AJURJ # /-, v_ BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE. BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE. BY THE REV. HUGH J^ACMILLAN, AUTHOR OF "FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION.' $ mtbon : MAC MI I. LAN AND CO. 1870. f Tht Right of Translation and Reproduttwn is reserved.] LONDON : R. CLAY, SONS, AND TAYLOR, PRINTERS, BREAD STREET HILL. PREFACE. ONE of the most distinctive features of the present day is the general taste for grand and beautiful scenery. Nature is now loved for her own sake, apart from all her uses to man. Not only poets and painters, but society as a whole, recognise the fact that the world owes its picturesqueness to its waste places. It has been discovered that a moun- tain is something more than a mere huge heap of earth and rock and that a lake mirrors in its waters other and greater beauty than that of the surrounding landscape. The terror of the volcano, and the grandeur of the snow-peak, when mingled with the smiles of warm regions flushed with corn and wine, are now felt to make a Divine harmony. Only an age like ours, amid all its Utilitarianism, could find with Ruskin its highest ideal of an earthly paradise on the slopes of a great snow Alp, bright below with the green of lorest and pasture, and sublime above with the purple of beetling precipice, and the silver of virgin summit, seven times purified in the fires of Heaven. vi PREFACE. Closely connected with this general love of scenery is a wide-spread appreciation of nature not as a mere frame-work of circumstances but as " a chamber of imagery," as a system of types and symbols for the education of the immortal spirit. Scripture and science, after a severe and prolonged contest, are now happily reconciled ; and both are found to be mutually helpful in illustrat ing the works and ways of God. This fair earth is recognised to be a mighty parable a glorious Shechinah. Its manifold forms and hues are the outer folds, the waving skirts and fringes, of that garment of light in which the Invisible has robed His mysterious loveliness. There is not a leaf, nor a flower, nor a dewdrop, but bears His image, and reveals to us far deeper things of God than do final causes or evidences of design. The whole face of nature, to him who can read it aright, is covered with celestial types and hieroglyphics, marked, like the dial-plate of a watch, with significant intima- tions of the objects and processes of the world unseen. The Bible discloses all this to us. It not only gives us the knowledge of salvation, but re- veals to us the spiritual source of the physical world ; shows to us that the supernatural is not antagonistic to the constitution of nature, but is the eternal source of it. The miracles of the Bible are not only emblems of power in the spiritual world, but also exponents of the miracles of nature PREFACE. vii experiments, as it were, made by the Great Teacher in person, on a small scale and within a limited time, to illustrate to mankind the pheno- mena that are taking place over longer periods throughout the universe. All creation is a stand- ing wonder ; but it needs other wonders to reveal it to our careless eyes and insensible hearts. It needs the sudden . multiplication of the loaves and fishes at Capernaum to explain to us the mystery of the harvest of the land and the sea. It needs the miracle of Cana to show to us who it is that is gradually converting water into wine in every vineyard. It needs the virtue flowing from the hem of Christ's garment at the touch of faith, to dis- close to us the source and the meaning of the medicinal virtue stored up, for bodies blighted by the curse, in many a soothing anodyne, and many a healing balm. It needs the destruction of the walls of Jericho by the trumpet-blast to convince us that the seen is governed by the unseen that the mountain must yield to the action of cold and heat and the stable rock and massive castle, in the course of years, be weathered away and dis- mantled stone by stone by the subtle invisible forces of the air. It needs the calming of the stormy waters of Gennesaret to satisfy us that the powers of nature which seem so arbitrary, so de- structive, so purely physical are held in leash by Him who maintains the constant beneficent circula- viii PREFACE. tion of the elements. The philosophy of miracles is, therefore, just the revelation of the living God as the God of nature ; the revelation of God, not as vio- lating, but as maintaining the order of His world ; a revelation sudden and startling, to show to us what could not be shown so effectually in any other way what " His hand is daily doing for the beautifying and glorifying of the earth and of life." As Mr. Westcott says in his thoughtful work on Miracles, " The order of the universe has a spiritual root. The purpose of love which changes is also the purpose of love which directs it. He who can bind and loose the forces of nature has thus re- vealed the eternal purpose in which they originate " As the miracles thus teach us the significance of the forces of the universe, so the parables teach us the meaning of the forms of creation. The one may be regarded as experiments in sacred natural philosophy ; the other as lessons in sacred natural science. The one " strikes again the key-note of the world's order, and tunes again the concords of the lower spheres ; " the other joins again, in a Divine harmonious union, what man has put asunder, and shows that these twain the natural and the supernatural are one. The parables of Jesus are not, as some suppose, mere arbitrary illustrations of nature, but actual translations, literal interpretations, of nature's own language. In them He does not give us ideas new and fresh from heaven ; but expounds PREFACE. ix and enables us to understand the old ideas which nature has been endeavouring, in her own dumb inar- ticulate language of signs, to teach us since she was created. Just as in His literal discourses Jesus rather expounded the Word than added to it, rather eluci- dated former prophecies than uttered new ones ; so in the parables He rather removes the veil from the material universe, than gives us a new revelation rather enables us to apprehend old symbols, than supplies us with new ones. He could say in regard to His explanations of both the Bible and nature " My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me." He shed light upon nature, as He shed light upon the Bible upon the works as upon the Word of God ; and proved that every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact ; that every object of creation is suggestive of some important moral truth. In the incarnation of the Son of God we have the 'connecting link between the seen and the unseen ; the ladder set upon earth whose top reaches to heaven. St. John represents Emanuel as seated on the throne in the midst of the four cherubim or living creatures full of eyes before and behind. These are the symbols of creation present in the holy place on earth, and in the holiest of all in heaven ; and the eyes before and behind look forward and look back to Him as types of the Great Antitype, to whom all nature had a reference, from the first atom that appeared in the mineral kingdom up through all the x PREFACE. stages of organization and life to man. Every object in nature speaks of Him. The mineral kingdom reveals His stability, for " He is the Rock of our salvation" the Foundation of our hope; the vege- table kingdom exhibits His beauty, for " He is the Rose of Sharon, and the Lily of the valley ; " the animal kingdom shadows forth His strength and self- sacrificing innocence, for " He is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." The sun declares His glory, for " He is the Sun of righteousness ;" the stars proclaim His effulgence, for "He is the bright and the morn- ing Star." All the objects of nature have but a sym- bolical or concealed meaning ; they are, in the words of St. Paul, atcia T&V fie\\6vTO)V ayaOwv a shadow of good things to come while the