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(_Day VI_.) I wish you to stop at the end of verse 25 because there the
account which God has given us of His creation of the world ends. All was
now complete; and all was very good in the eyes of Him who had made and
fashioned it. The rest of the chapter speaks of a distinct part of God's
Creation, when man, who was to be over it all, was made; a part of the
Creation, but head and Crown of all; a being distinct from any other
inhabitant of earth, air, or sea, because created _in the image of God_.
The old writer who speaks so quaintly about the "great pond of the world,"
and the "guests" which it contains, exclaims with wonder when he thinks of
the "tenant" which God, when He had made the great house of the world and
furnished it, brought in to possess it. He says:--
"But, oh God, what a little lord hast Thou made over this great world!...
yet none but he can see what Thou hast done; none but he can admire and
adore Thee in what he seeth.... Other creatures Thou madest by a simple
command, man not without a divine consultation; others at once, man Thou
didst first form, then inspire; others in several shapes, like to none but
themselves, man after Thine own image ... others with qualities fit for
service; man for dominion; other creatures grovel to their earth, and have
all their senses upon it, this is reared up towards heaven."
We talked a good deal about this; for I wished that Eustace and Leslie, and
even little Dick, should understand something of the great difference which
God has put between those creatures--the cleverest and best of them--who
live their little life in the sea or on the earth, and then pass away
altogether, and even a little child who does not know its right hand from
its left, and cannot take care of itself perhaps nearly so well as a bird
or a beast, but who has within it what God has given to no bird or beast, a
spirit which can never die, a spirit which must some time "return unto God
who gave it," because it belongs to Him.
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