^ In the Psalms there is an exquisite hint of a snowfall through the perfect stillness, and a magnificent storm-piece into which the snow comes with other elements. In the Proverbs, again, there is a passage, where the writer says, " As the cold of snow in the time of harvest, so a faithful servant refreshes the soul of his master." Isaiah has a noble image of the truth falling softly on the heart, as the snow falls softly on the earth. There is not a word about the snow from the lips of the Saviour ; and it is only noticed at all in the New Testament in a secondary sense, — used as a comparison, never as an experience.^
2. In this great poem of Job, the snow is given a place among the wonders of the world, and ranked with the morning stars and the sea and the lightnings and leviathan and death. It
^ R. Collyer, Nature and Life, 46,
132 THE TREASURIES OF THE SNOW
is one of the things over which Job is bidden to meditate in his heart, in order to restore his shaken faith in God's greatness and goodness and mercy. It is taken as one of the thousand revelations that are open to all men of the Divine Power that lives and moves through all the universe and finds nothing too great for its mighty guidance, nothing too small for its con- stant care.
Come see the north wind's masonry.
Out of an unseen quarry evermore
Furnished with tile, the fierce artificer
Curves with white bastions with projected roof
Eound every windward stake, or tree, or door.
Speeding, the myriad-handed, his wild work
So fanciful, so savage, nought cares he
For number or proportion. Mockingly,
On coop or kennel he hangs Parian wreaths;
A swan-like form invests the hidden thorn ;
Fills up the farmer's lane from wall to wall,
Maugre the farmer's sighs ; and at the gate
A tapering turret overtops the work.
And when his hours are numbered, and the world
Is all his own, retiring, as he were not.
Leaves, when the sun appears, astonished Art
To mimic in slow structures, stone by stone,
Built in an age, the mad wind's night-work,
The frolic architecture of the snow.^
3. In the Authorized Version the translation is " the treasures of the snow." The Hebrew word means treasuries or magazines. Snow and hail, says A. B. Davidson, are represented as having been created and laid up in great storehouses in the heavens or above them, from which God draws them forth for the moral ends of His government. But it will not be necessary to insist upon the difference between the two words. The treasures of the snow are in its treasuries.
We shall endeavour to enter the treasuries by consider- ing—
I. The Formation of Snow. II. The Qualities of Snow. III. The Use of Snow.
^ Emerson, "The Snow-Storin."
JOB XXXVIII. 22 133
I.
The Formation of Snow.
1. Snow is no more than a form of water. It is simply the vapour of water in a crystallized form. Indeed, the term "crystal" found in most of the European languages is derived from the Greek word crystallos, meaning ice or frozen water, and was subsequently transferred to pure transparent stones cut into seals, which, as was thought, were produced only in the extreme cold of lofty passes of the Alps. The atmosphere is charged with watery vapour to an immense extent, and when the temperature is sufficiently low to freeze this moisture, snow is formed. When produced in calm air, the icy particles build themselves into beautiful stellar shapes, each star possessing six rays.
Lieutenant Maury made an estimate based upon the average annual rainfall, which is sufficient to cover the earth to the depth of five feet, that this atmospheric ocean contains an amount of water equal to a lake sixteen feet deep, three thousand miles broad, and twenty-four thousand miles long. From this reservoir of moisture mist and dew are continually precipitated, and from the same storehouse issue forth also hail, snow, and rain. The challenge made to Job, "Hast thou seen the treasuries of the hail?" was perhaps unanswerable in the days of the patriarch. In a measure it is still unanswered; but modern investigations in meteorology have enabled us to draw aside the cloud-curtain, peep into Nature's laboratory, and obtain a reasonably clear mental insight of the formation of snow.
^ In the range of inorganic nature, I doubt if any object can be found more perfectly beautiful than a fresh, deep snowdrift, seen under warm light. Its curves are of inconceivable perfection and changef ulness ; its surface and transparency alike exquisite ; its light and shade of inexhaustible variety and inimitable finish, the shadows sharp, pale, and of heavenly colour, the reflected lights intense and multitudinous and mingled with the sweet occurrences of transmitted light. No mortal hand can approach the majesty or loveliness of it.^
^ Euskin, Modern Painters ( Works, iii. 445).
134 THE TREASURIES OF THE SNOW
2. There is a beauty and mathematical exactness in the structure of crystals that bespeak intelligence. The whirling snowstorm, instead of being, as it seems at the first glance, a bewildering chaos, is a most wonderfully ordered cosmos. If ever anything seems a matter of mere chance it is the fluttering down of a snowflake. And yet we know it to be a fact that no flake falls save in accordance with the same eternal laws which govern the rush of suns through the vast realms of space — that not one hastens or loiters but as the steady forces guide it — that each one is poised to its resting-place as surely as if angel hands had borne it down from heaven. And that fact helps us to realize what we ai'e learning more surely every day, that there is no such thing as chance anywhere, not even in the riot of the storm ; tliat chance, when you come to look into it, always resolves itself into unknown depths of law, that law is only a human phrase for the working of the Divine Wisdom and Power, and that so there is oneness everywhere .from the very centre to the outmost rim of the universe ; not an atom escapes from the all-ruling hand ; God is in all things, and God is one.