The Cross, viewed in one light, becomes the very climax of the doctrine of man. Theologians have often laid their stress upon some single purpose of the divine sacrifice. One has said that the Cross appeases the anger of God; another that the Cross maintains the majesty of the law; another that the Cross is a moral influence wooing and winning the heart of man to God; another that the Cross is the expression of the Father's sorrow with the sins and sorrows of his children. But we may surely take one meaning of the Cross to be the divine estimate of man. God's sense of values must be preserved. He did not send his Son to die for worms of the dust. That idea may fit an extreme mood of spiritual abasement. We may grant all possible condescension in the atoning act of God, but we cannot grant a condescension that dedicates infinite worth to finite worthlessness. Jesus died for men just because men were far more than worms of the dust. If we are to keep that theory of atonement that has long held the heart of the church, we are driven to affirm that the Cross gives us a divine estimate of mankind. No man ever appreciates the worth of himself until he gets the appraisal of Calvary. The dying of Jesus is not out of harmony with his teaching and his living. The whole program is like the garment taken from him on the day of crucifixion; it is woven throughout without seam. Men may decry a doctrine of substitution, but they cannot say that such a doctrine is a slight tribute to human worth. In such a doctrine thorns and nails and spears and all the drama of the Cross are made into tributes to the soul of man. This carries us on to the biblical teaching of man's permanent worth. The doctrine of immortality makes its incalculable addition to the doctrine of man. There is a story, for which the writer cannot vouch, that Thomas Carlyle in a mood of pessimism one day wrote this peevish estimate of man: What is man? A foolish baby! Vainly strives and fumes and frets! Demanding all, deserving nothing, One small grave is all he gets! Language like this is certainly no contribution to the literature of self-respect. The story proceeds to relate that Carlyle's wife found this poetic depreciation lying on the table, and that she wrote the following confession and correction: And man? O hate not, nor despise The fairest, lordliest work of God! Think not he made thee good and wise Only to sleep beneath the sod!