“As the world was plastic and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever
to so much of his attributes as we bring to it,” may be a startling
saying of Mr. Emerson’s, but is one which commends itself to our
experience and reason, if we only consult them honestly. Let us take
the most obvious examples of this law. Look at the relations of man
to the brute creation. One of us shall have no difficulty in making
friends of beasts and birds, while another excites their dread and
hate, so that even dogs will scarcely come near him. There is no need
to go back to the traditions of the hermits in the Thebaid, or St.
Francis of Assisi, for instances of the former class. We all know the
story of Cowper and his three hares, from his exquisite letters and
poem, and most of you must have read, or heard of the terms on which
Waterton lived with the birds and beasts in his Yorkshire home, and
of Thoreau, unable to get rid of wild squirrels and birds who would
come and live with him, or from a boat, taking fish which lay quietly
in his hand till he chose to put them back again into the stream.
But I suppose there is scarcely one of us who has not himself seen
such instances again and again, persons of whom the old words seemed
literally true, “At destruction and famine thou shalt laugh; neither
shalt thou be afraid of the beasts of the earth. For thou shalt be in
league with the stones of the field, and the beasts of the field shall
be at peace with thee.”
I remember myself several such; a boy who was friends even with rats,
stoats, and snakes, and generally had one or other of them in his
pockets; a groom upon whose shoulders the pigeons used to settle, and
nestle against his cheeks, whenever he went out into the stable-yard or
field. Is there any reasonable way of accounting for this? Only one, I
think, which is, that those who have this power over, and attraction
for, animals, have always felt toward them and treated them as their
Maker intended—have unconsciously, perhaps, but still faithfully,
followed God’s mind in their dealings with his creatures, and so have
stood in true relations to them all, and have found the beasts of the
field at peace with them.
In the same way the stones of the field are in league with the
geologist, the trees and flowers with the botanist, the component parts
of earth and air with the chemist, just in so far as each, consciously
or unconsciously, follows God’s methods with them—each part of his
creation yielding up its secrets and its treasures to the open mind
of the humble and patient, who is also at bottom always the most
courageous learner.