Every object in nature is impressed with God's footsteps, and every day repeats the wonders of creation. There is not an object, be it pebble or pearl, weed or rose, the flower-spangled sward beneath, or the star-spangled sky above, not a worm or an angel, a drop of water or a boundless ocean, in which intelligence may not discern, and piety adore, the providence of Him who took our nature that He might save our souls.
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D. J. Pratt Quote
“We might almost accuse nature of falsehood. One sees himself behind a mirror when nothing is there. A straight pole leaning in a pool is bent to appearance. The sun seems to rise and set, but moves not at all. We see it before it rises and after it sets. These and numberless other cases might be adduced to prove the deceitfulness of nature. Nay, they prove rather that education is the law of our being, and that here, as elsewhere, he who would not be self-deceived, must study nature's laws, must become educated.”
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Source: Three Thousand Selected Quotations from Brilliant Writers — Wikisource
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If we can hear the voice of God in all sounds, see the sweep of His will in all motions, catch hints of His taste in all beauty, follow the reach of His imagination in all heights and distances, and trace the delicate ministry of His love in all the little graces and utilities that spring and blossom about us as thick as the grass, we shall tread God's world with reverent feet as if it were a temple. The pure and solemn eyes of the indwelling soul will look forth upon us from every thing which His hands have made. Nature will be to us, not some dark tissue of cloth of mystery flowing from some unseen loom, but a vesture of light in which God has enrobed Himself; and with worshipful fingers we shall rejoice to touch even the hem of His garment.
When I consider the multitude of associated forces which are diffused through nature—when I think of that calm balancing of their energies which enables those most powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world's creatures and economy, to dwell associated together and be made subservient to the wants of creation, I rise from the contemplation more than ever impressed with the wisdom, the beneficence, and grandeur, beyond our language to express, of the Great Disposer of us all.
Vast chain of being! which from God began, Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, No glass can reach, from infinite to Thee, From Thee to nothing.
I hold that we have a very imperfect knowledge of the works of nature till we view them as works of God,—not only as works of mechanism, but works of intelligence, not only as under laws, but under a Lawgiver, wise and good.
So distinguished by a Divine wisdom, power, and goodness, are God's works of creation and providence, that all nature, by the gentle voices of her skies and streams, of her fields and forests, as well as by the roar of breakers, the crash of thunder, the rumbling earthquake, the fiery volcano, and the destroying hurricane, echoes the closing sentences of this angel hymn, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, the whole earth is full of His glory!"