FOURTH ANNUAL FLOWER SERMON. 27 



the love of a father for his child, who giveth him 

 richly to enjoy; that goodness with power is 

 wisdom and love are joined in infinite embrace ? 



met 



more than this, if God so clothe the grass 

 God thus declares himself the careful fab 



beautiful 



deli 



with the great Revealer, " Shall he not much more clothe 

 you, O ye of little faith?" but I ask, shall not man learn 

 that beauty is good, that the ministering of happiness is 

 legitimate object of human effort? I bid the commercial 

 spirit of our age, the demon who possesses the vast multi- 

 tude of our countrymen, come walk in our garden in the 

 cool of the day, and hear the voice of the Lord God pro- 

 claiming that dollars and cents are not the only measure 

 of value, that utility is to be determined by other tests than 

 capacity to feed a hungry body or to protect it from the 



man 



mouth 



man 



bread, even beauty and harmony and perfection. Come hear 

 Him declare by the works of His hand that man's every 

 hunger must be satisfied, if he shall grow up into the full- 

 ness of the stature of the manhood that is to be, into con- 

 scious sonship of the Eternal Father. Come hear the 

 Lord God asserting by His garden's beauty, that thy 

 money for which thou art laboring, for whose accumulation 

 thou art rising up early and late lying down to rest, is 

 worthless in thy coffers, but is valuable only as it doth 

 enable the satisfying of the natural hungerings of the 

 Godlike creature. If God so clothe the grass of the field, 

 shall not L, His son, make beautiful with all the resources 

 at my command, the home where dwell my children? 

 Yes, I will summon the artist to whom the Creator has 

 given in largest measure the vision divine that seeth things 

 that are not, and the creative skill that makes them to be, 

 that he may build my home in lines of beauty, and ornament 



