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Lily of the valley blooms in early spring.
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One day at noon during the latter part of Lent, in a cold winter, I found myself in the neighborhood of a church on Broadway, New York, where through open doors a stream of people were passing in to a little service. The invitation to leave the throng and bustle of the street and spend a quiet half-hour in a worshiping assembly could not be resisted, and entering, I found myself one of a large congregation among whom were many men, and young and old women of all ranks, from ladies richly and fashionably attired to women whose clothing marked them as toilers, some of them very poor. It was a pleasant experience to join this sanctuary throng, and as I left the church, comforted and helped by the song, the prayers, the little sermon and the watchword chosen from the Bible, I felt glad that Christians are more and more inclining their hearts to keep with special attention the services of Lent.
I could not agree with an editorial which I read shortly after, in one of the daily papers, in which severe reflections were made on the declining piety of the Church of today. We live in a material age; an age of fierce business competition; a time when men struggle to amass money, when the contrasts between rich and poor are more sharply drawn than of old, when the besetting sin of the day is to bring matters to the test of human reason rather than to go in faith to the mercy seat and accept what God gives us there. But I remember the text of that day: "I am the Lord, the God of all flesh: is there anything too hard for me? " I see pressing in with insistent energy upon the Church a great and increasing throng of young men and women, student volunteers, who are ready and willing to give themselves to serve the Lord in any land where he may want them. I am aware that there is a large and increasing army of men and women who quietly read their Bibles and earnestly pray, and I do not believe that the Church is losing its hold upon the world, nor that Christ is deserting his own people.
After the forty days of Lent comes the dawn of the Easter morning. Once more with flowers and hymns of praise we enter our holy places; once more we hear sounding over every open grave, and hushing every rebellious thought in our hearts and soothing every grief, the words of him who still says to every one of us, "I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in me, though he were dead yet shall he live." Because our blessed Captain tasted death for every one of us, and himself took on his pale lips its utmost bitterness, the cup which the death angel holds to our lips is filled with the sweetness and flavor of everlasting life. This is the great joy of Easter. More and more, as we go on traveling the pilgrim road, we are conscious that it is but a road leading to another and an endless home. Along the road there are beautiful surprises. Friendship is ours, and domestic bliss; the dear love of kindred; the sweetness of companionship; the delight of standing shoulder to shoulder with comrades; the glory of service. But this is not our rest, and we are going on to that place where the beloved of the Lord shall dwell in safety by him and where they go no more out forever.
Somehow Easter always carries with it more of heaven than any other of the great anniversaries of the Christian year. In its first bright dawn the heavens were opened and the angels came down to comfort the weeping women and the disciples, mourning their Lord at the sepulcher, with those ecstatic words, "He is not here; he is risen!" It is more than fancy, it is a precious fact, that the angels still come back to console the mourner, to strengthen the doubting, and to give Christ's own people the blessed assurance that he is with them still.
The festival of Easter comes to us at a propitious time, for lo, the winter is past; the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come; and the voice of the turtle is heard in our land. Winter, with its rigor and cold, its ice and frost and inclement blasts, its tempests on land and sea, is an emblem of warfare; its silence and sternness ally it to grief. Spring comes dancing and fluttering in with flowers and music and the blithe step of childhood. Her signs are evident before she is really here herself. First come the bluebirds, harbingers of a host; a little later there will be wrens and robins and orioles, and all the troop which make the woods musical and build sociably around our country homes.
Then the flowers will come. Happy are they who shall watch their whole procession, from the pussy- willow in March to the last blue gentian in October. We decorate our churches at Easter with the finest spoils of the hot-house — lilies, roses, palms, azaleas ; nothing is too costly, nothing too lavish to be brought to the sanctuary or carried to the cemetery. Friend sends to friend the fragrant bouquet or the growing plant with the same tender significance which is evinced in the Christmas gifts, which carry from one heart to another a sweet message of love.
But God is giving us the Easter flowers in little hidden nooks in the forests, down by the corners of fences, in the sheltered places on the edges of the brook, and there we find the violet, the arbutus and other delicate blossoms which lead the van for the great army of nature's efflorescence. The first flowers are more delicately tinted and of shyer look and more ephemeral fragrance than those which come later. They are the Easter flowers. Later on we shall have millions of blossoms and more birds than we can count: now in the garden and the field we have enough to remind us that the winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the time of the singing of birds is come.
If any of us have been grieving over our own lack, over our sinful departure from God or over the loss of dear ones, let us at Easter forget the past, put our hand in that of our risen Lord, accept the sweetness of his voice and the gladness of his presence as he comes into our homes, and say, thankfully, as we hear his " Peace be unto you:" "Lord, we are thine at this Easter time; we give ourselves to thee in a fullness which we have never known before. We are thine. Thine to use as thou wilt; thine to fill with blessing; thine to own. Take us, Lord, and so possess us with thyself that our waste places shall be glad, and the wilderness of our lives shall blossom as the rose." Such a prayer will find its way upward, and return to us in wonderful answers of blessing from the Lord.
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