THE PROBLEM: THE MODE OF ITS SOLUTION 9 



yet lived in continual dread of the hostile powers of 

 Nature. A Norse prophet or prophetess standing be- 

 side Elijah at Horeb would have bowed down before 

 the earthquake or the fire ; the oriental waited for the 

 " still small voice." And we are heirs to a Latin 

 theology grafted on to the Thor-worship of our pagan 

 ancestors. The idea of a Nature producing benefi- 

 cently and kindly at the word of a loving God is 

 foreign to all our inherited modes of thought. And 

 our views of the heart of Nature are about as correct 

 as those of our ancestors were of God. A little more 

 of oriental tendencies of thought would harm neither 

 our theology nor our life. 



What, then, is the biblical idea of Nature ? God 

 speaks to the earth, in the first chapter of Genesis, and 

 the earth responds by " giving birth " to mountains and 

 living beings. It is evidently no mere lifeless, inert 

 clod, but pulsating with life and responsive to the di- 

 vine commands. While yet a chaos it had been 

 brooded over by the Divine Spirit. It is like the great 

 " wheels within wheels," with rings full of eyes round 

 about, which Ezekiel sav/ in his vision by the river 

 Chebar. " When the living creatures went, the wheels 

 went by them ; and when the living creatures were lifted 

 up from the earth, the wheels were lifted up. Whither- 

 soever the spirit was to go, they went, thither was their 

 spirit to go ; and the wheels were lifted up over against 

 them : for the spirit of the living creatures (or of life) 

 was in the wheels." And above the living creatures 

 was the firmament and the throne of God. So Nature 

 may be material, but it is material interpenetrated by 

 the divine ; if you call it a fabric, the woof may be 

 material but the warp is God. This view contains all 



