nature of a consequence requires the soul's expansion, whereas the presence of 

 greed and selfishness, and the dwarfed, shriveled souls of men are responsible 

 for keeping aloof the reign of universal brotherhood. Little use of talking about 

 ushering in the ^Millenium while we suffer to exist those diseased social systems 

 that make so many of the human family foes instead of friends; anarchists in- 

 stead of builders; destroyers and unfaithful stewards before the Most High. 

 And what shall we answer in the revelation of our Day of Judgment? 



Therefore, we cannot slight the significance of loving nature study since 

 within that study exists, when our souls know the truth of beauty and the 

 beauty of truth, an influence that will regenerate the world. 



Let us further remember that we cannot go to nature with an unsympathetic 

 mood ; we cannot go and ask nature, the jealous mistress, to do all for us while 

 we are indifferent ourselves. There is ever much for us to do, for it was not 

 said to the soul, let nature work out your salvation while you stand aside as an 

 uninterested observer. If we would learn the miracles that the universe has 

 kept for us to recognize, let us meet nature on a friendly footing, in a mood that 

 seeks such recognition. Otherwise we will return with empty hands just as 

 we went. What nature enjoins of us is no more than religion, or its handmaids, 

 poetry, art, music, science, likewise require of those who would be numbered with 

 the lovers of those precious things, which, sharing the immortality of the soul 

 because they are the life of the soul, then, the soul is a traitor to itself when it 

 refuses to heed the very elements that lift it to its redemption. 



^loreover, we should all be. nature students, which is to say, nature lovers, 

 inasmuch as such a love persuades us to love our brothers as the most priceless 

 objects nature has brought to us. We recall a saying by Heinrich Heine wherein 

 that poet and philosopher contends, in substance, that not until we have become 

 wholly reclaimed by this love of the out-door world can we sincerely and to the 

 depths of being care for humankind. Heine was inclined to look upon all nature 

 study as a sublime preparation for those who would truly know something of 

 that passionate devotion to humanity whose chief exemplar is the Man of 

 GaHlee. the foremost nature lover ever sent by the Creator to share the expe- 

 riences of other men. 



The most wonderful affairs of the soul are mirrored in the wonderland of 

 nature ; and the unfathomed lure of nature is so interwoven .with fascinating 

 magic that the soul in tune with the infinite evermore heeds its beckonings. 

 Nature speaks not in vain where there is a soul unfoldment, for that is the 

 divine mission of nature, that is her purpose to build up the responsive soul for 

 its higher estate ; to speak as spirit unto spirit ; to proclaim as one with divine 

 intelHgence the divinity of the soul's evolution as the supreme evolution in all 

 the universe. 



764 



