---

The Psalmist reminds us that, although little in himself, he is Divine in his origin, and though weak and frail in his present life, he is capable of a glorious future, and that future God has in store for him. "Thou madest him a little lower than the angels, and crownedst him with glory and worship." The literal meaning of the words is still more striking. Thou madest him a little lower — or a little less — than God. He does not answer his own question, but he reminds us of this important factor in the inquiry, which must not be left out of view. It is this fact in our history which it is so needful to remember, and yet so easy to forget, amid the din and strain of our daily life. It is hardly possible for us to escape from the remembrance of our littleness and our weakness. In the straitened condition of this mortal life, both as regards our physical powers and our intellectual attainments, how little, after all, we can do, how little, after all, we can know! But how easy it is to forget that we are made a little lower than the angels, a little less than God, to live unmindful of our high calling as the children of God, unmindful of the splendid destiny which lies within our reach. Yet it is in the remembrance of this fact that our moral strength can alone be found. The contemplation of our weakness and our littleness, the frailty of the perishing body, the instability of the mental powers, the fewness of our passing years, the shortcomings of our best endeavours, the insufficiency of what we accomplish compared with what we purpose and desire, — all this might well suggest to us a philosophy of despair. But the thought of our high origin and our glorious destiny awakens and fosters in us the religion of hope. And so the Psalmist asks, What is man? Thou madest him a little less than God. It is this which the record of creation tells us in another form, that God made man in His own image. It is perhaps impossible for us fully, to understand the scope and meaning of these wonderful words, "made in Gods image," "a little less than God." The greatest of our theologians have given to them very different interpretations, as they have sought to discover and to define those powers and faculties in man which appear to reveal in him the traces of the Divine image. But whatever else the words may mean, they clearly assure us that there is in every man something that is akin to God, something which separates him from all other creatures on the face of the earth, something which makes it possible for him to think of God, to know God, and to love God. In this, at least, we find the special prerogative of humanity, that which distinguishes and differentiates man from all the lower orders of creation. The patient labours of science are unfolding to us day by day new and beautiful mysteries in the world of nature, with fuller knowledge of the marvels of animal life, and of seeming intelligence even in the tiniest of God's creatures; but no trace is found of anything akin to this capacitor of man, this high endowment of humanity — the power to know his Maker and to do that Maker's will. These are the highest capacities which belong to human nature, even in their possession, but still more in their use. It is in these unparalleled gifts that man's true greatness lies. There is nothing more great, nothing more noble, nothing more beautiful within the reach of humanity than to know with a personal affection the Being to whom we owe our existence, to be able to understand something of the working of His Divine power and love, to sympathise with the holiness and purity of His nature, still more to make efforts after attaining to some measures of that purity and that holiness in ourselves. These are at once the privileges and the responsibilities that belong to our humanity, the outcome of that love of God which breathed into us something of His own Divine nature, and gave us the germ of a Divine life. It is true, as the Psalmist reminds us, that man is like a thing of naught, that his time passeth away as a shade. It is not less true that He who made us made us in His own image, a little less than Himself, to crown us with glory and worship. This is the paradox of humanity — man's high origin, and man's humble estate. So Pascal exclaims, "Oh, the grandeur and the littleness, the excellency and the corruption, the majesty and the meanness of man."

(Archbishop Thompson.)

---

---

KJV: When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;

WEB: When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars, which you have ordained;