attribute--an absolute nonentity, which they placed in the seat of God, and attempted to confer upon this conception divine powers, clothe it with divine attributes, and give it title, knee and adoration--in a word, divine honors! [Footnote A: See Mosheim's Eccl. Hist. Cent. iv. bk. ii, ch. i, (note.)] Let us now consider the form of God. In those scriptures which take us back to the days of creation, when God created the earth and all things therein--God is represented as saying to someone: 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, male and female created he them. Now, if that were untouched by "philosophy," I think it would not be difficult to understand. Man was created in the image and likeness of God. What idea does this language convey to the mind of man, except that man, when his creation was completed, stood forth the counterpart of God in form? But our philosophers have not been willing to let it stand so. They will not have God limited to any form. They will not have him prescribed by the extensions of his person to some line or other of limitation. No; he must needs be in his person, as well as in mind or spirit, all-pervading, filling the universe, with a center nowhere, with a circumference everywhere. We must expand the person of God out until it fills the universe. And so they tell us that this plain, simple, straightforward language of Moses, which says that man was created in the image of God--and which everybody can understand--means, not the image of God's personality, but God's "moral image!" Man was created in the "moral image" of God, they say. It is rather refreshing in the midst of so much nonsense that is uttered upon this subject, in order to hide the truth and perpetuate the false notions of a paganized Christianity, to find now and then a Christian scholar who rises out of the vagaries of modern Christianity and proclaims the straightforward truth. Let me read to you the words of such an one--the Rev Dr. Charles A. Briggs; and this note will be found in the Manual that your Improvement Associations will use the coming winter. It may be said, of course, by our Presbyterian friends, that Dr. Briggs is a heretic; that he has been cast out of their church. Grant it; but with open arms, he has been received by the Episcopal church, and ordained into its priesthood; and has an influence that is considerable in the Christian world, notwithstanding the door of the Presbyterian church was shut in his face. But however heretical Dr. Briggs' opinions may be considered by his former Presbyterian brethren, his scholarship at least cannot be challenged. Speaking of man being formed in the image and likeness of God, he says: