human
I am still there--that I am the same--just as God is the same. The same
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I that played as a little child--the same
human
I
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I
human
I --as a person separate from all other persons, as a self separate from all other selves, as remaining always the same being, whatever changes may take place around him. That is what constitutes man--a self conscious of itself. As far as we can discover, the lower animals have no such idea. Children, at first, have not. Did you ever notice how a little child never says
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I till he is about three years old? He always speaks in the third person. It is always
human
Baby does this,
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Baby likes that, until the Divine revelation of his personality gradually grows and he recognizes himself as a person. Then, without any teaching on your part, the child, of his own accord, will begin to say
human
I.
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I that dwells somewhere in the centre of my being, and rules and possesses and is responsible for everything? What is this self, in each of you, that is hidden behind your faces as behind a mask--that is looking out through your eyes, and receiving, through your ears, the thoughts that others are trying to express for you? Can the surgeon's knife find any trace of it? Is it possible to destroy it? Is it possible to get away from it? It has survived the putting away of every part of the body a dozen times over. Will it survive the final putting away of the whole body at death? Will it survive everything? Shall
human
I be
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I,
human
I within you and answer this question. Why does it assert so positively that it is impossible to doubt it;
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I ought to do certain things, I ought not to do certain other things ? All over the earth this day--from the St. Lawrence to the Ganges, from the North Pole to the South--there is no man outside of a lunatic asylum without that conviction. No race, not even the lowest, has been found without it. Where did that conviction come from? From the Bible, do you say? From the teachings of Christ? Nay, surely not. Long before the Bible, long before the incarnation of Christ, the old pagan had the thought clear and distinct, though not by any means so clear and distinct as Christianity has made it. Did you ever think of the mystery of this authoritative utterance of the self within you:
human
? In the very lowest savages it asserts this. St. Paul calls this sense of
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--the law of God written in our hearts (Rom. ii. 15). St. John calls it the light of Christ in us,
human
(St. John i. 9). Longfellow sings of it in
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Hiawatha