I. The first voice we hear speaks directly for God for the Divine existence and presence with us in His works. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." Nature says in herheart, and in every colour and feature of her flushing face, "There is a God, and He is here!"
II. The spring sings a clear song of the Divine faithfulness. Every spring is with God the keeping of covenant. He is, as it were, conducting an argument as to His own fidelity. The argument began when Noah came out of the ark, and it will end only at the judgment day.
III. Spring tells us of God's great goodness. It is not merely that He made a certain promise four thousand years ago, and must keep it. It is that He made the promise and loves to keep it. The chief joy of God's existence is goodness. The Divine occupation for ever is to give.
IV. The season tells us softly and melodiously of Divine tenderness. God takes this season of the year to tell us especially what tenderness, what delicacy, what colourings of exquisite beauty, there are in His nature. In Him are all the archetypes of beauty and all the fountains of tenderness; we may therefore commit ourselves and all we have to His keeping.
V. Spring has a voice of good cheer to all who are serving God faithfully and seeking good ends for themselves or for others, although as yet with little apparent result. For whendoes it come? Immediately after the winter. This tells us never to despair, never to despond. God needs the winter for souls to prepare for the spring; but He never forgets to bring the spring when the time has come.
VI. The spring has another voice a voice which sounds away into the far future, and foretells "the time of the restitution of all things." God, in renewing the face of the earth, seems to give us a visible picture and bright image of that blessed moral renovation which is coming in the fulness of the time.
VII. Spring gives announcement of the general resurrection from the dead.
VIII. Spring tells us that all our earthly time is the spring season of our existence.
A. Raleigh, Quiet Resting-places,p. 347.
I. Spring is an awakening. We say, The year awakes from its winter sleep; nature opens its eyes. So is the turning of the soul to God. It was a soul asleep; it is a soul awake. It has heard a voice from heaven, saying, "Awake, thou that sleepest;" and it is opening its eyes on a new world, a new time, new thoughts, new possibilities, a blessed new life. Christ is the Prince whose touch awakens the soul from its winter sleep. The joy of the awakening soul is a new creation, by the word of Him who went near to lost souls to bring them to God.
II. Spring is the manifestation of life. It is life which sings among the branches. It is life which prattles in the brook. It is life which clothes the trees with verdure, and the furrows with the tender shoots of corn. It is life which stirs in the converted soul. Conversion itself is but a manifestation of life. The soul has been born again, has been revived, quickened, raised from the dead to newness of life. The life we are invited to live is nothing other, is nothing lower, than God's own life. And this life has been given to us in Jesus Christ. In Him is the fountain of life.
III. Spring is also a gateway. It is the gateway to the harvest seedtime first, then harvest. At the gateway of the year, a promise; at the end, fulfilment. In conversion the gateway is opened for the soul to go in and seek its fruit from God. The harvest of a single soul can the worth of that be summed up?
A. Macleod, Days of Heaven upon Earth,p. 45.
I. The vast importance to us that this season should regularly and infallibly return in its time is obvious the instant it is mentioned. But it is not so instantly recollected how entirely we are at the mercy of the God of nature for its return.
II. Consider, next, this beautiful vernal season. What a gloomy and unpromising scene and season it rises out of! Might we not take instruction from this to correct the judgments we are prone to form of the Divine government?
III. How welcome are the early signs and precursory appearances of the spring! The operation of the Divine Spirit in renovating the human soul, effecting its conversion from the natural state, is sometimes displayed in this gentle and gradual manner, especially in youth.
IV. The next observation on the spring season is, How reluctantly the worse gives place to the better. It is too obvious to need pointing out how much resembling this there is in the moral state of things.
V. We may contemplate the lavish, boundless diffusion, riches, and variety of beauty in the spring. Reflect what a display is here of the boundless resources of the great Author. Such unlimited profusion may well assure us that He who can afford thus to lavish treasures so far beyond what is simply necessary can never fail of resources for all that is, or ever shall be, necessary.
VI. This pleasant season has always been regarded as obviously presenting an image of youthful life. The newness, liveliness, fair appearance, exuberance, of the vital principle, rapid growth such are the fair points of likeness. But there are also less pleasing circumstances of resemblance: the frailty and susceptibility, so peculiarly liable to fatal injury from inauspicious influences, blights, and diseases.
VII. To a person in the latter stages of life, if destitute of the sentiments and expectations of religion, this world of beauty must lose its captivations; it must even take a melancholy aspect, for what should strike him so directly and forcibly as the thought that he is soon to leave it? On the contrary, and by the same rule, this fair display of the Creator's works and resources will be gratifying the most and the latest to the soul animated with the love of God and the confidence of soon entering on a nobler scene.
J. Foster, Lectures,1st series, p. 128.
The breath of the Most High, mentioned in the text, is the Holy Spirit of the Father and the Son, the Third Person in the Trinity, proceeding from the Father and the Son to give life, and order, and harmony to His creatures, especially to make His reasonable creatures, angels and men, partakers of His unspeakable holiness.
I. If this parable of breath be well considered, it may seem to account for other like parables, so to call them, by which Holy Scripture teaches us to think of this our most holy Comforter. For instance, the Holy Spirit is sometimes compared to the wind, as in the discourse of our Saviour to Nicodemus. Thus the wind, when we hear or feel it, may remind us of the breath of Almighty God; and the effects of the wind the clouds which it brings over the earth, the moisture which the air takes up, the dews which descend, the rains which pour down, the springs which gush out, the waters which flow over the earth all these are in Scripture tokens of the same Spirit, showing Himself in gifts and sanctifying graces and communicating spiritual life to His people.
II. We are hereby taught to think of our own spiritual and hidden life, the life which we have concealed and laid up for us with Christ in God, the life which is altogether of faith, not at all of sight. Whatever puts us in mind of the Holy Spirit puts us in mind of that life, for He is "the Lord and Giver of life." The natural life of the first Adam was a gift of the Spirit, a token of His Divine presence, but much more so the spiritual life which Christians have by union with the second Adam.
III. Whatever else we do, then, or refrain from doing, let us at least endeavour to open our eyes and contemplate our real condition. The outward world indeed is to us the same as if we were no Christians; the breath of heaven is around us, the dew falls, the winds blow, the rain descends, the waters gush out, and all the other works of nature go on as if we had never been taken out of this wicked world and placed in the kingdom of God: but in reality we know that there is a meaning and power in all these common things which they can have to none but Christians. The good Spirit is around us on every side; He is within us; we are His temples: only let us so live, that we force Him not to depart from us at last.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. vii., p. 144.
References: Psalms 104:30. J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes,4th series, p. 52; J. Keble, Sermons from Ascension Day to Trinity Sunday,p. 164; A. J. Griffith, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xii., p. 8; H. Wonnacott, Ibid.,vol. xvii., p. 314; G. Avery, Ibid.,vol. xxvii., p. 269; R. D. B. Rawnsley, Ibid.,vol. xxx., p. 172; J. M. Neale, Sermons in Sackville College,vol. i., p. 382.