ABSORPTION IN RELATION TO RADIATION
Most important factors in Living the Radiant Life are Living the Life of
_Possession_ and Living the Absorptive Life. To radiate one must
possess, and to possess one must absorb. To give largely and well, one
must receive largely and well. The Absorptive Life is as essential as
the Radiant Life. Out in the great silences are the eloquent voices of
God ready to speak to the attentive soul; out in Nature a million voices
are ready to impart knowledge to the ignorant. All one has to do to
receive is to "ask"; not with the voice but with the whole being. As a
sponge absorbs water up to the limit of its capacity, so should man
absorb, and then, unlike the sponge, which must be squeezed from without
ere it will give off that which it has received, man should radiate from
within all that he has received.
There are few people in the world who are true absorbers. We are so full
of prejudices, conceits, notions, that we refuse to receive from this,
that, or the other source, because, forsooth, we in our pride deem the
source unworthy. The true life receives from every source. Call nothing
unclean. All things are yours. God is over and in all. Prove all things.
Open your heart to all good from whatever source. Stand humbly before
God ready to receive. Keep your hands open; your eyes, your ears, your
nostrils, your whole nature in a state of active receptivity. Be afraid
of nothing. Some one comes and tells you that in this or that he has
found spiritual life and help. You, however, have been taught to regard
that as a dangerous thing, so you are afraid of it. Arise and be above
such fears. Are you a man, a woman, a human soul, made in the image of
God and given powers of thought, of discernment, of decision? Or are you
a mere puppet to be worked by the string of other men's thoughts, other
men's ideas, other men's opinions? Listen for yourself; think for
yourself; decide for yourself; act for yourself. If a thing seems right
to your own soul do it though the heavens fall and you suffer the
condemnation of all mankind. True and rapid progress will never come to
the race until individual men learn that they alone are the arbiters of
their own destiny.
Go out into Nature, into the silences, into the workshops and the marts
of trade _and absorb_. Listen to every good voice that speaks, and if
you are not sure whether the voice is good or not, listen anyhow and
"prove" it by the infallible tests of purity, unselfishness, and uplift.
Every human soul may be a wireless telegraph receiver. God is flashing
out messages every moment from His million and one instruments all over
the universe. They are all kinds of messages--but all from the one
spirit, and therefore all spiritual. They appeal to the bodies, the
minds, the souls of men, and all you have to do to receive them is to
have your receiving apparatus of body, mind, and soul attuned to the
sending apparatus of the Loving Sender. Get in tune. Cry out to God: I
want all there is. I cast aside all prejudgments, all conceits, all
ideas. Let me hear direct from Thee. Go out into the fields and receive
from the spirit that is in, over, and about Nature. Every tree, flower,
grass, bird, insect, animal, cloud, storm, rock, stream has a message
for you if you will but hear it. Love alone can open your heart to
receive; it is the key with which the soul and mind and body are set in
tune. Get yourself into _relationship_ with Nature. Feel your kinship.
God is the Father of every tree as much as he is your Father. Go and
claim your family. And claim all the good they possess as your own, for
it is yours and merely awaits your taking. As a child you did this with
your mother. The nourishment of her breasts, the gentle hush of her
voice, the soothing touch of her fingers, the brooding yearning of her
love; all these were yours the moment you cried out for them. Mother
Nature is as full of the spirit of Love as your physical mother. Indeed
the latter is one in spirit with the former. Call out then. Demand, with
the simple expectancy of the child, all that you need. Call for it
confident that it will come. Expect it, and according to your expectancy
it will be given unto you.
But to do this you must be a true child of your Nature Mother. You must
confidently lean on her breast, you must confidently blend yourself with
her, you must let her touch you as your mother used to touch you when, a
helpless babe, you lay in your cradle. Her hand went all over your body,
from head to foot, with loving, soothing caress. Let the sun and the
breezes touch your body in like fashion. Their fingers will soothe with
mesmeric power and at the same time bring health and strength and vigor,
and withal, peace. Go and lie down on the bosom of the Earth Mother;
feel her pulsating heart, and in time, when you have forgotten your
artificiality and pretension, your so-called civilization and culture,
and found anew your kinship with the Earth, you will feel the whole
power of Nature pulsing through your veins; the fever of your unhealthy
blood will be soothed and it will flow naturally and coolly as the sweet
sap that ascends to the nourishment of the topmost branch and leaf.
And when life has wounded you, cut you, torn you almost limb from limb,
and you feel and see yourself only an almost dismembered trunk, Nature
will soothe and heal you. Your wounds will soon be scarred over and the
trees, the ferns, the birds, the grasses, the squirrels, the bees, the
buds, the blossoms, and the butterflies,--all--will associate with you
on equal terms. They will neither laugh at you nor repel you, but as
loving friends come and associate with you in sweet and dear kinship.
You will walk through the aisled forest temples of God repentant and
forgiven for sins of the past, and shame and sorrow will flee away,
replaced by the calm joy of the peace that flows into the receiving
heart like a river. You will undress and bathe in the sunshine and the
pools, the creeks and the rivers, fearless and unabashed, for you will
have exposed your soul to the soul of things; real shame has nothing to
do with externals.
But, you ask, how am I to begin to observe and thus absorb the good
gifts of God into my very life in order that I may live and radiate them
to others? Let me help you to begin!
To be satisfied is to stagnate and petrify. In his _Rabbi Ben Ezra_,
Robert Browning has three pregnant lines:
What I aspired to be,
And was not, comforts me:
A brute I might have been, but would not sink i' the scale.
The aspiring soul is the one reaching out to absorb. One might be a
satisfied brute by closing all the avenues of aspiration and high
ambition, but it is immeasurably better to be an unsatisfied, aspiring
man rather than the satisfied low-minded brute.
Aspiration is the hunger of the soul. Hunger implies need. So
foster--cultivate--your hunger. The hungry seek for food, and food gives
new life, new growth, new strength, new power. The Universe of God is
full of food for man's mind and soul. And it is of infinite variety,
capable of nourishing myriads of soul-powers that now lie dormant in
your nature. Awaken to your needs. Be on the lookout every moment for
the free gifts of God that hang from the trees of life that grow in
every back yard as well as on high mountains and in every fertile
orchard.
There is a great deal more in this expression, "cultivate a hunger,"
than at first sight appears. People who satisfy their lower appetites
know nothing of the true hunger of the soul. And consequently when they
see the food designed by the Almighty Love and Wisdom to satisfy to the
full all the demands of true hunger, these grossly contented minds pass
them by, their eyes are closed so that they see not; their senses are
dulled so that they smell not, hear not, feel not, taste not. I have
seen people fast from every kind of food, solid or liquid, for ten,
twenty, thirty or forty, and in one case even for eighty days. At the
end of these fasts, the fasters related with delight their keen pleasure
and satisfaction at realizing what real hunger was as differentiated
from the mere appetite for food that they had felt prior to their fasts.
As a rule we eat too much. We satiate ourselves upon foods that are not
always good for us, and thus destroy the true normal appetite for pure,
good, healthful, simple foods.
Among these people who fasted were several who were thin and poorly
nourished, and yet who had abnormal appetites and ate far more food than
those who were robust, hearty, vigorous, and strong. The physician said,
what was self-evident, that the more food they ate, the less nourished
they became, because they overloaded themselves with food and much of it
was the wrong kind. It was hard work for these people to fast, but at
the close of the fast, their abnormal and unnatural appetite had
disappeared and in its stead had come a true, normal hunger which
revealed to them the right kind of food that they should eat to satisfy
the demands of the body and which, when they did eat, was immediately
assimilated. The result was that within a month or two, after having
learned what real hunger was as differentiated from perverted appetite,
they were fat and rosy, plump and vigorous, beautiful and energetic.
It is exactly the same in our mental and spiritual life. We feed upon
the grosser foods to satiation and repletion and the result is that we
suffer from mental and spiritual dyspepsia and are pale, thin, anæmic
and weak, where we should be beautiful, vigorous, energetic, and strong.
Quit stuffing and craving the lower foods. Stay away from the theater,
the vaudeville, the cheap show. Quit reading the sensational novel, the
trashy story of excitement. Give your brain, your mind, your soul, a
rest. Fast a while. Do as Elijah did, as Jesus, as Mahomet. Go into the
desert, the solitude, and for forty days and nights rest, body, mind,
and soul, until real hunger takes possession of you. Then come forth and
begin to absorb from all the great wealth of God that surrounds you.
There are three chief sources of purest mind and soul supply and I wish
briefly to consider each one of these. They are: 1. Observation. 2.
Reading. 3. Intuition.
This may not be a scientific classification, but it suffices for my
purpose. I have not put the most important first, but observation is the
one man most relies upon.
1. Observation is God's method of filling up the inner supply of man's
knowledge through the senses. He sees, feels, hears, smells, tastes, and
through these avenues receives mental impressions. One can observe the
lower things or the higher. Every day as I ride on the train or street
cars, I observe men reading their newspapers. As a rule I can tell in a
few minutes what a man's mental hunger is by watching him read. He
chooses the pink sheet and devours with avidity the stories of prize
fights. He turns to the pages devoted to courts and reads the accounts
of murder trials or of scenes where lawyers quarrel or jangle and where
witnesses testify to disgusting and loathsome things. Another man is
interested in clean athletics and reads with interest of college
football, Marathon games, and the like. Still another is absorbed in the
news of a higher nature, a meeting of the Hague Peace Conference, the
endeavors of statesmen to bring about a better understanding between the
North and the South, between nations. In other words, a man takes what
his appetite craves out of the newspaper. Just so it is with all life.
Men take whatever their appetites crave. If the appetite is false,
unnatural, abnormal, they take injurious food. Only when the depraved
appetite becomes changed into natural, normal hunger, is the right kind
of food sought and found. Yet there is immeasurably more of the pure,
good food to satisfy the perfect, normal hunger, than there is of the
carrion which the vulture instincts in us crave.
2. Reading. While I have put this under a separate head, it really
belongs under the head of observation, for the reading of books is but
observation of the observations of other men. Yet, as I shall show
later, this is a special field which one should endeavor to glean with
care.
3. Intuition. To the really normally hungry soul, this is the chief,
indeed, the only source of spiritual food. It is what Emerson called the
"Oversoul," and what Doctor Buck meant when, in speaking of Walt
Whitman, he said he possessed the "cosmic conscience." It is
receptiveness to universal truth, Divine truth, that truth which knows
no time, no place, no boundaries of nationality, no difference in creed,
in sect, in sex, in color, but that, like the sun, shines alike upon
all, whether bond or free, rich or poor, learned or unlearned, black,
white, brown, or red, savage or civilized. It is the spirit that
possessed--in varying degrees--Gautama, Buddha, Confucius, Mahomet,
Jesus, Joan of Arc, Emerson, Browning, Whitman, all great souls who have
seen the truth universal and recorded it for the uplift and ennobling of
mankind.
May I here suggest a few ideas as to how you should begin to absorb the
good things of God in order to get the fullest benefit from them, and
then let us go out together and absorb some of the things that will make
one a newer, fuller, more vigorous and truly radiant being.
Get into the habit of looking out of your bedroom window at the skies
each night before you retire to rest. Is it clear? Study that brilliant
scheme of stars and planets. What grander sight could you ask for? Yet
every common man and woman may see it from the smallest attic or
hall-bedroom window. Is the moon in the heavens dimming the stars but
flooding the earth with dream-light? Can you see the great wonderful
clouds floating about in the night's silences away up under the light of
the moon or against the sparkling of the far off stars? Or is the sky
dark and lowering with black clouds so that you can see nothing as yet?
What a wonderful thing that cloud screen is; that soft, moist vapor
piled in great billows above us, shutting out the heavens and their
wonders from our gaze. How dark it seems on the earth beneath. How shut
away from the brightness and serenity of the stars. Yet we know that the
clouds are but temporary, that they will soon pass over, and that we are
perfectly safe nestling here on the quiet bosom of mother earth.
Look up to the heavens _every night_ for some intellectual and spiritual
food, just as you go to the dining-room, _only more so_. Form the habit!
Study the stars as David did. They are as free to you as they were to
him. The poorest beggar and the most degraded sot have as much claim to
the stars as the king on his throne or the most divine man that ever
lived. What a wonderful drama is being nightly played in the skies. How
much more interesting and attractive to the seeing and understanding eye
than the puppet shows of the theater, where there is so much of the
glare, the tinsel, the sham, the shoddy.
The Passion Play of Oberammergau is well worth seeing. To witness and
hear the dramas of Wagner is worth while, especially soul-stirring
_Parsifal_, but here in the heavens is the great mystery of the Creator,
watched over, guarded, protected by these bright armored knights,--the
stars and the planets, the comets, the nebulæ, the milky way,--with a
vigilance which is as keen as it is eternal.
A thoughtful girl once wrote me to the effect that after she first began
to realize the glories of the stars, she prayed to a different God from
the God she had always associated with formality, churches, prayer
books, creeds, and the communion service. She said, in effect, that her
prayer became less glib, less wordy, less ready, for the stars inspired
her with the sense of majesty and awe of the Great Creator, so that she
came before Him with words that meant more even though they came with
less smoothness of utterance. Awe will take the place of smug
self-satisfaction; the obeisance of the soul to mere bending of the
knees; an all-sweeping passion for uplift rather than vain repetitions
and selfish cries for more of the baubles of life to play with. There is
no doubt whatever that Tennyson had some such thoughts in mind when he
wrote in _Locksley Hall_:
Many a night from yonder ivied casement, ere I went to rest,
Did I look on great Orion sloping slowly to the West.
Many a night I saw the Pleiads, rising through the mellow shade,
Glitter like a swarm of fireflies tangled in a silver braid.
Longfellow, too, has an exquisite poem on _The Light of the Stars_:
The night has come, but not too soon;
And sinking silently,
All silently, the little moon
Drops down behind the sky.
There is no light in earth or heaven
But the cold light of stars;
And the first watch of night is given
the red planet Mars.
Is it the tender star of love?
The star of love and dreams?
O no! from that blue tent above,
A hero's armor gleams.
And earnest thoughts within me rise,
When I behold afar,
Suspended in the evening skies,
The shield of that red star.
O star of strength! I see thee stand
And smile upon my brain;
Thou beckonest with thy mailed hand,
And I am strong again.
Within my heart there is no light
But the cold light of stars;
I give the first watch of the night
To the red planet Mars.
The star of the unconquered will
He rises in my heart
Serene, and resolute, and still,
And calm, and self-possessed.
And thou, too, whosoe'er thou art,
That readest this brief psalm,
As one by one thy hopes depart,
Be resolute and calm.
O fear not in a world like this,
And thou shalt know ere long,
Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong.
So study the stars, get from them all you can. Let their serenity sink
into your soul, and their calm peace speak peace to your troubled and
restless spirit. Yield to your imagination as to whatever they bring
you, and be thankful for every suggestion of largeness, bigness, power,
and love.
In his _Saul_, Browning has David tell how the stars suggested to him
the life of the people far away, who dwelt far beyond the possibility of
his ever seeking them. How could he, the poor and humble shepherd lad,
ever hope to see and know these people? Yet he could picture them. So
can you. Let your imagination grow! Let it roam! Enjoy all it gives to
you of good and inspiration. Think of the life you might live if you had
the power some of these people have, and then seek to live worthy of
that larger life even in the restricted sphere in which you are placed.
But there are other things in the heavens, almost as common as the
stars, that may become a great and glorious inspiration to you.
I once saw a display of lightning that came to me as a revelation from
God. It was so vivid and intense that the friends who were with me, old
Arizona pioneers who had braved hundreds of storms, were afraid, and
like myself hid their faces in their blankets. But by and by the
absurdity of this act struck me;--as if we were safer with our heads
covered than if we were taking in the sight in all its sublimity and
terrible splendor. So I resolutely cast my blanket aside, and although I
had not yet gotten over the shaking of my knees, I stepped to the cabin
door and enjoyed the splendid scene to the full.
Who could hope to describe this display so that others can see it, or to
be believed if he even attempts to picture the intense and vivid
brilliancy of that evening's marvelous fire-works? For a few moments we
were enveloped in a "darkness that could be felt," and then, in a
moment, what seemed to be hundreds of millions of darting, zig-zag forks
of lightning struck downwards through the heavens in every direction. We
were encircled in these myriad flashes of vivid violet light that almost
blinded us with their brilliancy. For an hour or more this display
continued. But it was a sight that I can never forget, and it gave me a
new insight, and new thoughts about the glory of God.
I have sat in the grass on a summer night or have walked many a mile
both in the South and in the West watching the scintillating, yet soft
and delicate, light of the fireflies as they sparkled and twinkled at my
feet and in the air all about me. With a sort of irregular yet rhythmic
movement they opened and closed their tiny lanterns, and interested,
fascinated, and thrilled me by the perfection of their simple beauty.
With equal fascination I have watched the phosphorescent glow on the
ocean beach, as the great foam-crested breakers curved over and dashed
shoreward, gleaming with that peculiarly weird brilliancy, altogether
different from any other light known to man. It is even more fascinating
when seen in the amethystine waters of the Gulf of Mexico, as the
steamer plows its way through the yielding waters and casts the
gleaming and phosphorescent spray from side to side in the otherwise
dark and silent night.
Talk about the beauties of Nature! Once begin on such a theme and there
seems to be no end. A thousand and one things crowd upon the mind
begging, clamoring for utterance in this record, but space forbids. Do
not say you cannot see, do not say there is nothing in your immediate
surroundings for you. You cannot take a step without glimpsing beauty of
some kind if your eyes are awake to observe and your heart to absorb.
Only this morning the maid in "doing up my room" in the city of Chicago
pointed out the beauty of the black trunks and branches of the trees in
the avenue contrasted against the pure white of the snow which had just
fallen. Then she remarked that even the smoky buildings were changed
into something beautiful and harmonious when the snow came, and she
commented upon the fact that she found beauty here that charmed,
thrilled, and stimulated her soul, just as much as she did amid the
much-described and certainly more glowing and picturesque scenery of
California.
Here is the true spirit! Do not repine for the things that are away off
and that you cannot have. Take from what you can get, or go resolutely
to work to get the more desirable surroundings. But _wherever you are_
absorb that which is _now_ and _here_ presented to you, and thus you
will learn to know and appreciate greater and grander things when
opportunity places them before you.
2. _Absorption through Reading._
It must not be understood that because I am constantly urging my readers
to rely upon their own observations of Nature that I do not fully
appreciate the benefit books may be to them. Books form a large place in
my own life, and I would regret to be separated from them. They bring
into my life the inner life of all the observers, thinkers, orators,
seers, poets, and prophets of the ages, and yet what are books but the
records of men's observations and their thoughts upon those
observations? All books are not good. There are books and books. And
just as some associates are injurious, so are many books. Do not waste
your time on the cheap, the trashy, the useless, and injurious. Select
only those books from which you are sure you can absorb those things
that will be helpful and beneficial.
Some people say they read simply for entertainment. There are times when
it is well to read with this object in view. If one is weary in mind or
body, the brain has been overtaxed, trouble distresses one, then it is
well to seek entertainment. For entertainment and the forgetting of
one's cares, troubles, and weariness will mean rest and recuperation.
It is well to be able to absorb such from a book that takes away
thoughts from one's self. But even at such times, choose the best books
from which you may absorb those things that will enable you the better
to take up the battle of life with renewed energy and courage.
Do you try to keep up with all the latest books? Why? Do you read simply
to say that you have read, to be able to give expression to the usual
fashionable gabble on so-called "current literature"? It is not the
amount you read, but the amount of good, ennobling, and uplifting
influences that you gain from your reading that makes reading worth
while. No person that lives can read book after book in rapid succession
and absorb therefrom anything worth while. As well sit down and eat from
six o'clock in the morning until twelve o'clock at night and expect the
body to be healthful as to read continually and expect the mind to be
healthful. It is not eating but assimilation that builds up the body.
Just so, it is not reading but mental absorption that informs the mind
and strengthens the soul. One book a year, thoroughly mastered, out of
which you have absorbed helpful, stimulating, invigorating,
health-giving, power-producing thought and action is worth more than a
thousand books swallowed whole without thought or digestion.
Joaquin Miller says that "Books are for people who do not think." Very
often this is a correct statement. While it is a good thing to desire
the knowledge we can gain from books, it becomes an evil thing when we
gain all of our knowledge of the world around us in this fashion. If the
only thoughts we have are the thoughts we get from books, books are an
injury instead of a blessing; a crutch instead of an invigoration.
In his early life, Edwin Markham, the poet, had but three books, the
Bible, Shakspere, and Bunyan. Yet from these three books and the
contemporaneous study of the mountains, valleys, canyons, plains,
orchards, gardens, ocean, sea-beach, and valleys by which he was
surrounded, he absorbed thoughts and saw things that enabled him to
write poems that have thrilled and benefited the world.
Sir John Lubbock a few years ago chose from all the millions of books
that have been published one hundred which he claims comprises all the
best literature of all the ages, and more recently still, President
Eliot of Harvard compressed upon a five-foot shelf all the books that he
deems necessary for the really thoughtful man to possess.
I am not prepared to accept these or any other limitations as to the
books I shall possess and read, and yet I do want to urge the principle
involved in them upon my readers. Learn to do your own thinking rather
than take your thoughts at second hand from what some one else has
written. At the same time I would urge upon you the reading of the
writings of our great poets that you may absorb from them their love of
Nature. In this way it may be that you will be won to the love and
appreciation of that which you have never before known or enjoyed. Just
as the artist on his canvas sets forth for us a beautiful scene out of
the great world that surrounds us and thus focalizes our attention upon
it, and teaches us to see the beauty which hitherto we had passed
unobserved, so does the poet focalize our attention upon that which
hitherto we had passed by and neglected.
Let us read, therefore, by all means, but not as an end in itself. Let
us read that thereby we may be stimulated to go out into Nature to see,
feel, and absorb for ourselves. Many of the books that are "worth while"
were written by men and women who have been close observers of Nature.
It is by observation that we absorb the facts and lessons of Nature.
Some of the most helpful and beautiful books have been written as the
result of the exercise of this faculty combined with the reflection that
always comes to the truly thoughtful. The sciences are based upon
observation, and as soon as one becomes interested in any particular
line of study it is amazing how many fascinating things begin to crowd
upon his attention. The great scientist, Agassiz, said that he could
find enough to thoroughly and completely fill the whole of a life of
eighty years in as much as he could cover with his one hand. I have
spent night after night with astronomers whose whole vocation was to
study the heavens and learn the wonderful lessons revealed thereby. One
of the happiest epochs of my life was to spend two months in the High
Sierras of California with Joseph Le Conte, the great geologist, and his
keen and trained eyes revealed to me things in Nature that I had never
seen before, and life has ever since been richer and fuller because of
the experience.
Darwin studied the facts of development of plant and animal life until
he wrote a book which has completely revolutionized the thought of the
world. He spent years in studying the movements and influences upon the
ground of the common earth-worm and showed us how great a friend to
humanity is this apparently insignificant and useless creature.
Sir John Lubbock, the eminent statesman and philosopher, busy with the
affairs of city and nation, spent years in studying the actions and life
of the tiny ant and has given us most fascinating accounts of what he
saw with philosophical deductions therefrom.
The Audubons spent their lives in studying the animals and birds of
North America and their books have been a source of intense delight and
instruction to all those that have been privileged to read them and see
their marvelous illustrations.
Michelet, the great French scholar, studied the bee and then wrote a
book about this busy insect that is as fascinating as a romance and as
thrilling and interesting as a drama.
John Ward Stimson studied the various forms of snow crystals, salts, of
rock substances; the natural forms of leaves, their systems of veins;
the spines of the various cactuses; the marking on the furs of animals
and the backs of reptiles, snakes, lizards, toads, etc.; indeed, all the
multi-form shapes, spirals, curves, angles, lines, etc., of Nature, and
wrote a book on them entitled _The Gate Beautiful_ which one great
critic and poet affirms is the greatest book, outside of the Bible and
Shakspere, the world has ever known. And thus might I go on page after
page, merely suggesting what men with the seeing eye and understanding
heart have given to the world as the result of their observations of
Nature.
Who would not observe in this fashion? Who would not like thus to fill
up the mind and the soul with such wonderful facts and beautiful truths
deduced therefrom?
Henry D. Thoreau, John Burroughs, Philip Gilbert Hamerton, John Muir,
John C. Van Dyke, and W. C. Bartlett have studied Nature in the trees,
grasses, the birds, the animals, and the sunrises and sunsets until they
have been able to thrill the world with the record of those things that
they have seen and felt.
Ernest Thompson Seton, W. J. Long, and C. G. D. Roberts have studied the
wild life of animals until they have written books that have charmed
perhaps millions of readers by revealing to them phases of animal life
that they had never believed existed.
Jack London goes up into Alaska and with trained eye observes the wild
wastes of snow and winter desolation and comes back and writes books
that win him fame and wealth, because of his power to see and tell what
his seeing makes him feel.
This world is full of beauty, of knowledge, of joy, to the hungry mind
and soul, and its treasures are all free, are all to be had merely for
the asking, for the seeing, for the reaching out.
Nothing repays every effort more abundantly than does Nature. She
preaches more eloquently, because more simply, purely, and directly than
any divine that ever occupied pulpit. She is the direct voice of God to
mankind, ordained by the Infinite himself. Few men in sacerdotal robes
ever come to us with this divine song upon their lips. Joaquin Miller
never wrote truer words than:
The woods keep repeating
The old sacred sermons whatever you ask.
It may be that as you read over what I have said of the observations and
achievements of the scientists and others that you will say that you
have no such opportunity for wide observation as this. It is not
necessary that you should have. Let me suggest to you how to begin the
development of your powers of observation in order that you may in your
way reap as beautiful a harvest as those men have in theirs.
David was only a poor shepherd boy, but while out tending his flocks by
day and night he learned the wonderful lessons that he afterwards
incorporated into the Psalms. It was his observations, without
scientific knowledge, without observatories, without telescopes, or
other scientific instruments, that gave him such clear knowledge of the
stars that he was able to sing those wonderful words that have thrilled
all mankind ever since they were uttered, "The heavens declare the glory
of God, and the firmament showeth His handiwork." While a shepherd boy
without training, without education, he so observed the things about him
that when, later in life, the power of expression came, he was able to
sing messages that will live so long as man lives.
So, like David, begin to study the common things about you. Observe the
flowers. Observe their loveliness. Study the infinite variety of their
form, color, fragrance; compare them one with another; ask yourself why
one appeals to you more than another; wherein the special beauty and
attractiveness lies of one flower over another for you. No one can study
the flowers and not realize that the Divine Creator loves beauty, for
the infinitude of varieties that are presented, from the delicate
orchids and cactuses of the tropical forests and barren deserts down to
the plainest sunflower and dandelion, are all rich in a beauty and
attractiveness all their own.
Ina Coolbrith, the California poet, in one of her sweetest songs, says:
I will out in the gold of the blossoming mould
And sit at the Master's feet,
And the love my heart would speak,
I will fold in the lily's rim,
That the lips of the blossom more pure and meet
May offer it up to Him.
See what a beautiful conception! Her heart was full of desire to lift
her prayer of thankfulness, praise, and supplication up to God, but
feeling her own inadequacy and incompleteness, and realizing the perfect
purity of the delicate lily, she felt that she might wrap her prayer up
in the rim of the flower and thus make it acceptable to the God of
purity and immaculate whiteness.
There never was a flower yet that was not a miracle to the observing eye
and thinking mind. How does it shape all that beauty? From whence does
it gain those delicate tints, tones, and colors? From what laboratory
does it extract those exquisitely delicate and delicious odors?
Oh, wake up to the beauty of the common grass, the common flowers, the
common trees. Open your eyes to see, open your hearts to feel, cultivate
your hunger for these common things and then absorb and assimilate them.
But the flowers and trees are but merely a part of the great world of
Nature from which one may absorb things beautiful and grand.
People who live by the sea or by an inland lake have wonderful
opportunities for the observation of grandeur, sublimity, and beauty.
Joaquin Miller once stood by the seashore and wrote these words of
poetry:
The sun lay molten in the sea
Of sand, and all the sea was rolled
In one broad, bright intensity
Of gold and gold and gold and gold.
He saw the gold of beauty which in this materialistic age few men deem
of value. But when all the gold of commerce has disappeared, the gold of
beauty is a treasure stored up in one's soul that will accompany him
through all the ages of eternity. The one is ephemeral and useful only
to provide the food, clothing, and shelter we need for the body, the
other, permanent, enduring, lasting, that clothes the mind with
brilliant images and the soul with helpful and stimulating aspirations.
It is one of the mistakes of life to overlook the apparently small,
trifling and near-by things, in the vain desire to see some great,
large, important thing. The things about us are the essential things of
our life. Too often we deem them unimportant. We are so accustomed to
seeing them that we pay no attention to them, yet these things were
worth the thought of the Almighty Creator. Every blade of grass, every
leaf of every tree is a revelation of some thought of God, hence can
never be beneath the notice of mankind. This careless and unobservant
attitude of mind shows our ignorance and our unwisdom. God's mysteries
are before us and we refuse to read them. As Walt Whitman says: "Our
streets are strewn with leaves from the book of God and we see them
not." We pass them by. Let us learn to pick up these divine mysteries
and in their sweet, beautiful simplicity read their sublime lessons to
our own hearts.
Who would think of learning anything from the mists? Yet Joaquin Miller
once wrote these words:
Behold the silvered mists that rise
From all-night toiling in the corn,
The mists have duties up the skies,
The skies have duties with the morn;
While all the world is full of earnest care
To make the fair world still more wondrous fair.
In one of his poems, one of our great poets tells the story of a number
of poor people who came to see their king who was to approach with his
gayly dressed bands of music and all the pomp and ceremony attendant
upon kingship. The story goes, however, that the Captain of the Province
drove the poor people away and refused to allow them to be present when
the king passed through.
Let the poet now tell his own story:
Lo, then a soft-voiced stranger said:
"Come ye with me a little space.
I know where torches gold and red
Gleam down a peaceful, ample place;
Where song and perfume fill the restful air,
And men speak scarce at all. The King is there."
They passed; they sat a grass-set hill--
What king hath carpets like to this?
What king hath music like the thrill
Of crickets 'mid these silences--
These perfumed silences, that rest upon
The soul like sunlight on a hill at dawn?
Behold what blessings in the air!
What benedictions in the dew!
These olives lift their arms in prayer;
They turn their leaves, God reads them through;
Yon lilies where the falling water sings
Are fairer-robed than choristers of kings.
Lift now your heads! yon golden bars
That build the porch of heaven, seas
Of silver-sailing golden stars--
Yea, these are yours, and all of these!
For yonder king hath never yet been told
Of silver seas that sail these ships of gold.
They turned, they raised their heads on high;
They saw, the first time saw and knew,
The awful glories of the sky,
The benedictions of the dew;
And from that day His poor were richer far
Than all such kings as keep where follies are.
Have you experienced these blessings in the air? Have you felt these
benedictions in the dew? Have you seen the exquisite robes of the
lilies? Have you seen the ships of gold sailing through the silver seas?
And the bars of gold that build the porch of heaven?
You have rushed to see the pomp of kings. You have rushed to see the
glitter and tinsel of the circus procession. You have struggled with
desperation that you and your wife might mingle with the gayly dressed
throng at some fanciful revel. Why be so eager for these vain shows and
yet not see the true beauty, real gorgeousness, undying splendor of
these other outward manifestations of the thoughts of God?
Eager desire for the vain pomp and circumstance of things reveals the
abnormal and depraved appetite just the same as the glutton's and
drunkard's cravings do. The more they are fed the more fiercely their
fires rage and the less satisfied one becomes. It is only real things
that will satisfy the hunger of the immortal soul, and then one of the
remarkable things is how the trivial and small things will produce
satisfaction.
As George Macdonald says in his fascinating story, _Sir Gibbie_:
It is wonderful upon how little those rare natures capable of making
the most of things will live and thrive. There is a great deal more
to be got out of things than is generally got out of them, whether
the thing be a chapter of the Bible or a yellow turnip, and the
marvel is that those who use the most material should so often be
those that show the least result in strength or character.