The lesson is written in a language foreign to most of us, and one
requiring careful study; and yet once deciphered it is clear.
Science attains the laws of Nature by the study of animal and human
history. But this record is a history of continually closer
conformity to environment on the part of all advancing forms. The
animal kingdom is the clay which is turned, as Job says, to the seal
of environment, and it makes little difference whether we study the
seal or the impression; we shall read the same sentence. Environment
has stamped its laws on the very structure of man's body and mind.
And the old biblical writers read these laws, guided by God's
Spirit, in their own hearts, and in those of their neighbors, and in
their national history, as the record of God's working, and gave us
concrete examples of the results of obedience and disobedience.
Hence the teaching of the Bible is always clear and unmistakable.
The Bible treats of three subjects--Nature, Man, and God--and the
relations of each of these to the others. I have tried to present to
you in the first chapter the biblical conception of Nature and its
relation to God. In its relation to man it is his manifestation to
us, and, in its widest sense, the sum of the means and modes through
which he develops, aids, and educates us.
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