Welcome to our Sunday Talks.

Today's reading was edited and adapted from Love's Way by Orison Sweat Martin, published in 1918.

Walt Whitman looked upon everything in nature as a message to humanity from the infinite.

He says, To me, converging objects of the universe

perpetually flow. All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means. Did you ever

think that every flower, every tree, every ray of sunshine, every beautiful landscape is really a loving message.

A letter from God to us, his children.

If we could only read his handwriting in the rocks, in the fields, in the flowers, in the stars,

in the moon, in the clouds, in the sunset, in all his handiwork, what joy would be brought

into our lives.

Whitman urged people to learn to read God's handwriting by going direct to the fountainhead

and studying and interpreting his messages for themselves.

This is the only way to get their full meaning. Books and teachers

open the door to knowledge concerning the infinite wisdom and beauty of nature and her laws,

but only by intimate and loving personal communion with nature, can we read and understand

God's messages written on every leaf of her great book.

Stop this day and night with me, and you shall possess the origin of all poems.

You shall no longer take things at second or third hand, nor look through the eyes of the dead,

nor feed on the spectres in books.

You shall listen to all sides and filter them for yourselves.

The Creator has so fashioned us that we get our greatest happiness in finding him in his creations.

Nature is packed, saturated with things which are calculated to make every living creature happy.

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