1.

NATURE A VEILED GLORY.

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world. Our Lord's first miracle at Cana of Galilee, the conversion of water into wine, was effected by the direct and immediate agency of the True Vine. It revealed the power which enables the natural vine in the vineyard to change the rains and dews of every summer into wine in its grapes. He lifted the veil from the natural form, and disclosed, once for all, the spiritual presence always working behind it. And what is thus asserted of the vine is equally applicable to bread, to light, to water, to every natural object. They all had a concealed meaning—a reference to Christ, from the beginning; so that when He appeared, the whole was unconcealed or revealed. We are placed, as it were, in the presence of an Isis, a veiled glory. The heavenly tabernacle is about us, but we know it not. We live and move and have our being in the midst of its eternal realities, but they are covered with the badger's skin of familiar uses and common-place enjoyments, veiled with the blue wrappings of sky and sea, and the purple and scarlet veils cf mountain and flower. Our whole life is spent in the effort to see more of heaven in nature and in revelation. Now and then, while we work and pray, the covering is partially lifted, and we obtain a glimpse of the hidden effulgence. When we are conscientiously and earnestly endeavouring to find out the design and significance of creation, in the light given to us by Him who is the absolute Truth, we are attaining to the knowledge of the truth, or the unconcealed; we are sharing in the dignity of communion with God. "It is the glory of

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God to conceal a thing; but the honour of kings is to search out a matter.

We are accustomed to call such language as our Lord employs in the text figurative language, thereby implying that there is nothing in it but a fanciful analogy. But we have seen that such language is not really metaphorical, but is our Lord's simple, literal explanation of His own creative purposes. The truest language is necessarily what we call figurative, and only false when the spiritual is interpreted by the physical, instead of the physical by the spiritual. Our Lord does not say, "I am like the vine." That would have been to use a mere metaphor, or figure of speech-to lay hold of a mere fanciful or arbitrary resemblance between Himself and the vine, for which there was no foundation in the world of reality. But He says, "I am the True Vine;" and this declares that the vine is the actual shadow of His substance. He is not so much the ingenious deviser and designer, displaying in the vine His contrivances of skill, as its Archetype; He is the ideal, and the vine is the material representative. It is

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Idolatry, instead of taking off the covering from the spiritual idea which nature contains, only darkens it by throwing over it an additional veil. The eidolon, or idol-image, instead of being a medium for the worship of the true or unconcealed God, hides Him more completely from the view. So, too, all ritualism obscures the significance of the truth by its symbols-deals with the truth as the Mahometans do with the sacred ark called the kaaba of Mecca, which they cover every year with a new kesoua, or silken covering. The only way to unveil the truth is by spirituality of mind and purity of heart.

I.

SPIRITUAL SOURCE OF NATURE..

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what we find it, not because God willed it to be so arbitrarily, as because of His containing in His own nature the first principles of its whole fabric and economy. It is one of the things that are made in which are clearly seen the invisible things of God-one of the inert images or forms in time of spiritual and eternal facts. In common with every object of the physical world, it is derived from an anterior spiritual world, and is the effect of a spiritual cause, which gives it its formative force, preserves in this peculiar pattern its matter, which otherwise would pass indifferently from mould to mould, without taking the shape of any, enables it to select its materials from earth and air, and causes it to come back, and grow up, generation after generation, in its own peculiar and adopted form. This profound and interesting truth is expressly taught in the Mosaic account of creation :-"These are the generations of the heavens and the earth, and of every herb of the field before it was in the earth, and of every herb of the field before it grew." These words tell us as plainly as language can, of the spiritual source of the physical world—that before the earth was green, verdure already existed, though not visible-that every herb of the field is an outbirth from the unseen universe. The model, or pattern of all created things existed in the spiritual world, in the mind of Him who calleth those things. that be not as though they were, just as truly as the patterns of the tabernacle existed in the spiritual world, and were shown to Bezaleel on the mount. The tabernacle of nature, no less than the tabernacle of

Israel, is an earthly copy of things which have a most real and glorious existence in heaven.

What qualities in Christ are adumbrated by the vine? What infinite reality in Him is indicated by the finite shadow? This we cannot fully unfold. We know only in part, and can prophesy only in part. We see through a glass darkly. But some of the resemblances are obvious. The vine, take it all in all, is the most perfect of plants. Some plants possess one part, or one quality, more highly developed; but for the harmonious development of every part and quality-for perfect balance of loveliness and usefulness, there are none to equal the vine. It belongs to the highest order of the vegetable kingdom, ranks in structure above the lily and the palm, occupies the same position among plants which man does among animals. Its stem and leaves are among the most elegant in shape and hue, its blossoms among the most modest and fragrant, while its fruit is botanically the most perfect; and, æsthetically, painters tell us, that to study the perfection of form, colour, light, and shade, united in one object, we must place before us a bunch of grapes. It is perfectly innocent, being one of the few climbing plants that do not injure the object of their support. It has no thorns--no noxious qualities; all its parts are useful. Its foliage affords a refreshing shade from the scorching sunshine; its fruit was one of the first oblations to the Divinity, and, along with bread, is one of the primary and essential elements of human food. It beautifies the landscape wherever it is allowed to wreath the trellised

I.

PERSONAL ORIGIN OF NATURE.

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cottages with its garlands, and festoon the trees with its luxuriant drapery. In common with other plants, it purifies the air-feeding upon what we reject as poison, and returning it to us as wine that maketh glad the heart, and in the process maintaining the atmosphere in a fit condition for our breathing. In all these aspects the vine is the shadow of Him who is altogether lovely -who unites in Himself the extremes of perfection— who is continually doing good-who beautified our fallen world by His presence, changed its wilderness into an Eden, and made the polluted atmosphere of our life purer by breathing it, and thus transforming our evil into good, and our sorrow into a fruitful and strengthening joy. Thus it is the beauty, the fruitfulness, the innocence, the all-sufficing fulness, and suitableness of Jesus to every human want, that we see mirrored in the vine; and we understand the full force and significancy of His words when he says, "I am the True Vine."

These words, moreover, distinguish clearly between nature and that which is above it. To Pantheism nature is all-nature is God, or God is nature; but the phrase, "I am the True Vine" reveals to us the existence of a Being who is distinct from, and superior to, the works of His hands; traces the stream of effect up to a living Origin, and discriminates the nature of that origin. It is the satisfaction of true reason, which, finding transitory beauty in the type, turns by its own law to gaze on the eternal beauty beyond, which, hearing broken

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