Association Boys’ Camps—­Edgar M. Robinson.  Association Boys, Vol.  I.,
No.3, 1902.

The Day’s Program—­C.  Hanford Henderson.  “How to Help Boys,” Vol. 
III., No.3, 1903.

The Camp Conference—­Secretary’s Report, 1905-06 (out of print).

The Camp Conference—­“How to Help Boys,” July, 1903.

[Illustration; The Story Hour—­Sunday Afternoon—­Camp Wawayanda]

CHAPTER VIII—­MORAL AND RELIGIOUS LIFE

The religious instinct
nature’s teachings
Sunday in camp
Bible study
how and when to teach the Bible
course of camp Bible study
Bible study course for boy scouts
devotions in tent
daily Bible readings
A “Novel” Bon-fire
reading of stories on Sunday
purposeful reading
chapel services
bibliography

The aspect of nature is devout.  Like the figure of Jesus, she stands with bended head and hands folded upon her breast.—­Emerson.

Camp life should help boys to grow not only physically and mentally, but morally.  Religion is the basis of morality.  The highest instinct in man is the religious.  Man made the city with all its artificiality, but, as some one has said, “God made the country.”  Everything that the city boy comes in contact with is man-made.  “Even the ground is covered with buildings and paving blocks; the trees are set in rows like telegraph poles; the sunlight is diluted with smoke from the factory chimneys, the moon and stars are blotted out by the glare of the electric light; and even the so-called lake in the park is a scooped-out basin filled by pumps.  Little wonder that a boy who grows up under these conditions has little reverence for a God whose handiwork he has not seen."[1]

[Footnote 1:  Walter M. Wood in Association Boys, June. 1907.]

Nature’s Teachings

When a boy’s soul is open to the influence of nature he feels the presence of the divine in the forest.  There is an uplift, an inspiration, a joy that he never experiences in the city.  He does not know how to express himself, but somehow he feels the spiritual atmosphere pervading the woods which his soul breathes in as really as his nostrils do the pure air, and he is ready to Go forth, under the open sky and list to Nature’s teachings. -Bryant.

For as Martin Luther said, “God writes the Gospel not in the Bible alone, but in trees and flowers and clouds and stars.”

Sunday