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10—EDELWEISS
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THE mountains bring to mind little simple things—flowers. If any ask, “How has the climber, whose whole thought is set upon the heights, time to stop and look for flowers?” I can only answer in the words of The Imitation, “If thou withdraw thyself from void speaking and idle circuits, and from vanities and hearing of tidings, thou shalt find time sufficient and convenient for to have sweet meditations and discoveries.” Sweet meditations and discoveries are the peculiar treasure of mountaineers. And they always find, I think, that far more than the toils of the climb, they remember the places where they gathered the edelweiss of God.
A chance reminder of the Spiritual may bring this peculiar treasure: the Sign of our faith (unpremeditated) in the woodwork of a door, a window, a roof. You may find it, perhaps, in common wire netting. You see the wire if you “look through” it casually: you are conscious of it, even though not looking at it. But if you focus intently on something beyond you hardly see it; and if you have field glasses you do not see it at all. (Lord, evermore give it us to look intently through the field glasses of faith.)
Or it may be something even less obvious, which has a word for our heart that it has not for any other at that moment: the coming of some Ebed-melech, a letter, a book. “Having so many and so great causes for joy, he is very much in love with sorrow and peevishness who loses all these pleasures, and chooses to sit down on his little handful of thorns.”
For some, the flowers of God take the form of music or a song: “And is that the great Dr. George Matheson?” asked a disillusioned child, as she gazed astonished at the blind minister, writer of hymns and neat brown books out of which her mother sometimes read to her pages that somehow were not dull. He was dining at the time—just dining. The child had revered him because he was so courageous; he had refused to let the blindness that had slowly crept upon him hinder, and his “O Love that will not let me go” had said far more to her than she could understand. She had thought of him as almost in heaven, and there he was, at an ordinary dinner table, and apparently enjoying what he ate. This last was quite a shock. It was years before that secular dinner table settled itself comfortably in her mind, and she knew his song for what it truly was, his edelweiss found for his consolation on his dark Matterhorn.
But probably we do not feel in the least like George Matheson or any of the noble clan of climbers who conquered gloriously and sang gloriously too. Does it matter? God knows all about that. To one of no account, who did not feel able to bring anything worth offering, a sweet and gentle comfort came through the moonlight that was shining on the grass and trees. It was only silver, not like the glory of the morning gold. “Offer thy silver,” said a quiet voice. And peace came that moonlit night in offering just silver:
I cannot bring Thee praise like golden noon-light
Shining on earth’s green floor.
My song is more like silver of the moonlight,
But I adore.
I cannot bring Thee, O Beloved, ever
Pure song of woodland bird;
And yet I know the song of Thy least lover
In love is heard.
O blessed be the love that nothing spurneth:
We sing—Love doth enfold
Our little song in love. Our silver turneth
To fine-spun gold.