His materials are in nature, but the truth against which he may measure what he finds is in God, who is within man. The task is to see nature fresh, as the physicist does, the medical researcher, the jurist, or the poet, who sees beyond nature toward its increasing implications. The ultimate function of nature, then, is to serve, to free the spirit, to unlock its capacities. It feeds us, pleases us, offers us images which we translate into words so that we may speak together, and its inexorable laws provide a discipline to which we at our peril fail to submit. But man is fed not that he shall eat, nor is he disciplined for discipline's sake, but that he may know the word which is with God.
Nature exists, that is, solely for the use of spirit.
The third idea in the essay Nature derives from and might even be thought of as a part or correlative of the first. It concerns the immediacy of God. We are nothing. We see all. We wish we had the power to recall those moments, to write them down, explain their revelation to us.