bleeding brow, and 'instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier the myrtle-tree, and it shall be to the Lord for a name and for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.' No more shall blight and mildew, and droughts, and untimely frosts, and floods and tempests, scatter the blossoms of spring, wither the flowers of summer, and destroy the precious fruits of autumn, for 'then shall the earth yield her increase, and God, even our own God, shall bless us. God shall bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.' And ever afterwards the joy-song of Humanity shall be this: 'Be glad, O ye heavens, for the Lord hath done it; shout, ye lower parts of the earth; break forth into singing, ye mountains, and forests, and every tree therein, for the Lord hath redeemed his people, and glorified himself in saving them.' 'I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunders, saying, Hallelujah for the Lord our God, the Almighty reigneth.'

CHAPTER III

NATURE AND THE BIBLE

NATURE and the Bible, are Divine revelations. They emanate from the same source, and show forth the nature, character, and moral perfections of Deity. The one throws light upon and receives aid from the other, and neither the one nor the other can be neglected without incalculable loss to those who disjoin them. But while both revelations are great, necessary and instructive, they are neither co-equal nor COordinate. Nature was the first to be given, and it might have been all-sufficient for man's need if only he had retained his original relationship to God, which was one of innocency, harmony and happiness. But when he forfeited that relationship, he not only lost his spiritual life, which was essentially a life of love, but also the capacity to interpret Nature spiritually. He lost the golden key to its hidden moral meanings and higher significance, and came in process of

time through ignorance of God and alienation from Him to interpret Nature falsely and grotesquely, as in the ancient mythologies of Assyria and Egypt, Greece and Rome. The great material universe ceased to be to men a revelation of God, and when they no longer knew Him rightly they also ceased truly to know themselves. Therefore a new revelation was needed — a revelation of redemption for fallen humanity. And that new revelation, was most graciously given. It was a greater work to redeem than to create, and we learn of that redemption, not from Nature but from the Bible. It reveals man's real condition under the power of sin, and also shows how he may rise therefrom into a state of holiness through the obtaining of a new spiritual life. It also throws the light of heaven upon the face of Nature, and enables the spiritual man by means of earnest meditation to apprehend its teachings spiritually. It is not possible to read the Scriptures intelligently and fail to see that their lofty and divinely inspired declarations are everywhere illustrated by natural phenomena. They justify man's instinctive love of the material universe, and unveil

in that universe with ever-increasing fulness new and inexhaustible. wonders. They extract from it deep Divine meanings and show how closely we are related to the mighty material system by which we are everywhere and always overshadowed and encompassed. Nature is taken as the emblem of human experience, the type of human character and the prophecy of human destiny. All true seers and psalmists have drawn from it their sweetest expressions, grandest images and finest similes. They have gathered up its freshness, fragrance and manifold charms to describe, illustrate and enforce spiritual things. Those parts of the Bible which are fullest of natural imagery are the most widely popular and the most powerfully influential with the great masses of its readers-the book of Job, the grand old Psalms, the prophecy of Isaiah, the four Gospels, and the great Apocalypse. The merely religious natural man can interpret these only intellectually and fancifully, and thus he fails to see their deepest meanings and loftiest unveilings. It is just as true of Nature as of the Bible, that 'the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolish

ness unto him, and he cannot know them because they are spiritually discerned.' But even the spiritually-minded man will fail to read the great Bible of Nature aright, unless he studies it with spiritual vision and in the light of the written revelation of God. Hence many intelligent Christian people see very little more in creation than is seen by the natural man, because they continue to regard it from the same natural standpoint and with the same earthly expectations as he does. Their spiritual eyes have not been opened to see the spiritual significance of material objects, nor to behold in Nature the same central truths and eternal relationships as are revealed in the Bible. The similarity between the natural and the spiritual, the temporal and the eternal was always visible to Christ, and it becomes increasingly visible to Christians also, just in proportion as they study Nature and the Bible side by side. The former lends all her lovelinesses to clothe and commend spiritual truth, and the latter in all its parts glorifies and spiritualizes natural things.

Let it never be forgotten however, that the highest function of the Bible is not to lead men