Article May 12, 1917 Issue

Kinship with Nature

ETHEL MUNRO GOSS

We had walked far into the cool green depths of the woods, where all around us rose cathedral pillars of straight dark trees. The ground at our feet was carpeted with ferns exquisite in form and shading; the only sound was the low note of a done, and over all was the calm serenity of nature's own exceeding peace.

The object of our quest was the pink lady's-slipper, mysterious, shy, not to be approached noisily or picked hastily; and as we left the dim trail and came out to an open swamp there was a clump of these wild flowers, flushing a delicate pink against the vivid green of a low hemlock. Such a wave of gratitude and reverence arose to the giver of all good at their wondrous delicacy, there where no man's hand had planted them, that one wondered at the viewpoint of a friend who had said, "I am afraid to love nature; perhaps I am not loving it in the right way."

A certain aspect of religious thought has always disdained the beauties of nature as being material, and has sternly denied itself the pleasures of form, outline, and color as of the earth and as hindering spiritual growth. But the reverence which is aroused in the human heart by the delicate wild-lings of field and wood, by the swaying grass of the meadow, the blue mist of the farther hills, or the wide sweep of the starlit sky, is such an element of our human progress that it cannot be ignored. This beauty all around us satisfies a deep need, and typifies the hunger of the real man for "the beauty of holiness."

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