I do not suppose that the author of the book of Job had ever studied
geology, or mineralogy, or biology, but read him, and see whether
this old prince of scientific heroes had loved, and understood, and
caught the spirit of Nature. And what a grand, free spirit it was,
and what a giant it made of him. I do not believe that Paul ever had
a special course of anatomy or botany. But if he had not pondered
long and lovingly on the structure of his body, and the germination
of the seed, he never could have written the twelfth and fifteenth
chapters of the first letter to the Corinthians. And time fails to
speak of David and all the writers of the Psalms, and of those
heroic souls misnamed the "Minor" Prophets.

Study the teachings of our Lord. How he must have considered the
lilies of the field, and that such a tiny seed as that of the
mustard could have produced so great an herb, and noticed and
thought on the thorns and the tares and the wheat, and watched the
sparrows, and pondered and wondered how the birds were fed. All his
teaching was drawn from Nature. And all the study in the world could
never have taught him what he knew, if it had not been a loving and
appreciative study.

There is one strange and interesting passage in John's Gospel, xv.
1: "I am the true vine." My father used to tell us that the Greek
word [Greek: alêthinê], rendered true, is usually employed of the
genuine in distinction from the counterfeit, the reality in
distinction from the shadow and image. Is not this perhaps the clew
to our Lord's use of natural imagery? Nature was always the
presentation to his senses of the divine thought and purpose. He
studied the words of the ancient Scripture, he found the same words