Oh, for a Fresh Vision of Eternal Springtime

"For you will go out with joy and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands.”

Isaiah 55:12

Gone were but the Winter;

Come were but the Spring,

I would go to a covert

Where the birds sing;

Where in the whitehorn

Singeth the thrush,

And a robin sings

In a holly-bush.

Full of sweet scents,

And whispering air

Which sayeth softly:

“We spread no snare;

“Here dwell in safety,

Here dwell alone,

With a clear stream

And a mossy stone.

“Here the sun shineth

Most shadily;

Here is heard an echo

Of the far sea,

Though far off it be.”

~CHRISTINA ROSSETTI

Holiness appeared to me to be of a sweet, pleasant, calm nature.  It seemed to me…that it made the soul like a field or garden of God, with all manner of pleasant flowers—all pleasant, delightful and undisturbed; enjoying a sweet calm, and the gently vivifying beams of the sun.

The souls of a true Christian appeared like such a little white flower as we see in the spring of the year—low and humble on the ground—opening its bosom to receive the pleasant beams of the sun’s glory—rejoicing, as it were, in a calm rapture—diffusing around a sweet fragrancy.

         Once I rode out into the woods for my health.  Having alighted from my horse in a retired place as my manner commonly had been, to walk for divine contemplation and prayer, I had a view—that was for me extraordinary—of the glory of the Son of God. As near as I can judge, this continued about an hour; and kept me the greater part of the time in a flood of tears and weeping aloud. I felt an ardency of soul to be—what I know not otherwise how to express—empted and annihilated; to love Him with a holy and pure love; to serve and follow Him; to be perfectly sanctified, and made pure with a divine and heavenly purity.

~JONATHAN EDWARDS