Bartram's Travels

       The following selection is from the introduction to William Bartram’s Travels which was first published in 1791.  It is an account of his travels through the southeastern American colonies during the years 1773-78.  A botanist, and the son of a botanist, Bartram certainly knows that of which he speaks, and what he speaks of in his journals is the benevolent hand of God forming and fashioning the diverse animal and plant life he observed.  To me, there are echoes of Psalm 19 and Romans 1 in Bartram’s words.

“THE animal creation also, excites our admiration, and equally manifests the almighty power, wisdom and beneficence of the Supreme Creator and Sovereign Lord of the universe; some in their vast size and strength, as the mamoth, the elephant, the whale, the lion and alligator; others in agility; others in their beauty and elegance of colour, plumage and rapidity of flight, have the faculty of moving and living in the air; others for their immediate and indispensable use and convenience to man, in furnishing means for our clothing and sustenance, and administering to our help in the toils and labours through life; how wonderful is the mechanism of these finely formed, self-moving beings, how complicated their system, yet what unerring uniformity prevails through every tribe and particular species! the effect we see and contemplate, the cause is invisible, incomprehensible, how can it be otherwise? when we cannot see the end or origin of a nerve or vein, while the divisibility of mater or fluid, is infinite. We admire the mechanism of a watch, and the fabric of a piece of brocade, as being the production of art; these merit our admiration, and must excite our esteem for the ingenious artist or modifier, but nature is the work of God omnipotent: and an elephant, even this world is comparatively but a very minute part of his works. If then the visible, the mechanical part of the animal creation, the mere material part is so admirably beautiful, harmonious and incomprehensible, what must be the intellectual system? that inexpressibly more essential principle, which secretly operates within? that which animates the inimitable machines, which gives them motion, impowers them to act speak and perform, this must be divine and immortal?”

            William Bartram, Travels of William Bartram (New York, NY: Dover Publications, 1955), pp. 20-1.

Christ, not man, is King!

Dale