THE GOSPEL OF NATURE 



thing not inherent in Nature, then we no longer look 

 for or expect a far-off, unknown God. 



Nature teaches more than she preaches. There 

 are no sermons in stones. It is easier to get a spark 

 out of a stone than a moral. Even when it contains 

 a fossil, it teaches history rather than morals. It 

 comes down from the fore-world an undigested bit 

 that has resisted the tooth and maw of time, and 

 can tell you many things if you have the eye to read 

 them. The soil upon which it lies or in which it is 

 imbedded was rock, too, back in geologic time, but 

 the mill that ground it up passed the fragment of 

 stone through without entirely reducing it. Very 

 likely it is made up of the minute remains of innum- 

 erable tiny creatures that lived and died in the an- 

 cient seas. Very likely it was torn from its parent 

 rock and brought to the place where it now lies by 

 the great ice-flood that many tens of thousands of 

 years ago crept slowly but irresistibly down out of 

 the North over the greater part of all the northern 

 continents. 



But all this appeals to the intellect, and contains 

 no lesson for the moral nature. If we are to find 

 sermons in stones, we are to look for them in the re- 

 lations of the stones to other things — when they 

 are out of place, when they press down the grass or 

 the flowers, or impede the plow, or dull the scythe, 

 or usurp the soil, or shelter vermin, as do old institu- 

 tions and old usages that have had their day. A 



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