The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1883-10-24
The Value of the Soul.

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matter of the value of the soul in the right
scales. We weigh in the scales of selfish
ness instead of love. We permit the
indifference and scorn we may chance to
feel for those low down to become our
standards, rather than the tender interest
we feel in those near and dear. The right
and wise way is to Judge all after the es.
innate we put on the select few. These
are mothers with the fond mothers heart
beating in their bosoms. AS often as they
go abroad into the streets, and return,
they see little eager eyes peering out of
nursery windows, and little soft hands
reckoning welcome. They hear tiny feet
pattering toward them along hall and
walk and they feel, as often as they look
down on these faces, upturned and beam.
ing with radiance, the pressure of loving
arms about their necks. Or, it may be, it
is not these sweet greetings and caresses,
but the memory of them, and that these
children are not here any longer, but yon-
der with him who said " Suffer little
children to come unto me-" But here or
there, is there any language with which
to give fit expression to the mothers sense
of preciousness of those who have found
life through her life ? She takes them
into her best and most sacred thoughts,
and in the golden flush of her illuminated
moods she says: "These children are
Gods gifts to me; Gods image is on
their brows; Gods life is throbbing in
their pulses; Gods Spirit broods over
them and tries to guide them; Gods
grace has bought them redemption, and
there is for them, in Gods great future,
&c -
crown of everlasting rejoicing" Words
cannot compass this mothers conception
of the worth of these children. For they
are her own-blood of her blood, bone of
her bone, and heart of her heart. But
every child of every mother the wide
earth over, is of equal intrinsic value. No
Partially of kinship, no fondness of affec-
ton, no closeness of association, can i'm
press upon US too deep and earnest con-
viction of the worth of human soul.
All that the warmest love can feel is but
feeble approximation to Gods thought
of the value of every member of mankind.
The child who plays at this moment Cd
the banks of the Gsnges or the Lena, or
who goes in and out of rudest Mopgolian
huts, has in it all the possibilities of those
who run in and out with such sweet, win
ming grace in our own home circles. To
our selfcomplacent pride this may not
seem so but unless we have everything
wrong-wrong views of our natures,
wrong views of God and of the meaning
of his instructions and promises, wrong
views of the Specification of Cslvary-so
it surely is. For social purposes just now,
for civil purposes, for educational pur-
poses, for the purposes of industry and
science and art and general order, men
low down, and barbaric, and savage, or
far away in habit and opinion and moral
life, are not to be compared with those
who are the rare, ripe products of splendid
privileges, and of centuries upon centuries
of the advantages of light, and of de-
voted and magnificent ancestry. But es-
timated by the intellectual and moral
faculties with which they are endowed;
estimated by the possibilities which are
in them, I'll ere is no difference. In thought
place them side by side in the gate
ways of eternity-the highest in all his
wealth of culture, but stripped of every
thing which mere earthly distinctions
have it in their power to confer, with the
light of heaven playing upon them, and
revealing and distinguishing between the
perishable and imperishabls, and then
tell me, if there, before God, there is
anything in the way of difference for a
single moment to be compared with the
august facts in which there is no differ
ence. One is little larger, it may be,
than the other, little finer, better,
knows more; but in nature and possibil
ity they are substantially alike. Not to
accept this is to degrade human nature
in the mass, and to strike from under our
feet the foundations of human dignity
Dr.. F. A. Noble.