Question--"If he be like man, his legs must be the organs of motion; if not, what purpose do they serve? If they are, are they good for walking through the air as well as on land? Or has he wings, or how? or some organ of motion we have not got? And if we have not sot this organ, how can we be created to his image and likeness, supposing the resemblance in every thing?"
Answer.--The resemblance between man and God has reference, as we have already observed, to the shape or figure; other qualities may or may not resemble each other. Man has legs, so has God, as is evident from his appearance to Abraham. Man walks with his legs, so does God sometimes, as is evident from his going with Abraham towards Sodom. God can not only walk, but he can move up or down through the air without using his legs as in the process of walking. (See Gen. xvii. 22; also xi. 5; also xxxv. 13.)--"A man wrestled with Jacob until the breaking of day;" after which, Jacob says--"I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved."--Gen. xxxii. 24-30. That this person had legs is evident from his wrestling with Jacob. His image and likeness was so much like man's, that Jacob at first supposed him to be a man.--(See 24th verse.) God, though in the figure of a man, has many powers that man has not got. He can go upwards through the air. He can waft himself from world to world by his own self-moving powers. These are powers not possessed by man only through faith, as in the instances of Enoch and Elijah. Therefore, though in the figure of a man, he has powers far superior to man.
Question--"When God appears surrounded with glory, is this glory essential to him or not? If essential, how can he lay it aside, as he seems to have done when he appeared to Abraham? If his appearing so does not prove it essential, how does his appearance in the form of a man prove that form essential to him?"
Answer--The glory of God is essential to him under all circumstances, whether his person is visible or invisible--whether man is permitted to behold that glory or not. He never lays aside his glory, though he may not always render it visible to mortals. "The God of glory," says the martyr Stephen, "appeared unto our father Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran"--Acts, vii. 2. But because he showed Abraham his person, it did not necessarily follow that he must also show him his glory. The person of God is one thing, and his glory is another; they are inseparably connected. He cannot divest his person of his glory, nor lay it aside, but he can hide his glory from the gaze of man, or he can reveal it and his person also, or he can reveal his person and not his glory. The visibility or the invisibility of the glory of God does not render it non-essential to him. The glory is just as essential as his image and likeness, and his image or likeness, resembling that of man's, is as essential as his glory--neither can be laid aside, though one or both may be rendered visible or invisible.