60 Walks in New England 



Yet the gospel of God in Nature is published 

 abroad upon the mountain tops and down the 

 valleys, so far as the sun has shone to unlock the 

 voices of the waters and the birds, and to stir the 

 pulses of growth in the earth. Many a long and 

 dreary day of gray forbiddance we wait through, 

 with rebellion and discouragement, while the rains 

 prepare the ground and the north winds restrain 

 the buds from premature ventures. This is the 

 trial of our faith, which in the natural as the spirit 

 ual life worketh patience, that after these may 

 come experience and hope. The sequence is 

 always the same, the experience that came in past 

 years has no sort of effect in working patience in 

 the present. Indeed in all things is it not so ? It 

 is only by looking at the results of ages over the 

 whole human race that we can discern strongly 

 marked the value of experience : and that value, 

 as Paul the tent-maker said, is to develop hope. 

 Hope is the virtue and moral essence of spring 

 time, wherein nothing is as we would have it, and 

 yet to the observant eye the promises abound of 

 all the comforts and recompenses of summer. 



For the hardier fern fronds begin to uncoil and 

 the hepatica buds to prick through the mat of 

 forest leaves ; pussy-willow is tossing yellow pollen 

 on the air; the pale yellow butterflies, hatched 

 from last year s chrysalids, flit around these cat- 



