Flowers and Gardens 



pleasure, that snatches and glimpses of 

 true loveliness are sufficient for us, to 

 refresh us, and to tell us of a better 

 world, and that these imperfect glimpses 

 are all that we must expect to gain. 

 But what, after all, do these blemishes 

 amount to, when justly weighed against 

 the good ? God's idea of the universe 

 may be read in the heavens on any starry 

 night. Stand near a town and watch 

 the red lights in the houses, and think 

 how much sin and evil are dwelling 

 there ; and then, quitting those mournful 

 thoughts, look up to the serene, unblem- 

 ished stars. How pure, how lovely! 

 And yet, perhaps, if we approached them 

 more closely, they would be much like 

 the world we dwell in, which to them 

 seems just as fair. Is the lesson then 

 a mournful one, that all things are false 

 and hollow, or is it not rather one of 

 unspeakable joy, that sin and all the evil 

 of existence shall thus vanish into insig- 

 nificance when once set in comparison 

 with its glory, when we shall be so able 

 to contemplate God's work in its vaster 

 proportions, as will only be possible in 

 looking back upon it from the immeasur- 

 able distances of eternity? And so we 

 find that the withered wrecks of dead 



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