SCHOOL-HOUSE GROUNDS. 
241 
All w r e have to do is not to destroy it by separating it from 
the sources of this enjoyment, but, by constant cultivation of 
a pure taste, keep the child in such an attitude towards 
nature that, 
“Tlie meanest flow’ret of the vale, 
The simplest note that swells the gale, 
The common earth, the air, the skies, 
Shall be an opening paradise.” 
•As a final consideration of the moral advantages growing 
out of such aids in the w T ork of human development, is their 
influence in leading the thoughts, “ through natue up to Na¬ 
ture’s God.” * * * Worship is the 
highest act of which the soul is capable — the only one in 
which the immortal throws off mortality and joins itself to its 
true center of a holy and changeless ideal. Has the All-wise 
Father given this power only to those who, through sins and 
repentance, have attained the experience and strength of years, 
denying it to those of whom Jesus said, “Of such is the king¬ 
dom of heaven”? Let those who doubt it go back to the time 
when there came a lull in the din of the day, and man and 
beast rested from labor; when, deep in the meadow grass, the 
dreamy eyes of childhood passed up from the pebbles, and the 
mosses, and the grasshoppers of the morning’s wonder— 
beyond the river, and the wood, and the cloud—beyond the 
arched stillness of the summer noontide—beyond the blue 
embrazure where the azure of its own thoughts was lost in the 
infinitude of awe, to which the child-soul had ascended, it 
thought not how', and knew not where. Or to the time when, 
on the golden shafts of some spring morning, an April shower 
came sliding down, and left such strings of perals tangled 
amid the emerald and rose of opening leaf and flower, and 
suclUa sense^of loveliness and joy thrilling the veins of the 
young worshipper, no longer now a child, with tasks, hopes, 
fears, but itself a lilly-bell, a jewelled spray, a sunbeam, 
butterfly, or bird. 
If the thoughts of children are not very early turned in the 
direction of all that is lofty in emotion, and “ of good report ” 
1G 
