ot *c ^^^^ohia,t s 
 
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 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 
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 BS 650 .M34 1880 
 Macmillan, Hugh, 1833-1903 
 Two worlds are ours 
 
 SM 
 
 ~Tr-T 
 
TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 HUGH'ilACMILLAN, D.D., LL.D., F.R.S.E. 
 
 AUTHOR OF "bible TEACHINGS IN NATUKE," "THE TRUE VINE," 
 "the SABBATH OF THE FIELDS," ETC. ETC. 
 
 " Tiao worlds are ours : 'lis only sin 
 Forbids us to descry 
 The mystic heaven and earth ivithin, 
 Plaiti as the>sea and sky." 
 
 Keblb. 
 
 bonbon : 
 
 MA CM ILL AN AND CO. 
 
 1880. 
 
 The Ri^ht 0/ Translation and Reproduction is Resenicd. 
 
Tonbon : 
 R. Cr.A.v, Sons, and Taylor, 
 
 IIREAD STREHT IIILL, EX. 
 
Wtl^HllL'^ 
 
 ^ DEC 7 ] 
 
 ^^^•cilSe^ 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 "To the solid ground 
 Of nature trusts the mind wliicli builds for aye." 
 
 So wrote Wordsworth, and his words have their highest 
 appHcation in theology. While, like Jacob's ladder, 
 its top is poised upon the throne of God, its base 
 rests upon the familiar earth. It ascends from the 
 earth and descends to the earth from its highest 
 nights. The Divine revelations of the Bible were 
 not communicated directly from heaven, but were 
 acted out historically upon the earth. They were 
 not painted on empty air, but were run into the 
 mould of existing circumstances, ami took tlieir shape 
 and colour from the things of natiu'e and of man. 
 The whole Bible is a Jacob's ladder, ascending by 
 successive steps of the unfolding of the Divine scheme 
 and the progress of doctrine — from the ground, as 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 it were, of the sublime account of the creation at 
 the beginning — to the subHme account of the city of 
 God in heaven at the end. And as with the Bible 
 as a whole, so with all its individual parts. It is the 
 same Spirit which brooded over the primeval chaos, 
 and brouglit light out of darkness, and life out of 
 death, that broods over the spiritual world, and forms 
 tlie new creation of God. From the glory of the 
 visible heavens the Psalmist ascends by harmonious 
 steps to the perfect law of the spiritual universe; 
 " the heavens declare the glory of God ; the law of 
 the Lord is perfect converting the soul." The miracles 
 of the Bible take their starting point from substances 
 and forces alreaily on the spot, and are simply the 
 making bare of its clothing of second causes, upon 
 which alone we are prone to rest as ultimate facts, 
 of the Almighty Arm which regulates tlie ordinary 
 course of nature. Between the principles or laws of 
 the spiritual realm and the forces acting in the visible 
 world, there is the same correlation which we find 
 among these natural forces themselves. Are not the 
 laws of Providence and Cirace different aspects of the 
 same Heavenly Wisdom and Love ? The duties which 
 the Bible prescribes and the relations which it hallows 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 are the true human duties and relations glorified with 
 the light of heaven. The earth is the Lord's, and 
 the fulness thereof, just as the heaven of heavens is 
 His. He who made man after tlie image of God 
 made earth after the pattern of heaven ; and, there- 
 fore, all that is purely human, all that is purely 
 natural, is full of His glory. Hence the Bible con- 
 siders the heathen to be without excuse, inasmuch as 
 ** the invisible things of God from the creation of the 
 world are clearly seen, being understood by the things 
 that are made." And hence, too, the parabolic teach- 
 ing of our Saviour was not the imparting of new truth 
 previously unknown, but the lifting of a veil from 
 truths that, from the creation of the world, were 
 uttering their unheeded lessons to the world. 
 
 The physiologist who would master the science of 
 biology must study and compare the dual forms — 
 the animal and the vegetable, in which life presents 
 itself in nature. And so the theologian who would 
 seek to understand in some measure the deep things 
 of God, must study the twofold revelation that He 
 has given to us — in His word as written in the Bible, 
 and in His word as written in the hieroglyphics of 
 nature. And just as the physiologist, finding innumerable 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 analogies of organization and function, on comparing 
 the two parallel forms of organic life, is profoundly 
 impressed with the unity of creation ; so the theologian, 
 in collating the acted and the written revelations of 
 God", finds most striking analogies at all points be- 
 tween them, and is convinced that all the great facts, 
 laws, and aims of the two dispensations are correlated 
 and work together for the same glorious end. 
 
 The testimony of the rocks is not engraved upon 
 a single page, finished and spread out once for all 
 before our eyes. It consists of a multitude of records ; 
 it is composed of the revelations of different strata 
 and epochs. And is it not so in the Bible? It is 
 not a single revelation given at one time and in one 
 way, but God at sundry times and in divers manners 
 spake unto the fathers, and in the last days by the 
 mouth of His own Son. The communication of the 
 Divine plan was given in fragments and parts — now 
 a little, ami then a little, with long intervals during 
 which no addition was made to the heritage of truth. 
 But, further, we observe, that multifarious as are the 
 pages of nature's record, a profound harmony of design 
 pervades them all. Tliroughout the ages of the geolo- 
 gist and the spaces of the astronomer — as throughout 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 all the kingdoms of nature — -we find, amid endless 
 variety, a substantial unity — unity of force amid 
 diversity of phenomena; unity of plan amid diversity 
 of expression. The unity of form and structure which 
 pervades the whole of organic life is the basis of all 
 our systems of classification, and of all the grand 
 generalisations of modern science. One of the greatest 
 discoveries of the present day — -rivalling the discovery 
 of the law of gravitation itself — is the doctrine of the 
 correlation of forces, the interchangeability in quality 
 and quantity of motion, light, heat, electricity, magnet- 
 ism, and chemical action. And hardly less important 
 is the other great scientific doctrine of our age, im- 
 mensely confirmed by the wonderful revelations of the 
 spectroscope — the law of continuity which pervades 
 and embraces the whole physical universe ; so that 
 in all systems of matter, in suns and stars as on our 
 own earth, the elements are the same; and in all 
 forms of life there is one unbroken gradation. And 
 all these forces and forms are co-ordinated with one 
 specific end in view. But more wonderful still is 
 the harmony that exists among the varied elements of 
 the Bible. In nature we find the moulding to tlie 
 Divine will of plastic matter, of dead forms and 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 forces tliat have no liberty of action. But in the 
 Bible we see the moulding by Divine inspiration and 
 guidance of free wills and living minds, exercised in 
 the most varied circumstances, and exposed to the 
 most widely different influences. And yet with all 
 the variety of circumstance and independence of mind 
 among the writers, we find a symmetry of individual 
 parts and a grand unity of the whole, which is all 
 the more extraordinar)' when we contrast it with the 
 endless confusion of opinions regarding subjects of the 
 highest interest to mankind, in uninspired works of 
 different ages. No incongruity can be detected in any 
 part from Genesis to Revelation ; but, on the con- 
 trary, each part is bound to all the others by a won- 
 derful fulness and subtlety of connection. Through- 
 out every part one great purpose runs ; everything is 
 tending to one point, and working together for one 
 grand consummation. The last words heard from the 
 lips of the risen and glorified Redeemer, recorded by 
 St. John, " Blessed are they that do His command- 
 ments, that they may have right to the tree of life, 
 and may enter in through the gates into the city," 
 are but the fulfilment of the words written by Moses 
 in the opening chapters of the liible. 
 
introduction: 
 
 Throughout nature there is a law of progression. 
 We see it distinctly in the geological record, in which 
 more and more orderly arrangements of the earth's 
 surface, purer skies, and higher systems of life succeed 
 one another, until in the last ages the earth becomes 
 a garden fit for man's habitation and culture. We 
 see it in the growth of living organisms, from the 
 germ to the mature state. And this law of progres- 
 sion operates in every case, not by addition, but by 
 expansion. The fundamental law of development is 
 a differentiation — a passing from simplicity to com- 
 plexity, from unity through diversity to a higher unity. 
 We have the oak in the acorn, the branch and leaf 
 in the bud, and the fruit in the flower. The cell-form 
 in the embryo is the representative of many widely- 
 separated cell-forms in the mature individual. And so 
 also in the geological history of that greater and more 
 complex organism — the animal and vegetable kingdom. 
 One form in the early periods stood as the represen- 
 tative of many widely-separated forms in its present 
 mature condition. " Nature first sketched out her 
 work in general terms, and then elaborated each sub- 
 ordinate idea in separate families ; all these families, 
 taken together as an organic whole, still containing 
 
INTKODUCTIOiV. 
 
 the original idea in a more develoi)ed form." And 
 this fact that all the infinite diversity of nature is but 
 the gradual unfolding of the original Divine conception 
 — the expansion of the whole idea contained in the 
 original germ — gives an overwhelming impression of 
 the unchangeableness, the all-comprehensive intelligence 
 and fore-knowledge of God. And do we not find 
 a similar law of progression, of differentiation from 
 simplicity through complexity to a higher unity, in tiie 
 llible? The whole record of revelation is but the 
 unfolding of the same plan of salvation indicated at 
 the very beginning. We see the primeval promise 
 announced in the vaguest and simplest form at first, 
 merely as a victory of the seed of the woman over 
 the seed of the serpent, without mention of any in- 
 dividual conqueror or of tlie mode of victory. But 
 as time rolls on we find the promise more and more 
 differentiated ; first, in the descendants of Shem ; then 
 in the families of Abraliam, Isaac, and Jacob ; then 
 in the tribe of Judah ; then in the family of David; 
 and at last the seed of the woman appears in Jesus 
 Christ, our Lord and Saviour. And with tliis pro- 
 gressive definition of tlie person of the Conqueror, we 
 have a clearer and more comprehensive idea given to 
 
INTRODUCTIOiV. XIU 
 
 us of the nature and mode of His work. And just 
 as in the earUest fauna and flora of the earth one 
 class stood for many, the earUest families combined 
 the character of several families afterwards separately 
 introduced ; so at the successive periods of the un- 
 folding of God's great promise, we find "one individual 
 representing the history of the race, and foreshowing, 
 in brief, the essential character of large phases and 
 long periods of human development." Surely when we 
 thus find the same law of progression in nature and 
 in the Bible we may believe that there is a continuity 
 Detween them ; that the scheme of redemption is, so 
 to speak, but the grand continuation — the Divine 
 climax and evolution of the same comprehensive plan 
 which was sketched in outline at the foundation of 
 the world. 
 
 When the scientific man asserts, as the latest general- 
 isation of his science, that nature abvays moves along 
 the same path^that law is a necessity of things — he 
 simply adds his own amen to the Christian aftirm- 
 ation ; for the very belief in miracles depends upon 
 this uniformity, for where there is no law there is 
 no transgression, and the exception here, as elsewhere, 
 proves the rule. Science, therefore, with all the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 manifold and impressive evidences wliich it brings 
 forward of the universal government of natural law, 
 has not advanced a single step in proving the 
 impossibility of miracle. It has, indeed, limited the 
 region of miracle, and cleared way the obstructions 
 of false ecclesiastical prodigies and superstitious be- 
 liefs, but in so doing it has caused tlie Christian 
 miracles to shine forth in all their bright significance 
 and unique grandeur. Scientific law, we must re- 
 member, is merely a question of observed fact and 
 not of inherent necessity ; it does not touch at all 
 the question of causality ; and therefore its argument 
 does not affect the Lible position that a change in 
 the sequence of nature did occur on certain adequate 
 occasions. We must not confound, as is so often 
 done, the law with the executive. They are as dis- 
 tinct in nature as they are in human economy. Law 
 is not power, but only the mode or design of power; 
 and design and power can never reside in things — 
 they can only belong to a Being. The mere in- 
 variableness of certain phenomena is not the cause 
 of that in\ariableness. It presupposes an intelligent, 
 voluntary, and Almighty agency. And if so, may He 
 not, at rare intervals, and for higher specific purposes. 
 
INTRODUCTIOy. 
 
 deviate harmoniously from the usual method of His 
 administration? Indeed, it is evident that the measure 
 of the probability of miracles is exactly that of the 
 existence of God Himself. 
 
 But what docs nature herself say to this question ? 
 Do we not find numerous exceptions to the ordinary 
 operation of the laws of nature? It is the ordinary 
 law, for instance, that fire should burn ; and this 
 we conceive to be the v;hole of the law with 
 respect to the action of fire. But it is well 
 known to scientific men that fire may be made so 
 hot as not to burn ; that substances which, at a 
 lower temperature, chemically combine and form 
 new compounds, remain distinct and separate at a 
 more elevated temperature. And this extraordinary 
 law of heat is not antagonistic to the ordinary law, 
 but in entire harmony with it. Further, it is the 
 ordinary law that substances should decrease in size 
 and become of greater specific gravity with decrease 
 of temperature ; but every one knows that water 
 expands in freezing, occupies more room, and be- 
 comes perceptibly lighter when it assumes the shape 
 of ice. Gravitation is the most universal of all 
 known physical influences, ranging throughout all the 
 
XVI INTRODUCT]ON. 
 
 time-worlds as well as all the space-worlds ; and yet 
 its operation is restrained by the law which determines 
 the di/Tusion of gases. Up to a certain point the law 
 of gravitation is permitted to rule without exception ; 
 but all at once it is suspended by the law of gaseous 
 diffusion, by means of which the heaviest and the 
 lightest gases are so commingled, irrespective of their 
 gravity, as that any given portion of air, at whatever 
 height, always contains the same relative proportion 
 of constituents. !May we not then look upon miracles 
 as standing in a somewhat similar relation to the usual 
 order and method of nature ; as " the intervention 
 of a spiritual law which is within, and thus above, 
 every natural law, and which being necessarily in 
 perfect harmony with it, may dignify and expaml 
 its operation, but can never contradict it." The 
 exceptions to the ordinary course of nature in the 
 miracles of the Tible are — like the exceptions of 
 which the ordinary course of nature itself is full 
 — only " \ aried utterances of one grand and simple 
 ordinance, that equally governs the common and 
 the strange." And it is most instructive to find, 
 that just as the natural exceptions to the ordinary 
 laws of nature are uniformly fraught with some wise 
 
INTRODUCTION. xvil 
 
 and gracious purpose, which the ordinary methods 
 of nature could not accomplish ; that just as the 
 expansion of water in freezing preserves it in a 
 liquid state for the use of organic life; just as the 
 extraordinary law of lieat, suspending its ordinary 
 effects, preserves to us the light and heat of the 
 sun, caused by the combustion of dissociated elements, 
 which, at a lower temperature, would combine and 
 extinguish the sun by its own ashes ; just as the 
 restraining of gravity by the law of diffusion of gases 
 prevents the heavy carbonic acid gas from resting 
 at the lowest stratum of the air, to the inevitable 
 destruction of all animal life, and spreads it harm- 
 lessly through the whole atmosphere ; so the miracles 
 of the Bible serve grand moral purposes, and were 
 uniformly charged with some errand of mercy which 
 could be accomplished by no other means. Instead 
 of making light, as it has been well said, of the 
 ordinary operations of nature by the display of extra- 
 ordinary powers, the miracles, on the contrary, impart 
 to these ordinary methods of nature a special and 
 heavenly glory, and teach us that the commonest 
 things are as much God's doing as the rarest. 
 
 Prophecy is usually classed with miracles as one of 
 the special distinctive features of Divine Revelation, 
 
 b 
 
xviii INTRODUCTION. 
 
 liable to the same objections. But if the physical 
 element in miracles, though a departure from the 
 oidinary course of nature, be shown to be yet rather 
 with than against nature, and to have, as we have seen, 
 numerous analogies in the exceptions of nature itself, 
 what shall be said if it be shown, in a similar way, 
 that the principle of prophecy or prefiguration is one 
 that pervades all nature? \Vhat was the deposition 
 of the coal-fields throughout the ages of the geologist, 
 but practically one long continuous prophecy of the 
 coming of a being who, in the fulness of time, was 
 to receive the blessing, " Subdue the earth," and to 
 incur the curse, " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou 
 eat bread " ? Visit one of those iron mines upon which 
 the prosperity of our country so largely depends, and 
 you will be greatly struck with the collocation of all 
 the materials needed to render iron serviceable to the 
 purposes of man ; of the ore of the metal, and the 
 coal and limestone required for its reduction and flux, 
 and the refractory substance necessary for the furnace, 
 and the clay of whicii the fire-bricks are composed. 
 Shall we regard this marvellous combination of materials 
 in one place as a mere fortuitous concourse of atoms? 
 Is it not rather the shadow cast before of the great 
 human world of civilization, tlie prolepsis or proi^hecy 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of the development of the genius of intelligent 
 creatures, destined in remote futurity to wield the 
 elements of nature for the ends of mind ? There is 
 not a sublimer prophecy in Scripture than that wliich 
 was written upon earth's tables of stone, as they were 
 slowly and successively deposited for the production 
 and storing of fuel and of implements for the service 
 of races yet unborn. All the prophecies of the Bible 
 have sprung out of that one primeval one, and rest 
 upon it as their foundation. Survey the face of 
 nature as it is now arranged, and you will find every- 
 where similar prospective contrivances, acted prophecies, 
 in their own order as wonderful and convincing. 
 Everything lower in order, or earlier in time, prophesies 
 the coming of something higher and better than itself 
 to follow in due course, and to announce in its turn 
 something higher still. The mineral world sends forth 
 its herald voice in its crystallisations to proclaim the 
 coming glory of the vegetable kingdom. The world 
 of plants in its structure and functions is full of pre- 
 significances of the animal world ; there is hardly 
 anything in the one which is not paralleled in the 
 other and earlier system. The blossom is foretold 
 at every stage of growth in the plant, by signs that 
 become more and more significant as the period of 
 
 /; 3 
 
XX INTRODUCTION. 
 
 flowering draws nigh. And the advent of man him- 
 self is predicted not only by the progressive arrange- 
 ment of the earth's surface through vast cycles of time, 
 but also by a corresponding uniform ascent and ap- 
 proach to the physical structure and form of man 
 in the creatures that appeared in the successive epochs. 
 In the first zoophyte that dropped its anchor in the 
 most ancient sea, man was created by anticipation in 
 the thought of God ; and parts of the economy of 
 all the lower animals that preceded man, which exist 
 but as symbols in them, acquire use and significance 
 in him. We thus see that the prophecies of Scripture 
 are of a cognate character with the inarticulate signs 
 of nature, and arc but the continuation, for still higher 
 and nobler purposes, and conveyed in the grander 
 shapes of human consciousness, of the ancient pro- 
 phecies of the globe itself. 
 
 The same things may be said regarding sacred 
 typology — another of the distinctive features of the 
 Bible, which is indeed but another aspect of prophecy. 
 Exception has been taken, especially to the various 
 typical and shadowy rites of the Lc\itical law, as 
 being junworthy of God, and extremely unlikely to 
 have been the subject of Divine communication. 
 But apart altogether from the fitness of such a system 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 to teach, by object-lessons as it were, minds so rude 
 and ignorant as to be incapable of forming a con- 
 ception of the abstract ideas of God's holiness and 
 of man's sinfulness, and of the necessity of medi- 
 ation between them — the typology of Scripture is 
 founded upon, and is but the clearer and fuller con- 
 tinuation of, the older typology of nature. There 
 were types and shadowy rites in existence long before 
 the Levitical law was proclaimed ; and all the great 
 ideas of the Jewish economy were presented in a 
 vaguer and more obscure form in the objects and 
 processes of creation. It is most significantly said that 
 the Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world ; 
 and this Divine statement was meant to refer not only 
 to the purposes of God and the arrangements of 
 human history, but also to the constitution of the 
 earth itself. Redemption was no accident, no after- 
 thought, no desperate remedy suggested by the 
 necessity. The Lamb was verily foreordained before 
 the foundation of the world ; and redemption was the 
 key-note of creation to which all its parts and purposes 
 were set in tune. Not only was the sin of man fore- 
 seen ; but the world was moulded by the Redeemer, 
 "without whom," it is most suggestively said, "was 
 not anything made that was made," to be the theatre 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 of the redemption of the sinner. The precious 
 mineral and vegetable substances used in medicine 
 were formed at the beginning, and had a Divine 
 reference to the purposes for which we employ them, 
 viz. the alleviation or removal of the physical effects 
 of man's fall. The natural objects which our Saviour 
 employed to illustrate the various aspects and relations 
 of the scheme of grace, were made at first with that 
 end in view, although it needed the Great Interpreter 
 to explain their significance to us. The first seed that 
 germinated on our earth was a type of Him who said of 
 Himself, " Except a corn of wheat fall into ^he ground 
 and dio, it abideth alone, but if it die, it bringeth 
 forth much fruit." The first animal that gave up its 
 life to nourish the life of another was an unconscious 
 type, like the murdered innocents of Bethlehem, of 
 the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 
 There is thus a sufficient family likeness between the 
 types of God's Woril and the types in His works to 
 warrant us in ascribing them to the same Divine origin, 
 and in believing that they refer to the same great object 
 which consecrates and ennobles them both. 
 
 And in connection with this remedial scheme, how 
 striking are the correlations between the purposes of 
 grace and the arrangements of nature ! With the 
 
INTRODUCTION. xxiil 
 
 sentence of doom, " in the sweat of thy face shalt thou 
 eat bread," are correlated the natural facts, that the 
 staff of human life is an annual grass, requiring to 
 be sown and reaped afresh every year ; that all the 
 esculent vegetables are annual or biennial ; and that 
 trees which produce human food are remarkably short- 
 lived as compared with other trees, and require 
 constant culture and attention to prevent their de- 
 generation. We are accustomed to hear that the law 
 of human toil in the sweat of the brow does not apply 
 to the indolent inhabitants of the South Sea islands ; for 
 there the bread-fruit-tree drops into man's lap his daily 
 bread without any trouble. But even here, there is no ex- 
 ception to the primeval sentence ; for of the two varieties 
 of the bread-fruit-tree, the wild kind that yields seed 
 and propagates itself without the aid of man is worth- 
 less as food, while the edible kind is seedless, and 
 therefore requires to be propagated by human toil 
 and care. How greatly the process of man's redemp- 
 tion from the effects of the curse, of his rise in morals 
 and in intelligence, is aided by this wise arrangement 
 of nature, it would be difficult to estimate. Did his 
 food grow like acorns or beech-mast upon long-lived 
 trees, requiring no toil or care or forethought of his 
 own, the most efficient means to man's advancement 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 would have been wanting; the curse would have 
 deepened his degradation, instead of containing, as 
 it does now, at its core, the means of its own removal, 
 the inverse aid of man's physical and spiritual progress. 
 With the dispersion of mankind at Babel on account 
 of sin were correlated the wise arrangements of land 
 and water on the surface of the earth, and the different 
 productions of different soils and climes, breaking up 
 mankind into nations, separating them from one another 
 within well-defined boundaries, preventing a general 
 combination for evil, leading to the development of 
 national character and experience, and thus preparing 
 the way, through the differentiation of separate culture, 
 for the removal of the effects of Babel, and the higher 
 unity of faith at Pentecost. How strikingly do the 
 laws of the unwritten revelation give their sanction to 
 those of the written revelation ! The laws of health 
 and organisation co-operate with the laws of spiritual 
 being to bless the man who obeys the precepts of the 
 Bible, and to punish him who disobeys them. The 
 mildew, the moth, and the rust, the annual nature of 
 our harvests, and the fleeting character of our natural 
 possessions, all lend additional force to the tenth 
 commandment, and give effect to our Saviour's injunc- 
 tion, *' take no thought for the morrow." And may 
 
INTRO D UC TION. 
 
 it not be said that with the progress of mankind — their 
 elevation above the lowest effects of the curse — are 
 correlated those grand disco/eries of modern science, 
 which prove to us the overwhelming importance of the 
 invisible as compared with the visible, which show to 
 us that the true essence and meaning of all things 
 is hidden from our natural sight, and thus lend their 
 own peculiar and solemn emphasis to the apostolical 
 injunction, which bids us "look not at the things 
 which are seen and temporal, but at the things which 
 are unseen and eternal." The law of continuity through- 
 out the space-worlds and the time-worlds teaches us that 
 the future life will be the counterpart of this; an in- 
 heritance for which we are trained here, as the heir grows 
 into acquaintance with the large and rich estate upon 
 which he was born. And as the caterpillar becomes the 
 butterfly by casting its skin and unfolding parts pre- 
 viously concealed and immature — as the petal of the 
 rose is just its green leaf altered in texture, colour, and 
 form, to fit it for a higher ministry, the eye of the 
 naturalist discerning the identity of type that exists 
 between them — so this very mortal of ours shall put 
 on immortality, and the life to come will only be 
 the blossom of the life that now is. We are learning 
 more and more through a clearer understandincj of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 the law of continuity, that heaven is not so much a 
 distant bourne towards which we are to move, as a 
 present experience which we are to rcaUze; not a 
 sudden giving but a gradual winning; that the 
 kingdom of heaven does not come to earth — as we 
 pray that it may do— but must grow on earth. All 
 these coirelations of the natural world with the 
 spiritual, and the list might be indefinitely extended, 
 are surely striking proofs that they are parts of one 
 and the same great remedial scheme, and that they 
 have the same great object in view, the one in a 
 lower, the other in a higher form, viz. the glory of 
 God in the redemption of fallen man. 
 
 And this brings me to the great truth of the atone- 
 ment of our Lord, which is the grandest and most 
 distinctive thing in the Bible, for the sake of which, 
 indeed, the Bible was produced. Very superficial 
 must be the study of the natural and human worlds 
 that overlooks the vast concurrent testimony which 
 they give to this vital truth. In certain of its aspects 
 the atonement is no unique doctrine, no startling 
 theme. The oldest fact of nature, the inmost fact 
 of society, the greatest fact of Christianity meet and 
 are one on Calvary. The cross of Christ was planted 
 upon the limestone rocks of Jerusalem, composed of 
 
INTKODUCTIOiW. 
 
 the remains of myriads of creatures that had yielded 
 up their life in order that the foundations of the earth 
 might be laid for man, and an altar formed on which 
 the great sacrifice for his sin might be offered. And 
 this fact is significant of the higher fact that the 
 atonement of Christ is the grand continuation, or 
 rather the Divine climax, of that system of interven- 
 tion and vicarious suffering which pervades the natural 
 world, alleviates so much of its misery, and adds so 
 much to its beauty and order. We see the law of 
 vicarious action at work in the plant yielding up its 
 life in order that the animal may be nourished, and 
 in the sacrifice of the animal in order that the nobler 
 life of man may be sustained. Starch, sugar, and oil 
 — substances essential to the support of man — are 
 produced at the expense of the vitality of the vegetable 
 cells in which they are developed, and from which we 
 extract them. We ourselves live by a constant process 
 of interstitial death ; the death and elimination of old 
 particles being necessary for the formation of new, and 
 the forces of repair being stimulated by the forces of 
 decomposition. We cannot digest our food without 
 sacrificing for the purpose a portion of our own sub- 
 stance, in the shape of the gastric juice, which is living 
 matter on the descending; scale arrested and sent back 
 
xxviu INTRODUCTIO.V. 
 
 to minister to our vitality. Physiologists tell us that 
 the gastric juice is formed in minute cells of complex 
 structure, which run a short life-history of develop- 
 ment, growth, and death, and are contained in tubes 
 lining the membrane of the stomach. Every act of 
 digestion involves the sacrifice of some of these cells. 
 The doctrine of substitution pervades the whole science 
 of chemistry, in which we find numerous examples of 
 one element of congeners replacing another, while still 
 the general character of the compound is maintained. 
 What is the principle upon which the familiar mustard 
 plaster depends for its efficacy? Is it not the power 
 which one organ possesses to undertake the work of 
 another, when that otlier is partially or temporarily 
 disabled? We stimulate the skin to do duty for the 
 inflamed liver or lungs, until these organs recover to 
 do their own work. It would be impossible to enu- 
 merate all the striking examples of vicarious or sub- 
 stitutionary action to be seen in the natural world. The 
 very commonest processes of nature are mediatorial. 
 And the same principle follows us into the higher 
 sphere of human life. The whole fabric of the moral 
 world is held together by this principle. From the 
 hour that the mother gives birth to her child — alas ! 
 too often at the sacrifice of her own life — to the hour 
 
INTRODUCTION. XXIX 
 
 when loving hands wipe the death dews from the 
 brow, and loving hearts are wrung with the agony 
 of bereavement, there is hardly a joy that we feel 
 or a trouble from which we escape, which we cannot 
 trace to the mediation of another, often effected . 
 through pain or loss or sorrow to the mediator. 
 Surely, then, if we can trace in the arrangements of 
 dead matter and of organic life, and in all the relations 
 and acts of the human world, one continuous system 
 of substitution and mediation, carried on for the safety 
 and well-being of nature, it is not unreasonable to 
 suppose that a like but a far higher principle should 
 exist in regard to the higher relations of man, which 
 endure for ever.^ Thus viewed, is there anything which 
 can reasonably shock our feelings that sinful, suffering 
 man should be pardoned and reconciled to God, 
 through the vicarious obedience and death of the 
 Incarnate Son ? Is not the law of redemption in 
 harmony — in continuity — with the law of God's other 
 departments of work ? May we not use in regard 
 even to the atonement the words of Solomon? — "I 
 know that whatsoever God docth it shall be for ever ; 
 nothing can be put to it, or taken from it ; and 
 
 ^ See Pritchard's admirable Analo^es in the Progress of Nature 
 and Grace. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 God doeth it that men should fear before Him. That 
 which hath been is now ; and that which is to be 
 hath already been." Are we not led up the great 
 aisle of nature to the altar on Calvary; and prepared 
 by all the facts of nature and of human life for re- 
 garding the expiatory sacrifice of Jesus with adoring 
 faith ? And may we not join in that sublime universal 
 chorus of creation, recorded by llie beloved apostle, 
 "And every creature which is in heaven and on 
 the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in 
 the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying : 
 Blessmg, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto 
 Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb, 
 for ever and ever." 
 
CONTEN TS 
 
 CHAP. PAGB 
 
 I. LIKE ONE OF THESE .... i 
 
 II. THE STARS AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE i8 
 
 III. GRAINS OF SAND 3° 
 
 IV. THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL . 46 
 
 V. WEEDS 62 
 
 VI. RAIN UPON THE MOWN GRASS . . 80 
 
 VII. SUMMER BLOSSOMS 97 
 
 VIII. MOUNTAIN SPRINGS n? 
 
 IX. MOUNTAIN PEACE ^11 
 
 X. LEAVEN 153 
 
 XI. MANNA AND CORN I77 
 
 XII. THE AUTUMN FIRE 19" 
 
•■^^^xii CONTENTS. 
 
 XIII. THE FRUIT-TREE AND THE CHAFF . 203 
 
 XIV. AN APPLE 213 
 
 XV. A CORN OF WHEAT 230 
 
 XVI. THE WIDOWS POT OF OIL . . 253 
 
 XVII. SNOW 269 
 
 XVIII. THE PERMANENCE OF THE PAST . 286 
 
 XIX. THE DAYS OF A TREE . . . . 301 
 
 XX. WASTE 32S 
 
 XXI. THE SPECTRE OF THE OLD NA PURE 343 
 
TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 LIKE ONE OF THESE. 
 
 "Like one of these." — St. Matthew vi. 29. 
 
 OUR Lord was preaching on the slope of a hill in 
 Galilee. It was the early spring, which in that 
 delicious climate is a period of enchantment. The 
 flowering season lasts only a few weeks ; but the traveller 
 who is fortunate enough to be in the Holy Land at the 
 time sees the ground ever)fwhere almost hid by a perfect 
 blaze of crocuses, lilies and anemones ; and these flowers 
 impart form and colour to tracts of country that would 
 otherwise be tame and monotonous. Upon such a blaze 
 of brilliant flowers did the eye of Jesus rest. He not 
 only admired their outward beauty but entered into their 
 simple life, and rose through this vividness of sympathy 
 to the spiritual meanings which they suggested. He 
 saw not only their natural but also their religious side. 
 To Him they were eloquent not only of Divine contri- 
 vance but also of human teaching. They were God's 
 
 is B 
 
TIFO WORLDS ARE OCRS. 
 
 revelation to man, brought nigh to his door, and 
 expressed in the simplest and homeliest form. 
 
 We have in this a striking proof tliat Jesus was 
 divine. His words are the only tender ones about 
 flowers in all the Bible. There are many allusions to 
 the sublime aspects and grand objects of nature — to the 
 mountains and trees — but hardly anything is said of the 
 lowly things that grow on the bosom of the one, and 
 light up the shadow of the other. The grass and the 
 flowers are commonly used as images of decay and tran- 
 sient glory ; and fruits arc prized for their utility without 
 a thought of the blossoms that preceded them ; and the 
 fragrance that is alluded to is not that of the living 
 rose or lily, or some humbler herb of the field, whose 
 sweet odour is its sole charm, but tlie incense that 
 dims the Holy Place, and the smell of the spices and 
 ointments of the merchant. Even in the descriptions of 
 heaven, we read only of the beauty of flashing gems, 
 and see nothing of the soft living beauty of flowers. 
 Golden streets invite the footsteps instead of a carpet 
 of cowslips and buttercups ; and walls of sapphire, ruby, 
 and emerald bound the splendour, instead of hill-sides 
 green on their lower slopes with the early spring grass, 
 and blue and crimson on the upper heights with the 
 gleam of gentian, and the blush of Alp-rose. We behold 
 indeed in the midst of the streets a tree of life with 
 medicinal leaves, and twelve manner of fruits ; but we 
 miss the flowers that have no purpose to serve but to 
 delight the eye, and bring sweet thoughts to the mind 
 by their beautiful idleness. All this of course is 
 
LIKE ONE OF THESE. 
 
 necessary, for the ideas of heaven which the sacred writer 
 wishes to impress upon our minds, in contrast with the 
 passing scenes and objects of earth, are those of eternal 
 endurance and complete satisfaction, which gems and 
 fruits alone can symbolise. But while the glories of the 
 golden streets and jewelled walls may be the most 
 attractive features in the picture of the heavenly paradise 
 to some minds, others will be drawn more by thoughts 
 of the green pastures and fountains of living waters be- 
 side which the Lamb leads His flock. And such per- 
 sons will feel a peculiar interest in the one little verse 
 which gives us a profound insight into the tender heart 
 of Jesus in regard to the gospel of nature, and tells us 
 that He who loved the little children, loved their little 
 unconscious playmates and counterparts, and virtually 
 implied in His words that of these too is the kingdom 
 of heaven. 
 
 " Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow ; they 
 toil not, neither do they spin ; and yet I say unto you 
 that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one 
 of these." This is indeed an illuminated text. Every 
 word in this allusion to the lilies of the field is itself a 
 picture. But Jesus does not look with admiration and 
 tenderness merely at the general aspect of the whole 
 crimsoned field before His eye— at the common mass 
 of blossoms ; He singles out the individual flowers. He 
 said tliat Solomon, who stood on the same spot and 
 sang of the same flowers centuries before, but only in 
 the lover's way, was not arrayed like one of these. \\'hat 
 loving, special regard ; what profound, far-reaching 
 
 15 z 
 
TiyO IVOKLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 significance, is there in that little phrase, "one of 
 these ! " I propose to isolate it from the rest of the 
 verse, and use it as a text for a few meditations upon 
 God's care for single individual things. 
 
 I think that there is particular need of such teaching 
 at the present day. There is much in our modern life 
 that tends to destroy individuality and to merge the 
 separate existence of each person in that of the whole 
 community. "The world," as one has quaintly re- 
 marked, "is so full of other folk." In our large cities 
 and in the busy centres of human industry and enjoy- 
 ment we are apt to be lost in the crowd. Individuals 
 come unregarded and go unmissed. The thought of 
 the teeming millions of the world's population oppresses 
 us with a sense of personal insignificance, and renders 
 it difficult for us to realise God's interest in the history 
 of each human being. Science is teaching us that nature 
 is careful only of the type and careless of the single life. 
 Face to face with the immense spaces of the astronomer 
 and the awful periods of the geologist, the old question 
 forces itself upon us with tenfold more difficulty and 
 sadness : " What is man that Thou art mindful of him, 
 and the son of man that Thou visitest him ? " When 
 gazing upon the everlasting hills and the untiring ocean, 
 the stars in their courses and the seasons in their changes, 
 and thinking of the vast forces and the vast orbits of the 
 universe, we seem to ourselves to be but little uncon- 
 sidered fragments of a tremendous material system. A 
 remorseless Fate seems to plough its course steadily 
 onwards, careless whether it is over senseless rocks or 
 
LIKE ONE OF THESE. 
 
 breaking hearts — leaving us to struggle for our life as 
 a man struggles in a stormy sea. The laws of nature as 
 they are explained to us by our philosophers seem to 
 allow no room for Divine thought and care in individual 
 cases ; and we are apt to be overpowered by the despair- 
 ing idea of the calm indifference of the great Ruler of 
 the Universe. Surely then it is a blessed Gospel which 
 tells us that we are not inextricably buried in a shoreless, 
 bottomless, sea of nature, but on the contrary are con- 
 stant objects of solicitude to a personal God ! And the 
 measure in which we realise that He who made us is 
 speaking to us in our own human language, and thinking 
 of us not merely as present somewhere in His vast and 
 total thought, but as known by name and nature — known, 
 but in far higher degree, as we ourselves know each other, 
 is the measure in which we realise our own individuality, 
 rise to the full dignity of a human person, and are 
 proof against all the pantheistic negations that perplex 
 our times. 
 
 Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of 
 these lilies of the field, said He who came in human 
 form to reveal to us the unseen personal God, to bring 
 near to us the distant living heaven, and to establish our 
 wonderful individuality and value as creatures made in 
 the image of God ; and we all feel the deep truth of His 
 words. There is no one who has not been lost in 
 wonder at times at the individual beauty and perfection 
 of the wild flowers, whose blossoming and fading, open- 
 ing and closing, mark the passage of the seasons and 
 the daily course of the sun in the heavens. We take up 
 
riVO IVORLDS ARE OURS. cjiap. 
 
 at random any single plant from a whole meadowful, 
 and we fmd that it is as complete in all its parts, and as 
 admirably adapted for its purpose, as though it were the 
 only object in the universe. And untold myriads of 
 such flowers are born and die every year in lonely places 
 where no human eye beholds them, and their sweetness 
 seems to be wasted on the desert air. And not only is 
 each plant thus superficially beautiful and perfect : the 
 microscope brings out new loveliness and increases the 
 wonder. The common daisy, which looks like a fairy 
 creature to the eye of a child, appears to the scientific 
 man in its composite arrangement of separate florets a 
 marvel of construction and contrivance, fearfully and 
 wonderfully made. You look at a bed of carnations, 
 violets or roses, and you count it all as one variety ; but 
 when you begin to examine and compare you find no 
 two individual blossoms exactly alike; and you soon 
 make the discovery that there are as many varieties as 
 there are individual flowers. The most elaborate means 
 are adopted to prevent self-fertilisation, which would 
 make the progeny like the parent, and to effect cross- 
 fertilisation, which introduces fresh varieties. The curious 
 shapes, brilliant colours and wonderful structure of many 
 flowers are produced by this cause, and show to us in 
 the most striking way that God cares not merely for 
 the race or the species, but for the individual : that 
 Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed, not merely 
 like the whole ficUl of lilies, but like one of these. 
 
 But Jesus brought forward God's care in clothing and 
 tending the individual plant as an argument and illustra- 
 
LIKE ONE OF THESE. 
 
 tion to prove His special care for human beings. He 
 used it as we pluck a lily or a violet in a spot where 
 some beautiful revelation of nature or some tender ex- 
 perience of the heart has been given to us, to hold the 
 memory fast. Plants, although they have a greater indi- 
 viduality than mineral substances, are still bound up 
 in the processes and forces of the physical world. They 
 are merged in the dominion of nature ; but man is not 
 a thing but a person. The individualising process of 
 God in nature is completed in him. He rises out of 
 nature, above nature, and becomes the interpreter of 
 nature. By some scientific men, indeed, man is sunk 
 in the creation. According to them he is simply the 
 copestone of the vast building, the highest link in the 
 chain of organic life, owing his origin to the same 
 physical laws which have formed the various species of 
 plants and animals, and tracing his ancestry to some 
 gelatinous jelly on the rocks of a primeval ocean. But 
 even supposing this theory to be true, it can manifestly 
 be true only of his physical part. He has a spiritual part 
 whose origin cannot thus be accounted for. The fact 
 that God made him in His own image, proves that he 
 is not a creature among the mass of creatures, but a 
 person standing out in full relief from creation ; and that 
 Divine impress is after all the real truth of humanity, 
 which makes it of very little consequence what views 
 may be entertained regarding man's physical descent. 
 His body is the most perfectly appointed work of God, 
 the most complete and vital unity in the material uni- 
 verse, summing up all the forms and forces of creation 
 
riro WORLDS are ours. 
 
 in itself and stamping upon them the higher characters 
 of a human soul, and thus linking the two worlds of 
 matter and spirit, of heaven and earth together. He is 
 endowed with a self-conscious intelligence which enables 
 him to understand the works of God and to search 
 out the secrets of the universe. His spirit possesses 
 that freedom of will to choose the means and objects 
 of life which alone makes goodness possible, which 
 constitutes the true image of God, and in which the 
 possibility of the incarnation is indicated. The creation 
 exhibits to us the operation of the Divine attributes ; 
 but man possesses the attributes themselves. We see 
 in God's works proofs of His love and wisdom and 
 power ; but man has love and power and wisdom in 
 some measure akin to those of his Maker, 
 
 Man, being thus alone of all creatures the child of 
 God, the whole history of the earth is the history of its 
 preparation for him. In the storing of coal under the 
 strata of the earth and the distribution of metallic 
 ores in veins ; in the formation of useful plants, 
 cultivated fruits, cereal grains, domestic animals, which 
 were among the last species introduced ; in the gradual 
 increase of the beauty of created things with the progress 
 of time — the plumage of birds, the hues of insects, the 
 songs of the woodlands, the delicate tints and perfumes 
 of flowers, and the sculpturing of the surface of the earth 
 into grander and lovelier scenery ; in all these things we 
 see how God has been providing for man's wants, and 
 giving him the means of obtaining dominion over all 
 nature. And if the peculiar dignity of man as compared 
 
LIKE ONE OF THESE. 
 
 with the rest of creation gives this grand significance to 
 geological history, it also makes the Scripture history 
 of the regeneration of man, his moral and religious 
 culture, reasonable and consistent. Where geological 
 history ends Scripture history commences ; and the 
 unique position of man in creation is the key that ex- 
 plains Scripture history. If we believe, as we must do, 
 that the origin of man is exceptional — that the chain 
 of continuity in nature in his case has been broken — 
 then we see the beautiful harmony between the scheme 
 of grace and that fact. We see why God should come 
 out from behind the veil of nature and reveal Himself 
 in the modes and within the limits of human life, and 
 break the silence of the heavens and speak to man by 
 means of prophets, kings and godly men of old, and in 
 the last days by the mouth of His own Son. The 
 whole system of Divine Revelation rests upon the 
 special creation of man. The scion of the incarnation 
 is harmoniously grafted upon the stock of an exceptional 
 being made in the image of God. In the origin of man 
 something has come into the world which is not of it ; 
 a power which is above nature is brought into the order 
 of nature. And all the after-interpositions of God in 
 his behalf, all the laws and processes of grace, are in 
 entire unison with the first interposition. 
 
 But not only does God treat the whole human race 
 in this exceptional way. He also enters into personal 
 relations with each human being. He knows us not 
 in the mass only, but individually. He calls each 
 human being by name, and leads him out from the 
 
TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 crowd and distinguishes him by special dealings. It 
 is a wonderful thought, which we too often lose sight 
 of, that not only is the human race a special creation 
 of God, but each human being is also a special creation. 
 Not only is man by himself an order which cannot be 
 classified with any of the other orders of the animal 
 kingdom, but each man is also a special order which 
 cannot be classified with any other member of the 
 human family. Each human being is a person differ- 
 ing from all other persons. There is an essential 
 difference in all lives. There are no real doubles in 
 the world; no such thing as identity in constitution 
 and circumstances. Even the most thoughtless person 
 cannot but be impressed at times with that great 
 mystery of our being, our individual isolation from 
 our fellow-creatures as from an all-surrounding universe. 
 Much of our life indeed is bound up in the Hves of 
 others; but every soul has besides an individual life 
 with an individual history. Each man is sent into the 
 world to work out by his acts or words some particular 
 truth which he alone possesses ; and the inimitable 
 speciality of each man's experience must present things 
 to him in an aspect which can be exactly the same for 
 no other. The " personal equation " must be taken into 
 consideration in all our estimates of men as well as in 
 determining the observations of astronomy. 
 
 And are we not thus shut out from our fellow-creatures 
 in the seclusion of our individuality that we may be shut 
 in more closely with God ? Are we not constituted 
 distinct persons, differing from all others, tliat God may 
 
LIKE ONE OF THESE. 
 
 manifest Himself to each of us in another way than He 
 does unto the world — that He may know us, love us, 
 watch over us, and lead us individually, even as if calling 
 us by name ? If the unique character of man be the rea- 
 son why God deals with him exceptionally, why He treats 
 him differently from the rest of the creation, surely the 
 fact that each human being is unique is a reason why 
 God should deal with him specially and in accordance 
 with his individual character and requirements. And 
 this is just what the Christian religion teaches. This is 
 the revelation w^hich Jesus has given to us. One of the 
 great uses of His incarnation is to manifest God in 
 a human personality, that we might believe in that 
 particular and personal love which he has towards us. 
 He taught the inestimable value of each human soul, 
 saying, " What shall it profit a man though he gain the 
 whole world and lose his own soul ? " He spoke the 
 beautiful parable of the sheplierd who left the ninety 
 and nine sheep in the fold and went out into the 
 w'ilderness in search of the one that had strayed ; and 
 He said that it is not the will of His Father that one 
 of these little ones should perish. He did not allow 
 the solitary woman who came up behind Him in the 
 crowd to steal some healing virtue from the hem of His 
 garment to go away in this impersonal, unrecognising 
 way, but compelled her to show herself and confess her 
 need, and sent her away with His personal blessing. He 
 has made Himself known to us not only as the Redeemer 
 of our common nature but also of our several persons. 
 We can each of us say, in the words of the Apostle, 
 
Tiro WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 " He loved me and gave Himself for me." We are 
 saved, not as some unknown person — a mere member 
 of the community — but as the Mary, or John, or Peter, 
 or Paul, or Antipas, whose name is written in the Lamb's 
 book of life, engraved upon the palms of God's hands. 
 And in the carrying out of this individual salvation 
 of men, God does not fail in some form or other to 
 present to every human soul the things that belong to 
 its peace. 
 
 Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one oj 
 these. The sun that shines upon the broad world lies 
 in its little bosom, and moulds its soft texture and paints 
 its bright hues. There is a wise meaning and a gracious 
 design in every tint of its adornment and every curve of 
 its grace. Each leaf is set in its own place by law; and 
 the spot where each petal and stamen is to appear is pre- 
 determined by a covenant of nature ordered in all things 
 and sure. Its symmetry is a type and proof of the 
 Divine justice. Its shape indicates that it occupies only 
 its own fiiir share of the world ; it is limited by its form 
 to what is best for it and for all other things around it. 
 Its life is co-ordinated and keeps time with the sublime 
 motions of the heavens, and its structure and uses are 
 full of the profound teachings of the unsearchable God. 
 And if God thus care for an individual flower, which 
 to-day is and to-morrow is cast into the oven, how much 
 more will He care for an individual human being whom 
 He has made in His own image, and upon whose life 
 He has made such momentous issues to depend? The 
 extinction of a lily would be only the loss of a fleeting 
 
LIKE ONE OF THESE. 
 
 form of organic life — a mere presentation of a specific 
 type, which is merged in nature and would disappear 
 again in nature, as a bubble that rises on the surface 
 of a stream vanishes again in its waters ; but the 
 extinction of a human life would be the loss of a 
 person in whom individuality — separation from the all- 
 pervading forces of nature — is completed, and who is 
 thus severed from physical connection that he may enter 
 into higher moral relations with other spirits and with 
 God. And, therefore, as I am a special creation of 
 God, whom He has made for communion with Himself, 
 I believe that He cares for me as He cares for no one 
 else ; that He manifests Himself to me in a way that 
 He manifests Himself to no one else ; that I bring out 
 certain qualities in His nature and administration which 
 no one else brings out ; and that I show forth His glory 
 in a way that no other human being can do. I believe 
 that every Christian sees and knows God and Christ in 
 a different way from all other Christians ; that according 
 to individual character and attainments are the special 
 revelations and experiences of grace ; that the love which 
 passeth knowledge and the fulness of God are condi- 
 tioned by the capacity of each human soul, and con- 
 stitute a special experience to each human being. 
 " How is it that Thou wilt manifest Thyself to us and 
 not unto the world % " " If a man love Me he will keep 
 My words, and My Father will love him, and Wc will 
 come unto him and make Our abode with him." He 
 gives to each a white stone and a new name, which no 
 man knoweth saving he that receivcth it. 
 
14 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 It is upon this ground of our individuality that we can 
 rest most securely the efficacy of prayer. It may seem 
 as if in this vast universe there were no place left for 
 caring about the wishes or interests of any individual 
 being in it ; that God governs the whole for the 
 benefit of the whole ; tliat the laws of nature carry 
 to their end, without any possibility of deviation or 
 interrui:)tion, the intentions of God. But the fact 
 that God enters into sucli personal relations with us, 
 as we know that He has done, indicates that we must 
 enter into personal relations with Him. His special 
 communications to us must awaken corresponding 
 responses in our heart. He can reconcile the true 
 interest of every soul with the real good of the whole. 
 Though He is ruling the world He has revealed Himself 
 to us as our Father ; and we must come to Him with our 
 wants and sins and sorrows as little children, confident 
 that our individual prayer has its own place and value 
 in this great system of law and order, and that the Lord 
 will hear it, as a father hears the prayers of a child, and 
 grant us, if not the exact answer that we wish, the 
 answer that we really need. 
 
 It is upon this ground also that the argument for im- 
 mortality rests most securely. The immortality to which 
 some look forward — the immortality of the matter of 
 which our bodies is composed, or of the force which 
 has produced our personal life, or of the race of which 
 we are members— the individual perishing but the com- 
 munity surviving — or of the intellectual ideas or moral 
 truths which we have oricrinated or transmitted — such an 
 
LIKE ONE OF THESE. 
 
 immortality would be worthless. "We can feel no interest 
 in a destiny so abstract, so impersonal. ^Ve do not 
 want to be absorbed and lost in the matter, or the force, 
 or the truth of the world, or even in the unfathomed 
 depths of universal being, like a drop in the ocean ; we 
 want to be ourselves throughout eternity. And such 
 an immortality is opened up to us by Jesus Christ, who 
 in death proved Himself to be stronger than death. 
 Because He lives we shall live also. This argument 
 when heaven grows dim to eyes full of tears, and 
 faith seeks to shape out in the awful void "the image 
 of its everlasting dower," is supported by the voiceless 
 unconfuted lips of the flowers which we place by the 
 bedside of the dying and on the grave of the dead. 
 To the thoughtful mind the lily blossom is a wicket 
 in the great unseen portal of death, through which we 
 may obtain bright glimpses of what is beyond. It opens 
 in all its snowy purity and exquisite grace from the dry 
 withered sheath, as the transfigured immortal life bursts 
 from the temporary imprisonment of death. Who would 
 have thought that such a glorious revelation lay hid in 
 the unsightly bulb buried in the dark earth 1 And if the 
 death of the plant should thus blossom into undreamt- 
 of beauty, what infinite possibilities, better than our 
 brightest hopes are held by tliat darkness which bounds 
 our vision here. He who raises up the lilies every 
 summer, each from its own root in the mould, wid 
 not leave our life in the dust. "Like one of these," 
 our death will be but a blossoming into a higher 
 life. 
 
l6 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 As nature protests continually against uniformity, and 
 by a thousand analogies insists upon the supreme im- 
 portance of the individual, so the Christian religion 
 is a grand continual protest against the spirit of the 
 world and the Pharisaism of the Church, which tend 
 to reduce all alike to one dull uniform pattern, and 
 to construct one type of Christian experience and 
 Christian work which all must follow. It proclaims 
 and insures the distinct life and originality and pre- 
 ciousness of each man, and claims all human interests 
 for its domain and all human faculties for its instruments j 
 and thus produces a variety as great in the field of grace 
 as in the field of nature. It teaches us to esteem others 
 better than ourselves for the sake of the special gifts and 
 graces which they possess and of which we are destitute. 
 It is by the qualities in which we differ from others that 
 we influence them most, and not by the qualities in 
 which we resemble them. Each human being is sepa- 
 rated from the rest of the world and from the rest of 
 his kind — is specially endowed and specially circum- 
 stanced and specially ministered to — in order first that 
 he may enter into living personal union with the Lord 
 Jesus, in whom alone he is complete — that he may lose 
 his lower sinful perishing life, and gain a higher and 
 more enduring individuality in Christ Jesus. And he is 
 thus united to Christ and made individually nobler — not 
 that he may be isolated from his race and confine to 
 himself the richness of his experience and the blessed- 
 ness of his life in Christ, but that he may be a centre 
 of usefulness to others. Each individual Christian life 
 
I. LIKE ONE OF THESE. i 7 
 
 is inestimably precious, because it can contribute its 
 distinct share to the manifold richness of the whole surn 
 of Christian life. Each of us can contribute to the 
 highest well-being of humanity — to the glory of God 
 and the joy of Christ what no other human being can 
 supply ; and if we withhold this personal contribution 
 the loss can never be made up. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE STARS AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 
 
 "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the 
 heaven to divide the day from the night ; and let them le for 
 signs, and for seasons, ana for days, and years." — Genesis i. 14. 
 
 ALIT'I'LE insignificant insect, that hides in the 
 darkest corners of our houses and in the most 
 obscure nooks in the fields, furnishes the astronomer 
 with a measuring line by which the august motions of 
 the orbs of heaven may be determined. By the slender 
 threads of a spider's web, stretched at equal distances 
 across the glass of the transit instrument in the Royal 
 Observatory, the exact instant at which stars and planets 
 pass south or north of Greenwich is noted, and the 
 chronometer of every vessel in our seaports about to 
 proceed on a distant voyage is regulated. By observa- 
 tions of the heavenly bodies, taken by aid of such 
 chronometers, mariners can ascertain with perfect ac- 
 curacy the latitude and longitude of their ships in the 
 loneliest parts of the ocean. Every ves-scl that sails upon 
 the high seas is thus as much indebted for its safety to 
 
en II. THE STARS AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. \-) 
 
 the delicate web woven by some spider between two 
 clover-leaves, for certain purposes of its own, as it is 
 to the sails and cordage by which the breeze propels 
 it over the waters. 
 
 Our human tasks, that appear insect-like to higher 
 intelligences, are also correlated with the stars of heaven. 
 Wrought in obscure corners, and in humble walks of 
 life, they mark the transit of the heavenly bodies, and 
 are timed to the motion of the spheres. Across the 
 webs woven by the toil and expenditure of brain and 
 muscle, the sun, moon, and stars pass, to be to us for 
 signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years. 
 
 But not for secular purposes alone are these divisions 
 of time marked out for us by the heavenly bodies ; they 
 have a still higher and more important purpose to serve 
 in connection with our spiritual life. Man does not live 
 by bread alone ; nothing was made by Ood for a mere 
 temporary or physical use. Everything in God's uni- 
 verse exists, not for its own sake merely, but for the 
 sake of something higher than itself. For the immortal 
 education of souls — as their grandest use — the visible 
 heavens and earth were made. This lower creation is 
 but a scaffolding for the erection of the spiritual temple 
 of the heirs of glory. What a grand thought it is, that 
 the whole mass of the earth, from pole to pole, and from 
 centre to circumference, has been weighed in the balance, 
 in order that a snowdrop may hang its fragile blossom on 
 its stem, in the right way to produce and ripen its seed ! 
 But it is a thought grander still, that the stars in their 
 courses fought against Sisera ; that the sun and moon 
 
 c 2 
 
Tiro WOKLDS ARE OCRS. 
 
 Stood Still over the valley of Ajalon, in order that Israel 
 might have light to fight the battle of the Lord ; that the 
 whole material universe is subordinated to, and even 
 sacrificed for, the spiritual welfare of those heirs of 
 salvation to whom the very angels are ministering 
 sijirits. Just as the spider's thread serves to catch a 
 fly and mark the transit of a star; just as the silky 
 web beaded with morning dew, that glitters on the 
 lawn, is correlated with the canvas sheet, wet with the 
 spray of the storm, that spreads to the gale in mid ocean ; 
 so the grand unity of design which binds together every 
 law and substance of the visible universe, links the stars 
 of heaven with the s])iritual condition of man, and 
 makes of them signs by which his spiritual life may 
 be regulated. 
 
 The revolution of the earth on its axis marks off" for 
 us the period of a day ; the changes of the moon divide 
 for us our month ; and the motion of the earth round 
 the sun determines our year. But the period of time 
 which we call a week has no such origin. It is marked 
 out, not by the passage of any star or the revolution of 
 any heavenly body. It is of special divine appointment. 
 It is caused by the Sun of Righteousness alone ; it is 
 indicated by the transit of the Star that arose out of 
 Jacob across the dark line of death — across the boundary 
 between this world and the next, in resurrection glory. 
 It is the gnomon of eternity, the shadow of God's 
 Throne, that separates the first day of the week from 
 all other days, and consecrates it to the service of God 
 and the highest well-being of man. The Lord's Day 
 
11. THE STARS AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 2 i 
 
 is the representative day — the representative period of 
 time, which determines the character of all the other 
 periods, and is given to us to prepare for eternity. It 
 is like the middle stem of the seven-branched candle- 
 stick, which sheds its centre light upon the other six 
 lamps ; for it is consistent with the experience of every 
 one, that as the first day has been spent so the whole 
 week has generally turned out. 
 
 Emerson strikingly says, that " This age has yoked its 
 wagsTon to a star." It makes use of the great forces of 
 the universe in its daily work ; harnesses the power of 
 steam to its machinery ; paints its portraits by the light 
 oi the sun ; and sends its messages to the ends of the 
 earth on the back of the lightning. What a lesson 
 should this teach us in spiritual things ! If we navigate 
 our ships by the light of the stars ; if we carry on our 
 correspondence by the lightning of heaven ; should we 
 condescend in the sphere of the soul to the use of things 
 that are relatively lower? Not by the vain appearances 
 of earth, but by the glorious revelations of eternity, should 
 we live ; not at the things seen and temporal, but at 
 the things unseen and eternal, should we look ; not by 
 sight, but by faith, should we walk ; not in man, whose 
 breath is in his nostrils, but in the Lord Almighty 
 should we trust ; not in ourselves should we look for the 
 ground of salvation, but to the merits of our Lord and 
 Saviour Jesus Christ ; not under the power of this world 
 should we live, but under the powers of the world to 
 come. If we are new creatures in Christ Jesus ; if the 
 Spirit has brought light out of our darkness, and order 
 
TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 out of our confusion, and life out of our death ; then 
 over our new creation the morning stars sing together 
 and the sons of God shout for joy. Naturally we are 
 the creatures of days and months and years that vanish, 
 regulated by sun and moon and stars that will perish. 
 But, born anew in Christ, we enter into a sphere where 
 time has no existence, where one day is as a thousand 
 years and a thousand years as one day ; we lay hold on 
 eternal life. As kings and priests unto God — kings over 
 circumstances, and priests yielding ourselves a living 
 sacrifice, let us walk worthy of our high vocation, and 
 reign and serve on the earth. 
 
 I. The lights which God hath set in the firmament 
 break up the monotony of life. There is something 
 peculiarly irksome in uniformity. A long straight road 
 without a turn is very trying to the person who has to 
 traverse it. He sees it all before him ; there is nothing 
 to divert his attention or excite his hope ; he anticipates 
 no surprise, no new experience. He walks it twice, first 
 with his eyes and then with his feet, and this double 
 walking is dreary and fatiguing. Like this straight road 
 would be our life, were it not for the alternations ol day 
 and night and the changes of the seasons. The orbs of 
 heaven introduce curves and turning-points into the path 
 of life, which relieve its monotony and impart interest 
 and variety to it. Life is not a continuous drudgery, 
 a going on wearily in a perpetual straight line ; but 
 a constant ending and beginning. We do not see 
 all the road of life before us ; the bends of its days 
 and months and years hide the future from our view, 
 
II. THE STARS AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 23 
 
 and allure us on with new hopes and fresh expecta- 
 tions, until at last we come without fatigue to the end 
 of the journey. 
 
 II. The lights which God hath set in the firmament 
 divide our life into separate and manageable portions. 
 Just as the horizon takes out of the great globe a land- 
 scape which does not bewilder us with its vastness, but 
 spreads around our home and sphere of labour a suffi- 
 cient variety of scenery and objects to draw out and 
 exercise our faculties of mind and body ; so the horizon 
 of each day, or week, or month, or year takes out of our 
 whole existence a part, which enables us most efficiently 
 to transact on its stage the business, and carry on 
 the relations of life. We have to deal, not with the 
 whole of life, but with small portions of it, as they are 
 measured out to us one by one. And thus, by the limit- 
 ation of our view and the narrowing of our range of 
 action, our attention is acuminated upon the objects 
 that are close at hand, and upon the duties and respon- 
 sibilities of the present moment. Sufficient to each day 
 is the evil thereof. Each day brings its own work and 
 its own rest. Each particular object is brought forward 
 from the dim perspective of the rational horizon and 
 bulks largely in the foreground of the sensible horizon. 
 The little things that would have been eclipsed if seen 
 only as parts of a great whole, are seen prominently by 
 themselves, and become invested with special impor- 
 tance. We are more deeply impressed with the magni- 
 tude of our faults when we look back upon them at the 
 close of each day, than when we review them at the end 
 
TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 of a year ; and we are more encouraged to do our work 
 when we look forward to it on the morning of each day, 
 than when we survey it from the commencement of a 
 whole week or month. 
 
 III. The lights which God hath set in the firmament 
 enable us to redeem the time ; to retrieve the mis-spent 
 past by the right improvement of the present. No 
 more, indeed, does God do for us as He did for 
 Hezekiah of old : " Behold, I will bring again the 
 shadow of the degrees, which is gone down on the sun- 
 dial of Ahaz, ten degrees backward. So the sun re- 
 turned ten degrees, by which degrees it was gone down." 
 But in a certain representative sense He brings back for 
 us the days that are fled and the years that are no more. 
 Each day is a miniature of the whole of life and of all 
 the seasons of the year. Morning answers to spring ; 
 mid-day to summer ; afternoon to autumn ; and evening 
 to winter. We are children in the morning, with their 
 fresh feelings and hopes ; we are grown-up men and 
 women, with all their sober and sad experiences, at 
 noon ; we are aged persons, with whom the possibilities 
 of life are over, in the afternoon and night. And this 
 representative relation of each day to the whole of life, 
 gives us daily-recurring opportunities of living over 
 again the past, and repairing its wastes and mending 
 its evils. Each morning we get our youth back again ; 
 each day we get our whole life back again ; in the 
 relation in which a miniature copy stands to the full- 
 sized portrait, or the small central part of the revolving 
 wheel to its wide circumference. And in this way 
 
ir. rilE STARS AND THE SPIRITUAL LITE. 25 
 
 we have an opportunity of doing on the small scale 
 and narrow stage of. a single day what we ought to 
 have done on the larger field of our whole previous 
 existence. 
 
 IV. The lights which God hath set in the firmament 
 enable us to set out on a new course from some marked 
 and memorable point. The horizon of each day, each 
 week, each month, each year, comes down and closes 
 around us with all its painful recollections and habits 
 and associations of evil, and a new horizon opens up 
 with new opportunities and fresh hopes ; and this closing 
 and opening of each marked period of our life says to 
 us emphatically, " Let the dead past bury its dead ; " 
 " Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto 
 sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 AVe are to gather out of the past all its wise lessons for 
 the future, and to forget all the rest, for " there is now 
 no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who 
 walk not after the flesh but after the Spirit." God is 
 giving to us with every new horizon of life a sense 
 of recovered freedom, separating us from past painful 
 experiences, and enabling us to begin a new course 
 of life on a higher plane. And with this division of 
 time by the orbs of Heaven — this arrangement of days 
 and months and years, with their perpetually recurring 
 new opportunities of living no more unto ourselves but 
 unto God — coincide the nature and design of the 
 blessed Gospel, whose unique peculiarity is, that it is 
 the cancelling of debts that could never be paid, the 
 assurance that our relations to God are entirely changed. 
 
Tll^O WORLDS ARE OCRS. 
 
 and all old things are passed away, and all things be- 
 come new. It is this association that gives such im- 
 portance to anniversaries, birthdays, and new years' days 
 — seasons considered peculiarly auspicious for commenc- 
 ing life afresh, and which arc generally taken advantage 
 of to form new resolutions. 
 
 It has been noticed in our observatories, that, betwe^-n 
 the real passage of a star across the spider's thread of 
 a meridian telescope and the estimation of its passage 
 by the ob.-^erver, an interval of time occurs which varies 
 with different individuals, and with the same individual 
 in summer and winter, and in different conditions of 
 body. It is the duty of the astronomer to record the 
 passage of the star the instant it occurs ; but it has been 
 found that when there are two or three assistants who 
 take their turn at the instrument, there is a constant 
 discrepancy between their observations. One notices 
 and records the passage sooner than another ; the 
 difference in some cases being more than a second. 
 This difference, arising from the different rate of speed 
 with which an impression from without travels along the 
 nervous system of different individuals, is called by 
 astronomers the personal equation; and allowance has to 
 be always made for it in the extremely delicate and 
 minute observations of astronomy. A similar dis- 
 crepancy may be noticed between the impressions pro- 
 duced upon different individuals by the transit of the 
 seasons, by the passage of life across the viewless 
 boundary of a new day, a new week, or a new year. 
 The personal equation must be taken into account in the 
 
II. THE STARS AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. :?7 
 
 spiritual as in the scientific world. Some are more 
 easily and deeply impressed by the flight of the years 
 than others. 
 
 God is setting His signs in the heavens that we may 
 pause and reflect upon their solemn significance. And 
 just as the seaman afar upon the trackless ocean takes an 
 observation with his instrument of the orbs of the sky, 
 in order to ascertain his latitude and longitude, that he 
 may steer safely to his destination ; so we are warned 
 to discern the face of the sky, to examine by the lights 
 which God hath put in the firmament our position re- 
 latively to the country for which we are bound. It is 
 for our salvation that sun, moon, and stars were ordained ; 
 that the world was made ; that the Son of God died. 
 Are we living insensible to the gracious calls addressed 
 to us by the creation which was brought into existence 
 for redemptive purposes, by Him without Whom was 
 not anything made that was made ? Is it in vain for 
 our higher well-being that God has placed His lights 
 in the firmament to be for signs and for seasons and 
 for days and for years ? If so, the stars in their courses 
 will fight against us as they fought against Sisera. The 
 whole economy of nature leaves him without excuse 
 who neglects so great salvation. 
 
 It is beautiful to observe how the motions of the stars 
 of heaven in their orbits, are represented by the flowers 
 of earth in their opening and closing, in their blossom- 
 ing and fading. The clock of time has two faces : the 
 one above, on which the hours are marked by the rising 
 and setting of the orbs of heaven ; the other below, on 
 
Tiro WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 which the hours are marked by the blossoming and the 
 fading, the opening and the closing of the flowers. The 
 one exactly corresponds with the other. The movements 
 of the living creatures depend upon the movements of 
 the lifeless stars. The daisy follows with its golden 
 eye the path of the sun through the sky, opens its 
 blossom when he rises, and closes it when he sets. 
 Thus should it be with our souls. There should be 
 a similar harmony between them and the motions of the 
 heavenly bodies which God lias set in the firmament 
 for signs to us. Our spiritual life should progress with 
 their revolutions ; should keep time with the music of 
 the spheres ; our thoughts should be widened with the 
 process of the suns. This is the true astrology. And 
 as the daisy follows the sun all day to the west with 
 its open eye, and acknowledges no other light that 
 falls upon it — lamplight, moonlight, or starlight — re- 
 maining cloijed under them all, except under the light of 
 the sun ; so should we follow the Sun of Righteousness 
 whithersoever He goeth, and say with the Psalmist, 
 " Whom have we in the heavens but Thee ; and there 
 is none upon the earth whom we desire besides Thee." 
 And so doing, the times and the seasons will work to- 
 gether for our good ; each day and week and year will 
 find us further advanced in the shining path of the just ; 
 and at last, when we are parted from the presence of 
 seasons and years as we know them now, it will be to 
 find that they were but the weak, shadowy representa- 
 tions of spiritual states that abide for ever. The sun, 
 moon, and stars are but dim lamps at the outer gates of 
 
H. THE STARS AND THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 29 
 
 our Father's many mansions above, to guide us home ; 
 and when the everlasting day breaks and the shadows 
 flee away, the sun shall be no more our light by day, 
 neither for brightness shall the moon give light unto 
 us, but the Lord shall be our everlastiiig light, and 
 our God our glory. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 GRAINS OF SAND. 
 
 " And God gave Solomon largeness of heart, even as the sand 
 that is on the sea-shore." — i Kings iv. 29. 
 
 THE image in which God's response to Solomon's 
 prayer is conveyed is one whose full si^ificance 
 is apt to evade us on a mere superficial reading. It is 
 a favourite metaphor with Eastern writers. There are 
 numerous examples of its use in the Bible. In these 
 examples it indicates vast quantity. The seed of 
 Abraham was to be multiplied as the sand upon the 
 sea -shore ; Joseph gathered com in Egypt as the sand 
 of the sea; Job spoke of multiplying his days as the 
 sand ; and the Psalmist acknowledged that the thoughts 
 of God to him were more in number than the sand. 
 The image is very expressive. On the coast both of 
 Palestine and Egypt — the regions with which the Bible 
 writers were most familiar — the sand is unusually 
 abundant. All the way from the Delta of the Nile 
 to the most northern point of vSyria, a vast sandy tract, 
 penetrating inland here and there from the shore bne, 
 
GRAINS OF SAND. 3 I 
 
 fringes the Mediterranean, and separates between the 
 green cultivated fields and the blue waters of the sea. 
 The floor of the desert, which encompasses the Holy 
 Land on the south and east, although usually composed 
 of other materials, has nevertheless in a few places large 
 belts of deep sand-drifts, like those which may be seen 
 on the western bank of the Nile. Let the traveller 
 stand on the sea-shore near Gaza, where, far as the eye 
 can reach north and south, the tawny sand-hills swell 
 and shoal as if imitating the rolling of the waves, down 
 to the while ermine of the ocean verge ; or let him be 
 overtaken by a sand-storm in the Egyptian desert, in 
 which the surging sand-clouds, with the red sun-light 
 flashing like flame from the particles, suggest the idea 
 of a whole continent on fire, with its smoke ascend- 
 ing in stifling immeasurable masses to heaven ; and 
 a most vivid impression of the vastness of the quantity 
 of this material will be produced upon his mind. Let 
 him take up a handful of the sand and try to count its 
 grains as they trickle through his fingers, and he will 
 give up the task in despair ere he has counted a 
 twentieth part. Let him try to imagine how many hand- 
 fuls there are in even one heap beside him, and his 
 imagination will be speedily overpowered. And if he 
 endeavours further to form some corception of the 
 quantity that makes up the shore of a single bay, or the 
 floor of a single desert, the mind utterly collapses under 
 the unequal burden. Such, then, is the image which 
 the inspired writer, in accommodation to the Eastern 
 hyperbolical mode of speaking, employs to express the 
 
32 TliO IVO.RLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 largeness of heart with which Solomon was endowed. 
 Such is the literal and obvious meaning of the allusion. 
 
 But it seems to me, in analysing it more closely, that 
 the image indicates not only the vast but also the varied 
 range of Solomon's wisdom ; not only the quantity but 
 also the quality of the largeness of his heart. Nothing, 
 at first sight, looks more uniform and monotonous than 
 a heap of sand. It seems barren and uninteresting to 
 the last degree. A sandy desert or sea-shore in itself 
 seems the most dreary and desolate of all places, where 
 there is nothing to excite the mind or appeal to the 
 imagination ; and yet examine carefully a small portion 
 of the sand, and you will be struck with the immense 
 variety which it contains. No two particles are the 
 same in size, shape, colour, or mineral chaiacter. No 
 two grains have perhaps the same origin or the same 
 history. A handful of sand is, in fact, a geological 
 museum, composed of the remains of different rocks 
 worn off or ground down by different agencies and at 
 different periods. What a boundless field for the ima- 
 gination does it afford ! To trace the regions in which, 
 and the methods by wliicli, the separate particles of a 
 handful taken from the shore of Palestine were formed 
 would be an endless task. One grain has come from the 
 granite rocks that almost throttle the Nile at the first 
 cataract, out of which the earliest monuments of Egypt 
 were carved ; perhaps has itself formed part of some 
 statue or obelisk that was old before history began. 
 Another grain has been ground down from the marble 
 hills of Greece that have yielded the precious material 
 
GRAINS OF SAND. 33 
 
 in which, by the sculptor's skill, the gods have come 
 down to the earth in the likeness of men. A third has 
 been disintegrated from the volcanic stone which the 
 earliest builders of Italy have piled into their gigantic 
 walls and massive tombs. Some of the particles have 
 been washed down by streams from, the precipices of 
 the Alps or Apennines ; others have been carried by the 
 wind from the eruptions of Vesuvius and Etna ; and 
 others still have been ground from the dark northern 
 headlands, those Sphinxes of the ocean against which 
 the waves of the Atlantic — fugitives, all white and 
 reeking, flying from some monster of the deep — hurl 
 themselves with frantic fear. Frost and fire, glacier on 
 mountain crest, and iceberg on Arctic shore ; cataract 
 roaring in rocky gorge, thrilling the leaves with fear, and 
 river flowing calmly through rich alluvial plain ; breaker 
 foaming on iron coast, and still lake lisping its liquid 
 murmurs on pebbly beach ; all these have been at 
 work for untold ages to produce the individual grains 
 of the handful of sand. Flakes of gold from eastern 
 mines ; scales of glittering mica from western hills ; 
 fragments of quartz, and onyx, and jasper from southern 
 ranges mingle with the duller debris of common rocks. 
 And interspersed among these lifeless particles may 
 often be seen beautiful forms of microscopic life, minute 
 hyaline shells, crystal spicules of sponges, and tinted 
 bits of sea-urchins, the faint dawning of a higher world 
 in sea and shore. We read in these sand-dunes, as 
 distinctly as we see the tracks of ancient animals on the 
 surface of sandstone slabs taken from the quarry, the 
 
 D 
 
34 TJFO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 evidence of many of the changes through which our 
 earth has passed. We see in them the relics of old 
 continents that have vanished completely — the sole 
 memorials of ancient seas that seem mythical to all 
 but the geologist. They are formed from the ruin of 
 rocks, which themselves were made of ancient sea-shores 
 and ocean-beds ; the sandstone rock alternately crumbling 
 into sand and hardening into rock, to be again disinte- 
 grated into sand, as sea and land alternately give place 
 to each other. The earth is but a gigantic sand-glass 
 for the computation of geological time, in which the 
 sands are falling unremittingly ; and which after long 
 ages is turned upside down to expend what it has 
 gained, and to gain what it has expended. And no 
 one with a thoughtful mind can gaze upon the minute 
 grains that thus come and go without being overwhelmed 
 by their significance, by the thought of the vast periods 
 which they represent and the stupendous cosmical pro- 
 cesses which have given rise to then. So far from 
 finding the sand upon the sea-shore monotonous and 
 uninteresting, it is full, when properly studied, of the 
 romance of natural history. 
 
 Like this sand on the sea-shore, in its wonderful 
 variety, was the largeness of heart which God bestowed 
 upon Solomon ; a largeness of heart which would find, 
 even in things as unpromising and barren at first sight 
 as a heap of sand, abundance of interest and enjoy- 
 ment ; a largeness of heart which would invest with its 
 own charm the most desert place and the most familiar 
 object — to which nothing that God had made would be 
 
III. GRAINS OF SAND. 35 
 
 common or unclean. Throughout the life of Solomon 
 we see how richly he possessed this Divine gift ; how 
 wide was his culture — how deep was his interest in the 
 world around him. He took cognisance not only of 
 the objects of nature, animate and inanimate, which 
 existed in his own kingdom, from the cedar of Lebanon 
 to the hyssop that grew out of the wall, and of those 
 which the commercial enterprises of his subjects were 
 continually bringing in from foreign lands, but also of 
 the lives and characters of men in all their surface 
 diversities and in all their inner depths. He displayed 
 the most consummate ability in organising and ad- 
 ministering the affairs of his extensive kingdom. He 
 searched with a keen intellect all the ever old, ever new 
 problems of life which were stirring the minds and 
 vexing the hearts of the most throughtful men of his 
 day. He had an imagination which played gracefully 
 around the light and airy subjects which occupy men's 
 moments of leisure, and a tender, passionate nature, 
 which gave its own strong colouring to every affection 
 of his heart. We have the most ample proofs of his 
 profound practical sagacity in the Book of Proverbs, 
 which he edited \ of his tenderness and devotion in the 
 Song of Solomon, which he composed ; and of his vast 
 and varied experience of all that the world can do for, 
 or give to, a man in the inexpressibly sad chapters of 
 Ecclesiastes, which, amid the sunny joyousness of the 
 other books of the Bible, seems like the skeleton at the 
 Egyptian feast. The historians of Israel delighted to 
 dwell upon the confession of the Queen of Sheba that 
 
 D 2 
 
TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 the reality of his greatness surpassed the fame thereof 
 — that one-half had not been told her. And ever since, 
 fantastic fables, Jewish, Christian, and Mohammedan, 
 have surrounded him with a halo of supernatural wisdom, 
 and have attributed to him the power of interpreting 
 the speech of beasts and birds, of knowing the secret 
 virtues of gems and herbs, and of curing diseases and 
 casting out devils by magic spells and incantations. 
 
 God is willing to grant to every human being, in a 
 degree proportioned to his nature and circumstances, 
 what he bestowed upon Solomon. He has placed us in 
 a large and wealthy place. He has given to us the 
 whole creation for our inheritance, and made us the 
 heirs of all the ages. The whole universe tends towards 
 man as its centre and highest point. It finds in him its 
 end and interpreter. Nature is translated in his mind 
 into thought. All the sciences are only the humanising 
 of the things of earth. We name and classify and study 
 plants, and animals, and stones, and thus give our own 
 hfe to them, and raise them by this association into fit 
 companions for ourselves. The uses of the objects of 
 nature are only their human relations. And all this is 
 because God made the earth to be co-ordinate with man, 
 and in its own degree humane. And just as He feeds 
 our bodies with the treasures of every land and every 
 sea, that we may have a wide and vigorous life, partici- 
 pant of all variety ; so He wishes to feed our souls with 
 intellectual food derived from all the objects which He 
 has made, that we may interpret the mute symbolism 
 of earth and sea and sky, and offer in rational conscious 
 
GRAINS OF SAND. 37 
 
 form, as the priests of creation, the silent, unconscious 
 worship of nature. But, alas ! how grievously have we 
 frustrated God's gracious design ! How insensible are 
 we to many of the relations and attractions of the 
 world around us ! How narrow is the region of interest 
 in which we live ! How few are the things for which we 
 really care ! A Roman noble, speaking to a great crowd 
 of his fellow-citizens on the Palatine Hill in Rome, once 
 said, " Nothing human is foreign to me." The senti- 
 ment was warmly applauded by the multitude ; but only 
 a few choice spirits have ever been able to carry it out 
 in all its significance. A life spent in the pursuit of 
 wealth, or pleasure, or comfort, or self-interest, like a 
 narrow window, frames and circumscribes the wide view. 
 Sin, that promises a glorious god-like enlargement of 
 being, contracts the world of nature and the world 
 of thought, lays waste all the sources of enjoyment 
 without, and paralyses all the powers of enjoyment 
 within. And in a world where everything that God has 
 made is very good, and is fitted to please and instruct 
 us, so many things become commonplace and uninterest- 
 ing to us because we ourselves have lost the capacity to 
 appreciate them. The world is full of life and beauty 
 and interest, but we have lost our vitality ; our life is 
 mixed with death ; and therefore the world is to us too 
 often a mere heap of barren sand. 
 
 And the most woeful thing of all is that that religion 
 which was given to us by God for the very purpose of en- 
 larging our heart and enlarging the sphere of interest and 
 enjoyment around us, for opening our eyes and bringing 
 
38 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 back the fresh charm of God's world, is perverted by us 
 into a kind of moral imprisonment. That which was 
 meant to throw wide open the gates of our spirit to the 
 fulness of the Divine blessing — to banish our fear to 
 live at large in God's great world — has, in too many 
 instances, led to greater self-centredness and narrowness 
 of vnew than before. How mean and low are the 
 ideas which many people have of rch'gion I They are 
 afraid to open their mouths wide that they may be 
 filled abundantly. They cannot believe in a disin- 
 terested goodness, which in the most absolute and 
 unlimited sense finds it more blessed to give than to 
 receive. They gauge the bounty of God by the narrow 
 standard of their own selfish, grudging hearts. How 
 many well-meaning Christians ignore altogether the 
 work of their Father's hands ; are content to know 
 iiotliing of the Older Testament of nature which He 
 has given for the very purpose of illustrating the 
 lessons of grace, and ministering pleasure and instruc- 
 tion to them 1 They glory in closing their eyes to the 
 beauties of sea, and sky, and land, as if in their 
 ver}' nature calculated to draw down -their thoughts 
 from heavenly to earthly things. How many reduce the 
 field of sacred knowledge and experience to those 
 things only which they deem necessary to salvation ! In 
 their estimation salvation begins and ends with the 
 conviction that we are pardoned sinners ; and all beyond 
 that is not only vain and useless, but positively mis- 
 chievous. Perverting the meaning of the singleness 
 of eye and heart which the followers of Christ must 
 
in. GRAINS OF SAND. 39 
 
 possess, of the one thing needful for which everything 
 else must be given up, they fancy that the Christian 
 religion is a scheme only of self-denial and self- 
 sacrifice — limiting the range of enjoyment and circum- 
 scribing the use of the things of the world. They 
 think that God is most acceptably served by austerities 
 and mortifications, which in themselves are pleasing to 
 Him. The love of God is so conceived of by them as 
 if it must exclude every other affection ; and the service 
 of God as the proscription of half the faculties and 
 sensibilities of our nature ; and the Christian life as a 
 life that exclusively meditates upon and prepares for 
 heaven, and is indiff"erent to all the common interests 
 of this world. 
 
 All this is but a caricature of the gospel. These are 
 the characteristics, not of Christianity, which gives ex- 
 pansion to the soul, but of a false religion which absorbs 
 it. The salvation of Christ Jesus is not, as it lias been 
 well said, an object which attracts the whole attention to 
 itself, and renders it insensible to everything else, but 
 the moral health of our being which imparts its own 
 freshness to every scene, and its own charm to every 
 object. It gives a disengagedness of mind which enables 
 us to take an interest in the passing occurrences of 
 the moment, and a disposableness of mind which fits 
 us to take part in any duty that arises. Where the 
 Spirit of God is, there is liberty. If the Son makes 
 us free, we are free indeed. The love of God excludes 
 none of the common duties and affections of life, but, 
 on the contrary, gives them a new beauty and power ; 
 
40 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. CHAr. 
 
 just as the light of day communicates its own warm glow 
 to everything in the landscape, from a mountain to a 
 moss, while it displaces nothing to make room for itself 
 It alone gives us the full free use of our own being and 
 of the world aiound us. It sets free the heart from its 
 preoccupation with itself to run in the way of God's 
 commandments. So far from throwing the common 
 features of our daily life into shade, it brings forth to 
 view objects before unnoticed, and attaches importance 
 to things so small that in the confusion and self- 
 absorption of a godless life they are altogether over- 
 looked. And just as the reflection of the sky on a little 
 wayside pool broadens its surface and deepens its 
 capacity until it can take in the whole heavens above it, 
 so the love of God in Christ shed abroad in cur hearts 
 will enlarge their capacity to embrace the whole universe. 
 Partaking of God's nature we shall love all that God 
 loves, and be interested in all in which He is 
 interested. 
 
 As the sand is formed on the sea-shore, so is the 
 enlargement of hean, which is said to resemble it, 
 acquired. Not in the quiet sheltered waters of the bay, 
 by gentle processes, is the sand deposited. It speaks 
 of storm, of waste, and change. Its gain has come 
 through loss. The sandy shore that fringes the ocean 
 has been produced by the ruin of mountains. On far 
 inland heights the storm and the glacier have been busy 
 wearing down the precipices ; on the ocean verge the 
 mammoth-chested rocks have been tunnelled by the 
 tides, and the tempest-vexed waves have carried the 
 
Til. GRAINS OF SAND 4 1 
 
 materials thus formed, and accumulated them on the 
 distant strand. The cascade we see foaming between 
 its grim walls bears away, in the apparently useless 
 struggle and waste of power, atoms from the rocks to 
 swell the heap of sand upon the shore and sow the seed 
 of continents yet to be. And so are all the gains of 
 the soul made, through the abrasion of the hard and 
 stony heart by the waves of time and change, by the 
 wearing down of lofty imaginations through disappoint- 
 ments and failures, by the crumbling of proud desires 
 through the humbling experiences of life. The sorrow 
 or suffering that seems so useless and vain, contending 
 with the hard rocky cause of it, fretting and fuming 
 among the trying restraints of life, is, as it were, re- 
 moving from them lessons of faith, and patience, and 
 love, which afterwards, when the sorrow has subsided 
 and the suffering has become tranquil, will enrich and 
 beautify the whole life. So is it with all enlargements 
 both in the natural and human worlds ; the increase in 
 one direction is the result of decrease in another, as the 
 sea-shore acquires its sand by a process of continental 
 disintegration. God's chastisements, which seem to 
 limit our joys and to make our life poorer and meaner, 
 are in reality designed to enlarge our hearts and to widen 
 the bounds of our being. Through the pains and 
 privations of our sufferings He leads us to a larger 
 freedom, a greater power, a deeper joy. The Church 
 has grown to the ideal of Christianity through per- 
 secutions and trials — has enlarged its boundaries and 
 purified and widened its faith in the crises through 
 
42 Tiro WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 which it has passed. Kingdoms have grown greater 
 and nobler through a stormy history. Nations have 
 learned through wars and revolutions to take wider and 
 truer views of their mission, and to fulfil the purposes 
 of their existence in the confederation of mankind. 
 Through the captivity into heathen lands the Israelites 
 realised that in them all the families of the earth were 
 destined to be blessed. Through the destruction of 
 Jerusalem and the dispersion of the peculiar people, the 
 narrow Jewish religion and polity merged into the world- 
 wide, time-long kingdom of the Son of Man. And so, 
 throughout the history of Christendom, we find that 
 communities tempted selfishly to confine to themselves 
 their special blessings have been compelled, by external 
 shocks and internal sufferings, to enlarge their bounds 
 and make others partakers with them of their privileges. 
 New ages of larger liberty, of wider vision, of purer 
 faith, of more just and loving relationships between man 
 and man, have been ushered in through periods of 
 terror and pain ! The hearts of men everywhere have 
 been enlarged through their fears ; and the storms and 
 strifes of the world have been the pains of progress 
 — the birth-pangs of grander liberties. The framework 
 of society, like the framework of nature, is broken up 
 from time to time, that out of the wreck may be formed 
 the shore-line that limits the encroachments of evil, 
 and the dry land of truth that lifts the level of life 
 nearer heaven. 
 
 The sand on the sea-shore is composed of small 
 particles. It is vast in the aggregate, but the grains arc 
 
III. GRAINS OF SAND. 43 
 
 individually minute ; and so the largeness of heart, 
 Avhich resembles it, is made up of the fulfilment of little 
 duties and the adorning of little occasions as they arise. 
 The work of creation was wrought out of finished atoms ; 
 the work of redemption was perfected by our Lord's 
 attention to the humblest details and the commonest 
 incidents — by obedience to the least of God's command- 
 ments ; and so the Christian's life is a constant living to 
 Crod in small things. The largeness of the Christian's 
 heart is shown, not only by the comprehensiveness of 
 its range of regard, but also by the minuteness of its 
 interests and sympathies. His piety is proved, not by 
 his conduct on great and exciting occasions, but by his 
 conduct in ordinary circumstances ; not by some great 
 gift, or sacrifice, or act of devotion, but by a circumstan- 
 tial attention to the common affairs of life. It requires 
 less grace in reality to be a martyr for Christ on a public 
 stage than to be kind and considerate in the familiar 
 intercourse of domestic life, or to maintain a . guileless 
 integrity in the ordinary transactions of business. The 
 Christianity that is faithful in that which is least is 
 a more difficult Christianity than that which glows and 
 triumphs on grand occasions. Little love can perform 
 great actions ; but it requires great love to present like 
 little children small offerings — and to devote every 
 moment and task of our life to God. A largeness of 
 heart which thus attends to the smallest details of piety 
 — to the little things in which love most powerfully 
 shows itself, which recognises God habitually and seeks 
 constant opportunities to please Him, will never be 
 
44 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 oppressed with listlessness and ennui. Every hour will 
 be filled with incident ; every object will possess a secret 
 charm ; and life will be a continual feast. And just 
 as the sand, by reason of the minuteness of its particles, 
 forms the most effectual barrier to the waves of the 
 ocean, and guards the land from their ravages, so the 
 opulent heart that resembles it in its vast variety of 
 interests and sympathies, will thus be most securely 
 guarded against the storms of temptation and the bitter 
 evils of the world. 
 
 Such is the largeness of heart that we all need. Our 
 constant prayer should be that God would quicken our 
 souls that cleave to the dust, that He would take us out 
 of the straits in which we have entangled ourselves by 
 our sin, and translate us into the glorious liberty of the 
 sons of God. Without this enlargement of heart we 
 cannot appreciate the broad wide world of God's salva- 
 tion. Without an enlargement of heart to place us, 
 as it were, on higher ground, from whence our view can 
 take in more and more of God's universe, our life will 
 be centred in the mere spark that animates the body. 
 We need that the grace of God should do for our hearts 
 what the microscope does for our eyes — enlarging our 
 vision so as to see new beauty and wonder in the 
 most familiar objects. We feel instinctively that some- 
 thing is wanting, not in outward objects, but in 
 ourselves, to realise the full enjoyment of this fair 
 creation for which God made us. We have had mo- 
 ments when we obtained fleeting glimpses of this joy. 
 Let the heart be warmed by a new affection ; let the 
 
GRAINS OF SAND. 45 
 
 mind be quickened by a new experience ; let the bounds 
 of our being be enlarged by the passing away of some 
 old trouble, or the dawn of some new revelation, and 
 then all old things become new to us. A heap of sand 
 becomes a heap of jewels. We have all felt the change 
 which the same scene and the same objects undergo in 
 different circumstances and different states of feeling. 
 A dreary moorland that in a listless mood of mind 
 presents nothing to interest or attract, becomes invested 
 with a wonderful charm when seen in the transforming 
 glow of some radiant feeling. The difference is not in 
 the scene : that remains the same ; it is in ourselves. It 
 is in our own eye that has been opened and in our own 
 heart that has been enlarged. The beauty and interest 
 that we find in external objects must first exist in our 
 own souls. We may travel from Dan to Beersheba in an 
 idle straitened state of mind and find all barren ; while 
 in another state of mind, quickened and enlarged by the 
 grace of God and the love of man, a walk along a 
 narrow strip of sandy shore, with only the blue sky above 
 and the calm sea before, seems like treading the golden 
 streets of the New Jerusalem. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL. 
 
 " The stone shall cry out of the wall." — II.vb. ii. ii. 
 
 VERY Startling was the vision which appeared to 
 Belshazzar and his courtiers when their feasting 
 and mirth were at their height. On the walls of the 
 Babylonian palace, the fingers of a man's hand were 
 seen writing mystic letters. These letters were dis- 
 tinctly visible — illumined by the light of the seven- 
 branched golden candlestick, taken from its sacred 
 shrine in Jerusalem, and employed with the other 
 Jewish regalia to dignify this pagan revel — but they 
 were in an unknown tongue, and none of the wise men 
 in the kingdom could interpret them. Only one man 
 possessed the key that unlocked the supernatural cipher ; 
 and to the awe-struck monarch the Hebrew captive 
 read the words of doom, in its " Mene, Mene, Tekel, 
 Upharsin." 
 
 But not in terrible omens and supernatural visions 
 alone do we see the Divine handwriting. To thoughtful 
 men on every wall by the wayside appear mystic letters 
 
CH. IV. THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL. 47 
 
 of profound significance. The Hand itself is unseen 
 
 behind the veil of nature ; we cannot catch the fingers 
 
 in the act of tracing the characters ; and the light by 
 
 which we behold them is only the common light of day. 
 
 But the words are, nevertheless, formed clear and 
 
 distinct upon the stones of the wall, and they remain 
 
 as if graven with a pen of iron. Botanists are familiar 
 
 with a peculiar genus of lichen called Opegrapha, from 
 
 the resemblance which the fructification of all its species 
 
 bears to written characters. On the surface, which is a 
 
 thin white tartareous film, closely adhering to the stone 
 
 or to the bark of a tree, bordered by a line of black like 
 
 a sheet of mourning paper, are numerous dark intricate 
 
 lines, like Arabic, Hebrew, or Chinese letters. The 
 
 likeness in some instances is remarkably close ; and 
 
 it would not be difficult to pick out combinations of 
 
 lines which by a very little stretch of fancy might be 
 
 identified by a scholar as the words and letters of an 
 
 Oriental language. Nature has thus mimicked in almost 
 
 every wood, and on almost every rock and wall, the 
 
 latest and highest result of man's civilisation ; and in her 
 
 humblest plant-forms has written her wonderful runes. 
 
 But though it can be literally said of only one genus that 
 
 it imitates the handwriting of man, it can be said in the 
 
 highest sense of the whole family of lichens that they 
 
 are God's handwTiting on the wall. We have in these 
 
 lowly plants — so lowly that most people overlook them 
 
 altogether, and the few who do give them a moment's 
 
 notice regard them as weather-stains or purposeless dis- 
 
 colorations without any form or comeliness — the certificate 
 
4S Tiro WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 of the hand of God, as truly as in the noblest trees of the 
 forest and the loveliest flowers of the field. He has 
 written His own signature on these minute and unregarded 
 pages of nature by signs and ciphers which those who 
 have made a special study of this department of God's 
 works — the prophets and interpreters of nature's "open 
 secret" — can read as easily as Daniel read the mystic 
 letters on the palace-wall of Babylon. How small a 
 key opens the great gate of the Temple of the Universe ! 
 By the study of a lichen or a moss we can understand 
 more clearly the mystery of the world. With this magic 
 " sesame " we enter the kingdom of life and inherit its 
 vast treasures. 
 
 Let us try and spell out a few of the most obvious 
 lessons contained in the Divine epistles written on every 
 wayside wall, so that he who runs may read. Lichens 
 form the nebulae, so to speak, of the firmament of life. 
 The mystery which distance gives to the stars that 
 appear on the remotest verge of space, the extreme 
 simplicity of their structure gives to these plants. That 
 faint grey organic film which spreads in a circular shape 
 over a stone, seems more like the nebular mist out of 
 which plants might be formed than a veritable plant 
 itself. It can hardly be distinguished from the stone ; 
 sharing in its utter passivity. It is as hard and dr}- and 
 seemingly as lifeless. Watch it day after day, and there 
 is no motion ; no change of any kind. For years and 
 years it continues the same. There is something that 
 appeals powerfully to the sense of wonder in this perfect 
 repose — this dormant suspended existence, hovering 
 
IV. THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL. 49 
 
 continually as it were on the border-line between the 
 mineral and the vegetable world. A spell as of some 
 natural enchantment has passed upon it, condemning it to 
 a perpetual hibernation. Only at rare intervals is this 
 spell broken, and the seeming mineral awakens to a 
 sense of its higher life. When all other kinds of 
 vegetation are asleep or dead the lichen bestirs itself — 
 fills its dry cells with sap from the very bosom of the 
 storm and the snow wreath, softens and expands, and 
 makes whatever growth it is capable of. The season 
 that blights and destroys all other life is most favourable 
 to its well being, and it looks its brightest when nature 
 around is most desolate. 
 
 Lichens are in the ocean of air that covers the dry 
 land what sea-weeds are in the ocean of water that 
 covers the depths of the sea. All the usual parts of 
 plants — root, stem, foliage, and blossom — have dis- 
 appeared in them, or been drowned as it were out 
 of existence by a flood of unfavourable conditions 
 above which no green leaf emerges. The seed of 
 vegetable life, instead of rearing a storied structure, rising 
 high above the influences of gravitation, and spreading 
 its green tent in the summ.er air, creeps close to the 
 naked rock, and spreads around itself in a series ot 
 circular waves, like the ripples caused by a stone thrown 
 into a pond. This infancy of vegetation cannot forego its 
 hold of the ground ] it clings closely to the bosom of its 
 mother earth. But in these tiny arks that carry the spark 
 of life floating on the surface of a dead physical world, 
 we find a miracle of contrivance. Marvellously are they 
 
 K 
 
50 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 adapted for their situation, and for the work they have 
 to do. They grow where no other vegetation could 
 exist — where the pulse of nature has almost ceased to 
 beat. On lofty mountain summits below the snow-line, 
 where hard quartz rocks look like white teeth fiercely 
 clenched against the polar blasts ; in arctic and antarctic 
 wildernesses, where the snow is driven back for a few 
 weeks by the ardour of the summer sun, leaving the 
 ground brown and bare, as if scorclied by fire ; in 
 lonely islands far in mid-ocean, scalped by all the winds 
 of heaven ; on barren rocky shores exposed to the 
 bitter breath of the salt waves, that look like a fringe of 
 death between the fertilising sea and the cultivated land : 
 in such desolate places these forlorn hopes of the vege- 
 table kingdom do their brave work. They have no 
 struggle of life with their kindred as in higher types 
 of plants, the stronger exterminating the weaker ; but 
 they have a still direr strife with the elements. They 
 are cast upon the merciless inhospitalities of inorganic 
 nature, alternately scorched by the sun and nipped by 
 the frost, buffeted by the wind and drenched by the 
 rain ; and yet He whose tender mercies are over all 
 His works takes care of them. He has given to them 
 a structure and a mode of life admirably suited to the 
 circumstances in which He has placed them. The round 
 shape of all lichens is the best for security. It is the 
 form of rest, so suitable for plants that are often placed in 
 unfavourable circumstances — where growth must be by 
 fits and starts, and where their whole work must often 
 be simply endurance. It is the form that makes the 
 
IV. THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL. 51 
 
 strongest resistance to the elements, for it gives a 
 maximum of contents with a minimum of exposure, and 
 all its points are perfectly balanced and proportioned 
 — equally related to the central point and to one another. 
 The material, too, of which lichens are composed is a 
 special provision for their long periods of inaction and 
 repose. It is chiefly starch — akin to the substance which 
 enters so largely into seeds, bulbs, and other parts of 
 plants that have ceased to display any vital action. 
 This starch covers over and preserves the fire of life, 
 as a common household fire is covered over and kept 
 in by its own ashes. In dry weather it continues un- 
 changed, and gives the lichens the grey hoary appearance 
 which usually distinguishes them ; but when the rain 
 comes it expands, and softens, and assumes a greenish 
 appearance, like that of the brown seed when it germin- 
 ates and forms the blade. For their alternate periods of 
 rest and activity — growth and torpor — lichens are thus 
 wonderfully provided both by their circular form and 
 their starchy substance. 
 
 And thus furnished they act as the pioneers of vegeta- 
 tion, climbing the bare crag and penetrating into the 
 lonely wilderness, and planting there the flag of life. On 
 the coral island that has just appeared above the surface 
 of the ocean ; on the stream of lava that has just cooled 
 as it reached the lowest point in its descent from the 
 volcano ; on the cliffs that have been sculptured into 
 smoothness by the recent passage of the glacier, lichens 
 form the beginning of organic life — the first colonies of 
 vegetation. No sooner does a boulder or rock rise 
 
 E z 
 
Tiro WORLDS ARE OCRS. 
 
 above ground than it is covered with their grey patches. 
 These disintegrate tlie rock and form a soil in which 
 higher plants can subsist ; and by and by Hchens give 
 place to moss and grass ; and perhaps a corn-field or a 
 forest may long ages afterwards mark the spot where 
 originally a few lichens scraped a miserable subsistence 
 from the bare rock, and spent their life in struggling 
 with the scorching sun and the cruel storm. The lichen 
 is thus the first link in the chain that surrounds the earth 
 with a zone of beauty and verdure. Between it and the 
 oak and palm there is the same relation of mutual depen- 
 dence which binds the highest and lowest objects of 
 creation together. 
 
 As elements in the picturesque, lichens have long held 
 a high place in the estimation of all lovers of nature. 
 What would a ruin be without them ? They give to old 
 walls and weather-beaten castles and abbeys the hoary 
 colouring of time. They soften the raw, harsh aspect of 
 man's handiwork, and bring it into harmony with the 
 meek unobtrusiveness of nature. They lay their quiet 
 fingers on the scenes of human suffering and the 
 monuments of human i)ride, and subdue them to their 
 own eternal peace. On the old home that sheltered 
 man's life, on the grey tombstone that records his death, 
 they paint their frescoes of immortal hope ; and amid 
 scenes that remind us only of change and mortality they 
 read their bright illuminated lesson of fixed and unchang- 
 ing endurance. But not only are they thus elements in 
 the quiet shading of nature's scenes, and in the pictur- 
 esque adornment of man's work ; they are often beautiful 
 
IV. THE HANDWRiriNG ON THE ]VALL. 53 
 
 in themselves, and exhibit a grace of outline and colour 
 which rewards like a new discovery the eye that searches 
 it out. Even the commonest and simplest species ex- 
 hibit this signature of the great Artist, indicating that 
 it is the work of One who has combined beauty with 
 strength in all the objects of His sanctuary. No one can 
 allow his eye in moments of reverie, when the mind is 
 quickened, to linger however briefly upon a small bit 
 of lichened wall or rock, without being astonished at the 
 disclosure there given to him of a hidden beauty, such 
 as he had not dreamt of in such waste places, and in 
 things so obscure and unheeded. And surely the lesson 
 comes home with power to the mind, that what we need 
 is not a new revelation from Heaven, but eyes to see 
 the revelation that is already before us in what ^^■e 
 proudly call the common and unclean. 
 
 Lichens run through the whole chromatic scale, and 
 show what striking effects nature can produce by an 
 harmonious combination of a few simple lines and hues. 
 !Most of them are of a quiet grey tint, but some display 
 the most vivid colours. One species covers trees and 
 rocks with bright yellow powdery patches ; another 
 sprinkles them with a kind of green rust, especially in 
 the neighbourhood of large towns. Almost every old 
 wall, castle, and rocky sea-shore is emblazoned with the 
 briUiant deep yellow rosettes of the common wall par- 
 melia. Olive-green and pale primrose-yellow lichens 
 diversify the surface of moorland boulders and dykes. 
 And what is very remarkable, the higher we ascend the 
 mountain-side, the farther north we penetrate, the brighter 
 
54 ^f^O WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 becomes the colouring, and the more graceful and 
 luxuriant the form of lichens ; presenting in this respect 
 a parallel to many flowering plants, such as the birch, 
 whose stem is whiter, and whose leaves are more shining 
 and fragrant in Nonvay than in this country. One 
 of the loveliest species is the " Geographical Lichen " 
 {Lecidea geographica), which is the most arctic, antarctic, 
 and alpine plant in the world, occupying the extreme 
 outpost of vegetation in altitude and latitude ; and 
 its yellow-green crust becomes brighter, smoother, 
 and more continuous, and its characteristic black dots 
 and lines, like towns, and rivers, and boundaries on 
 a map, become deeper and glossier the nearer we 
 approach the limit of perpetual snow. It is a fit 
 companion of those exquisite alpine flowers <"hat bloom 
 their fairest in the same desolate circumstances, and 
 exhibit a grace and beauty far surpassing those of 
 their favoured sisters of the plain. The little Cup 
 Lichen, that holds up its tiny goblets in myriads to catch 
 the dewdrops upon the turfy top of every old wall and 
 bank, assumes in one of its kindred forms that grows at 
 a great height upon the mountains a larger size, a more 
 elegant shape, and a more tender colour. Nothing of 
 the kind can be lovelier than this mountain species, with 
 its soft sulphur-coloured cups decked round the edge 
 with waxen heads of the most brilliant scarlet, creeping 
 over the bleak alpine turf, and forming, with the gay 
 flowers of the purple saxifrage and the moss campion, 
 a tiny garden in the wilderness. On the \Wldest islands 
 of the antarctic ocean, where nothinc: else but lichens 
 
THE HAS^DWRITTNG ON THE WALL. 55 
 
 grow, some of the finest species abound, whose large 
 polished black shields contrast beautifully with their 
 yellow shrubby stems; and on the tundras, or vast 
 plains that border the polar ocean, the eye is delighted 
 beyond measure with the delicate and intricate branch- 
 ing and the snowy purity of the larger lichens, which 
 form almost the only vegetation. One lichen in New 
 Zealand imitates the finest lace-work ; another found 
 on our grey northern moors resembles miniature coral ; 
 and on the highest and most exposed ridges of the 
 Scottish mountains one leafy species occurs whose under 
 side is of the most splendid orange colour, while its 
 upper surface, constantly wetted by the clouds and mists, 
 is of the most vivid green, varied by the chocolate 
 colour of its large, flat, shield -like fructification. Thus, 
 where we should expect the vegetation to partake of 
 the sombre nature of the locality, and to be dwarfed, 
 ill-shapen, and discoloured by the unfavourable circum- 
 stances, we find the most perfect and luxuriant forms ; 
 and just as the lichens in our sheltered woods and 
 valleys flourish best in wild wintry weather, so do their 
 congeners in the exposed altitudes and latitudes of 
 the world, where there is a perpetual winter, and storms 
 continually prevail, exhibit their brightest colouring 
 and their most graceful shapes ; reading to us thus a 
 most needful lesson of one of the sweet uses of adversity, 
 viz., to perfect that which concerneth us — to complete 
 the ideal which a too easy and pleasant life often fails 
 to realise. 
 
 We admire the beautiful ingenuity of the way in which 
 
5<> TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chat. 
 
 mosses are propagated — the slender stem that rises 
 from the moss-tuft, the Httle oval urn that crowns it, 
 with its veil that speedily falls off, its lid that soon 
 follows, and its fringe of microscopic teeth that remain, 
 and, fitting into each other, close over the mouth to 
 protect the dust-like seed within from bad weather, and 
 open and expand in sunshine to let in the ripening 
 light and heat. IJut equally wonderful is the contri- 
 vance by which the lichens that grow by their side 
 are perpetuated. Every one who has given a moment's 
 attention to these plants as they fall under his eye, 
 staming the stones of an old wall or the face of an 
 exposed rock, must have noticed a number of little 
 round or flat dots about the size of a pin's-head, raosdy 
 black, clustering about the centre of the grey patches. 
 These points are the fructification — all that the ])lant 
 has for blossom, fruit, and socd. The fructification 
 always differs in colour from the vegetative part — from 
 the filmy crust or leafy rosette. If the lichen is grey 
 the fructification is generally black or flesh-colour ; if 
 it is yellow, the fructification is of a deeper yellow ; if 
 it is green, the fructification is chocolate-brown ; and 
 however irregular or amorphous may be the shape and 
 ai)pearance of tl>e lichen, the fructification is always neat 
 and symmetrical. The same law that brings out the 
 greatest loveliness of the higher plants in those parts 
 that are connected with the propagation of the species 
 — the blossom and fruit — operates in the case of the 
 lichens, and crowns the fructification of these lowly 
 plants with all the grace and beauty of which they are 
 
THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL. 57 
 
 capable. The sweeter song of the thrush^ and the 
 brighter crimson of the robin's breast in spring ; the 
 transformation of the green foliage of the rose and lily 
 into gaily-coloured petals in the blossoming time ; and 
 all the poetry and romance that are connected with the 
 hour of human love, find their counterparts in tliose 
 little round variously-coloured dots that give a brighter 
 and neater appearance to the homely surface of the 
 liclien. The little Cup Lichen on the wall, when it 
 adorns the edge of its grey goblet as if with bits of 
 red sealing-wax, responds to the universal impulse which 
 prompts nature to adorn herself in her bridal hour ; and 
 experiences in its own humble degree the same feeling 
 that moves the aristocratic bluebell by its side to hang 
 out its cerulean chimes of blossom to be rung by the 
 autumn breeze. 
 
 And not less worthy of examination is the specialised 
 organ with which the lichen decks itself than the blossom 
 of the brightest flower, which is only the highest outflusli 
 of the energy that moves transformingly in this lowly 
 object. Cut a thin vertical slice from one of these 
 little round dots and place it under the microscope, 
 and you will find in it a number of delicate flask-shaped 
 cells containing four, eight, twelve, or sixteen sporidia ; 
 that is, cells of an oval form with spores or seeds in 
 their interior. Few things can exceed in beauty as 
 microscopic objects the sporidia of many of the lichens. 
 Some are bright scarlet, others deep blue, and others 
 green, olive, golden yellow, or brown. When ripe they 
 are ejected in moist weather, through the layer that 
 
58 TIVO WORLDS ARE OrrRS. chap. 
 
 bears the seed vessels becoming wetted, and thus 
 bulging out and exerting a pressure which ultimately 
 bursts the seed-vessels at the summit, and causes the 
 expulsion of their contents. It is by a similarly simple 
 yet most effective process that the seeds of ferns and 
 mosses are set free and sown broadcast by nature. 
 Very curious is the fact that the number of the sporidia 
 or seed-cases of the lichen is the same as that of the 
 teeth around the mouth of the fruit capsule of the moss 
 — always four or a multiple of four; thus showing that in 
 minute microscopic parts and organs, where one might 
 expect irregularity and chance results, there is the most 
 rigid order and accuracy. Our own teeth are arranged 
 according to a similar law ; and He who numbers the 
 very hairs of our head numbers the little teeth on the 
 capsule of the neglected moss and the little seed- 
 vessels of the obscure lichen which not one eye in a 
 million ever sees. But it must not be supposed that 
 the organs of fructification I have thus described are 
 present on every lichen. A very large number of species 
 and individuals are almost uniformly barren. In such 
 cases other modes of propagation are supplemented; 
 and indeed, the green spherical cells which form the 
 active vegetative part of the lichen are capable of 
 developing into new individuals if detached from the 
 parent plant, and act in the economy of lichens the 
 same part which buds, bulbs, and runners perform in 
 that of trees and flowering plants. If the one mode 
 of propagation is absent owing to unfavourable circum- 
 stances, the other is developed more exuberantly than 
 
THE HANDWRITING ON THE I FALL. 59 
 
 usual to supply its place ; and just as the chances of 
 
 failure are increased, so are the contrivances to prevent 
 it multiplied. And thus the lichens are " pilgrims bold 
 in nature's care," and spread themselves freely every- 
 where. 
 
 Nor are lichens without direct benefit to man. He 
 has made them humane by human uses and associations. 
 Some species, like the weeds that intrude into his fields, 
 and the nettle and the dock that are never found far 
 from his home, grow upon his walls and fruit-trees, and 
 are peculiarly domesticated. But there are many that 
 grow in the wild and refuse to come under the laws of 
 the garden and field, and yet yield him substantial 
 benefits. The reindeer-lichen feeds the herds of the 
 Laplander ; the Iceland moss produces a delicate jelly 
 for the invalid ; arctic travellers, in the absence of all 
 other food, have been obliged to subsist upon the black 
 shagreen-like tufts of the tripe de roche ; and a manna- 
 like lichen has sometimes fallen in showers in the Caspian 
 deserts, and kept the people from starving in seasons 
 of famine. In medicine, lichens at one time were almost 
 exclusively employed, but they are now retained as 
 cures for colds and fevers only in a few out-of-the-way 
 old-fashioned localities. As dye-stuffs, however, they 
 are still most valuable, and some of the loveliest hues 
 are yielded by the orchil and the cudbear. It is a 
 curious circumstance that the most brilliant tints in 
 dyeing should be produced by the most colourless 
 species, while the gayest lichen yield no colorific results 
 of any value. In the case of the yellow parmelias, that 
 
6o T^yO WORLDS ARE OCRS. 
 
 light up an old wall with their golden radiance, they 
 show upon their surface the sunshine that has kindled 
 and supported their life; but in the case of the grey 
 lichens the sunshine has been all absorbed into their 
 secret tissues, and not a trace of it is visible, and its 
 rainbow hues can only be elicited by artificial processes. 
 But whether reflected or absorbed, every lichen shows 
 its indebtedness to the sunshine, and yields the colours 
 that it has borrowed from the light and that have entered 
 into its composition. In some part or organ, at some 
 stage or other of its history or use, the coloured rays 
 that seemed to be lost are found again, and nothing 
 that is received but is faithfully accounted for. The 
 dock and the sorrel by the wayside, that have con- 
 tinued green and sullen all their life, brigliten into 
 scarlet as they fade ; and the hoary lichen on the dusky 
 rock, that has drunk in all the hues of the spectrum 
 and made no sign, yields when artificially treated, its 
 hidden store of colour, and produces a violet and golden 
 hue not unworthy of the fairest garden flower. 
 
 Nothing is lost in nature. God's handwriting on the 
 wayside wall and the weather-beaten rock writes no 
 sentence — " Thou art weighed in the balances and art 
 found wanting." On the lichen that grows over the 
 letters on a tombstone is written the successful history of 
 its own life ; it represents the sum of all the influences 
 to which it has been subjected. Would that the same 
 could be truthfully said of him for whom that tombstone 
 has been raised ; whose work when he has done with 
 it the lichen helps to bring back to tlie bosom of 
 
IV. THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL 6 I 
 
 the common mother earth, and for whom the Hchen 
 does the last continuous service of watchfuhiess by 
 his grave, when the woods and the blossoms and 
 the " gift-bearing grasses " have ended their ministry 
 for ever 1 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 WEEDS. 
 
 " Cursed is the ground for thy sake ; thorns also and thistles 
 shall it bring forth to thee."' — GENESIS III. 17, 18. 
 
 IT is the law of nature that plants should be diffused 
 as widely as possible wherever the circumstances 
 are favourable for their growth and welfare. For this 
 purpose they are provided with the most admirable 
 contrivances to maintain their own existence, and to 
 propagate the species. But man interferes ^nth this 
 law in his processes of gardening and horticulture. His 
 object is to cultivate beautiful or useful plants within 
 inclosures, from which all other plants are excluded, and 
 where an artificial soil and climate have been prepared. 
 He wishes to separate from the struggle of the elements, 
 and from the competition of other species, certain kinds 
 of flowers or vegetables which are good for food or plea- 
 sant to the eye. In this he is only partially successful, 
 for into the plot of ground which he has set apart from 
 the waste common of nature a large number of plants 
 intrude ; and with them he has to maintain a constant 
 
CU. V. 
 
 WEEDS. 63 
 
 warfare. These plants are known by the common name 
 of weeds, a term which, curious enough, is etymologically 
 connected with Wodan or Odin, the great god of the 
 northern mythology, to whose worship in former ages, in 
 this country, our Wednesday, or Odinsday, was specially 
 dedicated. Very few languages have any term equivalent 
 to our popular word ; and even science with its strict 
 technical definitions takes no cognisance of the useful 
 idea contained in it. There is no separate treatise upon 
 the subject so far as I am aware; and weeds in botanical 
 text-books are usually merged in the ordinary flora. 
 
 Any plant may become a weed by being accidentally 
 found in a situation where its presence is not desired ; 
 but true weeds form a peculiar and distinct class. They 
 are at once recognised by their mean and ragged appear- 
 ance ; their stems and foliage being neither fleshy nor 
 leathery, but of a soft, flaccid description, and by the 
 absence in most of them of conspicuous or beautiful 
 blossoms. A look of vagabondage seems to characterise 
 most of the members of the order, which at once stamps 
 them as belonging to a pariah class. In the vegetable 
 kingdom they are what gipsies are in the human world, 
 and the same mystery surrounds them which is connected 
 with that remarkable race. Like the gipsies they are 
 essentially intruders and foreigners ; never the native 
 children of the soil on which they flourish. They may 
 have come from long or short distances, but they have 
 always been translated. There is no country where they 
 are not found, and everywhere they have to encounter 
 the prejudices which the popular mind invariably 
 
64 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 entertains against foreigners. By the Germans a weed is 
 contemptuously called unkraut, which means " no plant." 
 In North America the native Indian calls the common 
 plantain — the waybread of Lancashire and Cheshire 
 villagers, which grows in this country by roadsides 
 and on gravelled walks — " white man's foot," because 
 it invariably follow the steps of the European. Long- 
 fellow, in his " Song of Hiawatha," thus alludes to 
 it : — 
 
 " Wheresoe'er they tread, beneatli them 
 Springs a flower unknown among us, 
 Springs the 'White Man's Foot' in blossom." 
 
 The New Zealand savage calls the chickweed, which in 
 that country flourishes with extraordinary luxuriance, 
 " the Mark of the Pale Face." The yellow sorrel of 
 the Cape has become a ubiquitous weed in Malta, where 
 it is called " Haxixa ta I'Englisi," the English Plant ; 
 while a plant like the common groundsel introduced 
 of late years from Peru, and one of the commonest 
 weeds in the market gardens in the west of London, 
 is known in the sandy districts of East Prussia, where 
 it has become a perfect pest, as " the Frenchman's 
 weed." 
 
 There is one peculiarity about weeds which is very 
 remarkable, viz. that they only appear on ground which, 
 either by cultivation or for some other purpose, has been 
 disturbed by man. They are never found truly wild, in 
 woods or hills, or uncultivated wastes far away from 
 human dwellings. They never grow on virgin soil. 
 
V. 
 
 WEEDS. 65 
 
 where human beings have never been. No weeds exist 
 in those parts of the earth that are uninhabited, or where 
 man is only a passing visitant. The Arctic and Antarctic 
 regions are destitute of them ; and above certain Hmits 
 on mountain ranges they have no representatives. There 
 were no traces of them in New Zealand, Austraha, and 
 America, when these countries were discovered, though 
 they now abound in them. We never see the famiUar 
 weeds of our gardens and fields anywhere else except in 
 association with our cultivated plants. The dandelion 
 illumines our waysides with its miniature suns j and far 
 and wide as its downy seeds may float in the air, they 
 alight and germinate only around the dwellings of man. 
 The chickweed and the groundsel have no home except 
 in the garden beds ; the thistle belongs to the cornfield, 
 the sheep-sorrel to the potato-plot, and the dock to the 
 meadow. 
 
 To every thoughtful mind the questions must occur, 
 " Have the plants we call weeds always been weeds ? 
 If not, what is their native country? How did they 
 come into connection with man, and into dependence 
 upon his labours?'' No satisfactory answer can be 
 given to these questions. As a class there can be no 
 doubt that weeds belong to the most recent flora of the 
 globe. Their luxuriant and flaccid look indicates their 
 modern origin ; for the plants of the older geological 
 ages are characterised by dry leathery leaves, and a 
 general physiognomy like that of the existing flora of 
 Australia. Indeed, the flora of Europe during the 
 Eocene period bears a close resemblance to tliat of 
 
 F 
 
66 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 Australia at the present day; so that in paying a visit 
 to our southern colony, we are transporting ourselves 
 back to the far-off ages when our own country had a 
 climate and vegetation almost identical. The flora of 
 Australia is the oldest flora at present existing on our 
 globe. Our weeds came upon the scene long subsequent 
 to this Australian or Eocene vegetation. In our own 
 country they form part of the Germanic flora which 
 overspread our low grounds after the passing away of 
 the last glacial epoch, driving before them to the moun- 
 tain tops the Alpine and Arctic plants, suited to a scveref 
 climate, which previously had covered the whole of 
 Europe. They came from Western Asia and Northern 
 Africa. They made their appearance in company with 
 the beautiful and fruitful flora that is specially associated 
 with the arrival of man, and spread from the same region 
 which is supposed to be the cradle of the human race. 
 In this way they are co-related with the Scripture account 
 of the fall of man. " Cursed is the ground for thy sake ; 
 thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee," was the 
 sentenced pronounced by God upon man's sin. We are 
 not to suppose from this circumstance that these noxious 
 plants were specially created then and there for the 
 express purpose of carrying out the punishment of man. 
 They were previously in existence, though they may be 
 said to belong very specially to the human epoch ; but 
 since that mournful event they have received a new 
 significance, and are bound up with man in a new moral 
 relation. 
 
 Most of our weeds possess all the characteristics of 
 
V. WEEDS. 67 
 
 a desert tiora ; special adaptations to a dry soil and arid 
 climate. The dock and the dandelion have long tap- 
 roots, the object of which is to store up a supply of 
 water, enabling the plants possessing them to live 
 through a long rainless period, and in spots from which 
 the moisture has vanished, either by evaporation in the 
 atmosphere or percolation through the soil. The dead- 
 nettle is covered with silky hair, a provision made to 
 attract the moisture of the air, and so to counteract the 
 drought of the circumstances in which it grows ; for we 
 find that plants in moist localities are less hairy than 
 those growing in dry, and if removed from the one to 
 the other they have been observed to change their 
 respective qualities to suit their change of conditions. 
 It has been suggested that the downy seeds of the 
 thistle and the dandelion, while tlieir principal purpose 
 is more effectually to diffuse the plant, are particularly 
 related to arid conditions. It may also be noticed that 
 a very large number of our familiar weeds have linear 
 ragged leaves, or foHage more or less cut up into seg- 
 ments. This would appear to be another arrangement 
 co-related with a dry habitat, as such leaves, approxi- 
 mating more in shape to hairs, would have a greater 
 power of attracting the latent vapour of the air in arid 
 situations than broad, fully-developed leaves would 
 possess. Plants have a tendency to produce narrower 
 and more divided leaves according to the aridity of 
 their place of growth. Thorns and thistles are also 
 characteristics of a desert flora ; and many of our weeds 
 are possessed of these weapons of defence. Thorns 
 
 F 2 
 
6S riVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 are undeveloped branches, and prickles aborted leaf- 
 stems ; and these arrestments of growth are caused by 
 poverty of conditions. A much larger amount of 
 nourishment is needed for the production of leaves 
 than for the growth of wood. We should, therefore, 
 expect that plants growing in poor dry soil would be 
 more remarkable for tlieir woody than for their leafy 
 products, would develop more spines and prickles and 
 other woody excrescences than full-formed foliage. All 
 these peculiarities, which distinguish more or less our 
 native weeds, would seem to indicate that they came 
 originally from a part of the earth less moist than our 
 own. And the reason why they find a congenial home 
 in our gardens and cultivated fields is because the soil 
 of such places is made artificially like the natural soil 
 of their native country. Our fields and gardens are 
 divested of all unnecessary vegetation, and drained of 
 all superfluous moisture, and thus are possessed of the 
 dry, warm, exposed soil, to which the provisions for 
 drought with which weeds are specially furnished are 
 admirably adapted, and where in consequence they 
 luxuriate and overcome other plants less specially 
 endowed. They follow in the train of man, and show 
 a remarkable predilection for his haunts, become domes- 
 ticated under his care, not merely because of the 
 abundance of the nitrogenous and calcareous substances 
 to be found in the vicinity of human dwellings and in 
 manured fields and gardens, but chiefly because he pro- 
 vides them with the dry soil and climate in which they 
 can best grow. 
 
V. WEEDS. 69 
 
 It is an essential qualification of a weed that it should 
 grow and spread with great rapidity. For this purpose 
 it is endowed with marvellous contrivances in the way 
 of buds and seeds. A very large number of our 
 weeds, such as the thistle, groundsel, dandelion, colts- 
 foot, scabious, daisy, ragwort, are composite flowers. 
 The apparently single blossom is in reality a colony 
 of separate blossoms, compressed by the obliteration of 
 their floral stems around one central axis. We have an 
 interesting proof of this in the five little notches at the 
 end of each of the yellow strap-shaped rays of the 
 dandelion — which are survivals of the original petals 
 of the separate flowers, reduced through concentration 
 and consolidation to the smallest compass, and altered 
 from the tubular form by being split down the sides 
 and opened out flat as is partially the case in the corolla 
 of the honeysuckle. And this arrangement must have 
 taken place long after the first appearance of true flowers 
 on the earth, and may be regarded as a gradual adapta- 
 tion of floral parts for more efficient propagation. Be- 
 sides the economical multiplication of this method of 
 blossoms within a small space, many composite plants 
 have a most remarkable modification of another part of 
 their floral system for the same purpose. The limb of 
 the calyx of each floret in the compound blossom is 
 reduced to a mere coronet of hairs, forming the well- 
 known thistle-down, and the "clock of the dandelion," 
 which country children blow away to ascertain the hour. 
 Each seed has its downy parachute attached to it, wliich 
 enables it to travel long distances from the parent plant 
 
70 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. ciiAr. 
 
 in search of suitable soil. Gifted with such special 
 means of dispersion as these, wc can easily understand 
 why composite plants should form the largest family of 
 the vegetable kingdom, and should be variously and 
 extensively distributed over every quarter of the world. 
 Every puff of wind blows off the ripened downy seeds 
 of the dandelion and floats them far and near, so that 
 we are not surprised that this weed should be found all 
 through Europe and Asia, from Arctic latitudes to Algeria 
 and India, and in America from Greenland to the Straits 
 of Magellan ; being at home in Japan and New Zealand 
 as well as in the Canary Islands, and from an altitude of 
 1 1, GOO feet to 18,000 feet on the Andes and Himalaya?. 
 In most of our weeds the floral parts are small and 
 inconspicuous. The reproductive act is so arranged as 
 to economise material and to exhaust the vital force 
 as little as possible, and the organs concerned in it are 
 reduced to the simplest forms consistent with efficiency. 
 Most of the species can be fertilised by the wind, which 
 is always available, or by the help of insects that have 
 a wide range of distribution and are abundant every- 
 where. In consequence of this floral economy, the 
 vegetative system acquires a greater predominance in 
 this class of plants than in almost any other, so that the 
 life of the individual is carefully preserved even amid 
 the most untoward conditions. A weed, by reason of 
 the strength of its vegetative system, is able to stand 
 extremes of heat and cold, and to recover from the 
 roughest usage. It will hold on to life in circumstances 
 which would prove fatal to most other plants ; and 
 
V. WEEDS. 71 
 
 in this way it can abide the most favourable time for 
 the development of its blossoms and seeds. Nay, it 
 can propagate itself as well without blossoms as with 
 them. Many of our weeds form long creeping stems, 
 giving off at every joint buds which will produce perfect 
 plants, and greatly extend the area which they occupy. 
 No one who examines attentively the coltsfoot, one of 
 the commonest and best-known weeds in our gardens 
 and fields, but must be struck with the wonderful care 
 which Nature takes of this vagrant outcast, and with the 
 ample provision which she has made that it shall not be 
 extirpated. It goes early to work, being one of the 
 first flowers which the spring calls up from the winter's 
 sleep, and it has thus a long time before it to carry out 
 all its purposes. It produces its blossoms above the 
 soil, before the leaves appear, like most spring flowers, 
 in conformity with the law that Nature cares more for 
 the type than for the single life, hastening, in a season 
 of storm and change endangering the life of the species, 
 to develop the parts essential to propagation before 
 those necessary to the welfare of the individual. The 
 young flower buds come up in a bent position ; the 
 involucre, — a ring of small leaves at the base of the 
 blossom, — thus acting as a pent-house roof to protect 
 it from the inclemency of the weather. The buds 
 gradually elongate, and by the time the flower expands 
 the stem becomes perfectly upright, so as to expose the 
 floral organs to the sunshine of a later and more setded 
 time. When the expanded blossom is fertilised, the 
 involucre collapses over the young seeds, and gradually 
 
72 Tiro WORLDS ARE OTRS. chap, 
 
 assumes the former bent attitude, in order to protect 
 them while they are ripening, becoming again upright 
 when the seeds are fully matured, so as to expose them 
 freely to the air. In each head there are about five 
 hundred seeds, and each seed is furnished with its 
 downy parachute, which catches the smallest breath of 
 wind, and is earned off to be sown in the soil. By the 
 time the leaves make their appearance the seeds of the 
 plant are shed, and the action of the hoc that seeks to 
 extirpate the obvious leaves, only aids in loosening the 
 soil for the unsuspected seeds, or in scattering them over 
 a wider surface. The roots are tough, succulent, and 
 most tenacious of vitality, and not only creep for long 
 distances along the ground, but penetrate beyond the 
 depth of ordinary ploughing or hoeing. They bud and 
 branch freely, each broken fragment sending up a new 
 shoot, so that the more they are injured by the hoe the 
 more they spread, unless they are at once removed from 
 the soil. With a plant so richly provided against all 
 contingencies, the farmer finds it most difficult to cope. 
 When it gets a fair footing in a garden or field, it is 
 almost impossible to eradicate it. And the coltsfoot 
 is only one example — a little more striking, perhaps, 
 than usual — of the extraordinary advantages which all 
 weeds possess more or less in the struggle of life. The 
 quantity of seeds which they all produce is most won- 
 derful. An average plant of shepherd's purse will 
 yield 800 flowers, with 20 seeds each, 16,000 seeds 
 to a root. An average plant of chickweed will yield 
 300 flowers, with lo seeds each, 3,000 seeds to a 
 
V. WEEDS. 73 
 
 root. This explains the great rapidity with which they 
 will spread in favourable circumstances. 
 
 That weeds belong to the most recent and specialised 
 flora of the world is evident from their wide distribution 
 and wonderful powers of colonisation. In our own 
 country they number about two hundred and thirty, and 
 constitute about a seventh part of our native flora. We 
 are constantly receiving accessions from the continent, 
 along with the seeds of our cultivated plants. In com- 
 pany with the wheat and barley that can be cultivated 
 in India down to the tropic zone, because they can be 
 sown and reaped during the coldest quarter of the year, 
 have been introduced a crowd of the common annual 
 weeds of our country, such as the shepherd's purse, the 
 chickweed, the spurge, and the corn-pimpernel, which 
 also run through the cycle of their lives in the winter 
 quarter. Half the weeds of American agriculture have 
 been imported from Europe ; and of the 2,100 flowering 
 plants of the Northern United States, 320 are European. 
 Our thistles have become naturalised in North America 
 to such an extent as to have become a perfect pest ; 
 while in South America they cover some parts of the 
 Pampas with thickets as high as a man on horseback, 
 and more impervious than a tropical jungle. Our chick- 
 weed in New Zealand is fast exterminating the tough 
 and woody native flax-plant; while our water-cress 
 threatens to choke up altogether the still waters of 
 New Zealand, where its stems often attain twelve feet 
 in length and three-quarters of an inch in diameter. 
 It is a singular circumstance that neither the southern 
 
74 TIFO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 nor the western hemisphere has reciprocated this evil 
 to any great extent, notwithstanding the vast intercourse 
 that exists between these regions and our country, and the 
 large number of their plants which we have introduced 
 into our gardens. Australia and New Zealand have sent 
 us no weeds, and America only a very few. The solution 
 of this mystery, as Dr. Seemann clearly proves, is not to 
 be found in any consideration of climate, soil, or circum- 
 stances. It is a question of race. The present flora of 
 the United States and of Australia is older than the Ger- 
 manic flora which now constitutes the principal vegeta- 
 tion of Europe. It is very similar to, if not absolutely 
 identical with, that of Europe during the Miocene and 
 Eocene epochs. America and Australia have not yet 
 arrived at the degree of floral development to which 
 Europe has attained; consequently plants coming to 
 our country from Australia and America would not come 
 as colonists, with a new part to play in it, but as sur- 
 vivors of an older flora whose cycle of existence had 
 ages ago run out there. Our system of the rotation of 
 crops is based upon the fact that the soil which has 
 borne one kind of harvest will not produce the same 
 next year, but requires another kind of crop to be 
 grown on it. And Nature in her wilds carefully observes 
 the same law. The former geological flora of this 
 country has exhausted its capabilities in it, and, return- 
 ing at a later date from another country, finds in it no 
 circumstances suitable for its grov/th and extension. On 
 the other hand, our plants going to Australia and 
 America encounter there an older flora, which has 
 
V. WEEDS. 75 
 
 survived since the Eocene and IMiocene epochs, and 
 is about to pass away in the altered conditions of the 
 world. In this struggle for existence the older flora has 
 no chance with the newer and better-equipped flora 
 coming for the first time in contact with a soil to it 
 altogether virgin. The same stern law would appear to 
 apply to the whole of organised nature. Man's own 
 history furnishes some of the most remarkable examples 
 of it. The native races associated with the peculiar 
 flora of Australia and America are disappearing rapidly 
 before the advance of the European ; and it is not with- 
 out reason that the Maori and the Red Indian view with 
 dread the appearance of the plantain and the chickweed 
 around their homes, for these are but the daring and 
 hardy outposts of a vast invading army that will drive 
 their native vegetation off the field, and the harbingers 
 of a mighty people, who will ultimately march over their 
 graves to the occupation of all the land. 
 
 Whatever our weeds were in their original state, they 
 are now like the corn which man sows in the same field 
 with them, endowed with habits so long acquired that 
 they will part with their life sooner than abandon them. 
 The original wild plant of the corn— if there ever was 
 such a thing, and this admits of grave doubts — from 
 which our corn was developed, may have been able to 
 propagate and extend itself freely independent of man ; 
 but we know that without man's agency the corn, as 
 it is now modified, would perish. It does not grow 
 of its own accord, or by the natural dispersion and 
 germination of its seed. Left to itself, it would quickly 
 
76 T]VO WORLDS ARE OCRS. chap. 
 
 disappear and become extinct. The one condition of 
 its permanency in the world, of its growth in quantities 
 sufficient for man's food, is that it be sown by man in 
 ground carefully prepared beforehand to receive it. 
 The same rule would appear to hold good in regard to 
 the weeds which, in spite of himself, he cultivates along 
 with it, and whose persistent presence makes the culti- 
 vation of the soil so difficult to him. We know them 
 only ill an artificial condition as abnormal forms of 
 original wild types ; and as such they are incapable 
 of continuing themselves without man's help. Left to 
 grow in soil that has reverted to its original wild con- 
 dition, they would soon be overpowered by the surround- 
 ing vegetation, the grasses and mosses, and in a shorter 
 or longer space of time they would inevitably disappear. 
 I have seen many ruins of dwellings in upland glens 
 from which the nettles and all the weeds that once 
 grew in the field and garden-plot have utterly vanished, 
 leaving only a dense thicket of bracken, or a lovely smooth 
 carpet of greensward, to indicate among tlie heather that 
 man had once inhabited the place. We are bound, 
 therefore, to believe that so long as man cultivates the 
 ground, so long will these weeds make their appearance, 
 and in striking correlation with the primeval curse, 
 compel him in the sweat of his face to eat his bread. 
 When he ceases to till the ground, they will cease 
 to grow in it. 
 
 Our weeds are distributed pretty widely over the 
 different families of the vegetable kingdom. The 
 poorest and meanest-looking of them claim kindred 
 
V. WEEDS. 77 
 
 with some of the brightest flowers in this and foreign 
 countries. Why do these homely weeds differ so much 
 from their splendid relatives % Whatever they might 
 once have been in their wild condition, they have 
 been placed in circumstances which have necessarily 
 degraded them. Intruding upon the cherished domains 
 of man, they have been treated uniformly as enemies, 
 injured, extirpated, maimed, expelled in every possible 
 way. For ages they have never had a chance of 
 developing any latent beauty that may be in them. 
 What loveliness those of them that are left long un- 
 disturbed display is shown by the buttercup, which 
 makes an old meadow like a field of the cloth of gold, 
 or the daisy, w'hich transfigures every neglected pasture- 
 land, and makes it whiter with its snowy robe than any 
 fuller on earth could whiten it ! How much more 
 beautiful are the scarlet poppy and the corn blue-bottle 
 that are left to grow among the corn-fields — for the 
 same reason that the householder in the parable gave 
 to the servants who would gather out the tares from 
 the wheat, lest the wheat should be rooted up with 
 them — than the sheep-sorrel and the groundsel, that 
 are remorselessly hoed away from the cabbage-beds and 
 the potato drills, whenever they make their appearance ! 
 How much more beautiful is the wild pansy that grows 
 on the undisturbed upland pastures than its little field 
 relative which grows on soil which is constantly up- 
 turned, and whoce flowers have therefore been reduced 
 to the lowest point in respect of colour and form ! How 
 much more striking is the large blue-eyed forget-me-not 
 
TlfO IFO/^LDS ARE OURS. 
 
 of the bogs than the species which grows in the fields 
 whicla man is constantly tilling ! Our brighter weeds 
 are invariably found in places where they are permitted 
 to undergo those changes, by insect selection, which 
 issue in richer and more varied loveliness still ; whereas 
 the homelier ones, standing directly in the way of the 
 cultivation of the soil, are constantly harassed and pre- 
 vented from putting forth their flowers, or taking 
 advantage of those forces whicli regulate the wonder- 
 ful evolution of floral beauty in the world. In their 
 case, too, as in the human world, " the destruction of 
 the poor is their poverty." And yet among the w^eeds 
 that have the least conspicuous flowers, how much 
 loveliness may be detected by the cultivated eye that 
 seeks for it ! In these the blossom, mean as it is, 
 is made the most of; and we see in the varied colours 
 of the opened and unopened flowers of the common 
 viper's bugloss, and in the pinkish bracts of the purple 
 dead-nettle, aspirations, as it were, on the part of these 
 lowly plants towards a higher type of beauty. 
 
 But weeds, as weeds, will never develop much floral 
 loveliness. Tlieir raison-d'etre is not to delight the eye 
 of man, but to further his moral discipline. With the 
 primeval curse of barrenness and weeds upon the earth 
 are correlated the fact that thorns are stunted or 
 abortive forms of branches or of buds that in happier 
 circumstances would have gone on to develop fruit 
 and foliage, and that the downy parasols by means of 
 which the thistles spread their seeds in myriads are 
 due to degeneration of floral parts ; the very instru- 
 
V. WEEDS. 79 
 
 ments of man's punishment, the very goads that piick 
 him to exertion being thus like himself failures on the 
 part of nature to reach an ideal perfection, and thus 
 witnesses to hira in nature of his own degradation and 
 of the imperfection of his life. The thorns and thistles 
 of the wilderness without, are faithful emblems of the 
 thorns and thistles of unsatisfied desires and unfulfilled 
 hopes in the waste ground of the heart within. Their 
 singular association with him, unwelcome as it is, is thus 
 not altogether an unmixed evil. For, just as labour, the 
 great curse of the world, has proved its greatest blessing, 
 developing out of its cares and toils and duties the 
 highest civilisation of man — as the thistle itself deve- 
 lops out of its prickly stem and foliage a rich purple 
 blossom of beauty — so in the ever-renewed contest 
 which man is obliged to wage with these persistent in- 
 vaders of his gardens and fields, so that his table is 
 literally furnished every year in the presence of his foes, 
 he acquires habits of patience, perseverance, and steady 
 industry, and learns lessons which, if he will only pay 
 heed to them, will make him wise for this world and the 
 next. The " Seed of the woman " who dwelt in the 
 bush — the thorny product of the desert — who built 
 His tabernacle out of the thorny acacia wood of the 
 waste, who wore the crown of thorns on the cross, can 
 by His gracious work of salvation bring good out of 
 evil, and beauty out of ashes, and make all the weedy 
 wildernesses of the world to rejoice and blossom as 
 the rose. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 RAIN UPON THE MO JVN GRASS. 
 
 "He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass." — 
 Psalm Ixxii. 6. 
 
 NO more tender and beautiful image than this can 
 be found in the whole range of sacred poetry. 
 It is full of precious significance. The memories and 
 associations which it suggests are very sweet. "We all 
 know the summer har\'cst of the hay-makers, whose 
 pleasant toils seem to anticipate those of the autumn 
 harvest of the corn. How different is the aspect of 
 the hay-field before the grass is cut, and after it is mown 
 and the hay removed ! 
 
 A meadow covered from end to end with tall ripe 
 grass crowned with rich dark-purple heads of blossom 
 and seed, and rippling in light and shadow like the 
 waves of the sea, as the sun and the wind chase each 
 other over them, is one of the most beautiful of rural 
 sights. Myriads of wild flowers add tlie glory of their 
 colour and tlic fragrance of their perfume to tlie blades 
 of grass among which they grow. The sorrel here 
 
CH. VI. RAIN UPON THE MOWN GRASS. 8 1 
 
 and there touches the surface of the undulating mass 
 with the russet hue of its long spikes ; the honey- 
 scented red clover stipples it into a warm glow when 
 the sun catches its crimson head ; and the soft shadows 
 of the dappled clouds overhead throw into prominent 
 effect the snowy gleam of the tall ox-eye daisies, and 
 the umbels of white hemlock blossoms on their waving 
 spray. The eye is never weary of gazing upon the 
 bright and living mosaic. But let us go back to the 
 same field when the hay-makers have done their work, 
 and how sad and desolate is the spectacle which it 
 presents ! The bright halo of wild flowers has vanished ; 
 the bloom and glory of the grass has been cut down 
 and removed ; the fragrance that loaded the air is gone ; 
 and nothing remains but the stubble protruding an inch 
 or two above the soil, and forming a pale, sickly yellow 
 sward without grace of form or beauty of colour, and 
 altogether out of harmony with the general tone of 
 the landscape. The desolation of the spectacle is 
 greatly aggravated during a season of drought, when 
 the sky is as brass and the earth as iron, and the 
 pitiless sun scorches the shorn field, and it makes no 
 effort to recover what it has lost. But how striking 
 is the change when a shower of rain comes ! The 
 dry, faded sward begins to brighten and assume a 
 tinge of verdure ; the stubble imbibes the moisture 
 and expands with new life and puts forth new shoots. 
 And as the soft reviving rain continues, the healing 
 process goes on ; the work of the scythe disappears, 
 and the hard bristles of the grass lengthen and become 
 
 G 
 
82 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 greener and more elastic every day, putting forth blade 
 and blossom as of old, and attaining to their full ideal 
 of shape and hue ; until, at last, an after-math is formed 
 which may be even more luxuriant than was the field 
 in its first fresh, strong growth. The rain upon the 
 mown grass is thus the harbinger of new beauties, and 
 of a richer fragrance and fulness of life in the meadow. 
 It constructs what the scythe had destroyed, and 
 crowns with fresh glory what had been humbled to the 
 dust. 
 
 Especially is the effect of the rain upon tlie mown grass 
 remarkable in the arid soil and climate of Bible lands. 
 The long grass growing on the house-tops, by the sides 
 of streams and wells, or in shady mountain recesses, 
 springs up rapidly ; but when it is cut down for fodder 
 what remains of it upon the spot seems under the 
 scorching sun to dry up completely, and a brown 
 naked waste remains behind. But when the rain comes 
 upon this withered grass it starts up as if by magic, 
 and resumes with wonderful rapidity its former freshness 
 and fairness ; the overheated air is cooled, and lays in 
 turn its cool, healing touch upon what it formerly de- 
 stroyed, and restores it to life and beauty ; and when the 
 sun bursts through the clouds and gilds the transparent 
 blades of grass with its refulgence, it seems the smile 
 of God made visible. These wonderfully reviving effects 
 of the rain upon the mown grass are beautifully alluded 
 to in many passages of Scripture, as in the triumphant 
 song of Moses, when he says of the Word of God, 
 " My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall 
 
VI. RAIN UPON THE MOWN GRASS. 83 
 
 distil as the dew ; as the small rain upon the tender 
 herb, and as the showers upon the grass ; " and in the 
 exquisite words of the Psalmist, " He shall be as the 
 light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morn- 
 ing without clouds ; as the tender grass springing out 
 of the earth by clear shining after rain." 
 
 The primary reference of the image was exceedingly 
 appropriate. The title of the Psalm in which it occurs 
 would indicate that it was composed by David for his 
 son Solomon. But internal evidence fosters the belief 
 rather that it belongs to a later date, when the Jewish 
 kingdom was reduced to the lowest straits. Weakened 
 by the separation of the northern tribes, and torn up 
 by hostile factions within their own territories, the Je\vs 
 were indeed in the condition of mown grass — shorn 
 of their power, deprived of the largest portion of their 
 territory, with their liberties trampled under foot, and 
 nothing remaining of their former glory save the memory. 
 In this blighted state they looked with fresh hope and 
 expectation to the reign of a new king, who had just 
 ascended the throne, and whose Avise and righteous 
 administration they hoped would be to them like the 
 rain to the mown grass. All their social wounds would 
 be healed, all their national grievances would be re- 
 moved ; their honour would once more be raised from 
 the dust, and the diminished and impoverished kingdom 
 of David would be restored to its former power and 
 prestige. But no earthly king or kingdom could fulfil the 
 high Jewish ideal, and therefore the accession of a new 
 king, and the establishment of a new administration, 
 
 G 2 
 
84 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. cirAr. 
 
 kindle anew the hope, long cherished in the hearts of 
 the people, of a heaven-born king who should indeed 
 restore the kingdom to Israel, and realise their highest 
 expectations of earthly prosperity and glorj' ; so that 
 the prayers of David the son of Jesse might indeed 
 be ended by being most fully answered. 
 
 Thus against the dark background of Jewish calamities 
 arose the bright vision of the Messiah ; and as the hope 
 of resuscitating the faded splendours of the past died 
 away, so the expectation grew of a heavenly king who 
 should reign in righteousness, gather the dispersed of 
 Israel into one, and make His kingdom co-extensive 
 with the whole human race. As the fountain that has 
 been stirred up from the bottom purifies itself as it 
 runs on, so this national consciousness, profoundly 
 quickened by God's judgments, became clearer and 
 more spiritual in each successive period of affliction. 
 Through their own sufferings they were able to realise 
 more and more • the worth and glory of suffering ; and 
 the idea of a suffering Messiah — of One who should 
 enter into fellowship with men not through their glories, 
 but through their trials, who should overcome the evil 
 of the world not by wielding the sword of vengeance 
 but by drinking the cup of shame and sorrow — was 
 more and more clearly discerned. It was the hope of 
 this coming Messiah that was to the Jews like rain 
 upon the mown grass. It cheered and revived them 
 in their times of deepest despondency; it kept ever 
 before them their high calling as God's priests for 
 mankind \ as the elect nation that was appointed to 
 
VI. RAJN UPON THE MOWN GRASS. 
 
 teach all other nations by their own representative dis- 
 cipline. They were now in the condition of the stubble 
 of the field • their beauty and power were shorn away 
 and withered, but they looked forward to the coming 
 of a blessed time when an after-math of higher glory 
 than they had ever experienced as a nation should 
 spring up from the stunted and blighted remains of 
 their present depression, and the wilderness should 
 become a fruitful field, and the fruitful field should 
 be counted for a forest. We see the contrast between 
 that future glory and this present distress vividly por- 
 trayed in the wide difference between the image of the 
 mown grass — shorn and withered — with which our Psalm 
 opens, and the image of the handful of corn that 
 should wave upon the tops of the mountains, whose 
 fruit should be as the cedars of Lebanon, while they 
 of the city should flourish like grass of the earth, with 
 which it closes. 
 
 But the image has a wider application. The Jews 
 were the representatives of the human race. And the 
 condition of mankind is most aptly symbolised by the 
 mown grass. Through the fall all flesh became grass, 
 and all the glory of man as the flower of the field ; 
 the grass withered and the flower thereof faded. Sin 
 robbed man of the beauty of the Divine image in which 
 he had been created, and laid his honour in the dust. 
 Having lost the health of the soul, he became the 
 easy prey of outward evils — pain, disease, sorrow, death. 
 Being no more satisfied from himself, he fell before 
 the temntations to sensual pleasure, and looked to his 
 
86 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap.. 
 
 body for compensation for those pure enjoyments which 
 hi»mind and heart could no longer yield him. Having 
 no counteracting peace and serenity within — ha\'ing no 
 elasticity of soul to resist external pressure, every touch 
 of the tempter's hand left its impression upon his nature, 
 just as the finger leaves its hollow jirint in tlie swollen 
 flesh of the dropsical, which has no principle of re- 
 covery to obliterate it. Everything became adverse to 
 Iiim who was afflicted with the great adversity of sin. 
 Like the scorching sun upon the mown grass, the 
 principalities and powers of this world blighted and 
 withered still more what remained of the beauty and 
 glory of his nature. And all his own schemes of self- 
 salvation have only aggravated the evil and completed 
 the wreck. But in this tragic scene, God, though justly 
 ofl"ended, graciously interfered. Most righteously, when 
 the experiment ended so disastrously, might He have 
 removed for ever the ruins of it — uprooted the blighted 
 and abortive growths altogether, driven the plough- 
 share of destruction over the whole field. But this 
 was not the design of Heaven. God appeared not to 
 destroy the sinner, but to save him from his sin. He 
 came not, like the scorching sun to consume the mown 
 grass with His fiery indignation, but like the tender, 
 gentle rain, to nourish it up and stimulate it to new 
 growth and blessedness. As He said regarding His 
 people, so He said regarding the whole human race, 
 " As the new wine is found in the cluster, and one saith, 
 Destroy it not, for a blessing is in it, so will I do for ir.y 
 servants' sakes, that I may not destroy them all." 
 
RAIN UPON THE MOWN GRASS. 87 
 
 I have often thought that the very time and way 
 in which God first appeared to Adam and Eve after 
 they had sinned, is deeply significant of the wonderful 
 tenderness and considerateness of all His subsequent 
 dealings with the human race. The Scripture narrative 
 tells us that our guilty first parents heard the voice of 
 the Lord God, " walking in the garden in the cool of 
 the day." There is in this language manifestly an 
 accommodation to our human ways of thinking and 
 feeling ; but it does not the less express a most blessed 
 truth. It tells us that God did not rush angrily upon 
 Adam and Eve in the very moment of their trans- 
 gression and inflict summary vengeance. Not in the 
 burning heat and glare of the noonday ; not in the terror 
 and anguish of their newly-committed sin, when their 
 eyes were opened and they knew the nature of what 
 they had done, did God appear unto them. He came 
 in the cool of the day, when the evening breeze had 
 tempered the fierce heat, and the scorching sun was 
 setting and relieving the sky of its fiery glow. He came 
 after the first terrible shock of the discovery which sin 
 had made, after the first dreadful revulsion of feeling 
 was over, and the guilty pair could with some degree 
 of calmness comprehend their new situation and pros- 
 pects. And though His voice was stern, there was 
 a tone of pity and tenderness in it. It pronounced 
 judgment, but it spoke of mercy ; and in the very 
 core of the sentence that doomed them to toil and 
 sorrow and exile, was contained the germ of a 
 Dromise of life and blessedness. God came down 
 
88 TIFO UVA'LDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 upon the misery of our first parents like rain upon the 
 mown grass, and by His gentleness made them great. 
 A higher life for man, a richer glor)' for God, issued 
 out of man's transgression through the more abound- 
 ing power of Divine grace. The after-math which 
 sprang up in the wilderness under the rain of God's 
 grace was more luxuriant and beautiful than even the 
 first fair crop in Eden. Thus He who said, " Let not 
 the sun go down upon your wrath," gave Himself the 
 first and most remarkable fulfilment of the precept ! 
 
 Wlien in after years the first sin grew to a monstrous 
 development of wickedness, and God had no alternative 
 but to cut down the human stem to the very root — no 
 sooner was this strange work of judgment done, than He 
 returned to the essential element of His nature, and His 
 love shone forth again on the ruined world. He came 
 down upon the survivors of the human race like rain 
 upon the mown grass ; and, sympathising with their 
 fears and forebodings as they put in their ploughshare 
 above the grave of the old world, and sowed their seed 
 in the very sediment of the flood that had destroyed all 
 mankind. He said, " I will not again smite any more 
 anything living as I have done. While the earth 
 remaineth, seed-time and harvest shall not cease." 
 And the same considerate kindness was manifested by 
 Him througliout the whole history of the children of 
 Israel. Notwithstanding their frequent backslidings, He 
 was ready to heal and forgive them ; and though He 
 was compelled to take vengeance of their inventions, 
 He was ever willing, on the least sign of contrition. 
 
VI. RALY UPON THE MOWN GRASS. 89 
 
 to restore them to His favour and love. But all these 
 displays of His tenderness in the Old Testament history 
 are eclipsed by the surpassing revelations of His grace 
 in the New. Throughout the whole course of our Lord's 
 life on earth, how wonderfully does He manifest to us 
 the gentleness and tenderness of God. He came into 
 our weary, worn-out world, from which the scythe of sin 
 had shorn away all the purity and beauty and joy, as 
 tlie rain ui)on the mown grass \ and He revived and 
 restored it to fresh verdure and brightness again. He 
 brought back by His miracles the abundance and glory 
 of the unfallen world ; He removed the limitations and 
 disabilities of the curse, and restored the primeval 
 blessing. The withered arm was made whole as the 
 other, the blind eye received sight, the lame feet walked, 
 the dumb mouth spoke, the deaf ear heard, the fever- 
 stricken was cured, the dead was raised to life. The 
 ghasdy mask fell from the leper's face and his flesh came 
 again as the flesh of a little child. The maimed, and 
 withered, and broken forms which sin had caused, were 
 made to grow into new beauty and blessedness. 
 
 Jesus did not destroy the existing forms of society, He 
 sanctioned and renewed them ; He hallowed and dignified 
 every relation of life which sin had polluted, by the 
 purity of His own experience of it. He passed through 
 the whole history of man, and claimed all that is best 
 and sweetest in human life for God— showed that every 
 part of it contains some spiritual capacity and power. 
 The bruised reed He did not break, but caused it to 
 flourish anew. Gentle to men's weaknesses, tender to 
 
90 TJVO IVOHLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 men's sorrows, pitiful to men's sins, even when He 
 condemned them. He ever showed Himself. Wherever 
 there was a spark of the Divine life, He fanned it into 
 flame ; wherever there was any growth of faith, however 
 feeble, He cherished it, and caused it to bud and 
 blossom. As a child seeks to warm by its breath 
 into life and vigour a fly made torpid by the cold, so 
 He breathed between His hands, as it were, upon some 
 numbed and sin-chilled soul, and quickened it into 
 newness of life. To the woman taken in adultery, He 
 said, " Neither do I condemn thee ; go, and sin no 
 more." On Peter, while denying Him, He fi.xcd a look 
 of mournful, but tender upbraiding, which caused him 
 to weep bitterly, and led to his true conversion. To the 
 woman that was a sinner, He gave the most generous 
 reception, and His love quickened within her withered 
 heart the pulse of a holy and purifying love. And of 
 His very murderers, who, in their utter hatred of Him, 
 seemed to divest themselves of every softer attribute of 
 humanity. He said, " Father, forgive them, for they 
 know not what they do." Like rain upon the mown 
 grass. He came down upon all the wants and woes 
 and sins of men. He e\er adopted the constructii'e 
 method of doing good. He formed a new and better 
 creation upon the purified framework of the old. And, 
 as a, piece of sward that had long been crushed and 
 blanched under the weight and darkness of a stone, and 
 had formed a nest for all foul creeping things that love 
 darkness, grows green and fair when exposed to the 
 soft April showers and sunshine, among whose slender 
 
VI. RAIN UPON THE MOWN GRASS. Qi 
 
 Stems the daisy lights its tiny lamp, and over whose 
 delicate blossoms the butterfly flits, so the crushed and 
 blighted world, that had lain so long under the burden 
 of the curse, began to grow sweet and verdant, and to 
 attract all pure and beautiful things to it, under the 
 living dew and sunshine of Jesus' presence. 
 
 To the soul that is ready to despair, the image of my 
 text speaks with peculiar tenderness and power, and 
 tells of love and hope, and eagerness to forgive. It is 
 to the mown grass that the rain is most beneficial ; and 
 it is sinners deeply laden with the burden of unhappiness 
 who are the special objects of Christ's care, for He came 
 not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. He 
 comes to save them from the hopelessness which makes 
 them utterly reckless. How many are there who are weary 
 of their lusts, sick of their evil ways, and yet continue 
 in sin, simply because they see no mode of escape, and 
 feel that they are sunk too low ever to rise to the calm 
 pure heights of heavenly grace. In such desperate hearts 
 the Saviour kindles a Divine hope, and awakens the 
 feeling that they too are precious in the sight of God, 
 and have still a future of usefulness and happiness before 
 them. It was by such means that Howard, the great 
 philanthropist, won over criminals who were hardened 
 by a long course of strife and hatred, and had no share 
 in the sympathies of their kind. He showed them that 
 there was still a heart that felt for them and pitied their 
 woes and wrongs ; and this conviction did for them 
 what no severity of punishment could accomplish. They 
 melted before the disinterested kindness ; and tears of 
 
92 ni^O WOJ^LDS ARE OURS. chai'. 
 
 mingled wonder, penitence, and hope ran down the 
 furrows of tlieir rugged faces. And oh ! if the despair- 
 ing sinner could realise that God is full of pity, that He 
 pardons with overflowing love, that He values even the 
 waited remains of a life spent in sin and folly, this would 
 melt and change the hardest heart. The gospel message 
 lells us that tliere is that in the vcr)- vilest that is worth 
 redeeming ; that what seems fit only to be cast out and 
 trampled under foot is in the eye of God fit to be saved 
 with the precious blood of His own Son. The very 
 degradation and misery of such an one is the strongest 
 plea for him in the Father's heart. " Thou hast de- 
 stroyed thyself, but from me is thy fruit found." So He 
 says to every sinner. Much of life is gone — its bloom, 
 its freshness, its fragrance ; but all is not gone. Upon 
 the wasted wrecks of life He will come down like rain 
 upon the mown grass, and there will be an after-math 
 of fruits meet unto repentance — peaceable fruits of 
 righteousness to His praise and glory. 
 
 To the sufferer, too, the image of the text has a most 
 touching application. To many, life presents the aspect 
 of a mown field. Some disappointment* or trial has 
 taken away all its bloom and fragrance. The world 
 without is desolate, the world ^\■ithin is withered ; and 
 the remembrance of the flourishing past increases the 
 barrenness of the present by its bright contrast. Human 
 synij)at]iy is unavailing ; the most soothing words are 
 like cold air to a quivering nerve, or scorching sunshine 
 to the mown grass. It is in sad circumstances like 
 these tliat the full significance of the Divine promise 
 
VI. J^A/N UPON THE MOWN GRASS. 93 
 
 is realised. He who has sent the trial does not act 
 
 in an arbitrary manner, taking away the blessing in the 
 mere wantonness of power. Dark and fatal as the trial 
 may seem, it is designed to enlarge the capacity and 
 increase the true wealth of life, by making it to include 
 a more fruitful experience. An inferior possession is 
 removed that a higher may be substituted. A transient 
 joy that touches only one part of the nature is quenched, 
 that a joy which satisfies the whole being, and is un- 
 speakable and full of glory, may be kindled in its place. 
 The Husbandman of souls deals with human beings as 
 the farmer deals with his fields. The farmer removes 
 the hay-crop that he may have a second crop of fodder. 
 He cuts down the rye-grass in June, that he may have 
 the purple honey-sweet blossoms and rich succulent 
 stems and foliage of the clover in September. And so 
 God cuts down the bright flowers and the green grass 
 of summer joys, that the more mature and lasting ex- 
 periences of the late autumn of life may be produced 
 in their place. And though the field be left bare and 
 desolate for a while, stripped of all that made it fair and 
 sweet, abandoned like the mown grass under the cruel 
 sunshine, God is not regardless. He ivaits to be gracious. 
 The rain may not come at once to refresh and recon- 
 struct ; but He is preparing all the time the consolation, 
 and preparing the afflicted soul to receive it. 
 
 How wisely and tenderly does He act in the field of 
 nature ! After a long drought He gradually brings over 
 the hard blue sky a film of fleecy clouds, cools down the 
 hot surface of the withered vegetation, opens the parched 
 
94 Tiro WORLDS ARE OCRS. chai-. 
 
 pores of the leaves, softens their fibres, and brings all 
 the dry dusty herbage of the fields and the foliage of 
 the woods into the condition of a sponge, prepared to 
 drink in the coming moisture. And then, when all is 
 ready, the white-capped clouds distil the small soft rain 
 that dimples the white dust on the roads, and hangs like 
 beaded dew on leaf and blade. The showers at first 
 come gently and drop daintily to the earth, with glimpses 
 of sunshine to make the pattering drops bright. But 
 by and by the blue seams of the clouds grow dark, the 
 golden blazonry on their edges from the shrouded sun 
 disappears, and the billowy masses cover all the sky 
 with gloom ; and then the rain comes down in torrents 
 and smokes and twinkles along the ground. And how 
 delicious is the clearing up of the summer storm ! The 
 freshened air is rich with fragrance ; the lark and the 
 blackbird pour forth their jubilant song, and over the 
 last purple cloud in the west the glory of the sunshine 
 paints a lovely rainbow that moves us " like the smile 
 upon the face of the dying." And what a push of 
 growth, what a quickened zest does the dripping earth 
 manifest under the solemn creative spirit of love that 
 is brooding over all, bringing light out of darkness, and 
 life out of death I The grass grows into the greenness 
 of sprouting grain, and the lean buds swell and burst, 
 and disclose the magic bloom and verdure of summer. 
 And if God thus wisely prepares the rain and graciously 
 deals with the grass of the field which to-day is and 
 to-morrow is cast into the oven, will He not deal with 
 even greater tenderness with souls made in His own 
 
VI. RAIN UPON THE MOWN GRASS. 95 
 
 image, redeemed with the blood of His own Son, and 
 destined to live for ever with Himself? He conies not 
 with His healing touch in the first wild moment of 
 anguish, when the sun of suffering is pouring down his 
 scorching rays upon the broken joy, or the ruined hope, 
 or the dead love. The tried soul cannot say in the first 
 fierce agony " Thy will be done."' Jesus Himself could 
 not say it when His soul was exceeding sorrowful, even 
 unto death. The angel must strengthen ; the prostrate 
 soul must have time to recover from the stunning blow ; 
 patience must have its perfect work. And in the cool 
 of the day He comes, whose very presence gives relief, 
 and draws His gentle cloud over the soul sick of the 
 garish light, opens the closed pores of the heart shut to 
 all human sympathy, softens the sjjirit growing hard in 
 fierce defiance of fate ; and thus preparing the afflicted 
 soul for the blessing. He comes down upon the poor 
 bruised, broken life, like rain upon the mown grass, and 
 the affliction that is not joyous but grievous afterwards 
 yieldeth the peaceable fruits of righteousness. 
 
 God is very pitiful. They wrong Him utterly who 
 imagine that human beings whom He has endowed so 
 richly, are no more in the execution of His great plan 
 for the universe, than are the chips of marble which the 
 sculptor hews off and casts away while finishing his statue. 
 We are not the refuse of His plan, but His own perfect 
 workmanship. He has respect unto the work of His 
 hands, and He will not forsake it until He has fulfilled 
 in it and toward it all the good pleasure of His goodness. 
 The death of His saints is precious in His sight. More 
 
96 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. ch. vi. 
 
 careful than the gold-beater of the fragments of his 
 precious metal, or the lapidary of the powder of his 
 gems, He values even the dust and the chips that He 
 strikes away in perfecting that which concerneth us. 
 Our very tears, shed in the painfulness of the trial. He 
 keeps in His bottle. Withered and desolate from the 
 worldly point of view the life that God chastens may be, 
 but the very chastening nourishes and strengthens into 
 fuller and nobler life. The captivity is turned, and like 
 Job's case the end is richer than the beginning. God 
 will restore the years that the locust hath eaten, and 
 lead His suftering ones out through the valley of the 
 shadow of death into green pastures and beside still 
 waters. And though there may be fewer flowers in the 
 after-math, though the life that has involved such sorrow 
 may never have the same capacity for mere worldly joy 
 as before, yet it will be richer and fairer in heavenly 
 beauties, and more profitable to God and man. And 
 suffering that is borne as Christ bore His, fruits in glory 
 and reaps its reward in those " fields of living green " 
 beyond the river, that shall never know the mower's 
 scythe or sun with scorching ray, where all life's hopes 
 are fulfilled, and all earth's ideals are realised. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 SUMMER BLOSSOMS. 
 
 "The flower fadeth."— IsAlAH xl. 7. 
 
 WE expect the leaves to fade and fall in October. 
 We are prepared for their fate. They have 
 had their full time of growth and unfolding, and their 
 fair share of the beauty and blessedness of the world. 
 The year has passed its meridian and is about to set ; 
 nature has reached its highest development and achieved 
 all its purposes ; and it is the rule of the world that 
 attainment is the end of hope, that all life must begin 
 to perish at its height, and all work when it is finished 
 bring forth death. But there is nothing to prepare us 
 for the fading of the blossoms of early summer. Nature 
 is everywhere repairing the ravages of winter, and 
 clothing all her waste and desolate places with beauty. 
 The veil is drawn aside ; and in the unchanging mono- 
 tone of the cuckoo that comes in from foreign lands, 
 and the bursting of the gay lilies from the dark mould, 
 and the primroses from the decay of last year's withered 
 
 II 
 
98 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 leaves, we become mystically conscious of a larger and 
 brighter world, full of promise and strange revelation. 
 The leaves are still in their first tender greenness, and 
 not a hint of decay has appeared on the transparent 
 loveliness of the emerald fields and woods. When, 
 therefore, we see the flowers fading on the ground and 
 the blossoms falling from the tree, our feelings receive 
 something like a shock. The contrast between the 
 death of these fair creations and the bright overflowing 
 fulness of life all around fills us with a peculiar sadness. 
 A premature fate, we feci, has overtaken them ; they 
 have not had their full share of the feast of life. And 
 thus while autumn teaches us the impressive lesson 
 that " We all do fade as a leaf," a voice in early summer 
 even more impressively says, " All flesh is grass, and 
 all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field. 
 The grass withereth, the flower fadeth." The very 
 joyfulness of the season enhances the moral which the 
 death of its flowers conveys. And it is in times of 
 gladness and success that we are most apt to forget 
 our mortality, and need most to be reminded of our 
 transitory state. 
 
 Looking exclusively at the fiict itself, there is nothing 
 but sadness in the fading of the flower. It seems a 
 wanton destruction of so much life and beauty ; and 
 we are apt to ask with melancholy wonder, "To what 
 purpose is this waste ? " Why should so many fair and 
 exquisitely constructed things be formed only to gladden 
 the eye for a few brief days, and then disappear like 
 a vapour-wreath, which the same sun that has called 
 
SUMMER BLOSSOMS. 99 
 
 it into existence and touched it with gold, exhales back 
 into tlie blue fields of heaven ? I go forth to the woods, 
 and I behold the green gloom lit up with innumerable 
 constellations of wild flowers, whose light will soon 
 go out, and leave behind a deeper darkness and deso- 
 lation than before. I see in early summer the orchards 
 white with apple blossoms, as if the snowy, braided 
 clouds of heaven had descended and become en- 
 tangled among the trees ; but a sudden wind comes, 
 and they are all blown down, and cover the ground 
 with the saddest of all storms — the summer-snow. 
 I watch the growth of a favourite flower with ever- 
 increasing interest, as it develops new aspects of 
 perfection ; and when it has put forth its radiant, 
 perfumed blossom, and is thus crowned with its crown 
 of life, I wish that it would pause and allow me to 
 feast all my senses upon its wealth of beauty for 
 weeks unwearied \ but it goes on by the very law of 
 life to overstep all that fascinating perfection, and to 
 fade and pass away. 
 
 And as evanescent are the counteri^irts of the 
 flowers in the human world ; are all the things of 
 man that they symbolise. Flower hfe and human life 
 have a wonderful correspondence to each other. The 
 higher life runs parallel to the lower, and repeats in 
 a grander form, with new qualities superadded, what is 
 exhibited in a humble form in the inferior creation. 
 Our Saviour bade us consider the lilies how they grow, 
 not merely because of their lavish wealth of beautiful 
 adorning, but because of the most important lessons 
 
 a .: 
 
Tiro WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 for the spiritual life which they suggest. They are 
 decked with more than the glorj' of Solomon, because 
 they have more than tlie wisdom of Solomon to teach 
 us. We can see as in a mirror, in their simplicity of 
 life and transparency of nature, truths which in our 
 own higher and more complicated life are obscured 
 by a more differentiated organisation and a greater mul- 
 tiplicity of details. A large portion of the imagery of 
 the Bible is derived from the comparison between the 
 nature of man and the nature of these mute and humble 
 fellow-creatures. The whole history of human life is 
 written, as the inspired writer tells us, on the fading 
 blossom of the plant. Linnaeus constructed a floral 
 chronometer, in which the times and the seasons were 
 measured out, not by the revolutions of sun, moon, and 
 stars, but by the appearance of flowers in their ap- 
 pointed seasons and by the opening and closing of 
 their blossoms each day. Some flowers come up in 
 spring, others in summer, others in autumn ; while a 
 ievf pale melancholy ones gild the dark gloom of winter. 
 Some blossoms open to the sunshine at early morn ; 
 and a bright succession of them, from dawn to sunset, 
 close their eyes in slumber and sink into their rest. Is 
 not the existence of each of us, like that flower-dial, 
 measured by a .succession of relations and friends, who 
 gladdened for a few brief years certain seasons of it — 
 childhood, youtli, manhood, old age, corresponding to 
 I lie natural seasons of the year or the hours of the day 
 — and then passed away into the darkness of the tomb ? 
 The child in the spring time and morning of its life 
 
SUMMER BLOSSOMS. 
 
 can recall fond hearts that first taught it love's sweet 
 lesson, and died in teaching it. The youth, in the 
 summer of life's bloom and joy, can remember many 
 a bright school companion whose promise was blighted 
 in the bud, and who passed into silence, " inheritors 
 of unfulfilled renown." The middle-aged man or 
 woman can look back upon friends, the true-hearted 
 and trusted, whose death has made them sorrowful 
 indeed that they shall see their face no more. While 
 the aged, sitting by the lonely hearth, and looking out 
 upon a lonely world, feel that their path has led from 
 grave to grave, and that the winter gloom which now 
 overshadows them has blighted and silenced all that 
 once made the sunshine and the music of their life. 
 Friend after friend departs ; human flower after human 
 flower opens its inward heart of beauty and fragrance 
 to the sunshine of life, and then closes it for ever, 
 making the darkness of death itself beautiful. And 
 how few do we meet to-day of those who began the 
 journey of life with us ! How many familiar unforgotten 
 faces, tender with the light of other years, have dropped 
 from the company of the living, and gone over to the 
 great majority ! A wind from God has moaned its 
 dirge among the goodly boughs of our garden, and 
 showers of prodigal blossoms have fallen into the 
 sepulchre that yawns in it. And now we feel that 
 eternity is no longer a waste outside desert, but a part 
 of our own home, seeing that into it have gone so 
 many dearer than life. 
 
 But not only do fading flowers represent the various 
 
102 Tiro WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 human friends and relatives that have died during the 
 various seasons of our life ; they also represent the 
 successive fading of all those gifts and graces which 
 make up our own individual life. All the goodliness 
 of man fades as the flower of the field. Before he 
 dies himself he parts one after the other with many of 
 the things that make life desirable — physical beauty, 
 strength, health, youthful activity, mental power, and 
 heart affections. The eye becomes dim, the round rosy 
 cheek bronzed and wrinkled, the flaxen curls dark 
 and eventually grey, the agile step slow and measured, 
 the vigorous arm feeble, and the erect graceful form 
 bent under its load of years. And with the fading of 
 these bodily qualities corresponds the weakening of 
 memory, the sluggishness of the imagination, the 
 blunting of the sensibilities, and the chilling of the 
 affections, so that v/hat once fired the youthful blood 
 to enthusiasm now produces but a faint and feeble 
 impression. The flowers of the individual life fade, as 
 fades the individual person himself in the end ; the 
 petals of heart, and mind, and body, fall off one 
 by one from the decaying human blossom ; and at 
 last the grey hair and the wrinkles round the eyes 
 and on the forehead, are but the bare wintry branches 
 of the tree of life rooted in the heart, from which 
 has disappeared many a bright leaf and many a fair 
 blossom. 
 
 All this is not joyous, but grievous I What disappears 
 from life is as sad as the final disappearance of life 
 itself. But much as we mourn all these fading flowers. 
 
VI [. SUMMER BLOSSOMS. 103 
 
 the human as well as the natural, we cannot wish them 
 to abide for ever. We speak of everlasting flowers and 
 amaranthine bowers, and long that things and persons 
 should remain in all their beauty and preciousness un- 
 changed. But we forget that it is the fading flower that 
 is so wonderfully beautiful. Fix its beauty unchanged, 
 and you make it an artificial flower, a dry mummy. It 
 is the fleeting human blossom also that is so tenderly 
 dear. We love each other more devotedly owing to 
 the shadow feared of man that falls upon and con- 
 secrates our love ; because we must soon, we know not 
 how soon, be parted. We should feel everlasting flowers 
 to be utterly incongruous in a world of change and 
 decay ; their steadfast continuance, when there was no 
 reason for their continuance, would weary and offend 
 our minds. Instead of wishing for everlasting flowers 
 therefore, let us wish rather to be able to prize at its 
 full worth the fleeting loveliness while it lasts, and to 
 learn the grand lesson of contrast which its successive 
 changes teach so impressively, that while the grass 
 withereth and the flower fadeth, the word of the Lord, 
 by which they were called into existence, of which 
 grass and flower and all created things are but passing 
 expressions, time syllables^ as it were, endureth for 
 ever. 
 
 But the truth of the fading flower has another and a 
 brighter side than that which has just been turned to- 
 wards us. It is not all death and desolation. AVe sliall 
 pass at once out of the shadow into the sunshine when 
 we consider the reason why the flower fades. In the 
 
I04 TJfO IVORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 economy of nature a blossom is not an end, but a means. 
 It is not the crown and consummation of the plant, 
 but one of its stages of growth. It is merely a ladder 
 as it were towards a higher platform of existence, which 
 is removed as unnecessary when that platform is reached; 
 it is only a scaffolding by the aid of which a building 
 is constructed, but which is taken away as a deformity 
 when the structure is completed. The great design of 
 the individual plant is to produce fruit and seed by 
 means of which the life of the species may be per- 
 petuated ; and the design of the blossom is to attract 
 insects by its bright colour, its sweet scent, or its 
 honey, to fertilise the plant, or to do so by its own 
 pollen, and so form the fruit and seed. And when 
 this most mysterious and wonderful function is per- 
 formed and the young fruit is set, the blossom fades 
 or falls off as no longer necessary, as, indeed, a hindrance 
 and a deformity. The flower fades that the fruit may 
 take its place. The fading of the flower, rightly viewed, 
 is therefore a natural and necessary phenomenon of life. 
 In itself it is joyous, and not grievous. And I believe 
 that in the-unfallen Eden the fading flowers suggested no 
 thought of gloom to Adam, but only of bright progress 
 from life to fuller life, from a lower to a higher stage of 
 development and perfection ; just as I believe that in 
 the restored Paradise above, the tree of life — representing 
 a larger world of trees and flowers — which yielded twelve 
 manner of fruits every month, must presuppose the 
 fading and passing away of the blossoms that preceded 
 and produced these fruits ; and we cannot imagine any 
 
VII. SUMMER BLOSSOMS. 105 
 
 sadness connected with any process or experience in 
 that land from which sorrow and sighing have for ever 
 fled away. 
 
 There is nothing in itself therefore to make us melan- 
 choly in the fading of the flowers, which is essentially 
 a natural process of development. Were we, like Adam, 
 the pure and sinless inhabitants of an unfallen world, it 
 would be to us simply a phenomenon of progress. It is 
 the fact of sin that is the sting of death, in the natural 
 as in the human world. It is we by our guilt who have 
 made the creature of God subject to vanity against its own 
 will ; who ha\ e brought it under the bondage of cor- 
 ruption that reacts so terribly upon our own spirits. We 
 have put into nature the images of our own ruin and 
 death, which she reflects back so faithfully to us. Not 
 a stone or a blade of grass but is now a mute memorial 
 to us of struggle and death. All things are set to the 
 same key-note of toil and suffering to which our own 
 life is attuned. On the other hand, take away the sting 
 of sin, and the struggle and death of nature become 
 only a progress to higher life, and every grave is a 
 cradle. Decay is a process of evolution, and all its 
 premonitions of wreck and ruin awaken only joyful 
 anticipations. Nature interpreted and glorified by the 
 redemption of man, which is also her own — for as 
 she fell with him so shall she be restored with him 
 — consecrates her objects dnd processes to a higher 
 symbolism ; so that, whereas before they spoke only of 
 the fall and the curse, so now they arc types of life 
 and rejuvenescence. 
 
lo6 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 Viewed, then, in the light of Him who hath brought 
 life and immortality to light in His gospel, and free from 
 the cloud of sin, the fading of human-life and of flower- 
 life is not in reality sad, but joyful. The flower fades 
 and falls, but a flower is only the means by which the 
 fruit is formed. Man dies, but his life on earth is only 
 for the formation of the eternal life ; and all its fair and 
 precious things that are passing away from it, as it passes 
 away itself, are but the withering of the petals around 
 the fruit that is setting and ripening for immortality. 
 Every gift we receive is but a promise ; every beauty 
 we behold but a prophecy ; every pleasure we enjoy 
 but a foretaste. All the uses and enjoyments of earthly 
 things, the bloom and loveliness of youth, the calm 
 wisdom and soberness of age, our powers of body and 
 gifts of mind, and all the exercise of them, our experi- 
 ences of life, and the circumstances in which we are 
 placed — all are for the development of our spiritual 
 and everlasting being. The Christian's whole life is 
 but the earnest of the inheritance that awaits him. We 
 see by f^iith, although we are slow of heart to believe 
 it, that our very losses and privations are ministering to 
 a noble and goodly development pregnant with an ever- 
 lasting promise. We see all our earthly experience, 
 whether painful or joyful, connecting itself with heaven 
 as the Father's discipline, the training of a blessed and 
 glorious life. It flowers here and fruits in eternity. Death 
 itself is the act of blossoming. It is a scientific fact that 
 it is tlie dying plant alone tliat flowers. Blossoming is 
 the highest point in plant lifo. When it has produced 
 
SUMMER BLOSSOMS. 107 
 
 its blossom it perishes. In human life it is so like- 
 wise. Our existence here is but a daily dying, the 
 continual production of a blossom, within whose 
 petals as they wither is expanding the immortal fruit ; 
 and death is but the final falling of the sere petals 
 from the fruit when it has set. It is not destruction, 
 but development ; the mortal not destroyed, but putting 
 on immortality. 
 
 Fruit is the end of vegetable life. It is for tliis every 
 plant exists. It clings tenaciously to existence until it 
 produces fruit. The most stunted wayside weed, starved 
 by its miserable circumstances, will hold on to the very 
 skirts of life until it has reached this consummation. And 
 the end is more valuable than the means. Beautiful as is 
 the blossom, it has no enduring value. It is fruit alone 
 that repays the efforts of the plant itself, and the toil and 
 skill expended upon its cultivation. And so it is in 
 human life. Precious as are the blossoms of hope that 
 the youthful life produces so abundantly, the fruits of 
 riper years are far more precious. Fruition, fulfilment, 
 is ever worth more than mere promise. The dreams of 
 youth were fancies ; the dreams of manhood are motives. 
 The first fresh love of youth is untried and inexperienced ; 
 the love of maturity has endured many a strain, and 
 reposes upon a foundation of unshaken trust. Better 
 far are the sober qualities of life's long experience than 
 the fragile brilliant impulses of youth. We can rely 
 more upon the wise judgment, the matured intellect, 
 and the tried and sanctified affection of the aged, than 
 upon the good intentions, and warm enthusiasm of 
 
lo8 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 youth. There is indeed no time of a man's life when 
 he is more profitable to God and man, when he is 
 a nobler specimen of what God would have a man 
 to be, than when his brow is wrinkled and his hair 
 silvered with the painful but precious experiences of 
 life. And there is a satisfying though pensive beauty 
 about the fruit of old age, which the frail slight 
 blossom of youth, full only of promise and hope, 
 altogether lacks. 
 
 And then consider that the blossom belongs to the 
 plant itself, the fruit to the race. The blossom is the 
 end of the selfish life ; the fruit is the beginning of the 
 unselfish. The plant till it flowers, lives only for itself; 
 but when its flower passes on to the fruit and seed, it 
 lives no more for itself, but for the new life chat is to 
 spring from it ; and it is a remarkable fact, full of 
 suggestive meaning, that it is in this unselfish part that 
 all the beauty, and fragrance, and sweetness of the plant 
 come out and culminate. Further still, the plant that 
 flowers is confined to one spot ; but when it fruits 
 and seeds it gets wings, as it were, and can fly away 
 from its natal place to long distances, as you have often 
 seen the thistle-down or the fleecy parasol of the 
 dandelion do, to make the wilderness and the solitary 
 place to be glad, and the desert to rejoice and blossom 
 as the rose. And is it not so in human life ? That 
 death which seems to bound our life, in reality gives us 
 wings, and takes us out of this cramped and narrow 
 sphere of change, and sorrow, and sin, into the freer 
 air and larger sunshine of God's everlasting kingdom. 
 
SUMMER BLOSSOMS. 109 
 
 The fruition of life is not the limitation, but the freedom 
 and enlargement of life. What a glorious development 
 we shall have in the after-life, when the blossoms of this 
 life have faded about us, and the fruit of immortality 
 is brought forth, and we shall be fashioned like unto 
 the glorious body of Christ ! The possibilities of a seed 
 are boundless. In the seed the plant renews itself, 
 corrects all its defects and decays, and attains to its 
 ideal. The young plant that springs from the seed 
 brings back the brown and withered form of its parent, 
 warped and limited by unfavourable circumstances, dis- 
 coloured and insect-eaten, to the fresh, bright perfection 
 of colour and form which belongs to the type ; and so 
 the seed-form of our being, developing in the ever- 
 lasting spring beyond the grave, where tlie perfect 
 conditions of its life are present, will unfold all the 
 latent possibilities of our nature, will reach its highest 
 ideal, and be fitted to work out unwearied all the grand 
 ministries of eternity. " It is sown in weakness, it is 
 raised in power ; it is sown in corruption, it is raised in 
 incorruption ; it is sown in dishonour, it is raised in 
 glory ; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual 
 body." And who knows what life, and beauty, and 
 blessedness to others may spring from seed dropped 
 by our losses and death ? Who knows whether our 
 afflictions may not be joys, and our death life from the 
 dead to hundreds who never knew us ? Rejoicing in 
 the blossoms of our life, we are living for ourselves ; 
 but when our flowers fade and fall, and our fruit and 
 seed are formed, we live no more unto ourselves, but 
 
no TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 unto Hipi that died for us, and unto all for whom 
 He died. 
 
 And here I would remark parenthetically, that the 
 meaning of the Apostle in that most significant saying, 
 "That which .hou sowest is not quickened except it 
 die," is constantly misunderstood. It does not refer to 
 the change that takes place in the seed after it is put 
 into the earth — the dissolution of the pericarp that 
 the embryo may be nourished, take root, and grow 
 up — but to the death of the plant in the seed that it 
 produces, that death which must necessarily intervene 
 when there is progress from a lower to a higher degree 
 or species of life. If the plant is to be quickened, if 
 in its present sere, discoloured, stunted, insect-eaten 
 form it is to become something brighter, fairer, it 
 must go on past the blossom and fruit to produce 
 seed, and to die in that seed ; and then out of that 
 dead seed buried in its grave in the soil will issue 
 a higher life, that will realise more perfectly the ideal 
 of the plant. 
 
 Looking thus at this life as only the flower-form of our 
 being, we see the reason of its brevity. The life of the 
 blossom is short because it has to prepare the way for 
 the fruit ; and the season in which it is put forth is 
 dangerous to the formation of the tender germ. Alpine 
 plants below the level of perpetual snow, and our own 
 spring plants after the winter snow is over, hasten to 
 flower and perfect their fruit and seed, as if there were 
 no time to lose, owing to the capricious weather of the 
 early year ; and it is a remarkable fact that all spring 
 
VII. SUMMER BLOSSOMS. m 
 
 plants develop blossoms straight from the root, or bulb, 
 or brarch, without the intervention of foliage, in order 
 to get this important process accomplished with the 
 shortest delay, for nature is more careful of the type 
 than of the single life. How anxious is the gardener 
 during the changeable weather of April and May when 
 his blossoms are out, lest a single night of frost should 
 destroy his hopes of a good fruit year ! But as the 
 season advances, and the weather becomes warmer and 
 more settled, so does he look forward with greater con- 
 fidence to the harvest that shall reward all his toil and 
 care. In like manner our life is short; it is as. the 
 flower of the grass ; it is soon, at the latest, cut off, 
 and we flee away ; and it is thus transitory because it 
 is the season of trial and probation for the everlasting 
 state. Amid the perils of this pleasing, anxious being ; 
 amid the dangers of a world lying in wickedness ; amid 
 fightings without and fears within, we should rejoice that 
 while the outward man is decaying the inward man is 
 renewed more and more. We should consider that the 
 sufferings of this present life are not worthy to be com- 
 pared with the glory that shall be revealed in us ; that 
 our light afflictions, which are but for a moment — light 
 and transient as a summer blossom — are working for 
 us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 
 We should welcome the growing infirmities and decays 
 of life as signs that summer, the season of fleeting 
 glories, is passing away, and that autumn, the season 
 of enduring fruition, is drawing nigh. They proclaim 
 to us that now our salvation is nearer than when we 
 
TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 believed — that we are fast leaving behind us this scene 
 of passing and perishing things, and approaching nearer 
 to that hour when time with all its decays and changes 
 shall be no more, and we shall enter into that inheritance 
 which is incorruptible and undefiled, and fadeth not 
 away. 
 
 But I reserve the grandest thought connected with my 
 theme to the last. The flower fades and falls off 
 the plant, but it does not altogether vanish ; it 
 does not perish utterly. Some part of it, larger or 
 smaller, according to the species, remains behind 
 to form the nucleus of the fruit. In every case the 
 lower part of the central and most important part of 
 the blossom is left, and it is out of it that the fruit is 
 formed. The fruit, in the language of the botanist, 
 is simply the enlarged and matured pistil. In many 
 cases a considerable portion of what in other blossoms 
 is most fragile and evanescent is incorporated with and 
 forms the actual substance of the fruit. In some plants 
 the style and stigma, which are among the first to dis- 
 appear, remain persistently attached to the fruit in a dry 
 condition ; while in others they not only remain fleshy, 
 but even take a new development, and become a marked 
 addition to the fruit. In the apple the greater part of 
 the edible portion is simply an increase of the tube of 
 the calyx, which in this case has become fleshy. A good 
 deal of the fleeting flower, indeed all that is essential 
 in it, is tluis made permanent in the enduring fruit ; 
 and the fiuit itself may be looked upon as a more perfect 
 and lasting blossom, retaining the colour, and fragrance, 
 
VII. SUMMER BLOSSOMS. 113 
 
 and grace of form that distinguished the blossom, but 
 super-adding qualities, such as nutritiousness and flavour, 
 which the blossom lacked. And is not the analogy here 
 very instructive and consoling ? Not only do all our 
 sanctified losses turn to gains, but the gains are largely 
 composed of what we lost. We take up with us into every 
 stage of our advancing progress what was best and most 
 serviceable in the previous stage ; and in the fruit of our 
 achievements we can trace much of the fair blossoms 
 of hope and aspiration which led to its formation. 
 Nothing that is really good in human life ought to be 
 thrown away as useless when we have outgrown it. 
 The good of childhood ought to remain in manhood. 
 The enthusiasm, the freshness of interest, the innocent 
 simplicity, the spirit of i.ope, inquiry, and wonder which 
 characterise our early years, ought to endure late in 
 life, under the calmer and quieter outside of maturity. 
 We ought to take the child-heart with us into old 
 age ; and old age should be but the beautiful ripened 
 fruit of the blossom of youth, taking up into its 
 own settled fulness much of what was holiest and 
 loveliest in childhood and manhood. We ought to 
 grow by regaining in a truer and more lasting form 
 the things that made our youth bright and happy. 
 We must enter the kingdom of heaven on to the 
 latest hour of life as little children. 
 
 Let us not mourn, then, that so many fair and 
 precious things pass away from us as we go on to 
 our immortality ; for nothing that is really beautiful 
 and precious — nothing that is really essential to our 
 
 I 
 
114 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 well-being — shall perish utterly, but shall be absorbed 
 into our souls and become their eternal wealth. The 
 grass withereth and the flower fadeth, but there is 
 an everlasting principle in these fleeting phantoms 
 of existence. The fair, fragile blossom must turn to 
 its native dust, but the truth which it taught, and 
 the beauty which it disclosed are fadeless as the 
 soul itself, and, incorporated with the life of the 
 soul, will bloom in its beauty and truth for evermore. 
 The flower fades, but the glory of it lives — that Word 
 of God of which it was the inspired, though silent 
 teacher, which liveth and abideth an incorruptible seed 
 in the soul that received it and turned it into fruit. 
 All the circumstances of our natural life, all the accidents 
 of our outward condition, will shortly fade away and 
 disappear like the flower, but the moral discipline 
 which they afforded to us, the virtues and graces which 
 they helped to produce and develop in us, the patience, 
 the hopefulness, the tenderness, the heavenly-minded- 
 ness which they wrought in us, will form the very texture, 
 so to speak, of the soul — an inseparable part of our 
 being here and hereafter. The kingdom of heaven in 
 the highest sense is the restitution of all things. 
 Creation will not perish, but be recast in finer moulds. 
 The things we lost, or overpassed, or overjoyed shall 
 be restored. The friends who died and left us 
 desolate shall meet us again on the happier shore. 
 The flowers that faded, and the fruits which they 
 formed in this wilderness world, will be garnered uj) 
 for us in the harvest-home of heaven, and shall 
 
vii. SUMMER BLOSSOMS. US 
 
 constitute the blessedness and fulness of our being 
 throughout eternity. 
 
 I am gazing while I write these sentences upon the 
 drooping flower of a snowdrop in a glass beside me ; 
 and I see painted on the tips of each of its petals on 
 the outside, a little heart or crescent of green — and in 
 the inside, slender pencilled lines of the same hue. 
 What is the meaning of this curious tinting, so unusual 
 in blossoms, which we see also though in a fainter degree 
 in another member of the lily family, the stately fragrant 
 Eucharis ? It tells us the secret that the snowy blossom 
 is only a transformation of the common green leaf, and 
 these green marks on its vestal glory are traces of its 
 lowly origin. The blossom cherishes, in the very heart 
 of its transfiguration, memories of the quiet green 
 youth of the plant. It has passed out of its temporary 
 burial in the bract or sheath, and unfolded in the new 
 life an undreamt-of beauty ; but still it hangs down 
 its head towards the familiar soil, and carries with it 
 into its greatest development these green birth-marks. 
 And is not this an expressive symbol of the nature of 
 our future life ? We too, emerging from the sheath of 
 death, shall be changed ; the mortal shall blossom into 
 immortality, and that which is sown in dishonour shall 
 be raised in glory; but we shall retain amid the new 
 splendour all that made our life on earth precious to 
 us. The white robes of the redeemed will cover hearts 
 made by reason of their perfect purification more tender 
 than ever to the old affections, as the emerald rain- 
 bow of Heaven will preserve the memory of tlie green 
 
ii6 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. CH. vn. 
 
 earth, and the glorified Redeemer Himself will appear 
 in the midst of the Throne with the marks of the Cross — 
 a Lamb as it had been slain. 
 
 "Is the bower lost then? Who i^ayclh 
 That the bower indeed is lost? 
 Hark ! my spirit in it prayeth 
 
 Through the solstice and the frost. 
 And that prayer preserves it greenly, to the last and 
 uttermost ; 
 
 " Till another open for me 
 
 In God's Eden-land unknown. 
 With an angel at the doorway, 
 White with gazing at His throne, 
 And a saint's voice in the palm-trees, singing— ' All is 
 lost . . . and won ! ' " 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 MO UiYTA IN SPRINGS. 
 
 " He sendeth the springs into the valleys, which run among 
 the hills.'" — Psalm civ. lo. 
 
 MY little girl gazing one day upon the brown 
 freckled ripples of a streamlet, suddenly said 
 to me, "Why does the water alu'ays run?" This is a 
 question that is apt to puzzle many older minds. It 
 seems a great mystery why hour after hour the stream 
 should continue to flow without any diminution. You 
 sit beside it a whole forenoon and watch a stone in 
 its bed, and you see that the water keeps the same 
 level along its sides. Day after day its voice is as full- 
 toned and its sparkle as bright as ever ; and you wonder 
 from what perennial fountain comes the inexhaustible 
 supply. Let us ascend to the source of the stream, and 
 we shall obtain an explanation of the mystery. We pass 
 by the way many beautiful and interesting objects : the 
 grass of Parnassus whitening the marshy places on either 
 side like autumn snow ; the golden saxifrage clothing the 
 boulders with masses of yellow bloom ; and the beaded 
 
Il8 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 leaves of the sun-dew glistening among the red moss- 
 tufts, from which they are hardly distinguishable, lying in 
 wait, as it were, like a vegetable spider, with a stealthy 
 look about it, to catch the small black flies upon whose 
 juice it feeds. We leave behind us the heather whose 
 crimson tufts are reflected in the little linns. The last 
 birch, dwarfed to a mere bush, lifts its slender snow- 
 white stem on a grey lichened crag overhanging a tiny 
 waterfall; and the last rowan-tree stands as a sentinel 
 at the uttermost limit of man's domains, and guards 
 them by its spell from all the mystic evils of the 
 desolate waste beyond. We now enter upon a region 
 as free of every trace of man's occupation as the ocean 
 itself. Nature here is not the slave of man, but the 
 face of God. The sweet-scented heath-fern disappears, 
 and soon even the grass itself vanishes, becoming 
 gradually yellower and scantier, until at last the hill- 
 side is covered only with loose stones, grey with lichens, 
 and interspersed \vith tufts of mosses, among which 
 stray saxifrages and other alpine flowers appear like 
 the first stars in the pale evening sky. 
 
 Here we reach the source of the streamlet we have 
 followed so long. It is a hollow in the side of the hill, 
 marked out like an oasis in the desert by the beauty and 
 softness of its verdure as contrasted with the bare deso- 
 late aspect of the scenery around. The hollow is filled 
 with great cushions of moss, whose rich and harmonious 
 variety of colouring — one hue blending imperceptibly 
 with another — would delight a painter's eye. At the 
 point where the water struggles clear of its swaddling- 
 
VIII. MOUNTAIN SPRINGS. 119 
 
 bands of vegetation, and bursts into a little rill, and gives 
 its first baby cry of pleasure, the moss is of the richest 
 and deepest emerald, every leaf being of the most 
 exquisite pellucid texture ; farther up it is of a pale 
 yellow and red hue; and at the well-eye, where there 
 is a centre of clear water, it is of the most beautiful 
 and vivid crimson. Forming an outermost circle is a 
 fringe of rushes, sucking the " milk of waters" into their 
 fair luxuriant growth ; each wearing its brown flag of a 
 blossom half-mast high, as it were, in sympathy with 
 the pensiveness of the solitude and the sorrowful moan- 
 ing of the wind. This bright verdure is the creation of 
 the spring. Like a star brightening its own rays it has 
 spread around it in the arid waste a halo of living loveli- 
 ness. But, beautiful and solid as it looks, this mass of 
 verdure is treacherous ; it is saturated with the coldest 
 water, and rests upon a basis of the finest mud, and the 
 unwary foot trusting itself on it will sink up to the knee. 
 I know nothing more pleasant and suggestive than to 
 gaze upon the centre of clear water in the midst of 
 this emerald rainbow of alpine vegetation, translucent 
 as air, welHng up with a faintly perceptible motion on 
 its surface from the heart of the rock. It is the pulse 
 of the mountain beating calmly and steadily, as it 
 has done for ages untold, while the rocks around are 
 crumbling into dust, and the vegetation which its waters 
 nourish is decaying, and the mountain itself falling 
 Cometh to nought. It is the one thing in nature that 
 is always fresh and young — that has a voice only of 
 perpetual life and gladness — and is therefore the fittest 
 
riFO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 emblem of that immortal joy which Christ creates in 
 the heart that loves Him, 
 
 We see in tlie cushions of moss around its source the 
 explanation of the ceaseless flow of the streamlet down 
 in the valley. The moss by its spongy texture imbibes 
 the water until thoroughly saturated, prevents its evapor- 
 ation, and parts with the excess slowly and gradually. 
 Presenting a surface constantly moist, it attracts the 
 moisture of the clouds and the mists of the cool moun- 
 tain tops, on the principle which operates throughout 
 all nature, as well as human economy, that " Whosoever 
 hath to him shall be given, and he sliall have more 
 abundance." And thus the supply is constantly main- 
 tained and dispersed. Nearly all our mountain tops 
 have large spaces covered with dense carpets of moss. 
 On these the snow appears early and lingers late ; 
 and during the rest of the year the clouds and mists 
 are constantly distilling their moisture into them. They 
 are therefore thoroughly charged with water, and give 
 rise, wherever the ground forms a sloping hollow, 
 to tiny rills, which drain the mossy sides of the hill, 
 and nourish large quantities of moss along their course ; 
 and these in their turn imbibe more moisture from the 
 clouds and mists, and conserve the gathering waters, 
 until at last they acquire some volume, and in M-ell- 
 defined channels flow down to the valley in a series 
 of snowy cascades and sparkling pools. It is interesting 
 to think of the moss being thus the mediator between 
 the weeping clouds and the arid earth, and that each 
 drop of the stream has oozed through the pellucid 
 
MOUNTAIN SPRINGS. 
 
 leaves and trickled from stem to stem of this humble 
 vegetation. The little emerald cup of mountain moss 
 first holds the crystal draught which in its overflowing 
 forms the mighty river. There is something that 
 appeals powerfully to the imagination in this association 
 of one of the grandest objects of nature with one of 
 the humblest and most minute. But it is ever thus 
 in God's administration : the snow-flake leads to the 
 sun, and the spider's thread marks the passage of 
 the star to the astronomer. 
 
 Moss serves on our mountains which are below the 
 snow-line the same purpose which the glacier serves 
 on the mountains of other lands that are above the 
 snow-line. They each afford one of the most striking 
 examples of those marvellous adjustments which per- 
 vade the whole economy of nature. Without the 
 intervention of the glacier and the moss the moisture 
 that falls on the mountain summits would speedily 
 run off in raging torrents, inundating the plains, scatter- 
 ing over the cultivated fields the barren debris of the 
 mountains, and leaving behind after their subsidence a 
 dry white wilderness of stones and mud. But the moss 
 and the glacier retain the moisture of the clouds, 
 and part with it gradually and safely, allowing it to 
 descend to the plains so gently and continuously that, 
 instead of destroying, it imparts beauty and fertility 
 to the fields. 
 
 Nothing in nature is more wonderful than the ministry 
 of the glacier. The ocean sends its waters by evapora- 
 tion to the summits of lofty mountains, where they fall 
 
122 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 in the form of snow. Summer and winter, that snow 
 remains unmelted ; and unless some way were provided 
 for getting rid of the constant accumulation, all the 
 waters of the ocean would in the end be transferred 
 from their bed and piled high upon the mountains. 
 But nature has ordained that the pressure of the snowy 
 mass on the upper parts should force the lower snow 
 down into the valleys, and convert it by regelation 
 into a mass of solid ice. This tongue of ice protrudes 
 far below the limits of perpetual snow, and has a 
 peculiar power of adapting itself to the various con- 
 tours of the ground over which it passes. It seems 
 to the senses fixed and solid as the everlasting rocks 
 that tower above its flanks — the very type of rigid in- 
 flexibility and silent steadfastness. And yet it flows 
 from the higher valleys to the lower ones at a very 
 slow pace indeed, but one that is capable of being 
 measured, being proportioned to the mass of ice and 
 the fall and width of the valley. It comes down into 
 the midst of verdure and fertility, where the most 
 brilliant and delicate flowers bloom in contact with 
 it, and its vast mass withstands, with a diminution 
 comparatively insignificant, the continued action of an 
 almost tropical sun. At last its most advanced front, 
 which almost touches the borders of a fir-wood, reaches 
 a warmer region, and there it melts and forms a full- 
 bodied arrowy stream, which flows on, spreading 
 brightness and verdure along its course, " sowing the 
 dust of continents to be," and finally falling into the 
 distant ocean ; thus returning to it the water that 
 
MOUNTAIN SPRINGS. 
 
 had been drawn from it perhaps centuries previously. 
 Nothing* seems so utterly wasted as the snowflake that 
 falls on a lofty mountain-peak in the heart of a great 
 continent, and yet it finds its way surely to its parent 
 source in the ocean, after having accomplished a blessed 
 ministry of usefulness by the way : a beautiful symbol 
 of the fact that every word fitly spoken, and every 
 good deed wisely done, however obscure the circum- 
 stances, will not be thrown away ! " For as the rain 
 cometh down, and the snow, from heaven, and retumeth 
 not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring 
 forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower 
 and bread to the eater ; so shall my word be that 
 goeth forth out of my mouth : it shall not return unto 
 me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, 
 and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent 
 it." 
 
 In all nature there is no other example of the peculiar 
 motion of the glacier; it is the exclusive property of 
 ice, and it is the only motion, slow and gradual enough, 
 without ©easing altogether, to convey the enormous 
 masses of frozen moisture on the mountain summits 
 down into the valleys with safety and benefit. He 
 who divided the waters of the Red Sea, and congealed 
 them into crystal walls on either side, that His people 
 might pass through, suspends on the mountain side 
 the accumulated waters of years in the crystal glacier, 
 and lets them loose by degrees, so that they shall 
 bless instead of ravaging the fields which man inhabits 
 and cultivates. The gentleness of God is most strikingly 
 
124 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 displayed in the controlling of the tremendous power 
 that is locked up in the icy cataract. It indeed makes 
 us great and happy, when otherwise we might have 
 been crushed or impoverished. 
 
 God brings about the same result on our smaller 
 mountains by the widely different agency of the lowly 
 moss. The green cushions of the moss carry down 
 into the upland valleys the waters that fall upon the 
 summits in the form best adapted to insure a steady 
 and uniform supply. And how quietly and imper- 
 ceptibly is this done ! The solid waves of the glacier 
 grind their bed to dust, scar and disfigure the face of 
 nature and topple over the crumbling rocks into their 
 abysses with the noise of thunder ; but the moss lines 
 the bed of the alpine rill with a velvet carpet, which 
 protects it from injury, and carries down its purling 
 current with softest tenderness, stealing half the music 
 from the white twinkling feet of the naiads as they pass 
 over it. The water that is frozen into the myriad 
 crj'stal flowers which make up the structure of the 
 glacier, trickles from leaf to leaf of the living moss ; 
 and thus, though the agency of the glacier looks 
 grander, the agency of the moss is grander in reality. 
 The one is mechanical, the other is living ; and we 
 know that the smallest living thing is of more consider- 
 ation than the most enormous masses of dead matter. 
 The still small voice of the living moss is in reality 
 more powerful than the earthquake and the whirlwind 
 of the lifeless glacier. Thus God compensates our 
 springs that run among the hills for their smallness 
 
VIII. MOUNTAIN SPRINGS. 125 
 
 by giving them to us, clear and transparent as the 
 blue heavens themselves, from the tiny goblets of the 
 living moss ; whereas the swift streams of other lands 
 are born of the lifeless glacier, and run foul and dark 
 with the wrecks of the mountains. But surely it is a 
 very marvellous link that connects together in the 
 same beneficent task of circulating the vital fluid 
 through the veins of the earth, objects so widely 
 different as a glacier and a moss ! 
 
 Associated with the glacier and the moss in the 
 formation of the springs that run among the hills, is 
 the tree. The Chinese have a proverb that the grandest 
 rivers are cradled in the leaves of the pine. Trees 
 by the ancients were invested with superstitious ideas 
 as the parents of fountains and streams. Standing on 
 the slopes of the hills they embrace the passing clouds 
 in their arms, and condense them by their cool leaves 
 into water which descends to the ground in drops, and 
 percolating through the moss and grass which the 
 shadowed earth produces, forms the source of springs. 
 Artificial springs may be created among the foldings 
 of the hills by simply digging a hole in the ground, 
 and sheltering it from the sun's rays by planting around 
 it trees and bushes, when the rain that falls will drain 
 towards this hole, and in a short time make it a source 
 of living water. The rod of Moses, smiting the rock 
 and producing the miraculous water from it, is thus in a 
 line with the natural way in which the growth of the tree 
 on the arid rock gives birth to a fountain. Periodical 
 rains, however abundant they may be, speedily pass 
 
126 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 away and descend into the valleys with unrestrained 
 violence, doing infinite harm. But the alpine woods 
 retain the fallen moisture long after the stomi has abated, 
 and the surface of the hill is dried up under the scorch- 
 ing sun. The continued existence of moisture in these 
 woods, and the constant evaporation from them, produce 
 a cooler atmosphere, which in its turn attracts and con- 
 denses the vapour of the clouds and thus replenishes 
 the springs. When the trees are cut down on the 
 mountains, this wonderful equilibrium of nature is dis- 
 turbed, and her wise and beneficent arrangements are 
 frustrated. Springs and streams are dried up, the 
 climate rendered hot and arid, and lands once richly 
 cultivated are converted into deserts. 
 
 Owing to the disforesting of the mountains of Greece, 
 many of the fountains and rivers celebrated by the 
 classic poets have either entirely disappeared or are 
 greatly diminished in size ; while regions once covered 
 with rich harvests, vineyards, and olive-groves, are now 
 arid wastes of rock or sand. Italy, lying in the centre 
 of the Mediterranean, between the snows of the Alps 
 and the fires of Vesuvius, was once one of the liealthiest 
 and loveliest countries in the world, well watered and 
 cultivated as a garden of the Lord. Notwithstanding 
 the purity of its sky, no country in Europe received 
 so great a quantity of rain-water ; and properly directed 
 this abundance of moisture nourished the land with 
 the richest beauty and fertility. But the noble forests 
 that once flanked and protected the sides of its great 
 dorsal mountain spine were in course of time recklessly 
 
viii. MOUNTAIN SPRINGS. 1 27 
 
 cut down ; and now places once healthy, populous, and 
 prosperous, ar^ converted into dry and silent deserts, 
 or into stagnant marshes where the poisonous malaria 
 carries off yearly a large percentage of the population, 
 and leaves the remainder a prey to miserable listless- 
 ness and hypochondria. Let but one day's intense 
 heat melt the snow on the Apennines, and the dry 
 white channels that seam the bare mountain sides are 
 filled to overflowing with raging torrents that work in- 
 conceivable mischief in the level plains. All the rivers 
 of Italy have this character of capricious violence ; and 
 their legacy of destruction to coming generations is due 
 to the gross ignorance or criminal neglect of those who 
 had denuded the mountains of their forest covering. 
 In Palestine the same melancholy state of things may 
 be noticed. When the children of Israel entered into 
 possession of it, it amply merited the inspired descrip- 
 tion given of it, "A land of brooks of water, of fountains 
 and depths that spring out of plains and mountains." 
 It had an abundance of water, both from natural springs 
 and from the clouds of heaven, in striking contrast to 
 the one uniform supply of a single river in Egypt. But 
 the splendid forests that covered the mountains were 
 cut down during the frequent wars that desolated the 
 country ; and in consequence many of the springs and 
 rivers disappeared, and the land became smitten with 
 the curse of barrenness, and was deserted by its in- 
 habitants. Baking and glaring in the burning sun may 
 be seen in many a place the ruins of gardens and home- 
 steads that once formed a beautiful oasis round a living 
 
128 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 well ; and the voice of many a spring that ran rejoicingly 
 among the hills of Lebanon, where the Psalm from 
 which my subject is taken was evidently composed, 
 upon which the eyes of David and Solomon may have 
 gazed in admiration, is now mute, since the cedars 
 that cherished them have been cut down. The traveller 
 now finds comparatively few of the springs and wells, 
 that linked the ages and generations to each other, and 
 around which had gathered all the life and human 
 histor)' of the neighbourhood. 
 
 Nor must we omit from this wonderful partnership 
 in the circulation of the vital fluid of the earth, the 
 agency of rocks. Layers of sand alternating with rocky 
 strata imbibe and retain an immense quantity of water, 
 which supplies the source of springs. Ordinary building 
 stones contain a large percentage of moisture. Granite 
 and marble are highly absorbent. Limestone contains 
 two pints of water in every cubic foot, and as it is 
 more pierced and more easily dissolved by the carbonic 
 acid which the rain-water holds in solution, it forms the 
 best of all mediums for the formation of springs and 
 wells. Hence the abundance of fountains in the Holy 
 Land, whose geological structure is almost entirely lime- 
 stone. Even the driest rock has its pores filled with 
 moisture like a sponge. Mountain rocks are thus vast 
 storehouses of water, which husband and equalise the 
 supply, and replenish the springs with unfailing regularity, 
 independently of the varying rainfall. The old miracle 
 is constantly performed in nature ; and the rock literally 
 yields out of its flinty sides a living stream, guarded 
 
VIII. MOUNTAIN SPRINGS. 129 
 
 equally from sun and frost, so cool in summer, so warm 
 in winter. Musing upon the wonderful harmony and 
 reciprocity of action that exist between the mountains, 
 the woods, the mosses, and the rocks, in the formation 
 of springs and streams, we see a more profound and 
 beautiful meaning in the comparison which the Psalmist 
 makes between the dwelling together of brethren in 
 unity and concord and the dew of heaven, which, 
 falling upon Hemion, the highest summit, waters and 
 refreshes all the land of Israel. 
 
 The incessant murmur of the mountain spring in 
 the solitude speaks to the ear of the thoughtful of 
 the wonderful rliythm of the universe. That spring 
 seems the wayward child of uncertain parents, and 
 yet it wells up with every beat of the pulse of nature 
 as it has welled up for thousands of years. As the 
 blood circulates in the body continually, so does the 
 water circulate on the earth. The ocean sends its 
 vapours to the mountain tops ; and these vapours in 
 the shape of streams return from the mountain tops 
 to the ocean. The clouds move across the sky and 
 the rivers flow along the earth in search of stable 
 equilibrium. The waters long for rest, for a perpetual 
 level. But this longing is never satisfied; for it is 
 to this restlessness that we owe all the life and beauty 
 and fruitfulness of the earth. Life is only compatible 
 with mutation ; and were this mutation to cease 
 universal death would be the result. Not more cer- 
 tainly would life terminate in the body if the pulse 
 ceased to beat, than would the world be locked in 
 
 K 
 
TtVO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 everlasting sleep if the pulse of the mountain spring 
 ceased to throb. And how grand is the music of nature's 
 rhythm as she rushes along the " ringing grooves 
 of change" to her unattainable repose. The moun- 
 tain spring bubbles up its crystal waters in rhythmic 
 gushes, like a happy-hearted maiden dancing to the 
 music of her own young heart's delight. The ripples 
 of the river are rhythmical as they flow in the quiet 
 peace of an even and assured course ; tlic waves of 
 the ocean are rhythmical as they chase each other over 
 the bosom of the deep, or break in thunder and foam 
 on the shore. The two great forces that are incessantly 
 employed in building up and pulling down the frame 
 of nature, move to the sound of their own music. Water 
 is everywhere musical as it wears down the mountains 
 into Grecian regularity of outline ; fire is everj'where 
 musical as it piles up the mountains into rugged Gothic 
 spires that pierce the heavens. The jet of flame that 
 passes up a tube produces a sound as sweet as the 
 tinkle of the Alpine rill. To this cadence of the 
 whirling world, our own human hearts involuntarily beat 
 time, and this wonderful rhythm of nature is within 
 our own frames. Shall our free-born spirits then strike 
 the one discordant note in this universal harmony ? 
 The streams, the winds, the flames, the woods, witness 
 that v/e only are changed, that not an atom of matter 
 sympathises with our transgression of the law of our 
 being. Calm and grand as when the morning stars 
 sang together in the morning of creation. Nature moves 
 in her appointed orbit ; and her blades of grass, and 
 
VIII. MOUNTAIN SPRINGS. t^X 
 
 grains of sand, and drops of water, tell us that we 
 must be brought into concord with the beneficent law 
 which they all obey so steadfastly and harmoniously or 
 else perish. What nature thus does unconsciously and 
 will lessly let us do consciously and willingly; and 
 learning a lesson even from the humble voice of the 
 mountain spring, let us make the statutes of the Lord 
 our song in the house of our pilgrimage. 
 
 Very mysterious' seems the origin of a spring as it 
 sparkles up from the bosom of the mountain, from the 
 heart of the rock into the sunshine. It stimulates our 
 imagination. It seems like a new creation in the place. 
 Through what dark fissures, through what fine veins 
 and pores of the earth have its waters trickled to the 
 central reservoir whose overflowing comes up to view, 
 crystal clear and crowned with light? We do not 
 wonder that in ancient times it should be regarded 
 as the local haunt of some divine presence. The sites 
 of the Grecian oracles were always beside springs, 
 whose water gushing up from the dark depths of the 
 earth expressively symbohsed the divine voice speaking 
 from the unseen world. And in harmony with the same 
 idea, the Hebrew name of a prophet was derived from 
 the bubbling forth of the waters of a spring, implying 
 that his utterances were the irresistible overflowings of 
 the divine fountain of inspiration in his soul. Beside 
 the well of Sychar, incarnate in human form, in visible 
 manifestation to the eyes of men, was the great Reality 
 to whom all these myths and symbols pointed, who 
 thirsted Himself that He might give us to drink. And 
 
 K 2 
 
TIFO IVOA'LDS ARE OURS. 
 
 if our eyes be purged with spiritual eye-salve, we too 
 shall see beside every spring the True Oracle, tlie 
 Great Prophet, the Divinity of the waters who " sendeth 
 the springs into the valleys which run among the hills." 
 And as the natural spring stands between the living and 
 the dead, between the sterility of desert plains, and 
 the bright verdure which it creates along its course; 
 so He stands between our souls and spiritual death, 
 between the desolation of sin and the peaceable fruits 
 of righteousness which He enables us to produce ; and 
 speaks to us of living waters that flow from the throne 
 of God and the La.mb, in a manner more wonderful 
 than the birth of any naiad daughter of the mountain 
 and the sea, " Whosoever drinketh of this water shall 
 thirst again : but whosoever drinketh of the water that 
 I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that 
 I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing 
 up into everlasting life." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 MOUNTAIN PEACE. 
 
 "The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little 
 hills, by righteousness."— Psalm lxxii. 3. 
 
 THROUGHOUT the sacred wTitings nature is 
 constantly described as in profound sympathy 
 with man. Numerous poetical allusions occur in the 
 Psalms and prophecies in which the removal of the 
 curse from the ground is made to depend upon the 
 removal of the moral taint from human nature. As 
 the woes of creation radiated from man's sin, so the 
 restoration of creation will radiate from man's righteous- 
 ness. The beauty of the redeemed soul will be reflected 
 in the beauty of a regenerated earth ; and man, having 
 the image of God in which he was created restored to 
 him, created anew in Christ Jesus unto good works, 
 will be like another Adam in another Eden. This 
 sympathy between the moral and physical worlds per- 
 vades the whole of the seventy-second Psalm. Through 
 the righteous rule of the new king of Israel the phy- 
 sical features of the Land of Promise are pictured as 
 
134 TPVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 contributing to the tranquillity and happiness of its 
 inhabitants. Their enjoyment of it is a kind of renewal 
 of the basis of paradise. The peace of the mountains 
 and the fertility of the valleys are God's benison made 
 visible to a peculiar people zealous of good works. 
 
 Mountains in olden times were associated with gloom 
 and terror. They were regarded as the waste places 
 of creation, tlie outmost bounds of nature, which the 
 imagination peopled with shapes of evil. Their bare 
 rocks and snowy peaks, dark forests and frequent 
 storms, repelled all human sympathies, and seemed to 
 belong to an alien, accursed land. Scenes of grandeur 
 which the traveller will now traverse half the globe to 
 gaze upon with rapture, were then avoided altogether; 
 or if necessity required that they should be visited, 
 they were passed quickly through with shuddering 
 dread The peasants who inhabit the mountains are 
 insensible to their glory. The hardness and severity 
 of their lives hide from them the beauty and the 
 majesty of the scenes amid which they are spent. To 
 them the rocks and the glaciers are only sources of 
 danger, obstructions to the cultivation of the soil, re- 
 strictions upon their pastoral labours. For them all 
 the elements of sublimity are only suspensions of the 
 benign and productive powers of nature ; and they 
 would prefer a green, monotonous cattle alp, or a 
 smihng cornfield beside a quiet stream in the valley, 
 to the wildest wonders of the barren upper heights. 
 What is it that has changed so completely our feelings 
 towards the mountains in these modem days ? One 
 
IX. MOUNTAIN PEACE. 1 35 
 
 reason undoubtedly is the vast increase of population, 
 and the multipHed facilities of travel. In olden times 
 population was scanty and widely scattered ; life was 
 calm and quiet, and was passed within a narrow area, 
 which few cared to enlarge. Nature overpowered man, 
 and he sought relief from her constant obtrusiveness 
 and monotony in human society ; and hence he pre- 
 ferred scenes that reminded him of man's triumph over 
 Nature, and of his presence and associations, to those 
 in which Nature reigned with undisputed sway. But 
 the enormous growth of our large cities, the vast in- 
 crease of the population, spreading over the country, 
 cultivating all the soil, and crowding every horizon with 
 the signs of its busy industry, the hurry, excitement, and 
 artificiality of our age — all have inspired a longing for 
 solitude, and a taste for scenes where Nature is all in 
 all and man is nothing. In our altered circumstances 
 we take pleasure in what our ancestors disliked ; and 
 fleeing by railway and steamer and coach from the toil- 
 worn haunts of men, we take refuge in the wilderness. 
 May we not also in some measure attribute the change 
 to the influence of a more enlightened Christianity, 
 which has made us more alive to scenes of beauty and 
 grandeur, apart altogether from their uses to man ; 
 which has taught us that the waste places of the earth, 
 which our forefathers looked upon as accursed, are the 
 sources of its health and fertility, and are even more 
 precious than its cornfields and meadows ? "\^'e are 
 beginning to see now that nothing that God has made 
 is in itself common or unclean, and that all the physical 
 
136 Tiro IVORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 earth unassociated with man's sin lies under the blessing 
 of Heaven as truly as in the Edenic state. The moun- 
 tains and the wildernesses of the earth, which our fore- 
 fathers regarded as evidences of the Fall, are precisely 
 the parts that have altogether escaped the curse upon 
 the ground; and it is only in the garden and the field, 
 where Nature comes into contact with man, and is made 
 to minister to his wants, that she shares his doom. 
 
 I. In the words at the head of this chapter the 
 Psalmist obviously referred to the security which the 
 shelter of the mountains afforded to a God-fearing 
 people. This is the literal meaning of the expression. 
 The peace which the mountains give is in the first in- 
 stance a peace of safety. On the plains man is exposed 
 on every side to attack, and there are no natural barriers 
 to prevent the approach of the enemy. In rude and 
 lawless lands the dwellers of the plains live in continual 
 alarm. They cannot cultivate the soil in peace; they 
 cannot be sure of their possessions for a single day. 
 The farmers in the more level and fertile parts of 
 Palestine at the present day sow and reap their fields 
 in bands, to defend themselves and their harvests from 
 marauders ; and this fact lends a new emphasis and 
 meaning to the words of the Psalmist referring to 
 those who sow in tears and go forth weeping, bearing 
 precious seed. Dwellers in the plains must fortify 
 their houses if they live alone, and if in communities 
 they must surround their towns and villages with walls 
 and moats. But among the mountains Nature herself 
 surrounds man's home with ramparts of defence and 
 
IX. MOUNTAIN PEACE. 137 
 
 guards his possessions. The only strife he has to 
 fear is that of the elements. Surrounded by lofty 
 precipices, containing hidden recesses that can only 
 be reached with great toil and difficulty, mountains 
 have always been the strongholds of freedom, where 
 patriotism has taken its last stand, and religion has 
 found a secure sanctuary, and the tide of conquest 
 that has elsewhere swept everything before it has found 
 an iron shore that hurled it back. Wretched tribes, 
 gradually driven up through oj:)pression from their native 
 fields, have there maintained the last straggle of despair 
 against the overwhelming foe. Just as the alpine flowers 
 that grow on the mountains are the last survivors of the 
 general flora that spread over the whole country, driven 
 up from the plains by altered conditions of climate and 
 elevation, so mountain tribes are for the most part the 
 survivors of communities forced to abandon the low 
 lands, and to take refuge from their enemies on the 
 inaccessible heights. The little faitlifnl flock of the 
 \VaIdenses found, among the lofty snow-crowned Alps 
 that shut them in on every side, protection when sorely 
 persecuted by the armies of the Pope, and almost every 
 spot in their magnificent mountain home has been 
 hallowed by some marvellous triumph of faith and 
 spiritual heroism. The Scottish Covenanters sought 
 refuge on the wild moors from a hostile bloodthirsty 
 government ; and often did the voice of prayer and 
 the song of praise mingle with the plaintive breeze 
 that swept over the bleak hillsides, and ascend from 
 many a desolate spot to Him who sits enthroned above 
 
138 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 the everlasting hills, and lends His ear to the cry 
 of the poor and needy. To these godly people the 
 mountains brought the peace of safety, because of 
 their righteousness. 
 
 Especially were the mountains places of defence to 
 the Jews. They were the Waldenses and Covenanters 
 of the old world, who protested against the heathenism 
 of the outlying nations, and therefore exposed them- 
 selves to their hatred and persecution. The land of 
 Israel was an alpine land, an elevated plateau, guarded 
 on every side by lofty mountain, deep defile, pathless 
 desert, or stormy sea. It was like a great altar lifted 
 above the plains, on which the incense of divine worship 
 went up continually. God provided for His people a 
 mountain fortress, where they should be secure from 
 attack, and be enabled, uncontaminated by association 
 with the surrounding idolaters, to maintain the pure 
 religion of Jehovah, and work out His great purposes 
 for the conversion and education of the human race. 
 In that eagle-like eyrie, high above the plains of Babylon 
 and the desert of Syria, and the rich valley of the Nile, 
 their place of defence was the munitions of rocks ; bread 
 was given to them, and their water was sure. The 
 mountains brought peace to them so long as they lived 
 in righteousness. But no sooner did they follow the 
 multitude outside to do evil, and, corrupted by the 
 example of idolaters, forsake the worship of the living 
 God, than their mountain home became the scene of 
 the wildest tumult and disorder. The rocks that should 
 have defended them hemmed them in for surer and 
 
IX. MOUNTAIN PEACE. 139 
 
 swifter destruction \ the heights on which they should 
 have sat under their own vine and fig-tree, with none 
 to make them afraid, were crimsoned, not with the 
 blood of the grape, but with the blood of innocent 
 women and children ; and the echoes of the hills, 
 instead of repeating the gentle voices of nature, the 
 sigh of the breeze, and the murmur of the torrent, or 
 the pleasant sounds of rural labour, were startled by- 
 shrieks of anguish from desolated homes. Never were 
 there fiercer battles and darker tragedies than among 
 the fair solitudes of those mountains, which God had 
 set as a wall lifted up to heaven round about Jerusalem, 
 when in wrath He removed His protecting shield from 
 a people who desired not the knowledge of His ways. 
 Syrian, Assyrian, and Egyptian came one after another 
 into their most secure fortresses by the passes of the 
 Lebanon, and taught them the bitter lesson that the 
 loftiest mountains afford no asylum to those who violate 
 the laws of righteousness. The mountain land itself 
 spued out its inhabitants, refused to harbour a race that 
 had proved faithless to its God. And in the Songs of 
 Degrees, the Pilgrim Psalms, the wailing music of the 
 harp hung on the willow-trees of Babylon, we hear 
 the longing of the poor exiles for their own beautiful 
 mountain land. '' I will lift up mine eyes to the hills, 
 from whence cometh my help." 
 
 But while this is the literal meaning of the Psalmist's 
 expression — "the mountains shall bring peace to the 
 people" — it may be lawful to treat it figuratively, and 
 hang a few appropriate thoughts regarding other kinds 
 
14° TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 of mountain peace upon it. In the Holy Land every 
 object was as typical of spiritual things as every article 
 in the tabernacle and temple. The one embodied the 
 typical dispensation of Nature, as the other the typical 
 dispensation of grace. In fact the Holy Land was the 
 tabernacle of the earth, the chamber of imagery of 
 the whole world, in which everything pointed to God, 
 and was significant of the soul's relations to Him and 
 to itself The truths of the Bible were moulded and 
 coloured by the natural characteristics of the country 
 in which it was written. The land was the picture 
 which illustrated the book; the revelation of natural 
 things explained the revelation of spiritual things. The 
 heights and depths of the landscapes signified the heights 
 and depths of the soul. The hills represented the high 
 places of faith and righteousness which men ought to 
 reach ; the valleys and defiles represented the deep 
 places of moral degradation into which men fall. The 
 heights of Jerusalem, on which stood the temple of 
 God, with its pure, free air, and its wide commanding 
 prospects, typified the highest attainments of holiness 
 and happiness; and the profound abyss in which lay 
 the Dead Sea, whose waters had closed over the guilty 
 cities of the plain, with its hot stagnant air, and rank 
 vegetation, and memories of gigantic sin and terrible 
 doom, typified the lowest depths of wickedness and 
 misery. There, before the eyes of men, were visible 
 types of heaven and hell. The people went up to 
 the Holy Hill to worship God and practise righteous- 
 ness; they went down to the dark defile to sin and 
 
IX. MOUNTAIN PEACE. 141 
 
 suffer. Thus these two opposite scenes of nature helped 
 them to understand their own experience and history, 
 and taught them that to be up in the moral nature 
 of man is to be pure and blessed, while to be down 
 is to be sinful and unhappy. Each Jew was thus led 
 to see in nature a reflection of his own condition, a 
 picture of his own soul. 
 
 2. According to this law of correspondence, the 
 peace which the mountains give by righteousness is a 
 peace of ehvatioti. It is on the heights of the soul 
 alone that we can get true and lasting peace. Like the 
 man in the parable who went down to Jericho, and 
 who was stripped and wounded on that downward 
 path, so on the low levels of our sense-life on which 
 we are trying to live, we are stripped and wounded 
 by the evils of life, and impoverished by its circum- 
 stances. We have left behind us in our natural state 
 the lofty city of holiness in which we were born, and 
 have gone down to the low polluted city of the curse, 
 as the traveller descended from Jerusalem to Jericho. 
 Our moral career has run parallel with our physical. 
 Mankind descended from the cradle of the race on 
 the lofty mountain ranges of Central Asia to the level 
 plains of Ass>Tia and Egypt; and so has the race 
 spiritually descended from the eternal hills of God to 
 the mean levels of worldly conformity and carnal in- 
 dulgence. We have gone down from a state of elevated 
 purity and blessedness to one of degraded sinfulness 
 and misery; and in the cities of the plain we are 
 lovers of pleasure and pursue many objects of interest, 
 
142 T^t^O WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 and surround ourselves with many comforts and posses- 
 sions, and say " peace, peace." But there is no true 
 peace for immortal souls that settle down contentedly 
 into the low, dead, carnal uniformity into which our 
 natural life so readily falls. Cares and temptations 
 assail us. We become dissatisfied with our circum- 
 stances, and most of all with ourselves. Whether we 
 succeed or fail in our objects, we are alike disappointed ; 
 and a profound feeling of weariness and vanity op- 
 presses us. The mysteries and troubles of life perplex 
 and bewilder us, and the current of our days flows 
 sluggishly and despairingly through them, as an African 
 river creeps through its tangled thicket of reeds, in 
 which the traveller is so hopelessly involved that he 
 imagines all the world to be an endless reedy marsh. 
 It is only when we ascend to the lost heights of our 
 purity by the successive stages of a life of faith in the 
 Son of God, that we regain the true peace of our souls. 
 The ascent is indeed difficult ; the path straight, narrow, 
 and steep. But every new achievement will be a van- 
 tage-ground for fresh effort. On stepping-stones of 
 our dead selves, on mortified lusts and sanctified affec- 
 tions, and trials turned to heavenly uses, we mount to 
 higher tilings, and every step upward brings us to 
 purer air, and to a grander and freer horizon. To go 
 up physically, is to alter climate and natural productions, 
 to pass vertically through tlie zones of the globe ; to 
 go up spiritually, is to inhabit a new world of joys 
 and hopes. And if our sweat of soul be great, our 
 peace of soul will keep pace with it. 
 
IX. MO UNTAIN PEA CE. 143 
 
 On the mountain heights of faith we are above the 
 changes of the world. We look not at the things 
 which are seen and temporal, but at the things which 
 are unseen and eternal. Our being ranges beyond all 
 the limitations of time and sense— beyond the bounds 
 which the cares and troubles of life set to it. And 
 therefore we feel calm and secure amid the whirl of 
 circumstances. Hearkening habitually to the voice of 
 God and so dwelling on high, we dwell safely and are 
 quiet from fear of evil. We have a peace which the 
 world cannot give. We are inhabitants even here and 
 now of that world where there is no succession of 
 existence, and consequently no change — where no suns 
 go down, no fruits decay, no years wax old and dim. 
 On the mountain heights of faith, too, we have a 
 brighter sky overhead, and a clearer prospect around. 
 Clouds and mists hang ever over the low levels of 
 life ; but above them there is sunshine, if only we can 
 mount high enough. If we crawl about on the dreary 
 flats of earth, content to rise no higher, then, though 
 a ray of sunshine may sometimes reach us, we shall 
 never pass the cloud, or know the boundless light of 
 God. Professor Piazzi Smythe, in his Astronomical 
 Expedition to the Peak of Teneriffe, mentions that while 
 the inhabitants of the sea-shore had the most dread- 
 ful weather, constant clouds, rain, and howling winds, 
 he and his party at the summit of the mountain 
 had a cloudless sky, brilliant sunshine, and the most 
 serene and delicious air. And so it is in the spiritual 
 world; storms rage on the low levels, but the blue 
 
144 77FO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 tops of the hills are calm in the sunshine of heaven, 
 and smile above the thunderstorm. The soul that 
 dwells habitually on high, has a perpetual summer. 
 It has a buoyancy and brightness which lift it above 
 all glooms and depressions. It is a striking circum- 
 stance that our Saviour spoke joyfully of His decease 
 on the mount of transfiguration, but was exceeding 
 sorrowful even unto death at the prospect before Him 
 down in the gloomy olive shadows of Gethsemane. 
 Every height of the soul is a mount of transfiguration, 
 where sorrow, like the dark clouds or the barren fields 
 of snow on a mountain top incarnadined by sunset, 
 takes on the hues of heaven. Rut such heights of 
 faith belong only to the latest formations of the soul. 
 The highest mountains of the earth are the youngest, 
 and have been thrown up to their serene altitudes by 
 volcanic forces ; so also the loftiest heights of faith and 
 hope are the most recent experiences of the renewed life, 
 and are often raised up by fiery trials that are most 
 grievous at the time. It was through a lifetime of sore 
 trial that the Man of Sorrows acquired the majestic 
 peace which He bequeathed in the end to His disciples : 
 " My peace I give unto you." They stood on the calm, 
 lofty vantage-ground which He had won by strong crying 
 and tears. 
 
 3. I go on to notice further that the peace which 
 the mountains give by righteousness is a peace of 
 compensation. In the mountain peak the earth is acu- 
 minated to the smallest point. On the level plain 
 the earth fills the whole horizon, but it narrows as we 
 
IX. MO UNTAIN PEA CE. 145 
 
 ascend, until the summit of the mountain becomes a 
 small island in space. On that elevated spot there is 
 little more than standing-room. The wide and varied 
 landscape around our home has diminished into a few 
 feet of grey, monotonous rock ; and nothing reminds us 
 of the common familiar world in which we live. But 
 while the earth contracts the sky expands, and on the 
 mountain height where the world is smallest the heavens 
 seem infinite. Nowhere else can such a boundless view 
 of the sky be obtained as where the earth affords only 
 a pedestal on which the spectator may stand. And 
 what a wonderful peace enters into the heart on such 
 a spot ! How far off seems the world of cares and 
 struggles ; how near the land of rest ! How small and 
 unworthy of attention are the things that worried and 
 perplexed us ; how grand and magnificent the things 
 that belong to our true peace ! The covctousness and 
 selfishness which sought to grasp everything lessen with 
 the lessening sphere for their exercise ; and here, where 
 man possesses no more of the soil than that on which 
 his foot rests, he has a peace which the ownership of the 
 whole world could not give him. And is there not a 
 parallel to this in spiritual experience ? God often 
 narrows our standing-place among the world's posses- 
 sions and affections that we may have a grander outlook, 
 a wider expansion of the everlasting inheritance. Each 
 privation of earth becomes a fuller realisation of heaven. 
 Poverty of circumstances, — as we see in nature the 
 glacier and the storm sculpturing the wide tableland into 
 pyramidal form, — may shape a mountain peak in the 
 
 L 
 
146 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 sphere of the soul, by removing the worldly grounds 
 of hope and confidence with which we encompass our- 
 selves. And a man may be raised above the world by 
 that which depresses him below its level ; the depths 
 of his outward possessions becoming the heights of 
 his being. Who were the men who saw most of heaven ? 
 Were they not those who possessed least of the earth ? 
 It was the patriarchs, who did not own so much as their 
 feet could stand upon of the soil of Canaan, who dwelt 
 in tents as strangers on its upland pastures with their 
 families and flocks, who nevertheless saw all the true 
 beauty and enjoyed all the true wealth of the land, and 
 wlio looked beyond its fleeting possessions to the 
 glory of the heavenly inheritance of which it spoke 
 so eloquently to them. Abraham, standing on the 
 .stony top of Bethel, and lifting up his eyes to be- 
 hold the rich plains and well-watered valleys glowing 
 in the Syrian sunshine as the garden of the Lord, 
 owned them in a truer sense than the idolatrous oc- 
 cupiers of them, who cared only for them as they 
 ministered to their carnal life. Moses surveying the 
 Land of Promise with dying eyes from the threshold 
 of Pisgah entered into possession of it in spirit, though 
 it was not permitted him to enter it in person. To 
 St. John, chained a prisoner on his little barren rock in 
 they^gean, the wonderful visions of the Apocalypse were 
 given through the door opened in heaven. When we 
 are rich and increased with goods, and have need of 
 nothing, the earth expands around us and becomes our 
 heaven; we say, "This is our rest for ever; here will 
 
MO UNTA IN PEA CE. 14? 
 
 we dwell, for we have desired it." But when our friends 
 and possessions pass away from us, and leave us bare 
 and empt}-, the earth around us contracts into a moun- 
 tain peak, and we have the grandest outlook into the 
 things eternal. The Lord graciously leads all His 
 people by the weaning dispensations of Providence as 
 far as to Bethany, that from the narrowest point of 
 earth they may with the least effort and wrench pass 
 into the waiting heavens with Himself. Life itself, 
 whether we build the pyramid of jasper or of common 
 clay^ however broad we make its base, mercifully 
 narrows to the top ; and as on our upward path we 
 successively leave behind us the beauty and joy of 
 childhood, and the strength of manhood, and the few 
 interests that survive, like pale flowers on the alpine 
 turf, to those days in which we shall say that we have 
 no pleasure in them — as all things fall away from us, and 
 leave us on our little narrow standing-place amid the 
 cold, barren snows of old age, eternity is seen to be 
 more and more beneath us as well as around us and 
 above us ; the heavenly world becomes more and more 
 part of our own home, and the transition in the end is 
 easy and immediate. 
 
 4. But I notice, further, that this peace is a peace of 
 unification. From the top of a mountain we behold the 
 wide landscape as a whole. Its varied features and 
 inequalities of surface are blended into one magnificent 
 picture. The most distant points are brought together, 
 and the most discordant elements are harmonised. 
 From the top of a lofty equatorial mountain we see all 
 
 L 2 
 
» 4^ TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 the zones and climates of the earth, all the seasons of 
 the year, and all the constellations of the sky at a single 
 glance. And it is because a mountain summit thus 
 brings together and unifies what down in the plain is 
 far separated, that we have such peculiar pleasure in 
 the extended prospect. It reveals to us the greatness of 
 our being, which has been formed for unity, for a state in 
 which things here dispersed shall be gathered into one. 
 We are here in a state of unnatural compression, and 
 existence within our narrow limits is measured out to us 
 in successive portions, so that we cannot gain one point 
 without leaving behind and losing sight of another. 
 But in the eternal world for which we are destined, all 
 that our heart desires will be brought together and pre- 
 sented to us in the fulness and unity of our being at 
 one view. The prospect from the mountain top there- 
 fore enables us to anticipate our future life. And what 
 we thus experience in the physical world, we also realise 
 in the mental and spiritual. Every advance we make in 
 the intellectual and moral life tends to place us on a 
 higher ground, from whence our eye can take in a wider 
 horizon, and thus bring larger and larger portions of 
 the past and future into the present. From the lofty 
 vantage-ground of our knowledge we have a wider 
 survey over the history of the world and of the race 
 than our ancestors had ; and the cultivated man lives 
 within a wider sphere of space and time than the 
 ignorant serf, whose mind can take in no wider reach 
 of thought than his own poor daily life. And the 
 Christian has the grandest survey of all. His faith 
 
AfO UNTAIN PEA CE. 1 49 
 
 places him on a spiritual eminence from whence he sees 
 the pains and losses that, owing to the laws of his 
 successive existence, he feels singly, blended with the 
 rest of his life ; and thus the lights balance the shades, 
 the deliverance is seen side by side with the danger, the 
 trial with its alleviation, and the temptation with the way 
 of escape, and the whole landscape of life consequently 
 appears beautiful and harmonious. On the Mount of 
 the Lord he sees the converging movements and the 
 network of connection w-hich unify into one great pur- 
 pose and blessed service the confusing fragmentary 
 medley of things amid which our daily work is done. 
 There he sees the end of the Lord, that He is very pitiful, 
 the termination of all the paths by which He is leading 
 us, and recognises that they are mercy and truth to those 
 who fear Him. And the wider the view the more perfect 
 the harmony. The faith that takes in the widest reach 
 of our being comprehends both worlds, that which 
 now is and that which is to come — has the promise of 
 them now — and can always pass from the discords of 
 earth to 
 
 "Where beyond these voices there is peace." 
 
 On these heights of salvation too we are above all party 
 feeling and sectarian jealousy. There are isotherms of 
 faith and love on those mountain tops where all Chris- 
 tians are one, and all faces belonging to different 
 dispensations and denominations are seen shining 
 transfigured in the same heavenly light. 
 
 5. I shall conclude with one other idea — viz. that 
 
I 5° TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 this mountain peace is a peace of isolation. It is well 
 that we have the mountains as retreats from the fevered 
 conventional life of cities. They cannot be subdued 
 by man or taken into his domains. They form a world 
 apart, a sanctuary of nature, which can never be crowded 
 or profaned, claiming affinity with the nearer heavens. 
 They are God's cathedrals not made with hands, where 
 man docs not live by bread alone, but by the visions 
 of beauty and grandeur in which the Creator speaks 
 to the soul. Nowhere can we find such haunts of 
 immemorial peace as among their recesses. Even gazing 
 upon the mountains afar off, as their softly rounded 
 outlines repose on the horizon, with the shadows of 
 the clouds resting upon them, or the purple hues of 
 evening transfiguring them, they seem the very embodi- 
 ments of peace ; and the sight is enough to infuse a 
 sympathetic feeling of peace into the heart of the most 
 careworn spectator. But when we penetrate into their 
 hidden nooks, the great mother there takes us back to 
 her bosom, and lays her cool hand upon our throbbing 
 brow, and hushes our fevered pulses to rest in the 
 depths of her silence ; we know the sleep that is among 
 the lonely hills, and have dreams of more than mortal 
 beauty to which it gives rise. The bush of the desert 
 becomes the shrine of God; the still small voice of 
 the wind among the rocks and pines whispers tlie secrets 
 of the unseen world ; and the vistas through die level 
 clouds that, burnished with gold, lie along the mountain 
 tops, seem doors opened in heaven. It is good to seek 
 the loneliness and serenity of the mountains, there to 
 
I X. MO UN TAIN PEA CE. 151 
 
 leave behind us our own thoughts, and to relinquish our 
 own wills, and allow ourselves to be moulded passively 
 by the solemn inspirations of the solitude. Cares and 
 troubles thus melt away, and calmness rises into a religious 
 experience. The greatest names in history prepared 
 themselves for their life-work by solitary communion 
 with God on the mountains : Moses on Horeb ; Elijah 
 on Carmel, and St. Paul among the granite peaks of 
 Arabia, And they took down with them into the world's 
 busy works and ways the light of heaven upon their 
 faces and the peace of heaven in their hearts. The 
 calm serenity which strikes us with wonder in the faces 
 painted by Fra Angelico, Raphael, and Perugino, was 
 acquired in the loneliness of those mountain cloisters 
 to which the noisy echoes of the world did not pene- 
 trate, and which heard only the still small voices of 
 the upper sanctuary; and we can attain to the beauty 
 of their angelic peace only by imitating the loneliness 
 and elevation of their lives. 
 
 But there ai-e spiritual heights of the soul as well as 
 material heights of nature on which we find a sacred 
 solitude and peace. The higher a man rises in spiritual 
 as in intellectual life, the more lonely he becomes. 
 There is always, as it has been often said, a degree of 
 solitude about a great man ; and this is especially true 
 of the Christian, whose greatness is reflected upon him 
 by the contemplation of the things unseen and eternal. 
 It is his distinguishing characteristic that he is not of 
 the world, that his citizenship is in heaven, and the 
 more renewed he is in the spirit of his mind, the more 
 
!$? TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. cu. ix, 
 
 separate from the world does he become. He prefers 
 the closet even to the crowded religious meeting, and 
 is never less alone than when most alone. When he 
 leaves behind the mount that might be touched with 
 its crowds and distractions, he comes to Mount Zion, 
 and is compassed about with a great cloud of spiritual 
 witnesses. When earth recedes, heaven opens to his 
 view, and he exchanges the companionship of flesh and 
 blood that wearies for the association of those heavenly 
 principalities in waiting upon whom his face is lightened 
 and his strength is renewed. Such a man dwells on 
 God's holy hill alike when, clothed in the garments of 
 beauty and glory, he worships and serves in the priestly 
 office, and when as an ordinary citizen, girded for toil, 
 he fulfils the common duties of hfe. He can seek the 
 things that are above in seeking that which is purest, 
 highest, and noblest even in the sphere of nature and 
 of ordinary human life; and at all times and in all 
 circumstances his life can preserve its vital relationship 
 with heaven, and the mountain-heights of his faith 
 and love and holy obedience will bring him peace 
 by righteousness. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 LEA VEN. 
 
 "The kingdom of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman 
 took, and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was 
 leavened." — St. Matthew xiii. 33. 
 
 N' OT more frequently did our Lord appeal to the 
 Old Testament of the Written Word in the 
 formula " It is written " than He appealed to the Older 
 Testament of created objects in the formula "The 
 kingdom of heaven is like unto " different objects and 
 processes of the natural world. That kingdom is not 
 of this world — so far as the source of its power and 
 authority is concerned ; it is essentially of heaven 
 and from heaven. But it is of this world so far as 
 the sphere of its influence is concerned, and it covers 
 the whole ground of its objects and affairs, just as the 
 blue sky covers the whole earth. Not more essential 
 to the order, beauty, and life of the earth is the all 
 embracing sky that bends over it than is the kingdom 
 of heaven to the kingdoms of this world with which 
 it is coextensive. For its gracious design is to remove 
 
154 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 all the limitations and disabilities which sin has brought 
 upon them — and make all old things new ; to form the 
 new hea\'en and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteous- 
 ness ; beginning in man its head, and going down to ail 
 with which man is connected. And this universal refer- 
 ence of the kingdom of heaven is clearly indicated by 
 the very multiplicity of the objects and processes with 
 which our Saviour compares it. It is not like one thing 
 only, but like a great many things as diverse as possible 
 from each other ; the examples given being only a few 
 specimens of what might have been indefinitely increased. 
 And they are given in such variety, not merely because 
 no single object or process could exhaust for purposes 
 of comparison the pleroma or fulness of the kingdom of 
 heaven, or adequately foreshadow its glory and intricacy 
 of relationships, but also, and chiefly, because the 
 kingdom of heaven is in truth like everything in this 
 worUl that is not of sin. For He who made man in 
 the image of God made earth in the image of heaven ; 
 and it is distinctly stated that all things were made by 
 the Second Person of the Trinity in His mediatorial 
 character and for redemption purposes, and that without 
 Him was not anything made that was made. 
 
 The parable of the leaven belongs to a distinct group 
 of seven parables which may be separated from the 
 others which our Lord spoke, not merely because they 
 occur consecutively in the same chapter of St Matthew's 
 Gospel, but also because they have close mutual relations 
 to one another, and constitute together a complete and 
 harmonious whole. They illustrate the history of the 
 
X. LEAVEN. 155 
 
 kingdom of heaven in its announcement and reception 
 upon the earth, the different steps and laws of its 
 advancement both externally and internally, in societies 
 and individuals, from its commencement to its consum- 
 mation. They may be arranged in pairs, e^^ch pair 
 having a closer affinity to its own members than to the 
 others. Thus the twin parables of the Sower and the 
 Tares are most intimately knit together, referring to 
 the different fortunes of the seed of the kingdom when 
 sown in the field of the world, and to the intermixture 
 of evil with it even when it germinates and grows up 
 in good soil. In like manner the parables of the 
 Mustard Seed and the Leaven constitute a distinct 
 pair, illustrating, the one the outward or extensive, and 
 the other the inward or intensive, development of the 
 kingdom of heaven ; increasing in magnitude from small 
 and unimportant beginnings, and overshadowing the 
 whole earth, visible to the eyes of all, at the same 
 time that its vital spirit silently and secretly progresses 
 within, gradually changing the character of the whole 
 of that into which it has been infused. 
 
 The parable of the Mustard Seed is essentially an 
 out-door parable, and has all the freedom and magnitude 
 of the open air about it. The parable of the Leaven 
 belongs to the house, and introduces us into the privacy 
 of the domestic circle. The one refers to the large out- 
 ward life of nature, and "the other to the small inner 
 life of the human household. The one is more objective, 
 the other more subjective. The home of man and the 
 world of God are thus both to experience the sanctifying 
 
156 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS'. chat. 
 
 and renewing influences of the kingdom of heaven, and 
 to be the sphere of its operations. 
 
 A difficulty meets us on the very threshold of our 
 inquiry into the significance of the parable of the leaven, 
 suggested by the fact that this material is more frequently 
 employed in Scripture in a bad than in a good sense. 
 It was rigidly excluded from all the Levitical off"erings as 
 an unclean thing. The children of Israel were strictly 
 commanded to remove every particle of it from their 
 houses during the Passover week ; and owing to these 
 restrictions, it came to be regarded as the type or symbol 
 of all that was false and corrupting. It seems somewhat 
 perplexing therefore that with all these evil associations 
 our Lord should have employed it as a symbol of the 
 pure and glorious development of the kingdom of 
 heaven. But this objection disappears at once when 
 we bear in mind that it is common in Scripture to 
 employ one object in nature to shadow forth two 
 opposite spiritual truths. " Be ye wise as serpents," 
 said Christ to His disciples, although He himself had 
 employed the image of a serpent in a most evil sense. 
 The same symbol of a lion is applied by St. Peter to 
 the devil, who goeth about seeking whom he may devour, 
 and by St. John to Christ, who is the lion of the tribe 
 of Judah. Hence it was not out of keeping for our 
 Lord to employ an object in a good sense which had 
 hitherto been used in a bad sense. Indeed, it is charac- 
 teristic of His whole work to recover the things of nature 
 and of man from their former ignominy and consecrate 
 them to higher uses, so that the darkest tokens of the 
 
X. LEAVEiV. 157 
 
 fall are changed into the brightest images of redemp- 
 tion — the thorns of the curse becoming the very Crown 
 of Christ. And therefore we can easily understand 
 how, while leaven stood previously associated in the 
 minds of the Jews with all that was corrupting and 
 debasing, our Lord should bid His audience look at 
 its good qualities, making bread lighter, more palatable, 
 and more easily digested, and for the sake of these 
 useful properties employ it Himself as a symbol of the 
 kingdom of heaven. 
 
 But while this reason for our Lord's choice of such 
 an apparently incongruous image appears on the surface, 
 and is obvious to every one, a yet deeper reason may be 
 found, if we consider for a little the nature and effects 
 of the leaven in the natural world. And this will not 
 only remove all embarrassment from the parable, but 
 also reveal to us a new beauty and significance in it. 
 For it is the unique distinction of all Christ's words, 
 that they are truer and profounder than they appear, 
 and link themselves harmoniously with the universiil and 
 absolute truth; and therefore every new discovery of 
 science, every deeper investigation into the mysteries 
 of this wonderful world of ours, gives them a wider 
 scope and a more suggestive meaning. 
 
 No process is so familiar and commonplace as 
 bread-making. It has been performed and witnessed 
 times without number from the earliest infancy of 
 our race. As a practical detail of housekeeping it 
 is so easy that a child understands it ; but it in- 
 volves mysteries which are among the most recondite 
 
158 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 in the whole range of science, and which are only now 
 beginning to be fully understood. The wonderful 
 discovery is little more than a century old, that the 
 yeast or leaven which is put into the dough to raise 
 it and make it more light and nutritious, is in reality 
 a mass of active living cells each about the 3,000th 
 of an inch in diameter, performing within itself all the 
 functions of life and multiplying by self-division. The>e 
 minute cells, which constitute living matter in almost 
 its simplest condition, grow and propagate with incon- 
 ceivable rapidity; a single cubic inch of yeast during 
 the heat of fermentation containing upwards of eleven 
 hundred and fifty-two millions of them. The name of 
 yeast-plant, or Torula, was given to these cells ; but they 
 do not constitute distinct plants. They are only a par- 
 ticular rudimentary state of a fungus or mould, like that 
 with which every one is familiar, as it covers with a 
 greenish grey powder or a whitish flocculcnt down 
 all kinds of decaying substances in damp shady places 
 that are seldom disturbed — a pair of old shoes, a pot 
 of preserves, or a piece of stale bread or fruit. When 
 the germs of this mould fall into any liquid containing 
 sugar and sink below its surface, they produce the ccMs 
 or globules of the yeast which, when they grow to their 
 full size, immediately begin to give off little buds from 
 their sides ; these buds in their turn growing until they 
 attain the size of their parents, and then giving off other 
 buds, a process of budding by multiplication going on in 
 this way to any extent, as effectual and complete as that 
 wliich takes place in a strawberry-bed or on an apple- 
 
X. LEAVEN. 159 
 
 tree. But when the food which the liquid contains is 
 exhausted, and the liquid itself is partially dried up, these 
 cells will vegetate, and throw out processes which will 
 produce a whitish filmy crust, from which in due time 
 will rise up a forest of little snowy stems crowned with 
 the fructification, presenting the well-known appearance 
 of the common mould. The effect of the fungus in 
 its undeveloped condition as a mass of separate bead- 
 like cells immersed in the liquid is very different from 
 that which it produces in its more advanced state when 
 growing exposed to the air upon the surface of the 
 liquid. As yeast in the liquid, it is deprived of a full 
 supply of oxygen, and produces fermentation ; as the 
 mature fungus on the surface of the liquid absorbing 
 oxygen from the air, it produces putrefaction. In the 
 one case it breathes after the manner of plants, taking 
 the oxygen necessary for its respiration from the sugar 
 in solution, converting it by so doing into alcohol ; in the 
 other, it breathes the free oxygen of the air after the 
 manner of an animal, and by the combination of the 
 oxygen thus absorbed with the carbon and other 
 elements of the substance upon which it feeds, it 
 keeps up in it a process of putrefaction. Each cell of 
 the yeast-plant may be said to exhibit vegetable and 
 animal characteristics. Its walls have the same composi- 
 tion as the substance of wood; and its innner nucleus 
 is identical with the material which forms the chief 
 part of our own blood, and is of the same nature as 
 the substance which lies at the foundation of every 
 animal organism whatever. The process of germination 
 
l6o T^yO WOKLDS ARE OUJiS. chap. 
 
 in the plant and of cligesiion in tlie animal is analogous 
 to that of the yeast on its nidus. And surely it is a 
 curious thought that tlie leaven by which we prepare our 
 bread and the leaven or gastric j uice by which we digest 
 it when eaten are similar in their nature and . opera- 
 tion j both being living cells in all essential respects 
 alike, although the one is a vegetable and the other 
 an animal substance. Alike in the rudimentary con- 
 dition of yeast and in the mature condition of mould, 
 the plant reproduces itself with the greatest readiness, 
 and its germs are thrown off in such enormous quantities 
 that it is difficult to conceive of any place where they 
 do not occur. The air is constantly full of them ; and 
 it is impossible to expose any vegetable juice or sac- 
 charine solution to the air without these httle bodies 
 entering into it, and if the conditions be favourable, 
 beginning at once an active life, increasing and multiply- 
 ing and giving rise to any quantity of yeast. 
 
 In the dough the leaven of course operates in the 
 same way as it does in a sugary fluid. The swelling and 
 commotion which take place in the leavened mass are 
 owing to the rapid multiplication of the cells of the 
 mould-plant. Excluded from the oxygen of the air, 
 fermentation is induced, by which the starch and sugar 
 of the dough are converted, in the nourishing of the 
 plant-cells, into alcohol and carbonic acid gas, which 
 last manifests itself in the miniature air-bells which 
 pervade the substance and give the light porous ap- 
 pearance to the bread. Were the process of cell 
 multiplication allowed to go on unchecked, it would 
 
X. LEAVEN. i6i 
 
 decompose all the substance of the dough, and the plant 
 would finally appear upon its surface in its complete 
 form as a fleecy mould, and, having access to free oxy- 
 gen, produce putrefaction. But at this initiatory stage 
 the principle of growth is arrested by the heat of the 
 oven into which the dough is put to be baked into 
 bread. 
 
 We thus see that leaven is connected with the two 
 familiar processes of fermentation and putrefaction, 
 which are of such vast importance in the economy of 
 nature and art, according to its stage of development, 
 and as it is excluded from oxygen or has free access 
 to it. In every stage of development it is in itself a 
 principle of destruction and construction — of decay 
 and growth — of death and life. According to the 
 "germ theory," which is now generally adopted, the 
 infection of disease in the human frame is produced 
 by the same kind of objects that cause the infection 
 of the leaven in the dough or the saccharine fluid. 
 The particles of disease are supposed to be fungoid 
 germs having a certain life of their own, which in their 
 development in the human system produce the serious 
 disturbances which we call fever, cholera, &c., and 
 which can be transmitted from one person to another 
 in the same way that the yeast-plant can be trans- 
 mitted from one substance to another. What 
 ministers to nourishment and life in one form, may 
 thus minister to disease and death in another. The 
 leaven that makes our bread palatable and nutritious 
 may poison our blood and cause us untold suftering. 
 
 M 
 
l62 Tl^yO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 These two opposite effects are made use of as types 
 in Scripture. On the one side the operation of leaven 
 upon meal presents an analogy to something evil 
 in the spiritual world, for it decays and decomposes 
 the matter with which it comes into contact. On the 
 other side the operation of leaven upon the meal 
 presents an analogy to something good in the spiritual 
 world, for it is a principle of life and growth and imparts 
 a new energy and a beneficent quality to the matter 
 with which it comes into contact. Hence we can see 
 more clearly than before why Christ at one and the same 
 time should, without any sense of self-contradiction, 
 bid His disciples beware of the leaven of the scribes 
 and Pharisees, and compare the kingdom of heaven 
 to leaven hid in three measures of meal. The kingdom 
 of heaven itself has two aspects ; it is a principle of 
 growth and decay, of construction and destruction. It 
 is life unto life in those who receive it, it is death unto 
 death in those who reject it ; as the same air that 
 nourishes our bodies when living decomposes them when 
 dead. Nay, in the same person it is at one and the same 
 time a principle of life and of death, of growth and 
 decay ; for the new man lives by the death of the old 
 man ; the spiritual life grows while the carnal life 
 decays ; the outward man perishes while the inward 
 man is renewed more and more. 
 
 I have thus shown what science has only recently re- 
 vealed to us, that leaven is not as was formerly supposed 
 (lead matter infecting other matter with its own cor- 
 ruption, a lifeless substance producing a mere chemical 
 
X. LEAVEJSr. 163 
 
 change upon another substance with which it comes 
 into contact, but on the contrary a living principle, 
 a collection of living organisms that manifest all the 
 signs and carry on all the functions of life, and that 
 its effect upon the dough is a vital process. It is tiue 
 indeed that leaven decays and decomposes the meal 
 in which it is hid ; but it does this in order to nourish 
 the life which it contains, just as every plant decays and 
 decomposes the particles of the soil and the elements 
 around it in order to sustain its life and growth ; just 
 as we ourselves decay and decompose the particles of 
 food that we eat by the gastric juice in order to support 
 our bodies. The innumerable microscopic cells of the 
 leaven grow in the meal as their soil, in precisely the 
 same way that the corn grows in the field, and the 
 mustard- tree in the wood. It assimilates the particles 
 of the meal and changes these dead effete substances 
 into its own living tissues, and makes them to live 
 and grow in a new form ; just as the corn takes up the 
 particles of the soil formed by the decaying remains of 
 former plants, and converts them into living structures 
 in its own living substance. And thus we get a glimpse 
 of the grand purpose wliich the minute and humble 
 plants, of which the cells in the leaven constitute but one 
 variety, perform in the great economy of nature. They 
 accelerate the process of natural decay and render 
 the natural products of that process less baneful by 
 absorbing them into their own lite. They economise the 
 stock of organised material which has been slowly 
 gained from the earth, air, and water, by preventing 
 
164 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 it from going back through decomposition to the 
 mineral state, and preserving it in an organic form to 
 be at once made available for the purposes of higher 
 animal and plant life. It is not death therefore that 
 we see at work in the effects of leaven upon dough, 
 reducing everything to its own dust and nothingness, 
 but life victorious over death — turning death into 
 higher life — raising dead substances into new forms of 
 energy and power, and stamping them with its own 
 image. 
 
 And looked at in this light, how forcible and beautiful 
 an illustration of the kingdom of heaven is the leaven ! 
 That kingdom is life, the highest of all life ; and all its 
 effects are processes and results of life. It does not 
 work mechanically, but vitally. It is that divine power 
 which saves from going down to the pit ; which pre- 
 vents the wreck of humanity by the fall from becoming 
 a greater wreck still ; which hinders that which was 
 made in the image of God and which sin has blighted 
 and wasted, from corrupting into the outer darkness 
 of eternal destruction ; and takes it back and lifts it up 
 into the higher life of heaven and makes it capable of 
 nobler work in God's world. The kingdom of heaven 
 is the spiritual life that broods over a world dead and 
 lying in Avickedness, and raises its dark, hopeless chaos 
 into the beauty, order and sunlight of the new creation. 
 And just as the living seed of the i)lant in a barren, 
 sandy desert where no green thing is found changes 
 the lifeless sand into living vegetation, so does the 
 spiritual and eternal life of the kingdom of heaven 
 
X. LEAVEN. 165 
 
 raise by its quickening energy the dead souls of men 
 with which it comes into contact, into newness of hfe 
 in Christ Jesus. 
 
 The leaven is not the same as the meal upon which 
 it operates. The meal is a dead, inert substance which 
 left to itself would moulder away into dust or impalpable 
 gases. It is indeed an organised material, the product of 
 former life, but separated from the corn upon which it 
 grew, and ground in the mill, it has lost all the powers 
 and properties of life. It can therefore enter the circle 
 of life and perform its part there again only by becoming 
 leavened by another substance that has life. There 
 is no such thing in nature as spontaneous generation. 
 Scientific men have fought hard over the question ; and 
 now it is all but universally admitted that no living change 
 can take place in any substance without the agency 
 of previous life ; that dead matter cannot originate 
 life under any circumstances whatever, and begin itself 
 the processes of life in its own substance. The meal is 
 leavened not by a spontaneous change begun in itself — 
 by itself — but by the introduction into it of the germs of 
 life from another source. And this fact is emphatically 
 indicated in the parable by the woman taking the leaven 
 and mingling it with the meal. She took the leaven 
 from elsewhere and placed it in the dough. The living 
 cells that constitute the leaven have not been generated 
 within the substance in which they are found. They 
 owe their origin to the germs of other pre-existing )east 
 organisms. Boil the substance and effectually exclude 
 the air, and there will be no appearance of living cells, 
 
1 66 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 no fermentation. The substance will remain inert and 
 unchanged for years. On the contrary, expose it to the 
 air, and living germs will at once establish themselves, 
 and the process of fermentation begin. Moreover, the 
 yeast itself must be alive in order to exert its peculiar 
 properties. If it be crushed or heated to such an extent 
 that its life is destroyed, it will not produce any leaven- 
 ing effect. And how true is this feature of the parable 
 when applied in illustration of the kingdom of heaven. 
 Man, like the meal, is the wreck of former life. Separated 
 from God from whom he derived his life, withered and 
 blighted by sin, ground between the millstones of the 
 hard service of the god of this world, he has lost all 
 the properties and powers of spiritual life. He cannot 
 by any process of self-reformation, of study or self- 
 denial, or performance of dutv, originate spiritual life 
 in himself or enter into the spiritual world, and regain 
 the divine image and power which he has lost. There 
 is no such thing as spontaneous generation in the 
 spiritual world any more than in the natural. Prayers 
 and penances and self-efforts will prove of no avail to 
 quicken and renew the soul that is alienated from God 
 and dead in trespasses and sin. Self-salvation in the 
 human world is impossible. No man can redeem his 
 brother or even his own soul from destruction. A 
 mightier power than his own must begin and carry on 
 the work of grace in him. He who is the life must 
 commence the jirocess of life in his inert, corrupt 
 nature ; must be Himself the beginning of the new 
 creation of God in him. Josus must breathe upon 
 
X. LEAVEN. 167 
 
 fallen man that he may be a new creature, just as He 
 breathed into his nostrils at first the breath of natural 
 life. The kingdom of heaven that comes to him and 
 works within him is a divine, unearthly power, a 
 heavenly principle altogether different from any power 
 or principle in himself. It is not of this world ; it does 
 not spring from the earth. It is not a philosophy of 
 man's reasoning, a natural process of mere human 
 development, a force of his own creation ; but a revela- 
 tion from heaven, the power of God unto salvation, 
 brought into the world and into the heart of man from 
 the life and death of the Son of God. 
 
 It will be observed that in the parable tlie leaven is 
 said to be hid in the meal ; and this is an essential condi- 
 tion of its operation. It is not necessary that a particle 
 of leaven should actually come into contact with every 
 particle of the mass. It is only necessary to start the 
 process of change in a single spot in order that it may 
 permeate the whole lump, but that spot must be in the 
 centre. Were the leaven merely applied to the surface 
 of the dough, it would fail to find there the principle 
 and the conditions for its development and would be- 
 come inert. But placed in the centre, it is in the proper 
 position to exert its influence. And so is it with the 
 kingdom of heaven. That kingdom comes into super- 
 ficial contact with every human being who hears the 
 gospel, but it is only effectual when it is personally ap- 
 propriated and hid in the heart. The great reason why 
 the gospel of Christ is so inoperative in the world is 
 because it onlv touches the outside of mer.; as it were, 
 
1 68 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 comes into contact merely with their senses and their 
 intellect. They keep it at arm's length even by the very 
 respect they pay to it, even by the performance of its 
 duties, and attendance upon its means of grace, as the 
 ceremonial of a court keeps a monarch apart from his 
 subjects. To exert its renewing and transforming power, 
 therefore, it must find lodgment in the inmost sanctuary 
 of our being. It must begin its work of grace in the 
 very citadel of sin, in the heart and in the conscience. 
 It was in the secret fountains from which our being 
 issues that the awful evil of sin which has corrupted and 
 defiled us originated ; and it is there that the kingdom 
 of heaven must grapple with and destroy it. It was by 
 a deliberate and decisive act of the will that man 
 separated himself from God; by the act of the will 
 only can he be restored ; and therefore the kingdom of 
 heaven must work directly upon his will and change 
 it. It does not in the first instance act upon our out- 
 ward conduct or reach us through our senses ; it goes 
 straight to the heart, and there it works from within 
 outwardly, from the centre to the circumference. As 
 the leaven is hid in three measures of meal, this may 
 imply that the kingdom of heaven sanctifies the three 
 parts of our complex human nature, body, soul, and 
 spirit. Beginning in the soul and changing it into a 
 new creature, its effects extend to the body, elevating its 
 type, refining and ennobling its expression, and altering 
 the use of its members from instruments of sin into in- 
 struments of righteousness. It then reaches the circum- 
 stances of man, going out in ever-widening ripples to 
 
X. LEAVEN. 169 
 
 all connected with him, his interests and relations, his 
 intercourse with the world, the conduct of his business, 
 and the very tilling of the ground. 
 
 But the hiding of the leaven among the dough points 
 to the secret as well as to the internal development of 
 the kingdom of heaven. For a long time the hidden 
 working of the leaven is unknown ; the lump is ap- 
 parently unaffected; there is little or no visible effect 
 until at length it is found that the whole loaf is thoroughly 
 leavened. And was it not so with the commencement of 
 the history of the gospel in the world? The kingdom 
 that came not with observation ; the kingdom of that 
 God whose glory it is to conceal a matter, worked in the 
 hearts of men unseen and unknown for a long time. 
 Below the surface of society, which was calm and un- 
 ruffled by its impulse, its mighty change was going on. 
 No flourish of trumpets sounded its coming, no powerful 
 array of means was employed to establish it. A few 
 poor and obscure men were the apparently inadequate 
 instruments by whom it silently and irresistibly worked 
 its way into the hearts and affections of all classes of 
 the community. Not by miraculous agency — causing 
 all men to wonder, — for the power of working miracles 
 was soon withdrawn from the Church, — did the gospel 
 win its w^ay, but according to the established laws of 
 mind, and owing to its own adaptation to human wants 
 and experiences. How little did the proud heathen 
 world know that it nourished within its own bosom a 
 mightier than itself, which was destined to overthrow 
 it by transforming it into a Christian world? How 
 
T^VO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 little did the Roman world know that the very house- 
 holds of its Caesars were filled with its saints ;■ that 
 "the very ground beneath the streets of the imperial 
 city was honeycombed with the long galleries of the 
 Catacombs, wherein were laid thousands of those who 
 had already lived and died in the faith of the crucified 
 Nazarene." And as it was thus with the early course 
 of the gospel in the world, so is it in regard to its 
 commencement in every individual heart. It is there 
 also a hidden process for a time ; it works unseen. 
 Its change in the inner spiritual world is at first in- 
 visible. It roots itself in darkness like the plant in 
 the soil ; and it is only after a while that its transfor- 
 mation is seen in the outer world of a man's associations 
 and interests. 
 
 But whether hidden or manifest, the introduction of 
 leaven into the mass produces a profound disturbance. 
 A contest is at once set up between the active principle 
 of life in the leaven and the inert, sluggish dead mass of 
 the dough. Fermentation ensues, and evidences of the 
 struggle appear in the commotion within the mass, and 
 the bubbles of carbonic gas which seethe and swell 
 througli it. And was it not thus with the introduction 
 of Christianity into the dead human world? It was 
 said of its apostles that they turned the world upside 
 down. Everything had to be renewed. It was necessary 
 to upset time-rooted convictions and cherished principles. 
 The selfish ease of spiritual death was disturbed. The 
 life of the gospel in its contact with the evils and idola- 
 tries of the world, and the prejudices of men, produced 
 
X. LEA VEN. 1 7 1 
 
 a perfect ferment of excitement. It stirred up all the 
 torpid aversion to truth and purity into active hostility. 
 It was not without fierce opposition that it raised the 
 death in sin of the old world, into the newness of life 
 in Christ Jesus. And not only in the enemies of 
 religion did it produce this commotion, it excited a 
 similar ferment even in the minds of those who 
 embraced it. Was it not said of the Pentecostal converts 
 that they were like men filled with new wine ? Does 
 not St. Paul, speaking of what he saw on a large scale, 
 describe men thrown off their balance and carried away, 
 by feeling their natural faculties transformed and exalted 
 under the divine influence which Avas pervading the 
 Christian Church ! Do we not read in the history of 
 the first Christian centuries of men living in deserts and 
 caves, of men, like Simeon Stylites, standing for years 
 on the top of a pillar of stones, beaten day and night 
 by frost and sun and rain, just because " they were so 
 possessed by the new life, the boundless spiritual power 
 of the gospel, that they did not know how to use it, and 
 were like men intoxicated with this new Avine of the 
 spiritual world ! " And docs not the experience of every 
 believer testify that in him the leaven of spiritual life 
 produces a commotion between the law of his members 
 and the law of his mind ; that the new life is not only 
 a new experience, but also a new conflict in his soul, 
 his will being now on the side of conscience, and both 
 being opposed to sin? And this ferment within him, 
 which is often very painful and protracted, is just the 
 characteristic sign to the believer that a "ood work is 
 
172 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 begun in his soul ; that there is a divine life struggling 
 with the natural corruption and death of his nature, 
 and transforming it slowly and gradually into its own 
 likeness. 
 
 Our Saviour said that the process of leavening would 
 go on until the whole lump should be leavened. Much 
 has been done by the gospel in tlie world. Most rapid 
 and astonishing was the change which it produced at 
 first over forms of government and manners of life and 
 all human experiences. And that change, with many 
 pauses and interruptions, has gone on upon the whole, 
 ever widening and increasing, during all the intervening 
 Christian centuries, bringing more and more of the 
 world and of human life under its sway. But the 
 process of renovation is very far from being complete. 
 Not to speak of the overwhelmingly corrupt, sluggish 
 masses of heathenism, how much that is inert and dead 
 is there even in Christendom itself; how much spiritual 
 insensibility and torpor is there in our Christian cities, 
 in our Christian congregations, nay even in the very 
 best of our Christian members. Very far indeed is the 
 whole lump from being leavened by the blessed life 
 which Christ brought into our dead world. But let us 
 not despair either for ourselves or for the world. The 
 operations of the Spirit are slow but sure. Scripture 
 and experience alike bid us look forward in confidence 
 to the consummation of the work of the Redeemer, and 
 to the universal diffusion of the gospel throughout all 
 nations. We would magnify the triumphs of the Son 
 of God, and believe in no mere poetical exaggeration, 
 
^ LEA VEN. 
 
 173 
 
 but in sober earnestness, that the whole creation shall 
 one day be set free from corruption and translated into 
 the glorious liberty of the sons of God ; that the leaven 
 of the kingdom of heaven shall indeed so leaven the 
 whole lump of the kingdoms of this world, that they 
 shall all become the kingdom of God and of His 
 Christ. 
 
 It is said in the parable that a woman took the leaven 
 and hid it in the meal ; and this feature is introduced, 
 not because the exigencies of the parable require it— 
 the baking of the household bread being peculiarly 
 woman's work in the East,— but in order to show forth 
 the agency of the Church in the blessed work of grace. 
 In and through the Church, as the bride, the Lamb's wife, 
 in and through the means of grace which the Church 
 employs, does the work of conversion and sanctification 
 go on in the world. Only as there is life in the Church 
 to secure and preserve the conditions which are neces- 
 sary in order that this spiritual leaven may work,— its 
 own vital power and proper temperature, as well as the 
 right consistency, heat and permeabiHty of the mass to 
 be leavened; only as its doctrine is pure, its zeal ardent. 
 Its love sincere, is it honoured of God when it takes 
 the leaven and hides it in the meal, to produce a trans- 
 forming and renewing influence. God indeed sometimes 
 gives unexpected success by the power of His Spirit, to 
 show that the efficiency lies with Him; but as a rule 
 the Church can no more expect to be able to feed 
 multitudes with the bread of life, without attending to the 
 well-known conditions under which the heavenly leaven 
 
I 74 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 will work, than we can expect the laws of chemistry to 
 be set aside in the making of our daily bread. 
 
 Not representatively or vicariously however does 
 the Church work, but through each of its individual 
 members. If the Church has taken and hidden the 
 principle of spiritual life in us ; if we have got saving 
 benefit from our attendance upon the means of grace 
 ourselves, we should remember that in our own salvation 
 we have received a call to seek the salvation of others. 
 We know in the case of the natural leaven that it is 
 not necessary to introduce fresh yeast into every new 
 part of the mass. That which is itself leavened becomes 
 leaven to the rest. It is not the bare yeast-plant that 
 is used in our domestic economy to produce the catalytic 
 changes in the substances into which it is introduced, 
 but the yeast-plant associated with those substances which 
 it has changed into its own nature, to which it has im- 
 parted its own properties. Leaven, properly speaking, 
 consists of the living cells of the plant, and the nidus 
 in which tlicy live, the matter upon which they operate. 
 And so the spiritual leaven is not an abstract, impersonal 
 power or doctrine, but a heavenly principle seen in the 
 walk and conversation, hid in the Christian purity and 
 beauty of those whose hearts and lives are savingly 
 influenced by it, warm with their love, and tender and 
 true with their sweet humanity. It was not by the 
 divine Word, but by the Word made flesh, not by the 
 Son of God as He was in the bosom of the Father, but 
 by His incarnation and assumed humanity, that eternal 
 life was introduced into our world. What no authority 
 
X. LEAVEN. 175 
 
 or laws, no terrors or promises could do, God has done 
 by presenting Himself to us in the likeness of sinful flesh, 
 that we might be attracted by the sympathies of a co-na- 
 tural object, and His Spirit might breathe new life into 
 our dead souls through the responsive channels of a 
 common nature. And in like manner it is not by His 
 gospel as a mere draught of excellence, a scheme of 
 benevolence, but by His gospel as exhibited in the 
 living example, embodied in the living form of His 
 followers, that the evil influences of a living and breath- 
 ing world full of temptations that appeal strongly and 
 warmly to flesh and blood, are counteracted. It is by 
 men, not by spirits, by persons, not by principles that 
 God blesses men. It is by those who have themselves 
 been converted that God strengthens the brethren and 
 saves sinners from the error of their ways. What is 
 wanted is personal work, and personal influence ; the 
 touch of a gentle hand, the word of a tender lip, and the 
 look of a pitying eye. And human society has been 
 made a perfect network of sympathies, that the nature 
 of one individual being changed, others may be similarly 
 affected by the change ; and this process of grace once 
 started in a particular spot may be transmitted by a self- 
 propagating power, from place to place, we know not 
 how widely. 
 
 This blessed leaven is apparently of slight account 
 when judged by man's standard. He who is the leaven 
 in the highest sense had no form or comeliness when He 
 lived on earth and wrought miracles as proofs of His 
 power, and men were offended in Him and despised 
 
176 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. CH. x. 
 
 Him because of His naturalness and homeliness. And 
 His gospel, even when preached by inspired apostles, was 
 to the Jews a stumbling-block and to the Greeks foolish- 
 ness. Cut for all that, the leaven of the heavenly 
 kingdom is the mightiest force in the universe, because 
 it and it alone has eternal life. There is nothing so 
 powerful in nature as life. It is more powerful than 
 the mechanical forces, the forces of heat and light, 
 electricity and gravitation. It can overcome them and 
 use them for its own purposes. A soft living tissue is 
 always stronger than a hard dead one. The feeble, pulpy, 
 coral-polyp, which a child's hand can squelch, can never- 
 theless build structures which defy the wildest storms of 
 the ocean, and by the sheer force of life resist the mighty 
 mechanical momentum of the raging billows. A growing 
 tree splits the rock or knocks out the solid masonry of 
 the wall by which it is enclosed too tightly. A seed in 
 its germination pushes aside a stone, and a crop of tender 
 mushrooms growing under a pavement have been known 
 to lift it up bodily. And if life even in its feeblest forms 
 can do such wonderful things, what m.ay not be expected 
 from life in its highest form, from the word of God which 
 liveth and endureth for ever, from the working in men's 
 hearts, and in the world of that kingdom of heaven, 
 which amid the moving of all earthly things cannot 
 be moved I 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 MANNA AND CORN. 
 
 "And the manna ceased on the morrow after tliey had eaten of 
 the old corn of the land."— Joshua v. 12. 
 
 TTARIOUS conjectures have been formed regarding 
 V the nature of the manna, which every mornin- 
 whitened like hoar-frost the ground around the encampt 
 ment of the Israehtes in the wilderness. It was indeed 
 a miraculous substance in the sense of its having been 
 provided at the very time when, and in the very circum- 
 stances where, it was required. We can see most 
 conspicuously God's hand put forth from behind the 
 veil of His ordinary providence, in the abundance and 
 unfailing regularity of the supply, and in the exceptional 
 feature of its corruption if kept over an ordinary day, 
 and Its preservation when reserved for the Sabbath. But 
 we have no reason to believe that it was in itself a 
 miraculous substance, a material previously unknown 
 created specially for the purpose and coming down 
 straight from heaven. God economises the supernatural 
 element in His working, and makes use of ordinary 
 
 N 
 
178 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 means as far as they will go. He did not create 
 abnormal loaves and fishes in the miracle at Caper- 
 naum ; He only increased the fisherman's scanty meal 
 into a feast for thousands ; and the extended loaves and 
 fishes were in all respects the same as those which 
 formed the starting-point of the miracle. The plagues 
 of Egypt, through which the Israelites were delivered 
 from their bondage, were in the line of the natural 
 phenomena of the countr)^ The conversion of the 
 water of the Nile into blood was in accordance with 
 what takes place naturally on rare occasions. During 
 an extraordinarily dry season the river sinks to a low 
 level, the current ceases, and the stagnant water gives 
 birth to a mass of minute plants and animals of a deep 
 crimson colour. Numerous examples occur of lakes 
 and streams being thus so completely filled with an 
 abnormal development of these microscopic objects, that 
 they seemed as if converted into blood. The words of 
 the sacred narrative that the Egyptians " digged round 
 about the river for water to drink," prove that the Nile 
 was at a very low ebb on tlie occasion. The miracle 
 was therefore only a portentous and well-timed exaggera- 
 tion for a moral purpose of a natural occurrence. The 
 same may be said regarding the plague of frogs. And 
 we have every reason to believe that God's mode of 
 operation was not different in the desert of Sinai. He 
 who used the ordinary thorny growth of the desert as 
 the medium of His transcendent revelation when He 
 appeared in the burning bush, and converted the simple 
 shepherd's rod in the hand of Moses into a serpent, 
 
MANNA AND CORN. 179 
 
 and made it the instrument of compassing the dehver- 
 ance of Israel by signs and wonders, would in all likeli- 
 hood employ on this occasion a substance indigenous 
 to the desert, as the basis of the great miracle which He 
 wrought for the supply of the daily bread of His people. 
 Such a substance might well have been the white hard 
 exudation that drops from the thorns of the tamarisk 
 shrub, and frequently covers the ground to a considerable 
 extent, which is used for food at the present day by 
 the Arabs, and to which they give the name of manna. 
 We cannot expect to trace an exact correspondence, for 
 some of the qualities and conditions of the manna of 
 Scripture were unmistakably supernatural. It is suffici- 
 ent if the natural object could serve as a mere fulcrum 
 for the miracle. 
 
 But whatever might have been the nature and origin 
 of the mysterious substance which God made use of, 
 it is evident that the manna was intended to serve a wise 
 and gracious purpose in the religious economy of the 
 Israelites. They had followed Moses into the wilder- 
 ness beyond the reach of ordinary food ; where, owing to 
 the nature of the soil and climate, they could neither sow 
 nor reap, and where there was no native provision for 
 their wants. They were in the wilderness, in obedience 
 to God's command, to be trained and disciplined under 
 . His own immediate eye, and amid simple and severe 
 conditions favourable for the checking of all that was 
 evil in them and fostering all that was good, in order 
 that they might thus be fit to occupy the Holy Land, 
 and to become God's holy priesthood for the blessing of 
 
I So rr/'O WORLDS are ours. chap. 
 
 all the families of the earth. God therefore engaged to 
 give them what they could not provide for themselves. 
 He who said that if we seek first the kingdom of God 
 and His righteousness all other things that we truly 
 need will be given to us, furnished a remarkable illustra- 
 tion of the truth of the promise in the experience of the 
 Israelites. There was no want to those who feared God 
 and did His will ; bread was given to them and their 
 water was sure, even if the bread had to come down 
 from heaven and the water had to be produced from the 
 flinty rock by the smiting of the miraculous rod. The 
 whole life of the Israelites in the wilderness was a life of 
 visible dependence upon the providence of God. They 
 were the pilgrim nation, strangers and sojourners with 
 God. They dwelt in His tent ; they ate of His salt ; and 
 He made Himself directly chargeable for their safety and 
 provision. What He did for other people by round- 
 about secondary means, He did for them directly and 
 immediately. The arm that to other nations was clothed 
 with the ordinary ways and means by which human food 
 is supplied, to them was made bare. They saw behind 
 the scenes, as it were, and God appeared to them visibly 
 as the source of all their blessings. They had renounced 
 the life of sense for the life of faith, and realised that 
 man does not live by bread alone, but by every word 
 that cometh out of the mouth of God. 
 
 But this supernatural life was not to last for ever. It 
 was appropriate to the wilderness, God's special dwelling- 
 place, as it were, where there was nothing but God and 
 nature ; but it was not suitable to the Promised Lanil, 
 
XT- MANNA AND CORN. l8i 
 
 where all the conditions of a natural human life existed, 
 and which was the haunt of man as well as the scene of 
 nature's most beneficent operations. It was necessarj', 
 when in the desert, where man could not sow, or reap, or 
 procure support by his own efforts, that he should be fed 
 with manna from heaven ; but in a region of agriculture, 
 where man's ordinary labour sufficed to supply his ordi- 
 nary wants, the manna would be altogether superfluous. 
 And accordingly we read that when the Israelites first 
 tasted of the corn of Canaan at Gilgal, the manna which 
 had been their food for so many years previously ceased 
 at once. The natural, which is always, superseded the 
 supernatural, which is only occasional. The miracle 
 must give place to the common processes of life. The 
 training of the Israelites in the wilderness was that of 
 children, in which all things were done for them ; but 
 the training of the Promised Land was that of grown-up 
 men who were to keep themselves. As a father feeds 
 his children in his household while they are children, but 
 when they are old enough to leave the parental roof he 
 allows them to take upon themselves the burden of their 
 own support, along with the active duties of life; so 
 He who fed the children of Israel at His own table 
 in the wilderness, when He brought them into the 
 Promised Land left them to provide their own food in 
 the sweat of their face, and to undertake the work of 
 persons who had grown strong, and wise, and capable 
 under His fostering care. 
 
 The manna ceasing when the Israelites ate of the corn 
 of Canaan teaches us the lesson that God's help is gi\ en, 
 
l82 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 not to supersede our self-help, but to enable us to help 
 ourselves. He gave manna when the Israelites could 
 not provide their own food, and continued it only till 
 they were able to sujjply themselves. Thus was it with 
 our Saviour's miracles of healing. He removed the dis- 
 abilities which prevented the sufTerers from earning their 
 own bread and helping themselves in the struggle of life. 
 Those who were lagging behind their fellows in the race 
 because of physical weakness and incapacity, He brought 
 to the front, and restored to them in full vigour the 
 power which would enable them henceforth to hold their 
 own. And there His aid stopped. He did not encumber 
 any one with help ; He did not enrich any one or give 
 to any one advantages which others did not possess ; 
 He simply gave the subjects of His miraculous cures the 
 jjower to help themselves. And as in natural so does 
 God act in spiritual things. He helps us to help our- 
 selves. We must work out our own salvation, for it is 
 God that worketh in us both to will and to do of His 
 good pleasure. No one can truly know what it is to 
 find his sufficiency in God but he who puts forth all the 
 strength which he himself possesses. It is exactly in 
 proportion as we strive to do all, and strive in vain, 
 that we can have an experimental consciousness of God's 
 almighty aid. And thus the believer feels that God's 
 strength is made perfect in his own weakness. 
 
 The difference between manna and corn is most 
 suggestive. Manna was a supernatural product pro- 
 vided directly by Divine power. It came to the 
 Israelites in tlie wilderness without any toil or trouble 
 
XI. MANNA And corn. 183 
 
 of their own. No tiller of the ground had wrought for 
 it in the sweat of his face, and therefore it was but little 
 esteemed by the Israelites. They soon lost their relish 
 for it ; it became tasteless and insipid, and their souls 
 loathed it in the end. It could not possibly satisfy 
 natures so constituted that all their truest joys should 
 come from sorrows, all their highest gains from losses, 
 and all their noblest achievements from the sorest pains 
 and greatest sacrifices. What was easily procured 
 ministered no satisfaction. But corn, on the other 
 hand, implies and involves great and continuous labour. 
 A sacrifice is made, a loss sustained in parting with the 
 seed-corn. There is much sweat of the face in pre- 
 paring the ground for its reception ; faith is exercised in 
 entrusting it to the earth ; patience and hope in watch- 
 ing its growth and waiting for its ripening ; and toil again 
 is required in reaping, storing, and preparing the harvest 
 for bread. Thus at every step and stage of its growth 
 and preparation for food the corn demands the sweat of 
 the face and the sorrow of the soul, and requires that 
 man should be a fellow-worker with God. And is there 
 not the same wide difference in spiritual things between 
 manna and corn — between what is given to us without 
 any toil or trouble of our own, and what is wrought 
 out for us and in us, as the result of our own toil and, 
 it may be, our own sad experience? No doubt we 
 should prefer manna to com ; we should like to get 
 heavenly blessings straight out of God's hands. But 
 the rule of the Divine kingdom is, " no cross, no crown." 
 Divine blessings are different from fairy favours. The 
 
1 84 TIVO IVOA'LDS A HE OURS. chap. 
 
 same law which enjoined that in the sweat ot our face we 
 should eat our natural bread, has enjoined that in the 
 sweat of the soul we should eat our spiritual bread. 
 We pray to God for heavenly-mindedness, and God, in 
 answer to our prayer, places us in circumstances in which 
 this grace will be the result of our own experience. He 
 takes away some cherished object or beloved person, or 
 defeats some favourite plan ; and weaned by disappoint- 
 ment, failure, or sorrow from earth, we put our trust 
 in heaven. We cannot get any natural blessing that 
 is worth having except by patient waiting and self- 
 denying effort ; and assuredly we cannot get any 
 spiritual blessings without a similar expenditure of toil 
 and trouble. In no other way would God's spiritual 
 or natural blessings do us good. Only in this Divine 
 way does the procuring of them act as a heavenly 
 discipline, counteracting the evil tendencies of our 
 nature, enabling us to sympathise with the plans and 
 hopes of God, and fitting us for the enjoyment of His 
 everlasting rest. 
 
 When the Israelites entered the Holy Land, God 
 gave them at first the corn of their enemies, as He had 
 given them the manna of the wilderness. They spoiled 
 the granaries of the former inhabitants of the land, and 
 subsisted upon the fruit of their labour. They ate com 
 for which they themselves had not toiled, as they in- 
 habited houses which they themselves had not built 
 That was necessary — just as it is necessary for the child 
 to be supported at first by its mother's nourishment, 
 and the young plant by the provision stored up in the 
 
xr. MANNA AND CORN. 185 
 
 seed. But this old corn would last only a little while ; 
 it would cease as the manna had ceased. When it was 
 done the Israelites would have to sow and reap their 
 fields in order to get a new supply ; they would have to 
 provide for themselves by the toil of their hands. And 
 how significant of the new life which it nourished was the 
 new corn in these circumstances ! The Israelites looked 
 forward from the wilderness to the Promised Land as 
 the place of consummation and rest. All conflict, hard- 
 ship, and toil would there be over for ever; all hopes 
 and desires would be fulfilled ; and life would be one 
 long holiday of ease and enjoyment in a land flowing 
 witli milk and honey. But they found that their former 
 discipline in the new circumstances was not ended, but 
 only changed in its character ; that amid golden corn- 
 fields and rich pastures and luxuriant vineyards they 
 would have to practise in even higher degree the virtues 
 which the wilderness-life called forth. The tenure of the 
 Holy Land was a moral one, and only on stern moral 
 conditions could it be owned. They had to enter it as 
 armed soldiers and to conquer every inch of it ; and they 
 had to hold it by a repetition of the same toils and self- 
 denials by which tliey had won it. And how symbolical 
 was the new corn of the land — the bread for which they 
 toiled in the sweat of their face — of this life of self- 
 conquest and devotion which it sustained ! It might 
 seem that their life in the wilderness, directly sup- 
 ported by God and under His immediate care, was 
 higher and more heavenly than their life in Canaan, 
 sowing and reaping their fields, and providing for their 
 
1 86 TiyO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 wants by their own labour. But it was not so ; for the 
 wilderness-life fed by the manna of heaven was only an 
 introduction to, and a preparation for, the higher life 
 of Canaan fed by the corn of earth. And let us 
 remember this solemn fact when we are tempted to 
 think that life spent in directly religious acts in the 
 sanctuar}', at the communion-table, in the closet, a 
 holier and more acceptable life to God than the life 
 spent in the place of business and in our homes, in 
 evcry-day duties and labours. When we look beyond 
 any wilderness of trial and discipline, in which we may 
 be at present toiling and struggling, to any promised 
 land of fulfilled hope and rest in the future, we must 
 bear in mind the fact that we shall there be fed not 
 with manna that costs us nothing, but with corn which 
 requires toil and self-denial. The higher life upon 
 which we enter is only a more serious and painful life 
 than we had known before. 
 
 The incident of the manna of the wilderness giving 
 place to the corn of Canaan is in entire harmony with 
 all God's dealings with man. The dispensation that 
 was inaugurated by supernatural manifestations is carried 
 on by common helps, and through the homely experi- 
 ences of human life. The signs and wonders which 
 opened a new era, or were needed to produce faith in 
 great emergencies, are not perpetuated in ordinary cir- 
 cumstances. The creation commenced with a stupendous 
 miracle, but is preserved by the quiet and uniform 
 methods of nature. The law of Moses, that was given 
 amid the thunders and lightnings of Sinai, was put in 
 
MANNA AND CORN. 187 
 
 force throughout the continuous history of Israel by 
 its own solemn sanctions. The Christianity which first 
 took its place in history by the aid of astonishing 
 miracles appealing to the senses, now maintains its 
 position by its own unobtrusive spiritual power. The 
 gifts of Divine inspiration, which were shown objectively 
 to men in the tongues of flame and the mighty rushing 
 wind of Pentecost, were discontinued when tlie work 
 of the Holy Ghost was carried on spiritually in all 
 places and in all hearts. What is necessary on the 
 stage of initiation disappears from the stage of a fixed 
 institution. The morning glow fades into the common 
 light of day ; the heavenly manna of the desert merges 
 into the corn of the cultivated land. Our Saviour said 
 even of Himself, the archetype of the manna, that it 
 was expedient that He should go away from the disciples 
 and from the world. The continued presence of the 
 Saviour visibly upon earth would have been a con- 
 tinual stimulus to the faculty of wonder and awe, 
 and in that respect would have been hurtful to 
 the life of faith. It was necessary therefore that He 
 should be withdrawn from sight, in order that He might 
 be apprehended in His true character by the soul. 
 The supernatural life in the visible presence of Jesus 
 must merge into the natural life of faith and hope amid 
 ordinary circumstances. The restored demoniac would 
 have liked to remain constantly with Jesus, feeding upon 
 the manna of Christ's wonderful words and deeds. But 
 Jesus knew that it would not be good for himself or 
 others that he should thus repose idly upon the bosom 
 
l88 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 of incarnate love and be sustained in this miraculous 
 ■\va)'; and therefore sent him away to proclaim to others 
 the wonderful tidings of his restoration, and to find that 
 in doing good to others he was getting good to his own 
 soul ; to feed upon the com sweetened to him by his 
 own toil and trouble. The young believer who has seen 
 Nvith rapturous eye the ascended Saviour on the throne 
 of glory must forego the contemplation of the sublime 
 spectacle, and return to the streets of Jerusalem, and 
 there, among the hard realities of every-day life, work 
 and wait for his Lord. The enthusiastic disciple must 
 go down from the Mount where he has seen his Lord 
 transfigured, and, amid commonplace cares, duties, and 
 trials, strive to work out his salvation with fear and 
 trembling, and to make the world fairer and happier 
 because of his presence and his work in it. 
 
 God gives at appropriate times meat to eat which 
 the world knoweth not of — hidden manna, living bread 
 direct from heaven. And when the manna is withdrawn 
 and we are supplied with corn — with human nature's 
 daily food — let us seek to profit by what the manna 
 has done for us and taught us. We have received 
 spiritual food that we may have grace and strength to 
 carry on the common duties of life. We have tasted 
 that the Lord is gracious on the Holy Mount that we 
 may follow hard after Him along the beaten paths of 
 life. The life imparted by Divine power must be 
 sustained by human means. The extraordinary, appro- 
 priate to times of religious excitement, must pass into 
 the ordinary experience. What is tlie birth of a 
 
XI. AfANNA AND CORN. 189 
 
 remarkable occasion must become the habit of an 
 ordinary life. If we only have faith, the corn of every- 
 day duty \vill minister to us nourishment and growth 
 in grace, as truly as the manna of special communion 
 and fellowship with Jesus at His own table. The corn 
 is as much God's gift as the manna. It is as wonderful 
 and as Divine. It is as truly heavenly food, and it is 
 the food convenient for us. Our bodies, if nourished 
 exclusively by organised materials and chemically pre- 
 pared food, would waste and starve ; and our souls, if 
 fed exclusively upon spiritual things, would become weak 
 and inane. This common evcry-day life of ours — whose 
 petty details and weary routine we are apt to regard as 
 inconsistent with the high ideals of the soul — is in reality 
 the most sacred and momentous thing in the universe. 
 Let us seek by the grace of God to make it what Jesus 
 made it by His experience on earth. Let us adorn the 
 doctrine of God our Saviour, not by fellowship with 
 Himself only in the lonely wilderness, not by communion 
 with His people on sacramental occasions only, but by 
 the spectacle to the world of our industry, our purity, 
 our truth, our honesty, our kindness and charity in all 
 our duties and relationships. And thus we shall con- 
 tinue to eat angels' food ; and while labouring for 
 the meat that perisheth, we shall be nourished and 
 strengthened at the same time by the meat that 
 endureth unto everlasting life. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 THE AUTUMN FIRE. 
 
 "lie will throughly purge His floor."' — St. Matthew iii. 12. 
 
 A HIDDEN fire burns perpetually upon the hearth 
 of the world. Scientific men call it by the 
 hard name of eremacausis, which means quiet or slow 
 burning. We see its effects in the fading of leaves, 
 in the rusting of iron, and in the mantling of the rosy 
 blush upon the cheek of youth. Every tree is a burning 
 bush. In a glory of blossoms vegetation in spring 
 flames from its embers. The lips of the crimson-tipped 
 daisies are touched with a live coal from ofi" the great 
 altar of nature. We speak of the lamp of life as a 
 mere poetical expression, but it is scientifically true ; 
 our bodies are burning away as on a funeral pyre, and 
 eveiy breath we exhale is the smoke of the fire that 
 consumes us. 
 
 In autumn this great conflagration becomes especially 
 manifest. Then the flame tliat is slowly and mysteri- 
 ously consuming every green thing bursts into vi\id 
 radiance. Every blade of grass in the fields and ever)- 
 
THE A UTUMN FIRE. 1 9 r 
 
 leaf in the woodlands is cast into the great oven of 
 nature ; and the bright colours of their fading are 
 literally the flames of their consuming. The golden 
 harvest-fields are glowing in the heart of the furnace, 
 and the ripe ears of corn are filled with the ashes 
 that have gathered around the smouldering fire of life 
 in order to preserve it; for the starchy products that 
 are deposited in the ears of corn, and which constitute 
 the food of man, are the result of the limitation and 
 quieting of the vital activity of the plant, bringing 
 with it a condition of sleep, from which the brown 
 grains will awaken in tlie germination of spring, just 
 as the careful housewife covers her fire with its own 
 ashes at night to preserve it for rekindling in the 
 morning. The yearly sacrifice of the first-fruits, golden 
 sheaves of speared barley and wheat, and purple grapes 
 on tinted leaves, which the autumn lays upon the altar 
 of nature as a thank-off"ering for the fertilising sunshine 
 and the softening rain, is thus salted with fire. And at 
 this sacrifice in the great world-tabernacle the scarlet 
 poppy, the corn blue-bottle, and the purple cockle, that 
 produce such brilliant patches of colour among the 
 sober corn, are like the veil of blue and purple and 
 scarlet which was removed from the Jewish altar when 
 used in the service of the sanctuary ; the beautiful thus 
 covering and imparting a mystic value to the useful. 
 
 By this autumn fire God every year purges the floor 
 of nature. All effete substances that have served their 
 purpose in the old form are burnt up, and only what 
 has the promise of life and usefulness passes scatheless 
 
192 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 through the ordeal. The straw and the chaff are con- 
 sumed, and the wheat remains. The wheat itself is 
 burnt in the kiln not made with hands, in preparation 
 for its burning in artificial ovens for human food. With- 
 out this burning the earth would be cumbered and 
 polluted with its own produce every year, and all fresh 
 growth would be impossible. Everywhere God makes 
 sweet and clean the earth with fire. His flaming besom 
 sweeps from sight, in the most obscure nooks as well 
 as in the open places, the impurities of death and 
 decay, in order to prepare the stage for fresh life and 
 new growth. Over the ravages of the yellow flames 
 of autumn comes the soft, green, healing verdure of 
 spring. Last year's stubble is burnt into the soil, and 
 from the ashes shoots forth a new crop. The red, 
 withered leaves of the woodland are pushed off by 
 the young foliage, into whose brightness their dead 
 substance passes. And every year in spring the earth 
 rises from the great baptismal fire in Edenic fresh- 
 ness and beauty, renewed and transfigured, but ever 
 the same. 
 
 This process of purification is helped by living agents 
 as well as by dead forces. In the woods and fields, the 
 moment a plant becomes delicate, owing to uncongenial 
 soil, situation, or other circumstance, or gets smothered 
 by a more vigorous rival, fungi set upon it and bum it 
 by their respiration as effectually as if it were dried 
 and set fire to. The mission of those curious organisms, 
 that shroud decaying vegetation in autumn in a maze 
 and network of white fleecy mould, is to consume 
 
XII. THE AUTUMN FIRE. I93 
 
 effete substances and render them fit to enter into 
 new forms in the vortex of life. Every blade of grass, 
 and every leaf on a tree has its own fungus, which 
 hastens the process of decomposition, and conserves 
 the valuable materials of life for further use in the 
 great household of nature. Even in the waters this 
 wonderful process of oxidation goes on ; and it is re- 
 markable how quickly streams clear themselves from 
 impurities caused by the natural contamination of the 
 soil through which they flow, or introduced into them 
 by sewage or by manufactures. The green, slippery 
 substance which adheres to the stones in their channel, 
 and which is composed of minute thread-like i)lants, 
 called confervcc and diatoms, performs the same service 
 in the waters which the fungi perform in the fields and 
 woods : it burns up the products of decay that pollute 
 the streams. In mountain districts it lives at the cost 
 of the peaty matter which gives a dark brown tinge 
 to the tarns and burns, and produces by its action the 
 clear pebbly channel and the light silver strand, ovei 
 which the dimpled wavelets laugh in the sunshine. 
 
 As God thus purges His floor in nature, so He does 
 in grace. We have a striking example of the effect of 
 this autumn fire in the removal of the effete things of 
 the Levitical institution. The Mosaic dispensation had 
 become dead ripe. It had served its purpose. Its 
 burdensome ritual had only the shadow of good things 
 to come and could make nothing perfect. It was 
 merely the straw by means of whicli the true bread 
 of the gospel was to be produced, the foliage through 
 
 
 
194 T'frC) WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 which the fruit of grace was to be developed ; and 
 therefore as the straw withers when the full corn in 
 the ear is formed and the foliage fades when the fruit 
 is matured, so the Mosaic dispensation waxed old and 
 was ready to disappear when the new and better 
 Covenant was established. The author of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews refers to this ripening of the ordinances 
 of the ceremonial law in preparation for Christianity, 
 in the sublime chapter that ends with the significant 
 words, " For our God is a consuming fire." The in- 
 spired writer in this chapter speaks of the removal of 
 all the temporary and perishing things of the Old 
 Testament economy — the things that hindered the com- 
 plete establishment of Christianity in the Jewish world 
 and in the heart of the Jewish Christians. The Hebrew 
 converts to whom the Epistle was written wore clinging 
 with almost idolatrous afiection to the ceremonies and 
 associations of the law, to the sacrifices and services 
 of the Temple, and by so doing were neutralising the 
 teaching of the gospel, rendering of no effect their 
 faith in Christ, and preventing themselves from going 
 on to perfection in the Christian life. They needed 
 therefore to be reminded — and the object of the whole 
 Epistle, as well as of the particular chapter in question, 
 is so to remind them — that the institutions of the 
 law liad no permanent value in themselves, but were 
 only preparatory to Christianity ; that they had done 
 the i)art for which they were designed, and were now 
 to be superseded by the higher and more spiritual 
 beliefs and practices of the gospel. The things which 
 
XII. 7 HE AUTUMN FIRE. 19S 
 
 had no abiding principle, which, like the chaff, were 
 necessary to form the grain, but did not form part of 
 the substance of the grain itself, wore to be shaken 
 in order that the things which cannot be shaken might 
 remain ; as the withered chaff is blown away from the 
 ripe wheat which is carefully gathered into the barn. 
 Wherefore, says the inspired writer, we receiving a 
 kingdom which cannot be moved, a kingdom of great 
 and eternal gospel realities, the substances of the 
 shadows of the law, let us serve God acceptably, not 
 with the sacrifices and ritual of the law, for these are 
 no longer acceptal^le, but with spiritual things, with 
 the love of the heart, with the faith of the soul, with 
 the devotion of the life, with reverence and with godly 
 fear. The things which under the law were gain to 
 the Hebrew converts should now be counted loss, yea 
 as dung, and refuse from which all the nourishing sub- 
 stances have been extracted and utilised — for the ex- 
 cellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus. In this way 
 then God manifested Himself as a consuming fire. As 
 the autumn fire burns up the ripe growth of the fields, 
 so the fire of God burnt up in the same quiet, gradual 
 manner the temporary and preparatory expedients of 
 the Old Testament economy. He consumed the yellow 
 blade and ear, the straw and chaff, and conserved the 
 full corn in the ear ; and laid up for ever the permanent 
 produce of these provisional institutions, as the shew- 
 bread in the holy of holies of the greater and more 
 perfect tabernacle not made witli hands. As the priest 
 of old consumed on the altar of burnt offering the 
 
 o 2 
 
I9<> TfyO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 sacrifice that was offered, and thus exhaled to heaven 
 its ethereal essence, so God consumed on the altar of 
 Christianity the whole Levitical ritualism, and now He 
 is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth. 
 
 Jesus came in the autumn of the world, when all 
 things had grown ripe and old, and all growth had 
 ceased. He came to gather in tlie harvest of all pre- 
 vious dispensations, the fruits of seeds that had been 
 sown, and had been growing and ripening during all 
 the former ages. He came to cast fire upon the earth, 
 to burn up the chaff of withered and effete institutions. 
 His was a fiery baptism which thoroughly purged His 
 floor — which consumed the stubble and the withered 
 herbage and foliage of the old growth that had served 
 its purpose in the religious culture of a former age, 
 and prepared them for being worked up into the fresh 
 living verdure and new developments of the spring- 
 time of grace. The baptism of John was a process 
 of purification ; but it was only a baptism of water. 
 Water can only remove superficial impurities ; it cannot 
 take away what is ingrained ; it can cleanse surface and 
 accidental or temporary stains, but it cannot change 
 the nature of anything. And so the baptism of John 
 could produce ceremonial purity, but it could not cleanse 
 the sinful heart, or transform the erring and polluted 
 mind. It could remove outward abuses and rectify 
 vicious habits, and produce a reformation of conduct ; 
 it could wash away, so to speak, those apparent evils 
 wliirh clog up the pores of the spirit and jirevent the 
 light and air of heaven from entering in, just as the 
 
X " • THE A UTUAIN FIRE. 
 
 197 
 
 washing of water cleanses the pores of the skin, and 
 allows the genial influences of nature to act upon our 
 internal economy. It prepared the way of Christ by 
 removing those evils, and reforming those abuses in 
 the Church and world which had grown up under ages 
 of Pharisaic righteousness and mere formal mechanical 
 goodness ; but it could communicate no vital influence ; 
 it could give no renewing power. The baptism of Jesus,' 
 on the other hand, was a baptism of fire, and fire pene- 
 trates every substance submitted to its action, and 
 changes it into its own nature. It transforms the black 
 coal into vivid brightness; it fuses the coarse ore into 
 the brilliant metal. The fire of life in our bodies 
 consumes their vvaste and stimulates the vital powers. 
 The fire of life in nature burns up all its decay and 
 prepares it for new growth. And so in the fulness of 
 tmie Jesus passed hke an autumn fire over all the dead 
 products of human attainment, thoroughly purging His 
 floor. He caused, by the same fire of grace, to^grow 
 la spnng freshness and beauty that fruit which is unto 
 holiness, and whose end is everlasting life. 
 
 But not once only in the end of the world did 
 Jesus come to thoroughly purge His floor with this 
 sacred fire. In nature there is not only one season 
 in which the sere, dry herbage of the fields and the 
 foliage of the woods glow in the great autumnal flame 
 but the fire of decay also flickers even among new' 
 fresh growths all the year round. There is an autumn 
 in every spring and summer. The candle burns at both 
 ends. The plant that bears upon the top of the stem 
 
19S TH^O WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 a brilliant flower has at the foot of it withered cotyledon 
 leaves as scarlet or yellow as the petals themselves. 
 The flame that glows at one end as a beautiful, fragrant 
 blossom, at the other burns as a sere and yellow leaf. 
 Among the evergreen foliage of the pine or the laurel 
 are brown, faded leaves that drop off without being 
 noticed. Growth and decay keep pace with each other; 
 and the fire that here bursts into green, luxuriant Hfe, 
 there smoulders in the dying embers of the closing 
 year. So Jesus not only came during the great autumn 
 of the world's history to burn up all the old, effete 
 things, and to make all things new, but He is coming 
 continually to purge His floor, and His fire of purifica- 
 tion is unquenchable. That which hath no promise of 
 life in it, no promise of blessing, however fair and 
 specious its outward appearance may be. He burns 
 like chaff. He destroys everything that has only a 
 partial or transient purpose to ser\'e, when it has done 
 its work. He shakes all temporary things and removes 
 them, that all eternal things which cannot be shaken 
 may remain unhindered and undimmed. And in each 
 of these partial and temporary consumings He anti- 
 cipates and foreshadows what He will do in the great 
 and final judgment, when everything that is purely 
 subordinate and distinctive in religion, ever)'thing that 
 is extraneous to the spiritual nature, however necessary 
 to educate it, everything that bears the stamp of man's 
 weakness, ignorance, and sinfulness, will disappear; and 
 out of the wrecks of the world and of the Church, only 
 a living faith in the atoning Saviour, the hope that 
 
XII. THE AUTUMN FIRE. 199 
 
 maketh not ashamed, and the charity which is the bond 
 of perfectness, will remain. "And now abideth faith, 
 hope, charity, these three." "If any man build upon 
 this foundation, gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, 
 stubble, every man's work shall be made manifest; it 
 shall be revealed by fire, and the fire shall try every 
 man's work, of what sort it is." 
 
 In each human heart this sacred autumn fire of 
 purification is burning as a vestal flame. To each 
 human being the apostolic precept is uttered, " Quench 
 not the Spirit ; " put not out the heavenly fire, which 
 God has kindled, by sensual pleasures, by love of the 
 world, or by careless neglect ; for this vital heat of life 
 once extinguished, spiritual death is sure to follow. 
 But if suffered to exert its full influence, if fanned 
 and cherished, it cannot in any case be powerless for 
 good. It begins its blessed work like the falling of 
 a spark upon inflammable matter, which gains strength 
 in proportion to the degree of faith and love that are 
 exercised, until at last it bursts into a flame of holiness, 
 transforming and renewing the whole man. And as by 
 the hidden fire of physical life shut up in our bodies, 
 these bodies are purified from the waste caused by 
 their own exercise, and are able to transmute the fruits 
 of the earth into parts of their own vital substance; 
 so by the fire of the Spirit in our hearts, these hearts 
 are purified from all their stains and secret sins, and 
 can assimilate and derive the materials of growtli in 
 grace from all the experiences of life. What a won- 
 derful transformation took place in the apostles when 
 
200 TiyO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 the tongues of fire at Pentecost sat upon them ! The 
 change was so manifest, so all-pervading, that it could 
 not be overlooked or misunderstood. The apostles 
 were no more the obtuse, selfish, cowardly men that 
 the disciples had been ; but with pure hearts and un- 
 selfish zeal and uncompromising boldness they pro- 
 claimed the truth, and were ready to be offered up 
 on the altar of their devotion. And such is the effect 
 of the Spirit's manifestation now. He comes as a 
 spirit of judgment and a spirit of burning, to separate 
 the cliaff from the wheat and the vile from the pure, 
 and to make men new creatures in Christ Jesus. 
 
 In each human life the heavenly fire of discipline 
 burns. God suffers no one to escape this ordeal. No 
 Divine change can be wrought even in the best of 
 His people except by passing through the fire of trial 
 appointed by God's providence. And just as each 
 plant, when dead and withered, has its own fungus, 
 which consumes it and thus helps to purify the earth 
 from the encumbrance, so each transgression has its 
 own special punishment connected with it, the inten- 
 tion of which is to destroy it and turn the transgressor 
 into the path of life. Such a process is indeed not 
 joyous, but grievous. It burns up and destroys much 
 to which the heart fondly clings, much which in the 
 eyes of the natural man is precious. It is hard to 
 part with cherished affections and abandon old habits ; 
 but the issue is glorious. 
 
 Blessed is the life that is thus purified by the autumn 
 fire of God's chastisements ; for as in Nature the fairest 
 
THE A UrUMN FIRE. 
 
 and most fertile regions are those which have been 
 subjected to volcanic fires, so green pastures of grace 
 will spring up where sinful desires and unhallowed 
 feelings have burnt down to their own gray ashes. 
 Nor is the autumn of the soul less beautiful than the 
 autumn of Nature, amid all its sadness. It has in it 
 as much of life as of death, of renewal as of destruc- 
 tion. It is as gorgeous in its adieus as spring in its 
 greetings. The fire that gives the hectic hue to the 
 withered leaf imparts the glowing scarlet to the late 
 autumn blossom. While the old things of the natural 
 life are burnt away in that pure oxidizing process of 
 grace which can abide no waste or decay, the new 
 things of the spiritual life are kindled into more radiant 
 loveliness. And if the present autumnal fire of God's 
 dealings with us has thoroughly purged our floor, we 
 need not fear any future fire of judgment. We are 
 like the Indian who burns a space of ground around 
 him to save him from the great prairie conflagration. 
 All that can be consumed has already been consumed, 
 and while the elements melt with fprvent heat, and the 
 new heavens and the new earth are being prepared 
 through the final baptism of fire, we shall not be 
 afraid ; for we shall be in harmony with the order and 
 beauty of all the worlds. We shall pass unscathed 
 through the devouring fire. Fire cannot bum or destroy 
 fire. A life that is as ethereal and pure as fire itself 
 can remain unhurt in the midst of it. If God be a 
 consuming fire, then we can dwell with Him, even 
 amid the everlasting burnincrs. 
 
202 TPVO WORLDS ARE OURS. CH. xii. 
 
 If we are pained and suffer loss by the autumn fire 
 now, it is ever a comforting thought that it belongs to 
 the dispensation of Sinai — of the mount that might be 
 touched and that burned as with fire, and is but the 
 partial and preparatory revelation of God. Fire is 
 caused by the world's disharmony, and will cease for 
 ever when there is nothing to purify and nothing to 
 remove. And the only memory of it that shall remain 
 to us in the final and crowning dispensation, in which 
 God will be our everlasting light and our God our 
 glory, will be the seven lamps of fire burning before 
 the Throne. These will complete the baptism of fire 
 begun on earth, replenish all minds with heavenly light, 
 inspire all hearts with holy love, and touch all \\\)% 
 with serapliic fire. And they will shed the opalescent 
 gleams of their unquenchable, unconsuming flame on 
 the sea of glass mingled with fire — God's floor which 
 has been thoroughly purged for the tread of feet that 
 Jesus' hands have washed, and for the sweep of robes 
 that His blood has made white. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 THE FRUIT-TREE AND THE CHAFF. 
 
 "He shall be like &. tree planted by the rivers of water, that 
 bringeth forth his fruit in his season ; his leaf also shall not 
 w ither. The ungodly are not so ; but are like the chaff which 
 the wind driveth away." — Psalm i. 3, 4. 
 
 THE first Psalm forms a most appropriate intro- 
 duction to the whole Psalter. It strikes the 
 key-note of those statutes of God which are the song 
 of His people in the house of their pilgrimage. Like 
 an illuminated initial letter, it presents a graphic picture 
 of the contrast between the blessedness of the righteous 
 and the misery of the wicked, under the emblem, on 
 the one hand, of a fruit-tree flourishing beside a river 
 and on the other, of a handful of chaff winnowed by 
 the wind. It brings back, in the one case, the Edenic 
 condition of our unfallen first parents dwelling safely 
 and happily beside the tree of life and the four rivers 
 tliat watered the primeval paradise ; and in the other, 
 it shows us how the doom of banishment iiito the 
 wilderness — separation from the life and blessedness of 
 
204 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 God, as the withered chaff is separated from the beautiful 
 fruitful plant, and blown away by the desert-breeze — the 
 doom inflicted upon Adam and Eve after they fell, is 
 repeated in the history of every soul that sinneth wil- 
 fully and persistently against its better knowledge. We 
 cannot help thinking that there was a conscious reference 
 to the imagery of the first Psalm in the words with which 
 John the Baptist began his preaching of repentance : 
 " He will thoroughly purge His floor, and gather His 
 wheat into the garner ; but He will bum up the chaff 
 with uncjuenchable fire ; " and also in the saying with 
 which our Lord Himself commenced His public 
 ministry : " A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, 
 neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every 
 tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, 
 and cast into the fire." 
 
 Let us look briefly at the significance of the picture 
 which the Psalmist paints for us — the striking analogies 
 of the fruit-tree and the chaff. 
 
 I. A fruit-tree planted on the banks of a ri\ er suggests 
 to us, first, stability. The tree is firmly rooted in the 
 soil, so that it can resist the storm. It is the most 
 steadfast and enduring of all living things. There are 
 trees still standing that have lived through the whole 
 history of England, and, in what remains of them, are 
 as fresh and green as in their prime, showing no signs 
 of old age or decay. Etymologically, the word tree is 
 cognate with the Anglo-Saxon word tnozoan, to trust, 
 to prove, which still survives in our word trcnc. Truth 
 and trust are sister terms ; these qualities being literally 
 
xin. THE FRUIT-TREE AND THE CHAFF. 205 
 
 trees of the mind, firmly rooted in the soil of mental 
 conviction. The Hebrew word for tree expresses the 
 same attribute of strength and endurance. In this 
 respect a tree is beautifully symbolical of the stability 
 of the righteous. They are rooted in the divine love. 
 They have a strength and unity of character which 
 enables them to overcome the common temptations of 
 daily life as well as the great storms of persecution and 
 trial. Their belief has passed beyond the reach of 
 perturbation or shock. They have so grasped the 
 truth of the glorious grace and faithfulness of the 
 God of heaven, that it has rooted them into a kindred 
 constancy. Their life is redeemed from its vanity 
 and perishableness by being united to Him who only 
 hath life. 
 
 But the idea of the fruit-tree planted by a river 
 implies access to a perennial source of 7iourishment and 
 refreshment. This is a peculiarly oriental image. A 
 river in the arid East is an artery of life, and only 
 on its banks do trees cluster and grasses grow. A 
 tree, therefore, with its head in the torrid sunshine, 
 and its feet laved by a perpetual stream that has its 
 source far up a snowy mountain, is one of the most 
 beautiful images of a righteous man, who flourishes in 
 the withering atmosphere of the world, and endures 
 the fiery trials of life, just because all his well-springs 
 are in God, and the sources of his human steadfastness 
 and hope are high up in heaven. He is independent 
 of the precarious supphes of the world : he has meat 
 to eat which the world knoweth not of And as the 
 
2o6 TJVO IVORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 tree that has its roots in the perennial stream can make 
 a .friend of the scorching sun that would otherwise 
 destroy it, and weave its burning rays into luxuriant 
 foliage and juicy fruit, so the righteous — who are con- 
 tinually refreshed and quickened by the unseen river of 
 life that flows from the Great White Throne — can defy 
 the drought of evil circumstances, and turn all hostile 
 things to blessed uses. 
 
 It is said by the Psalmist of tlie tree planted by the 
 rivers, that it yields its fruit in its scasofi. Fruit is 
 that part of the tree which belongs not to the individual, 
 but to the race. In the fruit the tree sacrifices its own 
 individual life for the sake of the life that is to spring 
 from it; converts branch and foliage, that v/ould have 
 remained and ministered to its own beauty and luxuri- 
 ance, into blossom and fruit that fall off, and minister 
 to the continuance of the sp jcies and the good of other 
 creatures. The fruit in no case benefits the tree itself, 
 but, on tlie contrary, burdens and exhausts it, as is 
 clearly proved by the shorter life of fruit-trees as com- 
 pared with other trees, and by the fact that the more 
 fruit a tree produces, the more speedily does its vitality 
 decline. In this respect, then, the fruit which the 
 righteous produce may be said to symbolise their self- 
 denying labours for others. The distinguishing pecu- 
 liarity of tlie righteous is self-sacrifice. They have 
 truly learned that first lesson of the Christian life. They 
 have become partakers not of a selfish human, but of 
 an unselfish di\ine. nature ; and like Him who came 
 not to be ministered unto, but tc minister, and to give 
 
XTii. THE FRUIT-TREE AND THE CHAFF. 207 
 
 His life a ransom for many, they go about continually 
 doing good. They form, wherever they are, a centre of 
 usefulness, round which a circle of blessed sympathies 
 and ministries gathers. They do the kind or noble 
 deed promptly — exactly when it is needed — without 
 delay or undue haste — like a tree that keeps time with 
 the motion of the spheres, and brings forth its fruit in 
 its season — not too soon, lest the frost should blight it 
 — not too late for the sun to ripen it. Their fruit is a 
 living self-sacrifice for others, the spontaneous, natural 
 outcome of a renewed and loving nature, not a dead, 
 perfunctory obedience to an outward law; and out of 
 the loss and pain which the sacrifice involves, comes 
 the purest and deepest joy known to a human spirit; 
 just as the fruit that involves the self-sacrifice of the 
 plant is the part that has the richest fragrance and 
 flavour and the highest beauty. 
 
 It is further said of the fruit-tree by the rivers that 
 its leaf also shall not 7vither. This is a remarkable 
 feature. It is the old idea of the bush burning, but 
 not consumed. In nature, it is only through the fading 
 of the leaf that the fruit ripens. It is the law of life 
 that one part of the organism must die in order that 
 another part may grow and perfect itself. The yellowing 
 autumnal foliage accompanies the development of the 
 fruit ; and the fading of the leaf and the maturing of 
 the fruit keep pace with each other. But it is not so 
 with the tree which represents the righteous. It is an 
 evergreen, in which, while the leaves do fade and fall 
 away, according to the universal law of life, they do so 
 
2o8 rnv WORLDS are ours. 
 
 without being marked ; in which there is no long interval 
 of winter desolation, but a constant succession of foliage, 
 keeping the tree always fresh and green. The leaf of 
 the tree belongs to the tree itself. It is the part 
 that is peculiar to its individual life. By it the tree 
 breathes and forms its wood from air and sunshine. 
 It is its strength, it is itself ; for the whole tree is simply 
 a modification and development of the leaf, as it is 
 most certainly the creation of the leaf. The leaf, there- 
 fore, represents the righteous man's own life. Not only 
 does he do good to others by self-sacrificing labours, and 
 thus keep up the general blessedness of the world, but 
 he gets good to himself. His own life is blessed. 
 Nothing can keep the heart fresh and young and joyful 
 amid the cares and changes of life like the godliness 
 which is to a man's nature what sunlight is to a plant. 
 All true goodness comes from godliness. There may 
 be dry, dim imitations of goodness without godliness 
 among men who have naturally amiable dispositions, 
 just as a plant deprived of light, if it has only access 
 to moisture, will produce a pale blanched ghost of stem 
 and foliage. But it needs the sunlight of God's grace 
 to impart living greenness and fiideless vigour. And in 
 proportion as the life of God quickens and inspires us, — 
 in proportion as we live in the sunshine of His presence 
 — so does our life resist the forces of the world that tend 
 to age and blight it, and rise to godlike beauty and pro- 
 portion. While it expends its vital powers in bringing 
 forth the fruits of self-sacrificing love for others, it keeps 
 its own leaf green with all tlie spring freshness of 
 
xm. THE FRUIT-TREE AND THE CHAFF. 209 
 
 thought and feehng, by renewed supplies from the fulness 
 of Him who is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. 
 2. But let us now turn to the analogy of the chaff as 
 representing the ungodly. This image is a complete 
 contrast to the other. Chaff is the husk or light dry 
 covering of the seed of corn m the ear. When the corn 
 is threshed in the open Eastern threshing-floor, it is 
 tossed up by a shovel or fan, when the pure grain falls 
 to the ground in a heap, and the light chaff is blown 
 away by the wind. Chaff is a dead leaf that w-as once 
 green and flourishing, full of sap and life. It once per- 
 formed an important part in the growth of the plant. 
 It formed a protection to the grain during its immature 
 state ; and through its functions the seed expanded and 
 ripened. It was a miracle of beauty and design admir- 
 ably adapted for its purpose ; it once adorned and helped 
 the plant upon which it grew. But now it is eft'ete, and 
 has no vital connection with the plant. Its work is 
 over, and it hangs mechanically as a deformity to the 
 ear of corn, to be swept off as utterly useless by the 
 fan of the farmer, and added to the rubbish-heap. 
 And how expressive a symbol is it in this respect of 
 the ungodly ! Equally worthless does a human being 
 become who has lost his true life and aim by ungod- 
 liness. He was fearfully and wonderfully made. He 
 had vast powers and capacities; a nature made in the 
 image of God, which nothing but God himself could 
 satisfy. He began life fair and bright. At one time 
 he was useful and happy. In his young innocent days 
 he was loving and beloved. There was a deep harmony 
 
 p 
 
2 10 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 between himself and the beings and things around him. 
 But as he grew older, he became aHenated from God in 
 heart and conduct. Consequently a process of corrup- 
 tion of sense and soul commenced in him. Sin robbed 
 life of its promise and beauty, and made it a dreary 
 waste ; dried up all the freshness and fairness of his 
 being. And now, useless to God and man, out of 
 harmony with the living world, grown old and dull 
 of heart, without a sense to enjoy anything that God 
 has given, he sits down amid the wreck of a dishonoured 
 and desecrated nature to die. He is winnowed out of 
 the society of the true Israel, with whom he has no part 
 or lot, by the fan of God's judgment. 
 
 And this fact that the chaff is driven to and fro by 
 the wind, to which the Psalmist alludes, suggests a very 
 solemn thought. Losing its life, the chaff loses its con- 
 nection with the plant that produced it. Falling from the 
 higher powers of the organic world, it comes under the 
 lower powers of the inorganic. Ceasing to perfoim the 
 purpose of life, it becomes a waif swept out by the dead 
 wind. And so it is with the ungodly man. It is godli- 
 ness, godlikeness, the divine image in which man was 
 created, that separates him as a creature from the mass of 
 creation. It is this attribute in him which makes him a 
 person, an individual ; which resists the tendency towards 
 the disintegration, towards the corruption that is in the 
 world through lust. But losing this quality, walking ac- 
 cording to the course of this world, he becomes a mere 
 part of the creation instead of a person having personal 
 relations with the personal God. Ceasing to obey the 
 
xiTi. THE FRUIT-TREE AND THE CHAFF. 211 
 
 laws of his spiritual life, he comes under the power of 
 material laws which drag him down to the dishonouring 
 dust. The ungodly have no individuality ; they live and 
 move and act and are dealt with in the mass. They are 
 like a handful of chaff, a confused, indistinguishable heap, 
 which the unconscious wind drives to and fro. They are 
 led captive by the devil at his will. 
 
 Nothing is more remarkable than the fact so often 
 pointed out that the criminal classes act according to 
 set forms, and yield to temptation in a recognised way. 
 Certain kinds of wrong-doing bear a fixed ratio to 
 certain determinable exigencies ; they prevail in par- 
 ticular states of society ; and there are moral epidemics 
 of vice and crime, just as there are physical epidemics 
 of bodily disease ; the evil spreading by sympathy and 
 example in the one case, as it spreads by infection or con- 
 tagion in the other. In a series of years there is a well- 
 known average of crimes. We can prognosticate in 
 a given community how many paupers, suicides, and 
 criminals there will be ; and not only the number of 
 murders, but even the weapons used in their commission, 
 can be ascertained in advance. We can calculate the 
 evil passions of men as we can calculate the coming of 
 a storm or an eclipse. And thus the awful lesson is 
 read to us, that human beings, when they have sold 
 themselves to sin, and in consequence lose that 
 orignality, that distinct personal life, that masterly 
 faculty which the Spirit of God produces and develops, 
 are controlled, notwithstanding their sudden wayward- 
 ness and wild, capricious inconsistencies, by laws which 
 
 p 2 
 
212 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. CH. xiii. 
 
 apply to mere things in which there is no principle of 
 life to resist and dominate circumstances. They pass 
 beyond the sphere of the grace of God — whose operation 
 brings out more and more into relief against the things 
 and the circumstances of the world the personality of the 
 believer — into the passive realms of matter ; just as the 
 chaff, losing its organic life and its hold of the organism 
 that produced and nourished it, comes under the sway 
 of the dead elements of the physical world. 
 
 What a contrast, then, between the living tree and 
 the dead chaff ! The living tree, because of its vitality, 
 takes hold of the soil, and lays all nature under con- 
 tribution for its sustenance ; makes all things willing 
 ministers to it ; draws its life and support from earth 
 and sky, from sunshine and river; and organises all the 
 contributions it receives into grateful sweetness of fruit 
 and unfailing beauty of foliage. But the dry chaff, 
 on the other hand, because of its loss of life, loses its 
 hold of the plant and of the earth that nourished it ; 
 is blown about by the idle wind as a dead thing that 
 has no longer a part to play in the living world ; and 
 descends rapidly to join the inert kingdom of darkness 
 and chaos. All things are hostile to it. The same air 
 and sunshine which are productive of health, beauty, anil 
 fruitfulncss to the living tree, are the sources of more 
 rapid decay in the dead chaff. Behold in the mirror of 
 these two common metaphors the likeness of the two 
 moral classes of mankind ; and discern between the 
 righteous and the wicked, between him that serveth God 
 and him that serveth Him not ! 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 AN APPLE. 
 
 " Comfort me with apples." — Song of Solomon ii. 5. 
 
 THE term a/'/k is a conventional one. By the 
 ancients it was applied indiscriminately to almost 
 every round fleshy fruit. Many fruits are still popularly 
 known as apples, although they are widely different from 
 the produce of the orchard, such as thorn-apple, pine- 
 apple, custard-apple, love-apple. We require to take 
 into account this extended application of the term, in 
 order to understand the metaphorical allusions to the 
 apple in ancient poetry, classical and oriental. And 
 only in this sense can we see any foundation for the 
 popular belief which has existed from a very early period 
 — that the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden was 
 an apple ; the tradition having no sanction, directly or 
 by implication, from Scripture. For the same reason 
 the fruit which Paris gave to Venus, provoking the 
 wrath of the other slighted goddesses and occasioning 
 the disastrous Trojan war, was called a golden apple. 
 
214 rnv WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 Such associations have given the fruit a bad reputation, 
 which has been still further increased by the fables of the 
 apples of discord and the apples of Sodom — fair on the 
 outside, but within full of bitter ashes. 
 
 The word a^pk occurs several times in the Bible, but 
 there is abundant reason to believe that it is in almost 
 every case a mistranslation of a word which should have 
 been rendered citron, orange, or quince. The East is not 
 the true home of the apple. It is essentially a Western 
 fruit, the product of the cooler air and moister skies 
 of the north temperate zone. The wild crab-apple, from 
 which all the cultivated varieties have sprung, is a native 
 of most of the countries of Europe; and the development 
 of the fruit has engaged the attention of their inhabitants 
 as far back as we can trace. The tree does not grow 
 wild in the East as it does in our hedges and woodlands, 
 and the ancient Jews were altogether ignorant of apples 
 such as we know them. Their apples were the golden 
 globes of the orange, which nowhere taste so deliciously 
 as when gathered fresh from the groves of the Holy 
 Land. In the north of Palestine, where the scenery and 
 climate approximate somewhat to those of Britain, a few 
 orchards and isolated apple-trees are cultivated, the pro- 
 genitors of which were probably introduced by the mor.ks 
 of Europe during the time of the crusades. Farther 
 east, in warmer countries, the tree degenerates and 
 changes its peculiar character and habit of growth 
 entirely, becoming useless both as a fruit and timber 
 tree. To the Romans who possessed, as Pliny tells us, 
 at least twenty-two different kinds that were highly 
 
XIV. AN APPLE. 215 
 
 esteemed, we probably owe the introduction of many 
 of our cultivated varieties of apples. The list was 
 greatly extended after the Norman Conquest, putting us 
 in possession of the better sorts grown on the Continent. 
 It is strange to associate the diffusion of this fruit, whose 
 cultivation is one of the most characteristic arts of peace, 
 with the ravages of conquering armies ; and yet, para- 
 doxical as it appears, the knowledge and propagation 
 of many of our most useful fruits may be traced to 
 this unlikely source. But what war introduced, religion 
 developed ; for it was chiefly the monks who, as the 
 great horticulturists of the Dark Ages, brought to per- 
 fection in our land the fruit-trees imported from other 
 countries. And many of our favourite varieties of apple 
 — such as the Arbroath Oslin, the Keswick Codling, the 
 Norfolk Biffin, and the Fair Maid of Kent — that have 
 held their own during all these centuries, had their first 
 home in the quiet seclusion of the monastery garden, 
 situated in some romantic spot which human skill and 
 toil had reclaimed from the wilderness and converted 
 into a second Eden. 
 
 The ai)ple is appropriately associated by popular 
 tradition with the paradisaical condition of man, for it 
 belongs to an order of plants that was introduced into 
 the world about the Innnan period. The previous 
 geological ages had produced no flowers or fruits. Plants 
 of inferior type, but of vaster size and more rapid growth 
 than those of the present day, absorbed the foul vapour 
 that loaded the primeval atmosphere, and purified it 
 for the more refined breathing of higher orders, and 
 
2l6 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 allowed the sunlight to shine upon them and develop^ 
 in them hues kindred to its own. Nature in former 
 epochs had run into rank, luxuriant foliage, but she 
 blossomed and fruited when man came upon the scene. 
 According to that infinitely wise plan which regulated 
 the succession of plants and animals upon the earth, 
 and established a perfect harmony between their nature 
 and the characteristics of the different epochs in which 
 they were introduced, man did not appear until a 
 suitable i^ora had been prepared to furnish him with 
 needful occupation as shepherd, farmer, and gardener. 
 Nor did this flora appear until a being had been formed 
 who could appreciate and utilise it fully. And this 
 correspondence between the late bestowal of flowers and 
 fruits, and man's recent arrival upon the scene, extended 
 to more than mere physical adaptation. There is a pro- 
 found relation between the eflloresence of the earth and 
 that of the human soul. The fullest significance of 
 flowers and fruits can only be seen in the life of man, 
 for the illustration of which they furnish innumerable 
 expressive images and analogies. 
 
 The apple belongs not only to the latest, but also 
 to the highest order of plants. This order is the 
 Rosacece, which for beauty of colour, grace of form, 
 perfection of structure, and great and manifold utility, 
 takes precedence of all others. The queen-like rose 
 is the type of all rosaceous plants. They graduate in 
 various degrees of family likeness around it. The order 
 comprehends an immense number of genera and species, 
 which yields some of tlic most highly pri/.ed fruits, such 
 
AN APPLE. 217 
 
 as the peach, the cherry, the plum, the pear, the straw- 
 berry, the ah-nond. It is a remarkable circumstance that 
 while the blossoms of this order are of various shades 
 of yellow, white, and red, blue is altogether unknown. 
 This colour, so predominant in bell-shaped blossoms, 
 has no place in one of the largest families of plants. 
 Another peculiarity of rosaceous plants is, that all their 
 parts, as a rule, are arranged according to the number 
 five. The blossoms have five petals, the calyx five 
 sepals, and there is a numerical correspondence in the 
 foliage and fruit. Five seems to be the typical number 
 of the highest order of vegetation. Indeed, all flower- 
 ing plants may be arranged, so far as their numerical 
 significance is concerned, into two great classes— plants 
 whose parts are arranged in fives and multiples of five, 
 and plants whose parts are arranged in threes and mul- 
 tiples of three. The former comprises the Rosacea, and 
 the latter the Liliacece; so that the rose and the lily may 
 be said to divide between them the sovereignty of the 
 vegetable kingdom. I may add under this head, that 
 man sums up in himself the numerical significance both 
 of the rose and the lily : for while five is the typical 
 number of his fingers and toes, three is the typical 
 number of the joints of his digits. In the highest type 
 of the human countenance the prevailing colours of the 
 rose and lily are combined. The bride in the Song of 
 Solomon says of Him who is the Rose of Sharon and 
 the Lily of the Valley, " My beloved is white and 
 ruddy." And such correspondences as these in physical 
 things between the highest t}pes of flowers and man, 
 
2i8 Tiro WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 whose glory is as the flower of the field, fit them in 
 a most interesting manner, for being the interpreters 
 of his spiritual things, the symbols of " all passionate 
 temptation and pure delight, from the coveting of Eve 
 to the crowning of the Madonna." 
 
 Looking at an apple from a morphological point of 
 view, we find that it is an arrested branch. Instead 
 of going on to develop more wood and foliage, a 
 branch terminates in an apple ; and in this apple the 
 sap and substance that would have prolonged the 
 branch are concentrated, and hence its enlarged size 
 and capability of expansion. The limits of the blossom 
 are pretty well defined ; it seldom exceeds certain fixed 
 dimensions. But the fruit is indefinite, and can be 
 grown to almost any size, as is proved by the enormous 
 pears and apples cultivated in France and California. 
 The principle upon which the formation of an apple 
 depends may be thus explained. A bud, which under 
 the ordinary laws of vegetation would have elongated 
 into a leafy branch, remains in a special case shortened, 
 and develops, according to some regular law, blossom 
 and fruit instead. Its further growth is thus stayed ; its 
 life terminates with the ripe apple that drops off to the 
 ground ; whereas another bud that docs not produce a 
 llower or fruit grows into a branch, clothes itself with 
 foliage, and lives for years, developing wood and leaves 
 like the rest of the tree. That this is the true secret of 
 the formation of an apple is proved by abnormalities of 
 growth which occasionally occur. Unripe apples and 
 pears are not unfreijuently found with a twig growing 
 
XIV. AN APPLE. 219 
 
 out of the top of them covered with green leaves ; 
 the branch in such cases, instead of being arrested 
 and terminated by the fruit, going on and passing 
 through it, developing an active vegetative growth. 
 And what thus takes place occasionally in an abnormal 
 manner in the apple and pear occurs always naturally 
 in some fruits, such as the pine-apple, where the stem 
 passes through the fruit, and produces above it a tuft 
 of prickly leaves. The same onward mode of growth 
 is characteristic of several of the myrtle-like plants of 
 Australia, in which a leafy shoot grows from the apex 
 of the fruit, promising and beginning the whole history 
 over again, the true Phcenix of creation. What pro- 
 duces the arrestment of the branch and the consequer.t 
 formation of the apple is poverty of condition, or any 
 shock or circumstance which places the life of the plant 
 in danger. Nature in such a case hastens to make 
 provision for the continuance of the type by developing 
 blossom and fruit, the organs of propagation ; whereas 
 very wet or very warm springs, or very rich soil being 
 favourable to the life of the plant, have a tendency to 
 foster the wood and foliage, and make it barren and 
 unfruitful. As a remarkable example of the abnor- 
 malities that occasionally occur showing the true genesis 
 of flowers and fruits, it may be mentioned that Mr. 
 Thomas Meehan exhibited at a scientific meeting not 
 long ago, an apple produced by a tree in Pennsylvania 
 which never bore any flowers in the popular accepta- 
 tion, but always yielded an abundance of fruit. The 
 apples were made up of a series of whoils of leaves, 
 
TM'O WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 comprising five each, and were chiefly remarkable in 
 liaving no cores. 
 
 Looking upon an apple thus as an arrested branch, 
 the branch giving up its own individual life in order 
 that the species may be perpetuated by means of 
 blossom, and fruit, and seed, we behold in it, as in 
 a glass, a very striking natural example of the law of 
 self-sacrifice ; that law which pervades all nature, and 
 upon which the welfare and stability of nature depend. 
 And it is a most interesting circumstance, as observed 
 in a previous paper, that it is in this self-sacrifice of the 
 plant that all its beauty comes out and culminates. The 
 blossom and fruit in which it gives its own life for 
 another life that is to spring from it are the loveliest of 
 all its parts. God crowns this self-denial and blessing of 
 others widi all the glory of colour, and grace of form, 
 and sweetness of perfume, and richness of flavour. 
 Nor is the reward even thus exhausted. The bud that 
 grows into a leafy branch and remains on the tree has 
 but a limited range of development — " it abideth alone " 
 — it continues simply a branch — a part of the parent 
 tree ; but the bud that terminates in a fruit that drops 
 off the tree grows, in the seed which it produces, into 
 several independent trees, bringing forth much fruit, 
 and reading to us the great moral lesson that he that 
 loveth his life shall lose it, but he that haleth his life 
 shall keep it unto life eternal. 
 
 An apple is the most perfect realisation of a fruit. 
 When the fruit is formed, the blossom and all its outer 
 envelopes usually fidl ofi" the stem, and only the central 
 
XIV. AN APPLE. 221 
 
 organ is taken up into the structure of the fruit. The 
 fruit in most cases is only an enlargement of the ovary 
 or lower part of the pistil; but in the case of the 
 apple several parts of the flower are concerned in the 
 fruit. It consists of an enlargement of the innermost 
 and outermost parts of the blossom of the ovary and 
 the calyx combined. The cherry and the orange are 
 developed from the ovary only ; but the apple retains 
 the calyx, or the external envelope of the flower, which 
 in most fruits drops off" altogether, or remains as a 
 withered husk below the fruit, and mcorporates it 
 into its own structure. In fact, the tube of the calyx 
 is united to the pistil, and therefore it shares in the 
 expansion of the ovary at the foot of the pistil; so 
 that an apple may truly be considered as an excessive 
 enlargement and alteration in texture of the calyx-tube. 
 The eye of the apple, or the little hollow at the top, 
 consists of the withered segments of the persistent calyx 
 and sometimes also of a few brown dried-up stamens. 
 It is because the calyx enters into the composition of 
 the apple that the fruit possesses such unwonted powers 
 of endurance, the calyx being the toughest of the 
 floral parts. Apples, if properly taken care of, can 
 continue fresh and good almost all the year round— from 
 the old harvest to the new ; whereas fruit formed by the 
 ovaries alone, such as the orange, the cherrj^, the plum, 
 and the grape, partake of the tender fugacious nature 
 of the pistil, are liable to suffer from unfavourable 
 weather, and yield freely to decay. The seeds of the 
 apple are contained in five ca\ities, called carpels, 
 
THO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 having a tough parchment-like lining called the core 
 formed by the cohesion of several pistils. In all these 
 respects an apple is the true ideal of a fruit. It con- 
 serves the greater part of the previous structures, 
 embracing in its formation all the parts of the flower 
 with the exception of the petals. It embodies a larger 
 amount of wholesome and palatable nourishment in its 
 fleshy substance than most other fruits, and is hardier 
 in its nature, remains longer in season, and retains its 
 pleasant flavour to the last. 
 
 The flesh of the apple, it may be remarked, has no 
 purpose to serve in the economy of the plant itself. It 
 does not supply, as many are apt to suppose, the first 
 food for the germinating plants of its seeds ; for these 
 seeds contain the nourishment of their embryos within 
 themselves, according to the beautiful and tender law 
 of nature that always links the mother's bosom with 
 every young life. The flesh of the fruit has no relation 
 to the embryo ; it is merely an excretion of the plant, 
 produced in large measure by cultivation. In the 
 natural state it is so little developed that the wild fruit 
 is almost worthless for food. It is the aim of the 
 gardener to increase this outcast superfluous substance ; 
 and it is marvellous what triumphs in this direction he 
 achieves. And surely this capability of developing 
 flesh which certain fruits possess in relation to the 
 wants of man is one of the most interesting subjects 
 of thought. In this respect man is a fellow-worker 
 ^\ith God, in dressing and keeping the great garden 
 of nature so that tliere shall be trees in it good for food 
 
XIV. AN APPLE. 223 
 
 and pleasant to the taste. The nature bound fast in 
 fate has been made fluent by the freedom of the human 
 will; and all tlie hints and outlines suggested by hei 
 roots, and fruits, and flowers are worked out and filled 
 in by man in the exercise of this wondrous divine gift. 
 Passing strange it is that through this same freedom of 
 will, he should, in the higher moral region, instead of 
 being a fellow-worker with God, be less true to his 
 proper end and destiny than the beasts that perish to 
 tlieir several instincts. 
 
 Why is an apple round ? The circular shape is that 
 in which forces and substances are most perfectly 
 balanced^-in which there is the greatest economy of 
 material, and the greatest resistance to external cir- 
 cumstances. It is the most stable of all forms, and 
 therefore, characteristic of bodies in repose. We find 
 it in all those parts of a plant that have entered upon 
 the stage of rest — in the tuber or bulb, in the 
 bud, in the leaf, in the flower, in the fruit and in the 
 seed. The linear form, on the other band, belongs to 
 objects in motion — that are active and advancing on- 
 ward. It is characteristic of the growing parts of a 
 plant, as the stem, the branches, the roots. A plant 
 thus grows from linear to globular forms. The round 
 seed when germinating sends up a linear stem; this 
 stem reaches a knot of rest, and then puts out on either 
 side round leaves ; from this stage it produces another 
 length of linear stem, and then enters at another knot 
 a stage of rest, developing on either side round leaves. 
 And thus the plant grows by alternate motion and rest 
 
2 24 Tiro WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 in linear stem and branch, and in round foliage, until 
 it reaches the blossom, when it enters upon stages of 
 rest more or less prolonged, which culminate in the 
 globular fruit. The round seed is the last stage of 
 rest. In it the plant gathers all its forces and rests 
 indefinitely, so long as it is kept out of the ground. 
 It is the little ark containing the promise of the summer 
 life, floating over the drowned winter world. The form 
 of the apple is thus that which everything reaches when 
 life has done its work and returned to repose. All life 
 seeks to round itself to perfection and rest. Our own 
 conical heart in its ceaseless beating is continually aiming 
 at the completion of its circular form, and with this the 
 attainment of perfect repose ; and we are thus solemnly 
 reminded that death is not merely the end, but the very 
 aim of organic life — the result of the full satisfaction of 
 tlie law of symmetry. It is because this law is thwarted, 
 and the matter that would have completed the spherical 
 form of the heart is carried away and diffused over the 
 body for its nourishment and growth by the circulation 
 of the blood, that our life is maintained and our heart 
 made to be its grand minister. Wherever we turn we 
 behold the same contest between the law of symmetry, 
 which seeks to round off and reduce everything to per- 
 fect repose, and the law which seeks by incessant motion 
 to keep everything in life — between the linear and the 
 circular. The whole heavens and the whole earth are 
 continually aiming at the spherical form ; and they fail 
 to reach or retain it because of their want of repose, 
 insisting upon a shortcoming or departure from the 
 
XIV. AN APPLE. 225 
 
 spherical. Thus the apple becomes to us a very signi- 
 ficant object, when we see in its round form a striking 
 illustration of the same law that is shaping the earth 
 around us, and the heavens above us, and the heart 
 within us. It is in little all the sphere; a miniature 
 organic orb, in which the cycle of the life of the tree 
 has completed itself, and is at rest. Most wonderful 
 is it to think of this little orb of the seasons, that is 
 so still and quiet, that shows no sign that it has any 
 life within it, yet containing in its core, carefully guarded 
 from outward injury, and richly provided with all the 
 materials of growth and nourishment, the small round 
 seeds, in which the life of the tree has retired a while 
 in order to gather itself up for a new effort, has paused 
 for a little in a simulated death, that it may start forth 
 in a new field, and with a new realisation of its ideal — 
 to repeat the endless round of its existence. 
 
 The skin or rind which hems in the apple, and bv 
 limiting completes and individualises it, is also a most 
 significant feature. It varies in thickness, smootlmess, 
 quality of texture, and colour in different varieties of 
 apple ; but in all it may be said to pass through the 
 different stages of leaf and flower like the plant that 
 bears it. In the immature or green state it may be 
 regarded as the equivalent of the foliage which the twig 
 on which it grows would have produced, had it not been 
 arrested and made to produce a fruit instead. Its fleshy 
 part is an extraordinary development of the tube of 
 the calyx, which is a metamorphosed leaf, and the 
 carpels at the core are all modified leaves; so that the 
 
2 26 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 whole apple represents the transformation for repro- 
 ductive purposes of a series of leaves. It acts in all 
 respects as a leaf. Wonderful is the ministry of the 
 green skin of plants. It changes inorganic into organic 
 matter, and thus furnishes the starting-point of all life. 
 Nowhere else on the face of the earth does this most 
 important process take place. Everything else con- 
 sumes and destroys ; the green skin of plants alone 
 creates and conserves. It is the mediator between the 
 world of death and the world of life. Hence the signifi- 
 cance of the green colour which appears so vividly 
 in all young growing plants. 
 
 We thus see that this truly vegetable process of creating 
 organic matter is performed only by a very small part of 
 a plant, viz. the cells on the surface, which contain the 
 green matter called chlorophyll, and which are exposed 
 to the action of sunlight. The cells in the internal parts 
 of plants — in the inside of the stem, and in the flesh of 
 the fruit — are perfectly colourless, secluded from light, 
 and do not create, but, on the contrary, feed upon, the 
 organised matter produced by the green cells on the out- 
 side. They do not exercise a vegetable, but an animal 
 function. They are like the pale parasitic plants which 
 feed upon the organic compounds elaborated by their 
 hosts, instead of forming materials of growth for them- 
 selves directly out of inorganic substances. Thus the 
 green skin of the apple serves all the purposes of a leaf, 
 and performs the great function of the vegetable kingdom 
 in keeping up the balance of organic, nature; while the 
 vvhite inside flesh, composed of simple sacs of cellulose, 
 
XTV. AN APPLE. 227 
 
 has no vegetable reactions, but lives parasitically, as it 
 were, upon the green skin, and breathes the air in the 
 true animal sense. But when the apple has grown to its 
 full size, and as it goes on to ripen, its outer surface and 
 its inner substance, its skin and its flesh, become assimi- 
 lated. The green colour of the skin passes away, and 
 various tints according to the variety of apple, such 
 as yellow, brown, and red, take its place. It loses its 
 vegetable power of creating organic matter with its loss 
 of colour. It absorbs oxygen and exhales carbon ; and 
 this oxidation is the cause of the bright colour which 
 it assumes, like the hectic flush on the cheek of the 
 consumptive. The cells of the flesh in the interior at 
 the same time form starch and sugar, which are simply 
 the ashes deposited by the fire of life, gradually limiting, 
 and finally quenching, vital action altogether. When 
 the ripening process is completed, and the connection 
 of the apple with the tree is cut off, certain chemical 
 changes allied to fermentation take place within it. 
 The sugar is decomposed, and alcohol and certain 
 ethers are produced, developing the flavour of the 
 fruit. After a while another process begins : the outside 
 softens and becomes watery ; the apple loses flavour anil 
 commences to decay; and at last it becomes shrouded 
 in a maze and network of soft dusty fungi, which rot and 
 burn it away by a process of respiration as effectually 
 as if it was dried and set fire to. But the imprisoned 
 seeds which it carefully guarded in its core in the 
 meantime are liberated ; and they fall into suitable 
 soil and germinate, and produce, in course of time, 
 
 Q 2 
 
2 28 7'^VO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 fruit-laden apple-trees ; and the whole cycle of interesting 
 phenomena from the seed to the apple, and from the 
 apple to the seed, are gone over again and again in 
 the ceaseless vortex of life. 
 
 We thus see that the little globe of the apple is a 
 microcosm, representing within its miniature sphere the 
 changes and processes which go on in the great 
 world. Life and death, growth and decay, fight their 
 battle on its humble stage. Fermentation and putre- 
 faction, the two great processes under whose familiarity 
 are hid some of the greatest wonders of the physical 
 world, take place within it. It exhibits the character- 
 istics of the vegetable, animal, and mineral kingdoms ; 
 it creates organic matter, and it consumes it ; and in 
 its motion within its little orbit, from its formation on 
 the bough in summer to its fall to the ground in 
 autumn, it illustrates the action of the mighty laws which 
 bind the universe together. Our greatest philosopher, 
 by his sublime theory of gravitation, connected it with 
 the stars of heaven ; and to every thoughtful mind 
 it suggests far-reaching ideas which shed light upon the 
 mysteries of our own world. While it hangs upon its 
 stem, it is in some kind of magnetic correspondence 
 with all the powers of nature ; it shares the life of the 
 earth and the sky. It is an embodiment of the air 
 and the sunshine and the dew. Reddened by the fire 
 of a July sun and varnished against the rain, it 
 contains all the summer life of the garden within it. 
 But its special charm consists not in its scientific teachin::,' 
 or in its material utilities. Who would care to study 
 
AN APPLE. 229 
 
 an apple, or any other natural object, were it not for 
 its religious side? The secret wonder in it, which 
 connects the universe with its Creator and Preserver, 
 makes every spot of ground sacred, and the investiga- 
 tion of physical truth itself a virtual seeking after God. 
 Nothing can be simpler and lowlier than such an object- 
 lesson. It is nigh unto us, in our very mouths, familiar 
 to every child, but its simplicity is the mystery of the 
 unsearchable God, the depth of the clear but unfathom- 
 able heaven. Autumn is the season of revealing; and 
 the fruit is ripened when the foliage that hid the orchard 
 is stripped off, and all its secrets are opened to the 
 glances of the sun. But no autumn of revelation 
 comes to the tree of knowledge, and we pluck its fruit 
 from the bough in the midst of mysteries that conceal 
 even while they reveal it — that baffle even while they 
 instruct us. But these mysteries are favourable to faith 
 and to a simple child-like trust, leaving what it cannot 
 understand, with a wise contentment, in the infinity of 
 God. Enough for us that while this simple, humble 
 creature gives beauty to the eye, and fragrance to the 
 nostril, and food to the appetite, it furnishes at the 
 same time food for thought and incense, for worship, 
 and ministers to the life of our souls, which is our 
 highest life, by speaking of Him who rounds with good 
 the common nature of all life. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 A CORN OF WHEAT. 
 
 "And there were certain Greeks among them that came up to 
 worship at the feast : the same came therefore to Pliilip, which 
 was of Bethsaida of Galilee, and desired him, saying. Sir, we 
 would see Jesus. Philip cometh and telleth Andrew : and again 
 Andrew and Philip tell Jesus. And Jesus answered them, saying, 
 The hour is come, that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, 
 verily, I say unto you. Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground 
 and die, it abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. 
 I le that loveth his life shall lose it ; and he that hateth his life in this 
 world shall keep it unto life eternal." — St. John, xii. 20-25. 
 
 THERE were two manifestations of our Lord to the 
 Gentiles in the days of His flesh. One took 
 place at the beginning and the other at the close of 
 His hfe. The Magi, the wise men of the East, came to 
 the cradle of Jesus ; the Greeks, the wise men of the 
 West, came, it may be said, to His cross. The old 
 world of the East, from which have come our race, our 
 myths and nursery tales, with its exhausted history and 
 completed revelation, came to the cradle of the Child 
 of Promise to receive from that wonderful Birth a fresh 
 impulse, a new start in the progress of development, 
 
CH. XV. A CORN OF WHEAT. 231 
 
 to share in the new creation of God and rejuvenescence 
 
 of the world. The new world of the West, with its 
 mobile life, its ever expanding history, its glowing hopes 
 and aspirations, came to the cross of the Redeemer 
 that it might receive the baptism of a deeper earnestness 
 and a higher consecration. In these two Epiphanies 
 we see harmoniously united the two great systems of 
 pagan religion which separately were but a mere 
 fragment of the truth, and contained no hope or 
 promise of blessing for man. The Orientals had the 
 humiliation of the Godhead as dimly shadowed forth in 
 the Avatars of Vishnu and Buddha ; the Greeks had the 
 exaltation of manhood as shown in the apotheosis of 
 the heroes of the Pantheon. Thus appropriately the 
 representatives of the wisdom of the East and the West 
 came respectively to the birth and death of Him who, 
 though He was the equal and the fellow of God, yet 
 humbled Himself and took on Him the form of a 
 servant, and whom God had highly exalted, giving Him 
 a name which is above every name. Equally significant 
 were the symbols of the two manifestations. In both 
 cases they were borrowed from the field of nature. The 
 one was a star, the other a corn of wheat. The star 
 of the wise men of the East — the watchers of the 
 midnight heavens — -was changeless as the life and 
 religion of the East. It kept its place in the heavens 
 from age to age. It rose and set and moved in its orbit 
 for ever the same. The corn of wheat of the Greeks 
 — those restless searchers into the meaning of every tiling 
 on earth — grew to more and more, and exhibited all 
 
232 T^f^O WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 the changes and variations of Hfe. The one was a 
 symbol of tlie night with its dreams and mysteries and 
 spiritual thoughts; the other of the day with its stem 
 facts and active duties and daily bread. The corn 
 of wheat reminds us of a similar agricultural symbol 
 which Jesus employed in the manifestation of Himself 
 to the Samaritan woman — intermediate between the two 
 other Epiphanies. He spoke in the case of the 
 Samaritans of " fields already white unto the harvest " ; 
 He showed to the Greeks, within a few days of the 
 cross, that these wide fields of golden grain were to 
 be the produce of one corn of wheat, falling into the 
 ground and multiplying by its death. 
 
 Putting aside the first manifestation of our Lord to 
 the wise men of the East, let us look for a little at the 
 second manifestation, to the wise men of the West. 
 On the last occasion on which our Lord appeared 
 openly in the Temple of Jerusalem — crowded at the 
 time with pilgrims from all parts of the world who 
 had come to keep the Passover — certain Greeks wished 
 to be introduced to Him. Instead of going directly 
 into His presence, they accosted Philip, one of His 
 disciples, and said to him in the most courteous manner, 
 " Sir, we would see Jesus." This was but another form 
 of the old question which the wise men of the East 
 had asked, when they came to Jerusalem, " Where is 
 He that is born King of the Jews ? " The Greeks 
 were probably induced to address Philip because he 
 alone of the disciples had a Greek name, derived 
 perhaps from the tetrarch Philip — or more probably 
 
A CORN OF WHEAT. 233 
 
 from his parents' familiarity with some of the Greek- 
 speaking population who lived mingled with the 
 Galileans on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. But 
 Philip did not at once carry their message to Jesus. 
 He was deterred by the unusual character of the 
 incident, and by a feeling of dubiety as to how his 
 Master would regard so singular a request. He went 
 and consulted his fellow-townsman Andrew ; and the 
 two disciples then made known the wish of the Greeks 
 to Jesus, and in all likelihood introduced the inquirers 
 into His presence. The wise men of the East were 
 guided to Christ by a star, a dead silent object of nature. 
 But the Greeks were guided to Him by the living voice 
 and hand of man ; by the hand of the very disciples, 
 Philip and Andrew, who first found Jesus themselves on 
 the shores of the Sea of Galilee, and led others of the 
 disciples into His presence. And how characteristic was 
 this circumstance of the difference between the Orientals 
 and the Greeks ! The Orientals shaped their philosophy 
 and religion in the changeless desert, under the passion- 
 less starry heavens, from the calm contemplation of 
 the objects of nature which entered so largely into 
 their worship. The Greeks shaped their philosophy 
 and religion amid the ever-changing haunts of man, 
 and in contact with the busy work of everyday life. 
 Not through the sympathy of nature, but through the 
 fellowship of man, did they rise to their conception 
 of man's origin and destiny, and their solution of the 
 profound mysteries which surround his present and 
 future. It was fitting therefore that they should be 
 
234 TH^O WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 guided to Christ, in whom all their hopes should be 
 fulfilled, and all their mysteries solved, not by a star 
 but by their fellow-men. And their guidance is a type 
 of ours — the higher leading in which, not by dumb 
 dead signs and wonders in heaven or earth, but by the 
 living sympathy and the articulate teaching of men 
 of like passions and experiences with ourselves, we are 
 brought to the personal knowledge of the Saviour. 
 
 No incident in the life of our Saviour produced a 
 more profound impression upon Him than this. It 
 was no idle curiosity that brought these Greeks to His 
 side. They had much of the spirit of their immortal 
 countrymen, Plato and Socrates, who all their life 
 were earnest inquirers after truth, unconscious seekers 
 after the living and true God. Despised and hated by 
 His own people for whom He had done so much, the 
 modest, reverential spirit, the simple faith and spontane- 
 ous devotion of these aliens from the commonwealth of 
 Israel, must have been as refreshing to the wear}' heart 
 of the Redeemer as a well in a wilderness to a traveller 
 parched with thirst. He recognised all the significance 
 of the moment. He regarded the request of this 
 little band of Greeks to see Him as a happy augury 
 of the universal triumph of His gospel. He knew 
 that although salvation was of the Jews, it was not to be 
 confined to them ; that although He was sent, so far 
 as the conditions of His earthly mission were con- 
 cerned, only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, 
 His work was to be for the whole world. The hour 
 was now come, He felt, when the Son of man should 
 
XV. A CORN OF WHEAT. 235 
 
 be glorified, when He should be revealed in His true 
 character as the Saviour of both Jews and Gentiles, 
 and His salvation should go forth to the ends of the 
 earth. With prescient eye He read at tliat moment 
 the future in store for His gospel in connection with 
 these Greeks. And what a wonderful future it was ! 
 It must never be forgotten that it was tlie Greeks who 
 first welcomed Christianity; and there cannot be a 
 more striking contrast than between the eagerness with 
 which they received tlie blessed truth, "God manifest 
 in the flesh," and the difficulty which even the Jewish 
 Christians had in realising its full significance. It was 
 in the Greek tongue that it first addressed its divine 
 message to the world. It was in the cities and homes 
 of the Greeks that it first displayed its wonderful 
 power of assimilating and transforming all the elements 
 of life, and manifested what it should aftenvards be- 
 come in human society. The gods of Hellas were the 
 first to fall down before the ark of the Son of God ; 
 and when He died on the cross, it is touchingly said 
 that a wailing voice was heard through all the hills 
 and forests of Greece, crying, "Great Tan is dead.' 
 Indeed it is diftlcult to conceive what form Christianity 
 might have assumed had not Greek faith first illustrated 
 its saving truths; or how it would have prospered in 
 the world had not the Greeks of earlier days spread 
 their language and philosophy throughout all lands. 
 
 What the world owes to the Greeks no tongue can suffi- 
 ciently tell. From them we have received the sublime 
 poems and splendid treatises on science and philosophy 
 
236 TH^O WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 which have educated all the higher minds of tlie human 
 race. From them we have received the matchless sculp- 
 tures, paintings, and architectural glories which have filled 
 men's souls with visions of ideal beauty. From them we 
 have received the inestimable legacy of our Greek New 
 Testament, which is the light of our feet and the lamp 
 of our path to immortality. It is to them we owe the 
 boon for which we should never cease to be thankful, 
 that the sacred Scriptures passed from the calm lonely 
 lethargic scenes of nature in the East, associated with 
 the infancy and early youth of our race, to the busy 
 stimulating scenes of the West, associated with its 
 manhood ; that the lofty, vague Hebrew language, the 
 very language of the loneliness and grandeur of nature, 
 has been translated into the quick, precise, many-mooded 
 Greek, the very language of business and active human 
 life ; that the stately oracles of prophets living in deserts, 
 addressing men afar off and from pedestals high above 
 them, have become the familiar epistles of apostles coming 
 constantly into personal contact with the sins, sorrows, 
 and wants of humanity. From them we have received 
 the noble works of the early Greek fathers of the 
 Church, Justin, Origen, Gregory, Chrysostom, Athena- 
 goras, Basil, Cyril of Jerusalem, and John of Damascus, 
 which have proved such invaluable helps in expounding 
 the sacred Scriptures. From them we have received 
 the grand liturgies, the inspiring hymns, the glorious 
 triumphs of martyrs, and the devoted lives of saints, 
 which have stimulated the piety and fired the enthu- 
 siasm of all Christian churches ever since. The Greeks 
 
A COR.V OF WHEAT. 237 
 
 gathered together, as it were, all that was grandest and 
 most enduring in the world, and, holding it up in their 
 arms for the baptism of Christianity, handed it on 
 thus purified and blessed for the blessing of all after 
 ages. All tliese great associations crowd upon our 
 minds as we think of the interview of the Greeks with 
 Jesus. They represented all this culture and all these 
 prospective benefits to mankind. We see here the 
 watershed of a stream that was destined in its flowing 
 on to make the wilderness and the solitary place to 
 be glad and the desert to rejoice and blossom as the 
 rose. We see here the light falling upon a mountain- 
 top — from whence it was to spread down into the valley, 
 and out over all the plains until the whole world should 
 be illuminated. 
 
 In the request of the Greeks to see Jesus there was 
 far more than a mere private request of a few in- 
 dividuals. In their courteous but eager desire we hear 
 the longing of the whole heathen world for a Redeemer. 
 A great crisis in human history had come. It well 
 deserved to be called "the fulness of time." Every- 
 thing seemed to have come to an end ; the goal of 
 human effort had been reached. Among the Jews the 
 Old Testament canon was closed, and the voice of pro- 
 phecy hushed, and Sadducean scepticism and Pharisaic 
 trivialities had taken the place of the grand old Hebrew 
 faith. Among the Gentiles the old rites and superstitions 
 had lost their hold upon men's minds. Jupiter and 
 ]\Iars, Apollo and Venus, had all faded from the imagina- 
 tions of the higher classes; and the worship of these 
 
238 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 deities was left to the vulgar and ignorant, or was re- 
 tained only as a matter of policy. The oracles were 
 dumb ; the altars cold and deserted ; and some tried in 
 vain to satisfy their wants by changing religion into 
 poetry or philosophy, or sought as a last resource to 
 fill with sensual pleasure the intolerable vacuity of 
 their hearts. Regretful of the past, hopeless of the 
 future, suicide was recommended as the only cure for 
 human misery; the darkness of despair giving place to the 
 deeper darkness of death. But even in the utter blank- 
 ness of such a night, there were men of nobler instincts 
 who could not do without religion — who, to use Hegel's 
 beautiful words, were " Memnons waiting for the day." 
 They felt about for the unknown God to whom they 
 might cry for help amid the wreck of every religious' 
 system, and the failures and uncertainties of the world 
 around. Some of these "seekers after God," men of 
 the stamp of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius, had 
 wandered into Jewish synagogues, which by a provi- 
 dential coincidence at that time were placed in all 
 the chief cities of the world ; and there they found 
 to their surprise, in what they had been taught to 
 regard as an "execrable superstition," ledges of faith 
 and hope by which they climbed out of the profound 
 darkness into the happy sunshine. They were irresistibly 
 drawn to the new religion by its unity of the Godhead, 
 its high ideal of domestic and social purity, and above 
 all by the hope which it held out of a coming Messiah 
 who should redress all the evils of the world, dispel 
 its ignorance, and bring in not a cold morality, but 
 
A CORN OF WHEAT. 239 
 
 a righteousness which should be the offspring of a 
 burning love. Not a few of these proselytes to the 
 Jewish faith went up as pilgrims to the great annual 
 festival in Jerusalem ; and among them were the Greeks 
 who wished to see Jesus. They expressed the longing 
 of the whole heathen world for Him who should interpret 
 and satisfy their longing, and who should be a light 
 to lighten the Gentiles as well as the glory of His 
 people Israel. 
 
 Very remarkable was the adaptation of our Lord's 
 words to the circumstances of these Greeks, to whom 
 doubtless He addressed them. He had been teaching 
 His own disciples at this period the necessity and 
 grand design of His death. He took every opportunity 
 of showing them that it behoved the Christ to suffer 
 and thus to enter into His glory. He appealed in proof 
 thereof to the Old Testament Scriptures, and instructed 
 them in the things concerning a suffering Messiah. 
 But this method of teaching was manifestly unsuitable 
 to the Greeks, who, if they had any knowledge, could 
 have but a very imperfect one of the Jewish Scriptures. 
 And therefore He taught them by an object-lesson. 
 He condescended to their ignorance and brought before 
 their minds a familiar parable from the still older 
 Testament of nature. He showed them that His own 
 self-sacrifice was only the highest exemplification of that 
 which underlay all the processes of nature, and without 
 which the glory and blessedness of the world could not 
 be unfolded. The very first seed that germinated on our 
 earth was a mute prophecy of the Lamb slain from the 
 
240 77F0 WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 foundation of the world. "Verily, verily, I say unto 
 you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and 
 die, it abideth alone : but if it die, it bringeth forth 
 much fruit." 
 
 A corn of wheat is beautiful and complete in itself. 
 It is full of latent life ; it contains the germ of bound- 
 less harvests. But it is hard and narrow and isolated. 
 How then are its dormant capabilities to be quickened ; 
 how is its narrow horizon of life to be widened ; 
 how are its possibilities of unknown good to become 
 actualities? Clearly not by keeping it as it is. In 
 its present state it abideth alone. It can never be 
 anything else but a hard, bare, dormant com of wheat 
 if kept out of the ground. But if sown in the field, 
 and covered by the earth, and quickened by the sun- 
 shine and showers of heaven, it softens and expands. 
 It seems to die. It surrenders itself to the forces of 
 nature which enter into it, and take possession of it, 
 and seem to put it altogether aside. But this ap- 
 parent death is in reality more abundant life. Its 
 burial-place becomes the scene of a wonderful resur- 
 rection. The spark of vitality has been kindled by 
 the very elements that seemed to work its destruction. 
 The embryo grows at the expense of the decompos- 
 ing perisperm. Lengthening downwards by the radicle 
 and upwards by the plumule, the seed becomes a bright, 
 green, beautiful plant which lays all nature under con- 
 tribution for its sustenance, borrows the materials of 
 growth from earth and sky, and at length becomes a 
 luxuriant stalk of corn laden with its fruitful ear, 
 
XV. A CORN OF IVHEAT. 24.T 
 
 containing sixty or a hundred such grains as it sprang 
 from itself, and thus becoming the prolific parent of 
 countless harvests in the future. The seed that has 
 been sacrificed in the sowing comes again in the harvest, 
 as the sum and organisation of the very forces that 
 had laid it aside. And in the mirror of that familiar, 
 but mysterious process of nature, Jesus saw a beautiful 
 picture of His own atoning death, and the great results 
 that should spring from it. He was the life of the 
 world; but he could only reach and benefit the world 
 by His death. The gospel in its fulness and saving 
 power could not be preached to these Greeks till He 
 Himself should die. Not merely by His life of holy 
 obedience and sublime self-sacrifice, but also by His 
 atoning death, He finished the work which His Father 
 had given Him to do. It was needful for the fruitful- 
 ness of the dead world that the Divine seed should be 
 put into the ground, in the new sepulchre in the 
 garden. And what a wonderful, world-wide, time-long 
 harvest has sprung from that grave, the hiding-place of 
 God's power, where by dying death was destroyed, and 
 life and immortality brought to light ! The harvest 
 that has grown from it is everywhere visible. It is 
 covering larger and larger spaces of the earth every 
 day; and all nations are destined to eat of its fruit 
 and know its saving health and rejoice with tlie jo)' 
 of harvest. Thus Jesus lost His own life, but He found 
 it again in the life of others, to whom He had imparted 
 life. His personality became enlarged and increased 
 by that very selfsacrifice which seemed at the time to 
 
 u 
 
242 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 have destroyed it. During His lifetime He had little 
 or no success; and His death itself was the measure 
 of the unbelief of the world in Him, and the failure 
 of His efforts. But after His death, men in larger and 
 still larger numbers believed in Him as the Saviour of 
 the world. 
 
 The darkness and dreariness of the closing years of 
 our Lord's life, in which the Divine seed was shed, 
 and the entombment in the garden sepulchre, have 
 their counterpart in nature. Seed time in this country 
 is in spring. The sower goes forth to sow when the 
 day is lengthening and brightening, and a softer blue 
 is in the sky and a warmer and more tender feeling is 
 in the air. The dark days and wild storms of winter 
 are over; and before the seed sown there is an almost 
 uninterrupted continuance of genial weather till the 
 harvest. But in nature seed-time is at the close of 
 autumn, when " the melancholy days have come, the 
 saddest of the year." The important process of scatter- 
 ing the seed over the waste places of the earth is 
 accomplished amid the fading and falling of leaves, 
 and the destruction of nature's strength and beauty. 
 The chill air and feeble sunlight put a stop to all 
 further growth ; and the dreary rain and boisterous 
 storms which prevail at this season are needed to 
 shake down the ripe fruits from stem or bough, to 
 scatter them over the face of the earth, and to rot 
 them in the ground, so that the imprisoned seeds may 
 escape and find a suitable soil in which to grow. Thus, 
 the dark ungenial weather which so often proves 
 
XV. A CORN OF WHEAT. 243 
 
 disastrous to our cereal crops when they are about to 
 be gathered into the barn, is a wise proi^ision of nature 
 to facihtate the dispersion of the ripened fruits and 
 seeds of the earth. We step between nature and her 
 purpose, snatch the corn from its appointed destiny 
 as the seed of a future crop, and convert it into human 
 food; and thus diverting a law of nature into a new 
 channel, we cannot always expect that the weather 
 which would be favourable to the natural process should 
 be equally favourable to the artificial. Nature fulfils 
 her designs perfectly; she is faithful to the law of 
 her God. But when she comes into contact with man 
 she does not harmonise with his designs. The primeval 
 curse rests upon the toil of man's hands, and the earning 
 of man's bread; and nature therefore will not give us 
 her blessings without a stern struggle with hostile 
 elements. How true is all this of the stormy end 
 of our Saviour's life ; that dreary autumn seed-time of 
 which He said, "Now is my soul troubled, and what 
 shall I say, Father, save me from this hour; but for 
 this cause came I unto this hour." And further, how 
 true of His entombment is the natural fact that the 
 seed thus sown in the decaying autumn, amid the wreck 
 of life and beauty, and to the wailing dirge of the 
 devastating storm, lies passive and inert in the soil all 
 the winter, chilled with the frosts, drenched with the 
 rains, and buried in its grave of darkness beneath a 
 shroud of snow, waiting for its resurrection under the 
 bright skies of spring. It is all a parable from beginning 
 to end of that truth which seems so strange and 
 
 R 2 
 
244 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chaj'. 
 
 incomprehensible, that death and increase go together — 
 that the growth of every germ in nature and in human 
 life must be in darkness and suffering. 
 
 But in this parable of nature there was a special lesson 
 for the Greeks. We see the same suitableness in the 
 symbol of the corn of wheat in their case that we 
 see in the symbol of the star in the case of the Wise 
 Men of the East No doubt there are traces of the 
 great truth of life only through death, of the true life 
 of man through the denial of his lower nature, to be 
 found in the history and literature of the Greeks. In 
 some of their immortal dramas the mystery of sorrow 
 is shown to us as lying at the root of all that is 
 noblest in the world ; and there are splendid examples 
 of heroic self-sacrifice which the world will not willingly 
 let die. But as a rule, the entire constitution and cul- 
 ture of the Greeks led them not to the darker and more 
 mysterious, but to the sunnier side, of life, whose limits 
 should everywhere be seen. The great characteristic 
 of Greek sculpture, Greek architecture, Greek literature 
 is its limitation. It is perfect of its kind, like an 
 isolated corn of wheat kept out of the ground, but 
 it is a very limited perfection. In a Greek tragedy 
 or a Greek temple the first impression of absolute 
 and limited beauty will be deepened by further study, 
 but it will never expand. There is no striving as in 
 all true modern art and literature, after that which is 
 incomprehensible because without and above them- 
 selves ; no room for development, because there is 
 no mystery of suffering. Even their music — that art 
 
A CORN OF WHEAT. 245 
 
 in which more than in any other, all that is truest 
 and deepest in a nation finds utterance— dividing as 
 it did the octaves into tetrachords, and proceeding in 
 its most approved form, the enharmonic by quarter 
 terms— differed as widely from the wild, wailing, infinitely 
 varied music of northern lands, as the l3oric pillars 
 of a Greek temple from the tangled forest of Gothic 
 foliage. Look at a Greek statue ; how beautiful ; how 
 symmetrical ! It is faultless, judging it by the rules 
 of art. But that is not your conception of a god. It 
 is limited and circumscribed by its very beauty and 
 perfection. The ideal of that marble divinity knew 
 nothing of the majesty of sorrow and the nobleness 
 of self-sacrifice. It was the fatal flaw in the Greek 
 religion that it represented the gods of Olympus as 
 beings who lived only to enjoy themselves, and who, 
 when they descended to earth, came only for the sake 
 of pleasant adventure or selfish amusement, carino- 
 nothmg for the sins and sorrows of humanity. And 
 we are not surprised that such conceptions should 
 have exercised so little wholesome influence upon the 
 manners of the people; that the highest perfection 
 of Greek art should have been associated with the 
 lowest corruption of human morals. There is every- 
 thing in the Apollo Belvidere and the Venus de Medici 
 to satisfy the love of beauty, but there is nothing there 
 to appeal to the conscience or touch the heart There 
 IS no sympathy with the deepest things in human life. 
 
 And like their gods was the national Greek character. 
 It was changeable, capricious, imaginative, without any 
 
24*5 TiyO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 fixed earnestness or purpose. It could be said of the 
 Greeks ernpliatically that they loved their life, and 
 cherished it by every means in their power. They lived 
 in the eye of nature, in a climate divinely fair, in a land 
 where mountain, valley, and sea combined their charms 
 into a focus of exquisite loveliness. They loved all 
 beautiful things, and strove to give them an immortal 
 permanence in their art and poetry. The Theocritian 
 idyll was to them a simple fact. Enjoyment of the 
 senses, of the intellect, of the imagination was their 
 highest conception of life. The development of all their 
 powers and faculties in the gymnasium and the academic 
 grove, was their highest ideal of duty. But Jesus 
 told the representatives of the Greek race who came 
 to see Him that this view of life was altogether narrow 
 and unworthy. It did not account for its most solemn 
 things ; it did not take in its greatest mysteries, its future 
 hopes, the sm and misery that reigned in the world, 
 and the deatli that closed up every vista of it. It left 
 out of sight the whole region of the conscience and the 
 moral nature ; it did not recognise that righteousness 
 which unifies our being, and imparts to our whole 
 nature and existence that imputation and discipline of 
 godliness, without which the cultivation of the separate 
 faculties is a process of death and not of life. And 
 it had proved in their own experience a failure ; it 
 had failed to satisfy the wants of the higher natures 
 among them ; and it was undoubtedly the cause of 
 their decadence as a race. He told them that in 
 order to lead a true human life, that which they called 
 
XV. A CORN OF WHEAT. 247 
 
 life — the unrestrained gratification and exercise of all 
 the powers and passions of human nature — must be 
 hated and abandoned. They must choose either to 
 lose the life of sense, that beautiful, sunny, selfish life, 
 free from thought and care, which they loved, and so gain 
 the life of the spirit ; or else to lose the higher, enduring 
 life of the spirit, and win the passing perishing life 
 of sense. " He that loveth his life shall lose it ; but 
 he that hateth his hfe shall keep it unto life eternal." 
 
 And how truly were these words fulfilled in the 
 history of the Greek race ! They had loved their 
 life and they had lost it. At the time of our Saviour 
 they had sunk to the lowest point morally, socially, 
 politically. All that represented their glorious past, all 
 that constituted the splendour of the age of Pericles, 
 was gone. The imperial despotism of Rome had 
 blighted them with its shadow. Their development 
 had stopped, and their capacity for blessing mankind 
 was over. They had apparently lived their time; 
 and there was no future before them. They were 
 like the cold, hard corn of wheat that abideth 
 alone, in an isolated death in life; the result of 
 a previous splendid growth indeed, but incapable 
 of future growth because kept out of the ground, 
 living for themselves. But Christianity came to these 
 Greeks, the religion of Him who gave the pattern and 
 the power of self-sacrifice, and it gave them a new 
 character and a new life. The seed was planted in 
 that most helpful soil, and it got a fresh start, it 
 became softened and immeasurably enlarged and 
 
248 TllO WOKLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 enriched. Belief in the gospel gave them as a race 
 a deeper earnestness, a tenderer sympathy, a greater 
 power of devotion and endurance than they had ever 
 known before. It taught them ideas of sin and holiness 
 of which their philosophy had been ignorant. It un- 
 folded to tliem principles and capabilities in human 
 nature to which their artistic genius had blinded them. 
 It enabled them to produce the noble virtues which grow 
 from the Christian doctrine of a crucified and risen 
 Redeemer, and which their own poetically beautiful 
 worship could not have inspired. By taking up their 
 cross, denying themselves and following Christ, they 
 were saved as a nation in the hour of their peril, 
 when their own magnificent civilisation had proved 
 its utter helplessness. They hated their life, and they 
 kept it grander and richer. That the Greek race, 
 which has contributed so large a proportion of the 
 materials that have made ourselves what we are, has 
 survived to this day, is owing mainly, as Dean Church 
 has so admirably shown in his Influences of Christianity 
 on National Character, to the fact that it comprehended 
 and acted in some measure, upon the great truth which 
 Christ proclaimed to the Greeks who came at Jerusalem 
 to see Him ; viz., that it is only in self-sacrifice, in dying 
 V to selfishness and sensuality, dying in the faith and love 
 of Christ Jesus to all that is base and mean and frivolous 
 in human nature, that we develop a grander and more 
 abundant life. And through a clearer recognition of 
 that truth, the Greek race will yet perform a nobler 
 part on the stage which the recent events in Europe 
 
A CORN OF WHEAT. 249 
 
 have been preparing for it. And the wortls in Greek, 
 " Jesus Christ conquers," placed by its Christian builder 
 on the bronze gates of St. Sophia in Constantinople, 
 and still remaining after all those centuries of desecration 
 as a Mohammedan mosque, will receive new meaning- 
 and fulfilment when the crescent has given way before 
 the cross. 
 
 For us too there is a profound lesson in the words 
 of Jesus to the Greeks. The symbol of nature in the 
 corn of wheat has a spiritual significance even for those 
 who by their science have shut out from nature the 
 glimpses wliich made the pagans less forlorn. We 
 are all Greeks in our childhood and youth. Our ex- 
 istence in the young and formative age, before we 
 go out into the world to encounter its sins and sorrows, 
 is like the river Jordan when it rises at Banias amid 
 the lovely landscapes at the foot of Hermon, associated 
 with the sunny nature-worship of Pan that has in- 
 truded there into the Holy Land, ere it passes farther 
 down the bare and rugged defiles of Judea under 
 the spell of a truer and severer faith. The old Greek 
 ideal of life is just the natural ideal of every man 
 who wishes to live for himself, and to make everything 
 subservient to his own interest or enjoyment. To 
 live a life of self indulgence, whether in the higher form i^ 
 of intellectual activity and aesthetic culture, or in the 
 lower form of sensual pleasures, to be occupied only 
 with the things of this world, to disregard the accusations 
 of conscience and the warnings of death, to skim over 
 the surface of life and look only at its sunny scenes, to 
 
25© TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 leave the world to struggle and sin on as it may, while 
 caring only for the gratification of our own tastes — 
 that is the pagan life, the life of nature. And living 
 that Epicurean life we shall assuredly lose our true 
 Christian life. We shall be like the seed which is 
 kept out of the ground ; which not only loses the 
 harvest which it might have produced, but the very 
 life which it already possesses. Everything is hostile 
 to the seed so long as it remains useless as a seed. 
 The rust and the mildew will seize it : the very air 
 will shrivel and waste it. Some seeds rapidly lose 
 their power of germinating : others possess a marvellous 
 persistency of vital force. But even admitting the truth 
 of the sprouting of hermetically-sealed mummy wheat 
 when sown, there is a limit to the vitality of the longest 
 lived seeds when exposed to the air. In the end, every 
 seed, if kept out of the ground, perishes, and becomes 
 a mere husk, full of dust and ashes. And so those who 
 live only for their own enjoyment, who make their 
 own personal pains and pleasures the pivot upon which 
 turns the entire conduct of life, not only deprive 
 themselves of the higher joys and hopes of humanity, 
 of the ble-ssings of doing good and communicating, — they 
 do not simply prevent the development of their being 
 by refusing the sacrifice of self; but they inevitably 
 lose whatever measure of spiritual life they already 
 possess, and their unfulfilled vocation and unsatisfied 
 desires will consume them like a tormenting rust. 
 
 Some ideal of life nobler than this Epicurean one, 
 embracing a wider scope than personal interest or 
 
XV. A CORN OF WHEAT. 251 
 
 pleasure is surely needed in this luxurious age and 
 country of ours, when the question, " Is life worth 
 living?" is asked, not from pressure of dire want and 
 trouble, but from very fulness of enjoyment. And such 
 an ideal has been given to us by Him who came '* not 
 to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give 
 His life a ransom for many." A striking experiment 
 has been tried of sowing oats and wheat together, in 
 order that the one might shelter and foster the growth 
 of the other. The two kinds of grain were sown on 
 the same day at the end of August. The oats sprang 
 up rapidly, but the tender stalks and blades were 
 killed by the early frosts, and their withered remains 
 lying over the dormant wheat all winter kept the snow 
 from drifting away, and the sun from thawing the 
 frozen ground. Thus sheltered, the wheat grew up 
 in early spring, and, manured by a top dressing of the 
 dead oats, produced a most excellent crop ; while the 
 wheat of an adjoining field, sown in the usual manner, 
 was of no value. Such is a picture of the relationship 
 which ought to exist between us and Him in the 
 likeness of whose death and resurrection we should 
 be planted together. The life to which He calls us 
 is a life quickened by His own death for us, that derives 
 all its elements of growth and well-being from His 
 atoning sacrifice, and that lives by the continual sacrifice 
 of self for the glory of God and the good of man. 
 It is the life that we desirQ to live in those solemn 
 impressive hours that come occasionally to all of us, 
 when sickness or sorrow shows to us the vanity of 
 
252 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. ch. xv. 
 
 all earthly things. And it is assuredly the life we 
 shall wish that we had lived in that most solemn 
 hour of all when we come to die. Shall we not join 
 ourselves to the Greeks and say to-day in our health, 
 in our strength, in our happiness, " We would see Jesus," 
 in order that we may begin that life at once. If so, 
 we shall see Him not as the Magi saw Him in His 
 state of humiliation and suffering before His work on 
 earth was finished ; but in His glorified state, seated 
 at the right hand of God, a Prince and a Saviour, to 
 give repentance and the remission of sins. And while 
 like the Wise Men of the East we Gentiles who were 
 fiir off draw nigh to the cradle of Jesus, and there 
 in gratitude for the humiliation of our Lord offer our 
 gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh ; let us like the 
 Greeks pass on to the Cross of Christ, that there, filled 
 with unspeakable love and devotion to Him who loved 
 us and gave Himself for us, we may bestow, not our gifts 
 only, but ourselves, and live no more unto ourselves, 
 but unto Him that died for us and rose again. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE WIDOWS POT OF OIL. 
 
 " Now there cried a certain woman of the wives of the sons of the 
 prophets unto Elisha, saying, Thy servant my husband is dead ; and 
 thou knowest that thy servant did fear the Lord : and the creditor 
 has come to take unto him my two sons to be bondmen. And 
 Elisha said unto her. What shall I do for thee? tell me, what hast 
 thou in the house? And she said. Thine handmaid hath not 
 anything in the house save a pot of oil. Then he said. Go, borrow 
 thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours, even empty vessels ; 
 borrow not a few. And when thou art come in, thou shalt shut 
 the door upon thee and upon thy sons, and shalt pour out into all 
 those vessels, and thou shalt set aside that which is full. So she 
 \\ ent from him, and shut the door upon her and upon her sons, who 
 brought the vessels to her ; and she poured out. And it came to 
 pass, when the vessels were full, that she said unto her son. Bring 
 me yet a vessel. And he said unto her, There is not a vessel more. 
 And the oil stayed. Then she came and told the man of God, 
 And he said, Go, sell the oil, and pay thy debt, and live thou and 
 thy children of the re^t." — II. Kixgs iv. i-S. 
 
 IF we are to believe the voice of tradition as expressed 
 by Josephus, the subject of this touching story 
 was one who had seen far better days, being the widow 
 of Obadiah, the Lord High Chamberlain of Ahab. 
 While her husband lived she breathed the atmosphere 
 
254 Tll^O WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 of a court, and was nourished in the lap of luxury. 
 But when he died she seems to have been reduced to 
 the utmost poverty. That world which had smiled 
 upon her in the days of her prosperity, now, with 
 characteristic fickleness, turned its back upon her. Her 
 friends forsook her, and refused to help her. She was 
 plunged into debt, contracted in order to obtain the 
 barest necessaries of life. Having nothing of any value 
 in the house, the hard-hearted creditor, in lieu of pay- 
 ment, threatened to take and sell her two only sons as 
 slaves ; which, by virtue of one Jewish law and the 
 extension of another, he had the power to do. It is 
 true that the period during which slaves could be held 
 in Israel was mercifully limited by the year of jubilee, 
 and that year, which would break every fetter, might be 
 near at hand ; but nevertheless, in her position, the 
 enforcement of the law even for the shortest period 
 could not but be felt as a grievous calamity. On 
 account of these trying circumstances, her case was one 
 that peculiarly warranted the interposition of Heaven. 
 But she had another claim still, beside that of her 
 wretchedness, upon the sympathy and help of Elisha. 
 Her husband feared the Lord while he lived. He was 
 the son of a prophet, and cherished the deepest regard 
 for the person and the work of those who filled that 
 sacred office. If he was, indeed, Obadiah, the steward 
 of Ahab — and there seems no reason to doubt the 
 Jewish tradition which thus identifies the husband of 
 the widow — then the sacred story informs us that during 
 the fierce persecution of the prophets of Israel by 
 
XVI. THE WIDOW'S POT OF OIL. 255 
 
 Jezebel, he took an hundred of these prophets, and, 
 at the peril of his life, hid them by fifty in a cave, 
 and fed them with bread and water during the whole 
 continuance of the famine. 
 
 Let us look for a moment at the beauty and signifi- 
 cance of Obadiah's devotion on this occasion. Most 
 interesting is it to find that while beyond the confines 
 of Israel, the widow of Zarephath was sustaining 
 the prophet of the Lord by the barrel of meal that 
 wasted not, and by the cruse of oil that did not 
 fail, Obadiah, in the court of Israel — in the very 
 centre of that wickedness which had brought the 
 curse of desolation upon the land — was sustaining the 
 hidden prophets of the Lord by a zeal that never tired, 
 and a patient tenderness that never wore out. We see 
 the hand of God in both these parallel incidents; in 
 the one as clearly as in the other. The replenishing 
 of the widow's barrel of meal and cruse of oil that sup- 
 ported Elijah was the doing of the Lord ; the maintain- 
 ing of the love and devotion in Obadiah's heart, whereby 
 in the midst of almost insurmountable difficulties and 
 innumerable dangers he failed not, for three years and 
 a half, to support the hundred true prophets under 
 his care, was also the doing of the Lord. The one 
 was a specimen of God's working in the field of nature 
 and providence; the other was a specimen of God's 
 working in the field of the human heart ; and both are 
 wonderful in our eyes. How striking a proof of God's 
 care for His servants do these two correlated examples 
 afford ! There was a curse of drought and famine 
 
256 71V0 WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 upon all the land ; thousands came to want and 
 probably perished ; but Jcliovah's servants were pre- 
 served, and had enough to eat and drink. An unclean 
 bird and a heathen widow — a Baal-worshipper from 
 Jezebel's native country — ministered to the wants of 
 Elijah ; a courtier, a servant of Ahab and Jezebel, 
 ministered to the others. 
 
 Obadiah's devotion on this occasion may have greatly 
 encroached upon the provision which he may have been 
 making for his family after his death. He may have 
 spent upon the prophets of the Lord what he meant 
 for his own wife and children. That the expense of 
 feeding such a multitude for such a long period must 
 have been very great is at once ajjparent when we con- 
 sider that food was all the time at famine prices, and 
 also that in order to convey this food to the hiding- 
 places of the prophets he must have employed many 
 servants, paid them well for their work, and perhaps 
 even bribed them to conceal it lest it should come 
 to the ears of his mistress, and prove fatal to tlie 
 propliets and to himself. Like Joseph in Pharaoh's 
 court, like Daniel in Babylon — the upright and pious 
 chamberlain in the palace of Ahab did not take ad- 
 vantage of his opportunities of enriching himself, as 
 the officers of eastern monarchs have so often done. 
 ( )n the contrary, he spent his fortune in benefiting 
 the needy, and died poor. On this ground his widow 
 might well appeal to Elisha for assistance. He who 
 had given at the risk of his life and with the loss 
 of his substance bread and water to the starving 
 
XVI. THE WIDOirs POT OF OIL. 257 
 
 prophets of the Lord, might now in the persons of 
 his representatives, in great straits, expect a prophet's 
 reward. 
 
 Ehsha's first question to her evinced a wonderful 
 knowledge of the liuman heart, and of the best mode 
 of deahng with poverty and suffering. Instead of 
 volunteermg to give her aid at once, as most persons 
 would have done, carried away by an overpowering 
 impulse of compassion at the recital of the tale o°f 
 sorrow; like a wise and judicious friend, he inquires 
 how for she herself has the power to avert the threatened 
 calamity- " What hast thou in the house ? " His assist- 
 ance must be based upon her own assistance. He will 
 help her to help herself. And this is the only true 
 way to benefit the poor. By reckless and indiscriminate 
 almsgiving, by wholesale gifts of money, we run the 
 risk of pauperising the objects of our charity. Our 
 assistance should therefore be of such a nature as to 
 call forth the resources which they themselves possess, 
 and to make the most of them. However small these 
 resources nuiy be, they should be used as a fulcrum 
 by means of which our help may raise them to a better 
 condition. The first question which we too should ask 
 the widow or the destitute is-MVhat hast thou in the 
 I'ouse?" No help from without can benefit, unless 
 there be a willingness of self-help within. Of course 
 such a mode as this of administering charity is more 
 troublesome, and requires a greater expenditure of time 
 and self-denial, than the plan, which is far too com- 
 mon, of throwing a dole to a beggar to get rid of his 
 
 s 
 
258 TIFO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 importunity, and to save ourselves the annoyance of his 
 wretchedness. But putting him in the way of helping 
 himself will be truer charity than any gift of money. 
 
 The widow of Obadiah had nothing in the house 
 save a pot of oil. Was this oil grown by Obadiah 
 during his lifetime — the last of the produce of his olive- 
 yard ? In all likelihood it was all that remained of the 
 once extensive property of Ahab's steward. Out of this 
 last pot of oil — the sign of her uttermost poverty — 
 Elisha furnished the source of her comfort and happi- 
 ness. Like Elijah, who made the handful of meal and 
 the cruse of oil already existing an unwasting provision 
 for each new day's want ; like a greater than Elijah, 
 whose miracle of the multiplication of the loaves and 
 fishes took its point of departure into the supernatural 
 from the common barley loaves and fishes before Him, 
 so Elisha in the case of Obadiah's widow made the 
 produce of nature and of man's labour the basis of 
 his wonderful act. In the fables of all nations we are 
 told that a magician, by a mere wave of his wand, or 
 by pronouncing a certain charm, produces at once wealth 
 and luxuries that had no existence before. Aladdin rubs 
 a ring, and immediately a genius appears, and at his 
 command provides a rich feast for him out of nothing. 
 He rubs an old lamp, and at once a gorgeous palace 
 rises up before him in substantial reality, created out of 
 the formless ether around. By putting on Fortunatus's 
 wishing-cap the lucky possessors of it can get anything 
 thev want, and create things unknown before. But there 
 is nothin" like this in the miracles of the Bible. The 
 
XVI. THE WIDOW'S POT OF OIL. 259 
 
 prophets and godly men of old were no such magicians 
 as these. Their most wonderful works are in beautiful 
 accordance with the wise laws of labour and economy 
 which pervade the ordinary arrangements of life. Even 
 the miracles of Christ, which approached nearest to 
 creations out of nothing, rested upon a fulcrum of 
 existing materials, by means of which their supernatural 
 leverage was exerted. We nowhere read that He created 
 anything which had no existence before. Such a miracle 
 would have been contrary to the analogy of His whole 
 work of redemption. Jesus on earth was a Redeemer, 
 not a Creator. He came for the purpose of removing 
 the curse of sin that lay upon the old world, which He 
 had created once for all, and which He had pronounced 
 very good; and not for the purpose of making a new 
 world. He came to make all things new — not by a 
 new creation, but by the purification of the old ; and 
 the miracles of Elijah and Elisha, as well as of St. 
 Peter and St. Paul, were all wrought for the same pur- 
 pose, and in conformity with and anticipation of this 
 glorious restitution of all thi/igs. 
 
 The Gospel miracle which most nearly resembles the 
 multiplication of the widow's oil by Elisha, is the miracle 
 of the loaves and fishes. In both cases the properties 
 of the articles remained the same, and their substance 
 only was extended. In both cases the point of departure 
 and the completed result of the miracle were articles in 
 familiar use among the people. Elisha simply multiplied 
 the common olive oil of the widow into the common 
 oii\"e oil of the country, neither better nor worse. Jesus 
 
 s 2 
 
7 6o TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 simply multiplied the common barley loaves and fishes 
 of the fisher-lad into the common barley loaves and 
 fishes which formed the ordinary fare of the disciples. 
 In both cases the miracle was based upon the ultimate 
 result of man's labour. The oil in the widow's pot was 
 the juice expressed, out of berries gathered, from trees 
 planted, grafted, and tended by man's toil and skill. 
 The bread in the fisherman's possession was baked by 
 man's hands, out of barley sown, reaped, gathered, 
 threshed, and ground in the mill by man's skill and 
 labour; the fishes were equally the produce of human 
 industry and special knowledge. These examples show 
 to us that even in miracles man must be a fellow-worker 
 with God in subduing the earth, and in removing the 
 limitations and disabilities of the curse. And this idea 
 is further illustrated by the command laid by Elisha upon 
 the widow to furnish vessels for the miraculous oil. " Go 
 borrow thee vessels abroad of all thy neighbours, even 
 empty vessels ; borrow not a few ; and when thou art 
 come in, thou shalt shut the door upon thee and upon 
 thy sons, and shalt pour out into all these vessels, and 
 thou shalt set aside that which is full." This procedure 
 is exactly similar to that of the disciples in distributing 
 the loaves and fishes to the multitude — to that of the 
 servants at Cana in drawing the water and bearing it 
 to the governor of the feast. To common sense these 
 actions might seem absurd ; and, therefore, men were 
 enjoined to do them in order to prove their faith in 
 God— to show that they could have implicit confidence 
 in His word, even in regard to things which might 
 
XVI. THE WIDOirs POT OF OIL. 26 1 
 
 appear contrary to reason and experience. In these 
 actions men prepared themselves by the miracle wrought 
 within them— the triumph over natural unbelief and the 
 objections of reason — to believe in and to benefit by 
 the miracle about to be wrought without. 
 
 The widow of Obadiah might well be astonished at 
 the command of Elisha. If she had stopped to reason 
 about the procedure required of her, she might well 
 hesitate to undertake it. Taking a common-sense view 
 of the matter, of what use would it be to borrow as 
 many vessels as possible from her neighbours? What 
 answer could she give them if they asked her what she 
 meant to do with these vessels ? Would they not laugh 
 at her if she told the prophet's message, and ridicule 
 the utter folly of the whole story? Would she not 
 seem to herself playing at a child's game in pouring 
 her pot of oil into the empty vessels ? Did any one 
 ever know of any good coming of pouring oil from 
 vessel to vessel? The quantity could not possibly be 
 increased by the process. The pot of oil would still 
 be only a pot of oil, though spread over a thousand 
 vessels. And yet, in spite of all these apparent absur- 
 dities and impossibilities — in spite of all the objections 
 of reason and common sense, the widow hastened to 
 obey the prophet's command. She stumbled not because 
 of unbelief. Her faith triumphed over all difficulties. 
 She had implicit confidence in Elisha's word, although 
 she knew not what he was about to do ; and in this 
 way she proved herself to be a fit subject for having 
 the miracle performed for her. She fiilfilled the 
 
262 T^FO IVOR LBS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 condition upon which alone a miracle can be wrought — 
 " Believest thou that I can do this ? " 
 
 It is a significant circumstance that the prophet should 
 have commanded the widow to shut the door upon her- 
 self and her sons, when she poured out the oil into the 
 vessels. There is a reason for, and a meaning in, every 
 detail of the Bible miracles ; and doubdess the design 
 of this apparently trivial injunction was to secure to 
 the widow the privacy and calmness of mind necessary 
 for the performance of the miracle, and for its producing 
 the full and proper impression upon her own soul. If 
 she had left the door open, the neighbours doubtless, 
 moved by curiosity to see what she would do with the 
 vessels she had borrowed, would flock around her, and 
 sadly discompose her mind by their laughter, their 
 sneers, and their unsuitable remarks. Reverence, still- 
 ness, and solitude are needed for the miracle, and 
 therefore the door must be shut, and the unsympathetic 
 world must be excluded. It is not in the crowd that 
 God works His wonders in nature and grace — it is in 
 the lonely place, to the solitary individual. Who is it 
 that sees the grander revelations of nature, but he who 
 turns his back upon the human multitude, and seeks 
 communion with her alone in the sanctuary of her hills 
 and desert-places ? It was to Moses, the solitary shepherd 
 who led his flock to the back of Horeb, and turned 
 aside to behold the great sight, that the burning bush 
 appeared. It was before Elijah in a cave, in the same 
 wild, lonely region, that the terror and the mercy of 
 Jehovah passed by in the whirlwind, the fire, and the 
 
XVI. THE WIDOW'S FOT OF OIL. 263 
 
 still small voice. We must enter into our closet and shut 
 the door, if our prayer is to be indeed such a communion 
 with our Father who seeth in secret, as will transfigure 
 us into His likeness, and make us, when we come out 
 into the world, strong to do and bear all His will. In 
 two of the mightiest miracles of Jesus we see strikingly- 
 manifested the different treatment given to humble 
 reverence and to rude unbelief. The boisterous crowd 
 of hired mourners were put out of the house of Jairus, 
 and they saw not the mighty miracle which Jesus did. If 
 they had not laughed Him who is the resurrection and 
 the life to scorn, they might have obtained such an 
 outlook into the life beyond the grave in that house, 
 as would have enabled them to laugh death to scorn. 
 While, on the other hand, we read that when Jesus 
 touched the bier of the widow of Nain's son, the 
 bearers stood still. They were struck by a sudden 
 consciousness that they were in the presence of One 
 who had a right to stop them, even in their progress 
 to the tomb ; and they waited silently and reverently for 
 what He might say or do ; and they had the unspeak- 
 able privilege of witnessing the mighty act which would 
 in future change for them the shadow of death into 
 the morning. 
 
 But, besides being necessary in order to prepare the 
 widow of Obadiah for receiving the benefits of the 
 miracle, the solitude and secrecy which Elisha en- 
 joined were significant of the mysterious character of 
 the miracle itself. It was withdrawn from siglit. It 
 ivas silent and unimaginable. It was veiled in the same 
 
264 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 obscurity as all creative acts — as all beginnings. It 
 was out of darkness and in darkness that the world 
 was created ; and it is in darkness that all the natural 
 processes that approximate most closely to creations 
 take place. The seed germinates, or, in other words, 
 multiplies itself in darkness ; animal life begins in the 
 mysterious secrecy of the womb ; formless matter 
 crystallises in the sunless caves of the earth into more 
 than the glory of living flowers. Who catches the 
 exact moment when the evening star first twinkles in the 
 transparent blue ? Who has noticed the unfolding of 
 tlie full-blown rose from the bud ? God's arm wrought 
 unseen for Israel in the bosom of the dark cloud which 
 rested over the Red Sea all the night : and in the 
 morning the dry path was revealed between the crystal 
 walls of water. The veil of darkness concealed the 
 falling of the manna from heaven : and the dawn 
 only disclosed it as it whitened the tawny sand of the 
 desert around the tents of Israel. We cannot trace 
 beginnings, or behold creative acts ; they are hid in 
 the secret place of God's thundering ; they are kept 
 beyond all our researches in the hiding-places of God's 
 ])0\ver. Verily God hideth Himself — shuts, as it were, 
 the door upon all His origins and commencements, and 
 leaves us baffled outside. Science, and religion, and 
 all life bring us back to an unfathomable mystery — a 
 closed door, whose magic "Sesame" no human being 
 can utter. 
 
 How great must have been the astonishment of the 
 widow when, pouring into the first vessel a quantity 
 
XVI, THE WIDOW'S POT OF OIL. 265 
 
 of oil from her pot, the vessel filled immediately after 
 the first few drops ; and the same thing happened as 
 she passed from vessel to vessel, each filling to the 
 brim as soon as she poured a little from her own store 
 into it ; until at the end, pouring the last remaining 
 drops into the last vessel, her own stock of oil and 
 the supply from heaven failed together. She could not 
 understand the extraordinary occurrence, though it took 
 place under her own hand. The process by which the 
 oil was multiplied we, toO; labour in vain to conceive. 
 We cannot explain the phenomenon by the observation 
 of any known laws ; and yet in truth the miracle is 
 not more strange, save in the rapidity with which it 
 is effected, than that which is every day going forward 
 in nature in those regions where the olive-tree grows. 
 You sow the seed of an olive tree ; that seed contains 
 a very small quantity of oil. It grows and becomes 
 a tree and produces an immense quantity of fruit ; so 
 that from the little drop of oil in the small vessel of 
 the seed, you have thousands of vessels in the shape 
 of the berries, each filled with oil. He Avho makes 
 the olive-seed in the course of a few years, or the 
 olive-tree every season, to prepare and extract oil from 
 the scanty soil on the arid rocks, and the dry burning 
 air in which the tree delights to grow, concentrated, 
 in the miracle in the widow's chamber, the slower pro- 
 cesses of nature spread over months and years, into 
 the act of single moment. Of course tlie natural 
 process does not explain the miracle, but it is a help 
 to our faith. The one sheds light upon the other. 
 
266 Tiro IVOHLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 The miracle teaches us that the natural process is not 
 the result of an impersonal law or of a dead course 
 of things, but the working of our Father in heaven ; 
 while the natural process in its turn shows to us that 
 God in the miracle is working in the line of the ordinary 
 events and dispensations of His providence. 
 
 Awestruck and filled with amazement, the widow 
 went and told the man of God what had happened. 
 She asked for counsel in the strange and unexpected 
 emergency. She needed assurance of the reality and 
 permanence of this marvellous good fortune. The oil 
 might vanish as mysteriously as it came. She did not 
 know what to do with it. How calmly the prophet 
 receives her I He is not astonished at what she tells 
 him. He knew what would happen. And does not 
 this show a wonderful amount of faith and confidence 
 in God on the part of Elisha ? Does it not impart 
 a striking confirmation to the truth of the words, "the 
 secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him." Elisha 
 told the widow to sell the miraculous oil and pay her 
 debt with the price of it, and use what she could not 
 sell as food for herself and her children. This feature 
 of the miracle brings it into close relation with the 
 gathering of the basketfuls of fragments by the disciples 
 after the feeding of the multitude, and the preserving 
 of the fragments for future use in daily life, when no 
 miracle would be wrought for them. Just as the 
 manna blended with the corn of Canaan, and the 
 fragments of the miraculous loaves took their place 
 among the common daily bread of the world, so 
 
xvr. THE IVIDOWS POT OF OIL. 267 
 
 the miraculous oil took its place among the common 
 stores of the merchant, and served its purpose in the 
 homely uses of every-day life. A price was set upon 
 it, and the oil-merchant could not distinguish it from 
 his ordinary stock. The miracle goes no farther than 
 is absolutely necessary. It does not permanently enrich 
 the poor ; it provides only for the temporary necessity. 
 The help of Jesus stops at the point when the diseased 
 or disabled man, by being cured, is able to come up 
 with his fellows and keep pace with them in providing 
 for himself. The miracle blends with common life. 
 How strikingly does this wonderful incident show to us 
 that we must be fellow-workers with God throughout, 
 from first to last, in our own deliverance and blessing. 
 How wonderfully it illustrates the whole Divine economy 
 of grace, under which we are enjoined to work out our 
 own salvation with fear and trembling, seeing that it 
 is God that worketh in us both to will and to do of 
 His good pleasure ! 
 
 Thus, in a most interesting manner, was the bread 
 cast upon the waters found after many days. The 
 widow proved in her experience the truth of the 
 Saviour's words, " Blessed are the merciful for they 
 shall obtain mercy ; " or, as the phrase should be trans- 
 lated literally, " Blessed are the olive-givers, for olives 
 shall be given to them." Obadiah had poured the oil 
 of his bounty into the afflicted heart of God's servants ; 
 and God's servant, in return, gave his widow the oil of 
 joy for mourning and the garment of praise for the 
 Epirit of heaviness. 
 
26S Tiro WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 I might make many practical uses of the wido^rs 
 pot of oil, for it is full of significance, but I prefer 
 turning the incident into a parable, and using it as an 
 encouragement to prayer. We are all in the condition 
 of the poor widow ; we are destitute of everything and 
 are ready to perish. But God is far more tender and 
 considerate to us than Elisha was to the widow. If we 
 have but the feeling of want, but the desire for God's 
 help, that very want or desire will be to us what the 
 pot of oil was to the widow — the source of an abundant 
 supply of all that v.e need. If we come to God with 
 the longing of our hearts for His salvation, He will 
 come with the fulness of His Godhead, and supply all 
 our need according to His riches in glory by Christ 
 Jesus. If we provide vessels, God will furnish the 
 oil with Mhich to fill them. For our own little oil, 
 He will give us overllowing measure ; for our feeble 
 desire. He will do exceeding abundantly above all that 
 we can ask or think. Let us borrow, then, many 
 vessels ; let them be empty, nothing of self in them ; 
 and let us lay them before Christ, and He will fill 
 them to the brim with the oil of His grace. Geth- 
 semane, the place where He suffered the last agony, 
 means a press for olive oil. From that oil-press of 
 sorrow He will provide a sufficient supply of the oil 
 of gladness for us. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 SNOW. 
 
 " He giveth snow like wool." — Psalm cxlvii. i6. 
 
 IN Palestine snow is not the characteristic feature 
 of winter as it is in northern latitudes. It is merely 
 an occasional phenomenon. Showers of it fall now and 
 then in severer seasons on the loftier parts of the land, 
 and whiten for a day or two the vineyards and corn- 
 fields, but it melts from the green earth as rapidly as 
 its sister vapours vanish from the blue sky. The snowy 
 peak of Hermon, the true scene of the Transfiguration, 
 is indeed seen from every elevated point of view — a 
 perpetual vision of winter clothed in raiment whiter than 
 any fuller on earth can whiten it ; but this snow-spectre 
 stands spell-bound as it were on the northern threshold 
 of the land, gazing over the smiling summer landscapes, 
 but unable to descend among thera, or even chill them 
 with its breath. But the Psalmist seized the occasional 
 snow, as he seized the fleeting vapour, and made it 
 a text for his spiritual meditations. Let us follow his 
 example and make the snow which appears oftener and 
 
Tiro WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 remains a longer time with us, lymg like a dreary 
 white shroud over the face of nature, the subject of 
 a few timely reflections, and the means of leading our 
 thoughts to things higher and more enduring than itself. 
 Let us write on its fair, white surface the name of God 
 in letters which he who runs may read. 
 
 I. Let us look first at its beauty. Every eye can 
 appreciate the stainless purity, the delicate softness of 
 the snow. It makes a spiritual world of this dull, dark 
 earth of ours; and the fields that seemed fit only for 
 the growth of man's food, and the tread of weary feet 
 in the common labours of life — covered with its white 
 immaculate carpet — look like a celestial floor on 
 which white-winged angels on lofty errands of mercy 
 might alight from the kindred heavens. How softly 
 rounded and graceful are its curves as it covers some 
 old wayside wall, or is drifted into wreaths over the 
 common 1 How picturesque are the forms into which 
 it moulds the outlines of trees and shrubs I Have you 
 ever entered a wood after a snow-storm ? If so, you 
 have been admitted into a scene of enchantment, at 
 whose threshold you stand in awe and astonishment. 
 It is a transformation scene in which familiar objects 
 become unreal as shapes in a dream, presenting an 
 appearance similar to the white Liliputian forest into 
 which the microscope changes a bit of fungus mould. 
 It looks like a newly formed world on the morning 
 of creation before the sun has arisen to cast over it 
 a prismatic radiance and baptise it with colour. What 
 a look of sublimitv docs the snow impart to the 
 
XVII. SNOIV. 271 
 
 mountain peak, raising it high above all human changes, 
 into a realm of serene, passionless repose, reflecting 
 the light of the great white Throne of wliich it seems 
 the very footstool I The line of mountain snow on 
 the blue verge of the horizon is the most exquisite of 
 all sculpture. It yields to the eye and mind the purest 
 and most refined enjoyment. From the stainless surface 
 of that Alpine snow comes back the crimson splendour 
 of the sunrise and sunset, like molten gold in the heart 
 of a furnace— the highest earthly of the landscape thus 
 purified into and mingling with the heavenly. Even 
 into the dreary prosaic city the snow enters and trans- 
 figures it; the houses become like Aladdin's palace; 
 every cart-rut is fringed with jewels ; and over smoke- 
 begrimed railing and miry street is spread the spotless 
 ermine of heaven's investiture. 
 
 How significant is the white of the snow ! The hue 
 of water in violent agitation— of the foaming cascade 
 and the raging surf— belongs to vapour frozen into 
 calmest permanence. Extremes meet ; and the water 
 that on the one side purifies itself by motion, on the 
 other side purifies itself by rest : symbol of the frequently 
 opposite modes of discipline by which God carries on 
 the work of sanctification in the soul. Out of white 
 all the colours spring, and to it they return. All 
 summer hues are gathered back into the uniform radiance 
 of the snow, and we retreat from a world of life and 
 beauty to a world of death and beauty. Nature's coat 
 of many colours gives place to the white raiment with 
 which we clothe the infant in its innocence, the bride 
 
272 7JV0 WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 in her purity, and the dead in their rest. Washed by 
 the waves of the world, and refined by the fires of God, 
 the landscape, like a gigantic lily, unfolds its white 
 petals to the sun, and reflects the light in all its 
 integrity and chastity ; and thus, clothed in the vestal 
 humility of winter, it is prepared for the many-hued 
 splendours of summer. 
 
 But it is to the eye that searches into the heart of 
 things that the snow reveals its most wonderful beauty, 
 for it is of that truest kind which bears the closest 
 inspection. Take one of the myriad snow-flakes which 
 obscure the atmosphere as they fall, and put it under 
 the microscope. It melts almost instantly, but not 
 before you have caught a glimpse of loveliness that 
 astonishes you. It is a perfect crystal, consisting of 
 six rays spreading in the most symmetrical manner 
 from the centre, and often provided with smaller branch- 
 ing rays. Formless and uniform as a wreath of snow 
 looks, it is composed of myriads of such crystals, whose 
 shapes are so exquisite that the eye is never weary 
 of looking at them. Their variety is most wonderful. 
 Thirty different kinds may be observed during any of 
 our own snow-slorms ; while in high northern latitudes, 
 upwards of a hundred varieties have been delineated 
 that looked as if designed from a kaleidoscope, yet all 
 based upon the simple plan of the six-rayed star. 
 We see in these minute crystals of the storm the sign 
 of the cross, which is impressed upon the whole of 
 nature, and enters in some form or other into all our 
 art and science and literature — thus linking our religious 
 
XVII. SNOW. 273 
 
 life with all our ordinary thoughts and labours. When 
 the first command was issued, " Let there be light," 
 that subtle power shot forth into the primeval darkness 
 in the form of an infinitude of crosses, and arranged 
 the chaos of the world into this shape throughout the 
 mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. Water freezes 
 and flowers blossom into the form of the cross, and 
 man himself, the crown of creation, assumes it in every 
 outspreading of his hands in prayer. And thus all 
 creation by wearing this sacred symbol upon its bosom 
 testifies of Him wlio is the true light of the world, who 
 formed the world to be the theatre of redemption, and 
 by the power of His cross brings order out of its 
 confusion and life out of its death. 
 
 The snow-crystals are the blossoms of inorganic nature. 
 According to the beautiful system of prefiguration which 
 prevents all abrupt beginnings in nature, and sounds 
 a herald voice of coming glory, the snow-flowers which 
 winter grows in such boundless and careless profusion, 
 foretell by the symmetry of their forms, the blossoms 
 of summer. They seem, indeed, like the ghosts of the 
 departed flowers ; the models of the spirit-world after 
 the pattern of wliich the snow-drop and the lily and 
 the Star of Bethlehem are constructed. They look as 
 if their translucent spiritual beauty needed only the 
 Promethean fire to glow into the rosy life of June. 
 A wreath of snow is thus, indeed, a bank of flowers ; 
 and we little think, when walking over its cold and 
 barren surface, that we are treading down at every 
 step a tiny garden. I know of no purer intellectual 
 
 X 
 
274 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 joy than tliat of gazing through the microscope upon 
 these miracles of lovehness ; and it is a careless mind 
 indeed that is not impelled to ask whence came these 
 figures so exquisite and yet so frail and fleeting, so full 
 of wonder and yet so long unknown, and still so little 
 recognised by thousands who tread them under foot. 
 Their beauty is not a chance endowment. It is God's 
 hall-mark attesting that the work is His. It is the 
 quality that is superadded to everything that God has 
 made — to the moulding of the fleeting vapour into the 
 sunset cloud, and the unfolding of the brilliant, fragrant 
 flower from the summer sod — in order that our thoughts 
 may be raised from the perishing loveliness of the creature 
 to the enduring glory of the Creator, from the beauty 
 of nature to the beauty of hohness. Such beauty is 
 a reflection of the Divine image — not something that 
 God does, but sometliing that He is, really and suitably 
 a part of Himself. All true beauty is something higher 
 than creation and independent of it, something that 
 God has not made, an attribute as much linked with 
 our conceptions of Him as His wisdom and justice. 
 It awakens that curiosity about God, which is an 
 essential element of worship. 
 
 No rightly constituted mind can behold the wealth of 
 beauty in the snow-flowers without being awed and 
 humbled. We see in the fair structure of these inorganic 
 blossoms, as well as in every lovely thing in nature, the 
 transcript of the Divine image originally impressed upon 
 our own souls ; and while these fleeting crystals of 
 vapour perfectly obey the laws of their formation, and 
 
XVII. SNOW. 275 
 
 exhibit the original beauty stamped upon the first snow- 
 flake, we have perverted our nature and made ourselves 
 unworthy of a world which God has made so fair for 
 us. We stand between two systems, each of which 
 reminds us that we, and we alone, have introduced con- 
 fusion and defilement into the works of God. The pure 
 snow-covered fields of winter beneath our feet and the 
 pure angel-tenanted starry heavens above our heads, 
 alike testify that we are not in harmony with God's 
 creation. But while there is this wholesome humiliation 
 in the sight of nature's beauty, there is inspiration in it 
 also. Although we have lost the Divine image, it can 
 be restored, and we can be brought again into accord- 
 ance with the beautiful harmony of the world. As 
 wonderful a transformation can be wrought by the Divine 
 Spirit in our case as is wrought in nature, when the 
 dreary city that speaks only of human toil and sorrow, 
 with its miry ways and sin-stained haunts, is changed 
 by the snow into a city of pearls and diamonds, and 
 looks like a suburb of the celestial city, or when the 
 pure white crystal of the snow-flake is formed out of 
 the polluted ditch-water and falls from the murky cloud. 
 He who arranged the particles of snow into such ex- 
 quisite shapes of beauty can bring ord^r out of our 
 confusion, and change our vile bodies and spirits into 
 the likeness of Christ's ; and He invites the guiltiest 
 and most morally-deformed to come and reason with 
 Him and be subjected to this renewing process, and 
 though our sins be as scarlet they shall be as white 
 as snow. 
 
 T 2 
 
276 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 2. Let us look further at the power of the snow. Can 
 anything be more feeble and delicate than the snow- 
 flakes which the child catches in its tiny hand as they 
 come down waveringly to the ground ? Lighter than 
 a feather they fall from the silent sky to the silent earth ; 
 more fragile than a foam-bell they melt and disappear 
 before the touch of a finger. And yet these weakest 
 and lightest of all things by their accumulation possess 
 a power which is irresistible, and which is among the 
 most stupendous forces of nature. They can lock up 
 the wheels of labour; they can besiege cities, and shut 
 them out from the rest of the world ; they can stop the 
 march of armies, and muffle the landscape into an awful 
 silence. We see countless evidences of the power of 
 the snow around us in winter, and feel how helpless all 
 the boasted appliances of our mechanical skill are to 
 make head against it. In a few hours God's little army 
 of snow-flakes does a work which defies all the resources 
 of man to undo it, and before which he has to pause 
 baffled and defeated. The snow-flakes did what all the 
 united power of Europe could not do : they arrested the 
 triumphant course of Buonaparte, destroyed his invincible 
 army, and paved the way for his overthrow. Were it 
 not for the disastrous effect of the terrible snow-storms 
 of Russia, the destiny of the world might at this moment 
 have been very different. God breathes upon the fleecy 
 vapours that hang light as a veil in the winter sky, 
 abstracts from them a few degrees of heat, and in their 
 fall the largest armies are overwhelmed. The giant 
 locomotive, which carries the commerce of a country 
 
xvir. SNOW. 277 
 
 and wliose strength seems irresistible is made to stop 
 by the soft but unyielding opposition of the snow-drift. 
 Filling the air with its misty darkness, obliterating all 
 the well-known landmarks, and changing the familiar 
 scene into a trackless waste, the snow-storm bewilders 
 the traveller and baffles his eftbrts to reach his destina- 
 tion. Into the toil-worn haunts of the city the snow 
 brings an involuntary pause, and bids all the Babel 
 noises be still. What a striking contrast between the 
 soft silent fall of the delicate snow-flakes and the mul- 
 titudes of noisy men and implements required to remove 
 the fleecy obstructions from the busy highways ! God 
 lowers the temperature of the air a few degrees, and 
 immediately man and his works are overwhelmed by a 
 fall of snow. God increases the temperature a few 
 degrees, sends the soft warm south wind, and imme- 
 diately what all the power and skill of man could not 
 remove, melts away quietly and gently like a dream. 
 
 But it is among the mountains that we recognise the 
 full power of the snow. There it crashes down the 
 steep mountain-side in the awful avalanche, crushing the 
 oldest forest before it like a bed of reeds, rending the 
 rock from its foundation, and burying the Alpine village 
 in ruins. The very wind which it produces in falling 
 levels trees and houses to the ground. The tourist 
 crossing the Wengern Alp sees enormous masses of 
 snow melted by the warm rock continually rushing down 
 the precipices of the Jungfrau with a noise like that of 
 a hundred pieces of artillery ; and yet to tlie eye these 
 avalanches, dwarfed by the distance and by the gigantic 
 
278 TIFO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 scale of the mountain, look like a puff" of smoke, which 
 the passing breeze speedily sweeps away. I have lis- 
 tened often to the indescribable sound of falling snow 
 and ice, unlike any other sound in nature, and I have 
 been reminded impressively of the Psalmist's sublime 
 words, " The voice of the Lord is mighty, it shaketh the 
 cedars of Lebanon;" while the awful silence that succeeded 
 seemed to whisper, " The Lord is in His holy temple, 
 let all the earth keep silence before Him." What power 
 is sealed up in the immense masses of snow that lie so 
 perfectly balanced on the upper slopes of the mountains, 
 that the least motion of the air would unloose them ! 
 Travellers passing under them must proceed with the 
 utmost care, and not speak above their breath. Innu- 
 merable fatal accidents have happened in consequence 
 of the neglect of such precautions, and avalanches thus 
 started have not unfrequently overwhelmed a whole 
 valley ! You see the tremendous pressure of the snow 
 as it slowly descends the mountain-side, and becomes 
 gradually consolidated into tlie ice of the glacier. 
 Though its motion be utterly imperceptible to the naked 
 eye, it presses forward with a constant, steady, and 
 irresistible force, torn and twisted in the narrowest parts 
 into the most fearful chaos of crevasses, blocks, and 
 precipices of ice. It tosses upon its surface as if in 
 sport stupendous blocks of granite, which it transports 
 from the loftiest summits to the lowest valleys ; and it 
 wrinkles up the solid earth in front of its advancing wall 
 like a sheet of paper. 
 
 3. Let us look further at the service of the snow. 
 
XVII. SNOW. 279 
 
 *' He giveth snow like wool," says the Psalmist. This 
 comparison expressively indicates one of the most im- 
 portant purposes which the snow serves in the economy 
 of nature. It covers the earth like a blanket during 
 that period of winter sleep which is necessary to recruit 
 its exhausted energies, and prepare it for fresh efforts 
 in spring; and being, like wool, a bad conductor, it 
 conserves the latent heat of the soil, and protects the 
 dormant life of plant and animal hid under it from the 
 frosty rigour of the outside air. Winter sown wheat, 
 when defended by this covering, whose under surface 
 seldom falls much below 32° Fahr., can thrive even 
 though the temperature of the air above may be many 
 degrees below the freezing-point. Our country, enjoying 
 an equable climate, seldom requires this protection ; but 
 in northern climates, where the winter is severe and 
 prolonged, its beneficial effects are most marked. The 
 scanty vegetation which blooms with such sudden and 
 marvellous loveliness in the height of summer, in the 
 Arctic regions and on mountain summits, would perish 
 utterly were it not for the protection of the snow that 
 lies on it for three-quarters of the year. In a shady 
 hollow of the precipitous rocks which crown the summit 
 of the ]\Iorgenberg range, lying to the east of Inter- 
 lachen, I once saw one of the most striking examples of 
 the good offices of the snow. A huge wreath, the 
 legacy of the previous winter, was melting slowly beneath 
 the hot breath of July, and from one end of it flowed 
 a rill of the clearest and "coldest water, inexpressibly 
 refreshing in the parching heat. Around it bloomed 
 
28o TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 a perfect garden of Alpine plants ; rich patches of 
 gentian of every shade and size, forget-me-nots blue as 
 their native skies, pure white ranunculuses, yellow geums 
 dazzling the eye by their brightness and profusion, 
 mountain cowslips, and crimson flames of rhododendron 
 bushes casting a glowing reflection upon the cold barren 
 surface of the snow. Wherever the wTeath melted, 
 leaving the newly exposed ground black and burnt- 
 looking, crowds of the graceful purple tassels of the 
 soldanella sprang up as if by magic. I never saw such 
 a wonderful display of floral beauty, and all fostered 
 by what is usually associated with death and desolation ; 
 summer reposing in all her charms on the chill bosom 
 of winter. In the course of a few weeks the snow 
 wreath would disappear, and the bright garden which 
 it cherished would vanish with it, leaving behind a dry 
 and lifeless waste. Thus the snow stood the friend of 
 the fair Alpine flowers against the too ardent advances 
 of the sun ; or rather, the sun and the snow, forgetting 
 their antagonism, worked together for the good of these 
 children of the light. That wreath with its surrounding 
 garden was surely an emblem of human life, played 
 upon by opposite forces made to harmonise in its well- 
 being, melting away continually, and in its melting 
 creating many fair and happy things, which in the end 
 perish with it ! 
 
 But it is not to .Vlpinc plants and hybcrnating animals 
 alone that God gives snow like wool. The Esquimaux 
 take advantage of its curious protective property, and in- 
 geniously build their winter huts of blocks of hardened 
 
xvii. SNOW. 28r 
 
 snow; thus strangely enough, by a homoeopathic law, 
 protecting themselves against cold by the effects of 
 cold. The Arctic navigator has been often indebted 
 to walls of snow banked up round his ship for the 
 comparative comfort of his winter quarters, when the 
 temperature without has fallen so low that even chloric 
 ether became solid. And many a precious life has 
 been saved by the timely shelter which the snow-storm 
 itself has provided against its own violence. But while 
 snow thus warms in cold regions, it also cools in warm 
 regions. It sends down from the white summits of 
 equatorial mountains its cool breath to revive and 
 brace the drooping life of lands sweltering under a 
 tropic sun ; and from its lofty inexhaustible reservoirs 
 it feeds perennial rivers that water the plains when all 
 the wells and streams are white and silent in the baking 
 heat. Without the perpetual snow of mountain regions 
 the earth would be reduced to a lifeless desert. How 
 wonderful is that ceaseless process by which the vapour 
 that ascends from the ocean falls upon the high range 
 far inland in the form of snow, and descends the 
 mountain-side in the glacier by the slowest and safest 
 of all modes of motion, melting at its extremity into 
 a river — flowing back to the ocean, enlarged by the 
 heat of summer when the need is greatest, and imparting 
 freshness and fertility to a wide tract of country that 
 would otherwise be hopelessly barren ! There is no 
 more striking proof of a Higher Intelligence combining 
 the forces of nature with a beneficent end in view ! 
 And not only does the perpetual Alpine snow thus 
 
TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. 
 
 keep always full the rivers that water the plains, but, 
 by its grinding force as it presses down the mountains, 
 it 'removes particles from the rocks, which are carried 
 off by the rivers and spread over the plains. Such is 
 the origin of a large part of the level land of Europe. 
 It has been fornicd out of tlic ruins of the mountains 
 by the action of snow. It was by the snow of far-off 
 ages that our valleys and lake-basins were scooped out, 
 the forms of our landscapes sculptured and moulded, and 
 the soil formed in which we grow our harvests. Who 
 would think of such a connection? And yet it is 
 true ! Just as each season we owe the bloom and 
 brightness of our summer fields to the gloom and 
 blight of winter, so do we owe the present summer 
 beauty of the world to the great secular winter of 
 the glacial period. And does not God bring about 
 results as striking by agencies apparently as contra- 
 dictory in the human world? He who warms the 
 tender latent life of the flowers by the snow, and 
 moulds the quiet beauty of the summer landscape by 
 the desolating glacier, makes the cold of adversity to 
 cherish the life of the soul, and to round into spiritual 
 loveliness the harshness and roughness of a carnal, 
 selfish nature. Many a profitable Christian life owes 
 its fairness and fruitfulness to causes which wrecked 
 and wasted it for a time. God giveih snow like wool ; 
 and chill and blighting as is the touch of sorrow, it 
 has a protective influence which guards against greater 
 evils ; it sculptures the spiritual landscape within into 
 forms of beauty and grace, and deepens and fertilises 
 
XVII. SjVOIV. 283 
 
 the soil of the heart so that in it may grow from God's 
 own planting the peaceable fruits of righteousness. 
 
 4. And now, in the end, let us look at the Giver 
 of the snow. "He giref/i snow like wool." "The 
 snow-flake," as Professor Tyndall strikingly says, "leads 
 back to the sun" — so intimately related are all things 
 to each other in this wonderful universe. It leads 
 farther and higher still — even to Him who is our sun 
 and shield, the light and heat of all creation. The 
 whole vast realm of winter, with its strange phenomena, 
 is but the breath of God — the Creative Word — as it 
 were congealed against the blue transparency of space, 
 like the marvellous frost-work on a window-pane. The 
 Psalmist had not the shadow of a doubt that God 
 formed and sent the annual miracle of snow, as He 
 had formed and sent the daily miracle of manna in 
 the desert. It was a common-place thing ; it was a 
 natural, ordinary occurrence; but it had the Divine 
 sign upon it, and it showed forth the glory and good- 
 ness of God as strikingly as the most wonderful super- 
 natural event in his nation's history. "WHien God would 
 impress Job with a sense of His power, it was not 
 to some of His miraculous, but to some of His ordinary 
 works that He appealed. And when the Psalmist would 
 praise God for the preservation of Israel and the restora- 
 tion of Jerusalem— as he does in the Psalm from which 
 my subject is taken— it is not to the wonderful miraculous 
 events with which the history of Israel abounded that 
 He directs attention, but to the common events of 
 Providence and the ordinary appearances and processes 
 
284 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 of nature. He cannot think enough of the Omnipotent 
 Creator and Ruler of the Universe entering into farnihar 
 relations with His people, and condescending to their 
 humblest wants. It is the same God that giveth snow 
 like wool who shows His word unto Jacob, and His 
 statutes and ordinances unto Israel. And the wonder 
 of the familiarity is enhanced by thoughts borrowed 
 from the wonders of nature. We know a thousand 
 times more of the nature, formation, and purpose of 
 the snow than the Psalmist did. But that knowledge is 
 dearly earned if our science destroys our faith. What 
 amount or precision of scientific knowledge can com- 
 pensate us for the loss of the spiritual susceptibility, 
 which in all the wonders and beauties of Creation 
 brings us into personal contact with an infinitely wise 
 mind and an infinitely loving heart ? The aurora 
 gleams of science in the long chill night of our Arctic 
 winter will not cheer and quicken us, if the sun of 
 faith, which is the real heat of our life, rise not above 
 our horizon. This world, in wliich the Psalmist saw 
 God and traced the operation of His hand, appeals 
 not to the intellect only, but also to the spirit; and 
 if with our intellect we examine the marvellous structure 
 of the snow and the laws which build up its exquisite 
 cr>'Stals, we are made morally purer and happier if with 
 our souls and all that is within us we worship the God 
 who made both us and it. 
 
 While the snow warms and preserves the life of 
 nature, it, alas ! brings poverty and discomfort into 
 many a human life and home. But it can warm the 
 
XVII. SNOW. 285 
 
 charity of Christian hearts to whbm God has given 
 abundance. He who giveth the snow to sadden and 
 embitter the life of one, has given to another the 
 wealth by which that privation may be removed. And 
 as the traveller, who is in danger of being overcome 
 by the fatal sleep in the snow-storm, preserves his own 
 vitality and strength by his efforts to restore the com- 
 panion who is more exhausted than himself; so the 
 Christian, by his endeavours to make more comfortable 
 the unhappy lot of his poorer friends, will preserve 
 and invigorate his own spiritual life, and make it glow 
 with warmth and beauty. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 THE PERMANENCE OF THE PAST. 
 
 "God rcquireth that which is past." — ECCLESIASTES iii. 15. 
 
 IN God's great universe there is no absolute past. 
 Time and space are the same. They have no true 
 reahty, but are mere modes of contemplation — conditions 
 by wliich objects are rendered perceptible to us. Owing 
 to the time that light, our only medium of vision, takes 
 to traverse the vast spaces between the stars and our 
 earth, we see these stars not as they are, but as they 
 were when the ray of light was emitted, several minutes, 
 or hours, or centuries ago. There are stars so remote 
 tliat the light by which we see them must have left them 
 before the creation of man. Could we reverse our view- 
 point, and place ourselves at the precise distance which 
 a ray of light would take the long interval of ages to 
 travel, and could we possess the necessary optical power, 
 we should be able to look down upon the earth, and 
 see the mastodon, which is now only a fossil in our 
 cabinets, browsing among the quaint vegetation of the 
 
CH. XVIII. THE PERMANENCE OF THE PAST. 2S7 
 
 tertiary epoch. By graduating the distance between our 
 point of observation in some star and our earth— by 
 making the interval of time to coincide with the interval 
 of space which a ray of light can shoot across — it would 
 be possible for us to see all the past cosmical eras 
 passing before us in panoramic view. Thus the visible 
 record of much that happened on our earth is still 
 travelling by means of light through the regions of space ; 
 as the stars recede, so time recedes with them, and 
 an actual and true representation of any past event may 
 be seen in some star. We may be looking unconsciously 
 any niglit at some orb in the sky from which — if we 
 could transport ourselves thither, and were we endowed 
 with the necessary optical power — we should be able to 
 see our Saviour walking upon the Sea of Galilee, hanging 
 upon the cross, or ascending to heaven from the Mount 
 of Olives. And passing as swiftly as a ray of light 
 from a star of the twelfth magnitude to our sun, the 
 wliole history of the world, from the time of Abraham 
 to the present day, would pass in review before our 
 eye in the space of a single hour. By such sensible and 
 actual suppositions the omniscience of God may be 
 conceived of by us as a material all-comprehensive view. 
 Before Him, endowed with the powers which we lack, 
 the whole history of the universe appears immediately 
 and at once. The extension of time and the extension 
 of space cannot be distinguished from one another. The 
 relations of past and future disappear; they form one 
 magnificent whole. He fills at once the boundless in- 
 finitude of His being. He is the Alpha at the same 
 
288 TIVO W02iLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 time that He is the Omega. With Him beginning and 
 ending coalesce and inclose ever}'thing intermediate. 
 
 I. God reqiiireth the past throughout the universe. — 
 What are our sciences but memories of the past. 
 Astronomy is the memory of the universe ; geology is 
 the memory of the earth ; history is the memory of the 
 human race. There is nothing forgotten or left behind. 
 The past is brought forward into the present, and out 
 of the past the future grows. Each material form bears 
 in itself the record of its past history ; each ray of light 
 carries the picture of that from which it has come. 
 Owing to the wonderful improvement that has taken 
 place in the construction and study of the spectroscope, 
 we are learning more and more to read the secrets, not 
 only of the present, but also of the past history of the 
 stars. The astronomer can not only calculate their future 
 movements, but also recall their former phenomena. 
 "When we look up to the heavens on a clear, frosty 
 night, we behold many of the stars that glitter faintly 
 in the sky as they were before the race of man was 
 created ; nay, we are now gazing upon stars that ages 
 ago were extinguished ; and the light by which we see 
 them is only tlie glare of their funeral pyre shooting 
 across the vast distance that separates us. And surely 
 there is something awful in the thought that on the 
 cold, impassive face of the midnight heavens we behold 
 thus the record of the past eternity unrolled, to be read 
 in time. Then what a faithful testimony has our own 
 earth kept of the changes through which it has passed ! 
 The geologist, from the unmistakable signs which he 
 
XVIII. THE PERMANENCE OF THE PAST. 289 
 
 sees in the rocks, can reconstruct in imagination the 
 seas and shores that vanished untold ages ago. In the 
 coal-beds we have a vision of the primeval forests of 
 the earth ; in the dolomite peaks we behold the coral 
 reefs that once formed a grand circle of breakers in 
 the midst of the ocean ; by the help of the polished 
 and striated rocks and the moraine heaps in upland 
 glens, we can recall the old glaciers that sculptured 
 our landscapes, and formed the fertile soil of our 
 meadows and cornfields. Jn our quarries the tracks 
 of extinct birds and tortoises that walked the sandy 
 beach in a remote era of the world's history, may be 
 seen as distinct as the footprints of the passing animal 
 upon the recent snow. Nay, the rocks retain memorials 
 of former times more accidental and shadowy than even 
 these ; such as ripple-marks of ancient seas, produced 
 by the gentle agitation of shallow water over sand or 
 mud, fossil raindrops, little circular and oval hollows 
 with their casts, impressions produced by rain and 
 hail, indicating by their varying appearances the character 
 of the shower and the direction of the wind that pre- 
 vailed when it had fallen. There is not a tree in 
 our woods but shows in various parts of its structure 
 its past history. From the character of the rings in 
 a transverse section of its trunk may be accurately 
 deciphered the peculiarities of every summer and winter 
 that have passed over it. From the scars on the outside 
 of the branches and twigs we can not only tell the age 
 of these shoots, but also the' number of leaves which 
 they produced, and the amount of growth which they 
 
 u 
 
290 TfVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 made each year, the character of the weather to which 
 they were exposed, and the nature of the circumstances 
 in which they were placed — in short, we have displayed 
 before our eyes in a moment their exact history during 
 their whole past life. The fossil tree, petrified into 
 a hard stone and dug up from beneath hundreds of 
 feet of solid rock, preserves the most delicate of these 
 natural hieroglyphics uninjured. Place a thin, trans- 
 parent slice of the fossil wood under the microscope, 
 and it not only shows at once that it formed part of 
 a species of extinct palm or pine-tree, but it also reveals 
 the kind of weather which prevailed when it was green 
 and flourishing thousands of ages ago, the transient sun- 
 shine, and the passing shower and the wayward wind 
 of long-forgotten summers. Memory is not a faculty 
 peculiar to mind ; it exists m each nerve-centre, whether 
 of sensation or motion, as is proved by the fact that each 
 nerve-centre can be educated to respond to impressions. 
 It is a property of every tissue of the body. The 
 scar of a wound is the recollection by the tissue of 
 the injury which it has received ; and the marks of the 
 small-pox are an evidence that the whole system re- 
 members the attack of the disease. There is such 
 a thing too as ancestral memory ; and the hereditary 
 traits and peculiarities which successive generations 
 exhibit testify to its permanence. Many of the strange 
 instincts, mysterious associations, and shadowy recollec- 
 tions for whose origin in our own experience we cannot 
 account, and which Wordsworth in his famous *' Ode " 
 alludes to as intimations of a divine home recently left, 
 
XVIII. THE PERMANENCE OF THE PAST. 291 
 
 may be traces in us of the memory of our forefathers 
 which we have inherited. What are the phenomena of 
 rejuvenescence in plants but a reminding — a grasping 
 anew amid the old withered decaying forms of life of 
 the ideal or type — a going back to the first fair condition. 
 The old specific nature returns to life with each young 
 annual plant, and every fresh shoot on a perennial plant. 
 Every new growth on a tree in spring is only a repetition 
 of the original form and vital purpose. The reproduc- 
 tion of long over-passed forms, the striking back of 
 varieties, and the recurrence of hybrids into the mother- 
 species, are all familiar illustrations of the persistency of 
 memory in the organic world. Nature never forgets. No 
 thing perishes without leaving a record of it behind. The 
 past history of the universe is not only preserved in the 
 memory of God, but is also inscribed upon its own tablets. 
 2. God require fh the past for our present consolation. — 
 He takes up all we have left behind in the plenitude 
 of His existence. The friends who have gone from 
 us live in Him ; the days that are no more are re- 
 vived in Him. He is intimately acquainted, not only 
 with our present thoughts, but also with the Avhole of 
 our past experience. In communion with Him we 
 can live over again our former lives ; and thus we are 
 saved from the unutterable loneliness of bereavement 
 and old age, when those who were the associates of 
 our joys and sorrows, and the depositaries of the 
 recollections of early scenes and incidents, have left 
 us for ever. The images of the past that haunt our 
 own minds are ineftaceably impressed upon His also. 
 
 u 2 
 
292 Tl^yO WORLDS ARE OCRS. chap. 
 
 The friends whose loss we mourn, all that they were 
 in themselves, and all that they were to us, are known 
 with the most minute and perfect knowledge to Him. 
 The bright and happy days of childhood and youth 
 have not vanished ; they are preserved in the vivid 
 consciousness of Him who gave them all their charm. 
 Our seasons of gloom and care are not forgotten like 
 clouds that years ago darkened the sky, but have their 
 witness still in the sympathetic heart of Him who in 
 all our afflictions is afflicted. The successive periods 
 of our existence, like lights and shadows on a sunny 
 hill, have not perished in the using ; their fleeting 
 moments and impressions have been laid up for ever 
 in the storehouse of the Infinite Mind. We are not 
 left to wander alone over the ruins of the past; alone 
 in the crowd, because none of our fellow-creatures can 
 revisit with us the scenes that were so dear, or recall 
 with us the joys and sorrows that were so tender and 
 sad. He is with us who keeps, independently of our 
 own frail memories, a faithful record of the whole 
 course of our pilgrimage ; who can summon back not 
 only the outward circumstances and objects of days 
 long since departed, but also the inmost thoughts and 
 feelings with which they were associated, and who 
 remembers what we ourselves have forgotten. In con- 
 verse with Him, in whom thus all our life is hid, upon 
 whose mind the whole picture of our existence is 
 mirrored, we feel that, though lonely, we are not alone 
 — though the perishing creatures of a day, we are living 
 even now in eternity. 
 
XVIII. THE PERMANENCE OF THE PAST. 293 
 
 3. God 7'equireth the past for its restoration. — As the 
 context indicates, it is a law of the divine manifestation, 
 a mode of the divine working in every department, 
 that the past should be brought forward into the present, 
 the old reproduced in the new. In nature and re- 
 ligion the progressive and the conservative elements are 
 combined. Each new stratum of rock is formed out 
 of the ruin of the previous strata. The properties of 
 the lower organisms are carried up into the higher, and 
 there made to serve nobler purposes ; the same vital 
 forces which produce the plant being brought forward 
 into the animal, and there subordinated to the senses 
 and the power of locomotion ; while the endowments 
 of the animal are in their turn raised up into man, 
 where they lie under the new and crowning authority 
 of reason. In man himself the characteristics of each 
 age are carried along with him through every advancing 
 stage of life, and the child-heart may be retained in 
 extreme old age. In the history of nations the past 
 overshadows and forms the present, and the modifi- 
 cations which existing institutions undergo are based 
 upon the solid advantages of old institutions ; while 
 "freedom broadens slowly down from precedent to 
 precedent." The revival of letters in Europe was 
 caused by the reproduction of the ancient literature 
 of Greece and Rome. In Hke manner in Scripture 
 every advancing event is marked by new powers and 
 destined for higher ends; but with these are always 
 essentially recapitulated all ' things that have been 
 previously employed. The system of truth contained 
 
294 T'.VO WORLDS ARE OCRS. chap. 
 
 in the successive dispensations of religion is one and 
 the same. All the elements of religious worship that 
 belonged to the patriarchal system were incorporated 
 with the succeeding economy. And is not the Christian 
 religion the heir of the Jewish ? Is not every name 
 — every feeling, every institution that existed under 
 the old covenant, still continued under the new, only 
 invested with a higher meaning ? Every characteristic 
 of the one finds its counterpart, its corresponding 
 reality in the other. The shadow of the Law becomes 
 the substance of the Gospel. The last chapters of 
 the Book of Revelation form a mosaic, gathering up all 
 the separate revelations of the previous books into one 
 significant picture, completing the design of Scripture, 
 and declaring its marvellous unity. And all the 
 cardinal facts and chief doctrines of revelation are 
 but majestic instances of that same kind of continuity 
 of the divine plan in the moral and spiritual world 
 which we have been taught to observe in the universe 
 of matter — a plan ordained of old by the Eternal Father. 
 " Nothing can be put to it, nor anything taken from 
 it ; that which hath been is now, and that which is to 
 be hath been already." 
 
 God, in His house not made with hands, is not doing 
 as we do when our household goods are old and worn 
 out and we replace them by things altogether new. 
 He is not continually refurnishing the earth. He is 
 causing the same flowers and trees and streams to 
 appear season after season. He never wearies of 
 repeating the old familiar things. He keeps age after 
 
XVIII. THE PERMANENCE OF THE PAST. 295 
 
 age, generation after generation, year after year, the 
 same old home-feeling in His earth for us. And is 
 not this a strong argument that He will keep the old 
 home-feeling for us in heaven ; that we sliall find our- 
 selves beyond the river of death in the midst of all 
 the former familiar things of our life, just as when we 
 get out of the winter gloom and desolation of any year, 
 we find ourselves in the midst of all that made the 
 former springs and summers so sweet and precious to 
 us? Why has God created in us such an intense love 
 of the past, such an ardent longing for its restoration ? 
 Why does the dullest moment become sacred, and the 
 most commonplace experience beautiful, when it recedes 
 into the past, and can only be seen in the sunset glow 
 of memory? Why is the recalling of days that are 
 no more, sweet as sacramental wine to dying lips — 
 " deep as first love, and wild with all regret " ? Why 
 do the aged, amid the decays of nature, when this 
 life is fading from their view, and the other is opening 
 before them, live more in the past than in the present 
 or future, and remember the things that happened to 
 them in early childhood more vividly than what took 
 place only a few hours ago? Does not the whole 
 analogy of things, the whole system of mutual adapta- 
 tion seen throughout nature, whereby there are no 
 means without an end, no appetites or desires without 
 a corresponding provision, declare that this powerful 
 instinct of our hearts will be gratified, that the past, 
 with all its precious possessioTis and tender experiences, 
 rt'ill be restored to us ? If here we ascend a green 
 
296 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 hill, and find the flowers blooming anew on its summit 
 which faded weeks ago at its foot — altitude thus corres- 
 ponding with the seasons of the year ; if on a journey 
 here we gain some elevated point and see the whole 
 course of the long white road which we had measured 
 out in gradual succession — one part disappearing as 
 another came into view — spread out at once ; is not 
 this a sign to us that on the hill of God we shall recover 
 all that we loved and lost on earth, and see the whole 
 path of life which we had traversed unrolled in all 
 its length before us? It is no Lethe that flows out 
 of the Throne of God and of the Lamb, but the clear 
 river of eternal life which includes in its ample tide all 
 our past as well as all our present and future. Here 
 memory is of the brain, while the heart remembers 
 not. If the old feeling has vanished, the heart cannot 
 recall it. That is a joy which the brain renews but 
 the heart cannot. We can remember what we felt 
 of old, but we cannot feel what we remember. It is 
 this that constitutes the true sadness in all the changes 
 of life ; that makes us feel strange in a once familiar 
 scene. It was a merciful severity that drove man out 
 of Eden when his innocent happiness fled. It would 
 have been a tantalising misery to dwell in the midst 
 of objects that could no longer awaken in the heart 
 the old response. And we may well wish never to 
 see again any Eden of our bliss, if wi; cannot feel 
 in it as we once did. But in the paratlise above the 
 heart will remember as well as the head. With the 
 restoration of the old loves — and the old sunny scenes 
 
XVIII. THE PERMANENCE OF THE PAST. 297 
 
 — will be revived in all their freshness and tenderness 
 the feelings connected with them. I love to think 
 of heaven as a recollection, and to believe that the 
 kingdom of God in its highest sense is the restitution 
 of all things. The last words of God's blessed Book, 
 the last words heard from the lips of the risen and 
 glorified Redeemer by human ear, assure me that all 
 that Adam lost will be restored by Christ. The bless- 
 ings which brightened man's early pathway will be 
 reproduced, and he will enter again on his once for- 
 feited inheritance. Wasted, toiling humanity, after the 
 great cinumnavigatio7i of human history is over, will 
 return to its early purity and glory. The tree of 
 life will bloom again, and the river of life will flow 
 through the paradise regained. The New Jerusalem 
 will descend from God out of heaven, " not in the 
 unearthly splendours of an unknown apocalypse, but 
 as a lark descends from the skies to the nest she had 
 dwelt and loved in. " 
 
 4. But closely connected with the brightness of such 
 thoughts as these is the shadow of the solemn one 
 that God requireth the past for judgtnent. I have said 
 that the stars of heaven witness and retain the scenes 
 and events of our earth. The pictures of all secret 
 deeds that have ever been done really and actually 
 exist, glancing by the vibration of light farther and 
 farther in the universe. At this moment is seen in 
 one of the stars, the gleam of the swords with which 
 the babes of Bethlehem were rnurdered. The massacre 
 is retristered in characters of H2;ht on the face of heaven. 
 
298 TIVO IVORLDS ARE OURS chap. 
 
 We are continually endowing the inanimate earth with 
 our own consciousness, impressing our own moral history 
 upon the objects around us ; and these objects react 
 upon us in recalling that history. They keep a silent 
 record of what we have been and done in the associations 
 connected with them ; and that record they unfold for us 
 to read when at any time we come into contact with 
 them. The sky and the earth are thus books of re- 
 membrance that witness against us, and God will open 
 them on the great day. " He shall call to the heavens 
 from above and to the earth beneath, that He may 
 judge His people." In ourselves, too, there are indelible 
 records of our former history. The whole past of our 
 lives is with us in the present, and accompanies us into 
 the future ; and whatever we have done or suffered or 
 been has entered into our deeper being, and we have 
 only to go there to find it. Memory is indestructible. 
 The successive layers of our thoughts and feelings, as 
 De Quincey has strikingly shown, may seem to be 
 obliterated, like the different handwritings in an ancient 
 palimpsest, but the touch of a fever, a moment of peril 
 or excitement, the decay of old age, or the unexpected 
 association of some outward object, will revive them in 
 a moment in all their former vividness. Deepen the 
 daylight a little, bring over it the filmy veil of early 
 twilight, and the stars hidden in the profounil blue of 
 the sky come out one by one ; and so, increase the 
 sensibility of memory in the smallest degree, and things 
 long lost and forgotten in its depths reappear with magic 
 power. There arc numerous authentic instances of 
 
XVIII. THE PERMANENCE OF THE PAST. 299 
 
 individuals on the verge of drowning, who had their 
 whole life placed before them in a kind of panoramic 
 review, not only the leading matters but even the 
 smallest details, and each act accompanied by the con- 
 sciousness of its moral character, and by reflections 
 on its causes and consequences. We have in this 
 a faint indication of the almost infinite power of memory 
 with which we are to awaken hereafter. And the book 
 of memory is one of the books that shall be opened 
 in the Judgment Day, and from which we shall be 
 judged. We all carry with us, from the cradle to 
 the grave, this record of our lives ; and what is written 
 in it is written and cannot be altered. It may be 
 sealed with seven seals, like the book which St. John 
 saw in vision, and no man, either in heaven or in 
 earth, or under the earth, may be able to open it 
 or to look therein ; but at the word of the Almighty 
 its seals will be loosed, and all its pages unfolded, 
 and every statement and deposition contained therein 
 be fully revealed to the light, and we ourselves shall 
 be able to read in its pages things we had long for- 
 gotten, things we had thought for ever perished. It 
 is an awful thought that the indictment of the impenitent 
 sinner at the bar of divine justice has thus been carried 
 about -with him, unconsciously, all his life in his own 
 bosom — that he himself is the strongest watness against 
 himself. "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee, 
 thou wicked and slothful servant." 
 
 We cannot undo the past and begin afresh. We have 
 to take the past as the starting-point and determining 
 
300 Tiro WORLDS ARE OURS. cii. xvnr. 
 
 element of the future. We are what the past has 
 made us ; and the memory of former things is in- 
 delible. But the Gospel reminds us that what cannot 
 be obliterated may be transmuted by divine grace. In 
 Christ Jesus we may become new creatures ; and in the 
 eternal life that we begin, in union with Him, all old 
 things, so far as there is any condemning power in 
 them, pass away, and all things in the transfiguring 
 light of heavenly love become new. Let not the 
 memory of the past, therefore, cling like a millstone 
 about our neck, or like a fetter about our feet. Let 
 us get out of all the pains, defects, and humiliations 
 of the past the lessons of heavenly wisdom which they 
 were meant to teach ; and in conformity with the prone- 
 ness of the mind to form new resolutions at marked or 
 memorable eras, let us take advantage of every anni- 
 versary, birthday, or commencement of a new year to 
 reckon ourselves, in regard to the whole past of our 
 lives, to be dead indeed unto sin, but in regard to 
 the present and future, alive unto God through Jesus 
 Christ our Lord. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 THE DA YS OF A TREE. 
 
 "As the days of a tree are the days of my people-" 
 — Isaiah Ixv. 22. 
 
 OF all natural objects trees have the closest fellowship 
 with man. When growing together in dense 
 primeval forests they indeed exclude his presence, and 
 the gloom and solitude produce an awe as of the super- 
 natural world. But in the open cultivated spaces around 
 his home they become domesticated, and are regarded 
 with a sentiment akin to affection. They help to make 
 a leafy nest for him out of the bare, exposed wilderness, 
 into which the winds come deprived of all their bitter- 
 ness, and the fierce sunshine is filtered through the 
 foliage into a cool refreshing light. God first talked 
 with man under their shadow ; man's first worship was 
 helped if not inspired by the solemn sights and sounds 
 of the grove, the flitting lights and shades as of 
 mysterious shapes and the .whispered secrets of the 
 leaves ; and the pillared aisles and groined inter- 
 lacing of branches first suggested to him the ideas of 
 
302 T^VO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 architectural beauty whidi grew into permanent shape 
 in the house of prayer. The heart twines around them 
 some of its most fragrant memories ; and at the end 
 of every vista of the vanished years — we see through 
 the golden light a favourite tree associated with some 
 cherished incident of the past. Trees are often planted 
 as memorials of visits to celebrated scenes, or at the 
 birth of an heir to an estate. Near Constantinople 
 the Turks have a beautiful custom. Whenever a cliild 
 is born the parents plant a cypress in the churchyard ; 
 and when either of the parents dies another tree is 
 planted by the surviving children at the head of the 
 grave. To watch the green spire of such a birthday 
 tree growing taller and casting a longer shadow upon 
 the ground, like the gnomon of a natural dial, indicating 
 the flight of time, might teach an impressive moral 
 even to the most careless observer. The years pass 
 over the tree as they pass over its human rival in 
 the race of life ; but while the one grows greener and 
 more massive, a pillar of cloud against the glare of 
 noon, and of fire in the slanting sunset, the other, 
 after the blossom and vigour of manhood are over, 
 begins to show the grey hairs and the infirmities of 
 age, and at last, when the old man sinks into the grave 
 at the foot of the still fresh and flourishing tree, his 
 children plant beside it another cypress, destined to 
 outlive its predecessor, and to triumph in its turn over 
 death and decay. 
 
 These human associations give to the emblem of 
 the prophet a touching significance. It is a very 
 
XIX. THE DA YS OF A TREE. 303 
 
 appropriate emblem. The comparison between the two 
 kinds of Hfe is very close. In every particular connected 
 with organic existence, in the laws of their development, 
 decay and reproduction, trees and human beings are 
 complete counterparts of one another. The former 
 expresses the ideas suggested by the latter, only on 
 a lower platform, as befits a humbler sphere of being. 
 Cuvier's well-known maxim, " An origin by generation, 
 a growth by nutrition, and a termination by death," 
 applies equally to both. Even their structure to a 
 certain extent is similar. The leaves correspond to the 
 lungs and digestive organs ; the blossoms represent the 
 distinctions of sex ; and the names of trunk, arms, and 
 limbs are given indiscriminately to similar parts of both 
 organisms. But if we inquire what a tree really is, we 
 shall find in the emblem a correspondence still more 
 profound. A tree is generally supposed to be a single 
 individual, in the same sense that a man is an individual. 
 It is one organism from the seed to the whole mass of 
 vegetable matter, trunk, branches, twigs and foliage, that 
 has gathered round and extended the sapling that springs 
 from It. It passes through a period of youth, maturity, 
 and old age. It has a fixed limit of size and age, 
 varying somewhat with the species, beyond which even 
 in the most favourable circumstances it cannot go. 
 Independently of those causes which tend prematurely to 
 shorten its life, each tree has in itself the conditions 
 which insure its dissolution within a given time. It 
 gradually loses its vital properties, and ceases to per- 
 form its vital functions ; its tissues become hai'der and 
 
304 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 more rigid ; and at last the tree exhibits, outwardly and 
 inwardly, changes which constitute and indicate a state 
 which may well be called old age, a state which is 
 inevitably induced by the prolonged exercise of its 
 own vitality, and is indicative of the approach of death. 
 Its size on the same principle is not determined by 
 circumstances, but by a fixed standard to which it grows 
 and from which it cannot greatly deviate. 
 
 But this popular view is altogether erroneous. A tree is 
 not a single individual, a unity in which there is but one 
 of each kind of organ, or of each set of organs, and in 
 which the vital parts are so mutually related and 
 dependent upon each other, that the removal of one 
 would occasion the death of the whole structure. On 
 the contrary, it is an aggregate of separate, independent 
 individuals, a composite organism in which there is no 
 centralisation of life, and all the parts are frequently 
 repeated : there being as many lungs as there are leaves, 
 and as many organs of reproduction as there are 
 blossoms. Each shoot is a distinct plant performing 
 the functions of nutrition and propagation by and for 
 itself, but, by virtue of its organic union with tlie rest 
 of the tree, contributing to the general welfare, and 
 helping to build up the common fabric. Cut off — its 
 removal would not virtually injure the tree, nor impair 
 its own vitality ; and planted in the soil, it would strike 
 root and in course of time grow to the same size as 
 its parent. A tree may thus be said to be a colony 
 of plants growing vertically instead of horizontally. 
 Could we miagine a strawberry-bed, whose separate 
 
xix THE DAYS OF A TREE. 305 
 
 plants are united by runners, gathered together and 
 growing straight up in the air, the runners forming the 
 trunk and branches, and the stems the boughs and 
 twigs, we should have a very good idea of the com- 
 position of a tree. Only one generation of plants is 
 living, viz. the shoots which have sprung from the buds 
 of the present year; all the rest of the tree, the trunk, 
 and woody portions, consist of the dead remains of 
 as many generations of plants as the tree is old. Each 
 of the living shoots exactly resembles in conformation 
 and structure, as well as in constitution and vital power, 
 the sapling which proceeded from the seed. Unlike the 
 primitive sapling which grew directly out of the soil, 
 each subsequent shoot grows like a parasite on the 
 organic remains of the previous shoots, which afford it 
 noi\rishment and mechanical support. It lives only 
 one year, and attains its full growth of a few inches in 
 summer, passing into the sere and yellow leaf, and 
 eventually dying in autumn, making provision, in the 
 form of a bud that tips its summit, for the production 
 of a similar shoot in the following spring. While the 
 foliage and other evanescent parts of it disappear, the 
 woody stem and roots remain, and these go to increase 
 the bulk of the tree, and, hermetically sealed within its 
 structure, are preserved from the process of decay to 
 which all dead organic substances exposed to the weather 
 are liable. 
 
 Regarding a tree then as a body corporate, consisting 
 of an aggregate of living and dead plants, the dead 
 enclosed and preserved in tlie tissues of the living, 
 
 X 
 
3o6 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 and the living continually reproducing and grafting 
 themselves upon one another, it follows necessarily 
 that there is no physical limit to the size it may attain, 
 or to the age it may reach. From its very nature a 
 tree is immortal. It may go on growing and enlarging 
 for ages, and after thousands of years be still in the 
 full vigour of its existence. Even in Europe where 
 man has so long held sway, and has ever been destroying 
 the woods and forests, individual trees have survived 
 since the commencement of the Christian era, and their 
 vigorous hold of life seems to secure them a longevity 
 in comparison with which the period already passed may 
 be no more than their early youth ; while in other less 
 known parts of the world trees are to be found whose 
 enormous size would indicate that they reached back 
 to the origin of the existing state of the globe. Such 
 vegetable giants and veterans belong to various natural 
 families ; so that the vast longevity and size which they 
 display is not the special property of any one order or 
 species. In our own country there are oaks, limes, 
 sycamores, chestnuts, ashes and other trees of great 
 antiquity and extraordinary size, some of them dating 
 long previous to the Conquest; but they all sink into 
 insignificance before the yews. In a walled enclosure 
 within the churchyard of Fortingal — a picturesque 
 village in the heart of the Perthshire Highlands — is a 
 most remarkable yew, said by De Candolle to be the 
 oldest tree in Europe, He estimated its age at two 
 thousand six hundred or two thousand eight hundred 
 years. Pennant, who saw it during his first tour in 
 
XIX. THE DA YS OF A TREE. 3" 7 
 
 Scotland in 1769, and gave the earliest account of it, 
 found the circumference of its trunk to be fifty-six 
 and a half feet. In his time the central part was 
 decayed down to the ground; and about sixty years 
 later Strutt, in his Silva Britaimica, represented the 
 trunk in a fine etching, as divided into two hollow 
 shells facing one another, with a funeral in the act of 
 passing through the gap, and sending forth branches 
 which intertwined above and formed one grand leafy 
 head. Since then it has undergone lamentable destruc- 
 tion, not only from the ravages of natural decay, but 
 chiefly from the removal of large arms and even portions 
 of the trunk to make drinking-cups and other curiosities. 
 What now remains of it are three huge wasted shells 
 leaning against the wall of the enclosure, at wide in- 
 tervals from each other. Blanched and gnarled, they 
 look like the ribs of some gigantic pre-adamite monster 
 — the sole relic of an older geological world. One of 
 the shells is completely dead and of a dingy grey 
 colour, but the wood under the bark is still firm and 
 red, and shows only at the edges the signs of rotten- 
 ness. The other two support an enormous amount of 
 vigorous vegetation ; and the contrast between the 
 hollow decayed-looking shells and the healthy branches 
 clothed with a dense mass of green foliage, bearing 
 a large crop of berries, is exceedingly striking. The 
 soil in the interspace is composed not only of decaying 
 wood, but also of human dust, for graves have repeatedly 
 been dug in the enclosure. ' 
 
 The yew is well-known to be a very slow-growing 
 
 X 2 
 
3o8 T^yO ^VORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 tree. Unlike other evergreens which have a brighter 
 smile in the face of spring, its young growth is of the 
 same unyielding tint as its oldest foliage. Its inexorable 
 verdure gives no register of the seasons, and takes no 
 notice of their lapse. Its wood is so hard and smooth 
 that the years deposit but the thinnest circles of it. 
 Centuries pass over it and leave but little trace of their 
 flight either in its size or appearance. Of the age of 
 the Fortingal yew the materials available for making a 
 proper estimate are very unsatisfactory. The fragments 
 that remain are parts of the outermost shell of the old 
 trunk, in which the wave of vitality having travelled so 
 far, is very nearly spent. In sections made here and 
 there in them, the annual rings — which are so very fine 
 and close as not to be counted without the aid of a 
 lens — indicate a rate of growth of one inch in thirty-five, 
 sixty-six, seventy, and in one instance, ninety years. 
 During the last hundred years therefore, or since the 
 visit of Pennant, the tree has undergone little or no 
 appreciable extension. When the trunk was entire the 
 rate of growth was much more rapid. Judging from 
 the evidence of other fresh yews, it would have attained 
 a girth of twenty-two feet in a thousand years; and 
 computing its after growth at an average rate of an 
 inch in thirty-five years, which seems to be the common 
 standard at that age, we are compelled to admit, however 
 startling it may be, that the longevity which tradition 
 assigns to it is within the mark. 
 
 Often when a boy — for my native place was not far 
 oflf— have I climbed over the wall and gazed in wonder 
 
XIX. THE DA YS OF A TREE. 309 
 
 and awe upon this huge relic of the primeval world 
 crumbling away in this remote funereal solitude. My 
 mind could hardly compass the thought that its infant 
 shoots were put forth long before Isaiah wrote the words 
 which stand at the head of this chapter. Who can tell 
 what changes it has seen ! In its immediate neighbour- 
 hood are many interesting remains of the shadowy past. 
 About four miles to the south there is one of tlie largest 
 Druidical circles in Scotland; throughout the glen at 
 whose mouth it stands are numerous ruins of the 
 strongholds of the primitive inhabitants ; on the plain 
 below by the river side there are distinct traces of a 
 Roman camp which has given its name of the Fort of 
 the Strangers to the village, and where, according to an 
 old persistent tradition, the father of Pontius Pilate was 
 the officer in command ; while six miles to the east 
 are still standing two huge stone crosses in the centre 
 of the hamlet of Dull, connected with one of the earliest 
 Celtic monasteries, founded by Adamnan the successor 
 and biographer of St. Columba, This Methuselali of 
 its tribe saw those races and creeds come and go around 
 it ; it bridged with its enduring life the gulf of the 
 silent intermediate ages ; while in later times generation 
 after generation of the rude forefathers of the village 
 were laid to rest beneath its shadow. We speak of 
 sidereal-time, but such a tree helps us to realise the 
 grandeur of tree-time. The stars in their courses revolve 
 as masses of dead matter, but this is a living creature. 
 
 The association of the churchyard and parish church 
 with it may be accounted for by the fact that it had 
 
3IO yiVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 a religious veneration attached to it from a remote 
 antiquity. Owing to its vast age and size it may have 
 been used as an hypaethral temple consecrated to tree- 
 worsliip, or whatever form of natural religion the primitive 
 inhabitants favoured. When the first Celtic missionaries 
 from lona penetrated to this region they found this 
 venerable tree regarded as a sacred object, and its site 
 as a place of religious meeting for the living and of 
 interment for the dead. Upon the principle of utilising 
 all that man had previously regarded as holy, and out 
 of the forms of the false bringing the power of the true, 
 which Christianity has always adopted, instead of draw- 
 ing away the people from the spot, they planted the 
 cross beside it, and changed it into one of their own open- 
 air sanctuaries, under Avhose living roof the gospel was 
 preached, until at last a Christian church and church- 
 yard were formed which have continued ever since. 
 Surely such a sainted tree is worthy of all the religious 
 history that has gathered around it ! What more suit- 
 able religious symbol could be found on earth? To 
 pagan and Christian alike it appealed, and conveyed 
 a lesson common to both religions, common to human 
 nature which is always and everywhere the same. While 
 its dark and gloomy shadow, its poisonous leaves and 
 bitter juice, spoke of death and associated it witli the 
 tomb, those who, having no other books must therefore 
 have read the book of nature more studiously, would 
 see in its calm patient endurance age after age, keep- 
 ing its foliage ever green, the fittest symbol under the 
 stars of immortalitv. These two imaTCS of death .nnd 
 
XIX. THE DAYS OF A TREE. 311 
 
 immortality were seen combined and harmonised in one 
 symbol, teaching the great doctrine of all religions, 
 what every human heart longs for as its most precious 
 hope — an immortality beyond death. If such were the 
 lessons which the " grey fathers " of our country were 
 accustomed to read in it, we need not wonder that the 
 early Christian missionary should have planted his cross 
 beside the same hallowed object under whose shadow 
 the pagan had reared his altar ; for the cross set forth, 
 only more clearly and fully, the same great truths which 
 natural religion had seen dimly shadowed forth in the 
 funereal evergreen tree. 
 
 From the nature of a tree as a composite, social 
 organism, it also necessarily follows that it is exempt 
 from death by old age. The individual plants whose 
 combination constitutes the corporate body, being only 
 annuals, may be said to die of old age in autumn when 
 the leaves fade and fall. But as regards the whole 
 organism there is no such thing as old age. In this 
 respect it is a little world in itself, renewing its youth 
 every year as the earth renews its vegetation every 
 spring; for the annual crop of shoots covered with 
 leaves, which by their reaction nourish and strengthen 
 the tree, are the equivalents of the successive genera- 
 tions of plants which keep the earth green. We know 
 nothing definite or satisfactory regarding either the 
 natural longevity or the natural size of any one species 
 of tree. The history of most of the trees with which 
 we are familiar gives us no insight into their capacities 
 for life or f^rowth. We know that they can live and 
 
312 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 flourish for a certain number of years ; but how much 
 longer they could live in more favourable circumstances 
 we cannot tell. The vegetable Nestors, which are the 
 living memorials of an antiquity as great almost as that 
 of the pyramids of Egypt or the sculptures of Nineveh, 
 have not survived all other trees of their species by an 
 exceptional strength of constitution, by an abnormal 
 vitality, as Thomas Parr who died at the age of 152, 
 or Petrarch Zortan who lived to tlie age of 184, far 
 exceeded the natural age of man. They only show 
 the potential longevity of every tree if placed in equally 
 favourable circumstances. There are no indications 
 that these immemorial trees have reached the limit of 
 their life. They exhibit no signs of what can physio- 
 logically be called old age. Many of them are still 
 fresh and vigorous; and though the glory of others 
 may be shorn away, the branches broken off, the trunk 
 hollowed out, and little but a wasted shell left standing, 
 by the aid of a crutch, still that fragment is the seat 
 of as active vital processes as ever ; the sap circulates 
 through it as vigorously, it puts forth leaves as fresh 
 and large, it produces flowers and fruit as perfect, and 
 deposits wood as solid and regular as in its earliest 
 years. 
 
 The decaying trunks of many trees undergo strange 
 metamorphoses by fresh growths within them. Into 
 the central hollow parts of the yew the growing 
 annual shoots send down their roots, and so gradually 
 fill up the gaps with new wood. In the Fortingal yew 
 a young growth, completely covered with bark and 
 
XIX. THE DAYS OF A TREE. 313 
 
 dense healthy foliage, has sprung up within the blanched 
 shell, which, when the shell has fallen to pieces, will 
 take its place as a vigorous tree, and nothing will 
 remain of the aged parent to tell its history. From 
 the same shell at its base a leafy young branch travels 
 along the ground without rooting anywhere, and fills 
 the whole space with what looks at first sight like a 
 crowded plot of young yew plants. The last time I 
 visited the spot it bore a plentiful crop of berries. 
 Here was a most extraordinary contrast; the gigantic 
 ribs of the old tree, grey with the frost of three 
 thousand years, looking like a vegetable Stonehenge, 
 and that mass of living greenery sprouting from their 
 sides as in their palmiest days ! There was no differ- 
 ence between the foliage which that wasted wreck 
 produced, and that of the sapling planted only two or 
 three years ago. And it was a touching thing to sec 
 those exquisite crimson berries, that looked as if moulded 
 out of wax or carved out of chalcedony, or the pink 
 inside of an ocean shell, so soft and delicate and juicy, 
 gleaming among the sombre leaves that crowned as with 
 a fadeless garland the hoary trunk standing there and 
 outfacing and defying time. I thought of the radiant 
 little humming-bird, called the flame-bearer, which is 
 found only in the extinct crater of the Andean volcano 
 of Puraci, where all save itself is dead ; and had a 
 glimpse of the Love which causes the brightest alpine 
 flowers to appear upon the frozen mountains, and 
 lights up with a spark of beauty the dreariest gloom 
 of nature and humanity. Here was the reality of 
 
314 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 the fabled Phcenix; and perhaps this apparent recu- 
 perative power may have been another reason why 
 yew-trees are associated with sacred places, suggesting 
 to our pagan forefathers, who — as half-barbarous men 
 always are — must have been close observers of 
 nature, thoughts akin to the scripture doctrine of the 
 resurrection. 
 
 All these considerations help us to understand more 
 clearly why a tree should have been chosen as the 
 sacrament or symbol of immortality in Eden, and why 
 it should represent the eternal felicity of the redeemed 
 in the heavenly paradise. The expression "tree of 
 Hfe," acquires a new and deeper significance when we 
 remember that there is nothing else with life that bridges 
 across the centuries, connects departed dynasties and 
 systems of religion with modern governments and fresh 
 creeds, and binds the sympathies of the human heart 
 with the sorrows and joys of other ages dead and gone. 
 When we realise what a tree is — a perennial collection 
 of annual plants, a community of numerous indivi- 
 duals, the individual perishing, but the community 
 surviving, and comprehend the great truth that from 
 the nature of its structure any or every tree might 
 live for ever, endure as long as the world itself, 
 and go on growing and enlarging to any conceivable 
 size — we shall have a more adequate idea of what is 
 implied in the words of the prophet, " As the days of 
 a tree, are the days of my people." How truly 
 applicable are they to the marvellous history of the 
 Jews ! As trees are the oKlcst of living organisms" 
 
XIX. THE DAYS OF A TREE. 315 
 
 SO the Jews are the oldest of living races. They have 
 existed since the days of their father Abraham until 
 now. Though the least of all people, unable to compete 
 in the arts of life with the nations of antiquity, they 
 have outlived the wisest and most powerful of them. 
 The people that oppressed and led them captive have 
 perished, leaving behind only a few nameless ruins ; 
 the kingdoms whose glory overshadowed theirs have 
 vanished, and left not even a wreck behind. But the 
 Jews have still lived on. Like their own cedars of 
 Lebanon they have survived the storms and vicissitudes 
 of ages, and endured M'hile all else has perished around 
 them. In their present state, deprived of their birthright 
 inheritance, without temple, or altar, or sacrifice, a mark 
 to be shot at in every land, they remind one of an aged 
 tree that has long battled with time, yielding only inch 
 by inch to the universal conqueror, and though sorely 
 bruised and battered, still surrounding itself with dignity 
 and picturesqueness, sending up year after year from 
 its scarred and -riven trunk fresh foliage and fruit. 
 Although the trunk and main stem of the Jews may 
 be withered away, and only a fragment remain, yet 
 this fragment is as full of life, is as green and flourishing, 
 as in the brightest days of prosperity. And from this 
 fragment will spring up a new and glorious tree that 
 shall overshadow the earth with its branches, and feed 
 the nations with its fruit and heal them with its leaves ; 
 and the promise of old shall be fulfilled: "But yet 
 in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return and shall 
 be eaten ; as a teii-tree and as an oak whose substance 
 
3l6 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 is in them when they cast their leaves ; so the holy seed 
 shall be the substance thereof." 
 
 I have been particularly struck with tlie truth of the 
 prophet's words when visiting the Ghetto of Rome. The 
 continuous existence of a small band of Jews in this 
 place, age after age, amid poverty, persecutions, and 
 hostilities of government, society, religion, and nature 
 itself which would undoubtedly have e.xterminated any 
 other people, is one of tlie most striking illuctrations 
 of the fulfilment of Isaiah's prophecy. Their presence 
 in Komc, as in Egypt and Babylon, has been a con- 
 spicuous instance of the visible interposition of a Divine 
 hand, for their own preservation and for their employ- 
 ment in influencing the mightiest movements of history. 
 They were in Rome in the days of the Csesars as a 
 protest against the idolatry and superstitions of paganism ; 
 and they remained in Rome through all the dark ages 
 of the Popes as a protest against the baptised paganism 
 of Christianity. Standing in that filthy street, amid the 
 wreck of God's ancient people, and seeing around me 
 the ruins of the pride and splendour of ancient Rome, 
 the mistress of the world, cast out into the fields like 
 an unburied and dishonoured corpse, and the temporal 
 power of the Pope fallen before the constitutional 
 government of a free and enlightened people, I could 
 not help feeling to the full that a God of righteousness 
 reigns on the earth, and that in the long run, " there 
 is nothing fruitful but sacrifice, nothing lasting but 
 love." 
 
 The tree rather tlian the " everlasting hills " may have 
 
XIX. THE DAYS OF A TREE. 317 
 
 been chosen by the prophet as the symbol of the per- 
 petuity of God's people, not only because it has life, 
 and is therefore a more appropriate emblem of life, 
 not only because of its power of indefinite longevity 
 and increase, but also, as Dr. Harvey has suggested, 
 because it is possessed only of a co?iiingent perpetuity. 
 Jn its own nature a tree is immortal, but it is subject 
 to accidents which impair its vitality and lead to decay 
 and death. Most trees die of mechanical injuries ; a 
 storm breaks off a branch and inflicts a wound which 
 exposes the inner heart-wood to the weather, decay 
 takes place, the inside of the trunk becomes hollow, 
 and, incapable of offering resistance, it is hurled to the 
 ground by a fiercer blast of wind than usual. Many 
 trees are placed in unsuitable situations, where they 
 are too much crowded by other trees or too much 
 exposed to the wind, or where the soil does not afford 
 sufficient nourishment to them, and they die of hunger. 
 Their own growth by hardening and compressing their 
 tissues prevents the roots of the young shoots from grow- 
 ing, and the sap from rising freely upwards, and thus they 
 are choked out of life. Add to these causes the mani- 
 fold destructive influences of nature and the necessities 
 and caprices of men, and it will be at once seen that 
 the great majority of trees must perish ere they have 
 reached their prime, and that even the oldest and largest 
 must finally disappear. This circumstance may have been 
 meant to infuse a salutary warning into the gracious 
 assurance of the text. The days of God's people would 
 be like the days of a tree so long as they obeyed the 
 
3i8 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chai'. 
 
 laws of truth and righteousness, by which the stabihty 
 of a nation is maintained ; but, Hke the tree, their days 
 would be cut short prematurely, if they exposed them- 
 selves by disobedience to the forces which inevitably 
 bring all that is evil to an end. The cedars which once 
 formed the glory of Lebanon are now so few that a 
 child can count them ; and the people who, like those, 
 goodly cedars, filled the land and sent out their boughs 
 to the sea and their branches unto the river, hav=; been 
 driven into exile, and are scattered and parted among 
 the nations. 
 
 We are profoundly impressed with the transitoriness 
 of human life when we compare it with the longevity 
 of one of the forest patriarchs, that year after year sheds 
 its leaves and still endures. There is nothing in the 
 nature of the tree to limit its life ; it grows by additions, 
 and these can go on indefinitely and be conserved in 
 the increasing structure. But man's body lives by 
 substitutions ; the particles whose vitality has been ex- 
 hausted by exercise being continually eliminated and 
 replaced by new ones; and a period soon conies in 
 which the forces of repair can no longer keep pace 
 with tlic forces of waste, and the organism inevitably 
 perishes. The tree looks so solid and immovable, 
 and our life is so frail and transient. We long for 
 an existence as secure and permanent as that of the 
 cedar or the yew. We feel that we could accomplish 
 so much of what lies near to our heart were our days 
 more like the days of a tree. And yet there is a sense 
 in whicli our wish can be granted. In nature an annual 
 
THE DAYS OF A TREE. 319 
 
 plant can be made perennial simply by preventing it 
 from flowering and seeding, when it will develop buds 
 instead, and from thence spring up the following year, 
 continuing to live indefinitely if treated in the same 
 manner. And so in the human world, by sacrificing 
 what seems life but is actual death, we gain what is 
 a seeming death, but is actual life ; we lose our selfish 
 individuality and gain a wonderful opulence of being, 
 and feel as if dwelling in eternity, in harmony with 
 the soul of the universe. Annual plants too, if growing 
 separately in the soil, perish ; but if they form part of 
 a composite organism they secure a permanence which 
 is not theirs by nature. They die, but they never lose 
 their connection with the tree to which they belong ; 
 they share in its immortal life ; their remains are sealed 
 up in its structure, and the whole tree is built upon 
 their foundation, is made up of the living and the dead, 
 united by the wonderful bonds of a persistent vitality. 
 And so joined to Christ who only hath life, grafted in 
 Him who is the true vine, our frail perishing life is 
 made immortal, we become members of His body, parts 
 of the fulness of Him who filleth all in all, time and 
 eternity, heaven and earth. We die, but our real life 
 is still hid with Christ in God ; we are asleep in Jesus, 
 bound up in the bundle of life, with all the former 
 generations who have died in the Lord ; and neither 
 life nor death can separate us from the love of God 
 which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. In Christ we are 
 possessors of a life whose durability as far transcends 
 the longevity of the oldest tree, as that tree transcends 
 
320 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 the existence of the mere infant of a day. Living 
 and believing in Him we shall never die. Death is 
 a mere incident in our everlasting life, the mere fixing 
 upon our affections and hopes the seal of eternity. 
 
 There is no reason for the living endurance of the 
 individual plants that compose the social organism of 
 the tree. They have accomplished their purpose when 
 they have helped to purify the air and form the fruit, 
 and have deposited an additional layer of wood for 
 man's use ; and though they remain in the tree they 
 are really dead, and will never more be the seat of 
 any vital action or change. The tree lives by relays 
 of annual shoots, and these relays in their turn die 
 and never live again. And all this is in conformity with 
 the object for which they exist. They are evanescent 
 structures because their purpose is to minister to passing 
 necessities. But man is an immortal being — for whose 
 sake the whole world itself exists. He has an immortal 
 purpose to fulfil, and therefore although the individuals 
 of the great genealogical tree of the human family die 
 one after another, and although in these individuals 
 themselves a continual process of interstitial death takes 
 place during life, yet there is an ineffaceable distinction 
 between their death and that of the annual shoots of 
 a tree. Through all the changes of life, through the 
 dissolution of death itself, God, who made them 
 in His own image, upholds their distinct personality, 
 and His eternity is the measure of their endless 
 life. Even their bodies are immortal realities. As 
 transcripts of their immortal spirits, our Christian faith 
 
XIX. THE DAYS OF A TREE. 32 1 
 
 bids us look forward to a resurrection of them, when 
 this corruption shall put on incorruption, and they shall 
 not only never die but shall be rendered incapable 
 of death. They shall preserve in worlds of glory 
 throughout eternity, the identifiable personality they 
 possessed before death. Human life shall know no 
 break from its first dim dawning in this world to its 
 ultimate perfection in the world to come. This con- 
 tinuity of bodily existence confers upon man an awful 
 indestructibility, at the thought of which the enduring- 
 ness of the oldest trees, ay, even of suns and stars, 
 becomes as nothing. 
 
 In the annual plant there is only a single presentation 
 of the essential characteristics of vegetable life. The 
 root, stem, foliage, flower, fruit and seed appear only 
 once ; but in the tree there is a continual repetition of 
 the like from year to year and from age to age. And the 
 reason of this is that vegetable life may rise from the 
 narrower circle of the development of the single individual 
 to its wider and grander social destination. With every 
 new generation it grasps anew its typical ideal and 
 carries it over every one-sidedness or imperfection to 
 greater completeness, until at last the magnificent oak or 
 pine in the utmost size, complexity, and luxuriance of 
 which it is capable, displays what vegetable life may 
 become. We have seen how this grander development 
 is related to the greater usefulness of the organism. The 
 single annual plant produces but a comparatively small 
 effect upon nature and is of comparatively little use to 
 man. But the composite tree stores up timber for the 
 
 Y 
 
322 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 manifold purposes of human economy, and regulates the 
 climate and the distribution of the winds and waters. 
 And so it is with man. Instead of inflicting the 
 threatened penalty of death upon our first parents after 
 they had eaten the forbidden fruit, and so exterminating 
 the human race when there was only a single pair, God 
 ordained that mankind should be perpetuated from age 
 to age indefinitely. In the very sentence of doom there 
 is provision made for the continuation of the species ; 
 and thus, instead of a single presentation of husband and 
 wife, parents and children, brothers and sisters, there 
 are continual repetitions of these, forming one grand 
 genealogical tree, that shall endure as long as the world 
 lasts. And surely there must be an adequate reason 
 for this continuous repetition of life — a reason as 
 satisfactory in the case of man as in that of the tree. 
 There must be some glorious end which will compensate 
 for the pains of birth, the sorrows of death, and all the 
 sins and miseries wliich are inherited and perpetuated 
 in the ever-recurring generations of men. We see how 
 the plant repeats itself in stem and foliage in unbroken 
 succession ; no leaf, even when belonging to the same 
 formation, exactly resembling another, and with every 
 successive leaf approaching nearer the production of the 
 flower, until at last comes the miracle of blossoming, 
 and the glory of the jjcrfect rose or lily shows the 
 clima.x towards which tlie plant was reaching forth. 
 And is there not a climax of blessing, exceeding that of 
 Adam in Eden, exceeding that of the angels in heaven, 
 in store for the Innnan race, towards which each new 
 
XIX. THE DAYS OF A TREE. 323 
 
 generation with similar and yet slightly different ex- 
 periences is advancing nearer and nearer ? ^\'ith each 
 new birth humanity rejuvenises itself, gets rid of some 
 old evil and develops some latent good. Each father 
 hopes that his child will achieve what he himself had 
 fliiled to do, and lead a nobler and happier existence. 
 And to this progress the very shortness of life lends the 
 most important aid ; for as each generation reaches a 
 point where its development stops and becomes stereo- 
 typed, a new generation with fresh and plastic minds 
 comes forward, takes up and carries on the work a few 
 steps further, and becomes fixed in its turn. During 
 endless ages creation struggled on through its entire 
 graduated series of living things to the attainment of the 
 human form, which emerged as by a supreme effort on 
 the last and highest stage, and now stands visibly at the 
 head of the whole, not as a figure carved in alto relievo 
 on the bosom of nature, but as a statue standing upon 
 it as a pedestal. Transferring the development from the 
 physical to the spiritual have we not the assurance that 
 there will be a similar progress through all the groanings 
 and travailings together of the successive generations 
 to the glorious consummation of humanity, when the 
 prophecy of the Divine image and likeness in which- 
 we were created shall be fulfilled, and the universe 
 shall comprehend what God meant by man? In the 
 tree of life which is in the midst of the heavenly 
 paradise — symbol of the perfection of the whole 
 redeemed community, of all' the races and generations 
 of men — will be seen the highest realisation of 
 
 Y 2 
 
324 TUO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 the words, " As the clays of a tree are the clays of my 
 people.'' 
 
 These two time-measurers, the tree and the covenant 
 people, remind me of two other interesting time- 
 measurers, the one by shadow, the other by light, which 
 produced a deep impression ui)on my mind, and which I 
 may here use as an instructive analogy. In an old- 
 fashioned garden which my young days haunted there 
 is a venerable sun-dial, spotted with mosses and lichens, 
 with liomely sweet-scented flowers growing around its 
 pedestal, and gnarled apple-trees dropping upon it in 
 September their faded leaves, and in May their beautiful 
 blossoms, combining the whiteness of the winter snow 
 and the redness of the summer fire, linking the two 
 seasons together into this perfect one. Around its edge is 
 carved the motto, '■'• Horas lum niimero 7iisi serenas." In 
 the church of Sta. Maria degli Angeli in Rome, con- 
 structed out of the ruins of the Baths of Diocletian by 
 Michael Angelo, there is a remarkable meridian line laid 
 down on the polished lloor of inlaid marble. Standing 
 in the garden beside the sundial one sees with dazzled 
 eyes the shadow of the gnomon on a ground of 
 sunshine. Standing in the transept of the church one 
 sees with cool eyes a beam of sunshine on a ground of 
 shadow ; for precisely at noon a bright ray comes 
 through a small round hole in tlie roof made for the 
 purpose and falls upon a particular line on the graduated 
 pavement. The sundial is associated with the works of 
 God, with the flowers and trees, which are constantly 
 renewed and bloom as fresh and fair after thousands of 
 
THE DAYS OF A TREE. 325 
 
 years as at the first. The flight of time passes over the 
 face of nature there as the shadow passes over the dial 
 and leaves no trace behind. The meritlian line of the 
 church is associated with the ruins of human works and 
 the decadence of human glory. The sundial casts its 
 shadow in connection with objects that have no otlier 
 darkness, to which decay and death are but mere stages 
 of progress ; the meridian line gives its light in con- 
 nection with objects that witness to human sin and 
 sorrow. In the garden the sundial speaks by a shadow 
 of the days of a tree — the duration of the physical 
 world compared with the short space of man's exist- 
 ence — the completeness of vegetable life and the incom- 
 pleteness of human life. In the church the meridian line 
 speaks l)y light of the days of God's people, -and raises 
 the thoughts to Him in whom there is no darkness at 
 all, and with whom a thousand years are as one day and 
 one day as a thousand years. In the sanctuary the 
 shadow of the world becomes the light of heaven, ard 
 all that is changing and evanescent in our life is 
 redeemed from its vanity by being associated with Him 
 who has given us the assurance in His ^^'ord that 
 because He lives we shall live also. 
 
 I am writing the closing words of this chapter in a 
 scene of wonderful beauty, at the head of one of our 
 western sea-lochs. Over a line of grand old Scotch firs, 
 whose dark blue-green foliage contrasts strikingly wilh 
 their warm russet trunks, glowing like the burning- 
 bush in the level sunset-fire, rises far up on the hori- 
 zon the w^eird fantastic summit of Ben Arthur, or 
 
326 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 the Cobbler. Its weather-worn rocks bear a strange 
 resemblance to a shoemaker working on his bench, 
 and to the gigantic profile of an old woman witii a 
 Scotch mutch, called his wife. Lifted high above the 
 world of human beings, these mighty sphinxes of nature 
 claim kindred with the enduring heavens. Long ages 
 before the dim Arthurian legends, which have given 
 the mountain its name — these hoary countenances were 
 sculptured by the slow alternate action of the sunbeam 
 and the storm. Older than the oldest records of 
 vegetable or animal life the changing centuries have 
 passed like shadows over their unchanging faces. They 
 ga,:e with the same calm indifference at the coming 
 and going on the loch below of the daily steamer 
 with its crowds of fashionable tourists, as they gazed 
 upon the fires which our savage ancestors kindled in 
 the primeval solitude. Can there be a more impres- 
 sive symbol of the permanency of nature as con- 
 trasted with the evanescence of man ! And yet, as 
 one has well said regarding a similar object, by a 
 change of position the apparently permanent forms 
 become the most fugitive illusion. If I move away 
 a couple of miles the gigantic features disappear, and 
 only a few rugged rocks, without any significance, 
 remain on the mountain-top. The spectral group 
 owes its WL-ird appearance entirely to the human 
 mind. It is in the eyes of man alone that it is 
 outlined against tlie eternal blue, and the red winter 
 morning kindles its beacon fire on its brow, and the 
 summer constellations deck it with a starry crown. 
 
XIX. THE DAYS OF A TREE. 3-7 
 
 It is in his mind alone that it is hoary with for- 
 gotten years. The space which it fills, the matter 
 of which it is formed, in the unconscious air, are mere 
 size and weight. It is in his consciousness that they 
 are re-created into mountain grandeur. He alone 
 admires the glorious view, embraces the whole scene, 
 and is conscious of the divine idea which it ex- 
 presses. And shall not a being who is capable of 
 this oudast it all ? If he can change the appearance 
 of the scene accordmg to the angle of his vision, and 
 thus make what seems most enduring in it illusory, 
 shall he not, when he has gone away from earth al- 
 together, live on when the mountains shall depart aid 
 the hills be removed? 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 "Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost." — 
 St. John vi. 12. 
 
 BETWEEN the miraculous provision of manna in 
 the Sinaitic desert, and the miracle of the multi- 
 plication of the loaves and fishes in the wilderness of 
 Capernaum, there is a close resemblance. But in regard 
 to the disposal of the food there is a striking and 
 significant difference. Moses said to the Israelites 
 when the manna came, " Let no man leave of it till 
 the morning. Notwithstanding some of them left of 
 it till the morning, and it bred worms and stank." 
 But Jesus said to the disciples when the multitude 
 were fed, *' Gather up the fragments that remain, that 
 nothing be lost." To gather up the fragments in the 
 one case was to be guilty of faithlessness and distrust 
 in God's providence ; to gather up the fragments in 
 the other was to exercise faith and to guard against 
 despising the common blessings of life, and wasting 
 what could be procured with so little trouble. The 
 
CK. XX. IVASTE. 329 
 
 difiference in the command arose from the difference 
 in the circumstances. The Israehtes, in obedience to 
 the Divine will, were sojourning in a region where 
 they could not help themselves. They were there- 
 fore directly dependent upon God ; the manna was 
 their daily bread given to them immediately from God's 
 own hand. And any attempt on their part to store 
 up the heavenly provision for an emergency would 
 obviously have been an interference with the Divine 
 plan, a proof of want of confidence in God's providen- 
 tial care. On the other hand, those who got the benefit 
 of the Saviour's miracle had followed Him out of the 
 villages of Galilee beyond the reach of ordinary food. 
 They were in the wilderness only for a short time ; and 
 their everyday mode of life was the cultivation of 
 the soil and the earning and procuring of their own 
 bread by the sweat of their face. The miracle was only 
 a sudden putting forth of the Almighty arm from be- 
 hind the veil of His ordinary providence, to show 
 once for all by a great and lasting sign the divine 
 source of the common blessings of life. And to gather 
 up the fragments of the feast was meant in their case to 
 link the supernatural with the natural, to connect every 
 day's food with God the Giver. The permanent 
 design of the miracle was to uphold the wise order 
 of God's arrangements for the supply of human 
 wants by the ordinary operations of nature, and 
 the common ordinances of human society ; and to 
 teach men that in quietness they should work and 
 eat their own bread, and provide by the exercise of 
 
33° TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 common prudence and economy for their prospective 
 necessities. 
 
 Our daily bread is given to us in a manner so regular 
 and lavish that there is a strong tendency to think 
 lightly of its crumbs and fragments. The miracle of 
 the multiplication of our loaves and fishes is so uniform 
 and constant that we are apt to think that there is little 
 need to guard against waste. He who has fed us so fully 
 and uninterruptedly hitherto by the miracle of His provi- 
 dence will always feed us we think in the same manner ; 
 therefore there is no necessity for us to be economical 
 in the use of the good things which He provides for us. 
 We have an unfailing sup])ly to draw from, and there- 
 fore may be as profuse and careless as we please. Now 
 our Lord guards us against this tendency of the daily 
 miracles of His providence, as much as He guarded 
 the disciples against the same tendency of the special 
 miracle in the wilderness of Capernaum. " Gather up 
 the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost," He 
 says to us at the close of every feast which He provides 
 for us in the wilderness of this world. And assuredly 
 no lesson is more generally needed in a luxurious age 
 like this. Economy does not obtain in these days the 
 place to which it is entitled in the education of life. 
 It is looked upon with dislike as a mean and sordid 
 necessity. It is confounded with petty selfish saving 
 for the mere sake of saving. Many are therefore 
 ashamed to practise it, as beneath the dignity of human 
 nature ; many never learn its value until it is too late. 
 But though not a brilliant quality, economy is in reality 
 
XX. WASTE. 331 
 
 more useful and more truly noble than some other 
 qualities which captivate the imagination, but are so 
 rare that few have an opportunity of practising them. 
 It is a virtue for everyday use, and one that ought to 
 be found in every home from the highest to the lowest, 
 whatever the income and scale of expenditure may be. 
 It is the basis and support of all the other virtues. 
 Neither elegant manners, nor dazzling talents, nor social 
 successes will avail much in the end where it is wanting. 
 How many families are plunged in inextricable diffi- 
 culties, obliged to keep up false appearances, and to 
 depend upon the chapter of accidents, owing to their 
 habit of living beyond their means. How many other- 
 wise able and estimable men have by their want of 
 economy first ruined themselves and then preyed upon 
 their friends until they became social pests ; when 
 but for this one fatal defect they might have passed 
 through life with honour and success and proved the 
 benefactors of society. Want of economy is the worst 
 form of selfishness. It seeks to secure its own in- 
 dulgences no matter at whose cost; and it breaks 
 down the moral principle, until in the end' it becomes 
 associated with meanness, servility, and an utter 
 disregard of justice and honour. 
 
 But the practise of economy can be based upon 
 higher grounds than mere worldly prudence, even upon 
 that foundation upon which our Lord Himself rested 
 it in the miracle of the multiplication of the loaves 
 and fishes. We are not to waste the resources which 
 have been bestowed upon us for religious ends. Without 
 
332 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 eccnoiny we cannot have the means to give liberally 
 to the cause of God It is necessary to gather up the 
 fragments of God's daily provision for us in order to 
 be in a position to serve Him. Unless we carefully 
 husband these, we cannot have the time to serve Him 
 persofially, not by deputy or substitute bought with 
 money, but personally by our own individual services, 
 which is the primary duty of every Christian. The 
 man of extravagant desires and expensive habit3 must 
 work hard, if he be honest, to furnish means for his ex- 
 travagances. He has not therefore leisure or composure 
 or freedom of mind to engage heartily in the service of 
 God. His whole time is occupied, his whole heart is 
 filled with serving tables, providing for his own selfish 
 pleasures or those of his family. And this is one of the 
 most crying evils resulting from the extravagance of the 
 age, that it needs in order to keep it up an amount of 
 devotion to the service of the world which leaves no 
 time or strength for the personal service of God ; 
 and that it wastes upon inferior transient tasks 
 powers which ought to be kept fresh and strong for 
 the noble and enduring work to which every human 
 being is called. "■ 
 
 On the page of nature he who runs may read in a 
 hundred different forms the same wise lesson which 
 our Lord taught in His miracle. Nature is a rigid 
 economist. In her liousehold there is no waste. 
 Everything is utilised to the utmost. The decay of 
 rocks forms the soil of plants ; and the decay of plants 
 forms the mould in which future plants will grow. The 
 
^^ WASTE. 333 
 
 sunlight and carbonic acid gas of past ages which 
 seemed to be wasted upon a desert world, have been 
 stored up in the form of coal for the benefit of man. 
 The water that seems to be dissipated in the air descends 
 in dew and rain to refresh and quicken the earth. The 
 matter that has served its purpose in one object goes 
 by death and decomposition to form another object 
 with a different purpose to serve. The materials which 
 the animal kingdom receives from the mineral and 
 vegetable kingdoms must be restored in order that 
 they may be carefully circulated without diminution 
 or waste over the whole earth. The gases that dis- 
 appear in one form reappear in another. Forces are 
 changed into their equivalents. Heat becomes motion, 
 and motion heat. Nowhere is there any waste. In 
 the ashes of every fire, in the decay of every plant, 
 in the death and decomposition of every animal there 
 is change, but not loss, death, but not waste. Every- 
 thing is made the most of. The fragments of every 
 product of nature are gathered up carefully and made 
 to serve a useful purpose in a new form at nature's feast. 
 Amid all her lavishness nature is very saving. The 
 briUiant hues of flowers which the poet and artist 
 love are not mere idle adornments, but have a practical 
 purpose to fulfil. The beauty and fragrance which we 
 so much admire appear only when the fertilisation of 
 the plant by insect agency is necessary ; and when this 
 task is accomplished, she withdraws them, as we put 
 out the lights and removd the garlands when the 
 banquet is over. In the most economical manner 
 
334 TfVO IVORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 nature gets her new effects not by producing new 
 objects, but by effecting a few modifications upon the 
 old ones; and when she makes a blossom on an apple 
 tree she simply shortens and alters what would other- 
 wise have been a common leafy branch ; all the parts 
 of the inflorescence of the commonest wayside weed, 
 the bract, the calyx, petal, stamen, pistil and seed, in 
 spite of all their differences of form and colour are 
 but successive transformations of the leaf TIils our 
 Lord teaches us by the common processes of nature 
 the lesson of economy. 
 
 In the sphere of human art we find that there is 
 a growing tendency to economise materials. The dis- 
 tinguishing characteristic of our arts and manufactures 
 is economy. Substances which our forefathers threw 
 away are now converted into useful and valuable pro- 
 ducts. We extract beautiful colours from the dung-heap, 
 and delicious perfumes and essences from the oftal of 
 the streets. Every day we are finding out more and 
 more that nothing is useless; that even the waste and 
 refuse of our manufactures may be turned to profitable 
 account, and made to minister to the necessities or the 
 comfort of man. By the work of our own hands 
 therefore our Lord is teaching us the lesson of economy. 
 
 But while we are thus increasingly economical in one 
 direction, we are increasingly extravagant in another. 
 The improvements in our arts and manufactures involve 
 the waste of substances far more valuable than any we 
 have utilised, and whose loss cannot be replaced. A 
 writer in an admirable article in the Quarterly your/ial 
 
XX. THE DAYS OF A TREE. 335 
 
 of Science, from which the facts in the following pages 
 have been derived, has drawn attention to the culpable 
 recklessness with which we use up in our industrial 
 operations substances necessary to the production of 
 human food. The supply of such substances in nature 
 is comparatively limited, and they ought therefore to be 
 most carefully economised, and employed only for the 
 most essential purposes. And yet they are squandered 
 by us in the most foolish manner as if we had an 
 unlimited store to fall back upon. Chief among these 
 substances are the nitrogenous bodies. Nitrogen is an 
 indispensable element of life. It is present in every seed 
 and egg, and takes part in all the clianges which plants 
 and animals undergo in their growth and maintenance. 
 Without it blood, milk, nervous tissue and muscle 
 would be impossible. Owing to its great mobility 
 and power of combination witli other elements, it 
 forms an endless variety of compounds, acids and 
 alkalies the most powerful, dyes the most useful, 
 medicines the most energetic, and poisons the most 
 deadly. There is hardly any organic compound, exist- 
 ing in a natural condition or prepared by man, which 
 does not owe the remarkable qualities which it possesses 
 to nitrogen. For this reason it enters largely into the 
 arts and manuf:ictures, and more than any other ele- 
 ment is exposed to waste. We are constantly setting 
 free vast quantities of it from its combined form, in 
 which it is most serviceable, into its gaseous condition 
 in the atmosphere in which' it is singularly negative 
 and inert. 
 
:i^6 Tiro IVORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 There are three ways in which it may be said 
 that we are grievously wasting this most precious 
 element. The first is by our failure to restore to the 
 soil the nitrogenous substances that we take from it. 
 No question of the present clay is more important 
 or perplexing than the utilising of our sewage ; and 
 it will continue to perplex and annoy us until we 
 find some practical method of obeying the simple law 
 of nature. The only condition of its ceasing to be an 
 evil is that it shall be converted into a good. Mean- 
 time we are pursuing the plan mentioned in the fable 
 of Hercules who cleansed the Augean stable by forcing 
 the waters of a river through it. We are polluting 
 our streams and pouring into the sea every day vast 
 quantities of the most valuable fertilising materials. 
 It has been calculated that the amount of nitrogen 
 annually lost in our country in this way, if returned 
 to the soil, would be equivalent in the form of 
 bread to more than five thousand millions of quartern 
 loaves. Mr. Mechi tells us that the inhabitants of 
 London consume daily the annual available produce 
 of 20,000 acres, and a similar quantity is required 
 weekly for London horses. The manurial wealth of 
 this is wasted by conveyance into the sea ; and the 
 country loses as much in available material for food 
 as if three million quartern loaves were daily float- 
 ing down the Thames to the German Ocean. Even 
 in country districts where the manure is stored up, 
 its most valuable ingredients — the volatile or azotised 
 portions by being freely exposed to rain and sunshine 
 
xs. IVASTE. 337 
 
 — are allowed to escape, so that what is applied to 
 the soil is in many cases only an impotent residuum. 
 It may safely be said that scarcely a half of the 
 fertilising materials that are used up in the growth of 
 our food and consumed by us in town and country, 
 are ever restored to the fields from whence they 
 came. We endeavour to make up for this waste 
 by importing guano and other manures from foreign 
 countries ; but this is only a temporary expedient 
 which must fail in the end and involve the sources 
 of our supply in the same loss. 
 
 Another way in which w^e waste this essential element 
 of life is in the preparation of alcoholic beverages. 
 \\'hatever view may be taken of the expediency or 
 inexpediency of the use of such beverages, no one 
 who is not prejudiced by personal interest but must 
 sincerely lament the enormous destruction of human 
 food involved in their manufacture. Not only is the 
 grain diverted from the best purpose to which it could 
 be applied in the preparation of bread; but in the 
 various stages of the process a very large proportion 
 of its nitrogenous material is wasted, and the liquor 
 which is su])plied to the consumer is of very little 
 dietetic value. This waste is all the more inexcusable, 
 as there are many other substances not used in human 
 food from which these beverages might be prepared. 
 
 But the most unjustifiable waste of all is in con- 
 nection with the use of gun^wwder and other explosive 
 substances, in which nitrogen, owing to its great gaseous 
 elasticity, is the most important factor. An immense 
 
 z 
 
338 TIFO irOMLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 quuiiiity ut these substances is employed for blasting 
 purposes, in the construction of works of public utility, 
 and in tlie extraction of metals and building stones 
 from mines and quarries. This use of them cannot 
 be dispensed with ; and there are no substitutes in 
 which oxidised nitrogen is not an essential element. 
 But the vast scale upon which war is conducted in 
 these times necessitates an extraordinary expenditure 
 of gunpowder. And the process by which the nitre 
 contained in it is obtained is a most wasteful one. 
 The writer to which I have already referred says that 
 upwards of ten million pounds of combined nitrogen 
 are in this way yearly withdrawn from the world's 
 available fertilising resources ; which, if translated into 
 human food, would mean the destruction in advance 
 of no less than five hundred millions of pounds of 
 bread. This is a new argument against war, the 
 cogency of which will be appreciated more and more 
 as the years go on. 
 
 It is doubtful if we are not paying too dear for many 
 of the conveniences and comforts of our civilised life. 
 The power of striking a light whenever we want it is 
 got by the waste of so much phosphorus, which is 
 one of the principal elements of vitality, and exists in 
 nature only to a limited extent. The manufacture and 
 printing of our cotton goods, as well as the preparation 
 of articles of clothing in the laundry in accordance with 
 the rules of fashion, requires the consumption of a vast 
 amount of starch, which is procured from our cereals 
 by the separation and waste of the gluten, which is rich 
 
XX. WASTE. 339 
 
 in nitrogen ; a precious substance indispensable for food, 
 existing in comparatively small quantity, being thus 
 destroyed in order to prepare another substance of 
 much lower value, which nature produces in almost 
 endless profusion, existing not only in grains and 
 esculent roots, but also in the trunks of trees, especially 
 the sago palm, and throughout nearly the whole tissue 
 of the higher orders of plants. Are we not, by our too 
 lavish and reckless use of coal, the great aliment of 
 our industrial operations, rapidly reducing the supply 
 which our country possesses of this invaluable mineral ? 
 
 The substances I have indicated are not generated in 
 nature as rapidly as they are consumed by man. It 
 does not appear that there is at work any natural 
 process which will prepare them in sufficient quantities 
 or in suitable forms for being used over again in 
 human economy ; or if there be any such processes, 
 they are so extremely slow that they can hardly be 
 taken into account, requiring ages like geological 
 periods, for their completion. 
 
 It may be said that there is no lack of the prime 
 necessaries of life in the world at large, and the 
 waste in one place can be made up by superabundance 
 in another. But the march of civilisation is rapidly 
 reducing all countries to the same condition. Not 
 very long ago, our own country produced a sufficient 
 amount of food for its own population. It is now 
 importing, in enormous and ever-increasing quantities, 
 both food and manures. And those parts of America 
 from which it originally received its supplies are now 
 
340 riVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 themselves falling back upon the surplus produce of 
 regions farther removed and recently brought under 
 culti\ation. But there can be no doubt that there 
 also the same effects will ensue, and that ere many 
 years have passed away the new land will sink to 
 the same condition as that in the older settlements. 
 Essentially vicious is the " skinning system " of the 
 great western prairies, for it is fast realising the fixed 
 capital of the nation, represented in the accumulated 
 power of these prairies, sending it over the seas in the 
 shape of food, and receiving back not what may 
 keep up the fertility of the soil, but what is utterly 
 useless for that purpose, mere money that may be spent 
 in idleness or noxious luxuIy^ The same wasteful 
 expenditure is going on in California, Hungary, South 
 Russia, Chili, and wherever the exportation of food 
 and manures is the principal branch of commerce. 
 The world is beginning to realise the serious fact that 
 its rescources are not inexhaustible ; and that the 
 wants of its vast industries, and its teeming populations, 
 are rapidly encroaching upon the limits of these. Such 
 a fact would seem to lend very little countenance to 
 the dreams of indefinite improvement which we cherish 
 regarding the future of our race. 
 
 The only effectual remedy would be to bring the 
 population of every country into more direct contact 
 with the cultivation of its soil so that it might be- 
 come self-sustaining, to restore every particle of the 
 fertilising materials which have been received from 
 the land in forms capable of assimilation, and to 
 
XX. WASTE. 341 
 
 restrict the use of potash, phosphorus, and nitrogen, 
 to the preparation of articles of food and medicine ; 
 finding substitutes for their present reckless application 
 in the arts and manufactures in substances not so 
 essential to life. Let not the awful lesson which 
 God taught the Israelites of old be thrown away 
 upon us. They wasted the natural resources of their 
 country ; apd that state of things which Moses fore- 
 told actually happened, " And your strength shall be 
 spent in vain ; for your land shall not yield its in- 
 crease." God punishes us in the line of our offence. 
 His judgments are not capricious and arbitrary, which 
 He will remove on our imploring Him to withhold 
 His hand. They are warnings and punishments in- 
 tended to set us earnestly to find out their causes 
 and remove them. And the repentance which He 
 values is the resolute putting away of the sin that 
 has brought the evil upon us ; and the prayer that 
 He will not despise is the effort to act in con- 
 formity with His wise and righteous will, as that will 
 is expressed to us in the harmonious arrangements of 
 the world and of society, which are all meant to 
 work together for good to them that fear God and 
 keep His commandments. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 THE SPECTRE OF THE OLD NATURE. 
 
 "O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from the 
 body of this death?" — Romans vii. 24. 
 
 SOME years ago a large number of peculiar photo- 
 graphs were circulated in America by spiritualists. 
 Two portraits appeared on the same card, one clear and 
 distinct, and the other faint and obscure. The fully- 
 developed portrait was the obvious likeness of the living 
 person who sat to the photographer ; and the indistinct 
 portrait was supposed to be the likeness of some dead 
 friend, produced by supernatural agency. Several speci- 
 mens of these double photographs were sent to this 
 country, and the mystery that had been made use of 
 to foster a gross superstition was found to admit of 
 an easy scientific explanation. Photographic portraits 
 are first taken as negatives on glass plates, and from 
 these plates they arc printed as positives on cards. 
 It not unfrcquently happens that the portrait of a person 
 is so deeply impressed on the glass of the negative by 
 the action of the light, that although the plate is 
 
CH.xxi. rilE SPECTRE OF THE OLD NATURE. 
 
 o4o 
 
 thoroughly washed and cleansed even with strong acid, 
 the picture cannot be removed from it, although it 
 is made invisible. When such a plate is used over 
 again, the original image faintly reappears along with 
 the new portrait. Beyond the substantial and fully- 
 developed figure of the person last taken, is the 
 shadowy outline of some unknown person, occupying 
 the same chair and exhibiting a ghostly repetition of 
 the same accessories. 
 
 Now, as it is with these double or phantom photographs, 
 so is it in the experience of the Christian. He has been 
 washed and purified in the blood of Christ; the old man, 
 with his sinful deeds, has been put off, and the new man, 
 which after God is renewed in knowledge and holiness, 
 put on. Beholding the glory of Christ as in a glass, 
 he is changed into the same image. And yet, not- 
 withstanding all this, the ghost of his former sinfulness, 
 the phantom of the old nature, persists in reappearing 
 side by side with the image of the new man. So deeply 
 are the traces of the former godless life impressed upon 
 the soul, that even the sanctification of the Spirit, 
 carried on through the discipline of trials, bitter and 
 burning as any corrosive acid, cannot altogether re- 
 move them. They may seem to vanish for a while, but 
 again and again they reappear when the slightest temp- 
 tation presents itself The Christian is indeed a new 
 creature in Christ Jesus ; but all old things have not 
 passed away. The remains, of former corruption still 
 exist in his soul. The sins formerly committed passed 
 into the very substance of his being. The memory 
 
344 TIFO IVOKLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 of them often rises up to haunt him and mock his 
 repentance. 
 
 Such was the experience of St. Paul. He passed 
 through an ideal death, a spiritual martyrdom, to a 
 nobler life in Christ Jesus ; and yet the image of his 
 former life, the old body of death, kept ever reappearing. 
 He strove to forget the things that were behind, but 
 they intruded on his holiest and heavenliest moments. 
 Thoughts and suggestions of evil started up even when 
 he was most occupied in communion with Christ. The 
 photographer is familiar with a process which completely 
 obliterates his picture, so that the card upon which 
 it is ])rinted may be used for any other purpose ; but 
 though utterly invisible, the picture still exists, and may 
 at any time be revived from its dormant state by 
 brushing it over with a certain chemical solution. And 
 so it was with the Apostle. The sin that so easily 
 beset him seemed to disappear altogether for a time ; 
 but it returned with fresh power in circumstances favour- 
 able to it, and made him almost despair of renewing 
 efforts so often defeated. And this confession of his 
 powerlessness to throw off the incubus was made, not 
 when he was a mere novice in the Divine life and the 
 scales had newly fallen from his eyes, but after he had 
 been thirty years a Christian and twenty years an Apostle, 
 and was ready to be offered up on the altar of the 
 martyr's sacrifice. The sense of the contrast between 
 the two natures within him became stronger and more 
 painful with his growth in grace. The more he believed, 
 the more he felt the obstinacy of his unbelief. The 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE OLD NATURE. 345 
 
 brighter the light, the deeper the surrounding darkness. 
 Sin became more hateful as he became more holy ; and 
 the more he was possessed with the spirit of Christ, the 
 more he was conscious of the indwelling of the spirit 
 of evil. As he rose to higher altitudes of spiritual 
 attainment, he sunk lower in his own estimation ; and 
 the more elevated and comprehensive his views of 
 salvation, the profounder and more personal became 
 his sense of guilt. 
 
 The " body of death," to which the Apostle alludes, 
 is not something that has come to us from without, 
 an infected garment that may be thrown aside when- 
 ever we please. It is a part of ourselves. It is not as 
 some imagine, a spiritual monomania, a nightmare of 
 the soul, a morbid hypochondriacal state of mind. It 
 is our own corrupt self, our own wicked will, alienated 
 from the life of God, — not our individual sins or evil 
 habits, but our sinful nature, which Ave cannot ignore 
 and from which we cannot separate. And this body 
 of death disintegrates the purity and unity of the soul 
 and destroys the love of God and man which is the 
 true life of the soul. It acts like an evil leaven, cor- 
 rupting and" decomposing every good feeling and 
 heavenly principle and gradually assimilating our being 
 to itself. There is a peculiar disease which often 
 destroys the silkworm before it has woven its cocoon. 
 It is caused by a species of white mould which grows 
 with great rapidity within the body of the worm at the 
 expense of its nutritive fluids ; all the interior organs 
 being gradually converted into a mass of flocculent 
 
346 TIVO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 vegetable matter. Thus the silkworm, instead of 
 going on in the natural order of development to pro- 
 duce the beautiful winged moth, higher in the scale 
 of existence and partaker of a freer and larger life, 
 retrogrades to the lower condition of the inert senseless 
 vegetable. And like the growth of this fungus in the 
 caterpillar is the effect of the body of death in the 
 soul of man. The heart cleaves to the dust of the 
 earth, and man, made in the image of God, instead of 
 developing a higher and purer nature, is reduced to 
 the low, mean condition of the slave of Satan. 
 
 None but those who have attained to some measure 
 of the experience of St. Paul can know the full wretched- 
 ness caused by this body of death. The careless have 
 no idea of the agony of a soul under a sense of sin ; 
 of the tyranny which it exercises and the misery which 
 it works. They have no deep feeling of inward discord ; 
 of their true higher life being choked and degraded 
 by an alien parasitic power of evil. They are asleep 
 and at ease in Zion ; their consciences do not accuse 
 them, their memories do not haunt them. Worldly 
 conformity is their practice ; worldly expediency their 
 principle. Their will being on the side of sin, they 
 have no conflict, no sense of resistance. And even in 
 the experience of many Christians there is but little 
 of that peculiar wretchedness caused by the presence 
 of the body of death. Conviction is in too many 
 instances superficial, and a mere impulse or emotion 
 is regarded as a sign of conversion ; and hence many 
 are deluded with a falsa hope, having little knowledge 
 
XXI. THE SPECTRE OF THE OLD NATURE. 347 
 
 of the law of God or sensibility to the depravity of 
 their own hearts. But such was not the experience 
 of St. Paul. At his conversion for three days he lay 
 blind and miserable, fasting and fainting under a 
 crushing sense of guilt ; and throughout his whole 
 subsequent life the remembrance and the burden of 
 his sin drew from him a cry of wretchedness which 
 the severest of his outward trials, and even the prospect 
 of martyrdom, were powerless to extort. The body 
 of corruption that he bore about with him, — the con- 
 scious living death, the sense of discord owing to the 
 law in his members warring against the law of his 
 mind, — this it was that darkened and embittered all 
 his Christian experience. Even when struggling so 
 earnestly against sin that he could honestly say, " It 
 is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me," 
 he felt the wretchedness of the body of death. And 
 so it is with every true Christian. It is not the spectre 
 of the future, or the dread of the punishment of sin, 
 that he fears, for there is no condemnation to those 
 who are in Christ Jesus ; but the spectre of the sinful 
 past and the pressure of the present evil nature. 
 Grafted in Christ, it seems as if, notwithstanding, he 
 were bearing the evil fruit of the old depraved nature 
 and not the fruit of the Spirit— the fruit of the graft 
 of the new nature. The sin which he fancied was 
 so superficial that a few years' running in the 
 Christian course would shake it off, he finds in reality 
 deep-rooted in his very nature, requiring a life-long 
 battle. The fearful foes which he bears in his own 
 
348 Tl'VO WORLDS ARE OURS. chap. 
 
 bosom — sins of unrestrained appetite, sins that spring 
 from past habits, frequently triumph over him ; and 
 all this fills him almost with despair — not of God, but 
 of himself — and extorts from him the groan, " Oh ! 
 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from 
 this body of death ? " 
 
 The evil to be cured is beyond human remedy. The 
 various influences that act upon us from without, — 
 instruction, example, education, the discipline oi life, — 
 cannot deliver us from this body of death. The work 
 is Christ's and not man's. In the same breath in which 
 we cry for deliverance we can acknowledge with the 
 Apostle the power of the Deliverer and the grace of 
 deliverance, " I thank God through Jesus Christ our 
 Lord." We are to fight the battle in His name and 
 in His strength, and to leave the issue in His hands. 
 The strength is ours if we have only the will, for, through 
 Christ strengthening us, we can do all things. He 
 will deliver us in His own way and in His own time. 
 Not at once, for we must remember "the long day 
 and the long way of the Lord." Through the struggle 
 our spiritual discipline is carried on. The new life, 
 like all life, must grow slowly and painfully, and by 
 growth take full possession of our whole being as its 
 own and transform us in the renewing of our minds. 
 
 We can reverse the illustration witli which I began 
 this meditation. If behind our renewed self is the 
 spectral form of qiir old self, let us remember that 
 behind all is the image of God in which we were 
 created. The soul, however lost, however darkened 
 
THE SPECTRE OF THE OLD NATURE. 349 
 
 and defaced, still retains some lingering traces of the 
 glory in which it was first created, some lineaments 
 of the Divine impression with which it was once stamped. 
 That image haunts us always ; it is the ideal from which 
 we have fallen and towards which we are to be con- 
 formed. To rescue that image of God from its dishonour 
 and pollution, and to make it shine in all its original 
 beauty and lustre, the Son of God assumed our nature, 
 lived our life, and died our death ; and His Spirit 
 becomes incarnate in our heart and life, and prolongs 
 the work of Christ in us, in His own sanctifying work. 
 And as our nature becomes more and more like Christ's, 
 so by degrees the old nature photographed by sin upon 
 the soul will cease to haunt us, and the image of Christ 
 will become more and more vivid and distinct. And at 
 length only one image will remain on the pure heart that 
 shall see God, and the holy life that shall maintain un- 
 broken communion and fellowship with Him. Wc shall 
 sje Him as He is, and we shall become like Him, 
 presented faultless before the presence of His glory 
 with exceeding joy. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Pv. Ci.AY, Sons, and Taylor, 
 
 BRBAD STREET HILL, B.C. 
 
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