Beneath the snow and frost of winter there are living seeds which
shall produce abundant harvests: so beneath a cold exterior there may
be a heart full of high resolves and glorious impulses, which at the
right season shall burst into blossom and bear precious fruit.
How often the sun rises in a cloudless sky, to be obscured before
noonday! Human life is like our fickle clime: to-day all sunshine, and
to-morrow clouds. The sun is the same by day and night, but the earth
comes betwixt his light and us: so when the Sun of righteousness seems
to have left our horizon and we turn in vain to the right and the left
to find him, may it not be that the dark, dense earth has come betwixt
us and his life-giving beams, while He remains "the same yesterday,
to-day and forever"?
The thistle has a fragrant smell, and the thorn a pleasant fruit. It
is a disease in the shell-fish that makes the pearl: so your sickness,
my friend, may be the means of your winning the Pearl of great price.
What plant would thrive if the sun shone forever? and what should we
be if the sun of prosperity always shone upon our pathway? Along
life's dusty thoroughfare I see the world, but not as I saw it once:
sickness and sorrow have given me another pair of eyes.
Gentle breezes, balmy breezes,
There is vigor in your breath,
But ye cannot bring the roses
To the leaden cheeks of death!
The soil that produces the rankest weeds would by proper care and
cultivation produce the richest crops: so will the human heart when
regenerated by grace and truth.
The violet cannot become the rose, the daisy cannot be the lily; and
if they could all be the loveliest flower, earth would lose half its
beauty. Without variety, a scene however fair within itself soon
wearies us. Knowest thou the moral? Be content in thy proper sphere:
then mayest be the violet or the daisy, but envy not the rose and the
lily; all are beautiful when in their appointed place.
At morn the shadows slant toward the west, but toward the east at
night: so when the sun of life declines the shadows stretch away
toward the everlasting hills whence the eternal beams of day shall
arise.