But let us examine more deeply this assertion, that our nature is kindred with that of God—­for if man has not a nature kindred to God’s, then a demand such as that, “Be ye the children of”—­that is, like—­“God,” is but a mockery of man.  We say then, in the first place, that in the truest sense of the word man can be a creator.  The beaver makes its hole, the bee makes its cell; man alone has the power of creating.  The mason makes, the architect creates.  In the same sense that we say God created the universe, we say that man is also a creator.  The creation of the universe was the Eternal Thought taking reality.  And thought taking expression is also a creation.  Whenever therefore, there is a living thought shaping itself in word or in stone, there is there a creation.  And therefore it is, that the simplest effort of what we call genius is prized infinitely more than the most elaborate performances which are done by mere workmanship, and for this reason:  that the one is produced by an effort of power which we share with the beaver and the bee, that of making, and the other by a faculty and power which man alone shares with God.

Here however, you will observe another difficulty.  It will be said at once—­there is something in this comparison of man with God which looks like blasphemy, because one is finite and the other infinite—­man is bounded, God boundless; and to speak of resemblance and kindred between these two, is to speak of resemblance and kindred between two natures essentially different.  But this is precisely the argument which is brought by the Socinians against the doctrine of the incarnation; and we are bound to add that the Socinian argument is right, unless there be the similarity of which we have been speaking.  Unless there be something in man’s nature which truly and properly partakes of the divine nature, there could be no incarnation, and the demand for perfection would be a mockery and an impossibility.

Let us then endeavour to find out the evidences of this infinitude in the nature of man.  First of all we find it in this—­that the desires of man are for something boundless and unattainable.  Thus speaks our Lord—­“What shall it profit a man if he should gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Every schoolboy has heard the story of the youthful prince who enumerated one by one the countries he meant to conquer year after year; and when the enumeration was completed, was asked what he meant to do when all those victories were achieved, and he replied—­to sit down, to be happy, to take his rest.  But then came the ready rejoinder—­Why not do so now?  But it is not every schoolboy who has paused to consider the folly of the question.  He who asked his son why he did not at once take the rest which it was his