Sometimes it is repressed by an irreligious
asceticism or narrowed and stunted by a literal and external faith.
But when the religious man is left free, it is appropriate to his
genius that he finds the world full of a high pleasure crowded with
sound, color, fragrance, form, in which he takes exquisite delight.
There is, in short, a serene and poetic naturalism, loosely called
"nature-worship," which is keenly felt by both saints and sinners.
All it needs for its consecration and perfection is to help men to
see that this naturalism is vital and precious because, as a matter
of fact, it is something more than naturalism, and more than pleasure
objectified.
Recall, for instance, the splendors of the external world and that
best season of our climate, the long, slow-breathing autumn. What
high pleasure we take in those hushed days of mid-November in the
soft brown turf of the uplands, the fragrant smell of mellow earth and
burning leaves, the purple haze that dims and magnifies the quiescent
hills. Who is not strangely moved by that profound and brooding peace
into which Nature then gathers up the multitudinous strivings, the
myriad activities of her life? Who does not love to lie, in those
slow-waning days upon the sands which hold within their golden cup the
murmuring and dreaming sea? The very amplitude of the natural world,
its far-flung grace and loveliness, spread out in rolling moor and
winding stream and stately forest marching up the mountain-side,
subdues and elevates the spirit of a man.
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