Man's imitative art is a resemblance of the Creator's power. J. Gough, M. As we look upon this great world in which we live, upon the heavens robed in majesty and glory, we cannot but recognise man's superior excellence and importance. )Work of God's fingersJohn Trapp.This is most elaborate and accurate; a metaphor from embroiderers, or from them that make tapestry. 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. What right have I to claim a different rank? We know nothing of mind force except through its material manifestations. If, on the one hand, nature is our irresponsible tyrant, on the other, we are masters of nature. Not one of them gives evidence of this knowledge of personality which we all possess. AND DO WE COMPREHEND FULLY THE END PROPOSED? This their language. But the naturalist will tell us that all attempts at classification with a view to separating man off by a broad line from the lower creation fail signally. IT IS, HOWEVER, IN HIS MORAL AND SPIRITUAL NATURE WHERE HIS IMPORTANCE IS MOST FULLY DISPLAYED. Our main business, therefore, is to save our soul.(H. It is the presence of intelligent life which gives significance to creation. Man's imitative art is a resemblance of the Creator's power. God has given to His human children a share in His wide rule.4. The question, "What is man?" But if I have no other theatre of His grace than that one so infinite I can call Him the Infinite, but the name of Father dies away on my lips. I. Is a heaven of holiness and of love too much for a being whom angels are delighted to protect? What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? 5 For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honour. So also it is with periods of time. We find in the animals a consciousness of feeling, but not a consciousness of self. You are impatient because you are little poor fussy fools; give Him time. And by its means we find the infinitude of God in every flying straw and in the smallest grain. No two alike. No, for see —2. We give account of our powers. So long as in our moral life we know that we are free we can look up into the face of the living God with the hope that He will deal with us separately and apart, that He Himself will care for us, and that there may be direct communion between us and Him.(R. ")How and why God is mindful of manW. Through reason man is capable of living in well-ordered society. Those of us who live in great cities are perhaps especially sensitive to the austere influences of the material universe. But it becomes stranger and more significant still, when it is seen to involve the power of setting up the "I" over against the "All," and, weak, ignorant, transitory, as each one of us is, of distinctly comprehending the vast and complex totality of which we form a most minute and undistinguished part. "Commit thy way unto the Lord, trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass." The moon and the stars cost nothing — the redemption of the soul cost God's Only Begotten Son.Inferences: 1. THE DISTINCTIVELY CHRISTIAN VIEW. The fine life lives in the Divine and eternal life, and is unspeakably content.(C. This is much more the case when we bring within our survey the moral element. What is it which each one of us means when he says "I"? Man's opinion of his own importance and inherent dignity has fluctuated, because he is moved by feeling. Please enter your email address associated with your Salem All-Pass account, then click Continue. Napoleon thought most of Austerlitz, Wellington of Waterloo, Morse of the telegraph, Lincoln of the Emancipation proclamation. Thereemin, D. D.)Man and the universeBishop Gore.The Psalmist has been contemplating the clear midnight sky, and there strikes into his soul that old, that unchanging sensation by contrast to the vastness of man's littleness. - C. 1. Now he turns his observation on himself, apparently mean and insignificant, and perceives that lie is the object of God's special and distinguishing care. They express what He feels. There are two kingdoms in which our Lord and God reigns upon earth:1. God is free; and it is in the possession of freedom that man is in His image — after His likeness. A somewhat inferior check, by which God humbles our pride, springs from man's mistakes in judgment. How great, how inconceivably great, must He be, the Creator and Father of all worlds, the primordial source of energy and motion, the first, eternal cause of all things, etc. And that men of science should doubt disturbs many who cannot bear to think that the Divine existence should be called in question. > Seneca contends for it, but the Church by her teaching of the value of each soul counteracted all such views. BUT WHY IS HE THUS MINDFUL OF US? FINE ANIMAL ORGANISM. Care — for God had been very mindful of him. This is the second form of the objection — it brings God too low. Thus there are two views of life, the detranquillising view and the all-tranquillising view. Similarity of nature to that of God Himself. Now this reasoning is plausible; it does justice to the wisdom of God, and no injustice to man. Thou madest him a little lower — or a little less — than God. We give account of our powers. We do not outrun the height of the planets; we are so easily excited by subjects that really have nothing in them. MAN'S DIGNITY IS FURTHER MANIFESTED FROM A SURVEY OF HIS PHYSICAL NATURE. They quote our text in a sense the opposite of that in which it is meant. The Most High appears to take no heed of the moral qualities of men, or of their weakness and helplessness. This is much more the case when we bring within our survey the moral element. Through reason man is capable of living in well-ordered society. III. The heavens have no power of self-modification — they cannot move slower or faster, grow brighter or dimmer, of their own accord; man can. (John Trapp. Think for a moment of the rapidity of thought: time and space are both annihilated by it. He abhors sin. He is a free being, capable of self-improvement and self-destruction. How.1. Punshon. BUT WHY IS HE THUS MINDFUL OF US? The wonders of grace — the incarnation and the death of the Son of God — are so tremendous, whilst there is nothing in man that bears any proportion to such concern for him. And are we not taught modesty by this very vastness of the universe? The glory of the astronomer who can measure the courses of the heavenly bodies and calculate the forces of the universe is really only another witness to the glory of the Creator, for He who framed the heavens framed also the understanding of the philosophic man, by which he was enabled to ascertain the laws regulating their motions. Thought, after all, is not merely phosphorus. The moral kingdom of God is extensive. I am the ruler who disposes all other manifold instruments of my nature. I see the heavens full of stars, and man's heart of anticipations and forebodings. It lies not in superior strength, powers of endurance, or length of days, but in that mysterious relation to the Maker of all, His likeness, His image, in which man alone of all God's works was made. The moral argument is, after all, the strongest. Who are we, to judge of what it is wise for God to do? It is the crown and coronation of all the physical creations, and the masterpiece of Divine wisdom and skill. and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?" Christ cares not for the outward, but for the spirit of a man. THEN, SHOULD WE NOT BE MINDFUL OF HIM?(W. The song of the Psalmist falls on the ears of Christians now with a fuller cadence, swelled with the experience of nearly thirty centuries, and prolonged into the hopes of eternity. What these are we may infer from the manner in which God regards them.II. Extra Small Small Medium Large Additional Settings . Ages ago David felt the insignificance of man when compared with the greatness of God's material works, and expressed it in the words of our text. We have the resurrection of Christ as the great argument for the resurrection of the body as well as of the soul. It is answered, this was David's night meditation, when the sun, departing to the other world, left the lesser lights only visible in the heavens; and as the sky is best beheld by day in the glory thereof, so, too, it is best surveyed by night in the variety of the same. The wonders of grace — the incarnation and the death of the Son of God — are so tremendous, whilst there is nothing in man that bears any proportion to such concern for him. Yet it is in the remembrance of this fact that our moral strength can alone be found. For the two truths stand or fall together. But both teach that God creates the soul. Is it begotten by the parents? So on the whole earth weary, heavy-laden men have ever since drunk of the water of life which quenches the thirst forever.(J. 6 Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet: Prayer is but empty breath. In another place he says, "It is but a dust heap, to be dispersed as it was swept together." Man is one who might "walk with God," as did Enoch; be the "friend of God," as was Abraham. But what are the wonders of his creation compared with the glories of his redemption? But if He express it His nature prompts Him to express it by act. Scripture: Psalms 8:4. D.)Man's dignityW. etc. So much, then, for what nature teaches. The very next verse shows that he could not mean that, for he says, Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, etc. By the influences of His Spirit.4. Yet man must still seem insignificant when measured by the highest standard. WHAT IS THE DESTINY OF THE SOUL? Another maintains that "The brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile." Some say that human nature can regenerate, can perfect itself; that it has in it a principle inherently good, and needs no Gospel to lead it into the way of truth. If we had ever any doubt of man's destiny, and the purpose of his creation, surely the incarnation of God has removed it.2. (Thomas Sherlock, D. D.)God mindful of manEdward Andrews, LL. A. In the centre and heart of my being I am free. )God's care of menThomas Sherlock, D. D.When we consider the care of Providence over the children of men, whether manifested in the works of nature or of grace, we naturally fall into the reflection of the text, and wonder to see so much done for men, who seem to have no merit or desert equal thereto. Is it begotten by the parents? Apostles and evangelists saw the true fulfilment of the Psalmist's prophetic saying in the ultimate and supreme destiny of mankind, as realised in the person and work of the one representative Man. Consideration is the only profitable use of history. Whence this fulness of provision, and this unbounded wealth of beauty and of blessing?" He has given us the pleasures of sense, of imagination, of friendship, of memory; above all, the pleasure of holiness. The makeup of the human body has ever been a matter of wonder to the thoughtful mind. What right, it may be urged, have we to claim any special remembrance from Him? It is the possession of this princely power to think that places him on the very throne of material beings, in his hand the sceptre of dominion and on his brow the crown of a possible and glorious destiny. Holy Scripture is one continuous record of God's effort to catch the attention of human ears, and to win the affection of human hearts. Man is an object of the manifold agencies of myriads of worlds. The Jew hardly knew what to think about the future.3. God sees in man what is like Himself, the sense of justice, hatred of cruelty, unselfishness. Shall such a loathsome creature as I find favour in his eyes? Take humanity out of the universe, and it is neither moral nor immoral, it is simply natural. He lift, up his thoughts higher than the sun, higher than the most distant stars; he lifts them up to God Himself, and bows in the dust before Him. Who can compute the number of yon flaming orbs? Then —. Another maintains that "The brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile." We are children of eternity.3. When you look at man in history there again the same sensation is borne in upon your mind. But He has more than this constitutional tendency to develop His character. How monstrous, then, the thought that God has left the world to shift for itself, that He is far off and takes no notice of us.4. In every circumstance of temporal existence God rides the whirlwind and rules the storm. (John Trapp. What are we but microscopical insects, crawling in indistinguishable multitude upon the face of a planet, which, in comparison with the countless orbs of space, is itself no more than a grain of stardust? By the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.3. (3) When renewed by the Holy Ghost, he is elevated still higher in the scale, for "after God he is created in righteousness and true holiness.". How do we receive this visitation? Yet, while the future remains a dim, unknown quantity to our reason, and shadows flit across the canvas of our daily life, it is hard to believe that God stands within the shadow keeping watch over His own. To visit is, first, to afflict, to chasten, yea, to punish; the highest judgments in Scripture come under the notions of visitations. Now, this consciousness is not the result of our physical constitution. 2. He is dependent for everything. It has been irreverently asserted by an atheistic writer that the heavens no longer declare the glory of God, but of Newton and Laplace. A sufferer is a being of importance in God's universe. There could be no greater folly than for men or women to treat themselves as though the physical life, which needs to have clothing of more or less fashionable cut, and food that may please the palate or nourish the body, were the real man or woman whose comfort is to indicate the decisions of life. Where is it treasured up? Try from the greatness of man to estimate the greatness of the end. There are two processes by which finite existences come to be. By which it is apparent that he speaks of man, not according to the state of his creation, but as fallen into a state of sin and misery, and mortality. Psalm 8:1, 3-4 Our Mysterious Yet Personal God. Other great creations concur in its maintenance. "Fearfully and wonderfully made."II. Compare me with the universe on the physical side, and words are utterly powerless to express the inconceivable contrast of greatness and littleness. The anatomist dissects and the chemist analyses the human body. For the world without and the love of the world within present to it a fearful obstacle. But are not the perverse principles which result in the overthrow of all social order, of all human well-being, taught and propagated by a reason degenerate? But man cannot sin without Divine assistance. )Work of God's fingersJohn Trapp.This is most elaborate and accurate; a metaphor from embroiderers, or from them that make tapestry. "Mindful of him" is not merely opposed to "forgetting him." It expresses —1. no answer could be found. There must be suitableness and correspondence between the persons allied in friendship. When sordid ambition has spent its life; when the hand has gripped its last possession, then memory awakes either as a mocking spectre or as an angel of peace. The heavens have no power of self-modification — they cannot move slower or faster, grow brighter or dimmer, of their own accord; man can.