I

The Culminating Easter

T was a wise, and in no respect accidental adaptation, that took into the young Chris

tianity the ancient Teutonic festival of Spring, and named from the imagined goddess thereof the time wherein the rising of the Saviour from the tomb took place. It is so much easier for the human consciousness to apprehend the immortal life in the presence of those lovely analogies which the new springing life of earth multiply before the eyes of dwellers in those northern climes where Eostre's rites were celebrated, as those of Rhea and Persephone were in the Natureworship of the Greeks. Nothing is more natural than to believe in perpetual life for the soul that can perceive this wonderful resemblance to itself. It is so plain that the forms alone die, but the life, depending not upon forms, but on essential principles, cannot die. And even that imperfection which gives to many a seed no fertility, that misfortune which blasts the new buds in their

sheaths and brings what we call death to the tree and the shrub, indicates but a conversion of life force into new modes of manifestation. Life ends not, but forever begins. And as it has been, so it shall be.

The individual life, as it is a growth, may have its pause or its conclusion; let the spirit see to it that, set free from whatever circumstances forbid or contract it, it shall have continuance in itself by virtue of that which in the sight of Jesus made man of a farther advance than the flowers of the field and the birds of the air, and yet of the same nature and under the same care. Not a sparrow falleth to the ground without your Father. It was not necessary to make a hypothetical emendation here; this does not mean that God had a purpose in the sparrow's fall, or that he decreed it, but that he must perforce be present in all the incident and result of life,-the Father is not outside, but within the phenomena we see; he is all and in all. Jesus was a pantheist, as all high poetic natures have been, for he knew no place where God was not. But this is hidden to some by ecclesiasticism, to some by dogma, and the most religious may be deficient in this spiritual For as Cowley wrote:

sense.

Only the spirit can the spirit own.

And to quote again from William Mountford :

"In God the fountains rise and the rivers run and the oceans ebb and flow; and shall not my spirit continue to be a spirit in him? But in death there is the loss of the body; and in health, is there not a losing of the body and a regaining of other flesh every minute? And then has a river the same water running in it any two hours together? A fountain is a fountain, in God, for a hundred, a thousand, and many thousand years; and I will not fear but my soul shall be a soul in him for ages of ages."

In Mountford's beautiful book, which he called "Euthanasy," Aubin says:

"In the woods I seldom was long before I was possessed by a spirit, like what the Greeks imagined was Pan. A fearful pleasure! At first it seemed as though the low wind whispered me; and then, as though it waited about me and curled about my face. If a branch waved, it was toward me, and if a leaf fluttered, so did my heart. Then I would sit down and wonder in awe and joy and tears. And the awe in my spirit would deepen, and the joy, too, and my tears would fall faster, till I felt as the child Samuel may have done in the temple, while waiting for the Lord to speak. And there was speech from God to me at those

times; because from my feelings then I am now sure, even to myself, of the blessedness which is to be felt with God by the pure in heart."

And this is no extravagance. Until the spiritual resurrection comes to business, politics and the great affairs of the world,-until the conviction of a spiritual life touches, informs and transforms everything which humanity has to accomplish, the divine purpose waits, and with infinite patience, for that culminating Easter morning when the life of God shall possess man as it possesses the new springing earth, and Jesus, the first fruit, shall welcome his brothers and sisters to the fullness of life.

C

April at Work

ONVERSATION on the weather is one

of the universal and continuous indulgences of humanity. There is no speech nor language where this talk is not heard-unless in places like the city of Mexico or the desert of Sahara, where they have only one kind of weather. In this country nothing but politics and religion can rival the weather as a subject, and it is a curious fact that the basis of talk about the weather is not the familiarity which characterizes the treatment of politics, but rather a religious mystery. No sort of weather is accepted as natural, the very sort to be expected and just the thing that is wanted. It is always unusual, extraordinary, incomprehensible. Men "never saw such a steady pull of cold weather," or "such a fearful hot spell," or "such a dry time," or "so long a siege of rain," —and so on,—or "leastwise, not at this time of the year," or "not for ten years," or "not since the summer of 1811," or "1837," or some other remote date.