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CHAPTER XVII.

The Silent Majesty and Invisible Procession of Nature.

"ATURE'S grandest operations and most beneficent processes are all carried on in the majesty of silence, and her mightiest forces are all invisible. In all this she is but indicating the similar processes by which her Creator works in the realms of morals and of grace.

Whoever saw that mysterious force called gravitation, attraction, cohesion-invisible, universal, resistlessbinding together by its mysterious bands, its subtle force, the uncounted orbs of space? Acting everywhere, it binds together at the same moment the "starry belt of Orion and the particles of stone by the wayside; regulates the falling of the snowflake, shapes the tear upon the cheek, and weaves the silvery web of the gossamer." "By the same law those globes wheel round,

Each drawing each, yet all still found

In one eternal system bound,

One order to fulfil."

Motion is one of the most marvellous and inexplicable

phenomena in Nature; vital to every system, from the

flower to the star; everywhere present, yet carried on for ever in the sublime majesty of silence. It is seen in the silent marchings of the stars; in the succession of the seasons; in the perpetual changes going on in the visible creation, reproduction, growth, decomposition, and decay; in the rising and falling of the sap in the vegetable world, and in the circulation of the blood from life's first pulsation to its last; in the march of events, the flight of years, the flowing of rivers, the flux and reflux of the tides; and in the realm of mind, in the growth, maturity, and decline of the mental powers. Yet from the revolution of the planet, to the growth of the daisy, this ubiquitous power works on in the majesty of silence! Who ever heard the stars come out in the darkness, the sun rise, the flowers grow, the seeds germinate, or the fruit ripen ?

In the same silent manner the "incorruptible seed" is sown in the heart by the Holy Spirit, germinates and grows and brings forth fruit to life eternal !

No landscape, however admirable in other respects, is complete without motion; the swan must glide along the river, the birds fly among the branches, the eagle wheel among the crags, goats feed among the precipices, and sheep bleat upon the hillside or group themselves in the valleys.

What is more pleasant to the eye and to the ear than the waving of trees, the rustling of the woods, the falling of waters, the flight of birds, or the curling column of smoke rising from the cottage chimney, and sailing away over meadow, and moorland? What landscape could charm us long where these were absent? All the great processes of life, animal and vegetable, are carried

on silently and invisibly. How silently the acorn passes into the oak! the egg into the worm, which continues to enlarge till the pupa state is reached, which in its turn merges into the butterfly, a gradual and silent process till the final form is reached. By the same vascular system a twofold kind of life is sustained; then follows the chrysalis, an apparent but not a real death; and then the metamorphosis, and the beautiful papilio comes forth to soar in the sunshine and feed on the nectar of flowers.

The silent supremacy of the Invisible is revealed remarkably in the ebbing and flowing of the tides. Standing upon the sea shore as the tide is coming in, we see it make its first effort to advance, and we see it rudely repulsed and driven back into the deep by the relentless rocks. But again it advances towards the mark at which it aims, and again it is repulsed, but not till it has gained some slight success over its rocky barrier. Again and again it advances, each time gaining ground over its opponent, till it is at last victorious, and gains the high water mark at which it aimed. Now what is the power by which it has been able to overcome every obstacle and gain the mark at which it aimed? and where does that power reside? Turn your gaze upward to the sky; there, in yon fair moon, riding so serenely through the midnight heavens, you have the power by which the tide has conquered! How invisible, how subtle, how potent must be the occult force streaming on and streaming ever from that silent satellite, so to act upon that mighty mass of waters, and cause it successfully to combat and ultimately to overcome the sullen resistance of the rocks!

And here again the mind glances in an instant from

Nature to grace, from the realm of matter to the realm of mind, from the action of Nature's laws to the action of Nature's God, who by the energy of His Holy Spirit operating on the mind of His children, overcomes all the potent gravitations of earth, and the heart's mournful affinities with evil, and allures the renewed affections to Himself by an invisible and silent force, which, overcoming all the obstacles that earth and earthly things would place in their way, press forward to the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

The silent ministry of the great to the small is another suggestive truth taught us in Nature. Take as an illustration of our meaning the growth of the wayside flower-the daisy or the pimpernel. It requires all the great agencies of Nature to co-operate together for its growth and development-light, rain, dew, wind, cloud, all necessary for its growth. The ocean must yield its waters; the sun evaporate, the cloud receive them; and then the south-west wind must waft the water-laden cloud across the Atlantic till it reaches the land, the hills must act as suckers to draw the water from the cloud, the atmosphere must change its temperature, that the waters under which the "cloud is not rent” may descend in gentle and fertilizing showers; and as the flower cannot get up to the rain-cloud, the rain must fall just where the flower is growing. Thus for the growth of that wayside flower, the sun each morning must climb the heavens with light and warmth, the waters rise from the sea, the winds blow, the showers fall.

Does not this fact suggest another in relation to our heavenly Father's care over us? "Consider the lilies how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin : yet

your heavenly Father careth for them." Thus for us also the Sun of righteousness must rise, with healing in His wings; for us He must come down "like the dew upon the mown grass, as showers that water the earth." Though He is Deity and we are dust, He is holy and we are sinful, yet He "careth" for us, and hath said, "Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out."

This ministry of the great to the small, or God's care for His creature man, and the divine anticipation of his wants, stands strikingly prominent in the Creator's preparation of the earth for man, centuries before his creation.

To an intelligent observer, looking on the pre-Adamic earth in the carboniferous era, it would have appeared a prodigal expenditure, a useless waste of life, and energy, and space, and time, while those gigantic fern forests were growing with more than tropical luxuriance, and then falling and perishing to give place to other forms which should grow and perish in like manner. And this continued through uncounted centuries of years! Yet through all these long and sunless* centuries the Creator was filling and storing the coal cellar for man, the being He would not create for many millenniums after ! The granite, the slate, the clay, the limestone, and the marble, with which man builds palace and pyramid, cottage and cathedral, are all the product of Nature's forces, heat and cold, frost and fire, busily working for man's good, ages before he had a being. Nor must we forget that,

* The conditions necessary to the growth of ferns are heat, moisture, and shade. Vegetable forms and trees characterized by season rings," which are the evidence of the presence of sunshine, are not found till after the carboniferous era has closed.