h the beams of his chambers in the waters: who maketh the clouds
his chariot: who walketh upon the wings of the wind."--Ps. civ. 1-3.

At this delicious season of the year, when spring time is fast ripening
into summer, and every hedge, and field, and garden is full of life and
growth, full of beauty and fruitfulness; and we look back on the long
winter, and the boughs which stood bare so drearily for six months, as if
in a dream; the blessed spring with its green leaves, and gay flowers,
and bright suns has put the winter's frosts out of our thoughts, and we
seem to take instinctively to the warmth, as if it were our natural
element--as if we were intended, like the bees and butterflies, to live
and work only in the summer days, and not to pass, as we do in this
climate, one-third of the year, one-third of our whole lives, in mist,
cold, and gloom. Now, there is a meaning in all this--in our love of
bright, warm weather, a very deep and blessed meaning in it. It is a
sign to us where we come from--where God would have us go. A sign that
we came from God's heaven of light and beauty, that God's heaven of light
and beauty is meant for us hereafter. That love which we have for
spring, is a sign, that we are children of the everlasting Spring,
children of the light and of the day, in body and in soul; if we would
but claim our birthright!

For you must remember that mankind came from a warm country--a country
all of sunshine and joy. Adam in the garden of Eden was in no cold or
severe climate, he had no need of clothes, not even of the trouble of
tilling the ground. The bountiful earth gave him all he wanted. The
trees over his head stretched out the luscious fruits to him--the shady
glades were his only house, the mossy banks his only bed. He was bred up
the child of sunshine and joy. But he was not meant to stay there. God
who brings good out of evil, gave man a real blessing when He drove him
out of the garden of Eden. Men were meant to fill the earth and to
conquer it, as they are doing at this day. They were meant to become
hardy and industrious--to be forced to use their hands and their heads to
the utmost stretch, to call out into practice all the powers which lay
ready in them. They were meant, in short, according to the great law of
God's world, to be made perfect through sufferings, and therefore it was
God's kindness, and not cruelty, to our forefathers, when He sent them
out into the world; and