^ J. Fiske, Man's Destiny, 31.
238 THE GREATNESS OF MAN
This earth too small For Love Divine ! Is God not Infinite ? If so, His Love is infinite. Too small! One famished babe meets pity oft from man More than an army slain! Too small for Love I Was Earth too small to be of God created ? Why then too small to be redeemed?^
(2) How is the man who knows himself to be but commonplace, and is daily driven to take his chance in the crushing crowd of the unprivileged and unknown, to find hope and inspiration ? This, it must ever be remembered, is the type of doubt which most of all prevails. It is well for the "aristocracy," in body or mind or position, to descant upon the " pleasures of life," and extol its delightful opportunities. Unfortunately, under present social conditions, the rank and file of humanity scarcely know what these mean. Surely it is one of the most monstrous and cruel anomalies of civilization that the vast majority of our fellows should be toiling through hard, drab, dreary lives, in order that a minority may have chances of sipping life's nectar which are inevitably denied to themselves. Who would not feel inspired if, with Euskin, we could travel luxuriously tlirough all Europe's fascinations of nature and art ? Would not myriads of poor, over- worked men and women be invigorated if they could winter at Davos Platz, or escape the cutting winds of spring by a sojourn in the Riviera, or flee from the depressions of a wet summer to the sunny South of France ? But these reliefs and enjoyments, we know, are for the favoured few. If amongst such, ennui and depression oft prevail, and globe-trotting millionaires find a disposition to suicide, how are the struggling many to keep heart amidst their wearing and wearying monotonies ?
Yet the humblest hind or the poorest straggler in the slums may, if he will, herein congratulate himself that he is " crowned with glory and honour." And if parsons are not pleasing to him, he may receive his crown from the hands of so competent a witness as Professor Huxley, who thus estimates " that great Alps and Andes of the living world — Man " : " Our reverence for the nobility of manhood will not be lessened by the knowledge that Man is in substance and in structure one with the brutes ; for he
^ Aubrey de Vere.
PSALM VIII. 5 239
alone possesses the marvellous endowment of intelligible and rational speech ... so that now he stands raised upon his accumulated experience as upon a mountain -top, far above the level of his humble fellows, and transfigured from his grosser nature by reflecting here and there a ray from the infinite source of truth." 1 More than that. The lowliest pauper may not only say with Descartes, " I think, therefore I am," but may quote the Psalmist in addition — I am " but little lower than God." For, accepting the testimony of latest science as just quoted, we know of no thinker in the universe save God and ourselves. Our power to think, compared with His, is truly both infinitesimal and derived, but it is real, and it is the medium of a kinship as valid and inspiring as is the dawning consciousness of a baby prince that his father is the king supreme in the land. How then can the man who appreciates such relationship to the Divine be driven even by modern cynicism into self -contempt ? In his possession of mind he is, in very deed, the son of the King of kings.
There is, however, by all acknowledgment, something higher than mind. Intellectual power is one thing ; moral character is another. To-day, happily, no one dare say, in respectable society, that so long as a man is clever it does not matter whether he is good. The folly which openly declares that " there are no good and there are no bad " ^ needs no disproof. Por it not only con- tradicts itself,^ but in putting an end to the possibility of morality it makes itself as contemptible as degrading. P. W. Eobertson was immeasurably more true and worthy of regard when he wrote in his diary, " I resolve to believe in myself, and in the powers which God has given me." Such a resolve, no less humble than potent, is based not upon " promises," but upon facts equally undeniable and immeasurable. Besides God, so far as our know- ledge extends, no other than man can say " I will." That he can and does so determine, is beyond controversy, for it is hourly consciousness. But such moral freedom marks man out from all the known universe as " but little less than Divine." *
^ No human life is perfect, not one is without its limitation, but David Hill so followed Christ that he was known as His. In
^ Huxley, Man's Place in Nature, 76.
- Editor's reply in The Clarion to Rev. C. Noel.
2 Not Guilty, 260. * F. Ballard, Does it Matter what a Man Believes? 174.
240 THE GREATNESS OF MAN
China the life he lived was recognized by the Chinese as corre- sponding to the Life he preached, and they called him " The little Jesus." A few days after the news of his death was cabled to this country, a relative of his, herself the daughter of a Fijian missionary, met the writer, and we spoke together of our dear friend. Suddenly, looking at me with tearful eyes, she challenged me. " You knew him," she said, " well ; was he not like Jesus Christ ? " The question was unexpected, but like a flash came the perception that only one answer was possible — " Yes, he was like Jesus Christ." ^