In his poem “Man”, George Herbert, the seventeenth century English metaphysical poet, depicts God as the builder of “a stately habitation” where He intends to dwell. This mansion in which God will live is “Man”—a microcosm (little world) analogous to the macrocosm (large world) of creation. Just as man makes his home in Nature, the big universe designed for man’s needs and enjoyment, God inhabits the little universe of Man, a place worthy of a Royal Guest. No place else is “more stately” than Man because he possesses God’s image and an immortal soul. Compared to man’s eternal destiny, “All things are in decay.” No plant or animal awaits a supernatural life.
As an inhabitant in God’s creation, Man experiences the bounty of Mother Nature, who provides and serves him by the fulfillment of all his natural desires and daily requirements: “Nothing we see, but means our good,/ As our delight, or as our treasure.” The winds blow, the fountains flow, and day and night alternate to satisfy man’s human activities, offering him either a “cupboard of food” or “cabinet of pleasure.” Rivers and oceans afford travel while the firm land gives man a stable home and sense of permanence. Herbs act as medicines and “gladly cure our flesh.” Mother Nature’s mansion for man attends to all his basic necessities: “more servants wait on Man, /Than he’ll take notice of.” Earth, air, fire, and water are Man’s agents.
Likewise, God dwells in a stately habitation where He too finds hospitality and service. The realm of man is a universe: “For Man is ev’ry thing, /And more.” Man is like an abundant tree: he multiplies and fills the earth with fruitfulness. Man is like an animal: he moves and experiences pleasure and pain and owns a body with five senses. Man is spiritual and intellectual: he possesses “Reason and speech” to ennoble him. His erect stature exalts him, and his mind contemplates the heavens and searches for knowledge: “His eyes dismount the highest star. / He is in little all the sphere.” Created in the image of God, “man is all symmetry, / Full of proportions, one limb to another”—a work of art with beauty, harmony, and integrity.
Just as God created a palace—an entire universe– for man’s home on earth through His Divine Providence and the blessings of creation, God also made Himself a mansion—the world of man’s soul as a dwelling worthy of a Lord and King. Because God made the macrocosm (Nature) fit for Man, Man must in turn prepare the microcosm (the soul) for the Divine Visitor: “That as the world serves us, we may serve thee, /And both thy servants be.” In Herbert’s poem God orders both places perfectly with wisdom and art, all the parts forming a whole, a unified body in which every piece contributes to the harmony of a great design or masterpiece. Ideally suited for their occupants, the palace and mansion serve their intended purposes of welcome for the guest. Both habitations illustrate that God and Nature do nothing in vain.
Tragically, however, the stately mansion that God designed for His home has been laid waste in ruins. How does God inhabit a beautiful palace when human beings spoil the beautiful architecture of the Maker by using the residence for purposes for which the Artist never designed it? How does the Author of life inhabit a place that rejects procreation by contraception or kills life by abortifacients? How does God who created man “male and female” feel welcome in a habitation that repudiates sacred matrimony and desecrates it with legalized same-sex marriages? How does God, the Holy of Holies, enter into a space profaned by adulterous relationships and violations of purity through cohabitation? How can God who designed a mansion for a residence feel at home when He receives no welcome, no hospitality, and no preparation to honor His coming?
Nature, the beautiful palace God made for man in creation, also fails to serve its purposes when prideful man does not honor natural laws. The universe God created for man’s fruitfulness and multiplication prideful man transforms into zero population growth or population control. The woman God created for man and the man He created for woman, social engineers subvert and call “constructs” in defiance of Mother Nature’s plan. The family God established from the beginning as a bond between father, mother, and children social law disintegrates into fatherless families, single parent families on welfare, and divorced families. How can Mother Nature serve man when environmentalists want to reduce the population of the earth to one billion, when governments provide foreign aid to third world countries on condition that they embrace contraception and abortion as “development,” and when hysteria about global warming presupposes that Mother Nature has no Creator who governs the universe with Divine Providence and that, as Aristotle stated, “Nature never does anything without a purpose.”
God’s masterpieces—the macrocosm of Nature and the microcosm of Man—fail to inspire admiration as works of art that radiate goodness, beauty, and wisdom when men presume to be gods. Liberal political thinkers imagine that Nature and Man have no origin, design, or purpose and possess an autonomous existence and aimless direction in dire need of man’s science and politics to arrange into some human system. While Herbert’s poem depicts the universe as ordered for man and man as created for God, modern political thought alienates man from Nature and man from God, leaving man entirely in the hands of the state to be indoctrinated and controlled. Instead of man being created as a stately mansion for God, man exists as a creature of government to do it’s bidding and conform. Instead of man serving God as the natural world serves man, man lives as the child of the state, told to provide in taxes $548 million for the services of Planned Parenthood to abort millions of babies, to sell their body parts, and to destroy the innocence of the young with secular sex education.
To live as a mere creature of the state without a natural habitation brings a sense of homelessness, a feeling of alienation. How can any honest man be at home in a world that kills its own children, does not acknowledge the nature of manhood and womanhood, and has no understanding of marriage? How can God be at home in man who renounces the moral law, his God-given human nature, and the eternal truths written on his heart? The state of homelessness promotes wandering and restlessness that never bring peace to the soul or the joy of living in tune with the world or in friendship with God. The stately palace and beautiful mansion of a master architect designed as places of love, welcome, and happiness have been transformed into ugly regions of hell fit for no human or divine being.