We see not yet all things put under him.”

 We see not yet all things put under him.”


If that psalm be God’s thought of man, the plan that He hangs up for us, His workmen, to build by, what a wretched thing my copy of it has turned out to be! Is this a picture of me? How seldom I am conscious of the visits of God; how full I am of weaknesses and imperfections, the solemn voice within me tells me at intervals when I listen to its tones. On my brow there gleams no diadem; from my life, alas! there shines at the best but a fitful splendour of purity, all striped with solid masses of blackness. And as for dominion over creatures, how superficial my rule over them, how real their rule over me! I can tame animals or slay them; I can use the forces of nature for my purposes. I can make machinery, and bid the lightning do my errands, and carry messages, the burden of which is mostly money, or power, or sorrow. But all these things do not signify that man has the dominion over God’s creation. That consists in using all for God, and for our own growth in wisdom, strength, and goodness; and he only is master of all things who is servant of God. “All are yours, and ye are Christ’s.” If so, what are most of us but servants, not lords, of earth and its goods? We fasten our very lives on them, we tremble at the bare thought of losing them, we give our best efforts to get them; we say to the fine gold, “Thou art my confidence.” We do not possess them, they possess us, though materially we may have conquered the earth (and wonderfully proud of it we are now), spiritually, which is the same as to say really, the earth has conquered us.

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