I. HOW CAN GOD MANIFEST HIMSELF?
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ALL men will agree that God has manifested Himself in the creation of the universe. Who God is or what God is is another question, but every one who reasons at all cannot but perceive that creation did not evolve itself spontaneously "by a fortuitous concourse of atoms." If it did so, where did the atoms come from? All men who reason recognize a primal force, a First Cause, which is supremely intelligent, and that cause they call God. It is likewise evident that this First Cause, or God, is Self-existent and Uncreated and Eternal. We also call God Infinite, by which we mean that He has no limitations. If He were limited, He would be limited by another or by something else, and He would not fulfil the indispensable requirement of an Absolute, Unconditioned Being behind whom and beyond whom no one can go or imagine. He would not be the First Cause dependent upon no being or thing outside of Himself; thus one who is Self-existent, Uncreated, and Eternal.
How Can the Infinite manifest Himself?
We have already replied that He has manifested Himself in creation, and creation is limitation; that is to say, created things are limited as to quality and expression. In another sense—a larger one—when we think of creation as the self-realization of God we cannot place any bounds upon it; yet in its existence in its units it is in every way limited. And God has expressed or manifested Himself in these limitations.
We thus see in a general way that God can manifest Himself in limitation.
But the question before us is, How can God manifest Himself in limitation, as, for example, a concrete human being, and that human being—limited—finite—be the Infinite God?
The reply is that this human being, as perceived by men in its limitations, cannot be all of God; yet it might be the manifestation of God in a special, exceptional, unique, unparalleled manner, so that it would be God manifest in the flesh.
Let us approach this question from another angle.
If God wanted to make Himself known to men, how could He do it in any other way than by appearing before them as a limited human being? As God is in Himself, it is perfectly obvious that we cannot understand Him. We do not know what an Infinite, Uncreated, Eternal, Self-existent Being is in any comprehensible way, except that the facts of the case in connection with creation and other manifestations of a similar nature require a Supreme Being who shall be all of these things. We know, for example, that no human being, limited as we are, could possibly create one little earth; nay, one little animal, or vegetable, or mineral upon it. Therefore, the necessities require the existence of God.
While we cannot comprehend God, yet we admit that such a being created the universe and governs it according to a perfect order; we realize that He created our little earth with all things upon it, including ourselves. And we perceive that we are the highest order of creation; but nevertheless painfully limited in many ways.
If this earth be created for man, as we perceive it to be; if we are created in the image and likeness of God, as the Bible tells us we are, and, as we recognize, the most perfect receptacle of the outflowing life of God in all created things; and if God wanted to reveal Himself to us as beings created in His image and likeness, capable of understanding Him at least in a way that no other created thing can do, how would He proceed to do it? What would be the most probable mode?
Well, we have seen that we are made in the image and likeness of God; hence we must resemble the original, in whose image and likeness we are made. Hence God must be man; God must be essential Man—primal Man, because of which fact all creation, a projection of the Divine, is distinguishably in the human form, and we, as its highest expression, are most perfectly in the human form, but all fitted to receive the Divine. Life flows into creation because it is adapted to receive it—adapted by likeness to receive and in its turn manifest it. Man, as the most perfect recipient, gives us the best idea of the Creator.
This does not mean that we are to think of God in the terms of space, as a great physical giant who presides over the destinies of the universe. God is not physical at all, except as the universe is in a sense a body in which He dwells. God is Spirit. He is infinitely more interior and higher than matter—infinitely more interior and higher than the spiritual nature of man or the spiritual world in which man's spirit dwells. We cannot correctly think of God in the terms of time and space at all.
Indeed, we cannot think of man's spirit as limited by time and space. With our affections and thoughts we can in an instant be on the moon, or at the sun, or at the farthest star. No limitations of time or space bind our affections or thoughts. And our affections and thoughts constitute the real man within our visible body. In this way it is that all men are invisible to one another, except as we can judge of their quality or affections through their expression of thought manifested in word or deed. We, indeed, live as to our sight and hearing and other senses in a material world, but yet we are not material. We are truly spiritual beings. The real man who thinks and feels is invisible in this material world, except as he is expressed outwardly through matter.
While God and man are in a sense both spirit, and hence invisible as to their true character on the material plane, save as they are manifested through matter, we must not think of them as the same quality of spirit. God is pure spirit. Man is spiritual, and indeed as to his interiors, spirit; but He would appear to be of that quality of spirit which has its own limitations, even if it has not the limitations of matter; thus is created spirit, a proceeding from the Infinite Uncreated Spirit. It is necessary to make this distinction in order that we may not think of God and man as of the same quality.
In order that we as spiritual beings may make ourselves manifest or apparent in the world of matter, or of nature, as we call it, it is indispensable that we shall have organisms of a material kind in which we shall dwell, and through which we shall manifest our real or interior spiritual life. In other words, the soul requires its body.
In order that God may make Himself manifest or apparent in the world of nature it is indispensable that He should have an organism of a material kind, through which He may manifest His real quality or character. Such an organism would make it possible for Him to reveal Himself. We could understand Him expressed in the terms of a man. Indeed, as we have already seen, we could understand Him in no other way.
Such an organism would have to be a complete man, thus possessing an outward limited body like our own, a natural mind, and degrees or planes of life for the expression of his more interior spiritual life. In other words, it would have to be as complete a man as man himself.