“See God in Nature. — When the prospects of the heavens or the verdant summer earth look most beautiful to me, I most think of God. But let us be careful how we see God in nature. The Pantheist sees the visible phenomena as a part of God. This is a sort of Atheism. The poet sees beauty, order, the picturesque, or the sublime, and this he makes his God. The Christian sees in the glories of nature not merely the effect of God’s hand, but its presence; not only God’s work, but God working. He not only created that landscape of field, wood, and orchard which I see from my window, but he upholds it, he gives it its existence, he causes every change, at every moment — at every moment there is a coming forth of his attributes into action. And these innumerable acts are each of them a display of some perfection; each is divine. I behold in his works, I do not merely see a mark that the Creator has been there, but a token that he is there. Just as when I hear the footstep of my dearest friend in his chamber, I know that he is there present.” — J.W. Alexander, Thoughts on Preaching (1861), p. 422-423