A TUFT OF MOSS. 



99 



of continuing not only the species but the individual, 

 and therefore last for many years. The family of the 

 Mungo Park moss, though it produces the seed-vessel 

 from the top of the stem, nevertheless branches pro- 

 fusely by innovations, or with the tops of the fertile 

 stems several times divided. This family, therefore, is 

 very enduring, and forms one of the principal features in 

 the mossy decoration of the woodland banks and 

 trees. 



In this branching of the tiny moss we have the 

 earliest premonition of the corporate relationships of 

 life. We are so familiar with this fact that it has 

 become a commonplace and uninteresting truism which 

 lies bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul. But when 

 we trace it back to its first feeble beginning in the first 

 kind of life that rose out of the forces and forms of the 

 inorganic world, we realize something of its wonder and 

 significance. All beginnings have a strange interest to 

 us, whether it be the source of a mighty river in the 

 little mountain well or the beginning of the gospel of 

 Jesus Christ, the performance of the first miracle or the 

 formation of the Christian Church. The thought that 

 there was a time when these things had no existence 

 gives a vividness to the feelings with which we regard 

 them, and brings back the freshness that has evaporated 

 with long familiarity. We are familiar with the relations 

 of human life ; but it is strange to go back to a time 

 when there was nothing like them, when life consisted 

 of units. The angels that were in existence before man 

 had no corporate life. They were created as mere 



