II
One thing is assumed by not a few, the absurdity of the Almighty caring for such a race, and therefore the impossibility of the Incarnation. 'Which,' asks Mr. Frederic Harrison, 'is the more deliriously extravagant, the disproportionate condescension of the Infinite Creator, or the self-complacent arrogance with which the created mite accepts, or rather dreams of, such an inconceivable prerogative? His planet is one of the least of all the myriad units in a boundless Infinity; in the countless æons 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 æons, 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]]
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 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 pertains, not to this wild death element of Time; that triumphs over Time, and is, and will be, when Time shall be no more.'[[3]] Man's place in the universe may, according to Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, be nearer the centre of things than has so commonly come to be accepted. Modern discovery, he maintains, has thrown light on the interesting problem of our relation to the Universe; and even though such discovery may have no bearing upon theology or religion, yet, he thinks, it proves that our position in the material creation is special and probably unique, and that the view is justified which holds that 'the supreme end and purpose of this vast universe was the production and development of the living soul in the perishable body of man.' And another, a convinced and ardent disciple of Evolution, the late Professor John Fiske, argues that, 'not the production of any higher creature, but the perfecting of humanity is to be the glorious consummation of Nature's long and tedious work.... Man seems now, much more clearly than ever, the chief among God's creatures.... The whole creation has been groaning and travailing together in order to bring forth that last consummate specimen of God's handiwork, the Human Soul.'[[4]] If this be so, this conclusion arrived at by those who do not hold the ordinary faith of Christendom, then the objection that the Incarnation could not have taken place for the redemption of such a race as ours, in a world which is so poor a fraction of the infinite universe, falls to the ground; and the protest of a devout modern poet carries conviction with it:
This earth too small
For Love Divine! Is God not Infinite?
If so, His Love is infinite. Too small!
One famished babe meets pity oft from man
More than an army slain! Too small for Love!
Was Earth too small to be of God created?
Why then too small to be redeemed?[[5]]
Man may, or may not, occupy a 'central position in the universe': other worlds may, or may not, be inhabited: this earth may be but a minute and insignificant speck amid the mighty All, this at least is certain, that not by mere magnitude is our rank in the scale of being to be decided, and that in the spirit of man will be found that which approaches most nearly to Him who is Spirit. 'The man who reviles Humanity on the ground of its small place in the scale of the Universe is,' according to Mr. Frederic Harrison, 'the kind of man who sneers at patriotism and sees nothing great in England, on the ground that our island holds so small a place in the map of the world. On the atlas England is but a dot. Morally and spiritually, our Fatherland is our glory, our cradle, and our grave.'[[6]]