40 The Mountaineer 
THE BENEDICTION OF THE MOUNTAINS 
Rev. Frepertck T. Wess 
The treasured memory of twelve years’ residence near to 
the very heart of the Rockies and nine years in daily sight of 
the splendid Cascades and the wild Olympics and the amazing 
“Mountain that was God”, with many a vacation hour spent 
in their suggestive and serene solitudes, has convinced me that 
mountains have a very distinet individuality. That is a 
truism. But they have more than this; something like a very 
live and majestic personality. It is scarcely a metaphor to 
sav: we sit at their feet and learn, that we commune with them, 
that our hearts go out to them and that they give answer back 
to us. 
Have you not felt as if these pine-clad, snow-garmented 
peaks were wrapping you in their great friendship? You do 
not feel that they are standing aloof coldly awaiting your 
homage; they take you to themselves, into their grandeur. 
They impart their strength; you warm their loneliness; and 
in the union of mountain and man you realize your oneness 
with the great universe itself, and are in toueh with the throb- 
bing soul of God. 
I believe the very presence of the mountains is a benedie- 
tion. And so is the mountain’s altitude. Whether he will or 
not, it lifts one up; first the eye, to scale its sides, and then 
the soul. All who love the mountains or look upon them are 
not actual mountain climbers, but the vision of them all moves 
to the skies, of necessity, under the mountain's leadership. 
And their example! Is not that, too, a benediction? All 
the seeret of life is with them. How responsive they are to 
the creative agencies of nature, still at work. This is their 
submission to the discipline of life. The pink glow of sunset 
is the mountain's gratitude for the light of the passing day in 
as a brave 
which they have bathed. They stand immovable 
man may, upon the granite basis of his faith, while the heat 
and the storm and the slow erosion of the rocks are doing for 
