Nothing can be known of God, save as He is pleased to reveal. Man has projected an imaginary being, the creation of his own mind, the personification of the qualities he finds in himself-has clothed it with power beyond his own, has deified and worshipped it. In result he has worshipped himself, or a demon behind himself. The wisest among the old heathen could not go beyond himself, that is, he could not conceive other attributes than nature displayed. These were developed to perfection in his gods, but it was the perfection of sin. And if there were no other surer and better way, we could learn in measure what man is from the gods he has made and worshipped. Let the cunningly-devised fables of pagan idolatry bear testimony. The portraits of man's deities were sketched in his heart, and painted in the colors of a degraded imagination. Thus man is known from the character of his gods. His gods are the impersonation of his sin, the apotheosis of his vices. Man is not merely a sinner, but a worshipper of sin, a slave of Satan.
The effect of man's inability to go beyond himself is, that he never conceived the idea of an eternal God, though he ought to have apprehended through creation His eternal power and divinity. His gods may be called immortal, but be gave them a beginning, and put them under a superior power, whose decrees could not be set aside. So incapable was man to conceive the idea of self-existence, that he must have a fate to control his gods, and must hide his conscious ignorance in chaos.
The knowledge of God was given up. Men did not like to retain God in their knowledge. (Rom. 1) Never did the mind of man in itself conceive the truth of One infinite in power and wisdom, infinite in goodness and love. The cultured and the refined were as far from it as the rude untutored savage. The world by wisdom knew not God. He is only to be known from and by Himself-from His own word, and by His own Spirit. Nature, on which infidelity rests as the means of rising from the visible to a knowledge of the Invisible, fails to tell who and what God is. Nature was never intended to tell us. But even what nature, or rather creation, should have shown was reasoned away-His eternal power and divinity. The heavens declare His glory, and the firmament showeth His handiwork. But not even that glorious display of wisdom and power could tell more than that there must be God, not that God in His nature was essentially light and love.
Men pretend to see love in the present condition of the earth, and argue for the necessity of evil, misery, and death as the best, if not the only, means of bringing the human race to a state of perfection. This is a libel upon the character of God. With infidelity evil is not the result of sin, but the condition in which man was created. That which makes other eyes weep, and other hearts ache, is for the infidel the beneficent arrangement of a wise and mighty God, who brings in evil to obtain good!
The Bible alone accounts for the presence of evil, and its resultant misery and death. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. It is a righteous thing that misery and death, with all their concomitant evils, should be the lot of man-the righteous dealings of a just and holy God with rebels; and, while sin remains, righteousness demands that all these evils-the fruit of sin-should also remain. Even God's saints, while here in the body, are exposed to the sorrows to which humanity is heir. The Lord Jesus Himself submitted, in grace truly, to all the consequences-sin excepted-of taking a place among men and specially the remnant of Israel, a thing wholly distinct from being made sin on the cross. To remove the sufferings while sin is present would be a denial of God's righteous government.
But is the present state of the world always to continue? Will there be no deliverance for a groaning creation? And if there be, when? and how? The Bible, in all the simplicity and majesty of truth, gives God's answer. There we learn His purpose before the world was made to manifest Himself, not only as a God that can create, and judge or destroy, but also as a God that can save. He who in Genesis is the Creator-God closes that wonderful book by declaring Himself the Savior-God in all its fullness. This is His declared purpose. The means of accomplishing it is by the Son appearing on earth in the guise of a man, and so meeting all the claims of divine righteousness, and expressing in the highest degree God's love for the lost. And this is the subject of God's book. Every doctrine contained in it, every fact therein recorded, each and all are subservient to this one great unchanging purpose. God will be a Savior-God. Creation could only bring out the fact of His eternal power and divinity. It displayed these divine attributes, but never could display His nature. God is light and love. There was a display of love in the circumstances and condition of the first man in the garden, as far as creation could show it; but that God is love, and could show it in the presence of sin, was not known, nor could be. Man's sin quickly brought out the fact that God is light, and no less quickly did death, the immediate offspring of sin, bring out the fact that God is love. And the cross is the divine proof of both. To be thus known and to receive the praises due from an intelligent responsible creature was His eternal purpose. Had there been no sin, with its resultant evils, we could not tell how He would have been worshipped as a Savior-God. The infinite depths of His love would not have had this sphere for its display. But God would be known to a redeemed creation, so that all that He is might be known, and bring forth praises which are His due and delight.
Was sin, then, a necessity for such a manifestation of what God is? We can only answer that this is the way in which He is known. God forbid the thought that He caused sin in order to display Himself. Infinite are the ways in which He could make Himself known to an intelligent creature in all the unfathomable depths of His nature. We cannot go beyond facts; and the two great facts of this world's history are, that sin has come into it, and God has used sin as the occasion to show Himself in all the infiniteness of love and grace. And so, if the first words of Genesis declare His glory as the Creator-God, the last words of the Revelation reveal Him as the Savior-God, full of grace and truth. The last words of His book are His invitation to the lost, weary soul to take freely of the water of life: “Whosoever will, let him come and take of the water of life freely.” Not that this invitation is displayed till the end; the gracious words had long before been heard, uttered in anticipation of the glorious fact which alone is the ground of redemption-the cross. The same free grace, under the same figure, was preached by Isaiah years before eternal redemption was accomplished by Christ on the cross. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.” There was wine, and milk, and honey beside: wine to cheer and make the heart glad, milk to nourish, honey to sweeten every trial throughout the pathway; but all without money and without price. It was the message of Jehovah-God to the lost sheep of Israel. The Lord Jesus comes with the same, offer, the same grace brought palpably nearer in His own person. “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst...It shall be in him a fountain of water springing up unto everlasting life.” Fullness, freeness, and inexhaustibility are the attributes of this living water. And now, at the close of the book, the Spirit, by the pen of John, re-echoes the living invitation to all. The thirsty one, and whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely. Is not this to be a Savior-God? The whole Trinity is seen in the call. The one God in Israel; Jesus, the Son, sent of the Father in the gospel; the Holy Ghost in the revelation, as the continued expression of Him who, when in the world, had but the one word for the laboring and the heavy-laden-” Come, I will give, you rest;” “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.”
Thus we now know Him. Heaven could not show it. Hell is the place of judgment. Earth is the platform where the purposes of richest grace are wrought and morally accomplished. In His book we may mark it, step by step, unto the end.
In the Bible there are three distinct objects about which God has a purpose: first, the material world and man in general; secondly, Israel, as a chief and special people on and for the earth; and thirdly, the saints destined for heaven, including the church, of which Christ is the Head, and which is also the habitation of God by the Spirit. These are three different lines, yet connected, and converging to one point.
Praise to God will be the result of His work. Looking onward to the coming kingdom, how bright and varied the scene. Though not the full result, yet there will be peace on earth and glory to God. The curse will be removed, for Jesus will reign, and the efficacy of His cross be felt even by the earth. Israel, the chosen people, exalted as princes over all, while the church will be seen in heavenly glory. This is the time when all things will be headed up in Christ. In the holy mountain-Christ's kingdom by right of descent from David-there will be nothing to hurt or destroy; Israel be all taught of God; the whole earth-His by purchase will be full of His glory. The new Jerusalem will appear out of heaven in all the splendor of a bride adorned for her husband, in all the glory of her Bridegroom. Here are varying brightnesses of glory, but one immense fact is the basis of them all-the cross, the focus of glory. And He who once hung there in shame and sorrow, redemption's toil completed, is to sit upon His own throne, King of kings, and Lord of lords. And in eternity, when the new heavens and the new earth shall have been created, when Christ shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father, that God may be all in all, when the last act of this wonderful drama shall have passed, and the session of the judgment before the great white throne shall have closed, then will the full and blessed accomplishment of His eternal counsel be celebrated, and there will be an intelligent and redeemed creation chanting the praises and the glories of a Savior-God. A word was sufficient to create; but to make a sinful yet an intelligent and responsible creature a worshipper, required the work and the blood of His own Son.
We find a process in the creation of the material earth before it became the theater of an intelligent creature. The word simply gives one or two facts. God created the heavens and the earth. Next the earth was without form, and void. Then we are brought down to the period when God began to prepare the earth for man. How long the earth was without form and void before the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters, we are not told. Human science says there were ages between the first creative act and the appearance of man. Geology may be right in many of its deductions, such as the countless years required for the different “formations” which, we are told, were successive. It is said that the earth gives evidence of different stages in its existence, from creation to the time when man was made; that each stage was characterized by different productions, and in different conditions, and endured for ages; and these, having served the purpose of the Creator, passed away, making room for a further stage of His power and wisdom in the formation of the present earth. But scripture, while leaving room for the deductions of science, does not affirm them. A forest, under certain conditions, after the lapse of ages, may become coal, or a piece of charcoal become a diamond. I would only remark that God was able by a word to have created all these appearances which seem to have required ages for their development. Still, there is no solid reason from scripture to doubt these successive changes. On the contrary, there is presumptive evidence of their truth, for the earth is not yet in its last stage. No small change was effected at the deluge, when the waters again covered the face of the earth, “whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.” The breaking up of the fountains of the great deep, and the opening of the windows of heaven, suggest images of disruption which nevertheless may have been exceeded by other and preceding effects of divine power, and also indicative of greater future changes in the earth and surrounding atmosphere than were effected by the overflowing rush of the waters of the flood. For another change is coming, and of far greater importance to man than has ever yet taken place. Not only the earth, but the heavens also, shall pass away. “The heavens shall pass away with a great noise, the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also, and the works that are therein shall be burnt up.” “We look for new heavens, and a new earth.” May we not say that the coming change is a presumptive proof that the inferences of geological researches are substantially correct?
But, admitting these long ages actually to have passed from the original creation of the heavens and the earth to the creation of man, what may we learn from it? That the platform on which God was about to display Himself, as not even heaven could, had a gradual preparation for it according to His wisdom. As if the mighty work to be done, and the dignity of the One who came to do it, required due solemnity and care in its preparation. We shall learn by-and-by, from the Creator Himself, all God's reasons (if I may so express it) for the way and manner of the operation of His creative power and skill. He who says that He has made known to us all that He heard of His Father, will at the right time tell us the history of His works. We know now, from the first verses in Genesis, that no immediate creation of something out of nothing would, according to His wisdom, be fitting for the habitation of man. So there was a process, most briefly expressed in a few short sentences. God created the heavens and the earth. Then the earth was without form and void, and enveloped in darkness. Then the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And it must have been necessary and wise, for it was God who did it.
But it was no moral process, There was no intelligent responsible creature before man. I speak of the earth. When the time came for his creation, God took five days to prepare the earth for him. Night and day were ordered, and lights were made to rule by day and by night, and to be for signs, seasons, days and years. The earth, air, and sea were peopled with living creatures. Why so much care to prepare man's habitation? Because man was to have dominion, and to be lord of all-to be the link between the Creator and His creation. But mark an important change in the manner of the creation of man, compared with that of all other creatures of this earth. Previously God had said, Be, and it was. It was the simple fiat of God. The habitation is ready, and furnished suitably to the dignity of the coming inhabitant. But now the word is changed; not “Be,” but, “Let us make man.” There is the appearance of deliberation, as if such a creature in his formation required due care and consultation. Does God say, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness,” because Adam was to have dominion, and to be the intelligent and responsible head of creation, and because he was to be capable of having a knowledge of His Creator, and therefore of power to worship Him? Nay, these are rather the necessary consequences of being created in the image of God, and after His likeness. Man was the only creature so made, and it was impossible that he should be subordinated to any other creature. The creature who bears the image of God must be officially above all other creatures. What, then, is the divine reason for putting man in such an exalted position? May it not be because the Son was in due time to appear in the likeness of man? “A body hast thou prepared me.” That body was present to the mind of God from eternity; not, of course, prepared, created before time began, but sorely known. When prepared, He who took that creature form as His body was God. And when Adam was made, he was created in the image and likeness of the form the Son was in due time to assume. It is this which gives point and meaning to the words, “after his likeness." Not merely in the image of God, that may look only to the position of Adam as the head of the lower creation, and the representative of God to it. Likeness suggests another thought. The image of the Queen is stamped upon the coin, it is not her likeness. “God is a Spirit;” there was no form till “God was manifest in flesh,” and there could have been no likeness till Jesus, THE MAN, appeared. The Son was to come upon the earth, and His form was to be man. That form must be endowed with all the qualities and prerogatives befitting Him as man. It was in view of the coming Man that we have the form of consultation when God made Adam. He, the Son, left the dwelling-place of His glory, and humbled Himself to assume the form of a creature, to be a man of flesh and blood. Hence the pattern after which man was created-” after his likeness.” Hence the care (apparently) in his formation-” Let us make.” Hence the various powers of man-his capacity for acquiring knowledge, his power of ranging in thought outside his own, existence and his own wants, an imagination that can soar beyond the sight of his eyes, and, having reached the uttermost limit of known creation, boldly leap the boundary, and travel through illimitable space. Hence all the wondrous faculties of his mind. Above all else, that of being able to apprehend the being of a God when revealed, and to whom he owes obedience, adding thus a moral faculty to his intellectual and physical. It is this moral faculty, with a sense of his responsibility to His Creator, which places an impassable gulf between him and every other creature of this earth. No other animal, however sagacious, is a moral and responsible creature. However close their approach to reason, even if other creatures can reason, none but man can have a conscience, and be morally accountable to God. True, it was sin that caused conscience; had there been no sin, there could have been no conscience. But the material was there, the necessary moral faculties of which it is formed. For conscience implies knowledge of God's will, and therefore the capacity of receiving it. It also implies the consciousness of having disobeyed, and of having done wrong in disobeying. These together make conscience. Therefore conscience is the effect of sin.
This at once stamps as being most absurd and disgusting the modern theory, dignified with the name of philosophy, that man is but the development (not yet perfect, perhaps) of some primeval immature creature. These, are soi-disant philosophers who will not even admit that man is an improved monkey, but refer backwards and find his origin in a jelly-fish, and attempt to trace from that source the various steps of development to man such as we see him now. What a blasphemous libel upon Him who said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness"! As before said Adam was made in the likeness of that body which was ever present to the eye of God, and which the Son took when He came. Nor does nature itself fail to exhibit the falseness and absurdity of this notion. For, even if the progressive development theory were true in a physical sense-that is, the higher order of animals the produce of the lower, in other words, the effect greater than the cause-how can they account for the change in the same line of descent from an irresponsible parent to a responsible offspring? There must have been a “fiat” from the Creator to produce this. Has the monkey-to take the stage immediately preceding that of mane moral perception of the being of a God? Of one to whom it owes obedience and is accountable for its actions? This faculty inherent in man, savage or civilized, when did this immense change occur? I do not say that man has now a true idea of God even as a Creator, although the visible things of creation are before his eyes, leaving him without excuse, but that man in his rudest condition has the instinctive perception of a Being above him, more or less controlling him, and noting his actions, though in every case a Being he fears, never loves. But in the process from monkey to man when was this faculty acquired, or given? Was it synchronous with the excision of his caudal appendage? To say that the faculty was developed is sheer nonsense, for development implies the previous existence of the germ of that which is developed. If the development theory be true there must have been a moral element in the constitution of the original jelly-fish! These philosophers object to the “fiats” of the Creator, because it disturbs their theory of progressive development, and what they are pleased to call the order of nature. They do not deny that God originally made the world, but they imagine it to be a clever machine endowed with perpetual motion and which can work out perfection for itself, and by itself, apart from the care and sustaining power of God. It is a direct denial of providence. They exclude God from His own creation, and will not allow Him to have anything to do with it save when and how they please. In effect they say, There is no God. The absurdity of this theory is only equaled by its horrible infidelity, and is repellant to every sober mind.
But wild and baseless as it is, it gives evidence of mental power, though it be most perverted, but it places man quite above the category of a mere animal. Could a monkey become an infidel, a fool and say, “No God “? That is, the theory is its own refutation. And the man who degraded himself by inventing it, only proves by it the height whence he fell. Man was made by God and endowed with faculties and capabilities such as we know him to possess. And this in view of the Man who was not only man but God manifest in flesh.
Scripture then leaves room for successive stages between creation and the appearance of man, but contains enough evidence, and more than enough to convict modern philosophers wandering, upon the dark mountains of Darwinism, or groping among the vestiges of creation, of grossest folly, and that in spite of knowledge. Even the reason of nature blushes at the degradation of such an origin, and rejects the proposed ancestral honors with scorn.
Some may call the intervening periods development, but not accurately. The evidence afforded by different strata seem to point not to a gradual passing away by almost imperceptible changes from one stage to another, as “development” suggests, but rather to violent disruption at different epochs, the upheaval of what was beneath. This could only be by the “fiat” of the Creator. In fact, in creation there is no such thing as infidelity called development. Upon this present earth there are orders and classes of animals each endowed with intelligence, but varied as to degree. We call it instinct. It remains essentially the same now as when animals were first created. The process from tadpole to frog is cited as proof, or illustration of this theory. But tadpole and frog remain now the same as at the beginning. The frog never becomes an ox. The modern infidel's development is younger sister to the metempsychosis of a by-gone age. Both the offspring of a darkened mind. Perhaps its refuge from the just tribunal of an offended Judge, the dread of whose anger lay heavy upon the guilty conscience.
With man God's moral processes begin. There were none before the fall. Adam was placed as the center of the system on the earth, and lord of all. But he quickly fell from his exalted position. One act of sin, and immediately all was changed. Ruined, banished, sin and death at work in his nature, his condition on the earth and his relationship to his Creator became altogether different. Labor and sorrow are now his lot, and the fair body which God pronounced good, after a few years to be resolved into dust, out of which it was made.
But the fall permitted, not caused, became the occasion for the declaration of God's eternal purpose, or of that which must be the sure and only foundation upon which the accomplishment of His purpose is based. “The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head.” The bruising of the heel of the Seed is only the divine way by which the serpent's head must be crushed. And here we may exclaim, how wonderful and past finding out are the ways of God. Was there no other way of bruising the serpent's head than by bruising the Deliverer's heel? No; or the Blessed One would never have been bruised. Then how brightly shine His wisdom, power and love! With whom took He counsel, or who hath known the mind of the Lord? None knew His mind then, but He has now declared it, and in these earliest words we read His purpose. We can only adore in silent wonder. Man fallen must be displayed in all his depths of corruption, in all his subjection to the power of Satan, that the victory of the coming Man, the Son of God, might be complete and perfect in every way.