Perhaps there is not anywhere a more graphic picture of multiplied human affliction than is given in the story of Job. No clear understanding of the salutary influence of suffering seems to have come to Job to comfort him in his sorrows until Elihu, the God-inspired man, gently turns Job's thought from its self-centeredness to a contemplation of God's power as manifest in nature. "Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of him which is perfect in knowledge? How thy garments are warm, when he quieteth the earth by the south wind?" These and numerous other questions Elihu asks Job to consider, until Job has recognized his mistake, and has been prepared to hear God speak to him "out of the whirlwind" of accumulated doubts and fears. In this clear revelation of Truth, Job is comforted, healed, and abundantly blessed.
The sunshine that follows the rain, the bow that is set in the cloud, the south wind that quiets the earth with warmth and melting tenderness, are just as potent with heavenly meanings to-day as they were in the days of Job. New every year a springtime comes and infolds the earth in a mantle of fresh inspiration, unveiling new beauties, and showing forth enlarged opportunities. Are we living so close to God, that, like Elihu, we may feel the delicious comfort, the exquisite grace of nature's art, and know as did he that it is Love drawing us nearer to the true understanding of God and man? Does nature's rejoicing over the blossoming forth of the spring cause us to pause in the busy day and just be glad we are learning in quiet ways that "now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is"?
Expressing her beauteous "penchant" in "Voices of Spring" (Miscellaneous Writings, p. 329), Mrs. Eddy asks, "What is the anthem of human life?" In the paragraph which follows she implies an answer when she sets forth that: "Human hope and faith should join in nature's grand harmony, and if on minor key, make music in the heart. And man, more friendly, should call his race as gently to the springtide of Christ's dear love." This is all there is to which we may call our fellow men,—the Christ-love and Christ-understanding,—and it is all our troubled race needs to bring it surcease from restlessness and fear. It is the south wind of the spirit, quieting, comforting, healing. To reveal this infinite love and bring it closer to human apprehension was the mission of our Master. That it could not be understood through the physical senses he made plain to Nicodemus, when he said by way of illustration, "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit." This new birth is the transformation of mortal thought from a material to a spiritual basis of thinking and living, thereby changing things into thoughts which unfold the law of cause and effect in the spiritual universe. When this law is understood and demonstrated, it reverses human theories, breaks the chain of so-called material causation binding mankind to sin, sickness, and death, and makes immortality a factor of daily living, rather than a theory about some future existence. It gives proof of the universality of divine Love's reflection through man's love for his brother man and in unselfish effort to advance the race in the knowledge of God's protecting care over all His vast universe of created ideas.
