ALPINE AND ARCTIC PLANTS 453 



ance thus indicated, not rudely breaking them by too hasty 

 generalizations. 



But it is time to leave the scientific teachings of our little 

 Alpine friends, and to inquire if they can teach anything to the 

 heart as well as to the head. 



The mountains themselves, heaving their huge sides to the 

 heavens, speak of forces in comparison with which all human 

 power is nothing ; and we can scarcely look upon them in their 

 majesty without a psalm of praise rising up within us to Him 

 who made the sea, and from whose hands the dry land took 

 its form. As we ascend them, and as our vision ranges more 

 and more widely over the tops of wooded hills, along the 

 courses of streams, over cultivated valleys, and to the shores 

 of the blue sea itself, our mental vision widens too. We think 

 that the great roots of these hills run beneath a whole con- 

 tinent, that their tops look down on the wide St. Lawrence 

 plain, on the beautiful valleys of New England, and on the 

 rice fields of the sunny south. We are reminded of the bro- 

 therhood of man, which overleaps all artificial boundaries, and 

 should cause us to pray that throughout their whole extent 

 these hills may rise amidst a happy, a free, and a God-fearing 

 people. 



Our Alpine plants have still higher lessons to teach. They 

 are fitting emblems of that little flock, scattered everywhere, 

 yet one in heart, and in all lands having their true citizenship 

 in heaven. They tell us that it is the humble who are nearest 

 God, and they ask why we should doubt the guardian care of 

 the Father who cares for them. They witness, too, of the lowly 

 and hidden ones who may inhabit the barren and lowly spots 

 of earth, yet are special subjects of God's love, as they should 

 be of ours. We may thus read in the Alpine plants truths that 

 beget deeper faith in God, and closer brotherhood with His 

 people. 



The history of these plants has also a strange significance. 



