The Collected Works of Theodore Parker/Volume 01/Book 2/Chapter 2

by Theodore Parker

CHAPTER II.

THE RELATION OF NATURE TO GOD.

To determine the relation of Man to God it is well to determine first the relation of God to Nature—the material world—that we may have the force of the analogy of that relation to aid us. Conscious man may be very dissimilar to unconscious matter, but yet their relations to God are analogous. Both depend on him. To make out the point and decide the relation of God to Nature we must start from the Idea of God, which was laid down above, a Being of Infinite Power, Wisdom, Justice, Love, and Holiness. Now to make the matter clear as noonday, God is either present in all space, or not present in all space. If infinite, he must be present everywhere in general, and not limited to any particular spot, as an old writer so beautifully says: “Even Heaven and the Heaven of Heavens cannot contain Him.”^[1] Heathen writers are full of such expressions.^[2] God, then, is universally present in the world of matter. He is the substantiality of matter. The circle of his being in space has an infinite radius. We cannot say, Lo here, or Lo there—for he is everywhere. He fills all Nature with his overflowing currents; without him it were not. His Presence gives it existence; his Will its law and force; his Wisdom its order; his Goodness its beauty.

It follows unavoidably, from the Idea of God, that he is present everywhere in space; not transiently present, now and then, but immanently present, always; his centre here; his circumference nowhere; just as present in the eye of an emmet as in the Jewish holy of holies, or the sun itself. We may call common what God has cleansed with his presence; but there is no corner of space so small, no atom of matter so despised and little, but God, the Infinite, is there.^[3]

Now, to push the inquiry nearer the point. The Nature or Substance of God, as represented by our Idea of him, is divisible or not divisible. If infinite he must be indivisible, a part of God cannot be in this point of space, and another in that; his Power in the sun, his Wisdom in the moon, and his Justice in the earth. He must be wholly, vitally, essentially present, as much in one point as in another point, or all points; as essentially present in each point at any one moment of time as at any other or all moments of time. He is there not idly present but actively, as much now as at creation. Divine omnipotence can neither slumber nor sleep. Was God but transiently active in Matter at creation, his action now passed away? From the Idea of him it follows that He is immanent in the world, however much he also transcends the world. “Our Father worketh hitherto,” and for this reason Nature works, and so has done since its creation. There is no spot the foot of hoary Time has trod on, but it is instinct with God's activity. He is the ground of Nature; what is permanent in the passing; what is real in the apparent. All Nature then is but an exhibition of God to the senses; the veil of smoke on which his shadow falls; the dew-drop in which the heaven of his magnificence is poorly imaged. The Sun is but a sparkle of his splendour. Endless and without beginning flows forth the stream of divine influence that encircles and possesses the all of things. From God it comes, to God it goes. The material world is perpetual growth; a continual transfiguration, renewal that never ceases. Is this without God? Is it not because God, who is ever the same, flows into it without end? It is the fulness of God that flows into the crystal of the rock, the juices of the plant, the life of the emmet and the elephant. He penetrates and pervades the World. All things are full of Him, who surrounds the sun, the stars, the universe itself; “goes through all lands, the expanse of oceans, and the profound Heaven.”^[4]

Inanimate matter, by itself, is dependent; incapable of life, motion, or even existence. To assert the opposite is to make it a God. In its present state it has no will. Yet there is in it existence, motion, life. The smallest molecule in a ray of polarized light and the largest planet in the system exist and move as if possessed of a Will, powerful, regular, irresistible. The powers of Nature, then, that of Gravitation, Electricity, Growth, what are they but modes of God's action? If we look deep into the heart of this mystery, such must be the conclusion. Nature is moved by the first Mover; beautified by him who is the Sum of Beauty; animated by him who is of all the Creator, Defence, and Life.^[5]

Such, then, is the relation of God to Matter up to this point. He is immanent therein and perpetually active. Now, to go further, if this be true, it would seem that the various objects and things in Nature were fitted to express and reveal different degrees and measures of the divine influence, so to say; that this degree of manifestation in each depends on the capacity which God has primarily bestowed upon it;^[6] that the material but inorganic, the vegetable but inanimate, and the animal but irrational world, received each as high a mode of divine influence as its several nature would allow.

Then, to sum up all in brief, the Material World with its objects sublimely great, or meanly little, as we judge them; its atoms of dust, its orbs of fire; the rock that stands by the sea-shore, the water that wears it away; the worm, a birth of yesterday, which we trample underfoot; the streets of constellations that gleam perennial overhead; the aspiring palm tree, fixed to one spot, and the lions that are sent out free, these incarnate and make visible all of God their several natures will admit. If Man were not spiritual, and could yet conceive of the aggregate of invisible things, he might call it God, for he could go no further.

Now, as God is Infinite, imperfection is not to be spoken of Him. His Will therefore—if we may so use that term—is always the same. As Nature has of itself no power, and God is present and active therein, it must obey and represent his unalterable will. Hence, seeing the uniformity of operation, that things preserve their identity, we say they are governed by a Law that never changes. It is so. But this Law-what is it but the Will of God? a mode of divine action? It is this in the last analysis. The apparent secondary causes do not prevent this conclusion,

The things of Nature, having no will, obey this law from necessity.^[7] They thus reflect God's image and make real his conception—if we may use such language with this application. They are tools, not Artists. We never in Nature see the smallest departure from Nature's law. The granite, the grass, keep their law; none go astray from the flock of stars; fire does not refuse to burn, nor water to be wet. We look backwards and forwards, but the same law records everywhere the obedience that is paid it. Our confidence in the uniformity of Nature's law is complete, in other words, in the fact that God is always the same; his modes of action always the same. This is true of the inorganic, the vegetable, the animal world.^[8] Each thing keeps its law with no attempt at violation of it.^[9] From this obedience comes the regularity and order apparent in Nature. Obeying the law of God, his omnipotence is on its side. To oppose a law of Nature, therefore, is to oppose the Deity. It is sure to redress itself.

But these created things have no consciousness, so far as we know, at least, nothing which is the same with our self-consciousness. They have no moral will; no power in general to do otherwise than as they do. Their action is not the result of forethought, reflection, judgment, voluntary obedience to an acknowledged law. No one supposes the Bison, the Rosebush, and the Moon, reflect in themselves; make up their mind and say, “Go to, now, let us bring up our young, or put forth our blossoms, or give light at nightfall, because it is right to do so, and God's law.” Their obedience is unavoidable. They do what they cannot help doing.^[10] Their obedience, therefore, is not their merit, but their necessity. It is power they passively yield to; not a duty they voluntarily and consciously perform. All the action, therefore, of the material, inorganic, vegetable, and animal world is mechanical, vital, or, at the utmost, instinctive; not self-conscious, the result of private will.^[11] There is, therefore, no room for caprice in this department. The Crystal must form itself after a prescribed pattern; the Leaf presume a given shape; the Bee build her cell with six angles. The mantle of Destiny is girt about these things. To study the laws of Nature, therefore, is to study the modes of God's action. Science becomes sacred, and passes into a sort of devotion. Well says the old sage, “Geometry is the praise of God.” It reveals the perfections of the Divine Mind, for God manifests himself in every object of science, in the half-living Molecules of powdered wood; in the Comet with its orbit which imagination cannot surround; in the Cones and Cycloids of the Mathematician, that exist nowhere in the world of concrete things, but which the conscious mind carries thither.

Since all these objects represent, more or less, the divine mind, and are in perfect harmony with it, and so always at one with God, they express, it may be, all of deity which Matter in these three modes can contain, and thus exhibit all of God that can be made manifest to the eye, the ear, and the other senses of man. Since these things are so, Nature is not only strong and beautiful, but has likewise a religious aspect. This fact was noticed in the very earliest times; appears in the rudest worship, which is an adoration of God in Nature. It will move man's heart to the latest day, and exert an influence on souls that are deepest and most holy. Who that looks on the ocean, in its anger or its play; who that walks at twilight under a mountain's brow, listens to the sighing of the pines, touched by the indolent wind of summer, and hears the light tinkle of the brook, murmuring its quiet tune,—who is there but feels the deep Religion of the scene? In the heart of a city, we are called away from God. The dust of man's foot and the sooty print of his fingers are on all we see. The very earth is unnatural, and the Heaven scarce seen. In a crowd of busy men which set through its streets, or flow together of a holiday; in the dust and jar, the bustle and strife of business, there is little to remind us of God. Men must build a cathedral for that. But everywhere in nature we are carried straightway back to Him. The fern, green and growing amid the frost, each little grass and lichen, is a silent memento. The first bird of spring, and the last rose of summer; the grandeur or the dulness of evening and morning; the rain, the dew, the sunshine; the stars that come out to watch over the farmer's rising corn; the birds that nestle contentedly, brooding over their young, quietly tending the little strugglers with their beak,—all these have a religious significance to a thinking soul. Every violet blooms of God, each lily is fragrant with the presence of deity. The awful scenes, of storm, and lightning and thunder, seem but the sterner sounds of the great concert, wherewith God speaks to man. Is this an accident? Ay, earth is full of such “accidents.” When the seer rests from religious thought, or when the world's temptations make his soul tremble, and though the spirit be willing the flesh is weak; when the perishable body weighs down the mind, musing on many things; when he wishes to draw near to God, he goes, not to the city—there conscious men obstruct him with their works—but to the meadow, spangled all over with flowers, and sung to by every bird; to the mountain,“visited all night by troops of stars;” to the ocean, the undying type of shifting phenomena and unchanging law; to the forest, stretching out motherly arms, with its mighty growth and awful shade, and there, in the obedience these things pay, in their order, strength, beauty, he is encountered front to front with the awful presence of Almighty power. A voice cries to him from the thicket, “God will provide.” The bushes burn with deity. Angels minister to him. There is no mortal pang, but it is allayed by God's fair voice as it whispers, in nature, still and small, it may be, but moving on the face of the deep, and bringing light out of darkness.

“Oh joy that in our embers
“Is something that doth live,
“That Nature yet remembers
“What was so fugitive.”

Now to sum up the result. It seems from the very Idea of God that he must be infinitely present in each point of space. This immanence of God in Matter is the basis of his influence; this is modified by the capacities of the objects in Nature; all of its action is God's action; its laws modes of that action. The imposition of a law, then, which is perfect, and is also perfectly obeyed, though blindly and without self-consciousness, seems to be the measure of God's relation to Matter. Its action therefore is only mechanical, vital or instinctive, not voluntary and self-conscious. From the nature of these things, it must be so.

1. See, too, the beautiful statement in Ps. cxxxix. 1–13.
2. See those in Cudworth, Ch. IV. § 28, and elsewhere.
3. See the judicious remarks of Lord Brougham, Dialogue on Instinct, Dial. II., near the end. Dr Palfrey, in his Dudleian Lecture, attributes only a qualified omnipresence to the Deity.
4. Virgil, Georgic IV. 222. See many passages cited by Cudworth, Chap. IV. § 31, p. 664, et seq., 455, et seq.; and the passages collected from Tschaleddin Rumi by Rückert, in his Gedichte, and Tholuck, Blüthensammlung aus der morgenlandischen Mystik.
5. Cudworth makes three hypotheses; either, 1. All things happen in nature by the fortuitous concourse of atoms, and this it is Atheism to suppose; or, 2, There is in Nature a formative faculty, “a plastic nature,” which does the work; or, 3. Each act is done immediately by God. He, it is well known, adopts the second alternative. See Chap. III. § 37. See also More's Enchiridion Metaphysicum, Antidote against Atheism, Book II.; Apol. pro Cartesio, p. 115, et seq. On the Transcendency of God, see Descartes, Princip. P. I. No. 21, et al. Leibnitz. Théod, No. 385, et al.
6. I will not say there is not, in the abstract, as much of divine influence in a wheat-straw as in a world. But in reference to ourselves there appear to be various degrees of it.
7. I use the term obedience figuratively. Of course there is no real obedience without power to disobey.
8. M. Leroux, an acute and brilliant but fanciful writer, thinks the capabilities of man change by civilization, and, which is to the present point, that the animals advance also; that the Bee and the Beaver are on the march towards perfection, and have made some progress already. However he may make out the case metaphysically, it would be puzzling to settle the matter by facts. But if his hypothesis were admissible, it would not militate with the doctrine in the text.
9. From this view it does not follow that animals are mere machines, with no consciousness, only that they have not free-will. However, in some of the superior animals there is some small degree of freedom apparent. The Dog and the Elephant seem sometimes to exercise a mind, and to become in some measure emancipated from their instincts. On this curious question, see Descartes, Epist. P. I. Ep. 27, 67; Henry More, Epist. ad Cartesium.
10. This point has been happily touched upon by Hooker, Eccles. Polity, Book I. Chap. iii. § 2. See his curious reflections in the following sections.
11. I have not the presumption to attempt to draw a line between these three departments of Nature, nor to tell what is the essence of mechanical, vital, or instinctive action. I would only indicate a distinction that, to my mind, is very plain. But I cannot pretend to say where one ends and the other begins. Again, it may seem unphilosophical to deny consciousness, or even self-consciousness, to the superior animals; but if they possess a self-consciousness, it is something apparently so remote from ours, that it only leads to confusion if both are called by the same term. The functions of a plant we cannot explain by the laws of mechanical action; nor the function of an animal, a Dog, for example, by any qualities of body. On this subject, see Whewell, Hist. Inductive Sciences, Book IX. Chap. i.-iii. Cudworth, Chap. III. $ 37, No. 17, et seq., has shown that there may be sentient, and not mere mechanical, life, without consciousness, and therefore without free-will. Is not this near the truth, that God alone is absolutely free, and man has a relative freedom, the degree of which may be constantly increased? Taking a certain stand-point, it is true, Freedom and Necessity are the same thing, and may be predicated or denied of Deity indifferently; thus, if God is perfect, all his action is perfect. He can do no otherwise than as he does. Perfection therefore is his necessity, but it is his freedom none the less. Here the difference is merely in words.