In My Vicarage Garden 



In one point only I cannot quite pass it by 

 the Bernese Oberland is not altogether pleasant 

 to the English Churchman. I was there three 

 Sundays one at Thun, one at Grindelwald, and 

 one at Miirren, and in all three, neither the 

 buildings or the services are what might be 

 expected from the hundreds of English visitors 

 who come there every year. In this dearth of 

 proper buildings it is a comfort to feel that 

 the whole country is one grand temple in which 

 is preached with no uncertain sound the majesty 

 and the goodness of Him, Whose we are, and 

 Whom we serve. " Altitudines montium Ipsius 

 sunt " is the feeling that can never long be absent 

 from us, and the many references to the hills and 

 mountains and the lessons they teach which 

 abound in the Psalms and the Prophets come 

 back to us with new force and value. Yet the 

 " hills which stand round about Jerusalem " are as 

 nothing compared to the mountains of Switzer- 

 land ; even the glory of Lebanon, the Mont Blanc 

 of Syria, though a snow mountain, is little more 

 than half the height of the Mont Blanc of 

 Switzerland, and no Jewish Prophet or Psalmist 

 could have seen or known anything of the wonder- 

 ful mysteries of the glaciers ; they had passed 

 away from Lebanon and Syria long before the 

 day of Prophet or Psalmist, but we know that 

 they were there once, for the cedars of Lebanon 

 now grow on an ancient glacial moraine. 



188 



