Then as we study ourselves, as we see the good that has been growing through the ages, and as we note the fact that I hinted at a moment ago, that we can plant ourselves in the way, and hinder the working of the Divine, so far as our tiny strength goes, or that we can study the conditions of this growth and co-operate and help it on, and so be just as truly a builder of the highest and finest humanity of the future as God is himself, as we note this, are not our little lives raised into dignity and touched with glory? And why should I cringe and humiliate myself in the presence of a planet a thousand times larger than our earth, or a sun a million and a half times larger than the planet that shakes to its centre as I stamp my tiny foot? I, or one like me, has measured the sun, weighed it as an apothecary can weigh a gram in his scales. I have untangled the rays of his light, and am able to tell the substances that are burning those ninety millions of miles away, in order to send down that ray of light to our earth. I have untangled the mysteries of the heavens, and find these only aggregations of matter like those of which my body is composed; but I deal with all these and overtop them, speeding with my thought with the rapidity that leaves the lightning behind. And I know that, because I can think God and can trace his thoughts after him as he goes through his creative processes, so I am more than these,-- a child of the Creator. I may feel as a little boy feels who stands beside his father who is the captain of some mighty ship. The ship may be a million times greater than he; but the captain's intelligence and hand made it, shaped it, rules it, turns it whithersoever he will. And I am the captain's child, like him, and capable of matching his masterly achievement. And so I may believe that I, as a child of the infinite Father, am of infinite importance to him in this universe of his; and I can live a grand and noble life. Nobody can harm me but myself. Place an obstacle in my path, and, whether it be insurmountable or not, I may show myself a coward or a hero as I face it. Tell me I have made a mistake, I can repair it. Tell me I have committed some moral error, am guilty of sin, I confess it. But I can make all these mistakes and sins stairways up which I can climb nearer and nearer to God. You may test me with sorrows, affliction, take away my property, take away my health, take away my friends; and the way in which I receive these may either make me nobler or poorer and meaner, as I will. The sun shines upon the earth. It turns one clod hard, makes it incapable of producing anything. It softens and sweetens another, the same sun: the difference is in the way in which it is received. So these influences may touch me, may make me hard and bitter and mean and rebellious, or I may stand all, and say, as the old Stoics used to, "Even if the gods are not just, I w ill be just, and shame the gods."