"He Hath Builded the Mountains": John Muir's God of Glaciers. (June 2016)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Willis, Paul J.
• Is Part Of: Christianity and literature. Volume 65:Number 3(2016)
• Page Start: 298
• Page End: 309
• Publication Date: 2016-06
• Subjects: John Muir -- Louis Agassiz -- Percy Bysshe Shelley -- John Ruskin -- glaciers -- Yosemite; Christianity and literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; 809.933823
• DOI: 10.1177/0148333115609280
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0148-3331

Abstract

While the writer and naturalist John Muir may have disposed of his father's Christocentric theology, he nevertheless firmly retained his faith in a loving Providence. For Muir, this divine love was best expressed in the power of glaciers to carve stunningly beautiful mountain landscapes, such as those in the Sierra Nevada, into their "predestined" forms. Muir was not only in the minority among 19th-century naturalists in his conviction that glaciers were the major force to have shaped the Sierra; he was also in the minority among Romantic and Victorian writers in his belief that glaciers are uniquely divine instruments in the ongoing creation of the beautiful.