Summer Meeting. 31 



of one whose mind was hung about by atheistic doubts reading, as he 

 w^alked throngh the fields, the statement of Plato, "God always geome- 

 trizes." Noticing a simple white flower growing at his feet, he plucked 

 it and carefully began to count its pedals ; there were five. He counted 

 the stamens ; there were five. He counted the divisions at the flower's 

 base; there were five. Interested in the discovery, he set himself to 

 computing the mathematical chances against the probability of the ap- 

 pearance of a single flower set about with this fiveness by a mere unin- 

 telligent happening. They were in this one flower as 125 to i. But 

 here was another flower of the same kind, and then another, whitening 

 the fields, thousands of them, and every one gripped by just this fiveness 

 — nothing more, nothing less. Small wonder that he reasoned from this 

 unfailing design to the Infinite Designer. The invariable order of an 

 even number of rows upon countless millions of ears of corn, continued 

 in different countries, and for successive centuries, proves the presence 

 of an intelligent Being in the universe who knows how to rule the secret 

 energies of vegetable life in acordance with mathematical law. A 

 peculiar magnetic plant that grows upon our western plains is called the 

 compass plant, because its electric leaves and petals point unwaveringly 

 to the north star. Let it be uprooted and replanted with its leaves south- 

 ward bent and it will gradually turn and bend again toward the north. 

 Every leaf and flower and stalk and blade that grows is indeed a com- 

 pass pointing invariably to the Almighty Maker of heaven and earth. 

 When Galileo was imprisoned on the charge of heresy for having as- 

 serted the motion of the earth on its axis, his cruel inquisitors came to 

 tease and torment him wdth questions in his dungeon. Affecting great 

 horror at the atheism of the man who had opened a new door into the 

 infinite heaven of divine glory, they asked him if he believed in the ex- 

 istence of a God. He lifted a dry straw from the floor of his cell and 

 said : "This straw is enough to demonstrate the existence of God."' 

 To one who proposes to destroy the idea of God from the minds of men 

 nothing is better than to say, "Do not forget to pluck up the grass and 

 pull down the stars." One has but to open his eyes upon any landscape 

 to see in the shading of the flower, the form of the tree, the verdure of 

 the grass, that perfection of beauty and design which invariably leads 

 the thoughtful mind to look beyond these manifestations for the intelli- 

 gent and beneficent Fashioner of it all. 



In contemplation of created things, 

 By steps we may ascend to God. 



When we consider the withered blade of grass, the exquisite 

 tracery of the maple leaf, the faultless geometry of the flower, or the 



