326 THE HUMAN FORM. 



its way as the leading instance of all, and can never be banished 

 from the cases upon which fair induction works. It is not the 

 average man, but the archetypal and typical man, who is the sub- 

 ject of anthropological science, according to that plain rule, that 

 cardinal and representative instances, and not extrinsic and adven- 

 titious ones, are those in which knowledge seeks for principles. 

 Indeed there is no doctrine of man, who is a variable and fluid 

 term, unless it be in the doctrine of Christ. The average man is 

 unattainable; every fresh birth alters his number and figure : it is 

 only the God-Man who can be known (p. 241). Hence the neces- 

 sity of turning the telescopes of physiology and anthropology in 

 this direction, that around the variable we may see the constant, or 

 that science may become divine by admitting him who is the light 

 of the world. This will give both dignity and facility to our stu- 

 dies ; for the revealed divine perfections are the tacit axioms of all 

 truth ; and consequently in the working of these remote problems 

 of physiology, we find here the principles that lead us on by imper- 

 ceptible stages, each easy as the first, to ends where the first in all 

 its brightness reappears. In nature's dark mines, this is a circle 

 from light to light, in which light is the way. 



We may here obviate an objection to these general views ; for it 

 may be urged that we have forgotten throughout that the original 

 human form is defaced, and cannot now be called the image of God. 

 To this we reply that we so designate it, in reference to what it 

 may be, not to what it is ; and claim that thought shall live upon 

 our future health, and not upon our present diseases. For man 

 still retains his prerogative so far, that he is capable of reconversion 

 into the primeval image, as all religion knows. The human form 

 has never been abolished : it has a divine strength of conservation 

 (p. 288); so that even the poor Bushmen and Australians, nay, all 

 criminals, are still men, and we dare not cease to say that they are 

 in the image of God ; for that same emancipative form which is 

 the immensity of righteousness, is also the dungeon of sin. By 

 this conservation it is that the children of those who are bending to 

 death under all guilts and plagues, are born infants as the rest ; 

 they too begin from heaven, by whose elasticity the liberated seed 

 recovers itself with a spring from the pressure and abuse of 



