Two friends wandered over the scarred war field. The grass was black with powder and with fire that had died out. Things that had been men were lying everywhere, and where once harvests had ripened in the sunshine was blood and wreckage. Overhead, smoke gathered into a pall, and the groans of the dying echoed where larks were wont to sing of summer. One of the friends, waving his hand over the scene, said in an agony of hopelessness, "This is the end of all things—all that we strove for and dreamed of, all that God meant to us, all that on which we built up our hopes of heaven. The devil, indeed, has won." But his friend, even amid the horror, was smiling. He had seen, bursting among the chaos, the petals of a flower—the promise of another springtime. "God's work is still going on," he said. (Story from a British daily paper.)

Whatever may be the destruction at noonday, and the terror that flies by night (Ps. 91: 5-6), the victory is not with Satan, nor with the forces of evil. God lives and reigns, and His work is still going on. He is moving in the hearts of men, going forth before them, to lead them to battle and victory for His truth and His kingdom."

As it is with the stricken earth, so 'tis with the souls of men." It may be necessary to the soul of man not to experience a lean time—"the winter of our discontent"—but that is left behind, and somehow the winter is transposed into the summertime of the soul. The winter of war and black desolation will pass, and there will come a new springtime in the world's life. Yes, the daffodils will dance again, and the flowers will bloom; there will be the sound of the larks singing of summer, and the dove of peace will find a resting-place on earth.

Let there be no question about it, God's work is still going on! Let us repeat this fact to ourselves until it becomes the background and the hope of all else—the basis of all that we strive for and dream of—the strength and inspiration of our efforts towards peace and the building of a better world--the signal beckoning us to the day when "God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations."