These, as they change, Almighty Father! these
Are but the varied God. The rolling year
Is fiill of Thee. Forth in the pleasing Spring
Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness and love.
It is good for any man to be alone with nature and himself, or with a friend who knows when silence is more sociable than talk,—
"In the wilderness alone
There where nature worships God."
It is well to be in places where man is little, and God is great,—where what he sees all around him has the same look as it had a thousand years ago, and will have the same, in all likelihood, when he has been a thousand years in his grave. It abates and rectifies a man, if he is worth the process.
The best thing is to go from nature's God down to nature; and if you once get to nature's God, and believe Him, and love Him, it is surprising how easy it is to hear music in the waves, and songs in the wild whisperings of the winds; to see God everywhere in the stones, in the rocks, in the rippling brooks, and hear Him everywhere, in the lowing of cattle, in the rolling of thunder, and in the fury of tempests. Get Christ first, put Him in the right place, and you will find Him to be the wisdom of God in your own experience.
Only let us love God, and then nature will compass us about like a cloud of Divine witnesses; and all influences from the earth, and things on the earth, will be ministers of God to do us good. Only let there be God within us, and then every thing outside us will become a godlike help.
