The Great Gospel of John
Volume 10
Jesus' Precepts and Deeds through His Three Years of Teaching
Der Herr in der Stadt am Nebo
- Chapter 183 -
The battle of nature.
You may go around the whole Earth and you will discover, for what the outer appearances are concerned, nothing else but enmity amongst the creatures.
2
Look at the sun, which is certainly the greatest benefactor of the Earth and all creatures, because by its light and warmth everything comes to life again and grows and becomes strong. The plant kingdom is like shooting out anew of the soil of the Earth and produces fruit within the order of every kind. The sap in the trees begins to flow again, they receive buds, leaves, blossoms, and then gradually the fruit ripens.
3
A countless number of the most various winged insects have laid their eggs. The light and the warmth of the sun hatch them out and they fill the air with numberless little and bigger creatures.
4
This is the way of the birds, the fishes in the water and the numberless other animals in this element. And the other animals and the people even enjoy the sun. So it is, as I said, certainly the greatest benefactor of the Earth and its creatures, but at the same time also the greatest enemy of the Earth and its creatures.
5
Because look, it does not take long for the sun to call everything to life on the surface of the Earth. After that, it increases in light and warmth, so much so that it kills everything again in the summer what it created during the winter and spring.
6
Your region here is an example of this in itself. In the second half of the winter till the first half of spring, everything becomes green, and your region looks like a paradise. And what is it now? It is hardly half autumn and it is a steppe wherein you seldom can find anything green. Everything is withered and dead.
7
And if you go to Africa, or the southern parts of Arabia, then you will need to travel many days before you will find something alive, because the heat of the sun kills everything that it possibly has brought to life in a winter.
8
In the so-called temperate zones of the Earth, things are more praiseworthy, but then the winters last much longer than here, and the plants and animals do not thrive anymore in such abundance as they do in these warm regions of the Earth. And so you will see everywhere on Earth that the sun is on the one hand the greatest benefactor of the Earth, but on the other hand its greatest enemy.
9
Even the sea in the hottest zones is little crowded by fish and other sea animals when the sun develops its greatest strength. They flee further to the north or more to the south, depending on whether the sun develops its greatest heat in this or that hemisphere.
10
And look, as the sun is in relation to the Earth, all the creatures on Earth are more or less in relation to each other.
11
This is for instance already the case among the elements. Is the water, next to the sun, not one of the greatest benefactors on Earth? Does not every farmer wish a blissful rain when his fields, pastures and gardens become dry? And when it comes, the whole creation is as if shouting from joy.
12
But if there is, instead of a blissful rain shower, one heavy cloudburst after another, then no one on the whole Earth will praise its usefulness because by their mighty streams of water they destroy everything they come across, and then they leave a vast region of waste soil behind them of which men cannot make good use anymore despite often centuries of great effort.
13
So also, the different winds are very great benefactors to the soil of the Earth and the physical health of all creatures. But when they degenerate in great storms and hurricanes they are not very useful but bring only damage, at least from the point of view of the human reason, because it is not capable to evaluate how effective these violent phenomena are for a great useful purpose.
14
This is also how it goes with the plants among which many are noble, but more of them are not noble, which you call 'weeds'. When someone has a clean field to sow his wheat and barley, those 2 noble kinds of grain will develop well and purely, but if an enemy would come during the night to straw a quantity of seeds of weed on the wheat and barley field, and the weeds would then come out between the noble grain, they would soon oppress and suffocate them.
15
Apart from that, there exist certain kinds of plants that prevent other plants from coming up when they take possession of a big or small piece of land.
16
And so you can see the same thing happening before you in the animal kingdom. The one animal serves the other as prey and food for what concerns his flesh. And man - a kind of animal himself as far as his flesh is concerned - is and remains the greatest predator. Because a gazelle or a sheep will flee when they see a wolf, a bear, a lion, a tiger or other devouring animals coming close, but man, when he is provided of all kinds of weapons that he invented by his intellect, does not flee for such vicious animals, but he greedily chases them to possess their fur, and will now and then also change their flesh into a well tasting piece of roast meat by the fire.