efore, for us to say
that we are made in the likeness of God than for the orthodox Theologian
to do so.

Nor, again, do we find difficulty in adopting such an expression as that
"God has taken our nature upon Him." We hold this as firmly, and much
more so, than Christians can do, but we say that this is no new thing
for Him to do, for that He has taken flesh and dwelt among us from the
day that He first assumed our shape, some millions of years ago, until
now. God cannot become man more especially than He can become other
living forms, any more than we can be our eyes more especially than any
other of our organs. We may develop larger eyes, so that our eyes may
come to occupy a still more important place in our economy than they
do at present; and in a similar way the human race may become a more
predominant part of God than it now is-but we cannot admit that one
living form is more like God than another; we must hold all equally like
Him, inasmuch as they "keep ever," as Buffon says, "the same fundamental
unity, in spite of differences of detail-nutrition, development,
reproduction" (and, I would add, "memory") "being the common traits of
all organic bodies." The utmost we can admit is, that some embodiments
of the Spirit of Life may be more important than others to the welfare
of Life as a whole, in the same way as some of our organs are more
important than others to ourselves.

But the above resemblances between the language which we can adopt
intelligently and that which Theologians use vaguely, seem to reduce the
differences of opinion between the two contending parties to disputes
about detail. For even those who believe their ideas to be the most
definite, and who picture to themselves a God as anthropomorphic as He
was represented by Raffaelle, are yet not prepared to stand by their
ideas if they are hard pressed in the same way as we are by ours. Those
who say that God became man and took flesh upon Him, and that He is
now perfect God and perfect man of a reasonable soul and human flesh
subsisting, will yet not mean that Christ has a heart, blood, a stomach,
etc., like man's, which, if he has not, it is idle to speak of him as
"perfect man." I am persuaded that they do not mean this, nor wish to
mean it; but that they have been led into saying it by a series of steps
which it is very easy to understand and sympathise [sic] with, if they
are considered with any diligence.

For our forefathers, though they mig