“To me nature speaks clearest in the majesty and beauty of the hills.” J. Gresham Machen penned these words in the 1930s for a series of radio addresses (now published in Things Unseen, 15). He looked at the splendor of God’s world from high places, from Mt. Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps, and his soul swelled with praise and gratitude. This had everything to do with how he saw, not simply what he saw. Recalling the experience, he writes,

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I had eyes for something else. I saw the vastness of the Italian plain, which was like a symbol of infinity. I saw the snows of distant mountains. I saw the sweet green valleys far, far below, at my feet. I saw the whole glorious round of glittering peaks, bathed in an unearthly light. And as I see that glorious vision again before me now, I am thankful from the bottom of my heart that from my mother’s knee I have known to whom all that glory is due. (Things Unseen, 16)

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Machen had eyes for God. He looked on the beauty of God’s creation and saw its Creator, not merely raw materials. For him, the world was full of theology, not just things. The glory of God sparkled in the glittering peaks. 

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While some philosophers are content to say that beauty is only something we find pleasure contemplating (Roger Scruton, Beauty, 22), something deep inside us knows better. The beauty of creation is much more than that. “Beauty,” as one of our own wrote recently, “is the unimpeded presence of God—the wielder and wonder of past, present, and future” (Insider-Outsider, 20). Or, in the rich old words of Saint Augustine, beauty is “so ancient and so new” (Confessions 10.27). It’s all around us (so new) and yet is always a reflection of the God of ages (so ancient). Machen saw beauty in the hills because he saw God’s reflection there.

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Machen, of course, was not alone in seeing the glory of God in the beauty of the world. The psalmists often waxed eloquently about the grandeur of God in nature. Psalm 104 is a prime example. 

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You make springs gush forth in the valleys;

    they flow between the hills;

they give drink to every beast of the field;

    the wild donkeys quench their thirst.

Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell;

    they sing among the branches.

From your lofty abode you water the mountains;

    the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. (Ps. 104:10–13)

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We find in Psalm 104 both the wonder we have in looking on God’s creation and the gratitude that comes from knowing that he cares for it—the beasts of the fields and the birds of the heavens. 

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Machen worried in his day, as we might worry in our own, that people had outgrown Psalm 104, that they no longer saw God’s personal providence in the beauties around them. This is a problem of spiritual vision, of not just what people see but how they see it. What was the solution? When would people be able to see God’s glorious presence in the natural world?

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Only when God in his supernatural grace shall have removed the blindness of sin in order that again men may see. When that blessed day comes, men will look out again upon the wonders of the world with the profound simplicity of the psalmist, and will detect in all the processes of nature no mere cold, unguided working of some mechanical force but the mysterious and infinitely discriminating hand of the living God. (Things Unseen, 213)

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Grace addresses the heart so that the eyes can follow.

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Grace renews our vision. Grace heals the blindness of sin. Grace addresses the heart so that the eyes can follow. This is how we were made—to see God all around us. As Herman Bavinck wrote, “The beauty of nature and art could not give man any pleasure unless he have a feeling for beauty in his bosom” (Wonderful Works of God, 26). We all have that feeling because God put it there. But we don’t see rightly apart from grace, apart from the self-giving beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Christ is God’s light in the world (John 8:12), and we can say with the psalmist, “in your light do we see light” (Ps. 36:9). The Apostle Paul echoes this when he writes, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). 

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As we enter a time where many people seek rest and refreshment (perhaps some people even traveling to places like Mt. Matterhorn in the Swiss Alps), we might pray earnestly for the Spirit to remind us that God has shone in our hearts through Christ. He has given us a godly vision of grandeur in the beauty we see around us. It is by grace that we see. What’s more, it is by grace that God is restoring the brokenness of the world through his Son. All of creation, Paul writes, “waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. 8:19–21).

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Are you waiting for renewal? The world is waiting too. Are you waiting for peace and vitality? The world is waiting too. God’s grand response to us and the world is the same: Jesus Christ, divine grace for sullied sinners. In him and by his Spirit, we see God’s beauty in the world around us. In him we can worshipfully proclaim, as Vern Poythress has in his recent book, “One of the most beautiful things about the world is simply that it reflects and displays the character of the God who made it” (Making Sense of the World, 8).

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May we all, like Machen and the psalmist long before him, “have eyes for something else.” May we see the wonders of nature around us and join in the song of gratitude:

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I will sing to the Lord as long as I live;

    I will sing praise to my God while I have being.

May my meditation be pleasing to him,

    for I rejoice in the Lord. (Ps. 104:33–34)

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In the God of Beauty and Grace,

Peter A. Lillback, President

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P.S. We have a new podcast called The Future of Reformed Apologetics, where K. Scott Oliphint talks with Brandon McLean Smith about Cornelius Van Til's legacy and a WSP book with essays from Scott, Vern Poythress, Christopher Watkin, James Anderson, Daniel Strange, Brian G. Mattson, David Owen Filson, and Nathan D. Shannon. Have a listen!

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