256 THE OLIVE LEAR CHAP. 



an atonement. Nature therefore cannot solve the awful 

 doubts which arise in the human heart regarding the 

 justice of God. Its testimony regarding His ways has 

 so many apparent contradictions that we can get no sure 

 and certain sound. Let us consider the lilies of the 

 field, or the stars of heaven, or any other objects of 

 nature, and they will return no answer to the moment- 

 ous question of the unquiet conscience and the sin- 

 stained soul, " How shall man be just with God ? " We 

 need therefore a special revelation. We need that He 

 who at first commanded the light to shine out of dark- 

 ness, should give us the light of the knowledge of His 

 glory in the face of Jesus Christ. God has given to us 

 this special revelation, suited to our altered sinful state, 

 in the economy of redemption. The candlesticks of 

 the sanctuary disclose to us in the darkness what the 

 trees of nature fail to teach. He who is in the midst of 

 these candlesticks reveals the Father to us, and is Him- 

 self the way by which we may worship Him. In His 

 cross we see the love that hates the sin and saves the 

 sinner ; how God can be just and yet the justifier of the 

 ungodly who believe in Jesus. 



In the tabernacle of nature many of the typical 

 objects and processes were unintelligible to Adam, 

 because of his sinless state. The wilderness was there 

 waiting, but it had no meaning to him who was in Eden. 

 The thorns were on the trees, but they suggested no 

 analogy to him who had no thorns in his own heart and 

 life ; the thistles spread over the ground, but they con- 

 veyed no lessons regarding the sweat of the face to him 



