It is not words only that are emblematic, it is things.  Every appearance in Nature corresponds to some state of mind, and that state of mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.  An enraged man is a lion, a cunning man is a fox, a firm man is a rock, a learned man is a torch.  Visible distance behind and before us is respectively an image of memory and hope.

Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of justice, truth, love, freedom, arise and shine.  This universal soul he calls reason:  it is not mine, or thine, or his, but we are its; we are its property and men.  And the blue sky in which the private earth is buried, the sky with its eternal calm and full of everlasting orbs is the type of reason.  That which, intellectually considered, we call reason, considered in relation to Nature we call spirit.  Spirit is the creator.  Spirit hath life in itself, and man in all ages and countries embodies it in his language as the Father.

As we go back in history language becomes more picturesque until its infancy, when it is all poetry.  When simplicity of character and the sovereignty of ideas are broken up, new imagery ceases to be created and old words are perverted to stand for things which are not; a paper currency is employed when there is no bullion in the vaults.

V.—­HER MORAL DISCIPLINE

In view of the significance of Nature we arrive at the fact that Nature is a discipline.  What tedious training, day after day, year after year, never ending, to form the common sense; what continual reproduction of annoyances, inconveniences, dilemmas; what rejoicing over us of little men, what disputing of prices, what reckoning of interest—­and all to form the hand of the mind!

The exercise of will or the lesson of power is taught in every event.  Nature is thoroughly mediate.  It is made to serve.  It receives the dominion of man as meekly as the ass on which the Saviour rode.  It offers all its kingdoms to man as the raw material which he may mould into what is useful.  And he is never weary of working it up.  He forges the subtle and delicate air into wise and melodious words, and gives them wings as angels of persuasion and command.  One after another his victorious thought comes up with and reduces all things, until the world becomes at last a realised will.

Every natural process is a version of a moral sentence.  The moral law lies at the centre of Nature and radiates to the circumference.  What is a farm but a mute gospel?  The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun—­it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields.  Who can guess how much firmness the sea-beaten rock has taught the fisherman?  How much tranquillity has been reflected to man from the azure sky?  How much industry and providence and affection we have caught from the pantomime of brutes?