religious experience all the effect of the voice. Thunder is Jehovah's voice, because the effect is an awakening of the religious nature, a setting of the soul face to face with God, a simple calling forth into existence spiritual emotion. Every peal that echoes and re-echoes from heaven to earth, is the voice echoing and re-echoing in the great Temple of God, and stirs the good poet's inmost nature. It is emotion-religious emotion-not mere æstheticism, much less prosy science; and the good man cannot find a better word to express the effect of the thunderstorm than calling it "the voice of the Lord." In it the soul heard Him. That is but one instance. It was the same with everything beside. In the rising, rolling waves they heard Him. In the massive moving clouds, they saw His chariot; in the silent, star-lit heaven, His great tent; in the wild winds, His wings fluttering as He passed by. And why? Simply because in all these they found a means of grace; ways by which their religious nature might ascend to the conception of, and communion with, God.

It was not to cold reason, as some will have it, that the natural appealed; to the reason they have no such voice and meaning. It was nature appealing to the spiritual-the religious nature-and to this they spoke the very heart-secret of God. There are many ways of illustrating it even in our lower sphere of humanity-e.!)., you visit the tomb of some great, good, beloved man or woman; you see it covered with beautiful and costly wreaths. In you what feelings do they rouse, although the dead one is a stranger, never seen by you? You can, so to speak, realise and commune with the dead-the dead was clever, good, benevolent, ever actively good. Thus there is produced in you the feeling of reverencerespect for him or her. That is as plain as though a voice had told you audibly. Through these wreaths you hear the dead is living-living in the memory and heart of those who put them there. They are a voice telling you the dead was beloved, respected, appreciated. They whisper to the quiet, listening soul the love of the past, hope of the future-the great beyond. And so we might go on describing what they mean, and therefore what they say to us.

But just imagine a wild, swarthy one from the dark, unchristianised continent of Africa. To him they might be no more than to cover the grave from heat of sun or rain of heaven; at best, they would be the means used to fright away the evil spirits. No one would say that there was even an attempt to put into words more than this, in either the one or the other. Very closely did the good man of old commune with nature all around, because it struck the key-notes of spiritual emotion, God-apprehension, otherwise im

possible. In every season he would see the beautiful; God going forth beautifying all things; and thus all beautiful things, all that. was outside and beyond human help or hindrance, brought thoughts of God, and meant such things concerning Him as made nature a mirror in which he saw reflected his God. And so in our text; God is closely identified with His works. His hand is there, evolving in due time everything beauteous; fashioning leaf, flower, fruit, i.e., in all these things, and more, the writer would see, or rather experience, all the effects of having seen Him doing it.

There is a time for everything, a season for everything in human effort and experience; and so there is a time for everything God does. Man may be variable and spasmodic, while God is recognised by His seasonable and timely dealing with the universe of space and matter. This recognition of God's connection, as Maker, with nature's beauties, is all of a piece with the Oriental religious nature worship. Everything wore the impress of God when gazed upon with the spiritual eye, the religious eyesight. It was the handiwork of the great, good God, as the thunder was His voice and the Icloud His chariot.

And now, if these God-worshippers, these God-chosen people found so much to help them in Nature's beauties towards the recognition of God, why should not we? Their whole religious system, we find from the New Testament language itself, was but a forerunner of our Christian faith. It was but provisional, while ours is permanent. It was the prophecy, this the prophecy fulfilled. I think we shall all agree that we have a right to what they had. If the north wind, if the sun's light and heat, if the stars' clear shining, if the expanding leaf, if the waving wood, if the perfect Nature-modelled flower will rouse within us and help us, understandingly expounding our Christian faith and life, why should we not lay hold of them all, use them all as avenues to higher realisation of all that God is in Christ our Saviour? If any of these will illustrate for us the power or the love of God, then are they the voice of God to us as well as to them. If a lily will teach us dependence, then is it a voice. If a bird of the air will teach us there is a Providence, then it is a voice to us. If the interworkings of Nature will enforce upon us Christ's self-sacrifice, then it is a message, a voice. Whatever will conduce to our knowing the possible experience of communion with God must be to us, as to His ancient people, God-made, appointed, and approved. If the beauty of the universe will make a ladder by which we can reach the conception of the glory of Christ, then may we use it in conjunction with the verbal description here.

It is when it falls short of these highest ends that it becomes a

a snare, an idolatry. When it is the worship of force merely, the worship of nature per se, that it takes the place of the golden calf, the Molech, the Baal of the ancient Jews. But there are times when all beauteous things come as a handmaid, a help to our understanding, appreciating the written Word. We worship not the mere Word of God; we rest not content in obeisance to a volume, however prized. It is but a medium to an end, and that end is the worship and the love of God Himself, not His Word, not His work. If the one will help the other, then we embrace them both, and hold them sacred. The poetic psalmists, prophets, even law-givers, of ancient Judaism found them thus, and held them thus. There were sacred mounts, sacred spots-sacred because on them, by them, the soul had been uplifted into the recognition of and communion with the Lord. Indeed, one so powerfully experienced this that he asks, “Whither can I go from Thy Spirit, and whither can I flee from Thy presence?" His spirit tells him that communion is independent of time and place; that he can now-so helpful does he find all these things-see God, as now he sees Him anywhere and everywhere; nay, that he cannot run away from the experience, cannot find a place where God would not be as near to him as now, and as much recognised by him. What is consecration? Is it the mere formal pronunciation of a word ?-nay, is it pronouncing of word at all? Can a place be consecrated at will? Consecration is the result of an experience of God's presence and communion with Him. That may not be possible in the grandest pile of ecclesiastical buildings to you or to me; it may be, in the middle of a wood; it may be, on a moor or a mountain; it may be, in a garret. And what is consecrated spot to me may not be so to you-cannot be, perhaps, to you. Where we struggle with God, and where God struggles with us, and we are victors, and win the blessing from God, like Jacob of old-it may be in a wilderness, it may be in a crowded street or mart, it may be at the altar, or it may be on a sick bed, but be it where it is, it is (the) Bethel-the house of God. That is consecrated, because there God is, God works, God blesses, God is seen and heard.

"Fools may run where angels dare not tread." Why? In this, at least, it is nothing to the fool, for he has experienced not; it is the Throne of God to the angel, because there he has seen God. The fool cannot desecrate it, the angel would not. Consecration means that God is there, but God's being in a place means that men and women have had, or may have, communion with Him. God's presence or absence are religious ideas, not mere ideas of space. God might be absent to some minds in a humanly conse

crated place; He might be present where foot of priest had never trod. God's beautifying hand might be seen by one in a sunpainted cloud, in the delicate petals of a wild wood-flower, more plainly than in the most gorgeous temple of man's building, or in the discourse of the most eloquent divine.

Consecration is not this to many; that is, it is not independent of circumstance and place. Certain sections will reconsecrate the place where a man lays violent hands upon himself; they do not reconsecrate it because the irreligious, godless, worldly, bring their desecrating thoughts. Place, time, association, words, forms, are nothing to me unless they will enable me to experience the spiritual nearness of God to the soul. We may respect and reverence all these for the help they have given to others, but the deeper reverence and soul-bowing comes from personal experience, surely. But we must beware; this is no substitution of æsthetics -philosophy of taste, the science of the beautiful-for religion. There are those who see nothing beyond the surface beauty of nature. It refines the taste, it sharpens the perception, it even kindles more brightly the spirit of human kindness; but what are these at the side of the recognition of the great Father? what are these at the side of the wrapt soul in communion with Him? what are these at the side of Christian faith, hope, and charity? None of us will say that mere nature-beauty worship is religion, that it fills up the yearning soul. It rather leaves us more unsatisfied, more cognizant of our own moral ugliness, the disparity between nature's unspoiled beauty and human nature self-spoiled. But if through it we can better feel our Father's presence, see His hand, and adore His bounteous love, then may it not be even as the elements in the communion service, a medium whereby we may see and feel God's nearness?

Our Master, Christ, in Christianity, has embraced many such suggestive though earthly things to give us conceptions of God, and all He desires to be to us and us to Him. We are, of course, slaves to earthly things and relations, and so father, child, light, darkness, woods, flowers, bread, water, wine, have been all used to bring about an experience of God, a proper relation to Him. Thank God, our Christianity is not a lifeless, unexpanding thing, a cut-and-dried formula, and if mountains, hills, valleys, woods, flowers, sky, sun, earth, will help the Bible revelation, the Christ revelation concerning God and myself; if, like the Psalmist, I can commune with God because all these things suggest communion, then have I found an additional help to all that God has taught me in the Bible of the experience of ancient men, and the truths they arrived at through those experiences

Read in the light of these revelations of nature's

beauties, they certainly are more forceful, and the study and love of nature may thus become a handmaid to revelation, and the truths of God's Word are greater, more blessed when face to face with nature.

Pastor Robinson to the Pilgrim Fathers uttered one great stirring sentence at least: "He charged us before God and His blessed angels, if God should reveal anything to us by any other instrument of His, to be as ready to receive it as any truth of his ministry; for he was very confident the Lord had yet more light and truth to break forth from His holy Word." If God's beautiful world, in whatever quarter, in whatever season, will give us any light, let us receive it as God-sent, God-made.

"We limit not the truth of God

To our poor reach of mind,

By notions of our day or sect,
Crude, partial, and confined.

Who dares to bind to his dull sense

The oracles of heaven,

For all the nations, tongues, and climes,

And all the ages given?

That universe, how much unknown!

That ocean, unexplored!

The Lord hath yet more light and truth

To break forth from His Word."

Very pertinent are the remarks of a good man now departed: "We see that what was beautiful suggested to the minds of the psalmists thoughts of God, threw them into states of religious emotion. No special physical characteristics of the things in which they realised God's presence can be found. We find, therefore, this at least, that the apprehension of God is not a thing that comes under the cognizance of a material science, and therefore cannot be proved or disproved by science. It is entirely a spiritual fact, an inward perception of spirit. The scientific interpretation of nature is quite independent of the religious one. They are different spheres, and cannot come into collision. The astronomer who has swept the heavens with telescope and found no God, has not disproved God's existence, has not disproved that the heavens are telling the glory of God, any more than a man who has looked through a microscope at empty space and found no atmosphere, has disproved the existence of air. The microscope cannot detect the presence of air; the telescope cannot discern God. Why should not the spirit be trusted when it asserts the recognition of God just as any bodily sense? We may then go on communing with nature, we may discipline our souls to see Him