would creation have been utterly incomplete had it stopped with the solar system—or with the minerally constituted earth—or with the vegetable kingdom. Why? Not because these things were insufficiently marvellous, for who can positively assign degrees of marvel to the creation. Why then? Does not one feel the answer to be that these things were incapable of consciously knowing God, or loving Him, or glorifying Him, or being or becoming like Him? That is the answer. And it shows us, further, why creation did not stop at the animal world, from the amoeba up to the ape. The same answer holds good. Man is the crown of it all, and to man all points. In man creation suddenly awakes into full consciousness, as one wakes out of a dead sleep or a confused dream. In man God has one to whom He can talk and who can talk with Him, in other words, like Himself.

Now this point of likeness is abhorrent to the Muslim, for it conflicts with his abstract doctrine of uniqueness. But he only denies it at the heavy cost of denying also the possibility of communication and love between God and man. For, as we have seen, conscious communication absolutely implies some point of spiritual similarity between the two, and love implies the same, a fortiori. And thus we find in the forefront of the Bible, 'God created man in His likeness'—a truly inspired word; just as we find in the New Testament, 'the inner man, which is renewed after the image of Him who created him.'

It is true that this word of Genesis has been adopted by Islam in the form of a tradition. This tradition has always fascinated Muslim theologians, but has perhaps equally embarrassed them. If any one wants to see how they sometimes do all they can to explain it away and evacuate it of meaning, let him read Al-Ghazali's Mishkat at Anwar, (pp. 34-5). We conclude, however, from the existence of this tradition that there is a yearning in Islam itself to establish a closer link between man and God. But the answer to that yearning, as we are seeing, is to be found in Christian, not Muslim, theology. For in the Holy Trinity we see that here also we have no absolutely new principle. God saw in His Son and Word the 'express image of His person' (Hebrews i. 2) from all eternity. So the creation of a world, in the highest rank of which He could see the image of His person, finitely, is seen to be no longer strange or new, but in accordance with His own essence.¹