98 WORCESTER COUNTY HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. [1898. 



Jthere are certain large relations of each man's business to the 

 world's business, to society, to human welfare ; and no man 

 knows so little of those large relations of his business to what 

 is right and true, as the man immersed in his own business. 

 He is like the engineer down in the hold of the great ship ; he 

 can make the thing go, but to pilot it up on deck, to see where 

 the thing is going, is beyond his power. 



There are great meanings flashing out all the time from the 

 farmer's craft, out of the mechanic's handiwork ; great revela- 

 tions of truth showing our relation to human life, to the whole 

 universe, which, I think, it is the minister's business to be look- 

 ing up all the time. There are bright revealings that I can 

 trace amid the daily toil of you business men, great shinings 

 out of honor and mutual trust, revelations of hope and promise, 

 showing me the way of God. I was always intensely inter- 

 ested in these larger relations of things, about the technical 

 merits of which I might know nothing. 



When I was a boy in England, there lived almost next-door 

 neighbor to us a very learned naturalist and scientist, one who 

 has written a number of books which to a wonderful degree ex- 

 plain the great problems and secrets of science to beginners, 

 Mr. Clodd. Many of you have read many of his books. And 

 it was just at the time, that is when I was a boy, when science 

 was turning from the endless business of labelling, cataloguing 

 and classifying all the diiferent species to the immensely better 

 business, it strikes me, of reading the meaning of the differ- 

 ences between them. I remember how he used to talk to us 

 children of the beautiful, the wonderful relation of each little 

 flower to its fellow and the great life-history of the world, and 

 that is how I came to find my sermon for today. 



If I were to take a text for it, and we ministers can hardly 

 preach a sermon without taking a text, I should, I think, take 

 the old Hebrew prophet's hopeful and happy view of the day to 

 come when " Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree and 

 instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree." But I 

 think we English children would like the prophet's hoped-for 

 day to be postponed as long as possible. I hardly know what 



