If the power of producing effects is the criterion of value, the few will always be the most valuable, and the mass relatively, subordinate, and the weak and lowest will be left helplessly worthless.
And the mass of all the myriads that do live, are of no more account than working animals; and there is, no such a theory, no reason, a priori; why they should not be controlled by superior men, and made to do that for which they seem the best fitted—Work and Drudgery! Only long experiment could teach a doctrine contrary to the logical presumption arising from weakness. There could be no doctrine of human rights. It would be simply a doctrine of human forces. Right would be a word as much out of place as among birds and beasts. Authority would go with productive greatness, as gravity goes with mass in matter. The whole chance of Right, and the whole theory of Liberty, springs from that part of man that lies beyond this life.
As a material creature, man ranks among physical forces. Rights come from his spiritual nature. The body is of the earth, and returns to earth, and is judged by earthly measures. The soul is of God, and returns to God, and is judged by Divine estimates. And this is the reason why a free, unobstructed Bible always works toward human rights. It is the only basis on which the poor, the ignorant, the weak, the laboring masses can entrench against oppression.
What, then, is that theory of man which Christianity gives forth?
It regards man not as a perfect thing, put into life to blossom and die, as a perfect flower doth. Man is a seed, and birth is planting. He is in life for cultivation, not exhibition; he is here chiefly to be acted on, not to be characteristically an agent. For, though man is also an actor, he is yet more a recipient. Though he produces effects, he receives a thousand fold more than he produces. And he is to be estimated by his capacity of receiving, not of doing. He has his least value in what he can do; it all lies in what he is capable of having done to him. The eye, the ear, the tongue, the nerve of touch, are all simple receivers. The understanding, the affections, the moral sentiments, all, are primarily and characteristically, recipients of influence; and only secondarily agents. Now, how different is the value of ore, dead in its silent waiting-places, from the wrought blade, the all but living engine, and the carved and curious utensil!
Of how little value is a ship standing helpless on the stocks—but half-built, and yet building—to one who has no knowledge of the ocean, or of what that helpless hulk will become the moment she slides into her element, and rises and falls upon the flood with joyous greeting!
The value of an acorn is not what it is, but what it shall be when nature has brooded it, and brought it up, and a hundred years have sung through its branches and left their strength there!
He, then, that judges man by what he can do, judges him in the seed. We must see him through some lenses—we must prefigure his immortality. While, then, his industrial value in life must depend on what he can do, we have here the beginning of a moral value which bears no relation to his power, but to his future destiny.
This view assumes distinctness and intensity, when we add to it the relationship which subsists between man and his Maker.
This relationship begins in the fact that we are created in the divine image; that we are connected with God, therefore, not by Government alone, but by nature.