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LETTERS ON TREES. 



another to be the better plan : — It is not good that 

 the man should be alone. I will make him an help 

 meet for him." An help meet for him ! One of his 

 bone and flesh, one with him in heart and mind, but 

 of a softer mould and a gentler spirit : one to share 

 his mission with him, and, sharing it, at once to cheer 

 and soothe and refine him ; to take upon herself, 

 besides, the main burden of one part of that mission 

 (leaving him the freer to fulfil the other), and in so 

 doing, and exercising a mother's influence over their 

 common offspring, to elevate the race of man ! 



16. Nor is this all. The gift to man of an help- 

 mate is spoken of as if it had been an after-thought. 

 The work of creation finished, God saw everything 

 that he had made, and behold it was very good." 

 Yet afterwards — after the Heir of Nature " had 

 been put into the garden of Eden to dress it and to 

 keep it," where he lived some time, longer perhaps 

 than we are wont to imagine, single and alone, it is 

 said — It is not good that the man should be alone." 

 Not that there can be after-thought with the Creator ; 

 not that the man was not at the first formed with a 

 view to the gift he was afterwards to receive ; but as 

 if to indicate that he might have been so organised as 

 by himself, and without an helpmate, to replenish the 

 earth as well as to subdue it ; and as if to indicate 

 also that the principle of reproduction by seed in con- 

 tradistinction to that by buds, had, as our view 



