you are very dear unto Me. There was great loneliness in My heart until I begot thee. Unlike the angels, you have been given a body that aches and dies. Unlike the animals, you have been given a mind that aspires, a spirit that gazes through its bodily windows upon My Face. Standing midway between the angel and the animal, a little lower than the one, infinitely higher than the other, you are different from either. In My universe there is a tiny star

named Earth. Thereon life is to be manifested that angels are ill adapted to; thereon careers must be begun that animals cannot understand. It is a strange and beautiful world, O Child of My Heart! I have ribboned it with seas; I have roofed it with galaxies; I have sowed it with countless forms of life; but it lacks a human lord, a human overseer, a human leader. The need of you among the worlds is great; you are My answer to this yearning need. Go forth from My hand with the blessing of a faithful Creator. You shall be lonely, tempted, defeated; but your loneliness shall speak to My fellowship; your temptation shall call for My help; your defeat shall make possible My triumph. At last, having been faithful unto death, you shall come back Home Home to the Deathless and the Tearless -Home to God's Heart-Home to the Holiness, the Laughter, the Love, and the Music that dwells behind the stars."

Because of God's investments in man, I feel assured that the human enterprise cannot permanently fail. Retrogressions and progressions there have been and will continue to be epochal backslidings and mighty forward movements. Self-wounded, bleeding, war-cursed, sin-crazed, the staggering Human Giant seems unable to reach Home; but just when his degradation is the deepest and his besotted condition the most discouraging, there are sudden unveilings of suppressed splendor, swift outflashings of unsuspected nobility, tremendous exhibitions of holy