The Individual's Place in Nature

He calleth them all by names by the greatness of His might; for that He is strong in power not one faileth.” — Isaiah xl. 26.

What a singular statement! I should have expected just the contrary; it is the contrarysentiment we generally hear. Men are saying every day, “Because He is strong in power you could not expect Him to care for the individual’’ I once stood beneath the dome of night by the side of a very learned astronomer. He broke into raptures on the vastness of the starry spaces. “In the light of these,” he cried, “what a travesty seems a well-known Christian doctrine!” — he meant the Incarnation. His view was that the power of God was disparaged by being associated with minute things. The prophet takes exactly the opposite view. He says that the vastness of God’s power must be proportionate to His minuteness. “In the greatness of His might He gives to each thing a separate name; because He is strong in power not one faileth.” Which of these views is the correct one? I know which has been truest to experience — the last. So far as experience goes, what has the vast creation been doing all this time? Making an individual — a man. It may have been doing so in all worlds; but we know that it has in ours. So far as it meets my eye, creation has been a stepping downwards — from the masses to the man, from the multitude to the unit, from the collective forces to the solitary soul. Each stage has become more separate from the mass. The stair which I descend is a stair of increasing personality — matter, crystal, plant, fish, reptile, bird, mammal, man. At the foot of the stair I stand alone. Wherever I came from — whether created or evolved — at the foot of the stair I stand alone. I have nothing whereon I can rest. I can pluck the flower, but it does not know me. I can rear the bird, but it does not commune with me. I can rule the beast of the field, but it does not understand me. The latest stroke on Nature’s anvil has produced an isolated soul.

I thank Thee that such has been the climax,

0 God! No longer, in such a knowledge, can

1 look at the stars and say, *’ What a travesty they make of Christ! “In the light of this climax, it becomes all fit and seemly that a man should be my hiding-place from the storm, a man my covert from the tempest. Nevermore let me feel my insignificance before Thee! Nevermore let me sneer at a special providence! Help me to see that all Thy providences have been tapering downward — from the dayspring to the dust! That dust of which Thou saidst, “Let us make man,’* is Thy gold dust; Thy closing work has been Thy climax work. Fearless I stand below the stars. Dauntless I survey the depths of night. Untrembling I behold the wonders of the telescope; for t)iQ microscope is the climax of Thy glory, and Thine audience chamber is the lowest room.