"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
