IN THE SOUL'S NATIVE AIR

Dear is the breath of the April winds, in the pines on the hillside,

Dear is the smile of the sun on the knolls where the

ground pines creep,

Dear are the showers that waken the flowers to bloom

by the rillside,

Dear are those blossoms that answer the sun and the rain from their sleep.

Aye, when the torrents adown from the springs of the mountain are dashing,

Gleams of celestial silver illuming the hemlock's deep shade,

The spirit of God moves those waters, so vividly rushing and flashing,

Even as on the great day when the firmament highly was made.

Still we behold it anew, as if God were the first time creating,

Nature eternally showing the pulse of continuing life; Nature forever repeating, all of her forces relating,

Glory and beauty and honour born out of storm and of

strife.

Crumble the rocks into mould, and trees spring from out of the ruin,

Climb to the sunlight and sway their breathing leaves in the breeze;

Sheltered beneath them spring the delicate flowers that renew in

Loveliness ever unfailing worship that never shall

cease.

Over the pastures the grasses slowly grow sweet and prepare them

Food of the servants of man, as erst of the rabbit and deer;

Green o'er the meadows the grasses, and swell the pink buds that o'erfare them,

Promise of fruit for the feasting that comes of the fall of the year.

Aye, and the birds that fly northward, pause here and sojourn and sing to us,

Birds with the sky in their voices, the message of love

in their lays,

Birds that are free in the ether, and poise and waver, and bring to us

Thoughts of the time when we too shall escape from the tumult of days,—

Escape and flee and evanish, and soar to the home of the spirit,

Soar there and sing, even we, the song that all life and breath share,

Praising and loving and honouring Him in whose grace we ensphere it,

Once more in the bosom of God, restored to the soul's native air.

T

Easter Hope

HE day of the rising of Jesus, the season of the rising of Nature, come into

the closest connection this late Easter; and the hope of humanity, the promise of earth, are blent in one common springtide, as irresistible as the sunlight and the south winds, that waken the grass and swell the buds, cheer the birds, and invite the peaceful forces of the spirit of all life to renew the miracle of summer. How charming is youth! The very fact of youth is a prefigurement of immortality. Energies that find their way to the seed in the ground, to the germ in the egg; that fill the birds with joy and the air with their happy melody; that stir the pulses with vigour and make strife more expectant and ideals draw nearer, these are the same that thrill the stars in their courses and bring the vital warmth of our sun to all its little worlds, and so with all the other suns and their attendant worlds.

It is still the word of Jesus that throbs with undiminished conviction this Easter: "Because

I live, ye shall live also." Not with Jesus was born the sense of the divine spirit of original, continuing and never ending life and advance. In the myriad ages of our race upon this planet there have been many prophets and priests of the living God who knew this truth and could not be put down by discouragements of transient and evil days. Not with Jesus did the line of these sons of God end, nor will it ever end. But it was he who first, so far as we have record, so knew the purpose of the Spirit and was so possessed by its unity, its sacred essence and its illimitable glory in ages beyond imagination to conceive, that his sense thereof was not hope, but knowledge, the certainty where is no room for doubt. He spake, because he knew at first hand. The voice of his Father was his own voice, for they were

one.

"If a man die, shall he live again?" This is the form the question of questions has taken all down through the ages. It is the riddle of the eternal sphinx, of which all legendary sphinxes are but shadowy types; and notwithstanding Edipus, it may be maintained that no sphinx. ever was answered,-for his answer was an overwhelming catastrophe. Perhaps it is near the time when the riddle shall assume a new form, and we shall no longer ask a question that predicates