Westminster Sermons | Page 3

Septuagint and the
Vulgate versions: "Cursed is the earth"--[Greek text]; "in opere tuo,"
"in thy works." Man's work is too often the curse of the very planet
which he misuses. None should know that better than the botanist, who

sees whole regions desolate, and given up to sterility and literal thorns
and thistles, on account of man's sin and folly, ignorance and greedy
waste. Well said that veteran botanist, the venerable Elias Fries, of
Lund:--
"A broad band of waste land follows gradually in the steps of
cultivation. If it expands, its centre and its cradle dies, and on the outer
borders only do we find green shoots. But it is not impossible, only
difficult, for man, without renouncing the advantage of culture itself,
one day to make reparation for the injury which he has inflicted: he is
appointed lord of creation. True it is that thorns and thistles,
ill-favoured and poisonous plants, well named by botanists rubbish
plants, mark the track which man has proudly traversed through the
earth. Before him lay original nature in her wild but sublime beauty.
Behind him he leaves a desert, a deformed and ruined land; for childish
desire of destruction, or thoughtless squandering of vegetable treasures,
has destroyed the character of nature; and, terrified, man himself flies
from the arena of his actions, leaving the impoverished earth to
barbarous races or to animals, so long as yet another spot in virgin
beauty smiles before him. Here again, in selfish pursuit of profit, and
consciously or unconsciously following the abominable principle of the
great moral vileness which one man has expressed--'Apres nous le
Deluge,'--he begins anew the work of destruction. Thus did cultivation,
driven out, leave the East, and perhaps the deserts long ago robbed of
their coverings; like the wild hordes of old over beautiful Greece, thus
rolls this conquest with fearful rapidity from East to West through
America; and the planter now often leaves the already exhausted land,
and the eastern climate, become infertile through the demolition of the
forests, to introduce a similar revolution into the Far West."
As we proceed, we find nothing in the general tone of Scripture which
can hinder our natural Theology being at once scriptural and scientific.
If it is to be scientific, it must begin by approaching Nature at once
with a cheerful and reverent spirit, as a noble, healthy, and trustworthy
thing; and what is that, save the spirit of those who wrote the 104th,
147th, and 148th Psalms; the spirit, too, of him who wrote that Song of

the Three Children, which is, as it were, the flower and crown of the
Old Testament, the summing up of all that is most true and eternal in
the old Jewish faith; and which, as long as it is sung in our churches, is
the charter and title-deed of all Christian students of those works of the
Lord, which it calls on to bless Him, praise Him, and magnify Him for
ever?
What next will be demanded of us by physical science? Belief,
certainly, just now, in the permanence of natural laws. That is taken for
granted, I hold, throughout the Bible. I cannot see how our Lord's
parables, drawn from the birds and the flowers, the seasons and the
weather, have any logical weight, or can be considered as aught but
capricious and fanciful "illustrations"--which God forbid--unless we
look at them as instances of laws of the natural world, which find their
analogues in the laws of the spiritual world, the kingdom of God. I
cannot conceive a man's writing that 104th Psalm who had not the most
deep, the most earnest sense of the permanence of natural law. But
more: the fact is expressly asserted again and again. "They continue
this day according to Thine ordinance, for all things serve Thee." "Thou
hast made them fast for ever and ever. Thou hast given them a law
which shall not be broken--"
Let us pass on. There is no more to be said about this matter.
But next: it will be demanded of us that natural Theology shall set forth
a God whose character is consistent with all the facts of nature, and not
only with those which are pleasant and beautiful. That challenge was
accepted, and I think victoriously, by Bishop Butler, as far as the
Christian religion is concerned. As far as the Scripture is concerned, we
may answer thus--
It is said to us--I know that it is said--You tell us of a God of love, a
God of flowers and sunshine, of singing birds and little children. But
there are more facts in nature than these. There is premature death,
pestilence, famine. And if you answer--Man has control over these;
they are caused by man's ignorance and sin, and by his breaking