From the Lakes of Killarney to the Golden Horn

by Henry M. Field

'Tis by thy strength the mountains stand,

God of eternal power,

The sea grows calm at thy command,

And tempests cease to roar.

But in another view the sight of these great objects of nature is depressing. It makes one feel his own littleness and insignificance. I look up at Mont Blanc with a telescope, and can just see a party climbing near the Grands Mulets. How like creeping insects they look; and how like insects they are in the duration of their existence, compared with the everlasting forms of nature. The flying clouds that cast their shadows on the head of Mont Blanc are not more fleeting. They pass like a bird and are gone, while the mountains stand fast forever, and with their eternity seem to mock the fugitive existence of man upon the earth.

I confess the impression is very depressing. These terrible mountains crush me with their awful weight. They make me feel that I am but an atom in the universe; a moth whose ceasing to exist would be no more than the blowing out of a candle. And I am not surprised that men who live among the mountains, are sometimes so overwhelmed with the greatness of nature, that they are ready to acquiesce in their own annihilation, or absorption in the universal being.

Talking with Father Hyacinthe the other evening (as we sat on the terrace of the Hotel Beau Rivage at Geneva, overlooking the lake), he spoke of the alarming spread of unbelief in Europe, and quoted a distinguished professor of Zurich, of whom he spoke with great respect, as a man of learning and of excellent character, who had frankly confessed to him that he did not believe in the immortality of the soul; and when Father Hyacinthe replied in amazement, "If I believed thus I would go and throw myself into the Lake of Zurich," the professor answered with the utmost seriousness, "That is not a just religious feeling; if you believe in God as an infinite Creator you ought to be willing to cease to exist, feeling that God is the only Being who is worthy to live eternally."

Marvellous as this may seem, yet something of this feeling comes to thoughtful and serious minds from the long and steadfast contemplation of nature. One is so little in the presence of the works of God, that he feels that he is absolutely nothing; and it seems of small moment whether he should exist hereafter or not; and he could almost be willing that his life should expire, like a lamp that has burned itself out; that he should indeed cease to exist, with all things that live; that God might be God alone. If shut up in these mountains, as in a prison from which I could not escape, I could easily sink into this gloom and despondency.

Pascal has tried to break the force of this overwhelming impression of the awfulness of nature in one of his most striking thoughts, when, speaking of the greatness and the littleness of man, he says: "It is not necessary for the whole universe to arm itself to destroy him: a drop of water, a breath of air, is sufficient to kill him. And yet even in death man is greater than the universe, for he knows that he is dying, while the universe knows not anything." This is finely expressed, but it does not lighten the depth of our despair. For that we must turn to one greater than Pascal, who has said, "Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father; be of good cheer therefore, ye are of more value than many sparrows." Nature is great, but God is greater.

In riding through the Alps—especially through deep passes, where walls of rock on either hand almost touch the sky—it seems as if the whole world were a realm of Death, and this the universal tomb. But even here I see erected on almost every hilltop a cross (for the Savoyards are a very religious people), and this sign of our salvation, standing on every high place, amid the lightning and storm, and amid the winter snows, seems to be a protest against that law of death which reigns on every side. Great indeed is the realm of Death, but greater still is the realm of Life; and though God only hath immortality, and is indeed "the only Being worthy to live forever," yet joined to Him, we shall have a part in His own eternity, and shall live when even the everlasting mountains, and the great globe itself, shall have passed away.