CITY OF NEW YORK.

GOD'S IMAGE IN MAN.

I.

THE NATURE OF GOD.

"From Thee, great God, we spring, to Thee we tend, Path, Motive, Guide, Original, and End."

WHAT an overwhelming subject for contemplation! Can the human interpret the Divine? Philosophers have reasoned about it, poets have sung of it, mystics have dreamed of it, and prophets, apostles, and martyrs have had it revealed to them in varying degrees of distinctness. Let us in the simple character of dear children, yearning to know more of Our Heavenly Father, confidingly draw near to Him. The feebleness of our loftiest perception inclines us to shrink back, when we would come face to face with the Infinite. We are confronted by our materialism, our spiritual

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dulness, the magnitude of the subject, and the poverty of language and expression. Solomon's Temple could not contain Him, and so our most expanded and enlightened comprehension is too puny to hold more than a few drops from the Ocean of Infinity. As we humbly and reverently come into the presence of the "Consuming Fire," let us put off the shoes of our materiality, for we are upon holy ground.

And yet, with all our littleness and ignorance, we receive a warm welcome to the Divine Banquet. As thoughts of the Eternal Mind, and as sparks from that Spiritual Flame which energizes the created universe, we turn lovingly to our Great Source.

In time past we lingered outside the GREAT TEMPLE; we studied its façade from different standpoints; we were curious about the order and symmetry of its architecture; we surveyed its lintels and door-posts, and admired their delicate carvings and tracery. If we stepped over the threshold, we employed ourselves in the outer vestibule with the dutiful observance of ordinances, sacraments, rituals, and penances.

We lingered before tablets, dusty with age, trying to decipher their inscriptions of arrested developments of truth, cast into the hard outline of formulated creeds and confessions. The draperies which separate the vestibule from the Great Auditorium were drawn close by the invisible wires of literalism, materialism, and sectarian loyalty. Let us not longer remain outside among symbols and shadows, but with joyful hearts accept the eternal invitation to come in, and surround ourselves with the endless profusion of good things in the Kingdom of the Real.

Our highest concept of the One Universal Power, Life, Intelligence and Will, we call God. Other nations and peoples have designated their supreme ideals of the Infinite, as Jehovah, Buddha, Allah, the Great Spirit, and many other names, in the vain attempt to adequately express Him through the feeble power of language. The word God originally meant Good. Various suggestive definitions have been given to his name as aids in perfecting our conception of Him. He is infinite Love, Wisdom, Goodness; and there is no space,

place, time, state, nor condition where He does not live and express Himself. To Him nothing can be added, and from Him nothing can be taken away. The divine life is also manifested to us in Order, Law, Harmony, Peace, Wholeness, Truth, Intelligence, Beauty, and Happiness. Our Heavenly Father is perhaps the fittest appellation to apply to that superlative mental picture which is our representation of Him to our own consciousness.

But in glancing backward through the ages and around us at the present time, we find Him designated by other titles which are misleading. He has been called Lord, Sovereign, King, Ruler, Judge, and Potentate. In a certain sense He is all of these; but their primary and peculiar meanings have come from the manifested characters of ambitious and erring men who have assumed these offices. As applied, they have humanized God instead of deifying man. The King was not God-like, but God was made King-like. Fatherhood and Kingship are almost at antipodes. The former signifies love, care, mercy, discipline, tenderness, sympathy; the latter is a synonyme for