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 
Q47 
