Creation in Christian preaching highlights God's wisdom, power, and purposeful design evident in the natural world, affirming His role as the Creator. Illustrations often use vivid images from nature—such as seeds, animals, and intricate patterns—to reveal God's invisible presence and providential care (Romans 1:20, Psalm 19:1). This subject underscores that creation testifies to God's existence and plan, encouraging faith in His divine plan.
Fixing man’s heart is key to restoring and ordering the world rightly.
A small boy filled with all kinds of playful ideas anxiously awaited his father's return from work. An extra-long day at the office, however, had taken its toll, and his father longed for a few minutes of relaxation. Over and over again the boy tugged at his dad's leg with yet another suggestion of something they might do together. Well, finally in total frustration the father ripped from a magazine a picture of the world and tore it into a hundred pieces. "Here," he said handing the child a roll of scotch tape, "go and put the world back together." Ah, peace at last, or so he thought. But, in just a few minutes, he was interrupted again, there before him stood his son-and in hands was a crudely fashioned picture of the world. "Son, that's incredible. How did you do it?" "It was easy," said the boy, "you see on the other side of the picture of the world was the picture of a man, and as soon as I got man straightened out the world came together."
What a profound answer from a child! How true! Get man fixed and the world will be okay.
God’s intricate creation of our bodies calls for praise and gratitude.
The scene was a familiar one. The young couple were going over their monthly bills. In it were ones from the drug store, department store, oil company, etc. Trying to find something humorous to say in the situation, the man quipped, "Isn't it a good thing that God doesn't send bills?"
That is good, isn't it? But what if He just decided to bill us for this wonderful body He has given us? The Psalmist said, "I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made" (Psalms 139:14). Shakespeare said, "What a piece of work is man!" Think about what God has made:
THE EARS: A piano has 88 keys, but each of your ears has a keyboard with 1500 keys. They are so finely tuned that you can hear the blood running through your vessels. The outside of your ear can catch up to 73,700 vibrations per second.
THE EYES: They are both microscopes and telescopes. They can gaze into the heavens and see a star millions of miles away, or inspect the smallest insect.
THE FEET: Did you know that each foot has 26 bones, none of which is wider than your thumb? But it is so "manufactured" (arched) with its ligaments, tendons, muscles and joints that a 300-pound man can put all his weight on these tiny bones.
THE HEART: Its size is about like your fist, but pumps (beats) 4,320 times an hour. In a year that would mean 40 million beats. A drop of blood can make a round trip in your circulatory system in only 22 seconds.
What if God sent you a bill for this marvelous body we live in? But God doesn't send us bills. He just loves us and takes care of us. Can we do any less than to return His love? We show Him our love by obedience to His Word and by faithful stewardship of that which He has entrusted to us.
The golden age was a time of universal peace, innocence, and abundance before decline.
This was the first period of history in which truth, right, innocence, and happiness universally prevailed. There were no instruments of war, and the earth brought forth her fruits spontaneously. Spring was perpetual, flowers grew up spontaneous, the rivers flowed with milk and wine, and honey dropped from the boughs of the oaks. Then came the declining silver age; then the savage brazen age; then the murderous iron age, followed by the flood of Deucalcon.
A child is an innocent, unspoiled copy of Adam before sin entered the world.
A child is a man in small letter, yet the best copy of Adam before he tasted the apple. His soul is yet a white paper, unscrubbled with observations of the world, wherewith it becomes at length a blurred note-book. Ep. Erle.
Every atom and natural event is interconnected and dependent on God's sustaining power.
Material. Not one atom in creation exists by itself or for itself alone, but, directly or indirectly, influences and is influenced by every other atom. The movements of the tiniest wave, which rises slowly over the dry pebble on the beach, marking the progress of the advancing tide in the inland bay, are determined by the majestic movements of the great ocean, with all its tides that sweep and circulate from pole to pole. The raindrop which falls into the heart of a wild flower, and rests there with its pure and sparkling diamond lustre, owes its birth to the giant mountains of the old earth, to the great sea, to the all-encompassing atmosphere, to the mighty sun; and is thus, by a chain of forces, united in its existence, its figure, its motion, and its rest, to the most distant planet, which, beyond the ken of the telescope, whirls along its path on the mysterious outskirts of space. Thus, too, the needle of the electric telegraph trembles beneath the influence of hidden powers which pervade the earth, which flash in the thunderstorm, awaken the hurricane, or burst in those bright and brilliant coruscations that shoot across the midnight of our northern sky. And so, "The whole round earth is everywhere bound by gold chains about the throne of God."
— Dr. Macleod
Excessive fashion distorts God's image in women, reflecting worldly vanity over godliness.
A woman must not have one quality of a ship; and that is, too much rigging. Oh! what a wonder is it to see a ship under sail, with her tacklings, and her masts, and her tops and top-gallants, with her upper decks and her netherdecks, and so bedecked, with her streamers, flags, and ensigns, and I know not what. Yea, what a world of wonders is it to see a woman, created in God's image, so miscreate oftentimes and deformed, with her French, her Spanish, and her foolish fashions, that he that made her, when he looks upon her, shall hardly know her; with her plumes, her fans, and a silken vizard: with a ruff like a sail; yea, a ruff like a rainbow; with a feather in her cap like a flag in her top, to tell (I think) which way the wind will blow.
— R. Wilkinson
A child's wonder at snow and cat tracks illustrates God's creative power and providence.
Dr. Boynton says that a family removed from Florida to the State of Maine. Among them was a boy who had never seen a snow-storm. One morning, he got up and found the ground all white. He went to the door, and found cat's tracks on the step. He went to his mother, and expressed his wonder. She told him it was only snow, that God sent down. "But," said the boy, "did God send down the cat's tracks too, mamma?"
Life abounds everywhere in nature, from tiny insects to great sea creatures.
The air is crowded with birds,—beautiful, tender, intelligent birds,—to whom life is a song and a thrilling anxiety,—the anxiety of love. The air is swarming with insects,—those little animated miracles. The waters are peopled with innumerable forms,—from the animalcule, so small that a hundred and fifty millions of them would not weigh a grain, to the whale, so large that it seems an island as it sleeps upon the waves. The bed of the sea is alive with polyps, crabs, star-fishes, and with sand-numerous shell-animalcules. The rugged face of rocks is scarred by the silent boring of soft creatures, and blackened with countless mussels, barnacles, and limpets. Life everywhere!—on the earth, in the earth, crawling, creeping, burrowing, boring, leaping, running. If the sequestered coolness of the wood tempt us to saunter into its checkered shade, we are saluted by the murmurous din of insects, the twitter of birds, the scrambling of squirrels, the startled rush of unseen beasts; all telling how populous is this seeming solitude. If we pause before a tree or shrub or plant, our cursory and half-abstracted glance detects a colony of various inhabitants. We pluck a flower, and in its bosom we see many a charming insect busy at its appointed labor. We pick up a fallen leaf; and, if nothing is visible on it, there is probably the trace of an insect larva hidden in its tissue, and awaiting development. The drop of dew upon this leaf will probably contain its animals, visible under the microscope. The same microscope reveals that the blood-rain, suddenly appearing on bread, and awakening superstitious terrors, is nothing but a collection of minute animals, (Monas prodigiosa); and that the vast tracts of snow which are reddened in a single night owe their color to the marvellous rapidity in reproduction of a minute plant (Protococus nivalis). The very mould which covers our cheese, our bread, our jam, our ink, and disfigures our damp walls, is nothing but a collection of plants. The many-colored fire which sparkles on the surface of a summer sea at night, as the vessel ploughs her way, or which drips from the oars in lines of jewelled light, is produced by millions of minute animals.
— Sala
Only God can give life; man's power cannot breathe the living fire of life.
Man's power is very mighty, I know; but it stops short of this. He can put a bone before him; and from a bone, a fossil bone, he can construct a massive elephant; and, with Promethean ambition, he can shape its features faultlessly; and, by clock-work or by galvanism, he can simulate a strange hypocrisy of life; but he cannot draw down the vital breath; he cannot breathe the living fire. His province is combination and embellishment. By divine authority, plainly conferred, he may now and then be permitted to resuscitate: to breathe is beyond his power. That belongs only to God. "Am I God," said the frightened king of Israel, "to kill and to make alive, that this man doth send to me to recover a man of his leprosy?"
— W. M. Punshon
Love of life is God's design to preserve His creation deliberately and wisely.
"And what thinkest thou," said Socrates to Aristodemus, "of this continual love of life, this dread of dissolution, which takes possession of us the moment we are conscious of existence?"—"I think of it," was the reply, "as the means employed by the same great and wise Artist, deliberately determined to preserve what he has made."
Mythical story illustrates man's creation, fall, and that hope remains after all plagues escape.
According to fable, Prometheus took earth, and, kneading it up with water, made man in the image of the gods. He gave him an upright stature: so that, while all other animals turn their faces downward, and look to the earth, he raises his upward, and gazes upon the heavens. To make man superior to all other animals, Prometheus ascended to the heavens, stole fire from the sun, and brought it to man, enabling him to make implements of war and of husbandry. Woman was made in heaven, each of the gods contributing something to perfect her. The name of the first woman was Pandora. She was conveyed to earth, and presented to Epimetheus, the first man, who received her gladly. He had in his house a jar filled with various articles. Pandora was seized with an irresistible desire to know what the jar contained. One day she lifted the lid, when there escaped a multitude of plagues for man, — fever, gout, rheumatism, and the like, for the body; and envy, enmity, and hatred for the mind. She hastened to replace the lid; but all had escaped save hope, which lay in the bottom.
Man is created as lord over all creation, holding central significance in God's design.
Scripture is no story of the material universe. A single chapter is sufficient to tell us that "God made the heavens and the earth." Man is the central figure there; or, to speak more truly, the only figure: all which is there besides serves but as a background for him. He is not one part of the furniture of this planet, not the highest merely in the scale of its creatures, but the lord of all; sun, moon, and stars, and all the visible creation, borrowing all their worth and their significance from the relations where they stand to him. Such he appears there in the ideal worth and dignity of his unfallen condition; and even now, when only a broken fragment of the sceptre with which once he ruled the world remains in his hand, such he is commanded to regard himself still.
— Trench
Nature records its history and human actions leave lasting marks, speaking to the observant.
NATURE, Report of Nature will be reported. All things are engaged in writing their history. The planet, the pebble, goes attended by its shadow. The rolling rock leaves its scratches on the mountain; the river, its channel in the soil; the animal, its bones in the stratum; the fern and leaf, their modest epitaph in the coal. The falling drop makes its sculpture in the sand or the stone.
Not a foot steps into the snow or along the ground, but prints, in characters more or less lasting, a map of its march. Every act of the man inscribes itself in the memories of its fellows, and in his own manners and face.
The air is full of sounds, the sky of tokens, the ground is all memoranda and signatures, and every object covered over with hints, which speak to the intelligent. Emerson
The ocean sustains all life and provides countless blessings to the earth.
How numberless are the blessings we owe to the ocean, the father and sustainer of all organic life! He it is that feeds the stream, that fills the lake, that bubbles in the spring, that foams in the cataract, or rushes along in the mountain torrent. Should his eternal fountains be dried up, the blooming surface of the earth would be converted into a naked waste. To him we owe the magnificence of our forests, the verdure of our meadows, the beauty of our fields. It is his waters we enjoy in the luscious fruits of our orchards, or quaff in the juice of the exhilarating grape. They circulate in the veins of numberless animals, — of the bee, which offers us the sweet tribute of its honey; of the bird, that charms us with its melodious song; of the domestic quadruped, on whose flesh we feed, and whose services are indispensable to our welfare. Nay, our own blood is originally drawn from the wells of the ocean, and is constantly refreshed and replenished from its exhaustless sources.
The ocean's cycle of giving and receiving sustains nature's beauty and life.
The great ocean is in a constant state of evaporation. It gives back what it receives, and sends up its waters in mists to gather into clouds; and so there is rain on the fields, and storm on the mountains, and greenness and beauty everywhere. But there are many who do not believe an evaporation. They get all they can, and keep all they get. Beecher.
Even dangerous animals can be domesticated, showing God's diverse creation and order.
In the torrid zone, snakes are sometimes domesticated to destroy vermin. The rat-snake of Ceylon is often kept as a household pet by the natives; and, what is still more remarkable, even the dreaded cobras are domesticated in the place of dogs. They glide about the house, going in and out at pleasure, a terror to thieves, but never attempting to harm the inmates. Hartwig.
Taste preferences vary greatly, showing God's diverse creation and human uniqueness.
Dr. Livingstone once gave a chief who came to visit him a piece of bread, with preserved apricots, for his lunch. As he seemed to relish it, the doctor asked if his country produced any food equal to it. "Ah!" said the chief, "did you ever taste white ant?" On his replying that he had not, he said, "Well, if you had, you never could have desired to eat any thing better." There is a large grub, the larva of a beetle, which feeds on the palm-tree, which is considered a great delicacy in the East Indies. Capt. Steadman, who ate of them fried in butter, declares their flavor to be "like a combination of all the spices in India."
— Bib. Treasury
Thinking with God is like co-creating as He composes the universe.
Thinking is creating with God, as thinking is writing with the ready writer; and worlds are only leaves turned over in the process of composition about his throne. Beecher.
A Tokelau story parallels Eve's creation, showing woman formed from man's rib and earth.
The people at Fakaafo, of the Tokelau group, say that the first woman was made of the loose earth, or lust of the ground. The story run thus: The first man, who had previously been a stone, thought, one day, he would make a woman. He collected the light earth on the surface of the ground in the form of a human body, with head, arms, and legs. He then plucked out one of his left ribs, and thrust it into the breast of his earth-model. Instantly the earth became alive; and upstarts a woman. He called her Ivi (according to English orthography, it would be Ecece), which is their word for rib. How like to our Eve! Turner.
Natural phenomena leave clear evidence of their causes, reflecting God's power and design.
Nothing takes place without leaving traces behind it; and these are, in many cases, so distinct and various as to leave not a doubt of their cause. Arizona, New Mexico and other sections of the West abound in beds of lava and other evidence of volcanic eruptions in remote ages. There are also vast canons, evidently cut out by mighty torrents of water, and yet, today, water may not be found in some localities in a day’s journey.
God's benevolence is evident even in the design of unpleasant creatures warning humans of danger.
The benevolence of our great Creator is chanted even by things unpleasant to the ear. "The nuptial song of reptiles," says Kirby, "is not, like that of birds, the delight of every heart; but it is rather calculated to disturb and horrify than to still the soul. The hiss of serpents, the croaking of frogs and toads, the moaning of turtles, the bellowing of crocodiles and alligators, form their gamut of discords." Here, also, we may read beneficent design. Birds are the companions of man in the lawn and forest, in his solitary walks, amidst his rural labours, and around the home of his domestic enjoyments. They are, therefore, framed beautiful to the eye, and pleasing to the ear; but of the reptile tribes, some are his formidable enemies, and none were ever intended to be his associates. They shun cultivation, and inhabit unfrequented marshes or gloomy wilds. Their harsh notes and ungainly or disgusting forms, serve therefore to warn him of danger, or to turn his steps to places more fit for his habitation.— H. Duncan's Sacred Philosophy of the Seasons.
An inch of rain over an acre equals 100 tons of water, showing nature's vast scale.
A drop of rain is a very little thing, but here is a calculation of a rainfall:
The rain fell in buckets, the thunder racketed terribly, and the lightning drew zigzag lines of bright gold upon the violet sky.
“So you, too, don’t know what an inch of rain is exactly,” said the weather clerk, as he looked at his rain-measuring instrument. “Very few people do, it seems. I’ll explain it to you.
“An acre is 6,272,640 square inches. An inch of water on an acre is therefore 6,272,640 cubic inches. That amount, at 227 cubic inches to the gallon, equals 22,000 gallons, or 220,000 pounds, or 100 tons.
“An inch of rain is, in other words, rain falling at the rate of 100 tons to the acre.”
Ancient Chinese paper manuscripts prove early advanced human invention and preservation of knowledge.
Sven Hedin has furnished additional evidence of the Chinese invention of paper. On his recent journeys he found Chinese paper that dates back to the second half of the third century after Christ. This lay buried in the sand of the Gobi desert, near the former northern shore of the Lop Nor Sea, where, in the ruins of a city and in the remnants of one of the oldest houses, he discovered a goodly lot of manuscripts, many of paper, covered with Chinese script, preserved for some 1,650 years. The date is Dr. Himly’s conclusion. According to Chinese sources, paper was manufactured as early as the second millennium before the Christian era. The character of the Gobi desert find makes it probable that the making of paper out of vegetable fibers was already an old art in the third Christian century.--_The Scientific American._
Even birds show a God-given sense of beauty in their nests and decorations.
The sense of the beautiful extends to the animal creation.
Land-birds show fondness for decoration. A robin in Pennsylvania made the whole nest of flowers and white stems of everlasting, and it may now be seen in the Philadelphia Academy of Science. Other birds have been known to build entirely of flowers. Miss Hayward, an invalid who studied birds from her window, saw one pair build a nest of the blossoms of the sycamore and sprays of forget-me-not, and another--an English sparrow--cover its nest with white sweet alyssum.--OLIVE THORNE MILLER, “The Bird Our Brother.”
The human body’s power and design reflect God’s marvelous creative attributes.
The human body is a marvelous machine with a storage of power. It is estimated that if all the beats of the heart in a single day could be concentrated in one huge throb of vital power, it would be sufficient to throw a ton of iron 120 feet into the air. An electrical engineer has affirmed that this expended heart-energy is equal to a two-candle power of an incandescent electrical lamp; or, if converted into cold light, this amount of power would represent forty candles. If a man had some such organ as a firefly has he could surround himself with light enough to live by without artificial lighting.
The human body exemplifies complex mechanical principles, showcasing God’s design and purpose.
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A scientific writer, speaking of the human body in its marvelous mechanism, calls it an epitome of all mechanics, of all hydraulics, of all machinery. It has all the bars, levers, pulleys, wheels, axles and buffers known to science. All the more than three hundred movements included in modern mechanics are simply modifications and variations of those found in the human body--adaptations of processes and first principles employed in the human organism.
In a true sense, man, in body, is a law unto himself, and possesses the potential means of fulfilling all the high purposes of physical life.
Children connect with nature through gardening, sparking curiosity and appreciation.
Professor Hanna, head of the Department of Natural History of the Board of Education, New York, divided an open lot into some three hundred little garden plots, took boys from the Bowery district, and girls as well. Each child spaded up its own ground, planted its seeds, pulled out the weeds, and watched the ruddy vegetables grow. A thousand questions arose to these city-born children. Given a black clod and a drop of rain-water, and a few seeds, how does the same clod make a beet red, and a carrot a golden hue? How could one clod condense the smells of a whole soap factory, into one little onion? How does a potato come to have starch in it? If one bunch of green weeds is worth ten cents for spinach, why doesn’t everybody in Wall Street go to farming? When some of the boys reached the Bowery Saturday night, the first question they asked their fathers was: “How much it would take to buy a ticket to Dakota.” Ah, Wordsworth, looking across the field, and writing, “My heart with rapture thrills and dances with the daffodils,” and Ruskin with his confession of what the fields and brooks did for his culture, throw a pathetic light on the lives of the little waifs of the tenement-house, starved for an outlook on the grass and the wave, and the shrub and the flower. Plainly the child has a right to its outlook upon the world of nature.
— N. D. HILLIS
Even primitive amebas exercise choice in what they consume for life.
Headly, in his book on “Life and Evolution,” instances our old friend, the ameba, which we have since childhood all agreed to be one of the most primitive forms of life. This microscopic creature, a unicellular morsel of protoplasm, undoubtedly has the power of choice. It exercises this power whenever it eats. Diatoms enveloped in flint are its favorite food. When an ameba comes in contact with one of these minute vegetables it swallows it through an aperture--a mouth--which it conveniently makes at whichever point an aperture is required. But when, on the other hand, the ameba comes in contact with a small grain of flint he leaves it severely alone; he does not treat it as he does the flinty envelop of the diatom.
A grain of corn grows and multiplies, illustrating God's power in creation and providence.
Drop a grain of California gold into the ground, and there it will lie unchanged to the end of time, the clods on which it falls not more cold and lifeless. Drop a grain of our gold, of our blest gold, into the ground, and lo! a mystery. In a few days it softens, it swells, it shoots upward, it is a living thing. It is yellow itself, but it sends up a delicate spire, which comes peeping, emerald green, through the soil; it expands to a vigorous stalk; revels in the air and sunshine; arrays itself, more glorious than Solomon, in its broad, fluttering, leafy robes, whose sound, as the west wind whispers through them, falls as pleasantly on the husbandman’s ear as the rustle of his sweetheart’s garment; still towers aloft, spins its verdant skeins of vegetable floss, displays its dancing tassels, surcharged with fertilizing dust, and at last ripens into two or three magnificent batons like this [an ear of Indian corn], each of which is studded with hundreds of grains of gold, every one possessing the same wonderful properties as the parent grain, every one instinct with the same marvelous reproductive powers. There are seven hundred and twenty grains on the ear which I hold in my hand. I presume there were two or three such ears on the stalk. This would give us one thousand four hundred and forty, perhaps two thousand one hundred and sixty grains as the product of one. They would yield next season, if they were all successfully planted, four thousand two hundred, perhaps six thousand three hundred ears. Who does not see that, with this stupendous progression, the produce of one grain in a few years might feed all mankind? And yet with this visible creation annually springing and ripening around us, there are men who doubt, who deny the existence of God. Gold from the Sacramento River, sir! There is a sacrament in this ear of corn enough to bring an atheist to his knees.
— EDWARD EVERETT
Earth's surface changes reveal God's providential design and historical continuity.
Accumulations of surface-matter are astonishingly rapid. Professor Newton estimates that 400,000,000 meteors fall to the earth annually. These add enormous quantities of matter to the earth, but do not, of course, account for all surface growth and changes. Modern London is built on the site of Roman London, but the ancient city is seventeen feet lower than the modern. The Jerusalem streets that Jesus walked through are twenty feet lower down than the streets of Jerusalem of to-day. One of the most interesting resorts in that city, in the time of Christ, was the pool of Bethsaida. Recently work being done by the Algerian monks has laid bare a large tank cut in the solid rock thirty feet deep.--_Public Opinion._
Electricity's many uses illustrate God's power and human discovery.
In 1856 Dr. R. S. Storrs said:
Not a century has passed since Franklin first drew the lightning from the skies; and yet already man prints with it, paints with it, writes with it, engraves with it, talks with it, cures with it, and is ever finding out new uses for its strength. The cunning Hermes has himself come to earth, to run on errands for men, and no more for the gods. His traveling-rod, enwreathed with serpents, is now a wire, transmitting thoughts. His golden sandals are sparks of lightning; and he forwards our commerce, as he never could the ancient.
Scientific view predicts a lifeless, motionless universe, ignoring the presence of a living God.
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The conclusion reached in this extract leaves out of account the presence in the cosmos of a living God:
The quantity of energy existing in the universe remains constant, but transforms itself little by little into heat uniformly distributed at a temperature everywhere identical. In the end, therefore, there will be neither chemical phenomena nor manifestation of life; the world will still exist, but without motion; and, so to speak, dead.--LUCIEN POINCARÉ, “The New Physics and its Evolution.”
Life's potential is immense but limited by God's providence and natural enemies.
An English naturalist has figured out that a single-stem mother of the common aphids, or “green-fly” of the rose, would give origin, at its regular rate of multiplication and provided each individual born lived out its natural life, which is only a few days at best, to over thirty-three quintrillions of rose aphids in a single season, equal in weight to more than a billion and a half of men. Of course such a thing never happens, because so many of the young aphids get eaten by lady-bird beetles and flower-fly larvæ and other enemies before they come to be old enough to produce young.--VERNON L. KELLOGG, “Insect Stories.”
Stars symbolize God's creation and our hope of passing into eternal day with Him.
H. Aide writes this apt fancy of the stars:
“Stars lying in God’s hand,
We know ye were not planned
Merely to light men on their midnight way.
Shine on, ye fiery stars!
It may be through your bars
We shall pass upward to eternal day.”
God's creation displays glory beyond human ability to replicate or capture.
A teacher in Alaska went out one day with one of her pupils to do some sketching. The little girl she took with her was about ten years of age and quite skilful with her brush. When the day was nearly over the teacher looked at the sky where the sun was setting. “Try to make a picture of that sunset,” said the teacher to the pupil. The little girl looked at the beautiful sight in the heavens and then turned to her teacher and said, “I can’t draw glory.” It was a bright answer made by that little Alaska girl. It is God who has painted the sunset sky, and there is no human skill that can draw the glory which He has created.
— W. M. VINES
Icebergs form from glaciers moving slowly under the law of gravitation in cold climates.
The hundreds of thousands of icebergs that every spring and summer terrify our ocean steamers are simply detachments from the glaciers that perpetually cover the face of northern lands. As far as can be learned, the interior of Greenland has a surface of tall hills and deep gulches, with an elevated range rather on the eastern side, running from north to south. Hence, if the climate of the interior of Greenland were mild, this extended range would serve as a watershed diverting streams to the sea on both sides. But the temperature some distance inland is nearly always below the freezing point, so that the almost constant snowfall and the brief midsummer rains remain on the surface, accumulating year after year, till there are formed thousands of square miles of blue compact ice, some of it over 1,500 feet thick. This enormous body of ice, like water, is subject to the laws of gravitation, and is eternally on the march to the sea. But its rate of travel is so slow as to be in most places imperceptible to the eye. So deep is this mass of inland ice that after a couple of days’ march from the sea there are no longer any hills visible, the entire landscape being white and naked. The ice from the higher ground is being constantly forced into the valleys and most of these valleys terminate toward the sea in very deep fjords. These fjords are in reality the launchways for most of the ice-floes and a great many of the bergs. You might lie for hours in your boat by most of the glaciers where they enter the sea, and not be aware that they were moving; but each one pushes constantly, and at a regular rate of speed, outward and outward into the sea, till the buoyancy of the water under it causes it to break at the shore, and sets it free to rove the ocean for thousands of miles, till it melts in Southern latitudes.--EDMUND COLLINS, _Harper’s Weekly_.
Apparent irregularities in planetary motion reveal new discoveries, confirming gravitation law.
Time after time astronomers have found seeming irregularities in the planets’ motions, which they could not explain by, nor deduce from this law of Newton’s (law of gravitation). In every case, however, later investigations showed the fault to lie in the imperfections of their methods; their calculations, or their assumptions in regard to the number and size of the planets were in error, not the law of gravitation. A discrepancy of only two minutes between the observed and theoretical places of Uranus led to the discovery of Neptune, and possibly the minute discrepancy in the motions of Mercury may lead to important discoveries regarding the properties or distribution of matter in the neighborhood of the sun.--CHARLES LANE POOR, “The Solar System.”
Nature can recover and grow stronger even after human disruption with God's help.
Once, a half-century ago or more, a farmer and his men came down from the pastures, and for purposes of their own cut a ditch straight through the middle of the bog to the open water. The hundreds of scrawny night-herons, sitting on pale blue eggs in scraggly nests in the cedar swamp, must have heard the cedars laugh as this went on. It was the swamp’s opportunity. Where the farmer and his men with incredible labor cut and tore away the marsh-grass roots the cedars planted their seeds, and called upon the alders and the swamp-maples and the thoroughwort, the Joe Pye weed, and a host of other good citizens of the swamp to help them.
So vigorous was the sortie and so well did they hold their ground, that you may trace the farmer’s wide ditch to-day only as a causeway down which the swamp has come to build a great wooden area in the midst of the bog, accomplishing in half a century what it might not have done in five times had it not been for human aid.--WINTHROP PACKARD, “Wild Pastures.”
Nature's delicate processes reveal the power and order of God's creation.
The down upon the peach or plum is so delicate and so thickly set that one can not touch the fruit with a needle’s point without breaking the tender stalk; and yet the dew of the night covers the whole surface of the fruit and disappears in the morning, leaving the gossamer growth more orderly and beautiful than before. The dew covers every leaf of the giant oak, and the mighty tree drinks in the refreshing moisture to its thirsty heart through millions of pores, and the iron trunk which has withstood a thousand storms is made stronger by the gentle strength of the dew. The silent fall of the dew is caused and controlled by agencies of the most tremendous power; the same power that shakes a whole continent with its subterranean thunder is the same as that which encircles the finest filament of thistle-down with a coronet of dewy gems so small that they do not bend the delicate stalks with their weight.--London _Globe_.
Millions of meteorites enter Earth's atmosphere daily, revealing God's powerful creation.
Observations of falling stars have been used to determine roughly the average number of meteorites which attempt to pierce the earth’s atmosphere during each twenty-four hours. Dr. Schmidt, of Athens, from observations made during seventeen years, found that the mean hourly number of luminous meteors visible on a clear, moonless night by one observer was fourteen, taking the time of observation from midnight to 1 A.M. It has been further experimentally shown that a large group of observers who might include the whole horizon in their observations would see about six times as many as are visible to one eye. Prof. H. A. Newton and others have calculated that, making all proper corrections, the number which might be visible over the whole earth would be a little greater than 10,000 times as many as could be seen at one place. From this we gather that not less than 20,000,000 luminous meteors fall upon our planet daily, each of which in a dark clear night would present us with the well-known phenomenon of a shooting-star. This number, however, by no means represents the total number of minute meteorites that enter our atmosphere, because many entirely invisible to the naked eye are often seen in telescopes. It has been calculated that the number of meteorites, if these were included, would be increased at least twentyfold; this would give us 400,000,000 of meteorites falling in the earth’s atmosphere daily.--J. NORMAN LOCKYER, _Harper’s Magazine_.
A sinless world would be peaceful and flourishing like the sacred island of Delos.
See BEING BEFORE DOING.
IDEAL, THE, ATTEMPTED
Delos was a small but very celebrated island near the center of the Egean Sea. It was a sacred island, devoted to religious rites, and all contention, and violence, and, so far as possible, all suffering and death, were excluded from it. The sick were removed from it; the dead were not buried there; armed ships and armed men laid aside their hostility to each other when they approached it. All was an enchanting picture of peace and happiness upon its shores. In the center of the island was a large natural fountain, from which issued a fertilizing stream; a populous city stood near the port, and the whole island was adorned with temples and palaces of magnificence.
Such an island might our world be were it not for sin and its ravages; were war no more, and were the Fountain of Life permitted to water it. (Text.)
Nature shows imperfection as no flower combines all primary colors, illustrating incomplete creation.
It is constantly felt by thoughtful minds that nothing is complete in this universe. We wait for perfection and can not know it in this life or in this world.
In the world of flowers there are three primary colors, of which many broken shades form a countless number of secondary tints. But the scientific botanist points out a remarkable fact: many flowers are of compound colors. Some are red and blue; some are red and yellow; some are blue and yellow; but there never has been such a thing as a plant whose flowers burst into all three of the primary tints. Roses are red in various shades, and yellow also in many shades. But that is all; no florist has ever been able to produce a really blue rose. The same fact applies to the chrysanthemum; it may be red in some shade or other, or it may be yellow in a whole range of alternative tints; but the vain dream of the Japanese is to find the fabled “blue chrysanthemum.” A great fortune would await any one who could produce by his art a blue rose or a blue chrysanthemum. Nature denies to flowers the ability to range through the whole gamut of the colors of the rainbow.
Observing nature closely enriches understanding and stewardship of God's creation.
One of the most important books on British ornithology is Gilbert White’s “Natural History of Selborne.” This work is made up of the jottings and notes of the author concerning the animals he saw in his daily walks through the woods and fields in the immediate vicinity of his little country parish, which he seldom left. (Text.)
A spider’s web changes predict weather, illustrating God’s design in creation.
One of the simplest of barometers is a spider’s web. When there is a prospect of rain or wind the spider shortens the filaments from which its web is suspended and leaves things in this state as long as the weather is variable. If the insect elongates its thread it is a sign of fine calm weather, the duration of which may be judged of by the length to which the threads are let out. If the spider remains inactive it is a sign of rain; but if, on the contrary, it keeps at work during the rain the latter will not last long, and will be followed by fine weather. Other observations have taught that the spider makes changes in its web every twenty-four hours, and that if such changes are made in the evening, just before sunset, the night will be clear and beautiful.--_La Nature._
Invisible elements of nature become visible through God’s creative processes and cycles.
On the brightest and sunniest day, millions of tons of black charcoal in an invisible condition are floating in the air. Millions of plants are at the same time restoring it to visible form by the chemical processes going on in the tiny laboratory of every leaf that expands in the sunshine. In the course of time the leaf or the wood it elaborates by its delicate alchemy, may be burned; and this cycle of change may go on indefinitely, the matter becoming visible and invisible again and again. (Text.)--_Popular Science News._
Matter can change forms, becoming invisible or visible, illustrating God’s sustaining power.
* * * * *
In chemical operations, whether natural or artificial, matter is often “lost to sight”; but the veriest tyro has learned, as one of the fundamental axioms of science, that it can never be actually lost or destroyed. In its manifold mutations it often disappears from our vision; but it reappears, or can be made to reappear, as palpable to our senses as before. If a piece of silver be put into nitric acid, a clear and colorless liquid, it is rapidly dissolved, and we “see it no more.” The solution may be mixed with water, and apparently no effect is produced. Thus, in a pail of water we may dissolve fifty dollars’ worth of silver, not a particle of which can be seen. Not even the chemist, unless he should apply certain tests to detect its presence, would, by merely looking at the liquid, guess what hidden wealth it contained. Other metals, as we know, can be treated in similar ways with the same result. When charcoal and many other substances are burned, they disappear as completely, no visible ashes even being left from the combustion. In fact, every material, which is visible can, by certain treatment, be rendered invisible. Matter which in one state or condition is perfectly opaque, and will not permit a ray of light to pass through it, will in another form become perfectly transparent. The cause of this wonderful change in matter is utterly inexplicable.--_Popular Science News._
A plant’s seeds cause uncontrollable laughter and sleep, illustrating strange effects of nature.
Palgrave, in his work on Central and Eastern Arabia, mentions a plant whose seeds produce effects analogous to those of laughing-gas. The plant is a native of Arabia. A dwarf variety is found at Kasum, and another variety at Oman, which attains a height of from three to four feet, with woody stems, wide-spreading branches, and light green foliage. The flowers are produced in clusters and are yellow in color. The seed-pods contain two or three black seeds of the size and shape of a French bean. Their flavor is a little like that of opium, the taste is sweet, and the odor from them produces a sickening sensation and is slightly offensive. These seeds, when pulverized and taken in small doses, operate on a person in a very peculiar manner. He begins to laugh loudly and boisterously, and then sings, dances, and cuts up all kinds of fantastic capers. The effect continues about an hour, and the patient is extremely comical. When the excitement ceases, the exhausted individual falls into a deep sleep, which continues for an hour or more, and when he awakens, he is utterly unconscious that any such demonstrations have been made by him.--_Scientific American._
Life's origin in the sea parallels modern biology and the cell's primordial conditions.
The old philosophers who held that all things originated in the sea were not far out of the way, if we are to believe some of the latest biological theories or speculations. That organic evolution began with marine creatures, Haeckel told us long ago. That sea-water is a particularly sympathetic medium for vital processes, has more lately been shown by Loeb in his experiments on the fertilization of the eggs of certain marine creatures. M. René Quinton, of the Laboratory of Pathologic Physiology of the College de France, has published a book, entitled “Sea-water as an Organic Medium,” in which he asserts that as the cell itself has persisted in living organisms, being practically the same in the human body as in our earliest marine predecessors, so the conditions of its life closely reproduce those of primordial times. The cell in our own bodies is bathed in a fluid that closely resembles sea-water in chemical composition and that approximates in temperature to that of the ocean when life first appeared in it. (Text.)
Though often defeated, man is godlike in image and destined to rise again.
An unidentified writer here points out the greatness of man even tho often overthrown:
Swarming across the earthly crust,
Delving deep in the yellow dust,
Raising his ant-hills here and there,
Scoring the soil for his humble fare,
Braving the sea in his tiny boat--
Tireless he struggles, this human mote.
Tempests scatter his ant-hills wide,
Vainly he braves the boiling tide,
Fire will ruin his busy mart,
Famine stilleth his throbbing heart,
Trembles the earth and prone he falls,
Crusht and tombed by his pigmy walls.
Heir of the kingdom ’neath the skies,
Often he falls, yet falls to rise.
Stumbling, bleeding, beaten back,
Holding still to the upward track;
Playing his part in creation’s plan,
Godlike in image--this is man!
Man shares in God's creation and provision, enjoying the laws and works of God.
Thomas Traherne, a poet, whose worth was discovered only after he was dead, is the author of the following:
The orb of light in its wide circuit moves,
Corn for our food springs out of very mire.
Our fuel grows in woods and groves;
Choice herbs and flowers aspire
To kiss our feet; beasts court our loves.
How glorious is man’s fate!
The laws of God, the works He did create,
His ancient ways, are His and my estate.
