A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and Character — John Shaqi
A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and CharacterHillis, Newell Dwight
Philosophy
A Man's Value to Society: Studies in Self Culture and Character
Hillis, Newell Dwight
Character; Self-culture
Thus man's descent from the animals has been displaced by the ascent
of the human body. This is not degradation, but an unspeakable
exaltation. Man is "fearfully and wonderfully made." God ordained the
long upward march for making his body exquisitely sensitive and fitted
to be the home of a divine mind. How marvelously does this view
enhance the dignity of man, and clothe God with majesty and glory! It
is a great thing for the inventor to construct a watch. But what if
genius were given some jeweler to construct a watch carrying the power
to regulate itself, and when worn out to reproduce itself in another
watch of a new and higher form, endowing it at the same time with
power for handing forward this capacity for self-improvement? Is not
the wisdom and skill required for making a watch that is
self-adjusting, self-improving, and self-succeeding vastly more than
the wisdom required to construct a simple timepiece? Should science
finally establish the new view, already adopted by practically all
biologists, it will but substitute the method of gradualism and an
unfolding progression for a human body created by an instantaneous and
peremptory fiat. But this is a question for specialists and experts.
Those scholars who accept this view, including such thinkers as the
late President McCosh, of Princeton; Dana, of Yale; such teachers as
Caird, Drummond, and scores who could be named, all renowned for their
Christian belief and life, find that these new views do not waste
faith, but rather nourish it. Formerly men feared and fought Newton's
doctrine of gravity, trembling lest that principle should destroy
belief. To-day many are troubled because of the new views of
development. But it is possible for one to believe in evolution, and
still believe in God with all the mind and soul and strength.
Strangely enough, some are unwilling to have ascended progressively
from an animal, but quite willing to have come up directly from the
clod. But either origin is good enough providing man has ascended far
enough from the clod and the animal, and made some approach to the
angel. Some there are for whom no descent seems possible--they can go
no lower; dwelling now with beasts; others seem to have made no ascent
whatever, but to be even now upon the plane of things that crawl and
creep. Let us leave the question to the scientists. By whatever way
the body came, mentality and spirituality have now been engrafted upon
it. Man is no longer animal, but spiritual; and the wondrous
development of man upon this side of the grave is the pledge and
promise of a long progress beyond the grave, when the divine spirit by
his secret resources shall lead forth from men, emotions,
dispositions, and aspirations as much beyond the present thought and
life as the tree is beyond the seed and the low-lying roots.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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