Section LXXVIII. The Inner Revelation and the Conscience. (Concl'd) · SECTION CXXVIII.

(b) The moral appropriating of nature is either of a purely spiritual, or of an actual character.—1. Spiritual appropriating consists, in addition to the legitimate striving after the highest possible knowledge of nature considered as a manifestation of divine power, love and wisdom, mainly in the reflective contemplating of nature in its symbolical suggestiveness of the moral,—God having implanted in it natural symbols of the moral.

The thoughtful, moral contemplating of nature is at once of a pious and of a poetical character; it is not a mere play of the fancy, it is veritable reality. Nature is not moral, but it is the work of Him who is himself perfect morality. Nature as created by the holy God must necessarily reflect this as from a mirror; it is the high and mysterious charm of nature that it is not mere nature, but that everywhere the Spirit whispers out of its bosom and broods over its expanse. Nature reveals to us not only God’s creative power, wisdom and glory [Rom. i, 20; Job xxxvii, sqq.; Psa. xcvii; civ; cxi, 2; cxlvii, 8 sqq. ], the heavens not only declare God’s glory [Psa. xix, 1 sqq.], but also God’s love is made known to us in nature [Matt. vi, 26 sqq.; Acts xiv, 17], and the bow on the clouds [Gen. ix, 12 sqq.] and the bespangled vault of the skies are symbols of the divine faithfulness [Gen. xv, 5]. But the moral consciousness finds still more than this; the phases of beauty that are perceived in nature are suggestions of spiritual beauty. It is not a groundless fancy when the mind discovers moral ideas symbolically suggested even in plants; we feel at once the kindredness of impression upon the sensibilities that is made by a delicate rose and by modest virginity, by a violet and by childlike humility, by an oak and by firmness of character. And the fact that animals so frequently directly remind us of human moral qualities, is simply evidence that the holy creative Spirit rules in them and discovers to us; in that which is merely natural, embryonic premonitions of the moral. The ant, the bee, etc., are natural emblems of the virtue of industry [Prov. vi, 6]; it is God who causes them busily to care for a common want,—who works in them in order to speak to man an unmistakable word of exhortation and instruction. The care of birds for their young, the fidelity of the dog and of the horse, are manifestations of a deeply suggestive character in nature. The quiet gentleness and the patient sufferance of the lamb are applied as types even to Christ [Isa. liii, 7; John i, 29, 36; 1 Pet. i, 19; Rev. v, 6, and elsewhere]; Christ himself uses the dove as a symbol of uprightness of heart [Matt. x, 16]. The animal-fable has something of the mystical in it and contains deep truth. The attractive and convicting element thereof is this inner mysterious fact, that something of the divine rules in the animal, and looks out upon us,—a moral element unconsciously immanent in nature itself; and that which appears in the brute as a type of human sin, is more than a mere fancied resemblance,—is in fact the root of that which in man actually becomes sin, whereas in the animal it is simply a normal limitedness.