Let us inquire into the meaning of "being made in the image and after the likeness of God?" Surely the writer could not have been speaking of any physical likeness. God is not a huge man, nor is He a finite being circumscribed by limited form. God is Universal Spirit, the Life Principle and intelligent Energy pervading all. The writer must have been referring to a spiritual and mental likeness, not to a physical correspondence.
Man, as the image of eternity, is made of God stuff. He partakes of the Divine Nature. His likeness to "The
(page 13) Ancient of Days" is a spiritual likeness. On the scale of the individual he reprcduces the Universal. As God is, in the big world, so man is, in the little world;—a small circle within an infinite one;—the same elements, the same nature, but not all of that nature. Since this is true of man's nature he is compelled, by reason of that nature, to use a creative power in, his own life. God's word is the creative impulse, stirring the universal law into action; man's word reproduces the same power in a smaller way. Man is the creative center of his own individual world. And this within the order of universal law, for man cannot break nor mar the face of eternity.
Let us ponder deeply on this thought. We are creative centers within the whole; individuals equipped with volition and self-choice. What untold agony and what sublime heights this idea supposes! Heaven or hell, which? As a Man thinketh! Heaven is lost for want of an idea of harmony. Hell is peopled with the symbols of human confusion.
Let us exercise our imagination for a moment and suppose that we are Gods and wish to make man after our image and in our likeness. We wish him to be free and happy but we know this can be brought about only by creating him and letting him discover his own nature. He must do this through a process of evolution or unfoldment, for could he awake to himself at once he would only awake to an eternal bondage. He must learn by experience, he must evolve through slow processes of time, and gradually become aware of his true nature and his relationship to us. We love him from the start. Indeed our (page14) love is so great that we will have nothing short of complete freedom for our creation.
Could we do this unless we made man and let him alone to discover himself? Of course not. As God can do nothing that contradicts His Nature.
Man is made with free will, therefore with the possibility of dual experience. He is not compelled to go one way or the other; but is left to discover which way is best. His thought and act, being creative, become his task master, driving him whither their tendency leads. Do we not recognize in this the law of cause and effect, set in motion through individual volition and free choice. Man can learn only through experience until the time comes when he is in complete unity with God, then he will know without first having experienced.