All the untamed and untutored tribes of Central Africa and of the South Seas have dwelt with Nature for ages. And what has she taught them? They sit round their horrible camp-fires and tear like beasts at human flesh, whilst all the sublimities and transcendencies of Nature spread themselves out on every hand. Nor need we journey to Africa or the coral islands. Facts are stubborn things; and the stern facts of life, as reflected by our police-courts, demonstrate the folly of idealizing the bush. Some of our most revolting criminal cases come from those districts in the Never-Never Country where every prospect pleases, where the landscape is a riot of glorious forestry, and where the earth is a gay profusion of wild flowers. Yet those cases reveal a sordidness, an animalism, and a brutality that have shocked the very dwellers in the slums. Now why these terrible murder cases? Does Nature never say to her children, 'Thou shalt not steal ‘Thou shalt not kill I'? Does Nature give no code of morals to the children of Nature? 'Alas!' cries Nature, as she hangs her head, 'it is not in me! It is not in me!'Yes, the dregs of life are not always found in city slums. The bush may become bestial as well as beatific. Let no one misunderstand me. I am not contending that the country is worse than the town. I am instituting no comparison. I am simply saying that there is nothing in the civilization of our cities that can save us apart from the gospel, and that there is nothing in the beauty of the bush that can save us apart from the gospel. Jesus is the only hope of country and of town. And the transcendent glory of the churches is that they exist to preach HIM.
F W Boreham, The Modesty of the Bush, The Golden Milestone, (London: Charles Kelley, 1915), 128-130.
