Have you ever asked yourselves the question, "What do the spring flowers mean?" I have sometimes tried to fancy men gloomily riding to the city and sulkily pointing to the wealth of ephemeral beauty that has glorified the world, and demanding, "To what purpose is this waste?" There the flowers bloom, so fragile, so delicate, so short-lived; here to-day, and faded and gone to-morrow: to-day, a quivering point of beauty and fragrance, to-morrow touched by the withering finger of decay. And so "they bloom their hour and fade," and we say in wonder, "To what purpose was this waste?" What did it all mean? One sudden, genuine gush of sacred feeling; one burst of almost overpowering glory that shone steadfast for one brief hour and then faded into nothingness. Why lavish such wealth of colour and sweetness on fabrics so short-lived as the flowers of spring? Ah, why, indeed! Long years before man brake the first poor spikenard vessel of worship and adoring love at the feet of the Eternal, God poured His precious gifts of bloom and scent in bewildering profusion and prodigality upon the listless sons of earth. I have sometimes wondered whether man might not have gone on conceiving of the world as no more than so much food, and clothing, and shelter, if God had not startled him by this annual miracle of spring to ask the question, "To what purpose is this waste?" Just so soon as man found himself appealed to in the higher faculties and senses, did he begin to suspect himself above the brute; did he begin to discover beneath the form of things a gracious and bountiful Spirit, whose attitude to him found voice in these tender and winsome words of Nature's lips. Flowers "born to blush unseen and waste their sweetness on the desert air"--to what purpose are they? Surely, surely (as Mary's offering of sweet spikenard) they are God's approach to man, if only we would accept them as such. That is the inner meaning of this sudden gush of sacred feeling; that is the purpose of this "waste." We are reaching, then, this conclusion, that if love is the soul of life, you must expect no mere dead level of respect, but occasional inevitable outbursts of feeling, love's sweet surprises; times when the ordinary prescribed channels through which habitual affection flows are inadequate, and when there must be room for the sweet extravagances of love. The strong, deep love of a father may no doubt be felt in the steadfast care that provides food and clothing, and shelter, and all things necessary for his child. But, after all, home would not be home if there were not room for the rarer gifts, and the moments of sublime _abandon_, when all the love of the heart breaks forth in unconstrained demonstration of affection.