294 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



more abundant life than he had in his state of inno- 

 cence ; and through that wondrous coming he has grown, 

 with all his sins and sorrows, to something which is 

 nearer to God, nearer to the divine level. He is made 

 capable, not of presenting the divine image merely, but 

 of partaking of the divine nature, and of entering, as 

 Adam never could have done, into all the high employ- 

 ments and holy fellowships of heaven. 



This is the grand distinction of man, that which 

 separates him at an immense distance from the rest 

 of the creation that while the after-work of God 

 in the restoration of the lower world of plants 

 and animals is only an accommodation the best 

 possible in the circumstances, a descent from the 

 ideal the after-work of God in the case of man is 

 the attainment of a higher ideal than the first work. 

 It is the redemption of free spirits which is God's 

 final and most perfect work, for the accomplishment 

 of which all things were made and are subordin- 

 ated. His chiefest glory is not to be shown in the 

 loveliness of animal and vegetable forms that have 

 never been marred, but in the purity, the love, the 

 spiritual greatness of beings who have sinned and fallen 

 and lost His image ; not in the paradisiacal life of our 

 first parents, exquisitely beautiful, lovely as a poet's 

 dream or a memory of childhood's sunniest hour, 

 although that vision may appear, but in the heavenly 

 life to which, through the atoning work of the Saviour 

 and the discipline of his own nature, man ultimately 

 attains, beyond the wilderness life of transgression, and 



