324 On the natural Love of Flowers. 



They forget that this world is not a mere matter-of-fact 

 world; they overlook the truth that the Deity, in providing 

 the fruit and the grain, has not been unmindful of the blos- 

 som and the foliage. He stayed not his hand at mere utility 

 as regards animal life; he bounded not his creative power to 

 the production of food and raiment ; he ministered not 

 merely to the actual wants of life, but clad the fields 

 in verdant green, tinged the fruit with its golden hue, 

 and added a surpassing beauty to foliage and flower. Shall 

 we eat and drink, and forget His ministration to our moral 

 taste } 



No one was ever intended for a mere business man — to 

 travel, as in a bark-mill, in one dull, dreary round-day in and 

 day out — month in and month out — year in and year out — to 

 exert every faculty, with all his energy, in the business of 

 life. Men are not created as machines, for the production 

 of a required amount of a useful commodity. They have 

 more to do, than to earn their bread and to eat it; more to 

 accomplish, than to strive for a high station, and to fill it. 

 Man has a moral nature to be strengthened and educated; 

 he has a susceptibility of soul, to be touched and excited: 

 and all this is most quickly and easily accomplished, by an 

 attention and constant reference to the works of Him who 

 has left, wherever his hands have wrought, the marks and 

 types of those attributes, which warm and purify and exalt 

 the heart. Without this moral culture, man is an animal 

 only, as unlike the being he should be, as the mere grain 

 of wheat, fitted to sustain life, is unlike the waving corn, in 

 all its richness and loveliness, as it covers the mountain 

 side. 



Why is it, that those who enter upon the examination of 

 the works of nature, in any of her various channels and de- 

 partments, become so enthusiastic in their research? Why 

 does their ardor constantly and regularly increase with the 

 increase of their knowledge? Read the lives of eminent 

 naturalists, look to the zeal manifested around you by all who 

 have entered into such studies. It does not arise from 

 mere increase of intellectual power, as affording valuable re- 

 sults to society; for duty here is often discharged from a 

 sense of duty, without any ardor of feeling. It is not the 

 mere force of habit; for habit is more like the chain which 

 binds one to a given course, than wings to fly with to objects 

 which we love. It is because there is a natural taste in ev- 

 ery man, which, when gratified, becomes strengthened and 

 quickened — a taste for the magnificent and beautiful objects 

 in creation which can never be satiated, but which carries 

 us onward in our researches, — an appetite which grows with 

 that it feeds upon. 



