88 THE WHITE ROSE. 



they seem to gaze upon the corpse, repeating the 

 humiliating doom, alike applicable to both — dust 

 we are, and unto dust we shall return. I could 

 not look on such a spectacle without beholding the 

 garden of Eden, by man's transgression rendered 

 desolate, and perishing, alas ! in man's destruction 

 — the creatures, the innocent and beautiful crea- 

 tures of God's hand, made subject to vanity 

 through our sinfulness ; fading and falling into one 

 common grave. The pall may spread its velvet 

 folds, and the sable plumes bow in stately gloom 

 over the dead ; but a single white rose, drooping 

 amid its dark foliage, tells the story more touchingly, 

 and with more eloquent sympathy, than all that the 

 art of man may contrive, to invest sorrow in a 

 deeper shade of woe. 



" Thou shalt be like a watered garden," says 

 the Lord to the believing soul, whose grace shall 

 spring up and flourish, and be fruitful, to the praise 

 of the glory of his grace, who visits it with the 

 small, quiet rain of his life-giving Spirit. " Thou 

 shalt be like a watered garden," he says to hi& 

 church, as one sleeper after another awakes, and 

 arises from spiritual death, and receives light 

 from Christ, growing up among the trees of his 

 planting, that he may be glorified in the abundant 

 accession to his vineyard on its very fruitful hill. 

 " Thou shalt be like a watered garden," the Lord 

 says to this wide earth, destined in the appointed 



