NATURE AND THE PSALMIST 289 



perhaps impossible to explain to any one not ac- 

 customed to a voluntary life in the open that gives 

 us a curious sense of relationship with Nature, of 

 dependence upon her, a deep, impregnable belief that 

 in her manifestations we come closest to divinity. 



When the snow has laid its winter mantle on our 

 hills and built magic cornices along our brooks, Orion 

 greets us from the evening sky and the Dog Star hangs 

 like a lamp amid the spires of the firs. I return some- 

 times from New York from the noise and glare and 

 hurry of its streets, from the feverishness of its spirit, 

 the oppression of its imprisoning canon walls and old 

 Orion is like a friend awaiting me. Often I think of 

 Martineau's words: 



Silence is in truth the attribute of God; and those who 

 seek Him from that side invariably learn that meditation is 

 not the dream but the reality of life; not its illusion, but its 

 truth; not its weakness, but its strength. Such act of the 

 mind is quite needful, in order to rectify the estimates of the 

 senses and the lower understanding, to shake off the drowsy 

 order of perceptions, in which, with the eyes of the soul half 

 closed, we are apt to doze away existence here. Neglecting 

 it now, we shall wake into it hereafter, and find that we have 

 been walking in our sleep. It is necessary even for preserving 

 the truthfulness of our practical life. 



To meditate in the night watches, to ascend through 

 the frosty darkness the pasture slope behind the garden 

 and from the hill to watch the slow procession of the 

 stars across the sky worlds which reck so little of 



