Tim; George Eliot, Adam Bede and Dinah Morris.  Men say that no such boy ever lived as MacDonald has portrayed in Sir Gibbie.  In every street Arab is a possible Sir Gibbie; and MacDonald has seen the possible and shown us what Christianity may make out of a street Arab.  In this perception of a possible in man lies the spirit of all progress in science.  The man of practical science laughs at the notion of an iron railway on which steam cars shall travel faster than English coaches.  But the man of faith in men, who believes that it is in the power of men to dominate the powers of nature, builds the road.  The man of practical science laughs at the notion that we can reach up our hands into the clouds and draw down the lightning.  But Franklin does it.  The man of faith is sometimes mistaken, but he is always experimenting, because he always believes that man to-morrow will be more than man is to-day or was yesterday.  And all progress in civilization has its secret in this great faith in man as a being that has a mastery, not yet interpreted, not yet understood, not yet comprehended in its fulness, over all the powers of nature.

Now, is there any ground or basis for this faith in man?  Have we a right to believe that man is more than he seems to be, as we can see him in the street to-day?  Have we a right to build our institutions and fabrics on this belief?  Have we a right to think that man can govern himself, or must we go back and say with Carlyle and Ruskin and Voltaire that the great body of men are incompetent to govern themselves, and a few wise rulers must govern them?  Have we a right to believe that all the progress that has thus far been made in science is but an augury of progress far greater, reaching into the illimitable?  Have we a right to say that these portraits of a possible humanity, this Portia, this Toby Veck, this Tiny Tim, this ideal man and woman, are real men and real women in possibility, if not in the actualities of life?  Or are we to think of them as simply phantasmagoria hung up for the delectation of a passing moment?  The Bible makes answer to that question,—­the Bible preeminently, but the great poets and the great prophets of all religions; the Bible, because the poets and the prophets of the Bible transcend the poets and the prophets of all other religions.  And that declaration is that man is made in the image of God, and that God dwells in man and is coming to the manifestation of Himself in growing, developing, redeemed humanity.  Our Bible starts out with the declaration that God made man in His own image.  The poets take the idea up.  MacDonald tells us in that beautiful poem of his, that the babe came through the blue sky and got the blue of his eyes as he came; Wordsworth, that the child’s imaginings are the recollected glory of a heavenly home; and the author of the first chapter of Genesis, that God breathed his own breath into the nostrils of man and made him in the image of God.  All fancy, all imaginings?  But,