year with thy goodness, and all thy paths drop fatness." "Surely goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives."
December Twentieth.
THE SEASONS.—SPRING.
"While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summey and winter, and day and night, shall not cease."—Gen. viii. 22.
THE duties which man has to perform in order to secure the blessings of heaven, are, by our Saviour, placed before us in the words, "I must work the works of him that sent me while it is day; the night cometh when no man can work." Besides the redemption of man, which the Lord in His love and pity came to accomplish, He performed the great work of glorifying His humanity; and we have, while it is day, the work of regeneration to labour in. The night is that period which passes us from time to eternity—when labour is ended, and our eternal state determined.
All the changes and vicissitudes of state through which we have to pass, may be compared to a year; and through each period of the year every person must pass in the great work of the regeneration. He has his spring, his summer, his autumn, and his winter. The first season of the spiritual, as of the natural year, may be called Spring. It is the period when the understanding is prepared for the reception of the seeds of truth, and the spring-time of our existence is that period of youth, when line upon line, precept upon precept, like the shower upon shower on the herbage, is so necessary to produce the after-fruits.
