When he thought he had become so well acquainted with him that he could make a confidant of him, he told him a little of what he had learned from Memotas, but he was careful to hide his own secret feelings, for he knew that Mookoomis was a strong pagan, as well as a great hater of the whites. Not as yet having met with any of the detested race who were Christians, he thought they were all alike, and had only come across the ocean to rob and cheat and kill the poor Indian and take possession of all his lands.

 

One evening, when they were alone, Oowikapun ventured to tell him about the book of heaven which the white man had, and which some Indians had got hold of and were reading with great interest, and that some of them had even accepted its teachings and were believing in them. This news made Mookoomis very angry, and Oowikapun was sorry that he had told him; but it was now too late, and so he had to listen while the angry man talked and gave his views on these things.

 

He said, referring to the legend, that the Great Spirit never intended the book for the Indian, but that he had made him a hunter, and sent him out into the forest and the prairies, and on the great lakes and rivers, and there he was to listen and hear the Great Spirit's voice and see his works. "This," added Mookoomis, "is the Great Spirit's plan, and he will be angry with any of his red children who become dissatisfied with this arrangement, and try to go the white man's way or read his book."

 

These talks did not bring comfort to Oowikapun, or lift the burden from his soul; and so, in his desperation, although he did not expect much comfort, he told Mookoomis of his heart sorrows and disquietude of spirit. The old man did not get angry, but listened to him very patiently; and then advised and even urged him to go out into the woods away from every human sound, and in peaceful solitudes let nature speak to him and soothe his troubled spirit.

 

So Oowikapun obeyed the voice of Mookoomis, and, quickly arranging his affairs, he went out into the solitudes, far away from any human being, in the hope that there, alone with nature, he might get rest for his soul. In doing this he was only imitating thousands who, too stubborn or too ignorant to come to the great Comforter in his own way, are trying in some other way to find that peace which God alone can give.

 

We pity those who ignorantly do these things, but what can we say of those who have been taught the plan of salvation through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, and yet will go on talking pertly about God in nature, and of their ability to find themselves in him by studying him in his works? God in nature, without Christ, is a riddle, a perplexity, a mystery.

 

We pity poor Oowikapun. Just enough light had come to him to show him that he was a poor, miserable sinner, but he had not yet received enough to show him the true plan of salvation; and so he was still groping along in the gloom, and much more to be pitied than the thousands who know in theory what is God's plan of salvation, but who reject it because of their pride or hardness of heart:

 

Everything seemed against him. His eyes were opened to see things now as never before, for not as a skillful hunter, but as a seeker after peace, was he out in nature's solitudes. Everything around him seemed mysterious and contradictory. This teacher, nature, whose lessons he had come to learn, seemed to be in a very perverse mood, as if to impart just the reverse of what he would learn, and seemed herself to be destitute of the very things he had hoped she would have imparted to him.

 

Sharp and rude was his first awakening from his illusion. He had not gone far into the wilderness before it came to him, and it happened thus. As he was walking along in the forest he heard, but a short distance ahead of him, a pitiful cry of a creature in distress. Quickly he hurried on, and was just in time to see the convulsive gasp of a beautiful young fawn that had been seized and was being mangled by a great, fierce wolf, which had found it where it had been hidden away by the mother deer before she had gone into the beaver meadows to feed.

 

To send the death-dealing bullet through the brains of the savage wolf was soon done, but, alas! it was too late to save the little innocent fawn, whose great, big, beautiful eyes were already glassy in death, and whose life-blood pouring out from the gaping wounds was crimsoning the leaves and flowers where it had fallen.

 

"Is this," said Oowikapun, with sadness of spirit, "the first lesson nature has for me? To her I am coming for peace and quietness of spirit, and is this what I first see?" Thus on he travelled until he reached the shores of a great lake, where he had resolved to stay for a time, at the advice of Mookoomis, to try to find in the solitudes, in communion with nature, that which his soul craved.

 

As an observant hunter he had ever been a student of nature, but never before with such an object in his heart as now filled it. He found no happiness in his investigations, but was appalled at the sights which met him and the mysteries with which the study of them baffled him. Death and discord seemed to reign everywhere, and the strong seemed ever tyrannising over the weak.

 

Such sights as the following were ever before him. One day, while sitting near the shore of the lake, where before him the sunlit waters played with the pebbles at his feet, he saw a beautiful kingfisher hover in mid-air for an instant, and then suddenly plunge down in the water and quickly rise up again with a fine fish in his bill. Almost instantly, from the top of an old dead tree near the shore, he observed a fierce hawk, whose sharp eye had seen the fish thus captured. With a scream that rang out sharp and clear, it flew swiftly after the kingfisher, and so terrified it that it quickly dropped the fish and hurriedly flew away to a place of safety. Seizing the fish in its bill, with a scream of triumph, the hawk was about to return to the shore, when another actor appeared upon the scene. Away up on the side of the cliff, which rose up a little back from the shore to the height of several hundred feet, on a projecting ledge of rocks, a pair of eagles came year after year and built their crude, wild nest. One of these great birds was watching the transaction going on below. When it heard the shrill scream of triumph from the fishhawk, it knew that the time for action had arrived. With both wings closed it shot down from the eyrie, and ere the hawk, with its stolen plunder, had reached its old, storm-beaten tree, the king of birds struck it such a blow that, dazed and terrified, it dropped the fish, and barely succeeded in getting away. It was not the fishhawk the eagle was after, but fish; and as the active bird saw the fish drop from the beak of the fishhawk, it flew down after it and caught it in mid-air ere it reached the water. Then, in majestic circles, it slowly ascended to its eyrie. This sight under other circumstances would have been enjoyable; but now, when he was a seeker in nature for peace and happiness, the greed and rapacity of the stronger over the weaker only filled him with sadness.

 

Thus for several weeks he tried to study nature, or to learn lessons from her, while, far away from all his people, he dwelt in his little camp, which he had made at the foot of a beautiful birch tree, or wandered over the hills or in the forests. But he was no better off, for all the sights that met his eyes were very similar to those we have described. It was cruelty and death and destruction everywhere.

 

Nature alone and unaided does not reveal Christ the Saviour. Since the fall, and the entrance of sin with all of its attendant miseries into this once glorious world of ours, the study of nature, with all her vagaries, without the light of revelation to clear up her mysteries, is more apt to drive men from God than to draw them to him.

 

So Oowikapun found out, especially one night, after tossing about on his bed of balsam boughs in his little tent. While lying there, utterly miserable and dissatisfied with himself, he was startled by hearing, far away, the dull, sullen roar of thunder, telling of an approaching storm. Such was the mode in which he was that this sound was welcomed, and he sprang up rejoicing, for there had suddenly come into his mind the thought that perhaps now he would hear something in nature's voice from which he could draw comfort and happiness.

 

With this hope in his heart he went out of his tent and seated himself on a rock near at hand. One by one the stars disappeared as the thick, black clouds came rolling up, quickly covering the whole expanse of heaven, and making the night one of inky darkness, save when the cliffs and forest, islands and lake, were illumined by the vivid lightning's flash.

 

Soothed by that awesome feeling which comes to many in the brief last moments which precede the burst of the tempest, Oowikapun was comforted, and began to say to himself, "At last I hear the voice of nature for which I have so long been waiting, and now tranquillised I wait for all she has to tell me of comfort and of rest."

 

Hardly had these thoughts passed through his mind ere there came a lightning flash so vivid, and a thunderbolt so near and powerful, followed by a crashing peal of thunder so sudden and so deafening, that Oowikapun was completely stunned and thrown helpless to the ground. When he recovered consciousness the storm had nearly died away. A few muttering growls of thunder could still be heard, and some flashes of lightning upon the distant horizon told in which direction the storm had disappeared.

 

Oowikapun staggered to his feet, and tried to comprehend what had happened. That something had struck him was evident. What it was at first he was too bewildered to understand. Thinking the best thing he could do in this dazed condition would be to go back under the shelter of his little tent, he turned to do so, but found it an impossibility. The thunderbolt that had stunned him had struck the large birch tree, and so shattered it to pieces that, as it fell, it had crushed down the little wigwam into a helpless wreck.

 

Great indeed was the disappointment and vexation of Oowikapun, who, while vainly imagining that at length he was about to hear the soothing voice of nature to comfo............