But there is one accent more, that of love, without which the hymn is not
complete; and there is another human order of Being to speak that accent.
Man includes in himself all the preceding orders of Being, with all the
notes of their praise: the material clod, for is he not made of dust; the
plant, for he has an outward growth and circulation--the animal, for he
has instinct and feeling; while reason and conscience and spiritual
affection he has peculiarly and alone; so that Power, Wisdom, Goodness and
Love, all concentrated in him, complete the ground of his praise.
Yet, as we look out upon this mighty sum of things in the external
universe, the level earth stretching off to some ascending ridge in the
horizon's blue distance--the boundless deep spread afar, till, at the
misty edge of vision it bends, in mingling threefold circles, to embrace
the globe, the impenetrable below and the infinite above him, how slight
and insignificant a creature he seems! like a fly that clings to the
ceiling, or a mote that swims in the sunbeam, one of the mere mites of
nature, easily lost by the way or a frail figure ready to be crushed by
any stroke of the ponderous machinery mid which he moves.
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