Article April 19, 1919 Issue

Image, or Reflection

ELSIE F. EASTMAN

In Genesis we read that when the heavens, the earth, and the seas were made, when the light by day and the stars by night appeared, God created man and gave him dominion over the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air, and over all the earth. "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness, ... So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him." "Our" and "us" imply that God is the Father and Mother of man, and it is in the image of such a parent that man is made. "Image" and "likeness" here are identical. Reflection, as defined in the dictionary, is "an image given back from a reflecting surface." As the clouds reflected in the water are a perfect likeness of the clouds in the sky, so God's man reflects the perfect likeness of God. Yet, the clouds imaged in the water are not and never can be the clouds in the sky, neither can man ever be God, but he is and always has been the image, or reflection, of God. But what is God? We have already called Him the Father-Mother of man. In the last verse of the first chapter of Genesis we find that God made everything and pronounced His creation good, therefore God must be good itself,—the source of all goodness. Man, to be His real child, must be like Him, therefore good, and the likeness must be expressed through intelligence; indeed God, Mind, cannot be known except through thought.

In the second chapter of Genesis, beginning with the last clause of the fifth verse, we find an allegory, telling of another kind of man who expresses himself in temptation, fear, pride, and shame. Here is a contradiction, since qualities like these are not good, hence not God-created. Mankind has, however, accepted this falsity and believed that man is incapable of being perfect. In the allegory he has listened to the voice of the tempter, which says, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." From this has come the belief in many gods and many minds,—the belief in something added to goodness; namely, evil, which results in sin, sickness, and death.

Instances of the wonderful possibilities flowing from the understanding that man is the reflection of Mind have been demonstrated down the centuries in some degree by those who have from time to time imaged forth God's eternal goodness. Moses showed this in his reflection of divine wisdom by giving to us the Ten Commandments,—a gift to be made practicable in every age. Elijah brought to a widow plentiful supply when she had only a handful of meal and a little oil in a cruse; he also raised the widow's son from death. Daniel's perfect faith delivered him unharmed from the den of lions. The prophet Malachi realized the truth when he asked, "Have we not all one father? hath not one God created us?"

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