the will, as constituted God the supreme end of man's being, and constituted man a finite reflection of God's moral attributes. Since holiness is the fundamental attribute of God, this must of necessity be the chief attribute of his image in the moral beings whom he creates. That original righteousness was essential to this image, is also distinctly taught in Scripture (Eccl. 7:29; Eph. 4:24; Col. 3:10).

Besides the possession of natural powers, the image of God involves the possession of right moral tendencies. It is not enough to say that man was created in a state of innocence. The Scripture asserts that man had a righteousness like God's: Eccl. 7:29 -"God made man upright"; Eph. 4: 24-"the new man, that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth"- here Meyer says: “xarà Ocóv, ‘after God,' i. e., ad exemplum Dei, after the pattern of God (Gal, 4:28 – κατὰ Ἰσαάκ, after Isaac - as Isaac was). This phrase makes the creation of the new man a parallel to that of our first parents, who were created after God's image; they too, before sin came into existence through Adam, were sinless- 'in righteousness and holiness of truth." On N. T. "truth"= rectitude, see Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 1:257–260.

-

Meyer refers also, as a parallel passage, to Col. 3: 10-"the new man, that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him." Here the "knowledge" referred to is that knowledge of God which is the source of all virtue, and which is inseparable from holiness of heart. "Holiness has two sides or phases: (1) it is perception and knowledge; (2) it is inclination and feeling" (Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:97). On Eph. 4:24 and Col. 3:10, the classical passages with regard to man's original state, see also the Commentaries of DeWette, Rückert, Ellicott, and compare Gen. 5:3 — “And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years, and begat a son in his own likeness, after his image," i. e., in his own sinful likeness, which is evidently contrasted with the "likeness of God (verse 1) in which he himself had been created (An. Par. Bible). 2 Cor. 4:4-"Christ, who is the image of God"— where the phrase "image of God" is not simply the natural, but also the moral, image. Since Christ is the image of God primarily in his holiness, man's creation in the image of God must have involved a holiness like Christ's, so far as such holiness could belong to a being yet untried, that is, so far as respects man's tastes and dispositions prior to moral action.

"Couldst thou in vision see Thyself the man God meant, Thou nevermore couldst be The man thou art - content." Newly created man had right moral tendencies, as well as freedom from actual fault. Otherwise the communion with God described in Genesis would not have been possible. Goethe: "Unless the eye were sunlike, how could it see the sun?" Because a holy disposition accompanied man's innocence, he was capable of obedience, and was guilty when he sinned. The loss of this moral likeness to God was the chief calamity of the Fall. Man is now "the glory and the scandal of the universe." He has defaced the image of God in his nature, even though that image, in its natural aspect, is ineffaceable (E. H. Johnson).

The dignity of human nature consists, not so much in what man is, as in what God meant him to be, and in what God means him yet to become, when the lost image of God is restored by the union of man's soul with Christ. Because of his future possibilities, the meanest of mankind is sacred. The great sin of the second table of the decalogue is the sin of despising our fellow man. To cherish contempt for others can have its root only in idolatry of self and rebellion against God. Abraham Lincoln said well that "God must have liked common people,- else he would not have made so many of them." Regard for the image of God in man leads also to kind and reverent treatment even of those lower animals in which so many human characteristics are foreshadowed. Bradford, Heredity and Christian Problems, 166-"The current philosophy says: The fittest will survive; let the rest die. The religion of Christ says: That maxim as applied to men is just, only as regards their characteristics, of which indeed only the fittest should survive. It does not and cannot apply to the men themselves, since all men, being children of God, are supremely fit. The very fact that a human being is sick, weak, poor, an outcast, and a vagabond, is the strongest possible appeal for effort toward his salvation. Let individuals look upon humanity from the point of view of Christ, and they will not be long in finding ways in which environment can be caused to work for righteousness."

This original righteousness, in which the image of God chiefly consisted, is to be viewed:

(a) Not as constituting the substance or essence of human nature, — for in this case human nature would have ceased to exist as soon as man sinned.

Men every day change their tastes and loves, without changing the essence or substance of their being. When sin is called a "nature," therefore (as by Shedd, in his Essay on "Sin a Nature, and that Nature Guilt"), it is only in the sense of being something inborn (natura, from nascor). Hereditary tastes may just as properly be denominated a "nature" as may the substance of one's being. Moehler, the greatest modern Roman Catholic critic of Protestant doctrine, in his Symbolism, 58, 59, absurdly holds Luther to have taught that by the Fall man lost his essential nature, and that another essence was substituted in its room. Luther, however, is only rhetorical when he says: "It is the nature of man to sin; sin constitutes the essence of man; the nature of man since the Fall has become quite changed; original sin is that very thing which is born of father and mother; the clay out of which we are formed is damnable; the fœtus in the maternal womb is sin; man as born of his father and mother, together with his whole essence and nature, is not only a sinner but sin itself."

(b) Nor as a gift from without, foreign to human nature, and added to it after man's creation,-for man is said to have possessed the divine image by the fact of creation, and not by subsequent bestowal.

As men, since Adam, are born with a sinful nature, that is, with tendencies away from God, so Adam was created with a holy nature, that is, with tendencies toward God. Moehler says: "God cannot give a man actions." We reply: "No, but God can give man dispositions; and he does this at the first creation, as well as at the new creation (regeneration)."

(c) But rather, as an original direction or tendency of man's affections and will, still accompanied by the power of evil choice, and so, differing from the perfected holiness of the saints, as instinctive affection and childlike innocence differ from the holiness that has been developed and confirmed by experience of temptation.

Man's original righteousness was not immutable or indefectible; there was still the possibility of sinning. Though the first man was fundamentally good, he still had the power of choosing evil. There was a bent of the affections and will toward God, but man was not yet confirmed in holiness. Man's love for God was like the germinal filial affection in the child, not developed, yet sincere-"caritas puerilis, non virilis.”

(d) As a moral disposition, moreover, which was propagable to Adam's descendants, if it continued, and which, though lost to him and to them, if Adam sinned, would still leave man possessed of a natural likeness to God which made him susceptible of God's redeeming grace.

Hooker (Works, ed. Keble, 2:683) distinguishes between aptness and ableness. The latter, men have lost; the former, they retain,-else grace could not work in us, more than in the brutes. Hase: "Only enough likeness to God remained to remind man of what he had lost, and enable him to feel the hell of God's forsaking." The moral likeness to God can be restored, but only by God himself. God secures this to men by making "the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God,. dawn upon them" (2 Cor. 4:4). Pusey made Ps. 72: 6-"He will come down like rain upon the mown grass the image of a world hopelessly dead, but with a hidden capacity for receiving life. Dr. Daggett: "Man is a ‘son of the morning (Is. 14:12), fallen, yet arrested midway between heaven and hell, a prize between the powers of light and darkness." See Edwards, Works, 2:19, 20, 381-390; Hopkins, Works, 1:162; Shedd, Hist. Doctrine, 2:50-66; Augustine, De Civitate Dei, 14:11.

In the light of the preceding investigation, we may properly estimate two theories of man's original state which claim to be more Scriptural and reasonable:

A. The image of God as including only personality.

This theory denies that any positive determination to virtue inhered originally in man's nature, and regards man at the beginning as simply possessed of spiritual powers, perfectly adjusted to each other. This is the view of Schleiermacher, who is followed by Nitzsch, Julius Müller, and Hofmann.

For the view here combated, see Schleiermacher, Christl. Glaube, sec. 60; Nitzsch, System of Christian Doctrine, 201; Julius Müller, Doct. of Sin, 2:113-133, 350-357; Hofmann, Schriftbeweis, 1:287–291; Bib. Sac., 7:409-425. Julius Müller's theory of the Fall in a preexistent state makes it impossible for him to hold here that Adam was possessed of moral likeness to God. The origin of his view of the image of God renders it liable to suspicion. Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 113-" The original state of man was that of childlike innocence or morally indifferent naturalness, which had in itself indeed the possibility (Anlage ) of ideal development, but in such a way that its realization could be reached only by struggle with its natural opposite. The image of God was already present in the original state, but only as the possibility ( Anlage) of real likeness to God-the endowment of reason which belonged to human personality. The reality of a spirit like that of God has appeared first in the second Adam, and has become the principle of the kingdom of God."

Raymond (Theology, 2:43, 132) is an American representative of the view that the image of God consists in mere personality: "The image of God in which man was created did not consist in an inclination and determination of the will to holiness." This is maintained upon the ground that such a moral likeness to God would have rendered it impossible for man to fall,- to which we reply that Adam's righteousness was not immutable, and the bias of his will toward God did not render it impossible for him to sin. Motives do not compel the will, and Adam at least had a certain power of contrary choice. E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 119-122, also maintains that the image of God signified only that personality which distinguished man from the brute. Christ, he says, carries forward human nature to a higher point, instead of merely restoring what is lost. "Very good" (Gen. 1:31) does not imply moral perfection,- this cannot be the result of creation, but only of discipline and will. Man's original state was only one of untried innocence. Dr. Robinson is combating the view that the first man was at his creation possessed of a developed character. He distinguishes between character and the germs of character. These germs he grants that man possessed. And so he defines the image of God as a constitutional predisposition toward a course of right conduct. This is all the perfection which we claim for the first man. We hold that this predisposition toward the good can properly be called character, since it is the germ from which all holy action springs.

In addition to what has already been said in support of the opposite view, we may urge against this theory the following objections:

(a) It is contrary to analogy, in making man the author of his own holiness; our sinful condition is not the product of our individual wills, nor is our subsequent condition of holiness the product of anything but God's regenerating power.

To hold that Adam was created undecided, would make man, as Philippi says, in the highest sense his own creator. But morally, as well as physically, man is God's creature. In regeneration it is not sufficient for God to give power to decide for good; God must give new love also. If this be so in the new creation, God could give love in the first creation also. Holiness therefore is creatable. "Underived holiness is possible only in God; in its origin, it is given both to angels and men." Therefore we pray: "Create in me a clean heart" (Ps. 51:10); "Incline my heart unto thy testimonies" (Ps. 119: 36). See Edwards, Eff. Grace, sec. 43-51; Kaftan, Dogmatik, 290-"If Adam's perfection was not a moral perfection, then his sin was no real moral corruption." The animus of the theory we are combating seems to be an unwillingness to grant that man, either in his first creation or in his new creation, owes his holiness to God.

(b) The knowledge of God in which man was originally created logically presupposes a direction toward God of man's affections and will, since only the holy heart can have any proper understanding of the God of holiness.

"Ubi caritas, ibi claritas." Man's heart was originally filled with divine love, and out of this came the knowledge of God. We know God only as we love him, and this love comes not from our own single volition. No one loves by command, because no one can give himself love. In Adam love was an inborn impulse, which he could affirm or deny. Compare 1 Cor. 8:3-"if any man loveth God, the same [ God ] is known by him "; 1 John 4: 8 — “He that loveth not knoweth not God." See other Scripture references on pages 3, 4.

(c) A likeness to God in mere personality, such as Satan also possesses, comes far short of answering the demands of the Scripture, in which the ethical conception of the divine nature so overshadows the merely natural. The image of God must be, not simply ability to be like God, but actual likeness.

God could never create an intelligent being evenly balanced between good and evil — "on the razor's edge"-"on the fence." The preacher who took for his text "Adam, where art thou?" had for his first head: "It is every man's business to be somewhere;" for his second: "Some of you are where you ought not to be;" and for his third: "Get where you ought to be, as soon as possible." A simple capacity for good or evil is, as Augustine says, already sinful. A man who is neutral between good and evil is already a violator of that law, which requires likeness to God in the bent of his nature. Delitzsch, Bib. Psychol., 45-84-"Personality is only the basis of the divine image,— it is not the image itself." Bledsoe says there can be no created virtue or viciousness. Whedon (On the Will, 388) objects to this, and says rather: "There can be no created moral desert, good or evil. Adam's nature as created was pure and excellent, but there was nothing meritorious until he had freely and rightly exercised his will with full power to the contrary." We add: There was nothing meritorious even then. For substance of these objections, see Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 2:346. Lessing said that the character of the Germans was to have no character. Goethe partook of this cosmopolitan characterlessness (Prof. Seely). Tennyson had Goethe in view when he wrote in The Palace of Art: "I sit apart, holding no form of creed, but contemplating all." And Goethe is probably still alluded to in the words: “A glorious devil, large in heart and brain, That did love beauty only, Or if good, good only for its beauty"; see A. H. Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 331; Robert Browning, Christmas Eve: "The truth in God's breast Lies trace for trace upon ours impressed: Though he is so bright, and we so dim, We are made in his image to witness him."

B. The image of God as consisting simply in man's natural capacity for religion.

This view, first elaborated by the scholastics, is the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. It distinguishes between the image and the likeness of God. The former (- Gen. 1:26) alone belonged to man's nature at its creation. The latter (7) was the product of his own acts of obedience. In order that this obedience might be made easier and the consequent likeness to God more sure, a third element was added-an element not belonging to man's nature- namely, a supernatural gift of special grace, which acted as a curb upon the sensuous impulses, and brought them under the control of reason. Original righteousness was therefore not a natural endowment, but a joint product of man's obedience and of God's supernatural grace.

Roman Catholicism holds that the white paper of man's soul received two impressions instead of one. Protestantism sees no reason why both impressions should not have been given at the beginning. Kaftan, in Am. Jour. Theology, 4:708, gives a good statement of the Roman Catholic view. It holds that the supreme good transcends the finite mind and its powers of comprehension. Even at the first it was beyond man's created nature. The donum superadditum did not inwardly and personally belong to him. Now that he has lost it, he is entirely dependent on the church for truth and grace. He does not receive the truth because it is this and no other, but because the church tells him that it is the truth.

The Roman Catholic doctrine may be roughly and pictorially stated as follows: As created, man was morally naked, or devoid of positive righteousness (pura naturalia, or in puris naturalibus). By obedience he obtained as a reward from God (donum supernaturale, or superadditum) a suit of clothes or robe of righteousness to protect him, so that he became clothed (vestitus). This suit of clothes, however, was a sort of magic spell of which he could be divested. The adversary attacked him and stripped him of his suit. After his sin he was one despoiled (spoliatus). But his condition after differed from his condition before this attack, only as a stripped man differs from a naked man (spoliatus a nudo). He was now only in the same state in which he was created, with the single exception of the weakness he might feel as the result of losing his customary clothing. He could still earn himself another suit,-in fact, he could earn two or more, so as to sell, or give away, what he did not need for himself. The phrase in puris naturalibus describes the original state, as the phrase spoliatus a nudo describes the difference resulting from man's sin.

Many of the considerations already adduced apply equally as arguments against this view. We may say, however, with reference to certain features peculiar to the theory:

(a) No such distinction can justly be drawn between the words Dy and The addition of the synonym simply strengthens the expression, and both together signify "the very image."

(b) Whatever is denoted by either or both of these words was bestowed upon man in and by the fact of creation, and the additional hypothesis of a supernatural gift not originally belonging to man's nature, but subsequently conferred, has no foundation either here or elsewhere in Scripture. Man is said to have been created in the image and likeness of God, not to have been afterwards endowed with either of them.

(c) The concreated opposition between sense and reason which this theory supposes is inconsistent with the Scripture declaration that the work of God's hands "was very good" (Gen. 1:31), and transfers the blame of temptation and sin from man to God. To hold to a merely negative innocence, in which evil desire was only slumbering, is to make God author of sin by making him author of the constitution which rendered sin inevitable.

(d) This theory directly contradicts Scripture by making the effect of the first sin to have been a weakening but not a perversion of human nature, and the work of regeneration to be not a renewal of the affections but merely a strengthening of the natural powers. The theory regards that first sin as simply despoiling man of a special gift of grace and as putting him where he was when first created-still able to obey God and to cooperate with God for his own salvation, whereas the Scripture represents man since the fall as "dead through . . . trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1), as incapable of true obedience (Rom. 8: 7-"not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be "), and as needing to be "created in Christ Jesus for good works" (Eph. 2:10).

At few points in Christian doctrine do we see more clearly than here the large results of error which may ultimately spring from what might at first sight seem to be only a slight divergence from the truth. Augustine had rightly taught that in Adam the posse non peccare was accompanied by a posse peccare, and that for this reason man's holy disposition needed the help of divine grace to preserve its integrity. But the scholastics wrongly added that this original disposition to righteousness was not the outflow of man's nature as originally created, but was the gift of grace. As this later teaching, however, was by some disputed, the Council of Trent (sess. 5, cap. 1) left the matter