God's Creative Original
by Cecil J. Blay

AMONG the glories which adorn the person of the Saviour, not the least is His title of Gods Creative Original. Of Him it is said that "in Him were all things made, and without Him was nothing made that was made." Taking Him as the Original, the Creator fashioned the universe in accordance with His perfection, not only the animate but the inanimate also.

God, Who is invisible, created mankind in His Own Image, and Christ is the Image of the invisible God. Since Adam, the first man, the reproduction has been marred, because the process of death in humanity has resulted in a degradation of the pristine perfection, and has produced a race which is lacking the glory of God, because death has been transmitted to all, on which all sin.

Even so, we find in mankind traces of the Image on which it has been modelled, and the eye of the ancient writer could perceive that "God made man upright, but they have sought out many devices."

But apart from mankind, there still remain those witnesses to God which may be descried through the things which are made, and which proclaim to the spiritual eye His imperceptible power and divinity.

Let us always keep in mind the fact that Christ is the only Image of the invisible God; all that we shall ever see of God we shall see in Him, for "no man hath seen God at any time."

The Deity Himself is Spirit, and is invisible. Creation, which is out of spirit, has Christ for its Original, and therefore those evidences of God which the enlightened eye can descry through the things which are made, are evidences of Christ--as it is His office to set forth His Father in terms which the finite mind can comprehend.

The highest glory of the Son of God is that He reveals His Father; His Father is greater than He, and to do His Father's will is His chief delight, but, occupying the unique place which is His, it becomes His due to receive all the honor and deference which we owe to God, for Christ is God to us, as far as our perceptions are concerned, since it is in Him only that we can realize or appreciate or approach the Father.

This must apply in the realm of things visible and tangible, as well as in that of the spiritual, for Creation has Christ as its model, He is God's Original, and all the wonder and beauty of the universe is but an expression of Him. Wherever that universe has been marred, the disfigurement is due to Adam's sin.

In Christ the attributes of God find their expression, and in creation the enlightened eye can perceive through the phenomena of nature Him to Whom all authority has been delegated, and in Whom the universe has its cohesion.

Does not the majesty of the storm, awe-inspiring in its grandeur, remind us how His righteous anger burns against sin?

His chariots of wrath
The deep thunderclouds form,
And dark is His path
On the wings of the storm.

And the sea, unfathomable, unconquerable, and untiring, tells in each repeated wave-beat of His deep, unwavering patience.

Is not the dazzling whiteness of the snow but the reflection of His unsullied holiness, and do not the mountains, unshakable and age-enduring, speak His immutable purpose, their cloud-cleaving peaks pointing His ultimate goal--mankind lifted above earth's clouds and mists into the light of God's presence?

He sets the rainbow in the cloud as token of His faithfulness, and the warm and joyful sunshine, bringing life and health, speaks of Christ the Effulgence of God's glory--the visible Shining of the invisible Sun.

Behold in the flowers the tenderness and beauty of His thoughts! Man cannot create beauty like this, however great his skill, but "My ways are not your ways, saith the Lord, neither are My thoughts your thoughts."

And if the glory of Solomon pales into insignificance before the grace and charm of the wild anemone, is it not because the beauty of the flower is but an expression of the mind and spirit of a Greater than Solomon?

The poet Wordsworth sings:

To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

In the soulish mind, these gifts of heaven call forth no response, but the one who has been gifted with God's gracious spirit, can say with the writer of olden days:

For as mutch as wee can not make one flower, neyther can gyve to any of them Hys proper beautyfull shape, vertue, or savour, wych Soloman, when he was florishying in his regall estate, was not comparable to any of these flowers for theyr excellent beauty: Therefore let us daily behold the Earth whereunto we once must come and also in the meantyme humbly laude and prayse the hyghe divine providence of the almyghty our Lord and God.

But rather than beholding the "earth whereunto we once must come" let us perceive in the beauty of the universe the beauty of Him in Whom all is created, and through Whom and for Whom all things are.

Your voiceless lips, O Flowers, are living preachers,
Each cup a pulpit, and each leaf a book.

There is nothing of Pantheism in this. On the contrary the clear declarations of the Scriptures affirm, not that God is in everything, but that everything is in God, and the universe is an expression of His spirit in material terms, with Christ as His creative Original.

Does not the acceptance of this thought glorify the commonplace? When we stand in admiration before beauty in nature, gazing over a far-flung landscape, humbled before the mighty hills, or enraptured by the grace and fragrance of a flower, there arise in us feelings which are akin to worship of the Creator of all these things.

And is not this but another phase of the setting forth of God, and has not Christ expressed Himself in these material things to that very end? Surely, then, we can say with the poet:

I see His blood upon the rose
And in the stars the glory of His eyes,
His body gleams amid eternal snows,
His tears fall from the skies.

I see His face in every flower;
The thunder and the singing of the birds
Are but His voice--and carven by His power
Rocks are His written words.

All pathways by His feet are worn,
His strong heart stirs the ever-beating sea,
His crown of thorns is twined with every thorn,
His cross is every tree.