372 Field, Forest, and Wayside Flowers 



This twofold use of the word may be a mere 

 phililogical accident. But it suggests to our minds 

 the thought which the botanist who first applied 

 the term to the seed-case had, perhaps, in his the 

 analogy used by the apostle in teaching that the 

 dead body, sown with tears, is as the seed, and 

 the soul is as the germ, which lives on in trans- 

 figured beauty when " God giveth it a body, as it 

 hath pleased Him." 



Where each flower has perished, in garden or 

 field, there is a seed, or more probably a pocket 

 filled with seeds, each a prophecy and a pledge of 

 the flowers which will gladden the earth next year. 

 And each leaf, falling, leaves behind it a bud, from 

 which a cluster of leaves or a cluster of flowers will 



unfold. 







All things have their price, both in the spiritual 

 and in the natural world. Without the torpor of 

 winter, the freshness and gladness of spring could 

 never be. Semi-tropic lands which escape the one 

 miss the other. Only to lands which have known 

 " the long dark nights and the snow" comes the 

 ecstasy of the northern spring, when skies growing 

 daily brighter, and earth awakening under them 

 with joy foretell to us the " new heavens and the 

 new earth" wherein shall dwell righteousness. 



