Southern Christian Advocate

The Beckoning Hills---No. 5.

By J. W. Daniel.

"The spirit of a man is always highland." G. H. Morrison wrote that sentence. He also wrote, "It is not to a man as a being with an intellect that the hills have spoken their unvarying message. It is to a man as a being with a soul, with a cry in his heart for things that are above him." Zeus came down to speak with the Greeks, but he came down no lower than the top of Mount Ida. God came down to talk with Moses and give him a message for Israel and the world, but He came down no lower than the top of Sinai. The intellect may revel in the valley and find enjoyment in a studio or cloister, but the soul refuses to be shut in either between hills or walls. It cries for the fresh air, and longs to climb the hills and stand on the loftiest tops of the mountains—it craves vision unobstructed. God never made a hill without a valley or a plain, but He has made many plains without a hill. In the intellectual world plains abound, they make the thought and literature of a kind. One has to seek in this day for a book, or a man, that lifts him up. Preachers do not bring me the same message but most of their messages are on the same plane. They feed on the products, drink the water and breathe the air of the plains in which they live. Now and then a great intellectual mountain rises like a lone pyramid out of the dead wastes of parched sand, and I sit under its shadow. It is refreshing. What would life be to a thinking man without some one to look up to? The Rock of Ages, with its weather-beaten sides, time scarred face and unique loneliness is always visible. I believe I would learn to look down like the hog that eats the acorns if it were not so. God built the body so that the heart and head are naturally four or five feet from the earth on which we walk. If we look out laterally we will see the earth and think about it, if we look down we will see the dirt on which we walk and it will not influence us to think clean thoughts or see pure visions. I know numbers of men and women who have looked out laterally, and looked down so long that their shoulders are bent just enough to make good saddles for burdens. Straighten up the shoulders of your spiritual manhood. I was playing with my little girl. I would stoop and she would place her pet chicken on my bended shoulders. Then I would straighten and look up toward the tree tops and the chicken would go fluttering to the ground. At last she was vexed and stamped her little foot. "Oh! you don't know how to play horse," she said, "a horse holds his head down." Yes, I confess I have sometimes played a beast of burden, not for my little girl who helps to make home happy, but for the devil as I trudged the dusty plains. "In the morning I will direct my prayer unto Thee and look up, for thou art not a God that hath pleasure in iniquity, neither shall evil dwell with thee." Thank God for the upward look! It straightens my shoulders and destroys the devil's saddle. A thousand times I have looked away to the holy hills and caught a vision of the Rock of Ages and my burdens have rolled away. A thousand times I have climbed their rugged sides with nothing but the Alpen staff of Faith. The Water of Life has satisfied my thirst and the manna along the way has taken away my soul hunger; then I have thought, as I sat at His feet, of the dying, foul waters of the plain and they were nauseating to me. I never wanted to drink them again. The waters of the mountains are clear as crystal, cool, refreshing, and they run and leap, they have to—but the further away from the mountains they go the fouler they get, for the decaying substances of earth will mingle with them. Go to the mountains for good water, go for yourself and drink for yourself and they will make you leap for joy! Are you in the valley? Lift up your eyes to the hill, for God never made a valley without a hill close by. Walk, climb, struggle to the top of it and look up, then write and tell me what you saw. It may be that God will show the same things to me.