If he wants mountains
carried hence and cast into the sea, he can bring rivers to carry for
thousands of years numberless tons. If he wants worlds held in
rhythmic relations to their sun, he can take gravitation. Man is of no
use; he cannot reach so far.
But if this being has anything to do that he cannot do, he will gladly
welcome man's aid. Has he? Yes. Obviously he wants things done he
cannot do alone. Worlds are dead. Trees do not think. Morning stars
may sing together, but they cannot love. None of them have character.
None of them have conscious responsiveness to the full tides of power
and love that flush the universe. None of them are permanent, or worth
keeping forever. They are only scaffolding. He wants something
greater than he can make; something as great as God and man and angels
together can make. He wants not mere matter acted upon from without,
but intelligences active in themselves; wants not mere miles of
granite, but hearts responsive to love, and character that is sturdier
than granite, more enduring than the hills that seem to be everlasting,
and of so great a price that a whole world is of less value than a
single soul, and of such permanence that it shall flourish in immortal
youth when worlds, short-lived in comparison, shall have passed away.
God can make worlds in plenty, but he wants something so much better
that they shall be mere parade-grounds for the training of his armies.
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