52 THE HEDGE-BANK. 



from ourselves, or we should be able to extend it 

 as far as we pleased ; therefore, it must have been 

 given to us by Himself; and if we are dependent 

 on Him for the best of His temporal gifts, we are 

 dependent upon Him for all; and if for all our 

 temporal gifts, yet more so for all our spiritual 

 privileges; whatever, therefore, we now possess, 

 or shall enjoy hereafter, is the gift of God." 

 This lesson our ignorance teaches us. Secondly, 

 we know enough to see that " none but an Al- 

 mighty power could have created the most trifling 

 objects around us, and yet that these apparently 

 trifling objects are watched over and protected, 

 and brought to perfection, with as much careful- 

 ness as if they occupied the important station in 

 the universe which has been assigned to ourselves. 

 Hence we may infer not merely that an equal care 

 is extended over us, while we are fulfilling our 

 mission on earth, but that, as He made us par- 

 takers of an immortal nature, His interest in our 

 welfare extends to all eternity, and so, that far 

 from having pleasure in the death of him that 

 dieth, he would have us to accept the terms of 

 the gospel of Jesus Christ, and also to be ' made 

 perfect.' The care which he extends to the 

 meanest of created things, He surely does not 

 withhold from the noblest; if He brings to per- 

 fection the grass of the field, how much more 

 shall He make perfect him, whom He created 

 in His own image ! " 



Time will not serve me to describe to you a half 

 of the pretty plants which you may at one season 

 or another meet with, in the course of a ramble 

 through one of the pleasant green lanes with which 

 England, more than any other country, abounds. 



