Full many a gem of purest ray serene
The dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear,
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its sweetness on the desert air.
Yes! These flowers of the snow, these gems of the winter storm, God has wrought out with as careful touch as the Victoria Regia or the twinkling lustre of Venus, the evening star.
^ Nothing is small or great in God's sight ; whatever He wills becomes great to us, however seemingly trifling, and if once the voice of conscience tells us that He requires anything of us, we have no right to measure its importance.^
And God works in the little as the great, A perfect work, and glorious over all,
Or in the stars that choir with joy elate, Or in the lichen spreading on the wall.^
' L-ife and Letters of G. J. Romanes, F.R.S., 249.
- Jean Nicolaus Grau. * Walter C. Smith, Eaban.
JOB xxxviii. 22 137
II.
The Qualities of Snow.
1. The first thing that strikes us about snow is its purity. The snow is white because the tiny crystals of which it is made reflect so much light. So much light is reflected by the snow that it often makes people snow-blind from excess of light.
^ What is the blackest thing in all the world ? Not jet, nor ebony ; not the raven's plume, nor the pupil of an Ethiop's eye. The blackest thing in all the world is said to be the blight at the heart of a flower when it is just stricken with death. So the blackest thing in the moral universe is sin at the centre of a soul, spreading corruption through the whole nature of man.
What is the reddest thing in the world ? Not the glow of the sunrise or of the sunset; not the heart of a ruby. The reddest thing in the world is the stream that flows from the fountain of life. Blood ; " the life is in the blood." The most vivid of all tragedies is that of Calvary. In all the moral uni- verse there is naught that so touches the heart of the race.
What is the whitest thing in the world ? The whitest thing in the world is the driven snow, for this is not superficial, but whiteness through and through. In all the moral universe there is nothing so glorious as the whiteness of holiness ; the fine linen, clean and white, which is the righteousness of saints.
What is the greatest thing in the world ? Love ! Ay. Not our love to God, but God's love to us, manifest in Jesus Christ. The love that holds the hyssop-branch of our frail faith and with it sprinkles the blood upon the soul defiled with the blackness of sin, until it becomes as white as the driven snow. This is the marvellous alchemy of grace. There is forgiveness with God.^
2. Snow too has a wonderful poicer. One flake is weak enough, but what can the avalanche and glacier not do ? Here is God's dynamite. In this apparent weakness is the hiding of His strength. The flake that falls into the cleft of the rock, with a few more of its feeble kinsfolk, shall take hold of the roots of the everlasting mountain and tear them asunder. This is God's way of working. He builds His temple without the sound of hammer or of axe. The sunshine, the atmosphere, the fallen rain — these
^ D. J. Burrell, The Spirit of the Age, 208.
138 THE TREASURIES OF THE SNOW
are His calm potencies. You trample the snowflakes under foot, the children play with them ; yet they have within them the possibility of great convulsion. Here are magazines of power. Men work amid demonstration, the shouting of ten thousand voices, the booming of heavy artillery. God's power is quiet, constant, persistent, infinite, everywhere. So ubiquitous is His omnipotence that men have sometimes taken Force to be their god. When it was desired to blow a ledge of rocks out of New York harbour there were years of preparation — digging of mines, placing of charges, laying of fuses ; then the city stood listening ; the explosion, the waterspout, and it was done. God rides through the universe in His chariot of Almightiness and its ponderous wheels move as silently as the waving of a butterfly's wings.
^ A learned physicist has declared that to produce from the vapour of water a quantity of snowflakes which a child could carry would demand energy competent to gather up the shattered blocks of the largest stone avalanche of the Alps, and pitch them twice the height from which they fell. If a single baby handful require such force for its creation, what power must have been put forth to produce the thick blanketing of snow that lies upon the northland, from mountain-top to valley, during the winter season ? ^
^ Writing to his sister in England from Fort Vermilion, Bishop Bompas said : " In your letter I am amused at your regret that you cannot promise me snow and ice in heaven. All I can say is, let us be thankful for it here while we have it, and say, ' Praise Him, snow and vapours.' Depend on it there would be a gap in the display in the wonders of God in Nature if this country were left out. Nowhere in Nature is God's power more forcibly shown, as you will find explained in Job xxxvii. and Psalm cxlvii."^