As St. Paul thought of that little company—a company small and obscure to the outward eye—what he saw in them was the temple of the
Holy Ghost, and the spiritual life that was breathing there was a Divine life; and this intense conviction of the value of each soul and each society and its consequent sanctity was a never-failing inspiration to him.
Through it he saw in every one who listened to his words, as he went from city to city, a man created and endowed with a Divine mission and Divine capacity, if they could only be roused.
It transformed every soul that crossed his path, so that he looked on life with new eyes. The common crowd had a new interest for him, the suffering poor, the downtrodden slave, the heathen in his blindness, the degraded sinner.
And it has been so with all the great servants of God; out of this feeling the love of souls has grown in men.
But this feeling of the value of each individual life, because of the Divine element and presence in it, is a peculiar gift of the Christian revelation.
In the ancient pagan world a man’s life
was of little account; it is out of the Bible that this new thought has come that every soul has in it an indefinite element of Divine possibilities, and is therefore of value in the sight of God. It is by virtue of this contribution to our thought that the Bible is truly described as the Great Charter of human rights, and as the source of the great stream of charity and self-sacrifice, of that enthusiasm of humanity which more than all else separates and distinguishes our life from that of heathen antiquity.
It would indeed be difficult to point to any one single thing which makes so great a difference between the quality of one man’s life and another’s as the presence or absence of this feeling about the value, the possibilities, the sanctity of each individual soul.
“Let man estimate himself,” said Pascal, “let him estimate himself at his true value, honour himself in his capacities, and despise himself in his neglect of those capacities.” Yes, if a man is once brought to this condition that he feels the greatness of the ends for