Kingdom of Christ Advancing – Charles Spurgeon

WALK in your gardens today, when all the fruit trees are opening their blossoms and pouring forth their perfumes on the air, and the birds are at the highest point of song, and you will think, “Yes, it has surely come, spring smiles on us after all.” The cold, blustering winds and the cold, dark nights could not prevent it: the spring blossoms are on every bough. Here is spring, and in its right hand it holds a faithful promise of the coming summer. We cannot say that in any one day in all these last months spring seemed to make any great advance; you cannot put your finger upon a certain day or hour, and say, “Now the weather is manifestly turning;” but the sweet days of bud and blossom have been introduced with a beautiful gentleness and growth. Even when the days lengthened we saw no great progress, for the cold strengthened, and if we enjoyed a mild day, there came a biting frost at night, but, surely and steadily, the veins of the trees were filled with the life-blood of sap, and the buds first swelled and then revealed their glories, while mother earth yielded to the roots of plants and trees fresh vigor, and helped them to put on their green array; and now we look for the beauties of summer, and the golden sheaves of autumn, with sure and certain hope. So Christ’s reigning is woven into the warp and woof of providence, and though he has long been lifted on high, and has not yet drawn all men unto him, it is coming, and if we have faith we may almost see it. His kingdom is coming; the time of the singing birds is drawing near.