NATURE AND THE PSALMIST 277 



were all about us, like familiar things recovered. The 

 camel-hump of Greylock to the north was sapphire- 

 blue and beckoning. The nearer mountains wore their 

 reddish mantles, pricked with green, above the snowy 

 intervales, and laid their upreared outlines stark against 

 the sky. Shadowy ravines let into their flanks, sug- 

 gestive of roaring brooks and the mystery of the wilder- 

 ness. The clouds trailed purple shadow-anchors; the 

 sun flashed from the ice on their scarred ledges. And a 

 weight seemed suddenly lifted from my spirit. The 

 words of the ancient Psalmist came to my lips uncon- 

 sciously: "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills. 

 From whence cometh my help? My help cometh from 

 God." 



Yes, God dwells in the high places! The Pemige- 

 wasset Indians who would not climb Mount Moosilauke 

 because the Great Spirit abode on the windswept sum- 

 mit, the ancient Hebrew Psalmist who dwelt in the 

 shadow of the Syrian hills, and I, "the heir to all the 

 ages," are alike in this primitive sense that God's 

 dwelling place is up there where our eyes instinctively 

 lift; for the glory and the wonder of the hills is upon us 

 all, and we cannot believe otherwise. 



Yet what of the man who never saw a hill? What of 

 the tribesman of the plain or desert, or the Illinois farm- 

 er's boy? Where, for him, is God's dwelling? I have 

 seen men from the prairie whom the hills oppressed, 

 who hungered for their level roads stretching arrow- 



