Blessed are those that are undefiled in the way,
    Who walk in the law of the Lord. 
    Make me to understand the way of thy commandments;
    And so shall I talk of thy wondrous works. 
    Thy statutes have been my songs
    In the house of my pilgrimage. 
    The earth, O Lord, is full of thy mercy: 
    O teach me thy statutes! 
    Thy hands have made me and fashioned me: 
    O give me understanding, that I may learn thy commandments. 
    Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. 
    They continue this day, according to thy ordinances. 
    Thy righteousness is an everlasting righteousness,
    And thy law is the truth. 
    Shew the light of thy countenance upon thy servant,
    And teach me thy statutes.

This is none other than that law of which a far later ecclesiastic, writing also of ecclesiastical law, discoursed in this wise: 

There can be no less acknowledged than that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as feeling her care, and the greatest as not exempted from her power:  both angels and men and creatures of what condition soever, though each in different sort and manner, yet all, with uniform consent admiring her as the mother of their peace and joy.[60]

This law is none other than that holy form which a modern poet thus apostrophizes: 

      Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
      The godhead’s most benignant grace;
      Nor know we anything so fair
      As is the smile upon thy face. 
      Flowers laugh before thee on their beds,
      And fragrance in thy footing treads;
    Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
    And the most ancient heavens, through thee, are fresh and strong.

3. The Law thus mystic and sacred is seen to be both the law of nature and the law of the human soul.

The Bible recognizes no duality of natural law and revealed law.  All divine law is natural, and, as such, is a revelation.  Physical and moral laws are but different forms of one and the same order.  The same Power is working in the world around man and in the world within man.  The lower forms of Its action are to be interpreted by Its higher forms.  Nature is to be resolved by Man.  The Ten Words were given as the statutes of Jehovah himself the personification of some form of nature’s force.  Out of this simple germ grew, the noble thought which anticipated the knowledge of our savans and the intuitions of our seers; who unite in showing us one order in the starry heavens and in the mysteries of mind.  Thus it is that the Bible feeds so richly, when read aright, that awe which steals upon us as we face nature and see ourselves mirrored there in shadowy outline; and realize the One in all things—­God.

There is a beautiful illustration of this in a noble poem that our later critics have handled with a strange lack of perceptiveness.  The Nineteenth Psalm opens with a lofty apostrophe to Nature, commencing: