MAY. 109 



that solemn and poetical people they were com- 

 monly regarded in another and higher sense, 

 they were the favourite symbols of the beauty 

 and the fragility of life. Man is compared to 

 the flower of the field, and it is added, " the 

 grass withereth, the flower fadeth." But of all 

 the poetry ever drawn from flowers, none is so 

 beautiful, none is so sublime, none is so im- 

 bued with that very spirit in which they were 

 made as that of Christ. " And why take ye 

 thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of 

 the field, how they grow ; they toil not neither 

 do they spin, and yet, I say unto you, that even 

 Solomon in all his glory, was not arrayed like 

 one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the 

 grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-mor- 

 row is cast into the oven, shall he not much 

 more clothe you, ye of little faith !" The 

 sentiment built upon this, entire dependance on 

 the goodness of the Creator, is one of the lights 

 of our existence, and could only have been ut- 

 tered by Christ ; but we have here also the ex- 

 pression of the very spirit of beauty in which 

 flowers were created ; a spirit so boundless and 

 overflowing that it delights to enliven and 

 adorn with these riant creatures of sunshine 

 the solitary places of the earth ; to scatter them 

 by myriads over the very desert " where no 

 man is ; on the vvilderness where there is no 



