re is no difference between men; that one
is not more powerful than another; that one is not richer in genius
than another; that one is not more valuable to _society_ than another;
that education, refinement, skill, experience, give no precedence over
their negatives. But God takes up the _least_ of all human creatures,
and, declares, "inasmuch as ye have done it unto the _least of these_,
ye have done it unto me." In a household, a babe is vastly less than
the grown-up children. But who dare touch it, as if it were as
worthless as it is weak?

So God pleads his own relationship to the meanest human creation, as
his protection from wrong; as the evidence of his rights, as the
reason of his dignity! There is something of God in the meanest
creature. He is sacred from injury! In these truths we find the reason
why Christianity always takes _hold so low down_ in human life. Things
that have got their root need little from the gardener; but the seeds,
and tender sprouts, and difficult plants, require and get nurture.

A Christianity that takes care of the rich, the strong, the governing
class, and neglects the poor, and ignorant, and the unrefined, as the
antitype of Christ.

It is in this direction only, that the declaration of man's equality
is true. No heathen nation could say that "all men are born free and
equal"--for in more earthly respects it is false. But it is a truth
that stands only and firmly in those grand relations which man
sustains _to God, to Eternity, and to future dignity_--all are equally
subjects of these. Man is ungrown. All his fruit is green. If he must
stand by what _he is_, how surely must he be given over to weakness,
to abuse, to oppressions. The weak are the natural prey to the strong,
and superiority is a charter for tyranny.

But if he be an heir, waiting for an inheritance of God, eternal in
the heavens, woe be to him that dare lay a finger on him because he is
a minor!

I dwell the longer upon this view because it carries the world's heart
in it. We must deepen our thinkings of man, and bore for the springs
of liberty far below the drainings of surface strata, down deep,
Artesian, till we strike something that shall be beyond winter or
summer, frost or drouth.

I do not believe that there is a doctrine of individual rights nor of
civil liberty that can stand outside of Christianity. They are to be
seen revealed in nature, but there is none to interrupt them with
authority. Christ is