Rovering To Success

ROCK NUMBER FIVE

IRRELIGION

Atheism

	THERE are a good many men who have no religion,
who don't believe in God; they are known as atheists.
	In Great Britain alone there are nine societies of these.
They are welcome to have their own opinions in this line,
but when they try, as they are always doing, to force these
ideas on other people, they become enemies of the worst sort.
	Some of these societies directly attack the religious belief
of others in a very offensive way, but I believe that by doing
so they are, as a matter of fact, doing more good than harm
to the religions concerned, since it makes people buck up
and sink their own differences in order to combine together
to repel these attacks.
	Here is a specimen of the gratuitous kind of insult which
they offer to the Christian religion. It is one among others
which have been quoted in the public press during the last
few years.
	"The chief religious ceremony of Christians, known as
the Mass, or Communion, which consists of eating the flesh
and drinking the blood of this Jew called Jesus, is a disgust-
ing and degrading superstition, and suggestive of a cannibal
feast, which in all probability was its origin.
	"Christianity has lowered and perverted the standard of
truth in every direction. It is not too much to say that it
has debauched the world with falsehood."
	This to every Christian who believes in his religion is an
indecent insult. At the same time it is a direct call to him
to action. But I am not going into that here.
	Apart from the anti-religious there are lots of fellows
who, though not violently opposed to religion, are not
particularly interested in it. In some cases they have never
been shown what it is; in others it has not proved very
attractive or inspiring and they have let it slide. Mark
Twain said he was averse to discussing religion since it
dealt with Heaven and Hell and he had friends in both
places.
	On the other hand, I have known in the backwoods more
than one strongly religious man who as a boy had had no
home teaching in religion, but who has realised God for
himself through what he has seen of His works and His
wonders in the world.
	Such a man has come to see that he himself was a part
and a member of that wonderful creation, but equipped in
higher degree than other living animals by having a mind,
the power to appreciate beauty, and the sense of good will
towards others, which meant also that he had something
of the spirit of God inside him.
	God the Creator is recognised by most denominations of
religion, but their differences arise over the actual character
of the connection of the Creator with the human soul.
	In the Christian belief it was held that Jesus Christ came
to live among men to interpret and bring home to them
the fact that God is Love, and that the sacrifices of offerings
to God as practised in the old superstitious religions were
not what were wanted so much as the sacrifice of self, and
Service for God.

RELIGION IS ESSENTIAL TO HAPPINESS
	If you are really out to make your way to success - i.e.
happiness-you must not only avoid being sucked in by
irreligious humbugs, but you must have a religious basis to
your life.
	This is not a mere matter of going to church, of knowing
Bible history, or understanding theology. Many men are
sincerely religious almost without knowing it and without
having studied it. Religion very briefly stated means:

	Firstly: recognising who and what is God.
	Secondly: making the best of the life that He has given
one and doing what He wants of us. This is mainly doing
something for other people.
	That should be your belief, not as a matter of thought for
Sundays only, but as one to live up to in every hour and
every phase of your daily life.
	As steps towards gaining these two points there are two
things I would recommend you to do.
	One is to read that wonderful old book, the Bible, which,
in addition to its Divine Revelation, you will find a wonder-
fully interesting story-book of history and poetry as well as
morality.
	The other is to read that other wonderful old book, the
Book of Nature, and to see and study all you can of the
wonders and beauties that she has provided for your enjoy-
ment. And then turn your mind to how you can best
serve God while you still have the life that He has lent
you.

THE BOOK OF NATURE
	What I am saying here is for those who have no particular
religion. Atheists say that they are against the Christian
and other forms of religion because these are superstitious
rather than guiding principles of life. They maintain that
a religion that has to be learnt from books written by men
cannot be a true one. But they don't seem to see that
besides printed books, and apart from Revelation, God has
given us as one step the great Book of Nature to read: and
they cannot say that there is untruth there-the facts stand
before them.
	Shakespeare speaks of "Sermons in Stones, Tongues in
trees, Books in the babbling brooks, and Good in every-
thing." Bacon wrote, "The study of the Book of Nature is
the true key to that of Revelation".
	The Koran says-"Seest thou not that all in the heavens
and all on the earth serveth God; the sun, the moon,
the stars, and the mountains and the trees and the beasts
and many men?"
	I hope I shall not be misunderstood. I do not suggest
Nature Study as a form of worship or as a substitute for
religion, but I advocate the understanding of Nature as a
step, in certain cases, towards gaining religion.
	This way is one that may appeal where other methods
have failed, especially to those who are inclined to be
atheists or those who have no religious ideals in particular,
or who have had them and have lapsed from them. It may
help them, by a new path, to find their Church again.
	The following words by David Grayson a famous
botanist, describe what I fancy must be the experience of a
very large number of men in the present day.
	"I have been a botanist for fifty-four years. When I
was a boy I believed implicitly in God. I prayed to Him,
having a vision of Him-a person-before my eyes.
	"As I grew older I concluded that there was no God. I
dismissed Him from the universe. I believed only in what
I could see, or hear, or feel.
	"I talked about Nature and reality.
	"And now-it seems to me-there is nothing but God."

NATURE KNOWLEDGE A SLIP TOWARDS REALIZING GOD
	I know that among our young men of to-day there is an
earnest desire for religion-a religion that they can grasp and
act up to. During the war I had hundreds of young soldiers
anxious to sign on to carry out the Scouts' Promise and Law
as somethng tangible in that direction.
	Recently I was told of a group of young working men who
had become "Rovers". There were some thirty of them, and
they asked their leader to hold a Sunday meeting to teach
them something of religion. So for such fellows I hope that
my suggestions may be helpful.
	The spirit is there right enough, but the form is needed
when once they have come to realise something of the
Divine nature and of His Service.
	There is the Indian legend of the energetic priest who was
dissatisfied with the amount of faith in one of his flock.
When charged with irreligion the man explained that he
had tried hard but had found that religion was not in his
line.
	The priest thereupon seized him, and plunging his head
under water, held him there until he was nearly drowned.
	By dint of sheer strength and struggling the man at last
managed to break loose. When he remonstrated against this
violent treatment, the priest replied:
	"If you only strove in a world of difficulties to find God's
help half as hard as you have been struggling to get breath
when in the water, you would soon find Him."

THE WONDERS OF THE FOREST

	If you have never journeyed through the forest of Brazil
or West Central Africa you can hardly imagine the beauty
and wonder of a tropical jungle. It recalls even to the most
unfeeling mind all the grace and majesty of a Cathedral.
But despite this it also hides horror within its dim twilight
and soggy vegetation. Through the tangled undergrowth one
pushes one's way with trees overhead shutting out the sun-
shine-and the air. And high above these the giant cotton
trees and other monarchs of the forest rear their heads two
hundred feet above the ground. But you seldom see these
heads when you are groping your way in the ooze and leaf-
mould amid the creepers, reeds and bush. As you tramp
day after day, and it may be week after week, through this
same gloom, its beauty is forgotten in continual repetition,
and the confinement becomes a horror from which you know
there is no escape and no relief. A sick depression holds
you in its clutch; in some cases even melancholy and
madness come to men.
	And then at night as you lie out in the dark, in the soft
stillness of the tropical night, the forest is hushed, but
there are small voices speaking everywhere. The little
chirps of crickets, the song of frogs, the drip and fall of
leaves, and the dim whisperings of light breezes playing
among the branches away up overhead. Now and again, at
long intervals, the stillness is broken by that most impres-
sive of all forest sounds-the roaring, rending crash) as a
hoary veteran among the giant trees yields up its long life
and falls from its pride of place to be no more seen.
	There is a moment of tense and, as it were, respectful
silence, and then the little voices of the forest carry on their
whisperings again.
	Man seems all out of place and a trespasser here. It is
mainly a plant kingdom where insects are admitted. And
yet in it all there is life and sensation, reproduction, death
and evolution going on steadily under the same great Law
by which we in the outer world are governed. Man has his
Nature-comrades among the forest plants and creatures.
	For those who have eyes to see and ears to hear, the forest
is at once a laboratory, a club, and a Temple.

THE GREAT FALLS

	Abraham Lincoln, as he stood and gazed at the Falls of
Niagara, said: "It calls up the indefinite past; when
Columbus first sighted this continent, when Christ suffered
on the Cross, when Moses led the Israelites through the Red
Sea, nay, even when Adam first came from the hand of his
Maker, then, as now, Niagara was roaring here ... Older
than the first man Niagara is as strong and fresh today as
ten thousand years ago. The mammoth and the mastodon
... have gazed on Niagara, that long, long time, never
still for a moment, never dried, never frozen, never slept,
never rested."
	John Wesley Hill, in recording this, wrote: "These reflec-
tions on Niagara embraced the whole subject of creation,
the existence of God, the Mystery and the power of the
universe, the history, redemption, and fate of man. ...
From this recognition of God in Nature it requires but a step
to a realisation of the Divine in the affairs of men."
	It is very true; you will understand it if ever you stand
on the edge of that stupendous gorge that constitutes the
Victoria Falls, in South Africa. Here the Zambesi, half as
wide again as Niagara, hurls its waters down 300 feet into
the dark swirling depths below.
	That roar which one hears some miles away has never
ceased, since time was, to shake the air. The zigzag passage
300 feet deep which the river has cut for itself for forty miles
through solid rock speaks to a grinding process not of thou-
sands but of many thousands of years. One learns here
something of the littleness of man, and of his transient efforts
at fighting and fussing about petty things that matter not.
One realises, dimly and inadequately it may be, that
there is a bigness around us-that there is the Creator-
God.

THE BEAUTY OF NATURE

	Many town-living fellows never get to realise the beauty
of Nature because they seldom see it. Their eyes are more
trained to looking at shops, advertisements and other
people.
	But with those who have lived with Nature, and have
come to recognise its beauties, they can, when they come
to town, catch glimpses of it even in the dingy streets.
	At one time in my life I had to cross Westminster Bridge
every day about sunrise and again at sunset, and scarcely
a day passed when I didn't find myself standing to gaze at
the gorgeous colours of the coming or departing of day; and
in the pearly grey and lilac tints of the hazy shadows and
silhouettes which, thanks to London smoke, make them
particularly prevalent there.
	An artist brother of mine actually went to Newcastle to
paint the smoke and steam for their wonderful effects under
sunlight and cloud.
	Why do I love fishing? It is not entirely for the fun of
catching fish. I enjoy the day whether I catch any or not.
I go to FISH, not to CATCH fish.
	In the rich lush grass of the meadows, with the golden
gleam and the scent of the buttercups, the heavy green of
shady trees, one is alone with Nature. The humming of
the insects, the rippling of the busy water-voles, the weird
"drumming" snipe, the blue flashing kingfisher, these and
other Nature mates become your companions.
	But there are other scenes than this. Shackleton had a
different view when he said that country-side scenery was
all very well.
	"That is all right for getting your butter and roast
mutton; but there's another kind of scenery that chal-
lenges the best in a man's soul. I can't tell you what
it means to an explorer marching through a fog in
a new land when suddenly the fog lifts and he finds
himself looking at mountains no human eye has
ever seen."
	Well, there I agree with him too. I love the
homely beauty of the English country-side as I
do the vast openness and freedom of the rolling veld
in South Africa.
	I  love  the  rushing waters and the nodding
forests of Canada; but I have been more awed
by the depths and heights of the Himalayas and by
the grandeur of those eternal snows lifting their
peaked heads high above the world, never defiled by the
foot of man, but reaching of all things worldly the nearest
to the Heavens.

HIKING

	You may say "yes, but I can't get to mountains, oceans
and primeval forests. How then am I to see and under-
stand the wonders of Nature and her messages?"
	Well, you can do almost as much in your own country
if you will come away from the town and suburb and get out
into the open, into the woods and meadows.
	With your pack on your back and a staff in your hand or
taking with you your little canvas home, your blanket or
your cooking-pot-and FREEDOM. Out in God's open air,
drinking in the glories of sky and earth and sea; seeing
the colour in the woods and fields, scenting the flowers and
the hay, hearing the music of the brooks and birds and the
whispering wind, getting to know the animals and their
ways, till you feel that you are a comrade with them all and
"find yourself" as a part of the great scheme of Nature.

HUMAN BODY AS AN ITEM IN NATURE STUDY

	Apart from woods or fields, you need not go farther than
your own self for a beginning in Nature study. What did
you come from? A tiny seed no bigger than a pin's point,
yet giving you a body formed of flesh and bone and sinew
with a likeness to your own father and mother, strong, and
able to obey whatever the mind tells it to do.
	It has wonderful mechanism in all its parts. Look at
your eye, a most delicate and marvellous apparatus beyond
anything that man could devise. It gives instantaneous
information to the mind of things near or far away, of their
ugliness or beauty, their colours and shapes. It reads this
page and from the printed letters upon it puts thoughts and
ideas into your brain which the brain packs away into store
for use later on when needed.
	Touch this book with your forefinger and think, simple as
the action is, yet how wonderful.
	Eye telegraphs to brain, "there is the book at such and
such a distance from you," brain tells sinew to move arm,
hand and finger to the spot at once. Nerves in finger-
tip telegraph back at once to brain that the job has been
done and that the book is cold or hot, rough or smooth, and
so on.
	Ask Mr. Atheist who it was who invented and made that
wonderful machine? And not merely one specimen but
millions throughout this wonderful world, alike in minutest
details, yet no two exactly alike in mind, body or appear-
ance. Put your finger on your pulse, that is the artery on the
front of your wrist directly below your thumb. Or feel your
heart in the left centre of your chest. There you find the
wonderful performance going on of fresh, warmed-up blood
being steadily pumped through your arteries.
	These lead to all parts of your body, and the blood
is then brought back, dirty, by the veins, to the other side
of the heart, to be cleansed by the lungs with fresh oxygen
from the air.
	And that work is going on regularly all the time without
your taking any trouble about it yourself; whether you
are sleeping or waking, that gallant heart goes on unceas-
ingly at his job.
	If it were to go on strike and stop work, even for a minute
you would be dead. It has its telegraph wires in the shape
of nerves which give it messages from the brain the moment
that your eyes or ears telegraph something out of the way
to the brain. Thus, if there is a sudden loud bang near you
or your ear tells you in the night that someone is creeping
up to stick you with a knife, ear tells brain and brain tells
heart, and heart at once increases its rate of pumping to
prepare you for instant action.
	Also if you go running or doing extra work uphill, more
fresh blood is demanded and you suck in greater gulps of
fresh air to replenish the blood; and heart has to get on to
the job with redoubled vigour.
	You owe a great deal to your heart; your health, your very
life depends on heart doing its duty to you; and yet
a great many people never give a thought to their hearts.
	It is not good for the heart to be artificially forced to work
its valves faster than Nature requires. If you force it to do
so the valves get weak and cannot keep the blood freshened
and so you get ill. For instance, if you drink to excess it sets
heart going faster than usual and if you keep on doing it it
steadily weakens it.
	Also if you smoke too much it does the same, especially in
the case of growing lads whose heart muscles have not yet
gained their full strength for meeting the strain.
	The sketch above shows the wonderful arrangement of
valves that goes on working in your heart once every second.
	I have copied it from Dr. Shelley's book, Life and Health,
which you should read if you care to see full information
put in most interesting form about all the different organs of
your body and the work that they do. It is really good
reading.
	Then there is your ear. Have you ever seen a model
of the human ear and the marvellous machinery that it
every sound to your brain?
It would take too long to go into that wonderfiil apparatus
here, but this diagram of the section of an ear will give you
some suggestion of what it is like.
	If  every fellow studied a little of his own body and
how it works he	would quickly gain a new idea of the miracu-
lous  handiwork of God and would realise how He is actually
active in your body as well as in your mind.
	Look at the grain of the skin of your finger-tips, with its
many circles and turns, take a print of those with ink upon
paper, and examine them with a magnifying glass. You
may get thousands of other people to do the same, but you
will never find one who has them identically like your own.
Consider any part of your body and what it does at your
command. You begin to realise what a wonderful living
machine has been given to your charge to use properly-
and you gain a reverence for your own body.

MICROSCOPIC NATURE

	Take one drop of moisture from your mouth and put it on
a glass slide under a microscope and you will see that it
contains hundreds of little living animals or germs of deli-
cate form and likeness to each other, endowed with life and
action, and with powers of feeding and reproduction.
	Go out into the garden or the nearest park and see those
plants, pick a single leaf of the thousands on the tree, and
study it though a magnifying glass, compare it with another
of the same tree or of a tree of the same family a thousand
miles away. Both will be exactly alike in form and texture,
yet each will have its own little minute difference of
individuality. Also each has its own power of breathing
and feeling, of feeling warm or cold, health or illness.
Each plant has its birth, life, reproduction and death just
as any other animal on earth.
	The wonders and mysteries of Nature are unlimited.
There are big chances before you fellows of the next
generation. So there is material value in studying them-
but the more you study them the more you become humble
in the presence of the work of the Creator.

TELESCOPE NATURE
	Look up in the sky. That aeroplane is high, almost out
of sight, but what is beyond-far, far above him?
	Limitless space. Look at it at night through a telescope
and you will see that those tiny points of light we know as
stars are great suns having planets circling round them,
just as round the sun we know this earth and half a dozen
more like it are continually circling at whirling speed.
	Many of those stars are so distant that the flash of light
coming from them (and you know how fast a flash travels)
takes five hundred years and often much more to reach us.
	One of them may have gone to bits in the time of Henry
V, after Agincourt, but its light would still be coming to us.
	From tiny microbes seen through the microscope to vast
worlds seen through the telescope one begins to realise
what is meant by the Infinite, and when one realises that all
things, big and little, are working in one regular order in a
great set plan, the stars whirling through limitless space, the
growth of mountains in the world, the life and reproduction
and death in a regular series among plants and germs, insects
and animals, one realises that a great Master Mind and
Creator is behind it all.

THE ANIMAL WORLD

	Animal life is at hand for all to study. There are the birds
with their feathers and mechanical arrangements of light
bones that enable them to fly, with their nesting ingenuity
their migratory instincts that make some of them travel
half the world over. There are the bees, where all but a few
are workers for the common good with a wonderful
division of duties and sense of discipline. The inner life of a
hive is a miracle of organisation; some of the bees collect the
pollen, others build up cells of exactly the same shape and
size, others come and fill the cells with honey from the
flowers for the feeding of the community. The queen bee
lays her eggs in the breeding cells where they are guarded
by the nursing bees; fanning bees are placed in regular
lines keeping the hive ventilated with their wings; and
sentry bees keep out intruders at the door.

	Then among the greater animals, wild or tame, whether
seals or panthers, horses or dogs, all have minds and memo-
ries for directing their powers. It is not only the human mother
who loves her children. The tigress is equally fond of her
cubs, or the partridge of her chicks.
	And the male will protect his female, whether he be a
monkey or a wild boar,just as bravely and as chivalrously as
any knight of olden days.
	Many creatures will sacrifice their lives to protect their
young as pluckily as any soldier fighting for his home and
country. You may have owned a dog who would defend you
and your possessions with his life, if need be, for no reward
but because he loved you.
	And you can see from his actions how he enjoys express-
ing his affection for you. It makes him happy to carry out
your wishes and to do little jobs for you.
	Man, too has all these attributes of the animals. He has
the mind and the memory, the pluck and the chivalry, the
affection and the happiness that animals possess; but he
has them on a far higher scale. He can use them all to
greater advantage.

THE SOUL

	As a man you have this pull over the animal-you can
recognise and appreciate both the wonders and the beauties
of Nature. You can enjoy the golden glory of the sunset,
the beauty of the flowers and trees, the majesty of the
mountains, the moonlight and the distant views.
	But there is bound to come in the thought that something
more is expected of you than is expected of rooted trees
or animals who have limited powers, something more than
merely enjoying the sunshine as they do.
	You have all this extra intelligence, with the ability to
apply it. But it is wasted if you don't use it or if you spend
it badly, when all around you is the vast universe and God
for you to work for.
	The funny thing is that there has been more fighting and
quarrelling in the world over religion than for any other
cause. It is worse than funny, it is ridiculous, but at the
same time true that the more we care for our own religious
beliefs the more narrow-minded we seem to become towards
the religious ideas of other people.
		We forget that we are all sons of the same Father and
that we are all striving to do His will, though it may be in
different ways.
		There is one thing, however, that I feel sure of myself,
and that is that God is not some narrow-minded personage,
as some people would seem to imagine, but a vast Spirit
of Love that overlooks the minor differences of form and
creed and denomination and which blesses every man who
really tries to do his best, according to his lights, in His 
service.

CONSCIENCE

		How can you best serve Him with the intelligence and
power that He has given you? If you are in doubt, ask
your Conscience, that is, the voice of God within you. He
will tell you at once what is needed of you.
		Dogs delight to bark and bite, it is their nature to, but
they cannot rise to being large-minded, charitable, helpful,
and kind. Men can do this when they really mean business.
That is where a man attains his proper footing, namely,
when he exercises the Divine Love that is in him in service
for others.

LOVE

	In India it is no unusual thing to see a fakir who, for a
vow, holds one arm aloft and never uses it. That arm
eventually withers away and dies. In the same way that
spark of Love that exists in every man, if not exercised,
wastes away and dies; but if put into practice it grows
bigger and stronger and more exhilarating every day.
	Service is giving up your own pleasure or convenience to
lend a hand to others who need it. Well, if you practise
service to others day by day in little things as well as big,
you will find yourself developing that spark of Love within
you till it grows so strong that it carries you joyously over
all the little difficulties and worries of life; you rise above
them; you are filled with good will towards men; and
Conscience, the voice within you, says "Well done!"
	That Love is like Mercy, which Shakespeare describes as
having a twofold quality: it blesses him that gives as well
as him that takes. That Love is "the bit of God" which
is in every man-that is his Soul.
	The more he gives out of Love and Charity to his fellow-
men so much the more he develops his Soul.
	Professor Drummond, in his work Natural Law in the
Spiritual World, has suggested that it is there that lies
man's chance of what is known as everlasting life; he
develops his soul from being a little bit to being part of God.
It is there that he finds the happiness of being a player in
God's team. It is there that he finds the joy of heaven, here
and now on earth and not vaguely somewhere later on in
the skies.
	There is no superstition about all this, as suggested by
your atheist. It is a direct fact, and it lies open to every
man, whether he be rich or poor, to enjoy, provided he
paddles his way towards it.
	A step to this end is to read the Bible and trace the history
of God's will among men and to carry that will out by your
own good will and helpfulness to others, and you will be
the better man for it-and safely past the rock of atheism
on your voyage to happiness.
	Now don't think from all that I have said in this chapter
that I am trying to convert you to some new form of
religion, because I'm not.
	I am only going on the idea that you who read this have
not got any strong religious views of your own. I only suggest
that the better realisation of God may possibly be got
through Nature-study rather than through books. I have
known it happen in very many cases among woodsmen,
seamen, soldiers, and explorers, who had not otherwise
grasped any religious faith.
	If you find this method does not help you, the next step is
to talk with a minister of religion, who can then put you
on the right line for gaining the truer religious beliefs.

GUIDING THOUGHTS FROM DIFFERENT SOURCES

	To be good is one thing, to do good is better.

	How many observe Christ's birthday! How few His
precepts. It is easier to keep Holidays than Command-
ments (Franklin).

	The study of the Book of Nature is the true key to that
of Revelation (Bacon).

	God is not a friend who thinks only of our religious side;
on the contrary, we should find it a help and an encourage-
ment if we looked upon Him as a keen friend, interested
alike in our games, our work, or our stamp-collecting(The
Heart of a Schoolboy).

	Reverence promises freedom from hasty judgment,
friendship towards men, and obedience to the gods
(Marcus Aurelius).

	I can see how it might be possible for a man to look down
upon earth and be an atheist, but I do not see how he can
look up into the heavens by night and say there is no
God (Abraham Lincoln).

	Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and
with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first
and great Commandment.
	And the second is like unto it:
	Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
	On these two commandments hang all the law and the
prophets (Matt. xxii. 37).