learn the spiritual laws that operate in the Universe. As yet we scarcely know that we are spiritual. Indeed we have but faint intimations of it. It is only quite recently that men have dared openly and positively to express their assurance that they were spiritual and not physical. Is it not then quite apparent that, as they grow in this marvelous knowledge, new vistas of hitherto totally unknown, unconceived of, things will be revealed, and man will rise to a height he has never dreamed of?

I am eager to begin to sing the Song of Man's Spirituality, of his oneness with God, of the immeasurable largeness of his destiny, of God's willingness and ability to supply man with all he needs to attain to the highest. If it be physical health, it will come; if it be money, it will be given; if it be power, influence, it will arise and-whatever his need, my need, it will be abundantly supplied; the measure will be full, pressed down, running over.

Thus shall I Sing through Life with God, and gladly enter upon the new life, the new and blessed adventure I see beyond, when this dream life of the body shall be ended and my real and spiritual life shall begin. Already I can hear the songs of the angels, of the archangels, the cherubim and seraphim, calling me onwards, upwards. Thus I am cheered and encouraged in my earthly pilgrimage and go on my way, Singing with God.

CHAPTER XVII

THE VARIED SONGS OF NATURE

WHILE there are special chapters devoted to trees

and mountains, stars and birds, brooks and rivers, I cannot resist the temptation to record a few of the many songs other phases of Nature have sung to me at different times. Of course it is evident to the thoughtful reader that a score of books the size of this easily might be filled with experiences of the kind. One of my motives in writing this specific chapter is to urge upon my readers the desire to "cash in" their own opportunities with Nature. Life is full of them, but one must catch them "on the wing." If one fails to enjoy the flavor of the peach he is eating, at the time, he has neither the additional joys of retrospect or anticipation. His loss is three-fold-the loss of the immediate pleasure, of remembrance, of anticipation. Eternal recognition and appreciation of Nature are the price one must pay for continuous joy. Bryant speaks knowingly and therefore truthfully when he says:

To him who in the love of Nature holds
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks
A various language.

So also does Tennyson, who declares, "Nothing in Nature is unbeautiful," and Lord Thurlow, who says, "Nature is always wise in every part; and Wordsworth, who asserts:

Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her.

How could she? Nature is but the visualized expression of certain thoughts of God:

All are but parts of one stupendous whole,
Whose body Nature is, and God the soul.

Hence, to me, as I study and enjoy Nature, I am studying and enjoying, not God, but a book of God's thoughts. I am not a pantheist, but I feel that God reveals Himself in every object, fact and aspect of Nature.

This world, the great sidereal universe, is God's. "All things were made by Him, and without Him was not anything made that was made." I recall, too, that when He looked upon this creation of His hands he declared it was "good." Therefore, when I go out into Nature I feel I am gazing upon, coming in contact with, the good, perfect and complete handiwork of God, manifested to me now in physical form, the symbol of the higher and more complete spiritual form which I can the more fully comprehend and understand as I myself become higher and more spiritual in my consciousness. I believe this is what makes the pure heart feel like singing when it gets.

into free and responsive contact with Nature. Ina Coolbrith sings in Blossom Time:

I sing and shout in the fields about,

In the balm and the blossoming.

And as the lark and thrush sing to her soul she exclaims:

Sing loud, sing clear, that the King may hear,

And my soul shall sing with you.

When Shelley heard the skylark he burst out into an ecstasy of song himself, that has thrilled the world ever since, and has led many to join in the Universal Symphony.

It must have been because he heard the great symphony of Nature that Mendelssohn wrote his Lobegesang, his Hymn of Praise, that wonderful composition that accords all Nature to his mood and genius, and that expresses so much of the tuneful joy of God's great out of doors. As I stop my writing for a few minutes, my whole nature responds to the thrill of the solos, duets, the overture, the delicate melodies, the crashing and thunderous choruses of that sublime composition, and then, in a moment, I am revelling in the majestic songs of Elijah, and can feel his "Thanks be to God, He loveth the thirsty land."

Haydn, too, felt it in his Creation, another of those more than human conceptions of the Divine power, expressed in vocal music. Can you not hear in memory-if you ever have been privileged to hear it

sung by a competent body of trained voices, accompanied by a good orchestra-that stately, opening chorus, "The Heavens are Telling the Glory of God?" The mere remembrance of it is as thrilling as a battle, and it is of God's creative glory and power, instead of man's destructive horrors and war's devastations.

I received more real and valuable theological instruction from these sublime musical compositionsand I might refer to a score, a hundred, of them, as, for instance, the overture to William Tell-than from all the sermons I ever heard preached. Why? It seems to me the answer must be found in the fact that the musicians responded more fully to Nature's glorious songs than did the preachers, and therefore were enabled to awaken similar responses in the hearts of those who listened to their music.

I am heartily in sympathy with the thought so perpetually expressed by Ruskin-I do not need to find a specific quotation-viz., that Nature is the great teacher of art. Young put this thought into these words: "The course of Nature is the art of God," and Pope says, "All Nature is but art." That artist, in every line of expression, who best studies and knows Nature, is best fitted for his own work. Take the basketry art of the Indian. So long as the weaver stuck to the patterns of Nature, and did her work well, her designs were infallible, perfect, uncriticizable. Who can criticize the sphere, the circle, the oval, the cube, the parallelogram? They are per