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BIBLICAL NATURE STUDIES

BIBLICAL
NATURE STUDIES

BY
REV. ANDREW W. ARCHIBALD, D.D.
Author of
"The Bible Verified," "The Trend of the
Centuries," "The Easter Hope"

"But looks through nature up to nature's God." — Pope.

THE PILGRIM PRESS
Boston new york Chicago

Copyright 1915
By ANDREW W. ARCHIBALD

THE PILGRIM PRtfSg
BOSTON

DEDICATED
BY THE AUTHOR TO HIS GRANDSON
KENNETH WARREN ARCHIBALD
AND ALSO
TO THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES
WHICH HE HAS SERVED FOR
ANY CONTINUOUS TIME

NATURE STUDIES
PREFACE
In the following pages, nature, which "speaks
a various language," is studied in earth and
sea and sky, from tree to mountain, from snow-
flake to desert mirage, from mirror lake to
human profile of rock, from denizen of the deep
to bird of the air, from leaf to star. Their
illuminating lessons are certainly capable of
being conveyed in a suggestive, interesting and
impressive manner, though the writer may not
have succeeded in attaining unto such an ideal
portrayal. Taking his previous volumes, ' ' The
Bible Verified, " " The Trend of the Centuries ' '
and "The Easter Hope," this fourth book can
be interjected between the second and third to
give a regular gradation, a logical succession,
of studies, which may be indicated as God in
the Word, God in the World — of history, God
in the natural World, and God in the future
World. The succeeding chapters are of course
no scientific treatises, but they are simply what
they are called, namely, Biblical nature studies.
Such is the title of the work, whose scope is
sufficiently set forth in "The Seasons" by
Thomson after this fashion :
[vii]

Preface
"Oh Nature! all-sufficient! over all!
Enrich me with the knowledge of thy works!
Snatch me to heaven. Thy rolling wonders there,
World beyond world, in infinite extent,
Profusely scattered o'er the blue immense,
Show me; their motions, periods, and their laws,
Give me to scan; through the disclosing deep
Light my blind way. ' '
Nothing more along the prefatory line need
be said, but the author feels a strong inclination
to give the list of the Churches which he has
served, and to which the volume on a preceding
page is dedicated. Though for the past ten
years he has not cared to settle again, having
travelled more or less at home and abroad, he
yet, when not on the wing, has been almost con
stantly employed here and there as an acting
pastor. In this capacity he has been with the
several churches named below long enough to
form for them a genuine attachment, and they
therefore are included among those with which
he has been for longer periods. The various
fields of ministerial labor herewith enumerated
bring to his mind many agreeable memory pic
tures. The mere mention of them will illustrate
what Themistocles once said to Xerxes, "that
a man's discourse was like to a rich Persian
carpet, the beautiful figures and patterns of
which can only be shown by spreading and
extending it out; when it is contracted and
folded up, they are obscure and lost." The
naming of the following churches, therefore, is
a pastor's unrolling of the tapestry of his per
sonal experience to a sufficient extent for the
[viii]

Preface
revealing of some definite providential designs,
which are gratefully recalled.
Student Supply:
Holland, Vermont ;
Nevinville-Fontanelle, Iowa ;
First, Guilford, Connecticut.
Pastor :
Nevinville-Fontanelle, Iowa ;
Stuart, Iowa;
First, Ottumwa, Iowa ;
Edwards, Davenport, Iowa;
Hyde Park, Boston, Massachusetts;
Porter, Brockton, Massachusetts.
Acting Pastor:
Wallingf ord, Connecticut ;
First, Milford, Connecticut;
First, New Britain, Connecticut ;
Pilgrim, Boston, Massachusetts ;
First, Springfield, Massachusetts;
Dorchester Second, Boston, Massachusetts;
Pilgrim, Los Angeles, California.
Organizer and Preacher :
Plymouth, Ottumwa, Iowa;
And In Boston Suburbs
Cliftondale in Saugus,
Waban in Newton.
Andrew W. Archibald.
Newton Center, Boston. [ixi

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

PAGE
I. Sitting Down Upon the Green Grass ... 3
II. Mirrors, Natural and Spiritual . . . 21
III. The Mirage of the Desert . . . . 39
IV. The Trees .... . . 55
V. Autumn Leaves ..... 73
VI. Treasuries op the Snow . 87
VII. By the Sea  . 103
VIII. Fishing Experiences ... .... 119
IX. The White Mountains .... . . . 135
X. The Mountains Round About Jerusalem . 151
XI. Eagles and Storks  171
XII. Some Striking Constellations  191
XIII. The Temple Expanding Round Us to Infinity 207

[xi]

SITTING DOWN UPON THE GREEN
GRASS

SITTING DOWN UPON THE GREEN
GRASS
Wordsworth, that nature poet of the delight
ful English Lake region, says :
' ' I had rather be
A pagan nurtured in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on some pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would leave me less forlorn,
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea,
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn."
The cultivated pagan of antiquity did have a
keen sense of the beauties of the natural world.
Sophocles, the great tragedian of Athens, has
left a most pleasing description of the sur
roundings of his country villa just outside of
the Grecian capital. This is what he said of the
lovely spot: ' ' Colonus, glistening bright,
Where evermore, in thickets freshly green,
The clear-voiced nightingale
Still haunts and pours her song,
By purpling ivy hid,
And the thick foliage sacred to the God."
Aristophanes, the celebrated comedian of the
Golden Age of Greece, has given us a more
homely touch, which yet is none the less appeal
ing, as he represented one saying, "When the
[3]

Biblical Nature Studies
grasshopper's sweet note is heard, how pleas
ant to watch the Lemnian vines, to see if the
grapes are getting ripe, for they are the earliest
kind. How pleasant to see the green fig swell !
And when it is ripe, I eat it and exclaim, What
weather it is ! "
Latin literature abounds in equally alluring
portrayals, like this from the -ZEneid, when
Virgil in describing the Elysian fields drops
thus into the imagery of nature :
' ' In groves we live, and lie on mossy beds
By crystal streams that murmur through the meads. ' '
Wordsworth 's pagan, therefore, did greatly ap
preciate natural beauty, but there should be in
this no intimation that the Christian cannot and
does not. Indeed Cowper makes knowledge of
God to be essential to the deeper appreciation
of the well-ordered cosmos. This is what he
says: ' ' Acquaint thyself with God, if thou wouldst taste
His works. Admitted once to his embrace,
Thou shalt perceive that thou wast blind before:
Thine eye shall be instructed, and thine heart,
Made pure, shall relish, with divine delight
Till then unf elt, what hands divine have wrought. ' '
It was the Master himself who bade us con
sider the lilies of the field and the birds of the
heaven. Very significantly it is related of him
once, "And he commanded them that all should
sit down by companies on the green grass."
When the disciples had "no leisure so much as
to eat," they were directed to go apart into a
' ' desert place to rest awhile. ' ' They accordingly
[4]

Sitting Down Upon the Green Grass
entered a boat and crossed Gennesaret, but when
they reached the farther shore, they found that
the people whom they left behind had walked
around the head of the lake for a distance of
about six miles, and were awaiting the arrival
of the little craft which had tacked hither and
thither over the sparkling body of water. The
crowd on the grassy plain at the foot of the
mountain increased, until there were present
five thousand men besides women and children.
It was these who were fed by the supernatural
multiplying of the five loaves and two fishes, in
a memorable meal which was indeed a table
spread in the wilderness. It is to be noted that
of those who recorded the incident, one men
tions the grass, another observes that there was
"much grass," while the third with still more
accurately descriptive instinct speaks of the
"green grass." The last likewise in referring
to the arrangement of the vast assemblage into
"companies" uses a very picturesque word,
which in the original Greek means "garden-
plats " or " flower-beds. ' ' Oriental people dress
in bright and gay colors, blue and red and yel
low, and the nicely-arranged groups upon the
verdant sward brought to the mind of him who
described the scene a well-cultivated garden or
a beautiful lawn decked out here and there with
little mounds all in blossom. Christ's own eye
must have been pleased with the sight, for the
expression is really his, "Sit down by com
panies upon the green grass," that is, arrange
[5]

Biblical Nature Studies
yourselves into groups of fifty and a hundred,
like so many flower beds upon this stretch of
verdure. And there they did sit down, while
neighboring mountain and lake and river con
tributed to their happiness.
We need more frequently to place ourselves
amid such beauteous scenes, while we look
through nature up to nature 's God. With most
of us a tender appreciation of natural beauty
may need cultivating. We may need to be com
manded to cross some lake, to climb some moun
tain, to go apart into some desert place, to stroll
by some seashore, to recline upon the green
grass. Darwin in his Autobiography says that
up to the age of thirty he enjoyed poetry and
pictures and especially music. But for many
years he had lost all taste for these, finding
even Shakespeare "intolerably dull," and he
attributed his inappreciation of what was once
to him a positive delight to parts of the brain,
through disuse, becoming "atrophied." He
added that if he could have lived his life over
again, he "would have made a rule to read some
poetry and listen to some music at least once
every week." He acknowledged that his ex
clusively scientific habits may have been injuri
ous to his intellect, and more probably to his
moral character. That is an honest confession
from the great naturalist, and we ought to real
ize the danger of inborn capabilities of ours
suffering atrophy, as they gradually dwindle
away through lack of needed nourishing. We
[6]

Sitting Down Upon the Green Grass
need to keep in touch with God's works by fre
quent communing therewith, and that, too, with
some play of the finer spiritual feelings, and
not simply with the analytic methods of the
scientist. We should endeavor to come into the
warmly sympathetic attitude of Jesus and his
immediate disciples.
There is a well-known picture given of Soc
rates in the opening lines of the philosophic
discussion in which Phsedrus leads out. The
latter, having spent a day with a famous rhet
orician, is taking a walk into the country to
refresh himself, and to peruse, it is suspected,
one of the consulted orator's speeches, for he
is carrying a suspicious roll under his cloak.
He is met by Socrates, and the two start off
together along the Ilissus, a clear brook in
which they cool their unsandalled feet, till they
come to a shady plane-tree. Before the read
ing and discussion begin, they admire the
beauty of the spot. They are delighted with the
soft rhythm of insect life, with the fragrance
floated to them from a tree in bloom, with the
grateful fanning of their heated brows by balmy
breezes, while, it is said, "the greatest charm
of all is the grass like a pillow gently sloping
to the head." The philosopher expressed his
satisfaction at having been drawn out of the
city into the country, and after throwing him
self at full length upon the verdant slope under
the shade of the tree, while the limpid brook
sang at his feet, he bade his friend to choose
[7]

Biblical Nature Studies
his own posture and to proceed with the reading
of the scroll.
The Lord would have approved of all that,
and he tells us to go apart occasionally from the
ceaseless activities of our busy life, to retire
to some place of solitude, to lie down in the
meadow with crystal river in full sight, to con
sider the lilies, to note the daisies and daffodils
and blue-bells and buttercups while a lesson of
trust in God is learned, to be observant of the
birds singing among the branches, while a spirit
of quiet contentment is thus nurtured. One can
not be amid the beauties of nature and not feel
a sweet call to worship.
When Wordsworth wrote his "Ode on the
Intimations of Immortality, ' ' he gathered much
of inspiration from the natural world, as is
evident from such lines as these in the poem :
"I love the brooks which down their channels fret."
"To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, from the time when
he and his brother as boys drove their widowed
mother's cow to pasture on Boston Common,
never ceased to feel the sweet influence of na
ture unspoiled by brick and mortar. He felt
that sea-shells, which were pearls on the shore,
became "noisome things" when brought away
from the associations of "the bubbles of the
latest wave." He says again in his own ex
quisite way:
[8]

Sitting Down Upon the Green Grass
' ' I thought the sparrow 's note from heaven,
Singing at dawn on the alder bough;
I brought him home, in his nest, at even ;
He sings the song, but it pleases not now,
For I did not bring home the river and sky."
We must, as he adds, yield ourselves "to the
perfect whole," to nature as it is, if we would
get the full benefit of its beauty.
More frequently than we do, should we get
away from the artificial to the natural. It will
do us good to see the bird, as Lowell says, sit
"like a blossom among the leaves," to hear
with Bryant "The soft winds
That run along the summit of these trees
In music."
The thought of God will steal over us, as we
farther say with the latter poet,
"Be it ours to meditate,
In these calm shades, thy milder majesty,
And to the beautiful order of thy works
Learn to conform the order of our lives."
Hawthorne's name will always be associated
with the "Old Manse," which his literary ge
nius made luminous. This ancient parsonage
at Concord he pictures most charmingly amid
its ample grounds on the banks of the "slug
gish" and peaceful river rendered historic
by the "embattled farmers" who started the
Revolution, "And fired the shot heard round the world."
He loved the garden and orchard there, and
[9]

Biblical Nature Studies
"the sunshine glimmering through the willow-
branches," and the broad "avenue of black ash
trees," and the "shadows that lay half asleep."
Amid such attractive scenes we hear the man of
literature saying, "I recline upon the still un-
withered grass, and whisper to myself: — Oh,
perfect day ! Oh, beautiful world ! Oh, benefi
cent God! And it is the promise of a blessed
eternity; for our Creator would never have
made such lovely days, and have given us the
deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond
all thought, unless we were meant to be immor
tal." This Moss gathered from the Old Manse
should stimulate in us worshipful emotions
under similar circumstances. In this way there
comes healing to frayed nerves.
More of leisure is needed in human life. We
need repeatedly to retire for communion with
Him who made the world and all that is therein.
He does not come to the chafed and heated
spirit. He does not come to us, as the Song of
Songs says,
"Until the day be cool, and the shadows flee away."
When there has been a high temperature, how
refreshingly comes the hour of sunset with its
upspringing breeze. We sit on open verandas,
or on velvety lawns that receive their artificial
shower baths often enough to keep them green,
and we listen to the gentle rustling of the leaves
on the trees beneath which we linger, until
our fevered brows and perturbed spirits are
[10]

Sitting Down Upon the Green Grass
soothed. There is needed in our lives more of
the cool of the day, more of its tranquilising
effects. There is too much of rush and worry.
We are living too fast. The activities of mod
ern life are tremendous. The substitution of
the country for the city makes a happy and
beneficial change. Gray's "Elegy Written in
a Country Churchyard" gives an experience
which every one should have, and which it was
mine particularly to have on a visit to Stoke
Pogis, the scene of the poem. There the famil
iar lines were appreciated as never before.
' ' The curfew tolls the knell of parting day ;
The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea;
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,
And leaves the world to darkness and to me.
"Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds."
Busy men and women need more frequently
to get into such scenes, rural and peaceful, away
from carking care. Dr. Henry Van Dyke in a
chapter on "A Lazy, Idle Brook" well says,
"Indolence is a virtue. It comes from two
Latin words, which mean freedom from anxiety
or grief. And that is a wholesome state of
mind. There are times and seasons when it is
even a pious and blessed state of mind. Not
to be in a hurry ; not to be ambitious or jealous
or resentful; not to feel envious of anybody;
not to fret about today nor worry about to
morrow, — that is the way we ought to feel at
[11]

Biblical Nature Studies
some time in our lives; and that is the kind
of indolence in which our brook faithfully
encouraged us. ' '
Even if we are largely confined to the town,
we yet can get the desired aloofness from the
"madding crowd," if we do not voluntarily
suffer ourselves to be driven by our work ' ' like
the quarry slave. ' ' We can spend a little more
time at home, we can with the family watch the
sun set, we can with them admire the crimson
and the gold in a resplendent sky, we can sit
and enjoy together the gathering of the shad
ows, while gentlest zephyrs chase one another
among the flowers, and waft the fragrance
thereof to us for our delectation. We need not
be continually on the run. We can stroll lei
surely by Edenic residential grounds, and drink
in their loveliness. Professor Phelps says of
a walk which the venerable Professor Stuart
of Andover once took, "he observed in a door-
yard as he passed it a rare and beautiful speci
men of a French dahlia. He paused; and,
leaning over the fence, he was heard ejaculating
in low tones his thanksgiving for such an im
pressive proof of the benevolence of God."
There should be more of this reverent and glad
recognition of the divine goodness along every
street. We should not let business, or domestic
care, or anything secular absorb all the atten
tion. We should oftener get away in our
thoughts from the commercial and all that ordi
narily presses upon the mind; we should get
[12]

Sitting Down Upon the Green Grass
away from the "burden of the day and the
scorching heat," and have more of the cool of
the day, where God walks in stillness and yet
in glory.
We shall thus be enabled to maintain the
cheerier and the truer view of life. The right
standpoint is everything for a correct estimate
of conditions. Very illuminating is the story
of the two buckets which constantly met and
passed in a well. The one creaked out, ' ' This
is dreadful, for however full I am when I go
up, I always come down empty." The other
clanked its chain merrily as it responded,
' ' This is just splendid, for no matter how empty
I am when I go down, I invariably come up
full." We cannot keep this equanimity of
spirit, and this bright outlook on life, unless
in quiet communion with nature we lose all
ferment and heat of mind.
We are allowing ourselves to be too much
driven and fretted. There should be more of
the repose of trust in God. We are not to
imagine that everything is going to ruin, that
God's cause is not going to triumph, unless we
drive our chariot like Jehu, unless we run our
engine at constant high pressure. To our bus
tling activity and to our worrying over lack
of results, the Master says, Stop right there,
' ' sit down. ' ' This of course does not mean that
we are to feel no responsibility, that we are to
put forth no strenuous effort. We are to be
concerned to a proper extent, for instance, for
[13]

Biblical Nature Studies
the success of the gospel. When something
over a century ago the whole Church was dead
to the cause of Christian evangelization, and
William Carey rose in a meeting and urged the
binding force of the Lord's command to preach
the gospel to every creature, a venerable Doc
tor of Divinity peremptorily ordered the young
man to "sit down," since when God wanted
the world converted he would effect his pur
pose without feeble human agency. The great
Teacher would never have endorsed that com
mand to sit down, and yet he does bid us do
that in various ways. He, for example, tells
us to sow our seed, and then to bide our time,
not to expect the harvest too soon ; in due sea
son we shall reap, if we faint not. We cannot
hurry the maturing of the grain, we might as
well go on sleeping and rising, as the parable
says, while the seed grows secretly; not be
coming impatient but sitting down and confi
dently expecting a rich outcome from labors
that have been expended.
To be sure, there is danger of dropping into
listlessness, of not exerting ourselves suffi
ciently. This is true intellectually. Prescott
spent ten years in writing his "Ferdinand and
Isabella, ' ' and he thus produced a valuable his
tory. But he sometimes felt that he was taking
too much time, perhaps, for the task, or at
least that he must guard against idleness, for
he once said, "I have sometimes been obliged
to whip myself up to the work. ' ' We do, time
[14]

Sitting Down Upon the Green Grass
and again, need to put ourselves under pres
sure, a certain spur to action occasionally is
helpful. There should not be, however, too
much excitation, till there comes a paralysis of
faculties, and till there is none of the strength
of reserved power. When there comes flurry,
when one becomes flustered, when there is not
the steadiness of a quiet self-control, when
there is mere agitation without accomplish
ment, be it along mental or religious lines, then
Christ would have us be, not like the nervous
Martha so troubled that nothing went right, but
like the reposeful Mary who sat at his feet and
learned to labor and to wait.
We hear often enough about improving every
minute, and a diligent use of time is right.
President Wayland was fond of quoting to his
students at Brown University these words of
the first Napoleon, "Never waste a half hour:
if you do, the time will come when you will
be embarrassed, and perhaps will fail of your
destiny, for want of what you might have
gained in that half hour." Napoleon endeav
ored to make practical in his own career that
advice, and when, a man of war, he was asked
how he came by his knowledge of jurisprudence
such that a celebrated code bore his name, he
replied that once for a breach of military disci
pline he was under arrest and in confinement
for three weeks, and that in a corner of his
room was a pile of old books, and among them
the Pandects of Justinian, containing the ele-
[15]

Biblical Nature Studies
ments of Roman civil law. "By the time I was
ordered back to duty," he says, "I had fully
mastered that work; and, when the time and
occasion came, I was able to apply my knowl
edge. " That is a fine example of the impor
tance of keeping busily employed, and for lack
of this there not infrequently comes deep
regret. Sir Walter Scott slighted the studies of the
regular college curriculum, and did not grad
uate, but he afterward said, "It is with the
deepest regret that I recollect in my manhood
the opportunities of learning which I neglected
in my youth." This emphasizes the same
truth, that we should steadily apply ourselves
to the business in hand, that we should consider
time too valuable to be wasted.
Now all this we hear with sufficient frequency,
but the opposite truth we do not so often
have brought to our attention: Do not work
too hard, do not toil excessively for the bread
that perisheth, "take time to be holy," to cul
tivate the spiritual ; in the midst of your multi
form secularities, stop and think of what is
higher, "sit down upon the green grass," and
reflect. Even Thoreau, who was not known for
his deep religiousness, but only for his intense
love of nature as he roamed the woods around
Walden and elsewhere, rejoiced in being able to
say that by six weeks of manual toil he could get
enough to supply his simple wants physically
for a whole year, and that he could thus devote
[16]

Sitting Down Upon the Green Grass
all the rest of his time to intellectual pursuits,
and he did. He studied the habits of birds and
insects, and from the forest brought forth re
flections that went to form several unrivalled
volumes. He did not believe in toiling so much
for the temporal, but more for the intellectual.
He had his eccentricities, but we might well
follow his example to a certain extent, only
substituting the religious for the chief good.
We often are reluctant to quit our labor along
secular lines for one day in seven, we can hardly
give ourselves that respite, we hesitate to cease
our monotonous round for so long as that.
There is something to what Thoreau once said :
"The order of things should be reversed: the
seventh should be man's day of toil, in which
to earn his living by the sweat of his brow, and
the other six his Sabbath of the affections and
the soul, in which to range this wide-spread
garden, and drink in the soft influences and
sublime revelations of Nature." And yet for
the higher ends of existence, men generally in
stead of devoting six days a week thereto can
hardly give the seventh. They crowd the
Lord's Day itself full of the secular, they read
column after column of the daily newspaper,
until we feel like saying with the quaint char
acter already quoted, "Read not the Times,
read the Eternities." If the worn and weary
throngs would listen and obey, they would be
fed and refreshed, as were those of old, with
bread from heaven, and in the strength of that
[17]

Biblical Nature Studies
celestial food, of that spiritual nourishment,
they would be able like the prophet of God to
go another forty days' journey along the toil
some way of the desert.
"The calm retreat, the silent shade,
With prayer and praise agree,
And seem by thy sweet bounty made
For those who worship thee. ' '

[18]

II
MIRRORS, NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL

n
MIRRORS, NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL
We are to consider mirrors, natural and
spiritual. Visiting once the Yosemite Valley,
we were more impressed by it than with any
other American marvels which we have been
privileged to see. We do not except Niagara
with its thunders, and with its fascinating and
yet fearsome Rapids whirling madly along like
Jehu with his wild driving. We also felt the
matchless Valley lying among the high Sierras
to be superior to the Grand Canyon of Arizona,
with its yawning and stupendous chasm thir
teen miles wide at the surface, and more than
a mile deep down to the Colorado River at its
bottom, and with its towering walls resembling
cathedral and castle painted in the most varie
gated way by the divine Artist.
We preferred the Yosemite even to the Yel
lowstone Park, which is a veritable wonderland.
It has paint pots of boiling, bubbling mud. It
has pools of scalding water, and of colors giv
ing such names as Emerald and Morning Glory.
It has a punch bowl that ought not to be called
the devil's, as it is, when fit for the gods to
drink from, if they like their nectar hot. It has
an expansive lake at an altitude considerably
[21]

Biblical Nature Studies
higher than Mount Washington. It has a can
yon colored red and green and yellow and pur
ple and blue. It especially has phenomenal
geysers, like the majestic Giant springing into
the air 250 feet, and like Old Faithful lifting
a watery column of 250,000 gallons from its
growling throat, and holding it aloft 150 feet
for three or four minutes, and doing this
every seventy minutes with the regularity of
clockwork. Notwithstanding all these wonders of the
Yellowstone, we still give the palm to the Yo
semite Valley, closed in with gigantic rock
formations, like El Capitan rising almost per
pendicularly 3,200 feet above the floor of the
valley, itself being 4,000 feet above the sea level,
while at the other end of the gorge the great
Half Dome has an elevation of 8,737 feet. Aside
from the grandeur of these granite heights,
there is the sylvan beauty of a meadowy vale,
through which winds a murmuring river. There
are attractive Falls, like the Bridal Veil, whose
silvery mist with rainbow hues constitutes a
delicate, filmy creation such as a celestial bride
might aspire to wear. Then there is the great
Yosemite Fall seeming to leap from the sky
itself with nothing visible beyond, and plunging
down a half mile with a continuous roar that
makes your every nerve tingle. There is again
the shelving rock at Glacier Point projecting
out over the valley at such a dizzy height, that
rarely is there a person level-headed and
[22]

Mirrors, Natural and Spiritual
steady -brained enough to creep out to the edge
for a look downward of 3,300 feet, though occa
sionally there is one foolhardy enough to stand
on his hands or head on that stone jutting out
into space.
After all these revelations we nevertheless in
a sense reach our culminating point of interest,
as in the freshness of the early morning we
repair to what is little more than a pond, that
yet is a gem, nestling at the base of beetling
cliffs. We gaze down into the placid water and
see not only the massive Half Dome outlined
there, but we also see the sun by reflection rise
several times. The surrounding mountains are
such, that the orb of day rising above one height
appears in the crystal depth below. Then it
disappears behind a high cliff, only to appear
again as it mounts still higher to an opening,
and this it does repeatedly, and we have seen
the sun rise a succession of times in what has
very properly been called — Mirror Lake.
In the Canadian Rockies every one is
charmed, as the writer has been, with the
reflecting features of Lake Louise, nestling like
Lake Mohonk in the Catskills among the ever
lasting hills at an altitude of 5,645 feet. There
Mount Victoria, 11,326 feet high, sees herself
with her beautiful white crown of snow con
trasting pleasantly with the emerald and some
times bluish hue of the waters. Ascending
directly from the shore something over 1,000
feet, and you are at "the lakes in the clouds,"
[23]

Biblical Nature Studies
one of which, for an obvious reason, is expressly
called Mirror Lake.
The Adirondacks, too, have not only their
Lake Placid but also its close companion, Mir
ror Lake, and in Otsego Lake we have James
Fenimore Cooper's " glimmer glass" with its
unfading literary associations, while there is re
called what the writer of the "Leather-Stocking
Tales" says so pleasingly, "A broad sheet of
water, so placid and limpid that it resembled
a bed of pure mountain atmosphere, com
pressed into a setting of hills and woods. On
all sides, wherever the eye turned, nothing met
it but the mirror-like surface of the lake, the
placid view of heaven, and the dense setting of
the woods."
It is the same east and west, north and south.
Of a well-known glassy expanse in Maine,
included in a New England itinerary of mine,
Whittier has said:
' ' Around Sebago 's lonely lake
There lingers not a breeze to break
The mirror which its waters make. ' '
Like this, if Milton's poetic inspiration be cor
rect, was the looking glass which our mother
Eve had at the very beginning of human his
tory. At the "murmuring sound of waters,"
the blind bard makes her say, "I thither went
With unexperienced thought, and laid me down
On the green bank, to look into the clear
Smooth lake that to me seemed another sky.
[24]

Mirrors, Natural and Spiritual
As I bent down to look, just opposite
A shape within the watery gleam appeared,
Bending to look on me. I started back;
It started back ; but pleased I soon returned,
Pleased it returned as soon with answering looks
Of sympathy and love. There had I fixed
Mine eyes till now, and pined with vain desire,
Had not a voice thus warned me: What thou seest,
What there thou seest, fair creature, is thyself. ' '
Scarcely thus had she come to consciousness,
and before she had yet seen Adam, she was
casting shy, admiring glances at herself re
flected in an Edenic lake, a very characteristic
thing for a woman to do even in her primeval
innocence. Then Byron makes the mirror to have been
quite ancient, when he says of the ocean, ' ' Thou
glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
glasses itself," and Job represents the trans
lucent, overarching sky to be "as a molten
mirror." Mirrors of polished metal were in
early use. Hebrew women had them in the time
of Moses, as we learn from the book of Exodus,
and it must be said to their credit, that they
gave up their bronze mirrors to make the laver
of brass for the tabernacle where they wor
shipped. Glass mirrors with coated or silvered
backs seem to have originated at Venice some
thing over three centuries ago. But aside from
what nature and art have furnished us along
this line, we have another kind of mirror as
indicated in the Scripture, "We all, with un
veiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory
of the Lord, are transformed into the same
[25]

Biblical Nature Studies
image from glory to glory." It is the Bible
wherein is reflected the highest beauty. The
gospel is a looking glass which God has made
for our use.
There is suggested, first, how we are to look,
"with unveiled face." In the chapter contain
ing this striking passage, Paul condemns the
way in which the Jews were accustomed to read
the Old Testament. They paid more attention
to the letter than to the spirit. They were al
ways looking after outward ceremonies. This
formalism, this lack of sincere desire for spirit
ual impressions, the apostle compares to a veil
which prevented clearness and correctness of
vision. Now we are to look, he says with un
veiled face. We are to put away all self-right
eous legalism, and we are to be reverent and
humble and devout in the study of the Word,
willing to learn and obey. We are not to look
into the gospel system with complacent satis
faction in ourselves, and with finical dissat
isfaction at the conduct of others. That is what
we do when we pride ourselves on our morality,
and when we are constantly hitting at the in
consistencies of others. That is Pharisaism,
and the proud moralist is a Pharisee. He in the
long ago felt his superiority to other men. He
had such a holy horror of the manner in which
others lived, that he had no indignation left for
himself. Try to fix the attention of such a one now
upon his own sinfulness and consequent need of
[26]

Mirrors, Natural and Spiritual
salvation, and he is sure to go off into denun
ciation of others. If at last you manage to hold
him to the subject, to himself, he will begin
a process of self-glorification; he is strictly
moral, not an extortioner, not unjust, nor even
as that publican, and away he goes with his
animadversion upon some one else again. Edi
son, whom we admire for his scientific and
inventive attainments, did that a while ago in
assailing preachers, and in saying that if there
was a heaven, he would get there sooner than
they, thus holding himself up before the pub
lic, with his smug sort of goodness, as quite
a model. No one can take this supercilious
attitude before God, and be blessed. His face
is veiled, self-righteousness intervenes between
him and the gospel mirror.
There could not be a better illustration of
those whose only religion consists of fault
finding with others. They are blind to their
own condition. Their sight is blurred by the
veil of self-righteousness which they have on.
They know a good deal about Christianity, but
they do not grasp its inner meaning, its spirit
ual and personal import. Not matter of fact,
self-satisfied glances in the mirror, but earnest
attention is what gives the true image mirrored
there. This is what the inspired James says :
"If any one is a hearer of the word, and not
a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his
natural face in a mirror : for he beholdeth him
self, and goeth away, and straightway forget-
[27]

Biblical Nature Studies
teth what manner of man he was." No close
inspection is indicated there. One looks into
the glass as a matter of habit, and off he goes,
with no definite impression except that he is all
fair enough. The survey is anything but search
ing. "But he that looketh into the perfect
law, the law of liberty, and so continueth, being
not a hearer that forgetteth, but a doer that
worketh, this man shall be blessed in his doing. "
He looks long and intently, and is rewarded
with very distinct impressions, which are by no
means altogether favorable, and which make
him set to work on improving himself. That
is the way to look, not with the veil of self-
satisfaction dimming the glass, but with all the
intensity of unveiled face, eager to learn our
imperfections, in order that we may know just
what to do, and that doing it we may grow up
toward perfection.
It is the self-complacent person, and not the
penitent and saved sinner, who acts the part of
Narcissus in the classical tale of old. He saw
nothing to admire in the beautiful nymphs of
the woods and hills. They were lovely as god
desses, but he saw in them nothing to attract.
One day, however, he came to a clear, silvery
fountain, with verdant banks, and sheltered
from the hot sun by cool rocks. He saw re
flected therein his own image, of which he at
once became enamored. He fairly adored the
beloved object mirrored in the water, the bright
eyes, the full cheeks, the ivory neck, the godlike
[28]

Mirrors, Natural and Spiritual
head of hair, and the ruddy countenance that
glowed with health. He thrust his arms into
the fountain to embrace the fair one, but it
fled like a fairy creature ; then, after a moment
when the water had become still and placid
again, it returned, and beamed upon him from
the crystal depths. He just doted upon his own
reflection, till he lost his appetite, his health,
his beauty, and he finally pined away and died.
Even when his shade crossed the Stygian river,
he leaned over the boat to admire the reflection
of himself in the deep, dark water. Thus he
passed away, self-satisfied to the last, and from
his decomposed body sprang a lone flower, all
that remained of him who once was so fair, and
the Narcissus, bearing his name, is his only
memorial. He evidently did not have clearness
of spiritual vision, to see in himself so much
with which to be pleased. He well represents
the self-righteous moralist, whose eyes are
veiled. We are to look with unveiled face, and
thus get the true impression of our imperfect
characters, which thereupon we will try to im
prove, and especially when we also realize our
mortality, that soon these frames of ours will
pass into shrub and flower. But there can be
the emergence and beauty of the immortal, if
we get the correct estimate of ourselves in the
gospel mirror.
For what, next, are we to look in our spiritual
reflector? This has already been negatively
answered, that we are not to be infatuated with
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Biblical Nature Studies
our own, as it seems to us, fair image. But
more positively we are to gaze upon him who
is "fairer than the sons of men." Says Paul,
"beholding as in a mirror the glory of the
Lord. ' ' That is a novel use to make of looking-
glasses. Their design has "been supposed to
be for contemplating one's own beautiful ap
pearance, or, nicely and even exquisitely
wrought, they themselves have been works of
art, objects of beauty. Chrysostom, the elo
quent Greek preacher of the fourth century, had
to rebuke the ladies of his time for the extrav
agant fashion of silver mirrors. Seneca, the
Roman philosopher of the first century, had
occasion to speak with disapproval of golden
mirrors. The gospel mirror is neither itself
the thing to be admired, nor is it for admiring
ourselves. The glory of the Lord primarily is
reflected. Christ in all his loveliness, the chief -
est among ten thousand, is what we are to look
for. And our mind must not be all taken up
with the external history of the God-man.
Many a person with a keen appreciation of the
dramatic, of the poetic, of the true and good
and beautiful, can read the story and pronounce
it wonderful. One may feel that the Bible is
the best of all books, that the Christian system
is beautiful, and yet lack the one thing needful.
He may be all absorbed in the mirror itself,
while never seeing the resplendent face within.
Not bare acquaintance with the gospel, but ex
perimental or experiential knowledge of Christ
[30]

Mirrors, Natural and Spiritual
in the gospel, is most important. The mirror
is beautiful, but the glory of the Lord in it is
more beautiful. Not the reflector but the one
reflected is what especially demands attention,
and that one is not man so much as the God-
man. At any rate Christ is the chief figure
appearing in the glass.
The face of the natural man is there delin
eated also, and yet to any but a Narcissus,
one's own moral visage is so black and repel
ling, that he instinctively turns to the glorious
countenance at the center. The metallic mirror
of the ancients was supported by a handle, on
which was sometimes carved the face of a mon
ster, as a kind of foil, ' ' serving as a contrast, ' '
says another, "to the features whose beauty was
displayed within." What now are we to look
for in the gospel mirror! The beauty of the
Lord, and if you wish to heighten that beauty,
contrast it with the image of the natural man.
That will answer the same purpose as the mon
ster face on the handle of the ancient mirror.
It will make Christ appear the all in all, every
thing, as he should be. The epistle to the He
brews sums up this thought in three words,
"looking unto Jesus," or, "beholding as in a
mirror the glory of the Lord, ' ' seeing there our
own moral repulsiveness, but more particularly
his moral beauty, even "the beauty of the
Lord." The result of the looking is next indicated,
"are transformed in the same image." It is
[31]

Biblical Nature Studies
the principle of like producing like, of outward
circumstances influencing inward spirit. Let
one look on beautiful objects, and he is more
apt to grow beautiful. People partake more
or less of the nature of their surroundings.
One can pass through a crowded train and tell
pretty accurately the general characteristics of
the homes which the different travellers have
left, from their personal appearance, from their
looks. Some have attributed the handsome
forms of the ancient Greeks to the multitude
of graceful statues, which passers-by could
feast their eyes upon in the gardens and places
of public resort. At any rate, we become in a
degree like what we see every day. And so
if we fix our attention upon Christ as reflected
in the gospel, we must become Christ-like.
When the spiritual eyesight dwells upon a char
acter so transcendently perfect, an impression
is left.
The science of optics teaches that seeing with
the natural eyes is the formation of the object
upon an internal nervous tissue called the ret
ina, the thing looked at is photographed there,
imaged in the eye. With the eyes of faith con
template that divine person mirrored in the
gospel, and the apostle's language will be very
appropriate, Christ "formed in you," on the
soul-retina. Indeed one would think from the
way Paul wrote, that he was actually two per
sons. "I live," he says, "Yet no longer I, but
Christ liveth in me." There was the old self,
[32]

Mirrors, Natural and Spiritual
and then transforming it was the new spirit
within. If we would put the old man off and
the new man on, if we would be transformed
into the same image as Christ, we have only
with unveiled face, with sincerity, to behold as
in a mirror the glory of the Lord. Look at
him as photographed in the New Testament,
and his impression will be made on the heart.
Keep the eyes upon him, and he will be formed
within. That is the result of peering earnestly
into God's looking glass; one is changed into
the same image as the glorious person mirrored
there. The change, however, is gradual, "trans
formed into the same image from glory to
glory. ' ' At first it may be only a faint impres
sion, but it soon becomes a deep reality, Christ
actually forming, as it were, in the heart. The
formation is never complete in this world.
There is progress. "Now we see in a mirror
darkly," says the chief of the apostles. At the
best we only get a reflection of God in the Bible.
We have to use an indistinct mirror, and so
after all we see him only dimly in this life, "but
then," it is added, "face to face." That will
be a beatific vision, when we gaze lovingly and
adoringly not into God's looking glass but into
his own face. "It is not yet made manifest
what we shall be," says the beloved disciple,
who continues, "we know that, if he shall be
manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall
see him even as he is." We shall no longer
[33]

Biblical Nature Studies
see any faint reflection of him in a mirror, but
we shall see him as he actually is. And why
shall we be like him? "For we shall see him."
It is still the same principle at work, the being
transformed into likeness to what we look at,
growing like what most has our attention. And
when ultimately we awake in the divine like
ness, we too, like the psalmist, ' ' shall be satis
fied," for we shall see him no longer darkly, in
a mirror, with vagueness, with a certain blur,
but as he is, face to face.
While we have seen that the Bible is a look
ing glass to reflect God, it has been aptly said
that ' ' the Christian is the world 's Bible. ' ' The
written Word is often but slightly scanned,
but disciples, says inspiration, are epistles
"known and read of all men." They are
watched with the closest scrutiny. They never
escape observation, they are read through and
through. Every page of their life is scruti
nized, and many a place is marked to be re
ferred to afterward with sneers. Not an
unseemly story, not a disgraceful chapter, is
passed over. Indeed such parts are singled
out, and learned by heart, and gloated over.
To be sure, critics like buzzards hasten by
everything sweet in a character, and fix upon
the putrid spots, but that is all the more reason
for keeping such spots out. In other words,
the Lord's followers should be true Bibles
throughout, untarnished mirrors, to reflect God
and not to reflect on God. Imperfections of
[34]

Mirrors, Natural and Spiritual
character do dishonor him, they are blemishes
on the mirror.
The more any catch of the radiance shining
out from that face in the gospel, the clearer
and purer will be the light radiated from them
to others. Daily should they be transformed
into the divine image. Then as the world ex
amines their life, it will be looking into a glass
showing in each a face Christ-like in all the
graces, and thus still others shall be changed
into the same image from glory to glory. And
yet, do the best that any can, they will only be,
according to another rendering of the passage,
"reflecting as in a mirror the glory of the
Lord." They will be reflecting Christ only
' ' darkly, ' ' they will be giving the world a very
indistinct and inadequate conception of what
their Master really is. Nevertheless, others
must take knowledge of them that they have
been with Jesus, getting from them some idea
of the Christ-like. Though they reflect only
dimly the Lord's glory, even that will make its
impression. If they keep steadily before them
the transfigured one, eventually there will be
made upon them an abiding impression, increas
ingly there will be awakened in them an earnest
desire and purpose to become more and more
like their great Exemplar, while there con
stantly goes on religious transmutation of sin
ful human life, Christian transformation of
character. [35]

Ill
THE MIRAGE OF THE DESERT

Ill
THE MIRAGE OF THE DESERT
Many have no idea that there is any mention
of the mirage in the Bible, but there is. It
occurs in connection with Isaiah's well-known
references to the desert, when he says that the
parched ground or the glowing sand shall be
come a pool. The marginal and literal render
ing is, ' ' And the mirage shall become a pool. ' '
In close connection a barren and sandy waste
is represented. It is farther portrayed as un
dergoing a marvelous transformation, "The
wilderness and solitary place shall be glad;
and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the
rose." It is by drawing such contrasts between fer
tility and sterility, that we get the truest con
ception of the desert. Accordingly there are
allusions to Carmel and Sharon and Bashan
and Lebanon. Each of these names is very
suggestive to the Old Testament reader of
beauty and fruitfulness, contrasting strongly
with what the prophet describes as "dust" and
"burning pitch." Every tourist, who crosses
the Continent to Southern California, and who
from the Mojave desert drops down over the
mountains into San Bernardino with its orange
[39]

Biblical Nature Studies
groves, can appreciate what the sacred writer
tries to set forth.
Or, we call to mind Sahara, Africa's vast
stretch of hot sand, three thousand miles in
extreme length, and a thousand on an average
in width. It has no rainfall, it has a climate of
burning aridity, the temperature under a ver
tical sun sometimes rising to two hundred de
grees. There is no verdure to absorb the rays,
but, glowing sand everywhere, like an oven,
reflects them seven times heated. There are
no bracing breezes, but only simoons and other
furnace-like winds, which carry with them
clouds of the dry, red particles that are like
fine, hot shot to assail the face. Very properly
has the question been agitated as to whether
this dreary waste cannot be reclaimed for vege
tation and for cultivation, by reconverting part
of it into a sea like that which at no remote
geological period, probably during the glacial
epoch, did roll over the sandy bottom. It has
been proposed to cut a canal, and let the At
lantic or Mediterranean sweep in, if possibly
thereby the atmosphere might be modified, and
the wilderness and solitary place might be made
glad, the desert being made to rejoice and
blossom as the rose. That would be a glorious
transformation, justifying Isaiah's exuberant
description. Now there is a desert more immense than
Mojave or Sahara. As another has said,
"Earth is a desert drear." This life has been
[40]

The Mirage of the Desert
called a wilderness of woe. There may be and
are pleasant oases, there may be and is for
us the "shadow of a great rock in a weary
land," and yet in the main we are crossing an
arid desert, with burning sands beneath our
feet and with a glowing sun above our heads.
Ours at present is more largely than is agree
able the torrid zone, is what one of the Lord's
parables calls "the burden and heat of the
day," or, as the Revised Version has it, "the
scorching heat. ' '
With the desert thus indicated, we come next
to the mirage thereon. All are acquainted with
this strange natural phenomenon, with this op
tical illusion. There is the appearance of water
ahead for the thirsty traveller, but the treach
erous lake ever recedes. It seems real, but it
is all a delusion. Says Southey,
' ' Still the same burning sun ! no cloud in heaven !
The hot air quivers, and the sultry mist
Floats o'er the desert, with a show
Of distant waters mocking their distress. ' '
The deception is most complete. The apparent
lake sometimes is dotted with little islands. It
may have an undulatory surface, while its heav
ing bosom is traversed by shadows chasing one
another in the most natural manner. Shade
trees occasionally are seen on its shore, which
rippling waves seem to lave. But the deceitful
sheet of water retreats as fast as one advances.
It is never overtaken. It is a mirage, which
[41]

Biblical Nature Studies
often occurs in the moral as well as in the
physical world.
Must we ever be disappointed? Certainly
not, for the glowing sand, the mirage, shall
become a pool. That is, the illusive appearance
of a lake shall become a real body of water.
The same prophet says elsewhere, ' ' They shall
not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat
smite them: for he that hath mercy on them
shall lead them, even by the springs of water. ' '
The margin again says, "neither shall the
mirage smite them," for God shall lead them
where there is cool, springing water. He does
not disappoint souls thirsting for righteous
ness. He does not allure them on by any
mirage. Jeremiah did once feel that God was leading
him deceptively on, and in his distress he cried
out, "Wilt thou indeed be unto me as a deceit
ful brook, as waters that fail?" There may
be here an allusion to the mirage, although the
word is not directly used, as it is the two times
by Isaiah. Both prophets, however, were as
sured that God never does disappoint ; nay, he
alone turns the appearance of a lake into the
genuine thing. "The mirage shall become a
pool," is the assertion, which is followed with
the explanation, "and the thirsty ground
springs of water," which is preceded also
by the explanatory, "for in the wilderness shall
waters break out, and streams in the desert."
Only the irreligious and unbelieving are mocked
[42]

The Mirage of the Desert
by the ever-receding lake, are tantalized like
Tantalus, who in the Grecian tale stood to the
chin in water which yet constantly eluded him
in his insatiable thirst. Mohammed was right
when he said in the Koran, "As for those who
believe not, their works are like the mirage
of the plain: the thirsty imagines it to be
water, but when he reaches it he finds it is
nothing. ' '
Wherein practically does the mirage consist?
For one thing, pleasure is sought, but it does
not satisfy. People go into society to have
the yearnings of their natures met. They in
dulge in the gaieties of social life, but they tire
of these as they grow older. They find that
they have been chasing a mirage. In the Sum
mer season again, thousands visit the great
fashionable resorts. They crowd the mountain
houses, which are being erected in greater and
greater numbers annually. They camp out in
the high Sierras, or in the matchless Yosemite
Valley, where majesty and loveliness are com
bined. They throng watering places. They go
to Saratoga with its single hotels capable of
accommodating two thousand guests. They
make the lake shore resound with their merri
ment, as they go from point to point on excur
sion boats, with bands playing and flags flying.
They walk the beach of old ocean, and listen
to its anthem rolled up in the great tidal organ-
swells of the Almighty. They pour out of city
and town in long trains in search of quiet nooks
[43]

Biblical Nature Studies
in the country. They penetrate unbroken for
ests, and canoe and fish in limpid streams, and
level their cameras at deer that start up sur
prised at their first sight of the human face.
They patronize ocean liners, and travel from
country to country all alive with the historic,
and full of masterpieces of art, both painting
and sculpture, and abounding in superb natural
scenery. Why all this movement, and stir? It
is for pleasure. But in a few weeks all are
weary of it, and are glad to get back to home
and regular work. At any rate, they have not
found permanent satisfaction for their restless
natures. They have pursued a mirage, so far
as the meeting of their deeper and their spirit
ual needs is concerned.
Neither does wealth, desirable as this may be
and is, fill for them the aching void. Their
ambition is to become rich as Croesus, who,
when he wanted a picture of his baking woman,
could afford to have a life-size statue made of
her in solid gold, and who according to classical
story could resort to other like extravagances.
What colossal fortunes men accumulate now-
a-days! They do become rich as Croesus, and
richer. They build palatial residences, sur
rounded with ample grounds which are beauti
ful Edens. They travel in their own private
railroad car, which is elegant beyond descrip
tion. They have their automobiles and their
yachts, and even airships. Are they happy and
contented? They are not, and in their sober
[44]

The Mirage of the Desert
moments they endorse the wisdom of the
proverb, "Give me neither poverty nor riches;
Feed me with the food that is needful for me."
They may even say with the richest man, of
whom we are informed in Holy Writ, "Better
is a handful with quietness, than both the hands
full with travail and vexation of spirit. ' ' Many
a millionaire, in the midst of urban heat and
dust, in the midst of the stress and strain of
unrelenting and exacting business, recalling
' ' An old farm-house with meadows wide,
And sweet with clover on each side, ' '
can still farther say with the poetess,
' ' O, could I only tread once more
The field-path to the farm-house door,
The old, green meadow could I see,
How happy, happy, happy,
How happy I should be."
As to how superabundant means may be only
disquieting instead of heart-satisfying finds
illustration in a tale of the Alhambra, the mem
ory of a visit to which still lingers pleasantly
with me. Among the legends connected with
this beautiful ruin of Moorish splendor in
Spain, none is more charming than that of the
"two discreet statues," as related by Washing
ton Irving in his inimitable way. A beggar
occupied a dilapidated apartment in Granada's
towered height. He was a little, merry fellow,
who was the gardener of the place. With his
[45]

Biblical Nature Studies
happy-go-lucky ways he was a favorite among
the poverty-stricken inmates of the once glori
ous palace and fortress combined. He always
had his joke, and his guitar helped to diffuse
merriment. He had never a care.
But one day his young daughter found a
carved, black hand, which turned out to be a
Moorish talisman that gave her admission to
chambers beneath the Alhambra, where Boab-
dil, the last of the Moors to reign over Granada,
held a phantom court, and where from an
enchanted lady she learned a secret that was
to make her father wealthy. She had often
seen the two nymphs of alabaster at the portal
of the vaults beneath the tower of Comares.
Her attention was now called to what she had
never noticed before, to the fact that both
turned their gaze within the vaulted chambers,
and were looking at the same point. She Was
informed that if her father some night with her
help would examine the wall exactly there, he
would discover treasures which would relieve
him of the necessity of gardening any more.
From the eyes of the two statuesque females
he, when unobserved, drew lines to the point of
convergence, and marked the precise place on
the wall, and then eagerly awaited the dark
ness. But even the hope of riches spoiled his
happiness, his quietude of mind. He feared
that some one else would discover the secret.
He wished the two statues would look in some
other direction, and not betray where the
[46]

The Mirage of the Desert
treasures were. Just as if they had not
been fixing their eyes upon that very spot for
centuries. The former happy but now much perturbed
gardener was suspicious of every visitor, and
was sure that every such person might note how
the two feminine statues were watching the
enchanted riches. "They are just like all their
sex," he at last grumbled to himself, "if they
have not tongues to tattle with, they'll be sure
to do it with their eyes." But the two marble
females, who had guarded the secret ever since
the expelled Moors hid the treasures there, did
not betray their trust, and that night when the
place was opened, two large porcelain jars,
filled with gold and jewels, when touched by
the hand of the daughter with her magical
charm came forth to make the discoverer and
his family independent for life. But again was
he disturbed in mind as to a place of safety for
his sudden riches. He feared robbers in his
insecure habitation, where formerly he had
slept peacefully with doors unlocked. He wor
ried, he lost his gaiety, and his friends, who
were not pleased with his anxious looks and
melancholy ways (which they understood not),
who left him more and more to his devices, till
he was lonely and miserable, whereas he once
had been the life of a considerable circle. Now
all this, fable though it be, shows that wealth
does not bring felicity, and may even substitute
wretchedness. The tale proves this, even
[47]

Biblical Nature Studies
though we do get one more glimpse of Irving's
quaint character at Malaga with his coach-and-
six, living in luxury, and mingling with Span
ish grandees. Like others he finally had to part
with all his possessions. Does wealth satisfy?
Eventually it all, be it more or less, has to be
left behind. Fleeting riches are nothing but
a mirage, they "make themselves wings," as
Scripture says, and very few comparatively
attain them at all, for they recede from the
grasp like the rainbow with its fabled pot of
gold, and the folly of chasing rainbows we all
recognize. Coveted fame is equally disappointing at the
last. How soon all except the very greatest, and
these exceedingly meager in number, are prac
tically if not quite forgotten ! How many of the
emperors of Rome through the centuries can
the average person name? Some, to be sure,
like Marcus Aurelius and Constantine, but not
many. How many of the lettered men of
Greece? Some, of course, like Homer and
Plato, and Pindar and Sophocles, but they can
be counted on the fingers of the two hands.
How many of the prominent generals belonging
to so recent and familiar history as that of our
Revolutionary War? The long ages of China's
existence, and of Japan's, and of India's, and
even of Russia's, are almost a blank in our
minds. We could not so much as pronounce
the names of their celebrities. What count
less thousands, esteemed celebrated in their day
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The Mirage of the Desert
and generation, at present lie enshrouded in
oblivion !
Visit an old cemetery, and most of the names,
if they can be read at all on the crumbling or
weather-beaten stones, stand for nothing after
the lapse of about a century, and we only know
that such lived and died, having mingled amid
such scenes as we do at present. Besides, if
one does rise to a brief eminence, how unsatis
factory it is according to the best testimony!
Shakespeare well makes Henry the Sixth to
say in admiration of the shepherd's humble lot:
' ' Ah, what a life were this ! how sweet I how lovely !
Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep,
Than doth a rich embroidered canopy
To kings that fear their subjects' treachery?"
The winter of time plays havoc with nearly
every one's fame, as the winter of misfortune
did with the greatness of the proud minister
of Henry the Eighth. Verily worldly distinc
tion, without spiritual attainment, is a mirage
alluring on to certain disappointment.
But when the divine is sought, the mirage
becomes a pool, becomes springs of water.
Entirely proper is the seeking of pleasures,
which however should not be the pleasures of
sin for a season, or even brief innocent recrea
tions and enjoyments, so much as the pleasures
forevermore. Perfectly right is the pursuit of
riches, but only as we lay up treasures in
heaven will the mirage be displaced by the
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real satisfying waters of eternal possessions.
Wholly legitimate is the desire to live in the
hereafter, but there is no elixir of immortality
in the dancing bauble of mere worldly fame;
we should seek "the blessed and only Poten
tate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords, who
only," says an apostle, "hath immortality."
It is thus that the mirage ceases to smite for
travellers over life's dreary waste, for those
who have the life and purpose and spirit of the
Christ. This world in all its various aspects is like
the ever-promising, yet ever-deceptive, and
ever-disappointing mirage, but a religious ex
perience makes the mirage a cool lake, and the
glowing sand a blossoming garden. Seeking
first the kingdom, not pleasure or wealth or
fame, the weary land then has the shadow
of a great rock, and the delightful oasis, and
eventually it shall be clothed throughout with
verdure and beauty and fruitfulness. The Sa
hara of life shall increasingly here and entirely
hereafter be transformed into the heavenly
Paradise. Christian faith changes disappoint
ment to realization, as she looks farther into
the future than we are wont to do. Tennyson
has well said of faith,
' ' She spies the summer thro ' the winter bud,
She tastes the fruit before the blossom falls,
She hears the lark within the songless egg,
She finds the fountain where they wail 'd Mirage ! ' '
It is after this fashion that the trying, blister-
[50]

The Mirage of the Desert
ing desert gives way to fair, refreshing Beulah
land, which can be the inheritance of all, and
which alone is permanent and soul-satisfying.
' ' Life has many a pleasant hour,
Many a bright and cloudless day ;
Singing bird and smiling flower,
Scatter sunbeams on our way;
But the sweetest blossoms grow
In the land to which we go. ' '
The desert will have blossomed as the rose, and
the mirage will have become a mere memory.

[51]

IV
THE TREES

IV
THE TREES
It is a refreshing change to turn from the
desert to the trees. These have their lessons
to convey. Shakespeare "finds tongues in
trees," and we are to listen to them as they
speak. One of the oldest parables in any lit
erature is that in the book of the Judges, where
the trees are represented as gathered in a sort
of political convention to choose a king. The
first to be nominated was the olive, and as the
shout went up, "Reign thou over us," we can
imagine the tumultuous applause that must
have run through the waving branches. But
the king-elect saw no reason for leaving its
"fatness," its productive power for good, for
the doubtful honor of exaltation "to wave to
and fro over the trees. ' ' The declination caused
a momentary lull, and then there was the sud
den nomination of the fig-tree, and the music
of ' ' Hail to the Chief ' ' must have broken from
all the excited and leafy boughs. Again was
there a refusal to cease yielding "sweetness
and good fruit ' ' for an empty promotion. After
this there must have been whisperings here and
there throughout the gathering, till sentiment
seemed to crystallize once more with the nam-
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Biblical Nature Studies
ing of the vine, and all the trees clapped their
hands. But this nominee arose and with a
graceful and sweeping bow likewise refused to
leave its "new wine," its good cheer for all,
for the purpose of lording it over the rest. Not
till the bramble had been nominated, was there
an eager acceptance of the position, and out of
it with its power to lacerate came speedily
destructive ' ' fire, ' ' involving all in ruin.
This was a most striking lesson in democ
racy, condemnatory of the ambitious and un
principled politician in civic life, of the impe
rious and selfish leader in society, and of the
domineering man or woman, loving to have the
preeminence, in the church. The modest work
ers uniting their various gifts are to be desired
in preference to the selfishly aspiring. Of
course there must be those who take the initi
ative, and those who must be followers, in every
movement, and this is right and necessary so
long as the former regard themselves as acting
only in a representative capacity. Many are to
be reproved, because they do not recognize
their responsibility.
In the sphere of civics particularly, a good
man cannot leave his fatness, his wealth, his
making of money wherewith to serve God and
man, he says, in order to go and vote. He can
not leave "home, sweet home," to go out and
cast his ballot. He will settle down amid the
comfort of the domestic circle, and neglect his
duty as a citizen. He cannot even leave his
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The Trees
pleasures, his pursuit of life's good cheer, to
go out and deposit a thunderous No, when the
licensing of the liquor traffic is involved. He
cannot meet a public trust by so much as taking
his turn in accepting an elective office for a
period. The result is, the bad man, the cor
rupt citizen, comes to the front, and soon a city
is torn with contention and strife because of a
reign of graft and immorality. The bramble is
always ready to jump into a position where
there is an opportunity to gain personal ad
vantage, and by and by the body politic is lacer
ated with thorns, or a community is ravaged, as
it were, with devastating flames.
There is another Old Testament scene that is
very instructive, when the mulberry-trees gave
a signal for battle, like that stirring one of
Nelson in a crisis, "England expects every man
to do his duty. ' ' David carried victory against
his Philistine enemies, because he heeded this
divine admonition, "And it shall be, when thou
hearest the sound of marching in the tops of
the mulberry-trees, that then thou shalt bestir
thyself. ' ' Not always do the trees speak to us
of quiet, for sometimes the lively moving of
their foliage is a summons to us for action.
Beneath over-arching branches, ours should not
constantly be dreamy musings, for there are
times when we should awake to the call of duty.
We need occasionally to be roused out of repose,
to be stirred to strenuous endeavor. There is
a soul agitation, that sometimes is desirable,
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Biblical Nature Studies
leading to right conduct, when Isaiah's words
shall be fulfilled in our experience. Of a Bibli
cal monarch and of those over whom he ruled,
the prophet said, "And his heart trembled, and
the heart of his people, as the trees of the forest
tremble with the wind. ' ' Devoutly to be wished
for is the spiritual sensitiveness to divine mov-
ings therein pictured.
Getting in still closer touch with our subject,
it is to be observed that we rightly form real
attachments for trees. On the farm of my boy
hood there was a hill clothed with sugar maples
to its summit, and there a stately elm towered
above them all, and outlined its top against the
sky. My father would come in of an evening
and remark, "It is a very dark night, for the
old elm cannot be seen." In the gloom he
seemed to miss its companionship, its message
of cheer and brightness from the top of the
mountain. There must be something wrong
with us, if we do not come to love certain trees,
both for themselves, and because of associa
tions that may be very dear. Sluggish must
be the heart that does not respond to the senti
ment of the writer of "Woodman, spare that
tree." ¦ ' When but an idle boy
I sought its grateful shade;
In all their gushing joy
Here too my sisters played.
My mother kissed me here:
My father pressed my hand —
Forgive this foolish tear,
But let that old oak stand."
[58]

The Trees
We cannot wonder very much that our an
cestors in England, the Druids, worshipped the
oak, in view of what Dryden says of the same :
' ' The monarch oak, the patriarch of the trees,
Shoots rising up, and spreads by slow degrees;
Three centuries he grows, and three he stays
Supreme in state — and in three more decays. ' '
Surely there is in it, with its nearly thousand
years of existence, "more abundant life" than
in man, who perishes after the brief period of
three score and ten years. Think of the suc
cessive human generations that pass away dur
ing the lifetime of a single monarch of the
forest. We can say with Cowper,
"It seems idolatry with some excuse
When our forefather Druids in their oaks
Imagined sanctity."
It, however, is not of oak or elm, of maple or
birch, of pine or fir, that we are specifically to
speak, but of exclusively Biblical trees. We
read regarding Solomon, "And he spake of
trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon even
unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall."
He made an exhaustive study of forestry. What
particularly he said about the trees is uncer
tain. He may have treated of them under the
head of natural history, or he may have used
them to illustrate divine truth. Josephus says,
"He spake a parable upon every sort of tree,
from the hyssop to the cedar. ' ' This, undoubt-
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Biblical Nature Studies
edly, is the correct conclusion, for though the
work has been lost, there are in his extant writ
ings references to the trees, and in these spirit
ual lessons are conveyed. It is he who in a
proverb compares wisdom to a "tree of life."
If then we could have his treatise, we certainly
would be very much instructed even from a re
ligious standpoint. But other sacred writers
furnish us with suggestions here.
Take the smallest mentioned, which is little
more than a shrub, the hyssop. It was used to
sprinkle the blood of the Paschal lamb upon the
door-posts of the Israelites, when all Egypt's
first-born were slain, except in those houses
which were passed over by the destroying angel
at the sight of the blood drops. It was also
used in various rites of purification, and hence
the Psalmist cries :
"Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean:
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. ' '
This cleansing from sin is what every one to
day needs. He should be the hyssop to receive
the precious blood of the spotless Lamb of God,
and to sprinkle it upon other defiled souls.
This is the starting-point, the small shrub, the
hyssop springing out of the wall, and Isaiah
says, "thou shalt call thy walls Salvation,"
and the foundation stone therein is the Rock of
Ages, clinging to which the hyssop can sing
(for we read in the Chronicles, "Then shall the
trees of the wood sing,") :
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The Trees
' ' Saviour, more than life to me,
I am clinging, clinging close to thee;
Let thy precious blood applied,
Keep me ever, ever near thy side. ' '
So much for the hyssop springing out of the
wall, for the very commencement of the re
ligious life. It is a life of natural helplessness,
and of clinging faith.
But one should be more than the clinging
shrub. He should become fruitful, and the fig-
tree was specially noted for its fruitfulness.
To dwell under one 's own fig-tree was a favorite
Scriptural emblem of plenty, of every want sat
isfied. It was a tree which yielded several
crops annually, and under hothouse cultiva
tion it has been known to produce eight times a
year. Very properly, therefore, did Christ
curse the barren fig-tree, upon which, says
Mark, "He found nothing but leaves." Very
appropriately did he say afterward, ' ' From the
fig-tree learn her parable." What is the les
son ? The solemn and needful warning is given
in the simple lines,
"Ah, who shall thus the Master meet,
And bring but withered leaves?
Ah, who shall at the Saviour 's feet,
Before the awful judgment-seat
Lay down for golden sheaves,
Nothing but leaves, nothing but leaves ! ' '
One is not merely to cling to Christ for salva
tion, like the hyssop springing out of the wall,
but he is to ripen in character; he is to bear
fruit, he is to be a fig-tree, he is to be of some
[611

Biblical Nature Studies
use to others. This truth is similarly imaged
in that well-known picture of the cross rising
out of tumultuous waters, while a beautiful fe
male figure clings to the transverse beam with
one arm, and with the other rescues another
person, who is about to sink beneath the waves.
The olive conveys another lesson. What is it
that we most of all crave 1 It is repose of mind,
it is quietude of spirit, it is that flower of char
acter known as heart 's-ease. Now the olive
speaks of just this peace and tranquility. We
talk about extending the olive branch, when
there is a truce to war, when harmony is re
stored, when quiet again reigns. Why is it
that this tree has such associations ? Can it be
because a dove bore a leaf of it to the ark to tell
in the mute language of a bird that the flood
had abated? It is not without significance
that tradition represents the dove to have in
troduced the olive into Greece, carrying a
branch of it from Phoenicia to the temple of
Jupiter in Epirus. Thomson in his ' ' Land and
the Book" says from what he himself had ob
served in Palestine, that olive groves are a fa
vorite resort of doves: "In them they build
their nests and rear their young, and there
may be heard all day long their low, soft cooing,
in sweet unison with the breeze which whispers
peace to the troubled and repose to the weary."
These trees thus give us a perfect picture of
unshaken calm.
But is not the olive subject to tempests?
[62]

The Trees
Certainly, for in Job we have a reference to
casting "off his flower as the olive." There
are winds which make the blossoms to fall by
the myriad, until the ground is literally covered,
but the tree, says another, only turns its "fat
ness to those which will mature into fruit. ' ' It
does not utterly succumb to adverse influences.
Nay, there may be what Isaiah calls the ' ' shak
ing of an olive-tree," yet the prophet mentions
' ' two or three berries in the top of the upper
most bough, four or five in the outermost
branches." The fruit is not all shaken off.
God does not entirely destroy. He may shake
the olive by tremendous storms, but it retains
some of its fruit in the uppermost and outer
most branches. It may be pretty thoroughly
stripped, as Job was who yet could trust though
slain, but the tempest-swayed olive holds on to
what fruit it can, until by and by its boughs are
again at rest, and not entirely denuded. When
one has made his peace with his Maker, all the
storms that may sweep over him will leave him
still trusting, and still bearing fruit.
The significance of our next tree, the palm, is
given by the familiar lines,
"Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again, —
The eternal years of God are hers."
This speaks of recuperative power found in
those who may have crushing experiences, but
who themselves are not crushed. They answer
to Paul's description, "smitten down, yet not
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Biblical Nature Studies
destroyed." Says Holy Writ, "The righteous
shall flourish like the palm-tree. ' ' How does it
flourish? It grows best by fountains, where it
multiplies very rapidly. One of the camping-
places of the Israelites was "where were twelve
springs of water, and three score and ten palm-
trees." Referring to the rising of the temple
at Jerusalem without the sound of axe or ham
mer or any iron tool, a poet has said,
' ' Like some tall palm the noiseless fabric sprung. ' '
These trees are tall, and they spring noiselessly
straight up into the air, and nothing of weight
or wind can deflect them out of their course,
can make them otherwise than perfectly up
right. An Oriental traveller mentions them
standing in the plains like "military sentinels,
with feathery plumes nodding gracefully on
their proud heads." This tree cannot be
crushed into crookedness, crushed to earth it
rises again. It is the very image of triumph
over obstacles. Having done all, says an
apostle, we are "to stand." Longfellow gives
the same thought in the lines,
"As the palm-tree standeth so straight and so tall,
The more the hail beats, and the more the rains fall. ' '
The name of that fabled bird which was said
to come to life from its own ashes was Phoenix,
which is the Greek word for palm, the name be
ing doubtless given in allusion to the fact that
the tree springs upward in spite of all hin
drances. Very fittingly were palm branches
[64]

The Trees
carried in triumphal processions, in the entry of
the King of kings into Jerusalem. This meant
victory to the Jews. In this connection there
is something pathetic in a copper coin which has
come down to us from the first century. On
one side is the head of the Emperor Vespasian,
during whose reign Jerusalem was destroyed
by Titus. On the other side is the representa
tion of a poor female captive, of a Jewess,
weeping under a palm-tree in sight of her mas
ter. The very Jewish symbol of victory was
thus associated by the cruel Roman with a cap
tivity which has lasted through nineteen cen
turies. But the palm-tree, rising erect above
the bent form of the Jewish captive, speaks of
triumph yet, when according to prophecy "all
Israel shall be saved." Over every prostrate
soul to-day, bowed down with sin and sorrow,
the palm stands and says in the words of Jesus,
' ' Look up, and lift up your heads ; because your
redemption draweth nigh," and eventually
there comes that triumphant scene in heaven of
the glorified ' ' with palms in their hands. ' ' This
was the hopeful message to the holy family it
self in that dark hour when compelled to flee
the country by a tyrant's wrath. Beautiful
among pictures is Correggio's "Flight into
Egypt." Golden-haired angels put aside the
branches of a palm sheltering the refugees, and
smile sunnily through the leaves upon the Ma
donna and her child, who must have been
cheered by the bright and lovely vision.
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Biblical Nature Studies
This to those compelled to wander far from
home and native land must have been as reas
suring as that of Whittier is to us under simi
larly trying circumstances, and in the wider and
more mysterious wanderings to which we may
be subject through the strange shaping of hu
man destinies by an overruling providence.
The Quaker poet in "The Eternal Goodness"
most comfortingly says :
' ' I know not where His islands lift
Their fronded palms in air;
I only know I cannot drift
Beyond His love and care. ' '
Ultimately we all can become what the Bible
terms "cedars of God." It is these that
Ezekiel describes, not like those of stunted
growth in the unfavorable climate of the Occi
dent, but as they are in their native element, in
the Orient, where, says the prophet, they are
' ' exalted above all the trees of the field, ' ' while
the "great eagle" alights in the "top" thereof.
These are like the mammoth trees of California,
like those seen by me near Santa Cruz, or like
those at Mariposa in the approach to the
Yosemite. Such were the famed "cedars of
Lebanon." One of them in our day has been
known to have a trunk nearly 16 feet in diame
ter. By counting the growths, the "annual
concentric circles," it has been estimated by
Thomson that some of them may "have been
growing ever since the Flood." John Muir
[66]

The Trees
tells us of one giant Sequoia in the Sierras 325
feet high. A colossus of this kind usually does
not begin to have branches till a height of 150
feet is reached. The same naturalist of the Pa
cific slope refers to one specimen having, four
feet above the ground, a trunk something over
35 feet in diameter inside the bark, which itself
is sometimes two feet thick. He counted the
yearly wood-rings of some, and found them to
be more than 4,000 years old. "These giants,"
he declared, though others reduce the period,
"probably live 5,000 years or more."
Can we get any adequate conception of the
age of such a tree? We try historic measure
ments. We talk of the landing of the Pilgrims
in 1620, from which we seem immensely sepa
rated in time. We trace our way along till we
come to the discovery of America by Columbus,
and we stand awed before the flight of four cen
turies. We turn to English history, we recall
the immortal Cromwell, and James the First
who gave us the Bible in our long-accepted ver
sion ; we remember Henry the Eighth who made
England independent of Rome, and the Norman
Conquest passes before our minds. In general
European affairs we are not forgetful of the
Reformation which revolutionized Church and
State. We follow in imagination the thousands
of Crusaders who poured into the Holy Land.
We have thus swept over a thousand years, and
we cannot help being impressed with such a
stretch of time. And yet a millennium ago our
[67]

Biblical Nature Studies
sequoia or our cedar of Lebanon was not so
much as nearing old age.
We proceed farther still toward antiquity. We
read of Charlemagne and his splendid empire,
of Mohammedanism in its long series of tri
umphs extending over three continents almost,
of hordes of barbarians rolling down from the
north and destroying the Roman Empire, of
Constantine the Great substituting for the im
perial eagles the resplendent cross which he
thought he saw emblazoned in the sky, and we
come to the birth of Christianity itself and a
century beyond, when two thousand years have
been traversed, but our tree then was only in its
prime. We continue our journey along the
path of history, and we take in empires, Ro
man, Grecian, Persian, and Assyrian. We are
in the midst of the Punic or Carthaginian wars,
and we hear the senate chamber at Rome re
echoing with Cato's "Carthago delenda est,"
Carthage must be destroyed. We see the cele
brated Hannibal, who thundered at the gates
of the eternal city. We become acquainted
with Alexander the Great and with Demos
thenes, with Solon and the seven wise men of
Greece, with Socrates and Pericles and Homer.
We learn about the romantic Cyrus the Great,
about the Captivity in Babylon, and we pursue
our course till we come to the reigns of David
and Solomon, and to the Trojan war with the
capture of the city by the wooden horse
crammed with soldiers and admitted within the
[68]

The Trees
gates. Another millennium has fled, and yet our
cedar or our sequoia even then had been watch
ing for a thousand or perhaps two thousand
years the procession of the centuries. If the
Creator has endowed an insensible tree with
life so long, we may be sure that man, made in
his own image, with an intelligence which has
accomplished so much, and with longings for
immortality, is going to be longer-lived. Our
leaf shall "not wither," we shall be "goodly
cedars ' ' for ever and evermore.
We have now spoken of the "trees, from the
cedar that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop
that springeth out of the wall." What has
been the effect upon us of our meditative stroll
in this Scriptural forest? Fortunate are we if
it has been as happy as Sidney Lanier has pic
tured it to have been on the Lord himself be
cause of a similar experience :
' ' Into the woods my Master went,
Clean forspent, forspent;
******
Out of the woods my Master went,
And he was well content. ' '
But the most unique tree of all has so far
been omitted, and has been reserved for men
tion last. Says Milton:
"Amidst them stood the tree of life,
High eminent, blooming ambrosial fruit
Of vegetable gold."
This is better characterized in the inspired
Song of songs as follows:
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Biblical Nature Studies
' ' As the apple tree among the trees of the wood,
So is my beloved among the sons.
I sat down under his shadow with great delight,
And his fruit was sweet to my taste. ' '
This is translated the apple tree, but the He
brew word, say scholars, is the generic term for
apple, quince, citron, orange, peach, and so
forth; thus giving us, as has been said, a "suc
cession of blossoms, fruit, and perfume." It
is all the fruit trees, with which we are familiar,
thrown and combined into one, into a magnifi
cent composite.
Verily this does surpass "all the trees of the
wood." It must be what John in his Revela
tion calls ' ' the tree of life, bearing twelve man
ner of fruits, yielding its fruit every month:
and the leaves of the tree were for the healing
of the nations." This must be indeed the
soul's beloved, must be he who alone is life,
"who only hath immortality." While we as
cedars shall be kings, he as the tree of life shall
be King of kings, and we shall sit under his
grateful shade, and partake of his pleasant
fruit, and we shall ever give him praise. The
Psalmist's words shall be fulfilled, "Then shall
all the trees of the wood sing for joy, before
the Lord." Isaiah's prophecy, too, shall come
true, ' ' The mountains and the hills shall break
forth . . . into singing, and all the trees
of the field shall clap their hands." In the
Paradise above it shall be ours at last to join in
the leafy chorus, in the new song before the
throne.
[70]

V
AUTUMN LEAVES

AUTUMN LEAVES
The glory of the trees is their foliage, whose
protection from the hot sun has ever been
eagerly sought and gratefully enjoyed. At
Athens the Academy where Plato taught was
among the olive groves on the banks of the
Cephissus, and the Lyceum where Aristotle
lectured was among the plane-trees on the
Hissus. Our higher institutions of learning
now, Harvard on her "yard" and Yale on her
campus, try to have classic shades that are
similar. It is in the spring when the leaves
are thickest and most umbrageous. It is then
that the birds, says the Psalmist, ' ' sing among
the branches." This is the season of which
Wordsworth sings :
"One impulse from a vernal wood
May teach you more of man,
Of moral evil and of good
Than all the sages can. ' '
Every one feels the inspiration of what Cole
ridge calls "the leafy month of June." Says
Thomson of "the pleasing spring:"
' ' Echo the mountains round ; the forest smiles ;
And every sense, and every heart, is joy."
The air breathes with fragrance. It is a
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time of buttercups and daisies, of apple blos
soms and meadow flowers. Nature is waking
out of sleep. Everything is bursting into new
life. Birds are nesting. Soft zephyrs kiss the
earth. The green foliage comes out. Under
such exhilarating circumstances, we cannot
help being buoyant and cheerful. But when
the fall comes, decay is seen on every side.
The birds are going south. The wild geese give
forth their plaintive notes, like Tennyson's dy
ing swan which "loudly did lament," as
' ' The desolate creeks and pools among,
Were flooded over with eddying song. ' '
The very breezes, especially on gray days, seem
to sigh in the tree tops. The leaves become sere
and yellow, and fall to the ground. The most
marked difference between the spring and the
autumn is due to this change in the foliage,
from which a prophet draws the impressive les
son, "we all do fade as a leaf." Oliver Wen
dell Holmes spoke sadly of the time when he
should become "The last leaf upon the tree,"
and Byron said mournfully,
' ' My days are in the yellow leaf. ' '
From another standpoint, however, a jubi
lant feeling is indicated by what we term "a
riot of colors." We often try to secure won
drous effects along this line. The greatest dis-
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play of this kind ever seen by me was the dec
orative exhibition in Boston, when the return
ing hero of Manila Bay rode along, standing in
his carriage and bowing to solid masses of
people on this side and on that, while a con
tinuous roar of applause marked his slow ad
vance. The city was ablaze with colored
lights, with illuminated flagships or Olympias,
with painted scenes of the whole historic fleet,
with the American eagle flying from its beak the
stars and stripes in brilliant fire-works. Even
in daylight streets and buildings were bright
with rainbow hues. Flags floated from win
dows. Bunting of red, white and blue hung in
graceful festoons everywhere. For whom was
all this gorgeous make-up? For the now illus
trious George Dewey, who on that May morn
ing of 1898 sailed into a Philippine harbor, and
in a forenoon without the loss of a ship or a
man annihilated the Spanish fleet there shel
tered and protected both by her own guns and
by powerful shore batteries, though to no pur
pose as against the superb daring and skill of
our American naval commander, whom as a
consequence all delighted to honor on that oc
casion of his return. But a more magnificent
display than that for this distinguished mariner
is that of all nature every fall for every hum
blest person. Colors more lavish than the art
of man can spread over a scene are those of the
autumn over entire landscapes that are for us
all made radiant. The leaves which burn with
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mingled fires, over which have been dashed by
the heavenly artist such manifold colors, speak
to us of joy and victory. We are reminded of
what Moses witnessed at Mount Horeb. Every
shrub aglow with color is a repetition of the
miracle of the burning bush which he saw, all
aflame yet not consumed. There is here the
brightness not of the destructive fire but of the
flame immortal in a divine luminosity. It is
what can be characterized as a blaze of glory
and triumph, and the thought is only that of
gladness. But in a different frame of mind we see the
sadness of it all, of the leaves fairly showered
down. Driving once from Florence to the ad
jacent heights of Fiesole, there was pointed out
to me the locality made famous by these lines
of Milton in his Paradise Lost :
' ' Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the brooks
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades
High overarched embower."
We are taught here an opposite lesson, that we
live our little life, and that for a while all is
fair. But soon there comes the fading, and the
withering; there comes the fate which Daniel
tells us was decreed for Nebuchadnezzar in the
midst of that monarch's prosperity: "Hew
down the tree, and cut off his branches, shake
off his leaves, and scatter his fruit. ' '
This Oriental ruler of splendid fame is not
the only one, who has thus been made to feel the
vanity of life. Wolsey's oft-quoted soliloquy
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on fallen greatness, as given in Shakespeare,
furnishes out of the personal experience of that
celebrated Englishman a striking commentary
on Daniel's prophecy regarding Nebuchadnez
zar's end. Says the great Cardinal:
' ' This is the state of man : today he puts forth
The tender leaves of hopes; tomorrow blossoms,
And bears his blushing honors thick upon him:
The third day comes a frost, a killing frost;
And, — when he thinks, good easy man, full surely
His greatness is a-ripening, — nips his root,
And then he falls, as I do."
Frosted leaves, blasted hopes, that in one sense
is the language of Autumn.
How soon we begin to fade! We no sooner
come to our best, than decay sets in. We are
fast passing away. In the springtime of life
there is only hopefulness, but as we advance in
age there comes a tinge of sadness, for we real
ize that our leaf is fading, and that it will soon
fall. We rapidly mature in years, till we drop
like the leaves. Such is our destiny according
to the irrevocable laws of nature. Like autumn
in the natural world is that in the human realm,
except that in the latter the falling leaf is con
tinuous. We are familiar with the song of the
landing of the Pilgrims by Mrs. Hemans,
' ' The breaking waves dashed high
On a stern and rock-bound coast. ' '
Still more strikingly has she said,
"Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither at the North-wind 's breath,
And stars to set; — but all,
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death I ' '
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The generations follow one another in quick
succession. One of Homer's heroes in the Iliad
has most graphically set forth our mortality in
lines which have been the admiration of cen
turies : ' ' Like the race of leaves
Is that of humankind. Upon the ground
The winds strew one year's leaves; the sprouting grove
Puts forth another brood, that shoot and grow
In the spring season. So it is with man:
One generation grows while one decays."
The falling leaf, however, speaks a various
language. It testifies farther to the fearful-
ness of coming to our end without the Christian
hope. Souls should tremble at the dread pros
pect of drawing near to eternity. We read in
Leviticus, "The sound of a driven leaf shall
chase them." There is such a thing as being
haunted by a vague and uncomfortable fear of
the future, by the dramatist's "dread of some
thing after death." If one is alone in an un
broken forest, which he knows to be full of
wild beasts, and especially in the stillness of the
midnight hour, he is startled by the fluttering
leaf. Says a Scottish poet :
"For now the leaf
Incessant rustles from the mournful grove;
Oft startling such as, studious, walk below,
And slowly circles through the waving air."
The dry leaf, blown toward one with the pe
culiar crackling noise of autumn, might easily
frighten him into flight, and he would thus be
chased by the ' ' sound of a driven leaf. ' '
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Now there is no place where a person will be
so much alone and in a night so dark, as in the
shadowy vale. There fears and doubts often
start up like rustling leaves to disturb the soul's
composure. We sometimes say with Bryant:
' ' The melancholy days are come, the saddest of the year,
Of wailing winds and naked woods and meadows brown and
sere.
Heaped in the hollows of the grove, the autumn leaves lie
dead;
They rustle to the eddying gust, and to the rabbit's tread."
But sadder than the fall of nature is the au
tumn of a life, which has been blasted by sin,
till the air is full of the flying leaves of guilty
memories which have the taint of a moral blight.
To persons of such lives there is frequently sent
"a faintness into their heart," as the inspired
writer says, while he adds the significant clause,
"and the sound of a driven leaf shall chase
them." The whirling autumn foliage speaks
of sad bewilderment at life's close. We all
must fade, but we need not have at the last this
spirit of fearfulness.
The leaves inculcate a further lesson. They
speak of divine comfort and protection. Job
asks, "Wilt thou harass a driven leaf?" The
patriarch meant to say, that the Father's ten
derness was such as not to injure in the least
the crisp leaf even, blown hither and thither by
the fall winds. So fragile a thing as that is the
object of his loving care. Much more does he
appreciate our frailties :
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' ' For he knoweth our frame ;
He remembereth that we are dust."
The promise is, "A bruised reed shall he not
break." He does let the storm come, and
does let it sweep round us and over us with
such force, that we are as helpless before the
terrific gale, as the autumn leaf before the
wintry blast. But the Almighty does not
forsake us in the tempest. He is in the
midst of it, guarding us with infinite compas
sion, and we are perfectly safe, for he does not,
we are assured, "harass a driven leaf." Not
a sparrow falls to the ground without his notice.
He throws shelter around the falling leaf, mak
ing it descend softly and with scarcely a flutter
to its resting place. He likewise takes care of
the trusting spirit
' ' In every high and stormy gale. ' '
The Fall foliage again points to something
beyond the present, if there is an inner princi
ple of life. Isaiah refers to trees "whose stock
remaineth, when they are felled, ' ' such are the
words of the prophet who continues, "so the
holy seed is the stock thereof. ' ' The marginal
reading is, "whose substance is in them, when
they cast their leaves; so the holy seed is the
substance thereof. ' ' Trees may be felled, may
have their branches lopped off, and certainly
may lose their leaves, and yet not be really
killed. They are not dead, for they sprout and
leaf again the next summer. In the summer-
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land of heaven, those persons, who have in them
the holy seed, who have in them the substance
of spiritual vitality, though sadly stripped here
below of boughs and foliage, become up there
trees of life, with branches renewed, and with
leaves that never wither. In other words, the
Autumn with its apparent deadness may contain
at the same time the promise of life to come.
As Job says,
' ' There is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout
again,
And that the tender branch thereof will not cease.
Though the root thereof wax old in the earth,
And the stock thereof die in the ground;
Yet through the scent of water it will bud,
And put forth boughs like a plant."
So will it be with those who have within
them eternal life. The autumn does not harm
such, "whose substance is in them, when they
cast their leaves," whose immortal spirit
abides, when they shuffle off this mortal coil.
' ' The trees of the Lord, ' ' to use an expression
of the Psalmist, are sure to leaf and bloom
again in the sweet fields of Eden. So that in
one sense the fading leaf is only a sign of ripe
ness, suggestive of decay to be sure, but also
of a more glorious future.
There is a similar thought in the Scriptural
lines, ' ' Thou shalt come to the grave in a full age,
Like as a shock of corn cometh in its season. ' '
That is, there is the ripeness of autumn. The
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falling leaf is not so dreary, when the tree it
self is not dead, whose substance is in it, when
it casts its leaves. Coupled with the melan
choly is the comfort of autumn, whose "days
fill one with pleasant sadness," said Henry
Ward Beecher, who went on to observe, "How
sweet a pleasure is there in sadness ! It is not
sorrow ; it is not despondency ; it is not gloom ;
it is one of the moods of joy. At any rate I am
very happy, and yet it is sober, and very sad
happiness. It is the shadow of joy upon my
soul. ' '
Bryant, too, speaks of these mingled feelings
produced in man's heart by transfigured nature :
"For his gayer hours
She has a voice of gladness, and a smile
And eloquence of beauty; and she glides
Into his darker musings, with a mild
And healing sympathy, that steals away
Their sharpness ere he is aware. ' '
Longfellow also speaks of "a sober gladness,"
which he portrays in lines we never tire of
quoting :
' ' There is a beautiful spirit breathing now
Its mellow richness on the clustered trees,
And, from a beaker full of richest dyes,
Pouring new glory on the autumn woods.
******
' ' O what a glory doth this world put on
For him who, with a fervent heart, goes forth
Under the bright and glorious sky, and looks
On duties well performed, and days well spent!
For him the wind, ay, and the yellow leaves,
Shall have a voice, and give him eloquent teachings.
He shall so hear the solemn hymn that Death
Has lifted up for all, that he shall go
To his long resting-place without a tear."
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Autumn Leaves
He shall be garnered above, because his charac
ter will have fully developed. He shall come
to his end like ripened shock of corn, like ma
tured autumn leaf. He shall be like him of
whom Dryden sang :
" Of no distemper, of no blast lie died,
But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long,
Even wondered at because he dropped no sooner. ' '

[83]

VI
TREASURIES OF THE SNOW

VI
TREASURIES OF THE SNOW
Regularly succeeding the autumn is the win
ter, which some are disposed to regard as an
alien realm, with no suggestion of God and
goodness, but only of what is bad and unde
sirable. We feel some sympathy with the
Greeks, who had the desolate and forbidding
kingdom presided over by Boreas, whom they
represented to be surly, blowing his horn which
expelled chilling, northern blasts. Even Thom
son, who generally saw the divine in all the
seasons, said of Polar regions,
"Here Winter holds his unrejoicing court;
And through his airy hall the loud misrule
Of driving tempest is forever heard:
Here the grim tyrant meditates his wrath ;
Here arms his winds with all-subduing frost;
Moulds his fierce hail, and treasures up his snows,
With which he now oppresses half the globe. ' '
But this poet saw another side to the matter,
when he pictured the pure joyousness of the
snowy season, as he portrayed a farmer going
forth after the following fashion :
' ' His dog attends him. Close behind his heel
Now creeps he slow, and now with many a frisk,
Wide-scampering, snatches up the drifted snow
With ivory teeth, or ploughs it with his snout;
Then shakes his powdered coat and barks for joy."
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All hearts respond to the poetic sentiment,
' ' Ringing, swinging, dashing they go
Over the crest of the beautiful snow."
But of something deeper than this must the
snow speak in view of a question which Job
asks, namely, "Hast thou entered the treas
uries of the snow?" It was from the ^Eolian
cave that Grecian mythology represented the
winds to rush forth. Scripture gives a similar
idea, when it says of God, "He bringeth forth
the wind out of his treasuries." The concep
tion seems to be that of a vast storehouse, from
whose chambers the blasts are expelled. The
patriarch is equally pictorial in his question.
He may have imagined something like the crys
tal palace which Montreal sometimes has had, a
splendid structure of clear ice, built of block
upon block of frozen snow and water, and, when
lighted by electrical appliances, and when filled
with the wealth and fashion of the Canadian
city, presenting a fairylike scene in its gorgeous
interior. What was in the mind of the sacred writer?
He may have conceived of regions of perpetu
al snow, like Greenland's "icy mountains," of
which we sing with missionary enthusiasm, or
like the highest summits of the Alps, where ava
lanches are sometimes set in motion by so little
a thing as the concussion or vibration of air
caused by the sound of a human voice in the
mountain solitude; was he calling attention to
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any such significant fact? He may have had
before him a scene like that in Whittier's
"Snow-Bound :"
' ' We cut the solid whiteness through,
And, where the drift was deepest, made
A tunnell walled and overlaid
With dazzling crystal."
He may have understood that the snow falls
in perfectly formed crystals of almost endless
variety; by inspiration he may have known
what has been revealed to modern science by
microscopic examination ; he may have been try
ing to stimulate the mind of man to pry into
these charming secrets of nature, and to ap
preciate the delicate, snowy gems. Had he ever
witnessed the phenomena of red and green
snow, occasionally observed in certain altitudes
Alpine and Arctic, and was he mystified by what
is now recognized as vegetable organisms color
ing the snow, the red and green being, we are
informed, "one and the same plants in differ
ent stages of growth, the green being probably
the riper ; ' ' was it by such strange phenomena
that he was struck? He may have had the
thought of the author of today, who writes in
terestingly of the various forms of snow under
the fascinating title of ' ' Cloud Crystals. ' ' He
could not have heard of snow a mile and a half
deep, over which depth Lieutenant Peary, in a
lecture once listened to by me, said he believed
he had walked in his explorations about the
North Pole which he finally discovered. Per
haps Job could have said with Longfellow :
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' ' Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow. ' '
It is quite certain that the patriarch would have
watched with interest the transformation pic
tured by another poet :
' ' Through the hushed air the whitening shower descends,
At first thin wavering ; till at last the flakes
Fall broad and wide and fast, dimming the day
With a continual flow. The cherished fields
Put on their winter robe of purest white."
He would have been fascinated at the sight of
what President Hitchcock of Amherst College
once pictured after this manner in a lecture on
the ' ' Coronation of Winter : " "If the twigs of
every tree and shrub and spire had been liter
ally covered with diamonds of the purest water,
and largest known size, say an inch in diameter,
they would not, I am sure, have poured upon
the eye in the sunlight a more dazzling
splendor. ' '
Ceasing from farther conjecture, we come to
what we know was originally being set forth by
the patriarch in his suggestive question. He
was greatly afflicted, physically, in that he was
one mass of painful sores ; pecuniarily, in that
he had lost all his property; and worst of all his
whole family had been swept away by sudden
death, while his pretended friends who came
with their consolations proved to be "miser
able comforters." As a consequence his faith
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in an overruling providence was put to a se
vere test. He could not comprehend God's
moral government. He could not sound its
mysterious depths. Well, what if he could not?
It was not his to know but to believe, not his to
rebel but to submit. That was the lesson finally
taught him so impressively out of the whirl
wind. God recounted the mysteries of nature,
from "the cluster of the Pleiades" to the "wil
lows of the brook ; ' ' from the horse whose neck
was clothed with ' ' the quivering mane ' ' to the
sea monster making "the deep to boil like a
pot;" and, among the things mentioned, was
the snow, and Job was asked if he had a clear
comprehension of that. Had he entered its
treasuries, did he understand the secret of its
formation and descent? Now if he was ignor
ant of one of the most common of natural phe
nomena, as he was, how could he expect to
fathom the mysteries of the divine purpose ?
When we are staggered by God's dealings
with the children of men, when we cannot see
why there should be such affliction and suffering
on earth, we are not to murmur, but we are to
accept with meekness what has been divinely
decreed. That is one of the spiritual lessons
conveyed by the snow, into whose treasuries we
have not entered any more than into the secrets
of God. The Biblical assurance, that all things
work together for good, bringing to the humble
and devout "an eternal weight of glory,"
should be sufficient. Simple faith, and not sus-
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picious questioning, should mark our attitude
toward the Omniscient. It is ours not to com
plain but to trust.
But the snow has other lessons ; we have yet
seen only one of the many sides of the crystal.
Probably all have had the experience of Job
in unsatisfactory earthly friendships, human
sympathy failing in the time of greatest need.
In illustration of this he says:
"My brethren have dealt deceitfully as a brook,
As the channel of brooks that pass away;
Which are black by reason of the ice,
And wherein the snow hideth itself:
What time they wax warm, they vanish;
When it is hot, they are consumed out of their place. ' '
That is to say, his friends were like a mountain
brook, making a great bubbling noise in the
spring when swollen by dissolving snow, but
in the heat of summer the uncertain stream
dries up. Exactly thus mere human friendship
will disappoint at the last. It may be refresh
ing enough in the springtime of life, but when
we are smitten and scorched by summer heat,
when we are called upon to go through some
terrible ordeal, some conflict of soul, some great
spiritual struggle, then the sympathy of those
about us, even if manifested, does not satisfy.
It is good so far as it goes, but it fails us just
where we need it most, to set us at rest with
our Creator. At that point it vanishes like the
brook wherein is snow, being exceedingly evan
escent. The spring freshet of brief earthly
friendship is not what we want, but the last
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favor of God, the peace which passeth under
standing, which floweth like a river full and
deep to all eternity.
And yet, to take a step in advance, human
friendship is not to be lightly esteemed. It has
its value, and is capable of accomplishing much,
when it has the quality of Christian faithful
ness. There is another side of the crystal which
we are examining through the microscope of
Scripture in the proverb which says :
' ' As the cold of snow in the time of harvest,
So is a faithful messenger to them that send him;
For he ref resheth the soul of his masters. ' '
A cooling drink is refreshing to the hot and
weary harvester. It would seem from this that
ice water was an ancient luxury. At least in
the age of Solomon, there was the cold of snow
in the harvest-field. Like such a draft of water
to the laborer, is the faithful gospel messenger,
who is always found in his place, who can be
depended upon for any designated duty. Of
such material are those who in every Church
are called the faithful few. Unless necessarily
detained, they are invariably present in God's
house to worship, helping to give the inspira
tion of numbers. They are regularly there to
cheer the possibly flagging spirit of the leader.
They rally round him with warm hearts and
willing hands, with earnest prayer and active
service. They are always ready with their
testimonies, with their inspiring messages, with
their glad tidings, with their words fitly spoken
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to do good everywhere. They may not be able
to say or to do much, but they do not drop out
of the ranks, and they do not excuse themselves
from all work, because they may possess only
the single talent. They use what they have.
They hold up the hands of their Moses whoever
he may be. They perhaps speak a solitary
word of encouragement to some fainting soul,
they give a stranger a friendly greeting, and
they have done no great thing, but they shall
not lose their reward, for they have shown the
praiseworthy quality of faithfulness, they have
given "the cup of cold water," which the Lord
very properly commended, for
' ' As the cold of snow in the time of harvest,
So is a faithful messenger. ' '
There is needed more of such Christian faith
fulness to revive drooping spirits, to infuse
fresh courage into those bearing the chief re
sponsibility, into those who are weary and heavy
laden, who are well-nigh overcome by the heat
of the day, by trial and temptation. There is
too little of religious helpfulness in the world.
We go on our own way, bearing our own bur
dens and carrying our own sorrows, and too
rarely speaking of the comforts of the gospel
and of the refreshing promises. We too inter
mittently utter the good cheer which is so help
ful, we do not as we should simply drop our
word here and there.
But will the little that we can say have any
effect? The answer to that question turns to
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us another side of the crystal which we are con
sidering. Will any feeble words of ours spoken
for the Master avail aught? What says the
snow? Isaiah replies, "As the rain cometh
down, and the snow from heaven, and return-
eth not thither, but watereth the earth, and
maketh it bring forth and bud, and giveth seed
to the sower and bread to the eater; so shall
my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth :
it shall not return unto me void. ' ' We are all
aware that the rain causes the earth to produce,
but does the snow have a similar influence on
the soil? That is what is implied by the
prophet. The farmer, too, testifies that better
crops generally follow a winter, wherein the
ground has been heavily mantled with snow.
Cyclopaedias state that the earth is thus pro
tected, being kept warmer, and vegetation is
not killed by excessive freezing. So that it is
an agricultural and scientific as well as Scrip
tural fact, that not only rain but snow falls to
some purpose.
Likewise a word uttered for Christ is not lost.
It may seem cold as snow, but there is the
warmth of heaven in it, and when it falls on
the heart, it makes that spiritual soil soft and
fruitful, and sooner or later there come the
results, the summer harvests. We may have to
say with the sacred poet,
' ' Weak is the effort of my heart,
And cold my warmest thought,"
but through that natural coldness of ours the
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fire from above can be conducted. A prism of
ice can be made to focalize the sun's rays with
such power as to burn the object beneath, at
a definite point where the beams are concen
trated, concentrated even by a cold medium.
Thus it is with the word uttered for the Lord.
It is like the snow, whose coldness seems un-
suited to impart warmth, but it warms never
theless. We may be very prisms of ice in com
parison with what we should be, "cold our
warmest thought," but if we only catch and
transmit the rays of the Sun of righteousness,
warmth will come out of coldness, hearts will
feel the divine heat sent through us as
instrumentalitie s .
We must not forget, however, that we our
selves need to renew our spiritual strength. We
personally should go to the fountain of all sup
ply. Are we drinking of the living waters?
We turn the snow crystal for another view of
the matter. It is Jeremiah who says, "Shall
the snow of Lebanon fail from the rock of the
field? or shall the cold waters that flow down
from afar be dried up? For my people have
forgotten me." Lebanon was covered with
snow the year round, and down this mountain
dashed fresh, sparkling water, cold as the snow
from which it melted, and it leaped unceasingly
from under the rock of the field. Will this ever
fail? asks the prophet. Certainly not, and no
more will the Almighty, whom yet people for
get. They hew out for themselves "cisterns,
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broken cisterns that can hold no water," for
saking the "fountain of living waters," for
saking the smitten Rock of Ages whence gush
the never failing streams. They abandon the
cool waters of life that flow down from afar,
proceeding clear as crystal out of the throne,
and "seek their happiness," another has said,
"in channels of their own digging." It is folly
to try to find all our enjoyment in the fleeting
pleasures of earth or in its equally transient
possessions. These do not satisfy our deepest
nature, our thirst of soul. We need to drink
from the "wells of salvation," artesian wells,
fed not by the watershed of any earthly range
of hills, blue or otherwise, but of the "green
hill far away." We need to go directly to
Mount Zion, from which issues a perennial river
of snow-cold water, which is to make glad the
city above forever. We are to follow this to
its fountain head beyond the sea of glass, where
it starts under the rainbow that is like unto
emerald. The cisterns which we are hewing
down here below will soon all be broken, if they
are not already failing us, and we cannot seek
too soon "the cold waters that flow down from
afar," as it were, from "the snow of Lebanon. "
But one may feel unworthy to come to such
purity. He may be conscious of guilt. What
light does the snow crystal flash upon us here ?
It is Job again who says,
' ' I know that thou wilt not hold me innocent.
I shall be condemned ;
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Why then do I labor in vain?
If I wash myself with snow water,
And make my hands never so clean. ' '
There may be all the cleansing qualities of the
softest water, of melted snow, but even that
cannot remove some stains. What says Lady
Macbeth? "Out, damned spot! out, I say! * * *
who would have thought the old man to have
had so much blood in him? * * * will these
hands ne'er be clean? * * * Here's the smell
of blood still: all the perfumes of Arabia will
not sweeten this little hand. ' ' Macbeth himself
cried out in despair,
' ' Will all great Neptune 's ocean wash this blood
Glean from my hand ? ' '
She had said, "A little water clears us of this
deed," but she soon learned her mistake. She
could have said with Job,
"I shall be condemned,
******
If I wash myself with snow water."
The stains of sin are indelible, and cannot be
removed even by snow water.
Nevertheless there need not be hopelessness.
We turn the crystal once more, and we get the
happiest effect of any yet, there is the radiance
of divine pardon. We read in Holy Writ,
"Come now, and let us reason together, saith
the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they
shall be as white as snow." We can through
penitence have the abundant pardon, which both
forgives and forgets, which makes our record
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clean, and gives us the white robes of right
eousness. With what force the question recurs,
"Hast thou entered the treasuries of the
snow?" There is this sweetest of all lessons,
this divinest of all secrets, that we can be
washed whiter than snow by cleansing grace.

[99]

VII
BY THE SEA

VII
BY THE SEA
Some prefer the mountains, while others
choose the ocean. A combination of both was
for fifteen seasons mine at Southwest Harbor
on Mt. Desert. This celebrated island resort,
with its harbors of Southwest and Northeast
and Seal and Bar, is unique in that directly
from the salt water rise the everlasting hills.
There are also ponds and lakes easily accessible
to visitors. Then the particular cottage, where
the writer was annually domiciled, had the sur
roundings of the quiet country, with a green
meadow sloping down to the tree-fringed shore.
There was the humming of bees on shrubbery
at the door. There was the low, rhythmic mur
mur of insect life. There was the sound of
human voices here and there across the fields.
There was the clatter of the mowing machine
on the land, and there was the swish of the
water cut by passing steamer, or gallant sail
boat, or stately yacht. There was the cawing
of the crow. There was the ringing challenge
of the chanticleer at a sufficient distance to lend
enchantment, the "cock's shrill clarion" some
times coming clear over from Northeast, a mile
or more across the water, while his feminine
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partner in business cackled her assertive claims
as to the choice contribution she was making
for the table of summer boarders. There was
the strident salute of the white sea-gull, wing
ing its way gracefully along against a back
ground of dark firs toward the Duck Islands.
There was the protesting chatter of the squir
rel, objecting to your hammock in the edge of
the woods. There was the sweet melody of the
song sparrow, and there was the evening matin
of robin redbreast, these being surpassed only
by the musical bobolink of New York State, and
perhaps by California's meadow lark with its
liquid notes and the mocking bird with its rol
licking harmonies continuing often into the
night. All such country and seashore sounds
were a delight to the ear, and we could under
stand why those Trojan soldiers, of whom Eu
ripides tells us, stopped in the early morning
to listen to the nightingale singing on the banks
of the Simois, and to the bleating of a flock of
sheep on the top of Mt. Ida, and to a shepherd's
pipe sending forth its strains on the dewy air.
With every thing of this kind the Master
was pleased. He even called attention to the
brooding fowl, the clucking hen, calling her
young under her wings. He loved the moun
tains, and more than once retired to their rest
ful solitude. He passed thirty years of his life
at Nazareth, which itself was at a considerable
altitude. From the summit of the hill on whose
slopes the village was built, there was a widely
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extended view. To the north was snow-capped
Hermon, to the east Tabor verdant to the top,
to the west the blue Mediterranean with white
sails, and to the south the fertile plain of Es-
draelon. But of such fair and sublime scenes
Christ at length took leave. ' ' And leaving Naz
areth," says the record, "he came and dwelt
in Capernam, which is by the sea." This lake
of Gennesaret was henceforth to be his favorite
resort. Often was he to stroll down to the
water's edge. He went on missionary tours,
but he regularly returned to the seaside. There
he found his first disciples, mending and wash
ing their nets. There he called Matthew the
publican. On Galilee's billows he slept peace
fully, while all others were frightened at the
violence of the storm that arose. From a boat
rocking on its rippling surface, he preached to
the multitude on the shore. On its beach one
of his appearances after his resurrection took
place. He was thoroughly at home "by the
sea." There are those of dull soul who catch no
inspiration, as he did, from nature, and from
that finest manifestation of it as seen in the
ocean. When Wordsworth and his sister Doro
thy, who were as inseparable as Charles and
Mary Lamb, — when they and Coleridge were
enjoying the beauties of nature in the since
famous Lake district of England, they were
suspected by the country people there of being
traitors or smugglers or perhaps lunatics. The
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poet and his sister were actually compelled on
this account to change their abode, the owner
of the house they had rented refusing to let
them have it any longer. As evidence against
Wordsworth, one of the villagers said, "We
have all met him tramping away toward the
sea. Would any man in his senses take all that
trouble to look at a parcel of water?" What
lack there is in persons who can see in the
mighty ocean only "a parcel of water." It is
like a nation seeing in a solemn treaty only ' ' a
scrap of paper." As has been said in another
connection, "Breathes there a man with soul
so dead."
Even Byron of irreligious mind could say
appreciatively, "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,"
while also he saw in the boundless deep an
"image of eternity," and likewise a vast and
"glorious mirror, where the Almighty's form
glasses itself." One can hardly express the
feelings that surge through the breast in the
presence of the expansive ocean. He involun
tarily exclaims with Tennyson,
"Break, break, break,
On thy cold gray stones, O Sea!
And I would that my tongue could utter
The thoughts that arise in me."
How much of mystery the ocean suggests!
One thinks of the deluge described by the Bible,
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of lost Atlantis which Plato says was located
out in the Atlantic beyond the pillars of Her
cules, and which was said to have been sub
merged with all its wicked inhabitants. One
recalls that oldest version of the flood first
deciphered in 1913 from exceedingly minute
characters on a tablet only seven inches square.
This is now owned by the University of Penn
sylvania, and it dates back at least to the time
of Hammurabi and of Abraham about 2200
years before Christ, and perhaps 400 years
earlier still, thus antedating by 1500 to 2000
years the account of the catastrophe found in
the excavated library of Assurbanipal at Nin
eveh in the seventh century before our era, and
revealed to the modern world by George Smith
in the last century. To such musings does the
rolling deep give rise regarding cataclysmic
happennings millenniums ago, as witnessed by
writings sacred, classic and Oriental.
One wonders again if the theory of some is
correct, that the configuration of continents
and mountain ranges is such as to indicate,
that the Pacific Ocean now covers the original
dry land on which Adam and Eve were placed,
and upon which the race was started on its
career. Then there is the Polar Sea, is it open
or is it frozen solid? To determine that many
have gone on voyages where the suffering from
hunger has been such, that human beings have
cut the flesh from their dead fellows for bait
with which to catch shrimps in Arctic waters,
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until finally Peary has solved the mystery in
the discovery of the North Pole.
A former President of Boston University,
Dr. Warren, has started another inquiry by
writing a book to prove that the North Pole is
where the Garden of Eden was. The flaming
sword, appointed by Jehovah forever to hinder
reentrance into this Paradise, was the girdle of
perpetual snow and ice that so long blocked
progress northward, and that henceforth must
always prevent tropical, Edenic conditions
there. With such thoughts trooping through
the mind, one can say with Longfellow :
"Ah! what pleasant visions haunt me
As I gaze upon the sea,
All the old romantic legends,
All my dreams come back to me. ' '
We cannot help querying, if the most fanciful
ideas may not contain more of truth than we
sometimes imagine.
The ocean has not yet yielded up all its
secrets. It still awakens inquiry, as it did when
Columbus sailed forth on his apparently fool
hardy explorations, which after all turned out
so successfully, in the enlargement of knowl
edge, in the discovery of continents, in the open
ing up of regions to provide comfortable homes
for the crowded millions of the old world, and
in the finding of islands ultimately to become the
possession of a great nation that was to grow
up on the western hemisphere, and that eventu
ally was to humiliate the Spanish government
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By ihe Sea
which sent the discoverer forth. What further
disclosures regarding the briny deep are to be
made to those having the inquiring spirit of the
Genoese mariner? Scientists, with their deep
sea dredging, have not yet revealed all of the
ocean depths. They inform us that it covers
nearly three-fourths of the surface of the globe,
leaving only a little over one-fourth of real
earth, and they of course have not explored
thoroughly such a mass of water.
With all our increased light on ancient Nep
tune's realm, we continue to feel awed in the
presence of the still recognized mysteries of the
ocean. We realize with Job that only God
understands all, and that his knowledge alone
is perfect. We can almost hear the Almighty's
challenge to the patriarch, thrown down like
wise to each of us,
"Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea?
Or hast thou walked in the recesses of the deep?"
In other words, the ocean impresses us with our
ignorance and littleness, and with the greatness
and wisdom of God. It seems to tell us that we
are finite, and that he is infinite. In short, it
stirs within us religious emotions and senti
ments. With so much in general, we will now walk
along the shore for different views, that will
suggest more specific lessons. We cannot tarry
long at any one point, we must be brief in our
reflections. Note for one thing how the ocean heaves and
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rolls. It rarely is quiet, and in fact never is.
It seems filled with the very spirit of unrest.
It seems like a great, panting monster imbued
with life, and Byron, you recollect, talks about
laying his hand on the mane of the huge crea
ture. As you watch its heavy breathing, as you
listen to its groans that in breakers sound like
thunder, you almost wish that you could still
its throbbing heart, and its restless movements.
You half pity it, as if it must be tired out. And
yet your sympathy is sometimes mingled with
disgust, as you see it belching into the air and
depositing upon the beach all manner of un
cleanness. The filth of city sewers it rolls as
a sweet morsel under its tongue. It swallows
with a gurgling noise the human corpse, and
then spews it forth with slimy weeds upon the
sand, over which is strewed all conceivable
refuse. With all this in mind, how forcibly come to
us Isaiah's words, "The wicked are like the
troubled sea; for it cannot rest, and its waters
cast up mire and dirt. There is no peace, saith
my God, to the wicked." What a striking pic
ture the prophet thus gives us of the ungodly !
They have no real composure of soul. They have
the restlessness of unsatisfied natures. From
their innermost being are evolved all sorts of
sinful thoughts and desires, and they might
well put their hands upon their mouths like
lepers, and cry, "Unclean! unclean!" They
need the One who is from above to purify the
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By the Sea
secret springs of action, and to calm the tur
bulent spirit.
We proceed along the shore, and the ocean
appears to us in another light. The suicide will
stand alone in the dark on some dock, looking
down into the gloomy waters, and revolving
unspeakable intentions. One plunge, he thinks,
and oblivion of life's sins and sorrows will
follow. The great deep thus speaks of forget-
fulness. Lost at sea means gone forever. Many
a vessel, with precious freightage, has disap
peared never to rise from the watery grave,
till the sea gives up its dead. More than one
has gazed over the fathomless waters, and
sighed for a burial therein of all that is gross
in his nature. He would like to part eternally
with the stains upon his character. But he is
afraid that the ' ' damned spots ' ' will not ' ' out. ' '
He is like Macbeth who felt that all the waters
of old ocean would not cleanse his hand when
blood-stained with murder. He on the contrary
under the scourgings of a guilty conscience
cried out in an agony of fear,
"This my hand will rather
The multitudinous seas incarnadine,
Making the green one red."
Shakespeare well depicts the terribleness of an
outraged conscience, and the Bible equally por
trays the exceeding sinfulness of sin, but the
Christian's religion, unlike the dramatist's phi
losophy, does testify to the efficacy of the ocean,
under certain conditions, in removing moral
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stains. The inspired Micah says of God, ' ' Thou
wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the
sea." This is a very sweet reminder by the
seaside of entire forgiveness. God does both
forgive and forget. Do any long to have the
imperfect and guilty past as completely for
gotten, as though it lay at the bottom of the
ocean? If they are penitent and believing,
their sins will be cast into the depths of the
sea, to rise up against them no more to all eter
nity. So that the ocean speaks to us not only
of mire and dirt and wickedness, but also of
pardon and purity and peace.
Advancing a little farther along the shore,
another feature of the ocean appears. Do you
see the white caps tossed lightly up? These
foamy waves are caused by an upspringing
breeze. The direction in which they go depends
upon the quarter from which the wind blows.
They are mere surface billows, with broken
crests, and they do not reach down to the heart
of the ocean. They change their course with
every rising gale. There are persons whose
religion is of that description. They have what
James calls faith without works. They do not
hold steadily on in the way they started. They
are "carried about," says Paul, "with every
wind of doctrine." They are not stable and
reliable. They run after every religious nov
elty, they do not stay anchored anywhere. They
attend the services of the sanctuary for a while,
and then they drop out, or at least become very
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By the Sea
irregular. They cannot be classed as among the
standbys. They are not steadfast.
What, according to Scripture, are such like?
What Biblical illustration do we get of them,
as we stand by the ocean? The apostle James
compares such a person to the "surge of the
sea driven by the wind and tossed." While,
therefore, people should be Christians, they
should not consent to be these surface waves
caused by the wind, going now in one direction
and then in another. They should rather be
like the tide, which reaches to the very center
of the ocean, and which, from whatever quarter
the wind blows, moves ever shoreward. There
is something impressive in the steady on-mov
ing of a tidal wave. Nothing can turn it from
the beach, toward which it swells in majesty and
strength. In our religious life we are not to be
like the ' ' surge of the sea driven by the wind, ' '
but we are to be like the deep undercurrent,
like the mighty tide itself, always advancing,
advancing, toward the shining shore, and there
dissolving in glory.
Once more, the sea speaks of breakers, where
there is a chance for its full sweep. The ocean
outside of the sheltered harbor thunders warn
ing. When we consider its vastness, three
times as extensive as the dry land, we can
hardly see why it does not overleap its bounds
and engulf every thing. Professor William B.
Carpenter tells us that "the average height of
the whole land of the globe above the sea-level
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Biblical Nature Studies
certainly does not exceed 1,000 feet." That is
not a very great height to surmount. What
desolation would be wrought, if the deep should
burst its bonds! Sometimes it does overflow
large districts with appalling results. Stand
ing on a long stretch of sandy beach, you won
der what there is to hinder it from sweeping
far beyond your position, and sometimes it does
catch the wayfarer. You tremble when you
realize what disaster such a bulk of water could
carry. And it does bulk large, for the oceans
are not only big but deep, so deep that after
a descent of 600 feet there is absolute darkness,
a blackness like pitch. There average depth is
two and a half miles, and there are marine
abysses five and even six miles deep lacking
only a few feet. Into one of these oceanic
depressions Mount Everest, the highest of the
Himalayas and of the earth, could be sunk,
while yet water would roll over the lofty peak
half a mile deep. With such figures for meas
urement, we nevertheless can form no adequate
conception of the aqueous force that ordinarily
is held in check, and that yet occasionally breaks
loose with paralyzing effects.
We cannot forget the dykes of Holland. We
remember having read in history how the Neth
erlands have been repeatedly inundated; in
1277 when forty-four villages were destroyed;
ten years later when 80,000 persons lost their
lives; in 1570, when notwithstanding the vast
artificial embankments of timber and iron and
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By the Sea
granite, notwithstanding watchmen to patrol
day and night, the ocean broke through, float
ing vessels back into the country to be entan
gled in the tops of trees and houses, while far
and wide in an angry sea struggled hopelessly
animals and a great mass of humanity, and
100,000 human beings perished.
With such tragic facts in memory, we pity
the fate of the impenitent and incorrigible sin
ner, of whom Jeremiah in his Lamentations
says, ' ' Thy breach is great like the sea : who can
heal thee ? ' ' What consternation will be theirs
who are caught in the swelling of the Jor
dan unprepared to meet their God, unreconciled
to their Maker. Indescribable will be their
dismay, when the Psalmist's words are fulfilled,
' ' Thou carriest them away as with a flood, ' ' and
no flood will equal that whose "breach is great
like the sea." We thus hear the breakers, the
thunders of warning, as we walk "by the sea."
On the other hand, if any have the great Friend
as a helper in the time of trouble, in the whelm
ing flood, they can and will have the undisturbed
and serene confidence of the Psalmist, who said
he would not "fear,"
' ' Though the mountains be moved in the heart of the seas ;
Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled,
Though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof. ' '
In the midst of all will be the assurance of
being soon where "the sea is no more," that is,
in its destructive capacity, where there is only
a peaceful ocean, preeminently the Pacific, even
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the "glassy sea like unto crystal" before the
throne. There is a celestial seaside by which
we can walk, while we sing our triumph song:
' ' Hark ! the sound of holy voices
Chanting at the crystal sea,
Alleluia, alleluia,
Alleluia, Lord, to thee."

[116]

VIII
FISHING EXPERIENCES

vin
FISHING EXPERIENCES
Fishing has been a diversion or an employ
ment in all ages. In my boyhood it was a rec
reation along a mountain brook, and the rich
reward was a string of fine trout, a forked
branch of willow being strung with speckled
beauties. Every heart stirs to the poetic de
lineation :
" There throw, nice judging, the delusive fly;
And, as you lead it round in artful curve,
With eye attentive mark the springing game. ' '
On the high seas fishing is a serious occupa
tion for thousands, who furnish no small per
centage of the world's food supply. The first
disciples were fishermen on the Sea of Galilee.
Among the symbols of early Christianity,
portrayed in the catacombs and elsewhere, were
not only the dove and anchor but preeminently
the fish. There is a famous acrostic which is
very significant. The Greek word for fish,
lx0u's, consists of the initial letters in the Greek
sentence, i^o-ovs Xpio-ros ®eoS Yio's San-^p, Jesus Christ,
Son of God, Saviour. These initials, therefore,
worn on the person, or the representation of
the ix0ik itself on some design that was carried
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as an adornment, would be like the C. E. mon
ogram on a gold pin, of which Christian En-
deavorers today are proud. It was really a
profession of faith in the divine Lord. Be
lievers in the mystic ix0w were themselves
"little fishes," according to the great Latin
Church Father, Tertullian, of the latter half
of the second and of the early part of the third
century. He once said, "We, little fishes, after
the image of our lx6w, Jesus Christ, are born in
the water." Because of such associations,
there is a fisherman's ring, of which historical
mention is made as long as nearly seven cen
turies ago. It is of gold, with a representation
of St. Peter in a boat, fishing. This for gen
erations at least has been placed on the finger
of every newly-elected Pope, signifying, like
the ordinary bishop's ring, a marriage to the
Church. Whether this venerable relic was the
original possession of Peter or not, it might
well have been owned by that apostle, for he
was a fisherman, and he was commissioned to
"catch men." The New Testament gives three
of his fishing experiences.
The first time, at Christ's command he
launched out into the deep, soon to find his net
breaking with a great multitude of fishes,
enough to fill two boats. Then and there, with
the glittering spoil in full sight, he was called
to be a fisher of men. He had already been
called by Jesus on the banks of the Jordan,
where he heard the Baptist's testimony, but he
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had not yet given up his old occupation. Now,
however, there was to be a change ; henceforth
he was to cast only the gospel net. A higher
type of the piscatorial art was to be his. By
means of the material he was led on to the
spiritual, and his was a common experience.
When the Master met the woman of Samaria
at the well he asked her for a drink, and
the sparkling beverage being the uppermost
thought in the mind, it was not long before he
was telling her of the living water. The Magi,
who gave themselves to the study of the stars,
found Jesus by means of a star. The woman
at the well and the magician of the east were
each led to the Messiah by the material object
which was especially appropriate. Many a one
nowadays is made a follower of the Master in
a similar way.
The farmer knows from personal experience,
that "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he
also reap;" what is put in the ground comes
out, only in greater abundance. So he feels
that it must be religiously ; sowing the wind will
bring a harvest of the same, only increased till
it becomes the whirlwind. By this argument
ad hominem, by this natural sowing, he is per
suaded to cherish the supernatural seed. The
business man likewise is reached according to
his nature. He is given to balancing accounts,
to determining the profit and loss, and by and
by he realizes that there is one account which he
has not yet balanced, or rather he runs up the
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two columns of life and death, and he discovers
that the latter overruns. He is startled, and
wonders if he has calculated according to the
right rule. He reads the rule slowly over,
"What doth it profit a man, to gain the whole
world, and forfeit his life," lose his soul? That
is the basis on which he made his calculation
only to find that his account with God was all
loss and no profit. Not wishing to go into eter
nal bankruptcy, he reverses his action, and
henceforth lays up treasures in heaven. That
squares the account, or rather changes it from
all loss and no profit to all profit and no loss,
for the account balanced reads, "All things are
yours." It is in this manner that the business
man may see at length that the great business
of life has reference to eternity.
The lawyer may have a like experience. He
has pleaded case after case, only at last to be
himself under indictment, about to be called
into judgment, and he looks for some one to
manage his case before "the Judge of all the
earth." More impressive and instructive and
helpful than all his law books here is the Book
of books wherein he reads from the divine John,
"We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus
Christ the righteous." To this advocate he
opens his heart, and soon with the conscious
ness of a glorious acquittal, he rests his case.
No legal technicalities and quibbles can hold him
longer under trial, for the successful plea in
his behalf was made nineteen centuries ago on
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Calvary, when the advocate with the sanction
of heaven and amid the volcanic plaudits of the
earth closed his eloquent defense with the tri
umphant, "It is finished." Thus the barrister
in the study of human law may be brought face
to face with the divine law, before which he
stands condemned, except as he is cleared by
him whose defense was the pouring out of his
very life with an eloquence so pathetic as to
touch and overpower the heart of the Almighty
himself. How is it with the physician? He treats with
calm equanimity the bodily ills of patient after
patient, until some frightened soul says to him
by looks if not in words, "It is not the pain,
doctor, but it is the darkness ; cannot you save
me from the blackness of despair, cannot you
illumine the future?" Such an appeal, though
mute, to an ungodly practitioner must cut to
the quick, as he recognizes that his dying pa
tient is but reechoing the Scriptural proverb,
"Physician, heal thyself." Had he been in the
light, he might have led a wandering spirit out
of the gloom. When Macbeth asked, "How
does your patient, doctor?" the answer was,
"Not so sick, my lord, as she is troubled with
thick-coming fancies." Shakespeare knew that
there was in the guilty Lady Macbeth "a mind
diseased," that is, that there was upon her soul
the stain of a great sin, which did "keep her
from her rest," and which made her walk in
her sleep with tormented spirit. Doubtless
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many a physician, in connection with his pro
fessional duties, has seen the need of a calling
higher than his own, which can save the soul
as well as heal the body, or which, as the great
dramatist says, can "pluck from the memory
a rooted sorrow."
Thus in every sphere the temporal can be
made to lead to the eternal. The earthly is one
of the most powerful instruments which Omnip
otence uses. Not infrequently he reaches us
through the senses. Such is human nature, and
Diogenes understood it pretty well, when on
one occasion in the long ago he went groping
through the streets at noonday with lantern in
hand, in search of men. True men were scarce
in those days, and nothing could have impressed
this so vividly upon the mind, as for that old
philosopher to go peering through Athens with
a lantern in broad daylight. That was a pic
ture which struck the senses, and so it has been
remembered for over two thousand years. The
minister has to be a kind of Diogenes. People
sometimes say, What is the use of the preacher,
since he only tells his hearers to do what they
ought to do without the telling? Nevertheless,
in the words of Paul, it is "God's good pleas
ure through the foolishness of the preaching to
save them that believe. ' '
To have a clergyman go round among parish
ioners with the lamp and light of God's Word
in hand does set them to thinking, as they would
not otherwise do. They cannot help being im-
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Fishing Experiences
pressed when they see a ministerial Diogenes
with the gospel lantern going here and there
seeking men. That stirs their souls, as, for
instance, the appeal through the glory of the
heavens does not. The one, "holding forth the
word of life" as "a lamp shining in a dark
place," is right among them and so real; the
other, the starry firmament, is far off, and so
vague and powerless. It is all because, consti
tuted as we are, the earthly has more power over
us than the heavenly, or at least the heavenly
is reached through the earthly. Peter went
a fishing, and became a fisher of men. Through
the material he was led to the immaterial.
Happy are we, if we allow ourselves to be
directed through nature up to nature's God,
through the human up to the divine.
A second fishing experience of Peter is re
lated by Matthew. It was the custom of the
Jews who had reached the age of twenty to pay
annually toward the support of temple worship
at Jerusalem. This sacred tribute being asked
of Christ through Peter, and neither of them
having anything to give, the disciple was told
to cast a hook into the water, and the fish caught
would have within it the requisite amount of
money, and it did have. Christianity needs men
of wealth, fishes, if you please, with gold in
their mouths. Money is needed not for the
temple in Jerusalem as of old, but for temples
over all the world. From China and Japan
and India, and even from destitute places in our
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own country, the cry is for help, the means at
command being too limited to carry on as could
be wished the grand work of Christian evan
gelization. There is not enough in the treasury
of the Church to meet all the demands for
assistance. There are noble persons, whose
riches are sent out in streams of blessing to
mankind. There is needed the catching of more
fish with money, for coin can be turned to a
better use than to lie idle in the great stomach
of selfishness, where alone it becomes, as the
modern phrase is, "tainted." The fish is no
better off for the gold within it, neither is man
with all his ample means compassed in self.
We want for Christ men of wealth, whether
wealth of money or of mind. Every immortal
creature, according to the great Teacher, is
worth more than the whole world. All are of
priceless value, but all are not equally capable
of being brought into the kingdom.
Some are too wary to be taken in a net, to
be drawn in with the multitude. They must be
angled, caught singly by a hook (for that was
Peter's method), by a hook prudently thrown.
There is a legitimate fishing with the drag-net,
there is the enclosing of a great mass by a
sweeping movement, but the final result of this
is not always satisfactory. As of old we get
good and bad. We, for instance, work up an
excitement, we launch out with much of dem
onstration, we throw our net, we pull it in, and
it is full, but too largely of eels, for it is not
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long before many of the slippery things have
squirmed out. Those caught singly, one by one,
are apt to turn out better, and therefore we
need more of skill with individuals, more of
scientific fishing. There is science even in fish
ing, which cannot be done successfully by bun
glers. Said Isaac Walton as long ago as 1653
in "The Complete Angler," "Move your rod
softly as a snail moves to that chub you intend
to catch; let your bait fall gently upon the
water three or four inches before him, and he
will infallibly take the bait. ' ' Then this writer
gives a personal experience : ' ' There lie upon
the top of the water, in this very hole, twenty
chubs. I'll catch only one, and that shall be the
biggest of them all." He does angle so com
pletely, that he immediately exclaims, "There
he is, that very chub I showed you with the
white spot on." This angling, this nice skill,
this singling out the one we are after, this re
ligious spotting of some particular person,
is what we need in spiritual fishing. There
should be a delicately-wise approach, such as
characterizes "the complete angler."
Peter drew in a great multitude with the net,
but when he caught the fish with money in it
he cast the hook. While many can be swept
into the kingdom, some can only be angled.
We may not be able to address a great audi
ence, to move a large congregation, but we can
influence a friend, we can bring to bear upon
some acquaintance the force of a consecrated
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personality. This can be made to tell mightily
for the cause. There should be less of the hap
hazard effort and more of the definite aim. Of
course, there is such a thing as "fisherman's
luck," which Dr. Henry Van Dyke made the
title of one of his delightful books. He enlarged
upon the feature of chance, of uncertainty, of
exciting adventure, in catching fish There is
an element of luck in the occupation, which,
however, to a certain degree is also as we have
seen an exact science.
To change the figure, and to use a Biblical
phrase, there is not infrequently an effective
drawing of the bow at a venture, and an Old
Testament king was once thus brought down.
Said Sir Walter Scott:
"O, many a shaft at random sent,
Finds mark the archer little meant."
Longfellow, too, pictures a random shot as hav
ing accomplished its purpose, when he wrote,
' ' I shot an arrow into the air,
It fell to earth, I knew not where;
******
' ' I breathed a song into the air,
It fell to earth, I know not where ;
******
' ' Long, long afterward, in an oak
I found the arrow still unbroke;
And the song, from beginning to end,
I found again in the heart of a friend. ' '
This is true often enough to encourage us in
the quite casual remark. Nevertheless, while
' ' an arrow into the air ' ' does often hit the right
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spot, generally it is better to aim at a mark.
Whether in shooting or in fishing or in
doing religious work, it is well ordinarily to
individualize more than we do.
A third time Peter went a fishing. It was
in the interval of uncertainty between the res
urrection and the ascension. Christ had died
and risen again, appearing from time to time
to his confused disciples. They hardly knew
what to do, for they could no longer follow the
Master personally as they had done, while all
were sustained from a common purse. What
now were they to do? That was the troubling
question. At length Peter settled it so far as
he was concerned by saying, "I go a fishing;"
that is, he would take up his old occupation till
he got more light, he would proceed with pres
ent duty and await further developments. Six
others fell in with his plan, as they decided to
go along. All night they toiled upon the lake,
but in vain, till the morning came, when at the
word of the unrecognized Lord on the shore
the net was cast once more, quickly to be filled
with the finny tribe, and soon Peter was at the
Master's side, and before the interview closed,
his faith was again made strong. In a time of
doubt and darkness, he went a fishing, and
found Christ anew.
We all, probably, at particular times come into
a state of more or less uncertainty. We are in
the dark. What shall we do? Just what Peter
did ; in all his confusion he felt that one thing
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was right, and that was to go to work, and at
it he went in his old way. In a similar condi
tion, we should give ourselves to activity, pro
saically if need be, from a hard sense of duty
if necessary, doing with a grim determination
the best we can, acting up to the light we have.
We are to hold ourselves steadily to this, to the
unwavering performance of at least the minor
and even of the major activities. By pursuing
undeviatingly such a course of conduct, there
will come to us sooner or later a revelation of
the Lord, of whom we may have temporarily
lost the vision. Whatever else may be uncer
tain, whatever may be our bewilderment in cer
tain respects, it is right to fish for souls, to
seek to help others.
We are to stand to our posts, we are to do
heroic service, even in the midst of darkness.
We ought to have more of the spirit shown by
the brave Spartan at Thermopylae. When he
was reminded that the arrows of the Persians
falling round him were so numerous as posi
tively to obscure the sun, his reply was that he
preferred to fight in the shade. His sentiment
was,
Let the arrows come in their darkening flight,
They make a fine shade in which to fight.
When there is such resoluteness, such grit and
grace, in facing ordeals, when we act well our
part, however perfunctorily sometimes, however
machine-like for the time being, when the Lord
sees us toiling faithfully, he will ' ' come to us, ' '
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and with his blessing on our efforts be they ever
so material, the spiritual will certainly be
added. The way out of religious perplexity and
depression, and a general unsatisfactoriness of
experience, is to set about doing something. By
work faith in us is strengthened.
Nor are we to be discouraged by long toiling,
for the dawn with better things is at hand.
"Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy
cometh in the morning." With this assurance
we are to toil on all through life even, all night,
and when the morning of eternity breaks, Jesus
will stand on the shore as he did with Peter,
only it will be on the ' ' shining shore, ' ' and our
works shall follow us, our gospel net shall be
drawn ashore after us, full of souls saved
through our instrumentality. The more there
are to come to us at last with grateful expres
sion for the ways we have served them, and
especially for transcendent service rendered in
life 's crucial periods, the more will be the flash
ing jewels with which our crowns of rejoicing
will be set.

[ 1^1 J

IX
THE WHITE MOUNTAINS

IX
THE WHITE MOUNTAINS
Next to the Catskills of my youth, what Starr
King christened the White Hills have most fre
quently lured me, commanding my rapt atten
tion and my highest admiration. It was the
mountains of which Ruskin said, "these great
cathedrals of the earth, with their gates of
rock, pavements of cloud, choirs of stream and
stone, altars of snow, and vaults of purple,
traversed by the continual stars." The same
author well notes how insignificant blades of
grass contribute to the glory of the everlasting
hills. Read his eloquent apostrophe to what
he terms mere strips of "fluted green," and
you can echo his language: "Look toward the
higher hills, where the waves of everlasting
green roll silently into their long inlets among
the shadows of the pines; and we may, per
haps, at last know the meaning of those quiet
words of the 147th Psalm, He maketh grass to
grow upon the mountains."
In entering upon particulars, we shall have
to confine ourselves, quoting from Deuteronomy,
to "the chief things of the ancient mountains."
The first important point in passing up the
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famous Franconia Notch is the Flume. This
is a remarkable natural fissure, solid rock ap
parently having once been rent in twain by an
earthquake or other shock, while through the
opening thus made a stream dashes with a sense
of liberty. For several hundred feet you as
cend the gorge, stepping from stone to stone,
or following a plank walk, or crossing romantic
bridges, until in the narrowing defile, with the
water roaring beneath your feet, and the rocks
rising straight up on your right and on your
left, and trees hanging threateningly over you,
you almost fear for your life, lest by some slight
jar things might be set to tumbling about your
head. Especially was there this sense of insecurity,
when a few years ago between the walls at the
narrowest place hung a huge boulder that
weighed tons. It seemed to be held by the
smallest contact possible with the crags on
either side. Would not a push of the hand start
it swinging, and perhaps spring it from its
sockets? Naturally visitors felt somewhat tim
orous on passing beneath it, though sometimes
with a kind of daring they would stoop to take
a drink of water directly under the vast sus
pended mass. It doubtless had been lodged
there for geologic ages, they would argue, while
they felt it would continue there for countless
millenniums yet. Starr King spoke of it in his
day after this fashion, "as unpleasant to look
at, if the nerves are irresolute, as the sword of
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The White Mountains
Damocles, and yet held by a grasp out of which
it will not slip for centuries."
But he was mistaken. The sword of Damoc
les, suspended by a single hair, did fall; and
the colossal stone did one day go crashing to
the bottom of the chasm. On the 19th of June,
1883, there was a terrific thunder storm, and
more deafening than the roar of heaven's artil
lery was an awful, deep rumbling which lasted
for forty minutes, and which was heard at Beth
lehem seventeen miles away. What had hap
pened? A tremendous landslide had occurred,
and the boulder was carried down like the
merest pebble. We get here a lively and im
pressive illustration of the divine omnipo
tence. In the presence of the terrible forces
of the mountains, we feel very sensibly the
almightiness of the Creator. With such ex
hibitions of power, human helplessness becomes
all too evident. Under such circumstances,
one must be moved to stand and reverently
worship. Farther up the Franconia Notch is another
wonder. A mountain breaks into human sem
blance, giving us the renowned Profile, or the
Old Man of the Mountain. Ascend to that
craggy height springing into the air 1200 feet
above the valley, which is itself at a consid
erable elevation above the sea level, get a near
view, and there are only chaotic rocks, with
out form and void. But when you are suffi
ciently removed, there is a strong and majestic
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and benignant face, and the poet's lines are
verified, ' ' 'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view,
And robes the mountain in its azure hue, ' '
and it equally brings out in this case the linea
ments of a man. When you get just the right
standpoint, there appears that human visage,
with its far-off look to the southeast.
There is the noble forehead, the perfect nose,
and there are "the vast lips, which," says Haw
thorne in his classic Tale, "if they could have
spoken, would have rolled their thunder accents
from one end of the valley to the other," that
valley of which Whittier has said,
"Watched over by the solemn-browed
And awful face of stone."
The flight of time would seem as nothing to
that serene countenance with its unchanging
expression of repose.
The Profile Lake immediately below has been
called the Old Man's washbowl, and again, with
a finer thought, his mirror, but he remains un
moved at our fancies, and answers not a word,
though the companion Echo Lake near by would
seem to give an opportunity for a returning
voice. He however makes no response. He
just continues to beam pleasantly upon us in our
infantile littleness. We stand and gaze at him
with a certain awe, and we feel the subtle influ
ence of those benign features whose peaceful-
ness has not been disturbed for centuries.
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The White Mountains
Hawthorne's romance of "The Great Stone
Face ' ' represents a boy Ernest as growing up
in daily sight of the expressive face, and as
being unconsciously educated by it into nobility
of character. The lad was told by his mother
of an Indian legend, that there would come
some day to the valley a great and good man
with a face like that sculptured by the hand of
God on the brow of the mountain, and he began
at once watching and waiting, and longing for
the fulfillment of the mysterious prophecy. In
his boyhood there returned to the valley one
who had been a native of it, but who had gone
away and had become immensely rich, and who
in retiring from business selected the place of
his happy childhood. On the site of the old
farm-house he erected a marble palace, and
furnished it in princely style. The popular im
pression at first was that the predicted coming
one had appeared in this Gathergold, and a
resemblance was imagined between his features
and those chiseled in stone. But when his
penuriousness was seen, and his general mean
ness of character, hopes were disappointed.
Ernest from the outset had failed to see any
likeness to the Great Stone Face in the "sordid
visage" of the Midas at whose touch everything
had turned to gold.
When he became a young man, another native
of the valley came back to end his days there,
and he was a celebrated general. Again were
there great expectations, and the features of
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the Profile were eagerly compared with those
of the distinguished commander. For a while
resemblances were traced, but a closer inspec
tion revealed a certain lack in the man of war.
There was not the tenderness, the mildness, that
appeared in the Great Stone Face, which was
as the face of an angel "sitting among the
hills," says the romancer, "and enrobing him
self in a cloud- vesture of gold and purple."
Ernest had reached middle age. when hope was
again stirred, as an eminent statesman came
back to the place of his nativity, having but
recently been nominated to the Presidency.
There was a triumphal procession of old neigh
bors and friends to give him a welcome, and
banners were carried with his portrait smiling
to another of the Stone Face, and according to
the artist at least there was a striking resem
blance between the two. Shouts went up for
him who immediately became known as Old
Stony Phiz, and the name of itself caught
voters by the score. Once more was there dis
appointment, as time revealed an absence of
high purpose in the honored guest, and selfish
ambition was set aside as failing to meet the
ideal so grandly imaged in stone.
Eventually Ernest became an old man, whose
life had been one of quiet ministry to his fel
lows, and whose ripening of character was beau
tiful to behold, when another native of the val
ley appeared upon the scene in an illustrious
poet. He sought out Ernest himself, who had
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The White Mountains
become known far and wide as a kind of sage
because of noble thoughts, which seemed to
drop naturally from his lips as the fruit of real
heart experiences. The poet found him alter
nately reading a book of the visitor's poems,
and then gazing earnestly up at the physiog
nomy of rock. Upon his learning that the
stranger was the writer of what he was reading,
again were his anticipations unrealized, espe
cially on hearing the poet's own confession that
divine as his thoughts had been, his life had
been very human.
And now came an astonishing disclosure.
About sunset the aged inhabitant of the valley,
as was his custom, gathered his neighbors
about him, and spoke to them words of life out
of a rich experience, and the poet himself sat
and listened with entranced attention to the
prophet of "mild, sweet, thoughtful counte
nance, with the glory of white hair diffused
about it," while, says Hawthorne, "at a dis
tance, but distinctly to be seen, high up in the
golden light of the setting sun, appeared the
Great Stone Face, with hoary mists around it,
like the white hairs around the brow of Er
nest, ' ' and the poet with ' ' irresistible impulse ' '
exclaimed, "Behold! behold! Ernest is him
self the likeness of the Great Stone Face!"
And it was even so. Not the wealthy merchant,
nor the great military leader, nor the ambitious
politician, nor even the author of world-wide
fame, but the person of character was the one
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who was imaged in the grand Profile on the
mountain side. He who daily dreamed of the
sublime ideal in stone, and who sought for its
realization in human character, himself became
like that which engrossed his mind and heart.
Let the fulfillment of prophecy be seen in the
Christ who has already come, let the matchless
face of the Son of man and Son of God be that
upon which we gaze with adoration and aspira
tion, let him whose image appears in the Rock
of Ages and in the everlasting hills be contin
ually before our eyes, and we have a grander
ideal than that of the Great Stone Face, and
the character resulting will be correspondingly
more noble.
We next pass round to take in the majestic
Presidential range. These on an October day,
when perhaps their tops are covered with snow
and the air is translucent, are seen to be indeed
in their crystal clearness the White Hills. The
highest of these we once and again have
climbed. We ascended on our first trip there
by the carriage road, and after four miles of
steady ascent we were above the timber line.
But we had four miles more to go, we were only
half way up, and how we were thrilled by the
unique experience! We looked down into the
valley below, and the dark shadows lying along
it gave us a creeping sensation, as if we were
peering down into Dante 's Inferno. We struck
into a cloud with the wind blowing a gale, and
the mists came fairly boiling up out of gulfs and
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The White Mountains
ravines which seemed bottomless pits. Then
we were hit by a snow-squall, in July though
it was, and we seemed to be in the wildest win
ter weather with drifting snows and fogs pre
venting vision farther than a few feet. We
were not surprised to learn that ladies some
times have to be held to be kept from being
blown from the platform in front of the hotel
then on the summit, while strong men occasion
ally have been hurled to the ground by a blast
of the Almighty. We can imagine what an
electric storm would be at such an altitude, with
the lightning striking the bare rocks on every
side, and with deep thunderings reverberating
in awful sublimity from peak to peak.
We shuddered on seeing the pile of stones
on the spot where Lizzie Bourne perished, hav
ing almost and yet not quite reached the top,
as she lay down to die in a tempest of the night.
We recalled the other tragedies of those who
in some storm lost their trail, their discovered
bones afterward telling of their mournful fate,
while now and then one has wandered away
never yet to be found. Amid the dense fog and
especially the terrific play of the elements at
a height where there is nothing to break their
force, we feel the power of the Creator in whose
sight the vast mountains are only as dust in
the balance. Even in clear and calm weather
we have a sense of being the merest pigmies on
earth, when slowly we ascend Mount Washing
ton. We wind round close by Madison and
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Biblical Nature Studies
Adams and Clay and Jefferson, and we see
them as it were sinking beneath our feet, and
when we reach the highest crest we are bewil
dered by the multitude of Haystacks, to use
the figure of the countryman, who said that
New Hampshire contained so much land, it had
to be stacked.
In another aspect the surrounding country
seems to be tossed into multitudinous billows,
while if we are favored with cloud effects far
below, there is for all the world the appearance
of white caps on an angry and boundless ocean,
and we swing our hat in the brisk wind that is
blowing, while we exclaim as Byron did of a
European mountain,
' ' Mont Blanc is the monarch of mountains ;
They crowned him long ago
On a throne of rocks, in a robe of clouds,
With a diadem of snow."
We catch the enthusiasm of these lines, and we
recognize that the great and majestic God who
made all is worthy of the most devout adora
tion. Particularly do we feel this, when we
consider how comparatively insignificant even
the great mountains are as related to the whole
round earth. "The thickness of a sheet of
writing paper on an artificial sphere a foot in
diameter," we are authoritatively assured,
"represents the eminence of the mountain
chains. They are no more than the cracks in
the varnish of such a ball." Surely we ought
to bow down and worship, we ought to kneel
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The White Mountains
before the Lord our Maker, and the Creator
of the universe.
In our survey, we must not omit the superb
Crawford Notch. We see a silvery stream
dashing along through the length of the valley,
and we recall Tennyson's song of the brook,
' ' For men may come and men may go,
But I go on forever."
We ascend Mount Willard at the head of the
Notch, and from a precipitous edge we com
mand a most pleasing view of forest-clad Willey
on one side and of towering Webster on the
other, and the whole immense gorge lies at our
feet. Creeping to the brink of the shelving
mountain, and looking straight down, and lis
tening to the sounds that rise to our ears, we
can say with Bryant, " It is a fearful thing
To stand upon the beetling verge, and see
Where storm and lightning, from that huge gray wall,
Have tumbled down vast blocks, and at the base
Dashed them in fragments; and to lay thine ear
Over the dizzy depth, and hear the sound
Of winds, that struggle with the woods below,
Come up like ocean murmurs. ' '
Still standing there, we are reminded of the
Willey catastrophe that brought disaster to
the family of that name far below us in the
center of the Notch. This was in 1826. In
front of the humble inn was a green stretch
of meadow, extending to Mount Webster of
frowning brow. Back of the dwelling rose
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Biblical Nature Studies
threateningly Mount Willey, but being verdure-
clad it did not seem specially fraught with
danger. To be sure, a thunder-bolt or a sud
denly rising stream would sometimes loosen a
huge boulder on Webster, and with a deafening
roar it would go crashing to the bottom, leaving
a trail of light along the path it quickly trav
ersed. But the Willey family were not prepared
to see, after a dark and heavy August storm,
the mountain itself back of them begin to move
in their direction. Nevertheless, that evidently
was what they did see in the horror of great
darkness which must have been theirs. They
rushed from the house only to be caught by
the avalanche, which covered the meadow at
places to a depth of thirty feet, and which
buried three of the household so deep that they
were never found.
Had they remained in the cottage, they would
have been spared, for just above it a rocky
ledge divided the landslide, and the little struc
ture that had been their home was saved. Over
the remains that were recovered, very properly
did the preacher at the funeral speak from the
text which says of God that he weighs "the
mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance."
Very significantly was the family Bible lying
open on the table in the Willey house at the
eighteenth Psalm, containing such impressive
sentences as these,
' ' The Lord also thundered in the heavens, ' '
"And the foundations of the world were laid bare."
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The White Mountains
The historic disaster suggests that the nat
ural world has not only a benign but also a
threatening aspect. Of the author of nature
Paul bids us behold both his goodness and his
severity. With such tragedies, there would
seem to be no inherent improbability against
the judgment to come pictured in the Revela
tion, when many shall cry to the rocks and the
mountains to fall on them and hide them from
the wrath of the Lamb. That catastrophe in
a New England mountain-pass shows what does
sometimes occur, and what therefore may occur
again at the final consummation of history. But
the manifestly calm reading of the Holy Scrip
ture in that crisis indicates a trust, which can
rise superior to all calamities. We can be like
Tennyson, who believed in God and immortal
ity and in an overruling providence, to quote
his well-known lines,
' ' Tho ' Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shrieked against his creed. ' '
There can be a quiet contemplation of the worst
that may be coming, while yet there is retained
a serene faith in him whom the Bible reveals.

[147]

X
THE MOUNTAINS ROUND ABOUT
JERUSALEM

THE MOUNTAINS ROUND ABOUT
JERUSALEM
Dr. Henry Van Dyke, Princeton Professor,
distinguished author, and American Minister
to the Netherlands, when he went to Southern
California, caught inspiration from the Sierra
Madre range as seen from Pasadena. Under
the spell of its heights he wrote these lines :
"O Mother Mountains! billowing far to the snow-lands,
Robed in aerial amethyst, silver, and blue,
Why do ye look so proudly down on the lowlands?
What have their gardens and groves to do with you?
*********
' ' O Mother Mountains, Madre Sierra, I love you !
Rightly you reign o'er the vale that your bounty fills, —
Kissed by the sun, or with big, bright stars above you, —
I murmur your holy name, and lift up mine eyes to the
hills. "
The writer evidently had in mind what the
Psalmist wrote :
' ' I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains :
From whence shall my help come?
My help cometh from Jehovah,
Which made heaven and earth."
The sight of the mountains, the implication is,
has an inspiring effect. We are reminded of
the thrill of rapture felt by the ten thousand
Greeks, when the sea first burst upon their view.
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You remember the story as related by Xeno-
phon in his immortal Anabasis. The Greeks
in their expedition to the far east met with
reverse after reverse, until they had to abandon
their project of a Persian conquest.
The long march home was conducted amid
disasters that almost overwhelmed the band of
heroes, who, however, struggled on till at length
the foremost ranks from a rise of ground saw
in the distance the glimmering waters of the
Euxine. They sent up a shout of joy at the
longed-for sight, and others, hurrying forward
to ascertain the cause of the excitement, helped
to swell the mighty volume of glad cheering.
The commander-in-chief, spurring his horse
toward the front, caught the exultant cry, ' ' The
sea! the sea!" That spoke of a speedy end
to their toilsome march. The successful retreat
of the famous ten thousand from the plains of
Babylon was to be accomplished, to be the won
der of every century since. The sight of the
sea meant deliverance from extremest peril, and
a safe return home.
Israel was portrayed as experiencing a sim
ilar relief and transformation, when, on lifting
up the eyes, the mountains came into view. It
has been suggested that the Psalm, from which
our quotation has been made, may have been
chanted by the pilgrims returning from the
exile in Babylon. The land of the captivity
was a level country, so level as to have been
monotonous to the Median princess, whom Neb-
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uchadnezzar married and brought from her
mountainous home to the prosaic plain. That
is why the oriental monarch built the celebrated
Hanging Gardens, one of the seven wonders of
the ancient world. It was to gratify an ex
pressed desire of his young wife to see a moun
tain again. Accordingly for her the artificial
hill was constructed, rising picturesquely in
successive terraces above the city walls like a
garden, like a suspended paradise, which it was.
The Jews also tired of the dreary sameness of
Babylon, resembling our great stretches of
prairie. They had come from what is expressly
called a "hill country," and when by decree of
Cyrus they were permitted to return to their
native land, they eagerly climbed higher and
higher till they were once more among the
"everlasting hills," which they so loved, as
William Tell, according to Schiller, loved the
"crags and peaks" of Switzerland. Drawing
near their destination after a wearisome pil
grimage, they might well have broken out into
the triumphant strain, ' ' I will lift up mine eyes
unto the mountains."
"Sacred Mountains" indeed were those of
the Holy Land, and the historian, Headley,
devoted an entire book to a description of what
has transpired on their peaks. Mount Olym
pus was fabled to be the abode of the Grecian
gods, but Mt. Carmel was actually the scene of
the manifestation of the fiery presence of the
eternal and only living God. The sculptor of
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Alexander the Great thought that Mount Athos
in Thrace, because of its natural conformation,
could quite easily be transformed by chisel and
hammer into a statue of the great general,
which, says Plutarch, "in its left hand should
hold a city of ten thousand inhabitants, and
out of its right should pour a copious river
into the sea." That, had the proposal been
acted upon, would have been a splendid trans
formation, but it would not have equalled the
transfiguration, which really did take place on
another mount three centuries later, when, says
an evangelist, "Jesus taketh with him Peter,
and James, and John his brother, and bringeth
them up into a high mountain apart," where
he was "transfigured before them," while "his
face did shine as the sun, and his garment be
came white as the light, ' ' glistering as the snow
of Hermon, on which they were. The associa
tions make the mountains of Israel dearer and
grander than those of any other country, giv
ing them a religious significance. Looming
heights anywhere are suggestive of the majesty
and glory of God. All of us have been im
pressed with the stately Biblical sentiment,
"The strength of the hills is his," and with
the sublime utterance of Isaiah, "He weighed
the mountains in scales, and the hills in a bal
ance." The mountainous always and every
where awes the human spirit, but more espe
cially are we moved by the "mountains round
about Jerusalem," which we are to consider,
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glancing at simply three heights, that are fa
mous as the seven hills whereon Rome was
built. The first is Zion, which, however, is by no
means a Mont Blanc. It cannot compare in
impressiveness with this as seen from the
lovely valley of Chamonix. It has no Alpine
grandeur. It is only about 2500 feet above the
level of the Mediterranean, and most of us have
stood on greater elevations than that in the
Catskills, and in the White Mountains, where
indeed summer hotels have been found at an
altitude of 3,000 and even 6,000 feet. Neverthe
less the Psalmist could say,
' ' Beautiful in elevation, the joy of the whole earth,
Is Mount Zion. ' '
And its moral elevation is grand, for out of it
has come the law, and out of Jerusalem the
word of God. There for over 1,000 years the
kings and princes of Israel held the sceptre of
power. There was founded a theocratic king
dom, out of which with germinant force sprang
Christianity. There was inaugurated a wor
ship destined to become universal. There, on
one of its spurs, on Mt. Moriah, where the
mosque of Omar now stands, was erected the
temple, a perpetual call to mankind to bow
down before the Lord, the Maker of all. The
sanctuary was the most conspicuous object on
the "holy hill of Zion," on its Moriah peak.
We have here, then, a summons to recognize
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God, to meet for his worship. Zion, the holy
temple, is not to be neglected. As the tribes
of old went up to Jerusalem, we have our Zions
to-day in the various churches where we should
gather. We need time and again to climb to
the mountain top of devotion and praise. We
live too much in the plains. All the week we
are in the valley, amid temptation and trial and
abounding worldliness, and we need the Sab
bath to lift us to higher altitudes. President-
Emeritus Eliot of Harvard, who sets a notably
good example in this respect, has well said:
"People of to-day should go to church regu
larly ; for, if men allow themselves to go with
out attending to the noblest things, they must
expect to lose themselves in the confused stress
and strain of everyday affairs." We need to
come to a decided stop every seventh day, and
get out of the surging mass of sinning, chafing
humanity, and we need to ascend the slopes
of Zion, singing as we go,
' ' I was glad when they said unto me,
Let us go unto the house of the Lord."
Groveling in the dust, ground down by busi
ness, crushed by trouble, overborne by the
power of evil, we need to lift our eyes unto the
mountains whence cometh our help, unto Mount
Zion, unto the repose of worship. Like a peace
ful mountain, the appointed day of rest prop
erly observed rises out of the surrounding
chaos, calling our thoughts from the earthly to
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the heavenly. We are not to forsake the assem
bling of ourselves together, as the custom of
some is, says an apostle, as the habit of many
is, we must say. There seems to be an increas
ing number of non-churchgoers even among
professed believers, who in this respect do not
follow in the footsteps of the Master, concern
ing whom it is recorded, ' ' As his custom was,
he entered into the synagogue on the sabbath
day." That is, he had the habit of worship,
and we should have, not neglecting God's house,
which has in it so much of helpfulness, which
lifts us from the low vale to the lofty mount.
The quiet hour at intervals is invaluable. It
throws about us defensive influences, fortifying
us against coming attacks of sin and sorrow.
Zion anciently was an impregnable fortress.
It was one of the last points to succumb in the
conquest of Canaan by Joshua. It was the very
last to surrender to Titus, 70 A.D., when Jeru
salem was trodden down of the Gentiles, as
commemorated in the Arch of Titus still stand
ing near the historic Roman Forum in the city
on the Tiber. The mount overthrown with such
difficulty was the Gibraltar of Palestine. The
Church is such a stronghold. It is a Mount
Zion, a Gibraltar, for the tempted and tried.
We are to lift up our eyes unto this mountain.
Regular worshippers in the sanctuary receive a
special blessing, they have as others do not the
Lord for their helper.
Olivet is another sacred mountain which has
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for us a helpful suggestion. On its western
slope was Gethsemane, which we once visited
with tender hearts. From its top, whence also
we looked and indulged in the reminiscent, there
was the weeping of the Lord over Jerusalem.
Over on its opposite slope was the village of
Bethany, the home of Mary and Martha and
their brother Lazarus, where we lovingly lin
gered. It was the scene of the Triumphal
Entry, when the people had to shout, or the
very stones would have cried out, as the elo
quence of Brutus made
' ' The stones of Rome to rise in mutiny. ' '
But the peculiar renown of Olivet arises from
its marking the place of the Ascension. Per
haps not from the point where the emperor
Constantine and his aged mother built their
memorial church, but somewhere from its sides
or summits the risen Lord ascended on high,
and Olivet fades away in the cloud which re
ceived him out of sight. The top of this holy
mount is thus, so to speak, lost in the clouds.
It penetrates the sky. Because of this glorious
fact each of us should say with the Psalmist,
"I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains,"
unto Mount Olivet, whence cometh our help,
for the promise is, "this Jesus, which was re
ceived up from you into heaven, shall so come
in like manner as ye beheld him going into
heaven." The certainty of the Lord's resur
rection and ascension is something upon which
we should fix our eyes, as upon a massive moun-
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tain filling all the vision; and the certainty of
his coming again, of the repetition of the cloudy
splendor of Olivet, when he shall come on the
clouds of heaven with all the holy angels, —
this should lead us to make sure of being among
those, who, says the apostle, are "looking for
the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of
our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ."
In other words, we should see to it that we
have more of the upward look, of the hope
reaching like an anchor sure and steadfast
within the veil. Our citizenship should increas
ingly be in heaven. Even the British Weekly
has said that "the future life" needs to enter
more into religious thinking Eternity does
grip the conscience as nothing else does. We
should live more in the realm of the world to
come; not to the extent of neglecting earthly
duties, for that would be standing and gazing
idly up into the sky like the disciples of old,
who were gently rebuked therefor. But we
should look long enough and often enough
through the gates ajar between which loved
ones sweep, long enough and often enough in
the direction whither Christ disappeared in
glory, to get a vivid sense of the reality of the
celestial world. We need to ascend the mount
touched by the cloud that receives the depart
ing out of sight From this exalted commun
ion with the unseen, we shall descend better
equipped to fight life's battle.
It was the distinguished Fabius who was
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noted for "always keeping upon the hills."
For this he was ridiculed by his impatient fol
lowers, the Romans, who inquired contemptu
ously, "whether it were not his meaning, by
thus leading them from mountain to mountain,
to carry them at last (having no hopes on
earth) up into heaven, or to hide them in the
clouds from Hannibal's army." But the great
African general, the hero of old Carthage, saw
the wisdom of Fabius. Subsequently meeting
with defeat from him, he said, "Did not I tell
you, that this cloud which always hovered upon
the mountains at some time or other would
come down with a storm upon us?" It was
even so. That cloud contained thunder and
lightning, contained bolts of destruction which
nothing could resist.
We need to dwell much, or at least more than
we do in these busy times, on the heights of
Olivet, in thoughts of heaven, in meditations
upon the unseen. It is well occasionally to get
up ' ' among the clouds, ' ' though this may excite
the ridicule of the prosaic, of those who have
no ideals, of those who pride themselves on
keeping to terra firma. Aristophanes, a liter
ary critic of the golden age of Greece, repre
sented Socrates as caught up to the clouds in
a basket, and there he had the philosopher
swinging in mid air. It was as if his views
were altogether too exalted, too utterly super
fine, for earth, too far beyond and above the
reach of ordinary mortals, and the comedian
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Mountains Round About Jerusalem
thus tried to laugh him out of court. But we
to-day see that from the lofty, and, if you
please, cloudy and hazy altitude to which he
was lifted in contempt, there came the very
best and most forceful teachings of antiquity
for the elevation of humanity.
We may be sneered at for our ' ' other-world-
liness," for living among the clouds with our
impracticable notions of accomplishing any
thing by communing with the divine, but from
those very clouds will come an electrical energy,
a spiritual power, which will sweep with the
strength of the thunder storm over the valley
below, to which we descend for meeting its stern
realities. Christ himself often went up into the
mountain to pray, and especially on the eve
of some trying ordeal. Cloud-capped Olivet is
a good preparation for the conflict in the vale.
We are thereby made sons of thunder, vital
personalities fairly vibrant with electricity and
well-nigh resistless.
Once more, Calvary is needed to complete the
view. This is not, strictly speaking, a moun
tain at all. The old paintings sometimes pic
ture it as a rugged height, but this does not
correspond to the fact. It is not so much as
called a hill by the evangelists, but the "place
of a skull," its name, in the opinion of many,
being derived from its form, from its being a
rounded, skull-shaped mound. In this view
of the matter, it was little more than a hillock.
Helena, the mother of Constantine, in her
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pilgrimage to the holy land at the age of eighty
in the year 326, could scarcely find it ; but when
she did discover what she believed was the site,
well did her converted son, the emperor, dis
place the temple of Venus which had been
erected there as an insult from heathenism, —
very properly did he demolish this, and build
in its stead the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
This stood for three hundred years, and though
burned by the Persians in the seventh century,
and though its successor was destroyed by the
Mohammedans in the tenth, there has been a
restoration again and again, the last time in
the nineteenth century, and this was the edifice
we entered, with feelings like those of the Cru
saders when they sought to rescue the place
from infidels during conflicts lasting for two
centuries. This spot of hallowed memory, could it be
certainly identified, should be, if possible, pre
served and cherished, for there Christ was cru
cified, there he was buried in a rocky tomb,
there he died for human sin, there he made the
great sacrifice which was to be once for all,
which was forever to end the shedding of blood
on smoking altars. But after all no such device
as a church is needed to indicate the locality of
Calvary. The great sacrificial truth, without
requiring any outward symbol, speaks for itself
with a most impressive majesty.
We, however, would like to know the place
of the Lord's burial, for which there is another
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claimant, that is growing in favor among mod
ern scholars. To be sure, the spot where the
Church of the Holy Sepulchre is located has
been generally accepted for sixteen centuries.
It was the tomb here for which the Crusaders
so long contended. But not till the early part
of the fourth century did Helena make her
identification. She did not make her investi
gation till nearly three hundred years after the
event. Meanwhile Jerusalem had been razed
to the ground. The destruction was so thor
ough that all local sites must have been oblit
erated. Moreover, the one chosen is apparently
within the ancient walls of old Jerusalem, as
excavations would seem to show, whereas we
are expressly informed that Christ was cruci
fied and buried without the gate.
Now just outside the present Damascus Gate,
there is a grassy knoll, which singularly an
swers to the description of the "green hill far
away, without a city wall." In the face of it
are grottoes, which make cavernous eyes, that
from the right position give it very much the
appearance of a human skull, justifying the
New Testament writers in their characteriza
tion of the place. Still further, the new Cal
vary is a rounded, skull-shaped hill, giving
another reason for the name. At its base, too,
is a lovely garden breathing with the perfume
of flowers, and the rock-hewn tomb wherein no
man had yet been laid, and wherein the Lord
found his repose of three days, was in the gar-
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den of the Arimathean Joseph, and therefore
in some such quiet spot as is here increasingly
being commemorated. There is likewise a sep
ulchre excavated in the ledge of stone rising to
form the plateau. So that all the conditions
seem to be met in this Calvary, and with a tear
ful reverence we entered the tomb, which may
have been that indicated by the angel in saying,
"Come, see the place where the Lord lay."
One cannot very well stand unmoved within
this sacred shrine, where he who died to save
us all may have been entombed.
There is here no great elevation of ground,
if we are looking for that, and yet Calvary is
high. A quaint old writer has called it the
highest peak in the world, and it is. Mount
Washington, crowning New England scenery,
is high, over 6,000 feet, but Calvary is higher.
Mont Blanc, the pride of Europe, is more than
15,000 feet, but it is not, as Byron says mis
takenly, "the monarch of mountains," for Cal
vary is that. Mount McKinley in Alaska ex
ceeds 20,000 feet, and is the highest summit in
North America, but there is a higher in Pales
tine. South America in the Andes range boasts
of an altitude at one point, in Mount Huas-
caran, recently ascended by a daring woman,
of about 24,000 feet, while the Himalayas in
their loftiest peak, Mount Everest, rise to the
prodigious height of 29,000 feet, nearly equiva
lent to five Mount Washingtons one above an
other, like the classic "Ossa piled on Pelion."
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But all these fab! short of Mount Calvary,
upon which the eyes of the whole world can be
fixed spiritually at one time. Like England's
drum-beat which can be heard round the globe,
it can be seen round the earth. There is no
place where it is not visible to the eye of faith.
All Christendom is looking unto Calvary. Pa
gan lands are turning their eyes more and more
to the same holy mount, since in it is help for
sinful, guilty mankind. The cross makes an
appeal to the human heart altogether unique,
and Mount Calvary contains the cross.
Going in 1907 from a stay of five months in
California, we were eager to see on our line of
railway a height, whose sheltered, shaded ra
vines are such, that a vast white cross of
unmelted snow, 1500 feet by 500, appears with
great distinctness on the sloping mountain. The
sight in a book of scenery inspired Longfellow
to write, ' ' There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side. ' '
Calvary is a mountain, whose most conspicuous
characteristic is the cross of redemption, which
it bears, so to speak, deeply imbedded in its
rock-ribbed sides, and which is thrilling the
hearts of humanity with hope and gladness.
This, and not that yonder rising so superbly
among the Rockies, is the true "Mountain of
the Holy Cross." Looking, therefore, unto
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Calvary's Mount, each of us can say with a
sacred poet, ' ' Here I would for ever stay,
Weep and gaze my soul away;
Thou art heaven on earth to me,
Lovely, mournful Calvary ! ' '
Zion, Olivet, Calvary, how they tower one
above the other, constituting a very Presiden
tial range like that of which New Hampshire
people so proudly speak, or being, as the Bible
says, veritable "mountains of God." They
give us three mighty ranges of truth, leading
us out of the valley of perplexing care and
chafing sin to the mount of reposeful worship,
to the mount of uplook into the sky — of com
munion with the heavenly, and to the mount of
peace through the blood of the cross. These
are what Bunyan in his delightful imagery
would call Delectable Mountains, and may we
walk more and more in this Beulah Land of
commanding heights, of inspiring truths, of
Alpine altitudes with the cross dominating all.
' ' In the cross of Christ I glory,
Towering o 'er the wrecks of time,
All the light of sacred story
Gathers round its head sublime. ' '
These are religious heights more sublime than
the intellectual to which Henry Cabot Lodge, in
the recent dedication of the Widener library
building at Harvard, said we could rise through
the medium of the noble books now so royally
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housed at Cambridge. The Massachusetts
senator is always most happy in his classical
allusions, and he has a charm of literary ex
pression all his own, and he is equally felicitous
in his wide-range quotations, as he was on this
University occasion when he recalled these lines
that are also capable of a spiritual application :
' ' O, let me leave the plains behind,
And let me leave the vales below!
Into the highlands of the mind,
Into the mountains let me go.
' ' Here are the heights, crest beyond crest,
With Himalayan dews impearled;
And I will watch from Everest
The long heave of the surging world. ' '

[167]

XI
EAGLES AND STORKS

XI
EAGLES AND STORKS
Having been for some time in high mountain
altitudes, we naturally proceed from this point
of elevation to a flight into the air in a consid
eration of some of the denizens thereof. In
making a necessary selection here, we take
eagles and storks as being the most imperial
fliers. The eagle has been called the king of birds,
as the lion has been named king of beasts. Two
of the greatest nations of modern times have
therefore made them national emblems. We
talk of the British lion, and of the great Amer
ican eagle. Indeed various countries have
adopted the eagle; the illustrious Napoleon
could find nothing more suitable for his beloved
France. Even as far back as the Caesars, the
Roman eagles were the standards borne every
where by the victorious legions. Jeremiah said,
' ' swifter than the eagles, " as he admired their
rapid flight. Solomon was struck with the
height to which they rise, "like an eagle that
flieth toward heaven." Job referred to their
power of vision, their eyes beholding the prey
"afar off."
Striking characteristics these are, but storks
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are a close second, if they do not stand first,
for majestic flight. From Africa, when the
spring comes, they are said to fly without once
alighting across the entire Mediterranean and
over the whole of Europe far above the Alps
to their northern nesting-places in Holland and
Denmark and elsewhere. European travellers
are always interested in them, and in their
nests, built preferably on towers or ruined cas
tles or lofty roofs. The stork is sacred to the
city of Strasburg, from which no American
should go without first seeing it, either domes
ticated in some enclosure or perched in statu
esque fashion on some high chimney. As he
sees it, he thinks of the long distance it has
flown, and of its returning year after year to
the same place, till it is recognized as an old
friend. In Venice, it is the pigeons of St.
Mark's, which are fed and loved, and even the
stranger receives their friendly overtures in
expectation of being given some dainty to eat.
One of them actually alighted on my head, on
my hat, when it was my privilege to see them
in the Italian city which has adopted them as
peculiarly her own. As they rise from the
public square in graceful flight toward the top
of the Campanile, and to the heights where they
have their homes, you feel like exclaiming with
the Psalmist, "Oh that I had wings like a
dove! Then would I fly away and be at rest."
But in Strasburg it was the storks which our
guide felt that we must see before continuing
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Eagles and Storks
our journey from that point. In their ability
to fly so high and so far, they suggest to us a
comparison with souls, of which we may say
with Zechariah in a different connection, "The
wind was in their wings ; now they had wings
like the wings of a stork." In other words,
as spiritual beings we are peculiarly fitted for
flight. We are taught this no less by the eagle. No
one appreciated better the royal bearing of this
bird than Moses, who must have often seen it
in the wilderness, and amid the crags and peaks
so familiar to his sight. If one thing more than
another constitutes it a king, or gives it queenly
preeminence, that single distinguishing trait is
indicated by this Old Testament writer when he
says: "As an eagle that stirreth up her nest,
That fhittereth over her young,
He spread abroad his wings, he took them,
He bare them on his pinions."
The mother bird drives her young from the
nest, she wants them to learn to fly. Their
wings would never gain strength without use.
They must venture out. They dread to start,
but they cannot always be fed ; they must get
their own living, and especially must know what
an independent life is, and so they are thrust
out to do for themselves. The parental treat
ment of them does seem hard at first. The nest
is away up in some cliff, and the eaglets are
pushed from the nursery in the lofty rock, and
they go falling through the air.
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There they come from a height of hundreds
of feet, down, down, down. They spread their
tiny wings, and mount up a little. They fold
their pinions unconsciously, and again they
begin to descend toward the bottom of the
chasm. They make another attempt to fly, and
by vigorous beating of the atmosphere they
manage to ascend somewhat. Before they are
fully aware of it, they cease their motions
(for they do not have the stroke yet), and they
are falling once more. All the time they are
nearing the hard rocks at the foot of the cliff,
and can it be that the parent bird will let them
have their life dashed out far below? By no
means; she has watched their feeble efforts
with keenest interest. She has sailed round
and round just above them, hovering over them,
ready for any emergency. When she sees they
are quite exhausted, she swoops under them
with broad, extended wings, catches them up
thereon, till they are rested a little, and have
gained some confidence. Then she flies from
beneath them, and leaves them for a while to
their own exertions. She keeps close above
them, and at any indication of failing strength
she darts under them to stay them up again.
This is continued, till the eaglets are able to
soar away into the blue vault to be lost to sight.
It was well that their nest was stirred up, other
wise they would never have risen toward the
sun. If they were never made to struggle in
midair, they would never learn to fly.
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Strenuous effort has been shown to be true
of the very bee as a preliminary to any accom
plishment. There is an illustration of this by
F. B. Meyer, not before me for the moment,
but its substance is readily recalled. The sweet
maker of honey in its embryotic state is en
closed in a cell over which is a capsule of wax.
Like the chick through the egg-shell, it must
work its way out by pushing and struggling.
Its gauze-like wings, which are bound to its
sides, are loosened in the very process of break
ing through the confining membrane. The op
posing capsule is a blessing in disguise. A bee
keeper tells of a moth gaining entrance to a
hive and eating off the wax capsules, until the
bees had the easy time of simply walking out
of their cells, but they were wingless, and were
stung to death by their fellows, and were thrust
out as useless. They could unfold wings only
by much striving for freedom.
Discipline answers the same purpose for
souls. With wings thus developed they can
triumph over every adverse influence. By bat
tling with storms they can rise above the same,
with divine assistance. God is the eagle, for in
Exodus we read of him, "I bear you on eagles'
wings." We are the eaglets whom he thrusts
forth to our own endeavors, while yet he flut
ters over us, and gives us helpful lifts when
needed. We might apply this all to a family in vari
ous circumstances, and we would see how fitting
[175]

Biblical Nature Studies
the figure is. For instance, two young persons
mate, leaving the old homestead. They marry,
and start in the world for themselves. If they
are thoughtful, they will have times of shrink
ing from entering upon wedlock. They have
been so well provided for in the old home, they
have been so happy there, that they almost
tremble at the responsibilities of the new life
they are contemplating. Shall they make the
venture ? Notwithstanding such musings, there
is a mysterious power forcing them on and out
of the former relations. And it is best that it
should be so; it is not meant that we should
always stay in the old nest. That would be
against nature, and parents, much as they dis
like to have children leave them, feel after all
that it must be so. Therefore, after a certain
period of nurture a day comes, when there is a
stir at the homestead. There is bustle, and
excitement. Preparations are made for a mar
riage. Every one moves with a quick step
about the house. There is laughter, and there
are tears.
Bureaus are ransacked, and trunks are
packed. There are fitful embraces, and broken
words. Friends arrive in rapid succession.
The doorbell rings almost constantly. Rooms
are crowded. A hush of expectancy is followed
by a rustle of silk, and in the presence of the
assembled guests vows of mutual love and
fidelity are made. Congratulations are offered.
Music floats through the rooms. A festive table
[176]

Eagles and Storks
is spread. Twenty miles distant a train comes
speeding on. It is ten miles nearer. Hurried
good-byes are spoken. A carriage rolls away,
the guests depart, and when all has become
quiet, the change that has occurred is keenly
realized. The words, "What therefore God
hath joined together, let not man put asunder,"
are irrevocable. It was God's doing. It was
he, who stirred up that nest, and sent out into
the world the twain made one. They are to
make a nest for themselves, and they ought to
build high. God is hovering over them to assist
them upwards. There would not be so many
families going down, down, down, if like eaglets
they would send up their cry for help, if there
were an atmosphere of prayer in the household,
if family worship were maintained, if religion
entered more into the domestic relations.
That is what will give us the ideal home, like
that pictured so fascinatingly by Robert Burns
in that gem of Scottish literature, "The Cot
ter's Saturday Night:"
' ' The eheerf u ' supper done, wi ' serious face,
They, round the ingle, form a circle wide ;
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace,
The big ha '-Bible, anee his father's pride:
*********
' ' Then, kneeling down to heaven 's eternal King,
The saint, the father, and the husband prays :
Hope springs ' exulting on triumphal wing, '
That thus they all shall meet in future days. ' '
The poet well comments,
' ' From scenes like these old Scotia 's grandeur springs,
That makes her loved at home, revered abroad. ' '
[177]

Biblical Nature Studies
For the avoiding of friction, for the quieting of
the mind, for the composing of the heart, there
is nothing like this seeking of help from above.
The parent bird responds and bears up her
young on her wings, and that is what God is
willing to do for every family. When he stirs
up the old home nest, and sends forth a young
couple, he watches their course with tender
sympathy, and if he sees them sinking under
the weight of the new responsibilities, he is
more than ready to outspread beneath them
his pinions, and to bear them "as on eagles'
wings." He would have them see the need of the spir
itual. They may become too much absorbed in
the temporal. They may come to glory in their
worldly life, in the money they are making, in
the constancy with which they meet their round
of secular duties, in the good time they are
having. To quote from Horace Bushnell's
famous sermon on Feet and Wings, "It is as
if eagles had fallen out of their element and
descended to be cranes, pleased that the legs
they stand upon have grown so tall and trim,
and are able to wade in such deep water,"
whereas they might "soar as eagles do and
burn their wings in the sun. " Into that atmos
phere with its clear light and tranquil blue, we
are to "mount up." God has given us the
facilities for rising. Our eyes must be unto the
hills, whence cometh the blessing. Of ourselves
we are helpless. As another has said,
[178]

Eagles and Storks
' ' Our souls can neither fly nor go
To reach eternal joys."
That is true when we attempt the flight in
our own strength, when we do not use the right
instrumentalities, when our aspirations and
endeavors are humanly presumptuous rather
than divinely spiritual. There is such a thing
as rising in our own self-sufficiency up to the
very gates of heaven, only to be cast down
therefrom. We should remember the truth
pictured in the classical tale of Daedalus and
Icarus, those first navigators of the air. They
were imprisoned on an island, and all the ves
sels that plied the surrounding waters were
closely watched to prevent their escape. The
father saw no way to liberty except through the
air, and accordingly he set about making wings
for himself and his son. The boy gathered all
the feathers he could find, and the parent with
thread and wax put them together, giving them
the shapely curvature of a bird's wings.
When the work was completed, and when the
wings were adjusted, the artist found that he
could rise and poise himself in midair. He was
delighted, and when he had equipped his son,
and after he had charged him to take no rash
flights, they sailed away, over the plowman who
stopped his work to look in wonder, and over
the shepherd who leaning on his staff gazed at
them in astonishment, as they cleaved the at
mosphere like gods. The father arrived safely
in Sicily, where he humbly worshipped in a tem-
[179]

Biblical Nature Studies
pie. The boy, growing over confident, rose with
the self-made wings toward heaven itself, and
the blazing sun melting the wax he began rap
idly to fall from his great height, till he was
engulfed in a sea, which henceforth bore his
name, the Icarian Sea.
If we would avoid the tragic fate of Icarus,
we must not rashly attempt to rise to heaven
with the waxen wings of self-sufficiency, for
these will fail us in the searching, scorching
light of the Sun of righteousness, and we shall
be thrust down from the very gates of pearl.
It is only by the wings of faith and prayer, by
the stork's wings wherein is the wind, wherein
alone is spiritual soaring power, that we can
surely rise to the height of heaven, and enter
therein. We have referred to the marital pairing of
a couple, who next find a resting-place. They
locate their nest, sometimes higher and some
times lower. Then the nest has to be feathered ;
they want a comfortable home, and that is right.
They make a success of life,, and rent or build
or buy a modern house. They have bright
pictures on the wall, soft carpets or choice rugs
on the floor. They have pretty ornaments, lux
urious chairs, and all that heart could wish.
They are proud of their neat, cozy place. They
have a well-kept lawn, handsome shade trees,
and abundant fruit. They set a bounteous
table. Could anything be pleasanter than a
family thus situated? They have their nest
nicely feathered. [ 180 ]

Eagles and Storks
But how often business reverses change all
this! It is an exceptional household, which
does not at some time in its history know what
it is to be in cramped or at least reduced cir
cumstances. Domestic expenses have to be cut
down. The table has to do without the usual
luxuries. The piano, the fine chamber set, and
other rich furnishings it may be, have to be
sold. One thing after another, to which the
heart clings on account of the associations, has
to be disposed of, and perhaps the house itself
at last has to be given over to inexorable
creditors. How many a well-feathered nest has thus
been stirred up by God, possibly not to so great
an extent as this, and yet has been sadly ruffled
in its interior arrangement. But the Lord does
not afflict willingly; he does it for each family's
profit. They may have built too low, not near
enough heaven, and therefore Providence may
have to go to the extreme of breaking up their
home. He may cast them out upon the world
almost if not quite penniless. They may have
to start again, and at such a time he hovers
very tenderly over them, and he would not have
them despair. He wants them to rise to a new
hope, to build higher. He is anxious to assist
them in this, and though he has thrown them
out as it were on nothingness, he is like the
eagle which flutters affectionately over her
brood, as, thrust from the nest, they struggle
on the empty air, but are caught on parental
[181]

Biblical Nature Studies
wing just when they need assistance most. God
does pecuniarily disturb many a home, he stirs
up the feathered nest, but he is close by to bear
the occupants on extended pinions to a higher
point, where they can get more of the light from
heaven. Every family, whose home nest he in
any measure has stripped of its feathers, of its
resources, should realize the divine purpose
in it, and be sustained by the grace that is
sufficient. There is an opposite condition of things in
which there is danger. The head of the house
does not meet with adversity. On the contrary
he is exceedingly prosperous. He is in the rush
of business, amid its stress and strain. There
are many annoyances and vexations, and he
loses his equanimity of spirit. He becomes
easily exasperated, until he is like "the fretful
porcupine ' ' both at home and in his commercial
dealings with others. He does not maintain an
even disposition, a Christlike frame of mind.
What is the way of escape? It is to get in touch
with the divine, it is to rise to the higher alti
tudes, not always like the king of birds, one
may not aspire quite as high as that, but at
least like a humbler denizen of the air. The
eagle is a rare bird, rara avis in the aviary of
the Catskills where my childhood was spent.
But the hawk resembling it is often seen, sail
ing round and round in graceful circles at a
considerable height, with wings that are not
noisily flapped, that are rather held in steady
[182]

Eagles and Storks
poise, awakening the wonder of every boy, who
can never cease admiring its aerial flight far
above his head. John Burroughs, in speaking
of its calmness and dignity when pursued by
crows or kingbirds, writes as follows: "He
seldom deigns to notice his noisy and furious
antagonist, but deliberately wheels about in
that aerial spiral, and mounts and mounts till
his pursuers grow dizzy and return to earth
again. It is quite original, this mode of getting
rid of an unworthy opponent, rising to heights
where the braggart is dazed and bewildered
and loses his reckoning. I'm not sure but it
is worthy of imitation. ' ' It certainly is. When
one has become nervous and unduly sensitive,
and suffers from exasperating hits and attacks,
there is nothing like the calm of the upper
air to restore a proper and most desirable
equilibrium. No home, to proceed to another point, is com
plete without children. They are the birdlings
for which the nest is designed. How much a
babe is bike a bird, it opens its mouth for every
thing, and there everything has to go. Stand
over a brood of young birds, and make a noise,
and the only thing they think of is to have their
mouths filled, and they stretch up their necks,
and wait for some delicious morsel to drop.
That is infants right over again, they imagine
everything is for their mouths. As they grow
older, they become still more interesting. They
begin to chirp and twitter, and soon the nest
[183]

Biblical Nature Studies
is full of melody. A happy household is that
which has small children. They bring cheer
and comfort. They are indeed more or less
care, they have to be provided for, their wants
are innumerable, and yet what a joy they are !
But this happiness is not infrequently dis
turbed. Everything may be moving tranquilly
along, all is serene felicity, when suddenly there
is a whir, and a rushing of wings, and a darling
child is taken. God has stirred up the nest,
and what a commotion there is ! It practically
breaks up the home; an adjustment to a new
condition of things is necessary; the family is
all at sea, only it is on a great aerial ocean,
and they feel themselves sinking, sinking, until
they cry to God in their distress. Thereupon
they find that he is hovering directly over
them, and when their strength is about to
fail, they feel his wings beneath. The affliction
does them good. When they get settled again
in their domestic life, it is on a higher plane,
at a greater spiritual elevation, and they are
surprised to see how much nearer heaven they
are. They are lifted by the wings of the Al
mighty to a more sublime height of religious
experience. God hears the cry of his children,
and bears them up, lest they be dashed upon
the stones. The home is not stirred up for
nothing. Every time it is visited with trouble,
there are divine pinions to sustain and carry
aloft, and only those, who will not take advan
tage of the proffered help, sink till they are
[184]

Eagles and Storks
self-destroyed. Foolish eaglets they would be
to ignore the helpful wings of the parent bird.
Their fate would be to go to the bottom of the
chasm. But let them accept assistance, and
how they soar upward ! Likewise, says Isaiah,
' ' they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their
strength; they shall mount up with wings as
eagles." Once more God stirs up the nest. If the
young couple we have pictured beginning life
together, and passing through its varied scenes,
meet discipline in the right spirit, they will be
lifted each time a little higher. With trying
experiences they will feel that they are growing
old, as they are, but to the heavenly Father
they will always be children. "Even to hoar
hairs," he says, "will I carry you." He will
care for them as the eagle cares for her young,
and that, too, at the very last. There will come
an hour when the rushing plumes will sweep
through their home again, and they themselves
shall be taken, and they shall be driven out to
try the unseen realities of eternity. But even
there, they shall not be forsaken. For them
judgment to come will have no terrors. Christ,
as Paul says, will be their Passover, a word of
comforting significance when analyzed, Pass
over, and when taken in connection with the
ornithological illustration of a prophet, who
says, "As birds flying, so will the Lord of hosts
protect Jerusalem ; he will protect and deliver
it, he will pass over and preserve it." The
[185]

Biblical Nature Studies
Lord with fluttering pinions, as it were, will
hover over his redeemed children in the pres
ence of his Spirit, with the wings of the celes
tial dove, with the solicitous affection of the
mother bird flying to and fro just above her
young for their defense and protection and
help. There will be heard chanted in the sky
by all the holy angels as they come the inspired
song: ' ' He shall cover thee with his pinions,
And under his wings shalt thou take refuge. ' '
Ultimately those wings shall be placed under
the Lord's beloved, who shall be taken up still
higher, this time even to be received out of
sight in the sky above. The eagle will have
borne them to their native element. They will
have been "caught up," says an apostle, "in
the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air. ' ' Then
can each sing with the sacred poet,
' ' I thank thee for the wing of love,
Which stirred my worldly nest;
And for the stormy clouds which drove
The flutterer to thy breast."
We can rise to this final height of heaven,
only as the wind is in our wings, only as soar
ing power is imparted to us, only as we have
"wings like the wings of a stork." Says Jere
miah, "The stork in the heavens knoweth her
appointed times; and the turtle-dove and the
swallow and the crane observe the time of their
coming." As surely as the migratory instinct
[186]

Eagles and Storks
of the first here named leads it from darkest
Africa to its nest in fairer Europe, in a better
and more genial clime, though bewildering
sometimes may seem the blackness of the storm
encountered in the passage, so certainly, how
ever uncharted may seem the way, shall the
"home of the soul" be eventually reached by
the immortal spirit that follows the divine im
pulse, the holy aspiration, planted in the human
breast. We can not better close than with this
thought as set forth by Bryant in his ' ' Ode to
a Waterfowl : ' '
' ' Thou art gone, the abyss of heaven
Hath swallowed up thy form, but on my heart
Deeply hath sunk the lesson thou hast given,
Aid shall not soon depart.
" He who, from zone to zone,
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight,
In the long way that I must tread alone,
Will lead my steps aright."

[187]

XII
SOME STRIKING CONSTELLATIONS

XII
SOME STRIKING CONSTELLATIONS
We are very much inclined to have the con
tracted vision of the terrestrial. We do not
get the sweep of the celestial. We are like
Bunyan 's famous character, who was always
using his muck rake, who never lifted his eyes
from the ground to the sky. That was good
advice given by Emerson when he said, ' ' Hitch
your wagon to a star." We can do this in a
consideration of some striking constellations
which once attracted the attention of a sage
in the orient. It was Job who said,
' ' Canst thou bind the cluster of the Pleiades,
Or loose the bands of Orion ?
Canst thou lead forth the Mazzaroth in their season?
Or canst thou guide the Bear with her train?"
The significance of these words is not readily
determined. There is a diversity of views, and
we may not be able to arrive at absolutely cor
rect conclusions. However, our motto, which
any High-school or College class might well
adopt, will be the Latin phrase, Per aspera ad
astra, Through difficulties to the stars. We will
indulge in some astral reflections. We will learn
some true lessons that are easily deducible
from the patriarch's language, whether they
[191]

Biblical Nature Studies
were in his mind or not. He turned his eyes
heavenward, and received religious instruction
from the starry beauty which he saw. What
ever constellation he viewed, he was impressed
with the majesty and glory of God.
He first propounded the inquiry, ' ' Canst thou
bind the cluster of the Pleiades ? ' ' The margin
says, the "chain" of the Pleiades, while the
rendering of the common version is, "sweet in
fluences." You remember the classic origin of
this constellation. Seven sisters were pursued
by an enemy, and in their fright and distress
they cried for help from above. In answer to
their prayer they were changed into a flock of
doves, and were borne away to the sky where
as bright orbs they still shine. They were not
cruelly separated by death. They were forever
united on high, and their glory has been sung
ever since.
The eastern poets have called them a "bril
liant rosette," and who but God could arrange
the beautiful petals? Tennyson sees them
"tangled in a silver braid," and who but God
could weave the charming web in which they
are caught? Job represents the cluster as
linked together, and who but God could make
this chain? What is the chain? Pope tells us
in his Essay on Man:
"Look round our world; behold the chain of love
Combining all below and all above,
See plastic nature working to this end,
The single atoms each to other tend,
Attract, attracted to, the next in place,
Formed and impelled its neighbor to embrace."
[192]

Some Striking Constellations
Nature's chain in plain prose is none other
than the law of gravitation. By this the Plei
ades are bound together, and Job stands rever
ential before the mighty, divine force, and chal
lenges human power to accomplish any thing
so grand. "Canst thou bind the cluster of the
Pleiades?" Canst thou give that cohesive
force, by which they are united in a splendid
constellation? The ancients counted seven Pleiads. As only
six are conspicuous, visible to the ordinary eye
sight, there has been a discussion regarding a
"lost Pleiad," but astronomers tell us that all
are there which have ever been there. Perhaps
in the clear, oriental sky, the Biblical writer
could see seven. For that matter, very keen
eyes now can see eleven, and to telescopic
vision about four hundred appear. With this
enlargement of the number to modern knowl
edge, still more impressive is the fact that all
these are held together by a strong chain. Then
when we consider that this same law of gravity
runs through the whole sidereal system, through
the entire universe, we feel increasingly the
almightiness of Him, who by one simple prin
ciple of attraction and repulsion harmoniously
balances in infinite space such countless
worlds. So nice is the adjustment, that, as we are all
aware, it led in 1846 to the discovery of the
giant planet of the solar system. It was found
that Uranus swayed a little, so to speak, to
[193]

Biblical Nature Studies
this side and to that. From these slight vari
ations it was confidently believed that there was
another world attracting it besides Jupiter and
Saturn. The exact place in which this disturb
ing globe must be was calculated, and telescopes
were turned upon the locality indicated, and
there it was, magnificent Neptune, never before
having been given a local habitation and a
name. Was there ever such exactness of
construction? Canst thou make a chain like this, running
through all nature? Is there any thing like
universal gravity which comes within the re
motest possibilities of human ability to accom
plish? Beneficent law is at work everywhere,
giving us seed-time and harvest, giving us cer
tainties upon which we can depend. We have
the assurance that God is over all his works.
Not a material atom is beyond his control, not
a sparrow falleth to the ground without his
notice. His providential government is coex
tensive with his law of gravitation. He maketh
all things work together for good to his chil
dren. Sweet influences are these which are
operating, and which are suggested by the union
of the seven sisters in the sky, by the cluster
of the Pleiades, by the chain which binds them
together. In this thought we get an explana
tion of the patriarch's wonderful trust. He
bowed submissively and gladly before him who
made the marvelous chain of nature and of
providence. [194]

Some Striking Constellations
A second question is, "Canst thou loose the
bands of Orion? " Orion, in Grecian mythol
ogy, was a giant. He was so tall that he could
wade through the deepest seas, and still have
his shoulders above the water, and on land his
head, as it were, brushed the clouds. Says
Virgil in the .iEneid :
' ' Like tall Orion stalking o 'er the flood,
When with his brawny breast he cuts the waves;
His shoulders scarce the topmost billow laves."
He was noted for his wickedness, and as a
punishment, according to one interpretation, he
was chained in the sky. The inspired writer
may have seen in the fable of his being bound
there pictorial proclamation of the folly of sin,
and of the wickedness of rebellion against the
Almighty. Canst thou loose the bands of
Orion? Canst thou swing the stars out of their
course? Nay, they are fixed in their orbits.
God holds them steadily to their appointed cir
cuit. Natural law is resistless. Orion has
never broken away from the bounds by which
he was first circumscribed. He has not been
able to burst the fetters. He is securely
fastened. Here, too, we need to remember that to the
scholarship of to-day Orion is vastly more than
to the Oriental mind. The gigantic warrior of
old has not only a triangle of small stars to
form his head, but three very bright orbs are
in his belt. Never was another so brilliantly
[195]

Biblical Nature Studies
belted as to have three enormous suns in his
girdle. He likewise has a nebula all his own,
as a kind of private possession. In short, a
whole cluster of stars go to form this constel
lation. Nevertheless Orion, though so vast, is
not independent of the rest of the universe. He
is rigidly bound to a definite place. The Giant
is forever bound by the hand of Omnipotence.
When God shall bind the sinner what prospect
can there ever be of a release? Chained Orion
gives solemn warning of the certain doom
awaiting the finally impenitent.
Divine law will be as unvarying and unyield
ing as natural, and when we see how unalter
able the latter is we cannot hope to fly the orbit
of permanency of character, into which we are
gradually settling. There is that giant constel
lation just where it was seen four thousand
years ago! Canst thou loose its bands? No
more canst thou free thyself when thou hast
been bound hand and foot by the cords of in
iquity. If the Pleiades speak of light and glad
ness, Orion speaks of gloom and sadness.
Hence the prophet Amos says, ' ' Seek him that
maketh the Pleiades and Orion, and turneth
the shadow of death into the morning, and
maketh the day dark with night." He does
both, brings sunshine to the righteous, and
shadow to the wicked. There are the sweet
influences of the Pleiades, and there are the
bands of Orion. There are benevolent and
there are malevolent forces at work. We can
[196]

Some Striking Constellations
be victims of the latter, or we can have our
interests subserved by the former.
Our view takes a wider range with the next
question, ' ' Canst thou lead forth the Mazzaroth
in their season?" The Marginal reading is,
"The signs of the Zodiac." Twelve constella
tions were and are included in this belt, which in
a sense sweeps the circle. That is, God is omni
present. He is not confined in his agency to
a single constellation, but he is in the wheeling
and blazing constellations to the utmost bounds
of space. Do we appreciate what that means?
Consider how perfectly vast the universe is.
The telescope resolves the Milky Way and other
nebulous appearances into thousands of flash
ing worlds. Where one star appears to the
naked eye, let hundreds of orbs flash forth, and
we begin to get what the situation is. About
one hundred million suns have so far shone
upon the scientifically enlarged vision according
to the astronomer Young, while Professor New-
comb said, that if we could perfect a sufficiently
large telescope, the number probably would be
found to be "hundreds of millions."
Some of these are so far away, that, though
they are speeding on at the rate of thirty to
fifty miles a second, they do not during the life
time of one of us change their apparent loca
tion in the least. Observe yonder fixed star,
note exactly where it is. Now follow one of
earth's most renowned men through his whole
career. He is born, he grows to years of ma-
[197]

Biblical Nature Studies
turity, he has his struggles, his defeats and
victories, he makes a great name in history,
he reaches his four-score limit, and dies. Turn
again the eyes to the star noticed at his birth.
So distant is it, that it has not shifted its posi
tion a single iota, so far as can be with tele
scopes even detected. And yet it has been shoot
ing on with a velocity in comparison with which
our swiftest express train moves at a snail's
pace, a mile a minute as compared with thirty
to fifty miles a second, while the flight of Arc
turus is said to exceed two hundred miles a
second. When Napoleon wished to inspire his soldiers
in Egypt, he said impressively, "From yonder
Pyramids forty centuries look down upon you. "
Yonder are glittering suns, whose light, as it
strikes your eyes at present, is older than the
Pyramids. Though it has been travelling 186,-
000 miles a second, it has been on its way to
the earth longer than the historic period of the
race. Now all these rolling spheres at such
immense distances whirl on in regular succes
sion. They preserve an orderly march through
infinity, because God is everywhere directing
and controlling. With what significance the
question recurs, "Canst thou lead forth the Maz-
zaroth in their season?" Canst thou exercise a
potent influence upon the whole Zodiac? God
can and does. Thinkest thou, then, that thou
canst escape his all-seeing eyes? Our answer
must be that of the Psalmist, "Whither shall
[198]

Some Striking Constellations
I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee
from thy presence ? If I ascend up into heaven,
thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, be
hold, thou art there." God will be to us either
light or darkness, either the sweet influences
of the Pleiades or the bands of Orion. There
is no escaping him, for he sweeps the whole
Zodiac with his spiritual presence.
There is one more inquiry, ' ' Canst thou guide
the Bear with her train?" We might ask in
this connection, in view of a recent astronomical
appearance which challenged the attention of the
world, "Canst thou guide Halley's comet?"
On January 14, 1742, died the astronomer who
at the early age of twenty-four made himself
celebrated by his prediction that the comet,
which since has properly borne his name, would
return long after his death on schedule time,
and it did. Here is a wanderer in space, into
whose depths it speeds to such a distance that
seventy-five years are reqired to complete its
circuit. It recedes three thousand million miles
from the sun, and after it rounds its goal it
comes rushing back and down its track toward
our earth at the rate of two and a half million
miles every day. But though it traverses a
distance so vast and with a velocity that almost
takes our breath away, its return after three-
quarters of a century can be foretold with
measurable accuracy, even to the very year,
because it is guided on its course by the eternal
God. Art thou civil engineer enough to mark
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out a course like that, canst thou guide Halley's
comet ?
To revert to the Scriptural question, ' ' Canst
thou guide the Bear with her train?" This
to us is the Dipper, so clearly outlined in the
sky that all of us can see it there very plainly.
To us it resembles this humble utensil more than
it does the animal after which it was named
by antiquity. But we must keep the viewpoint
of the Orient in the present consideration of
Ursa Major. Here, too, seems to be primarily
a classic reference.
A maiden was fated to be changed into a
bear, but when in her misfortune she was about
to be shot by a hunter, she was snatched away
from death by the deity whose mercy she had
implored, to become the constellation of the
Great Bear. She continued to be followed by
her implacable enemy of earth, who begged that
she might never be allowed to set like other
stars in the ocean. The request could be
granted with wisdom and kindness, for why
should she ever desire to sink so low again?
She never was to go below the horizon, and
that is her peculiar glory. This constellation
never does set. Or, as Homer says after men
tioning the Pleiades, and Orion,
"And the Bear near him, called by some the Wain,
That, wheeling, keeps Orion still in sight,
Yet bathes not in the waters of the sea."
In other words, this constellation ever shines.
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Some Striking Constellations
God makes it circle in splendor forever above
the horizon. So it is with redeemed souls that
have been translated. It might be supposed a
deprivation for them never to be permitted to
return to this earth of sin and sorrow, and to
what Shakespeare calls the "sea of troubles"
here. But it is far better for them to be re
moved from this mundane sphere, where they
are in danger of becoming brutish and de
graded, — it is far better to be translated to the
heavens, where there is "no more sea," and
where they shall "shine as the brightness of
the firmament," says Daniel, and "as the stars
for ever and ever." Such a glorious future
can come from none but Christ, "who only hath
immortality," says Paul, "dwelling in light
unapproachable." Canst thou guide the Bear
with her train? Canst thou make the constel
lation that never sets ? Canst thou confer upon
thyself a splendid immortality? No, but thou
canst attain unto this through faith in the Risen
One. If any will lead a Christlike life, if they
will let their light shine on earth, they shall
shine forever, they shall never go below the
horizon. Most truly says a poet :
' ' The shining firmament shall fade,
And sparkling stars resign their light;
But these shall know nor change nor shade,
For ever fair, for ever bright."
It is only a few samples of constellations
which we have been contemplating, and we
might study them ad infinitum. They are
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blazing away to the outermost bounds of space.
We can never say what the ancients said of
the Pillars of Hercules, our Gibraltar, "Ne plus
ultra, ' ' nothing more beyond. Even then there
was a beyond in undiscovered islands and con
tinents, for the Americas were yet lying in
quiet seclusion, and there had not been so much
as dreamings of the North and South Poles,
which have yielded up their secrets to our age.
Much more is there a beyond in a universe,
which must ever expand to the student of as
tronomy. The farther we might go, the more
would we be awed. We might as well stop here
as anywhere.
We cannot conclude better than in the words
of the German author, Jean Paul Richter, when
he vividly represented the feelings of a disem
bodied human spirit on an imaginary tour with
angels through endless space. Let me indicate
parts of the marvelous journey which they are
pictured as having taken: "Sometimes with
the solemn flight of angel wings they passed
through Zaharas of darkness, * * * sometimes
they swept over frontiers that were quickening
under prophetic motions from God. * * * In
a moment the rushing of planets was upon
them; in a moment the blazing of suns was
around them. * * * Without measure were the
architraves, past number were the archways,
beyond memory the gates. Within were stairs
that scaled the eternities around. * * * Sud
denly, as they thvs rode from infinite to infinite,
[202]

Some Striking Constellations
suddenly as they thus tilted over abysmal
worlds, a mighty cry arose that systems more
mysterious, that worlds more billowy, other
heights and other depths, were coming, were
nearing, were at hand. Then the man sighed
and stopped, shuddered and wept. His over
laden heart uttered itself in tears, and he said,
'Angel, I will go no farther; for the spirit of
man acheth with this infinity. Insufferable is
the glory of God. Let me * * * hide me * * *
for end I see there is none.' "

[203]

XIII
THE TEMPLE EXPANDING ROUND US
TO INFINITY

XIII
THE TEMPLE EXPANDING ROUND US
TO INFINITY
There have been many fine temples erected
on the earth. We have admired St. Paul's in
London, that architectural masterpiece of Sir
Christopher Wren, and the Spanish cathedral
at Seville, with its picturesque vistas through
graceful arches. We have stood before that
noble Gothic structure at Cologne, with its
massive and soaring twin towers, and before
the Milan cathedral with its multitudinous pin
nacles and statues. We have had our attention
enthralled by St. Mark's at Venice, with its
splendid mosaics and its exquisite color effects,
and by St. Peter's in Rome, the most spacious
and the grandest cathedral of Christendom.
We have felt the venerableness of St. Sophia
in Constantinople, erected by Justinian away
back in the fifth century, long the metropolitan
church of the Greeks, but since 1453 a Moham
medan mosque.
We have been deeply impressed by pagan
temples, by the Pantheon of Rome completed
27 B.C., with its unequalled dome in which is
a circular opening twenty-eight feet in diam
eter, giving it its only light. We have been held
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Biblical Nature Studies
entranced by the Parthenon on the Acropolis
at Athens, dating from the middle of the fifth
century before our era, and surpassing in clas
sic beauty any other building on the face of
the globe. We have gone to the site of Old
Thebes in Egypt, and we have been amazed at
Karnak, begun at least 2,500 and perhaps 2,700
years before Christ, and being larger than any
other edifice constructed by human hands for
divine worship, with an extreme length of 1,200
feet, nearly a quarter of a mile.
Perhaps the imagination has been most
struck by Solomon's temple, and we have gone~
to the top of Mt. Moriah in Jerusalem just to
see its site, where now stands the attractive
mosque of Omar, or the Dome of the Rock.
This Old Testament house of worship must
have been magnificent. Not that it was so very
large, being only 105 feet long and 35 wide.
But the material and the work were of the most
expensive kind. The timbers were cut and some
of the stones were quarried in a distant coun
try, from which they had to be floated to Joppa
by way of the ocean, and thence transferred
overland. Laborers to the number of 183,000
were employed, and seven years were required
to complete the building.
The second temple here, of the time of the
restoration from Babylon, was not so imposing
a structure as the great original. That of
Herod the Great, however, frequented by the
Lord and disciples, must have rivalled Solo-
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The Temple Expanding
mon's. There were employed upon it 18,000
workmen, with 1,000 wagons to do the hauling,
and for forty-six years it was in process of
erection. From Josephus, who had seen it, we
learn that it had pillars between thirty and
forty feet high, each being an entire stone of
white marble, and so thick that to span it there
were required three men with extended arms.
The gates were plated with gold, and they
swung on hinges of the same precious metal.
The roof was covered with one mass of golden
spikes. On a door was carved a golden vine
with clusters of grapes, a single bunch being
as large as a man. In fact, the temple was so
glorious, that at the rising of the sun, says the
Jewish historian, it ' ' reflected back a very fiery
splendor," which forced people to "turn their
eyes away, just as they would have done at the
sun's own rays." At a distance, he adds, it
appeared "like a mountain covered with snow;
for as to those parts of it that were not gilt,
they were exceeding white."
But all these temples, which we have been
recalling, were inferior to what William Cullen
Bryant conceived of when he said,
' ' The groves were God 's first temples, ' '
while he continued, "Father, thy hand
Hath reared these venerable columns, thou
Didst weave this verdant roof."
There is a still more impressive conception
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Biblical Nature Studies
than this, indicated by the sacred poet who said,
' ' O thou, whose own vast temple stands,
Built over earth and sea."
Professor Park of Andover in picturing this
said, it "has the stars for the gilding of its
roof, and mines of gold for the pillars that
sustain its floor, and the rose and the lily and
the jessamine ever renewing themselves in the
carpet that blooms for us to tread upon while
we are walking through the temple, resonant as
its wide spaces are with the hymns of the forest,
and the eternal anthem of the waves of the
sea." The thought of Solomon rose to a still
greater and more sublime height, when at the
dedication of his own matchless house he said,
"Will God in very deed dwell on the earth?
behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens can
not contain thee ; how much less this house that
I have builded!" The various particulars here
indicated will be followed out under suggestion
from the astronomical figure employed. Under
guidance from "Ecce Coelum," and various
works on astronomy we will traverse the stellar
regions. Each of us will doubtless be moved
to exclaim with Kepler under similar circum
stances, "O Almighty God, I am thinking thy
thoughts after thee!"
The first item is, "Will God in very deed
dwell on the earth?" The idea is that this
globe of ours is not a worthy abode for his
glorious Majesty. And yet this earth is sug-
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The Temple Expanding
gestive of much that is grand. Its 25,000 miles
of circumference cannot be traversed under
several weeks. Jules Verne's work, "Around
the World in Eighty Days," was considered a
wonder in the last century. It of course was
written as fiction, and very fictitious did its
implied claim seem to be. In his generation
only the wildest imagination could conceive of
so long a journey being taken in such a short
period. The time, however, in 1911 in a test
trip was cut in two and a little more by actual
accomplishment, the journey having been really
made in thirty-nine days and a fraction. In
1913 four days were clipped even from this
record, by using the fastest express trains and
the swiftest steamship lines, with flying auto
mobiles to make the connections. Nevertheless
this shorter time speaks of vast distances trav
elled. In simply crossing our country from the
Atlantic to the Pacific, we are impressed with
the length of time taken, four days and four
nights, clipping it along every minute, never
relaxing our speed except for the change of
cars in Chicago. Continue this nine times as
long as the transcontinental journey takes, and
you make the circuit of our globe, and you begin
to get some idea of how immense this terrestrial
ball is.
Its size may also be realized by an astronom
ical illustration. We admire our full moon, and
we realize its largeness when we are informed
that the entire lunar surface is nearly as ex-
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Biblical Nature Studies
tensive as North and South America combined.
But this earth at the distance of our satellite
would appear to an observer fourteen times
larger than our full moon. Ours, therefore, is
considerable of a planet. But it is thought
suitable only for God's "footstool," which it is
called in the Bible. As we reflect upon its con
tinents and oceans, its forests and rivers, its
mountains and lakes, its springing flowers and
singing birds, we are amazed at its vastness and
beauty, while yet the intimation is that it is
not a fit habitation for the King of kings, for
the Creator of the universe.
The next thought is that the "heaven" can
not contain God. By this would seem to be
meant the nearer heavenly bodies; those, for
instance, belonging to our solar system, and
those comets which at infrequent intervals come
within the range of our more immediate circle
of worlds. Let us pass hastily through this
part of the house not made with hands. There
is Venus, a star with a beauty all its own, and
nearly as large as our earth. At its transit it
has been seen to have a vaporous atmosphere,
and to be in such a general condition, that, said
Proctor to a Glasgow audience, though others
differ from him, ' ' presumably it is inhabited. ' '
There is Mars with its two moons to our one.
At its poles are seen white patches, which some
times are larger and again are smaller, plainly
speaking of winter and summer up there, of
Arctic snow with its advancing and its receding
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The Temple Expanding
line. Mars indeed is declared by one astron
omer to be " a miniature of our own earth, and
in all probability inhabited by such creatures as
we are familiar with." This is evidenced, says
Professor Percival Lowell, by what he calls
canals, immense artificial constructions that
because of their geometrical regularity and
because of the nicety of their articulation at
the junction points would seem to testify to
superhuman intelligence and capacity.
Then there is Jupiter supposed to be still red-
hot, not having yet cooled down to the degree
that this earth has, with the latter 's solid out
side crust, and with a molten interior breaking
out here and there in volcanoes. It has been
suggested that the fiery Jovian globe, still in
candescent, may be a sort of sun to its several
moons, which themselves may be planets, and
which possibly may be inhabited by beings to
whom our luminary would appear twenty-five
times smaller than it does to us, but to whom
glowing, cloud-enveloped Jupiter would be an
"amazing object of contemplation," a "glori
ous disc." And it has several moons, only
four of these having been discovered till in
1892 a fifth was revealed, and even while one
of our later astronomies was telling me that
there were now seven, the Lick Observatory
quietly announced, in 1914, that the ninth had
been found. There is also Uranus with its four
satellites, and Saturn with its eight, and with
its enchanting rings, an outer and an inner,
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Biblical Nature Studies
and there is mighty Neptune with its one moon.
The great central orb of our solar system
must not be forgotten. It outweighs more than
330,000 earths. It gives forth a heat, which
according to one computation would be equiva
lent to that sent forth from our globe, if upon
every square yard of its surface there should
be consumed three tons of coal every second.
What a conflagration is thus raging constantly
on yonder ball of fire. The flames in tremen
dous sun-storms have been known by astronom
ical measurements to shoot up to the prodigious
height of more than 160,000 miles.
Around this fiery center, Mercury, the near
est planet, revolves once in three months, a
period that therefore is the length of the Mer
curial year. Neptune, the most distant planet,
is 164 of our years in completing the revolu
tion. There are comets, whose orbits are so
vast, that it takes thousands of our years to
make the circuit of the sun. The period of the
comet of 1858, Donati's, is about two thousand
years. It will not be seen again till there has
fled a time as long as has elapsed since the
birth of Christ. "The comet of 1811," says one
authority, "when it last saw the earth, saw it
yet dripping with the waters of the flood; the
comet of 1680, when it last saw the earth, saw
it without form and void, and prophesying but
faintly of an Eden and an Adam still three
thousands years" in the future, and when it
comes round again, nine thousand years hence,
[214]

The Temple Expanding
we could hope with the gifted author of ' ' Ecce
Coelum, ' ' that it might be to witness ' ' the pre
dicted new heavens and new earth in which shall
dwell righteousness."
We take a still wider sweep into the immen
sity of nature, when we contemplate "the
heaven of heavens. " It is inspiring to think of
our system with its planets and moons revolv
ing about the sun, but there are other sun-
systems. There are what are called in astro
nomical language fixed stars. These are
self-luminous, and so are unlike the planets
which shine with reflected light. That is, these
fixed stars are suns like ours, and they revolve
about each other, as telescopic observations
demonstrate. They are so far away as to seem
mere points of light, only twinkling in the
distance. There is the North Star, which has guided
so many mariners on the great deep, and which
not long ago assisted so many slaves in escap
ing from their southern masters. This is a
sun from which light, travelling 186,000 miles
a second, takes seventy years to reach this
earth, and were it this moment blotted out, we
would not know it for the three score and ten
years marking the usual limit of a human life.
It does not seem so very dazzling because it is
so distant, but as a matter of fact it is equal
to one hundred of our suns. There is Arcturus
blazing away with the brilliancy of more than
five hundred of our suns. Alcyone, the bright-
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Biblical Nature Studies
est of the Pleiades, has a light as powerful as
twelve thousand of our solar orb. As another
has said, our sun is a "mere rush-light and
glow-worm as compared with many of the huge
luminaries which pour their glories adown the
immensity of nature." And how immense
nature is, we can in a measure conceive, when
we are informed that the passage of light from
the Pleiades to us requires seven hundred years
— so that Alcyone could have been extinguished
seven centuries since, while we are receiving its
light as shot forth through space that long ago.
And Alcyone with its circling suns may be
wheeling with other Alcyones around a larger
center still, perhaps 100,000 suns strong. It is
wheel within wheel far beyond our present abil
ity to observe. So far as can be detected, how
ever, there is no one vast sun, no center of cen
ters, around which the whole universe revolves.
Our solar system, for instance, has been flying
straight ahead toward the constellation Lyra
during all human history, ten miles a second,
a million miles every day. Whence we started
thither, and when we shall get there, are un
answered conundrums. A reputable astron
omer tells us that we probably will not reach
the vicinity of Vega for half a million years
or more.
Such enormous distances can only be meas
ured by what is called the astronomical unit,
a light-year, which is the distance that light
travels in a year. When it flashes along 186,-
[216]

The Temple Expanding
000 miles every second, more than seven times
around the earth between two ticks of a watch,
we can appreciate how far it will go in a year,
and that is what gives the standard of meas
urement. Our authorities inform us that the
most remote stars in the stellar system are ten
or even twenty thousand light-years distant.
The nearest star to us is Alpha Centauri, and
that it is more than 275,000 times as distant as
our orb, which itself is more than ninety mil
lion miles away, and which we could not reach
on the fastest express train running a mile a
minute day and night under 175 of our years.
When we reflect that there may be in bound
less space other sidereal systems as yet undis
covered and perhaps forever undiscoverable by
mortal man, the imagination is fairly stag
gered, accustomed though it is to flights extend
ing to absolutely bewildering distances.
Confining ourselves to what can be seen, what
are some of the facts? The telescope is con
tinually making new revelations. It resolves
the Milky Way and other nebulae into myriads
of flashing worlds. Where one star appears to
the naked eye, let thousands of dazzling orbs
leap into sight, and some conception is gotten
of how thickly strewn space is with stars. "In
one region," is the declaration, "they seem to
form sprays of stars like diamonds sprinkled
over fern leaves ; elsewhere they lie in streams
and rows, in coronets and loops and festoons. ' '
Think again of the variegated colors, diverse
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Biblical Nature Studies
as the tints of the rainbow. Polaris gives its
planets a yellow light, while the rays from Cas
tor are green, and the constellation of the Cross
and Altar bathes every thing in a radiance that
is blood-red. Capella is yellowish, Arcturus
reddish, and Vega bluish. Some are green,
and others are red as garnets and rubies. Nay
more, the magnifying lens reveals to us the
fact, that the "suns of the same system often
have different colors. ' ' How picturesque would
be a planet upon which suns yellow, green and
red, all shone. To some intelligences in the
universe, a blue sun may be coming up in the
east, while an orange sun hastens toward the
west. We are informed of one stellar group
whose variously colored suns are "so closely
thronged together as to appear in a powerful
telescope like a superb bouquet, or a piece of
fancy jewelry." Could we have the standpoint
of God, at the last center of all centers, if such
there be, we would see all about us blazing
constellations of red, and orange, and yellow,
and green, and blue, and indigo, and violet, —
revolving rainbows of glory. Such is "the
heaven of heavens," which cannot contain God.
Not only is space with these countless and
radiant worlds boundless, but time also is limit
less. There are two eternities which we need
to couple to get any adequate conception of
the Infinite Creator, and of the house whose
architect he is, and whose builder and maker
he is. Let us endeavor to measure eternity
[218]

The Temple Expanding
by astronomical cycles. Professor Dolbear of
Tufts College once said, that light though flying
like a flash through the universe would require
more than 800,000 years to reach us from the
most remote sun known to exist. Marvelous
is the statement of the astronomer Proctor,
who wrote, ' ' Some of the fainter stars revealed
by the great Rosse telescope lie at a distance
so enormous that their light has taken more
than 100,000 years in reaching us," while he
added, that "millions of years" probably would
be required for the passage to us of light from
some worlds which have not yet been revealed.
Now take for substance an illustration heard
in my early life. Its details have escaped me,
but we can readily construct something similar.
Suppose that a bird took a grain of sand from
this earth, and flew away at the rate of 186,000
miles a second. In Dolbear 's 800,000 years to
the most distant orb now discernible, or in
Proctor's millions of years to some more dis
tant star not yet discovered, it reaches a starry
world in the outermost limits of boundless
space, and there leaves what it had carried so
long in its beak. Millions of years, to use the
larger figure, are required for its return flight
to this globe. It takes another solitary sand,
and flies away, away, away, and deposits it in
the same place. It continues this till the con
tinent of Africa is removed, till two continents
are gone, till all of them and the isles of the
sea have vanished, till this entire terrestrial
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Biblical Nature Studies
ball has been carried away grain by grain.
How long has the bird been in accomplishing
its task? Billions and trillions and quadrillions
of years ; and yet we are no nearer having the
measure of eternity than when we began.
Considering thus the boundlessness of both
space and time, getting just a glimpse of the
temple expanding round us to infinity, we can
well adopt the language of Walt Whitman at
his best. In his somewhat disjointed and yet
in a very impressive way he wrote these lines :
"I open my scuttle at night and see the far-sprinkled systems,
And all I can see multiplied as high as I can cipher. edge but
the rim of the farther systems.
Wider and wider they spread, expanding, always expanding,
Onward and outward and forever outward.
' ' My sun has his sun and round him obediently wheels,
He joins with his partners a group of superior circuit,
And greater sets follow, making specks of the greatest inside
them.
' ' There is no stoppage and never can be stoppage.

"A few quadrillions of eras, a few octillions of cubic leagues,
do not hazard the span or make it impatient.
They are but parts, any thing is but a part.
"See ever so far, there is limitless space outside of that,
Count ever so much, there is limitless time around that.
' ' My rendezvous is appointed, it is certain,
The Lord will be there and wait till I come on perfect terms,
The great Camerado, the lover true for whom I pine will be
there. ' '

[220]

BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE BIBLE VERIFIED
Pages 132. Price $1.00
Four Editions, and Translations into Spanish
and Japanese.
President J. G. K. MeClure, V.D., McCormick Theological
Seminary:I have never found a book so suitable for size and contents
to place in the hands of the ordinary inquirer who desires to
know the preeminent value of the Bible in the literatures of
the world as ' ' The Bible Verified. ' '
Bishop J. P. Newman, D.D., LLJ>. :
It is a timely book. The common people will read it gladly.
Scholars will find mental recreation therein. * * * * Would
that some wealthy saint would put "The Bible Verified" in
the hand of every minister and Sunday-school superintendent
in the land.
Bev. S. F. Smith, D.D., Author of "America:"
The successive chapters unfold with an ever renewed inter
est. The illustrations from history are rominous and striking.
**** ****** j wish it might be used as a classic.
Prof. A. H. Sayee, HOD., LLOD., Oxford University, England:
It is written at once interestingly and forcibly. I see that
you have consulted the latest and best authorities.

THE TREND OF THE CENTURIES
Pages 419. $1.00 net, postpaid
Prof. George P. Fisher, DOD., LLOD., Yale University :
It shows how extensive and intelligent has been your survey
of the past, how careful and broad have been your researches,
and in what a scholarly and catholie spirit you have judged
of historical events and persons. It is an able and suggestive
review of the course of history.

The Presbyterian Journal, Philadelphia:
Those who have read ' ' The Bible Verified, ' ' a book from the
pen of the same author, will readily understand the character
of the work before us. There is this difference, however, ' ' The
Trend of the Centuries" is the stronger of the two. * * * A
more powerful argument for the actual participation of God
in human affairs we do not know.
The American Journal of Theology, Chicago University:
The matter is put in a fresh and fascinating way: The
great epochs of history are so skilfully and vividly portrayed,
that the reader becomes an interested and delighted spectator
of the great and inspiring acts of God 's providence.
The Expository Times, Edinburgh, Scotland:
It is a book to be read by the multitude. It bristles with
literary references, but they are all intelligible.
THE EASTER HOPE
Pages 132. Price $1.00
Two Editions
The Baptist Commonwealth, Philadelphia:
The author's arguments are clear, cogent and convincing.
* * * yjre <j0 not see now this book can fail to be of service
to his fellow preachers, and to Christians generally.
Herald and Presbyter, Cincinnati:
This is a strikingly forceful presentation of the great argu
ments for the immortal life.
The Pacific Churchman, San Francisco:
There is a reasoned argument for the resurrection worked
out with the skill of a practiced and eloquent writer.
Ex-Pres. Timothy Dwight, D.D., LL.D., Yale University :
I read it twice with great interest. * * * * You have made
a very able and helpful volume.
Prof. Edward L. Curtis, D.D., in Yale Divinity Quarterly :
Dr. Archibald writes with great clearness and simplicity of
style and abundant use of happy quotation, especially of
poetry. There is not a dull page in the book.
Eev. Charles L. Morgan, D.D., First Church, Elgin, III.:
I wish to congratulate you on the most charming and at
the same time convincing assembling of the facts and argu
ments that I have ever read. * * * * I truly believe the book
will be a classic on this great theme.
Eev. A. Z. Conrad, D.D., Parle Street Church, Boston:
I read it from cover to cover. * * * * It is stimulative,
suggestive, inspiring.

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