The altar of nature, like the altar on the other side of Jordan, is not meant for burnt-offerings or for sacrifices. No sacred fire burns upon it; no true sacrifice for sin can be offered upon it; no effectual atonement for the sinner is made there. It is to the great altar on Calvary, in a manner, what the manger of Christ was to the cross. The manger was the place at which the beasts of the stall ate to renew their strength – at which vegetable life was sacrificed to support animal life; and the fact of our Saviour being laid in that symbolical place might be regarded as significant of the analogies of nature being fulfilled in Him. But we are not allowed to linger at the manger, we must pass on to the cross, where we have on that accursed tree the sacrifice of Christ fulfilling all the analogies of nature and all the types of grace-the symbols of the curse and of the restoration-and disclosing its own unique peculiarity of a true propitiation for human sin. The manger has no saving power. The dim revelation which it gives of the eternal mystery of love, wherein life lives by life taken, may constrain us, in humble reverence, like the wise men of the East, to pour forth our gold, and frankincense, and myrrh.

But the cross saves and sanctifies us, because it tells us that the work of redemption is finished, and that God is now just while the justifier of the ungodly who believe in Jesus; and the full and clear revelation which it gives of the way of salvation constrains us, like the apostle Paul, to offer at its foot the far costlier offering of a life devoted to the service of God. At the manger we worship the God who created and sustains us, and pour forth the gifts He has bestowed in thankful acknowledgment of His goodness; at the cross our worship is raised into devoted love to the God and Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and our gifts lead to self-sacrifice, in imitation of His unspeakable gift. So should it be in regard to the altar of nature and the altar of Calvary. Let us not separate the one from the other. Let us not stop short, as many do, at the mere religion of nature, but press forward to the religion of the cross. While as intellectual beings needing instruction, we "consider the lilies how they grow," let us not at the same time neglect, as impure perishing creatures needing the great salvation, to "behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world." And so associating the altar beyond Jordan with the altar at Shiloh, the one will be to us the pattern and the witness of the other. We shall find the same great truths stamped upon nature which shine forth in clearest light in redemption; and communion with the works of God will only deepen our faith in His word.

(MacMillan," The Sabbath of the Fields.")