SECOND ANNUAL FLOWER SERMON. 31 
Dr. Chas. A. Pope, delivered before a medical college in 
this city, A. D. 1855. 
‘“Unity and simplicity characterize the works of the 
Creator.”?> Mark he does not say the works of nature, 
but «* the works of the Creator,’’ he believed in a personal 
God. He proceeds: ** They obtain alike in the vegetable 
and animal kingdom. Thesimple leaf by its morphological 
changes, constitutes the calyx, the petals, stamens, pistil, 
which having diverse forms and functions according to 
their position on the axis of the plant, may be compared 
to the homologous organs of animals; 7%. e., an organ 
fundamentally the same, develops in one case as a leaf, in 
another as a petal, in another as a stamen, or pistil; just 
as the arm of aman, the foreleg of a quadruped, the wing 
of a bird, and the pectoral fin of a fish represent one and 
the same organ. In vegetable as in animal growth, one 
great thought underlies the whole structure. The thought 
has in it an element of infinity, but the mode of expression 
is necessarily finite. And what does it indicate, but that 
the same word which created the plant, is expressed in the 
plant.’? God’s works are every where characterized by unity 
and simplicity ; and His forming hand is as plainly visible 
in the structure of the simplest plant, in the careful pro- 
vision for its organs of reproduction and their potential 
working, as in the glittering array of the starry heav- 
ens, or the movements of the myriad planets in their ap- 
pointed orbs. The laws which govern the universe know 
no limitation of time or space; and are not measured by the 
boundaries which either the microscope or telescope can 
survey. 
We often speak in our self-complacency of this world, as 
formed for the use and pleasure of man, and seem to take 
it for granted, when in its several stages, we are told the 
Creator pronounced it ‘‘ very good,”’ that it was all for the 
sake of him who was to come forth in the last era, as the 
finished specimen of His handiwork. 
Doubtless, he was greatly honored, when God said: 
