"What is Man?" Psalm 8:4-6. - Hebrews 2:5-8.
That nocturnal meditation and contemplation of the Psalmist, which led him to ask this question.
and to answer it by placing man at the center of the universe, has bounded all the ages, gone back.
to the eternal counsels of the Godhead before the world was and passed on to the consummation.
of those counsels in the inhabited earth to come, and beyond it. It is a question as to the Divinely.
conceived destiny of a specific creation called Man. Those thoughts had phases: "For a little
while lower than the angels"; crowned "with glory and honor"; "to have dominion over the
works of thy hands". The question of the Psalmist is taken up and enlarged upon by an inspired.
Apostle. "Not unto angels did he subject the inhabited earth to come ".” Thou didst put all things.
in subjection under his feet".
But between the Divine conception and its ultimate realization there is all the tragedy of human
disruption, and all the glory of Divine grace in redemption. What is before us here is to say
something of the nature of that disruption as to man's own being, and therefore to see what.
conformity to the image of God's Son means as to the overcoming of that disrupted state. It is the
question of man's own person, and what kind of person can alone inherit the kingdom of God.
For such a high and glorious destiny not only a spiritual or moral state is required, but certain.
type or species of being. As the crawling caterpillar or silkworm has to spin its shroud and yield
that form of life in order to awaken in a new order, break through into a new world as a beautiful
moth or butterfly, so has man now to pass out of one order and be constituted anew with faculties.
and capacities for a higher. Man, according to God's mind, and according to a dim and intangible.
sense in himself, is of a universal character, with universal interests. But something has
happened which, on the one hand, makes the realization of God's intentions impossible in man as
he now is, and on the other hand, causes man to persist in a vain effort to achieve such.
realization. This terrible contradiction of things at the center of the universe is the occasion of a
new intervention on the part of God in the person of His Son. This intervention has several.
features. It shows what a man is according to God's mind; it secures the removal of the man that.
is not so according to God; it brings in the powers and constituents of a new creation; and it.
reveals and secures what man will be when he reaches the mature form which was ever in God's.
mind as the end and not the mere creation state of even unfallen man. As we see it, this all hangs.
upon the setting right of derangement in the nature of man whereby his living and full
relationship with God is renewed. This, in the main relates to one part of his being called the
pneuma or spirit, and it is here that we therefore need to have enlightenment.