ow, we could not understand it.

For suppose that the theory were true, which Dr. Temple of Rugby has
lately put into such noble words: suppose that, as he says, 'The power
whereby the present ever gathers into itself the results of the past,
transforms the human race into a colossal man, whose life reaches from
the creation to the day of judgment. The successive generations of men,
are days in this man's life. The discoveries and inventions which
characterize the different epochs of the world, are this man's works. The
creeds and doctrines, the opinions and principles of the successive ages,
are his thoughts. The state of society at different times, are his
manners. He grows in knowledge, in self-control, in visible size, just
as we do.' Suppose all this; and suppose too, that God is educating this
his colossal child, as we educate our own children; it will hardly follow
from thence that his education would be, as Dr. Temple says it is,
precisely similar to ours.

Analogous it may be, but not precisely similar; and for this reason: That
the collective man, in the theory, must be infinitely more complex in his
organization than the individuals of which he is composed. While between
the educator of the one and of the other, there is simply the difference
between a man and God. How much more complex then must his education be!
how all-inscrutable to human minds much in it!--often as inscrutable as
would our training of our children seem to the bird brooding over her
young ones in the nest. The parental relations in all three cases may
be--the Scriptures say that they are--expansions of the same great law;
the key to all history may be contained in those great words--'How often
would I have gathered thy children as a hen gathereth her chickens under
her wings.' Yet even there the analogy stops short--'but thou wouldest
not' expresses a new element, which has no place in the training of the
nestling by the dam, though it has place in our training of our children;
even that self-will, that power of disobedience, which is the dark side
of man's prerogative as a rational and self-cultivating being. Here that
analogy fails, as we should have expected it to do; and in a hundred
other points it fails, or rather transcends so utterly its original type,
that mankind seems, at moments, the mere puppet of those laws of natural
selection, and competition of species, of which we have heard so much of
late; and, to give a sin