The entire paragraph (vers. 26-29) is obviously the record of a supernatural origination. There is a significance even in the change of the _creative_ word. In regard to prior and inferior existences the language is, "Let the earth bring forth!" "Let the waters bring forth!" as though there were some parturient power in nature, or as though nature co-operated with and furnished the conditions and means of the Divine efficiency. But when man is to be created the language is, "Let us make man;" thus placing the origin of man outside the chain of physical causation, and ascribing it to the immediate agency of God. Besides, the creation here spoken of is the production of a _spiritual_, not a material entity. "God created man in _his own image_." This creation can not be a formation out of a pre-existent matter, for no form of matter can possibly bear any resemblance to God (Acts xvii. 29). "God is _spirit_" and man can be like God only in so far as he is endowed with a spiritual nature. Spirit alone can bear the image of God. Whatever may be the teaching of Genesis as to the origin of the human body, be it a formation or a development, there is no uncertainty in its language as to the origin of the human spirit. It is an inbreathing from God. It proceeded directly from Him. By no mere figure of speech, but by a Divine reality God is "the Father of spirits," and man is the offspring and the image of God. This likeness of God lifts man out of the sphere of mere nature--it sets him apart in the essential characteristics and endowments of his being as _above_ nature, and in some sense _divine_. The third created entity is _Spirit_; spirit with its reason, its liberty, its conscience, its susceptibility of Divine inspiration, its capacity for endless progression in knowledge and love. Here, then, are three entities, _matter_, _life_, and _mind_ (= body, soul, and spirit), which had their beginning in an act of absolute creation, and are therefore to be regarded as primordial things.[205] Their existence is the necessary condition of all subsequent formative and developing production, inasmuch as all formation supposes a something to be formed, and all evolution a something involved. These primordial entities are the substratum, or ground, of all the mediate architectonic creation which is effected by the moving and informing presence and agency of the Spirit of God. This leads us to the consideration of those creative words which are _formative_, and which always presuppose the existence of real entities as the condition of their efficiency; as, for example, "Let there be light;" "Let there be an expanse in the midst of the waters;" "Let the dry land appear;" "Let there be luminaries in the expanse of heaven." All the dividings, the gatherings, the organizings, the ordainings, and collocations suppose the prior existence of matter.