82 THE WHITE ROSE. 



* Soft roll your incense, herbs, and fruits, and flowers, 



In mingled clouds to him whose sun exalts, 



Whose breath perfumes you, and whose pencil paints.' 



Yet Thomson only saw with the perception of taste, 

 and by the exercise of natural reason argued from 

 the things that are seen to the invisible First Cause. 

 Alas ! that many who have been deeply taught of 

 the Holy Spirit to view all in Christ, and Christ in 

 all, should often come so very far short of even 

 this ascription, when looking upon their watered 

 gardens of perishing flowers ! 



I am shamed by every weed that grows, when I 

 bring myself to this test — when I compare the dili- 

 gence with which each tiny blossom seeks the 

 beams of the summer sun, with my sad unheedful- 

 ness in striving to catch the far brighter beams of 

 that eternal Sun, without whose life-giving light 

 my soul cannot be sustained. The favourite 

 edging of my flower-beds is singularly eloquent 

 on this point. Heart's-ease composes it ; and 

 while the border that faces the south exhibits its 

 beautiful little flowers on short stems, basking tran 

 quilly in the ray, displaying a broad uniform sheet 

 of gold, and silver, and purple, — the strips that run 

 from south to north ; appear as with their heads 

 turned, by an effort, out of the natural posture, 

 that they too may gaze, and shine. To complete 

 the picture, where a little hedge throws its shad- 

 dow over another bank of my heart's-ease, I see 



