66 SERMON XXXVII. SPIRITUAL HARMONY. PSALM Cxlviii. 12. Young men and maidens, old men and children, Page. 502 SERMON I. GEN. i. 26. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." If you wish to know what you are, where you are, what is your work in this world, turn to your Bible, and read; or think over your Belief, which gathers into a few words. the main truths of the Bible. There you will find the knowledge God has given us, a knowledge fit for God to give, and such as lies at the very root of our life and our happiness. It is not that we can see into the inner depths of God's Wisdom and Counsel, for these must ever be hidden from us and beyond our reach; but we can see more, and more truly, by the light that He is pleased to give, than by any thought and searching of our own, though we were the wisest of mankind. However, while we acknowledge that we could never have made out for ourselves B what He has told us in His Word, we are not therefore to be slack in setting our minds to work upon it, that we may learn what is His meaning in each truth that He has laid before us, and what we are to do on account of it. And so when we read that "God said let us make man," we know at once that we cannot see to the depth, and breadth, and height of His Counsel in the making of this His creature; and yet we are stirred up to think that it was a work of great Counsel, and that it is His Will to make something of that Counsel known to us. Now I shall not stay to speak of the Divine Mystery that is found in these words, in that the Father appears to be speaking to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, although, perhaps, that is one of the things we were meant to learn from this verse. I wish now to draw your thoughts to what is here told us about ourselves, that we may think once more seriously what we are, and what we live for, and what we are doing, and see whether we are living according to that which God purposed in creating us, or whether we are turning aside to other things than those for which He made us. It is written, then, that "God said let us make man," and not only so, but that He "said let us make man in our image after our likeness." Now it is not written of any other creature that "God said let us make" it, so that there seems to be some great purpose and counsel of God in the making of man. And there is a reason for man's being thus marked out and counsel being thus taken about him, in that he was to be made in the image and likeness of God. It was now the fulness of time for bringing into the world that being for whom the world was made, and of whose flesh the Son of God Himself would one day take flesh upon Him, so as that He Who was in the beginning with the Father, and by Whom He made the worlds, should become very Man. Well might it be a matter of counsel with the Almighty when, and how, and where, He should make that being which He would hereafter so wonderfully take into Himself. Not that He was troubled and in doubt, as we are when we take counsel; but that the whole counsel of His Wisdom in the making of the world did, as it were, gather itself into one head in' this great and chiefest matter of all His creation, the making of such a soul and body as God should hereafter take to be His own. |