Summary
“Is not the evidence of Ease on the very front of all the greatest works in existence? Do they not say plainly to us, not ‘there has been a great effort here,’ but ‘there has been a great power here’? It is not the weariness of mortality but the strength of divinity, which we have to recognise in all mighty things; and that is just what we now never recognise, but think that we are to do great things by help of iron bars and perspiration; alas! we shall do nothing that way, but lose some pounds of our own weight.”
Ruskin.“Consider the lilies of the field how they grow.”
—The Sermon on the Mount.“Nunquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit.”
—Juvenal.What gives the peculiar point to this object-lesson from the lips of Jesus is, that He not only made the illustration, but made the lilies. It is like an inventor describing his own machine. He made the lilies and He made me—both on the same broad principle. Both together, man and flower, He planted deep in the Providence of God; but as men are dull at studying themselves He points to this companion-phenomenon to teach us how to live a free and natural life, a life which God will unfold for us, without our anxiety, as He unfolds the flower.
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- Natural Law in the Spiritual World , pp. 121 - 140Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009First published in: 1883