humbly and reverently, He will take you out of that atmosphere of darkness and gloom and lift you into an atmosphere full of sunshine and hope. Perhaps that transformation was never more splendidly described than by David when he says: "I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praises unto our God."

APPEAL OF THE SKY

"God called the firmament heaven."-Gen. 1: 8.

T

HE sky is treated with most beautiful poetic imagery in the Bible. In the Book of Proverbs, where wisdom speaks as tho incarnated, we hear her saying: "When he prepared the heavens, I was there: When he set a compass upon the face of the depth: When he established the clouds above." Isaiah, speaking of the sky as part of God's creation which He made and can again destroy, says: "And all the host of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heavens shall be rolled together as a scroll: and all their host shall fall down, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a falling fig from the fig tree." And again, in his description of the might and glory of God, Isaiah says: "It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in." In the Book of Job,

also: "Is not God in the heights of heaven? And behold the height of the stars how And thou sayest, how

high they are! doth God know? Can he judge through the dark cloud? Thick clouds are a covering to him, that he seeth not; and he walketh in the circuit of heaven." Again, the writer of the same book, contrasting man's littleness with God's greatness, inquires: "Hast thou with him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten lookingglass?" And the Psalmist, calling on all things to praise God, exclaims: "Praise ye him, sun and moon: Praise him, all ye stars of light. Praise him, ye heaven of heavens, and ye waters that be above the heavens."

This poetical language has sometimes been criticized as not being scientifically correct, but that is a very cheap criticism. It is not scientifically correct to say there is a "sunrise," or that we have seen a "sunset," but every scientific man in the world uses these phrases. There are many things in the world in description of which poetry is more correct than science.

The moral and spiritual teaching of the

sky should be very helpful. It is so aburdant that one can only glance at some of the supreme messages it is always bringing to

us.

I

The sky suggests the soul's true direction -it is upward. Every man who is true to himself, and who seeks the proper development of his body and mind and heart, aspires constantly to higher things. The very

phrase "higher things," which I used quite unconsciously, suggests the great fact that we are always using the idea of altitude to denote the difference between good and evil. All the figures, all the adjectives which describe that which is pure and righteous and noble and heroic, are those that indicate altitude. How constantly we are saying, "exalted worth," or "high resolve," or "lofty ambitions," or "elevated purposes, or "eminent purity," or "sublime character." It is impossible to think of things which are beautiful and noble and glorious without this idea of exaltation; something lifted upward toward the sky. On the other

hand, we never speak of evil in that way. If a thing is mean and ugly and wicked, we think of it as beneath. We speak of a very mean, depraved person as "beneath contempt,” and we are constantly using expressions of that sort, such as "low instincts," or "degraded character," or "groveling habits." And how frequently in speaking of some man who has been guilty of conduct quite unworthy of his reputation and ordinary life, we say of it, "Such an act was beneath him; he should not have stooped so low as to do it."

From these illustrations it is evident that the sky is a perpetual appeal to us, calling man upward, showing that he was not made to grovel in the dirt, but to soar aloft in his thoughts and ambitions toward heaven.

II

The sky lifts our thoughts to God. Everything that comes from the sky is pure and wholesome. The floods of sunshine that come with their illuminating beams, the white snow that comes as a mantle of righteousness, the rain that has been filtered and