42 
WILD SCENES AND SONG-BIKDS. 
breathed into tlie nostrils of tlie animal the breath of life," 
and that it became "a living soul !" 
Now, this was the crowning act of the six days' work. 
And man, the sublimation of material forms, alone was 
trusted with that awful gift — "the breath of life!" There is 
no mention of the "breath of life" when he made the beast, 
cattle, and creeping things. Yet in the common sense of 
these words, thej too were given the breath of life. 
No ! He before says — " God made man in his own 
image," that is, in his spiritual image — ^for there can be 
no material likeness of spiritual existence, and these ma- 
jestic words were used in reference to that spiritual resem- 
blance of which the Eternal Life of God was the first feature. 
The hreath of life from his own lips was the bestowal of the 
eternity of his own spiritual being. A distinct, peculiar act ! 
adding another element to the animal framed of the same 
dust of which the beast was made — interfusing a portion of 
Himself, of His own ultimate and indivisible essence, into 
the subtlest, purest organization of compounded matter: 
and man hecame a living soul, and that soul in the image of 
its Maker ! 
Between the atomic reasoner, and the reasoning man, 
there is a mighty stride. The shadow, though far away, 
is like, for one and the same principle governs in each. 
The stride between the attributes of God, so far as he has 
chosen to reveal them, and the attributes of the Living Soul 
in man, made after his own image, is vast too ; but the shad- 
ow, though cast from afar — from out the abyss of Infinity — 
is yet dim, is still like ! 
We cannot know how much more high those other attri- 
butes of which it has not pleased Him to instruct its may 
be ; but we do know from His own words that the Crea- 
tive Power is one of them, and Omnipresence and Foreknowl- 
edge are others. 
Then has not the Imagination, the Living Soul of man, in its 
own narrow sphere, the Creative power. Out of the chaos of 
