One thing is assumed by not a few, the absurdity of the Almighty caring
for such a race, and therefore the impossibility of the Incarnation.
'Which,' asks Mr. Frederic {97} Harrison, 'is the more deliriously
extravagant, the disproportionate condescension of the Infinite
Creator, or the self-complacent arrogance with which the created mite
accepts, or rather dreams of, such an inconceivable prerogative? His
planet is one of the least of all the myriad units in a boundless
Infinity; in the countless aeons of time he is one of the latest and the
briefest; of the whole living world on the planet, since the ages of
the primitive protozoon, man is but an infinitesimal fraction. In all
this enormous array of life, in all these aeons, was there never
anything living which specially interested the Creator, nothing that
the Redeemer could care for, or die for? If so, what a waste creation
must have been! ... Why was all this tremendous tragedy, great enough
to convulse the Universe, confined to the minutest speck of it, for the
benefit of one puny and very late-born race?'[1]
{98}
But is it not the fact that along with the discovery of Man's utter
insignificance, there has come the discovery of powers and faculties
unknown and unsuspected, so that more than ever all things are in
subjection to him, his dominion has become wider, his throne more
firmly established? Is it not the fact that the whole realm of Nature
is explored by him, is compelled to minister to his wants or to unfold
its treasures of knowledge? Is it not the fact that more than ever it
can be said:
The lightning is his slave: heaven's utmost deep
Gives up her stars, and, like a flock of sheep,
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and roll on.
The tempest is his steed: he strides the air.
And the Abyss shouts from her depth laid bare
'Heaven, hast thou secrets? Man unveils me: I have none.'[2]
Is it not the fact that deposed from his position of proud pre-eminence
as centre of the universe, Man has by his labours and his ingenuity
reasserted his high prerogative {99} to be lord of the creation? The
printing-press, the railway, the telegraph, how have inventions like
these invested him with an influence which he did not possess before!
And is it not the fact that when most conscious of our nothingness
before the immensities around us, when humbled and prostrate before the
Infinite of which we have caught a transitory glimpse, we are also most
conscious of our high destiny, we are lifted above the earthly to the
heavenly, we discern that, though we cannot claim a moment, yet
Eternity is ours? 'What, then, is Man! What, then, is Man! He
endures but an hour and is crushed before the moth. Yet in the being
and in the working of a faithful man is there already (as all faith,
from the beginning, gives assurance) a something that pertains, not to
this wild death element of Time; that triumphs over Time, and _is_, and
will be, when Time shall be no more.'[3] {100} Man's place in the
universe may, according to Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, be nearer the
centre of things than has so commonly come to be accepted. Modern
discovery, he maintains, has thrown light on the interesting problem of
our relation to the Universe; and even though such discovery may have
no bearing upon theology or religion, yet, he thinks, it proves that
our position in the material creation is special and probably unique,
and that the view is justified which holds that 'the supreme end and
purpose of this vast universe was the production and development of the
living soul in the perishable body of man.' And another, a convinced
and ardent disciple of Evolution, the late Professor John Fiske, argues
that, 'not the production of any higher creature, but the perfecting of
humanity is to be the glorious consummation of Nature's long and
tedious work.... Man seems now, much more clearly than ever, the chief
among God's {101} creatures.... The whole creation has been groaning
and travailing together in order to bring forth that last consummate
specimen of God's handiwork, the Human Soul.'[4] If this be so, this
conclusion arrived at by those who do not hold the ordinary faith of
Christendom, then the objection that the Incarnation could not have
taken place for the redemption of such a race as ours, in a world which
is so poor a fraction of the infinite universe, falls to the ground;
and the protest of a devout modern poet carries conviction with it:
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!
Was Earth too small to be of God created?
Why then too small to be redeemed?[5]
Man may, or may not, occupy a 'central position in the universe': other
worlds may, {102} or may not, be inhabited: this earth may be but a
minute and insignificant speck amid the mighty All, this at least is
certain, that not by mere magnitude is our rank in the scale of being
to be decided, and that in the spirit of man will be found that which
approaches most nearly to Him who is Spirit. 'The man who reviles
Humanity on the ground of its small place in the scale of the Universe
is,' according to Mr. Frederic Harrison, 'the kind of man who sneers at
patriotism and sees nothing great in England, on the ground that our
island holds so small a place in the map of the world. On the atlas
England is but a dot. Morally and spiritually, our Fatherland is our
glory, our cradle, and our grave.'[6]