104 



THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



trees, bat invisibly in continual succession beneath the 

 ascending crest. Their final duty is to die ; their main 

 task is not, like other leaves, in their life, but in their 

 death : to form by their decay and decomposition the 

 soil out of which first the topmost crest of the moss- 

 tuft, all green and bright, may be formed, to drink in 

 the dew and to gleam in the sunshine, and then higher 

 forms of life, the flowers to assume the colours of the 

 rainbow, and the cedars to cover the earth with their 

 shadow. " None teach so well the humility of death ; " 

 the sacrifice of one generation that another may come 

 in its place ; the sacrifice of one epoch of thought and 

 effort that a higher state of progress may be reached ; 

 the self-sacrifices that respond to a parent's tenderness 

 and a friend's devotion, the root of which is love ; the 

 presenting ourselves a living sacrifice, which is the 

 ground of all true performance of duty to the family, 

 the Church, and the world. The moss-tuft interprets 

 in higher form what the rock crumbling away in death 

 in order that its dust may afford support to the plant 

 itself proclaims. All lower things live unconsciously 

 for the sake of higher things. Everywhere beneath is 

 life unfolding through struggle, suffering, and death. 

 And the highest sacrifice of all, the laying down of His 

 own life upon the cross by the Son of God, that we 

 might not perish but have everlasting life, is the key 

 that explains the mystery hid from the foundation of the 

 world the mystery of the growth of the first moss-tuft 

 on the rock whose green leaves above, that never 

 withered, were nourished by the dark leaves beneath 



