God of nature

“ Studies in Nature lead us to cherish the idea of a God, who created, who regenerates, who preserves this universe by invariable laws, and by a continued chain of similar causes, producing similar effects; who pervades all Nature with His Divine Spirit, as a universal Soul, which moves, directs, and restrains the fabric of this world. The blissful idea of a God sweetens every moment of our time, and embellishes before us the paths of life; invites us delightfully to all the beauties of Nature, and associates us with everything that lives or moves. ”

“ Nature is his great law, that speaks his whole will both in heaven and on earth; and to obey nature, is to obey the God of nature; to please him, and to live to him, in the highest perfection. God indeed has many after-laws; but it is after his creatures have fallen from nature, and lost its perfection. But all these after-laws have no other end or intention, but to repair nature, and bring men back to their first natural state of perfection. What say you now, Academicus, to all these matters? ”

“ From the humble daisy to the splendid dahlia, from the modest lily of our own fields to the curious and gorgeous fiowers of the tropics,—we may range through unending varieties of shape, scent, and colour, till we wonder at the exhaustless riches of nature, and begin to perceive and to feel that, in truth, nought but infinite skill, prompted by infinite goodness and love, could have produced such a world of beauty. ”

“ And who can consider these amazing acts of divine power and wisdom, without admiration and praise to the Author of nature? This astonishing order of nature appeared so glorious to the ancient heathens, that they worshipped even the sun for their God, as being the greatest and most splendid of all objects, and as enlightening all the world. This was a conclusion for blind, corrupt reason to draw, though every part of the creation, to pure and right reason, fully manifests and discovers the being and excellencies of the Creator. ”

“ Both teach us much, but the religious way of looking at nature includes and transcends both the others. Nature is a parable. It is a visible manifestation of God, and His ways there shadow His ways with us, and are lessons in trust. ”

“ Or view the stupendous scenery of Alpine countries, and there, amid rock and snow, overlooking the valleys below, we feel a sense of the presence of Divinity. Or, wandering on ocean beach, watching the play of the waves, or listening to the roar of the breakers, our hearts are impressed with a sense of the power and majesty of God. In short, wherever we contemplate the vast or wonderful in nature, there we experience a religious exaltation of spirit. It is the soul within us placing itself en rapport with the soul of nature, the great first cause. ”

“ How easily can the devout spirit go through nature up to nature's God. Who loves nature should love God. Who admires Beauty should reverence its Author. Natural beauty inspires piety in a good heart. To commune with nature intelligently is to commune with God. Who ever loves a flower, a bird, a landscape view, a rainbow, a star, the blue sky, should love God. ”

“ He was so good to women and little children; but the Almighty I can only see in Nature—relentless, unforgiving, always ready to punish a slip, always demon-quick to see a mistake and visit the sins of the fathers on the children. Nature's the stern image of a stern God to me—a thing no more to be blamed than the lightning, but as much to be feared. ”

“ All the powers of nature witness to us a sovereign power in the God of nature, from whom they are derived, and on whom they depend. It is not the heaven that gives us rain, but God that gives us rain from heaven, he is the Father of the rain, Job xxxviii. ”

“ Such comforts would come to us oftener from Nature, if we really believed that our God was the God of Nature; that when He made, or rather when He makes, He means; that not His hands only, but His heart too, is in the making of those things; that, therefore, the influences of Nature upon human minds and hearts are because He intended them. ”

“ I answer: ‘To know the secrets of nature is to know the works of God; and to know the works of God within the Creation, is to know God himself; for God dwells in every visible work or body. Indeed, if you would know spiritual things, it is to know how the Spirit or Power of Wisdom and Life, causing motion or growth, dwells within and governs both the several bodies of the stars and planets in the heavens above, and the several bodies of the earth below, as grass, plants, fishes, beasts, birds and mankind. ”

“ When we contemplate this grotesque and strangely-formed little creature, and see how wisely and wonderfully it is fashioned and adapted to its destined place, supplying another missing link in the great chain of Nature, we cannot but feel God’s power and omnipresence. ”

“ As a race, young, imaginative, superstitious, and enamoured of the beautiful, they ascribed every phenomenon in nature to the action of a god—peopled the woods, the hills, the waters, with graceful imaginary beings sympathising with and often visible to man, and filling even the highest heaven with divinities who were gods but in power, and wholly men in passion. ”

“ He saw God through Nature as few men ever saw Him, and he therefore naturally used the beauty and sweetness and glory of Nature to help to reveal the beauty and sweetness and glory of love, the element of the Divine that thrilled him with the deepest joy and the highest reverence. ”

“ For Nature, ever, like the Old Hebrew God, cries out, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Only then, when there comes a pause, a blank in your life, when the old idol is broken, when the old hope is dead, when the old desire is crushed, then the Divine compensation of Nature is made manifest. ”

“ By this view, there is a new significance in Nature. Nature is the womb in which, and evolution the process by which, are generated sons of God. Now, — do you not see? — without immortality, this whole purpose is balked — the whole process of cosmic evolution is futile. Shall God be so long and at so great pains to achieve a spirit, capable of communing with him, and then allow it to lapse again into nothingness? ”

“ But why do you not consider what God worketh from year to year in the order of nature? Sometimes you see the face of the earth decked and beautified with herbs, flowers, grass, and fruits; again you see the same utterly taken away by storms, and the vehemence of the winter: what does God to replenish the earth again, and to restore the beauty thereof? ”

“ How few there are who look upon nature in that light in which she was intended to be seen by her Creator. Seen in this light, the whole visible world of nature raises up our thoughts and affection to our common Creator. For nature has ever been true and loyal to her Author. The Psalmist only gives expression to the natural and spontaneous impulses of the soul when in beholding the visible world, he exclaims: "O Lord, our Lord, how admirable is thy name in the whole earth." How few in looking upon nature, raise up their thoughts to nature's God. ”

“ But what do we mean when we say that man's great teacher has been Nature? Nature, as we have seen, is instinct with Reason, and the Reason which is revealed in Nature is only another name for God. It is the immanent God, the Eternal Reason, who has been patiently disclosing himself to us in the world round about us, and thus cleansing our minds from the crude and superstitious conceptions with which in our ignorance and fear we had invested him. ”

“ Say’st thou, “The course of nature governs all?”
The course of Nature is the art of God. 1269
The miracles thou call’st for, this attest;
For say, could Nature Nature’s course control?
But, miracles apart, who sees Him not,
Nature’s controller, author, guide, and end? ”

“ But I fear the opinion of Immaterial substances in Nature will at last bring in again the Heathen Religion, and make us believe a god Pan, Bacchus, Ceres, Venus, and the like, so as we may become worshippers of Groves and shadows, Beans and Onions, as our Forefathers. I say not this, as if I would ascribe any worship to Nature, or make her a Deity, for she is onely a servant to God, and so are all her parts or creatures, which parts or creatures, although they are transformed, yet cannot be annihilated, except Nature her self be annihilated, which may be, whensoever the Great God pleases ”

“ All this is sufficiently plain on the theistic view of nature, and may suffice for those who reverently regard the God of nature as the Father of their own spirits. But there are others who ask further questions. ”

“ Century by century God has guided nature up to the point of producing creatures which can (if they will) be taken right out of nature, turned into ‘gods’. Will they allow themselves to be taken? In a way, it is like the crisis of birth. Until we rise and follow Christ we are still parts of Nature, still in the womb of our great mother. ”

“ This beautiful world is full of wonders of every kind, full of evidences of the Great Creator's wisdom and skill in adapting each created thing to its special purpose. The whole realm of nature is meant, I believe, to speak to us, to teach us lessons in parables-to lead our hearts upward to God who made us and fitted us also for our special place in creation. ”

“ Nature is but a name for an effect
Whose cause is God. ”

“ Nature Eternally Alterable. GOD, without Error: Nature, full of Irregularities. GOD knows exactly, or perfectly, Nature: Nature doth not perfectly know GOD. GOD is Infinitely and Eternally worshipped: Nature is the Eternal and Infinite Worshipper.
CHAP. V. All the Parts of Nature worship God.
All Creatures (as I have said) have an Innate Notion of GOD; and as they have a Notion of God, so they have a Notion to worship GOD: but, by reason Nature is composed of Parts; so is the Infinite Worship to God: and, as several Parts are dividing and uniting after several kinds, sorts, manners and ways ”

“ And all this is of the Nature-Goodness of God, by the working of Grace. God is Nature [2] in His being: that is to say, that Goodness that is Nature, it is God. He is the ground, He is the substance, He is the same thing that is Nature-hood. [3] And He is very Father and very Mother of Nature: and all natures that He hath made to flow out of Him to work His will shall be restored and brought again into Him by the salvation of man through the working of Grace. ”

“ Even the so-called radical unbeliever when cornered will acknowledge that the Universe has been made and is kept up by something which he cannot comprehend, but which he cannot deny, but he calls it Nature. Very well, let us call it Nature, and give praise to the work of Nature. But the great majority have seen fit to call it God, and this name is again spoken differently by every language of the globe, and I suppose that is the case with all intelligent beings on any heavenly body that may exist. ”

“ According to this pantheistic view, nature and God are the same thing viewed differently. God, foreshortened and taken in the limited perspectives defined by man's earth-bound intelligence, is nature; nature, consummated, seen in its fullness and harmony, is God. ”

“ Thence also the Stoics have laid down the doctrine, that living agreeably to nature is the end, fitly altering the name of God into nature; since also nature extends to plants, to seeds, to trees, and to stones. ”

“ All my life I've devoted myself to following the inquiry into the nature of Nature. This pursuit has led me—by way of psychology—into finding out a great deal about what is popularly called the nature of God. ”

“ Nature is but a name for an effect,
Whose cause is God. ”

“ The world and nature are marvellous in their being, but they are not “divine”! The formula “natura sive deus” is a monstrous misuse of the word “deus,” if we are to use the words in the sense which history has given to them. God is the Absolute Being, perfect, wholly independent, resting in Himself, and necessary; nature is entirely contingent and dependent, and at every point of it we are impelled to ask “Why?” ”

“ But you will say, The divine Soul is a part of Man, and Man a part of Nature, wherefore the divine Soul must needs be a part of Nature. I answer, Not: For the divine Soul is not a part of Nature, but supernatural, as a supernatural Gift from God onely to Man, and to no other Creature: and although in this respect it may be called a part of Man, yet it is no natural or material part of Man; neither doth this supernatural Gift disturb Nature or natural Matter, or natural Matter this supernatural Gift. ”

“ The Lord calls Himself a vine. All plants, from the tender grass to the oak, cedar, and palm, are employed as symbols of the processes of spiritual growth. The Lord is also called a lion and a lamb, because the strength of the one and the innocence of the other are primary qualities of His nature. Nature is the created word of God. It is a revelation of His love and wisdom, of the laws of His order, purposes, and the means by which He attains them. The objects in nature are not arbitrary characters. ”

“ The idea of a God we infer from our experimental dependence on something superior to ourselves in wisdom, power and goodness, which we call God; our senses discover to us the works of God which we call nature, and which is a manifest demonstration of his invisible essence. Thus it is from the works of nature that we deduce the knowledge of a God, and not because we have, or can have any immediate knowledge of, or revelation from him. ”

“ Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Tierra del Fuego, where Death and Decay prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature:—no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body. ”