Nature contributes something to the negro spirituals. Certain parts of nature are symbolic and serve to convey the picture of a vivid imagination as nothing else can do. The wonders of God and the terrors of the judgment must be seen in their relation and effect upon the forces of nature. Certain natural phenomena inspire awe and reverence; they add thus to the conception of his religious fear. Other references to nature convey, as they only could, pleasing features of life, hence of heaven and God. The negro refers to the "break o' day", the "settin' o' the sun", the "cool o' de evenin'" and each is very expressive. Morning and evening are common; he prays in the evening perhaps; in the morning he is going to heaven. The hillside, the mountain and mountain top, the valley, signify and typify the experiences of the Christian of the past and present; the heavenly breeze comes from the valley. The negro sees a paradise and a wilderness, a sunshine and a storm. But Dere's a tree in paradise, Christians call de tree ob life, and he faithfully believes "I specs to eat de fruit off'n dat tree". The earth trembles and is jarred; the sky is "shook." The river is "chilly an' cold, wide an' deep." The "rock" is better than the miry clay and "nebber mind de sun--see how she run." The stars, moon, and world fall, bleed, and burn. The thunder and the lightning are in the stormy cloud; Jesus may be, too. Satan is a snake in the grass and a hunting dog. Young lambs and "de sheep done know de road." The summer, spring, flowers and the field are mentioned. The negro wishes he had wings like Noah's dove. He is sometimes awed: I looked toward dat northern pole, I seed black clouds of fire roll. With his vivid imagination the negro feels much of the thought expressed in the folk-song. Thus sin and the sinner are intimately connected with life and death, religion and repentance. How skillfully the songs express the folk-feeling may better be inferred in the further analysis of the following _Types of Negro Spirituals._