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Looking out of our window one morning we saw the earth robed in a white mantle; for in a few short bourn the earth had been covered to a considerable depth with snow. We looked out again in a few hours and saw the fields as green as ever, and the ploughed fields as bare as if no single flake had fallen. It is no uncommon thing for a heavy fall of snow to be followed by a rapid thaw. These interesting changes are wrought by God, not only with a purpose toward the outward world, but with some design toward the spiritual realm.

I. THE OPERATIONS OF NATURE.

1. The directness of the Lord's work. When we can look upon every hailstone as God's hail, and upon every floating fragment of ice as His ice, how precious the watery diamonds become! When we feel the cold nipping our limbs and penetrating through every garment, it somewhat consoles us, and makes us willing to endure its hardness, when we remember that it is His cold. When the thaw comes, see how the text speaks of it — "He sendeth out His Word." He does not leave it to certain supposed independent forces of nature, but, like a king, "He sendeth out His Word and melteth them: He causeth His wind to blow." He has a special property in every wind; whether it comes from the north to freeze, or from the south to melt, it is His wind.

2. The ease of Divine working. A man puts his hand into a wool-pack and throws out the wool; God giveth snow as easily as that: "He giveth snow like wool." A man takes up a handful of ashes, and throws them into the air, so that they fall around: "He scattereth the hoar-frost like ashes." Rime and snow are marvels of nature: those who have observed the extraordinary beauty of the ice-crystals have been enraptured, and yet they are easily formed by the Lord. "He casteth forth His ice like morsels" — just as easily as we east crumbs of bread outside the window to the robins during the wintry days.

3. The variety of the Divine operations in nature. When the Lord is at work with frost as His tool He creates snow, a wonderful production, every crystal being a marvel of art; but then He is not content with snow — from the same water He makes another form of beauty which we call hoar-frost, and yet a third lustrous sparkling substance, namely glittering ice; and all these by the one agency of cold.

4. Consider the works of God in nature in their swiftness. It was thought a wonderful thing in the days of Ahasuerus when letters were sent out by post upon swift dromedaries — it was a new invention when one man upon a dromedary travelled till the animal's speed began to fail, and then passed the mail bags to the next messenger, who, similarly mounted, bore them onward in hot haste. In our country we thought we had arrived at the age of miracles when the axles of stage coaches glowed with speed, but now that the telegraph is at work we dream of stretching out our hands into infinity; but what is all the rapidity of anything we can ever attain to compared with the rapidity of God's operations?

5. Consider the goodness of God in all the operations of nature and providence.

(1) Think of that goodness negatively. "Who can stand before His cold?" You cannot help thinking of the poor in a hard winter — only a hard heart can forget them when you see the snow lying deep. But suppose that snow continued to fall! What is there to hinder it? The same God who sends us snow for one day could do the like for fifty days if He pleased. Why not? And when the frost pinches us so severely, why should it not be continued month after month? We can only thank the goodness which does not send "His cold" to such an extent that our spirits expire.

(2) Not only negatively, but positively there is mercy in the snow. Is not that a suggestive metaphor? "He giveth snow like wool." The snow is said to warm the earth; it protects those little plants which have just begun be peep above ground, and might otherwise be frost-bitten: as with a garment of down the snow protects them from the extreme severity of cold.

II. THOSE OPERATIONS OF GRACE OF WHICH FROST AND THAW ARE THE OUTWARD SYMBOLS.

1. There is a period with God's own people when He comes to deal with them with the frost of the law. The law is to the soul as the cutting north wind. Faith can see love in it, but the carnal eye of sense cannot. It is a cold, terrible, comfortless blast. This cold makes the sinner feel how ragged his garments are. He could strut about when it was summer weather with him, and think his rags right royal robes, but now the cold frost finds out every rent in his garment, and in the hands of the terrible law he shivers like the leaves upon the aspen. The north wind of judgment searches the man through and through.

2. When the Lord has wrought by the frost of the law, He sends the thaw of the Gospel; and when the south wind blows from the quarter called "promise," bringing precious remembrances of God's fatherly pity and tender lovingkindness, then straightway the heart begins to soften, and a sense of blood-bought pardon soon dissolves the heart of stone; the eyes fill with tears, the heart dissolves in tenderness, rivers of pleasure flow freely, and buds of hope open in the cheerful air. Oh, happy day! Miriam's joy at the Red Sea, when she led forth the damsels, exclaiming, "Sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously!" was all outdone in our case. Our strain was more jubilant, our notes more full of joy, and our hearts more exulting when we sang, "He is my God, and I will extol Him; He is my father's God, and I will exalt Him." Praise ye the Lord, my brethren, and my sisters, as ye recollect that "He sent His Word, and melted all their fears: He caused His wind to blow, and made the waters of your joy to flow, and our soul was saved in film."

( C. H. Spurgeon)

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KJV: He giveth snow like wool: he scattereth the hoarfrost like ashes.

WEB: He gives snow like wool, and scatters frost like ashes.