FIRST ANNUAL FLOWER SERMON. 109 



fusions of bountiful loving kindness that marvelously warm 

 the heart and cheer the soul. 



Consider the lilies of the field ! Their beauty of form and 

 brilliance of color, surely. But the botanist can tell more. 

 He will explain how in the family of lilies the calyx is not 

 leaf-shaped and green as in other flowers, but as rich in tint 

 and fine of texture as the very petals of the corolla. So 

 that the external robe of the lily is of the same pure fair- 

 ness and brilliant beauty with the precious flower enclosed 

 within. And, as the Master said, God so clothed it, this 

 grass of the field. Outwardly and inwardly wanting nothing 

 in charm of color and exquisite delicacy of shape ; and so 

 elegantly arrayed of nature that Solomon iu all his artificial 

 glory could not surpass it. When the Master, without whom 

 was not anything made that was made, said this, see you 

 not that He knew that the botanist would find in the image 

 employed a deeper truth than even the pleasing one that we 

 ordinary folk perceive? 



Consider the flowers of the field ! *' The proper study of 

 mankind is man", insists a didactic poet. But even he 

 would grant that the study of flowers and love of flowers 

 may minister lessons sweet and precious for man's life and 

 happiness. Their humility. They carpet the earth. We 

 tread them down and in the sweetest meekness they resist 

 not the treading. Their obedience and self-forgetfulness. 

 Following the will of their Maker and the law of their being 

 they come forth in blushing beauty spring time after spring 

 time and fade and fall as summer passes. And millions of 

 them so come and blush unseen in the uninhabited stretches 

 of area of our globe. It makes no difference. It is not of 

 themselves they think, but of God, and of growth, and of 

 future life inwrapped in them. 



Consider the plants of the field! Their benevolence. 

 Stalks bend under their load of grain, — kernels grown for 

 our sustenance. Vines root themselves in the rockiest and 

 shallowest sorts of soil and suck thereout sweetest juices of 

 grapes, and change dry barrenness into rich verdure. 



