II. Revelation Through Nature.
1892 original text, YOGeBooks typeset transcription; original text extent only
Chanted when the sphere was young.
Aloft, abroad, the pæan swells;
O wise man! hear’st thou half it tells?
O wise man! hear’st thou the least part?
’Tis the chronicle of art.
To the open ear it sings,
Sweet the genesis of things,
Of tendency through endless ages,
Of star-dust, and star-pilgrimages.
Of rounded worlds, of space and time,
Of the old flood’s subsiding slime.
Of chemic matter, force, and form,
Of poles and powers, cold, wet, and warm:
The rushing metamorphosis
Dissolving all that fixture is.
Melts things that be to things that seem,
And solid nature to a dream.”
Nature is God translated into vitalized color, form, and beauty. The world is embellished by Spirit, and its inaudible testimony is the cadence of the gospel of love. Nature is a vast kindergarten, whose easy object-lessons train our childlike affections, so that they may gain strength to mount above and beyond. Her mountain-peaks of truth stand out sharp and clear above the fogs and mists of error. To view the Real, we must climb the mountainside, until our standpoint is above the leaden gloom of the lowland outlook.
We try to conform Nature to our notional concept of what she should be, instead of attending her school like willing pupils. We aim to shape her into correspondence with our selfish wills, instead of yielding our hardness to her graceful mould. Let us put our hand in hers, and thus hasten to gain her wholesome ministrations.
In Jesus, the Christ, was the supreme demonstration of the identity, in man, of the natural and spiritual type. His teaching was spontaneous and unconventional, and His education was not shaped by the formulas of the schools. In Him, that which had been buried in philosophies and hidden in institutions was brought to light, and interpreted to man upon his own plane. For the only time Humanity became perfectly transparent, so that the divine light and purity shone through it, unsullied and unperverted. He was the natural, the ideal, and the archetypal man. In Him the divine pattern of humanity was filled to the full. As Nature is a continuous divine manifestation, so Christianity is not limited to any age or dispensation. The historic Jesus was a temporary and material manifestation of the spiritual and eternal Christ. “That was the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” The typical man is spiritual and eternal because he is made in the Father’s image. The essential Saviour is that manifestation of the love of God toward man, which is both natural and eternal. Sonship is neither fleshly nor limited. Christ as the ideal man was a prophecy, a first fruit. “The last Adam was made a quickening Spirit.” The human embodiment of the Word was a manifested love without perversion, and was Nature’s ultimate prototype.
Source notes
1. Professor J. P. Cooke in “Religion and Chemistry.”