such problems lies in giving them up. The best evidence that the mind has little right to speak and that the opinions are worthy of little consideration is the evidence that the holder is sure that he knows all about it. There are many great questions which only the fool will claim the mastery of. But in the country the mind is permitted to study the simpler lessons of God, the lore of clover-fields and fern beds, the poetry of grass and flowers, the science of leaf and bird. From my berth on the hillslope I could study the diligence of the woodpecker, the enterprise of the squirrel, and the growth of the mosquito in his aquatic stage, for the wigglers in the rain-barrel at the back of the house were interesting and harmless objects of study.

In this age, when words are being subordinated to things, when the fairy tales of old are being outdone by the more bewitching tales of science, the country offers increasing inspiration to the mind. The delicate investigations, skilful experiments, and the necessary generalizations from country facts and emergencies, indicate the processes by which the spiritual vision of the coming generations may be clarified. By these methods are the prophets and

seers of the future to be trained. The hornet which finds for his mud house secure lodgment on the rafters of some of the Tower Hill cottages, the wasp in his city pavilioned in papier-maché of home manufacture, the ants in their ordered colonies, the mud-worms in the pool, the swallows in their rocky catacombs, are humble phenomena, but upon the study of these and such as these rest the foundations upon which must be built the sound sense, the ordered thought of the future concerning capital and labor, the state and the individual.

"The ink of science is more precious than the blood of the martyrs," is a radical saying from the Arabic, a saying to be verified by the history of the future. The power of observation that makes one equal to the perplexities of the forest and skilled in the manipulation of nature's elements, the thrift of the pioneer, the sagacity of the hunter, are spiritual acquirements. The frontier settler was the forerunner of Darwin, and Darwin is himself a prophecy. He represents a fraternity yet to come, a brotherhood of men who through science will find communion with the potency of the universe, the eternal power, the ever present and ever living God.

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The country is not the place of many printed books, but the infinite variety that everywhere impinges upon sight and hearing, the ever pressing marvel of being, the bewitching beauty of river and wood, the symphonies that combine the trill of the tree-toad, the sighing of the wind, the bellowing of the cow, and the finer notes from the silvery throats of the birds, possess direct mental value, they are themselves creators of intellect. To bring oneself into an appreciation of these simple realities of nature requires a finer mental endowment than that which shaped and preserved the fairy folk-lore of antiquity. The myths of the world are its child science. They indicate the way in which untrained intellects often miss the reality. Those who "speak to the earth" are taught tales more marvellous than that of Cinderella, are made familiar with creatures more airy than Puck or Ariel, and are brought into immediate contact with powers exceeding those of a Hercules or a Samson, greater than the might of the Titans. Indolent indeed is the mind that finds not something of this intellectual quickening in the country to-day. Alas for him who returns from his vacation to his city work untutored by these country forces, with no con

scious sense of mental growth and intellectual enlargement.

The Indian, it is said, puts his ear to the ground and, listening intently, detects the approaching tramp of the foe or feels the tread of the buffalo herd which he is seeking. He who puts his ear close to the bosom of Mother Earth and listens to the simple runes of the insects, or studies the circulation in the fern frond, will in due time hear the approaching tramp of the human army that makes for civilization and peace. The fine sense there developed will help solve the perplexities of the state. It will purge the altar of its superstition and rear the temple of reason, which will also be the temple of trust. The good saint of the Catholic Church, Thomas à Kempis, anticipated me and put all this in happier phrase when he said: "If indeed thy heart were right, then would every creature be to thee a mirror of life and a book of holy doctrine."

This suggests another great contribution which the country gives to the spirit. Nature is a school of faith. It restores the trust which is ever being broken by the clash of selfish interests, the clamor of wordy creeds, the rivalry

of sect. However banks break, nature is always solvent. Building and Loan Associations too often prove a delusion and a snare to the toiler on account of the most dastardly treachery of which the modern man is guilty, the speculating treachery of so-called "trusted officials," the men who, in the hope of private gain, dare risk another's property. But the forests continue to grow, the oak adds its annual ring of fibre, and though the farmer has his dire anxieties caused by drought and flood, scorching heat, and untimely frost, yet deep in the heart of nature, long before it found a place on Hebrew scroll, was written the text, "Seed time and harvest shall not fail." The seasons keep their ceaseless rounds. The sun keeps his engagements unerringly. When humanity disappoints, the moon holds ; and from its regularity there rises in the heart of man a tide of confidence in the eternal as surely as the waves of the ocean turn their tidal front toward its beckonings.

The genesis of the religious sentiment is a matter about which scholars disagree, but all are agreed that nature very early became a preacher to the soul. The universe soon began