If now the dynamic play of the living forces of nature, which is unquestionably a living entity, and has a life in itself though not indeed of and from itself--if this dynamical alternation between life and death be regarded as a simple fact, and man is content to rest there, without seeking to explain it by a higher principle, then will he have ever the self-same One--an all-producing, all-absorbing, ruminating monster, whether we express it poetically, as in mythology, or in the scientific formularies of physiology. Quite different is it, however, if this great pyramid has been built upon the foundation of eternal death. Then is the whole creature of this earthly planet and sensible world merely a commencing life which, so long as the pyramid is still unfinished and incomplete, is, in parts, perpetually relapsing into death--into actual death, or at least into diseases and fractures of various kinds, which are only so many _principia_ or germs of death. Then is nature itself nothing less than the ladder of resurrection, which, step by step, leads upward, or, rather, is carried from the abyss of eternal death up to the apex of light in the heavenly illumination. For, understanding it in this sense, it is impossible to think of nature without remembering at the same time the divine hand which has built this pyramid, and which, along this ladder, brings life out of death. This view, moreover, accounts for the fact, that a state of slumber is essential to nature, and furnishes an explanation why that perpetually-recurring collapse into sleep, which to us appears so near akin to death, should be nature's proper character. And just as the consuming fire of death appears in the more highly-organized beings to be somewhat subdued and restrained--mitigated or exalted into the quickening warmth of life--so also sleep is only the more than half-enlightened brother of death. And indeed as such, and the lovely messenger of hope to immortal spirits, was he ever regarded and described by the ancients; but that which for them was little more than a beautiful image of poetry is for us the profoundest of truths.
An exalted view and understanding of nature consists, then, in its being contemplated not merely as a dynamical play of reciprocal forces, but historically in its course of development, as a commencing life, perpetually relapsing into death, ever disposed to sleep, and only painfully raising itself, or, rather, raised and lovingly guided through all the intermediate grades into the light. But beneath the huge tombstone of outward nature there sleeps a soul, not wholly alien, but half akin to ourselves--which is distracted between the troubled and painful reminiscence of eternal death, out of which it issued, and the flowers of light which are scattered here and there on this dark earth, as so many lovely suggesters of a heavenly hope. For this earthly nature, as Holy Writ testifies,[24] is, indeed, subject to nullity, yet, without its will, and without its fault: and consequently in hope of Him who has so subjected it, it looks forward in the expectation that it shall one day be free, and have a part in the general resurrection and consummate revelation of God's glory, before which both nature and death shall stand amazed--and for this last day of a new creation it sighs anxiously, and yearns with the profoundest longing.