moral of flowers. 
69 
Telling us to be grateful for these abundant 
manifestations of His attention, not only to our 
actual wants and necessities, but also to our 
comforts and enjoyments; opening to us this 
source of pure and innocent gratification, m 
order to strengthen us against the allurements 
of foliy, and wean our hearts from the guilty 
pleasures of sensuality, into which they are 
but too apt to be drawn :— 
“ God might have bade the earth bring forth 
Enough for great and small, 
The oak-tree and the cedar-tree, 
Without a flower at all. 
He might have made enough, enough, 
For every want of ours, 
For luxury, medicine, and toil, 
And yet have made no flowers. 
* » * a* 
Our outward life requires them not, 
Then wherefore had they birth ?— 
To minister delight to man, 
To beautify the earth ; 
To whisper hope—to comfort man 
Whene’er his faith is dim, 
For whoso careth for the flowers 
Will care much more for him ?' — Mart Howxtt, 
