Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER Til. GRASS. ' ff God so clothe the grass, which is to-day in thifieid, and to-morrma it cast into the oven ; how much more will He clothe you, 0 ye of littli faith f "—LUKE xii. 28. We are told that " the invisible things of God, from the beginning of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made." From the very first, a spiritual significance was embodied in the physical forms and processes of the universe. Nature as a whole was meant to be for man the vesture of the spiritual world. There are close natural affinities between the things that we see around as and the mysteries of our own life and of God's relations to us. Our familiarity with these things, as objects of use and profit in daily life, may hide their higher meaning and importance from our view; the blinding effects of sin may so veil them that they may suggest nothing to our minds ; but they are nevertheless, by a necessity of their nature, continually testifying to us of the unseen world; and he who studies them aright will be delighted to find in them pictures of heavenly truth, shadows and reflections of eternal realities. Our Saviour's parables lifted theveil from the face of nature, revealed to us the exact relationship between the natural and the spiritual world, and connected the things of sense with the things of faith, from which sin had divorced them- And the analogies in what we usually call Christ's figurative language are not really metaphorical, but exhibit the perfect insight of our Saviour's mind into the purposes and ends of that material world which was created by Himself and for Himself, as a magnificent diagram to illustrate His spiritual lessons, and show forth His glory. No natural obj ect gathers around it so many scriptural associations, and sugg... --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.