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ECCE TEPRA;

OR,

THE HAND OF GOD IN THE EARTH.

BY THE
Rev. E. F. BURR, D. D.,
Author of " Ecce Ccelum," " Pater Mundi," etc.

Nihil rerum humanarum sine Dei Manu fieri putabat.

PHILADELPHIA :
PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION,
1334 CHESTNUT STREET.

COPYRIGHT, 1883, BY
THE TRUSTEES OF THE
PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Westcott & Thomson,
StereotyPers and Electrotypers.

PREFACE.

The characters which a divine Hand once traced on
the walls of Belshazzar's palace have all disappeared.
The walls themselves are gone. If the broken mate
rials could now be found, it would be quite impossible,
by any art or chemistry, or other science known to us,
to discover the faintest trace of those radiant words
which so dazzled the court of Babylon.
Not so with the characters which a divine Hand
has traced on the walls of the heavens and the earth.
These walls are still standing, apparently as strong
and fair as ever. Some of the inscriptions on them
are as legible as when first made. Others, like the
original writing of some palimpsest, have been thickly
overwritten by clumsy later scribes till it is hard to
make out the nobler underlying scripture. And others
still were originally traced in lines that were never
meant to be visible to men, save when warmed by the
fires of an earnest piety or touched by the chemistry
of a reverent science. But, in one state or another, all
these heavenly scriptures are still extant, and may, with
suitable pains, be read and interpreted.
I am no Daniel. Yet I have ventured, in Ecce
Ccelum, to attempt the reading and interpreting of
some of the divine inscriptions on the sky. In the
present volume I attempt a similar work for the earth.
3

4 PREFACE.
But not after the former manner. This would require
me to summarize all the sciences that deal with the
earth. But assuming (what I have endeavored to
show in other volumes) that there is a personal God,
and that he has given the Christian Scriptures, I first
seek to show that the earth is thickly covered with a
divine handwriting by showing, in a general way, that
the hand of God is active in every event, and conse
quently in every earthly fact, inasmuch as every fact is
an event or includes many events. But to show this
is far from being enough. For many reasons the gen
eral doctrine of a universal divine activity in the world,
when accepted, is not as real and impressive to our
thought as it is desirable to have it. The natural way
of meeting this difficulty is by (ist) setting aside the
chief apparent objections to the doctrine; (2d) bring
ing forward its chief points of harmony with the con
stitution and course of nature; (3d) instancing decisive
examples of divine action, especially of the larger and
more striking sort. Examples are the eye of philos
ophy. Accordingly, this is the way I have chosen. In
using it I have drawn freely from history, science and
Scripture, as being parallel authorities. The reader
who can freely accept them all has an evident advan
tage, so far as strength of impression is concerned ;
but whoever is not prepared to do this, let him take
the fractional light that is left him and make the most
of it. It is better than none. And it may lead him to
more light, as even a lantern may lead to an illuminated
palace. Lyme, Connecticut.

CONTENTS.

i.
PAGE
THE PARALLEL RAYS  7

II.
GENERAL FACT REVEALED  23
III.
NEED OF FURTHER ILLUSTRATION  35
IV.
ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES  53
Part First. — Great Facts not Inconsistent.
V.
ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES  89
Part Second. — Great Facts Positively in Harmony. 5

6 CONTENTS. VI. PAGE
ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES  121
Part Third. — Great Facts Positively Demanding —
1. Matter  124
2. A Habitable Globe  129
3. Lower Organisms  137
4. Man  143
5. Insignia Common to Organic Species  162
6. A Great Unity  1 83
7. Language  191
8. Universal Faiths  197
9. Sacred Writings  202
10. Moral Wonders  .*. . 221
11. Miracles  229
12. A Marvelous History  245

THE PARALLEL RAYS.

ECCE TERRA.

i.
THE PARALLEL RAYS.

HISTORY holds a high place in public
esteem. And deservedly. It is both
entertaining and useful in a high degree. We
know of no better instructor in the science of
human nature, that exceedingly practical sci
ence. In the conduct of our affairs it gives us
the benefit of many ages of experience. To
governments it is perpetual privy councillor.
Society could hardly do without its testings of
laws, principles, and institutions. Were we de
prived of its lessons on the perils which beset
society, and the best methods of dealing with
those perils, it would be the eclipse of a great
light — very much such a disaster as one would
suffer if he should lose from his memory all the
records of his past life and be compelled to
pursue his way among men with the inexperi- 9

IO ECCE TERRA.
ence of an infant, though with the age of a
Methusaleh. A still higher place in the public regard has
lately been obtained by Natural Science. Per
haps deservedly. It gives a very pure and
wholesome pleasure. It strengthens, expands
and disciplines the intellectual powers. As a
purveyor to the more practical side of human
life its uses are enormous and almost innumer
able. Commerce sails safely on all seas with
the help of its chronometers, nautical almanacs
and star-seeking instruments. It is the mother
of inventions : from its teeming womb come
the leading contrivances which have added so
immensely to the safety, conveniences and pow
ers of our modern life. Some claim that the
study of nature is the creator of the nineteenth
century. Certainly not a farmer ploughs the
land, not a sailor ploughs the sea, not a printer
makes up his forms, not a manufacturer turns
the power on his looms, not a trader or broker
sends orders by cable, not a sick man takes his
medicine, not a woman does her housekeeping,
not a day-laborer works with mattock or hod, —
not a person, whatever the name or work in
this toiling and moiling and swift-handed, swift-
footed civilization of ours, but is immensely a
debtor (though he is often mysteriously igno
rant of the fact) to the sciences of nature. The

THE PARALLEL RAYS. II
peasant has become a king. We make by mil
lions what we used to make by units. We fly
where we used to creep. Years of work are
condensed into moments. Distant countries
say daily Good-Mornings to each other across
the oceans. We ride through the seas or under
them, over cities or under them, as we please.
Science has set to work for us workmen more
fleet, tireless, powerful, and yet tractable, than
ever Oriental genii, or even the gods of the
Greeks and Romans, were supposed to be.
Our fathers of only a few generations back,
suddenly brought down to our times, would
think them almost miraculous. Men now liv
ing have almost seen with their own eyes the
time when the announcement of some signal
discovery was sure to find a profoundly incred
ulous, if not scoffing, public ; now, that public
is almost ready to accept on demand the im
possible without question ; it has seen actually
realized so many astonishing and unbelievable
things. With eyes aflame and uplifted hands
we stand gazing earthward and heavenward,
and exclaim, "What next?" And we shall ac
cept it when it comes, though it be the Seven
Stars or the Seven Thunders.
A still higher place in the public regard than
is held by history, and even by natural science
in its most genuine and useful forms, is claimed

12 ECCE TERRA.
by Christians for the Christian Scriptures. Shall
I not say, Deservedly ? Beyond all comparison
the Bible is the greatest impersonal benefactor
the world has ever seen. This follows at once
from the fact (which I have sought to make
plain in another volume) that the Book is a
Divine Message. This Message, as being
largely history, has the same sort of uses with
other history, though in much larger degrees
on account of its far greater reliableness and
wiser discriminations ; and ministers various
pleasure, wholesome instruction, just views of
human nature and invaluable suggestions on
the management of states and families, as well
as of individual life. As being largely science
(for it gives us, though in popular forms, the
principles of the most effulgent and useful of
all the sciences, that of God and duty), it has
the same sort of uses with other science, only
in much larger degrees, owing to its vastly
greater importance, and breadth of application,
and variety of literary form ; and, as the most
universal of all textbooks, has been more of an
educational force among the masses, more stim
ulative of thought and discussion and eloquence
and philosophy and literature, and even the fine
arts, than any other book. That it wrestles
mightily against those gross vices and crimes
which exhaust the body, fill prisons, burden the

THE PARALLEL RAYS. 1 3
public with taxes and strike at the very vitals
of society, goes without saying; and it is equally
plain that it frowns on envies, jealousies, selfish
nesses, hatreds and all those evil passions which
do so much to vex and disfigure human hearts,
disturb the peace of communities and prepare
the way for the worst deeds. We see in the
Book the guardian, not to say the founder, of
homes and of all the home virtues — of parental
authority, filial dutifulness, family concords, and
fidelities of every name. It beckons men to
all the traits of good neighborhood and £ood
citizenship. If families and states do not live
in harmony with each other, and in the inter
change of all delightful courtesies and good
offices, it is not the fault of the Bible. It al
most scourges them to such things. It is the
foe of social excesses and disorders of all sorts;
the upholder of law ; the father and mother of
industry, prudence, good faith and business in
tegrity. It says to rogues, whether mature or
incipient, whether individuals or corporations
or states, Stop Thief! — says it with a majesty of
emphasis such as the united voices of all man
kind could not compass — and with the same
majestic and menacing voice warns us off from
trespassing on each other's rights in all direc
tions. Behold its great placard frowning con
spicuously over the fences of all private prop-

14 ECCE TERRA.
erty — itself the highest fence of all — saying, No
Thoroughfare! And yet behold the friend alike
of labor and capital, of the peasant and the peer,
of the masses and the magistrate ! — the only
daysman that can successfully lay hand upon
them both.
But the Bible is not content with negations.
To its uThou shalt not" it proceeds to add,
" Thou shalt." It summons men to all mutual
helpfulness. They must treat each other as
brothers. They must be compassionate and
loving as well as just, free-handed as well as
free-hearted. So it has become the founder
and chief supporter of almost all the humane
and educational institutions and private char
ities which are so great a glory of our time.
Hospitals, reform schools, ragged schools, in
firmaries for the blind or intemperate or idiotic,
homes for the aged poor or orphans or incur
ables, — what an immense variety of such things
in every Bible land ! Christendom, especially
where the Bible is most diffused and influential,
is studded with public charities almost as the
sky is with stars. Every Bible Christian, doing
good to all as he has opportunity, is an incor
porated benevolent institution endowed with
unlimited privileges of traveling and self-sup
port. Were the world stripped of the educa
tional chairs and fellowships and lectureships

THE PARALLEL RAYS. IS
which the Bible has created, our unbelieving
scientists would find their financial foundations
almost wholly swept away. They would have
no platform from which to attack the Bible.
They sit at its table and eat its bread, and then,
worse than an Arab, waylay and strike at their
generous host. It is the old story, old as Judas :
"He that eateth bread with me has lifted up
the heel against me."
The Bible has been the main factor in making
the difference that exists between Christendom
and Dahomey. It would be hard to point out
any necessity, utility or ornament of our homes
that does not credibly say "Mother!" to the
Bible, and is not daily carried in its arms and
fed at its breasts. For one thing, were woman
put back into the position from which the Bible
has raised her, what an eclipse we should have!
The Bible is the greatest and cheapest of all
known civilizers. This is denied by some who
have much to say about Advance and Progress,
and who are fond of representing religion as the
foe of such things ; but it is open to all observa
tion that the little finger of the gospel is thicker
than the loins of all these men put together as
to practical work in behalf of humanity. Our
Bible-sent and Bible-bearing missions have re
duced rude languages to writing, created in
them a vast and pure literature, founded educa-

l6 ECCE TERRA.
tional institutions, revolutionized the healing art,
suggested wise laws, relieved and prevented
famines, pestilences, wars and superstitions;
poured out long-accumulating treasures of art,
science, invention and comfort with free hand
into the lap of heathendom. In so doing they
have wonderfully pushed outward the luminous
outposts of civilization, and are fast carrying the
nineteenth century to the ends of the earth.
Besides what it does directly with its own
hand for the various secular interests of the
world, the Bible has been a great pioneer and
caster-up of highways for all sorts of benef
icent agencies. They best see how to work
by the light that shines from its face. Indeed,
it is hardly too much to say that it furnishes the
only foundation, broad and strong, on which
Science and other human benefactors can, for
any length of time, securely stand, let alone
work. Without it, Omnia ruunt in pejus.
While thus vigorously shooting their rays
into the darkness of distant lands, our Bible
missions have reflected great light upon their
own. They have opened new highways for
Christian commerce, new markets for Christian
manufactures, new channels to wealth, comfort
and power for Christian peoples. While busy
in carrying the gospel to every creature, they
do not forget to send back to their native shores

THE PARALLEL RAYS. I?
brilliant contributions to Geography, Ethnol
ogy, Archaeology, Geology, Natural History,
Philology and other sciences. In short, the ser
vices which the Bible has rendered to the sec
ular interests of mankind are wonderfully great.
All other benefactors are but echoes and shad
ows of this. Never a cornucopia so large and
full as that which it holds — never one so freely
emptied in every direction ; for this Briareus
has and uses a hundred hands for its glorious
distributions. Were the Bible quite without
religious pretensions, it still ought to be
crowned as the foremost philanthropist the
world has ever seen.
Shall we call that useful, brilliant and reveal
ing thing named History, Light? At least a
ray. It illumines the past, and, by reflection,
the present, and even the future.
Shall we call that more useful, brilliant and
revealing thing termed Natural Science, Light?
At least a ray. It reveals the laws of material
nature. In so doing it largely reveals the Au
thor of nature — also innumerable sources of
comfort, profit and power. All sensible people
allow that it is an illustrious illuminator of our
times, and some even go so far as to say that in
comparison with it there is no other.
Shall we call that most useful, brilliant and
revealing thing known as the Bible, Light? At

ECCE TERRA.

least a ray. I would much prefer to call it a
sheaf of rays ; brilliant benefactor of the world
as it is, grandest illuminator of dark lands and
times. It throws more light on the character
and will of God, on the nature and destiny of
man, on what constitutes a wise and righteous
ordering of life, than does anything else we
know of. Nothing else can so brighten the
world's glooms, whether of sorrow or of sin.
While it illumines this world, it discovers to us
two other worlds beyond this, and faithfully
shows the two paths that conduct to these
final and widely-differing homes of mankind.
History, Natural Science, the Christian Script
ures, — certainly these three illuminators of our
times are entitled to be called at least so many
rays of light. Are they parallel rays — and so,
when made to enter the eye at the same time,
mutually corroborative ?
What is the supreme drift of the Bible ?
What is the great end toward which its Old
Testament and New, its histories and poetries
and parables and epistles, its examples and in
structions and exhortations, tend ? Certainly
not its secular uses. Many and great as these
are, they are merest ciphers by the side of
its religious use. So to manifest God and his
government as to bring men to honor, love and
serve him, — this is evidently the Gulf Stream

THE PARALLEL RAYS. I9
to whose warm bosom all other currents are
drawn and made tributary.
It is but reasonable to suppose that Natural
Science and History have at bottom a like relig
ious bearing. This notwithstanding some pro
fessional students of these branches of knowl
edge have been anything but religious, and
have even claimed that their studies teach away
from God and his government instead of to
ward them. We ought not to be surprised at
such claims. Is it a new thing for men to mis
interpret and pervert the plainest and best of
things ? Despite the bitter tongues and pens
of those men, and their more bitter example,
the stress of the reasonable study of nature and
history, as well as of the Bible, is strongly to
ward setting in a striking light the existence,
perfections and government of God. It ought
to be so ; every intelligent Christian knows that
it is so. Our case is that of people living in a
land all of whose rivers and mountain-ranges
descend on a common trend to a common sea,
and are seen to do so when one stations him
self at a proper elevation, though their parallel
ism is not visible to him who lives amid the fogs
and narrow horizons of the lowlands.
What are Natural Science and History but
interpreters of nature and its ongoings ? Of
course, when genuine, they must be thoroughly

20 ECCE TERRA.
in sympathy with nature. But every intelligent
Christian believes that nature and the Bible, as
having a common divine Author, must be thor
oughly in sympathy with each other. When
placed side by side and fairly interpreted they
will be found not only not contradictory, but
positively explaining, confirming and enhancing
each other. They will be found like parallel
and complementary rays from the same sun ;
which have the same brilliant essential nature,
move in the same direction, encounter the same
obstructions, obey the same laws, are success
fully studied by the same methods, conspire to
produce the same image, give together a whiter
and brighter image of the luminary from which
they come than either can do by itself.
So History, Natural Science, and the Christian
Scriptures are not only light of various ray, but
the rays are parallel, and together illumine the
character and ways of God as neither could do
by itself. As different children of the same
parents may be expected to show a family like
ness; as different works of the same author may
be expected to show certain common features
of thought, style and influence; so it may be ex
pected that God's book of words and his book
of things, will, when properly set together, ex
change light to mutual advantage. What we
actually find different parts of the Bible doing

THE PARALLEL RAYS. 21
for each other in the way of mutual interpreta
tion and enforcement (and this, as Christians all
know, is very much) we may reasonably look to
see done in a good measure by the different
parts of that larger Bible which includes the
whole scheme of things coming- from the di-
vine Hand, together with its outworkings
through the ages. We shall see the Script
ures brighter from being set in the light of
the results of historic and physical inquiry, and
these again brighter from being shone upon by
the Scriptures. As a matter of fact, many a
dark text has been brilliantly cleared up by the
researches of the historian and scientist. At
least one man, Bishop Butler, has been made
illustrious, not to say immortal, by his success
in relieving the Bible of difficulties by compar
ing it with the constitution and course of nature.
On the other hand, the successful scientist or
explorer of the past has often taken his inspira
tion and cue from something he has found in
the Bible.
Accordingly, in the present work I propose
to show the hand of God in the earth by the
joint means of Scripture, Science and History
— believing that the picture of this Hand given
by these three parallel and complementary rays
will be a whiter and brighter one than either
could gfive alone.

II.

GENERAL FACT REVEALED.

II. -
GENERAL FACT REVEALED.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN said in Congress,
" I have lived, sir, a long time ; and the
longer I live the more convincing proof I see
of this truth, that God governs in the affairs
of men." Our illustrious American sage and
statesman only echoed the thought which the
illustrious Roman Cicero had written out some
eighteen hundred years before : " Quid enim
potest esse tam perspicuum, quam esse aliquod
numen quo haec regantur?" — What can be so
thoroughly plain as that there is some Divinity
by whom these things are governed?
An infinitely perfect Being ought to be the
ruler of the world. As much is demanded of
him by every consideration of justice and kind
ness. Being infinite, he can give us a govern
ment of incalculable value ; and, being infinite,
to give such a government will be to him no
burden whatever. Accordingly, he has given
it. As say the Scriptures, "The Lord is a great
King over all the earth."

25

26 ECCE TERRA.
More than this. It would not only be no
burden to an infinite Being to maintain a royal
government over the world, but he can, just as
easily as not, maintain one that deals powerfully
with every actual event. He is therefore sure
to do even as much as this. Accordingly, we
find it to be the tenor of Scripture that the
God who is "Governor among the nations" and
"directeth the steps of a man," and whom we
are to ask for "daily bread" and every "good
thing," is one without whom " not a sparrow
falls," who " numbers the hairs of our heads,"
whose is " the disposing of the lot that is cast
into the lap " — who, in short, " worketh all
things after the counsel of his own will ;" so
that universal Christendom is established in
the doctrine not only that God is King, but that
his hand potentially touches every event in the
whole range of fact — that there is absolutely
no particular, however inconsiderable, which is
not obliged to ask permission of his sover
eignty in order to be, and around which, when
it has come into being, do not effulge and throb
his all- knowing thoughts and the regulative
forces of his sleepless and tireless monarchy.
It should be clearly noticed just what is, and
what is not, implied in this doctrine of the divine
Hand in actual events. To say that the wisdom
and power of God are brought to bear in a

GENERAL FACT REVEALED. 2"]
commanding manner on every event ; that he
supervises and, so to speak, manipulates in a
royal manner whatever occurs, — is not saying
that each event is a just expression of his pref
erences or that he is active in promoting it.
His activity may be that of one who hates and
hinders. A government may be fully as active
in the way of hindering as in that of helping.
A large part of the activity of every human
ruler consists in opposing and lessening, as far
as possible, undesirable things. Perhaps it
would not be too much to say that our civil
governments commonly display more power in
opposing what is wrong than in promoting what
is right. Their laws, their magistrates, their
courts, their prisons and other penalties, their
armies, their police (that is to say, their most
conspicuous and representative things), express
the principle of hindrance rather than that of
help. They say to disorder and wrong, " We
will fight you as well as we can." And such
may be the attitude of the divine government
toward many things. The Scriptures say that
it is. The sceptred Hand is vastly busy with
them ; it is above, beneath, on either hand, and
within even ; but it is as an enemy. It is our ex
perience as well as Scripture that the best that
can be done with some things is to fight them,
to minimize them, to overrule them. And it is

28 ECCE TERRA.
both conceivable and scriptural that the fight
may be carried on by a government that brings
even infinite resources into the battle, and yet,
owing to moral and other limitations, be unsuc
cessful in winning a complete victory. Actual
cases of this sort will hereafter be given. It
will appear that there are very many actual
events which God neither assists nor favors in
any way, but which he struggles against with
all the forces he can consistently bring into the
field. Sins of all sorts are such events. Every
one of them is like a pirate ship beating through
stormy latitudes and hunted down by the fleets
of all nations.
The doctrine of a divine Hand in every event
gives the divine government, even in this world,
a very large field. Just think of the number of
events about us daily in all the wide realms
of mineral, vegetable, brute and human history!
Even what happens to a single man from sun
rise to sunrise, including his thoughts and feel
ings, would make a more ponderous journal
than ever yet came from human pen. But, like
the endless break of waves on the shore ; like
the endless pulses in the still more restless
ocean of air ; nay, like the light-waves that
come and go in every direction with such amaz
ing swiftness, numbers and complexity in that
still wider ocean in which all the stars are

GENERAL FACT REVEALED. 29
islands, — must be the events of all sorts ever
taking place in all quarters and histories. In
each of them, however small, we are to hold
the hand of God to be royally active.
But this does not express the whole fact.
Broad as must be the divine government that
bears on every actual event, it is but narrow as
compared with that we actually live under.
For this covers also the undesirable events
which never become actual, but which would
become so save for its interference ; and we
have good reason for thinking that the number
of such events must be very great. Every
good man, with his small power and wisdom,
prevents many evils — suspicions, slanders,
hatreds, quarrels, frauds, diseases ; in short,
sins and sorrows of all names. He hails them
while they are yet, as it were, in the offing, and
successfully warns them off from the shores of
being. Of course, God with his infinite power
and wisdom can do infinitely more. Every
good civil government has an eye on the
homely maxim that "An ounce of prevention
is better than a pound of cure," and manages
to prohibit the arrival of many public evils
which it sees approaching. Of course the di
vine government, with its immeasurably greater
foresight and forces of all kinds, can prohibit
to a vastly greater extent. Our modern society

30 ECCE TERRA.
has many great institutions, not merely to alle
viate and cure existing evils, but also to quite
forestall others, to close and bolt the gates of
the future against them, to reach forth into the
void and cancel their very possibility. This is
really the great philanthropy. And it has been
very successful. What it does, on by no means
an inconsiderable scale, God, the greatest and
best-equipped philanthropist ever known, doubt
less does on a scale inconceivably large. He
is an optimist, and gives us the best possible
system. He keeps many a litter of pests from
coming to the birth. His amazing fleets block
ade all the coasts of being against interloping
evils as no scanty dories of our building and
ordering can do. It must be that a host of
sins and harms find themselves unable to make
a landing through that watchful and terrible
leaguer on which the sun never sets.
Accordingly, the Scriptures call God " a
shield," " a fortress," " a high tower," " a Sav
iour," "One mighty to save" — epithets that viv
idly describe how largely he negatives evil for
individuals and communities. And so, the world
over, we learn to pray, " Deliver us from evil,"
and to believe that, bad as the state of the
world is, it would have been far worse had not
God swept with his great hand the expanses
before us, and laid waste to the greatest pos-

GENERAL FACT REVEALED. 3 1
sible extent the very seeds and possibilities of
evil. This general doctrine of a divine government
that extends to all actual events, and even vastly
beyond, is illustrated in the Bible by a great va
riety of examples. There is scarcely any sort
of thing we can think of, actual or possible,
which is not there instanced as touched poten
tially by the divine sceptre. The movements
of the heavenly bodies ; the rise and fall of
nations ; the fortunes and policies of rulers ;
the course of parties and populaces and armies;
victories and defeats ; famines and pestilences ;
the course of each individual life, its prosperi
ties and adversities of all sorts ; food, raiment,
riches, honor, health, long life, friends, influence,
eloquence, wisdom, and theiropposites; thoughts,
feelings, purposes, sins and virtues in great va
riety ; deliverances from all sorts of evils ; con
versions, sanctifications, salvation ; all sorts of
things in the inanimate world, as winds, rains,
droughts, storms, calms, crops ; in short, the par
ticular things which the Scriptures, in one way
or another, say are dealt with by the divine gov
ernment, — seem to cover by specimen the whole
field of beingf and event. One who will take
pains to bring together the vast variety of ex
amples in their Scripture form of statement
will feel himself forbidden by them to except

32 ECCE TERRA.
anything whatever from the stress of a divine
Hand — from the rush of suns and heavenly
armies to the ripple of a pool and the beat
of an insect's wing, and even to that dim waste
beyond where lie unquickened only the seeds
and possibilities of the actual. So large an
induction of particulars would be enough to
establish any scientific doctrine. It is enough
to establish the scriptural doctrine of a provi
dence that bears on the whole field of actual
and possible event; that is, on every fact, for
every fact in this world began in an event, and
concerns us only as being the source of events.
I have already briefly called attention to the
wonderfulness of this universal providence. It
is so beyond what human rulers can do ! Nay,
it is so beyond what our thought can grasp !
If you sweep around you a radius of ten feet
in every direction you include hundreds of mil
lions of living things, each of which is having
at any moment hundreds of millions of changes,
chemical, mechanical, vital, spiritual. How un
equal are you to the summing up of even these!
How much more unequal to the task of bend
ing the horizon of your thought around the all
things that are, have been, or shall be, or shall
have been prevented from being, on this an
cient, populous, ever- changing and long-endur
ing world! Not even an archangel could do it.

GENERAL FACT REVEALED. 33
And yet all this infinity of things and events
is not only " naked and open to the eyes of Him
with whom we have to do," but they are all ac
tually wrought in by his hand, as the clay is
wrought in by the hand of the potter. It is
not only as if he were a Sun-Lye, piercing the
whole earth through and through in every di
rection with its rays, till all its darkest nooks
are flooded with day and each smallest thing
shines like a world; but it is as if he were a
Sun-Hand, grasping the whole great globe, so
that every mote feels its throb and pressure,
and receives from it innumerable currents and
thrills of force and direction.
We are told by some, that in whatever forms
force may appear, these are all only different
forms of one great physical, unintelligent force,
whose essence is motion, whose amount is al
ways the same, and which is really the sole
author of all events from the fall of a stone
to the birth of a thought. It cannot be denied
that such a conception has in it an element of
grandeur, though we clearly see in its womb
all the inanities and follies and mischiefs of
materialism. Others tell us that there is no such thing as
an impersonal cause — that the one all-working,
ultimate force just spoken of, instead of being
a blind property of matter, is really the force

34 ECCE TERRA.
of a personal God; so that he is the sole and
direct author of everything that takes place in
height or depth, in far or near, in the universe
of matter or mind. And this conception we
must allow to have even a grander element
than the other; for certainly an infinite per
sonal force is grander than an equally pow
erful impersonal.
But the grandest conception of all is that
of a universe of efficient material and spiritual
causes mingled in one seething ocean of ener
gies, but all watched over and comprehended
and dominated at every point and at every
moment by an infinite personal God. This
conception has the majesty of a most useful
fact; the others have only such as can belong
to a most harmful hypothesis. This invests
nature with the grandeurs of religion ; the
others make religion impossible. This permits
us to think that God has the glory of perfect
righteousness ; the others show us either an
irresistible Fate or a huge Person disfigured
with the blots and scars and rags of a wicked
world which he has made such. This gives us
a glorious empire ; the others show us only a
vast factory.

III.
NEED OF FURTHER ILLUSTRATION.

III.
NEED OF FURTHER ILLUSTRATION.

THIS doctrine of a divine Hand present
and working in all earthly facts is now
fully admitted by all who admit a personal God.
The old Epicureans, who supposed that Deity
does not even concern himself with the affairs
of men, any more than most of us do with ants,
left no children. Not so the Stoics. Their de
scendants are everywhere. Are not we among
them ? Are not most of us almost as stony as
we are orthodox ? We freely allow that God
governs, and even that there is more or less
of his government in every actual event, and that
a host of evil events have been kept from be
coming actual by his hand ; but in most cases
the admission is merely intellectual and without
vividness. We consent to a cold abstraction, to
Euclid's triangles in the original Greek, to an
old-world fossil that has little or nothing to do
with the present. We bow distantly to a shadow
on the horizon — a shadow which though vast has
no weight. It influences neither our feelings 37

38 ECCE TERRA.
nor our conduct. And, practically, each event,
whether in private or public life, is viewed as,
in the last analysis, wholly produced and shaped
by second causes. This view is the every-day
working- dress of our thoughts in which we feel
most at home.
This is a calamity. We miss a most elevat
ing conception. We fail of a great restraining
and reforming power. We do great injustice
to one of the sublimest, and at the same time
most useful, facts that ever challenged atten
tion. Can nothing be done to break up this most
hurtful stupidity ? Is there no way of giving to
this great but shadowy divine Hand something
of the vividness of an actual perception ?
Certainly there is. Not a few persons have
found this way, and have come to live daily as
in view of the divine government. And yet it
is not an easy matter, as you may see by notic
ing the ways in which this government gener
ally acts.
Through the Original Framework of
Things.
Some go so far as to say that the divine gov
ernment is altogether by this means. They speak
as follows. In the beginning, God, having be
fore his thoughts all possible events, and select-

NEED OF FURTHER ILLUSTRATION. 39
ing such as he saw it best to have realized,
created secondary causes, such in their nature,
number and arrangement as would of them
selves produce in their proper time and place
all the good results possible to his personal
activity. The system was made self-governing.
A divine government is really brought to bear
on every point of space and mote of fact ; but
the government was incorporated in the orig
inal framework of things, so that there has been
no occasion for a personal divine action since
the creation, and of course there has been
none. In favor of this view it is said that it must
have been perfectly easy for an Infinite Being
to make such a comprehensive, self-governing
system complete by one stroke of his will — that
to make instead a system requiring all along
the ages more or less divine superintendences
and actions, none of them a whit easier than
the comprehensive one supposed, would be ir
rational and contrary to that Nature whose
observed habit is to reach her ends without
superfluous steps. To which we may answer
that there is no evidence that God can make a
system of second causes that, by itself, can give
as complete results as both himself and itself
can do — that, on the contrary, this is quite im
probable ; especially as it would imply not only

40 ECCE TERRA.
that God can make the equal of himself so far
as government is concerned, but make that
other self out of the gross and imperfect sub
stance which we call matter, together with that
less gross but still imperfect substance we call
spirit in men and brutes.
Another reason given for favoring the view
that represents the divine Hand as working
altogether through the original structure of
things is, that it alone gives full scope to sci
ence — science, which must be permitted to as
sume that every event is explainable by second
causes, and which has succeeded in explaining
by this means so many things once credited
directly to the Supreme Being. To this we
answer that this view really gives no more
scope to science than does that which conceives
of the system of second causes, after its crea
tion, as still followed by an active superinten
dence of the Creator through all its history:
for this last view does not necessarily suppose
in the system any new force in kind ; only such
as belongs to men and other spiritual beings
with intelligence and will. If the action of
these lower spiritual forces cannot be denied,
and does not restrict the scope of science,
neither does the action of a divine force. The
fact is, all spiritual forces have their fixed na
tures and laws as truly as has matter, only

NEED OF FURTHER ILLUSTRATION. 41
they are widely different from the material, and
harder to be interpreted. Science is quite at
liberty to do its best at interpreting all these
laws, and at explaining events by them after
the most rigorous scientific fashion.
Did God, some thousands or millions of
years ago, make his clock, wind it up, set it
agoing, and has it been running by itself ever
since totally without any action on his part?
The practical tendency of such a view is greatly
against the truthfulness of it. It crowds the
idea of God and his government into the back
ground, into the horizon and below it; in fact,
hides it behind a whole world of secondary cau
sation ; whereas the other view brings us into
close quarters with the great religious ideas,
sets our daily lives face to face with the King,
and is greatly fitted to restrain and elevate us.
Which view, then, would God be likely to lay
a foundation for in actual fact ?
Further, the clock- theory of the divine gov
ernment really negatives all evidence from na
ture of the existence of a God. If the present
system of second causes is able to get on just
as well without a God as with him — that is, if
mere nature can by itself work out all the mar
velous constructions, metamorphoses and re
productions constantly taking place — it is hard
to see why it could not, single-handed, with its

42 ECCE TERRA.
eternal atoms, have wrought out the first con
structions, supposing there were such.
But one almost needs to apologize to a be
liever in the Scriptures for spending time on
such arguments. " My Father worketh hith
erto " — " known to God are all his works from
the beginning of the world." The clock-theory
of divine government defies the whole tenor
of revelation. The very fact of a revelation
made at intervals through centuries defies such
a theory. Through Old and New Testaments
God appears as " nigh at hand and not afar
off," and no fair-minded reader fails to get
from the Book the idea that the divine power
is a current factor and actor in all times.
But while we deny that the divine govern
ment is wholly by means of the original struc
ture of the system, we cannot deny that it is
partly so. Of course that original structure
was meant to further certain purposes of the
Creator — to promote, hinder, regulate, the oc
currence of certain events. It may not give a
sufficient force ; it may and often does require
to be supplemented by something else ; but it
does go to shape much that occurs. The in
clination of the earth's axis necessitates certain
consequences as to climate and seasons, and
was meant to do so. The laws of optics, of
magnetism, of chemistry, of meteorology, of

NEED OF FURTHER ILLUSTRATION. 43
health, — we are compelled to have more or less
respect to all such laws, and the Creator meant
that we should. Men, in all their movements,
must take into account the primitive laws of
both matter and mind, just as the sailor must
take account of the winds and currents and lee
shores in his navigation. First and last, it is a
wonderful deal of governing that these laws do
among men and other living beings; among in
animate things their authority is still more com
plete. God meant it should be so. And he
often exacts heavy penalties to enforce his
meaning. By Current Use of Second Causes as In
struments.
The divine action may be a remote link in
a chain of causation or a near one. The
wave that reaches us may have been started
by a stone a mile or a foot away. The news in
my ear may have come through three mouths
or three hundred. Relays of messengers may
stretch across a town, a province or a con
tinent. As man, even the humblest (and
even the pigmiest insect), can and does act
directly on matter, and start chains of sec
ondary causation more or less long for the
purpose of controlling events, and finds it

44 ECCE TERRA.
useful, not to say indispensable, to do so, it
seems quite likely that God can do and does
do as much.
Nay, the Bible says that he has often used
second causes for instruments ; as when he es
tablished subordinate " thrones, principalities
and powers;" sent angels on his errands;
commissioned Moses for the Exodus ; raised
up judges to deliver Israel ; stirred up adver
saries to Solomon ; smote backsliding Israel
with " the rod of the children of men ;" made
Paul a " chosen vessel " to himself.

By Personally Suggesting Ideas and Motives.
The class thus reached is vastly larger than
the last. It is the whole animal kingdom.
Wherever intelligence and will, in any degree,
are found, there God can sway actions by sug
gesting ideas and motives, not of the nature of
law, but which go to conduct, perhaps uncon
sciously, in the right direction. And this is
only saying that he can do what the humblest
man, and even the humblest insect, is accus
tomed to do freely. From the king on his
throne to the tiniest living mote visible under
the microscope, each has his motions influenced
more or less by thoughts which some other
creature, it may be of the puniest, has suo--

NEED OF FURTHER ILLUSTRATION. 45
gested. The chirping of a cricket can call up
trains of thought that lead to most important
actions. The struggles of a spider to fasten
its thread satisfactorily actually started such
feelings and plans in Robert Bruce as won
back for him his kingdom. Men are contin
ually shaping the conduct and character of
other men, especially of the young, by sug
gesting in them, it may be all undesignedly,
currents of ideas whose trend is in the direc
tion desired. Cannot God do even vastly more
than other beings in this way ? What they do
with means cannot he do without? And is it
not likely that he finds useful a method of con
trol which is found, sooner or later, indispen
sable to every other being with whom we are
acquainted ?
Nay, the Scriptures tell us that God puts it
into the heart of kings to fulfill his will ; that
he gives his people " in the same hour what
they ought to speak " — that is, words as well
as ideas ; that he puts thoughts and purposes
into ravens that feed his Elijahs, into lions
which spare his Daniels, into fishes which ap
pear where and when wanted with tribute-
money in their mouths. Dreams are but trains
of ideas, and though they often " come from
the multitude of business," yet they sometimes
have come by the inspiration of God. " In a

46 ECCE TERRA.
dream, in a vision of the night, . . . then he
openeth the ears of- men and sealeth their in
struction." By Direct Personal Actions of the Second
ary Order; that is, Actions such as Sec
ond Causes are equal to producing, though
they do not actually produce them.
We act directly to bring about events — not
merely as bodies, but as spirits. With our own
hands, without any axe or saw or other instru
ment, we bring about what we want ; nay, our
minds have a way of acting directly on the
matter composing our bodies and producing at
pleasure various movements, as when we will
to move hand or foot. What the human spirit
can do, and finds it desirable to do largely, God
can do, and probably does. A government that
undertakes so much as does God's and that is
bound to have things as well done as possible,
will be likely to avail itself of all possible ways
of bringing itself to bear on events. But it
must often happen that small degrees of power
and pressure from the divine Hand will be all
that is needed to secure what is wanted or is
best — just as men find that for many purposes
the smaller degrees of their force will answer
quite as well as, or better than, the larger. It
is only occasionally that the giant finds it neces-

NEED OF FURTHER ILLUSTRATION. A7
sary to put forth all his resources and do what
nobody else can do. Nine-tenths of the time
his actions are level with the powers of ordinary
persons. So of governments. Their actions
show all grades of power, from that expressed
by splendid armies down to that expressed by
the pettiest policeman. And so, doubtless, the
divine force about us is graduated according to
the work to be done ; and many things requir
ing but. as it were, the lifting of a divine finger
to do them, God does not expend upon them
the whole breadth of his hand. It is very like
ly that with him, as with us, by far the greater
part of his direct actions bring into play only a
small part of his resources, and are quite on
the plane of secondary causation. Some speci
mens of this are given in Scripture. God utters
an audible voice ; so does man. He sends a
messenger ; so does man. He takes away life ;
so does man. He shakes the earth ; so do
struggling vapors and gases. He sent dreams ;
so do second causes, as says the Scripture when
it says, "A dream cometh through the multitude
of business." A large part of actions ascribed
to him are presumably not beyond the power
of angels and devils if left to themselves. In
deed, the Bible attributes to evil spirits great
sions and wonders which might, " if it were
possible, deceive the very elect."

4s ECCE TERRA.
By Moral Laws.
God has given to man various rules for his
conduct which he can obey or not as he pleases,
but which are accompanied with penalties for
disobedience. Such rules and penalties are
found in the Scriptures; which have already
made their way to a large section of mankind,
and are destined to reach all. But besides
these biblical laws there are others which from
the beginning have been generally known
among men — viz. the laws of conscience, the
laws written on the heart, those convictions of
right and wrong and of accountableness for re
sisting them which are common to men. Some
of these duties, like old inscriptions on monu
ments in damp and changeable climates, are
more or less defaced, and sometimes they seem
almost rubbed out ; but they were evidently
original inscriptions on human nature — inscrip
tions writ large and cut deep, however worn by
time, bad weather and rough usage. Men at
large have always felt that they would be held
to account, at least in another life, for their con
duct in this.
These convictions, whether they came from
a primary divine revelation or from the moral
intelligence implanted in human nature by God,
are divine laws ; and they have more or less

NEED OF FURTHER ILLUSTRATION. 49
regulative force wherever known. God gov
erns by them as well as by the original struc
ture of the system.
Such are mainly the ways in which the di
vine Hand does its work. Sometimes, how
ever, it is in the way of direct personal actions
of the truly divine order ; that is, such as only
God can do. Samson was daily doing many
things which any of his neighbors and country
men could do ; but times came when the actions
required of him were such as only he could
furnish. He must defeat an army single-
handed ; he must bow a temple into ruins.
Our civil governments are daily doing common
things which only ask for common forces — it
may be forces almost beneath account in their
smallness — but times at last come round when
the nation rises to the majesty of some great
effort that astonishes mankind and glorifies his
tory. It is so with all the great inanimate sec
ond causes. They are found ranging through
all the gamut of energy according to circum
stances — now holding a planet to its orbit, and
now drawing a feather to the ground. We
would naturally think it might be so with God
— that while a government dealing with minut
est details, as we have seen that his does, would
abound in all the smaller examples of force, it
would in course of time be found putting forth
4

50 ECCE TERRA.
those glorious and sublime measures of power
to which God alone is equal, and which as soon
as we see we say, Behold the Almighty ! Ac
cordingly, the Scriptures show him as a worker
of such miracles as cry None but He! None
but He ! — sending the Deluge, dividing the sea,
raising the dead, speaking storms into calms,
giving whole limbs to the maimed, — in short,
doing a multitude of things which none but he
could do. As soon as we see them the ques
tion of their origin is settled. " Cold weather
cometh out of the north — with God is terrible
majesty." But we do not now see any such divine work
ing. And generally the Hand has done its
work without the usual sensible accessories of
human governments. The Monarch himself is
never visible to us. No throne, no palace, no
splendid court, no celestial offices or police or
armies, illuminate our sky. We see no prison,
no courts in session, no arrest of offenders, no
uniformed agents of any sort. Such things
exist ; they have been seen in glimpses by a
few privileged men ; but to the mass of man
kind they have always been matters of faith
only. We live on the frontiers of the empire ;
the capital with its golden pomp we have never
visited ; and though the pulse of the central
authority really beats strongly on our distant

NEED OF FURTHER ILLUSTRATION. 5 1
shores, it is not easily traced back by our
thought across an ocean rough with ten thou-
sand other pulses to the metropolis from which
it comes. Accordingly, we are not able to illustrate the
doctrine of God's universal providence as we
do the doctrine that " it is appointed unto men
once to die." On receiving this latter teach
ing we can at once proceed to verify it in detail
from observation, and so make it exceedingly
vivid and impressive. Can we do as much for
the doctrine that God's hand is in every fact
of the world ? Most certainly not. Though in
some events that Hand as plainly appears as
it did to the appalled court of Belshazzar, in by
far the greater number of cases it is quite im
possible for any human gaze, however able and
patient, to single out from the maelstrom of
various activities concerned in an event that
part which belongs to God. The forces of in
animate nature are there ; also those of man ;
also, perhaps, those of created beings above
man ; and though among these forces, beyond
a doubt, is a commanding divine element, no
human eye is sharp enough to recognize it as
such. Can I see it in the election of last week ?
On general principles I believe God to have been
active in it. But I am also sure that other forces
in great variety were present ; and no mere

52 ECCE TERRA.
looking of mine could ever show me the pres
ence of anything else. What I see are the
primary meetings ; the canvassing of partisans ;
the scudding cloud of political pamphlets, jour
nals, books ; the whole noisy machinery of party
politics ; the busy interplay of human ambitions,
interests, passions, — all heavily and continually
pattered on by innumerable modifying influ
ences of inanimate nature. That is all I see.
For aught mere sight can tell me God is not in
the election at all. If one points out to me
some useful results of the election and exclaims,
Behold the hand of God! I cannot but remem
ber that second causes also can do useful things;
also, that if the seeming advantages of one event
prove in it the presence of a divine Hand, the
seeming disadvantages of another event prove
in it equally well the absence of such a Hand.
It is necessary to confess it. The golden thread
of supernaturalism that actually runs through
all the tangled web of public and private affairs
only herfe and there comes to the surface and is
recognizable by the eye.

IV.
ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES.

IV-
ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES.
PART first.
GREAT FACTS NOT INCONSISTENT.
UNDER these circumstances it is not an
easy matter to keep the eye of the soul
widely open on the fact of the great Hand in
the earth. But it can be done, for it has been
done.
" In each event of life how clear
Thy ruling Hand I see !"
sang a certain poet, and still sing not a few
hearts. A most enviable song ! How did they
get to sing it ? No doubt the answer is mainly
found in " The pure in heart shall see God."
No doubt it was mainly through gracious hearts
and gracious ways of living — the greatest of
all known torches for showing God and his
words. But this torch may be reinforced as
by jets of oxygen by great examples of divine
action in some of the most notable facts of the
world.
We will now proceed to look at some of
5ft

56 ECCE TERRA.
these. When we have finished our survey it
may be seen that we have shown three things :
I. No facts on the earth are inconsistent with
the divine Hand being in them;
II. Many facts positively harmonize with the
idea that a divine Hand is in them;
III. Not a few facts positively demand the
presence in them of a divine Hand.
By making good these three statements we
furnish not only striking examples of divine gov
ernment, but also such an experimental proof
of its universality as is furnished by proving
similar statements for a divine Framer of na
ture in the argument from design. Every object
will not answer for this latter argument. The
common compounds, the endless stones, the
hosts of things that lie about the confines of
the organic and inorganic, cannot be appealed
to ; only those more elaborate organisms that
can be shown to have had a beginning, espe
cially these as appearing in endless number and
variety. These imperatively demand a glorious
Designer for themselves ; and, such a Being
once found, the way is easy to admit that he
framed all nature — in view of the fact that all
remaining objects are either such as are not in
consistent with that idea or positively harmonize
with it. In view of similar facts those events
in great number and variety that imperatively

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. $7
demand a divine Governor for themselves open
the way to admit that he governs universally.
They are like certain stars, which, having been
analyzed by the spectroscope and found to con
tain earthy matters on fire, forthwith become
to us brilliant specimens of what all those other
stars contain which circumstances do not per
mit us to analyze.
I. No Facts on the Earth are Inconsistent
with a divine Hand being in them.
Temptation, sin, suffering, error, and, to a
considerable extent, the unequal distribution
of good in the world (vast facts, all of them),
are looked upon as stumbling things by not a
few when called on to admit that every fact
about us includes a busy divine Hand. Are
they really inconsistent with the admission?
i. Temptations.
Temptations to what is wrong or harmful are
an immense class of facts, crowding every coun
try and age of which we know. Each person is
tempted — tempted daily, tempted in ways with
out number. Sometimes the assaults are sim
ply terrible — terrible both as to the vices and
harms to which they urge, and as to the force
with which they urge. Never was city more
beset with armies, never ship more stressed to-

58 ECCE TERRA.
ward breakers by conspiring gale and current,
than is yonder Noah in the midst of antedilu
vian wickedness, yonder Lot amid the vileness
of Sodom, yonder Joseph in the house of Poti-
phar, yonder child being brought up in the
worst den of the worst street of the worst city
in the world. Can it be that a good divine
Hand is concerned in every such temptation ?
Let us see.
Suppose the following things to be true. It
is well for a man to have a nature capable of
being solicited toward what is right and useful.
Such a nature implies a capacity to be solicited
in an opposite direction. Opposite solicitations
can, in all cases, be successfully resisted, either
by a native power of self-restraint or by aid
from without, or by both. Where thus resisted
they become a great moral discipline and give
birth to a strength and splendor of virtuous
character otherwise impossible. That this
splendid result may follow every temptation,
God supplies all the help possible to infinite
wisdom and power ; for example, sometimes
wholly suppressing temptations that would
prove too powerful ; making others as favor
able as possible in regard to degree, time and
other circumstances ; forewarning of, forbidding
to yield to, calling to watchfulness and prayer
against, promising and threatening, minister-

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 59
ing strength by his Holy Spirit and providence
and word. And all to such good purpose that
there is absolutely no one, however stormily he
may be tempted, but may get from the tempta
tion almost infinite good to himself, and so to
others who come under his influence.
Not a few do this. Their fight conquers for
them whole provinces and kingdoms of charac
ter. Their storm at last sends them into har
bor, not only without the loss of a single spar
or rope, but triumphantly drawing after them
more captive galleons than ever came in, heavy
and glittering, from the Spanish Main.
I say, suppose these things are so. Certainly
not an unreasonable supposition. It looks as
though it might be true. It is at least what the
scientists would call a good working hypothesis.
It would be hard, not to say impossible, to show
that it does not conform to fact in every partic
ular. While not a single one of the particulars
it includes is a priori incredible, or even un
likely, most of them are demonstrated by either
experience or Scripture. " Blessed is the man
that endureth temptation ; for when he is tried
he shall receive the crown of life which the
Lord has promised to them that love him. Let
no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted
of God ; for God cannot be tempted with evil,
neither tempteth he any man. But every man

60 ECCE TERRA.
is tempted when he is drawn away of his own
lust and enticed ;" " God is faithful who will not
suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able ;
but will with the temptation also make a way to
escape, that ye may be able to bear it;" "In this
manner pray ye, Lead us not into temptation."
How much is implied in such passages as to the
degree and kind of work done by the divine
Hand in connection with the temptations of the
world !
If our supposition expresses the actual state
of things, it follows not only that there is a
great divine Hand active in connection with all
temptation, but that the activities are of such
sorts as an infinitely wise and good Being may
consistently put forth, and is even bound by his
wisdom and goodness to put forth. The only
action of his that has any look to the contrary
is his initial allowing of temptation at all ; but
if this is a necessity to his having the best sort
of human nature in his world — viz. one to
which virtue is possible (that is, one that can
be solicited toward the right and yet be free
to refuse) — then even this cannot be charged
as inconsistent with the goodness of the divine
government. No one has a right to complain
of a tempted lot of which he can avoid all the
evils, and out of which he can wring almost im
measurable good, and toward which God stands

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 6l
ready to grant, especially on being asked, any
amount of help that may be needed to con
vert the contest into a victory, the cross into a
crown. 2. Sins.
Temptations, in cases innumerable, result in
sins. These dreariest events of our own time
have made dreary nearly all time. Since the
first apostasy sins have been a staple product
of the ages. The world has fed on them as on
bread, and become a lazaretto throughout. And
such diseases ! So many, so various and so
dreadful ! Were a thunderbolt let loose every
time an enormous crime is done, the heavens
would quake with one continuous and intoler
able roar. History is pocked with outrageous
abominations. Wars, cruelties, murders, frauds,
profligacies, slaveries, apostasies, — take your
choice, O historian, as to the direction in which
you go, you shall wade chin-deep through
such things ; through seas of ink. The ink
with which you write is not by any means as
black as the injustices and perjuries and vices
you describe. Nay, quit your ink and write
with blood, for enough human blood has been
wickedly shed to fatten the soil of all the world.
Enough human souls have been deliberately
corrupted to rottenness to poison whole conti
nents and smell to heaven. The plague is

62 ECCE TERRA.
everywhere. There is not a bit of thoroughly
sound flesh in all this human world. Even
good men have to say, "I know that in me,
that is in my flesh, there dwelleth no good
thing." Is it possible that this wonder-sinfulness, in
all its length and breadth and in every instance,
includes a busy divine Hand ? Let us see.
Let us suppose the following things. God is
not the responsible author, or even abetter, of
any sin whatever. On the contrary, he dis
likes and opposes every sin in all the ways open
to infinite wisdom, power and goodness. He
only allows it in any case as a grim necessity, so
far as he is concerned, of that free moral nature
and government which to dispense with would
be to dispense with the possibility of virtue it
self. It is desirable that a part of the world's
inhabitants, have not the nature of stones or of
vegetables, but vastly higher natures, like God's
own, in being capable of virtue. Natures capa
ble of virtue are by that very fact also capable
of sin. So God cannot prevent sin among us
by mere physical omnipotence. The best he
can do with such natures is to bring influences
to bear on the will, persuading it in its freedom
to decide against sin. Such influences he does
not spare, but by his word or Spirit or provi
dence, or all these, endeavors to enlighten men

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 63
in regard to the evil of sin, dissuades from
it, forbids it, threatens and promises heavily
against it, marshals circumstances against it,
counteracts and overrules as far as possible its
natural effects. In fine, his actions as to sin
are such that he does all he can, consistently
with retaining a free moral nature in man and
the best possible moral system, both to prevent
sin and to recover from it, and, when neither is
possible, to neutralize its effects. Not merely
by conscience and the word, but also directly
by his Spirit and his own busy right hand, he
is incessantly and wonderfully acting for these
ends. If, notwithstanding all, the man will go on to
the sin, God endeavors to minimize it, atones
for it, forgives it if repented of, does all he con
sistently can to recover from it, perhaps chas
tises it, circumscribes and defeats its natural
effects as far as possible, and, as a last resort,
punishes it. In short, every sin that occurs rep
resents a vast amount of antagonistic divine
action. A fire burns in it as it did in the thorn-
bush that Moses saw, or as does the electric
glory in the black bosom of a storm-cloud.
This is at least a plausible supposition. It is
accepted as satisfactory by multitudes of Chris
tian people, being, as they think, expressly
taught, as to most if not all its particulars, so

64 ECCE TERRA.
fully and variously in Scripture that they are
compelled to accept it. And certainly it has in
itself an aspect of reasonableness. To affirm
that it cannot be true, or even that the likeli
hoods are against it, is more than careful and
conscientious reasoners would venture upon.
A priori, it is altogether credible.
And what if the supposition agrees with fact?
Then it follows not only that every sin carries
with it an immense amount of divine action, but
that most of these actions are not only not in
consistent with divine goodness, but are even
positively and loudly demanded by it. There
is only one particular which can be supposed
to be an exception. That is the initial allowing
of sin. But if sin is a necessity to God in
every case in which it occurs — necessary be
cause it is on the whole best for man to have
a free moral nature — then how is a shadow,
even the slightest, cast on the goodness of the
divine government ?
No, there is nothing in sin to hinder our ac
cepting the doctrine that there is a divine Hand
in every instance of it as really as there was in
the riotous and sacrilegious halls of Belshazzar.
What a flaming, kingly Hand that was ! Right
in the midst of the wickedness, and yet not
partaking of it ! On the contrary, a great,
warning, resisting, protesting, primitive Force

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 65
which got not a shade on its brightness from
its bad surroundings. A Hand can burn and
sway as well in the bosom of the night as of
the day. The sceptre of a human king is as
much at home among disorders, corruptions
and crimes as elsewhere. Why not that
grander sceptre ?
The Bible is one huge protest against sin.
To be consistent God must act against it as
well as talk against it; and, since acting might
ily against every instance of it is just as easy
to an infinite Being as acting against a single
instance, it is certain that such mighty personal
action is really, though invisibly, at work as a
hostile force wherever and whenever sin is
found. 3. Sufferings.
Another great class of facts, found in the
greatest profusion in all times and countries —
not only in those known to written history,
but also in those buried in the mausolea of
geology. Men have always died, and found their way
to the grave by rough and thorny roads. Not
a day without something disagreeable ; some
days full of vexatious experiences ; occasion
ally an experience that amounts to anguish.
And sometimes anguish is heaped on anguish.

66 ECCE TERRA.
What prolonged tortures are inflicted by some
diseases, by some crushing accidents, by human
and inhuman inquisitions ! What terrible dis
appointments, anxieties, despairs, sometimes
make a still severer inquisition for the soul !
How famines, pestilences, wars, cataclysms
every now and then, put whole nations on the
rack ! So it has always been. Not a human
grave has yet been made except by a spade
in the form of a cross. Some say that former
times were even more trying than the present
— that the mountains of ignorance, supersti
tion, absolutism and depravity, like the other
Alps, have been slowly wearing down under
the wave-beat of the ages and letting in upon
us more and more of the light and cheer of
Heaven. Doubtless it is so. The "good old
times," the " brave days of old," were, after all,
the saddest of all. History is a fearful thing —
till we get used to it. We walk through its
ghoul-haunted and shrieking shades with hair
scarcely less electrical than if they were those
of Dante's Inferno. Such wars, such tyrants,
such flailing of the masses to pieces ! — ah, an
tiquity was a monster ! It had no bowels of
compassion. Man trod man as the mire of the
streets. "And the earth was filled with vio
lence " — while one Flood was experienced, sev
eral floods were deserved.

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 67
Now, is it possible that such facts as these —
casting such terrible shadows across all coun
tries and times — include a busy divine Hand?
Let us see.
Suppose the following things to be true.
Much suffering flows naturally from much sin
— sin, the parent of such things as selfishness,
envy, jealousy, malice, remorse ; sin, that con
flicts with the laws of nature, and so implies
struggle, discontent, vexation, anxiety, defeat.
Also, it is well that sin should be allowed to
show forth, to a certain extent, its evil nature
by its evil fruits. It is fitting that so sinful a
race as ours should not have a Paradise to live
in, but should have in the form of pain more or
less tokens of divine displeasure — indeed, se
vere chastisements and punishments. Still, no
one suffers more than an enlightened con
science tells him he deserves. And, such as the
suffering is, it need continue but a short time
— a time so short relatively to our whole dura
tion that it ought in practice to count for noth
ing, as do the relative nothings of the math
ematics. Besides, human suffering in this world
is by no means an unmixed evil while it con
tinues, but often enhances enjoyment by its
sable background; calls forth delightful benev
olent activities; furnishes the world with many
splendid examples of patience, fortitude, trust,

68 ECCE TERRA.
heroism ; and in the case of every man may be
the means of almost unlimited moral improve
ment to himself, and so to others.
Now, let us suppose that God is in these
facts in the following manner. He is inces
santly active in the effort to dry up the sources
of all suffering in sin. He actually cancels or
averts, especially in the case of such as ask his
help, many sorrows which but for his interfe
rence would have made human life far more
thorny than it is. What cannot be wholly done
away with consistently with those general laws
indispensable to every great and wise system,
and with his character as magistrate over sin
ners who need to be chastised, punished, re
formed, he makes as small as possible consist
ently with these essentials. What suffering
remains after this paring process he aims to
make fruitful in the largest possible advantage
to the sufferer, and also to others whose orbits
fall within or intersect his, and for this end
never for a moment ceases to manipulate the
suffering and the men with all the forces of his
wisdom and strength ; and is so successful in
his work that not only great improvement in
character often takes place under the discipline
of trouble, but there is not a cross in the whole
round of human experience by which the suf
ferer may not, with the help of a divine lifting,

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 69
climb to noble heights of virtue, and finally to
that God who wipes away all tears.
But suffering is not confined to responsible
man. It overflows from him on all the subject
races in a mighty freshet. They are worried,
hunted, victimized by each other as well as by
ourselves. And long before man appeared in
the world with his iron flail they were scarcely
better off. They had but one tyrant the less.
The rocks tell a dismal story, and tell it loudly.
Species after species was swept away. Chase,
violence, blood, were the order of the day of
the long ages. From their very beginning the
brute races preyed on each other without stint,
and, evidently, were designed to do so. The
fossil world is largely a petrified groan.
Such is the view of the situation taken by
many who are tempted to ask how the suffer
ings of the world can consist with the idea that
there is a divine Hand busy in every one of
them. And, however we may object to their
strength of statement and depth of coloring,
we cannot deny that this " whole creation
groaneth and travaileth together in pain until
now." What can be said to such a fact by those
who hold to a good governing God whose
Hand is concerned in absolutely everything?
Let us suppose again, as follows. By far the

70 ECCE TERRA.
larger part of brute experience, like the human,
is pleasurable. Having a far less sensitive and
delicate organization than ourselves, the races
below us suffer far less than we should under
the same circumstances. They have little of
that faculty of anticipating trouble from which
so much of human suffering comes. Even the
pain they feel in dying by violence may be very
small, for there is reason to believe it so in the
case of men with their finer sensibilities. Liv
ingstone says that one stroke from the paw of
a lion preparing to devour him left him without
pain, even that of fear. Muscular convulsion
and distortion are no sure sign of suffering, but
are even sometimes the sable dress worn by
actual enjoyment. So that it is by no means
beyond belief that the death of brutes in the
line of their function as food for others is pos
itively pleasurable. There is such a thing as
euthanasia. But euthanasia, with a succession
of individuals and races perpetually rejuvenat
ing the earth, may give a larger sum of happi
ness than any other possible system.
Still, let us grant that after all such abate
ments there is, and always has been, much real
suffering among the brutes. How great is this
remainder ? Is it greater than is required to
meet the following possibilities ? First, it may
be that the best, not to say the only, means of

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 7 1
guiding the lower animals away from hurtful
and destructive paths are the thorn-hedges of
pain on this side and on that Second, it may
be that most people are right in tacitly assum
ing, as they do, that a certain low measure of
depravity, responsibleness and improvableness
belongs to brutes, so that for them pain as
chastisement, discipline, punishment, is not out
of place, and that the same general sort of di
vine dealing which is proper for us may be
proper for them.
I say, suppose these things are so. I do not
affirm them (there is no present need) ; I only
suggest them as a reasonable hypothesis to
account for the facts. Is the hypothesis incredi
ble, or even unlikely? It certainly would be hard
to show that it is so in a single particular. It
has a look of reasonableness and verisimilitude,
finds great support in Scripture; at the very
least is what scientists would call a "good
working hypothesis." It may be true.
But if true, it follows not only that a divine
Hand is largely active in connection with every
sorrow, but also that many movements of that
Hand are positively demanded by the divine
goodness. Even the initial permission of suf
fering — the only thing about it that for one
moment can be supposed to be at war with
the doctrine of a universal Providence that is

72 ECCE TERRA.
good as well as divine — appears as a grim ne
cessity to a just and wise government over a
depraved world — a world which is itself the
grimmest necessity of all.
The well-known tenor of Scripture, recog
nized in all Christian creeds and practice,
teaches us that "affliction cometh not forth of
the dust, neither doth trouble spring out of the
ground;" that God appoints or royally manh>
ulates all trials ; that he is open to prayer in
regard to every one of them ; that for the good
man he actually secures that all things (afflic
tions) shall work together for his good ; that in
the case of no one and in no case does he
" willingly afflict the children of men, but for
their profit, that they may be partakers of
his holiness." 4. Errors.
Another great family of stumbling facts.
Errors are the weeds of opinion, and, like
other weeds, flourish luxuriantly all over the
world. Who knows an infallible man ? The
wisest and most careful fall into mistake on all
sorts of subjects — business, social life, politics,
medicine, science, religion. To some men mis
takes seem to come in flocks, as kites to car
rion, and never was unfortunate ship more
weighted with barnacles than are not a few

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 73
crude and reckless thinkers with errors on the
most important subjects.
See what religious errors ! Our first mother
fell into the mistake of thinking that eating the
forbidden fruit would make her a goddess ; her
children very soon made the still greater mis
take of thinking that there was any number
of gods ; and the greatest mistake of all was
made when, still later, men shut their eyes on
the heavens and the earth and thought there
was no God. The bottomless pit of thought
is materialistic atheism. Alas ! what numbers
are shooting down that pit to-day — some of
them shooting stars — exclaiming as they pass
out of sight, " No sin, no responsibility, no fu
ture state, no soul, no God " ! Mohammedan
ism, Spiritualism, Mormonism, Romanism, and
heresies within the Christian Church, — how
many, truculent and destructive they are !
Missiles of error and doubt —
Firebrands, arrows, deaths— sing out
From our air, as summer sings
With the rush of insect wings.
Our faith sails on the high seas,
Where fleets of corsair ideas
Watch and wander night and day,
All to bear this prize away.
Fierce slops and acids of thought
From stills of all lands are brought,

74 ECCE TERRA.
And cast without stint or ruth
At the roots of each great truth
Think you the leaf will not wilt
Beneath which such dregs are spilt ?
Think you the fruit will riot shrink
Whose root is drinking such ink ?
As well 'mid swamps and miasm
Think to set up a safe home,
Or through thick tempests of steel,
Unmailed, a safe way to feel.
May one toss his flaming brands
Right and left, with careless hands,
'Mid your droughty ricks and thatch,
Thinking naught the flame will catch ?
Ho, truth-holding men ! beware
How you sleep and how you dare —
How you dare with open breast
Bid the foeman do his best.
See you not that you have need
Of a shield for this your creed —
Need to front it every way,
Need to hold it night and day ?
In an air that hums with death
Naught but this is safe for faith —
Slime or shot that raineth free
Meaneth death for you and me.
Man is weak, the false is strong,
It has friends in all our wrong ;
" Watch and fight and pray '' must be
Daily shield for you and me.

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 75
Is it possible that an almighty benevolent
Hand is busy in every one of these many as
sailing errors, even the worst?
See my hypothesis, as follows. Some errors
are unimportant, and so in our mathematics we
always neglect fractions of a certain grade. In
deed, we may say that some mistakes are more
useful than truth would be in their stead : as
when the truth would be abused, and so guilt
be enhanced; or when a man enters a church,
supposing it to be a theatre, and is converted;
or misses his road, and so misses the steamer
that goes out to sea only to go to the bottom.
The finiteness of our faculties, itself a neces
sity, necessarily breeds more or less error in
us if unaided by God ; and it may be proper,
and even necessary, for God to leave unaided
those who do not seek his help, and who need
to learn their own weakness without him. And,
generally, the attitude of God toward errors is
this : he cautions against the more serious of
them by name ; actually prevents not a few by
his word, Spirit and providence; removes, after
a while, many which he could not consistently
prevent ; defeats the natural ill effects of many
which he could consistently neither prevent nor
remove ; is constantly antagonizing all error by
antagonizing sin to the utmost and by his ut
most efforts at lifting humanity in all respects

?6 ECCE TERRA.
to a higher plane of being, as some city is
gradually lifted out of its primitive slough, by
screws and levers innumerable, into dryness
and healthfulness. Even good men are con
stantly engaged in doing all these things : is it
too much to suppose that God is doing them
on a vastly larger scale? We will suppose it;
and even that, by his manifold " sceptrings "
this way and that, God actually secures all who
yield to his guidance either from error or from
all harm from it as he proceeds on his sublime
path of making " all things work together for
good to them that love God."
Notice that I do not affirm a single one of
these particulars. I only suggest them as pos
sible truths. That they are at least so much
can hardly be questioned by any reasonable
person. Indeed, no such person will venture
to say that they are unlikely even. One does
not have to listen very hard to hear in their
favor the affidavits of both natural and revealed
religion. But if our supposition really accords with
fact, it follows not only that a divine Hand is
largely busy within and around every error, as
the lightning plays within and around the black
cloud, but that the movements of that Hand
are such as to manifest rather than discredit
the goodness of God. The only thing that for

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 7 J
one moment seems against that goodness is his
initial permission of error when he could have
prevented it ; for doubtless he could have pre
vented it, since he could have withheld from us
intelligence, and thus have made mistakes as
impossible to us as they are to stones. Or,
without doing this, he might have telephoned
a self-evidencing divine voice to our hesitating
thought, saying, "This is the way, walk ye
therein." But it may be that it would not be
best that all men should be stones, or that all
the errors that naturally flow from sin should
be prevented. For aught any can show to the
contrary, a system that guarantees practical
immunity from all serious errors to all persons
on their complying with certain reasonable con
ditions would be better than a system dispensing
with free agency, or one carrying, as in an om
nibus-car, with equal sureness and despatch to
the goal of truth the careful and the careless,
the industrious and the idle, the earnest in
quirer and the pettifogging partisan, the wise
and foolish, the righteous and the wicked.
The well-known tenor of Scripture, recog
nized in all Christian creeds and practice, is to
the effect that in all cases of doubt as to what
we are to believe or do it is our duty and priv
ilege to appeal to God for help. This means
that his hand occupies in a sovereign manner

78 ECCE TERRA.
the whole realm of truth and error — that he
can "open the eyes of the understanding," "di
rect our paths," "guide into all truth," "give all
things that pertain to life and godliness," "open
the understanding to understand the Script
ures," — in short, means that " if a man lack
wisdom, let him ask of God," who "is Light"
itself, "who orders the steps of the good man,"
and who "will withhold no good thing from
them who walk uprightly."
5. Certain Partialisms.
Looking about among the creatures, we see
wide differences as to the measure of " advan
tages " enjoyed — differences often independent
of character. One being is a stone, another a
grass, another a worm, another an eagle, still
another a man. Men differ vastly among them
selves as to beauty, health, strength, wealth,
social rank, talents, education, and even moral
advantages — not seldom by virtue of mere
birth. Born a genius, born wealthy, born a
prince, above all born in the bosom of a wise
and Christian family and at the centre of the
very choicest influences, — this describes the lot
of some, while a lot just the opposite in all re
spects falls to others. Human society is a
ladder the topmost rounds of which are in the
clouds and the lowest stuck fast in the mire ;

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 79
and whatever round the good man may stand
upon he is sure to see above him the foot of
some sinner who is not worthy to come down
and unloose his shoe-latchet. Good Lazarus
in his sores and rags waits with the dogs for
the crumbs at the gate of wicked and sump
tuous Dives. St. Paul clothed with serge and
chains stands before brute Nero clothed with
imperial purple and jewels.
One nation is greatly inferior to another in
numbers, geographic position, wealth, power,
fame, though greatly superior in character.
What was Israel at its best, in point of historic
splendor and importance, compared with such
heathen nations as the Assyrian, Egyptian, and
Roman ? A good cause, like a good man, is
often defeated and trodden in the mire by a
bad one — true philosophies by the false, Pytha-
gorases by Ptolemies, orthodoxies by heresies,
revivals by backslidings, primitive Christianity
by Romanism, the Vaudois by their bloody and
misbelieving princes, the Protestant electors by
Charles V., Protestantism in France and Spain
and Italy by horrible Inquisitions and St. Bar
tholomews, Reformed by Rationalistic Germany,
Poland by her grasping neighbors, Hungary by
Austria, — in short, there is neither individual
nor nation nor cause, however good, but may
be prostrated by its enemy, however bad. This

80 ECCE TERRA.
lies open to all sight on the surface of all his
tory. The past is strewn with wrecks of sys
tems, public morals, institutions, empires —
causes that were crushed by foes less de
serving than themselves, and sometimes wicked
in the extreme — just as the Old World is strewn
with noble works of art broken by the hands of
rude Vandals, or as wheat is supplanted by
tares, a palace by a cabin, a city by a desert,
a calm by a storm, summer by winter.
Can a divine Hand that is both just and al
mighty have anything to do with such partial-
isms as these ? Is there not necessarily injus
tice as well as inequality in such allotments?
Let us see, looking first at the case of individ
uals. We have been taught, truly or otherwise, as
follows. Such worldly distinctions as riches,
honors, beauty, fame — and even such things as
splendid abilities, and education, and religious
advantages — are not always real advantages
as to either character or happiness ; indeed, are
never so except as associated with virtue. Cae
sar says that even the barbarous Helvetians
held, " consuesse deos immortales, quo gravius
homines ex commutatione rerum doleant, quos
pro scelere eorum ulcisci velint, his secundiores
interdum res et diuturniorem impunitatem con-
cedere." Real disadvantages of one sort are

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 8 1
often offsetted by advantages of another sort
which escape our notice and perhaps are invisi
ble ; thus, the moral disadvantages of a child
born and bred in some den of vice may be com
pensated by extra measures of a striving Holy
Spirit within, which no observation can detect.
Certain forms of good, from their very nature,
cannot be given to all ; for example, the leader
ship of the Exodus, the Jewish high priesthood,
the motherhood of Christ, the office of an apostle.
Different positions and functions, and therefore
different circumstances and faculties, neces
sarily belong to the different members of a
great and wise system, even as a watch must
include many a little pin and tooth and wheel,
as well as the conspicuous golden dial-plate, in
order that it may answer its purpose. Different
persons of the same moral standing require dif
ferent ways and measures of training in order to
the best moral results, as we often observe in
children of the same family, one thriving best
under the discipline of poverty, another under
that of affluence ; one under the discipline of
sickness, another that of health ; one in obscur
ity, another in the blaze of fame; and, really, the
question which God asks in regard to a man is
not merely, What is his character? but, What
can be made of him ? Also, this life is a small
matter compared with the eternal next ; so that

82 ECCE TERRA.
outward worldly advantages are of little ac
count in view of our whole duration. Of this
duration we see but a small part, and that
which comes after death may balance matters
between the righteous and the wicked, and
show that the providential favors now granted
to the latter are only such winning measures
and merciful respites as just human govern
ments often grant to disloyal subjects. Less
responsibility is insisted on in cases where less
advantages are given : the man of one talent is
not made answerable for ten talents. The lead
ing advantages of life are accessible to all on
the same reasonable terms ; and pardon of sin,
a noble character, usefulness, divine consola
tions, brightest hopes, and, finally, eternal sal
vation, men are welcomed to with as little dis
crimination as to any city park or thoroughfare
on the high seas. Further, all things in a man's
condition that are called disadvantages, with the
single exception of sin, for which he alone is re
sponsible, may be made stepping-stones to a
higher state than he could have reached with
out them: and spoils of character to any extent
may be conquered out of the difficulties and dis
abilities and troubles at which men often repine;
as a man may ascend by some narrow and dim
and inconvenient stairs to the top of a tower
and to glorious prospects, or as a soldier may

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLE 83
mount into a rich city by means of the very
stones hurled against him.
In all this God is infinitely active. He de
vises and appoints the original faculties and
place of every man according to the work he
is needed for. He tempers circumstances
every moment to these original peculiarities,
so as to give the man the best possible envi
ronment for the work he has to do and the
character he has to attain. He stirs him up to
make the most of his circumstances, and, es
pecially if solicited, grants all manner of prov
idential and spiritual aid to his efforts. In
short, he keeps perpetual school and university
for each human being, and the means and
methods of training are as perfectly adapted
to each as if there were no others — checking
and prompting, forbidding and commanding,
guarding and guiding, without measure or rest,
so that the final result may be the best, both for
the individual and the public, which infinite
power and wisdom can secure.
These views, with modifications, apply to
those broader partialisms with which history is
chiefly concerned. Lapses of communities into
error or sin or suffering are only the aggrega
ted lapses of individuals in the exercise of their
responsible freedom. Besides, all causes are
not good that seem so to our hasty and dull

84 ECCE TERRA.
vision. How often do we find occasion to cor
rect, and even reverse, our first impressions of
public measures ! And, then, experience goes
to show that it is not always best for a really
good cause to succeed at once. There is a best
time, as well as a best way, for public as well as
private successes. The age needs a certain
ripeness for them in order to use them.
Delays, difficulties, struggles, reverses, can
strengthen, purify and ennoble a cause as
much as an individual person. And, then,
what if every really good cause is bound to
succeed at last, and to succeed all the more
splendidly by the temporary buffetings which
have shaken the oak into strength and a thou
sand characters into broader faith, fortitude and
force ?
Certainly, these views have no look of incred
ibility about them. No one is entitled to set
them aside as inadmissible at a glance. On the
contrary, they look as if they might be true.
One undertaking to prove that they cannot be
true would have a heavy task before him —
would have it even if setting out only to show
that they are improbable. As suppositions they
certainly deserve respect — are at least a good
working hypothesis. And Christianity, as well
as natural religion, sweats them at every pore.
" The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 85
the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor
yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet
favor to men of skill ; but time and chance hap-
peneth to them all." And yet " the lot is cast
into the lap, but the whole disposing thereof
is of the Lord ;" " Riches and honor come of
thee ;" " He putteth down one and setteth up
another." But if our suppositions are also facts, it fol
lows not only that the divine Hand is largely
in the inequalities of human condition, but that
its movements are radiant as the path of a star
with wisdom and goodness. Even the initial
appointment of such inequalities is no accusa
tion of his justice or kindness. Such things
must be in every great and wise scheme. But
the Hand that manages in these things that
must be, and flashes unseen hither and thither,
" putting down one and setting up another,"
buffeting here and caressing there, distributing
tears on the one hand and smiles on the other,
is not an eyeless fate that knows not and cares
not where it smites or lifts, nor yet an ocean
that kisses one shore and thunders in storm on
another (perhaps the fairest of all), and yet is
the unthinking friend of all; but rather the intel
ligent monarch who is independent enough to
sacrifice present appearances that he may in the
end do the best thing possible for everybody.

86 ECCE TERRA.
If the sins, errors and sufferings of the world
are not inconsistent with a divine Hand being
in them, still more are not those events into
which these enter more or less largely, but
which also include some plain advantages.
Such, for example, as these. The persecu
tions of the primitive Christians, with all the
guilt and misery they involved, contributed not
a little to the purity and evidence of the infant
Church. The fall of the Roman Empire, though
tears fell like rain and the Dark Ages followed,
helped the general diffusion of civilization and
Christianity in Europe. The feudal system and
Crusades, with all their follies and mischiefs,
were not without their protecting and elevat
ing influences on the rude society of the times.
Such men as Alexander, Caesar, Mohammed,
Tamerlane, Napoleon — rough battle-axes as
they were — lopped off some excrescences and
hewed the way for some improvements. Even
the Reign of Terror has furnished useful les
sons — notably, that atheism means the disinte
gration of society. Not a few of the wars,
pestilences, famines, have been to nations what
conflagrations have sometimes been to cities
— consuming rubbish, cleansing dens, finding
wood and leaving marble. In short, almost or
quite all the dark things of the world have
their "coigns of vantage," and in not a few of

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 87
them the advantages are so great as to start
the question whether they may not be in a ma
jority. Of course such things are not incon
sistent with a divine Hand being in them; for
it seems that even sins, errors and sufferings
in their purest and most unrelieved form are
not inconsistent with it. Still less are those
things in which stars glint through the torn
clouds, the air grows pure in the sweep of the
madcap storm, an oasis is embosomed in the
desert, and even fragrant and beautiful flowers
spring from an offensive dunghill.
The sun has spots. Science does not require
us to explain these spots on the supposition
that the heart of the sun is dark and cold, pro
vided they can be explained quite as well on
the contrary supposition.
The earth has a broken surface — roughnesses
that hinder cultivation, hills up which men toil,
precipices down which men fall, mountains that
obstruct sunlight and intercourse, uncouth, and
even awful, forms of disorder and ruin. The
oceans of water and air include many draw
backs, difficulties, dangers, and some tragedies ;
the atmosphere is often black with clouds, howl
ing with winds, and vivid with smiting light
nings ; the seas toss in storm, wear away fruit
ful coasts, engulf men and property. On all
hands it is agreed that philosophy does not re-

88 ECCE TERRA.
quire us to explain these disagreeable things
on the supposition that they come from un
friendly sources, because they can be explained
equally well, for aught that appears, on just the
contrary supposition ; viz. that the ruggedness
of the land, the mobility of the waters, and the
still greater mobility of the atmosphere, are, on
the whole, most useful things whose advantages
greatly outweigh the incidental disadvantages
with which they appear inseparably connected.
So, when we look about us and see a moral
system which includes such evils as temptation,
sin, suffering and error, neither science nor
philosophy requires us to explain them on the
supposition that almighty goodness and wis
dom have not been active in connection with
them ; because, for aught that appears, they
are explainable equally well on just the op
posite supposition ; viz. that God brings to
bear upon them, in every single instance, the
sum of his infinite attributes, but that it is im
possible for him to eliminate them any further
than he does without sacrificing interests still
more valuable than the elimination would be.
Wisdom and goodness make heavy limitations
on the exercise of even divine power; and
there are limitations also in the very nature
of power itself. There are things that lie
quite without its range.

v.
ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES.
PART SECOND.

V.
ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES.
PART SECOND.
GREAT FACTS POSITIVELY IN HARMONY.
IN looking over the world, we find in every
age not merely dark things whose consist
ency with a good divine government that is
universal needs to be shown, but we find also
a great many bright things whose general use
fulness is so clear that, instead of needing ex
planation, they are seen to be just what one
would naturally expect from the hand of a
perfect Being. That hand may have directly
established them at the first, and ever since
may have directly and earnestly supported and
cherished them, they are so plainly and con
fessedly useful.
II. Many Facts Positively Harmonize with
the Idea that a Divine Hand is in them.
Among these facts is the institution of
i. The Family.
In all ages we find this institution, in a form
more or less pure, lying at the foundation of
91

92 ECCE TERRA.
human society.. Evils are often found in con
nection with it (there are ill-mated, ill-man
nered, quarrelsome, and even leprous house
holds), but they are as separable from the
family as weeds are from a garden or dirt
from our faces. In its own nature the insti
tution is clean and wholesome, and even in
dispensable. This would be the confession of
all intelligent and respectable people. They
are shocked at what the absence of the family
implies. As the source of all the precious things sug
gested by the word Home ; as the mother of the
most sacred human affections ; as the golden
thread on which are strung conjugal, parental
and filial loves ; as the nurse of order, thrift
and just subordination ; as a provision for the
recognition, support and training of children ;
as a safeguard against a large class of violent
and shameful quarrels, and even against one
universal slough of vice and crime, — the family
enters into the very foundation of all decent
and orderly society. We owe to it a large
part of the happiness which has survived the
fall ; and were the institution ideally perfect in
every case, as it nearly is in some cases, it
would be a still more brilliant benefactor of the
world. It is a world-wide fact and casts light
instead of shadow.

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 93
An institution like this would come as natu
rally from the divine Hand as does the water
from an opening at the base of some mighty
and full reservoir. Its character and effects
harmonize perfectly with the idea of such an
origin. If we should assert that God originally
organized the family by a positive agency, and
now guards and promotes it with the utmost
resources of his government, the assertion
would be one of the most credible of things.
The institution is worthy to come from him.
And from him, say the Scriptures, it really
comes. Not only is "his hand active in and
about the family relation (as it is, indeed, in and
about sin and error even), but the relation was
directly established by his choice and agency,
and is guarded and cherished by his provi
dence, laws and Spirit. He started our race
in a pair. He continues the sexes in about
equal numbers. " He sets the solitary in fam
ilies ;" " For this cause shall a man leave father
and mother and shall cleave to his wife;"
" What God hath joined together let not man
put asunder." Marriage is made indissoluble,
save for a single cause. The right of parents
to honor and obedience from their children is
strongly enforced. Both Old Testament and
New Testament lay down many rules for fam
ily intercourse, the training of children, the

94 ECCE TERRA.
mutual duties of husbands and wives, of pa
rents and children, of brothers and sisters. To
say that the moral government of God deals
largely in such matters is the same as saying
that his providential government is ever power
fully busy in the same.
2. Civil Government.
In all large communities, present or past, we
see persons making laws in regard to the mu
tual relations of men, trying cases of dispute
arising under those laws, and looking after their
enforcement. Under the name of patriarchate,
or monarchy, or aristocracy, or republic, or
democracy, civil government has had our whole
race in its hand as far back as history casts
light. It must be confessed that its doings
have not always been perfectly satisfactory.
We have heard of great injustices and op
pressions at its hands. Bad laws, bad magis
trates, unfaithful judges and courts, are no
novelties in any land ; and in some lands they
are the rule rather than the exceptions. But
such evils are excrescences — no more essential
to a civil government than warts or rags are to
a man. Nothing is essential to it but a system
of human arrangements for defining and con-
trolling the conduct of men toward each other.
Such a system, as it may be, and indeed as it is,

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 95
is an undeniable blessing. The worst govern
ment that ever was is better than no govern
ment at all. And the best conceivable, one
rooting itself thoroughly in Christian principles,
is an unspeakable godsend to any community.
This is conceded by all respectable and reason
able people. A Nihilist is either a rogue, a
madman, or a fool.
Civil government settles disputes, prevents
personal retaliations, punishes crimes, puts in
fear the vicious elements of society, secures the
safety and order necessary to industry and en
terprise and thrift, justly distributes the public
burdens, enforces reasonable subordinations,
unites the resources of the people for public
education and other expensive works of gen
eral concern, conducts international intercourse
and provides for the public defence. In short,
it is a blessed substitute for anarchy.
What does anarchy mean, in the present
state of human nature? It means all the vicious
and criminal classes let loose to a carnival of
debauchery, violence, robbery and murder. This
at once begets unlimited peril, terror, conflict
and retaliation. In the stormy, boiling whirl
pool and " madding crowd " all productive in
dustries and thrift and comfort disappear till
some strong arm is bared and raised aloft to
govern. " God bless that strong arm !" shout

96 ECCE TERRA.
*fie peoples ; " the Reign of Terror is too much
for us ; thanks for a Napoleon ! He is a har
bor from an intolerable storm, a heavenly refuge
from an earthly hell."
When we are told that this indispensable and
world-wide institution came primarily from God,
instead of being surprised at the news, and feel
ing under the necessity of laboriously explaining
its consistency with the goodness of an Almighty
Ruler, we say that its consistency is as evident
as the sun at clear noon — we even say that civil
government is an institution which God may
well have positively and personally ordained
and established, as well as defended and cher
ished. And this is what the Bible says he has done.
Not only does it show God "setting up one and
putting down another" particular ruler at his
pleasure, not only does it show him dictating
to all rulers the principles on which they must
govern, and requiring for them honor and obe
dience from the people, but it also declares that
" the powers that be are ordained of God, and
that whosoever resisteth the power resisteth
the ordinance of God." Thus God is not
merely a wind that sways the wood at its
pleasure, but is also the soil out of which the
wood springs and from which it gets all its
nourishment.

illustration by great examples. qj
3. Nations.
We find mankind broken up into large
masses, each under its own civil government.
Profane history does not carry us back to the
time when it was otherwise.
At first glance, one might think this not to
be one of the bright facts of the world. What
envies, jealousies, hatreds, bad faiths, wars,
wastes of public treasures, are often found in
connection with the division of mankind into
separate nations ! But really, when one comes
to think of it, the separation of mankind into
nations does not necessarily involve such evils.
We can conceive of different governments, as
well as different individuals, living quietly side
by side in generous fellowship and mutual help
fulness. This has been, and can be again. The
evils complained of would not cease if all men
were brought under one huge civil government.
Are there no jealousies and contests between
States of the same republic? no civil wars be
tween Red Roses and White, between Guelphs
and Ghibellines, between Cavaliers and Round
heads, between North and South ?
Just imagine a single government undertak
ing to govern all mankind ! How impossible
for it to adapt itself well to the widely-differing
tastes, habits, social and moral conditions of so
many different peoples from New England to
7

98 ECCE TERRA.
Dahomey! How impossible for it even thor
oughly to supervise so vast a region ! How im
possible for it promptly to meet, even if it could
keep well aware of, the ever-changing situation
and needs of countries twelve thousand miles
away from its capital ! What multitudes of of
ficials, vast patronage and opportunities for po
litical corruption of all sorts ! What a danger
ous accumulation of power in the hands of the
man or set of men who have at command the
resources of some fourteen hundred millions
of people ! Nor could unity be maintained for
any length of time. Like gravity or light, the
force of civil government varies inversely as
the square of the distance from its source.
How much is Constantinople felt among the
Koords, or Washington among the frontier
hunters of Alaska ? Though the centre were
quiet, the circumference would be in a state of
chronic revolution at the rate of a thousand
miles an hour. What centrifugalisms ! What
breaking off of zones and planets ! — for once
evolution coming true. The huge, cumbrous
machine would shake to pieces by its own
motion ; the Great Eastern, whose very size
makes it unmanageable, would founder in the
storm which smaller and snugger crafts easily
outride. As to what would be best for a race ideally

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 99
perfect we will not undertake to say. But for
such a race as ours is, and always has been, it
is plainly better for purposes of civil govern
ment that it should be broken up into commu
nities of manageable size. Small farms are
most profitable. Armies beyond a certain size
cannot be well handled. Many independent
freeholds are better for a country than a single
mammoth estate. Schools, colleges, and even
churches, cannot include over a certain number
of persons without becoming unwieldy. We
object to having all our American benevolent
societies consolidated into one — much more
should we object to the consolidation of all
the societies of Christendom. It would be like
chaining together all the shipping of the world
in one fleet and under one captain. " Divide
and conquer" is the motto in all such cases.
And so it must be in this case of civil govern
ment. To secure the best results the one must
become many — the great numeral be resolved
into factors, if not into terms. In no other way
can so vast a field be thoroughly supervised
and managed — managed with a due regard to
the different characters and interests of differ
ent sections. But in this way the peculiarities
of all sections may be pleasantly accommodated,
while all may live quietly, side by side, on the
best terms — a brotherhood of nations.

IOO ECCE TERRA.
So the division of mankind into distinct na^
tions, instead of being a curse, is a blessing;
as it seems to me, a very great blessing. As
such it harmonizes perfectly, not only with the
doctrine that a divine Hand is in it (as indeed
it is in sin itself), but also with the doctrine
that it proceeds directly from that Hand — that
it exists by the express appointment and sov
ereign personal action of God. As says the
Bible. In the infancy of the race, when it was
yet one in place and speech, God by a personal
act of sovereignty confounded that one speech
into many tongues, that so the unity of man
kind might be broken up, and the great river
of humanity go forth through the world in many
irrigating streams whose freshets banks can re
strain and bridges span.
4. Literature, Science and Art.
At the present time we find in many lands a
vast body of most useful books — books that in
struct the ignorant, refresh the weary, spur the
sluggish, console the afflicted, guard the tempt
ed, enlarge and discipline at the same time both
the intellectual and moral faculties, show what
truth and virtue and God are, and incite toward
them. They are histories, biographies, poems,
epistles, travels, essays, orations, works of imag
ination, scientific works — falling on us like au-

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. IOI
tumn leaves, and, like them, enriching where
they fall. How much we owe to some of these
works ! How vastly have books of science ex
panded our horizon, educated the young, em
powered our civilization, magnified our concep
tions of the Author of nature, and ministered
to the reverence and devotion and obedience
of good men ! This more especially in late
years. But in every age, from Moses and
Homer and Confucius and the star-gazers of
Chaldea downward, on baked bricks or stony
monuments, on plates of metal or skin or paper,
some measure of the civilizing, refining and ele
vating influence of literature and science has
o
been felt.
And in our own time these public benefac
tors have a large family of handmaids and chil
dren. Such are the mechanic arts, with their
innumerable inventions, which have multiplied,
almost beyond comprehension, the safeties, com
forts, powers and ornaments of both human
and brute life. Such are the fine arts of
architecture, sculpture, painting and music.
What feasts of sweetness and beauty and gran
deur have these spread on golden tables for
hungry souls who crave something besides the
plain bread of this workaday world ! — children
as they are of Him who paints the flower and the
bird of paradise, chisels the sculptor's models,

102 ECCE TERRA.
sings in winds and oceans, and builds the great
dome above us with its pantheons of stellar
systems. Between these two forms of art,
peasants are now equipped like kings. Those
mines on the surface of the earth which we
call warehouses and museums are richer than
any mines below the surface. You cannot
travel a few miles with exploring eyes in such a
country as this without finding more triumphs
of useful ingenuity, more exquisite treatises on
the sublime and beautiful in stone or wood or
metal, than tongue can well tell. What thrills
and exaltations in the presence of statues and
paintings and templed piles and the music that
" lifts a mortal to the skies or draws an angel
down"! How bare society would be if all that
art has done for it should be taken away ! It
would be like a great house the day after the
moving, or like the firmament with all its stars
painted out. The colors are wiped off from
nature, the hands and feet of the world are
cut off, the rich gamut of sounds is leveled
to a monotone, and that a humdrum.
Of course, evils are found connected with
these blessings. There are bad books, shame
ful and shameless sculptures and pictures, tem
ples and colisea that ought never to have been
built, science that "puffeth up" and blasphemes
God, hurtful and even " devilish " inventions.

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. IO3
But these are excrescences — the wens and
warts and cancers that sometimes grow on a
man. Cannot he be a man without them, and
even a truer and completer man ? Cannot we
go through a conservatory and cast out all the
weeds, and still have a beautiful conservatory
left — indeed, have it all the truer and brighter
for that weeding and outcasting ? It is not es
sential to literature that it be frivolous and
corrupting ; to science, that it be conceited or
materialistic ; to art, that it be a prodigal or a
wanton. In themselves they are such things
as may flourish in heaven itself. Call them the
ornaments, if not the necessities, of earth. A
man may prostrate others and himself with a
loaf of bread. He may strangle himself in a
spring as pure and sweet as man ever drank
from, or heaven ever saw itself in. But bless
ed be our bread and water, nevertheless !
And blessed be literature and science and art,
though sometimes perverted, and even pos
sessed with a devil !
Now, such bright facts do not need to be
laboriously shown to be consistent with a good
divine Hand being in them. Their consistency
is seen at a glance. They are even seen to be
such things as the Hand might positively ap
point, promote, and even originate by a direct
personal act, without suggesting a difficulty as

104 ECCE TERRA.
to its goodness, but rather illustrating, empha
sizing and proclaiming that goodness.
And this is what the Bible says the Hand
does. It not only says that " every good and
perfect gift is from above," that " God giveth
wisdom," that " if a man lack wisdom let him
ask of God," but it gives particular instances
of literature, science and art proceeding
directly from his sovereign hand ; as in the
case of Bezaleel and Aholiab, the artists of the
tabernacle ; of Solomon, who built the temple
after the "patterns" given by God to David, and
to whom God gave "a wise and understanding
heart" in the science of government, not to say
in natural history ; of Daniel and his compan
ions, to whom God "gave skill in all learning
and wisdom ;" of the writers of the Old and
New Testament, every man of whom " spake
as he was moved by the Holy Ghost." And
in every age the experience of not a few is to
the effect that " to have prayed well is to have
studied well " — whether as artist or inventor
or author or scientist. 5. Enjoyments.
That there are enjoyments which do not de
serve the name because of their sinful and, in
the end, hurtful character, is plain. But it is
equall)' plain that there are now in the world,

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 105
and have been through all the known ages, al
most innumerable other enjoyments of a sound,
wholesome and most desirable sort — from the
merely physical gratification of eating when
hungry, drinking when thirsty, resting when
weary, up through long shining files to the
rapture of a saint just unfolding solar wings
for heaven. Think of sportive youth " tread
ing in air," of health bounding like the steed of
the desert, of the joy of harvest, of the pleas
ures of the imagination, of the delights of
knowledge, of the gratifications of taste in con-
nection with the grand and beautiful in nature
and art, of thrills of inventors and discoverers,
of the profound satisfactions in difficulties over
come, temptations resisted, virtues achieved,
useful things unselfishly done, the good name
that is better than great riches honorably ac
quired ; think of " sweet peace of conscience,
heavenly guest," the brightness of celestial con
solations and hopes, the. peace that flows like
a river, the "joy unspeakable and full of glo
ry" of the ripest Christian, glorious deathbeds
which are triumphal chariots and mounts of
transfiguration and ascension ! Surely, if the
world should lose all such things it would lose
more than a purple robe. And they are so
many — so very many ! Are there any stars in
the Galaxy under the broadest of telescopes ?

Io6 ECCE TERRA.
Any light-shafts in the air when the great
archer-sun stands in the zenith and empties
his quiver?
If we are told that a divine Hand is active in
all these sound enjoyments — preparing the way
for them, directing their time and other circum
stances, warding off enemies, widening and lift
ing, resisting abuses, always striving to get out
of them the greatest possible good — we see
nothing in the assertion that looks like calling
in question the goodness of God. On the con
trary, we can allow that he has produced these
enjoyments of set purpose and with his own
right hand, and yet find in the fact only an
illustration and emphasis of his goodness. That
he does sometimes directly originate such enjoy
ments is plain from the fact that men often do
as much, and might do it still oftener. Can God
do less than man ? Do not our consciences,
with all their precious " well-dones," come from
his framing hand ? And do we not read of the
"Comforter," and of the "joy of the Holy
Ghost," and of the " fruit of the Spirit which
is joy "? So it is not always as the first link in
a long golden chain of causes that God appears
in such passages as the following : " My peace
I give unto you ;" "God giveth to a man that is
good in his sight wisdom and knowledge and
joy ;" " He giveth songs in the night."

illustration by great examples. io7
6. Virtues and Usefulnesses.
We have had to open eyes on depravities
and sins and harms as entering largely into
the history of the world. But history has a per
contra. Veins of silver and gold, sometimes
wonderfully rich in great nuggets of pure metal
and precious stones, run through the dark and
flinty ground. Amiabilities, fortitudes, candors,
generosities, pities, mercy, justice, honesty,
unselfishness, purity, integrity, conscientious
ness, resignation, patience, philanthropy, mor
ality, piety, virtue, magnanimity, holiness — the
things which a hundred such words are used
to signify — are no poetical fictions, but real
existences ever turning up in our observation
and reading. Names are often misapplied.
All is not gold that glitters. That is often
called integrity or virtue which is only an imi
tation, sorry or otherwise. But none of us
doubt that there are almost innumerable ex
amples in actual life of what deserves such a
grand name — sometimes most dazzling exam
ples, not only of single virtues, but of clusters
of them in the same person ; not only of mo
mentary actions, but of long careers of splen
did goodness and usefulness. We shade our
eyes from the glory. Shall we say, " Hail, Cato
the Censor, Scipio the continent, Socrates the

108 ECCE TERRA.
brave lover of truth and hater of shams"? At
least we will say, " Hail, Abraham the faithful,
Joseph the chaste, Moses the meek, Daniel the
incorruptible! Hail, holy prophets and apostles,
martyrs and confessors, whose principles were
stronger than death ! Hail, men in every age
who have put on righteousness as a robe and a
diadem, saviors of nations, examples to the ages,
ornaments of human nature, the bulwarks of
public morals, the glory of history — sometimes
learned and sometimes ignorant, now robed
in serge and now in purple, here great ban
nered triremes intellectually and there little
dories, great calcium-lights of goodness hid
away in lowly corners or blazing away from
the gilded domes and pinnacles of the world,
—all hail!"
Such things are the loveliest and grandest
of all beneath the sun — are brighter than the
sun itself. All men know it, all candid men
confess it. Such heroically righteous lives as
some men have lived ! They astonish me, they
thrill me. I seem to see all the fine arts crys
tallized into a man. I turn my back on sunrises
and sunsets. I turn away from galleries, Uffizis
or Pittis, flanked with famous masterpieces, even
from that sapphire gallery whose masterpieces
are sun and moon and stars, — turn away to gaze
absorbedly on something more masterly still, on

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. IO9
some glorious beggar of whom the world is not
worthy. Saints of God ! Salt of the earth !
Lights of the world ! Stately ships ploughing
through electric seas that glow and flame be
hind them ! Bright rivers streaming away to
a golden ocean, and, as they go, enriching the
earth and reflecting the glory of the sky! Does
any one contradict?
Do such things as these give trouble to one
who is trying to justify the ways of God to
men ? When he is told that God's hand is in
them, he says at once, " I can well believe it —
can even believe that God ardently desires,
deliberately plans for and personally works,
such excellent things. They are so excellent !
so clearly, wholly and superbly excellent !
Just what one would have expected from such
a Being. They are illustrations of him, and
not shadows. They are chords, and not dis
cords. They are spurs to faith, and not re
pressing bits." And faith quickens as we read
that God " creates in men new hearts," that he
"works in them to will and do," that all vir
tues are "fruits of the Spirit," and that we must
cry out to him, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be
done on earth as it is in heaven."
But besides virtues and virtuous careers
there have been many useful actions and lives
which cannot be called virtuous. Confessedly

I IO ECCE TERRA.
bad men sometimes propose measures, start
enterprises, perform deeds of great public ser
vice. They are statesmen, warriors, scholars,
orators and many others of humbler name, who,
led mainly by pride and a selfish ambition, have
yet become saviors of nations and benefactors
of the race. They builded better than they
knew. Like Columbus, without design they
gave a new world to free institutions and a free
religion. History abounds in such useful things,
as well as in useful events that flow from other
sources than men; such as frosts that put a stop
to the pestilence, a storm that purifies the air, a
fire that cleans out the city slums and begins a
new era of hope and improvement for the de
voured Sodom. When religion comes forward
to say that there is an overruling providence in
these events, we see nothing in them that even
seems to object. All that we see is confirma
tory. We have a harmony instead of a discord.
The facts are just as if the doctrine were true.
So far as they are concerned, lights instead of
shadows are cast on the old-time teaching that
" there is a divinity that shapes our ends, rough
hew them as we will."
7. Great Victories of Truth and Right.
I do not know what my readers would call
such victories. We might differ somewhat as

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. Ill
to particulars. But we would not differ on this
— viz. that in the long stretch of the past there
have been many cases in which truth has bat
tled with error, right with wrong, good causes
with bad, and at last signally triumphed. To
me such triumphs are found in the success of
the Greeks over Xerxes, of the Maccabees over
the Syrians, of Constantine over Maxentius, of
Alfred the Great over the Northmen, of Bruce
over the Southrons, of the Netherlands over
Spain, of William of Orange over the Romanist
Stuarts — in the success of education over illit
eracy, of constitutionalism over absolutism, of
law over anarchy, of tolerance over intolerance,
of the Renaissance over the Dark Ages, of the
' Copernican astronomy over the Ptolemaic, of
Bacon over Aristotle, of civilization over the
barricades of Africa, of the Cross over the
Crescent, of God over Jupiter and other stones
whether rudely or beautifully chiseled ; noting
especially the wonderful success of Christian
missions in the gradual amelioration of life at
large. If you hesitate on some of these examples,
put others in their place to your satisfaction,
and then join me in saying that the number of
such shining victories is not inconsiderable, that
they have often been exceedingly brilliant, and
that sometimes they have run together as do

112 ECCE TERRA.
contiguous fires, and gloriously streamed away
over the world as a broad luminous river with
many tributaries ; as when Kepler and Bacon
and Galileo and Newton joined hands with
Columbus and Luther and Erasmus and many
another in dissipating medievalism, and in giv
ing new worlds, above and below, to mankind ;
and, still more notably, in the case of the later
Protestant missions.
One feels like singing the songs of Miriam
and Deborah over such victories. Glorious
bonfires among the ages, burning up refuse
and purifying the air; beacons of warning to
the bad and of courage to the good; earth-
stars which the sky-stars almost envy, but at
last conclude to call brothers, — it is a smooth*
way for our theism among these. We can ad
mit that a good divine Hand is active in such
things to any extent without being at all stum
bled. We could even see a positive illustration
and proclamation of his goodness were God
himself to descend personally into the field of
battle, and with his own right hand hew the way
to victory. That he sometimes actually does
what amounts to this, will be most readily ad
mitted by him who has most fully drank into
the spirit of those Scriptures which tell of the
Lord who is mighty in battle, who marshals
Armageddons, who girds his sword on his thigh,

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. II3
and rides prosperously because of truth and
meekness and righteousness.
8. Richly- deserved Calamities.
"And it shall come to pass that the ears of
every one that heareth shall tingle." The
calamity was so great. But, while we are
startled, our sense of justice is not shocked.
The sufferers deserved what they suffered. It
was right that such high-handed evil-doers
should be made an example of. I mean you,
Adam and Eve, driven from the happy garden
which you have forfeited by deliberate disobe
dience. I mean you, antediluvians, who filled
the earth with violence and impiety, and then
were swept clean away by the unsparing Flood.
I mean you, Sodomites, whose vices first smelt
to heaven, and then the brimstone smoke of
your burning. I mean you, Egypt, enslaving
God's people four hundred years, and then
flailed with plagues and buried under the Red
Sea. I mean you, Babylon or Nineveh, proud
spoiler of the nations with an eye that never
pitied, and then given over to spoilers who did
to you as you had done to others. I mean you,
backsliding Israel, apostatizing to the infinite
abominations of the heathen, and then becom
ing the Lost Tribes. And you, ye Jews, cruci
fying the Lord of glory, and then scattered and

114 ECCE TERRA.
peeled among all nations. And you, Spain,
sickening history with your brutal cruelties in
the New World, and then hunted to the mean
est place among European nations. And you,
ye Neros and Caligulas and Hyder Alis, who
sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind.
From the beginning till now hard things have
" blurted out " on hard men — not with regular
ity, as though this world were one of retribu
tion, but as occasional hints that Heaven is not
dead nor asleep, as trumpet-blasts sent forward
at irregular intervals from the advancing armies
of avenging Justice to warn the sinner that they
are on their way and will arrive sooner or later.
I do not know what would become of this dar
ing, reckless, God-forgetting world if such
"alarums" did not sometimes burst out on
men in advance of the judgment day. All
good men say Amen to them. They are fitting
things, a salutary lesson, a just rebuke.
Sad as are many things about such judg
ments, all their shadows point away from God,
as do those of all natural objects (Sinai, Geri-
zim and Calvary included) away from the sun.
We can allow that his hand is in them, and
even that it is the volcanic mouth from which
the chastising lava flows, and yet see in that
lava only the fact that God is righteous as well
as mighty. In the Old Testament how many

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 115
great and sore judgments does he threaten for
great and sore guilt ! How many actual disas
ters to nations and individuals are there traced
to his sovereign decree chastising for wrong
done ! How many vials of wrath do the angels
of the Apocalypse pour out at his bidding on
the guilty nations ! In both Old Testament and
New how much after this strain : " Thus saith
the Lord, I send my four sore judgments on
Jerusalem — the sword and the famine and the
noisome beast and the pestilence" ! Surely,
"God distributeth sorrows in his anger." In
such passages we almost see the Hand smiting
offenders ; and as we see we feel bound to say,
"Just and true are thy judgments, O Lord."
They are precisely what we should have ex
pected from the best of rulers. An objection ?
Rather an emphasis and illustration of the
doctrine that the great Hand that made all is
in all. 9. Respites of Sinners.
But disaster does not always immediately fol
low sin. Even gross sins — nay, sins that seem
superlative and shocking beyond endurance —
are generally committed without Heaven mak
ing any sign. The earth is just as green, the
sky just as hlue, and the sinner just as un
harmed as ever. And so for long periods.
Suns rise and set, month after month glides

Il6 ECCE TERRA.
quietly away, even years add themselves to
years, and yet the scourge does not fall. Some
hastily say, "Is there not injustice here?" or,
" Does God care?" or, " Is there any God to no
tice and punish ?" And so, " because sentence
against an evil work is not executed speedily,
the hearts of the sons of men are fully set in
them to do evil." But yet we all know, when
we reflect a moment, that forbearance and pa
tience and long-suffering, so far from being
stumbling things, are really after the manner
of a good king who has supreme confidence in
the stability of his throne and wishes to do his
utmost in the way of sparing and reclaiming.
It is just what one would expect from a strong
and benevolent government. It is a positive
illustration of both its goodness and its
strength. And so we easily and naturally
say, as we notice what respites sinners gene
rally have, " God is waiting to be gracious.
He is keeping the door open for an escape.
He is 'not slack concerning his promise as men
count slackness, but is long-suffering to us-
ward, not willing that any should perish, but
that all should come to repentance.' " In short,
when we are told that the hand of a merciful
King is in these forbearances, that they are a
leading feature of his scheme of government,
we see nothing to object, but rather see the

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 117
facts greeting the doctrine with friendly voice
and embracing arms.
10. The Reign of Law.
This is one of the plainest of facts in the ma
terial kingdom. Here, from the orbs of the
sky to the grass-blades beneath our feet,
everything acts or changes according to fixed
modes. We find laws of heat, of light, of
chemistry, of health, of solids, of gases — in
short, of all that we know in the heavens and
earth. It is fashionable not only to allow this,
but to insist on it as being one of the most im
portant and grand of facts. In historic matters
the reign of law is not so evident ; but still it is
easy to see that even such matters are largely
affected by the orderly brute forces in which
they are embosomed ; and, when long periods
and many individuals are taken into account,
laws begin to show themselves, so that Social
and Political Science finds a foundation for
itself while saying, "The thing that has been
is the thing that shall be, and there is nothing
new under the sun."
What a useful fact this is ! However well it
may be for God occasionally to assert his su
premacy over nature and accredit his messages
to men by miracles, it would be a general catas
trophe if this were to become a haphazard

Il8 ECCE TERRA.
world, without fixed modes and sequences.
Through these alone is science possible. By
them alone does experience become a teacher
to us. Without them history throws no light
on our path, and we are no longer able to
stand on the shoulders of other generations
and so see farther than they. Were chance
suddenly to take the place of law in the uni
verse, it would practically nullify all the accum
ulations of knowledge during bygone centuries.
The reign of law, therefore, casts lights, and
not shadows, in the direction of God and his
government. It is a harmony instead of an in
consistency with our theology. We expect
from every human government set methods
of administration which can be depended on ;
and we certainly should expect no less from
the great Sovereign above, of whom it is writ
ten that he makes the dayspring to know its
place and the sun to know his going down, ap
points the moon for seasons, causes that seed
time and harvest shall not fail, sets bars and
doors to the deep, establishes the ordinances
of heaven and all the ends of the earth. We
have a verisimilitude and illustration of the di
vine goodness instead of a denial or suspicion.
Our enumeration of bright facts might be
carried much farther. That the system of

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. II9
things in which we live is largely mysterious
to such beings as ourselves ; that in some way
the main religious ideas have been conserved
all over the world in all ages ; that there are
great scope and demand for faith in God
among men ; that sin and error are allowed to
show out, to some extent, their nature by their
fruits ; that the world is made a thorny one
for sinners ; that, while respite and forbearance
are the rule with men, there are occasional out
bursts of judgment on signal offenders ; that
even the good find life disciplinary, suffer more
or less from the follies and sins of the bad, and
so have a personal interest in promoting public
intelligence and virtue ; that sin is largely over
ruled for good ; that there are in the world
grand opportunities for cultivating patience,
courage, fortitude, sympathy, helpfulness and
many good and noble traits ; that light and
other advantages are apt to be withdrawn on
abuse; that God hides himself from the wicked
and reveals himself more and more to the good,
— I say, that great numbers of such reasonable
and useful facts are just what we should look
for in a scheme of things through all parts of
which sways and works a divine Hand. And
they are what we actually find. Do they frown
on our doctrine ? Nay, they look toward it
with friendly and even affectionate eyes.

120 ECCE TERRA.
Whatever may be thought of some noisome
inorganic substances (certainly no more noi
some than sin), such useful things as water,
air and light accord perfectly with the idea
of a good God who cherishes, and even made,
them. Whatever may be thought of some nox
ious plants (certainly no more noxious than sin),
such useful things as grass and flowers and
fruits and grains and forests are just what one
would expect a good divine Power to foster,
and even make. Whatever may be thought of
some venomous animals (certainly no more ven
omous than sin), such things as the more useful
domestic animals and many birds of wondrous
beauty or song are certainly the very opposite
of objections to the idea that a good God is to
them both a Providence and a Maker. What
ever may be thought of sin and its related
evils (certainly not irreconcilables) , such things
as happiness, virtue, truth, the great ethnic in
stitutions which furnish these a congenial Strong
er o
hold, the brilliant victories won in the name of
science, humanity or God, — I say, these are what,
a priori, we should suppose would find active
support, if not origin, in a benevolent divine
Hand. They are just the children to come
from such a parent, just the music to sound
from such lips, just the rays to shoot from
such a sun.

VI.
ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES.
PART THIRD.

VI.
ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES.
PART THIRD.
GREAT FACTS POSITIVELY DEMANDING.
TO complete our argument we need to
illustrate the following proposition :
III. Not a Few Facts positively Demand the
Presence in them of a Divine Hand.
Under this head it is proposed to cite only
such facts as can be shown to be of signal
greatness on their own account, as well as on
account of the great Hand that is in them.
Such facts quicken interest, impress the mem
ory, arouse and empower the thought as less
striking facts cannot. They seem specially
worthy of a divine interposition. They trend
toward the supernatural, naturally invite our
faith in "that direction, and, in some cases, al
most contain an incipient promise that if we
look for a divine Hand we shall find it. And,
if it is found, they do for it what a rich frame
does for a great painting, or a choice setting
123

124 ECCE TERRA.
does for a precious jewel. Accordingly, I ask
particular attention to the greatness of the facts
now to be cited. i. Matter.
What is that ultimate material of which the
earth is composed ? Let him answer who can.
The profoundest and acutest minds have now
for ages been straining away at the question,
and yet the solution seems as far off as ever.
Matter is still a great mystery. And yet we
know some striking things about it.
The last atoms composing any given bit of
matter are almost infinitely small. Neither our
eyes nor our instruments can discern them.
The smallest bit of dust that we can take up
on the point of a knife, or indeed can see by
a microscope magnifying two hundred and fifty
thousand times, is almost a world to one of its
last particles. A grain of musk will give a
sensible odor through a room for twenty years.
This it does by filling the air with its particles,
but so inconceivably small are these that if the
musk is weighed at the end of the twenty years
no loss of weight can be noticed. A grain of
copper dissolved in nitric acid will give a blue
color to three pints of water. Each atom of
the water must have something of the copper,
which is thus separated into no less than one

IL L US TRA TION BY GREAT EX A MPL ES. 1 2 5
hundred million parts. Eight ounces of spider-
web would go round the earth about a thousand
times — that is, would stretch twenty-four mil
lions of miles.
Such are the atoms ! And yet they are
heaped together in such numbers as to make
the great earth. How many of them are there
in a globe eight thousand miles through? "As
the sand on the sea-shore innumerable " is a
strong comparison, but right in its neighbor
hood lies the material for another wonderfully
stronger. There are, according to present knowledge,
some sixty different sorts of these infinitely
small particles. They must differ from each
other as widely in qualities as do the widely-
different substances they compose. Each of
them is a crystal, having a symmetrical form
peculiar to itself. Each of them has solved for
itself the problem of perpetual motion, being in
a state of continual transfer from one object to
another, sometimes at the rate of more than one
hundred and eighty thousand miles a second,
and some scientists say eight million times this
figure. Think of the marvels of chemical affinities;
of the stupendous velocities and mechanical
forces that belong to what we call heat, light,
electricity ; of the profound mystery of these

126 ECCE TERRA.
things, whether they be considered elemental,
matter or only states of such matter; of that
astounding property of gravity in virtue of
which each atom attracts at the same instant
every other atom, however remote, through the
whole universe — acts where it is not, acts at
infinite distances from itself, acts on an infinite
number of things at the same moment. Un
doubtedly, the atoms are the last hiding-places
of that great mystery which we call physical
force. They are the fountains and seeds, the
fathers and mothers, of those great dynamics
that sometimes shake the world.
Now, heathen philosophers have largely sup
posed matter to be eternal. In this respect,
as in many others, they are followed by atheists
of the present day. But believers in God and
the Scriptures are one in the opinion that mat
ter was strictly created — made out of nothing.
The statements of the Bible in regard to the
power of the Almighty are so intense and
broad, and even scornful of limitations ; so
mighty an exception would have to be made
to the " all things were made by him, and without
him was not anything made that was made" if we
must except the whole infinite kingdom of ma
terial substance with its various elements, pro
perties, forces and natural combinations ; the
power to create matter differs so little, if at all,

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 27
as regards difficulty of conception, from other
attributes freely ascribed to God in his word,
such as self-existence, intuitive knowledge of
all things, incessant and eternal vigilance and
action without weariness, power to accomplish
the grandest results instantaneously at any dis
tance simply by willing, power to make souls —
whether viewed as being in their very nature
thinking, feeling, willing, moral substances, or
as substances to which these qualities have
been given by organization or otherwise ; — in
a word, the drift of revelation is such as to
carry all unresisting minds into the presence
of a Creator. Especially after they have been
set forward by such a special current as this :
"The things that are seen were not made of
things that do appear!'
So, once the regions of space, now occupied
by the worlds, were wholly vacant of them.
Suddenly the vacancy became occupied by
such earthy substances as we see around us.
Out of the black waters of pure zero flashed
the oxygen, the nitrogen, the hydrogen, the car
bon and whatever other elements enter into the
ultimate substratum of material nature — wheth
er that just at hand in our own planet or yonder
in the fires of the sun, or still yonder in the
far-away stars seen only by the great eye of
the largest telescope, or not seen at all by man.

128 ECCE TERRA.
Whence that wondrous birth? Things do
not make themselves, save in the philosophy
of babyhood. On our own plane we find no
force that even suggests the possibility of
producing something out of nothing. It is
only when we look up, far up, until at last our
wearied and dazzled sight reaches the utmost
summit of being, and Him to whom "all things
are possible," that we reach our answer. Be
hold the Creator ! Here is One who is not
merely an infinitely enlarged man, differing
from us only in degree, but One whose nature
differs from ours in kind — possessing that most
incomprehensible though credible faculty of
doing all things without means of doing, as
well as of knowing all things without means
of knowing.
"Ex nihilo nihil fit" is a mistake. There is
a better as well as an older maxim to substitute
for it, which we beg leave to commend to the
notice of "philosophers" — viz.: "In the begin
ning God created the heavens and the earth."
When that beginning was we cannot tell. We
cannot tell whether it was at one time or at
many times. For aught we know, creation
may have been taking place at intervals all
along a past eternity — may be taking place
still. Why could not the power that calls
matter from nothing insert at any moment

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 29
new masses of matter among the old, so as
not to destroy the equilibrium of the system,
only readjusting it? Certainly, this we know,
that whenever creation has occurred it has been
by divine power. Also, the time or times of
the event, the places in boundless space where
it took place, the various sorts of matter made
and their proportion to each other, must have
been fixed upon by the divine Will.
2. A Habitable Globe.
The material elements which God created
came together into a habitable earth. At first
no such forms of organic life as we now see
could exist among them — especially as, Geol
ogy being witness, they were all mingled in
one great fiery ocean convulsed with such ter
rible storms as are now never seen. But grad
ually they came together in such ways that
vegetables, brute animals, and at last men,
could not only live on the earth, but flourish.
Especially, large and striking provision slowly
gathered for man.
He would need air, water, dry land ; and
somehow these separated out of the original
chaos of elements. He would need stores of
metals, medicines, marbles, oils and many other
substances for his trades and arts ; somehow
these came to be stored away in the bowels of

130 ECCE TERRA.
the earth. He would need to have the prim
itive rocks broken down into fertile soils ; and
somehow a large part of the earth's crust was
ground into atoms. He would need a great
variety of vegetable products for food, fuel,
clothing, building, beauty ; somehow the ground
came into that state that it could take on robes
of grass and flowers and grains and fruits and
forests. He would need various brutes for
food, service, knowledge ; somehow suitable
conditions for them appeared in the air, in
the waters, on the dry land.
He would need a broken surface to give
wide outlooks, to diversify and beautify the
landscape, to give motion and purity to water
and air, to make accessible the rich mineral
deposits ; somehow the strata were broken and
tilted and lifted into hills and mountains, from
which rivers and rivulets innumerable were
running their fruitful and forceful courses to
the sea. He would need the alternations of
day and night to meet the alternate demands
in his constitution for labor and rest, as well as
to enlarge his outlook on the creation ; some
how the earth took to moving on an axis. He
would need a variety of seasons to give a grate
ful and healthful change to his occupation and
experiences ; somehow the earth came to re
volve about the sun at a suitable distance and

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. I3I
speed and with an axis suitably inclined to its
plane of revolution. He would need certain
bounds for the winds, rains, snows, heats,
colds ; somehow such general limitations were
found checking the great natural forces in the
interest of human safety.
In short, he would need the raw materials
out of which to make the highest condition of
humanity yet seen, with all its comforts, con
veniences and powers ; and, somehow, were
stored away, as if for him, all the brute forces,
harness, cars and tramways by which to bring
in the nineteenth century with its trades, com
merce, inventions and discoveries, arts and sci
ences, educations, temples, cities, wonders.
Now, here is a series of historical events ex
tending over vast periods of time and making
an immense procession of adaptations and
preparations for the organic races, of which
we have instanced only a few broad classes.
The only two explanations that would be
offered at the present day are — (i) the theory
of natural development, which makes the or
ganic races the natural outcome of earlier con
structions with their environments, and so in
harmony with them ; and (2) the theory of a
direct divine purpose and action for securing
these preparations.
I have endeavored to show elsewhere that

132 ECCE TERRA.
matter in an elementary state is not able, of
itself, in process of time however long, to come
together into all that wide variety of complex
substances and arrangements actually found in
habitable globes. Otherwise, the actual heavens
and earth could not properly be appealed to in
proof of God — as is done in the Scriptures and
as has been done by natural religion from time
immemorial — because in that case we have al
ready a sufficient explanation of them in exist
ing material causes which may be eternal.
Besides, historical Genesis shows us the Spirit
of God acting amid the primitive chaos of ele
ments and bringing them into order and prep
aration for organic life on this earth. A part
of this preparation may have been sudden ; a
part of it we know from geology to have been
very gradual. But, whether sudden or gradual,
something more than the forces and laws of
matter was concerned in producing the won
derful constructions of the material theatre we
occupy. The supernatural was active. " The
worlds were framed by the word of God ;" he
" built all things." This is the only scriptural
or sufficient philosophy of the architectural
heavens and earth.
Supposing that God intended to stock the
earth with organic races, he would provide for
them, as far as possible, a suitable environment.

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 33
This is only after the manner of every wise
builder. Who does not aim to have the sur
roundings of the house he is about to build in
harmony with it ?
Notice yonder man, whom I happen to know.
He has large resources, has decided on the
plan and site of his mansion, and, while the
materials and agents are being gathered, is
busied in dealing with the grounds. He grades
them. He drains them. He draws out rocks
and gathers off surface-stones. He sets out
trees and vines. He makes a garden here, a
well there, a road yonder. He provides for
prospects, for health, for convenience, for
beauty. He is a landscape-gardener — all with
reference to the structure that is in due time
to arise — so that everything about it may make
with it a harmonious whole. And, from what I
know of the man's taste and judgment and re
sources of every kind, I am sure that, when his
great mansion is finished and stands in its place
amid the circumstances provided for it, the
whole will seem one delighfully self-congruous
picture — a chime of bells, the different parts of
the same tune, the petals of the same flower,
the complementary colors of the same white
light — even such a unit of construction that,
one part being given, every other can be in
ferred from it.

134 ECCE TERRA.
" Thus saith the Lord that created the heav
ens, God himself that formed the earth and
made it — he hath established it, he created it
not in vain, he formed it to be inhabited."
There is but One who can ask, " Where wast
thou when I laid the foundation of the earth?"
but One to whom we can say, "As for the world
and the fullness thereof, thou hast founded
them." Are not these inanimate constructions by
which the earth is made habitable such as to
tax heavily our powers of astonishment? The
atoms have come together into a palace.
If one could journey outward from the cen
tre of the earth, what a long train of marvels
he would see ! The whole core one huge con
flagration, tossing in inconceivable heat and
flame — flashing, billowing, roaring, as never
did surface-fires ; so hot that in it all sub
stances, even the most refractory in human
crucible, exist only as gases or as incandes
cent gases solidified ; mysteriously burning on
from age to age with no supplies of fuel from
without; a perpetual, self-feeding furnace that
helps warm the surface of the earth, but is kept
from burning it by the interposed rocky crust
through which it finds occasional vent and voice
in boiling springs, volcanoes and earthquakes.
Moving upward, we pass through what are

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 35
really successive chapters of a stone book in
which the eye of science reads the history of
untold ages of change and preparation — pass
ing gradually from a universal ocean of fire to
a universal ocean of water; and from this to
islands and continents long since buried, and
where reigned with alternate sway profound
quiet and awful convulsion, torrid and glacial
climates, and where slowly gathered (or rapid
ly) the wonders of crystallization ; vast stores
of the precious and useful metals ; rainbow-
gems fit for kings ; beds of coal and salt and
marl and medicine and marble ; caverns where
our torches beam on the weird architectures of
subterranean temples ; a system of underground
streams and rivers as vast and useful as that
above ground, so that if we sink a shaft almost
anywhere we come, sooner or later, to abun
dant water. At last we come out on the sur
face to see mountains whose tops we cannot
see, ranges of them that stretch across conti
nents ; great lakes and seas gilded with sun
light and silvered with moonlight ; Amazons
that sweep majestically thousands of miles to
oceans still more majestic, and whose sublime
bass fills the earth ; Niagaras of rapids and
cataracts, — all buried profoundly in a universal
ocean of air in whose pellucid depths swim
architectural clouds and snow-crystals and gra-

136 ECCE TERRA.
cious rains and the pomp of sunsets, rainbows
and auroras, and where rush the storms, flash
the lightnings and volley the thunders, — all
varied by the shifting glories of day and night
and of the revolving seasons. All through our
journey we have fallen in with dynamites of
force, either chained in rocky cells (or, still
more securely, in some chemical union) or
ranging abroad with stormy brow and earth
quaking tread, but yet in these days somehow
kept within such bounds as the general safety
of a habitable, world requires, so that colds and
heats and rains and winds and lightnings are
all under bonds not to pass certain limits of
violence. All through our journey, though it
led under the Arctic Circle, we have only to
smite the coldest stone, the frostiest air, or the
iceberg itself, to find that magazines of heat
are mysteriously stored away in the depths of
all things — enough, if brought out, to wrap
the world in flames. What a wonderful variety
of composite substances we have encountered,
from that grand melange of glowing gases in
the great central crucible, with their vociferous
unions and disunions, up through the dense
subterranean storehouses of the mineral world
to and around and above the globed surface ;
and all this vast variety made up mainly of
only some sixteen elements variously com-

ILLUSTRATJON BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 37
pounded according to the doctrine of definite
proportion ! How many results by how few
means ! What signal uses have already been
found in them ! how many new ones are being
found almost daily! — suggesting untold wealth
of use still lying behind in the shadow, and
clamorous to be discovered.
One man devotes the labor of a lifetime to
the science of crystals, another still to some
other small fraction of the furniture of this
habitable world. Does either lack enough to
do as the years go by? He hardly makes a
beginning on the wonders of his field, which is
merely one item of furniture in a palace twen
ty-four thousand miles in circuit.
3. Lower Organisms.
By these I mean vegetables, and brute ani
mals. Nothing but wonderful folly would deny
these to be wonderful things. What man
can make the like ? As a rule, the better in
formed one is in regard to them the more won
der-smitten he is. Especially if he has studied
through the lenses of a first-class microscope.
For the intimate structure of plants and ani
mals I must ask you to look at easily-obtainable
plates which picture specimens as they appear
under the best instruments. They show only

138 ECCE TERRA.
a few parts of objects all of whose parts are
almost equally curious and elaborate. The
mystery of a single leaf, or a reticulated spider's
eye, is quite beyond the probing of the pro-
foundest philosopher. Till used to it he lifts
up both hands in astonishment. If I could
condense all the anatomical details of recent
botanists and zoologists into a single picture,
speaking with all the colors of life to a single
glance of the eye, ah, what a glory of structural
workmanship would confound you !
Now, work out a problem of infinite varia
tions on these specimen structures, yet so that
they shall always remain beautifully adapted to
their place in nature. Do this out of scarcely
more than four sorts of chemical elements.
Then multiply these varieties by all the num
bers that can be got out of the multiplication
table by an expert, and sow these broadcast,
as from an inexhaustible granary, through the
immensities of air and sea and land till they
everywhere almost touch each other.
" Full nature swarms with life ; one wondrous mass
Of animals, or atoms organized,
Waiting the vital breath when parent Heaven
Shall bid his Spirit blow. The hoary fen,
In putrid streams, emits the living cloud
Of pestilence. Through subterranean cells,
Where searching sunbeams scarce can find a way,
Earth animated heaves ; and where the pool

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 39
Stands mantled o'er with green, invisible,
Amid the floating verdure, millions stray.
Each liquid too, whether it pierces, soothes,
Inflames, refreshes or exalts the taste.
With various forms abounds. Nor is the stream
Of purest crystal, nor the lucid air,
Though one transparent vacancy it seems,
Void of their unseen people."
Paint and proportion multitudes of these till
they glow with beauty — from the green blade
or leaf to the Victoria Regia, from the sculp
tured iridescent shell-fish to the bird of para
dise — and so dispose numbers of them as to glo
rify such landscapes as tourists go half round
the world to see. Swell some of them till they
rise more than three hundred feet into the air,
as the giant trees of the Yosemite, or as the
leviathans of the deep make it to "boil like a
pot ;" dwarf countless others, yet without sub
tracting a single vessel or pore or function, till
they pass out of sight of the sharpest-sighted
instrument that optician ever made ; fit the
parts of each so mathematically to each other
that when one finds a leaf or bone, however
small, he can infer the whole plant or animal
from it. Then fit them all, from the greatest
to the least, with that wonder which, in our
ignorance, we call life. Nay, at least in some
cases, give this life in advance of organization.
And, perhaps greatest wonder of all, let all

I40 ECCE TERRA.
these wonders come from little seeds or eggs
sometimes microscopic, sometimes thousands
of years old, always plain and unorganized to
all appearance under the best glasses. Does
each of these unpromising eggs or seeds con
tain in itself an infinitesmal organic unit or
mould as perfect and peculiar as that which
comes from it, though no science nor art of
ours can find it?
But the animal tribes have some marvels of
a higher order than those common to them and
plants. Their life is of a nobler and more mys
terious sort. They have the rudiments of a
spiritual nature. They furnish wonderful ex
amples of speed, strength, courage and acute-
ness of senses. The common butterfly has
thirty-five thousand eyes in one. Some birds
are the sweetest of songsters. Worms change
to butterflies, and fishes to frogs. Some ani
mals are headless, and others have, or can
have, many heads. Some can be turned inside
out and then thrive just as well as ever — can
indeed be cut into bits which shortly become
as many complete animals ; or these bits may
be pieced together in any way and grow into a
living monster of any form you please. Some
can thrive in enormous heats, others in enor
mous colds, others still under almost infinite
tons of pressure and in eternal night, still

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 141
others with enormously long deprivation of
food. Little polypi, working as if possessed
by one will, build up great coral reefs and
islands out of the ocean depths, and great min
eral beds are made up of the stony remains
of infusoria five hundred millions of which are
sometimes found in a single drop of water, and
forty-one thousand millions of whose skeletons
only fill a cubic inch, — every one of which had
mouth, teeth, muscles, glands, eyes and all the
organs of sense after the manner of the larger
animals. In all this immense population of fauna and
flora what a world of uses — for decoration, food,
labor, pleasure, education ; for shade, medicine,
fuel, furniture, instruments and structures of all
sorts ! Wonderful servants of that wonderfully
furnished palace which we call the earth !
If mere atoms with their forces and laws can
not account for habitable globes, and especially
for such systems of them as science has discov
ered, much less can they account for endless
species of plants and animals, all of which are
geologically known to have had a beginning,
and which, all things considered, are at least as
wonderful as any astronomic system. In the
Scriptures these earthly organisms are freely
appealed to as conclusive proof of the divine
wisdom and power; which they certainly are

I42 ECCE TERRA.
not if existing natural forces and laws are
enough for their production. Are we pre
pared to abandon the Newtonian method of
philosophizing ?
Further, the first chapter in Genesis, naturally
interpreted, shows us God as personally intro
ducing the various flora and fauna of our world
to their home. Has science discovered any
thing opposed to this view? On the contrary,
it is the most reasonable and philosophical ex
planation of the origin of species; because it is
the simplest, the clearest, the safest, the most
salutary, as well as .the most consonant with the
natural thought and traditions of mankind.
So every new species that appeared along
the geologic ages was a divine construction.
Especially did every animal form that included
a choosing, feeling and intelligent nature, of
whatever grade, also include a divine creation,
or at least organization. As the number of
different organic species known to us is prac
tically infinite, there has been in the long course
of the past a practically infinite number of con
summate divine actions. They make the pres
ent, as well as the past, a glorious overflowing
granary of stars. Just as stars, millions of them
— wonders all of them — come out one after an
other quietly on the sky and pierce the gloom
in every direction with their shining arrows, so

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 143
all through the dim geologic evening of the
world were ever appearing new species which
no preceding species could account for, any
more than the earlier stars of the evening can
account for those which appear later ; and the
only sufficient philosophy of which is : " Hath
not My hand made all these things?"
Of course the same divine sovereignty that
began species fixed the times and places in
which they appeared. 4. Man.
The simplest vegetable is a wonder. Placed
under the microscope, and studied as far toward
the first elements of structure as our best sci
ence can carry us, it seems full of a mysterious
wisdom. From this, upward to the most com
plex and colossal forms of our flora, the whole
immense interval is deluged with an endless va
riety of organisms. We are astounded; we are
even at times overwhelmed and discouraged.
The lifetime of generations and the utmost re
sources of our art only suffice just to place us
within the doors of that great forest sanctuary
whose every leaf worships God as its Author.
" For the Lord God made the earth and the
heavens, and every plant of the field before it
was in the earth, and every herb of the field
before it grew." ^

144 ECCE TERRA.
But these are only parts of his ways — the
lower parts. Our observation still keeps on
its ascending way till it comes out on the plane
of animal life. Where is the horizon ? Where
is vacancy? The dust beneath our feet is fairly
alive with miracle-beings. The air swarms and
sings with every imaginable sort of winged
creatures. The water, from the tiniest stream
let and pool to the mightiest ocean, is as pop
ulous with various finny tribes, from motes to
monsters. Ranging over the land, on moun
tains and in valleys, in meadows and forests, in
tropics and arctics, are flocks and herds in num
bers and varieties that defy statement; from the
hugest Deinothere that shakes the plain with
his tramp and roar to the humblest spider that
creeps and spins. These stand as much above
vegetable organisms, wonderful as they are, as
these latter do above the highest mineral com
pounds; and in their innumerable hosts they
represent to us those primitive species which
long ago, and (as the earth-records show) at suc
cessive periods, made their appearance on the
earth — not by a fortuitous concourse of atoms
or creation by law, but by the might and wis
dom of Him " without whom was not anything
made that was made." "And out of the ground
the Lord God formed every beast of the field
and every fowl of the air."

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 145
Then came a higher epiphany. After the ad
vent of all the other organic types appeared
man. On some bright day, millenniums back,
the brute world and the gazing stars became
aware of a new wonder among them that out
shone them all. An upright form, a majestic
brow, eyes that gleamed with thought and em
pire, lips that could speak, as well as ears that
could hear, the words of God, — behold, at last,
the king of the world !
Let us set this advent apart from that of the
lower organisms, for the same reason that the
Bible seems to do it — viz. its special dignity and
consequence. It is plain that there is " a great
gulf fixed " between man and every other ter
restrial species — not so much as to his wonders
of bodily organization, for it is by no means
certain that in this respect he has much the
advantage of many other animals that might be
named, but as to his spiritual and moral pow
ers. In these he towers almost infinitely above
all other terrestrial beings. He is the image
of God.
Were I called on to picture the present state
of human nature, I would point to the ruins of
a city that once shone with the glories of em
pire. Here are dismantled walls. Here is the
rubbish of dwellings. Here rank weeds wave
over highways and crumbling foundations.
10

146 ECCE TERRA.
Here creeps the reptile, roams the wild beast
and prowls the outlaw.
But it is not all a desolation. As the traveler
threads the deserted streets he is awed by the
grand remains which gaze mournfully on him
from every hand. In these broken marbles he
sees traces of vast and beautiful structures
through which moved the great, the splendid
and the lovely. Here rises a column as erect
and fair as when it helped to sustain a palace.
There stands a palace as entire almost as when
princes dwelt in it. Yonder appears a temple
so massive, so stately, so noble of material and
workmanship, that the eye never wearies with
gazing on it. And, scattered all about, are
relics of other days, profuse and magnificent
enough to awaken visions of a metropolis whose
proud name was Palmyra or Thebes or Rome.
No doubt the human nature we see is human
nature in ruins. Our moral being is prostrate.
Its fall has carried with it, to a very consider
able extent, the beauty and power of our intel
lectual, and even of our physical, being. We do
not know as we should know if we had never
sinned. We are not as fair, strong and health
ful as we should be if the curse of the soul had .
not passed over to the body. Yes, it is a sad
ruin which sins have made of us — sins, those
worst of Goths and Vandals — and yet, like old

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. \\7
Rome or Egyptian Thebes, it is a ruin of most
majestic aspect. Enough remains to make hu
manity one of the grandest things beneath the
heavens. Columns wondrously chiseled still
stand upright and shining within us. Halls fit
for sovereigns still stretch within us their long-
drawn magnificence. Within us may be found
shrines needing only a true fire on their altars
and the sanctity of a true worship to make
them outshine all outward temples. No old-
time city, in the gloomy pomp of its partial
desolation, so awes the mind accustomed to
think deeply as do the great remains of its
own shattered powers. Let others wonder as
they may that the Scriptures make men the ob
jects of such high interests and strivings on
the part of the Highest, it is no wonder to me.
I see enough in men, ruined as they are, to
make it worth the while of Him who inhabits
eternity and calls the universe of astronomy
his own, to bend on them the whole of the care,
the longing and the effort ascribed to him by
the Christian religion.
Go with me to yonder library. What book
is this? It is the work of a bard who swayed the
pictured wings of angels, whose voice has tuned
every Christian language, at the sound of whose
mighty harp generation after generation have
hushed their hearts to listen. — What book is

148 ECCE TERRA.
this ? It is the work of a philosopher by whose
name knowledge is wont to swear ; whom sci
ence counts her master of magicians ; the coro
net of whose fame is graced by so many gems of
discovery as all the ages before him had failed
to gather ; who created the most profound of
the sciences in the effort to improve another
science ; who taught us to climb to the height
of the stars and weigh them as in balances,
and girdle them with measuring-line, and make
up the log of their stupendous voyages, and
tell the precise arrangements of the system of
worlds to which we belong at any given moment
of the future or past. — What book is this ? It
is the life of one who rose from obscurity to
a throne and from a throne to a kingdom of
thrones, but whose place was never greater
than his faculty ; who never was more am
bitious and selfish, never more famous and
powerful, than his genius was sublime ; whose
sovereign glance went promptly down into the
depths of human nature ; who grasped almost
as by intuition the great principles of govern
ment and warfare, and strode through the cabi
nets and battlefields of Europe with a science
and ease that never found their equal ; who
fought and legislated, diplomatized and finan
ciered, with the same triumphant ability ; and
who, when he fell, fell not so much by the skill

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 149
and powers of man as by the icy rigors of the
Almighty. And now let us turn from these alcoves, in
which the lips and deeds of mighty men are
still eloquent, and place ourselves in the cathe
dral of Rome as it now is, or in the Senate-
house and Forum of Rome as it was in the
days of M. Tullius Cicero, or on the Pnyx of
Athens in the days of Demosthenes, or in some
national Patent Office where all the great in
ventions of the age are brought together. The
church of St. Peter ! What multitudes have
looked, as we are now doing, along the height
and outspread of these proportions, and, like
us, felt themselves almost overborne in the
presence of the speaking masonry ! Ah, the
blended richness of painting, sculpture and
architecture ; of the artful light, the exquisite
carving, the graceful arches, the massive
strength, the faultless symmetry and the vast
spaces of this wondrous temple which human
genius planned and wrought! Religion, in the
majesty of her heavenly form, seems to come
and lay her solemn shadow on us, and silently
and slowly lift her finger toward the eternal
God. This hall of the Conscript Fathers ! Now the
patricians must indeed take care that the re
public receive no detriment. The consul is

150 ECCE TERRA.
already doing it. He is exposing to them the
conspiracy of Catiline as never was conspiracy
exposed before. Listen ! See with what high
art he introduces his dangerous subject. See
how, as he proceeds, he is fastening to himself
as with hooks of steel the attention and sym
pathies of his hearers ! Now he is beginning
to thrill them by the electricity of his kindling
argument. The stream of his power widens
and deepens and grows more rapid and phos
phorescent every moment. See, now, how it
sparkles and flashes beneath the lightnings of
his wrathful patriotism and fancy ! At last,
swollen to a shining river, it hurries along the
whole assembly on its impetuous bosom as if
they were mere bubbles of its own foaming
waters. See how they hang on his wonderful
lips, are convinced when he is convinced, glow
when he glows, scorn when he scorns, rage
when he rages ! How evidently they have be
come in his hand a keen two-edged sword
driving with thirsty point at the infamous con
spirators ! Catiline trembles. He attempts to
reply. Murmurs rise on every hand ; they swell
gradually into a tempest; and grave senators,
despite dignity and usage, spring to their feet
and ring in his ears the cry of Incendiary ! Par
ricide! He rushes in terror from the Senate-
house and the city.

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 151
These are but ancient specimens of powers
which are being freely reproduced in our own
day. We have orators as eloquent, poets as
soaring, architects as gifted, as any in the past.
Circumspice, as says the monument of Sir Chris
topher Wren. Antiquity gives a certain beauty
and grandeur of its own to persons, structures,
achievements. Apotheosis is not to be had till
long after death and burial. That old temple
is really no grander in its design and execution
than this which was finished yesterday ; only it
looks so, as seen through the haze of a thousand
years. That scientist, long since laid away in
Westminster Abbey, did not command in his
own day such reverence as he does now: and,
it may be, was not a whit abler than many a
present scientist who lacks his splendid oppor
tunity, or who has chanced to turn his studies
on less fruitful fields, or has focused his genius
on those great inventions or institutions or
business operations which distinguish our time.
How marvelous some inventions are ! The
contemporaries of Homer, or Demosthenes, or
Cicero, or Angelo, or even Newton, would have
wondered far more at some of our -graphs and
-phones and factories than they ever did at any
of the achievements which they actually saw.
I have no wish to rehearse the much-rehearsed
story of the exploits of inventive genius in our

152 ECCE TERRA.
times. I simply echo what everybody is saying:
It is wonderful !
Such is the human intellect in its broken
state. Not that we are all the peers of such
great men as I have named, in the present
degree of our faculty; but we may well lay claim
to natures of the same general order, and na
tures which, in a few years, will have reached
the same grand intellectual expansion.
Now turn from the intellect of man to his
will. We here find a greatness fully equal to
any found in his intellectual nature. The ener
gy and persistence of purpose which some men
show are about as impressive as anything to be
seen in the world. Glance at the career of almost
any man who from obscurity has raised himself
to a great place and name. That scholar whose
name is on every lip and whose works will make
him live immortally when dead, — how happens
he to stand on the pinnacle where we see him?
Is it due to some stroke of good luck, or to some
sudden uplift of incomparable natural talent?
Nothing of the sort. In early life he set his
mark before him, kept it there despite great
temptations to discouragement, pressed toward
it when weary and sick and neglected — pressed
toward it when men and even divine Providence
seemed to say, Thou shalt not. It was his un
conquerable resolution, maintained with stern

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 53
and splendid erectness, despite gravities and
storms, through many years of struggle, which
finally carried him through to his high place.
How imposing the constancy and fire of de
termination with which men of business some
times work out through years and years their
plans of accumulation — imposing in spite of
the manifest infatuation of a governing purpose
that centres altogether on this brief life ! And
how much more imposing the steady inflexibil
ity with which the good man sometimes takes
up his cross and does the work of unpopular
reform, sets himself against corrupt public opin
ion, heroically battles all his life long through
contempt and abuse, or, calmly untwining from
his neck the clinging arms of dear ones, puts
oceans between himself and them and wears
life away in missionary-work among savages
beneath the Arctic Circle or the fiery zones of
the Equator, and at last lies down uncomplain
ingly to die, with no country but heaven and no
friend but God ! Fix your thought on the glo
rious resolves of a Paul ; and, indeed, of a host
of martyrs who have pressed with a like unwav
ering decision along their thorny and bloody
way toward the mark for the prize of their
high calling.
Surely this human will has still left in it some
thing too sublime to be easily spoken. Can we

154 ECCE TERRA.
look at such examples without feeling that
something of divinity still lingers among men ?
True it is that the will does not display itself in
these imposing forms in each of us; but, in each,
precisely the same forms lie folded up, ready to
be spread abroad like banners by suitable pains.
How glorious are even the ruins of the human
will! Also, we shall find on examination that our
emotional nature, much as sin has injured it, is
still full of great things, if not of good things.
Here we may find desires which the whole
world cannot satisfy. Throw in at their open
mouths planets, suns, starry systems of natural
good, and they would remain open for more.
Here we may find hope quenchless by trouble.
Here, too, we may find a fear immense as any
hope — a fear fearful to see as well as to feel ;
the pale and haggard fear that screams in
dreams, tries to struggle away from a horrible
death, begs to escape the endless perdition of
the ungodly ; the terrible fear that sometimes
rends the hearts of men when they are con
sciously dying in their sins. Do we not know,
too, of human love that is stronger than death,
which many waters cannot quench nor floods
drown ? Have we not known it to cling to its
object not only when it was disgrace and ruin
to do so, but when abused and ruined by the

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 155
very object to which it clung? And within our
strange heart, also, we may find a hatred as
huge as any love — a hatred fearful to see as
well as to feel, one that would gladly pluck
down eternal retributions on its object. " Go
to hell," says many a wretch ; and he means it.
An Italian one day found his enemy in his
power. The dagger was lifted : " I will spare
your life if you will abjure the religion of Jesus
Christ." The wretch abjured. " Now," ex
claimed the triumphant hater as he drove his
weapon home to the heart, " I have a sweet
revenge, for I kill both body and soul." With
in each human heart what wondrous capacities
for happiness and misery ! We have a thou
sand sources of either where the brutes have
one : in this world we may " rejoice with joy
unspeakable and full of glory" or suffer with
unspeakable distress ; in the next world no
limits can be set to the heights of bliss to which
we shall rise, or to the depths of anguish to
which we shall descend.
Surely this is a great and awful nature of
ours, though it be in ruins. Though we do
not all now have such degrees of hope and fear,
of love and hatred, of joy and sorrow, as have
been instanced, yet their elements lie folded
up within us all, and can, like the furled canvas
of the ship or of the aeronaut, be expanded by

156 ECCE TERRA.
circumstances into great billowy clouds and
globes. There are powers wrapped up in man of
which we only get glimpses on extraordinary
occasions. For example, at the point of drown
ing men sometimes find their memories sweep
ing back over their entire past and seemingly
gathering into one view on the instant all the
actions of their lives. It is the judgment day
condensed into a moment. The Book of Re
membrance, brought down to date, flashes out
to them its every entry. • The somnambule will
rise from his bed and solve problems which
baffled his best waking hours — will, with closed
eyes, walk safely through the midnight on dizzy
ridges and parapets where he would not ven
ture in the waking day. He has, somehow, a
faculty of seeing that is independent of bodily
eyes. Think also of that strange world of facts,
as well as of fictions, glimpses of which we get
in Mesmerism and Spiritualism. Whatever
doubt, and even denial, belongs to many of
their wonders, it hardly can be reasonably
doubted that they hint at powers in the hu
man soul of the most astonishing sort.
Notwithstanding the heavy blow which sin
has given to the human soul, it has left it a
free moral nature. The power of self-govern
ment in respect to right and wrong still re-

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 57
mains. No matter how mighty the tempta
tions to wrong, we can trample on them ; and
no matter how mighty the motives to right
eousness, we can trample on them. A nature
thus self-governed like God's own, a nature
that can conquer all its circumstances, a nature
which, however it does, can choose and do the
right despite the utmost efforts of earth and
hell, is, deny it who can, a noble structure. It
is the pillar which stands as lofty and beautiful
among the broken marbles of Persepolis as
when it helped to support a temple.
One of the most striking features of human
ity is its power of indefinite enlargement.
There are no limits which can be assigned to
the extent of our knowledge, to the firmness
and force of our purposes or to the range and
depth of our emotions. We shall never have
a virtue or a sin which cannot be greater, at
least in intensity. Look down the endless
future till your eye aches with straining after
the ultimate, and you can discover nothing
which would necessarily prove to the soul the
Pillars of Hercules. Yes, we can become
wiser and stronger and better for ever if it
be so that God has granted us a for ever to
improve in. And, on the other hand, if God
has granted us a for ever, we can, in respect
to many things, ever grow worse. Beyond

158 ECCE TERRA.
any assignable limit we may increase our de
pravity — deprave our reason as a guide to
truth ; weaken our wills for every useful pur
suit and the ease with which useful emotions
are excited and maintained. Such is the glo
rious and awful nature that still remains to
man. We are forced to admire and tremble
at the same moment.
That everlasting duration, along which our
natures are fitted to improve or decline, act
ually belongs to them. The majesty of an im
mortality is upon us. Sin, with all its power
to curse and crush, has not been able to lay in
ruins this feature of our likeness to God. Nay,
it has never been able to weaken it in the least.
It is as solid and rooted and august as that
around which Paradise first bloomed. It is a
great thing to look at as belonging to another
race of beings — this perpetual inaccessibility
to death. But it is a still more impressive
thing to look at as a feature of our own race
of sinful and responsible beings. The immor
tality of such beings has a solemn grandeur
about it which that of the holy angels cannot
have. The latter is shone upon by the soft
light of heaven alone ; the other has in addi
tion the lurid brightness of a far different
world. The image of God ! Yes, the image of God,

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 59
every man of them — notwithstanding a part of
mankind look scornfully down on another part,
and treat them as if they belong to another
race and are quite unworthy of notice. How
cruelly such conduct defies facts ! Are not
these real men ? Have they not human intel
lects, wills, hearts ? Is there any limit to their
power of expansion ? Is not the humblest of
them immortal ? Has not every man of them
the sublime faculty and opportunity of a glo
rious virtue and a glorious heaven ? What
though their skins are dark, or their hands
horny, or their clothes poor, or their gait and
port somewhat less than imperial ? They are
kings for all that — kings in disguise, if you will,
but still kings. Shall we say that the Kohinoor
was not a diamond, so long as it lay uncut and
unset and unfound amid the rubbish of its
native sands ?
Such is the view of human nature given in
the Scriptures. They show God doing for it
with a care and zeal that never flag ; doing for
it all that the case admits of being done ; doing
for it that exceeding much implied in the incar
nation and atonement and perpetual mission of
the Holy Ghost. Does God move heaven and
earth for nothing ? Is he so bent on saving
what is poorly worth saving ? Did apostles
undertake such toils and martyrdoms for

l6o ECCE TERRA.
ephemeridae, or for anything short of the im
age of God ? Do not believe it. It were pre
posterous to believe it. Such conduct, trans
lated into speech, says : "And what shall a man
give in exchange for his soul?"
Whence came this paragon ? If mere nature
is insufficient to originate other species, it is
doubtless insufficient to originate the human.
After such a full account of the origin of
Adam and Eve by direct divine action as the
Bible gives, we have a right to expect that
no believer in that book will talk to us in
favor of our race coming in a natural way
from apes, and at last from minerals. But,
apart from exegesis and the human body,
what sufficient account can be found in mere
nature for the human soul? What cannot
explain a worm can hardly explain a Newton.
Unless we admit that the soul is the result of
organization (which would at once land us in
materialism, with all its defiance of Scripture
and natural religion), we must allow it to have
been a divine creation, and that the prophet was
right in saying, " He formed the spirit of man
within him."
We learn from the Scriptures that man is
comparatively a recent being ; that his original
seat was in the neighborhood of the Euphrates ;
that he began not as a unit, but as a pair ; not

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. l6l
in a desert, but in a beautiful garden ; not as
an ape, but as one of ourselves ; not as an in
fant, but in full maturity of bodily and mental
powers ; not as a rude savage, but at what,
though simple, was really a high stage in main
things ; not as a frail and dying being like our
selves, but as constitutionally immortal ; not as
a depraved and sinning being, but as altogether
upright and righteous — though in a state of
temptation and probation — and having free and
intelligent communication with higher beings,
and especially with his Maker. Some of these
particulars — for example, the comparatively re
cent origin of our race, its unity and the general
Asiatic region where it occurred — are known
from other sources as well as from the Bible.
From the nature of the case all the original
traits and circumstances of the first man were
determined by the sovereign choice and agency
of his Maker. They were the capital with
which a father sets up his son in business ; the
fire, fuel, graded track and skilled engineer with
which a locomotive comes forth from the works
to run its courses; the location, lands, buildings,
apparatus, professorships with which the found
er of a university starts it off on its educational
career ; the rounded shape, sun-distance, axis
elevation, initial velocity, atmosphere, waters,
stores of useful minerals and vegetables, with
n

1 62 ECCE TERRA.
which the Creator of this habitable planet
launched it into space ; that is to say, the
original capital and endowments with which
the Father, Builder, Founder, Creator of the
race chose, in the exercise of his sovereignty
and wisdom, to send it forth on its mission.
5. Insignia Common to Organic Species.
Organic beings are divided into groups by
certain sensible differences. The broadest
division is into vegetables and animals. Each
of these two great classes is subdivided into a
multitude of others, in each of which the num
bers are alike in main respects and incapable
of reproduction, at least in a series, with the
other sub-classes. So, organic nature is an
archipelago. It appears in the form of innu
merable organic islands.
Now, these islands, which we call species,
have had from the beginning, so far as we
know, certain traits in common which are very
striking — so striking that they deserve to be
singled out and distinctly referred to that per
sonal divine action which must have chosen and
established them ; more especially as they
strongly suggest, if they do not prove, a form
of divine action other than that concerned in
constructing organic beings. They seem as in
dependent of structure as are the purple robes

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 163
and other insignia worn by princes of the bodies
that wear them.
All species of such beings have something
that we call Life. We give this name to that
which keeps in play their seemingly self-active
natures. Just what this something is has been
matter of long and fierce discussion ; and even
to-day scientists, as such, are as much in the
dark as ever, though we have what is called a
Science of Biology. Is it something within the
bodies themselves — either some distinct inspir
ing essence inhering in them or some peculiar
correlation of the atoms and forces composing
them, or is it some force from without empow
ering them for their apparently spontaneous
functions ? In the first case, life is of course
due to Him who not only contrived and made
the first parents of each species, but without
whom our science cannot explain a single in
dividual of their successors ; as we will soon
try to show.
If, under the pressure of such facts as that
the power of spontaneous movement for an
end is not in harmony with our fundamental
ideas of matter, that it seems to precede all
visible organization, and that it ceases while yet
organization seems quite unimpaired — I say, if
under the pressure of such facts we elect the
latter supposition of the dilemma, what can that

164 ECCE TERRA.
vitalizing force from without be save the divine ?
What other do we know of sufficient for the
work ? What other force than His of whom
the Scriptures choose to say, " He giveth to all
life and breath;" "He upholdeth our soul in
life ; " " In him we live and move and have our
being"? Is it so very unlikely that the seem
ingly spontaneous movements of bioplasm, as
it throws out its bridges and drives hither and
thither its shuttles, are not spontaneous at all,
but are the work of Him of whom Job in
quires, " Did not He that made me in the
womb make him, and did not One fashion us
in the womb?"
All organic species have also growth. No
instrument made by man either lives or grows ;
every organism in the animal and vegetable
worlds, without exception, does both. Begin
ning with a very small structural unit, each in
dividual takes on symmetrically additions to all
its parts, until in process of time it comes to
many times its original size. This universal
fact among living things is very wonderful —
about as much so as life itself — and as yet
quite unexplained on natural principles. We
know that the material for growth is found in
the sap or blood, and that, somehow, out of this
is filtered to the various parts what they need
for their upbuilding; but here our knowledge

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 165
ends. That somehow is a dark continent which
our science has not yet landed on, nor even ap
proached. What force directs that sure and
silent analysis and synthesis? Who is the prin
cipal in that consummate laboratory?
To say that bioplasm, or living matter in its
earliest observable state, moves toward and ap
propriates lifeless matter and endows it with
its own properties, is far enough from giving
a scientific explanation of growth. It is a mys
tery from the side of science — as much of a
mystery to-day as it was when it was said of
the seed, " It springs and grows up he knows
not how," or when at an earlier time it was
said, "As thou knowest not the way of the
spirit, nor how the bones do grow in the womb
of her that is with child, even so thou knowest
not the works of God who maketh all." Is it
done by mere vitality and structure, well con
ditioned chemically and mechanically? Growth
ceases when as yet there is no discoverable
vital, structural or circumstantial change. Be
sides, what is growth but a kind of self-repro
duction — a gradual reproduction on a larger
scale of the original organic unit? In a few
years the whole original matter is eliminated
and replaced by new matter. We have an en
tirely new and better structure, but on the plan
of the old. But is it conceivable that an in-

l66 ECCE TERRA.
strument can produce its own equal, much
more its own superior?
Again, each species has its own fixed range
of structural variation. Thus, men differ among
themselves as individuals and races, as John
differs from James, and as the lowest Hotten
tot from the highest Caucasian. Food, climate,
many circumstances, go to modify our inward
structure as well as outward appearance. But
the range of this variability is limited. Go a
little way and you come to a wall as high as
heaven. So with every species of animals or
vegetables. Each has its own measure of
structural flexibility to suit varying circum
stances : if the human range is called one
league, then that of another species is two
leagues or more, but never runs on into the
infinite ; very far from it. We. only go a little
way, and, lo, a ne plus ultra built squarely across
the path which neither art nor force can remove.
It has never been passed, save in hypothesis.
Observation being teacher, the different species
never come to overlap or to be coterminous.
They even remain widely apart; they are as
far apart to day as they were at the dawn of
history, or at that vastly more remote time when
their earliest fossils were living. Each species,
like a jealous property-holder, seems to say to
its neighbor, "No trespassing allowed." They

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 67
are all ships of a fleet, each riding at anchor on
a cable of definite length which allows some
change of place as change the winds and tides,
but is still such as to keep it at a safe distance
from all its fellows. They are all like the stars,
radiant islands, each of which has its own range
of minute changes, but never so roves as to col
lide with any other star. Such is the famous
doctrine and fact of the stability of species.
How are these termini of structure to be
explained ? What keeps each species rigidly
within its own bounds ? Is there anything in
its make-up to prevent its varying indefinitely ?
Nothing that is visible. May I not say, Nothing
that is conceivable ? Such variations as actu
ally occur would, if continued, carry it into an
other species, and finally through all the species.
And yet just as soon as the variation reaches a
certain point it stops. Of course, if this is due
to some invisible physical terminus, some West-
inghouse brake hid in the nature of the species
itself, it was God, the contriver and maker of
that nature, who placed it there. But it looks
as though there were no such limit within itself.
What is there in mere human nature to prevent
its appearing in as many varieties as do pig
eons ? We know of nothing to prevent it but
the current choice and agency of God.
There are other termini of organic species,

l68 ECCE TERRA.
each of which is quite as remarkable as that just
mentioned, but of which I must speak collect
ively. Each species has its own range of life-
duration, of adult stature and of growth-period.
One never lives beyond a few days or hours,
another never beyond a few months, another
never beyond a few years. One never rises
more than a few inches above ground, another
never more than a few feet, still another never
more than a few hundred feet. One always gets
its growth in less than a hundred years, another
in less than twenty, still another in less than a
day. The members of the same species vary
among themselves somewhat as to these par
ticulars, but there is always a John o' Groat's
House beyond which none of them ever go.
At present men attain a size of about six feet
and an age of about eighty years, and their
growth-period is about twenty years.
And so every species of animals and plants
has its own general limit of size, of age and of
growth-period. Whence came these differences?
Of course, either from a current divine Provi
dence steadily holding each species to the ter
mini thought best for it, or from some peculiar
ity in the physical make-up and conditions of
each species. But the differences seem quite
independent of structure and environment. No
structural bounds are visible even to keenest-

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 69
eyed science. What reason in nature why a
peach tree cannot live as long and grow as
large as an oak ; why a dog cannot live as
long and grow as large as a man ; why a man
cannot live out the three centuries of an oak as
well as a little more than threescore years, stop
growing at twelve feet of height as well as at
six, continue growing for forty years as well as
for twenty? Certainly, the actual terms seem
purely arbitrary. They seem to exist by no
necessity of nature or construction, but by the
sovereign will and efficiency of a current Provi
dence, which, for reasons best known to itself,
says to the stature and life and growth of each
organic species, "Thus far shalt thou come, and
no farther."
We also find all animals endowed with what
are called Instincts.
At the first introduction of any species into
the world it needed to have at once certain
elementary informations (or their equivalent in
blind impulses) as to ways and means of living
and continuing the species. At once the new
beings needed to avoid certain enemies. At
once they must be able to move about freely,
to find their suitable food and drink, to appro
priate these by the curious and artificial process
of eating and drinking. But originally they
had no fellows to imitate. They could not

170 ECCE TERRA.
afford to wait the slow teaching of experience.
That very day they must begin to protect and
nourish the life they had received. So, from
the very outset, they had to be supplied with
some promptly-acting means of guidance. These
were furnished by their Maker, and should be
allowed to be what are now known to us under
the name of instincts. We find these sufficient
for the work required, and they have actually
been doing it as far back as we can trace.
It is a question whether these instincts came
necessarily from the very nature of the animal
(so that God established them in the very act
of making that nature), or whether he, by a
supplementary act, as it were, equipped that
nature with what it needed but could not sup
ply from itself. I am inclined to say that just
as a householder, when his house is fully com
pleted, still needs to have certain furniture
placed in it to make it fairly available ; that just
as a sailor, when his ship is well launched and
quite done, even to the last iota of rigging, still
needs to have it provisioned for the voyage ;
that just as the inexperienced owner of a new
watch or factory, though it is exquisitely fin
ished down to the smallest details and beauti
fully running, still needs to be shown how to
keep it running — so the animal tribes imme
diately on their advent, though perfect in their

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 17I
way for the time being, still needed to be shown
at once the ways and means of continuing so ;
to be supplied with a certain preliminary capi
tal of information in order that they might go
about their business. A single day must not
pass before they know at least what to eat and
how to eat. So their Maker guided them —
gave them what we call instincts. Instead of
being the necessary outcome of the nature of
the animal, instincts are an annex to that na
ture by direct divine interposition.
Let us notice some of these instincts as they
now exist. They give actions relating solely
to the preservation of the individual and spe
cies. Plainly, these actions do not come from
imitation, nor are they reached in the course of
many crude attempts and failures. But, quite
without help of observation and experiment,
and as if by some necessity of nature, they are
found done with perfect freeness and unerring
accuracy just as soon as occasion arises — done
as well on first attempt, as far as strength will
allow, as after long practice. For example,
most animals immediately after birth fix without
hesitation on the kind of food appropriate to
them out of many kinds around them that are
inappropriate, convey it to the one right open
ing into the body, and proceed to drink and
eat as if veterans at the business. The arts of

172 ECCE TERRA.
running, swimming, flying and singing are ab
original with vast sections of the animal races.
Embryo languages that call, warn, defy, and
even elaborately inform (as in the case of some
ants), come to them spontaneously. What nat
uralists call " the habits of animals " are not
habits at all, save in the etymological sense ;
the measures they take to get a living, to de
fend themselves against their enemies, to pro
vide for their young, presenting themselves com
plete as soon as circumstances call for them.
The duck would hasten to the pool, the hen
scratch the ground, the pig root, the cattle seek
the pasture, the beaver build his dam, the gull
dive for fish, the humming-bird probe the heart
of flowers, the squirrel become an acrobat and
lay up his stores of nuts, if from the beginning
secluded from all others of its kind. The spi
der weaves its delicate web, spreads it out in
the way of insects, lies in wait where it can best
feel any disturbance of its meshes, waits till the
captive is exhausted by its struggles, then sal
lies forth to secure its prey — a born hunter.
The wasp makes a cell, deposits its egg, places
by the side of it as many green worms as will
suffice to feed its larva till it gets wings and
can care for itself — a born naturalist as well as
mother. Many species are born artists. The
bird will, without instruction or experience, at

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 173
the proper time of the year, artistically build a
nest suitable in size, shape, material and situa
tion ; deposit its eggs, sit on them till the young
appear, provide the young with suitable food
and protection till they can care for themselves,
and then, perhaps, as the winter comes on,
associate with a host of others of the same spe
cies and migrate to sunnier lands. The ants
or honey-bees associate themselves, come under
government, distribute occupations among them
selves, rind suitable places for homes, gather
and work up fitting materials into the wonder
ful ant-city with its complex of paths and its
magazines of winter stores, or into the won-
derful honeycomb with its mathematical cells
filled with pellucid nectar. Hardly less curious
things are done naturally by many other sorts
of animals. In many cases these instinctive
actions are a large and intricate system, the
parts of which are delicately framed into and
proportioned to each other about as artificially
as are the members of an animal body. This
is most strikingly true of the humbler sorts of
animals. But every species has its own striking
set of measures conducive to self-preservation,
to which it turns as does the free needle toward
the pole — a set of measures which it seems
born to, which seem to come to it on occasion
ready made, which all its individuals use with

174 ECCE TERRA.
equal facility and success, and in precisely the
same way, the world over, and from generation
to generation — in short, things which they seem
to do out of the fullness of natural knowledge.
To say that such actions come from mere
matter and its organization is bald materialism,
with its malarial consequences. Such things
cannot give rise to intuitive intelligence, or to
intelligence of any kind. As little can they
give rise to volitions, which are as spiritual
products as thought itself, and the immediate
parents of all the instinctive actions we have
been considering. And just as little can they
give rise to any such blind impulses as are
equivalent to intelligence, so far as effects are
concerned. If a broad system of voluntary
actions, such as in man would be thought to
imply intelligence of a high grade (such as we
see in the economy of bee-life), can reasonably
be supposed to come in any way from mere
bodily nature and structure, it is hard to see
how such an explanation cannot reasonably be
extended indefinitely — say to all the various ex
ternal actions of men and brutes that are com
monly supposed to be prompted and guided
by intelligence. Can matter be so put to
gether as to turn out results that imitate the
best results of intelligence to that degree that
it is impossible to discriminate the one class

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 175
from the other? If so, materialism is sufficient
to explain everything, and the Newtonian phil
osophy requires us to use it for that purpose,
though it carries in its womb fatalism and irre
sponsibility, and so the abolition of govern
ment, of immortality, of religion, of God, of
moral distinctions, and, finally, of the whole
frame of society — in short, Nihilism that de
vours everything in this world and the next,
save hell.
But the brute nature has an intelligent part.
Can this give rise to the intuitions, or blind
impulses, that are the root of the instinctive
actions we have been considering? Can any
intelligent principle originate blind impulses ?
To say it seems very much like saying that it
is possible to get out of a thing what is not in
it ; that it is not a fundamental law that every
thing begets after its kind ; that fig trees may
bear thistles, grapevines bramble-berries, and
matter mind. Can such an intelligence as the
brutes possess of itself give intuitions alto
gether above the human ? If so, then their
sort of mind is above ours. What they see at
a first glance we see only after laborious sci
entific processes. That hexagonal cell of the
bee, that provision which the wasp makes for
her worm-young of food which she cannot eat
herself, but which is just suited in quality and

I76 ECCE TERRA.
quantity to the larva, is to us a research and
philosophy — the luminous jet at the end of a
considerable amount of machinery. An intelli
gence whose merest flashes of outlook are level
with the researches of philosophers is grander
than the mind of Newton. But, in point of
fact, we know that the brute mind is nothing
of the sort — a mere rushlight in the presence
of the great effulgent candelabrum, a toy spy
glass in the presence of the most space-pen
etrating telescope that ever looked toward the
frontiers of creation. " Ye are of more value
than many sparrows." No, we cannot account
for the ready-made arts and sciences found in
the bee-hive or ant-hill or beaver-camp on the
ground that they come, lightning-paced, out of
the native powers of such a grade of intelli
gence as this.
Besides, if the intuitions in question came
only from the intelligent part of the animal,
and so depended solely on the degree of its
power, they would not be limited, as they are,
to the means of preserving the individual and
species, but would extend in every direction to
other fields of knowledge of no greater remote
ness and difficulty — just as the eye that sees
clearly the objects at a certain point in the land
scape is not restricted to a view of these, but,
in general, can see with equal clearness all

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 77
other objects at the same distance quite around
the horizon. Mere intelligence makes, not a
luminous line, but, like the sun, a luminous
sphere. But the instincts of the brute illumine
only a long, narrow strip of the great domain
of knowledge. All other parts, however near,
on the right hand and left, remain in profound
darkness. It is as though the vision were ab
ruptly broken off by solid black walls as high
as heaven. From noon to midnight. From
the state of kings to starvation. The brutes
are no longer embodied arts and sciences, but
living know-nothings. This looks very much
as if their intuitions were given them from
without, for a purpose, by some eclectic power
— by their Maker, who wished to qualify them
capitally for their place, but designed that
place to be a narrow one — a narrow Swiss
valley walled with Alps, on some lofty peak of
which man stands and looks away freely into
all Europe.
Another epical fact common to all organic
species, from the lowest to the highest is Pa
rentage. Let us first notice it in connection
with man.
Man becomes a parent. A miniature self ap
pears — body as complete as his own ; as com
plete as his own the new soul. Whence came
that child-body ? Have the parents had any-
12

I78 ECCE TERRA.
thing to do with devising its world of complex
and exquisite mechanism? Consciously not —
no more than the bird has with devising its
chicken, or the oak with devising its sprouting
acorn. Are they mere machines, turning out
unintelligently other machines like themselves?
This seems mechanically impossible. A pin-
machine can turn out pins, but not pin-machine
makers. Men can turn out, in an instrumental
way, blood or bile, but not men, and especially
not men-makers. Even God himself cannot
make his equal. What remains but for each
man to say with Job, "Thy hands have made
me and fashioned me together round about"?
Further, with each body- birth there is a soul-
birth. The body receives an inhabitant. It is
not matter, but something that can think, feel,
choose. It is not a product of bodily organiza
tion and the chemistries, but something that can
survive the organism that serves it for a house,
and even flourish on for ever — the master of
the mansion, the charioteer of the chariot, the
image of the spiritual God. Whence came this
soul ? It remembers no past. It is as fresh
and dewy with tokens of recentness as the
first bud of spring. Can body produce soul?
Can even soul unconsciously produce anoth
er soul? In all the range of causation, out
side of the present field of inquiry, where

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 79
has a cause been known to make the equal of
itself? But the child is often spiritually supe
rior to the parent.
Plainly, something besides nature must be
concerned in the human production. Unless
we allow this, we must allow both the possibil
ity and naturalness of atheistic evolution. For
if mere nature, without any exercise of devising
intelligence, can originate the simplest embryo
of a new man, and then, in virtue of its own re
sources, can develop that embryo in the course
of some months through various ascending
forms as diverse from each other as species
into the new-born child, why cannot it generate
some moneron, and then develop it in the course
of some millions of years through various like
ascending specific forms into a man ? It can.
And so there is no need of a God to account
for anything. If we reject this conclusion we
must claim that, behind the veil of natural
conditions and agencies, the supernatural is
active in every case of reproduction. Each
new human body as much requires a divine
Framer as did the first man. Each new human
soul as much requires a divine Author as did
the soul of Adam.
Now, these wondrous births have been going
on from the beginning with ever-increasing free
ness ; the one trunk put forth branches, each

180 ECCE TERRA.
of these branches itself ramified, each of these
ramifications spread itself out abruptly into an
immense fan of new being, and so on until now
some two hundred thousand new human bodies
and souls present themselves on the earth each
day. But this is only one of many streams of de
scent. For a long time before the flux of hu
man generations began, innumerable other births
scarcely less wonderful had taken place among
the brute and vegetable races ; and these have
continued without intermission, in floods that
defy statement or imagination, down to the
present time. At least a hundred thousand
species of flora are continually (as we say)
reproducing themselves and making the whole
earth green with perpetual youth. At least a
million species of brute fauna are continually
(as we say) reproducing themselves — some of
them with amazing rapidity. Thus, a single
herring can deposit about forty thousand eggs
in one season, a flounder a million, the common
oyster still more ; and an insect called the Cy
clops in four months can have forty-five hun
dred millions of descendants. The microscopic
animalculae are still more prolific, a single indi
vidual of one species being capable of multiply
ing in four days to one hundred and seventy
billions. When we consider the vast numbers

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. l8l
of individuals in many of these species — as, for
example, in that of the herrings, each of which
sometimes sends out a thousand billions or
more in a single company — and how each one
of these increases like money at compound
daily interest, we feel quite lost in this perpet
ual deluge of new life. What is it but a per
petual deluge of personal divine action — of
wondrous divine action ?
The utter insufficiency of merely natural cau
sation to account for a single one of these prac
tically infinite reproductions ought to be easily
admitted. The same reasons that demand the
supernatural for each new man demand it for
each new worm or weed. A thing cannot make
the equal of itself. It is against experience. It
is unthinkable. Accordingly, the Scriptures de
clare that the heathen are without excuse for
not knowing God, because his works immedi
ately about them (not some remote first pa
rents) clearly declare his eternal power and
Godhead. That is, the present environment of
every man, the wonders now seen in the earth
and sky, are plainly unexplainable by mere na
ture. It is not necessary for him to grope his
way back some thousands of years to a begin
ning of the organic races in adult individuals
which only a true God could have made. Other
wise, he would have a very good excuse for not

1 82 ECCE TERRA.
knowing him — if the impossibility of doing it
can be considered a good excuse.
It is commonly said that the age of miracles
has long since passed, and that God never now
gives water from a rock nor bread from the
sky. And unbelievers are apt to clamor for at
least one good rousing miracle, and to protest
that if it could be had they would at once flash
into faith as gunpowder flashes at the touch
of a live coal. Miracles ! Let people look about
them. Not a day passes that is not more shin
ing with miracles of creation and construction
than it is with the sun. We float in miracles as
ships do in the ocean. Our homes, though men
call them hovels, are floored and walled and
ceiled with this gold. No miracles now-a-
days ! It is time such talk had ceased — time
to cease quietly assuming, as even Christians
are apt to do, despite the whole tenor of
Scripture, that amazing postulate that mere
nature is amply sufficient to account for the
successive generations of the world. What a
mistake ! Parents are hardly more than a
divine laboratory, or the chariots by which the
young ride into being. The Amazon, sweep
ing on to the sea in ever-widening flood, is
modified in many respects by the country
through which it passes ; but every new drop
contributed to it at any point comes from

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 183
above — from yonder high and snowy peak or
yonder higher sky.
6. A Great Unity.
All men, however far apart in place and
physical characteristics, are descended from a
single pair. This doctrine, though generally
admitted by scholars, has sometimes been ob
jected to on the ground of the very great dif
ferences between the races of men, especially
between the Caucasian and the negro. But
these differences are such in kind as differences
of climate and modes of living, in connection
with well-known laws of heredity, are found to
make in the course of long periods, and are no
greater in degree than sometimes exist between
persons known to be of the same stock. We
find great variety among Englishmen as to stat
ure, complexion, thickness of lip, straightness
of hair and frontal development. Even in the
same family the children are often vastly unlike
each other, both physically and mentally.
It is not surprising that persons beginning
with such a great divergence should, in the
lapse of generations, produce descendants as
far apart as are Europeans and Nubians. Two
very unlike brothers, separating into two very
unlike countries and marrying very unlike
wives, would naturally have families still more

1 84 ECCE TERRA.
unlike each other; and a repetition of this pro
cess through several generations might easily
give us as wide a range of varieties in men as
we actually find.
American history carries us back to Europe ;
European history carries us back to Rome and
to rude tribes drifting westward from Asia
along the northern parallels ; the history of
Rome carries us back to the Asian Troad and
to the Greek colonies of Magna Grecia ; the
history of Greece carries us back to the immi
gration of the Asian Hellenes and to the crude
embryos of states that were looking wonder-
ingly toward the already full-grown glories of
Tyre and Thebes and Babylon and Nineveh,
and the rich and populous empires which some
of these great cities represented.
By the general consent of historians, these
cities, especially the last two, show us the
earliest known peoples. Existing monuments
confirm this testimony. The general result of
the latest researches is stated by Prof. Rawlin-
son as follows : " Cuneiform scholars confident
ly place the beginnings of Babylon about b. c.
2300; of Assyria, about b. c. 1500. For Phoe
nicia the date assigned by the latest English
investigator is the sixteenth or seventeenth
century before Christ. The best Aryan schol
ars place the dawn of Iranic civilization about

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 85
b. c. 1500; of India, about b. c. 1200. Chinese
investigation can find nothing solid or sub
stantial in the past of the Celestials earlier
than b.c 781, or, at the farthest, b. c. 11 54. In
Europe the incipient civilization delineated by
Homer may have commenced as early as the
Trojan epoch, which is probably about b. c.
1300— 1200. No other European civilization
can compete with this — the Etruscan not
reaching back farther than about b. c. 650 or
700." Leaving out of view that much-debated coun
try, Egypt, whose antiquity has of late so dwin
dled in the thought of scholars, we find that
the lines of history converge on Asia, and es
pecially on the region about the Euphrates, as
the most ancient seat of the human race, where
it first ripened into nations and whence it radi
ated into other parts of the world.
Years ago Humboldt told the world that the
American Indians of the Far West were indis-
solubly united by the ties of language with the
Asiatics. Later, Max Muller wrote : " There
was a time when the ancestors of the Celts,
the Germans, the Persians, the Hindus, were
living together under the same roof." The lan
guages of all these peoples have certain com
mon radicals. The same elemental terms for
tree, ox, father, mother, son, daughter, heart,

1 86 ECCE TERRA.
tears, dog, cow, God, are found, more or less
disguised, in them all. Each is a composite
made up of the fragments of earlier speech,
and among these fragments are some that are
common to all the Indo-European languages,
though immemorially separated by whole earth-
diameters. These common elements are ex
ceedingly primitive in their aspect — as readily
seen to be primitive as are fossil trilobites
when found by geologists in situ.
Just as the structures of modern Rome show
in their walls the remains of the ancient city,
and so proclaim it ; just as the later geologic
formations show in themselves the ruins of
primary rock, and so proclaim it, — so the pres
ent Indo-European languages proclaim in their
make-up a common quarry of ancient speech
from which, in part, they have drawn their ma
terials. As these common materials are large
ly, if not wholly, arbitrary and conventional,
they must have come from one source. Lin
guistic scholars are practically a unit in this
verdict; also in thinking that this original
tongue was Asian, was inland, and is most
fully represented to-day by the Persian and
Sanskrit tongues. The mother-speech was a
child of Central Asia.
But this relates only to the Aryan or Indo-
European family of languages. What of the

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 87
Turanian and Semitic and other outlying
tongues not yet fairly classified ? Can they
be traced back to the same ultimate fountain-
head with the rest?
The answer to this question does not rest on
so broad a foundation of research as does the
conclusion just stated as to the Indo-European
tongues, and yet the leading linguists of the
day have seen their way to say that " nothing
necessitates the admission of different inde
pendent beginnings for the material elements
of the Turanian, Semitic and Aryan branches
of speech; nay, it is possible even now to point
out radicals which under various changes and
disguises have been current in these branches
ever since their first separation." And Max
Mliller, whose words have just been quoted,
and who is our greatest authority in such mat
ters, goes so far as to say : " If inductive rea
soning is worth anything, we are justified in
believing that what has been proved to be true
on so large a scale, and in cases where it was
least expected, is true in regard to language in
general:" That is, all the wisps and spurs of
language have not as yet been carefully stud
ied, but so many of its main streams have been
followed that their general trend toward unity
is clear, and the induction is imperative that, as
the St. Petersburg Academy says, "All dialects

1 88 ECCE TERRA.
are to be considered as dialects of one now
lost." This is agreed to by such men as
Klaproth and Herder even, who look with
little favor on the Book that says, "And the
whole earth was of one speech and one lan
guage." As one examines the main streams in a
country, and finds one after another, even
those widest apart, flowing toward the same
sea, he has the right gradually to get confident
that the remaining small streams scattered
among them have the same destination.
Thus, the lines of both history and language
converge on unity. We find our thought
beckoned to one central district in Asia, to one
people, to one primal speech, and at last to
that one original pair of which traditions, as
well as our Scriptures, tell. For not only do
we find among the leading and widely-separ
ated nations traditions of a Flood, of a preced
ing age of supreme wickedness, of a primitive
Golden Age — which can be reasonably ex
plained only by supposing a time when men
were all together as one people, holding these
views and carrying them with them as they
diverged into different countries — but also tra
ditions of a single pair from which have sprung
all the nations of mankind. Says Max Miiller:
" So far as I know, there has been no nation on

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 1 89
the earth which, if it preserved any traditions
on the origin of mankind, did not derive the
human race from one pair, if not from one per
son." Also, Wilhelm von Humboldt, quoted
with approval by his brother in Cosmos: "The
separate mythical relations, found to exist inde
pendently of one another in different parts of
the earth, concur in ascribing the generation
of the whole human race to the union of one
pair." The Bible speaks of but one original pair.
Eve is called the " mother of all the living."
Prof. Rawlinson, in his Origin of Nations, shows
that Genesis io expressly derives the leading
Gentile nations from Noah. In the New Testa
ment the sin and death of our whole race are
traced to the fall of one man : "As by one man
sin entered into the world, and death by sin,
and so death passed upon all men, for that all
have sinned." In short, the Scripture testi
mony in this direction is so clear and abundant
that a belief in the unity of human origin has
ever been wellnigh universal among believers
in the Bible.
From the fact that all the streams of human
ity have diverged from one source, it follows
that this source was supernaturally opened. If
nature had made man at the first, he would have
had several distinct origins, especially in the

190 ECCE TERRA.
course of the long stretch of ages during which
animal life has flourished on our globe. For
aught we can see, mere natural circumstances
have been quite as favorable in a thousand
places and times as in one for the spontaneous
generation of animal life and for its develop
ment on the human stage. The nature that
made its way without help to one human pair
is very unlikely to have stopped abruptly at
that single wonder, and never once in all
these years and lands have duplicated it. The
chances are many millions to one against it.
Our unity of origin also implies a divine ad
ministration through all past ages, confining the
currents of man-constructing energy to one
channel. Nature could not restrain the exercise
of this energy in God ; she would not restrain
its exercise in herself. The unthinking, uni
versal mother, pushing out her motherly forces
in every direction, and finding as little obstruc
tion to their play in Africa and America as in
Asia, as little obstruction in the year 6000 or
4000 Anno Mundi as in the year One, would
not have narrowed herself down to a single
birth in Eden, but would have given many in
dependent births from the " rising of the sun to
the going down of the same," and from the be
ginning until now.

illustration by great examples. i9i
7. Language.
Spoken language is one of the seven won
ders of the world. It broadly divides man from
all other animals. Max Miiller thinks he sees
in it a complete refutation of the notion that
man is genetically derived from lower species —
by no means the only refutation of that ungra
cious notion.
Notwithstanding the mechanical and parrot
imitations of the human voice by some brutes,
none of them really make any approach to ra
tional speech, and no ingenuity and patience in
training have been found able to bridge the
great gulf between the chatter of the ape and
the majesty of articulate speech. And yet such
speech is practically universal among men.
There is no known human tribe that does not
possess it. We search history, and even tra
ditions, in vain for a people that has not its
system, more or less copious, of arbitrary vo
cal signs for expressing facts, and also its own
thoughts and feelings in view of those facts.
Nay, on the very frontiers of the past, and
among men as incapable of devising a rich
language for themselves as were the contem
poraries of Homer of devising that of the Iliad,
we find some of the noblest tongues. The
Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Sanskrit, are fit to ex-

192 ECCE TERRA.
press the widest range of fact and thought, the
most delicate scientific distinctions and subtle
ties and the loftiest flights of aspiration and
fancy. And sometimes they fairly thunder and
lighten with passion and thought and charac
ter. But into all speech the soul projects it
self as it does into nothing else. Here may be
found all the lights and shadows of humanity,
all its greatness and littleness, all its joys and
sorrows, all its virtues and sins.
Then what a wonder of endurance amid won
ders of change ! Dynasties and empires have
fallen, arts and civilizations have died out, but
speech still lives on in undecaying vigor. Not,
indeed, without its changes. It has its flows
and ebbs ; becomes more or less copious as
knowledge advances or recedes ; puts on new
dresses to suit the changed conditions, tastes
and fashions of men ; branches off easily into
new forms, syntaxes and dialects, as the Latin
has done to form the languages of Southern
Europe ; but as to dying, or even being sick,
it has not even thought of such a thing. A
dead language ! The world has never yet seen
that corpse. The Latin has become a Spaniard,
a Frenchman an Italian, almost an Englishman ;
that is all. Migrations, cataclysms, barbarisms,
amalgamations, fissions, do not touch its essen
tial life. It laughs them all to scorn, and refuses

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. I93
to be crushed by even the great wheels of the
ages that grind rocks and empires to dust.
How did men come by this great acquisition?
Some say that it is a purely human invention ;
primitive men having gradually found their way
to it, in the course of long periods, under the
pressure of their needs and powers. Others
say that speech originally came directly from
God, as did those primary knowledges of the
brutes which we call instincts — that God did
not merely furnish man with powers sufficient
to invent it, but that, like their adult size and
furnished home, it came to the first pair ready-
made, a regium donum, a part of the original
capital with which a rich Father sent them forth
into the world. Is there anything in speech it
self, or in its history, that does not harmonize
with this latter view ?
To be sure, spoken words are to a vast ex
tent deceitful, abusive, heretical, slanderous,
profane and corrupting. At times we can do
the facts justice only by saying that "the tongue
is an unruly evil, full of deadly poison ; a fire, a
world of iniquity, setting on fire the course of
nature, and set on fire of hell." And yet, with
all the drawbacks on speech from the ignorance,
carelessness, folly and wickedness of men, every
sensible man would think it a calamity were the
race to be struck dumb. But even if it would
13

194 ECCE TERRA.
not be so — if it could be shown that thus far in
the human history the harm done by speech has,
as a matter of fact, greatly exceeded the good —
it would not follow that such a gift could not
properly come from God. Plainly, that harm
has no necessary connection with speech, any
more than rust has with a royal sword. Its
nature no more enforces its being a curse than
does the nature of the esculent grain enforce
whisky, drunkenness, and at last brutedom and
murder. Dealt with as we may deal with it,
dealt with reasonably and righteously, it would
at once shed what is low and unsightly as the
butterfly does its caterpillar envelope. Then
how brilliant would appear that speech which
even now shows, through haze and cloud, so
many brilliant points of utility!
Speech is the easiest and clearest means of
communication between man and man. It is the
voice of consolation to the stricken, of instruc
tion to the ignorant, of hope to the desponding,
of affection to friends, of warning to the endan
gered, of rebuke to sin, of persuasion toward
righteousness. It is the chief instrument by
which parents and others train the earlier and
more plastic years of life to intelligence, virtue
and usefulness ; indeed, it is a main factor in
education at all stages, especially as being the
foundation of written language, and so of all

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. I95
those accumulations of fact and thought which
make each generation the heir of all its prede
cessors. It is the eloquence that persuades in
democracies and legislatures to just measures
and laws. It is the voice of prayer, of sacred
song, of the Christian ministry going into all
the world and preaching the gospel to every
creature. Nay, it is the voice of Christ speak
ing " as never man spake."
Are the primary teachings of cultured and
virtuous homes useful ? Is that useful which
makes society possible and puts man in close
communication with both earth and Heaven ?
Do we owe anything to the preaching of the
gospel, the tuneful speech of praising congre
gations, the devout upliftings of public prayer
and the glory of audible worship in closet or
family or temple ? Blot out the good done by
conversation ; by oral teaching in the nursery,
the school, the university; by lectures, orations,
sermons; by discussions, appeals, expositions in
conventions and congresses and cabinets and
courts of justice, — and our whole landscape,
away to the uttermost horizon, would be
shaded into inkiness by the terrible spatter-
work. A word spoken in due season, how good is
it ! Nothing less than " apples of gold in pic
tures of silver." Nothing less than "a precious

196 ECCE TERRA.
jewel." Is it not the foster-mother of both
civilization and religion ? Such a thing as this,
with which evils in the main have no more vital
connection than weeds have with a garden,
clouds with the sun, poisonous serpents with
the broad and fruitful river whose banks they
haunt, and from which they will be gradually
driven as the surrounding country becomes
settled and improved — such a thing is this
speech of ours, which when reasonably used
is always beneficent, the irrigator of deserts,
the cleanser of Augean stables, the distributor
of truth and religion and social riches among
men, and so harmonizing perfectly with the idea
that it came directly from God ; as, indeed, the
Scriptures seem to clearly teach that it did.
For they show our first parents, while they
were yet in the garden (which could have been
for a short time only, else they would have be
come confirmed in obedience), naming the brutes
about them and holding converse with each
other, with their Maker and with the tempter.
It appears that they were able from the first
to understand the divine words that told them
of their sovereignty over the other living tribes,
of what they were to use for food, of their duties
in caring for the garden, and of the terms on
which alone they could retain their beautiful
home and the divine favor. So, from the very

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. I97
beginning, man was in possession of language:
as the bee is in possession of the art of cell-
building, and the singing bird of his variety of
song. And yet a system of vocal signs for
outward and mental facts does not necessarily
spring at once from the human nature and en
vironment. It is purely arbitrary. So the di
vine action implied in it was distinct from that
which created man and set him in his place.
This was only the first verse of a long chap
ter. " Holy men of God spake as they were
moved by the Holy Ghost." They spake, " not
in the words which man teacheth, but which
the Holy Ghost teacheth." And some of them,
when brought before rulers, found the promise
fulfilled which said, "It shall be given you in
the same hour what ye ought to speak." En
couraged by such cases, Christians have often
found confidence to pray that God would " put
right words into their mouths as well as right
thoughts into their minds ;" and, seemingly,
have not prayed in vain.
8. Universal Faiths.
In a survey of mankind we find everywhere
certain fundamental religious convictions : for
example, that man consists of two very dissim
ilar parts, a material body, and an immaterial
soul within it ; that there is a most important

I98 ECCE TERRA.
distinction in the very nature of things between
right and wrong; that there is a world of in
visible beings, whose chief is, to all intents and
purposes, infinitely above the human level ; that
worship is due to this great Being; that he has
much to do with human affairs; that he holds
men responsible for character and conduct in a
future state of rewards and punishments; that,
as a matter of fact, men are universally very
guilty beings ; that yet atonement may be made
for sin, the Deity placated and pardon secured.
Such views have been held by the great masses
of men in every known age. If here and there
a person has expressed dissent, his puny voice
has been drowned in the general chorus of hu
manity. Among those who read these words there
will be but one mind as to the salutary charac
ter of these world-wide convictions. They are
to our broken human nature what the splints
are to the broken limb around which they are
securely fastened — the necessary conditions of
its safety and recovery. They do not set the
limb, but they keep the fracture from enlarging
till the surgeon arrives, and, when he has done
his work, they secure it and enable the parts to
knit together.
This is a fair statement, as far as it goes.
But it does not go far enough. It is hardly

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. I99
possible to state too strongly the importance
of those great religious beliefs that so dominate
every nation and age. They are the mother
of all wholesome restraints, the father and
mother of all wholesome promptings. They
are anchors to hold us back from universal
breakers, gales to waft us toward all heavenly
harbors. They are the only ground on which
we can set up our catapults against temptation
and wickedness, the only ground on which we
can build and fortify a positive and enduring
human virtue. They are the last foundation
of practical morals ; and, whatever rubbish has
gathered over them, or whatever unsightly
structures have been raised on them by igno
rance, superstition and wickedness, they are
still the great and phenomenal substructions
of Solomon's temple, worthy of a better fate,
and on which some day a glorious temple will
stand. The world is bad enough with these
cosmic notions ; without them it would be the
mouth of hell. The foul outpouring breath
would poison us to the very centre, convert us
into one huge cancer : and now, what shall be
done with the horrible thing, save to cut it out
of the universe by the sharp surgery of the
Almighty ? Blow, all ye winds, blow ! and
drive back into its parent pit that noisome
pestilence.

200 ECCE TERRA.
Such is the vast worth of those primary re
ligious beliefs which, so far as we can trace,
have always leavened the masses of mankind.
For God to have introduced them by direct
revelation would not have been unworthy of
him, but the contrary. We say at once, and
almost without needing a moment for thought,
" Such an origin is perfectly credible, is quite
consistent with all we know of God, is just
what we would naturally expect from him.
Instead of bringing his hand into suspicion, it
would positively illustrate and emphasize its
goodness and wisdom."
But much more can be said. A house needs
more or less furniture to make it available.
After man was made he needed at once the
elementary informations on religious matters
which have just been mentioned, as the capital
on which to start his career — needed them just
as much as the brutes need those instincts with
which they are born. But none of these ele
mentary informations are intuitive. None of
them are such easy and dynamic deductions
from reason and observation as of themselves
to enforce the attention and faith of all man
kind. Witness the laborious and misty specu
lations of even such ripened men as Socrates
and Plato. The unfledged and unaided powers
of our first parents could hardly have succeeded

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 201
better — would not have succeeded so well. At
the best, it would have been a mere fluttering
and panting without progress. So God was
called upon to furnish them what they needed
by direct revelation. So, no doubt, he did
furnish them.
The observed facts, like the streamers of an
advancing army, point backward to the same
conclusion. The elementary religious convic
tions, universal and immemorial, and which
have always been held, not as a logic but as
an heirloom, must have come down to us from
the common ancestors of the race. Whence
did these common ancestors get them ? They
were, at least, no more like axioms to the first
man than they are to the last. They were no
nearer the surface to the unaided eyes of our
first parents than they are to ours. The gold
nuggets must have shone up to them very
doubtfully, if at all, as from the depths of
shadowy mines. At the best they would have
appeared to that fresh, unpracticed vision as
do objects to one who has just opened his eyes
from sleep in the light of morning. So God
came to the help of the dazed eyes. He di
rectly revealed to them what they needed to
know at once, but could not at once discover
for themselves.
The Scriptures teach as much. For they tell

202 ECCE TERRA.
us that God manifested himself directly to our
first parents, held free verbal communication
with them, told them of various things consid
erably less important than the fundamental re
ligious truths. This fact alone assures us that
these latter truths were not left unrevealed.
The less would not have been told and the
greater left unnoticed. We are now in the
presence of the "law written in the hearts of
men " and of a " faith that is the gift of God."
In addition to that divine action that made
man there was another divine action altogether
distinct : it was that which supplied him with cer
tain primary religious ideas for which he could
not afford to wait on reason, and which, indeed,
the mass of men could never have argued out
with sufficient clearness for their needs.
9. Sacred Writings.
I seem to be traveling through some astonish
ing country full of objects not to be seen else
where, or to be seen only in dwarfed forms —
unequaled harvests ; wonderful structures ; in
exhaustible diamond-fields ; geysers that shoot
their airy columns beyond sight; waterfalls
pouring from heaven and vested in perpetual
rainbow; forests and plains of boundless green
alive with plants and animals of startling size,
beauty and variety ; rivers that sweep thou-

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 203
sands of miles in molten gold to a golden sea ;
mountains whose summits are stars. What a
land ! Why does not all the world run to
see? Whatever may be thought of the truth of
the Bible-teachings, there can be but one opin
ion as to the greatness of them. See some of
these teachings.
The Doctrine of a God. — There is a Being
who is the sum of all the infinites ; a Being
who is one and yet three ; a Being who never
began and will never end — self-existent, from
everlasting to everlasting, found in whatever
depth of the past or future to which our
thought with its fleetest wings may carry us,
though it fly for never so many millions of
years ; a Being who knows absolutely all
things— from whom nothing can be hid by
darkness or depth or walls of masonry thick
as Babylon's, or the labyrinths of hypocritical
souls where they hide from themselves — noth
ing present or past or future, nothing actual or
possible — nothing from the path of a planet to
that of a microscopic insect with its myriads of
sub-orbits of thought and feeling ; a Being who
can do all things to which power has relation —
whose hand can in a moment compress and
crush into nothingness all nature to its farthest
outposts ; a Being at the same time wearing

204 ECCE TERRA.
this crown of crowns, that he is as vast in
righteousness and kindness of every sort as
he is in wisdom, power and duration. In short,
a Being who is the sum of many golden oceans,
each of which is shoreless and bottomless, not
only to our sight, but to his own.
What a wonder ! Above all men, above all
giants of fable, above all the gods of the na
tions before whom long ages have trembled,
above the mountain-tops scaled by the most
soaring thought, rises this colossal Perfec
tion. Doctrine of God as the Author of Nature. — ¦
Out of nothing he made the substance of all
things, whether material or spiritual. This sub
stance he framed into the mineral, vegetable,
animal and spiritual kingdoms — into worlds
that shine on high and the world that shines
below ; into flocks and herds and swarms of
living creatures that people land and sea and
air ; into trees and grains and fruits and flow
ers that sustain most of this roving life with
life in another form only less brilliant ; into a
host of useful compounds which themselves
have no life, but which minister as beauty or
food or health to the things that live ; count
less armies of exquisitely framed things, by the
side of the humblest of which all the inven
tions of men deserve no notice whatever — all

ILL USTRA TION B Y GREA T EXAMPLES. 205
these were brought into being without means,
simply by a stroke of will. What a great teach
ing is this !
Doctrine of God as Universal Governor. — God
sitteth King for ever. He sitteth King every
where. He does according to his will in the
armies of heaven and among the inhabitants
of the earth — helping the good, hindering the
bad, causing the wrath of man to praise him,
and restraining the remainder of it. All things
and events in all times and worlds are touched
by his sceptre. It is never asleep. It is never
careless. It is never too busy nor too weary.
It is never hampered by want of agents or re
sources of any kind. The daily path and ex
periences of the humblest man that ever crept
along earth's lowest vale is as carefully looked
after by his Maker as" is the career of a sover
eign or a sun. Nay, see you yonder mote zig
zagging through the sunbeam ? Not a motion,
not a muscle, of that living speck but as truly
feels the pressure of his will as do the radiant
wing and orbit of an archangel.
Tell us not of our puppet human kings.
Point us not to the vigilant and far-reaching
sway of your Csesars and Charlemagnes with
their hosts of officials, police, soldiers. I know
of none that astonishes me — at least when the
stupendous, all-comprehending government of

206 ECCE TERRA.
God is before me, shooting its beams like a ver
tical sun till every part of every object is gilded,
but, unlike the sun, gilding the remotest object
as freely as the nighest. To this govern
ment there is no far and nigh, no small and
great. Doctrine of Man's Immortal Soul. — The real
man — the intelligent, self-conscious, feeling, pur
posing something that lives within the dying hu
man body, but is not of it — never dies. What!
do you really mean never? Have you consid
ered what that great word means ? Yes, I mean
a real Never — nothing of the poetical sort ; if
you please, Never a thousand times repeated.
No disease nor accident has any power over the
life of that inner man. It defies and easily van
quishes all the ages. This is true of the hum
blest soul as well as of the highest. Not a man
to be found on all the breadth of the earth who
is not heir to all the breadth of the future. We
have all been dipped in the river Styx, and are
invulnerable by any weapon death can use.
Wheeling sword, thrusting spear, roaring can
non, famines, pestilences, earthquakes, — such
things cannot even come nigh our citadel.
Empires may sicken and die, worlds may grow
old, stagger on their shining paths, and at last
disappear, but of all the countless human souls
at any time on the earth not one will ever drop

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 2.0J
out of being, but each will go forward endlessly
in full possession of all its faculties.
Is it not wonderful ? In view of such a fact
how much is a man worth ? How much can
one afford to take for himself?
Doctrine of Angels. — We are told of a broad
realm of spiritual beings greatly superior to
ourselves. They are winged, tireless, death
less, and can come and go without being no
ticed by us. They are intelligent and power
ful and lofty of faculty enough to be called
" thrones, principalities and powers." Beyond
counting are their hosts. Some of these many
and great beings are very good, others very
bad. They are all in constant communication
with our world, keenly interested in its affairs,
acting on us daily and powerfully for good or
ill. The good angels are trying mightily to
help us, the bad as mightily to hurt us. Be
tween Satan and his angels on the one side,
and the good angels on the other, it is keen
struggle and war. And man is the prize to be
lost or won. Whose shall we be ? Satan, the
roaring lion, says, Mine. And his we shall be
unless we bestir ourselves and take the whole
armor of God. Full of subtlety, full of malice,
practiced in all expedients and doctrines of
devils, even to appearing as an angel of light,
campaigning against us summer and winter,

208 ECCE TERRA.
day and night, the prince of -the power of the
air and ruler of the darkness of this world will
not be easily foiled.
What a great war it is ! Naturally, how full
of peril to us! What mighty enemies we have!
Yes, but what mighty friends also ! Know we
of any profane history that tells of wars and
warriors like these unseen ones — any Wagrams
or Waterloos where a sublimer battle rages than
this where the sword of Michael crosses the
sword of apostate Lucifer?
Doctrine of Individual Responsibility. — Every
man shall give account of himself to God, even
for every idle word, and indeed for smaller
things than that. God trieth the reins. Are
you a king, and technically above law? Are
you a priest and professional keeper of other
men's consciences ? Have you gotten an " in
dependence," and so can live very much as you
please ? In yonder supreme court of all, the
crown and the crozier and Fortunatus's purse
will all be sure to appear, and all on a level
with the spade and the fustian. Can a man,
however adroit, manage to " shirk responsibil
ity" there, as he sometimes tries to do here?
Can one say to another, " I'll take the respon
sibility," and actually succeed in taking it?
Though the priests cry, " His blood be on us
and on our children!" will that clear Pilate?

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 2O9
Whatever the present look of things, and how
ever long a man may go on undisturbed, he
will at last find himself in front of the tribunal
from which there is no appeal, and before a
Book of Remembrance that probes all the
smallest secrets of his life. Due regard will
doubtless be had to all alleviating as well as
enhancing circumstances ; but let him see to
it : " It shall be rendered to every man accord
ing as his work shall be."
Is not this a great doctrine — formidably
great? Was the illustrious statesman far out
of the way when he said, " The greatest
thought I ever had was that of my in
dividual responsibility to God." The man
who stands unawed before the majesty of
mountains and oceans and skies may well
uncover before that of those heavenly bal
ances into which surely go every act and
thought and feeling of his life — not to gratify
an idle or scientific curiosity on the part of
Heaven, but for reward or punishment.
Doctrine of Probation. — We are now having
our only probation. Now we may retrace
wrong steps. Now we may recast the founda
tions of character. Now we may alter totally
our attitude and relations to the government
of God, and pass quite over the immense in
terval from disloyalty to loyalty, from condem-
14

210 ECCE TERRA.
nation to justification. All our sins may be
forgiven, the rudiments of every virtue gained.
But the time for this is limited. By and by,
and that at no great distance, the gracious sun
that is now shining will set, and never rise
more. Let death surprise us with certain
things undone, and, lo, the transfer-books of
character and destiny are permanently closed.
This is something to think of, something
great, something in the very front rank of
greatness. One chance — threescore years long,
it may be — and then never another. O land of
the irreversible ! What infinite meaning such
a thought gives to our life in this world, es
pecially in view of the Bible doctrine of what
the irreversible future contains !
Doctrine of a Perfect Law. — Look at the Ten
Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, the
Two Commandments on which hang all the
Law and the Prophets — at the filling up in all
the Scriptures of this outline of what duty God
requires of man ! The Scripture ethics pro
fess to be perfect. Are they not so ? By com
mon consent of friends and candid foes the
Bible morality, translated from precept into
the actual life and character of a man, would
make him all we could wish. Society would
only need to be made up of such men to meet
our highest ideals.

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 211
If we would do them justice, these Bible
ethics are not to be contrasted with those of
the best of our unbelievers in Christian lands :
these men have unconsciously absorbed their
principles of morals from the biblical atmo
sphere in which they have always lived. But
they should be contrasted with the views of
right and wrong prevailing when and where
the Scriptures were written. Considering the
ages and countries out of which they came,
they are simply wonderful for their compre
hensiveness, purity and justice — at least as
wonderful as it would be for snowy Cauca
sians to have Nubians for parents. To the
best of us they say, as out of heaven, "Come
up hither."
Doctrine of Infinite Sanctions. — A world of
glory, on the painting of which the imagination
may lay out all its powers, and yet feel that the
picture falls immensely short of the reality. A
world of darkness, of which as much can be
said. Both of these worlds everlasting homes
to those once entering them — the one the
sure recompense of God's friends in this
world, the other the sure recompense of his
enemies !
By the side of these two as yet invisible
worlds all that we see in the nightly sky are
of no consequence. Such is the instant thought

212 ECCE TERRA.
of every reasonable man. To show the great
ness of some things requires explanation and
argument : we have to put the matter in this
light and in that, go round it with our measur
ing-rod as did the angel about the celestial
city ; but such worlds of retribution as heaven
and hell need only to be glanced at, and, lo,
all other worlds disappear. Nothing remains
in the wasted vault but two immeasurable
orbs. Doctrine of a Divine Incarnation, Atonement
and Mediatorship. — To make heaven possible
to all men, however sinful, the Son of God him-
. self became flesh and dwelt among us many
years, contradicted of sinners, treading thorny
paths with bare feet, and at last, by sacrificial
dying agonies, atoning for sin, and then re
turning to the skies as official Mediator for
mankind. What a doctrine is this ! An unspeakable
thing from the standpoint of nature. No doubt
the angels, leaning over the celestial battle
ments, wondered and wondered as the sacred
tragedy went forward. Let us wonder also.
Doctrine of the Holy Spirit. — Convincing the
world of sin, of righteousness and of judgment;
silently yet mightily persuading in all hearts to
right ways; anointing both the truth and seeing
eyes with power; reversing the poles of life

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 213
and character to consenting souls ; setting up
the whole man on new moral foundations, and
these of the whitest sculpture-marble, and
thence proceeding to carry up by degrees a
glorious Christian temple, into which, as wall
or column or buttress or some other shining
part, every virtue enters, and whose summit
is white with heaven !
This work of regenerating and sanctifying
souls is even more grand and consequential
than the work of the creation. It is a necessity
— not in that poor and low sense in which we
sometimes use the word, but in the very high
est. Without it what would have become of us,
fallen, feeble, much-tempted creatures as we
are ! With such free and mighty helps what
heights are possible to us ! It seems that for
our highest interests the almightiness of God
is at our service. Amazing privilege !
Doctrine of Exceeding Promises — " exceeding
great and precious promises," as the Bible calls
them. Such as that God will give his Holy
Spirit freely to all who ask him ; that he will
allow access to himself, at all times and for all
sorts of things not sinful in themselves, to the
meanest human being who wishes his help ;
that he will never suffer any hostile powers
to pluck his people out of his hand and finally
ruin them ; that all things shall work together

214 ECCE TERRA.
for good to those who love God ; that the
gates of hell shall not finally prevail against
his Church.
No such promises are found elsewhere.
They have made many weak and fainting
ones sublimely strong. They have set stars,
moon, sun in many a black firmament. In
many a desperate field they have turned the
tide of battle in favor of truth and righteous
ness, and are, in fact, the sinews of our spirit
ual war and the banner which God gives to
them who fear him.
Doctrines of inspiration, miracles and sub
lime vistas of outlook through the history of
the world — vistas reaching on the one hand
away back to the world's very beginning, and
on the other away down to the world's very
end; including a golden age, the resurrection
of the dead, the general judgment and the
earth in flames !
The teaching is that a divine influence so
guided the pens of all the Bible-writers as to
secure its being an infallible and complete rule
of religious faith and practice. It gives us no
error, and it gives us all needed truth in the
best way. Further, it causes to pass before us
in magnificent procession a long series of di
vine apparitions, ministries, signs and wonders,
extending through the whole history of man,

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 21 5
and in the presence of whose gigantic and
radiant forms all the events of common history
are sapless trifles. And what a glorious stretch
of view it is, from this Pisgah away back untold
distances to the beginning when God made the
heavens and the earth, and away down in the
opposite direction untold distances, until at the
end of the vista we see new heavens and a new
earth !
Now put these great teachings of the Bible
together so that they may be commanded by a
single view. Have we not, indeed, a wonder
land? Where is another book that offers so
many ideas that strain our powers of concep
tion ? Oriental fiction, in its wildest imagin
ings, has never approached in strangeness and
sublimity this glorious landscape. What are
trees loaded with many-colored jewels, moun
tains borne aloft in the hands of genii, men
flashed through the air on magical carpets,
compared with one infinite personal God, his
universal government, responsibility to him, a
lost race, immortal souls redeemed, God mani
fest in the flesh, heaven and hell, atonement and
regeneration and sanctification, the Mosaic and
Christian miracles, and the glories of the world's
last day ? Such things are absolutely full of
the elements of amazement and awe. Many a
strong man has been quite overwhelmed by a

2l6 ECCE TERRA.
sense of their majesty. They are of infinite
consequence to everybody — have had, and are
destined to have still more, a wonderful influ
ence on the world. I have walked through
many a famed gallery of the Old World which
great artists have glorified with their genius,
but never with such abashed step and wonder
ing heart as belong to any reasonable man as
he passes through this divine gallery of paint
ings and sculptures called the Bible, of which
God is both the artist and collector.
It is not surprising that this Book which is
so great in its teachings should be found great
in many other particulars. Its various parts
are far above the level of the various times in
which they appeared. Among books it has no
peer in the amount and quality of the influence
it has exerted and is still exerting. It is a great
educational institution, doing more to educate
the public heart, conscience, and even intellect,
than any other teacher that has ever appeared.
That endeavor to take in and do justice to its
great thoughts which all Bible-readers are daily
put upon is itself a liberal education. Is Homer
with the art-galleries of his great epics, or some
natural science with its roomy halls and muse
ums of facts and laws, properly called an edu
cational institution, and shall we deny the name
to that castellated group of templed and pala-

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 11J
tial thoughts and foundations which we call the
Bible? No other such reformer is known ; no other
such conservator of rights, properties, order,
law. It does more to restrain men from the
bad than all the prisons, polices and armies
that ever frowned; more to stress them toward
the good than all the philosophies, natural re
ligions and natural rewards of virtue that ever
smiled and beckoned toward that goddess. We
speak of the world's great powers ! The first
among them is not Russia, nor Great Britain
-with its mighty horizons from sunset to sunset,
but it is that vaster empire of the Book, with
its wonderful adaptation to all times and peo
ples, its mountainous stability against all at
tacks, its vast uplifting power, its current rap
id conquests in many lands, that is to-day the
mightiest governor and conqueror on the face
of the earth. So broad and strong and right
ful and righteous and useful and promising for
the world's future, we look all the lands through
in vain in search of its fellow.
That this Book, with its various great feat
ures, has God for its author I have endeavored
to show in another volume, and have steadily
assumed from the beginning of the present
work. But I have not yet distinctly called at
tention to the exceeding number, variety and

2l8 ECCE TERRA.
greatness of the divine actions involved in the
Scriptures. The Bible is really a composite of many rev
elations, made at different times, through differ
ent persons, over a stretch of many centuries,
and so involving a great many distinct divine
actions. Scarcely a single sacred penman,
moreover, did his work at a sitting, but at
intervals more or less long ; and sometimes
these intervals were of very great length.
For example, the Psalms of David are known
to have been composed in a long series, the
terms of which were interspaced sometimes by
many years. During all this time the divine
inspiration was either continuous, or, as it is
more reasonable to suppose, came upon the
writers in distinct waves as it was needed and
used, thus making a long series of divine ac-
tions. The divine action in inspiring the sacred
writers was very various. They were inspired
to write history, biography, poetry in many
forms, proverbs, prophecy, letters, and even
what may be called philosophy. Facts and
principles before dimly seen were made clearer;
new facts and doctrines, otherwise inaccessible
to us, were revealed ; all that we need to know
religiously was communicated ; all error in doc
trine and fact was precluded ; even the words

ILL USTRA TION B Y GEE A T EXAMPLES^ 2 1 9
of Scripture and their arrangement, so far as
these might affect the value of the revelation,
were divinely suggested ; in short, the Book
was made by a multitude of distinct and va
rious divine actions an infallible and complete
rule of religious faith and practice for all men
— not only far superior to every other rule
known to us, but, all things considered, a per
fect rule. We are also to believe that from
the beginning of the Canon till now a Provi
dence has watched over it, and not only kept
it in existence, but kept it from all serious cor
ruption in passing through many hands and rude
and troubled times ; that is, kept it from all
changes that would have marred its character
as a religious rule for such beings as men ; also,
that during all this time God has been person
ally active in interpreting the Book, especially to
all praying souls, "opening the understanding to
understand the Scriptures," and applying them
as "the sword of the Spirit" to all classes. "Lo,
I am with you alway, even to the end of the
world," means at least a steady divine co-opera
tion with ministers of the word from age to age.
Such is the testimony which the Bible gives
of itself. Certainly a great testimony. The
outward seeming of the Book is that of any
other book. No aureole plays about it; the
characters within are such as mere types and

220 ECCE TERRA.
ink can give ; no radiant hand let down from
heaven visibly passes it from house to house
and from person to person ; and yet it is one
of the greatest divine works visible in all the
earth. It contains within itself an army of di
vine actions. It is environed and carried for
ward by an army of divine auxiliaries. On its
path among men is gathered more divine in
terest and a greater measure and variety of
divine forces than gather about the orbits of
planets and suns. As the chariot in which
salvation rides to a lost race ; as the pillar that
shows the journeying nations how to cross the
"great and terrible wilderness ;" as the perma
nent yet moving Shekinah for Jews and Gen
tiles, whence the voice of the Lord speaks in
fallible oracles ; as the great lens which brings
to a brilliant focus far more than the scattered
rays of tradition, conscience, reason and nature,
— it really has no fellow among all the useful and
precious things that meet our eyes as they go
ranging through the world. This is claimed of
several books — is true for only one. And this
one is not the Zendavesta, nor the Vedas, nor
the Koran, nor some other on which is written
the name of Confucius or Mormon or Sweden-
bo rg — purely human the best of them, insane
or diabolical the worst of them : it is the Book
that incarnates the Christian religion. A divine

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 221
pulse is in every verse, and every verse is being
charioted toward its own particular uses by a
discriminating Providence that makes no mis
takes. What a Book ! It is a quiver full of golden
arrows that God himself has wrought, and
which his eye and hand are sending out to
their various destinations more critically than
ever did consummate Tell poise and strain
shaft on string. It is a ship sailing toward us
out of the dawn, embosomed in a phosphores
cent ocean, driven steadily on to its port by
sacred gales and currents, and picking up on
this hand and on that wrecked mariners as it
ploughs its golden furrow.
io. Moral Wonders.
All men now are conscious of a certain
working within them in opposition to courses
of sin and folly. Usually this opposition is felt
for years. Sometimes it strengthens into a
strong wrestling, and the soul is strained and
bruised and torn as if at the hands of a glad
iator. We may not say that no natural forces
are concerned in this holy gladiatorship — we
know the contrary — but yet it is certain that
just this sort of work is attributed in the Bible
to God. He strove with the antediluvians,
until he at last said, " My Spirit shall not al-

222 ECCE TERRA.

ways strive with man." He strove with the
Israelites in all their generations, until Stephen
said, " Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost ; as
your fathers did, so do ye." And from that
time till now the striving has continued with
the whole world, for the Saviour says, " He
will reprove the world of sin, of righteousness
and of judgment." Such passages have com
pelled the current belief of Christians that,
even as good men never content themselves
with indirect and occasional resistance of
wrong courses in others, but also, according
to their power, act directly and habitually for
that purpose, so no doubt the striving of the
Holy Ghost with wrong in every man and in
every age includes one that is personal and
habitual — all the more certainly because God,
unlike man, is not to be wearied or embar
rassed by any amount or variety of action.
In the case of many persons these divine
strivings issue in another divine work — viz.
regeneration. Character and life are radically
changed. The sinner finds himself penitent
and believing. Somehow, he thinks different
ly, feels differently, acts differently. He has
come into hearty sympathy with the divine
government, and is resolute to obey its laws
and promote its ends. And yet only a few
hours ago it was so different — perhaps fiercely

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 223
and almost hopelessly different. But now "old
things have passed away ; behold, all things
have become new."
A new thing under the sun ? By no means.
Such stars have always been coming out in the
jet of our sky. Adam and Eve, we hope, had
that starry experience. We know that Abel
had it. And, from that first martyr down
ward, good men have never been totally want
ing — patriarchs, prophets, apostles, saints, of
whom time would fail me to tell — and each of
these men became good by experiencing, once
upon a time, just that moral revolution of which
I have spoken. And now many thousands of
such revolutions occur every year. The thou
sands will grow to millions as the years roll
on kindling wheels through dawn and sunrise
toward the perfect day. The noon itself will
be made by these starry experiences becoming
so closely packed together as to make a sun.
Whence are these, from first to last, innu
merable regenerations ? Christians have but
one answer. They are compelled to uniform
ity by the clear and manifold Scripture utter
ances. Faith is the gift of God. Jesus is the
author, as well as finisher, of it. " Create
within me a clean heart, O God, and renew a
right spirit within me," says David. Christians
are the " wheat sown by the great Sower — his

224 ECCE TERRA.
workmanship, created anew in Christ Jesus,
born of the Spirit, renewed of the Holy Ghost."
That such language means a real divine action,
and one of the most commanding sort, no rea
sonable man can doubt, especially in view of
the fact that we are directed to pray for the
conversion of men.
In addition to these divine acts for the con
version of men there are also others for their
sanctification. Some men grow in grace. They
go from strength to strength. The dawn shines
more and more toward the perfect day. Their
faith gets stronger, their conscientiousness deep
ens ; their obedience gradually takes on the ease
and fixedness of habit. The young banyan wi
dens and heightens, sends down rootlets from
every branch, makes filial stems on every hand,
promises in time to become a pillared temple of
the forest. How many forms of virtue belong
to a single finished Christian character ! and
how many increments each of these takes on
in the course of years under as many impulses
of the growth-making forces ! How many of
these complex, banyan-like sanctifications in
the world, from first to last, between Adam
on the one hand and the Church universal in
its white millennial robes on the other !
The Bible being witness, all the virtues that
have ever adorned the world ; all the improve-

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 225
ments made in these virtues, even such as men
have wrought at as laboriously as ever did lap
idary at cutting and polishing and setting a
gem ; all the finished jewels of character that
will finally be found flashing on the persons of
that multitude that no man can number as they
pass through the gates into the city — must be
credited to God. They are "fruits of the Spirit."
"My Father is the husbandman," and he prunes
and " purges the tree that it may bring forth
more fruit." "Through sanctification of the
Spirit;" "changed into the same image from
glory to glory as by the Spirit of the Lord ;"
" knowing that it is God that worketh in you to
will and to do of his good pleasure," — how out
spoken and decisive are these gleams of the bib
lical philosophy! So the whole Christian Church
has felt constrained to allow that in the " every
good and perfect gift that is from above" is this
supreme gift of sanctification — that, inspiring,
directing and working with the human lapidary
as he toils away on the precious stone to fit it
for a crown, there is another Hand, so much
more skillful, diligent and efficient than his
own that we are bound to say, " Thou, O
Lord, hast wrought all our work in us."
Prayer in its very nature is largely an appeal
to God to do something. Such appeals have
been made from the beginning. From the be-
15

226 ECCE TERRA.
ginning God has invited them, encouraged them
by great promises, put on record many brilliant
examples of their success in calling forth divine
activity ; so that every believer knows, inde
pendently of observation, that countless millions
of petitions from devout men for objects known
to be always and everywhere agreeable to the
divine will and consistent to be granted (for
example, spiritual blessings for the petitioner
himself) have been answered by appropriate
movements of divine power all adown the ages.
But there are many cases in which prayers are
so circumstantially fulfilled before our eyes that
we know, aside from Scripture, that the divine
Hand must have been concerned in them. The
occasional experience of almost every praying
man, the records of noted prayer-meetings, and
especially the continuous histories of such Chris
tian institutions as Miiller's at Bristol, England,
where daily bread (none too little and none too
much) for thousands is gotten by daily prayer,
are witnesses. Could we collect all the exam
ples of such circumstantially fulfilled prayer as
no doctrine of chances or of blind law can ex
plain that occur in a single year all over Chris
tendom, they would be found to make a very
great total — something not easily counted, some
thing to be astonished at — and such have been
occurring every year, not to say every hour,

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 227
since man began, sometimes in constellations.
As the conditions of acceptable prayer will be
more and more freely supplied as the world
goes on toward its Golden Age, these brilliant
examples will go on multiplying, till at last the
earth is ablaze with the time when " it shall
come to pass that before they call I will answer,
and while they are yet speaking I will hear."
But some one reminds us that there is a
theory which provides for answers to prayer
— as well as for an infinity of other things —
by only a single divine action. At the creation,
God, contemplating all the events which both
could and should be, so framed the system of
nature that, without any further action from
him, it would itself produce these events at
the proper time and place. One comprehen
sive act at the beginning made unnecessary
any further divine action. So that from then
till now God has not once lifted his hand.
According to this notion, no doubt, the di
vine government would be jusl as real and
present as if a distinct divine action were im
mediately connected with each event. If Dom
Pedro, emperor of Brazil, proposes to travel
for a year in foreign countries, and succeeds
in making arrangements in advance by which,
during that time, all the needs of the empire
will be as well met as if he had remained at

228 ECCE TERRA.
home and daily attended to all the details of
kingly work, his government by no means
ceases when he embarks. But is this really
the way in which God governs ? Then he
has made an alter ego. Then mere nature
wrought all the miracles of the Old and New
Testaments, including his descent on Sinai and
his greater descent on Calvary. Then it is pos
sible for God to make a system of second causes
that can go on untended for ages, doing the
entire work of Deity, save perhaps that of
creating ; and we have but to suppose such a
system eternal (just as easy a supposition as
that of an eternal God) to get rid of all philo
sophic need of a God ; nay, in such a case one
is forbidden by the inductive philosophy to ex
plain such a nature by the hypothesis of a God.
Of course the whole drift of Scripture is
against this clock-winding scheme. Plainly,
it never once entered the thought of the sacred
writers, unless as a part of the " oppositions of
science, falsely so called." The impression left
on the most careful as well as the most careless
reader of the Bible is that nature is not a ma
chine so wisely built that it can go on of itself,
turning out as good results as both nature and
the supernatural together could do, but that God
is continually active in the system, meeting its
current needs by the current outgoes of his

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 229
watchful almightiness. He never embarks for
foreign parts. He never puts a viceroy into
his throne.
This conception of the divine government is
far more useful than the other, as it brings God
nearer our thought and life, and is therefore pre
sumably correct; especially as it is just as easy
for an infinite Being to act daily, and even mo
mently, as to act once in a million of years.
1 1 . Miracles.
In addition to the divine actions already men
tioned, there have been certain others in con
nection with events, for the present sufficiently
described by the name of the " Scripture Mir
acles." That God has, from time to time, put forth
his hand to produce such miracles is far from
being incredible, apart from revelation. The
air of all times and countries is quick with
rumors of supernatural occurrences. We
meet everywhere echoes which might well
have been born of the most wonderful voices,
everywhere odors which might well have come
from the distant swaying of royal robes.
Nay, as we have seen, there are events tak
ing place even now which, to say the least, it
is very hard to bring clearly within the class of
the purely natural. Are we never at a loss to

23O ECCE TERRA.
see how mere animal parentage can account
for the bodies and souls that are constantly
being born, to see how it is possible for any
thing in the way of mere nature to produce its
own equal ? Is there not very considerable
reason for believing that the long stretch of
organic life on our globe has been many times
broken and as many times renewed by that
greatest of marvels, a sudden creation ?
And, then, what a fitting basis would miracles
be to such a system of religion as the biblical !
A grand palace should have a grand founda
tion, a great monarch should be preceded by
no common herald. Whatever else may be de
nied as to the religion of the Bible, it cannot
be denied that it is great. It seeks the great
est objects, works by the greatest means, and
claims some of the greatest ideas and literature
and effects the world ever saw. Its purpose is
the salvation of mankind. It offers to secure
this purpose by a divine atonement and by a
constant miracle of renewal and sanctification
in the hearts of men through the Holy Spirit.
It would be a fitness — such a fitness as nature
loves, and such as we intuitively recognize as
belonging to truth — were this great temple
fronted with a porch of signs and wonders.
It would be a graceful harmony — like the ac
cords in music or the symmetries of physical

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 23 1
beauty — were this pure and lofty faith of Christ
endom found poising itself, in part at least, on
such a foundation of great and precious stones
as the marvels that transcend nature.
But some are disposed to object. They tell
us that such marvels have never been needed,
and so have never occurred ; that an infinite
Being could have so made the scheme of things
as to secure all his ends by natural forces and
laws alone ; that He who is admitted to have
secured by such means a large part of his ends
could, with omnipotence and omniscience to
help him, have managed to secure the remain
der. We happen, however, to know that not
even an infinite Being can work impossibilities
in the nature of things, and that among these
impossibles may well be that of securing from
mere nature as complete results as might come
from nature and the supernatural together.
They tell us that such marvels, in their very
nature, are amendments — mere supplements
and patches to eke out a faulty system — at
tempts to correct what is too long or too short,
too fast or too slow, too weak or too strong ;
in short, such a thing as could never have come
from a perfect Being. I happen, however, to
know that great deeds are not necessarily
afterthoughts. They may enter into the orig
inal plan of their author with all smaller mat-

232 ECCE TERRA.
ters. And why may not such marvels as I
have mentioned have entered into a great
primal plan of creation which was never for
a moment supposed to be complete without
them? In their nature they are no more
amendments than a pendulum is an amend
ment to a clock or a roof to a house. Did
not the maker from the first propose the
whole ?
Above all, they tell us that such events are
contrary to experience. I happen, however, to
know some things in the way of science that
make light of such an objection. Grant that
such events are aside not only from our own
personal experience, but also from that of all
our predecessors for some thousands of years.
What then ? Does it follow that they have
never occurred, or even that they cannot be
known with scientific sureness to have occur
red ? Nothing of the sort. We certainly know
of real geological wonders which have never
once been observed actually occurring during
the entire history of our race thus far ; we cer
tainly know of real astronomical wonders sure
to occur after many ages, but of which all previ
ous human history will not have seen a solitary
instance, but rather constant facts of directly
the opposite bearing. For example, many ages
hence the moon will begin to recede from the

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 233
earth. That will be an event totally unprece
dented in the history of mankind. Nay, it will
be an event directly the opposite of what has
always been occurring. From long before man,
down to that remote future, the moon, instead
of retreating from the earth, will have been
steadily approaching it ; and were the race of
that distant time to reason merely from what
has been within its time to what will be on the
morrow, it would confidently say that the satel
lite will be still approaching. But it would be
a mistake. On that very morrow the lunar
orbit will begin to expand — will do a thing
which no man in all the ages has ever observ
ed it doing, and, what is more, will do a thing
which, with the help of a little astronomy, those
men might have foreknown with supreme cer
tainty. We foreknow it with supreme certainty
to-day, thanks to the great observations of Hal-
ley and the greater mathematics of La Place.
Now, what neither science nor tradition nor
the fitness of things forbids us to believe in
we find imposed on our faith by the Scriptures.
They tell us that the Hebrews saw ten general
plagues sent on Egypt through the rod of
Moses ; that by it a way was opened through
the Red Sea for a whole marching nation until
from the farther bank they saw the crystal walls
fall on the pursuing army of the Egyptians ;

234 ECCE TERRA.
that a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire
by night led the pilgrim host for forty years ;
that during this long time their clothing waxed
not old and their daily bread came daily from
heaven ; that, on their coming to Sinai, God
came down on the mount in foretold majesty
of lightnings and thunders and earthquakes,
and spake his law in awful proclamation that
sounded through all the marshaled millions,
and carried dismay through all their hearts.
Many other events of a similar nature are
found described in the Old Testament.
In the New Testament we find a record of a
similar but still more illustrious cluster of won
ders. It tells us that God himself became in
carnate in the person of a babe ; that a host
of angels appeared to the shepherds of Bethle
hem and sang gloriously of the nativity ; that a
star, moving as if instinct with intelligence,
guided a caravan from the East to the infant
King ; that, as he was being baptized, a voice
fell from heaven on the ears of thousands gath
ered from all parts of the country, saying, "This
is my beloved Son ;" that promptly, at the speak
ing of a. word or the lifting of a finger or some
other sign equally insufficient as cause, the blind
received sight, the lame walked, the deaf heard,
the dumb spake, the lepers were cleansed, the
paralytics took up their beds and walked, the

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 235
madmen became sane, the sick were cured of
whatever disease they had, the very dead were
raised ; that at the crucifixion of Jesus the whole
land was darkened and shaken ; that a terrible
angel flashed down from heaven in sight of the
Roman guard about the sepulchre ; that the
Messiah rose from the dead and was seen forty
days among his apostles, and on one occasion
by more than five hundred disciples ;' that he
rose to heaven in broad day in sight of the
Eleven ; that these men themselves received
the gift of tongues and the power of working
miracles, and wrought them for years over a
wide extent of country.
Beyond question, the Scriptures represent
such events as due to direct divine action.
From the very nature of the case, some of
these, such as the descent of the Deity on
Sinai and the incarnation, were supernatural ;
but the same supernatural origin is claimed
by the Scriptures for the whole body of such
marvels. This claim breathes from the whole texture
and atmosphere of the narrative. It is its
fundamental postulate. It is true that some
persons maintain that while the Bible is, in
general, trustworthy both as to doctrine and
fact, and even came from God, its so-called
miracles were merely very unusual and strik-

236 ECCE TERRA.
ing natural events, produced wholly by sec
ondary forces and laws. But, to any fair-
minded reader of the Bible, this claim is too
absurd to merit the least attention. It is
abundantly plain that the sacred writers meant
to have us understand that such marvels as
have just been mentioned were not excep
tional natural events, but were wrought di
rectly by the finger of God. And so they
have been understood by unsophisticated peo
ple in every age.
Now, notice the exceeding number, variety
and greatness of these divine interventions, also
the exceeding evidence that accompanied them.
Many scores of these are distinctly recorded;
and we are told that the New-Testament mir
acles are merely samples of a much larger
number. See what breadth of statement:
"And his fame went throughout all Syria;
and they brought to him all sick people that
were taken with divers diseases and torments,
and those that were possessed with devils, and
those that were lunatic, and those that had the
palsy, and he healed them." Similar statements
are several times made as to the miracles of
both Jesus and his apostles. It appears that
the whole land was filled with marvels. They
overflowed into surrounding countries. They
lasted for the best part of a century. They

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 2T>J
counted by thousands and tens of thousands.
They lightened in city and on country-side.
They flashed on the eyes of nobles and com
moners, of learned and simple. Scarcely a
hamlet into which they did not go. Scarcely a
man who did not have opportunity, over and
over again, of examining them personally with
all his senses. Their heavy footfall was heard
near every door ; the family had but to open
and look and listen. It would, of course, have
paid a Jew to push a pilgrimage to Gaul or
Britain to come into the presence of such
superb events, but they came to greet him in
his own streets, and he had but to follow the
crowd, or to climb the sycamore, or to ask the
eye-witness of yonder dwelling, in order to
have evidence of them as triumphant as the
mathematics. We are so familiar with this story that we
are apt to miss a sense of its exceeding great
ness. It is easy for us to read without emotion
the oft-read account of the Nain widow's son
or of Lazarus bewailed of sisters ; but could
we actually stand by the bier which is trembling
with the throes of resurrection, or by the cave
whence swaddled death comes promptly forth
at the word of command, we would hardly be
able to keep back our exclamations of wonder
and awe. We must try to transfer ourselves

238 ECCE TERRA.
to those distant times. We should gather
about ourselves, in idea, the living circum
stances under which Almightiness is said to
have stepped forth to its work. We should,
as it were, hear with our own ears the inad
equate utterance and the hot tramp of the
mighty result. Thus would our dull concep
tions be roused and empowered as was that
ancient Gennesaret when the storm came
down upon it. Looking as through our own
eyes, we would better take in the hugeness of
those marvels, so simply set before us in the
Scriptures, as they tell of lame men leaping
as the hart; dumb tongues singing; deaf ears
waking up to a gospel of sweet sounds and
the voices of kindred ; blind eyes that had
rolled sightless from birth drinking in with
passionate joy the bright aspects of nature
and the loving looks of parents and children ;
dead bodies in which decay had already begun
to proclaim itself quickened anew with the
mystery of life and soul, and going forth
among men with the old potential step of
manhood in its prime — as they tell of such
events forthspringing with glorious prompt
itude at the feeblest natural signal, and with
a profusion and overtness that spoke to the
whole land and age.
What supreme evidence accompanied the lead-

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 239
ing Scripture miracles! They were not done in
a corner. The entire Hebrew nation of Moses'
day must have known perfectly whether the Mo
saic miracles were real or not. They could not
have passed forty years in such a wonderful
experience without knowing it. And they could
not have been without such a forty years' ex
perience without knowing that too to a perfect
certainty. If no such plagues were ever
wrought for their deliverance, they knew they
were never wrought. If they never went
through the Red Sea as on dry land, every
soul of them knew that they never did. If
they had not been led by that intelligent pillar
for nearly half a century, they all, to a man,
knew that they had not been. If they had
never bowed and quaked before a bowing and
quaking Sinai, not a Hebrew of them all but
knew it like noonday. If they had not been
fed by daily miracle for a lifetime, they all,
without exception, knew that to absolute dem
onstration. In short, the chief Mosaic miracles
were of such a nature that the senses of every
man, woman and child among the Hebrews
could judge of them infallibly.
So of the leading Christian miracles. Large
ly, Jesus allowed the whole world to look on
while he wrought. It is broad day. Gather the
wise and the learned; gather the men of theory

240 ECCE TERRA.
and the men of affairs ; gather the unsophisti
cated and the prejudiced, the devout and the
worldly, the populace and the counselors ; let
them all come and sift this matter to the bot
tom. So they came — the scholarly rabbi in all
the pride of learning ; the honorable ruler in
all the pride of place ; the bitter enemy with
his sharp outlook for imposture ; the proud
Pharisee drawing his robes more closely about
him lest they should touch the shamefaced pub
lican at his side ; the Sadducee with his free-
thinking ; the Essene with his dreamy intui
tions — in a word, the great public in all its
grades and opinions and habits. And there,
on the thronged thoroughfare, they looked and
listened as blind Bartimeus regained his sight.
There, at the city-gate, they looked and lis
tened as the dead man sat up and began to
speak. There, at the crowded city-house, they
looked and listened while the roof was broken
up and the palsied man was let down before
Jesus and cured. And there, at Calvary, with
its unspeakable martyrdom and surging seas
of people, they looked and listened and 'felt as
night came up at midday and the ground shook
beneath them at the majestic tread of the earth
quake. And where the miracles were done only in
the presence of the twelve disciples, they were

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 24I
largely such that those disciples could not have
been mistaken as to their reality and divine ori
gin. The evidence was supreme. Could they
help knowing that the violent storm on the Sea
of Galilee was instantaneously quieted at the
bidding of their Master ? Did they not know,
by every sense they had, whether a living Jesus
was among them for forty days after he had
been pronounced dead by the grand coroners
of Judea and Rome ? Did they not know
whether they saw Jesus rising through the day
into heaven, and whether, thereupon, they saw
an angel standing among them in white robes
and telling of the second coming ? Especially,
did they not know whether they themselves
possessed the power of working miracles, and
whether they actually wrought them in great
numbers and splendor for many years? Those
twelve men could not possibly have been mis
taken as to the reality of any one of these
miracles, much less as to the reality of thou
sands of them, occurring under every variety
„ of form and illuminating a whole lifetime. Just
as ancient Israel must have known to absolute
certainty, at the merest glance, that no such
forty years of miraculous experience as Moses
wrote of had happened to them in case it had
not, so those Christian apostles knew perfectly
that no such gorgeous caravan of miraculous
16

242 ECCE TERRA.
years as they wrote of had borne them along
in triumphal march in case it had not.
The evidence attending the Christian miracles
was so great that it bred a magnificent faith in
the primitive Christians. How like profound
believers do the Evangelists write ! What
charming directness, simplicity and general
air of good faith in their narratives ! What
faithfulness in recording their own crudities,
mistakes and sins ! Truly they were consum
mate actors if they were merely feigning faith.
Never did Roscius or Garrick so admirably
personate kings. And then see how they lived
and died. It is agreed on all hands by the tra
ditions and histories that the apostles who lost
their Master by crucifixion passed their own
lives in labors, dangers and sufferings in attes
tation of the same miraculous story, and at last
endured, most of them, martyrdom for the same ;
and all with no possibility of any such result to
themselves (such was the pure and spiritual na
ture of the system of religion which they taught)
as alone could beckon on selfish and unprinci
pled men to undertake such sacrifices. They
had been with Jesus through all his troublous
ministry. They had seen him crucified. He
had predicted just such a stormy life and fate
for themselves ; and they tell us that from the
beginning of their separate mission they had

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 243
expected the fulfillment of that prediction. In
deed, the very circumstances and temper of the
time must have given to the dullest observer
assurance of the utmost trouble to all mission
aries of the new faith. Yet the apostles went
forward. They went forward with steady feet
and unsparing tongue to meet the scowling
populace, the infuriated rulers, the bigotry of
the Jew and scorn of the Greek, want, stonings,
chains, scourgings, prisons, wild beasts, cruci
fixions, infamy ; in short, to receive in their faces
the fiercest wind and sleet and volleys of ill-will,
outrage and death. And when they actually
met and were enveloped by the storm, did their
courage fail them ? Did they shrink and give
way, and finally disappear humbly within the
old synagogues and temples? Nothing daunted
those witnesses. They went on witnessing to
the end. At last they resolutely sealed their
witnessing with their blood. By all the laws
of evidence, and by all the light of experience
and history, they must have most thoroughly
believed in the miracle-founded system which
they taught
But this is not all. The evidence of the
Christian miracles was so overwhelming that
they were believed in by the whole land as well
as by the apostles. It was the general confes
sion, "This man doeth many miracles ;" "That

244 ECCE TERRA.
a notable miracle has been done by them is
manifest to all that dwell at Jerusalem, and we
cannot deny it." After the Christian age was
fairly begun it does not seem to have occurred
to the Jews to question the reality of the mira
cles of Jesus and his disciples. They only
questioned their proceeding from God. They
ascribed them to Beelzebub, the prince of the
devils. They said it was magic that did them.
So say the Talmud and all the literatures as
sailing Christianity that have come down to us
from the earlier centuries. Neither Celsus, nor
Porphyry, nor Hierocles, nor Julian ever denied
the miracles ; they only denied the divine origin
of them. No defender of Christianity in the
earlier times ever tried to prove the miracles ;
he always took them for granted, and confined
himself to showing that they must be from God.
Their reality was universally confessed. And
a hostile nation, a nation fiercely bitter against
Christianity and seeking every pointed weapon
against it, would never have confessed the
Christian miracles genuine unless it had been
compelled by an astounding majesty and abun
dance of evidence.
Such were the Scripture miracles. Wonder
ful in their intrinsic greatness, and also in the
greatness of the evidence by which they took
captive the faith of vast populations ! Wonder-

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 245
ful, also, in number and variety, especially in
the time of Jesus and his apostles ! As mag
nificent princes on some high festival stand and
scatter gold among the people with a full hand,
so magnificently stood Messiah the Prince and
sowed out over the land his shining largess as
out of the fullness of a heavenly treasury. It
was a golden rain. The great firmament seemed
broken up and all its stars falling. City and
country were gay with the mighty spangles.
"And there are also many other things which
Jesus did, the which, if they should be written
every one, I suppose that even the world itself
could not contain [endure] the books that
should be written."
Wonderful events from almost every point
of view, but specially wonderful as being flash
ing interjections in current human affairs of a
divine Hand. 1 2. A Marvelous History.
In the beginning God created the heavens
and the earth.
The earth, " without form and void," he grad
ually fitted up for an abode of living things —
plants, brutes, men.
When the preparation was complete he willed
into being the world's inhabitants— first, the end
less wonders of vegetable life over all the lands,

246 ECCE TERRA.
and even in the waters ; second, the endless
.wonders of the lower orders of animals that
swim in the deep, fly in the air and walk or
creep on the ground or within it ; last, man,
the viceroy and image of God.
For this king he made a companion queen.
He^ placed them in a delightful garden east
ward in Eden which he had specially prepared
for them ; gave them, at first hand, most simple
and reasonable regulations, and ample motives
for complying with them ; added the safeguard
and privilege and glory of angelic, and even
of divine, society and counsels.
But, despite these counsels and all that the
Hand could consistently do, in an evil hour
Adam and Eve were persuaded into sin by the
dragon, " that old serpent which is the devil,
and Satan which deceiveth the whole world,"
and so were driven forth in shame and sorrow
from the Paradise to which they had become
unfitted, and became the parents of a race sin
ful and unhappy like themselves.
For several generations the lives of men
were very different affairs from our present
lives. They had some length to them. They
gave one a brave chance to get something
done. Were wildernesses to be subdued, cities
built, kingdoms founded, arts and sciences
thought out? — there was a plenty of time for

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 2\J
everything before night. The sun rose and
climbed and circled about the zenith as in an
Arctic day ; would it ever set? Adam lived nine
hundred and thirty years, Methusaleh nine hun
dred and sixty-nine, and none of the men of
that period whose names have come down to
us fell far short of these ages. Ah, those were
grand orbits ! Those were lives worth living !
Just think of it ! Nine centuries and more —
little immortalities ! A man was still dewy and
lithe with early youth at an age when now he
would be an infirm old man supporting his
trembling steps with a staff.
"There were giants on the earth in those
days." Tradition points in the same direction
— from those among the Arabs who profess to
show the graves of Adam and Noah, a hundred
feet long, to those among the Greeks and
Romans who tell of the Titans, vast sons of
the Earth and the Sky, and almost equal to
gods in strength. In the same direction, also,
points the fact that the earlier individuals of
the leading fossil species of brute animals have
been the larger and more perfect. The pro
digious vitality and physical completeness ex
pressed in such long lives strongly favor the
same view. Altogether, does it not seem prob
able that if some geologist, in the course of
his pryings among the strata, should uncover

248 ECCE TERRA.
the skeleton of a primitive man, he would be
astonished at. the great bones that proclaim
himself a pigmy?
Men abused the great forms and prodigious
lives which their Maker still allowed them.
How much good a man could do and get in
the course of nine centuries! To what heights
of virtuous habit might he not climb ! But
then to what depths of badness and hardness
might he not sink ! A sinner now, who has
been hardening for the better part of a single
century, is flint : what of the sinner who has
been hardening nine times as long? Such
were the original sinners. Men became awful
ly and almost universally wicked. "All flesh
corrupted its way." The good were reduced
to a single small household. The more men
departed from God, the more they departed
from each other. Brother rose against brother.
"The earth was filled with violence;" "And God
saw that the wickedness of man was great in
the earth, and that every imagination of the
thought of his heart was only evil continually."
These are strong words. One almost stands
aghast at the picture of depravity, disorder and
outrageous crime which they call up.
Was God inactive while men were getting so
high-handed ? That is incredible. Even good
men cannot rest without striving against the

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 249
vices and follies of their times — much less
could the good God. So his Spirit strove
with man. He strongly wrestled and fought
with the growing wickedness. Perhaps he now
and then struck down suddenly, as with a bolt,
some daring ringleader. Perhaps he sent to
them warning dreams and visions. Perhaps a
divine voice, or angels on rainbow wings, broke
in with remonstrances on their oaths and rev
elries and profligacies. Certainly, God sounded
trumpets in their consciences — inwardly sug
gesting, inviting, warning, persuading, instruct
ing — even as he now " convinces of sin, of
righteousness, and of judgment." As certain
are we that he foretold to them a dreadful fate
in case they did not repent, limited them to a
probation of one hundred and twenty years,
and remonstrated with them both by the words
and deeds of Noah, the preacher of righteous
ness. But all in vain. God was almighty and all-
wise, but then the contest was a moral one, in
which, if possible, men were to be won from
wickedness by their fears and hopes and con
sciences ; and in this moral wrestling the vic
tory was with the weaker side. God was de
feated. Wickedness came off with flying colors.
The world remained as bad as ever — nay, grew
worse. Sinners, awful with the hardness and

250 ECCE TERRA.
inveteracy of a wicked millennium, were teach
ing the new generations to be worse than them
selves. What must be done ?
God must act again. He has tried to govern
by his law : now he must govern by his sword.
He has threatened that unless men amend he
will destroy them. Of course such threats must
be fulfilled. The long moral striving on the part
of God must now give place to another sort of
divine activity — the activity of power and justice
and wrath. So he gave notice to the one good
family in all the earth (so bad was the state of
things) to build an ark for itself; for, was he not
about to drown the whole race of rebels as an
intolerable and irreclaimable nuisance, and to
wash clean again the dirty and stenchful world
with his avenging floods ? How the ark was to
be built — how large, how shaped, of what mate
rials, what occupants it should have, — all were
matters of express divine appointment. The
axes rang, the hammers sounded, the great
structure slowly grew, and, for the hundred and
twenty years during which it went on toward
completion, Noah preached righteousness more
loudly, perhaps, with his hands than with his
voice, and God continued to strive.
At last the ark is done. Enter, said the voice
of God to Noah and his family. Enter, said the
power of God to representatives of every sort

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 25 I
of land animals. Then God shut them in, shut
the rebels out. Probation finished. Grow black
the heavens. Hark to the muttering thunder !
Is that the rush and roar of distant winds ?
Crash ! and a red bolt leaps like a bloody dag
ger out of the angry clouds at the ghastly
earth. And in the glare are seen ghastly
people standing at their doors and on house
tops, looking terror into each other's eyes.
Was that a drop of rain ? Yes ; hearken now
to the patter. And now it pours, pours, pours,
as if the very sky itself were turning to water.
The solid strata burst with the sound of thunder.
Great seams open everywhere, through which
leap up unnumbered geysers. Down the hill
sides rush the torrents, roaring and tearing
through gorges and ravines. Now the smaller
streams overflow their banks ; now the rivers,
spurred by ten thousand unwonted tributaries,
rush like mad coursers to the sea. And the
sea itself has to-day a tide that ebbs not — high
above high-water mark, above spring and neap,
above the highest that the oldest inhabitant
ever made or knew — still on and on, day after
day, until the land has become an archipelago,
a wreck-covered sea, up through which pierce
the hills as so many islands, all black with
people ; and the great ark loosens from its
place on the mountain-side and floats mutely

252 ECCE TERRA.
by the crowds of imploring, drowning wretches
who have at last discovered that there is a God.
At length the last peak disappears. A single
rebel left ? Not one. The world is drowned.
The ark, freighted with the seed of a new dis
pensation, is the only thing to be seen on all
that wide avenging ocean.
See what the Hand has done ! Whether the
axis of the earth was altered or its diurnal rev
olution suddenly suspended, or some disorderly
sphere, roving near the earth, drew the waters to
ward itself and heaped the oceans on the land,
or floods of water freshly created for the occa
sion arose to judgment — who knows? But this
we know, that in whatever way the work was
done, it was done according to express predic
tion and by a direct act of divine sovereignty
and power as a judgment on sin: as when a
human monarch bids his armies march, and
marches himself at their head with flashing
sword, to overwhelm his enemies and lay waste
their country. Such is the Scripture account;
it purports to be history — has always been re
ceived as such — is naturally understood as such
by all unsophisticated people.
The same Hand that let loose the avenging
floods removed them when their work was
done. It held back the rains. It sealed up
the fountains. It made a thirsty wind to blow

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 253
across the waters and drink them insatiably.
And at last the same divine voice that bade
Noah enter his ark bade him go out to possess
a new world.
So the race began anew, from a pious stock.
Anew men multiplied, grew wicked, spread
themselves westward on the plains of Shinar.
Here they set to work to build a great city and
sky-piercing tower. Exactly how much wicked
ness they meant by this is not clear, but they
seem at least to have been inspired by pride
and presumption and a wish to prevent the
dispersion of men over the earth according to
the divine plan. Their heaven-climbing tower
should be seen from afar and be a rallying-point
for the fast-spreading multitudes. Their grand
city should be a powerful magnet to keep the
straying peoples together. They meant con
centration — God meant diffusion. They meant
the pride and power and condensed wickedness
of a great metropolis — God meant the compar
ative simplicity and purity and healthfulness and
freedom of rural life and of a scattered popula
tion. And the meaning of God triumphed. For
his hand was lifted, and smote, not the bodies
of those presumptuous builders, but their lan
guage. Hitherto all had been of one speech,
but now, at the smiting of the Hand, the one
flew into the many. The Arabic strove with

254 ECCE TERRA.
the Latin, the Hebrew with the Greek, and the
Sanskrit with all. It was jargon. It was babel.
One group of workmen did not understand an
other. " What do they mean ? Are they mock
ing us ?" So perplexity, impatience, suspicions,
alienations and exasperations arose. The build
ers ceased to build, they drew apart. In this
simple way their unity was broken up, and it
became impossible for them to plan and act in
concert as they had been wont to do. Instead
of walls rising around them, walls arose between
them. A centrifugal force was secured, under
the steady action of which they went forth in
all directions the more rapidly to people the
earth ; became distinct clans, tribes, nations,
manageable bodies for civil government, serv
ing as checks on each other in courses of vio
lence and ambition, prompting to many health
ful competitions ; sometimes scourging each
other for sin in God's behalf and as his
unconscious ministers.
Just how suddenly this diversity of languages
was brought about we are not told. But we
are given to understand, in the whole structure
of the narrative, that when brought about it
was not by the mere working of natural causes,
such as now tend to change languages and such
as have made the English of a few centuries
ago almost unintelligible to us. God himself

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 255
took the matter directly in hand. The Hand
hurried through what else had been the work
of centuries, if not in a moment or a day, at
least in a less time than was necessary to build
a city of brick, materials all at hand. It was a
case of the supernatural. The same divine
power that equipped man at his start with a
language as full grown as his body (instead of
leaving him to find his way to it by the slow
process of gradual invention and accumulation
of minute improvements), by a similar right-
handed sovereignty started into being other
languages full grown. They were propagated
by fission, if you please, but the fission took
place not naturally, but by the smiting of a
divine Hand.
In the dispersion from Babel did Ham and
his descendants stream off to Africa, Japhet
and his descendants to Europe, Shem and his
to the four winds in Asia? Did this tribe settle
in Mesopotamia, that in Egypt, this in Phoenicia,
that in the land of Sinim? Where each new
tongue found a home and founded a state, thith
er it went, not as chance would have it, or the
enforcings of mere natural circumstance, but as
the unseen Hand constrained. " He made of .
one blood all nations of men to dwell on all
the face of the earth, and hath determined the
times before appointed and the bounds of their

256 ECCE TERRA.
habitation." This passage is not found in a
poem, but in a speech of Paul to the Athe
nians. Very likely nothing beyond the conve
niences, needs and passions of men, nothing
beyond considerations of soil and climate, of
rivers and mountains, of friends and enemies,
was visible at the time as influencing the settle
ment of new regions ; but the Scripture takes
us behind the scenes to see the hand of God
digging the channels and directing into them
the streams of emigration — settling the Arabs
in their deserts, the Greeks in Greece, the
Romans in Italy, the Sclaves in Russia, the
Germans about the Rhine, the Britons in their
island-home — in short, decreeing the where
abouts and times of every nation, past and
present. All in harmony with that broader
teaching, that " the Most High rules in the
kingdoms of men, gives them to whomsoever
he will, increases the nations and destroys
them, enlarges the nations and straitens them
again." Among the earlier settlements of the world
was that in the fertile vale of Siddim. Here
were built seven towns, the leading ones being
Sodom and Gomorrah. Wicked, wicked Sodom
and Gomorrah ! The very names smut our
pages. " Pride, fullness of bread and abun
dance of idleness," as too often happens, went

ILL US IRA TION B Y GREA T EX A MP I ES. 257
on to dissipation and abominableness ; and at
last the nuisance became intolerable even to
the long-suffering God. So he sent his angels,
led out of the doomed plain the one righteous
man and his family, and then rained fire and
brimstone out of heaven till the whole region
about was one sea of fire. Died the sinners,
perished the cities ; some fancy that a Dead
Sea moaning over the polluted sites is for ever
trying to wash them clean and for ever pro
claiming by its ever-nauseous floods the impos
sibility of the task.
Did some sudden volcano spout sulphur-
ously through the air? Did the hot simoom of
the desert raise aloft the dry brimstone dust of
Siddim in clouds, and then ignite with its fiery
breath both the clouds above and the bitumen-
pits below ? I do not know. But this I know,
that in whatever way that fiery destruction
came, and however many natural agencies
were concerned in it, it was appointed and
predicted and brought about by the direct
personal action of the Almighty. By the
same Hand the disobedient wife of Lot be
came a pillar of salt.
In Ur of the Chaldees dwelt a good man.
This man was chosen by God to be the founder
of a people having special privileges. They
were to receive divine oracles. They were to
17

258 ECCE TERRA.
be an ark for the conservation of truth in rude
and troublous times. They were to be brought
into almost visible relations with God by signs
and wonders and revelations. And among them,
in process of time, should appear One in whom
all the families of the earth should be blessed.
In point of religious privileges and opportuni
ties they should excel all other nations, and if
they would use their privileges well they should
prosper outwardly beyond all others. But if
they would abuse them their outward afflictions
should also be beyond precedent. (See Deut.
28.) As was but reasonable : to whom much
is given, of them may much properly be re
quired. In accordance with this plan, God said to
Abram in some clear way, " Get thee out from
thy country and from thy kindred, and come
into the land that I shall show thee." So he
came into the land of Canaan. And there he
and his son and grandsons, for the most part,
passed their days — every now and then favored
with a communication of the divine will by a
dream or an angel or a divine voice (not to say
incarnation), as indeed all previous ages had
been. A great-grandson of his was signally
favored in the same way ; and, through his fac
ulty as a prophet, became prime minister of
Egypt, the preserver of his race and the means

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 259
of their honorable settlement as citizens in the
valley of the Nile.
In course of time the citizens became the
slaves. At last God raised up a deliverer,
commissioned him for his work by an audible
voice, and clothed him with miraculous powers
that he might bring his people out of their
house of bondage. Portent after portent
leaped sublimely from his rod. Plague after
plague smote the oppressor. It was a scourge
of ten thongs, and every thong evoked a wail
through the whole land, from palace to hovel.
"Let my people go," said the scourge as it
whistled through the air; and lice and flies
and hail and locusts and boils and murrain and
blood and darkness and death in turn sought
out every Egyptian house and spared every
house of Israel. So at last the slaves became
freedmen, and went out with a high hand and
an outstretched arm. A pillar of cloud led their
armies by day, and a pillar of fire by night.
The Red Sea, cloven in twain, gave them dry
passage while it drowned their pursuers. Down
through the desert conducts the wondrous pil
lar — the pillar that can lighten and darken and
talk. Every morn, save on the Sabbath, the
bread of heaven lies about their camp like the
dews. Rocks pour out water to quench their
thirst. Birds offer themselves by millions to

260 ECCE TERRA.
meet their craving for flesh. Lo, Sinai ! How
it quakes and thunders and blazes ! The pomp
of God is on its brow, and an awful voice that
affrights the millions pronounces to them the
Ten Commandments. They were then twice
written by the finger of God on tables of stone.
In addition, a whole system of religious duties
and observances, known to us as the " Mosaic
Economy," was given to Moses in a way of di
rect personal communication. God talked with
him face to face as a man talketh with his friend.
A tabernacle, and priesthood, and oracle with
its Urim and Thummim and Shekinah, and a
picturesque array of types and shadows, were
established. God took upon himself to be the
civil Head of the nation. He made their gov-
ernment a glorious and unparalleled theocracy.
Yet they grievously sinned. So his wrath came
upon them and smote down the chosen men of
Israel. They were bitten of fiery serpents. The
earth opened and swallowed up Dathan and
covered the company of Abiram. For forty
years, as they were led up and down the wil
derness by the supernatural pillar, their clothes
waxed not old nor did their sandals fail them.
For forty years they continued to take their
daily bread out of God's right hand.
So at last they came to Canaan. Still the
aureole of miracles continued — now about the

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 26 1
head of Joshua. "What ailed thee, O thou sea,
that thou fleddest, and Jordan, that thou wast
driven back ?" Not that the feet of priests just
touched thy waves, but that the hand of thy
Creator touched them. The walls of Jericho
fell down flat before the besiegers. Was it
their tramping about the city and the blowing
of rams' horns — the prodigious dynamics of
rams' horns — that did it? Those walls of stone
trembled, shook, toppled, lay low, because the
Hand was invisibly smiting them. " Sun, stand
thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, moon, in the
valley of Ajalon. So the sun stood still in the
midst of heaven and hasted not to go down
about a whole day." Wonderful ! Did the
power that did that feat — that stopped the
rotation of the earth, or bent to a circle the
hasty rays of light, or flooded the sky for
twenty-four hours with the rays of a substitute
sun — did that power belong to the voice of a
man, or was it the power of God riding forth
enthroned on the chariot of human speech ?
So all along the course of the Old-Testament
history, at intervals longer or shorter, events
occurred for which no second causes can ac
count, or which are so explicitly ascribed in
Scripture to the supernatural that nothing
short of infidelity itself can explain away the
testimony. Prophets arose ; oracles spoke ;

262 ECCE TERRA.
deliverers were raised up ; angels came with
heavenly messages ; battles were divinely
gained or lost ; dreams and visions taught
men the will of Heaven ; famines and plen
ties, sickness and health, came and went at a
word ; the shadow went back on the dial of
Ahaz ; " holy men of God spake " and wrote
"as they were moved of the Holy Ghost;" a
host became corpses in a single night,
" For the angel of death spread his wings on the blast,
And breathed in the face of the foe as he passed ; "
fire leaped from heaven at call to consume sac
rifices, destroy wicked men and confound the
worshipers of idols ; " the mountain was full
of chariots and horses of fire round about
Elisha;" "women received their dead raised to
life again ;" men walked unharmed in the midst
of a fiery furnace and in dens of hungry lions ;
a spectral hand wrote the doom of an empire
on the wall ; "time would fail me to tell of Gid
eon and of Barak and of Samson and of Jeph-
thah, of David also, and Samuel, and of the
prophets, who through faith subdued kingdoms,
. . . stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the
violence of fire, . . . turned to flight the armies
of the aliens." A man who can believe the
Scripture and yet think that it does not teach,
and mean to teach, the direct personal inter-

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 263
vention of God in these things at the time of
them, but rather such poetical interventions as
may be attributed to the original Author of
nature and its forces, who, once for all, at the
beginning, wound up the clock of centuries
and nations, is a rationalist without reason, or
at least without reasonableness. Such a believ
er is only a baptized infidel.
A peculiar people ! Certainly, in respect to
religious privileges and national opportunity.
Never elsewhere on the planet did God so un
veil his hand, so display his sceptre, to the eyes
of men, so walk before them in the royalty of
a visible theocracy. Never elsewhere were
such promises made to obedience. The world
should have an opportunity to see for them
selves how correct is the common notion that
if we could only stand face to face with the
supernatural, could only live in the midst of
an economy of glorious marvels in which God
is almost seen in the act of royally governing, no
one would be lacking in faith and obedience.
A thorough experiment with the Hebrews,
drawn patiently out through a thousand years
and duly set down in imperishable records,
should set the matter for ever at rest.
Surprising result ! " If they hear not Moses
and the prophets, neither will they be per
suaded though one rose from the dead." The

264 ECCE TERRA.
earth rocked, the heavens blazed, the angels
flew visibly athwart the blue on their wings of
balm, the clouds and darkness thinned away
from before the Hand till it became almost in
sufferably bright, and yet — Ah, what unbelief
and perverseness ! " Ye stiff-necked and un-
circumcised in heart and ears, ye do always
resist the Holy Ghost ; as your fathers did,
so do ye." If one wants to know what the
Hebrews would have been if they had done
justice to their opportunities, let him read the
first part of the twenty-eighth chapter of Deu
teronomy. And if one wants to know what
they actually turned out to be in their vexa
tious and unconscionable wickedness, let him
read the predictions in the latter part of the
same chapter, also profane history. Among
the smallest of nations. In arts and arms and
splendor and extent of territory utterly insig
nificant by the side of its neighbors, the great
Assyrian, Egyptian, Persian, Macedonian and
Roman empires. Leaving out of view the
books which God himself dictated, the He
brews had no literature to speak of. In na
tional respectability and influence they have
generally been the " tail, and not the head."
In scornings and humiliations and wide variety
of suffering no people can pretend to equal
them. And all because they were a peculiar

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 265
people — peculiarly favored with privileges and
opportunities, and so peculiarly guilty in their
sins, and so peculiarly chastised.
We come now to a time when the visible
stream of supernaturalism, long directed spe
cially toward the peculiar people, is seen broad
ening toward all nations. The Desire of all
nations is at hand. After some four' hundred
years, in which signs and wonders have been
withheld — as if for the purpose of making an
other outburst of them more impressive — a new
dispensation dawns. God sends an angel to an
nounce the supernatural birth of the forerunner
of the Messiah ; and then another angel to an
nounce the miraculous birth of the Messiah
himself. And who, now that he is come, is this
rough-hewn John the Baptist, who never fears
the face of clay ? A prophet ? " Yea, I say
unto you ; and more than a prophet." And
who, now that he is come, is this son of a vir
gin, foretold ages gone with minute circum
stantiality ? Hush ! ask it only with bated
breath, for the answer is one that to this day
astonishes both earth and heaven. Behold
God manifest in the flesh— in the flesh of a
little child! Hitherto the world has had the
supernatural Hand, now it has the whole super
natural Person. And is to have it for long
years. No wonder that a golden cloud stoops

266 ECCE TERRA.
down through the night, dissolves into a host
of radiant forms making august celebration ;
the shepherds of Bethlehem see midnight
shining as the day on that unexampled won
der, the birth of God. And who are these
hasting westward in long and travel-stained
caravan? Star-led, dream- warned, God-sum
moned sages, representative men bringing the
homage and tribute of the Gentile world to
its Jewish King. Warned of God, his parents
take him to Egypt ; warned of God, they bring
back and make him a Nazarene.
The first shower of the glorious rainy season
that makes all things green. A lull. The years
roll on as they will and must. The divine Child
has become a divine Man ; appears at Jordan
under an open heaven from which settles upon
him the Holy Ghost in visible form, also a heav
enly voice that says, " This is my beloved Son,
in whom I am well pleased." From this time
a steady downpour of wonders which only the
Hand can explain — wonderful teachings such as
never came from other teachers, however fa
mous ; wonderful fulfillments of old prophecies ;
wonderful deeds of power as well as of knowl
edge, by which the blind receive sight, the lame
walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the
dumb speak, storms cease at a word, the dead
are raised, and (scarcely less wonderful, con-

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 267
sidering the times) the poor have the gospel
preached to them. For three years the star-
flakes descend till the land is galacteal with
their glory. Then comes a greater glory still,
a falling sun — God sacrificing himself for the
sins of men, while the sky puts on mourning,
the earth quakes with astonishment and horror
and many bodies of sleeping saints arise. And
then is seen a greater resurrection still. An
angel flashes down and rolls away the stone
from the door of the sepulchre. Forth comes
the Crucified. " Handle me and see, for a
spirit has not flesh and bones as ye see me
have." And now behold him, defying gravity,
rising through the air, lessening on the sight,
at last disappearing in the far clouds. Ah,
the King has come to his own again. And
" he shall come in like manner as ye have seen
him go into heaven," break in two white-robed
strangers standing suddenly among the rapt,
up-gazing disciples. And he will.
Glorious incarnation, miracles, atonement,
resurrection, and ascension ! Instead of say
ing, "Lo, the hand of the King!" we say, "Lo,
the KING HIMSELF!"
Now that the sun is withdrawn, the planets
can be seen. Look at the apostles shining
with reflected light. Gathered in an upper

268 ECCE TERRA.
room, praying and waiting, waiting and pray
ing, as believers still have to do. Lo, the sound
of a rushing mighty wind ! A fiery tongue
rested on the head of each. And the tongue
of each became a tongue of fire — swift, fer
vent, eloquent, wise, able to tell in any lan
guage the wonderful works of God. In a
twinkling leaping far beyond Gamaliels and
universities ; swiftly qualified by the Sceptre
for their work, better than any professors and
seminaries could have qualified them in tedious
drilling years; masters of speech toward the four
winds, — see what it is to be empowered from on
high ! Jerusalem rushed to see. " Parthians and
Medes and Elamites and the dwellers in Meso
potamia and Judea and Cappadocia, in Pontus
and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt and
in the parts of Lybia about Cyrene, and stran
gers of Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and
Arabians," came, saw, and were conquered.
How could they resist that self-evidencing
polyglot gospel ? So three thousand of them
submitted at once, and went their ways to their
various countries with new faith and new hearts
— of course trumpet on lip. How providential!
For the purpose of a wide and swift diffusion
of the gospel that first Christian revival at Je
rusalem on the Pentecost could not have been
more happily placed.

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 269
And it was soon found that the mantle of
Jesus had fallen when he ascended. " In the
name of Jesus." This name was to the apostles
what the mantle of Elijah was to Elisha, what
the rod of God was to Moses. It cast out
devils. It healed the sick. It made the lame
leap as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb
sing. It unstopped deaf ears and gave the
blind their sight. Nay, that supreme sign, the
resurrection of the dead, was found not beyond
its swift spell. Like the flaming sword that
kept the tree of life, it turned every way. Like
some grand yet simple astronomical formula, it
seemed to hold wrapped up in itself all the
works of God. The gift of tongues continued
among the disciples at large. There were
prophesyings and interpretations. Above all,
there was a subtle convincing and persuading
power going with the word spoken, that came
not from the intrinsic force of the truth itself,
nor from the eloquence and abilities of the
speakers, nor from the signs and wonders
offered in evidence of their doctrines, but from
the direct action of the Spirit in removing prej
udice, opening the understanding, subduing the
will and renewing the heart. The direction of
their journeys, the places they visited, the time
of their stay, were suggested to the apostles by
the Holy Ghost. Not only did God preside

270 ECCE TERRA.
over their spoken gospel, but he inspired sev
eral among the early disciples to put that gos
pel in writing for the benefit of after-times —
" not in the words that man's wisdom teacheth,
but which the Holy Ghost teacheth."
Then mightily grew the word of God, and
prevailed. Converts came in crowds — not only
in the Holy Land, but also in adjacent coun
tries. This success was favored by some nat
ural circumstances, such as the decadence of
the old idolatries, the wide dominance of the
tolerant Roman power and laws, the ease and
safety of communication between all parts of
the empire which Rome (law, order and road-
builder as she was) secured, the general dif
fusion of the Greek language, the indefatigable
zeal and labors of the primitive evangelists ;
but, on the other hand, were no small oppos
ing circumstances in the Jewish origin of Chris
tianity, in the Cross of its Founder, in the hum
ble station of its apostles, and especially in its
severe doctrine and morals. On the whole,
little account is to be made of this or that
friendly or unfriendly circumstance. The open
secret of the apostolic triumphs was the di
rect personal divine action that was back of
them. The wheels of Ezekiel's chariot ran
because the Spirit of the Living One was in
them. " Not by might, nor by power, but by

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 27 1
my Spirit." "The Lord working with them and
confirming the word by signs following" — that
simply tells the whole brilliant story.
As the first evangelists went from place to
place with their conquering gospel they gath
ered those who accepted it into churches hav
ing sacraments, public worship, a definite creed,
a discipline or government and a teaching min
istry — as lies on the surface of the New Testa
ment, and especially of the Acts of the Apos
tles. At the same time, they gradually laid
aside the Mosaic economy as being a fulfilled
system — shedding the limitations, wrinkles and
cerements of the old national religion, and
keeping only those vital elements which are
always young and which fit it to all times and
countries. All under the broad seal of their
commission as apostles and by the guidance
of that Holy Ghost whom their Master had
plainly promised for their work. The Chris
tian institutions thus founded came from the
Hand as truly as did the miracles.
Dispersion of Jews.
Then came the political ruin of the Jews.
As a nation they had never accepted the gos
pel, and their unbelief was still crying, " His
blood be on us and on our children !" It did
not cry in vain. Jerusalem was compassed

272 ECCE TERRA.
with armies. Titus thundered at wall and gate;
factions roared and fiercely fought within.
Never was such a scene, never such suffer
ing. A city? 'Twas Gehenna. Not Jews
held it, but demons. Not Sanhedrim gov
erned it, but that grim triumvirate, Famine,
Pestilence and Assassination. Brother stabs
brother. Mothers have sodden their own
babes. The air is putrid with corpses, and
still more putrid with wickedness. Ah, it was
"great tribulation, such as was not from the
beginning of the world ; no, nor ever shall
be." The storm beat pitilessly ; there we*e
thunderings and lightnings and quakings ; the
winds rioted and trumpeted and wrestled with
all their might on tower and battlement. They
fell. They fell on the nation. More than a
million of people were crushed outright. The
maimed survivors were mostly swept away to
other lands — largely as slaves, and universally
as objects of scorn, hatred and persecution.
They had on them the mark of Cain ; never
theless, whoever killed them thought he was
doing God service. And so it has continued
down through bloody ages almost to our own
times. Scattered and peeled, scouted and
scourged alike by sovereign and serf, "dogs
of Jews," at whom rabble children might cast
stones unrebuked, "ground exceeding fine in

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 273
the mills of the gods," what people has fared
like this ? And with what strange result ! Al
ways dying, but never dead ; always being ex
terminated, but never even sensibly diminish
ing. Always tossed from vessel to vessel, and
fiercely stirred by sceptre and crozier and re
publican quarter-staff, and yet refusing to mix
with the contents of any. Waifs and outcasts
of the world, yet kept as in an ark ; a Wan
dering Jew with unlimited faculty of being mis
erable, but without the faculty of dying ; an
island on all whose shores the surf is always
breaking, sometimes with the onset of storms,
but always breaking in vain, one wave bringing
back what another has taken away.
Who destroyed Jerusalem ? The Romans
proudly thought they did, the Jews bitterly
thought the same. And history, as commonly
written, tells merely of the great commander,
the invincible legions, the unity, discipline and
confidence of men on the one side, and the di
vision, disorder and despair of men on the
other. But there was something back of all
these — viz. the punitive sceptre of God. This
was really busy in heaving down the walls of
Jerusalem, as, in the fancy of the poet, the
trident of Neptune was in casting down the
walls of Troy. That disaster and the long
train of disasters that followed, bush always
is

274 ECCE TERRA.
on fire but never consumed, was circumstan
tially foretold from the time of Moses — fore
told as the penalty for wickedness. And Jesus
had said with tearful eyes, " For the days shall
come upon thee that thine enemies shall cast
a trench about thee, and compass thee round,
and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay
thee even with the ground, and thy children
within thee ; and they shall not leave in thee
one stone upon another; because thou knew-
est not the time of thy visitation."
The Roman Victory.
Up to about this time Christianity had fought
unbelief with both moral and miraculous evi
dence. But now signs and wonders ceased.
They could be appealed to as historic — indeed,
as forming one of the surest as well as brightest
departments in the treasure-house of the past —
but henceforth men should not see with their
own eyes the feats of Omnipotence. Enough
of these had been granted to warrant faith in
all time to come ; to grant more would palsy
wonder or aggravate condemnation. So mir
acles disappeared. Religion stood forth on the
field of battle armed only with moral weapons
— with history, the written Scriptures, unin
spired preachers, the native force of truth, the
Christian experience and life, a manifest supe-

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 275
riority to all other religions in purity and reason
ableness and adaptation to the needs of men.
At this moment imperial paganism began to
open its eyes. It had been tolerant ; it had
been wont to admit all gods to its Pantheon ;
besides, was not the new religion quite too
small a matter to alarm the thrones, principali
ties and powers that swore by Olympus ? But
now the little one had become a thousand.
Christians were found in all parts of the Ro
man empire, and, occasionally, in the very
highest walks of life. It was found that the
new system would not fellowship the old, but,
on the contrary, firmly insisted on occupying
the world alone. The old temples and altars
were getting neglected. Priestly revenues and
reverences were running short. The change
was beginning to tell on even Pontifex Maxi-
mus and Caesar. So Caesar bestirred himself.
He summoned to the battle all possible forces
— prejudice, prestige, pomp of worship, art,
literature, philosophy, social influence — above
all, the civil arm in the shape of scourges,
chains, dungeons, exiles, swords, crosses, ten
general persecutions. On the other hand,
Christianity opposed with patience, blameless
living, fearless testimony, faithful preaching of
the word, invincible constancy, joyful martyr
doms. And these strange arms at last seemed

276 ECCE TERRA.
to conquer. Not without considerable delay,
not without mighty struggles, not without seas
of blood mirroring some three millions of mar
tyr crowns. But the victory was at length com
plete. Olympus surrendered at discretion. The
world's conquerors themselves passed under
the yoke. The faith of the great Nazarene
came up from the Catacombs, and took posses
sion of market-places and camps and schools
and temples and senate-houses and throne.
Caesar himself knelt at the foot of the Cross.
Was this great victory gained by merely the
visible weapons used ? Doubtless, truth is
mighty. Doubtless, the new religion was
manifestly superior to the old. Doubtless,
there is a commanding eloquence in earnest
faith, blameless living, heroic constancy and
" line upon line." Doubtless, also, the old
faith had some of the infirmities of old age.
Yet Gibbon was wrong. Such facts are insuffi
cient to explain that Roman victory. Naturally,
the blazing bush would have been consumed
and the stripling David have fallen an easy
prey to the giant. But David stands with his
foot on the huge warrior and gives thanks to
God. Does he mistake? Did not Jesus say
even to the apostles, " Without me ye can do
nothing"? Did not an apostle say, "I have
planted ; Apollos watered ; but God gave the

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 277
increase"? Were not the apostles, even while
miracle-working, in the habit of invoking divine
power that the word of God might have free
course and be glorified ? How certain, then,
is it that the uninspired and non-miracle-work
ing successors of the apostles must have had a
divine power to give them success ! No be
liever in the Scriptures doubts it. The Roman
victory over Romans was supernaturally won.
In advance of the sword of Gideon waved in
visibly a much more effulgent and efficient
weapon — the sword of the Lord.
The Continental Victory.
After a while came another victory — a vic
tory out of the very jaws of defeat. Christian
ity gradually became corrupted by alliance with
the state and other causes. Antichrist appear
ed. Ritualisms, hierarchies, traditions and su
perstitions largely covered up the simple gospel
and its simple institutions. Buried under heaps
of rubbish and clogging material, what can that
gospel alone do to spread itself over all Europe?
When in all its native purity and freedom, also
armed with miracles, it still needed in addition
the convincing and converting power of the
Holy Spirit in person in order to succeed :
after miracles were withdrawn it needed that
divine help still more, if possible ; and after

278 ECCE TERRA.
both miracles and purity had gone, and gross
corruptions of doctrines and practice had come
— come into the camp of Israel and eaten the
bowstrings and rusted the swords and spears
of the host — it needed such personal divine
help still more to make its way. Yet its way
was made.
Hear the sound of a mighty rushing ! Is it
the coming of hurricanes ? Is it the downpour
of torrents and rocks from the Alps ? Yes,
torrents and avalanches of wild and ruthless
men — men who worship Odin and Freia, Thor
and Balder, who drink human blood out of hu
man skulls, spend life in alternate feasting and
bloodshed, desire nothing better for themselves,
hope to spend an eternity in the same way.
Down come Goths, Huns, Vandals — down come
Alarics and Attilas, scourges of God, sweeping
before them an enervate people as the swollen
Po in spring sweeps along the dry leaves and
straws of winter. Surely the falling empire
will carry down with it its religion ! Surely
the floods of paganism will paganize every
thing — will bury the Christian faith and institu
tions wholly out of sight ! Not so. The idols
disappear. Disappear the savage orgies and
human sacrifices. Odin and his Walhalla sur
render at discretion, as Jupiter and his Olym
pus have already done. The conquerors are

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 2?$
•
conquered. The true God passes the Alps,
enters the German cabins, crosses into Britain,
summers and winters, cross in hand, among the
hardy Northmen. So the fall of Rome was the
conversion of Europe. The converts, it is true,
were still rude and ignorant and superstitious,
but as compared with their former selves they
were new creatures. It was a change from
midnight to morning, from midwinter to spring,
from mortal sickness to convalescence. Such
a result in the absence of miracles, and con
sidering how the Samson of apostolic times had
been shorn of much of his proper strength,
required even a mightier interposition of the
Hand than was needed when religion was
purer, and especially when it was armed with
signs and wonders.
The Reformation and Reformers.
But men gravitate wonderfully. The Evil
One also bears them downward with a heavy
hand. And so at last Christian Europe reaches
so low a level that the day is almost as night.
The Dark Ages ? Yes, almost subterranean
in regard to religion. The Bible banished and
vanished, "contradicting and blaspheming" tra
ditions of men raised to its vacant throne ;
everywhere doctrines and practices, principles
and institutions, of which the apostles never

280 ECCE TERRA.
heard — image-worship, indulgences, priestly
omnipotence, salvation by sacrament and rit
ual, " Mary, queen of heaven," " our Lord God
the Pope " ! Shocking ! Is this real Christian
ity, this the true Church of Jesus Christ? It is
scarcely more than the old paganism revived
and baptized. A Roman of the first century,
revisiting the earth and his old haunts, would
think the temples still occupied by the old di
vinities. He would find the same statues and
altars, smell the same incense, hear the same
unintelligible mumbling, see the same ridicu
lous pantomime and milliner}', witness priest
and people doing the same wickedness.
Only the Pontifex Maximus is now Pope
Leo X.
" But out of the eater came forth meat, and
out of the strong came forth sweetness." From
the corrupt carcass of the lion appeared the
Protestant Reformation. This Reformation,
with many a sore set-back during more than
three centuries, has gradually encroached much
on all papal territory, has won its way to a com
manding position in the chief European coun
tries, has fairly appropriated to itself the North
American continent, and is now vigorously
pushing out conquering detachments into all
quarters of the globe.
Now, it is not to numbers and might of men

ILL USTRA TION B Y GREA T EXAMPLES. 28 1
that such victories, from Luther downward, can
be attributed. The stars in their courses have
fought against Sisera. That Protestant Refor
mation ! Will arms account for it ? They were
on the other side. The Christianity and Church
of the time? These were more corrupt, and
therefore weaker for enlightening and convert
ing men, than ever before, and were adminis
tered by men who were successors of the apos
tles only in name. Leprous men never cure
themselves. Desperately diseased bodies must
have help from abroad. Did help come from
natural principles and agencies outside of Chris
tianity and its institutions — for example, from
larger knowledge, better government, greater
freedom, the Renaissance of literature, learning
and art? These, on Bible principles, have even
less reforming and lifting power than a corrupt
Christianity, for, by supposition, they have ab
solutely nothing of the Christian element in
them. So, even more than in the case men
tioned before, the Bible sends us to the Holy
Ghost, to the personal agency of God, for ex
planation of Luther and Calvin and Zuingle
and their successors. For it tells us that a per
fectly pure Christianity in the hands of inspired
and miracle-working apostles was insufficient to
this class of results. Much more such a drossy
Christianity as Europe had at the beginning of

282 ECCE TERRA.
the sixteenth century in the hands of a still
more drossy priesthood and executive.
As to the general advance of Protestantism
since, we are compelled to the same philosophy.
Without such enlightening and persuading di
vine power as comes in answer to prayer the
word of God would never have had free course
and been glorified as it has. Neither in purity
of doctrine nor in personal qualifications for
their work were the early Reformers, or any
of their successors down to the present, peers
of those inspired apostles who were " empow
ered from on high," and the gold of whose
teaching was without any dross. Yet even
these peerless men, with an absolutely pure
gospel, had to cry heavenward for success.
To them Paul was nothing, Apollos nothing,
but God who gave the increase much. What,
then, are these modern apostles ? I profess a
tolerably high respect for Luther and his asso
ciates and their shining wake of reforming and
evangelizing men adown the ages. But one
can, without much difficulty, find a good many
reasonable stones to cast at the best of them.
They often lacked judgment as interpreters
and proclaimers of the gospel. They made
many a mistake. Many a rag of the old flut
tered on their new garments. They were often
useful only by being overruled. They were

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 283
very far from being such planters and water-
ers as Paul and Apollos ; and must not God
have given them such increase as they had ?
The doctrine of all of them was, " Except the
Lord build the house, they labor in vain that
build it."
The Roman apostasy was a great enemy to
Christianity — even greater than the Moham
medanism and Paganism with which a collat
eral contest has been successfully waged. But
since the Protestant Reformation, and notably
in our own time, has appeared a greater enemy
still. I mean pseudo-science — attacking religion
in its very primary sources, and too often doing
it from positions of dignity and influence to
which it has been helped, and in which it has
been maintained, by the official and pledged
guardians of religion. I.
Out of a mountain
That rose beyond sight,
Struggled a fountain
Into the sunlight.
Fed by the whiteness
That gleams evermore
On the far summit,
The water ran o'er,
And, downward moving
Like a molten ray,

284 ECCE TERRA.
Cheerily singing,
At length found its way
To the wide lowlands ;
And then sparkled on,
Past farms and cities,
A broad silver zone ;
Wider and wider,
As the lands went by,
Richer and richer
With hues of the sky ;
Till, a broad river,
With sunset aflame,
Home to the ocean
In triumph it came.
Ah, what green beauty,
What plenty and glee,
As smiled that water
From mountain to sea !
All things drank of it,
And broke into psalm,
From the wall-hyssop
To cedar and palm ;
From clouds of insects
That dip treble wing,
To crowds of mankind
Who bass anthems sing.
Laughed the fat pastures,
Shouted corn and vine ;
Flocks and herds shouted — ¦
The water was wine.

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 285
II.
A spring so precious,
So vital to all,
Of course had round it
A guard and a wall.
"Now mind, ye keepers!
Keep this your charge well ;
Far from its margin
All vile things repel.
"Let naught whatever,
Whate'er be the plea,
Mix with these waters
That go to the sea.
"Night and day watching,
No risk must befall
The bright sweet waters
So vital to all.
Will you be faithful?" —
"We will, yes, we will." —
"This double promise
Be sure you fulfill."
III.
Sang the days onward,
Months went and came,
The guard grew careless —
'Twas guard but in name.
Just then a stranger,
In dress like a sage,
His beard long flowing
And snow-white with age,

286 ECCE TERRA.
Greeted the watchmen —
Would fain see the spring;
Thought he could help it
With drugs he could bring.
His name? 'Twas Science —
Great things had he done;
Would they see greater ?
Then grant him his boon.
His words came smoothly,
His promise was grand ;
They took his promise,
And gave him their hand.
A dark specific
They helped to compound ;
To flask they helped him,
Then helped to the ground:
The gate swung open — ¦
So gave him to stand
Hard by the fountain,
With flask in his hand. •
Down went the contents
With a startling hiss :
Was it a demon?
The spring shuddered, '* Yes ! '
But that grim wedlock
It could not then flee;
So sped together,
From mountain to sea,
Angel and demon,
Blessing and bane;

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 287
But bane was master
All through to the main.
Faded each grass-blade,
Not a worm that drank
That water possessed
But its life-pulse sank.
Thin grew the catde,
The birds ceased their song,
Sick fell the cities
That river along.
The fiend-breath, rising
In a hot, thick mist,
Lay on the waters
As they foamed and hissed —
Lay like a serpent
The landscape along ;
Then writhed and parted
As the winds grew strong;
Parted and floated,
In many a cloud,
The broad land over —
Each cloud was a shroud
Where dead men rotted;
And the air grew fell
With a new fiend-breath
From a new-made hell.
IV.
Now tell me truly,
Ye that hear my tale,
Which the more guilty
In reason's just scale —

288 ECCE TERRA.
That sage-like stranger
Who cast in the bane
That went forth wasting
From fountain to main ?
Or those strange keepers,
Promising so fair,
Hands on the Gospels,
No taint should come there,
Yet both hands lending
To help to the spring,
Of tramps the Satan,
Of poisons the King?
It is hardly necessary for us to answer this
question. Good causes have always suffered
more from the mistakes and misconduct of their
pledged friends than from all other sources.
Especially has the Christian cause found its
greatest hindrances and harms, as well as its
greatest helps, in those within its own pale.
Had it not been for the unworthy living of
many professed Christians, Christianity would
long ere this have possessed the world. Christ
was really crucified by Judas. The primitive
Church became the papal through the ambi
tions and speculations and unfaithfulness of its
official teachers. Through such teachers, along
the succeeding centuries, came in the chief her
esies that menaced, distracted and disabled the
Church of the Reformation. In more recent

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 289
years pulpits and presses and institutions of
learning, not a few, which had been established
and endowed in the interest of religion, and
which still were under ecclesiastical supervision,
have been handed over bodily to the enemy.
The same mischief is still going on, and in the
same way. Some of the best fountains of cul
ture and influence ever consecrated to Christ
and humanity are having the virus of unbelief
in its worst form infused into them at the hands
of men in the uniform of science who have been
introduced into their places, and are maintained
in them, by the official guardians of the religion
they are attacking. We shall not attempt to
divide the guilt between principal and subal
terns, between the pseudo-science that casts in
the bane and those who bring the poisoner to
the brink of the fountain. It is certain that
the Lord does and will fight against both of
these parties — will hold them to a severe ac
count for the mischief they have done or al
lowed ; will, finally, by his consummate anti
dotes freely cast in, restore to the great spring
its normal purity and sweetness. We do not
know how long this victory will linger ; it is
possible that religion may yet see dark days ;
but this we know, that in the end all the clouds
will be swept away and the sun come forth tri
umphantly. And it will be not so much from
19

29O ECCE TERRA.
the powers of the men who are "valiant for the
truth on the earth," not so much from the might
of our apologetics and of the eloquence of
Christian orators and scholars, as by the secret
currents of divine force in these, combined with
those providential workings which so often in
the past have suddenly torn the mask from false
science and overwhelmed it with confusion. No
doubt the friends of truth will be exceedingly
vigilant and active. The simple will be taught
to "avoid profane babblings and oppositions of
science, falsely so called." The guardians of
the young will take large precautions in their
behalf against the " scoffers to come in the last
days," who will scoff in the name of the laws of
nature, saying, "All things continue as they were
from the beginning." Full surely the men of
war will set themselves in array, the champions
will " willingly offer themselves in the high
places of the field," the Davids will sling their
stones into the forehead of Unbelief — in short,
Christians will " contend earnestly for the faith
once delivered to the saints." But these things
will be mere conditions of the final victory. The
conquering forces will be His who " giveth wis
dom," who " taketh the wise in their own crafti
ness," who is the "Author and Finisher of faith,"
who says, " not by might nor by power, but by
my Spirit." It will be by the might of prayer,

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 291
saying, " Oh send out thy light and thy truth."
It will be by the faithfulness of Him who has
promised that " the gates of hell shall not pre
vail." It will be by revivals of religion unstop
ping deaf ears, unsealing blind eyes, shining on
both the written and unwritten word, making
men both honest and earnest in their inquiries,
giving them " the demonstration of the Spirit."
In a word, it will be by the same Hand that has
really gained all the former victories of religion.
Armageddon.
In course of time the successes of Christ
in the world will rouse the elements of evil to
a great combination against him. "This will
never do. If matters go on in this way we are
lost. Up! up! all ye haters and unfriends of
God and the Bible, in whatever land dwelling,
whatever your language, nationality, color or
social position ! Do you not see whither all
this is tending? Are you ready to disappear
from the world, to go into eternal banishment,
to hand over all the world's treasures and pleas
ures and freedoms to the torch of a grim super
stition? Let us stop wrangling among our
selves for a while, and make a common cause
against a common foe." Lo, the scattered
clouds, gradually taking courage from their
fast-increasing number, at last draw together

292 ECCE TERRA.
into one dense blackness, and with Satan blow
ing hard behind them for an east wind, sweep
up to Armageddon. All idolatries and papacies
and false prophets ; all unbeliefs, superstitions,
false philosophies, heresies, mammons, vices,
respectable ungodliness, castes, oppressions, —
here they are in one compact array and with
the port of Mars. It was to have been ex
pected. It is ever the way of fighters, from
the days of Demetrius and his fellow- craftsmen,
backward and forward, when hard pressed and
they have no quarter to expect, to stand at bay
together, gather courage from desperation, and,
if need be, die hard. And this is what the Bible
says the enemies of the truth will do in the last
days. The dragon and the beast and the false
prophet will send out their emissaries in every
direction and ally themselves with as many
" powers " as possible (ambitions, greeds, lusts,
arts, literatures and sciences so called, and
other " rulers of the darkness of the world "),
and, sinking for a time their mutual antago
nisms in view of the common danger, will orga
nize a common battle against the common foe.
It will be a great battle. Behold Satan's for
lorn hope! Behold the "people and nations
and kindred and tongues " of error and sin
fighting for very life ! Now or Never ! is their
battle-cry.

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 293
Well, Never let it be ! All is lost. Despite
desperation, despite numbers and unity and
hell, all is lost. And by whom or what does
the enemy suffer this Waterloo at Armaged
don? (See Rev. 19.) Heaven is roused. Its
armies march. They are led by One on whose
vesture is written, " King of kings and Lord
of lords." And when battle is joined, what an
overthrow of the evil powers ! Never such be
fore. " Ho, all ye fowls that fly in the midst
of heaven ! come and gather yourselves to
gether unto the supper of the great God ; that
ye may eat the flesh of kings, and the flesh of
captains, and the flesh of mighty men." Through
this veil of vivid symbolism shines clearly the
giant fact that it will be by the coming forth of
the supernatural that the great victory will be
gained. Whatever natural forces may be busy,
whatever preaching and giving and writing and
example in defence of the truth Christian work
ers may contribute, will be so marshaled and
energized and supplemented by the Hand that
to it will mainly belong the honors of the day.
It will be the " day of God Almighty."
The Millennium.
The issue? As stars come out, one after
another, on the evening sky till the whole vault
is ablaze— as, in some great inundation, stream

294 ECCE TERRA.
mingles with stream and pool adds itself to pool
till the whole district, lowland and upland, is
one broad shining sea — so the reformations just
noticed will go on multiplying and meeting each
other (not without many serious breaks in the
advance, it may be) until the whole world is
" full of the knowledge and glory of the Lord."
See, Babylon, the mother of abominations, has
fallen ! Fallen is the False Prophet. Boodh
and Brahma and every other modern idol and
fetish lie, like the Olympian deities and Dagon,
prostrate and broken on their own threshold.
Unbelief — where is it? Where are the men
who have no religion at all? The "scientific"
men, the men of " advanced thought," the men
so knowing that they know nothing of God or
Christ or inspired Bible or soul or hereafter?
The materialists, the pantheists, the skeptics,
the agnostics, the " philosophers," the fungi of
our culture and cancers of our civilization, —
what has become of them ? Vanished quite.
Faith is practically universal; and such faith!
The very souls of the martyrs have come back,
and are sitting on thrones all over the world.
The Great Martyr himself is in the midst of
them, before whose throne all other thrones
are dim and low, and whose sun makes their
stars. "And they lived and reigned with Christ
a thousand years." Their mighty faith, their

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 295
unconquerable principle, their sublime lives, are
royally governing in every land. " Born in the
purple," worthy to reign, undisputed and indis
putable sovereigns, not even Solomon in all
his glory was arrayed like the least of these.
How much less like this Greatest, on whose
head are many crowns ! Long live the King !
And the little children all over the world are
crying Hosannas to Him who has come in the
name of the Lord ; and mightily swells around
that tender music the chording bass of nations
and peoples and tongues, and bears it heaven
ward as the ocean sweeps aloft the foam.
And now the wolf and lamb lie down to
gether. Wars have ceased. Prisons are emp
ty. Civil governments have become a shadow
for weight ; and in its coolness the weary na
tions repose. Knowledge is the roof-tree of
every house, and its yellow fruit, low hanging,
can be plucked from every window. Science
and Art imitate from afar the miracles of God.
Men have forgotten to be sick. Want has for
gotten the way to men's houses. Above all,
men are no longer praying, "Thy kingdom
come, thy will be done on earth as it is done in
heaven." Why should they continue to ask
for that they have already fully received? Holi
ness is written on the very bells of the horses.
The earth is full of the knowledge of the Lord.

296 ECCE TERRA.
Blessed consummation ! Will it be by nat
ural tendency of human society, by blind, re
sistless law pushing slowly up through the ages,
till at last the race will find itself on those lofty
table-lands where the air is so pure, the light
so strong and the outlook so grand ? Script
ure, history and experience tell us that the tend
ency of human nature is downward rather than
upward (pray, what parent does not know it?)
— even that very strong forces from without
must be brought into play to overcome this
gravity, and that even such are generally insuf
ficient. Will it be by Christians, Mohammed
like, going forth to the nations with the Bible
in one hand and the sword in the other? Not
so have the past successes of Christianity been
gained ; and nothing is farther from its thought
to-day than the idea of spreading itself through
the world by outward force. We have been
taught by our religion itself that the only sword
we are to wield in its behalf is the sword of the
Spirit ; that men are sanctified by the truth ;
that it pleases God by the foolishness of preach
ing to save them who believe. Will it be by
policy and diplomacy and statecraft and patron
age of the great and chance freshets of favoring
circumstances? Very likely that the times and
various circumstances will, to some extent, be
propitious — that good men will labor zealously,

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 297
take pains to act discreetly, like Paul study a
sacred policy in dealing with the prejudices and
passions of men, accommodate themselves care
fully to the common relations of cause and ef
fect in their efforts to advance religion. But
this I know, as every student of the Bible
knows, that such things are merely conditions
under which God himself potentially works ;
that free institutions, general education, the
growth of linguistic and commercial facilities
for spreading the truth, Christian eloquence
and learning and alms and prestiges, mission
ary organizations, nursing kings and queens, —
all such things, are merely ushers and hand
maids to the supernatural, are merely the race
ways through which pours the current of that
divine Force that works all things after the
counsel of its own will. Very likely these race
ways will be covered ones, as they are now,
and no outward looking will be able to discover
the forceful supernatural that pours within ;
but, for all that, this is what will really set in
motion all the wheels of the last victorious
evangelism. The Christian philosophy of this is plainly
the same as that of those preliminary successes
already noticed. If inspired apostles, with
hand and thought full of the might of mir
acles, with a gospel fresh from its source and

298 ECCE TERRA.
clear as crystal pouring like a river from
tongue and lips, needed a further divine inter
position, how much more will it be needed by
the less royally furnished workmen of later
times as they strain toward the latter-day
glory ! But there is more direct testimony.
Read Isa. 65, also Rev. 18 and 19. You see
Babylon falling from her seven hills by the
hand of " the Lord God who judgeth her."
You see an angel sent down from heaven " to
chain Satan and cast him into the pit, and shut
him up, and set a seal upon him that he should
deceive the nations no more for a thousand
years." And thus you see that the " Lord God
will cause righteousness and praise to spring
forth before all the nations."

Men gaze on the structure
With awe-smitten eyes :
Is the Titan earth-born,
Or child of the skies ?
How earnest thou hither,
Galaxy of rock !
Didst come from a fire-mist,
Whose thoughtless laws mock
Thought, or, on a sudden,
Did some thunder-shock,
Serving as rough midwife,
Nature's womb unlock,

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 299
And give us Athene,
A goddess full grown,
In armor celestial.
And done into stone?
List ye to my answer:
Architect makes plan,
Then sends for his workmen.
His work gives each man.
They lay the foundations,
Cruciform and vast,
Deep down on a rock-bed
That for ever shall last;
Then hew the fair marbles,
Set block upon block,
From head of the corner,
Till at last they knock
At the door of heaven
For walls that have come,
Upright as its justice,
To pray for a dome ;
And to get such copy,
As prayers best can,
Of that spangled buckler
That nightly shields man.
Arch mimic shield grandly,
Ye workmen on high ;
With jewels on sapphire,
So fashion your sky.
Then let it down gently —
So gently let down

3OO ECCE TERRA.
As on a new monarch
They set his fair crown.
Along with this outward
And its musical din,
Twin glory and music
Have ripened within.
Columns bear up heaven;
Pictured windows stain
Sculptured woods and marbles
With their pageant rain —
Sculptured woods and marbles,
Litanies and songs,
Whose thunders of silence
Silence human tongues !
At last all is finished,
Through smiles and through tears
Of earth's fickle weather,
As days spell out years —
Gloriously finished !
A miracle in stone !
Stand off and gaze on it,
Ye pilgrims, each one,
And say that such marvel,
Such stone jubilee,
Is worth a whole lifetime
Of journey to see.
Ay, say that such temple,
So grand and so fair,
The broad earth saw never
Triumphing through air.

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 301
Hail, stone constellation !
Hail, solid sunlight !
Hail, Salem the Golden !
With awe and delight
I gaze on thy greatness,
Whose glory defies
That men should not call thee
A child of the skies.
Heart ! leap like a charger
That glory to see ;
What heart does no leaping
Is no heart for me.
Ho ! set the chimes ringing
Close to heaven's ear,
And sing out Te Deums
Till all the world hear.
For not by mere nature,
Say men what they may.
Does Salem the Golden
Flood earth with its day.
Can dead quarries flower
Into such a fane,
If God to our prayers
Add not his Amen ?
Nay, God is the Builder;
His hand and his thought.
Though much served by nature,
Count nature but naught
As aid in the framing,
Or aid in the plan,

302 ECCE TERRA.
Of this grandest temple
That ever held man.
Tell not of the '* science "
That tells not of God :
'Tis only pretender.
That sees but the sod,
Nor cries with eyes lifted,
And voice full of awe,
'"Tis God the Almighty,
And not mighty law,
"That built the great heaven;
Then build to accord
Thy temple of temples,
O Church of the Lord !"
The Last Day.
Each man has his last day. To each a sun
rises of which he never sees the setting, or a
sun sets of which he never sees the rising.
Rosy dawns will ascend, hours crowned with
light go treading gayly over the earth ; but not
for him. Fast locked up in his narrow coffer,
laid away deeply in the bowels of the earth, he
lies in stiff unconsciousness of the long proces
sion above him of days and seasons and ages.
Families have their last day. Households
part never to meet again. Ancient lines,
dating back beyond the Conquest, at last
come to an end. The ancestral mansion is
vacant, the title is extinct, the estates revert

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 303
to the state. In almost every community
" there is one alone, he hath neither child nor
brother," and his last day will be the last of
his name and race.
States also have their last day. Where are
the thrones of Carthage and Tyre, of Assyria
and Egypt, of Macedon and Rome? All gone,
like extinct individuals and families. After de
fying the trickle and the flood, the rust and the
battle of centuries, they at last gave way. One
sun arose on them still breathing, the next
found them only matters of history. In the
interval they had passed from something to
nothing. And other states occupied their
places ; not a few of whom, in their turn, have
expired and been laid away in the cemeteries
of history.
Also, the world will have its last day. We
have the best authority for saying that the
time will come when the human race will dis
appear in a body from the earth, and the planet
itself and all things therein be burned up. Also
the best of authority for speaking of that time
as a day, and as the last day. The Book has
spoken — not merely the analogies. "After its
words they speak not again, and its speech
drops upon them."
Exactly when this greatest of last days will
come we are not informed. The month,

304 ECCE TERRA.
the year, the century, the millennium even, in
which it will occur is not foretold. So little
hint is given of its exact locality in history
that its actual advent will take the world at
large thoroughly by surprise. Like the spring
ing of a snare or the coming of a thief will it
be. Up rolls that last sun from the east as
brightly and steadily as usual. Men hie them
to their business, their pleasures, without a
thought of change. The farmer is toiling in
his field, the merchant selling in his store, the
sailor bending his sails for distant climes. The
child is busy with its toys ; the youth at the
education which he hopes will some years
hence conduct him to honor and usefulness ;
and manhood at far-reaching plans which the
longest life will hardly suffice to realize. In a
word, all the world, like the sun, is moving
along the beaten highway of the ages without
a thought of its coming to an abrupt end a few
steps farther on. As it was in the days before
the Flood, when men "were eating and drink
ing, marrying and giving in marriage, until the
day that Noah entered into the ark, and knew
not until the Flood came and took them all
away, so shall the coming of the Son of man
be." Yet that last day will not be without its har
bingers. It will be immediately preceded by

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 305
very troublous times, especially by a time of
sad religious relapse. The long-bound Satan
will reappear among men. The Golden Age
will turn to an age of iron. Wickedness will
become a vast majority. And why not? If
holy Adam could become a sinner in his Par
adise ; if Lucifer, son of the morning, could
drop out of heaven into hell, and into that
deeper pit which we call Satan ; if the prim
itive Church could backslide partly into Ro
manism and partly into annihilation, — why may
not a world drop out of a glorious millennium?
Yes, that is what will happen. The summer
will become winter, the shadow will go back
some thousands of years on the dial of Jesus ;
the clock of the ages will point again at that
early time when Christians were relatively a
mere handful, and a sorely persecuted handful
at that. " Satan is loosed, and is gone out to
deceive the nations and gather them together
to battle " against the truth. Hark to the
tramp of the militant peoples ! From the four
winds come all the Antichrists of the period —
come in various uniforms, with various weapons
and banners, and with various shibboleths of
profane speech, but with one array and pur
pose — viz. to finally put down religion in the
world. So they compass the camp of the
saints about : " Now we have them ! Let
20

306 ECCE TERRA.
none escape. Give no quarter — do you hear,
men of Gog and Magog? — give no quarter!"
It is man's extremity. Also God's oppor
tunity. Ye can do nothing, O saints ; there
fore stand still and see the salvation of
God! The forked fire leaps from the sky. Aflame
are the tents of assailing Gog and Magog.
Their banners are meteors, their trumpets are
dumb, their bodies cover the ground as char
coal statues. Has brute nature blindly let slip^
a broad electric flash ? Nay, from God out of
heaven came the blazing judgment, and all the
Sennacheribs of unbelief and hostility have
gone suddenly into his presence to answer
for both their deeds and their opinions.
Whether this biblical picture means literal
war, or only such attacks on religion as the
tongues and pens and laws and examples and
social tactics of very bitter foes can make, is not
important to be decided. It certainly means at
least a banding together of all the evil elements
of the world in a supreme effort to suppress
Christianity, and a supreme defeat of that effort
by direct divine interference. It was the Hand
that smote those sinners and sent them into the
presence of the Judge.
Into the presence of the Judge ! Well, they
have not far to go. That fiery arrow was shot

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 307
from God on his way to judge the world. " Be
hold ! behold ! the Lord cometh with ten thou
sands of his saints to execute judgment upon
all and to convince all that are ungodly among
them of all their ungodly deeds which they
have ungodly committed, and of all their hard
speeches which ungodly sinners have spoken
against him." And now he is near. The sky
begins to glow with awful lights. A broader
flash, and, lo, the van of the heavenly host ap
pears in a colossal form in whose presence the
sun itself is dim. Standing one foot on sea
and one on solid land, the mighty angel lifts
his hand and " swears by Him that liveth for
ever and ever that time shall be no longer."
The great voice rings all round the world. All
business suddenly stops — all pleasure as well.
The tool drops from the hand of the laborer,
the pen from the hand of the writer, the sceptre
from the hand of the king. The ships cease to
sail, the cars to rush and the factories to hum.
The noisy, restless world, that — for who knows
how many thousand years ? — has not ceased its
rush and din for a single moment, is at last as
still and dumb as the grave itself — a world of
statues gazing up with such faces of awe and
astonishment as were never yet seen in statues
— gazing up to see the angel putting a trump to
his lips, to hear a blast such as never yet sound-

308 ECCE TERRA.
ed from the swollen cheeks of war or from the
artillery of lightnings and storms. It sweeps
from zone to zone. It rocks all the oceans. All
the continents are atremble. Like some golden
dagger the potent melody pierces all the sealed
sepulchres, all the deep sea-caves, all the mau-
solea and catacombs and Westminster Abbeys
and Pere la Chaises of the world ; and wher
ever is the dust of a human being, wherever it
has been carried by wind or wave or war, or is
in process of circulation in vegetable or animal,
there the searching summons hunts it out and
brings it to its fellows. Oh, what a resurrec
tion ! Oh, what hosts on hosts, rising from the
face of the world like a dense mist ! Here are
all the human generations away back to Adam.
Not a single missing link, not an atom of hu
manity missing. Nobody too insignificant to
be here, and nobody too great. Here are the
men of whom the world was not worthy, and
the men not worthy of the world. Here are
the men for whom nobody cared, and uhose who
cared for nobody.' Caucasian lords and Afri
can slaves ; deformed ^Esops and symmetrical
Apollos ; Dives from out his costly casket, and
Lazarus from out his deal box ; kings fresh
from the sculptured crypts of cathedrals and
pyramids, and subjects fresh from the clay of
the breezy country-side ; famous men whose

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 3O9
names bestar history, and plebeian millions
who left "no footprints on the sands of time;"
men weighted with untold tons of monumental
granite, and men scarce covered with the pity
ing sod; the men who were buried, and the men
who were burned and went off in gases toward
the four winds ; the lifelike corpse that was laid
in dust but yesterday, and the handful of dust
over which some eighty centuries have crept
away since it breathed and walked ; babes that
saw but a single sun, and patriarchs frosty with
wellnigh a millennium ; the wise virgins and the
foolish, the great saints and the great sinners ;
prophets and apostles and martyrs, together
with heresiarchs and antichrists and sodomites
rotten in both body and soul while yet above
ground ; the slain Gogs and Magogs of a few
moments ago, and their ancient sires who were
drowned by the Flood, burned in Siddim and
crushed by the watery walls of the Red Sea ;
the men of faith who have been counting on
such a time as this, and those who stoutly main
tained that a resurrection is incredible and im
possible, and even unthinkable, — here they all
are, ancients and moderns, Jews and Gentiles,
away to the land of Sinim. And here are we
of the sunset land — you and I, who long ago
were gathered to our fathers. Here in mid-air,
for the broad earth-surface can no longer hold

3IO ECCE TERRA.
the mighty multitude of its returning sons and
daughters. Behold the dead ! just now such, never to be
such again. But what of those who have never
died, but who this morning,, some fifteen hun
dred millions strong, were in the full blast of
their earthly ways, and now in immeasurable
astonishment find themselves almost lost in the
deluge of old life that is pouring in upon them
from every quarter? — what of them? The same
earth-quaking blast that roused the dead trans
formed the living. Suddenly the material re
fined into the spiritual. All grossness and in
firmity vanished. Age flashed back and youth
flashed forward into mid-life, and from the eyes
of mid-life flashed the strange fires of an immor
tal life. The maimed cast away their crutches
— what need they ? The sick desert their beds
and hospitals — what further use for nurses
and doctors ? The prisoners walk forth from
their prisons without challenge — trouble not
yourselves any further about them, O ye jail
ers, judges, jury; henceforth God will take both
them and you in charge. And up, all of you !
defy gravity and join in mid-air the mutely-ex
pectant hosts of other generations.
Any among you now to doubt the Last Day?
Any Paines, at first or second hand, to laugh at
the old wives' fables and priestcrafts with which

ILL USTRA TION B Y GREA T EXAMPLES. 3 1 1
only women and children are frightened? Any
" philosophers " refusing to see in nature any
thing but eyeless law, and ready with their dem
onstrations that neither in earth nor starry heav
ens is there aught requiring the supernatural ?
Pray, is this day, with its effulgent angel and
earthquake-trump and countless resurrections
and transformations, naturally evolved from the
primal fire-mist ?
Mutely-expectant, upward-gazing billions,
what is that far back in the sky? A star?
A planet? A moon? A sun? Still swells
the splendor ; gradually divides into angels
and archangels and thrones and principalities
and powers in forms so lovely, so stately, so
resplendent, as never before shone on the sight
of living men. And yet these make but little
impression on that mutely-expectant, upward-
gazing human host ; for in the midst of that
glorious array is seen a Form so much more
glorious that no eye can for one moment wan
der from him — human yet divine, and through
all the divine splendor sending forth a some
thing that says, // is He of Nazareth. And
Pontius Pilate knows him. Know him Annas
and Caiaphas and all who cried so vehemently,
" Crucify him ! crucify him !" and the soldiers
who plaited the crown of thorns and plied the
scourge and drove the nails; and the centurion

312 ECCE TERRA.
who exclaimed, " Truly, this is the Son of God."
And now his thought says it again in silent thun
ders. Who is there among all those rapt, up
ward-gazing hosts to differ from him ? At last
there is absolute uniformity of belief among men.
Is it really a great white throne ? Is it really
a Book of Remembrance? Ah, what floods of
retrospection now sweep through every soul !
Not a thing that any man has said or done but
is present with him now. He is himself a book
of remembrance, also of predictions. Seeing
so clearly what he has been and what he is, he
knows as with a sunbeam what he will be. He
can go to his own place on the right hand of
the Judge or on the left without any help from
the angels. But who is willing to go to the
dreadful left ? Once it was a matter of willing
ness and unwillingness ; it is so no longer.
Probation is ended. And the angels divide
the goats from the sheep.
Behold the two great parties into which men
have always been divided in God's sight, though
inextricably mixed to human eyes, now stand
ing so far apart that all eyes can see the divis
ion ! And the division will need no revision.
No mistake here — not one sheep among the
goats, not one goat among the sheep. Per
plexed as some of us were formerly to know
what to think of our neighbors, what to think

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 313
of ourselves even, such perplexity exists no
longer. " Depart, ye cursed, into everlasting fire pre
pared for the devil and his angels." Does any
goat fail to hear? No. Does any wish to obey?
No. Is any able to disobey? No. All that is
past, and away sweep the multitudes of repro
bates as if driven by ten thousand whirlwinds —
away, and still away, till on the outskirts of vis
ion the night receives them.
" Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the
kingdom prepared for you from the foundation
of the world." And the cloudy throne begins
to ascend. With it ascends the satellite glory
of the angels. Drawn as by some mighty at
traction more commanding than that which
binds sphere to sphere, and which they are
neither able nor willing to resist, the redeemed
hosts follow on — " a multitude which no man
can number, out of every people and nation
and kindred and tongue "--up through the
atmosphere, up through the planetary spaces,
up through the files of rejoicing stars, up
through the gates of pearl.
On the golden threshold, O rearmost saint,
linger for a moment and look behind thee.
Let thy now celestial glance shoot along the
still luminous track by which thou earnest until
it arrives at the poor deserted earth. Emptied

3 14 ECCE TERRA.
of all its people, rifled even as to all its graves,
not a waif of humanity left above ground or
beneath it — houses all vacant, roads untrav-
eled, ships drifting idly on the moaning seas,
libraries unconsulted, churches without congre
gations, schools without scholars, palaces with
out nobles and kings — see how desolate and
empty the earth is. Well, the emptier the bet
ter, for the earth is old and forlorn and stained
and saturated throughout with the vices of a
thousand wicked generations. It seems wait
ing, like some refuse and decrepit and disfig
uring pest-house, for the torch to be applied.
Will it be applied ? Suddenly a fiery lance
stands quivering in the bosom of the planet.
In a moment the lance becomes a volcano, the
volcano a fiery sea. Now all the mountains
are volcanoes, all the plains fiery seas, and
even the great deeps themselves are flaming
as if their brine were oil. The rocks are mere
tinder. The Arctic ices and snows are all
aflame. The whole geography is ablaze, and
from surface to centre is dissolved into lava,
and then into a fire-mist that surges outward
till it gathers into its terrible embrace the hap
less moon. On the night-sky of some distant
orb flames out a new star. Neighbor-planets
are affrighted by the appearance of a new sun.
What a furnace of stormy splendors ! What a

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 315
carnival of raving, desperado gases ! What a
babel of awful sounds ! It is the Armageddon
of the elements, the jubilee of anarchy, nature's
Reign of Terror, the civil war of demons.
Is that far-gazing saint surprised at what he
sees? Not at all. He has long been looking
forward to such a consummation. Not because
he has been taught by the chemist that the earth
is made up of combustibles and supporters of
combustion. Not because some have assured
him that the earth will gradually contract its
orbit and at last wheel into the sun. Not be
cause some physicists have told as science that,
sooner or later, it cannot but be that the earth,
amid the distractions of innumerable attractions,
will collide with some other orb, and so confla
gration result from the concussion of the two
mighty flints. Not because he knew that every
now and then some orb had suddenly blazed
into view, and then swooned away through all
the colors that belong to a decaying conflagra
tion, and even that innumerable stars are only
worlds on fire. Ah, no ! But it is because he
has read it in the Book. With its telescope he
saw it ages ago. Borne by the prophets to
their Pisgahs of outlook, he had seen the
"heavens passing away, and the elements
melting with fervent heat, and the earth and
all things therein burning up "—seen it not as

316 ECCE TERRA.
the suicide of Nature, who, like Dido, had built
her own funeral-pyre, but as the execution of a
sentence by the supernatural on a polluted
world, the fitting end of a theatre in which sin
and shame have been ever enacting tragedies.
Let it burn. The Hand is in it. The will of a
just God was the kindling torch. And he turns
and crosses the golden threshold to join his com
panions in their song of "Just and true are thy
ways, thou King of saints."
The New Earth.
Is the history of the earth at last finished?
Have we seen its last chapter — nay, its last
verse, its last letter, its last period ? Have the
mad flames scourged it back into nothingness ?
Who says that? Not science, not the Bible.
If that saint who just now saw the earth burnt
up will, after a time, look forth again from the
earthward gate of heaven, especially if he will
launch forth from it a space, he will see — what?
Certainly a world wheeling on the old orbit
Certainly sun, moon and stars shining in its
sky as of old. Certainly people and occupa
tions and the rush and lightning of great enter
prises. But, after all, he will see what is, in the
main, a new world. Behold " the new heavens
and the new earth in which dwelleth righteous-
ness !" A sky which, perhaps through some

ILLUSTRATION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 317
change in the constitution of the air or of the
eyes that look up to it, has been transfigured
into new wonderfulness and splendor. An earth
beneath that rejoices and sings and claps its
hands. It is no longer the wild and disorderly
frontier of the kingdom, no longer a nest of
treasons and insurrections, no longer the home
of partially reconstructed rebels, as it was even
in the millennium. At last it is peopled perma
nently by perfectly holy beings. Those miser
able ups and downs of religion so long seen in
individuals and society; the alternate triumph
and defeat; the doleful mixture of good and
bad, of loyalty and disloyalty, of gold and silver
and iron and clay, in even the best, — are alto
gether and for ever things of the past. Some
how, as in some city a great conflagration with
its numberless fiery tongues licks cleanly up
the vile tenements and dens where squalor and
vice have rioted and rotted, and makes way for
boulevards and palaces ; so, somehow, all that
is refuse and disfiguring in character has disap
peared from the earth in that tremendous cruci
ble, and Medea's old father, full of wrinkles and
aches, has come out of the dissolving flames a
young Apollo. At last holiness reigns — holi
ness complete, universal, permanent. This
trinity carries an outward as well as inward
paradise in its bosom. Glorious souls are

3l8 ECCE TERRA.
housed in glorious bodies. The grim diseases,
the truculent deaths, that all along the groan
ing past have so haunted palace and cabin, are
gone for ever. Gone for ever are the old want,
war, oppression, heresy, misgovernment, unbe
lief: one may hunt the wide world through for
a single specimen, and hunt in vain. The spe
cies are extinct. They will never appear on the
earth again, by evolution or otherwise.
In harmony with this state of things is the
material environment. Physical nature has al
ways taken its cue from the moral — does not
forget to do it now. Ah, what landscapes! Ah,
what fruits and flowers ! Ah, what miracles of
material beauty and grandeur beyond the wild
est dreams of our poets and painters ! The
deserts are all gone — gone all the thorns and
briers and swamps and miasms and other ugly
and deadly things that so deformed the face of
the old world and conformed it to the character
of its people ; and in their stead, lo, a setting
worthy of the gem, a home fit for the peers of
angels ! And a jubilee happiness and science
spring up as naturally in such circumstances as
do the jubilee palms and flowers in that glori
ous soil. Hail, Age of Gold without any dross!
Hail, Day that has neither night nor clouds !
Hail, New Jerusalem freshly alighted from the
skies in every land !

LL LUSTRA TION BY GREAT EXAMPLES. 3I9
Whence this new state of things ? Who
made these royal people? Who built their
palatial home and furnished it so superbly?
It was not a windfall. Almighty chance had
nothing to do with it. The laws of nature had,
doubtless, something to do with it, but they no
more evoked this tabernacle of God and New
Jerusalem out of the fire-mists of the Last Day
than they did the old heavens and earth out
of a chaos of fiery elements. "And I saw the
New Jerusalem coming down from God:" this
is the last philosophy and ultimate science and
true history- root of the glorious "new earth in
which dwelleth righteousness."
Such are some of the loftier summits of
supernaturalism in the earth. They are only
the visible outjuttings, from a misty ocean, of
a mighty continent that stretches away in un
broken sequence through all the abysses and
over all the parallels and meridians of earthly
fact and history. There are no real lacunas
whatever. From the moment when, at his
word, the substance of the earth flashed out of
nothing, up to that of its reconstruction into the
new heavens and the new earth, God has fol
lowed each ultimate atom as an equatorial fol
lows a star — not only with his watchful eye,
but with his forceful right hand. His throne is
set up in every mote that kindles in the sun-

320 ECCE TERRA.
beam. The currents of his will course through
all the veins and arteries of being. Heat, light,
gravity and every other physical force wear his
harness and feel his spur. All the highways
and byways of history, which are so trampled
by armies of second causes, have, side by side
with each tiny footprint of the creature, the
gigantic footprint of the Creator. He domes
ticates in all the homes of the world, transacts
in all its business, enacts in all its laws, advises
in all its cabinets, marches with all its armies,
as well as sanctifies in all its solemn temples.
Even the free will and heart of man, however
erratic and far-going their orbits, never pass
beyond that all-encompassing firmament of
which his fingers are the galaxies. Creating
or suppressing, constructing or dissolving, pla
cing or displacing, expanding or contracting,
hastening or retarding, reining or spurring,
helping or hindering — helping all right and
hindering from all wrong — the Hand is work
ing all things after the counsel of its own will,
through all the zeniths and nadirs, through all
the latitudes and longitudes, through all the
pasts and futures, as well as present, of the
earth — always as a benevolent providence,
never as a heartless fate — the one almighty,
omnipresent optimism of a world which but for
him would have been a pessimism.

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