The Gospel of Outdoors and Indoors
In a recent sermon on "The Good News of Outdoors," preached at Cornell University, Dr. Francis E. Clark, President of the United Societies of the Christian Endeavorers, while lauding the blessings of field and forest and river and mountain, pertinently remarks: "I do not think that the Gospel of Outdoors is a substitute for the Gospel of Indoors; that because a man can find God in the woods therefore he does not need to look for and listen to Him in the church; that the gospel of the brook takes the place of the Gospel of the Book. . . . He who does not find God in the sanctuary and in His Word will not often find Him in His works, for God must be in us first, to interpret God without us." And this is true; and it is also true, as Dr. Clark intimates, that God comes into our hearts only through faith in the Gospel of His Word. As has been aptly remarked, "The leaf of the forest must be read, if rightly read, through the leaf from His Word." Then, indeed, how delightful is nature, which continually reveals to us, despite the ravages and perversions of sin, the glories of a wonder-working God.