Herbs gladly cure our flesh, because that they
Finde their acquaintance there.
For us the windes do blow;
The earth doth rest, heav'n move, and fountains flow.
Nothing we see, but means our good,
As our delight , or as our treasure:
The whole is, either our cupboard of food,
Or cabinet of pleasure.
The starres have us to bed:
Night draws the curtain, which the sun withdraws:
Musick and light attend our head.
All things unto our flesh are kinde
In their descent and being; to our minde
In their ascent and cause.
Each thing is full of dutie:
Waters united are our navigation;
Distinguished, our habitation;
Below, our drink; above, our meat:
Both are our cleanlinesse. Hath one such beautie?
Then how are all things neat!
More servants wait on man,
Than he'l take notice of: in ev'ry path
He treads down that which doth befriend him,
When sicknesse makes him pale and wan,
Oh, mightie love! Man is one world, and hath
Another to attend him.
George Herbert, 1593.
Verse 5. "Thou hast made him a little lower than the
angels." Perhaps it was not so much in nature as in position that
man, as first formed, was inferior to the angels. At all events, we
can be sure that nothing higher could be affirmed of the angels, than
that they were made in the image of God. If, then, they had
originally superiority over man, it must have been in the degree of
resemblance. The angel was made immortal, intellectual, holy,
powerful, glorious, and in these properties lay their likeness to the
Creator. But were not these properties given also to man? Was not man
made immortal, intellectual, holy, powerful, glorious? And if the
angel excelled the man, it was not, we may believe, in the possession
of properties which had no counterpart in the man; both bore God's
image, and both therefore had lineaments of the attributes which
centre in Deity. Whether or not these lineaments were more strongly
marked in the angels than in man, it were presumptuous to attempt to
decide; but it is sufficient for our present purpose that the same
properties must have been common to both, since both were modelled
after the same divine image; and whatever originally the relative
positions of the angel and the man, we cannot question that since the
fall man had been fearfully inferior to the angels. The effect of
transgression has been to debase all his powers, and so bring him
down from his high rank in the scale of creation; but, however
degraded and sunken, he still retains the capacities of his original
formation, and since these capacities could have differed in nothing
but degree from the capacities of the angel, it must be clear that
they may be so purged and enlarged as to produce, if we may not say
to restore, the equality. . . . Oh! it may be, we again say, that an
erroneous estimate is formed, when we separate by an immense space
the angel and the man, and bring down the human race to a low station
in the scale of creation. If I search through the records of science,
I may indeed find that, for the furtherance of magnificent purposes,
God hath made man "a little lower than the angels;" and I cannot
close my eyes to the melancholy fact, that as a consequence upon
apostasy there has been a weakening and a rifling of those splendid
endowments which Adam might have transmitted unimpaired to his
children. And yet the Bible teems with notices, that so far from
being by nature higher than men, angels even now possess not an
importance which belongs to our race. It is a mysterious thing, and
one to which we scarcely dare allude, that there has arisen a
Redeemer of fallen men, but not of fallen angels. We would build no
theory on so awful and inscrutable a truth; but is it too much to
say, that the interference on the behalf of man and the
non-interference on the behalf of angels, gives ground for the
persuasion, that men occupy at least not a lower place than angels in
the love and the solicitude of their Maker? Beside, are not angels
represented as "ministering spirits, sent forth to minister to the
heirs of salvation?" And what is the idea conveyed by such a
representation, if it be not that believers, being attended and
waited on by angels, are as children of God marching forwards to a
splendid throne, and so elevated amongst creatures, that those who
have the wind in their wings, and are brilliant as a flame of fire,
delight to do them honour? And, moreover, does not the repentance of
a single sinner minister gladness to a whole throng of angels? And
who shall say that this sending of a new wave of rapture throughout
the hierarchy of heaven does not betoken such immense sympathy with
men as goes far towards proving him the occupant of an immense space
in the scale of existence? We may add, also, that angels learn of
men; inasmuch as Paul declares to the Ephesians, that "now unto the
principalities and powers in heavenly places is made known by the
church, the manifold wisdom of God." And when we further remember,
that in one of those august visions with which the Evangelist John
was favoured, he beheld the representatives of the church placed
immediately before the eternal throne, whilst angels, standing at a
greater distance, thronged the outer circle, we seem to have
accumulated proof that men are not to be considered as naturally
inferior to angels—that however they may have cast themselves down
from eminence, and sullied the lustre and sapped the strength of
their first estate, they are still capable of the very loftiest
elevation, and require nothing but the being restored to their
forfeited position, and the obtaining room for the development of
their powers, in order to their shining forth as the illustrious ones
of the creation, the breathing, burning images of the Godhead. . . .
. The Redeemer is represented as submitting to be humbled—"made a
little lower than the angels," for the sake or with a view to the
glory that was to be the recompense of his sufferings. This is a very
important representation—one that should be most attentively
considered; and from it may be drawn, we think, a strong and clear
argument for the divinity of Christ.
We could never see how it could be
humility in any creature, whatever the dignity of his condition, to
assume the office of a Mediator and to work out our reconciliation.
We do not forget to how extreme degradation a Mediator must consent
to be reduced, and through what suffering and ignominy he could alone
achieve our redemption; but neither do we forget the unmeasured
exaltation which was to be the Mediator's reward, and which, if
Scripture be true, was to make him far higher than the highest of
principalities and powers; and we know not where would have been the
amazing humility, where the unparalleled condescension, had any mere
creature consented to take the office on the prospect of such a
recompense. A being who knew that he should be immeasurably elevated
if he did a certain thing, can hardly be commended for the greatness
of his humility in doing that thing. The nobleman who should become a
slave, knowing that in consequence he should be made a king, does not
seem to us to afford any pattern of condescension. He must be the
king already, incapable of obtaining any accession to his greatness,
ere his entering the state of slavery can furnish an example of
humility. And, in like manner, we can never perceive that any being
but a divine Being can justly be said to have given a model of
condescension in becoming our Redeemer. . . . . If he could not lay
aside the perfections, he could lay aside the glories of Deity;
without ceasing to be God he could appear to be man; and herein we
believe was the humiliation—herein that self-emptying which
Scripture identifies with out Lord's having been "made a little lower
than the angels." In place of manifesting himself in the form of God,
and thereby centering on himself the delighted and reverential
regards of all unfallen orders of intelligence, he must conceal
himself in the form of a servant, and no longer gathering that rich
tribute of homage, which had flowed from every quarter of his
unlimited empire, produced by his power, sustained by his providence,
he had the same essential glory, the same real dignity, which he had
ever had. These belonged necessarily to his nature, and could no more
be parted with, even for a time, than could that nature itself. But
every outward mark of majesty and of greatness might be laid aside;
and Deity, in place of coming down with such dazzling manifestations
of supremacy as would have compelled the world he visited to fall
prostrate and adore, might so veil his splendours, and so hide
himself in an ignoble form, that when men saw him there should be no
"beauty that they should desire him." And this was what Christ did,
in consenting to be "made a little lower than the angels;" and in
doing this he emptied himself, or "made himself of no reputation."
The very being who in the form of God had given its light and
magnificence to heaven appeared upon earth in the form of a servant;
and not merely so—for every creature is God's servant, and therefore
the form of a servant would have been assumed, had he appeared as an
angel or an archangel—but in the form of the lowest of these
servants, being "made in the likeness of men"—of men the degraded,
the apostate, the perishing. Henry Melvill, B.D., 1854.
Verses 5, 6. God magnifies man in the work of creation. The
third verse shows us what it was that raised the psalmist to this
admiration of the goodness of God to man: "When I consider the
heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou
hast ordained; Lord, what is man?" God in the work of creation
made all these things serviceable and instrumental for the good of
man. What is man, that he should have a sun, moon, and stars, planted
in the firmament for him? What creature is this? When great
preparations are made in any place, much provisions laid in, and the
house adorned with richest furnitures, we say, "What is this man
that comes to such a house?" When such a goodly fabric was raised
up, the goodly house of the world adorned and furnished, we have
reason admiringly to say, What is this man that must be the tenant or
inhabitant of this house? There is yet a higher exaltation of man in
the creation; man was magnified with the stamp of God's image, one
part whereof the psalmist describes in the sixth verse, "Thou
madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast
put all things under his feet," etc. Thus man was magnified in
creation. What was man that he should have the rule of the world
given him? That he should be lord over the fish of the sea, and over
the beasts of the field, and over the fowls of the air? Again, man
was magnified in creation, in that God set him in the next degree to
the angels; "Thou hast made him a little lower than the
angels;" there is the first part of the answer to this question,
man was magnified in being made so excellent a creature, and in
having so many excellent creatures made for him. All which may be