VII.

HUMAN NATURE CONSIDERED AS A GROUND FOR THANKSGIVING

KNOW YE THAT THE LORD HE IS GOD; IT IS HE THAT HATH MADE US, AND NOT WE OURSELVES; WE ARE HIS PEOPLE AND THE SHEEP OF HIS PASTURE. ENTER INTO HIS GATES WITH THANKSGIVING, AND INTO HIS COURTS WITH PRAISE; BE THANKFUL UNTO HIM AND BLESS HIS NAME.-Psalm c. 3-4.

THE theme of gratitude which is here presented to us, is, our existence, our nature. "It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves: we are his people and the sheep of his pasture." It is not what we possess or enjoy, but what we are; or it is what we possess and enjoy in relation to what we are, that I would make the subject of grateful commemoration in our present meditations.

In truth, every call to praise, is but an echo of this. For if it be duly considered, will it not be found, that all possible blessings,-all that can be the occasions of thanksgiving,-must be referred back, when we trace them, to the blessing which is conferred upon us in a nature capable of enjoying them. The bounty and the beauty of the world, were nothing but for the seeing eye and the sensitive frame; the wisdom which all things teach were nothing, but for the perceiving mind; the blessed relations of our social existence would be all a barren waste, if we had not a heart to feel them; and all the tendencies and conditions of our life and being, all our labours and pleasures, all our joys and

despair, if we had not a moral soul and will, to bring good out of evil, imperishable virtue out of perishable circumstance, and immortal victory out of the everpressing strife of human existence.

Every blessing, then, hath the essential condition that makes it such, in my very humanity. I am called upon to be thankful, for food and raiment, for the bounties and gratuities of nature, for green fields and whitening harvests, for peace and freedom and government; and for those blessings that are beyond and above all the immeasurable and eternal blessings of religion. I am called upon to be thankful for all these things, and I am so. But still I must say, and must so answer, that I cannot be thankful for one of these blessings, without being first, and last, and throughout, thankful that I am a man.

The advantage of being a man, therefore, is what I propose now to consider; the blessing bestowed in our very humanity; that indeed without which we had not the power of gratitude.

I am thankful, then, that I am a man. This is the central fact, around which all things range themselves in clusters of blessings.

I am thankful that I am human. I am thankful that I am not a clod; that I am not a brute. Nay, nor do I ask to be an angel. I am glad that I am human. My very humanity, despite of all that is said against it, is a blessing and a gladness to me. Although it may sound strangely-to the thoughtless man on one account, and to the theologian on another; yet will I say, that I accept this humanity thankfully-with all its imperfections, with all its weaknesses, with all its exposures to error and sin. nature could be so exposed.

None but a high moral
Although I stand amidst

a multitude, where the infirmities of this nature meet me on every side, in many a shaded brow and pale cheek, in many a countenance where grief and gladness are strangely mingled, where joy itself is touched with sadness; yet still I say, that with all the joy and sadness of this nature, included, interwoven, and making up one momentous, mysterious and touching experience, I accept, I embrace, I cherish it with gratitude: I rejoice that it is mine.

I do not wish, I repeat, to be something else. I do not wish that I were an angel; and I do not wish that I were like the inhabitant of some distant star. I do not know what he is. But this humanity that throbs in my bosom-I know what this is; it is near me, it is dear unto me; I rejoice that I am a man.

And upon this I insist, and am going to insist, because there is, I fear, a commonly prevailing disparagement of our humanity, which leaves no proper, no grateful sense of what it is. There is a feeling in many minds, as if it were a misery, a misfortune, almost a disgrace to be a man. I am not speaking merely of the theological disparagement—the dull fiction of oriental philosophy and of scholastic darkness— though that, doubtless, has helped to create the common impression, that it is but a poor advantage, but a doubtful good, to be a man. I am not speaking alone of that scorn and desecration, by theology, of the very humanity which it ought to have loved and helped. There are other causes that have tended to the same result human pride, misanthropy, discontent, anger with our kind, anger with our lot; and the natural sense too, of human ills and errors. It is curious to see how almost all our higher literature betrays its trust to the very humanity which it celebrates,-denies in general what it teaches in detail-heaps satire and

scorn upon mankind, and yet makes men its h It is wonderful to see how, not authors only, but generally, can berate and vilify the very being they are. Humanity-man-these are not contra but correlative things; you cannot eulogize the for and desecrate the latter; the former is the ideal, latter the real; the one is the picture, the other, original. What man is, must furnish the eleme from which we draw out the idea of what man sho be; what you think, what you feel, is human, a that tells what humanity should be. There is dou less a struggle between these conceptions, of the actu humanity and the ideal humanity; and for this ve struggle too, I admire the human being. It could n agitate inferior natures. That man can separate th good from the evil, and set it up as a model; that h can sigh over the evil, is a praise and a glory to him Ay, and that he can satirize, scorn and execrate th evil, and can do it with such uncompromising hearti ness that he goes too far, seems to me not a disreputa ble tendency of his nature. There is something right then, something respectable in the leaning to darker views. In this respect, there is something right in theology, in literature, and in common opinion. But for the sake of justice and of gratitude, for man's sake, and for God's sake, if I may reverently say so, let not all this go too far; let it not spread the shadow over all, lest it hide from us, both man and God. I must therefore resist this tendency: because it is wrong, and especially at present, because it hinders a just gratitude to the Almighty Creator, for the nature he has given

us.

For this what we are-is, I repeat, the central truth around which all other truths that appeal to gratitude, do range themselves: it is the sun in the system

of God's mercies-their common bond and enlightener. It will not do to set up that antagonism which is commonly taught, between man and God; to say that God indeed is altogether good, but that man is altogether bad; that God is glorious, but that man is altogether mean; that it is proper indeed to celebrate God's goodness and glory, but that this is especially to be done by discrediting all worth and value in man. Who is it, after all, that celebrates the goodness of God? It is no other than man. The worshipper, the adorer, the singer of praises in this world, is none other than man. If his nature is all contrast to the divine, what is the value of his praise, of his judgment? Nay, how came the divine to be known? Man, I say, is the worshipper. And what more is the angel, unless that he is so in a higher measure, or with a purer intent. There must then be a beauty in human as well as in angelic nature, or all the beauty of the creation and of its Maker, could avail nothing-were nothing, to us. I know not what eyes look out from yonder bright orbs of heaven; but I know that eye is not, nor soul there, that can see any thing brighter, lovelier, more majestic, more divine, than the glory of Him that made us that made the earth so fair, and the heavens so beautiful and sublime. I claim kindred with those dwellers on high. I bow with them in adoration. I join my voice to their lofty anthem. Shall I think lightly of this glorious affinity?

No, I am thankful that I am a man. Boldly do I say it that I rejoice, that I delight in my nature. I rejoice that God has made me, and made me such an one-a sensitive, social, religious being-one of the seers, one of the worshippers, one of the immortals. Mourn I well may, that I have failed so far, so lamentably far, from what he has made me for. But still I