» Q. H. Morrison, Tht Retwm of the Angels, 100,
PSALM cxxi. I, 2 37
^ From Venice, Euskin travelled by Milan and Turin to Susa, and over the Pass of Mont Cenis. Among the mountains he recovered at once health and spirits. His first morning among the hills after the long months in Italy, he accounted a turning- point in his life :
"I woke from a sound tired sleep in a little one- windowed room at Lans-le-bourg, at six of the summer morning, June 2nd, 1841 ; the red aiguilles on the north relieved against pure blue — the great pyramid of snow down the valley in one sheet of eastern light. I dressed in three minutes, ran down the village street, across the stream, and climbed the grassy slope on the south side of the valley, up to the first pines. I had found my life again ; — all the best of it. What good of religion, love, admiration or hope, had ever been taught me, or felt by my best nature, rekindled at once ; and my line of work, both by my own will and the aid granted to it by fate in the future, determined for me. I went down thankfully to my father and mother, and told them I was sure I should get well."
Euskin might have said very literally with the Psalmist : " I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help." ^
^ Nature has many aspects, and God is behind them all ; but the mass and grandeur, the vast solitudes and deep recesses in the heart of the hills, are, in a peculiar sense, the inner shrine where He waits for those who come, worn and confused, from the noise and strife of the world. Here the sounds of man's struggle are lost in His peace ; here the fever of desire and the agitation of emotion are calmed in His silence. The great hills, purple with heather or green with moss, rise peak beyond peak in sublime procession ; the mountain streams run dark and cool through dim and hidden channels, singing that song without words which is sweet with all purity and fresh with the cleanness of the un- trodden heights. Through the narrow passes one walks with a silent joy, born of a renewed sense of relationship with the sub- lime order of the world, and of a fresh communion with the Spirit of which all visible things are the symbol and garment. This is perhaps the greatest service which the hills of God render to him who seeks them with an open mind and heart. Their grandeur silently dispels one's scepticism in the possible greatness of man's life. In a world where such heights rise in lonely majesty, the soul, to which they speak with voices so manifold and so eloquent, feels anew the divinity which shapes its destiny, and gains a fresh faith in the things that are unseen and eternal.^
1 E. T. Cook, The Life of Euskin, i. 120. =" H. W. Mabie, The Life of the Spirit, 81.
38 HELP FROM BEYOND THE HILLS
3. The hills evermore summon us to look up. The influence of the world begets a downward look, a sort of set of the eyes and heart downwards. We are in the world ; in a thousand subtle ways we are kin with the world. We are subject to its influences, caught by its wind of excitement, absorbed by its pressing claims, and then we may easily be of the world as well as in it. But everything the world presents to us is below us, beneath us, and it 80 keeps us looking down that at last the habit of down-look- ing grows upon us. The world offers the attraction of its riches, but money is all below us, and we must look down upon it. The world fascinates us with its learning and its science, but books and experiments are all below us, we must look down upon them. The world bids the siren pleasure float on golden wing before us, winning us to her pursuit; but she ever flies low, and we must look down upon her. Even the better things that the world may give us, the things of family life and love, are still all below us ; we look down even on the children about our feet.
^ I have read of a woman who worked hard with her pen, and at last found her eyes troubling her. The oculist whom she con- sulted told her that her eyes needed rest and change. From the windows of her home there was a grand view of some distant hills, and the doctor told her, when her eyes were tired with work, to look out of the window and gaze on the distant hills. It is good for us all to look out of the window sometimes. If we are always looking at the rooms where we live, the shop where we trade, the farm or the counting-house, we begin to think there is nothing else. Our little bit of ground is all this world and the next ; we never see anything beyond our own handiwork, we are blind to all else, like the horse in the coal-mine.^
^ Sailors tell us that at sea, when the fog is so dense that they cannot see far ahead, they climb the rigging ; and, seated there upon the yard-arm, they may see the heavens bathed in sunshine and the blue sky above the billows of mist that lie below.