4. Christ's theory of Providence in the natural order. — (1) The first characteristic in the attitude of Jesus towards the facts and arrangements of the organic world is a certain beautiful calmness and sercnifi/. The facts which so deeplj- disturb us in our view of nature — suffering, the prejing of one animal on another, death — were just as familiar to Him, who was an accurate and careful observer, as to ourselves ; moreover. He who was so sympathetic with men in their sorrows, must have been equally accessible to the sorrows of dunib creatures. Yet there is no trace of any disturbance of mind in Him as He met these familiar facts. His profound trust in Gods good- ness to His creatures enabled Him to view their suflerings with an equanimity in w liich there could have been no trace of hardness or inditlerence. It is the calmness of a mind so firmly centred in the idea of the Divine love and care that it sutlers no shock at the most disturbing and harrowing of natural events. His references to the Providence that looks after the interests of flowers and birds, which are ' clothed ' and ' fed ' by God Himself, are full of a sense of the Divine benignity and good- will towards His meanest creatures, and He uses this fact as an argument to quell the needless anxiety of men, who belong to a far higher order
234 NATURE, NATURAL PHENOMENA NATURE, NATURAL PHENOMENA
of being (Mt 12^^), as to the sources and sureiiess of the natural provision for their own life and well- being. If God so ' clothes the grass of the field,' and ' feeds the fowls of the air,' He will surely much more attend to the temporal wants of His cldldren so that they may consider themselves free to attend to their jiroper spiritual interests (g.'5-34)_ That the optimism of Jesus is not the result of careless observation or lack of sympathy is seen also in His acknowledgment of the evan- escence and perishableness of vegetable and animal life (v.^"). Jesus teaches us that ' God feeds the spaiTow and also attends his obsequies' (Lk 12''''*, cf. Mt lO'^**). The sufferings peculiar to animal life and the incidence of natural death are clearly normal facts in our Lord's view of nature, and need contain no problem for faith.
(2) Another feature of our Lord's view of the providential order is His recognition of the order- liness and faithfulness of natural law. There is every indication that in realizing this He found a deep and constant pleasure. The world to Him was the home of order, and, as such, an indication of the will and character of the Creator and Sustainer of all things. He loved to notice and draw attention to this characteristic of the natural world (cf. Mt 513 T^"-^*- 2^"", Mk 4^-«-26-ii8 950^ lj^ jqis 12-^'» 138 19^^ Jn 3« 10^-5 151-^ etc.) Specially inter- esting to Him were all the phenomena of growth, which He so often uses as a symbol of the laws of the spirit (Mk 4*-8- ^s-ss- sh. 1328^ Lk I3«-". Jn IS'^-*), and of the habits of animals (Mt 6-« 7^'^ lO^", Lk 13^^ 17=*', Jn 10»-=-i'^etc.).
(3) This leads us to the most important of all the characteristics exhibited in our Lord's treat- ment of natural j^henomena — His profound sense of the function they fulfil as suggesting spiritual facts and laws. His purpose in using natural imagery is not summed up in the fact of its pic- turesqueness and mnemonic aptness. However handy it may have been as a mould into which to throw His teaching. He evidently believed that there was in addition to this a real correspondence between the laws of organic and of spiritual life. He lived in two worlds, with an intensity of inter- est that has seldom been approached — the world of sense and the world of spirit. These two worlds to most men are divided by a deep chasm ; but to Him there were innumerable bridges of con- nexion between them, and His thoughts traversed these in a perpetual play of happy insight, finding in both unending correspondences that were real and true, each shedding light into the heart of the other. Or, to vary the simile, we may say that to Him nature was the mirror of the spirit, in which He ever caught glimpses of the profoundest laws and operations of the higher life of the soul and of the character of God as the Lord of both.
When He said, ' The kingdom of God is like ,'
He was exercising no mere ingenuity of fancy, neither was He inventing fictitious similarities between disconnected sjiheres of existence ; rather He was holding up the gold and silver sides of the same bright shield of Truth.
(4) In entire consistence with this view of our Lord's imagery, we notice the complete absence, in His view of the world, of any such distinction as has been drawn by modern thinkers betvjeen the natural and the supernatural. Living, as He did, in the per- petual sense of His Father's presence and power and love, such a distinction would be to Him utterly unreal. In His cosmology there was no tlnrd term, such as 'force,' or ' energy,' or 'law,' coming in immediately between the Divine will and its result. There "was only God — the Creator and Sustainer — and nature was the material ex- pression of His loving care and energy. What we would attribute to a secondary or efficient