Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1895-08-12
A STUDY OF NATURE.
THE LESSON THAT 1T is EVER TEACH
ING US.


Its One Governing Force A Sermon
Preached at Plymouth Church, Brook
Iyn, by Rev. Lyman Abbott.
The poets in all ages have seen, or
Thought they have seen, i'll nature a
Iconscious life. They have peopled the
woods, and the wales, the mountains,
and the ocean they have seen dryads in
the trees and fairies in the groves,
wrath in the tempest and love in the
sunshine, but science has come with her
later message and has driven the dryads
from the trees, and the fairies from the
groves, and the wrath from the tenn
pest, and the love from the sunshine.
Science las said to Us, No; these bolts
are not arrows which Jove filings from
his hand. They are only electric sparks.
This beauty of the flower has not been
painted by an artists hand; it is only
the reflection Of q part of the sunlight.
Nature is q great machine. Her laws
are uniform. She knows no passion.
She neither loves nor hates nor fears nor
hopes nor cares. She is q great, remorse-
less mechanism. So we get these two
testimonies-th poet seeing life in phe-
nomena, and the scientist seeing in phe
nomena nothing but natural law.
The Poets as Witnesses.
1t is to be noted that both witnesses
bear their continuous testimony, one to
conscious life in nature, the other to its
uniformity. This one has not, i'll fact,
excluded the other. The poets are not
dead Science with its bowstring has
not strangled them. Science has not put
10 of a
We're put out in the Tower. No. The
poets still have eyes and ears and think
they see behind phenomena something
more than phenomena; think they hear
in the voice of nature something more
than the moaning of the wind and the
sound of the waves For the oiden times
gave no such poets of nature as the mod
ern times have given. Not i'll Homer or
Virgil or Dante will you find such in
terpretative vision as in Wordsworth, in
Whittier and in Browning So these
witnesses live side by side, the one say
ing that nature is q mechanism, unified
in all its laws, and the other saying
that nature is vocal, and there is life
within it and behind it. What are we
to do? Are we to deny one Of these wit
nesses and take the other? Are we to say
that the poets from the earliest ages
have been wrong and have not seen
what they thought they saw? Are we to
drive the dryadS from the trees and the
fairies from the groves and to hear in
the signing of the wind nothing but the
vibration of the atmosphere and in the
music of the surf nothing but the mo-
notonous and meaningless sound of ocean
waves? Are we to think that science
tells us the truth; that science is the
scholar AID understands and the poet is
but to amuse US, to play upon our i'm
aginations and our emotions? Or are
we to think that there may be some
truth in these poet visions, and that they
also have seen something; that they
bear a true witness? I believe that both
science and the poet are right, and that
in our thought, pot modern, yet coming
to life again in modern times, of God
in nature and working through nature
you find the reconciliation of them both,
that there is really behind all the phe-
nomena of nature a life; that the vari
Gus phenomena of nature are themselve.
manifestation of an indwelling life, but
that this life is uniform, habitual; that
it is not transitory, vacillating, arbi
trary, whimsical, life which varies
with infirmity of temper; that it is not
one kind of life in the tree and another
kind in the ocean and another kind il
the cloud; that there is really in all this
phenomena and behind it all a life-that
is what the poet says. That this life is
uniform, ruled or ruling itself accord
ing to great laws-that is what the sci
enlist says.
Life and Matter.
Professor Tyndall, you remember,
some years ago created a great excite
ment and brought heated protests from
religious men by his declaration that
he sometimes thought that in matter
was the promise and potency of all life.
For my part, I accept his statement. In
matter is the promise and potency of all
life. The life is not outside, working on
the matter. 1t is inside, working through
the matter. 1t is within the organism,
and by its operation from within makes
the organism what it is. The artist sits
at his table wAh his clay before him,
and with his fingers models the statue
the arms, the hands, 1She features,
everything. He models it from with
out. Your soul, residing within your
BODY, models your BODY. 1t models tn
fingers which grow flexible at the piano
by that which the soul directs them to
do. Their fitness for service is made,
not by fingers working on them from
without, but by soul working on them
from within. So the face is made by
the soul that lies behind the face. If
there is fire which flashes from the eye,
or kindness which looks out from it,
lit is because the soul has fire or the soul
has love. IF there are grooves.of care
nodded in the brow or in the cheeks, it
is not by an external artist who shapes