“So much of that, and now I want to tell you about the steep rocks I am climbing these days,” and then follows the application to the big “Hill Difficulty” that was blocking up her own life path.

God in Nature.

Love of nature is not as spontaneous in the Indian girl as in the Japanese.  Yet with but a little training of the seeing eye and understanding heart, there develops a deep love of beauty that includes alike flowers and birds, sunsets and stars.  A High School senior thus expressed her thoughts about it at the final Y.W.C.A. meeting of the year.

“Nature stands before our eyes to make us feel God’s presence.  I feel God’s presence very close when I happen to see the glorious sunset and bright moonlight night when everybody around me is sleeping.  I think Nature gives a much greater and more glorious impression about God than any sermon.

“Whenever I felt troubled or worried, I did not often read the Bible or prayer book, but I wanted to go alone to some quiet place from where I could see the broad, bright blue sky with all its mysteries and green trees and gray mountains with fields and forests around them.

“I think Nature is the best comforter and preacher of God.  When we are too tired to learn our lessons or to do our duty, we can go alone for a safe distance where God waits for us to strengthen us.  It is hard for me to sit and think about God in the class room, where everybody is speaking, and the class books and sums on the board attract my attention, or make me feel useless because I was not able to do them as nicely as others in my class.  But, if we go away from all these, our friend Nature jumps up and greets us with new greetings.  The cool wind and the pretty birds and wonderful little flowers and giant-like rocks help us to feel the presence of God.  We cannot appreciate all these when we are walking with the crowd and talking and playing, but, if we are left alone when we go out to see God, then even the stones and tiny flowers which we often see look like a mystery to us.  In thinking about them we can feel the wisdom of God.”

Crude as the English may be, the spiritual perception is not so different from that of the English lad who cried,

     “My heart leaps up when I behold
      A rainbow in the sky.”

Religion Made Practical.

Religious feeling and expression may be natural to the Indian mind, but how about its transfer to the affairs of the common day?  It is a hard enough proposition for any of us, be we from the East or the West; to make the difficulty even greater, the Indian girl is heir to a religious system in which religion and morals may be kept in water-tight compartments.  Where the temples shelter “protected” prostitution and the wandering “holy man” may break all the Ten Commandments with impunity, it is hard to learn that the worship of God means right living.  Harder than irregular verbs or English idioms is the