WINTER.

surrounding landscape, with its clothing of colours grave and gay, and with its ever-shifting expression of light and shade; the noble magnificence of the material world rejoicing in stately trees, rich with waving corn, and loaded with precious fruits-where are they now? Like other fashions of this world, passed away. But yesterday the enchanting vision filled the eye, and to-day it is gone for ever!-sunk into decay, and dust, and death! A similar scene may rise to view with returning Spring and Summer, but the same delightful aspect we can behold no more. Are we not thus presented with an instructive emblem of the transitory nature of men and their possessions? But as Winter leads us to reflect on the fleeting beauty and glory of the year, it may easily carry our thoughts to the like transitory character of all mortal things-"things seen and temporal," things passing away as contrasted with things enduring. "The world passeth away and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever."

man.

Winter may give rise to reflections on some personal conditions of There are those to whom the Winter of life has already come. The snows of age are sprinkled upon them. "The hoary head" gives sign of life's approaching close. To you, no Spring-time or Summer-tide of existence can come again in this world. Yet, perhaps you have improved former seasons; you have learned to "sow to yourselves in righteousness," to sow "to the Spirit;" you have done the part of “a wise son, that gathereth in Summer;" you have laid in valuable store for the closing periods of time, and better still, laid up "treasure in heaven." If so, you may bless God for it. If not, you should surely seek, ere it be too late, to be prepared for the abrupt and final departure from all this world's scenes, which, in the natural course of things, must needs be so near.

Winter has presented comparisons, remembrances of old age, decay, and death; but if there be points of resemblance, we may also get some hints of contrast. By-and-by the Spring will return, torpid vegetation will be revived, Nature will seem to be awakened and renewed, buried seed will be quickened, yielding its appropriate produce, and the landscape, now so withered and dead, will be beautified with fresh life. In men, without Revelation, this contrast only begot sad emotions, or led to despairing words. One of the ancient classic poets has thus expressed their hopeless thought :

"Alas! the tender herbs, and flowery tribes,
Though crushed by Winter's unrelenting hand,
Revive, and rise when vernal zephyrs call.
But we, the brave, the mighty, and the wise,

Bloom, flourish, fade, and fall,-and then succeeds

A long, long, silent, dark, oblivious sleep;
A sleep which no propitious power dispels,
Nor changing seasons, nor revolving years."

But to us, thanks be to "our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel," the cold obstruction of the tomb is not to be followed by perpetual silence, undisturbed darkness, everlasting oblivion. Let the silence come; let the darkness fall; let each of us for a while be "forgotten as a dead man out of mind." In the case of those "that sleep in Jesus," it is only to prepare for a brighter day, when morning shall break upon the tomb; when "all that are in the graves shall hear the voice of the Son of Man, and shall come forth;" when "the multitude of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake;" when the soul shall be refreshed, and the body renewed, and we shall be changed. Old age, and decay, and death may be succeeded by no reviving in this world; yet, in the world to come, we may expect a state surpassing that of "everlasting Spring," or eternal Summer," in "the resurrection of life," "when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality," and "death shall be swallowed up in victory."

CHRISTMAS WITH THE POETS.

unsatisfied!

old friends?"

HRISTMAS with the Poets! Are there not echoes of

familiar verse that bring a gust of Christmas almost as the bells do, and that for many a listener can awaken deep and tender associations-the more, because they are to him a tale twenty times told? They are, it is true, known by heart, but so are the snowdrops and aconites and mezereon that begin to steal out shyly here and there at the end of Christmastide; yet what new and carefully-culled exotics could replace these in our love? How the expectant pleasure would die out of our eyes, while they wandered over new beauties still Yes, this is lovely, and that is gorgeous; but where are the

66

How natural, then, it seems to say over again the familiar lines in which Shakespeare speaks of the atmosphere, so to say, hallowed and gracious, which, in the rudest and least-instructed minds, clothes the thought of Christmas, throwing a grace over the very fantasies of superstition

"Some say, that ever 'gainst that season comes
Wherein our Saviour's birth is celebrated,
The bird of dawning singeth all night long;

And then, they say, no spirit can walk abroad;

The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike,

No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm,

So hallowed and so gracious is the time.

Horatio. So have I heard, and do in part believe it."

I think that these lines give most remarkably the glow, the tender warm light, the almost weird fascination, with which, to, at least, the English mind, the idea of Christmas is haloed about.

The English mind-I may be mistaken, but I fancy that in a special sense this festival may be called the English feast more universally regarded and more joyous in our island than even Easter. For one reason, I fancy, because of its close connection in the mind of Englishmen with the gathering of kindred and the dearness of Home.