And the blood tingles in the veins, and life and health come back with sudden rush, and you leave who will to stay by the fire, while you start forth with swinging skates to do the next best thing to flying; having dined hastily at midday, so as to have a long evening.
And one night you go to bed, leaving a yellow dun sky sleeping over the hard fields. At a little before seven you rise, and drawing aside the blind with something of a shiver and a yawn, rub your eyes with amaze. In the half dark you seem to look out from your dim-lit room upon one large Twelfthcake, with a dark figure here and there for an ornament. And when you put out your candle, and draw up the blind, on how strange a sight do you look! How changed the appearance of everything since last night! What a heavy fall of snow there has been; and how sudden, and how silent! Against the slate sky a few dark flakes steal down, or a small drift dances, changing into a pearl-white as they sink lower, and are seen against the black bare trees, or the full evergreens. You are fascinated; you must stand at the window and watch. That araucaria—how can its long dark arms hold such a piled sheer height of snow? How deep and dazzling it lies upon the window sill! what a broad sheet upon the roof of that barn! how of the thinnest twigs of the nut trees and the acacias each sustains his piled inch and-a-half in the complete stillness! how the laurels bend down under great heavy loads of snow; and the erect holly shows a prickly dark gleam, and a burning berry here and there! All the sad traces of the dead Summer are buried, and the bustling birds chirp and huddle upon the anew foliaged branches, raining down a miniature snow-storm as they fidget about the trees. All the sodden leaves, and the black flower-stalks, and the bare fields are hidden now, and Autumn and Summer are buried; and the Winter days are come in earnest. Ah, yes, the sadness was more in the transition, and now that that is over and the change made, did you not discover that—
“Some beauty still was found; for, when the fogs had passed away,
The wide lands came glittering forward in a fresh and strange array;
Naked trees had got snow foliage, soft, and feathery, and bright,
And the earth looked dressed for heaven, in its spiritual white.
“Black and cold as iron armour lay the frozen lakes and streams;
Round about the fenny plashes shone the long and pointed gleams
Of the tall reeds, ice-encrusted; the old hollies, jewel-spread,
Warmed the white, marmoreal chillness with an ardency of red:
“Upon desolate morasses, stood the heron like a ghost,
Beneath the gliding shadows of the wild fowls’ noisy host;
And the bittern clamoured harshly from his nest among the sedge,
Where the indistinct, dull moss had blurred the rugged water’s edge.”
But, O writer, your pen has wandered; and this mere description of God’s snow and frost is mere secular writing. Dear Reader, let me contradict you, and plead—“It is not so.” A careful loving observer of God’s works, attains also the privilege of becoming a reader of a second volume of God’s word. And if you would have for what I say authority from the sacred volume, take it down and turn to the 104th Psalm. You will find in that, God’s works abundantly brought in and interwoven with God’s word, still further, as I may say, embellishing and beautifying it; and illuminating the text with initial letters and little gems of illustration. Here is a bird’s nest, you will find, swung securely in the long flat arm of a cedar; here a breadth of bright green grass, with cattle feeding upon it; here a tinkling spring, trickling down the hill side, whilst, as it sleeps in the valley, the beasts of the field gather about it, and the wild asses quench their thirst. The birds chirp and sing among the branches, the murmuring rain descends from the chambers of God upon the grateful hills and the satisfied earth; the tender grapes appear, and the “olive-hoary capes,” and the wide waving fields of the deep golden grain. The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and the conies stud the rocks here and there. There are moonlight scenes, and sunsets, and an Eastern night, with its great luminous stars, and the deep roar of the lion creeping under the shadow of those tall silent palms. There is a field with labourers at work, coming out from their homes as the sun rises, and the beasts of prey slink back to theirs.
And there are sea pieces too: we turn from the land to the hoary wrinkled ocean, with its ships, and its monsters, and its innumerable population, all gathering their meat from God. And in other psalms, and in many another part of the Bible, we find God’s word studded with illustrations from God’s works. In the 147th Psalm, for instance, there is something to our present purpose:
“He sendeth forth His commandment upon earth:
His word runneth very swiftly.
He giveth snow like wool: He scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes.
He casteth forth His ice like morsels: who can stand before His cold?”