Perpetual Spring-Time

‘His leaf also shall not wither.’ — Psalm i. 3.

THE leaf is the thing of the spring-time. It is the first thing that comes. How soon it loses its delightful freshness! How soon the sweet greenness passes into the darker shades of summer, and becomes sere and yellow in the older days of autumn! But my text speaks of a religious life whose leaf shall retain its freshness through all the changing days. The spring glory shall not wither as the years roll away. The beauties of the spring-time shall continue through all the seventy years. The characteristic charms of childhood shall never be destroyed. Life shall grow. It shall increase in knowledge. It shall broaden in experience. It shall open out large capacities and powers. But amid all the many and varied developments the beauties of childhood shall remain. ‘His leaf shall not wither, (perpefuaf §&$vin%itimt 121

What are the leaves which make childhood so beautiful? They are these — hope and sympathy. These are the fresh green adornments of the spring-time of life. How many of us lose them as life passes forward into its prime! There is so much that is hostile to them in the very atmosphere of the world we have to breathe. There is the terrible chill of sorrow and care. There is the repeated experience of failure. There is the growing sense of personal sin. There is the increasing knowledge of the world’s depravity. There is the ever-present might of the tempter. There is the cold mystery of death. All these pervade and possess us, and in their bitter blasts our spring leaves begin to wither. The ’ tender leaves of hope ’ begin to lose their freshness; the delicate leaves of sympathy begin to fade away. As men and women leave their youth and childhood behind, they are apt to decline in one of two ways — to become pessimists or formalists. A pessimist is a soul from whose branches the green leaf of hope has withered away. A formalist is a soul from whose branches the green leaf of sympathy has withered away. When these leaves fade and droop, the world becomes unspeakably poor. That is a wonderful word in the Apocalypse,

wherein we are told that ’ the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.’ It is full of beautiful suggestiveness. ‘The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.’ If ever the wounds and sorrows of the world are to be healed, it will have to be by the leaves of the tree of life, the green leaves of the spring-time, the leaves of hope and sympathy. It is the child-like disposition which is to heal the world’s broken heart.

And yet in what multitudes of lives the leaves have withered away! What crowds of men and women there are who have lost their hope and sympathy! How is it? This psalm affirms that it is all a matter of rootage. If some of my readers are not as hopeful as they used to be, not as sympathetic as they were wont to be, let them regard their decline as occasioned by bad or imperfect rootage. Here stands the word, proclaimed with unfaltering confidence, declaring that he who ‘delights in the law of his Lord,’ who lives in the mind of God, who meditates therein continually, shall be ’ like a tree planted by rivers of water: his leaf shall not wither.’ His leaves shall be as green in old age as in earliest youth. Circumstances shall not vanquish him. ‘He shall not fear when heat cometh, Amid all the fierce blasts which (perpefuaf §&pvin%ttimt 123

beat upon men in their prime, amid all the feverish haste and worry of these perspiring times, ’ his leaf shall be green, The drought of ingratitude shall not destroy the green leaf of his sympathy. The hot menaces of wickedness shall not corrupt the green leaf of his hope. ‘The trees of the Lord are full of sap, Rooted in the mind of God, our souls are c planted by rivers of water, and have resources at hand which can never be dried away.

Does this accord with common experience? Who are the men and women who keep the green leaf, who retain all the hope and sympathy of their early days? Where are the hope and sympathy of the world to be found? They are to be found on the tree of life, on souls that are rooted in Christ. It is there we find the spring green through all the changing years. It is there we find the enduring hope which is the source and impulse of all labours of reform — a hope that some day lust shall be unknown in the land, that drunkenness shall be no longer seen in our streets, and that all the owls and bats and dark night-birds of the human heart shall give place to the birds of the morning, the sweet singers of the brighter day. That is a great and inspiring hope. On some souls it has withered away, but it grows

green and fresh upon the souls of those who are rooted in their God. They carry the charms of their childhood on to the farthest day. ‘He shall be like a tree planted by rivers of water. His leaf also shall not wither, and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.’