Nature

"Only let us love God, and then nature will compass us about like a cloud of Divine witnesses; and all influences from the earth, and things on the earth, will be ministers of God to do us good. Only let there be God within us, and then every thing outside us will become a godlike help."

"It is well to be in places where man is little, and God is great,— where what he sees all around him has the same look as it had a thousand years ago, and will have the same, in all likelihood, when he has been a thousand years in his grave. It abates and rectifies a man, if he is worth the process."

"All things and all acts and this whole wonderful universe proclaim to us the Lord our Father, Christ our love, Christ our hope, our portion, and our joy. Oh, brethren, if you would know the meaning of the world, read Christ in it. If you would see the beauty of earth, take it for a prophet of something higher than itself."

"These, as they change, Almighty Father! these Are but the varied God. The rolling year Is full of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness and love."

"There's nothing bright above, below, From flowers that bloom, to stars that glow, But in its light my soul can see Some feature of Thy Deity."

"The very voices of the night, sounding like the moan of the tempest, may turn out to be the disguised yet tender voices of God, calling away from all earthly footsteps, to mount with greater singleness of eye and ardor of aim the alone ladder of safety and peace — upward, onward, heavenward, homeward."

"Vast chain of being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach, from infinite to Thee, From Thee to nothing."

"I hold that we have a very imperfect knowledge of the works of nature till we view them as works of God,— not only as works of mechanism, but works of intelligence, not only as under laws, but under a Lawgiver, wise and good."

"We might almost accuse nature of falsehood. One sees himself behind a mirror when nothing is there. A straight pole leaning in a pool is bent to appearance. The sun seems to rise and set, but moves not at all. We see it before it rises and after it sets. These and numberless other cases might be adduced to prove the deceitfulness of nature. Nay, they prove rather that education policy is the law of our being, and that here, as elsewhere, he who would not be self-deceived, must study nature's laws, must become educated."

"Every object in nature is impressed with God's footsteps, and every day repeats the wonders of creation. There is not an object, be it pebble or pearl, weed or rose, the flower-spangled sward beneath, or the star-spangled sky above, not a worm or an angel, a drop of water or a boundless ocean, in which intelligence may not discern, and piety adore, the providence of Him who took our nature that He might save our souls."

"If we can hear the voice of God in all sounds, see the sweep of His will in all motions, catch hints of His taste in all beauty, follow the reach of His imagination in all heights and distances, and trace the delicate ministry of His love in all the little graces and utilities that spring and blossom about us as thick as the grass, we shall tread God's world with reverent feet as if it were a temple. The pure and solemn eyes of the indwelling soul will look forth upon us from every thing which His hands have made. Nature will be to us, not some dark tissue of cloth of mystery flowing from some unseen loom, but a vesture of light in which God has enrobed Himself; and with worshipful fingers we shall rejoice to touch even the hem of His garment."

"So distinguished by a Divine wisdom, power, and goodness, are God's works of creation and providence, that all nature, by the gentle voices of her skies and streams, of her fields and forests, as well as by the roar of breakers, the crash of thunder, the rumbling earthquake, the fiery volcano, and the destroying hurricane, echoes the closing sentences of this angel hymn, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is full of His glory!"

"When I consider the multitude of associated forces which are diffused through nature — when I think of that calm balancing of their energies which enables those most powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world's creatures and economy, to dwell associated together and be made subservient to the wants of creation, I rise from the contemplation more than ever impressed with the wisdom, the beneficence, and grandeur, beyond our language to express, of the Great Disposer of us all."

"God is infinite; and the laws of nature, like nature itself, are finite. These methods of working, therefore, — which correspond to the physical element in us, — do not exhaust His agency. There is a boundless residue of disengaged energy beyond."

"I wonder if a sillier and more ignorant catachresis than "Mother Nature" was ever perpetrated? It is because Nature is ruthless, hideous, and cruel beyond belief that it was necessary to invent civilisation. One thinks of wild animals as savage, but the fiercest of them begins to look almost domesticated when one considers the viciousness required of a survivor in the sea; as for the insects, their lives are sustained only by intricate processes of fantastic horror. There is no conception more fallacious than the sense of cosiness implied by 'Mother Nature.' Each species must strive to survive, and that will do, by every means in its power, however foul—unless the instinct to survive is weakened by conflict with another instinct."

"Nature's old felicities."

"To the solid ground Of Nature trusts the Mind that builds for aye."

"As in the eye of Nature he has lived, So in the eye of Nature let him die!"

"Such blessings Nature pours, O'erstock'd mankind enjoy but half her stores. In distant wilds, by human eyes unseen, She rears her flowers, and spreads her velvet green; Pure gurgling rills the lonely desert trace And waste their music on the savage race."

"Nothing in Nature, much less conscious being, Was e'er created solely for itself."

"Talk not of temples, there is one Built without hands, to mankind given; Its lamps are the meridian sun And all the stars of heaven, Its walls are the cerulean sky, Its floor the earth so green and fair, The dome its vast immensity All Nature worships there!"

"Ah, what a warning for a thoughtless man, Could field or grove, could any spot of earth, Show to his eye an image of the pangs Which it hath witnessed; render back an echo Of the sad steps by which it hath been trod!"

"In the world's audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight."

"Nothing in Nature is unbeautiful."

"What more felicitie can fall to creature Than to enjoy delight with libertie, And to be lord of all the workes of Nature, To raine in th' aire from earth to highest skie, To feed on flowres and weeds of glorious feature."

"The streams with softest sound are flowing, The grass you almost hear it growing, You hear it now, if e'er you can."

"Call nature the grand revelation! Is it more to go to nature and know it than to know God? Are there deeper depths in nature, higher sublimities, thoughts more captivating and glorious? In the mineral and vegetable shapes are there finer themes than in the life of Jesus? In the storms and glorious pilings of the clouds, are there manifestations of greatness and beauty more impressive than in the tragic sceneries of the cross? Nature is the realm of things, the supernatural is the realm of powers."

"One touch of nature makes the whole world kin."

"How sometimes Nature will betray its folly, Its tenderness, and make itself a pastime To harder bosoms!"

"Certainly nothing is unnatural that is not physically impossible."

"To hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to Nature; to shew virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure."

"How hard it is to hide the sparks of Nature!"

"Diseased Nature oftentimes breaks forth In strange eruptions."

"And Nature does require Her times of preservation, which perforce I, her frail son, amongst my brethren mortal, Must give my tendance to."

"In Nature's infinite book of secrecy A little I can read."

"Yet neither spinnes, nor cards, ne cares nor fretts, But to her mother Nature all her care she letts."

"My banks they are furnish'd with bees, Whose murmur invites one to sleep; My grottoes are shaded with trees, And my hills are white over with sheep."

"Yet nature is made better by no mean But nature makes that mean: so, over that art Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art That nature makes."

"The course of nature governs all! The course of nature is the heart of God. The miracles thou call'st for, this attest; For say, could nature nature's course control? But, miracles apart, who sees Him not?"

"Oh, Brignall banks are wild and fair, And Greta woods are green, And you may gather garlands there Would grace a summer queen."

"Once, when the days were ages, And the old Earth was young, The high gods and the sages From Nature's golden pages Her open secrets wrung."

"A voice of greeting from the wind was sent; The mists enfolded me with soft white arms; The birds did sing to lap me in content, The rivers wove their charms,— And every little daisy in the grass Did look up in my face, and smile to see me pass!"

"For all that Nature by her mother-wit Could frame in earth."

"Nature is always wise in every part."

"And recognizes ever and anon The breeze of Nature stirring in his soul."

"La Nature a toujours été en cux plus forte que l'education."

"And liquid lapse of murmuring streams."

"Accuse not Nature, she hath done her part; Do thou but thine!"

"Let us a little permit Nature to take her own way; she better understands her own affairs than we."

"Thus with the year Seasons return, but not to me returns Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn, Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; But cloud instead, and ever-during dark Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of men Cut off, and for the book of knowledge fair Presented with a universal blank Of Nature's works to me expunged and rased, And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out."