A MORNING'S WALK IN A COUNTRY LANE.
It is pleasing, during the bright summer time, to rise early and, if our lot is so cast, to stroll into the country lanes and breathe the pure air of heaven, inhale the sweet scent of the hay, and gaze upon God's beautiful creation around us, and, if possible, learn some of the many lessons which even a tiny flower or a feeble insect may be able to teach us.
One Monday morning during the last summer, when staying in Hampshire, we had such a walk, the memory of which, and its profitable lessons, are still fresh upon our minds.
Leaving the town where we were staying, we quickly found ourselves between the hedgerows, and our first impulse was to turn at once into the green fields, but another feeling led us to keep to the lane.
Was that change of plan the result of chance? Nay; the great Ruler of all things, who guides the flight of a sparrow, as surely orders the footsteps of His children.
John Knox had a usual seat at his table, with his back to the window. A sudden impulse led him to take another seat. That night the assassin's bullet came through the window, and but for an overruling Providence, Knox would have lost his life.
How many such instances might be related, which shows that even more surely than the smallest wheel of some vast machinery is as readily controlled as the largest, so surely does Infinite Wisdom control all the great machinery of life, from its most momentous events down to the smallest circumstance, such as the movement of a leaf. "If a pestilence stalk through our land, we say, 'The Lord hath done it.' Is it not also His doings when an aphis creepeth on a rosebud? If an avalanche fall from the Alps, we tremble at the will of Providence. Is not that will also concerned when the sere leaf falls from the poplar?"
Pursuing our walk, we soon found that we were in the most delightful of country lanes, with high hedgerows and overhanging trees, that formed a most delightful shade from the fierce burning sun, which, even at that early hour, was almost unbearable. What must be the sufferings of a traveller in the desert, with the fierce orb of day beating down upon his head, as mile after mile he traverses the burning sand without shade or water? How grateful to him must be "the shadow of a great rock in a weary land," or some delightful Elim, with its seventy shady palms, and its twelve refreshing wells of water!