Every soft, grey-green shoot on the tangled honeysuckle stems sets you thinking of the yellow, rosy-tinged blossoms that will fill the long summer evenings with fragrance; every crimson thorn and bursting leaf on the wild rose, tells of far-flung branches that will arch the hedges and flush them with pale-pink flowers later on; the rosettes of foxglove leaves on the roadside banks remind you of the bells that will be ringing all along the lanes when summer sets in. And although the fresh green of all the courageous little things that have braved the winds and peeped forth, is exquisite enough in itself to satisfy that eternal craving of the human heart for something fresh from the Hand of God, yet the promise that each proclaims carries one into further realms of loveliness, and conjures up visions that can never be put down in black and white. One dimly understands how impossible was the task St. John set himself when he tried to describe the glimpse that was permitted him of the City not made with hands. He wrote of gold, and pearls, and crystal, and inexhaustible gems—yet these are but cold, lifeless things, and the list of them leaves us unmoved. With all the words at his command, with all the similes he could muster, nothing brings us so near a conception of that vision as his indication of the Divine understanding of poor human needs, and the promise of a fuller, richer life, freed from earthly disadvantages and with nothing to sever us from God. At a time like the present, when souls innumerable are bearing silent sorrows, and the whole earth is scarred with the iron hoof of the Prussian beast, how much more to us than all the radiance of topaz, jacinth, sapphire and amethyst is the assurance—“There shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain . . . and there shall be no more curse: but the Throne of God and of the Lamb shall be in it; and His servants shall serve Him: and they shall see His Face.” * * * * * At this season of new-bursting life we, too, catch a glimpse of the Beyond, and underlying all our delight in the material beauty of spring, is there not the still deeper joy arising from the promise it brings of greater beauty yet unfulfilled—beauty that transcends all earthly imaginings? The heart, whether conscious of it or not, assuredly finds comfort in the reminder of the Resurrection that Nature whispers wheresoever we may turn. It is no mere haphazard chance that Easter falls about the time of the blossoming of the bare blackthorn bough. * * * * *