If that psalm be God's thought of man, the plan that He hangs up for us. His workmen, to build by, what a wretched thing my copy of it has turned out to be ! Is this a picture of me ? How seldom I am conscious of the visits of God ; how full I am of weaknesses and imperfections, the solemn voice within
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me tells me at intervals when I listen to its tones. On my brow there gleams no diadem ; from my life, alas ! there shines at the best but a fitful splendour of purity, all striped with solid masses of blackness. And as for dominion over creatures, how superficial my rule over them, how real their rule over me ! I can tame animals or slay them ; I can use the forces of nature for my purposes. I can make machinery, and bid the lightning do my errands, and carry messages, the burden of which is mostly money, or power, or sorrow. But all these things do not signify that man has the dominion over God's creation. That consists in using all for God, and for our own growth in wisdom, strength, and goodness ; and he only is master of all things who is servant of God. " All are yours, and ye are Christ's." If so, what are most of us but servants, not lords, of earth and its goods ? We fasten our very lives on them, we tremble at the bare thought of losing them, we give our best efforts to get them ; we say to the fine gold, " Thou art my confidence." We do not possess them, they possess us, though materially we may have conquered the earth (and wonderfully proud of it we are now), spiritually, which is the same as to say really, the earth has conquered us.
^ The sense I had of the state of the churches brought a weight of distress upon me. The gold to me appeared dim, and the fine gold changed, and though this is the case too generally, yet the sense of it in these parts hath in a particular manner borne heavy upon me. It appeared to me that through the prevailing of the spirit of this world the minds of many were brought to an inward desolation, and instead of the spirit of meekness, gentleness, and heavenly wisdom, which are the necessary companions of the true sheep of Christ, a spirit of fierceness and the love of dominion too generally prevailed. From small beginnings in error great buildings by degrees are raised, and from one age to another are more and more strengthened by the general concurrence of the people ; and as men obtain reputation by their profession of the truth, their virtues are mentioned as arguments in favour of general error; and those of less note, to justify themselves, say, such and good men did the like.^
* The Journal of John Woolman,
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II.
Sovereignty secured in Christ.
"But we behold him . . . even Jesus . . . crowned with glory and honour."
The writer of the Epistle has quoted the 8th Psalm as an illustration of his thesis that Christ, and we in Christ, are exalted above angels, and then he proceeds to admit that, as a matter of fact, men are not what the Psalmist describes them as being. But the psalm is not, therefore, an exaggeration, or a dream, or a mere ideal of the imagination. True, as a matter of fact, men are not all this. But, as a matter of fact, Jesus Christ is, and in His possession of all that the psalm painted our possession is commenced and certified. It is an ideal picture, but it is realized in Jesus, and, having been so in Him, we have ground to believe that it will be so in us. We see not yet all things put under man — alas, no — but we see Jesus crowned with glory and honour ; and as He tasted death for every man, so in His exaltation He is prophecy and pledge that the grand old words shall one day be fulfilled in all their height and depth.
1. Christ's sovereignty was won through humiliation and suffering.
(1) He was content to he " made a little lower than the angels." — Wherein was Jesus set under the angels ? Not simply in that He became man; for His manhood is as truly the ground of His exaltation as of His humiliation. It is to man as man that the psalm ascribes the coronet of glory and honour — the exaltation over all creatures into which Jesus has entered. With Jesus, as with man in general, the inferiority to the angels is one of dis- pensation, not of nature. To be subordinated to the angelic dis- pensation is the same thing as to be "made under the law." Jesus shared man's humiliation, to win, not for Himself only, but for men, His brethren, the destined glory. God brings many sons to glory along with Him, inasmuch as He that sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one piece. Thus the blessings of the psalm do, in the world to come, fall to man. But they are
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