And if the solemn nightingale be mute, With the loud streams; and at the quiet hour, A voice of spiritual presence to the souls. A voiceful presence o'er the listening soul. The Excursion. CHAPTER II. Beauty, Constancy, and Repetition of the Analogies between the Natural and Spiritual Life-Practical purposes of these Lessons-The Universe as the shadow of God's Light—A faith in that which is above Nature requisite to view Nature aright. How many, how beautiful, how constant are the analogies drawn between the processes of nature and the goings on of spiritual life. The relation of the seasons to one another, and to the object and end of the whole year, is full of instruction as the symbol of spiritual reality, and the suggestion of spiritual thought. The relation of seed-time to harvest, and of harvest to seed-time, the spring as the parent of the autumn, and the autumn as the child of spring, are frequently and solemnly dwelt upon. And the perpetual recurrence of these seasons, the familiar sight and knowledge of these relations, never make the lesson trite; on the contrary, there is a beauty and solemnity in it, which no frequency of return can diminish, a power of freshness, and a depth of power, in the appeal to our immortality, which no familiarity can wear out. O listen, Man! It is the language of the serenest, most gradual, fixed, and quiet processes of nature, with an appeal as much deeper than that of the cataract, as the still, small voice was more penetrating to the soul of Elijah than the noise of the rushing, rending whirlwind. But why do I speak of the frequency and familiarity of the lesson? Is it so, that the processes of nature are so very familiar and so often witnessed, so perpetually observed, that they can become trite and disregarded? Why! the years in a man's lifetime number them all. Few men ever see more than fifty summers' suns, fifty winters' snows and tempests. Few men ever behold more than fifty times, in passing through this world of nature, the indescribably beautiful and solemn imagery of spring and autumn, the goings on of seed-time, and the ripening and gathering of harvest. Of the multitudes pent up in cities, how few there are that ever behold these scenes at all; that ever know anything of nature, save the cares, the passions, the anxieties, the depravities and conflicts of human nature! How few there are that ever even see the sun rise and set! How still fewer that ever watch the opening of spring, or the passage of spring into summer, or of summer into autumn, or of autumn into winter! What study of these scenes it requires to gain a familiarity with them! The mere passage of life, from year to year, no more of necessity opens up to a man's soul the loveliness of nature, or gives him knowledge and command of the imagery and teachings of nature, or makes him familiar even with the commonest sights of nature, than to be whirled round the earth in a rail-car would make a man acquainted with the landscapes, climates, and geography of our globe. Now if a man could have leisurely and serenely watched, with the eye of a painter, the imagination of a poet, and the heart of a Christian, the varied seasons of the year-spring, summer, autumn, winter-fifty times in succession, what is that to the inexhaustible magnificence and beauty each year poured out anew! What is that to the infinite variety and freshness of night and day, morning and evening, cloud and sky, sea and land, mountain and dale, sunshine and rain, brooks and banks, running streams and mighty rivers, plain and valley, springing herbage, and opening and falling flowers; trees budding, blossoming, clustering with fruits and foliage; a wilderness of leaves changing with the months, in hues that speak to the soul in their evanescent yet perpetual beauty; a wilderness of plants, that from the seed, or from the root of man's planting, or of nature's wild, unsought, unstudied abundance and abandonment, first break the earth and open to the sunlight in the green blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear; growing, changing, from shape to shape, from color to color, from the freshness of spring to the ripeness of autumn. All this combined with the renewal, diversity, and gaiety of animal life, in forms and habits almost as countless as the leaves, fruits and flowers; all in one grand, mighty, ever-changing panorama under the cope of heaven, in every season entirely new, and yet the same! What, to the knowledge of all this, or for an adequate command of such knowledge, or for the exhausting, or even the enumerating of its lessons, or the full understanding of the teachings of nature by the soul, would be fifty times beholding of it! Oh no! Our human lifetime is not enough to make nature familiar to us, not enough to take the charm of novelty and wonder, even childlike wonder, from any of God's works. Enough to lay up God's sermons in the soul, enough to learn the syllables of wisdom from the lilies of the field as they grow, but not enough to make one lesson trite or wearisome. Before the solemnity, the richness and the beauty of the lesson can pos from it, sibly become familiar, or lose its power, we pass away into that advanced world of which it is the prelude and the warning. Before we can fully realize the greatness of the prediction, we are borne past it into the reality. After passing through this world of nature, these forms of teaching and instructive loveliness, one would think a happy soul might wish to come back and survey them again from the serenity of a higher, yet nearer post of observation, in a holier existence, with a heart entirely in unison with God, entirely free from human care and passion, in angelic leisure to drink in the spirit of love, harmony and happiness, and to understand the lessons, both sweet and sad, and the influences, both warning and animating, which God has given to nature in a fallen world. But they are linked now with nature for practical purposes. They are not given for our amusement or enjoyment merely, but for our education and instruction; ours is a disciplinary world, and the lessons of nature are a part of God's own discipline with us. The poets have often used the forms and materials of nature merely as rich fuel to feed the fires of an intellectual imagination; but the diviner lessons they have disregarded. It is as if a Hottentot should take a richly bound and ornamented copy of the gospels and fasten the gold clasps and illuminated pages as ornaments to his person, but throw the writing away. Not thus to be used, did God write the book of nature for us, nor for our earthly life, but for our immortality. In the recesses of a thick wood it seems as if nature were meditating upon man, or for him, as deeply as man upon nature. In the sacred stillness of a summer's noon, or in the forest by moonlight, there is an almost audible breathing of nature, and the momentary droppings of the buds, or of the falling leaves, |