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:

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:

Longfellow, too, has an exquisite poem on The Light of the Stars:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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:

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: