Harmonies of Nature – Charles Spurgeon

IN the grandeur of nature there are awful harmonies. When the storm agitates the ocean below, the heavens above hear the tumult and answer to the clamor. Down comes a deluge of sonorous hail or swift-descending rain, attended with peals of thunder and flashes of flame. Frequently the waterspout evidences the sympathy of the two great waters, above and beneath the firmament; the great deep above stretches out its hand to the great deep below, and in voice of thunder their old relationship is recognized; as though the twin seas remembered how once they lay together in the same cradle of confusion, until the decree of the Eternal appointed each his bounds and place. “Deep calls unto deep”—one splendor of creation holds fellowship with another. Amazed and overwhelmed by the spectacle of some tremendous tempest upon land, you have yet been able to observe how the clouds appear to be emptying themselves each into each, and the successive volleys of Heaven’s artillery are answered by rival clamors, the whole chorus of sublimities lifting up their voices. It has seemed to me that a strange wild joy was moving all the elements, and that the angels of wind and tempest were clapping their awful hands in glorious glee. Among the Alps, in the day of tempest, the solemnly silent peaks break through their sacred quiet, and speak to each other in that dread language which is echoing the voice of God—

“Far along,

From peak to peak the rattling crags among,

Leaps the live thunder! Not from one lone cloud,

But every mountain now has found a tongue,

And Jura answers, through her misty shroud,

Back to the joyous Alps, who call to her aloud.”

Height calls unto height even as “deep calls unto deep.” David perceiving these solemn harmonies, uses the metaphor to describe his own unhappy experience.