The Philosophy of Creation/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI.
THE CREATOR.
Creation Necessitates A Creator.
It is a revealed truth that God created man in His own image and likeness. God, then, is a Divine image and likeness of man—or, in other words, He is a Divine Man, and Person. This is also the claim of Jesus Christ, that God was made flesh, and dwelt among us, revealing Himself in His Divine Humanity. The doctrine of creation by Correspondence begins with this revealed truth. To accommodate the argument to reason, and to confirm it by rational truth, we will start with the axiom, which discussion can not make clearer or more certain, namely, that creation necessitates a Creator. This all are harmonious in conceding, for even those who think of a first cause as the Creator acknowledge a Creator under that idea. Differences arise when the Creator is limited to some finite idea, or is assumed to be some specific power or thing.
To begin our reasoning in full agreement, it is necessary only to have that intuition which acknowledges that there must be a creating agency of some kind. It is optional whether it be called a First Cause, a Power or Aptitude, Efficiency, or the Creator, for into any name each may put his idea of the creating agency. With this understanding, there can be no objection to the axiom that creation necessitates a Creator.
Being agreed as far as this, the next step is to ascertain what the First Cause, or the Creator, is. Is the Creator a law, a quality, an unembodied force, a substance, the first principles in nature, a universal intelligence or goodness, a supernatural force, a person, or what? This question can be answered by logic that is irrefutable. It is hoped that the reader may be led to an answer that is clear, definite, and certain. In giving it, only the familiar and universally accepted principles of philosophical reasoning will be used. Yet let it be borne in mind that the reasoning is not based upon any hypothesis. It commences with a universally perceived and accepted axiom, and proceeds with mathematical certainty.
Law Is In The Creator.
First, is law the Creator, or First Cause? Law itself is but a mode of action, and implies something back of it that acts. It can not be said that laws create, but rather that creation is subject to law. Law is not a power, but a rule according to which power acts. Consequently law alone is not the Creator, for a mere principle is essentially nothing; that is, a principle abstracted from its subject is without substantial existence. Yet there is nothing that escapes law. It comprehends every particle of matter as well as the universe. Since law characterizes every created thing, it is conclusive that law is an attribute of the Creator; but as creation itself is more than law, for it has a substantial being, so must be the Creator. If the Creator were naught but law, there would be no way to account for the power inherent in matter and in material forms that manifests itself according to law. Nature is more than law, for it has a substantial existence. The Creator is greater than the thing created, consequently we may know that while law is an attribute of the Creator's acting, the Creator, like nature, is more than law.
Quality Is In The Creator.
Is the Creator, or First Cause, a quality? Qualities cannot exist apart from substance. If the Creator were but a quality, He would be nothing. Yet the Creator, whatever He is, gives to created things their respective qualities, which we at once see would be impossible if the Creator had not quality in Himself. Hence it is certain that quality, as well as law, is in the Creator or First Cause.
The Creator Is Not An Unembodied Force.
That the Creator is not an unembodied force, is evident from the fact that force can not exist apart from an embodying substance. Force is but substance acting. It is intuitively perceived that an unembodied force can not exist, consequently it is known that the Creator, or the First Cause, is not an unembodied force.
The Creator Is A Substance.
It has been observed that neither law, nor quality, nor force exists apart from substance. Law is but the rule according to which substance acts. Quality is derived from the form of substance. Force is the action of a substance, or substance in action. As these have their origin in the Creator, they are in Him, or the First Cause, in their beginnings or elements; but as they can not exist apart from substance, it is conclusive that the Creator is substantial, or substance. Then as the First Cause is substantial, it is as the name implies the highest, purest, and primal substance of which law, quality, and force are attributes, and from which came matter with its attributes.
Intelligence Is In The Creator.
Having deduced the conclusion that the Creator, or First Cause, is substance, the inquiry is not as to the real existence of a Creator, but rather as to the character of the Creator. Let us now further consider the attributes of the substantial First Cause.
Gravity, attraction, atomicity, electricity, heat and light from the sun, and the like, are the only creating agencies generally acknowledged in the discussions of current science. There might be some reason for limiting the creating agency to these essentials of nature if there was not manifestly a realm of forces that transcends them and uses them as servants. Observe how uniformly gravity acts. Attraction and chemical affinities follow their prescribed rules. Capillarity and osmosis operate only within their limitations. Yet out of the passive rock trees are builded up in the perfection of form, flowers unfold with designed beauty and variety, and fruits are produced for human use. Likewise particles of matter gather together, and form the symmetrical bodies of animals, and the forms of human beings, whose faces indicate their characters. Gravity, attraction, chemical affinity, capillarity, osmosis, and atomicity alone or together can not do these things; for they are but attributes of matter, are limited to their own plane, and are as inferior to such results as an organ is to the music that is produced by it. It is clearly perceivable that there is an overruling, governing power that brings together all the separate kinds of nature's forces to the accomplishment of greater works than they alone are capable of, works showing too great design to come from the laws of nature operating at random. Therefore all concede that there is intelligence in the creative force, an intelligence that brings the various forces into harmonious action and design; for it needs no process of reasoning to see that there could not be intelligence in a thing created if there were not even greater intelligence in the creating power. There are those who, having perceived and forcibly felt the truth of this and the consequent absolute inadequacy of the materialistic origin of the higher forms, have attributed creation to a universal intelligence.
An abstract intelligence is unthinkable, yet since intelligence is a marked characteristic of the governing power, we know that it exists in the Creator, or the First Cause. It is asserted that sap and blood flow by osmosis and capillarity, and that by attraction particles take their places and form the organisms of plants and of animals; yet these forces do not explain why a leaf is oblong, or rotund, or lanceolate, nor why the margin is entire, or serrate, or spinate; nor do they offer a reason why in one animal they form claws and in another hoofs. There was a time when upon this earth no animal existed, and consequently there was no such thing as an eye or an ear. Was it not therefore an intelligence of the highest order that knew even that organisms like the eye and the ear could be made, and that the possibilities of the wonderful phenomena of sight and hearing existed? It was the denial of intelligence in the Creator that drew forth these trenchant words that carry their own answer, "He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see?"
Observing further the mutual service of the organs of the human body, and how each thing in it is of use; how each part of the universe is an essential of a symmetrical whole, and each thing is in its use; how there are no mistakes in nature's laws, and how they work in absolute perfection, we are compelled to concede that there is intelligence in the Creator, or First Cause, which must be superior to that in the things produced.
No one, it seems, denies a form of intelligence in the creating agency. Differences arise in endeavoring to form a conception of that intelligence. The thought of intelligence creating seems incredible, because under that idea the impression comes that the Creator must build the things created much as a man does a house, shaping this timber and that stone in an arbitrary way, and then bringing all together, while the fact appears that every atom is subject to and operates by fixed laws. This apparent difficulty will be removed later when the requisite data are brought forward. Sufficient for the present to make the point that the intelligence displayed in the effect must reside also in the Creator, or First Cause. "He that teacheth man knowledge, shall not He know?" Thus far there can be no difference of opinion. Later the nature of that intelligence will be considered.
Life Is In The Creator.
The Creator, or First Cause, has also in Him the element of life. In order that the Creator may impart mineral, plant, and animal life. He must contain the essentials of these three degrees of life in Himself. No matter what life is, the Creator must be that life in the universal, highest, and purest form. Life in created things is a form of activity. All science so teaches. It follows that the Creator could not communicate activity except from activity. There is, therefore, activity in the Creator.
Life is not a created thing, yet it is a form of the activity of substance. The life of anything is its activity. The life in the Creator is the activity of His substance. The conception of activity apart from something acting is impossible. It is therefore rationally to be concluded from all the foregoing that the Creator, or First Cause, is a substance having in Himself law, quality, force, intelligence, and life. By these sure steps of reason, which the reader may largely augment, we may perceive that the Creator also embodies all the essentials of nature in their highest form and substance.
Affection And Thought Constitute Human
Life, And Are In The Creator.
That we may advance to a fuller understanding of the Creator, it will be necessary to consider somewhat in detail what life is.
1. Life Is A Form Of Activity.
In a most general sense, life may be regarded as comprehending all the activities distinguished as mineral, plant, and animal life. From a natural point of view, or with regard to the order in which creation took place upon the earth, the activity in matter verges little by little until it becomes what is called vegetable life, and lastly it assumes that complexity of action called vital. All the discussions of life that are accredited a scientific standing regard it as a form of activity. Holmes says, "Life is the state of an organized being in which it maintains, or is capable of maintaining, its structural integrity by the constant interchange of elements with the surrounding media."[1] Spencer defines life as "The definite combination of heterogeneous changes both simultaneous and successive, in correspondence with external coexistences and sequences."[2] These are sufficiently correct definitions of the effects of life, or the manifestation of life in matter; but as definitions of life itself the first is erroneous in making life merely a state of organized matter by which it maintains itself, and the second is defective in regarding life as changes that take place in correspondence with external things alone. How these and similar definitions fall short of comprehending what life is, may be further suggested by asking what it is that produces the "state" and the "changes" that are defined as life. Life can not be defined as the state or changes of matter, for matter has no power in itself to produce the organized state or to effect those changes called life. It is reasoning in a circle to say that life is the change of state of matter and the change of state is life. The definition of life must comprehend the cause of the changes or it is not a definition of life, but only a description of the effects or manifestation of life in nature. But to start our reasoning in agreement, it is necessary to regard life only as a form of activity, as science claims.
2. Affection And Thought Constitute The Life Of The Brain, And Consequently Of The Whole Body.
To ascertain more about the nature of life let us examine it in the human brain, the highest of material forms. What is the life of the brain, or human life? An answer has been given, its "complex functional activities." But to know what life is, it is necessary to go further than this. What gives the brain its functional activities? What makes it act? Matter can not act unless it is acted upon. A particle of matter can not move except some substance comes in contact with it. It is begging the question to say that life produces the activity of the brain, and that the activity of the brain is life. There is no other answer to the question than that there is a substance superior to the visible matter, tissue, and organism, that impels the brain to action.
A little thought about the function of the brain will disclose what it is that causes it to act. It is well known that affection and thought are associated with the brain; but that the activities of the particles of the brain, or that the modes of motion of its organism, can produce what is experienced as affection and thought appears upon reflection impossible. The brain, however highly organized, is of itself naught but matter, particles of dust, which intuition and observation show have no element of affection or thought in them. The sensations and capacities of human life are not attributes of matter, nor therefore can they be of a merely material organism. They so transcend in their qualities and abilities all the attributes of matter as to reveal clearly that affection and thought are distinctly above and superior to material potency; as much so as a telegraphic dispatch transcends the inherent ability of a copper wire. The wire may produce dots and dashes, but it can not arrange them into a message of love. The theory that brain action produces affection and thought is the reverse of the truth. It is affection and thought, or more accurately speaking, the activity of a substance of which affection and thought are predicated, that gives motion to the brain.
3. In Affection And Thought Originates The Life Of The Whole Body.
Not only are affection and thought the active elements in the brain, and consequently its life, but as the brain is the primary vitalizing organ in the body, they are the life of the whole body. This is evident from self-examination and general observation. The action of the heart and lungs is immediately affected by the state of affection and thought. In deep meditation, the hearts beats are subdued, and respiration is fainter. Fright temporarily checks vital action, and animation stimulates it. When fervent and rich affections are called forth, the heart-beats are heavier, and respiration is longer-drawn and deeper. Affections of a passionate nature set the blood and body as it were on fire. Happy affections and cheerful thoughts aid digestion, strengthen the general organism, favor health, and generate pure blood. Morbid affections and thoughts corrupt the whole body and breed disease and sickness. Affections and thoughts operate even so far as to write their quality and kind in the features. Not only can we generally distinguish the features of an intellectual person from one less so, but even branches of intellectuality or professions become in time notably marked. We know therefore that the same thing builds the body that builds character. In short, all evidence goes to show that affection and thought are the life of the brain, and through the brain reign as the supreme governors in the body. It is rationally conclusive from the foregoing that, as no activity can exist apart from a substance, and as matter is totally incapable of that activity distinguished as affection and thought, affection and thought are of a substance superior to matter, and that the brain's activity is from that substance, which is consequently its life and vital essence.
4. Life Is The Activity Of Love.
All the faculties of the mind can be traced to the province of affection and thought. The whole intellectual part, to which belong knowledge, ideas, conceptions, wisdom, and their kind, is from the thought function; purpose, desire, longing, and their kind are from the affectional function: or what is the same, the understanding and the will comprehend the whole of the human. The understanding is such as is one's wisdom, and the will is such as is one's love. The terms will and understanding are used more to refer to the organs or faculties of affection and thought; the terms affection and thought refer to the activities of those organisms or their outward functions, while the terms love and wisdom refer to their interior essence. Affection rules over thought. It gives thought its character and quality. If the affections are for science, the thoughts are scientific. If they are for literature, the thoughts are literary. If the affections are debased, the thoughts will be; if pure, the thoughts will correspond. Such is the relation between affection and thought that thought may be correctly defined as the manner in which affections act. Thought is nothing other than the form in which affections act. Then since thought is affection's action, the life of the brain may be reduced to one primal element, that of affection or love. From a higher standpoint, therefore, love, or affection, is the life of the brain, while thought is its form of manifestation in the understanding. Having observed that affection and thought are properties of a high substance, we may name that substance itself love. Operating in the will it produces affection; operating in the understanding, it produces thought, and thence the activities of the brain particles, and all the mental operations in their great variety.
5. Love Is A Substance.
It may be well here to recall that since love causes the brain to act, and since that which causes activity must have a body, or be a substance either natural or supernatural, love must be a substance. The examination of natural phenomena leads up to and enforces the truth of this. Sound is from the activity of air, a substance. Heat and light from the sun are from the activity of an intervening substantial ether, a still higher substance capable of more complex motion. Electricity is but another manifestation of the same substance, a substance so subtile and so underlying grosser matter that it is able to operate upon the forces that bind atoms together, and to rend asunder the hardest objects. It is a universally diffused substance polarizing the earths and permeating the universe. Though finer and so superior to what we are accustomed to think of as substantial, it is most enduring, eluding destruction, and escaping decay because it is essentially a substance (sub-stare)—a thing that stands under to hold out. Gravity is the activity of a substance having still more subtile and more universal power. Nothing eludes its grasp. Acting in matter it gives bodies forces that draw them together after the similitude of affections that draw minds together. The affection that exists between material objects, or the force with which they affect one another, is called gravity, and is the measure of weight. Though so subtile as to escape our grasp even more effectually than ether, for it is a purer substance, it is most substantial because it operates the most interiorly and primarily upon all material things. The higher the substance, the more substantial it is, the more perfect and the more potent, showing greater variety of powers. The lower, visible, and passive materials change or decay because they fall out of the grip of the more subtile substances, and shift about; but the higher and more subtile substances are the least subject to change, being nearer the great foundations that are laid for nature's building. Not only do we observe that, as we ascend the scale of material substances, rock, air, ether, and aura, they are more substantial, but also that they show greater activity and more varied powers. Passing on up to the substance of affection, we are prepared to see that it must be still more substantial, manifest still greater activity and more varied power. From carefully observing the increasing complexity of activity in the ascending degrees of matter, no difficulty should be experienced in grasping comprehensively the fact that affection or love is a substance that is capable of the highest complexity of activity, and that it underlies the brain, and produces thought and all mental action or power.
Having considered somewhat in detail what affection and thought are, the next conclusion can now be more satisfactorily drawn. Since affection and thought are factors in creation, they are in their beginnings and with all their potencies in the Creator, or First Cause; and as affection or love is a high, pure, underlying substance of manifold, vital potencies, the Creator is as surely a substance with equal potencies. In short, the Creator is a substance of which affection and thought are attributes in addition to these previously considered; or, in the terms of the proposition, affection and thought constitute human life, and are in the Creator. This conclusion also may be interposed here, that as thought is the form of affection's action, the substantial and underlying element of the Creator is affection or love.
The Creator Is Person, Human, And Man.
Before taking the next step, it is necessary to observe only in a most general way what constitutes person, the human, or man. Neither the material body, nor its shape, nor its organism makes the person. One whose affections and thoughts are evil is called an evil person. If they are good, he is called a good person. Every person is such as are his affections and thoughts. It is readily perceived that affection and thought constitute the real person. Since thought is but the activity of affection, and affection is only another name for love, and since affection and thought constitute person, person exists in its essence in love. As has been discussed, love is an element in the Creator, or First Cause, therefore it is evident that person in its essence is in the Creator. Or it may be said, that since affection and thought constitute person, and person is formed by the Creator, the Creator has the whole of person in His nature. There is therefore in the Creator Essential Person, comprehending the Human, or Man, which Person makes.
The Creator Is Eternal.
It is axiomatic that the First Cause is eternal, for the assumption of a beginning of the First Cause presupposes a prior cause that produced the First Cause, in which case the First Cause would be a secondary cause or an effect. It is acknowledged, therefore, by every rational mind, that the First Cause has the element of Eternity.
The Creator Is Infinite.
Though creation must necessarily be finite, it yet shows that the Creator comprehends the infinite. Infinity is shown to exist in prolifications, for there is no limit in either plants or animals to the capacity to multiply, though external conditions may prevent. A grain of wheat has in itself the capacity to convert the earth into one field of wheat in about thirty years. A school of fish has the potency to fill the ocean in a short time with its prolification. There are no two faces, no two leaves, no two blades of grass precisely alike, nor can there ever be. Nature is a constant succession of varying effects. The capacity to continue varied effects for eternity, which essential the Creator has, proves that the Creator embraces the Infinite.
The, Creator Is Omnipotent.
The Creator is also omnipotent; not because He can do an impossible thing or violate the laws of His own operation, but because all power originates in Him. He is omnipotent in the sense that He, as the term omnipotent (omnis-potens) implies, embraces all power that is.
The Creator Is Omniscient And Omnipresent.
Omnipotence implies omniscience, for that which is not omniscient could not be omnipotent, for then something would be in existence from a power which was not included in the omnipotent. Infinite implies omnipresence, for if there is that wherein the Infinite is not present, the Infinite is thereby limited, which supposition would render the Infinite finite, whereby the Infinite would not be Infinite. The Creator is therefore eternal, infinite, omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent.
The Creator Is Self-Existing.
It is axiomatic that the Infinite, Omnipotent, and Eternal is self-existing.
The Creator Is Very Person, The Divine Human,
And God-Man.
Finite person is composed of an unlimited variety of affections and thoughts. Person, the human, or man, is a little kingdom of affections going out in the form of thoughts. Person is a certain order of affections correlated into form. There are varieties and qualities of affections, as those for science, art, literature, and all their divisions; and those for father, mother, sister, brother, husband, wife, son, daughter, and friends. They are all the unfolded potency in the love that exists in the Creator. Now since the First Cause is eternal, infinite, and omnipotent, its essentials must also be eternal, infinite, and omnipotent; and consequently the human elements in the First Cause are eternal, infinite, and omnipotent. Since the human elements constitute Person in the First Cause, they must necessarily constitute an eternal, infinite, and omnipotent person. There is therefore no logical escape from the conclusion that the First Cause is the eternal, infinite, omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient Person, the Creator, and all that can be conceived under the name God. Since the human is in the Creator, and in Him it is eternal, infinite, and omnipotent, He is the Divine Human, God-Man, Very Person, the Omniscient, the Omnipresent, and the Self-existing.
The difficulty encountered in conceiving God as a person arises from bringing God down to an imperfect and finite conception of person rather than expanding and exalting the conception of person to the Infinite. It is neither an outrage upon reason nor is it difficult to think of the Creator having in Him all the elements of our human nature perfect and infinite, whereby is constituted the Divine Humanity in which is every potency in its highest form and in its infinitude. Should the objection arise that all powers can not originate in the Creator because evil can not be thought of as existing in God, the difficulty will immediately vanish upon the reflection that evil is nothing other than the perversion of a good power that originates in Him, or that is directed contrary to Divine order through the free-will of mankind.
An Adequate Idea Of God Necessitates That
He Be Conceived Of As Interiorly
In The Human Form.
Lest the argument might seem prolonged, the greatest brevity has been exercised in arriving at the final conclusion that the First Cause is a Divine Human Person. To make clearer and more comprehensive the conception that it has been the endeavor to produce, a few general observations will here be added.
In speaking of the form of God or of man, a more interior idea than that of shape is intended. The human form has its origin in the order of human faculties, the primary essentials of which are affection and thought. Affection, or love, comes first, because this underlies and rules all in man. Next in order is thought, because thought is the first offspring of affection, just as light is the offspring of heat in the sun. This is tacitly perceived in the familiar expression that the wish is the father of the thought, which is but the common way of saying that thoughts are the product or offspring of the affections. The faculties of determination, memory, reflection, and the like, treated in psychological writings, are faculties distinctly below the general functions of affection and thought, and subservient to them. These faculties, determination, reflection, memory, perception, intuition, and the like, as has been observed, are classifiable under either the thought-faculty, the understanding; or under the affection-faculty, the will. They enter into the human form, but as they are external and subservient to the more interior human essentials, affection and thought, they need not be considered here further than to say that they are the organized faculties essential to the effective operation of the indwelling affection or love. They are the body in which affection or love dwells as the soul; they are the faculties into which the current of life-love charged with many potencies divides and becomes one again in the unity of the human form. The organized, subordinated, and correlated functions and faculties and potencies are what is to be understood by the human form. The material body with its system of organs is the habitation that love builds for itself that it may bring into outward effect the endeavor that is in love. The human body is therefore the outbirth of the interior human form, and as such it is the material image of the functions and faculties that constitute man; it is the visible symbol of the systematic and correlated potencies that are in love itself.
If love had not in itself an ordinated series of potencies, it could not produce a corresponding material organism; for the material organism is nothing other than a system of organs formed by the potencies of love in which they may dwell and act. The material organism is a form made by love for love to realize itself. Since love is the forming and creating substance in man, the corresponding substance of the Creator is properly called Divine Love, and as God in His very essence is Love, His whole substance is Love. By His form is not meant shape, but the correlative, coordinating, infinite potencies that are in the substance of His Love, which constitute the Divine Human. The substance of the Creator is Love in the same sense that the substance of the earth is rock, or that the substance of the material body is flesh. Love and wisdom are the flesh and blood of the Divine Being, from which man must receive to have life. "Except ye eat My flesh and drink My blood, ye have no life in you." The nature of that Love is that of affection—ad-ficere, to do to, to act upon. The Creator's Love is the source of all activity and power, hence the fulness of all activity is in Him. As thought is the first activity of love in man, so Divine Thought or Divine Wisdom is the form of the first activity of Divine Love in the Creator. The form of the activity of Love in the Creator is Divine Wisdom; the form of its unperverted activity in the mind of man, is truth; in the universe, it is law.
In regarding the Creator as a Divine Person whose substance is Love, He is not made a mere sentiment or a formless thing, but a real substance and form in which is the kingdom of universal potencies in their beginning, in their highest form, and in their fulness. The fulness of the kingdom of potencies in Him constitutes His infinity, and from their quality and height He is Divine.
The Human Form And Shape Should Be
Attributed To The Creator.
As the Creator is substantial. He necessarily must have form. His form is properly conceived of as that ordinated series of potencies that makes the finite human form; but as in Him each potency is eternal, infinite, and omnipotent, the series in Him constitutes the Divine Human. Thinking above space, that is, not having it in mind, we can think of His substance as Love, the potencies of which give rise to the forces of creation; and we can think of His form as that succession and arrangement of essentials that constitute a humanity. Since the mind can not think definitely except from images, His shape is properly conceived of as that of the highest outbirth and embodiment of His Love; namely, the human shape. The human shape is the material image of the human form; the human form is an image of the Divine Human; so it is evident that the Divine Human could not be revealed or thought of under any other form than that of the human, which corresponds to it. "He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father," said Jesus. No injustice will be done in thinking of the Creator as of the human shape, provided there is put within that idea the essence of the Divine Human, which is infinite love. Indeed, without such a definite image in mind, no adequate idea of God can be formed. Should it be admitted that the Creator is all this, yet so much more that to think of Him as Infinite Person is a limitation upon Him, it should be remembered that as creation is finitely represented in man, so creation is in the Creator in its infinitude. For man in himself is a little universe wherein the greater universe is represented in each particular by some power or faculty. The rock and the sand, the lamb and the lion, the dove and the vulture, the earth and the heavens are all in man. Man's person includes all that there is in the material creation, but on higher planes. In the Creator are man and creation in the still higher planes of the Divine Human. Now when we have assigned to the Creator in infinite degree all that there is in creation, we can not conceive of more. Whatsoever more than this He might be would be of no concern to us. We have no means of knowing it, or faculties to cognize it. It is sufficient that He is the Divine Human, and whatever He might be on still higher planes is immaterial, for man is satiated in the Divine Humanity.
Our conclusions, then, are the truths of revelation, for it declares that God created man in His own image and likeness, and that God is Divine Man. In subsequent chapters this will be considered more in detail when the requisite data are adduced; suffice it here to say that He could create in no other way than in His own image, which every orderly thing reflects in some degree. Representatively God put Himself fully into creation, "For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse." Thus as perceptions, which are first, are the conclusions of reason, so the facts of true revelation, being given, become the conclusions of all sound logic; for every truth of the Word can be confirmed by irrefutable reasoning.