AND GROWTH. 177 



ploughmen, and picking up the "animal weeds," 

 while the ploughs are turning down the vegetable 

 ones. 



All the countless races of that time of labour and 

 of love, both native and visitant, are busy following 

 their own purpose, or rather the law of their being, 

 for they form no purpose of their own, or they 

 would sometimes commit errors of judgment as we 

 do, but they do not. At the same time the fulfilment 

 of the law of their being works for good to us, just 

 as the law of the being of a bushel of wheat works 

 for good to us when we cast it upon the earth and 

 cover it with dust ; and come back after a season and 

 find ten bushels, nine for food, and one to cast into 

 the earth, in the same manner and with the same 

 hope as before. 



At that season of the year nature has many busy 

 labourers to feed, and many young plants, and come 

 or coming blooms, and other previous things to look 

 after, that her grand messenger the atmosphere re- 

 quires to be on the alert ; and as nothing in nature 

 ever does that which it is not the very law and pur- 

 pose of its nature to do, her messenger is always in 

 time, and not one of her workers slackens or is 

 palsied until it has answered the end for which the 

 Author of nature ordained it, and the matter which 

 has ceased to be useful in it is required for another 

 purpose. 



Those variable winds of the spring which seem 

 to shift about and change in their rate and their tem- 

 perature, in a manner absolutely capricious, are far 

 more unerring than if the wisest man that ever lived 

 had the management of them. That is proved by the 

 very fact of our thinking them capricious, which is 

 just in other words admitting that we do not under- 

 stand them ; and of course that we could not get one 

 of the things done, of ourselves, or by our direc- 

 tions, which they are unceasingly doing for us. The 

 most intelligent of us know but few of the properties 



