why we love the mountains

J. Gresham Machen, professor of New Testament, apologist, author, and founder of Westminster Theological Seminary, once said, "I do love the mountains, and I have loved them ever since I can remember anything at all.”

In a 1933 lecture to ministers in Philadelphia he spoke about "Mountains and Why We Love Them." It was subsequently published in Christianity Today in 1934. A five-minute overview of this message is presented by Stephen Nichols here.

I love Machen's own words on the perspective that mountains give us on history and our world:

What will be the end of that European civilization, of which I had a survey from my mountain vantage ground—of that European civilization and its daughter in America? What does the future hold in store? Will Luther prove to have lived in vain? Will all the dreams of liberty issue into some vast industrial machine? ... Will some dreadful second law of thermodynamics apply in the spiritual as in the material realm? Will all things in church and state be reduced to one dead level, coming at last to an equilibrium in which all liberty and all high aspirations will be gone? Will that be the end of all humanity's hopes? I can see no escape from that conclusion in the signs of the times; too inexorable seems to me to be the march of events. No, I can see only one alternative. The alternative is that there is a God—a God who in His own good time will bring forward great men again to do His will, great men to resist the tyranny of experts and lead humanity out again into the realms of light and freedom, great men, above all, who will be messengers of His grace. There is, far above any earthly mountain peak of vision, a God high and lifted up who, though He is infinitely exalted, yet cares for His children among men.

~ Gresham Machen. The complete message, "Mountains and Why We Love Them," here.

Photo above is of Yosemite National Park by Christoph Bengtsson Lissalde on Unsplash.

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