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Here we learn that, while death is incessantly destroying the numerous forms of animal and vegetable life, and decomposition reducing them to unorganized matter, the Holy Spirit is constantly supplying a power which replenishes the wastes of nature, and thus renews the face of the earth with successive generations. This vital energy, though, like gravitation, it is unseen, is everywhere present, everywhere active and efficient. Without it all animal existence would soon perish, and be reduced to unorganized matter; but it is the Divine idea and purpose that the ravages of death and dissolution should be counteracted by a perpetual reviviscence of dead matter, and the Holy Spirit's vitalizing energy, everywhere present and everywhere active, doth accomplish this, and thereby He perpetually "reneweth the face of the earth." Without the Spirit's reproductive energy, death would bring universal ruin in a single generation; but the Spirit's reviving energy arresteth death and disorder, replenishing the earth with continuous life, and clothing it with endless forms of animation and beauty. Moreover, the Spirit's vitalizing and reproducing energy, in thus neutralizing the ravages of death and disorder, is accompanied by a conserving power which displays His presence and agency in all organized existence. I select one evidence of this — that of instinct. It is evidence of mind, yea, of a high order of mind, and of one presiding and directing mind, everywhere present and everywhere active, pervading every creature, great or small, in earth, air, or ocean. What, then, is this invisible, intangible, inaudible, and ubiquitous presence? If not in the creatures themselves as an attribute of their own nature, it must be in the all-wise beneficent Creator; and their Creator is, as we have seen before, God the Holy Spirit. It is He who in the beginning moved upon the dark chaotic mass of matter and formed it into order and beauty; it is He who hath garnished the heavens and preserved them in constant harmony and grandeur; it is He who continually "reneweth the face of the earth" by His vitalizing energy; and it is He who thus conserves the creatures He has made, by unerringly directing them to perform those remarkable functions which indicate a wisdom not in themselves, and which therefore directs the thoughtful observer to a source higher than the creatures, to that Infinite Source from which all good is derived.

(W. Cooke, D. D.)

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KJV: Thou sendest forth thy spirit, they are created: and thou renewest the face of the earth.

WEB: You send forth your Spirit: they are created. You renew the face of the ground.