36 A BOOK ABOUT ROSES. 



semper, ubique, ab omnibus — always, everywhere, 

 by all. 



I. Semper. — When, in sacred history, a chief 

 prophet of the Older Covenant foretold the grace 

 and glory which were to be revealed by the 

 New — when Isaiah would select, and was inspired 

 to select, the most beautiful image by which to 

 tell mankind of their exodus from the Law to the 

 Gospel, slavery to freedom, fear to love — these 

 were the words which came to him from heaven : 

 *' The wilderness shall blossom as a Rose." In 

 the Song of Songs the Church compares herself 

 unto ** the Rose of Sharon;" and in the apocry- 

 phal scriptures the son of Sirach likens wisdom to 

 a Rose-plant in Jericho, and holiness to a Rose 

 growing by the brook of the field. And the Rose 

 still blooms on that sacred soil, even in that 

 garden of Gethsemane, where He, who gives joy 

 and life to all, was sorrowful unto death.* In our 

 own, as in the older time, it is associated with 

 religion, with acts and thoughts of holiness which 

 should be fair and pure and fragrant as itself; 

 and at the Orphanage of Beyrout, the authoress 

 of Cradle Lands saw two hundred and fifty maid- 



* "The old man,- a Franciscan monk, gave me a Rose as a 

 memorial of the garden."— Bar tlett's Jerusalem Revisited, p. 129. 



