From The Australian Christian Commonwealth – front page, June 30 1916… (so the language is not what we would use today)

“The Bible leads its student into God’s great out-of-doors. It enables him to find the symbols of spiritual truths in things material. The works of God and the word of god are interpretative of each other. In the lover of nature God finds His best-qualified messenger.”

The author of the article goes on to talk about the Shepherd & His sheep, the vineyard and The Vine pruner, etc.

‘The Australian Christian Commonwealth’ was a weekly newspaper of the early Methodist Church in South Australia, and can be found online at the National Library’s Trove website (trove.nla.gov.au), or print versions can be read at the History Centre.