THE OLIVE LEAF. 



the medium of His revelation to Moses, or in the 

 Cross of Calvary as the instrument of the salvation 

 of the world. I never see a green leaf without ever- 

 increasing wonder and admiration ; amazed at the 

 apparent inefficiency of the means and the stupendous 

 magnitude of the result 



In this light how suitable it was that an olive leaf 

 freshly plucked should have been the first object brought 

 to Noah in the ark ! For just as the green leaf is the 

 means in the natural world of counteracting all the 

 destructive forces that are reducing its objects to dust 

 and ashes, and clothing its surface with vegetable and 

 animal life, so the olive leaf in the mouth of the dove 

 spoke to Noah of the undoing of the work of destruction 

 caused by the flood, and of the raising up of a new and 

 fairer creation out of the universal wreck. That olive 

 leaf was the earnest of a mighty redemption, of the 

 restitution of all things. It foretold the destruction of 

 the death which had already destroyed the world, and 

 the opening up of a new world beyond the wide drear 

 wilderness and the floods of time, in which Eden itself 

 would be forgotten in the transporting joy of heaven, 

 and the tree of life would be restored in a grander 

 multiplied form. And just as all this beautiful world of 

 life and joy is the product of the work of the green leaf, 

 so all that mankind has achieved and enjoyed since the 

 flood the great results of civilization, and the still greater 

 results of redemption arose out of the work of grace 

 whose dawning the green leaf intimated, and whose 

 operation it typified. For sin and grace are in constant 



