works and wonders in the
little flowers, as we consider how kind and almighty He is; therefore
we praise and thank Him. In His creatures we see the power of His
word--how great it is. In a peach stone, too, for hard as the shell
is, the very soft kernel within causes it to open at the right
time.'[6] Again, 'So God is present in all creatures, even the
smallest leaves and poppy seeds.'

All that he saw of Nature inspired him with confidence in the
fatherly goodness of God. He wrote, August 5th, 1530, to Chancellor
Brneck:

I have lately seen two wonderful things: the first, looking from
the window at the stars and God's whole beautiful sky dome, I saw
never a pillar to support it, and yet it did not fall, and is
still firm in its place. Now, there are some who search for such
pillars and are very anxious to seize them and feel them, and
because they cannot, fidget and tremble as if the skies would
certainly fall ... the other, I also saw great thick clouds sweep
over our heads, so heavy that they might be compared to a great
sea, and yet I saw no ground on which they rested, and no vats in
which they were contained, yet they did not fall on us, but
greeted us with a frown and flew away. When they had gone, the
rainbow lighted both the ground and the roof which had held them.

Luther often used very forcible images from Nature. 'It is only for
the sake of winter that we lie and rot in the earth; when our summer
comes, our grain will spring up--rain, sun, and wind prepare us for
it--that is, the Word, the Sacraments, and the Holy Ghost.'

His Bible was an orchard of all sorts of fruit trees; in the
introduction to the Psalter, he says of the thanksgiving psalms:
'There one looks into the hearts of the saints as into bright and
beautiful gardens--nay, as into heaven itself, where pure and happy
thoughts of God and His goodness are the lovely flowers.'

His description of heaven for his little son John is full of simple
reverent delight in Nature, quite free from platonic and mystical
speculation as to God's relation to His universe; and Protestant
divines kept this tone up to the following century, until the days of
rationalism and pietism.

Of such spontaneous hearty joy in Nature as this, the national songs
of a nation are always the medium. They were so now; for, while a
like feeling was nowhere else to be found, the Volkslieder expressed
the simple familiar relat