Who Am I? Who am I? The Bible and my own conscience give the only and the sure answer to that question: "What is man?" Ask philosophy, ask science; and, to their infinite shame, they are not quite sure whether we are gradually developed, not yet perfectly developed monkeys -or donkeys, maybe; they don't know which-nor whether we are going up or back. They have not made up their minds yet. They will tell us next week, and contradict it the week after that. Who am I? A "germ' -a "protoplasm!" What pitiful answers these men give! I know there is some good in them, but you have put them in a corner when you ask them to give a plain answer to a plain man on a plain and desperately, intensely personal question: 66 What is man?" Who am I? Between my finger and thumb (when holding a few leaves of God's Book) there is what is of more value as a contribution to that A B C question, "Who am I?" than is contained in all that ever the philosophers wrote, either ancient or modern. God's Word says-my own conscience rings responsive to it-I am an immortal soul. I am a living, thinking, not material, but spiritual being, surrounded with the material for a little, yet conscious that I am not of it--in it, but not of it rising continually above it, and showing that there are powers in me far beyond the seen, the material and the physical. That is the answer. An immortal soul! God breathed into our nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul. There is in us a spark of God's own kindling, and God shall die the day I die. That is to say, I shall never die—never, never! My body goes down, but my body is not I any more than my coat is I. I can do without the one I can do without the other. I may lose a limb, I may lose one limb after another; but still I preserve my sense of being I— I still, the whole, round, personal, solid individual I. You see it when people are dying-up to the very last moment conscious; suffering, but the spark there, and, to the last that we see of it, indestructible. The old heathen poet was far ahead of some of these modern ones when he said: "Non omnis moriar "—"I shall not all die." MCNEILL. Man's Brotherhood. There are two sides to the question: "What constitutes this brotherhood of man, of which we speak so much?" The progress of science develops every year more clearly the significant fact that all men are brothers whether they will or not; if not for weal, then for woe. God has said it not by any arbitrary decree, for this He never does, so far as our studies of Nature indicate. But in the constitution and course of things He has said: “All ye are brethren." Only by making this the major premise of our lives can we attain true happiness. The sooner we find it out, the better for us. The sooner we learn that it is true, the sooner we clasp hands in concerted purpose and endeavor to enact brotherhood upon earth, the more shall we be made in the image of man, rather than show forth the lineaments of serpents and of beasts; for the hiss of the snake and the teeth of the hyena are not more savage, relentless and cruel than those laws and customs by which the greater number are steadily ground under the heel of the lesser, and a human being becomes the cheapest thing on earth --the least desired, and the worst cared for.-FRANCES E. WILLARD. The World in Man. Beautiful, no doubt, are all the forms of Nature, when transfigured by the miraculous power of poetry-hamlets and harvest-fields, and nut-brown waters, flowing even under the forest, vast and shadowy, with all the sights and sounds of rural life. But, after all, what are these but the decorations and painted scenery in the great theater of human life? What are they but the coarse materials of the poet's song? Glorious, indeed, is the world of God around us, but more glorious the world of God within us. There lies the land of song; there lies the poet's native land.-LONGFELLOW. The Wondrous Frame of Man. Not in the world of life alone, Where God has built His blazing throne, Nor yet alone in earth below, With belted seas that come and go, OLIVER WEndell HolMES. i The Greatness of Man. Every want, not of a low kind, physical as well as moral, which the human breast feels, and which brutes do not feel and can not feel, raises man by so much in the scale of existence, and is a clear proof, and a direct instance, of the favor of God toward His so much favored human offspring. If man had been so made as to have desired nothing, he would have wanted almost everything worth possessing.—DANIEL Webster. What Is Man? I have a thought. I am a creature of a day, passing through life as an arrow through the air. I am a spirit come from God, and returning to God; just hovering over the great gulf; till a few moments hence, I am no more seen! I drop into an unchangeable eternity!—JOHN WESLEY. A Finished Man. The finest fruit earth holds up to its Maker is a finshed man.—Humboldt. -:0: |