When the warm rains succeed winter’s driving downpours, and the young grass begins to mantle the meadowswith tender green, is the time, of all the year, to be out of doorsAll the woodsy places are cool and dripping and dim and delicious. A month later they will be not less beautiful, perhaps, but less approachable. The things of Nature grow sophisticated as the season advances. In the early springtime they are frank and confiding, and willingly tell the secrets of their growth to him who asksThey have time, in these first beginnings of things, for friendly sociability: to show their tiny roots and bulbs, and let us study the delicate, gracious unfoldings of leaf and bud and blossom. In a few weeks they will all be too busy, keeping up with the season’s swift march, to stop and visit with the lovingest of human friends.
Do we forget, from springtime to springtime, how lovely will be the year’s awakening? Each winter of our discontent I think that I remember, as my longing imagination looks forward, the tender charm of the springtime wonder, yet with each recurring year it comes to me as a new and unknown joy
The whole world seems to welcome the new year-child. Even before the first growths appear there is a hushed awareness throughout Nature that moves the heart to thankfulness and remembered expectationThe hope of springtime comes without stint, and without fail, bringing each one of us the message his heart is prepared to receive, and quickening our purest, least sordid impulses. The best that is in us seems possible, in the springtime. Who of us does not then dream that this best will yet gain strength to withstand the heat and drouth of summer’s fierce searching? We turn to Mother Nature like children who long to be good. The worshipping instinct that lies deep within each soul goes out to her, vesting her in that personality which we have long since pronounced unthinkable when applied to God. There is a suggestion in the situation that is not without a certain saving humor to relieve it from grotesqueness. We are not far from a personal god when we send our souls out in loving contemplation of personified Nature, yet we still go on asking if God is, and if He is Truth. Whom do we ask, and why does the question rise? If God is Truth, He must be universal; and to be perceived by each soul for himselfIf, then, I perceive him not, either He is not the truth or else I am simpleand sincere in desiring the truth. If He is not the truth, do I then desire human persuasion that He is? Or, if I am not simple and sincere, who can make me so?