when the dove fluttered to the window of the ark, that there are olive leaves outside for the plucking. Still, I tell you, the question for most of us to solve is not, Am I fruit? but Am I a leaf? I take it, if we are to be fruit, we shall be by some deep predestination; and what we shall have to do in that case will be to keep as sound as we can to the core. But, if I am not fruit, then I am leaf; and leaf is fruit in its own order. Do I cast a mite of shadow; do I beautify ever so small a piece of blank barrenness; do I help along, in the measure of my one-leaf power, in forming, if not fruit, then timber? because, this question answered right, I have answered every other.

Let me make this sure; and then I may be sure of this also, that the nipping frosts of the autumn, when they come, will be as divine to me as the dewy splendors of June. A falling leaf, I shall fall honorably; and the spirit, returning to the God who gave it, will again be set to do the greatest, and by consequence the most blessed, thing it can do; while this frame, the faded leaf, will wait for the morning of its resurrection. For this corruptible shall put on incorruption, and

this mortal immortality. And when a man reaches this faith, he will not fear death any more than he fears life: :

"Fear death! to feel the fog at my throat,

The mist on my face,

When the snows begin, and the blasts denote
I am nearing the place;

The power of the night, the press of the storm,
The post of the foe,-

Where he stands, the arch fear, in a visible form,
And the strong man must go!

No; let me feel all of it; fare like my peers

Who have met him of old;

Bear the brunt; in a moment pay life's whole arrears

Of pain, darkness, and cold:

For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave.

"The dark minutes at end,

Then the elements rage; and the voices that rave
Shall soften and blend,-

Shall change, and become,

First a peace, then a joy, then thy breast.
O thou soul of my soul, I shall meet thee again,
And with God be the rest!

III.

THE TREASURES OF THE SNOW.

MEDITATING through the week what I should say to you to-day, my mind at last began to turn steadily toward the snow that was falling all day long between the window where I sat and my church, covering the city with its white robe to be instantly soiled and torn, and casting an unspotted radiance over hundreds of miles of the land through which also it was my lot to travel. So I gradually became aware, that to-day I must speak to you about the snow, and its place in the world and life in which we are now witnessing its presence, see what hint of the Divine blessing is revealed to us in this fair vesture of the winter, the delight of our youth, the touching image of the white age before the opening of a new spring, and the fair shroud, that, in the black winter days, covers all the graves.

The

I read a story once of what had happened just before in one of the new English colonies. It was a land where the snow fell but seldom. children had grown up to a good age, without once seeing it. One day, the thick flakes began to fall; the children were terrified; they shrank back from it, did not know what to make of it: but the parents ran out to welcome what it was the first impulse of the children to fear. The unknown wonder of the one was the welcome visitor of the other, bringing hosts of kindly memories. It melted as it fell, was what we now watch with disgust on sloppy days, and call neither one thing nor the other. But, as these men and women saw the feathery fleece falling for the first time in their new home on the other side of the world, it seemed to bring the blessing of the old home on its wings, to make their past and present more intimately one. It was a means of grace to them: it came down cold out of the heavens; but their hearts became all aglow, as it touched them.

I had written as far as this, when a lady came to my study, and I read the incident to her. "I know something as good as that," she said. “I

had a friend who went south, out of the reach of the snow, lived there many years, and then came north again. When the first snow fell after her return, she ran out to meet it with all the delight of a child, caught a flake in her hand, and kissed it." A flake in her hand to kiss, she could not resist the impulse. It was an old friend she had nearly forgotten, as welcome as the flowers in May. The philosopher could tell her, to be sure, that this was not the snow that used to fall about the old homestead. She knew better: it was the same snow, because she was the same woman: the identity was in her own nature. It was a hint of that better life to come, in which we are not to reckon by then and now, by past and present, what was, and is not, and never can be again; but by an eternal now, fresh and full as the heart of a great

ocean.

It is notable that there is but one instance of an actual snow-fall in the Bible; and even that is rather a recollection than a record. It is in the Second Book of Samuel, where, speaking of a mighty man, the chronicler says he slew a lion in the midst of a pit, in the time of snow. If the