The Voice of God in the Forest
“And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the deserts till the day of his showing unto Israel.” Luke 1: 80. “The word of God came unto John the son of Zacharias in the wilderness. And he came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins.” Luke 3: 2, 3. Forth from the forest came the prophet, the greatest ever born of woman, full of the word and Spirit of God, to cause kings to tremble with his message, and to speak to the hearts of the children of Judea, and comfort them with the tidings of divine mercy and pardon. To him came men of all classes,—the rulers, the soldiers, the men of business,—asking advice and counsel; and to each one he spoke the word that was needed. The simple were taught, the humble were comforted, and thousands were converted. “The groves were God’s first temples.
Ere man learned
To hew the shaft and lay the architrave,
And spread the roof above them,—ere he framed
The lofty vault, to gather and roll back
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood,
Amidst the cool and silence, he knelt down,
And offered to the Mightiest solemn thanks
And supplication.” In the grand temple,—the forest,—“Fit shrine for humble worshiper to hold / Communion with his Maker,”—10whose solitude God filled, John learned “the wisdom that is from above,”—wisdom far higher than that to be learned in any school taught by man. There he learned man’s relationship with all created things, and that “all flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof as the flower of the field,” and that though the grass withereth and the flower fadeth, “the word of our God shall stand forever.” This was the burden of the message that was to prepare a people for the coming of the Lord. Then to the forest let us turn our steps, or at least our thoughts, that we may learn to recognize the Word that dwells there; for even now may we see our lesson plainly written. The budding trees in springtime, and the rich green leaves that deck their branches, remind us that God spake, and it was, and show us the very tones of his voice in varied tints and innumerable forms; but no less legibly is the word written in the falling leaves; for— “The voice of the Lord shaketh the wilderness;
The Lord shaketh the wilderness of Kadesh.
The voice of the Lord . . .
strippeth the forests bare;
And in his temple everything saith,
Glory.” It is God’s voice that causes the leaves to fall as well as to spring forth; and autumn tints and fading leaves, no less than the springtime buds and blossoms, proclaim the glory of God, which is revealed that all flesh may see it together. You say that you have always regarded the fading leaf as the result of the curse, and the evidence of its continuance. So it is; but Christ has paid the price of redemption from the curse, “being made a curse for us,” and has thus made even the curse itself to proclaim to us the glory of the cross. The wisdom, the love, and the life of God are revealed in the falling leaves of autumn. To most people the falling leaves bear only a message of death, as if they would say, “So must ye also fade and die;” and this is correct to a degree; but we ought to learn that it is life—the active life of God—that causes the leaves to fall, as well as to spring forth. They die, but in dying they secure the continuation of life to the tree that bore them. Let us read a passage from one who knows the trees well, even though he may not know the voice that speaks through them:— “It certainly appears strange that the leaf-fall should be sometimes connected with the approach of cold and sometimes with that of hot weather. And yet this is the fact. Heat and cold are only the indirect causes; the primary cause of the fall of the leaf is the danger threatened to the plant by the continuance of transpiration when either heat or cold is excessive. The danger of transpiration during continued dryness of soil and air scarcely requires much explanation. The conditions may be summed up in a few words: the throwing off of the transpiring surfaces when the drought commences, and the temporary stoppage of the sap-current—that is, the so-called ‘summer sleep’—furnish one of the best protective measures in plants surrounded by air against excessive transpiration and withering. “It is more difficult to explain the connection between the fall of the leaf and the commencement of the cold period. . . . In regions which annually pass through a long period of cold, the leaves of the plants are as liable to be dried up by the cooling of the soil round their roots when winter approaches, as are the trees in the catingas of Brazil when the hot dry season commences. They also denude themselves of their leafy raiment as these do, since otherwise they would be unable to make good the water exhaled by the leaves. When the temperature of the air sinks below zero, frost ensues, and the water in the plant stiffens into ice; this hastens the fall of the leaf, but it was already partially accomplished before the frost set in; and where the leaves still cling to the branches, preparations are already made for their detachment, which is brought about by the limitation of transpiration. “It must not be concluded from this that plants foresee the approach of winter, and that the preparations for the fall of the leaves result from such an intelligent foresight. . . . The ultimate cause of this instinctively adaptive periodicity is certainly not yet explained; it is as mysterious as those life processes and phenomena which regularly recur at certain periods, which are perhaps hastened or retarded by favorable or unfavorable external conditions, but cannot be stopped by them, and which the plant carries out, or endeavors to carry out, without immediate external stimulus.”—Kerner’s “Natural History of Plants.” Ah, but the mystery is revealed in the great Index to God’s Book,—the Bible,—where we are told that the voice of the Lord strippeth the forests bare. It is true enough that the tree does not foresee the approach of winter, but God does, and he is eyes and reason for it. God would preserve life, and as the fall of the leaves is necessary for the tree’s protection against the chill of winter, he speaks to them, and, obedient to his voice, they yield up their lives into his hands. It is in the silence of the forest that one can best hear the voice of God. And what of the leaves which careless feet trample into the ground?—He who marks the fall of the sparrow, and numbers the hairs of our heads, keeps watch of every leaf that in falling does his commandment, hearkening to the voice of his word. Into his hands they commit the life that he gave them, and it is not lost. They protect the young shoots, and enrich the soil around the roots of the old tree, contributing to the next year’s growth, and are reproduced in the leaves of succeeding summers. And thus in the yearly round of service in God’s great temple are we taught the lesson that death is swallowed up in eternal life.—Present Truth.