The spring and summer have taught me afresh that there is in our lives a Power that is not ourselves. It is imminent in us and in all things, yet transcends all. "Change and decay in all around we see," and still there is One who changes not; He "_from_ everlasting _to_ everlasting is God." He is the fountain of eternal life that no drought can touch. He heals the broken tree and the broken heart. He clothes the desolate fields of war with the golden corn of peace, and in the trenches that war has scored across the souls of men, he plants the rich poppies of memory. He drives away the icy oppression of winter with the breath or spring, and in His mercy assuages "the grief that saps the mind for those that here we see no more." He who turns rain-mists into rainbows and brings out of mud scarlet poppies and white-petaled daisies without a speck of dirt upon them, is at work in human life. Out of mud He has formed the poppy and out of the dust the body of man. Who then can set Him limits when He works in the finer material of man’s soul? Eye hath not seen nor heart conceived the beauty that will come forth when His workmanship is complete. "If God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith" who were made for immortality? His ways are past finding out, but they are good. He puts out the sun but brings forth millions of stars in its stead. At His call they come flocking forth as doves to their windows. He blinds Milton but brings into his soul a flood of light such as never shone on sea or land, and in its rays he sees Paradise, lost and regained. He shuts Bunyan in a noisome prison, and closes against him the door to his beloved Bedford, but He opens to him a magic window that looks on heaven, and the years pass swiftly as he watches the progress of the pilgrims towards the Celestial City. In the mud that has been stained and even saturated with the life-blood of our soldiers, He has made poppies to spring to loveliness. It is a parable He is speaking to us, that the heart of man may feel and believe that which it is beyond the power of the mind to grasp, or the tongue to explain.