Editorial February 18, 1905 Issue

A Snowflake

John B. Willis

Muse on Nature with a poet's eye.—Campbell.

Standing at the window these days, and watching the snowflakes as they trustingly wander down through the air, or scurry by, with fleeter wing, when the winter wind cries Haste, how instinctively does inquiring thought mount heavenward! These dainty visitors disclose, "e'en to dullards," something of their lavish beauty, and he who notes their elaborate traceries, their exquisite finish, their purity, and their completeness, can but think deeply of the wisdom and power which, in aerial spaces near and far, is fashioning "the treasures of the snow." To him, as to all who feel the quickening appeal of nature's unflecked glories, there will come in such an hour impelling queries like those propounded to Job. "Who hath begotten the drops of dew?" "And the hoary frost of heaven, who hath gendered it?" These delicate jewels of snow, came they by chance? If not, then is He wondrously wise indeed who has chosen the storm-cloud for his studio, and who clogs our winter ways with the seemingly discarded trifles of His handiwork. And to think that so great an artist should be so near and we know so little of Him!

Solicited as we are, every hour and upon every hand, by multiplied and constantly varying appeals to our sense of the beautiful, it is impossible to think that they have no ministry and no meaning. A great artist would not thus display his thought to men, had he no message to communicate; nor would he, did he not recognize the possibility of an appreciative response.

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