THE BIBLE AND MAN
The natural outline of a human life which has suggested the method of
these lectures represents a man as awaking each morning to the
consciousness of himself. Every man lives perforce in his own company. He
walks with himself on every road of life. He sits with himself in its
resting places. He lies down with himself in its slumbers. He is his own
friend, and his own enemy. Omar Khayyám declares that he is his own heaven
and his own hell. There is a story of a farmer who said that when he
climbed to the roof of his barn and looked about, he always found that he
himself was the center of the world. The roof of the sky at all points was
equally distant from him; the walls of the world made by the dipping
horizon showed the same length of radius from himself! The story has its
serious, as well as its amusing side. Every man is the personal center of
a world which gets its meaning from his own heart. It is no wonder that
the old Greek motto was "Know thyself."
Yet the knowledge of self is not easy knowledge. The fact that no man has
ever seen his own face, save by reflection in some mirror, is a parable.
The very eyes that see cannot see themselves. They are so near that they
are hidden. The moral literature of the race always emphasizes the
difficulty of self-revelation. Its cry is, "Who can understand his errors?
Cleanse thou me from secret faults." It has a yet deeper desire: that it
may know more of its own essential nature. Each man longs for a revelation
of God; and each man longs for a revelation of himself. The present
emphasis is that the Bible is the medium of this human revelation.
We do not go far in the reading of its pages without discovering that the
word "thou" looms large in its spiritual grammar. Those curious persons
who often bring their arithmetic to the Bible could doubtless tell how
many times "thou" and "thee" and "thy" and "thine" are found in its
chapters. In the Ten Commandments and in the New Commandment "thou" is the
recurring word. Personal address is prominent everywhere. Indeed, the
whole Book is a kind of prophet coming into the court of each soul and
saying, "Thou art the man." Sometimes the approach is an accusation,
sometimes an approbation; in any case the note is intensely individual. In
the New Commandment the "self" is made the standard by which the relation
to the neighbor is to be tested. The implication would seem to be that the
man who does not love himself lacks the law by which his love for other
men may be made efficient. Polonius was not far from the biblical idea
when he said:
To thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
In daily parlance it is often said. "Put yourself in his place": but the
value of that transfer of self is small if you do not know what the self
is after you give it the new place! The revelation of self is likewise the
revelation of other men. We know our neighbors only as we know ourselves.
Presuming, therefore, that we send a man to the Scriptures to find the
doctrine of his own nature, what will be his discovery? The question is
not a new one, and its answer has sometimes been touched by prejudice.
Many have contended that in its effort to magnify God, the Bible is guilty
of belittling man. Fragments of Scripture might be presented to support
this criticism. We must, however, insist that the biblical teaching is to
be determined by its main current rather than by its eddies. The Book does
present God as high and lifted up, while man lies with his lips in the
dust. It does make God a King, while it proclaims man a subject. It does
stress divine sovereignty, while insisting on human obedience and
reverence. It does call for humility on the part of man. We may well admit
that it is possible to overdo the call to humility. That good mood may
easily pass over into a false mood. Occasionally men, in an effort to be
humble, speak untruth concerning their own souls. It is just here that the
"worm-of-the-dust" theory gets its chance. That phrase was a biblical one,
used by a character in his moment of self-abasement. Yet the Concordance
will prove that this lowly estimate of man is by no means the staple of
teaching, as well as that much of the cheap preaching of human nature is a
radical departure from the doctrine of the Book. It is always good to keep
clear the distinction between vanity and self-respect, so that if a man
may not have the right to look down on his neighbors he may still have the
right to look up to himself. Humility must ever be based on truth, and
self-respect can have no other foundation. The two moods are not
contradictory. The one comes from the recognition of the nature of God, in
the utter and unspeakable perfection of his attributes; the other comes
from the recognition of the nature of man as being himself a partaker of
that divine nature. In reality the two moods grow out of the same truth.
A still deeper objection is sometimes offered against the scriptural
theory of human nature. It is charged that the doctrine of the Fall,
together with the constant emphasis of man's "exceeding sinfulness,"
deprives man of special dignity. Without doubt the theory of the Fall has
sometimes been presented in such a manner as to cancel all human claims to
greatness. Whenever a religious teacher carries his doctrine of the Fall
to unjust lengths, we must all be tempted to declare that we can readily
prove an alibi! And if he shall employ that doctrine as a vast slur on
humanity, we shall insist that the length of the fall must be the length
of the possible rise! In harmony with this idea a great preacher has given
the world a sermon on "The Dignity of Humanity as Evidenced by its Ruins."
Much of the glory of the Coliseum at Rome has departed, but even its ruins
are a testimony to its greatness. Seeing its gaunt grandeur in the
sunlight, or viewing its impressive shadows in the moonlight, the tourist
gets the shock of its glory. The simple truth is that a doctrine of the
Fall is possible only when you start with human greatness. God made one
creature strong enough to resist Himself--one creature with sufficient
self-determination to make mutiny in the world. We would not torture the
doctrine of the Fall into a mere compliment for humanity; but we would
insist that the possibility of a Fall implies a height to fall from, and
that responsibility for a Fall implies a nature great enough and free
enough to make far-reaching choices. The evidence of the dignity is still
found among the ruins.
We must always supplement any doctrine of the Fall with a doctrine of
human responsibility. The Bible is most explicit in this insistence. Its
pages are crowded with the moral imperative for man. The thorn and the
brier are on the earth; but they are not blamed, because they wait for the
era of the good people. The whole creation groaneth and travaileth
together in pain; but the creation is not blamed, because it waits for the
revealing of the sons of God. The lion and the lamb do not lie down
together; but they are not blamed, because they wait for the age of peace
that can issue only from the hearts of men. The coin rolls into dust and
shadow and is lost; we do not blame the coin. The sheep wanders into
desert and darkness and is lost; we do not blame the sheep. The son goes
off into the swine field and is lost; and we do blame the son. The coin
and the sheep have no communings with self, no sense of guilt, no road of
repentant return; but the son has all these. The Bible does utter its
vigorous charge against man's sin; it is the ever-open court room into
which the human conscience is summoned for judgment. The Book does not
treat man as a machine whose cogs and wheels are moved only by outside
force; nor does it treat him as a manikin, jerked hither and yon by
irresponsible sensations; it rather dignifies him with personal
responsibility. The Fall does not prevent climbing, if only man will take
advantage of those gracious powers that are offered for his help. Emerson
saw the meaning of this when he wrote his tribute to mankind based on its
ability to respond to the moral order:
So nigh is grandeur to our dust,
So near is God to man,
When Duty whispers low, "Thou must,"
The youth replies, "I can!"
Words like "ought" and "should" and "must" have gone forth from the Bible
and have fairly penetrated the moral consciousness of the race. No other
book so honors human nature with a sublime call to responsibility.
We now leave these general considerations and take up the several portions
of the Scriptures with a view to ascertaining their contributions to a
doctrine of man. The foundation of that doctrine is seen in the account of
the creation. Whether that account be poem, parable, allegory, or history,
its meaning for this special point is the same. The climax of the creation
is man. God is represented as changing chaos into cosmos, separating
waters and land, fixing sun and moon in their places, bringing verdure to
the surface of the earth, assigning birds and beasts and fishes to their
spheres, and then as giving to man a wide rulership. "God made man to have
dominion"--that is the biblical word; and the ages have been telling how
true that word is. The Bible theory and the facts of life join in a
coronation of man.
The account of the creation goes deeper than this in its estimate of
mankind. Its conferring of power on man is explained by its conferring a
nature on man. Man is made in the divine image. The Word was not content
with one statement of that fact; it must needs give it double emphasis.
"So God created man in his own image"--that would seem simple and strong
enough. But the statement is strengthened by repetition, "In the image of
God created he him." These twice-repeated words are the real charter of
man's greatness. The atheist must admit that man has the dominion, but the
believer holds that man has the dominion because he has the birthright.
Man is not only God's submonarch, he is God's image.
It is interesting and convincing to note how soon that primary truth about
man's nature began to work. In the persecution under Diocletian the
precious parchments of the Bible had been secretly carried from house to
house. The charge that a Christian had given up the sacred Book in order
to save himself from death was one of the most serious that could be
presented. Many martyrdoms occurred because men preferred the Bible above
their own lives. Though circulated under such difficulty, and though made
into readable parchments at such expense of labor and money, the Bible was
slowly impressing its doctrine of man upon the stubborn period. We are
often smitten with horror as we read stories which show how lightly human
life was regarded by the Romans. Those dreadful scenes in the arena, where
thumbs so often declined to turn down as a sign of mercy, are dire
mysteries to men who have gotten the biblical standpoint. We are distant
from that heartless mood because we are near to the Bible. The Book and
the gladiator could not live together in peace. The Book at once began to
call men from the tiers of bloody pleasure. With the conversion of
Constantine, superficial as it may have been, the change began. The
emperor ordered many splendid copies of the Bible for the churches of his
capital. He himself came under the spell of its human doctrine. Zealous
Christian teachers may sometimes overstate the influence which the Bible
exercised over later Roman law. Still there are some undoubted evidences
of that influence. Constantine made a law forbidding that a criminal
should be branded on the face, and he gave as his reason for the law that
the image of God should not be marred! This leaves us in no doubt as to
what had inspired the legislation. It was the simple beginning of a
program that has not yet come to its consummation. The biblical idea of
man routed one form of slavery, and it will yet rout all other forms. When
men come to believe that man is made in the divine image all good
movements for the betterment of life are set in the way to victory.
The legal portions of the Bible give us the like lesson, even though the
approach to the lesson is different. Here we discover that humanity is
worthy enough to call for conservation and protection. The legislation
reaches to hygienic and sanitary details of minute character. The whole
effort is to build a protecting fence about men. The Ten Commandments,
studied in this light, become a very human document. Their harsh and
negative quality is softened into gentleness. They guard the goods of
man--his property, his wife and children, his body, his good name. It
would be possible to regard the Decalogue as a series of prohibitions in
which the word "not" occurs with forbidding frequency. In this case the
appropriate accompaniment is thunder and lightning, and the appropriate
scroll for the writing is stone. This viewpoint is one sided and unfair.
The Ten Commandments are prohibitions only because they are protections.
They have been through many ages the kindly sentinels of society. They
have taken the side of God, of his dumb creatures, and of men and women
and little children. Considered in any just way, the legal portions of the
Bible are a tribute not merely to divine authority, but to human worth.
The prophetical books add their lesson, and from a still different angle.
They are filled with protests against man's conduct, with wrath against
his insincerities, and with predictions of his coming woe. The mouths of
the prophets were not filled with compliments. Those stern men were not
the flatterers of their own generations. Their sayings could be so elected
as to make a degrading estimate of men. But here again we must get the
full meaning of the message. In their last analysis the prophecies are a
marked tribute to potential man. Beyond the disturbed present they see the
peaceful future. Beyond the clash of swords and the swish of spears they
see the mild and productive era of the plowshare and the pruning hook.
Beyond the unreal altars they see the incense of true worship arising to
God. The prophets were, in the best sense, optimists, and they were
optimists because they believed that all men would some day yield to the
Lord. They beheld the whole earth filled with righteousness. They saw the
stone cut loose from the mountain and filling the wide world. The healing
river was to flow to all peoples. Jerusalem was to be the universal joy.
The day would dawn when it would be unnecessary to say to any man, "Know
thou the Lord." The most dismal of the prophets foretold the perfect day.
But all this means that the prophets foretold the perfect man and the
perfect race. To proclaim that humanity, under the guidance of God, is so
capable is to dignify human life beyond measure.
Nor are we lacking among the prophets an individual example of the power
of self-respect. Nehemiah may not be the premier among his fellows, but he
talks with a royal self-consciousness. When messengers come, desiring
that he shall go down into the plain for a parley with Sanballat, he
declines by saying, "I am doing a great work, so that I cannot come down."
Again he is told that the enemy is coming, and he is counseled to go into
the temple and cling to the altar for protection. Once more self-respect
comes to the rescue; the reply is, "Should such a man as I flee? and who
is there, that, being as I am, would go into the temple to save his life?
I will not go in." Here the potential man, foretold by the prophet, was
the actual man. He had reached such a high doctrine of his own nature that
the doctrine itself became the prevention of triviality and of cowardice.
The rebuilded walls of Jerusalem arose from that spirit. Those walls were
likewise an expression of the prophet's faith in the future of his people.
The prophetic confidence in man was second only to the prophetic
confidence in God. This form of tribute to humanity is preeminent in the
books of the prophets.
In the devotional part of the Bible we should not naturally expect that
tribute would turn manward. The tendency is seen in those sections of
prophecy where the prophet himself has close dealings with God. When the
greatest of the prophets sees the ineffable One and hears the awful
trisagion of the seraphim, the prime confession is that his own lips are
unclean and that he dwells in the midst of a people of unclean lips.
Inasmuch as the Psalms are in large measure a liturgy of worship, their
emphasis is on the greatness of Jehovah. Yet sometimes the emphasis turns
toward man. The most striking illustration occurs in the eighth psalm. The
writer there utters the feeling that we have all shared. The limitless
expanse of the heavens, the shining of moon and stars in the far heights,
the workmanship of the Lord in the vast universe--all this makes the
psalmist feel that he is a mere speck in the scheme. Tried by those
celestial measurements, he drops into insignificance. He is rescued from
self-contempt only by a return to the message of Genesis. His despairing
cry issues in a shout of personal triumph. "When I consider thy heavens,
the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou
visitest him?" If materialism should conquer the Bible there is but one
answer. The psalmist is saved by the Scripture, "Thou hast made him a
little lower than God, and hast crowned him with glory and honor." It is
no marvel that the first translators lowered the tribute and substituted
"the angels" for God. The reverence that so often used a sign for the
divine name trembled on the verge of such a human tribute. Still that
tribute was a return to the doctrine that God had made man in his own
image and had given him dominion over the works of his hand. In addition
to all this, the Psalms are girded with the consciousness that man can
enter into the august presence of the Lord. The mutual element in worship
is an exaltation of man. The greatness of Jacob is greater when he meets
with the heavenly visitant by the Jabbok brook. He becomes a prince. In
the devotional books man claims his princely heritage. He treads the
courts of the infinite King.
Moving forward into the New Testament, we find that the doctrine of man
gathers more impressiveness. Jesus never cast any doubt upon the supreme
place of man in the program of God. He put his harshest blame upon those
who wickedly misled the children of the Father. He himself was chided
because he sought the lowliest and the worst among men and women. He ate
with the publican and gave his choicest lesson to the harlot. He was
willing to exchange his social reputation for the privilege of associating
with the humblest people. For a woman with a dark past he delocalized
worship. From another he accepted the offering of grateful tears and put
her conduct in contrast with that of the lordly Pharisee. He was the
Prophet for the soul as such. He was the Priest who mediated gladly
between the least one and the greatest One. We search his words in vain
for anything that put contempt on man as man.
When he compared men to the rest of creation it was always to human
advantage. He told of the care of the shepherd for the sheep, and then he
asked, "How much is a man better than a sheep?" He declared that God noted
the fall of sparrows, though they brought small price in the market place,
and then, speaking to ordinary men and women, nearly all of them ignorant
and more than half of them slaves, he said, "Are ye not much better than
they?" Nor were these sayings really interrogative; they were exclamatory.
Jesus knew that every normal man would feel the answer in his own soul.
The worth of man was, in the teaching of Jesus, beyond debate.
He moved, also, from inanimate things to the assertion of man's worth. The
lilies and grasses were in the care of God and waited on him for their
vesture. "Will he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?" He made
the worth of man the warrant of the care of God. At last he put man on one
side of the scale and the whole world on the other side, and he affirmed
that man outweighed the world. Men may barter themselves for half a
township; but Jesus declared that it would be a disastrous bargain, if a
man should accept the world in exchange for himself. "What shall it profit
a man, if he gain the world and lose himself? Or what will a man give in
exchange for himself?" This is the final answer to any paltry teaching
about the worth of man.
When choice had to be made between man's interests and sacred laws and
ordinances, Jesus gave preference to man. The shewbread was consecrated,
but he approved the taking of it to satisfy human hunger. The Sabbath day
was holy, but the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath; so
the plucked ears of corn were a testimonial to men.
The attitude of Jesus toward childhood is tender evidence of his thought
of humanity. The child has not yet won any achievement, save the loving
assertion of its own dependency. The child in the midst represented
humanity in its freshest and most natural form. It is said that some
ancient religionists were accustomed to debate whether or not a child had
a soul. Jesus would have scorned such a debate. He made the child the
model of the kingdom. Human life unspoiled was lifted up as an example. To
offend a little one was worse than being sunk by a millstone into the
sea. A cup of cold water given to a child would win a special reward. The
angels of the children behold ever the face of the Father. Thus the child,
in all the teaching of Jesus, was made the creditor of the race.
Jesus carried this doctrine of man on to the uttermost issue. We have
never yet secured the full meaning of that "inasmuch" in the account of
the final judgment. The Lord lives beyond the need of man's overt aid. But
human beings are his representatives. The righteous had so far overlooked
this fact, that they were forgetful of any ministry to him; and what had
been the unconscious glory of the righteous was the unconscious tragedy of
the wicked. The judgment day will be filled with human tests. He who has
not acted as if human beings stood for God cannot meet the final
standards. Jesus's picture of the judgment is a statement of divine
authority; and it is an appraisement of human worth.
Thus do we see that from whatever side we come to the teaching of Christ,
we find an exalted doctrine of man. The incarnation itself is a
contribution to that doctrine. If we call it "the human life of God" it
was a life lived for the sake of man. The Word became flesh and dwelt
among men, full of grace and truth, because men needed the message of
that Word. The whole life of Jesus was lived for man. He himself said,
"For their sakes I sanctify myself." All those sacrificial phrases that
describe the purpose of his coming add glory to human life. The joy that
was set before him was the goal of a redeemed humanity. His living for men
was simply his teaching about men, made over into concrete terms. In the
Parable of the Good Shepherd he gives the revelation of his own attitude
toward men. One soul, brought back into right relations with God, makes
joy in heaven. It is the Eternal One who is represented as saying,
"Rejoice with me." Men may deny the doctrine of the only begotten Son, but
they can scarcely deny that that doctrine leads on to a wondrous doctrine
of human worth.
The Cross, viewed in one light, becomes the very climax of the doctrine of
man. Theologians have often laid their stress upon some single purpose of
the divine sacrifice. One has said that the Cross appeases the anger of
God; another that the Cross maintains the majesty of the law; another that
the Cross is a moral influence wooing and winning the heart of man to God;
another that the Cross is the expression of the Father's sorrow with the
sins and sorrows of his children. But we may surely take one meaning of
the Cross to be the divine estimate of man. God's sense of values must be
preserved. He did not send his Son to die for worms of the dust. That idea
may fit an extreme mood of spiritual abasement. We may grant all possible
condescension in the atoning act of God, but we cannot grant a
condescension that dedicates infinite worth to finite worthlessness. Jesus
died for men just because men were far more than worms of the dust. If we
are to keep that theory of atonement that has long held the heart of the
church, we are driven to affirm that the Cross gives us a divine estimate
of mankind. No man ever appreciates the worth of himself until he gets the
appraisal of Calvary. The dying of Jesus is not out of harmony with his
teaching and his living. The whole program is like the garment taken from
him on the day of crucifixion; it is woven throughout without seam. Men
may decry a doctrine of substitution, but they cannot say that such a
doctrine is a slight tribute to human worth. In such a doctrine thorns and
nails and spears and all the drama of the Cross are made into tributes to
the soul of man.
This carries us on to the biblical teaching of man's permanent worth. The
doctrine of immortality makes its incalculable addition to the doctrine of
man. There is a story, for which the writer cannot vouch, that Thomas
Carlyle in a mood of pessimism one day wrote this peevish estimate of man:
What is man? A foolish baby!
Vainly strives and fumes and frets!
Demanding all, deserving nothing,
One small grave is all he gets!
Language like this is certainly no contribution to the literature of
self-respect. The story proceeds to relate that Carlyle's wife found this
poetic depreciation lying on the table, and that she wrote the following
confession and correction:
And man? O hate not, nor despise
The fairest, lordliest work of God!
Think not he made thee good and wise
Only to sleep beneath the sod!
Doubtless the tale is apocryphal. In any case the latter estimate is far
nearer to the biblical conception, and it is altogether worthy of a
woman's moral instinct. If man is to live forever, as the climax of
Revelation insists, it is quite impossible for him to "think too much" of
himself, unless he indulges in comparison of himself with others. An
argument for immortality does not fall within the scope of this lecture;
but the bearing of immortality, as declared in the Holy Scriptures, on the
view that men must take of human nature, touches our purpose in a radical
way. A deathless person must respect himself. A deathless person must
command the respect of a world--and of God. The doctrine of immortality
adds an infinite measure to the doctrine of human worth.
Even the biblical representation of heaven secures a relation to this
subject. The abode for immortal life, as well as immortal life itself, may
be turned into a human estimate. The book of Revelation declares that the
nations shall bring "their glory and honor" into the Eternal City. This
can only mean that men shall make some contribution to the eternal life.
What they are and what they have done shall fill heaven with added value.
The cities of earth shall transport treasures to the Heavenly City. Here,
again, we come upon a reason based on the divine sense of values. God will
not provide an Eternal Home that is any better than the Eternal Beings for
whom he makes it ready. The gem is to be better than the setting. In a
certain sense, therefore, jasper walls and pearl gates and gold streets,
as seen in the descriptions of heaven, are tributes to human souls. The
Bible tells us that "greater than the house is he that built it," and the
Bible would tell us, also, that the occupant of the house is greater than
the house. God will provide no everlasting dwelling that is better than
the everlasting dwellers. Heaven is made for man, and not man for heaven.
The many mansions are tributes to the people that shall live in the
Father's house. The Scriptures are reserved in their revealings of the
other land; but their descriptions of celestial glories may be united with
those other portions of the Bible that dignify the human spirit and may be
taken as standing for the divine valuation of the essential selves of men.
This review of the teaching of the several sections of the Bible has
confessedly sought for the words and ideas that exalt the doctrine of man.
Allowing all possible discounts, and admitting all possible offsets, the
residuum of instruction tending to glorify human nature is significant. We
need not wonder that some thoughtful men have affirmed that the chief
characteristic of Christianity is the value that it places on man. If we
do not accept this statement, we can still declare that the Bible is the
supreme Book when judged by its emphasis on human values.
Nor can there be any doubt of the need of this emphasis in our own age. As
men crowd more and more into the great centers of population, the tendency
will be to hold men cheaply. In former times man was often highly valued
because of his rarity. On the far Eastern plains a new face, not being
often seen, was regarded with curious interest. Thus Abraham stood in the
door of his tent in the heat of the day and welcomed the stranger, because
the stranger was an event. But in the modern city the stranger is no
longer an event; he is only an episode, or perhaps an incident. We pass
him on the dense street, and we do not notice him at all. There are so
many of him that, unless we are heedful, we shall come to regard him
lightly just because he is hidden by the crowd. When factories grow so
huge that men are known, not by their names, but by their numbers, only
the scriptural emphasis upon men as such can save human beings from being
deemed "hands" rather than souls. If the sin of the countryside is an
excessive social interest that makes for gossip, the sin of the city is a
social carelessness that makes for indifference. The various problems of
our social life wait for their solution upon the Christian doctrine of
man. When that doctrine has done its full service, race problems, labor
problems, liquor problems, and all their dreadful accompaniments will
issue into a righteous and intelligent peace. An immortal son of God,
knowing himself, cannot be unjust to another immortal son of God, when
once he knows his Brother.
This hints at the personal bearing of the doctrine. As men grow in moral
and spiritual experience, they find themselves using more and more the
test of self-respect. Knowing that the reaction of certain behaviors makes
them feel that a fragment of the soul has slipped away from them, so that
they have the sense of smallness, they guard their natures lest legitimate
pride should be destroyed. Andrews Norton once wrote to his son, Charles
Eliot Norton, who was about to go abroad for an important service, telling
the young man that his family and friends recognized that he had special
powers for doing large and worthy things. Then he added that "this ought
not to make one vain. On the contrary, their true tendency is to produce
that deep sense of responsibility--of what we owe to God, to our friends,
and to our fellowmen--which is wholly inconsistent with presumption or
vanity." It was a wise father who wrote thus to his son. If the Christian
doctrine of man be true, no man can think too much of himself. There is a
type of saving pride. Clough stated it in his well-known lines:
Then welcome, Pride! and I shall find
In thee a power to lift the mind
This low and groveling joy above--
'Tis but the proud can truly love.
The pride that comes from the consciousness of the divine image has power
to restrain from sins and trivialities, and it has power likewise to
constrain toward holiness of character and largeness of service. One who
has come to believe that he is made in the divine image, that he is one of
the divinely appointed rulers of the world, that the great laws are
designed for his protection, that the alluring prophecies of the future
are declarations of his coming power, that his worship is the symbol of
his partnership with the Most High, that the incarnation is in his
interest, that the Infinite Teacher brought him matchless tributes, that
the Cross of Calvary is an expression of his own valuation, that immortal
life is his destiny, and that a glorious heaven is the fitting place for
his final dwelling--such a one has gained all the preventions and all the
inspirations of the Christian doctrine of self-respect. Sins and
trivialities cannot flourish when one thinks so much of oneself; great
affections and lasting consecrations seem natural to one so highly
endowed. The conception that makes for the dignity of self makes also for
the consideration of others. He who entertains this view begins to
Find man's veritable stature out,
Erect, sublime, the measure of a man,
And that's the measure of an angel,
Says the apostle.
To such a one life becomes solemn and beautiful. He is now the son of God.
While he knows not yet what he shall be, he sees the vision of the Elder
Brother and so purifies himself even as he is pure. The world needs the
gospel of the Son of God in order that it may learn the gospel of the sons
of God.