"one star differeth from another star in glory." There are, too, the same varieties of human power and greatness, as there are inequalities on the earth's surface, gradations in the scale of animal life, and diversities in the instincts and capacities of the several races of the brute creation.

It is the doctrine of my text, that "it is in the Lord's hand to make great." All power and might are his, and all human greatness, of every sort and degree, physical strength, intellectual vigor, genius, talent, wisdom, are all alike his gifts. He is the author of all the powers and faculties of man, from the highest to the lowest; which, accordingly, in their several places and appropriate degrees, are all to be honored and cultivated. It is a narrow and unworthy feeling to disparage any of these divine endowments, or to despise any of the various indications of human power and greatness. The mind must not say to the body, “I have no need of thee;" nor yet the senses to the spirit, "We have no need of you." For man is not one power or faculty, but many. It behooves every one, then, to stir up and cultivate the peculiar gift of God which is in him, and thereby cause a various tribute of glory to ascend from earth to heaven. For God is truly glorified by the full developement and right exercise of our several faculties, and by their consecration to the increase and diffusion of knowledge, virtue and happiness on the earth. Not in vain is this prodigal variety of human gifts, if God be honored and man blessed by it.

Let us, my hearers, take a survey of some of the prominent varieties of human greatness. Let us see how they have been viewed and estimated. Let us look at them as so many manifestations of divine energy in man.

In the first place, and at the lowest point of the scale, stands physical greatness, strength of body, power of limb, capacity of labor and endurance, material energy and force. At some periods in the world's history, and at certain stages of man's growth, before the mental and moral faculties were unfolded, and the higher principles of our nature had gained the ascendency, and civilization spread her restraining and refining influences, this species of greatness has been the most in honor and demand. When the earth was one vast forest, and the wild beast prowled on the frontiers of the infant settlements, and waged a desperate and hardly unequal warfare with man, then physical strength was, of course, alone cultivated and prized. The great ones of that period were the men of giant frames, and tough muscles, and arms of iron-the Samson and the Hercules of their tribe. The primitive, or as we choose to call it, the fabulous history of our race, is full of the marvellous exploits of these renowned heroes, who protected the rising hamlets, with their flocks and herds, from the depredations of the wild boar and the wolf. In the early annals of almost every nation, ancient and modern, we meet with a great man of this sort, who, by mere physical strength, cleared the land of some ferocious animal,

the terror of the surrounding villages, and thereby gained for himself everlasting gratitude and fame. St. George, the tutelary saint of England, was only the great dragon-slayer of his day.

We come down a little later in the history of our race, and we find another form of greatness, closely allied to the preceding, beginning to display itselfnamely, martial prowess, or, as it was originally and distinctively called, warlike virtue. Hardly are the wild beasts exterminated, than there springs up, as it were from the dragon's blood and teeth, a horde of oppressors, strong, proud men, who declare that their strength shall be the law of justice, and that their might shall rule in the earth-men who wrong the poor, spare not the widow, nor reverence the grey hairs of the aged. These are the sons of Anak and Belial, whose continued and aggravated oppressions at last raise up an indignant band, who, though inferior in muscular strength, are enabled, by the invention of weapons, and by their superior agility and skill, to put themselves on a level with these haughty oppressors, and cope with them in personal combat. They become the guardians of innocence, the avengers of wrong, the giant-quellers of their day-in a word, the great men of their time. In a later age, the institution of chivalry was only the reproduction of the same remedy on the recurrence of the same evil. In both cases the feeble and the friendless were generously protected against outrage by the strong and stout-hearted.

Here we have the germ of military greatness, which, as soon as war was made a business, and bloodshed a pastime, became the greatest curse that ever afflicted our race. From the earliest times down to those in which we live, martial glory has, in every age, continued to dazzle the eyes of the stupid world; and I know not but that even now, after the dear-bought and bitter experience of ten thousand battle-fields, military greatness, in the opinion of the majority of men, stands at the head of all greatness. The fame of the Cæsars, the Attilas, and the Napoleons, the great manslayers, still sheds a blighting and baleful influence over the prospects of humanity, as their bloody victories did over the pleasant fields of an industrious peasantry.

*

But let us pass on from these exhibitions of physical greatness to the higher and nobler manifestations of human power. Physical strength man shares in common with the brute; but the "spirit within him is the candle of the Lord," kindled from the great source of light, and "the inspiration of the Almighty hath given him understanding." When, therefore, we would conceive worthily of man, we think of him as an intelligent

* See Southey's beautiful little poem on the Battle of Blenheim.

being, possessed of vast capacities, comprehending the universe in his ken, and "with large discourse looking before and after." And when we would form an idea of a superior kind of greatness, we think of the giants of intellect, of Aristotle and Bacon, the great lights of philosophy and science, men who have enlarged the domains of thought and carried forward the human race with them; though at the same time they themselves "stride on so far before the rest of the world that they dwindle in the distance."

Of all the various branches of intellectual pursuit, that science which explains the system of the universe, and reveals the mechanism of the heavens, must always take the lead as the most sublime and marvellous; and the foremost and most successful cultivators of this science will always be classed among the greatest of men. What, indeed, can be more astonishing, than that a being like one of us, endowed apparently with no higher or different powers, should be able to obtain so minute and accurate a knowledge of those distant planets, and be as well acquainted with their constitution, elements, and laws, as the geologist, the chemist, the botanist, with the appropriate objects of their sciences? Nothing gives me so exalted an idea of the power of man, and the extent and reach of his capacities, as his ability to calculate, with unerring precision, the distances of those twinkling orbs, to determine their figures, magnitudes, and velocities, to measure their weight, estimate their relative attractions and disturbing forces, delineate their