But, further, for Christ the revelation of God and His actiWtj- in tiie physical order of the world possessed a moral significance. God as a floral Being— and because as such He is perfect — can never act unless morally, even in the sj-stem of things physical. This truth regulated the whole of our Lord's conception of Gods relation to this order, and of His ways of administering its pro- visions. And therefore it is that He saw in such physical events as sunrise and rainfjill manifestations of God's beneficence and magna- nimity. He ' maketh His sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust ' ! These words are a striking revela- tion of the perfectly fresh, intelligent, discerning eyes with which Christ looked uixm the physical order of things, and contemplated God ancl His activity as therein manifested. This appears when three things are noted. — (1) There is only one established physical order of things. (2) This order is constituted throughout on one and the same homogeneous plan, and it is necessarily regulated accordingly. (3) Therefore it is im- possible for this order to be so administered as to make distinctions of any kind in the distribution of its provisions among men. Here distinctions cannot be made even between the evil and the good, between the just and the unjust. Therefore as tiie Author and the Administrator of this system of things God makes no such distinctions. Within this sphere of the relations between God and men, the good and the evil, the just and the unjust, are the same to Him. His impartiality to both sorts of men is as absolute and universiil as the rising of the sun and the falling of rain. And God Himself has so ordered the physical universe that it should be so, and that it cannot
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be otherwise. And, so far as any one can say, Christ was the first to notice and fully to aj^preci- ate the true meaning of these obvious but vastly important facts. In sunrise and rainfall He saw nothing but instances of the manifestation of the loving-kindness of God to all men, good and evil alike, and of His magnanimity towards evil and unjast men. For it was one of Christ's governing ideas as a Teacher that God did not need to punish evil and unjust men for their sin by withliolding from them any of the beneficent 2>ro- visions of the physical order of things. He knew and taught in effect that it is with the moral order of things and God's unerring and all-sufficient ad- ministration of it, as the moral Governor of the world, that evil and unjust men have to reckon ; and therefore, in the exercise of the magnanimity alike of His love and of His justice, God dispenses to them, in common with good and just men, a full and free share of His sunshine and rain. So Christ understood this matter (cf. Mt 521-30 ip5.26^ jn 939-41 with Mt 5^5).
2. But, further, these views that Christ held as to the physical order of the world suggest the inference that He must have looked upon this system as an order of law. That He did so regard it is evident from His teaching, when the latter is carefully and fairly examined from this point of view. The term 'law,' as defined by science, is of modern origin, and therefore it is never employed in this sense in the Gospels. But the Gospels are rich in recognitions of a large variety of those facts for which the term ' law,' as scientifically under- stood, stands ; and recognition of these facts was made by Christ Himself. The modern conception of the order of things physical, which the term ' law ' is employed to denote, is, that it is an order in which perfect constancy and regularity reign universally and persistently, and that even in the case of its minutest phenomena and its subtlest processes. Did Christ, then, pei-ceive and acknow- ledge the great features of the physical order on which this conception is founded ? He did. In all its essential forces and laws the physical order was the same in His time as it is to-day. Science has not created any of the forces or laws in question ; it has only discovered and formulated them. Moreover, it is evident that Christ's observations and His reflexions on nature were prompted and controlled rather by religious than by scientific motives or reasons. It is to be admitted, again, that He never made the physical order of things a direct subject of teaching, but always made it sub- servient to the religious or moral ends He had in view. Still He was dee^jly convinced of tlie con- stancy and regularity of the physical system of existence in tlie midst of whicli He lived and taught, and on which He depended (e.g. Mt 7^8-20^ Mk 43-32) That it was so is evinced by the follow- ing facts: — (1) A large ijroportion of His teaching was based on the principle of comparison. (2) The most of His comparisons were indications of resemblances between the things of the physical order of the world and the things of the Kingdom of God, which are in reality the things of the moral order of the world, considered as an order in which the will and purpose of God are coming to realization in the moral relations of God to men and of men to Him and to one another in Christ. (3) In His comparisons it was His custom to lay conspicuous emphasis on those phenomena of the physical order of things in which the constancy and regularity of this order are i)ro- minent. (4) His manifest reasons for doing so were such as these— His whole conception of the Kingdom of God implies that He regarded it as an order of perfect moral constancy and regularity, i.e. as an order of moral law\ But few, if indeed