light, and the depths of sea and the heights of sky since the beginning of time. 

 There are ever awaiting us the milHon voices that utter this language attesting 

 the existence of the Creator, while disagreeing men quarrel over the accuracy of 

 the Bible. Let the disputants turn to nature, where they will behold the first Bible 

 antedating by the misty, forgotten cycles that work we distinguish as Holy 

 Writ ; let the blind forego their blindness, and it will be revealed to them how 

 divinity is written in every seed and leaf ; in the perfection of flower and bird 

 song; just as much as in the star so distant that its light travels three years to 

 come within the scope of our vision. 



You to whom nature's realm means much, will listen with strange amuse- 

 ment to that oft repeated statement, "I have no time to give to nature." As well 

 say we have no time for sleep or breathing if we desire life in its fulness; if we 

 desire to live in this world and not to vegetate in our self-satisfied stupidity. 

 Whoever neglects the great things of life, to which nature is of such overwhelm- 

 ing importance, does not really live ; for he is a dead man among the living whose 

 indifference causes him to be so much less of a man than God intended! And if 

 that is not, that neglect, the very essence of irreligion, then we know not how to 

 interpret such an admonition, ^'Remember thy Creator." 



Once a man who was before unmindful becomes the loving student of 

 nature he will be like the sleeper awakened. He will understand when his eyes 

 are unsealed that not hitherto did he live, for erstwhile he walked within a 

 universe where he should have been a master ; he tasted only chaff and husks, 

 and fool-like, sneered at those who went in to the banquet ; he even demanded 

 the reason for what seemed to him the ridiculous course of others no longer 

 satisfied with the chaff and husks such as he in his misfortune deemed so im- 

 portant to life. But when the morning dawns after his long and heavy night ; 

 when the scoffer has become the lover, it is as if all things were created anew ; 

 it is as if he had stepped upon another planet ; it seems to him that not until 

 this hour of his redemption has he entered within the portals of immortality. 



We hear that individual, familiarly styled a "hard-headed business man," 

 endeavoring to prove how the study of nature is not "practical." Now listen, 

 sirs, nothing is practical save that which God regards as practical ! Nevertheless, 

 we do assert that while a deepening affection for nature offers a profit to the 

 spirit never to be weighed by material things ; that shall never be estimated by 

 linear measure nor calculated by cube or square root ; that shall at no time be 

 limited merely by the span of years that mark one life ; yet there is a profit which 

 will appeal to this most "hard headed," or rather, thick-headed man in the 

 marts of trade. There is nothing in nature hampering to any duty of life 

 honestly performed ; there is much in nature which by developing the complete 

 manhood, the glorious womanhood, aids us to conduct our duties more agree- 

 ably and to such better advantage that we become the better citizens. The right 

 familiarity with nature arouses our best sagaciousness ; it makes us keener 

 observers ; hence we become keener, clearer thinkers and more alert doers in the 

 field of life. All the faculties that the workaday world asks us to put in operation 



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