Vermont watchman and State journal. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1836-1883, 1877-05-23
True Glory Of Mans Nature.


II we were made in the likeness of God
if he meant to use us as glorious and honor
able fellow-workers with himself, then TO sink
down into british disregard of him and of
our natural prerogatives is an immense
shame and corruption. If we were made a
little lower than angels, to forget our noble
birth and act as if we were nothing but
worldlings is TO degrade ourselves inexpres-
sibly. Men whose faces are turned earth
ward do not feel this. Men of science, with
all their penetration, are apt to conceive of
the outer world as larger and grander than
the spiritual es sence that inhabits our weak
and short-lived bodies But as soon as you
believe that man is immortal, and has a ca
pacity for progress, you must admit that
there are no fixed limits to the growth of
every selfish and base affection, any more
than TO advancement in virtue And, what
is still more tragic, there may be an honor
able employment of the leading powers of
the mind in every other way, while a man is
utterly dead and blind to whatever concerns
the highest life of the soul. If as a man
grew wicked his powers grew less, until the
highest crimes of which our nature is cap
able handed him over to idiocy, you might
pity and excuse human guilt. 1t would
look like a disease, bringing the soul down
to something like annihilation. But power
of thought is wasted on schemes of ambi
ton, on plans of wealth. on the mere pur-
suit of enjoyment, as great as would be
needed for escaping the corruptions of the
world and for putting on the likeness of
God. We must feel them that man carries
with him into and through all crimes against
his fellows, through all self-ruining vices,
all hate and blasphemy, the same high
powers and capabilities which made him at
his creation a little lower than the angels
If he might have been grand temple holy
and indestructible, he must be grand, too, in
his ruins. This it is that throws the spirit
of tragedy into our lives. Our faults and
follies, looked at from lower point of view,
are subjects of comic mirth, and perhaps
the iesting of an hour may cure those devia-
tions from line of social propriety which
are simply ridiculous. If we were vulgar
existences, made on no great pattern, toward
whom neither justice nor pity could be ex-
ercised in large measure, there would be no
tragic element in our lives. Poets could
not mourn, under the faint light of heathen-
ism, over character led by strong passion, or
perverse plans, or divine Nemesis into self
delusion, into crime and ruin. This view of
man the Scriptures take up. We feel that
they are righteous when they measure re-
sponslblity by power, purposes of crime by
capacity for the highest virtue, the guilt of
hatred by the excellence of love, the base
ness of sensuality by our creation in the
image of God. If they are severe it is be-
cause there are such extremes of character
possible for man. If they are sad, it is be.
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