s
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