Out-of-Doors Religion

“Christianity is an out-of-doors religion. From the birth in the grotto at Bethlehem (where Joseph and Mary took refuge because there was no room for them in the inn) to the crowning death on the hill of Calvary outside the city wall, all of its important events took place out-of-doors. Except the discourse in the upper chamber at Jerusalem, all of its great words, from the sermon on the mount to the last commission to the disciples, were spoken in open air. How shall we understand it unless we carry it under the free sky and interpret it in the companionship of nature?”

-From Out-of-Doors in the Holy Land by Henry VanDyke