228 
BllAMBLES AND BAY LEAVES. 
But no floral symbol can equal in beauty or sacred¬ 
ness the passion-flower. It is so peculiar in construc¬ 
tion, that when the Spanish conquerors of the New 
World first met with it in the woods, they gave it its 
name, and adopted it as an emblem of the sufferings of 
Christ. The thread-like stamens which surround the 
rays of the flower and some other portions, suggested to 
their enthusiastic imaginations the story of the Saviour’s 
passion ! and the sight of this wondrous symbol, in a 
wilderness in which they trod for the first time, seemed 
to them to betoken conquest, riches, and power—to be 
achieved under the sanction of religion. But they 
sought rather to insure a temporal dominion, than to act 
in obedience to that God who had planted flowers in 
those solitary wilds; and the very men who beheld in 
the passion-flower an emblem of mercy and of love, an 
emblem of faith in God and fellowship to man, carried 
malevolence and desolation wherever they trod, and 
made their standard a signal of blood, torture, and 
tyranny. Let the passion-flower be still an emblem, but 
let it keep us in the fulfilment of the benign precepts of 
the great Teacher, whose suffering is symbolized in the 
form of the flower—that by contemplating it, we may 
be raised in thankfulness to God, and learn to recognize 
the great truths taught by Him who 
“-:-Trod 
The paths of sorrow, that we might find peace.* 9 
The clover has been revered from the most remote 
antiquity as a religious symbol. Its triple leaf renders 
it adaptable to a multiplicity of ideas. The Druids 
