74 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 



liuman standard of utility and because, above all, 

 in the most lovely and bountiful of God's works, it 

 leads them up to Him that made them, not in a 

 mere dumb, inactive admiration of His wonderful 

 designs, but to bless Him that He has given them 

 pleasures beyond their actual necessities the means 

 of a cheerful countenance, as well as of a strong 

 heart. 



Still more because if ours be not too rude a 

 step to venture within such hallowed ground it 

 speaks of a Christian people employed in an occu- 

 pation which, above all others, is the parable that 

 conveys the deepest truths to them which daily 

 reads them silent lessons, if their hearts will hear, of 

 the vanity of earthly pomp, of the beauty of hea- 

 venly simplicity, and purity, and lowliness of mind, 

 of contentment and unquestioning faith which sets 

 before them, in the thorns and thistles, a remem- 

 brance of their fallen state in the cedar, and the 

 olive, and the palm-tree, the promise of a better 

 country which hourly recalls to their mind the 

 Agony and the Burial of Him who made a garden the 

 scene of both, and who bade us mark and consider 

 such things, how they bud, and " how they grow," 

 giving us in the vine a type of His Church, and in 

 the fig-tree of His Coming. 



Again, we would ask those who think that national 

 amelioration is to be achieved only by dose upon 

 dose of Eeform or Ked-t apery, where should we now 

 have been without our savings-banks, our allotment 

 system, and our cottage-gardens? And lest we 



