Thirty-four years ago, while teaching school, I had an opportunity of going to Yellowstone National Park with a camping party of school teachers and others from Southern Montana, but as I needed money, I decided to teach a summer school and to postpone the trip until some future time. When the party returned and tried to tell me about the many wonders they had seen, I resolved not to lose another opportunity to go, but I did, and for the same reason that kept me from going before. After this I was not so enthusiastic over the Yellowstone and the many miracles to be seen there.
However, I was always interested in some of the descriptions of the geysers,—Old Faithful, the Giant, Giantess, and others, that threw boiling water, at intervals, from 150 to 250 feet into the air. In Gospel messages I used them to illustrate spiritual truths, but no one had ever given me the slightest conception of the Grand Canyon, the Upper and Lower Yellowstone Falls, the boiling pools, the paint pots, the cascades, Mammoth Hot Springs, the exquisite colorings of the mineral formations, Roaring Mountain, "Hell's Half Acre," the majestic mountain peaks and ranges, Rainbow Lake, the Punch Bowl, Amethyst Spring, and a thousand other things which so awed and inspired me that out of the depths of my being, I exclaimed, "What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him? For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, and hast crowned him with glory and honor. Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands; thou hast put all things under his feet."
But how unworthy has he proved to be! Amidst the magnificence and grandeur of the wonders of Nature, he is ever showing his ingratitude, and the tendency to prostitute these things to the uses of his baser nature, and take all the glory to himself. He makes use of the gold and silver to build himself a habitation that storms are destined to shatter, leaving him exposed to divine wrath.
As I meditated upon these things, my heart cried out, "Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; ... He shall receive the blessing from the Lord, and righteousness from the God of his salvation" (Ps. 24:3-5). My heart overflowed like the boiling springs and the gushing geysers, which symbolize the sanctified life.
JUPITER TERRACE © Haynes, St. Paul
When I first had opportunity to go to Yellowstone Park, I did not enjoy the experience of sanctification, and therefore could not have appreciated its many wonders as I do now. Who knows but this is the reason why the door closed and did not open for me to go until I should be in the enjoyment of this experience, and able to impart spiritual truths to others?
There is an inner chamber of the soul that corresponds to the hill of the Lord. It is the place where the Shekinah dwells and His secrets are made manifest. Those who know Him in the relationship of the Bride can better appreciate His handiwork. Submission to the whole will of God is the price of such an experience.
There are those who appreciate the grandeur and magnificence of the Yellowstone as a whole, but there are thousands of spiritual lessons which the book of nature unfolds that the ordinary sightseer fails to grasp.