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In experiencing the rapture of spring, not a few of the excellent rejoice with trembling. They are hardly sure if those who desire to walk close with God should permit themselves to delight in nature. Indifference to earthly beauty has so long been regarded as an almost indispensable condition of viewing the heavenly glory that their hesitation is hardly surprising. The monk who on his journey down the Rhine shut his eyes lest the beauty of the scene should steal away his heart from God was by no means singular in his strange notion. Our Puritan forefathers are charged with holding a somewhat similar view. Possibly by their prohibition of the celebrations of May-day and other festivals of the seasons they may have done something to impair the feeling for nature. Though, truly, if the price to be paid for its cultivation is the restoration of the unrestrained and licentious revels of the Middle Ages, we had better continue without it. But more is due to the attitude which their ideal of the religious life caused them to assume. It is enshrined in John Bunyans "Pilgrim's Progress." This world lies in the wicked one. In it the Christian is a stranger and a pilgrim. To participate in the joys and pleasures of this world is to delay his progress to the loved eternal city, and even to jeopardize his final entrance into it. Even though nature should display parts of God's ways, there was the clearer and fuller revelation of the Scripture and in Christ. Seeing then that that which is perfect is come, where is the wisdom of troubling about that which is in part? A yet more considerable factor is to be found in the philosophic view of God then current. Deism held the field. God was practically outside His universe. Creation displayed the skill of the Creator in the mechanical adaptation of means to end. Design was utilitarian, the design of a carpenter making a tool. Against this hard and unsympathetic presentation of God, those who loved Nature for her own sake, and felt that she was not a machine, but was throbbing with life, revolted with their whole heart; the notion of such a God they flung away, and, like Shelley, proclaimed themselves Atheists. Thereupon also rose a new school of investigation of nature, the standpoint and earlier conclusions of which seemed to run counter to the current interpretation of Scripture. So it came to pass that in earnest Christian circles research into nature was deprecated as likely to result in the abandonment of the Evangelical faith and the denial of God. But times are changing. Denizens of the crowded cities, with their restricted field of vision, their unpleasing and unnatural objects of sight, and their unwholesome atmosphere, begin to cry out against such cruel bondage of their elemental feeling, and to long for open spaces and green swards, for woodland and hill, for stream and valley, for singing birds and the sounds of the country. On grounds of both tradition and tendency, therefore, a somewhat timid and tepid enthusiasm for nature would seem the path of discretion. But is there really sufficient cause for such a position? Indifference to nature is not, and never has been, of itself a sign of spirituality, neither is a quickened pulse in the spring the proof of total depravity. Surely, of all men in the world, the people of God should be most sensitive to the works of God. Those who know Him most intimately should be in closest accord with all that He has created and made. The children of the Old Covenant, as well as the nation that knew not Israel's God, celebrated the great epochs of the year with festival and sacrifice. They waved the firstfruits of the earth's increase, and gave thanks for the completed harvest, rejoicing before the Lord in their feast. Search the literature of any nation or any period, and you will find it hard even to equal the appreciation of the majesty, the beauty and the manifold wonder of the works of God as shown in many of the Psalms. I say it reverently — What a Child of Nature was the Lord Jesus Christ. How He delighted in the country and loved the fresh air. His discourses are redolent of the open field. Is it not indeed truer to say that to understand nature you must be a learner of Christ? The more fully you know Him and the power of His resurrection, the more fully nature will yield to you her secrets and increase your pure delight in her companionship. To an inconsiderable degree the new feeling for nature is itself the outcome of the Evangelical Revival. That is the true order. See God in Christ, and you have the key that unlocks the mystery of God everywhere. Already the Christian lives in a new heaven and a new earth; not merely in anticipation, but in experience. "If any man be in Christ, there is a new creation, old things pass away, behold all things become new," the old world along with them. The world on which he now looks forth all speaks to him of the Father. Despite the sin and the darkness, he obtains joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing flee away.

(F. L. Wiseman.)

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KJV: Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth.

WEB: You send forth your Spirit: they are created. You renew the face of the ground.