the unloving and the unlovable. He
was named, and rightly named, "Friend of publicans and sinners." Then
were bad men of worth to Christ? They were; for, as Tennyson says, "If
there be a devil in man, there is an angel too." Christ saw the possible
angel in the actual devil. He knew that the lost might be found, and the
bad become good, and the prodigal return home; and He loved men, not
only for what they were, but for what they might be.

It would be easy to show that this high doctrine of man underlies, and
is involved in, the whole life and work and teaching of Jesus. It is
involved in the doctrine of God. Indeed, as Dr. Dale says, the Christian
doctrine of man is really a part of the Christian doctrine of God.[32]
Because God is a Father, every man is a son of God, or, rather, every
man has within him the capacity for sonship. It is involved in the
doctrine of the Incarnation; that stupendous fact reveals not only the
condescension of God but the glory and exaltation of man. If God could
become man, there must be a certain kinship between God and man; since
God has become man, our poor human nature has been thereby lifted up and
glorified. The same great doctrine is implied in the truth of Christ's
atonement. When He who knew Himself to be the eternal Son of God spoke
of His own life as the "ransom" for the forfeited lives of men, He
revealed once more how infinite is the worth of that which could be
redeemed only at such tremendous cost.

Such, then, is Christ's teaching about man. And, as I have already said,
it was a new thing in human history. Nowhere is the line which divides
the world B.C. from the world A.D. more sharply defined than here.
Before Christ came, no one dared to say, for no one believed, that the
soul of every man, and still less the soul of every woman and child, was
of worth to God, that even a slave might become a son of the Most High.
But Christ believed it, and Christ said it, and when He said it, the new
world, the world in which we live, began to be. The great difference
between ancient and modern civilizations, one eminent historian has
said, is to be found here, that while ancient civilization cared only
for the welfare of the favoured few, modern civilization seeks the
welfare of all. And when we ask further what has made the difference,
history sends us back for answer to the four Gospels and the teaching of
Jesus concerning the infinite worth of the soul of man.

II

And now,