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Each succeeding season comes to the world with a new and peculiar influence. Spring has a different language from winter. She stirs different forces within the human frame. She evokes different feelings within the human heart. She hath a gladsome voice, and her step is altogether light and joyous. And men change under her influence; then they will come to bear the impress of summer's hand, and then again grow sad and contemplative with autumn. And the Christian lives in this world and under these varying influences; and they, like all the multiform forces which he feels, should prove religious, — favouring breezes to swell the sails of his Christian life; drawing powers to draw towards happiness and peace, and purity and God. Hence Christ's exhortation to His Church in the text.

I. He calls unto her through the BEAUTY OF THE SPRING-TIME. His exhortation hath for its emphasis, or one of its most beautiful settings, the blossoming flowers. "Arise, come away, for the flowers appear on the earth." Scattered throughout the earth; blooming now upon mountain top, and now in deepest gorge; now lifting up its tiny form from out the crevasses of the ice-fields, and now painting itself in gorgeous hues beneath a tropical sun; now blooming in lonely desert, where no eye save that of God may note its beauty, and now upon the beaten thoroughfare lifting up its spiritual face beneath the rude gaze of the passers-by; now, in rich profusion, heaped upon the casket of death until its ghastliness is well-nigh abolished, and, now, in wreaths of orange and snow, lending the last charm and grace to animated beauty, — the flower, wherever it blooms, is a smile of God lingering upon the earth; the most delicate earthly blossoming of that spirit of beauty which God has breathed into all the works of His hand. And spring is full of flowers. She stretches forth her wand over the earth, and forthwith they start up in innumerable ranks of loveliness. She calls with her voice, and they come trooping in beautiful array to her side. She cries out that the winter is gone, and assured of safety, as an angel ambuscade, they lift up their smiling faces over all the earth. She breathes with the breath of the south wind over field and garden, and at once they rise up from their wintry graves, their spirits of life laden with ten thousand odours. And so God calls unto men through the voice of the spring; for this is the voice of flowers and of beauty. With the beauty which is external He would call unto that which belongs to the soul, and which is the beauty of holiness. As, then, during the coming days, and amid the opening glories of the spring-time, your Nature shall feel the softening influence, and flow out in warmer and swifter currents towards the lovely, the beautiful, and the good, know that all this is the voice of your Saviour speaking unto you, and saying, "Arise, come away." Open your heart to the gentle and purifying influences which, at this season of the year, fill the air; for they will do you good and not evil. They will have for you a voice from God speaking of the beauty which is unfading, — the beauty of holiness, which blossoms perennially in the world above.

II. The call of the Saviour is through the JOY OF THE SPRINGTIME. There is joy in the vernal season as well as beauty; and this joy is made the organ of the Saviour's call: "The time of the singing of birds is come. Arise, my love, and come away." As the Creator of all things, He is the Author of all the joy which fills the world, and which meets in a royal crown upon the head of spring. Birds sing because He, the Good One, has created them so full of joy that they cannot help but sing. The waters laugh in the sunshine, and join in merry music as they flow, because lie has made the sun so bright and water so clear. Children disport themselves in the streets, and fill the air with their merry voices, because children are fresh from God, — freshly filled with joy at an infinite fountain. God is the joy of this world. Forget not the joy-fountain, while you bathe yourself in the joy-streams! While gladness streams into your heart, let grateful love flow out from it and upward. And, oh! if perchance you are a dissonant, jarring being within this world of joy and gladness; if the waves of the spring-time joy, as they roll over this world, reach not your dry and thirsty and unhappy heart, — still is the voice of the Saviour unto you through all this unshared flood, which, Tantalus like, you reach after, but may not drink. Listen to His words, "Arise, come away." God has the joy which you need also, — enough for all your cravings, and to fill you too. Pray Him that by His renewing Spirit He would create spring-time within your soul, and fill you with this joy of His which rolls and flows throughout His Being and throughout His realm.

III. The call of the text is unto men through THE FRUITFUL LIFE OF THE SPRING. The winter has been the night of Nature, and with spring comes the morning, in which, as in a gradually awakening city, begins the hum of life, swelling louder and louder into the full activity of midday. Spring is life from the dead; resurrection, reanimation, restoration. And God speaks through it as such, proclaiming Himself as the Life-giver, and through it He also calls for life within His followers. Some of you, it may be, have been hibernating in the Church: you have not been dead, but torpid; hoping little, feeling little, doing little. Come away; leave your winter-quarters; throw off their imprisonment, their constraint, their dull routine. Forth into the field where your Saviour calls; go, to ramble with Him through the flowery fields and beside the still waters. Drink of the fulness of a spiritual spring-time. Dare to hope more, to attempt more, to enjoy more. Let all the fulness of your being flow out towards the Saviour, who loves you with an everlasting love.

(S. S. Mitchell, D. D.)

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KJV: My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away.

WEB: My beloved spoke, and said to me, "Rise up, my love, my beautiful one, and come away.