256 Natural Theology. 



The power and beauty of these same objects 

 appear in the Saviour's teachings. The fig and the 

 olive, the sparrow and the lily of the field, give 

 peculiar force and beauty to the great truths they 

 were used to illustrate. 



The Bible throughout is remarkable in this re- 

 spect. It is a collection of books written by authors 

 far removed from each other in time and place and 

 mental culture, but throughout the whole, nature is 

 exalted as a revelation of God. Its beauty and 

 sublimity are appealed to to arouse the emotions, 

 and through the emotions to reach the moral and 

 religious nature. This element of unity runs through 

 all the books where references to nature can be 

 made. One of the adaptations of the Bible to the 

 nature of man is found in the sublime and perfect 

 representation of the natural world, by which nature 

 is ever made to proclaim the character and perfec- 

 tions of God. No language can be written, that so 

 perfectly sets forth the grand and terrible in nature 

 and its forces, as we hear when God answers Job 

 out of the whirlwind. No higher appreciation of 

 the beautiful, and of God as the author of beauty, 

 was ever expressed than when our Saviour said of 

 the lilies of the field, " I say unto you that even 

 Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one 

 of these ; " and then adds , " If God so clothe the 

 grass of the field" ascribing the element of beauty 

 in every leaf and opening bud to the Creator's skill 

 and power. 



Thus, in all the adorning of common language, 



