Orleans County monitor. [volume] (Barton, Vt.) 1872-1953, 1895-08-12

world.
Music of Nature.
So everything in nature speaks of
God, because God himself is within
speaking forth This is the truth which
the poet who wrote that earliest of
poems, the first chapter of Genesis, saw !:
s'God said, Light be. Light was" Light
is the voice of God speaking. And as
the light, so everything else. ''He spake.
and it was done. He commanded, and
it stood fast. ;" You remember the fairy
story Of your youth, how the fairy god
mother touched the lips of the maiden,
and then, when she spoke, pearls and
diamonds and precious stones dropped
from her lips. So Godspeaks, and when
he SPEAKS the flower, the cloud, the star,
the thunder, all things, are his utter
ance Some one has said that the cathe-
drals of Europe are frozen music. All
the phenomena of nature are the music
of Gods voice solidiied. He is in ma
ture speaking, and all things that come
forth from nature come forth from him.
And it is because he is One-the same
yesterday, today and forever = not
1awless, ftful being ruled by a lawless
and fitful will. 1t is because he is one,
working out his great purpose with
steady uniformity, that nature is herself
uniform, bearing her witness to this
sublime truth of life. that law is in
God, and God is in law, and all life is
lawful. There are no fitful flashes, no
lawless impulses in the divine, the in
finite, the eternal. Yes, there are re-
fected coiors of the sunlight in the
flower, but there is something more
than that. The tide is drawn by the
moon, but there is something more in
the march Of the ocean than that. There
is the vibration of the ether in the sun
light, but there is something moce than
that. In nature, ruling it, creating it,
the power that speaks through it and is
manifested by it, is an infinite and eter-
nal life. [ want to try to do little this
morning to draw the curtains aside that
we may see some of these values that lie
beyond the ken of mere material science.
In the first place, then, nature has
her word to speak respecting the wis
dom of God. To put it in philosophical
phrase, the old theological argument no
longer has the force it used to have, but
the modern argument from design is
member that Paley said, if a man finds
a watch on the road, he concludes some
skillful mechanic has made it. That is
the old argument-a watch made by
mechanic and then left, separated from
him. What we have now found upon the
road is not a watch; it is a child. The
soul is within the mechanism itself.
Less design? More design. Life here pal
pitating in the very nature, so that ev
cry movement of the mOlecule, every vi
bration Of sound, every activity of ma
ture is itself the expression of q soul
that dwells within. No longer are we
looking upon a mechanism which the
machinist has made and set going. We
are looking on some phase and feature
of God himself. The flower, the sun
light, the storm, the ightning-aH
these are the utterances of himself, a.
your voice is the utterance of your secret
soul.
One Cause Only.
No doctrine of god that set great
causes at work and then went away
leaving them to operate can compare IL
its power to bring God into the horizon
of the human vision with this concep-
ton of the radical evOlutionist of God
present in and working out the very
processes of creation. The ancient Hin
docs, you remember, said that God was
too great to make the world, so he
Matched out from an egg Il number of
little deities and set them to work, and
they made the world And so our or
thodox theology has thought that God
was too great to make this world. He
was the great first cause, and he set
light and heat and electricity to work as
second causes. There is no great first
cause There are no second causes.
There is one universal cause, and all
phenomena spring instantly from him.
He is the perpetual, eternal, indwelling
power.
So nature, giving it's testimony and
speaking of wisdom dwelling within
the phenomena, gives its testimony also
to divine Artist working within and
speaking through the phenomena. Imag-
inc an artist who does not have to take
a brush and palette and paint his pic
lures on the canvas, but who, as he
looks at it, by thought transference puts
the picture upon the canvas, SO that
there glOws in colors before the surpris-
eel spectator what 1rSG the ARTIST saw
with his own vision. So God looks on
the canvas, and as he looks the canvas
CLOVIS with the beauty which he saw
before the canvas was put in its place Or
brush was taken in hand. This is why
Solomon in all his glory was not array
ed like lily of the field. Solomon was
arrayed by the people who put the glory
on him. He may have appreciated the
beauty, and he may not. But this lily
of the valley evolves the beauty. 1t is
itself speaking, interpreting God.
So, again, if you get this thought of
God dwelling in nature, [ am sure it
vi II Il, Of God