The Pulpit Commentary — Leviticus — Section 212

The rellgiow we of nature. Ch. xi.; cf. Ps. civ., cvii.; Job xxxviii.-xli.; Matt. xiii.; 2 Sam. xxii. 34-. We pass now to the relation in which the Lord's people are to stand to animated nature. So far from treating it with indifference, they were bound to regard certain animals as clean and certain others a.s unclean, and to regard their use of and contact with them as of religious importance. The temptation to use nature .as something outside religious considerations was hereby avoided, and the Jew was led to regard every animal as having some religious significance to him. A literal watch- fulness was thus inculcated of the most painstaking character. The Jew, wherever he went, was on his guard against the unclean, and was providing for his use only what was legally clean and pure. l. NATURE 18 A REVELATION OF GoD IF WE ONLY HAD ITS KEY. It is too often forgotten that nature was the first revelation of God to his creatures. The Bible is the supplementary re1·elation necessitated by sin. To our first parents before the Fall, nature had a. deeper meaning, most probably, than it has yet had to us. The inter- pretation of nature is most important, and there is no need that it should be "agnostic" or irreligious. Provided scientific fact be welcomed, there is no detriment, but rather there is gain, in looking at our surroundings in a religious spirit. Science is not bound to become a department of theology, and to be running up into theological statements; neither, on the other hand, is it bound to indulge in atheistic ones. 'l'he "argument of desib'Il" may not be a part of science, hut it is just as true that the ar11:ument of chance, which is the only alternative, is no part of true science either. But while science is under no obligation to become theological, it is right that nature should be regarded religiously. Natural religion has its sphere just as well as supernatural religion. IL WE INSTINL'I'IVELY USE ANIMATED NATUilE TO ILLUSTilATE THE CHARAOTEBISTICS -OF M.ANKI:KD. The animals become our picture alphabet, by whose help we spell out character. Indeed, so close are the affinities beween the lower animals and the succes- fiive stages of human character, that one ingenious foreign writer points out an analogy between the development in nature and the development in individual human nature, o<JB, XI. 1-47,] THE BOOK OF LEVITICUS. 175