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God has made the winter. It now claims our thought, and has as much happiness as gloom. Week by week we have watched decay doing its work on earth. The harvest was gathered in and the fruits of the earth, and then came the wind and the rain to gather the harvest of the leaves and flowers. And gradually all around winter has deepened, and there is no light in the sun nor heat in the bones of the earth. We strive to create joy and brightness at home to balance the mourning of the world. By the fireside when the light is low, we re-create the year, and recall its varied changes. And we see the image of what is when the winter of life comes chill on us in age. We had our spring and summer, and our days were warm with glowing love and happy friendship. Now these things have grown cold around us. Love remains, but the heart does not beat as heretofore. And in the dim firelight, as We sit silently, it is not living presences that haunt the room, but the ghosts of men and women long loved, long dead, and unforgotten. It is winter, not Summer. We had our harvest time, but we can only look back upon it. Such is our retrospect in the first days of gloom. What kind of prospect have we then? It also is imaged in the world of winter. The earth after the frost is bound in iron bands. The waters of the land are hushed, frost has chained their rippling light. The flowers, the trees, the birds and beasts, all suffer in their own way. The patient earth is dead; over its dark face the pitying heaven draws the winding sheet of snow, and the grey and bitter fog hangs over it the funeral pall. It is death we see, and death we look forward to, and death only in this first hour of wretchedness. And it is well to look straight into the gloomy eyes of the worst fate, and look into it however hard it be, without fear, and know it to its depths. For only so can we wring out of it its secret, and then, as is our way, when we have once seen the worst, we invent the better. We find we can rise above the evil and despise it, and we think we have power to create the good. And we do so by the aid of memories of the past. As the winter drives us to our homes and to life indoors, so the winter of age drives a man home to himself, and our life becomes an inner life. But our heart's happiness will depend on how we have lived our past life, if it has been truly and lovingly human, if it has been kind, and true, and good. For on that all will depend whether we can summon any and what guests to our hearts. And not only the memory of past love but the sweetness of love present, will make glad the winter of age. Love is not lost, nor beauty, nor all we mixed with love. Age may possess both a noble and a beautiful life. Only you must make ready for it. Keep your soul healthy, your heart and brain awake to noble thoughts. And there is far more than death in winter. See the life hidden away in every root, in every seed. Not death but life in preparation — hidden, but in slow activity, is what we see.:Faith arises for ourselves, and we forget the winter of age to realize the enchanted youth of the life to come. "It was the winter wild," when our Saviour came at His first advent, as if to tell us of the immortal spring that lies hidden in the winter of humanity. By His eternal life in us we conquer the decay of winter and the frost of death.

(Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.)

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KJV: Thou hast set all the borders of the earth: thou hast made summer and winter.

WEB: You have set all the boundaries of the earth. You have made summer and winter.