The position which Religion, and especially the Christian Religion,
assigns to man, to man as he ought to be, is very high. He is made in
the image of God, he is a little lower than the angels, a little lower
than God, he is a partaker of the Divine Nature. But as the corruption
of the best is the worst, there is nothing in the whole creation more
miserable, more loathsome, than man as he has forgotten his high estate
and plunged himself into degradation. 'What man has made of man,' is
the saddest, most deplorable sight in all the world. Amid the awful
splendour of the winning loveliness of Nature, 'only man is vile.'
That is the terrible {94} verdict which may be pronounced upon him
renouncing his birthright, surrendering himself to the powers which he
was meant to keep in subjection. It is not the verdict to be
pronounced on Man as Man, the child of the highest and the heir of all
the ages. The appeal of Religion, the appeal of Christianity above
all, has continually been, O sons of men, sully not your glorious
garments, cast not away your glorious crown.
I
It is irreligion, it is unbelief, which comes and says, Lay aside these
fantastic notions as to your greatness: you are the creatures of a day:
you belong, like other animals, to the world of sense, and you pass
away along with them: a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast. Banish
your delusive hopes; confine yourselves to reality; waste not your time
in the pursuit of phantoms: make the best of the world in {95} which
you are: seize its pleasures: shut your eyes to its sorrows: enjoy
yourselves in the present and let the future take care of itself:
follow the devices and desires of your own hearts in the comfortable
assurance that there is no judgment to which you can be brought, save
that which exists in the realm of imagination.
Listening to such whispers, obeying such suggestions, walking in such
courses, the spectacle which man presents can be viewed only with
compassion, with horror, or with disdain. His ideals, his aspirations,
his self-sacrifices are only so many phases of self-deception. The
natural conclusion to be drawn from denying the spiritual origin and
eternal prospects of man must be that he is of no more account than any
of the transitory beings around him, that, if he has any superiority
over them, it is only the superiority of a skill with which he can make
them the instruments of {96} his purposes. With no glimpses of a
higher world, with no inspirations from a Spirit nobler than his own,
he can hardly regard the achievements of heroism as other than acts of
madness, he can be fired with no desire to emulate them, he cannot well
be trusted to perform ordinary acts of honesty and morality, let alone
extraordinary acts of generosity and magnanimity, should they come in
collision with his objects and ambitions.
Unless above himself he can
Erect himself, how mean a thing is Man!
Deny his divine fellowship, extirpate his heavenly anticipations, and
it might seem as if no race on earth would be so poor as do him
reverence.