Page:The stuff of manhood (1917).djvu/78

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His kingdom in the world, we must somehow bring home to men the recognition of the great truth that God cannot get along without every man and all of that man, and that every human life and all its buried powers are essential to God.

One of the great purposes of our Lord's coming here to earth was that He might show men the value of a man's life in the plan and thought of God. Even the most sacred and time-honoured institution our Lord weighed over against one man and found him outweighing the institution. What was His own example but the illustration of the immeasurable value of man? He did not come to teach the uselessness of human life, but its pricelessness. He did this by becoming a man Himself. And this principle of God's need of men and their latent possibilities is not mere theological theory. It is the hard historic fact that God has ever needed men and waited for them and for what they were the men to do for Him. Look at the great inventions, discoveries, achievements. What is the whole lesson of the Incarnation but that there are things that God Himself will not do except as He uses man? God Himself, we must say reverently, was communicable and a Saviour only as man. And His call to-day as it has been all through the years is for men who will believe that the thing God wants done can be done by Him through them. The Western Hemisphere