SUNDAY READING

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 118, 5 October 1912, Page 10

SUNDAY READING

THE MINISTRY OF SPRING. SERMON PREACHED BY REV. H. J. LEWIS. "Let the field be joyful and all that is therein: then shall all the trees of the wood rejoice before the Lord; for He eometh to judge the earth: He shall judge thenvorld with righteousness and the people with His truth." — Ps. xcvi., v. 12-13, This is the sweet religious noti % struck by the return of spring. The festive robes put on by Nature in spring, the rich green of the young .grass, the leaves of the trees, the gay, bright blooi/n of the daffodils, the pure white of the snowdrop, the deep blue of the pansy, are the festoons and triumphal arches witji which Nature adorns the road along which the conquering Lord returns to reign.' Even the wild equinoxial storms are the salute of Nature's great guns, and the heavy spring rain her tears of joy to welcome back the Lord from Whom she seems to have beeen parted awhile by the gloom of winter. From time immemorial spring has been regarded as the perennial type of three things, the free, gladsome, buoyant life of youth, the happy life which is the result of conversion, and the glorious life, which is the aftermath of the Resurrection. But spring is far more than a parable. It is a proclamation to eye and heart of the fulness of God. It suggests to us all three things: (!) THE INEXHAUSTIBILITY OF' LIFE. The one transcendent charm of spring is the triumphant glory with which it shows us life treading on the heels- of death, life growing out of the gloom of the grave, life born of the womb of death. Spring sings over to us again every year the sweet song of the omnipotence of life, the victorious energy .of life, the recuperative power with which Nature shakes off and leaves behind everything that tries to keep it down, or to hold it back. Winter may bring life for a time, but by-and-bye it springs up again with all the exuberant glow of renewed youth. Nothing can annihilate life. Nothing can crush life. Nothing can drain the springs of life dry. After the longest, hardest winter life comes back every spring, melting the snows into rivers, and the icebergs into waterfalls, laughing, dancing with the transport of delight at its triumph in breaking the prison doors which had tried in vain to hold it, bursting in every bud, sparkling and revelling in the young lambs in the meadows, and the newborn babes in the homes. The storms of spring are but the bitter pangs through which it leaps into new life and the agony of repentance through which the soul passes into the pale of pardon is but the counterpart of the storm through which Nature sweeps from winter into spring. And as the earth finds the spring when it turns to the sun, so the soul finds life eternal when it turns to Christ. Dr. Dale once said: "I have seen the sunrise from the summit of the Rigi, and it was a glorious sight; hut it was not so glorious as the sight of the smile sweeping over a man's face in church which showed that he had found Christ." The spring of the soul is the discovery of the sunshine streaming upon it from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. Religion is the life of God in the soul of man, and there's life enough in God to fill all the souls of all the millions of men and women on the earth with a life that can never die. Love like God's own is a life nothing can ever destroy or exhaust, because it is a river flowing from the eternal spring of the inexhaustible life of God.

(2) THE INDESTRUCTIBILITY OF BEAUTY. .Spring paints over again every year all 'the beauty which winter had seemed for a while to wipe out. The trees which a few months ago stretched their bare withered branches in dumb appeal to God are to-day covered with leaf. The flowers which hung their drooping heads in patient submissiveness to the stroke of winter are to-day clothed with a beauty which casts that of Solomon in all his glory into the shade. Over the Huatoki stream just outside our own town there is an old gnarled willow trunk which all last winter looked like an old discrepit man, bent and feeble, waiting only for the grave. To-day that trunk is clad from base to tip in greeD leafy beauty the picture of which would ma-ke the fortune of any artist who could paint it. And the beauty of holiness is as indestructible as the beauty of Nature. Nothing can ever destroy the beauty of purity, the beauty of honor, the beauty of patience, the beauty of gentleness, the beauty of love. In one of the old churches of England there used to be a tombstone bearing this inscription :

"Beneath this stone doth lie As much beauty as could die, Which when alive did give Grace to- as much virtue as could live; Pembroke's sister, Sidney's mother, Death e'er thou hast slain another, Sweet and fair and true as she, Time shall fling a dart at thee."

It is true. Neither poverty, nor pain, nor sorrow, nor death can destroy beauty of character. The beauty of a strong, brave, honorable man lives on in his sons; the beauty of a sweet, gentle, gracious woman lives on in the loveliness of her daughters.

"Time that does all things else impair, Still makes them flourish young and fair."

(3) THE IMMORTALITY OF INFLUENCE.

What is the secret of all this inexhaustibility of life, this indestructibility of beauty? Well, what makes the spring? The sun. Nothing can destroy the beauty or exhaust the life of the earth, because nothing can rob her of the sun. And nothing can exhaust the life, nothing destroy the beauty of the life that hid with Christ in God, because nothing can stop the influence of Christ on those who receive Ilim. The one omnipotent, irresistible influence in the world is that of sunshine. If we receive Christ nothing in the world can hinder the influence of the sunshine He will pour into us. If we live with Christ nothing can ever destroy or overcome the influence or the sunshine we shall shed upon the world. The object for which our Church exists to-day is to enable us all to catch the sunshine, and then pass it oil. When wc receive Christ His sunshine will make it spring in our lives. When we live Christ our sunshine will make it spring in the world around us. The message of spring to us all is: "Arise! shine, for thy light is come and the glory of the Lord is risen upon thee." Nothing but the influence of the sunshine of Christian love in one's lives is needed to make the wilderness and the solitary place glad, the desert to rejoice am! blossom as the rose. Let your light s line. Then we shall not have to wait i million years for Heaven in some far-off world. Earth itself will become a Heaven, where "Everlasting spring .abides, And never-'fithering frowers."