Those airy pinnacles of toppling rocks,
those sheets of slanted snow, those ice-bound crags--there is a
sense of fear and mystery about them! One does not know what is
going on there, what they are waiting for; they have no human
meaning. They do not seem to have any relation to humanity at all.
Sunday after Sunday one used to have sermons in that hot, trim
little wooden church--some from quite famous preachers--about the
need of rest, the advantage of letting the mind and eye dwell in
awe upon the wonderful works of God. Of course the mountains are
wonderful enough; but they make me feel that humanity plays a very
trifling part in the mind and purpose of God. I do not think that
if I were a preacher of the Gospel, and had a speculative turn, I
should care to take a holiday among the mountains. I should be
beset by a dreary wonder whether the welfare of humanity was a
thing very dear to God at all. I should feel very strongly what the
Psalmist said, "What is man that Thou art mindful of him?" It would
take the wind out of my sails, when I came to preach about
Redemption, because I should be tempted to believe that, after all,
human beings were only in the world on sufferance, and that the
aching, frozen, barren earth, so inimical to life, was in even more
urgent need of redemption.
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