Parables from Nature
Book Description
a selection from the PREFACE: "THERE are two books," says Sir Thomas Browne, in his Religio Medici, "from whence I collect my divinity; besides that written one of God, another of his servant, Nature-that universal and public manuscript that lies expanded unto the eyes of all: those that never saw Him in the one have discovered Him in the other." And afterwards, as if giving a particular direction...
Morea selection from the PREFACE: "THERE are two books," says Sir Thomas Browne, in his Religio Medici, "from whence I collect my divinity; besides that written one of God, another of his servant, Nature-that universal and public manuscript that lies expanded unto the eyes of all: those that never saw Him in the one have discovered Him in the other." And afterwards, as if giving a particular direction to the above general statement, he adds: "Those strange and mystical transmigrations that I have observed in silkworms turned my philosophy into divinity. There is in these works of Nature, which seem to puzzle reason, something divine, and hath more in it than the eye of a common spectator doth discover." Surely these two passages, from the works of the celebrated physician and philosopher, may justify an effort to gather moral lessons from some of the wonderful facts in God's creation: the more especially as St. Paul himself led the way to such a mode of instruction, in arguing the possibility of the resurrection of the body from the resurrection of vegetable life out of a decayed seed: "Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened except it die!" Thou fool -fool! not to be able, in thy disputatious wisdom, to read that book of "God's servant, Nature," out of which there are indeed far more actual lessons of analogy to be learned than we are apt to suppose, or can at once detect. Assuredly, the changes of the silkworm, and the renewal of life from vegetable seed, are not more remarkable than the soaring butterfly rising from the earth grub-a change which, were the caterpillar a reasonable being, capable of contemplating its own existence, it would reject as an impossible fiction. It was not, however, Sir Thomas Browne's remarks which gave rise to these parables; for the first was written in an outburst of excessive admiration of Hans Andersen's Fairy Tales, coupled with a regret that, although he had, in several cases, shown his power of drawing admirable morals from his exquisite peeps into nature, he had so often left his charming stories without an object or moral at all. Surely, was the thought, there either is, or may be devised, a moral in many more of the incidents of nature than Hans Andersen has tried for; and on this view the "Lesson of Faith" was written-an old story; for the ancients, with deep meaning, made the butterfly an emblem of immortality-yet, to familiarise the young with so beautiful an idea seemed no unworthy aim. "The Sedge Warbler" is open to the naturalist's objection, that female birds do not sing. But it suited the moralist that they should do so in this particular case; and who would not err in such company as Spenser, Milton, Thomson, Beattie, and the immortal Isaak Walton? "And in the violet-embroider'd vale, Where the love-lorn nightingaleNightly to thee her sad song mourneth well." Song of Comus-MILTON. "And Philomele her song with teares doth steepe." The Shepherd's Calendar, Nov. SPENSER.
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