If, however, the "speck" refers to the real man, the spirit, then the question is equally foolish. An intelligent will is neither a "speck," nor something spread out like ether. Furthermore, that which can be so deeply impressed by the vastness of the universe is not insignificant in itself. A mastodon would not be overwhelmed by the vastness of the universe. Neither is the great universe overwhelmed by a sense of its own magnitude. In his sense of awe, the foolish man who asked the question transcends the great universe itself. To be overwhelmed with our inability to know the universe is partly knowing it, or else we should not be so completely overwhelmed. That is not insignificant which can measure the distance to the stars, and weigh the planets, and mark out the shape and size of their orbits. That is not insignificant which can discover the very elements of which the sun is composed. Man's primary body may be relatively small, but it is so highly organized that he can augment it until his instrument reaches the stars. Though the sun is approximately ninety-three million miles from our earth, yet the intelligent mind of man discovered helium in the sun before he discovered it upon the earth. This feat of His child must have given the Father keen delight.
Man's body is potentially as great as the universe because, being so delicately organized, it can articulate with the world elements to the farthest sun that twinkles in the blue.
The Luther Burbanks are revealing our supremacy over the vegetable kingdom. The animal kingdom is known to be equally plastic under our shaping hand; for juggling with animal life is one of man's pastimes. By using pressure, he has taken a single cell life and divided it into twins. He has taken two separate cells and formed them into a giant. Taking off the head and tail of some lower forms of life, he has made the head grow where the tail was, and vice versa.
No one mind can find time to learn of all the wonders achieved by the human family in the realms of nature and of social well-being. A simple statement of man's achievements in the twenty or thirty allied sciences is more thrilling than all the romances ever written. Man's power for good or evil is stupendous and overwhelming. It is in the realm of human life that God Himself will be victorious, or else defeated. All creation will fail if man fails. I here speak of man in the sense of God's children, wherever they may be in the universe. The people on this earth might fail without bringing universal disaster; but if God's children throughout the universe should fail Him, then all is lost. If God did not "care for" His children, it would be the same as not caring for Himself, since all His aims and purposes culminate in His family. God has crowned man with glory and honor, by putting all things under his feet.
The world is as ignorant of man as it is of God; and the prevailing idea of either is a caricature.
It is doubtful whether a self-conscious moral will could be awakened outside of a body, or inside of one if it were less highly organized than the human body. The higher animals share our sensations of pain and pleasure, but it is extremely doubtful whether any of them share in our self-conscious, moral purposes. Possibly a soul must appear in any such highly organized form of God's energies as a human body, and cannot appear where the organization of His energies falls short of this high standard. If we believe the body to be the integration of God's own energies it would not be strange if the body proved to be the incipient soul. We have not yet sounded the depths of God's creative wisdom either in the soul or the body; we only know that soul and body are bound together, and that God's highest achievement and deepest interest center in them. How infinitely precious in the sight of God are His children, the crown and glory of all His wisdom, love, and power!
5. Is not socialism the best religion there is?
When socialism means the Kingdom of God, it is the best religion conceivable. And it is a pity that either religion or socialism should ever mean anything less than the Kingdom of God; for when they drop below that standard, the one is spurious religion while the other is counterfeit socialism; the former discarding society, and the latter eliminating God, both alike become a menace.
Last summer in Madison Square, New York, I listened to a socialist who was ridiculing the very idea of God. Exhorting his listeners to have a little sense, he advised them to get rid of God, priests, ministers, churches, and King Capital. He said:
"You have but one life to live, and it is short; if ever you get anything, you must get it now."