We now use the word Nature very much as our fathers used the word God, and, I suppose, back of it all we mean the power that is everywhere present and active, and in whose lap the visible universe is held and nourished.  It is a power that we can see and touch and hear, and realize every moment of our lives how absolutely we are dependent upon it.  There are no atheists or skeptics in regard to this power.  All men see how literally we are its children, and all men learn how swift and sure is the penalty of disobedience to its commands.

Our associations with Nature vulgarize it and rob it of its divinity.  When we come to see that the celestial and the terrestrial are one, that time and eternity are one, that mind and matter are one, that death and life are one, that there is and can be nothing not inherent in Nature, then we no longer look for or expect a far-off, unknown God.

Nature teaches more than she preaches.  There are no sermons in stones.  It is easier to get a spark out of a stone than a moral.  Even when it contains a fossil, it teaches history rather than morals.  It comes down from the fore-world an undigested bit that has resisted the tooth and maw of time, and can tell you many things if you have the eye to read them.  The soil upon which it lies or in which it is imbedded was rock, too, back in geologic time, but the mill that ground it up passed the fragment of stone through without entirely reducing it.  Very likely it is made up of the minute remains of innumerable tiny creatures that lived and died in the ancient seas.  Very likely it was torn from its parent rock and brought to the place where it now lies by the great ice-flood that many tens of thousands of years ago crept slowly but irresistibly down out of the North over the greater part of all the northern continents.

But all this appeals to the intellect, and contains no lesson for the moral nature.  If we are to find sermons in stones, we are to look for them in the relations of the stones to other things—­when they are out of place, when they press down the grass or the flowers, or impede the plow, or dull the scythe, or usurp the soil, or shelter vermin, as do old institutions and old usages that have had their day.  A stone that is much knocked about gets its sharp angles worn off, as do men.  “A rolling stone gathers no moss,” which is not bad for the stone, as moss hastens decay.  “Killing two birds with one stone” is a bad saying, because it reminds boys to stone the birds, which is bad for both boys and birds.  But “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones” is on the right side of the account, as it discourages stone-throwing and reminds us that we are no better than our neighbors.

The lesson in running brooks is that motion is a great purifier and health-producer.  When the brook ceases to run, it soon stagnates.  It keeps in touch with the great vital currents when it is in motion, and unites with other brooks to help make the river.  In motion it soon leaves all mud and sediment behind.  Do not proper work and the exercise of will power have the same effect upon our lives?