A blind world this, which always talks about “natural laws,” and “the effects of natural causes,” but forgets that laws cannot operate of themselves, and that natural causes, so called, are not causes at all unless the First Cause shall set them in motion. The old Romans used to say, God thundered; God rained. We say, It thunders; it rains. What “it”? All those expressions are subterfuges to escape from the thought of God.
We commonly say, “How wonderful are the works of nature!” What is “nature”? Do you know what nature is? I remember a lecturer in the street, an infidel, speaking about nature, and he was asked by a Christian man standing by whether he would tell him what nature was. “Walk in the fields, and see nature”- “nature did this and nature did that”- these are common phrases, but is there any meaning in them? Is not that an old heathenish way of talking? If we see aright, we see God working everywhere. We frequently talk as if we were trying to thrust our God into the distance.
Our good old forefathers, the Puritans, when they wanted rain, used to pray that God would unstop the bottles of heaven; at another time that he would be pleased to bind up the clouds, that there might not be too much rain; we run to the barometer, or grumble at the bad weather. They referred all natural phenomena to the Most High, and were accustomed to see him at work in all the events of life; we have grown so wise nowadays that we find a thousand second causes interposing between the world and its Maker.
From a sermon entitled "In The Hay-Field," delivered June 23, 1867. Image by Matteo Mazzoni under Creative Commons License.
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