14 THROUGH GLADE AND MEAD. 
problem of man’s destiny and God’s ways with him 
here on this earth, and has expressed it in free-flowing 
outlines. 
The Great Teacher enforces his teaching by para- 
bles and gives his hearers the deepest truths, involved 
in the story of the sower, of the man ,who planted a 
vineyard, of the net cast into the sea; the tree by the 
wayside, the lilies of the field, the birds of the air, 
nothing is too simple or too familiar, if only the multi- 
tude have eyes which see and ears which hear. 
Homer and Theocritus and Pindar and Virgil and 
Ovid and other poets of classical antiquity draw their 
illustrations from the familiar outdoor life of their own 
lands, illustrations which have an equal force and mean- 
ing everywhere. Among the plants of which Homer 
speaks are the olive, the oak, the beech, the ash, the 
elm, the plane, the lotus, nepenthe, moly, asphodel, the 
poppy, the crocus and the hyacinth. In the Olympic 
games, the most famous athletic contests of all time, the 
victor’s prize was a wreath of wild olive; in the Isthmian 
games, a wreath of parsley; in the Pythian games, a 
wreath of bay; in the Nemean games, a wreath of pine; 
and great honor went with them. The world was young 
to those old poets and they did not scorn the myth and 
the fairy tale, the legends of sea-gods and nymphs and 
enchantresses, neither mortal nor divine; and Homer, 
at least, loves to relate the marvels of far-off lands, tales 
