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I. CONSIDER ITS BEAUTY. Its shape and colour have always charmed the naturalists and the poets. Its beauty is its own, unique, artistic, Divine. This beauty suggests a higher beauty, as articulated in thought, in character, and life. The beauty of any life consists in that circlet of excellences called the fruit of the Spirit. That life is beautiful whose touch is healing, whose words are comforting, and whose influence is ennobling. Delicacy and sweetness belong to the highest music. The purer the soul, the more of delicacy and sweetness will be in it. A beautiful life carries the Christ heart. Not only is each snow crystal a thing of beauty, but its ways are ways of pleasantness. How graceful the curves and beautiful the lines of falling snowflakes! How gently they touch the earth! With feathery softness they weave about the trees and bushes the rarest lace. work, defying all the looms of the modern world. The snow is an artist unequalled in all the world. Its ways are full of grace and beauty. And beauty in the soul expresses itself in comely ways and winsome deeds. Spirituality will not only transfigure the countenance, but clothe the hands and feet with tenderness and grace.

II. CONSIDER THE PURITY OF THE SNOW. It is clean, white, and bright. But when it comes in contact with soot, its purity is defiled and its comeliness destroyed. What a pitiable sight is a soul defiled by the soot of sin! Snow undefiled is bewitchingly beautiful, but when tainted it is repulsive. The sight of doves and snow made David yearn for a pure heart.

III. CONSIDER THE VARIETY OF THE SNOWFLAKES. The snowflake has been examined by the microscope, and its revelations disclosed. Revelations of crowns studded with brilliants, of stars with expanding rays, of bridges with their abutments, and temples with their aisles and columns. "Scientific men have observed no less than a thousand different forms and shapes in snow crystals. While they shoot out stars like chiselled diamonds, they reveal endless variety. O what a God is ours! Everywhere in nature we see diversity. We stand amazed before the various types of mind. When we say the snow crystal is a picture of God's thought, we also are forced to believe it is expressed in a thousand different ways.

IV. CONSIDER THE USEFULNESS OF THE SNOW. It is a stimulant and fertiliser. Exhausted soils are enlivened and strengthened by the snow. Gases are captured by it, and they descend in showers to enrich and beautify the fields. Utility is a widespread law. Waste material is caught up and made to serve another purpose. See how the snow covers with its woollen mantle uncomely objects, and simultaneously protects those hidden potencies which under the vernal equinox unfold into bud and leaf, blossom, fruit. Beneath that white shroud the forces of spring are allying and marshalling, like soldiers on the field. Snow is a source of irrigation. In countries of great elevation, where the rains are only periodical, the inhabitants depend wholly on the snow to enrich and fertilise their fields. Viewing human life in the light of a Divine philosophy, we are forced to the conclusion that the winter of our trials is essential to soul-fruitage. Lowell saw in the first fall of snow the picture of a great sorrow, but a sorrow sweetened by the elements of hope. Reposing in the thought of a universal Father, and having assurances that winter will give place to spring and the melodies of birds, let us see in our trials and afflictions the means ordained for our entrance into glory. In Haydn's Creation the opening passage abounds in dissonances, a fit representation of chaos; but they soon give way to harmonies, choral and symphonic, that fill the soul with dreams of immeasurable glory and unearthly peace. And as in music, so in life, discords will end in harmonies, and sweet strains fill earth and sky. Death may seem to silence the harp of life, yet it is only as a pause in music that is preparatory to richer, sweeter, and fuller tones.

(J. B. Whitford.)

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KJV: At this also my heart trembleth, and is moved out of his place.

WEB: "Yes, at this my heart trembles, and is moved out of its place.