Religion, in truth, is too much thought of as “a star that dwells apart,” and is not one with our common life; not as the daisy by our hedgerows, or the rose in our gardens, as well as the light in our sky. It should not be a mere Sunday garb, to be wrapped up and put away in a drawer till Sunday comes again; if we understand and use it aright, it is our holiday dress, and our every-day dress too; and no need to fear lest we should shabby it, or wear it out. The world may look on it as an artificial restraint, a thing _to be put on_, and not our common apparel; as a light which has to be lit after a great deal of fuss in striking the match; or a moon only useful in the night of sorrow. But we should learn to make it a light ever at hand, and ever in use; there needs not that we should have to make a disturbance in order to procure it at any moment:-- “But close to us it gleams, Its soothing lustre streams Around our Home’s green walls, and on our Churchway path.” Only thoughts on Nature should really lead on to thoughts of God; else we do but look at the type, but are not reading the book. And I must here own to something of deeper meaning underlying these stray jottings on Winter days. For it struck me that, taking the reader’s arm, and walking out for a short stroll into the frosty air through the vista of November, I might show, perchance, from one or two points of view, the cheeriness and the calm, and the deep heart of peace, that underlies all even of the sadnesses that God sends. There is a bitter kernel to all the sorrows that we bring on ourselves--the kernel of remorse and unavailing regret. But there is a sweet kernel, believe me, to all the bitter-cased walnuts which fall, naturally, straight down from God’s trees. There is use, yea, also, beauty, in His dying fields and His shrouded earth; in His November, and in His Winter days. Let me gather a thought here and there that seem to come up, like Christmas roses, from the bare beds of Winter days. [Illustration] The life of man has its November time; a time of sheer, literal, moist decay; no romantic flush of Autumn woods, freaking them with a thousand fancies and poetic hues, and crowning death with an intense, fascinating, dreamy glory. The wild abundant Spring blossoms are over long ago; the achievements of Summer, sobered though they were, have passed away, and the tinge of pleasant dreamy melancholy that touched their first decay has died out; and the heart sinks as we look around us. “That time of life thou dost in him behold, When yellow leaves, or few or none, do hang Upon the boughs that shake against the cold, Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.”