6o IN THE IMAGE OF GOD
off to sleep. The lady of the house happened to enter the room. At first she looked in disgust and anger at the filthy black object that was soiling her counterpane. But all at once something in the expression of the little dirty face, or some familiar pose of the languid limbs, drew her nearer with a sudden inspiration, and in a moment she had clasped once more in her motherly arms her long-lost boy.i
•[[ Travellers to the islands of the South Seas reported — that is, such of them as came back — that the natives were fierce and cannibal, bearing the brand of savagery even upon their faces. But Calvert and Baton went there, and proved that this savage countenance was only a palimpsest scrawled by the Devil over a manuscript of the Diviae finger. To us the face of a Chinaman is dull and impassive. It awakens no interest; it stirs no affection. Then why have our friends Pollard and Dymond gone out to Yunnan ? Because the Spirit of God has opened their eyes, so that behind all that stolid exterior they can see a soul capable of infinite possibilities of godlike nobility, just as the genius of the great sculptor could see an augel in the shapeless block of marble. And even already their inspired insight has been verified: they have seen that sluggish nature move; they have watched that hard, emotionless Chinese face as it has glowed with the joy that illumines him who knows that Christ is his Saviour. It is as when in the restoration of an old English church the workmen begin to take down the bare whitewashed wall, and the lath and plaster, as they are stripped off, reveal the hidden beauty of some ancient fresco or reredos. Let a new race of men be discovered to-day, and the true missionary Will not hesitate to start for them to-morrow. Before he has heard anything of their history or their customs, before he has learnt a word of their language, there is one thing that he knows about them — that, however deeply they may be sunk in barbarism, they are not so low that the arm of Christ cannot reach them.^
Count not thyself a starveling soul,
Baulked of the wealth and glow of life,
Destined to grasp, of this rich whole, Some meagre measure through thy strife.
Ask not of flower or sky or sea Some gift that in their giving lies;
Their light and wonder are of thee, Made of thy spirit through thine eyes.
» H. W. HorwiU.
GENESIS I. 26, 27 61
All meaningless the primrose wood, All messageless the chanting shore,
Hadst thou not in thee gleams of good And whispers of God's evermore.^
III.
Two Pra-ctical Conclusions.
There are two facts of immense practical importance for us which follow from the one momentous fact of creation.
1. We owe to God our being and therefore we owe to God ourselves. — What God makes, He has an absolute right to. There is a corresponding fundamental principle in social ethics among men; and in the case of God's relation to His creatures the principle is yet more fundamental and absolute, even as the case itself is altogether unique. The obedience of nature to the Creator is unvarying, but it is only the blind obedience of necessity. Of the spiritual creation, on the other hand, the obedience must be free, but it is nevertheless as rightfully and absolutely claimed. Indeed, if it were possible, God's claims on those whom He has made in His own likeness are of even superior obligation. For the existence which they have received is exist- ence at its highest worth, and to them is given the capacity to recognize and appreciate the paramount sovereignty of creative power as inspired and transfigured by creative love.
^ The disinclination to be under an obligation is always more or less natural to us, and it is particularly natural to those who are in rude health and high spirits, who have never yet known anything of real sorrow or of acute disease. It grows with that jealous sentiment of personal independence which belongs to an advanced civilization ; and if it is distantly allied to one or two of the better elements of human character, it is more closely connected with others that are base and unworthy. The Eastern emperor executed the courtier who, by saving his life, had done him a service which could never be forgotten, perhaps never repaid; but this is only an extreme illustration of what may be found in the feelings of everyday life. A darker example of the same tendency is seen in the case of men who have wished a father in his grave, not on account of any misunderstanding, not from any coarse desire of succeeding to the family property,
' P. C. Ainsworth, Poe^nx and Sormett, 57.
62 IN THE IMAGE OF GOD
but because in the father the son saw a person to whom he owed not education merely, but his birth into the world, and felt that so vast a debt made him morally insolvent as long as his creditor lived. If men are capable of such feelings towards each other, we can understand much that characterizes their thought about and action towards God. By His very Existence He seems to inflict upon them a perpetual humiliation. To feel da;^ by day, hour by hour, that there is at any rate One Being before whom they are as nothing ; to whom they owe originally, and moment by moment, all that they are and have ; who so holds them in His hand that no human parallel can convey a sense of the completeness of their dependence upon His good pleasure; and against whose decisions they have neither plea nor remedy : — this they cannot bear. Yet if God exists, this, and nothing less, is strictly true.^