NEUOFFENBARUNG[Gr.01_010,01] The other benefits are these. Every mountain, by itself and in connection with others, and especially a glacier like our Grossglockner, is continually a preacher of love and a prophet of wisdom.
[Gr.01_010,02] You will say, ‘That may be so, but how can we hear a mountain preach love and wisdom?’
[Gr.01_010,03] That is a different and rather peculiar question. I tell you there is nothing easier in the world than to hear this twofold voice of the mountains. Several examples will disclose the secret of how to hear it.
[Gr.01_010,04] Suppose two people always treat one another with contempt. Advice and action alike are of no avail. Down below they will remain as they are. Take them up a high mountain, and you will soon see what this great preacher of love and wisdom can do. You may be sure that half a day will make them the closest of friends.
[Gr.01_010,05] You will ask, ‘Why? How is this possible?’
[Gr.01_010,06] The mountain itself answers. It is a foundation, or as it were the seat of the spirits of peace, who promptly intervene to do good wherever there is discord. The moment people set foot on the mountain, the spirits begin to work on their hearts through an increasing upward pull, arousing the feeling of love more and more powerfully. By the time they have reached the heights, their feeling of friendship has grown and strengthened so much that often they could no longer treat one another unkindly even if they wanted to.
[Gr.01_010,07] If their hearts are harder, the spirits bring real distress upon two such enemies on a high mountain, so that both are in obvious danger of losing their lives. This is a universal remedy that can turn longstanding enmity into the closest friendship at a stroke.
[Gr.01_010,08] Another example will fully show you that this is indeed so.
[Gr.01_010,09] In great upheavals of the elements, such as devastating storms, floods and other events of the kind, even the fiercest creatures, tigers, lions, hyenas, bears and snakes, become so gentle and trusting that they join human beings and tame animals, harmless and mild as doves. You can confidently gather this from all sorts of experiences reported throughout the ages.
[Gr.01_010,10] I need only draw your attention to one such incident, which you will surely have read about in connection with the flooding of the well-known French city of Lyon.
[Gr.01_010,11] If danger to life makes even fierce beasts friendly, it will surely do as much among people, particularly on the mountain heights, where the spirits of peace are secretly and actively working upon their hearts.
[Gr.01_010,12] See from this example how the mountains speak. They do not speak to the bodily ear, but all the more clearly to the ear of the spirit.
[Gr.01_010,13] How else do the mountains speak, and what do they say?
[Gr.01_010,14] Here and there in the lowlands lives a person of stunted feeling whose only concern is to stuff their stomach with food and drink, then lie down on a soft bed and sleep off their gluttony in comfortable stupidity.
[Gr.01_010,15] Such people often know scarcely more of my might, power and authority than children in the womb. It is already accounted to their great credit if they have got as far as being able simply to utter my name.
[Gr.01_010,16] When some kindly friend takes such people up a sizeable mountain, it is the first moment in their lives when they wake, look around and see that God, whose name they used to utter so sleepily, must be a little greater and mightier than they had thought until then.
[Gr.01_010,17] This is clearly borne out by the fact that friends of the mountains are generally gentle people, and that those who were formerly very sluggish and taciturn become talkative and have plenty to tell about what they experienced climbing such a mountain.
[Gr.01_010,18] See how the mountains speak here too. They are the best teachers of speech and loosen the tongues of even those who often find it burdensome to utter their own names. The reason here again is the awakening of the spirit, which makes the soul and body more lively and active.
[Gr.01_010,19] How else do the mountains speak?
[Gr.01_010,20] Some inquisitive people go up mountains and often find so-called rarities of nature. They may find shells embedded in rock, petrified bones, a kind of stone foreign to that mountain, rare plants and many other such things. At these discoveries the mountains say to them, ‘Water once stood where you found the shells. Where you found the petrified bones there were once rich fields and dense forests, which gave ample food to the great animals to which the enormous bones bear witness. Where you find strange stones, great upheavals of the elements once hurled these foreign bodies here. Where you find unusually beautiful, fragrant and distinctive plants, remember that these are surviving remnants of prehistoric vegetation, and so more vigorous and fragrant than those that, already greatly degenerated, monotonously adorn the plains and valleys.’
[Gr.01_010,21] So the mountains speak again. They open the great history book of prehistoric times to inquisitive eyes and tell them roughly how things once looked. The mountains are thus the best and most reliable teachers of great events in the world and in nature, and quietly show how unfathomable my ways and how unsearchable my counsels are.
[Gr.01_010,22] Learned people who are often somewhat puffed up within themselves are greatly humbled in this way. What sermon is better than one that preaches humility?
[Gr.01_010,23] What else do the mountains preach, and how?
[Gr.01_010,24] When someone has climbed their bare summits, the peculiar formations of the mountains prompt this question: ‘Have you mountains stood like this from the beginning, or were you formed later, and how did you come to have your present shape?’
[Gr.01_010,25] From the many broken-off stones the questioner will receive an immediate answer: ‘We have changed greatly since we came into being. More than half our former height has long lain buried deep beneath our present feet, filling the depths of valleys and ravines. If you could see us over the course of only a few hundred years, you would surely no longer recognise us.
[Gr.01_010,26] ‘When you see how our rock inclines at different angles and find recognisable impressions between its layers of plants and animals that ordinarily live and thrive only in the lower regions of the earth, you can safely conclude that we ourselves once formed level ground. Only later, by the Creator’s most wise counsel, were we raised piece by piece above the plain.
[Gr.01_010,27] ‘Now look at our ravines, gorges, fissures, ridges and cracks. You can easily see how floods and great storms of the elements once tried and exerted their gigantic strength upon our hard brows.’
[Gr.01_010,28] So the mountains speak again, giving people a full account of how they arose, how they were shaped and why they look as they do today.
[Gr.01_010,29] How else do the mountains speak, and what do they say?
[Gr.01_010,30] Suppose someone more inwardly awake sets foot on their heights and finds nothing but bare stone and, here and there, fields of snow and ice. The mountains say to that person:
[Gr.01_010,31] ‘See, proud and glory-seeking person, ever striving to raise yourself up and rule over your brothers, how meagre the fruits of the heights are. As you find us here, bare, cold, without feeling or life, so are you in your delusion of power.
[Gr.01_010,32] ‘Our bare rock and our snow and ice are a blessing to the valleys because we are in constant connection with our vast lowlands, which are far greater than we are in our heights. But what would happen to us if we did as you do and drew all our lowlands up onto our heads? Would we not soon come crashing down with an earth-shaking fall?
[Gr.01_010,33] ‘Learn from us to be truly human. Let your understanding be bare, cold and barren, and continually humble itself as we continually humble ourselves. Your love will then grow and your life increase where, like us, you have been called by the Creator to be fully alive. Let your supposedly far-seeing understanding always be clouded and misted by your humility, so that it becomes a liquid blessing flowing in drops, like our little streams, into the depths of your love. It will enliven and bless your love as our streams enliven our lowlands and nourish all their fruit.’
[Gr.01_010,34] This too is how the mountains speak.
[Gr.01_010,35] How else do they speak, and what do they say?
[Gr.01_010,36] See, another person climbs their heights.
[Gr.01_010,37] This person is a rich speculator, for whom nothing matters as much as gold and silver. What do the mountains say if such a person happens to take the time to pay them a visit?
[Gr.01_010,38] They give him an excellent lesson. ‘Foolish man, how far and deep you have fallen! What you love is merely our refuse. What would your brother say if the only things about him you loved were his refuse and stinking dung?
[Gr.01_010,39] ‘Would he not say, “Dear brother, what great madness has overcome you, that nothing about your brother is sacred or pleasing to you except his refuse?”
[Gr.01_010,40] ‘What your brother says to you, foolish man, we say with even greater right. See how many splendid plants grow on our heights and pastures and feed the farmer’s useful animals. Thousands upon thousands of the finest trees grow on us and give you abundant wood for countless useful purposes. Count the crystal-clear springs we yield in thousands of places, blessing the plains and valleys. How often you see our summits wrapped in clouds and dreadful storms raging around our brows. We bear these so that the valleys and plains we bless may be spared great devastation. Year in, year out, you see our summits buried beneath perpetual snow and ice. We thus draw so much frost to ourselves that the valleys and plains can enjoy living warmth.
[Gr.01_010,41] ‘Tell us, foolish man, what wrong have we done you that you disregard all our benefits, burrow into our entrails like a roundworm in an animal and pursue something that holds no blessing for you? Meanwhile you pay no heed to us, who by the ordinance of your Creator and ours continually provide you with so rich a living blessing.
[Gr.01_010,42] ‘Give up your folly. In future, rummage about on our pastures and heights instead of in our entrails. Be assured that a plant, a drop from one of our springs, and a glance from our heights into the distant sphere of your almighty Father’s work and that of our Creator will bring you a benefit beyond words greater than if you had emptied all our entrails.’
[Gr.01_010,43] Through this good sermon it has often happened that very greedy people, after visiting the mountains only a few times, have at once become quite generous and hospitable.
[Gr.01_010,44] These are further things the mountains preach and teach. What more they preach and teach we shall hear in what follows. Let that be enough for today.