It is quite in keei)ing with this view of the facts, that the Lortl Jesus never hesitated to appeal to the natural instinct of men on questions of conscience. E.g. ' Doth not each one of you on the Sabbath loose his ox or his ass . . ,. ? And ought not this woman to have been loosed from this bond . . . ? (Lk 13'*'-, cf. 14^). He also employed expressions in reference to Himself which may be said implicitly to make naturalness the criterion of conduct. E.g. ' Thus it becometh us to fulhl all righteousness ' (irpifTov earlv rjfjLtv, Mt 3'^) ; ' Behoved it not the Christ to sutler?' (ovx'i ravra iSei Tra$eli' tov 'Kpicrrov, Lk 24*^). This last usage is very characteristic of the Ep. to Heb. (cf. 2^^ uKpeiXev . . . d/j-oLwdiivai. ; v.^" iirpeirev avrui ; and the similar expression in 7^ i]/xip Kal eirpiirfv dpx'fpf''^» which bases on the nature God has given us the natural expectation which must be formed of Ciirist). See Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in Xcv: Light, 105.
E. P. Boys-Smith.
NATURE AND NATURAL PHENOMENA.— 1. The inquiry as to the attitude taken up by Jesus towards tlie natural, visible, tangible world which is the physical environment of the soul, is affected and limited by the fact that our Loi"d was not a philosopher or a scientist, but a sjurifital teacher. His only mission was to preach the doctrine of the Kingdom of God, and to this He rigidlj- restricted Himself. Thus He nowhere enunciates a cos- mology ; He gives us no explicit theory of the providential order; He leaves the scientific con- ceptions of His day Mhere they were, correcting no current mistakes as to the meaning of natural phenomena, and giving no intellectual synthesis of His own of tlie facts of the physical universe (see Wendts Teaching of Jesus, i. pp. 151-153). This at once botli iiampers us and frees us in dealing witii our special siibject. It hampers us because we have to glean sucii hints as are possible for our purpose from scattered references to natural pheno- mena and to tiie order of nature as a wliole, which occcur incidentally in His teaching. But it also assists us by enabling us to understand that no sinister or misleading suggestions lurk behind the silence of .Tesus on tiie innumerable problems that try tlie modern mind in its outlook on the natural order. The revelation of Jesus does not contain a complete conspectus of the facts of tiie world in all tiieir aspects : it is a spiritual revelation, which aims at the enlightenment of the soul as to tlie vital truths of conduct, and as to tiie ideal relations between it and its Heavenly Patlier. Every element in the teaching is sulx)rdi- nate to this central consideration. In seeking for such liglit as is possible on tlie attitude of our Lord to tlie physical world, we must, therefore, bear this limitation constantly in mind.
2. We also find here the key to the kind of refer- ences which are made by our Lonl to the facts of nature. These references are, fortunately for our purpose, very numerous in proportion to the bulk of His teaching as it has come down to us, and this for a reason we shall presently deal with. But they all belong (1) to the class of facts that were quite familiar to His hearers. His aim was always entirely practical, and His illustrations and references to nature are thus extremely simple and obvious. We seek in vain for anj- re- condite, or technical, or unusual allusions ; they all lie consistentlj- in the \^AX.\\ of common observa- tion ; so much so that hardly any of them need interpretation to tlie simplest modern minds.' And (2) they are of that class which lend themselves obviously to the uses of illustration, being vivid, pictorial, and frequently recurrent in the lives of ordinary men and women, so that anyone familiar with His teaching could not fail afterwards to be reminded of the spiritual truths He had taught, because no one could go through a single daj- of average experience without coming across one or more of tlie natural facts used in His matchless collection of illustrations. By this means He turned nature into a whispering gallery of spiritual truths, and tilled each common day with jierpetual reminders of His central teaching, thus enlisting both the understanding and the memory of His followers in His permanent service as a revealer of religious truth. Anj- devout and careful student of the Gospels will readily find the justification of these remarks in the pages of the Evangelists.
3. Incidental, however, as are the references to nature and natural phenomena in the words of Jesus, they are full of suggestiveness as to His attitude to the material world. Through the rigid self-limitation which He imposed on Himself we catch the glow of His spirit ; through the narrow windows of His imagery raj's of light poiu" out in many directions on the mysteries of life and providence. It is not, perliai>s, possible to con- struct a complete Christian Weltanschauung, or ' View of the World,' out of the scattered refer- ences of Jesus to nature ; but in the light of His teaching it iscertainlj- possiiJe to suggest the lines along which such a theory must run. His doctrine of the Fatherhood necessitated an attitude towards nature as well as man, and this attitude is con- sistentlj' maintained bj- Him in all His Avords and habits of thought as recorded in the Gospels.