EARTH'S FULNESS

The earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein. — Psalm xxiv. 1.

THERE is a wholesome and robust piety in this text that shames the mincing, halting indecision of the cautious who try to pick their way through what is to them a profane and secular world. The earlier geologists thought of the earth as consisting of a thin crust encircling a burning core. The later geologists are coming to think of it as essentially solid, - not a shell filled with fluid matter, but rigid to the centre. Something like this change is going on in the theological estimate of the world. The elder theologies formed scarcely sanctities enough to make a shell. They discovered here and there a divine touch, a holy spot, an occasional sacred day; but they thought of all the rest of life as some kind of devil-stuff, to come into contact with which was to expose oneself to blight. Opposed to this is the faith of the

psalmist, which is being reemphasized in these days by science. He taught that the earth is the Lord's all the way through, and that it teems everywhere with a divine fulness. The old sanctities stand, but new sanctities are added thereto. The holy land is not alone on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean; the holy word is not confined to Hebrew and Greek text; and he who died on Calvary is not the only son of the eternal Father. He who would study the mystic depths of law, order, beauty, and utility need not now confine himself to archæological subjects. He has but to put his ear close to the breast of earth anywhere and he hears the rhythmic pulsing of her great heart. He need but stand uncovered anywhere and cast his eyes upward to find himself overarched by Infinity. The squadrons of the sky sail the upper seas over every land, and the horizon-line is the best thing in every landscape.

In search of rest, adventure, and health, my vacation tramp this time carried me, in the company of a friend, into the pinery depths of northern Wisconsin. Together we walked more than two hundred miles, consorting with woodmen, lodging with half-breeds, interviewing Ind

ians, feeding on wild berries, and fighting mosquitoes. And we found something more valuable than health, a restoration of courage, a renewal of the spirit. We found verification of the stalwart faith of the psalmist that "the earth is the Lord's and the fulness thereof, the world and they that dwell therein." I may not yet preach the sermon of this vacation tramp, and so I apply myself to the humbler task of recounting a few of the a few of the many illustrations of my text which we found by the way. I shall be content if I can provide the raw material out of which you may construct your own sermon. Take it and weave it into a fabric of your own.

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Emerson says: "The best part of a boy's schooling is that which he gets on his way to and from school," and the best part of our visit to Duluth was the two-hundred-mile walk through the wilderness. We arrived at Duluth sadly frayed out at the edges, so much bedraggled that our friends would have been loath to acknowledge us. The hotel clerk eyed us suspiciously, and granted us accommodations reluctantly. But little recked we. We had walked through naves, aisles, and choirs of cathedrals

greater than those of Cologne or York. We had found beauties of nature at points not down in the guide-books, to which no "tourists' tickets" were obtainable. We had had lovely glimpses of human nature, revelations of human passion and sympathy in lives unclaimed by priest and outside of all church statistics. We had been hunting without a gun and fishing without a rod, and our game-bags were loaded. Alas for him who goes seeking his game; the true hunter tarries where he is and his game comes to him. The most foolish of all gameseekers are the social lion hunters, those who go in quest of interesting people, — for such game is everywhere. The lines of poetry and pathos run parallel with those of evolution. The dullest of birds is more cunning than the wisest of fishes, and the most primitive of fishes is a greater marvel than the most elaborated crystal; yet the powdered quartz we call sand is star-stuff. What reaches of divine fulness are found between the grain of sand and the man whom we call stupid! The greatest stupidity is that which finds anything stupid in the world. The soul is irreligious that finds the story of any hearth-stone pointless, any mother

uninteresting, any babe unattractive.

Let the

man be ever so ignorant and marred howsoever by vice, the culture that recoils from him is a veneer, and the piety that dismisses him with an epigram is a varnished delusion. The first business of culture, as of religion, is to liberate the soul from the social tyranny, the blindness of the aristocrat, the elegant conceits and polite imbecilities which sometimes mask under the name of good society.

Hanging over the railing of a rustic bridge that spanned a forest river, we came one day upon a fisherman to whom the adjectives "worthless" and "aimless" would seem to fit if they ever belonged to a human being. In the winter season he cooked in the pinery, but summer-time he mostly fished, he told us. We were anxious for dinner. "If you are willin' to go out of your way 'bout half a mile I think wife can give you some bread and milk over at the shanty." Almost any way in these woods was our way, particularly if it led to bread and milk, and we accepted the invitation. Suddenly we emerged out of the dense shades into a little garden-patch of a clearing, flecked with sunlight, with a newly built little shanty in the midst of it. A smiling, dainty