Bring her flowers—sweet, beautiful flowers.
They are meet companions for her solitude. Gather
blossoms from the whitening apple-bough, violets from
the meadow, dandelions from the wayside. She will
fold them more tenderly to her bosom than the rarest
plants, for their faces are old, familiar ones, and
she imagines they wear a look of pity.
But there are more precious things than human sympathy;
there are sweeter flowers than violets or roses.
They bloom on the prayer-consecrated mountains of
Judea, amid the ancient olives of Gethsemane, along
the Dolorous Way trodden by the Man of Sorrows, beneath
the shadows of the Cross, and around the borrowed Sepulchre.
Oh, gather them with no sparing hand: there are
enough for you and her—enough for every
sorrowing heart in the universe. Take them to
the poor sufferer. Their fragrance will make the
lonely chamber like a garden of spices; the tearful
eyes will turn heavenward, and the pale lips—tremulous
with contrition will whisper, “Father; forgive
me, for I knew not what I did when I murmured at thy
dealings.” Then a solemn hush will follow—a
holy twilight of the soul,—as if the sorrows
of earth were blending with the joys of heaven, the
pains of mortality with the blessedness of the angelic
bards. Oh, these are the flowers for a sickroom!
How dreary and desolate does it seem without them!
The strong and healthy may live on, careless and irreligious,
but what would become of the poor, grief-stricken,
despairing Soul if she could not repose quietly in
the bosom her Beloved, and say with child-like simplicity,
morning and evening, "Our Father who art in heaven!"
SONGS OF HOPE
“HE GIVETH SONGS IN THE NIGHT.”
Gloriously the sun sinks behind the western hills.
Half the sky seems on fire, and the other half wreathed
with light fantastic clouds. All nature is beautiful—can
I be sad? Nay; away with sadness, away with sorrow;
I will forget everything my strangeness, my blasted
hopes, and seek for happiness where happiness only
is to be found, in the sacred Oracles of God.—July
14, 1852.
God sometimes speaks in earthquake and
in storm,
But oftener in the “still small
voice” of love:
He urges men as loving fathers plead.
God is our Father, yet we shun
his face
And hide ourselves when at the cool of
day
He walketh in the garden!
How sweet the thought that God, our heavenly Father,
is omniscient. Our griefs are not hidden from
him. He knows our hearts, and with all this knowledge
he is good—so tender, so pitiful! Oh,
to love him as he deserves! Oh, for a thousand
tongues to sing his praises! Tell the sick, tell
the sorrowing, tell the broken-hearted of this God;
tell the wretched, the guilty, the wayward prodigal
of this gracious Father.
