Letters February 27, 1904 Issue

Letters to our Leader

with contributions from Anne, Anna O'Neal Miller, Ernest C. Moses, Annah Brooks

St. Augustine, Fla., February 17, 1904.

Beloved Teacher:—I am among the blossoming roses, waving palms and ferns, flowering shrubs and plants, and soothing, balmy breezes of the languid, "sunny South," and glad indeed am I to get away from the sordid atmosphere, the greed of gain, and love of money, that has seemed of late more and more noticeable and offensive in New York, as in most large cities.

I agree with the poet who said, "God made the country, and man made the town" (meaning mortal man). Certainly the country, with its sweet simplicity and expressive silences, its natural beauty and freedom, seems nearer the Creator and a better place in which to offer the heart's true worship and praise, though those who truly worship shall need neither country nor town, for "in spirit and in truth" shall they worship and adore; yet to me nature,—the song of a bird, free and soaring through the ethereal blue above, the ripple of a brook, the forest's stillness, the silent, solitary, grandeur of a mountain peak, the breadth and unfathomable depths of the ocean,—all these voice Him in unmistakable language, and bring me nearer to the great heart of infinite Love,—the rest of rests,—the sabbath day of God! Oh how we long for it,—for that peace serene, eternal, in which is "no variableness, neither shadow of turning," steadfast, unchanging,—nothing therein but the glorious knowledge of the nobility and grandeur of unselfed love! God bless thee, beloved, and, for a few weeks, adieu.

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