370 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



its new revelations of beauty and wonder, and all its 

 varied influences upon nature and reactions of nature 

 upon it, as compared with the shifting of the same 

 barren sands from one place to another, or the blowing 

 of the dead chaff to and fro, by the same weary wind of 

 the wilderness. Not more remarkable was the contrast 

 between the little green spots growing over the ashes of 

 the sacrifices deposited outside the camp, that marked 

 the resting-places of the tabernacle by the way the 

 places of death thus becoming the places of new and 

 brighter life than is the contrast between the garden 

 of the renewed soul and the dreary wilderness of its 

 former dead condition. And as the circles of greener 

 and taller grass spread in the fairy ring over the sward, 

 fed by the rich nitrogenous materials, resulting from the 

 decay of the mushrooms that form them, so from the 

 mortification of the lusts and passions of the unrenewed 

 nature will spring up and ripple over the heart and life 

 a rich luxuriance of spiritual graces. 



To the sorrowful, God gives beauty for ashes. 

 Grievous to sensitive human hearts are sorrow and 

 suffering ; but they play a gracious part in the moral 

 economy of the world. They are the furnace in which 

 our evil nature is reduced to ashes the trial of our 

 faith which is more precious than that of gold, even 

 though it be tried by fire. We are laid with the great 

 Sufferer of our race upon the altar and share the fellow- 

 ship of His sufferings, and like Him are made perfect 

 through suffering. " I believe," says Heine, in one of 

 his far-reaching sentences, " that by suffering animals 



