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THOUGHTS IN MY GARDEN 
 
 EY 
 
 MARY G. WARE. 
 
 M 
 
 AUTHOR OF "ELEMENTS OP CHARACTER. 
 
 w The human mind is as ground j which is such as it is made by cultivation." 
 
 SWEDENBORO. 
 
 
 BOSTON: 
 CROSBY AND NICHOLS, 
 
 WM. CARTER & BROTHER. 
 18 63. 
 
^ 
 
 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1862, 
 
 By Maey G. Ware, 
 
 in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 
 
 boston: 
 
 CHAS. H. CROSBY, PRINTER, 5 & 7 WATER STREET. 
 
V 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 I, 
 
 
 II, 
 III 
 
 
 IV, 
 
 
 V, 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 THE DAWNING DAY. 
 FAITH WORK AND LOVE WORK. 
 ELM SEEDS. 
 WEEDS. 
 SQUIRRELS. 
 VI. BIRDS AND OTHER THINGS. 
 VII. THE SOWING OF SEED. 
 VIII. ABOUT SEEDS. 
 IX. THE CHANGING SEASONS. 
 
 X. AUTUMN LEAVES. 
 XI. THE USES OF GARDENING. 
 XII. THE HOUSEHOLD GARDEN. 
 
 XIII. HOME VIRTUES. 
 
 XIV. PARENTAL DUTY. 
 XV. SIMPLE PLEASURES. 
 
 XVI. FILIAL AND PARENTAL LOVE. 
 XVII . DISAPPOINTMENTS . 
 XVIII. DROUGHT. 
 
 XIX. INSECTS AND WORMS. 
 XX. THE POWER AND USE OF CIRCUMSTANCE. 
 
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 
 
" What surmounts the reach 
 Of human sense I shall delineate so, 
 By likening spiritual to corporal forms, 
 As may express them best; though what if earth 
 Be but the shadow of heaven ; and things therein 
 Each to other like, more than on earth is thought ? " 
 
 Milton. 
 
 QAS) 
 
INTBODUCTORY ESSAY. 
 
 ^^IpHOSE among the readers of this little 
 l^Jjgl volume who are not familiar with the 
 doctrines of the New Church, as taught by 
 Swedenborg, may look upon the explanations 
 contained in it of the correspondence of things 
 natural with things spiritual, as fanciful or poeti- 
 cal merely, instead of being what the writer in- 
 tended, strictly scientific. To such, a more sys- 
 tematic statement of the subject may be interesting 
 and useful. 
 
 There has always been a class of minds not 
 willing, or not able, to rest patiently in the ex- 
 ternal knowledge of the material world, but seek- 
 ing earnestly to find some meaning hidden within, 
 some anima rmmdil informing with wisdom the 
 dead matter of which earth is made, and the living 
 organisms, vegetable and animal, that cover its 
 surface. So, too, ever since the promulgation 
 
V1U INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 
 
 of the Scriptures, a similar class of minds has 
 been seeking there for a sense within the letter, 
 a hidden wisdom, that shall give to the seemingly 
 strange symbolism of the Word a meaning and a 
 power that it must ever lack to the reader who 
 is destitute of such knowledge. 
 
 Various theories aiming to explain the spiritual 
 system of the universe and of the Scriptures, 
 have been given to the world; but none that 
 has been widely received. It is evident that no 
 human mind can be competent to explain the 
 wisdom and the love of the Divine Mind, as a 
 whole, though it may attain to many detached and 
 fragmentary truths. Divine illumination must be 
 needful, in order that the human intellect should 
 have breadth and depth to measure and to fathom 
 divinity. Swedenborg claims to have received 
 such illumination, for the purpose of teaching 
 mankind the internal meaning of the Word and 
 Works of God. Strong internal evidence that he 
 did so, lies in the fact that his exposition of the 
 doctrine of correspondence is a positive science, 
 reducing the Word and Works to perfect con- 
 sistency in themselves, and perfect harmony with 
 each other. In the light of his teachings, the 
 supposed contradictions of science and religion 
 
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. IX 
 
 disappear, and each helps to Illustrate the other ; 
 while both are plainly seen to be the veritable 
 outpouring of the mind of the Heavenly Father, 
 for the instruction unto salvation of His children. 
 
 This illumination, of which Swedenborg claims 
 the possession, is something quite unlike the in- 
 spiration of those through whom the letter of the 
 Scriptures was given. Being the veritable Word 
 of God, the Scriptures did not require anything 
 beyond a material means of expression. Those 
 who wrote them were breathed into from on high, 
 and wrote what they thus received without neces- 
 sarily knowing the meaning of that to which they 
 thus gave material form. Illumination is an en- 
 lightening of the mind, so that it becomes capable 
 of comprehending truths otherwise too high for it, 
 and then of teaching them voluntarily to others. 
 Inspiration places the mind in an involuntary 
 state, and excludes the possibility of mistake in 
 its subject. Illumination leaves the will free, so 
 that its subject is still fallible, and his teachings 
 not to be reverenced in the same way or degree as 
 those of inspiration. 
 
 Few can doubt that every word and work of 
 the Divine Being must have a meaning and a 
 purpose. We can all perceive that the wiser 
 
X INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 
 
 and better a man becomes, the less frequently 
 he acts without end and aim. There is a con- 
 stantly increasing recognition in his mind that 
 there should be thought and purpose in all his 
 sayings and doings ; and if this be true even of 
 regenerating man, how much more completely 
 true it must be of the All-perfect Creator. 
 
 The Works of God must each represent some 
 Divine thought or affection, and the universe 
 taken together must represent the Divine Mind. 
 The same is true of the Word of God. There- 
 fore the types and symbols of Scripture speak a 
 language in perfect unison with the creations of 
 the outer world. 
 
 There are as many ways of reading the Word 
 and Works of God as there are individuals who 
 read; for they both, to a certain extent, mirror 
 the mind of the reader. We can only perceive 
 accurately, and appreciate justly, whatever is pre- 
 sented to our observation, when there is something 
 in our own minds corresponding to it. 
 
 One class of minds is affected chiefly by the 
 denunciatory parts of the Word of God, and an- 
 other class, on a similar plane, is reminded of God 
 in His Works only when He sweeps over the earth 
 in storms and tempests. To such He is only a 
 
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XI 
 
 God of terrors. They may admire and tremble 
 before His power, but they are not warmed and 
 quickened by His love. 
 
 Others are most interested in the Command- 
 ments of God, and seek to find them out that they 
 may do them. Simple obedience is the law and 
 the delight of their lives. A parallel class of 
 minds is constantly perceiving in nature the adap- 
 tation of its products to the wants of man ; and 
 to render them more serviceable to him in all 
 manner of practical ways, is the direction in which 
 all their efforts tend. 
 
 Others again love especially to learn the doc- 
 trines of Scripture, and to form schemes and 
 systems of God's laws in His relations with man ; 
 to find how man is to be converted, regenerated, 
 and saved ; and this to the exclusion of any prac- 
 tical application of what they thus learn to their 
 own lives. Nearly related to these are they who 
 devote themselves to the examination of the physi- 
 cal laws of the universe, simply as abstract studies, 
 and without having their minds strengthened and 
 enriched by any practical application of what they 
 learn ; who study for the amusement and satisfac- 
 tion of the intellect only, without regard to use. 
 
 With others faith, worship and obedience go hand 
 
Xll INTRODUCTORY ESSAY, 
 
 in hand. They reverently obey, and through obe- 
 dience learn to know the doctrines of the Lord. 
 They seek to know that they may "do and 
 teach ;" and, through their good words and works, 
 men learn to honor their Father who is in heaven. 
 Akin to, these are they who seek to find in nature 
 some articulate teaching of the Lord; who are 
 not satisfied with contemplating it as a dead world, 
 but who hope to find within it a living soul, dis- 
 coursing of its Almighty Maker. To such the 
 science of correspondences is an inestimable boon ; 
 the joy of their lives. They can never tire of 
 reading the Word or of studying the Works of 
 God, for each day and hour is opening out to 
 them new phases of the Divine Wisdom and Love. 
 Love, Wisdom and Power form the three phases 
 of Divinity; and affection, thought and life the 
 three phases of humanity. Divine Love and Wis- 
 dom are the sources of God's Word and Works. 
 Power is the means by which Love and Wisdom 
 express themselves. Human affection and thought 
 are the sources of all that man says and does ; and 
 his life is the embodiment of these two. Every- 
 thing of which we take cognizance in the creation 
 addresses itself either to our thoughts or our affec- 
 tions, because it conies to us from the Divine 
 
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XU1 
 
 Wisdom or Love. It is a form or expression 
 of either truth or goodness. Thus all things come 
 into one or the other of two great classes, which 
 correspond to one or the other of these two uni- 
 versal attributes of the Heavenly Father. Innu- 
 merable as are the forms of creation, they still all 
 come under one or the other class ; all come from 
 the Divine Love or Wisdom, all correspond to 
 some form of goodness or truth, all address them- 
 selves either to the affections or the thoughts of 
 man. 
 
 It must not be supposed that by correspondence 
 is meant resemblance in the way we mean when 
 we say one person or thing looks like another 
 person or thing. Perhaps no better illustration 
 can be given of what is meant than the human 
 countenance, which, in its ever- varying expressions, 
 corresponds to the emotions of the soul. As the 
 human features offer to the eye something which 
 expresses the varying passions of the mind within, 
 so the universe of matter expresses or corresponds 
 to all that is in the soul of man, and the universe 
 of spirit all that is in the soul of angels. As men 
 and angels are formed in the imao-e and likeness 
 of God, these two universes correspond also to 
 Him, and so aid men and angels to come nearer 
 
XIV INTKODUCTOKY ESSAY. 
 
 to Him through the instruction they gain from 
 these correspondences. The universe thus forms 
 the Grand Man, which is the basis of the whole 
 system of correspondences. 
 
 First there is God, the Infinite, Divine Man. 
 Then there is the finite, angelic man, formed in 
 His image, with a spiritual world about him cor- 
 responding to his being, adapted to his wants, and 
 capable of educating his faculties to the utmost. 
 Then there is man in his lowest state, still in the 
 likeness of God, but clad in a material form, and 
 dwelling in a material world ; corresponding to 
 his being, adapted to his wants, and capable of 
 opening his faculties, and preparing them for that 
 higher training which awaits him, when, putting 
 off his material frame, he enters upon the spiritual 
 world, with the nicer senses, the wiser thoughts, 
 the purer affections that pertain to the angel. 
 
 Thus from the Divine Humanity downward 
 through angels and men, and all the things that 
 surround them, all tend to the human form, all 
 join to make up the Grand Man, or macrocosm, 
 of the universe. Everywhere and always men 
 and angels are surrounded by types, the whole 
 value and purpose of which is to help them to the 
 comprehension of themselves and of their Creator ; 
 
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XV 
 
 to teach them spiritual truth, by means of which 
 they may be constantly ascending to a higher 
 degree of spiritual life. 
 
 The human soul, clad in a material body and 
 placed in a material world, finds its true life only 
 when it learns to perceive that the material is the 
 result of the spiritual, and that it exists only 
 through its correspondence with the spiritual. 
 The material world does nothing but mislead 
 us, until w T e know and feel that it is entirely 
 secondary to the spiritual world. Then it be- 
 comes a ladder on which we may mount up to 
 the highest wisdom of which man is capable. 
 
 The science of correspondences is the one ab- 
 solute and universal science, for it includes all 
 natural and physical science, all art and literature, 
 all philosophy and theology, all thought and feel- 
 ing. 
 
 The old theology taught that the higher we 
 ascended in the spiritual world the less complex 
 everything became. It asserted that God was a 
 simple entity, without parts or affections ; that 
 angels were intangible creatures, without organ- 
 ized forms ; that heaven was an insubstantial, 
 cloudy place, in which these beings floated, sing- 
 ing eternal anthems of praise to the glory of the 
 
XVI INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 
 
 Almighty. Yet this life and these beings were 
 asserted to be perfect and happy beyond anything 
 that man could conceive. 
 
 Everything that we see on earth reverses all 
 this ; for here we find that the capacity for knowl- 
 edge and for happiness increases in direct propor- 
 tion with the complexity of organization of the 
 being. From the soft, scarcely organized mass 
 of the mollusk, through fish, reptile, bird and 
 beast, up to the firm, delicate, and exquisitely 
 complex organization of man, the capacity for use, 
 for culture, and for enjoyment, rises proportion- 
 ately higher and higher. Is it not then irrational 
 to believe that when we pass from man to angel 
 we become less highly organized, less perfect in 
 form, less sensitive in perception? We believe 
 that a true analogy indicates what the New 
 Church teaches ; that the angel retains all that 
 made the man capable of using his material form. 
 That the spiritual body permeates every fibre and 
 atom of the material body ; and that when the 
 material body falls off, the spiritual body remains 
 in a similar form, but more perfect in every sense, 
 capacity and power ; thus becoming a fit instru- 
 ment for the use of the soul in the higher world 
 on which it is entering. 
 
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XV11 
 
 The spiritual world is the soul of the natural 
 world,, as the spiritual body is the soul of the 
 natural body. The natural body and the natural 
 world exist only because the spiritual body and 
 the spiritual world are within them ; and they die 
 and deCay so soon as the spiritual is withdrawn 
 from them. 
 
 A man with only the sense of touch would grope 
 about the world perceiving only the objects he can 
 reach by actual contact with his body, and per- 
 ceiving them in a very imperfect way. If the 
 other senses could be opened to him one after 
 another, the added perceptions of each would seem 
 like the entering into a new world, so much would 
 be offered to his observation with each new 
 power of perception. The worlds of smell and 
 taste, of sight and sound, would each seem like a 
 new revelation ; and yet they were all about him 
 just as perfectly before he had the use of his 
 senses as after. Just in the same way the world 
 of spirit is all around us while we live in the world 
 of matter ; but our senses are not yet opened to 
 perceive it. The death of the body is the opening 
 of the spiritual senses, by which we shall be made 
 capable of perceiving the glories and perfections 
 of the spiritual world. Just in proportion as that 
 
 2 
 
XV111 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 
 
 world is more perfect than this, must its objects of 
 sense be more complex, varied and numerous ; 
 and our perceptions more delicate, our capacity of 
 enjoyment more exquisite. That our moral nature 
 may find scope for the employment of its faculties, 
 there must be the most varied social relations in 
 which all charity will become mutual ; each angel 
 having something to give his neighbor, and some 
 want which his neighbor may supply. As in the 
 human body each part is dependent on every 
 other part, while it has its own special function in 
 relation to the whole, so in the Grand Man of the 
 spiritual world each individual is made happy by 
 fulfilling the duties of his own sphere, and receiv- 
 ing in turn the benefits that belong to him. No 
 one there desires to leave his own place, to escape 
 from his own duties, or to receive what does not 
 belong to him; yet the places, the duties and the 
 gifts are more varied and more numerous than we 
 can conceive. As we cannot imagine one sense or 
 organ of the human body envious or jealous of an- 
 other, because no one sense or organ can do the 
 duty of another so agreeably to itself as it can do 
 its own, so in heaven as happiness consists, for 
 the most part, in the doing of duty, each angel 
 wishes to do what he is best fitted for doing well, 
 
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XIX 
 
 and each is placed where his own special duty is to 
 be done. 
 
 What the duties of the spiritual world are we 
 are not told. They are not the same as those of 
 earth, but they correspond in the benefits which 
 they confer upon the spiritual body to those of 
 earth in what they do for the natural body. As 
 the spiritual body is immeasurably more varied in 
 its capacities and in its wants than the natural 
 body, so the employments of the spiritual world 
 will be more varied than those of earth. 
 
 Rising above the heavenly hosts to the contem- 
 plation of the Deity who created and who sustains 
 the universe, holding all things from the highest 
 to the lowest, from the greatest to the most 
 minute, in the embrace of His Almighty power, is 
 it rational to believe that this being of infinities is 
 a simple entity, without parts or affections, an ab- 
 stract ' ' somewhat " without form or personality? 
 This is what the Old Church has taught, but what 
 the New Church denies. We believe that the 
 Deity is a being of infinite parts and affections, 
 and that in His personality is contained the causa- 
 tive soul of every created thing ; that in Him is 
 something corresponding to everything that exists 
 
XX INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 
 
 out of Him, and that nothing ever did or ever can 
 exist apart from this correspondence. 
 
 This correspondence is of two kinds ; that of sim- 
 ilarity and that of opposition. The first of these is 
 directly of the Heavenly Father ; the second is in- 
 directly of Him, because all power to will and to 
 do is His ; but directly of the perversity of evil 
 men and evil spirits. The first is of God's Provi- 
 dence, the second is of His permission. 
 
 All other creatures that God has made are with- 
 out freedom. Their knowledge is instinctive ; and 
 each one follows the bent of his own natural in- 
 clinations, without having any idea of right or 
 wrong, of moral good or evil ; and therefore with- 
 out having any responsibility. Man differs from 
 all other creatures in being almost without instinct, 
 and in being possessed of a freedom of thought 
 and will that makes him capable of accepting or 
 of rejecting whatever of good or evil is placed be- 
 fore him ; hence responsibility is one of his most 
 marked and distinguishing characteristics. If he 
 love the Lord and endeavor to keep His Command- 
 ments, true thoughts and good affections will fill 
 his mind, and he will constantly grow to corres- 
 pond more and more directly to his Heavenly 
 Father. If he love himself and the world he will 
 
INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. XXI 
 
 turn away from keeping the Commandments, and 
 will grow constantly more in opposition to his 
 Heavenly Father. The same faculty of loving 
 which in the one is developed into a good affection, 
 becomes in the other an evil passion. The same 
 faculty of thinking which in the one is developed 
 into forms of truth, in the other expands only into 
 falsehood. The one is fostered by the Divine 
 Providence because it is in harmony with the 
 Divine Love and Wisdom; the other is per- 
 mitted only that man may be left in perfect 
 freedom. 
 
 The material world which surrounds us is de- 
 signed to teach us what is within us ; therefore we 
 find in it all manner of good and evil things in 
 animal, vegetable and mineral forms. All good 
 and useful forms derive their existence directly 
 from the Lord. All evil and noxious forms derive 
 their existence directly from man, and indirectly 
 from the Lord. The former are the outbirth and 
 expression of the Divine Love and Wisdom. The 
 latter are the result and expression of the evil 
 and falsehood that is in man. The former by 
 their beauty and usefulness are designed by the 
 Providence of God to lead us in the path of 
 
XX11 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. 
 
 life. The latter by their ugliness and noxious- 
 ness are permitted by the same Providence, 
 that man may be repelled from the way of 
 death. 
 
THE DAWNING DAY. 
 
— *««<>#»»*- 
 
 "The first watch of the morning is internal, pacific, and sweet, 
 above the succeeding watches of the day." — S wedenborg. 
 
 s^22£ 
 
I. 
 
 THE DAWNING DAY. 
 
 FIND great pleasure, as well as instruc- 
 ^f||tion, in working in a garden. All the 
 processes of gardening are full of suggestion to 
 every mind that loves to think. The Lord is 
 ever preaching to us in all His Providences ; but 
 in none of them more plainly than in the growth 
 and development of the vegetable kingdom. 
 
 My garden is an open, sunny spot, lying in the 
 midst of beautiful scenery. In front it is bounded 
 by the village street ; one of the prettiest that can 
 anywhere be found ; bordered on each side with 
 luxuriant maple and ash trees, forming a long and 
 beautiful avenue, such as would make a fitting 
 approach to the finest house in the land; but 
 which, to my mind, is all the more beautiful for 
 belonging to everybody in the village, instead of 
 being the property of a single individual. On the 
 (25) 
 
26 THE DAWNING DAY, 
 
 opposite side of the way there stands a superb 
 grove of stately old elms, planted a century and 
 a half ago, to adorn the site of the parsonage, 
 which was built when the town was settled for the 
 second time, after having been totally destroyed 
 during King Philip's war. South of the garden, 
 separated from it by a small lawn, stands our old, 
 rambling house, whose age is more than a hun- 
 dred years, canopied by two immense elms, whose 
 youth no man remembers. On the west is a 
 deep, winding dell, shaded with a variety of fine 
 trees, and ending in a broad meadow, across 
 which, through the vista formed by the dell, the 
 eye wanders away northward, among groves of 
 walnuts and elms, and then to a village with its 
 heaven-pointing steeples, and distant, wooded hills 
 beyond. 
 
 In the warm summer mornings, I love to stand 
 in the midst of my garden and see the sun rise, 
 bathing the landscape with a refulgence of beauty 
 such as no other hour of his course ever bestows. 
 What the rosebud is to the rose, the early morn- 
 ing is to the rest of the day. There is a freshness 
 and purity in the aspect of the landscape then that 
 resembles nothing else so much as an opening 
 bud of the queen of flowers. There is a brilliant, 
 
THE DAWXING DAY. 27 
 
 crystalline clearness in the atmosphere, too, that 
 gives a distinctness to the outlines of even distant 
 objects, which is never produced by the glaring 
 light of noon, nor the hazy gleam of the evening 
 twilight. It is Nature's most genial hour, when 
 her face glows with warmest welcome to her 
 lovers, unobscured by any of those veils of earthy 
 miasm that are sure to dim the lustre of her 
 beauty at a later hour. 
 
 I think I am right in believing that there is a 
 correspondence between this peculiar beauty of the 
 early morning and the commencement of the re- 
 generate life. When the soul is first roused from 
 its stupor of worldliness and self-love, a door seems 
 suddenly to have opened through which we look 
 into the fair light of that city which has no need 
 of the sun, and we feel as if we should never 
 turn away from it to follow after the dim, earth- 
 ly flame that has hitherto lighted our path- 
 way. A vision of celestial beauty beckons us 
 to go with it into the New Jerusalem, and we 
 think we shall never tire, while our day of life 
 lasts, of strewing palm branches along the way 
 and singing psalms of joy and praise. This 
 period is of but short duration. The rising of 
 the natural sun soon causes the vapors of the 
 
28 THE DAWNING DAY. 
 
 earth to ascend, and dim the transparency of the 
 atmosphere, even in the fairest days ; and so, in 
 like manner, the spiritual sun shines in upon our 
 souls, and as it rises higher and higher, reveals 
 to us more and more of the noxious evils that 
 permeate every fibre of our being. The warmer 
 the sun .shines the more quickly the vapors rise, 
 and the more distinctly the evils of our nature 
 become revealed to us. It may be that, as the 
 day advances, we shall forget our vision of the 
 morning, and, blinded by the mists that wrap us 
 round, succumb to evil, until we lose our faith, so 
 that our noon shall be shrouded in darkness, and 
 our sun go clown in the blackness of despair. Such 
 cannot be the result of a genuine conversion. If 
 the light and warmth of the early dawn awoke a 
 sincerely answering love in the soul, the memory 
 of that first vision of the heavenly life will go with 
 us through every moment of the day, kindling a 
 faith that shall give us light though thick clouds 
 overshadow our path ; giving us a rejoicing hope 
 for brighter hours in store for us ; and finally, 
 burning with the steady flame of charity, shall 
 keep the heart warm and the head clear in every 
 trial and emergency life can bring. 
 
 The morning dawn is eloquent with life and 
 
THE DAW1STNG DAY. 29 
 
 hope, and the promise of power to meet the toil 
 that is to come. The evening twilight is surges- 
 tive of peaceful repose from the toil that is past. 
 If the day of our life has been one of faithful 
 effort, after the regeneration it will end in a twi- 
 light that shall say to the soul, "Depart in peace ; 
 for the morning that waits for thee shall know no 
 diminution of its glories ; but shall shine more and 
 more brightly and clearly and peacefully through- 
 out a perfect, eternal day." 
 
FAITH WORK AND LOVE WORK. 
 
— ***®<>®-»»»~ 
 
 "He who has love in his heart has spurs in his side." 
 
 Proverb. 
 
 -*$/&* 
 
n. 
 
 FAITH WORK AND LOVE WORK, 
 
 ©IS STINT myself to work an hour at weeding 
 sHJH in my garden every morning before breakfast ; 
 but it often requires a good deal of effort to turn 
 my eyes away from the beautiful landscape that 
 surrounds me, and fix them upon the weeds at my 
 feet ; just as it is often very hard, and sometimes, 
 to our wilful hearts, seems degrading, to turn 
 from the study and contemplation of the sub- 
 limities of truth, and employ ourselves about the 
 many little duties that go to make up the comfort 
 of external life. As the success of the garden 
 must depend on the care with which the weeds 
 are removed, and the tender growth of the young 
 plants watched over, so the comfort of the family 
 depends on the performance of a thousand petty 
 duties that go to make up the great sum of 
 housekeeping. 
 
 3 (33) 
 
34 FAITH WORK AND LOVE WORK. 
 
 A garden may be successful, and a house may- 
 be well kept ; and yet the garden may be devoid 
 of beauty, and the house may be an unhappy 
 home. There is Mary's way and Martha's way 
 of doing everything, Mary works from love, and 
 Martha works from faith. Mary's heart works, 
 and Martha's head works. Martha knows it is 
 wrong to be idle ; that in the sweat of the brow 
 we are condemned to earn our bread ; and she 
 thinks that man was made for work. Mary, too, 
 knows, when she stops to think about it, that it 
 is wrong to be idle ; but then she feels that it is 
 pleasant to work ; that the sweat of the brow 
 brings no pain to those who work with love ; that 
 the body is more vigorous and the mind more 
 elastic with those who work than with those who 
 are idle ; and she feels that work was made for 
 man. With Martha work is an oppressive bond- 
 age, while with Mary it is an inspiring freedom. 
 
 The saying of the Lord to the Jews, who were 
 enslaved by their ceremonial observances of the 
 Sabbath, may be applied with equal propriety to 
 many of our surroundings. Men and women are 
 not made for the house, the garden, the farm, the 
 profession ; but all these are made for men and 
 women. So long as we believe ourselves made 
 
FAITH WORK AND LOYE WORK. 35 
 
 for duties we work like slaves ; but when we wake 
 to the truth that duties were made for us, we 
 come into the liberty wherewith the Lord makes 
 his children free. The soul grows in stature, and 
 beauty, and grace,, by the doing of duty ; just as 
 the body grows in health, and strength, and skill, 
 by the exercise of its members. 
 
 The Marthas who seek the Lord sorrowing, 
 through wearisome and painful effort at doing 
 their duty as a hard task set before them, might 
 add warmth to their light, which is what they are 
 suffering for, if they would give more thought to 
 the exceeding love of God in making this world so 
 beautiful. As I look around me, standing here in 
 the midst of my garden, it is evident to my mind 
 that God loves to work ; that creation is a delight 
 to Him ; and this is why He has made so vast 
 a variety of beautiful objects purely for the de- 
 light of the soul, and subserving no use to the 
 body. 
 
 I have seen more than one human being who 
 dared to walk through a flower-garden, with a 
 sneer upon the lip, and ask what use there was in 
 all this ; and it seemed to me that it was a profane 
 question, that could never have emanated from a 
 reverent heart. 
 
36 FAITH WORK AND LOVE WORK. 
 
 It is very strange, and shows to what a low 
 state man has sunk, that he calls only those 
 things useful that subserve the life of the body ; 
 while those which feed and clothe the soul are 
 called beautiful, but useless. Can a race of beings 
 truly believe that they have souls and yet make 
 such a distinction ? 
 
 I am not one of those who think lightly of the 
 body, or who overlook its wants ; for I am well 
 assured that every function of the body which 
 works imperfectly is a fetter upon the movements 
 of the soul ; and therefore that we cannot be care- 
 less of the wants of the body without sinning 
 against the soul. My garden is by no means a 
 mere flower-garden. My endeavor is that it shall 
 contain sufficient variety of fruits and vegetables, 
 so that it may bring its tribute of comfort or 
 luxury to the table every day in the year ; but 
 I think a garden that does not acknowledge the 
 existence of a soul that loves the beautiful, by 
 affording flowers as well as fruits, proves its 
 owner deficient in the higher attributes of hu- 
 manity. When it is evident that God loves 
 flowers so much, since He adorns the earth with 
 them so profusely, it is as evident that if we do 
 
FAITH WORK AXD LOVE WORK. 37 
 
 not love them we are so far not images and like- 
 nesses of the Creator. 
 
 Where we can count the varieties of plants that 
 are directly useful to the body by tens, we must 
 count those that are not so by thousands. If 
 these latter are of no use, we ask, like the un- 
 believing disciple, "To what purpose is all this 
 waste?" Here is material enough to make more 
 wheat, and potatoes, and rice, than would supply 
 the wants of the whole human race, wasted in 
 useless beauty ; while thousands of men and wo- 
 men suffer for lack of food. It seems to me to 
 prove that God sets very little store by the body 
 compared with the soul, when he feeds the latter 
 so much more richly than the former. 
 
 Every creation from the hand of God must be 
 the expression of a Divine thought or feeling ;. 
 and if we study them reverently, and enjoy their 
 beauty with thankful hearts, our filial love for our 
 Heavenly Father must grow day by day, as we 
 learn more and more of the beauties and wonders 
 of His works. New plants are discovered every 
 year, by those who explore new countries, and 
 added to our gardens, to give us new varieties of 
 food, or to delight our sight and smell by their 
 beautiful forms and colors, or their delicious 
 
38 FAITH WOUK AND LOVE WORK. 
 
 odors; and men say, "How strange that these 
 plants should have grown for ages, wasting their 
 flowers and fruits to no purpose ! " But does not 
 this wealth of creation teach us that God loves to 
 work ; and that creation is the spontaneous out- 
 flowing of the Divine Life ? 
 
 To Him in whose Infinite Thought a thousand 
 years are as one day, it must be but a small 
 matter that the flower blooms and fades, and the 
 fruit is perfected and decays, through a length of 
 time that to our finite thought seems immense. 
 He built the earth, and furnished it for man's 
 dwelling-place, and His love for man is such, that 
 it overflowed in the infinite variety of beautiful 
 forms that surround us ; and this creative love did 
 not wait until man should be ready to take pos- 
 session of each earthlv mansion, but delighted 
 itself in preparing beforehand abodes for children 
 yet to come. 
 
 The slave who works from compulsion, and the 
 drudge who works merely for his hire, stop with 
 doing the least possible amount of work that they 
 can ; but he who works from love, though it be 
 from a low and natural form of love, does a great 
 deal more than is required of him ; while he whose 
 love is elevated and spiritual, works in true Chris- 
 
FAITH WORK AKD LOVE WORK. 39 
 
 tlan liberty, seeking not his own, and loving his 
 neighbor as himself; never inquiring what he must 
 do, but striving to do all that he can. 
 
 Since human love works thus aboundingly, we 
 can hardly be surprised to find the Divine Love, 
 in whose image ours is formed, and from whose 
 life ours derives its power, providing not merely 
 for the support of life, but for its enjoyment, 
 through every perception of both the spiritual and 
 the natural body. 
 
ELM SEEDS. 
 
— *«#<>#»»- 
 
 The seeming waste of nature is in fact a storing up of resources 
 for future need ; not a spendthrift loss of power. 
 
 <^22Z? 
 
m. 
 
 ELM SEEDS, 
 
 liC*^ ® l ar g e a number of elms stand near by my 
 ^)^|5 garden that when the seeds ripen, let the 
 wind blow from what quarter it may, it is sure to 
 waft them within its limits, until its whole surface 
 is thickly sown. They soon vegetate upon the 
 loose earth, and after a few days it is difficult to 
 find a square inch of soil that is not shaded by an 
 infant tree. What a preparation is here for a 
 forest ! and yet all must be raked away and des- 
 troyed, that the growth of the garden plants may 
 not be impeded. Of the seeds that fall in the 
 neighboring fields and pastures, and by the road- 
 side, where no one will notice them enough to 
 destroy them, not one in a million will ever be- 
 come a full grown tree. The very few that 
 survive the accidents that will destroy most of 
 them while young, will continue to make all the 
 (43) 
 
44 ELM SEEDS. 
 
 region round about magnificent with their beauty 
 for centuries to come, as their parents are now 
 doing ; but it seems strange that so much seed 
 should be wasted, when so small a quantity would 
 suffice to produce all the trees that will ever come 
 to maturity. Probably a single large tree pro- 
 duces in one year as many seeds as there will 
 be elms in the whole town for a million years. 
 Can this be the mere waste of the abounding 
 wealth of the Divine Creative Power ? or is there 
 a meaning in it for our soul's instruction, and a 
 material use for the benefit of our bodies? A 
 little study and reflection will teach us that there 
 is food both for soul and body preparing in this, 
 as in every other, creation of the material world. 
 Vegetable growth and decay seem to have been 
 the means whereby the Creator has produced fer- 
 tility over the whole earth. A little moisture on 
 the barren surface of a rock causes it to become 
 clothed with lichens : one of the lower forms of 
 vegetable growth. After a while these decay and 
 leave particles of soil upon the rock sufficient to 
 sustain the life of mosses, and these, passing away 
 in their turn, leave a little deeper coat of decayed 
 vegetable substance which suffices to support some 
 small, flower-bearing plant. Years roll on in this 
 
ELM SEEDS. 45 
 
 way, until enough soil has been eliminated by suc- 
 cessive plants, acting upon the decaying rock, and 
 decaying in their turn, for a stately tree to find 
 abundant nourishment where once there was 
 nothing but hard, bare stone. This process goes 
 on slowly in our climate, — too slowly for a great 
 result to be observed by any one man ; but in 
 tropical climates a very few years suffice to change 
 barrenness into fertility, whenever water, moisten- 
 ing mineral substances, causes. the minute seeds 
 floating in the atmosphere to cling to them ; and 
 they are afterward stimulated into growth by 
 heat and light. Desert sands, reefs of coral, fields 
 of lava, are transformed by these agents into fer- 
 tile fields and stately forests. Geologists are led 
 to believe, by their investigations of the earth's 
 strata, that all vegetative soil was produced in this 
 way, by the gradual decay of mineral and vegeta- 
 ble substances. The plant devours the rock, and 
 the animal devours the plant. Thus the inorganic 
 substances of the earth become organized and fit 
 for the support of the material life of man. The 
 little elm seed, then, has not sprouted and ex- 
 panded in vain, though I destroy it in the infancy 
 of its growth. Each one, by combining earth, air, 
 and water in its foliage, has organized a few grains 
 
46 ELM SEEDS. 
 
 of inorganic matter ; and its decay will help to 
 enrich the garden for another year. 
 
 In the air we breathe infinitesimal seeds are 
 constantly floating, imperceptible to any of our 
 senses, but clinging to any damp surface, over 
 which the air passes, and vegetating with wonder- 
 ful rapidity into the curious growth that covers our 
 food, our clothing, our books, with mould and 
 mildew, unless we are watchful to guard against 
 them, by abundant ventilation. The use of this 
 lowest form of vegetable life, which often becomes 
 so troublesome and so offensive to man, seems to 
 be to hasten the decay of all dead organic matter, 
 thereby reducing it to a state in which it may sub- 
 serve the use of a higher form of living, vegetable 
 matter. 
 
 The Heavenly Husbandman is sowing seed, 
 everywhere and at all times, without stint or 
 measure : and covering the earth with vegetable 
 growth faster than man can make use of it. So, 
 too ? He is sowing seed in our minds every moment 
 of our lives. Every time that the senses take 
 cognizance of sight or sound, of taste or smell or 
 touch, a seed is sown ; and every time a thought 
 or feeling is aroused within us, a seed has ger- 
 minated. These seeds spring up in our minds just 
 
ELM SEEDS. 47 
 
 as they do in the garden ; bad and good, whole- 
 some food and noxious poisons, fair flowers and 
 unsightly weeds. There is, however, this differ- 
 ence : The garden gives growth, without voluntary 
 choice, to whatever germinates in its soil ; but the 
 mind of man, being endowed with free agency, 
 gives growth only to what it loves. The Divine 
 Gardener tends and nourishes the good seed that 
 He plants in our minds, but He never pulls up the 
 weeds that are planted there by the evil influences 
 of the world. Just so fast as we pull up the 
 weeds, He plants good seed in their places ; but 
 He does this only on condition that we first pull 
 up the weeds. We begin to do this just as soon 
 as we begin heartily to wish for good seed, and to 
 feel our entire dependence upon Him for it. Love 
 of the world and pride of character may induce us 
 to pull up many weeds ; but they are powerless to 
 plant good seed. They only leave the ground 
 swept and garnished, ready for weeds seven times 
 worse than the first to spring up and overshadow 
 the land with narcotic poisons that lull the soul 
 into the sleep of death. 
 
 Some persons suppose that the human soul 
 becomes regenerate by new and holy affections 
 crowding out the old and unholy ones ; but we 
 
48 ELM SEEDS. 
 
 may as well hope to crowd the weeds out of our 
 gardens by planting roses and lilies among them, 
 as to rely on what Dr. Chalmers has called the 
 " expulsive power of new affections " to drive the 
 old leaven of unrighteousness from the heart. 
 The weeds must be torn up and cast away before 
 the good seed can find room to spread its roots 
 downward and its leaves upward. 
 
 They who strive to adopt virtues into their souls 
 without first having learned to hate their own 
 vices, and ceased to habituate themselves to them, 
 produce a result corresponding to the gardens that 
 may often be seen about the country, where the 
 seeds of good things are sown, and the roots of 
 fruit-bearing vines and trees are planted, but taken 
 no care of afterwards. They look as if there had 
 been days in the spring when the desire after good 
 things became active in the owner's mind ; but the 
 true love of cultivation being wanting, the tall 
 weeds soon overtop and choke the growth of the 
 plants useful to man, while the couch-grass coat- 
 ing the surface, shows that its roots must form a 
 net-work everywhere beneath the soil, and by the 
 time the autumn comes will have taken possession 
 of the whole. One may gather a few currants 
 here and a handful of strawberries there, and per- 
 
ELM SEEDS. 49 
 
 haps a fruit-tree may testify by a cluster of nice 
 apples or pears what its whole growth would have 
 borne had it been duly cared for ; but the result 
 of the whole is a melancholy failure, and a simple 
 field of grass would have given the eye more 
 pleasure and the mind more satisfaction. 
 
 This is no fanciful analogy ; no idle invention 
 of the imagination ; but a true correspondence. 
 Strive after virtue as we may, while our souls are 
 still unconverted, hereditary evil is pervading our 
 whole being, and constantly springing forth into 
 sinful words and works ; and though we may 
 ever and anon check its external manifestations, it 
 is still full of vitality within our hearts, like the 
 couch-grass, whose roots traverse the under-soil of 
 our gardens, ready to start above ground at every 
 joint of their prolonged fibres, whenever the rain 
 moistens them and the heat of the sun reaches 
 them. The vices, too, that have been ingrafted 
 upon us by external circumstances and associations, 
 though not so deeply rooted, nor so intimately en- 
 twined in our natures, often spring into a more 
 showy growth ; like the tall rank w-eeds, which, 
 though they have but little depth beneath the sur- 
 face, spread a top so large as to overshadow the 
 useful plants of more humble growth. 
 4 
 
50 ELM SEEDS. 
 
 If we endeavor to plant new virtues in the soil 
 where old vices are still growing we are striving to 
 serve two masters ; we are putting forth our hand 
 to the plough and yet looking back ; we are trying 
 to take up the cross without denying self; and we 
 have the assurance of the Divine Word that all 
 such attemots are made in vain. 
 
¥ E E. D S . 
 
— -««^<>#»*»— 
 
 " The noisome weeds, that without profit suck 
 The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers." 
 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 <SS^22Z> 
 
IV. 
 
 WEEDS. 
 
 ($lj||)HE word weed has been defined in various 
 |Sjy| ways. Some authorities give it the nega- 
 tive definition of " a plant out of place ; " others 
 give it the positive definition of "a useless or 
 noxious herb." Since a weed corresponds to 
 falses, the positive signification is the one which 
 seems nearest the truth. 
 
 We sometimes say of a desirable plant that it 
 grows, or spreads, like a weed ; but the mind re- 
 cognizes a difference between such and the true 
 weed. So the exaggeration of virtues is some- 
 times perceived to run into something vicious ; but 
 still the mind acknowledges an essential difference 
 between these, and vices that are so by their 
 original constitution. 
 
 Since the Almighty is the Creator of all things, 
 it becomes a question of interest why He created 
 (53) 
 
54 WEEDS. 
 
 weeds ; and why He sows them so thickly over the 
 earth. 
 
 In its broadest meaning, the earth and all that 
 it contains corresponds to the races of men who 
 people its surface. In a narrower sense it repre- 
 sents the individual man. 
 
 He who studies the natural sciences only in 
 their relation to each other, or in order that he 
 may find out how they can be made to minister to 
 the material wants of man, stands only at the 
 threshold of the great temple of nature. He is 
 like one who reads the Bible and sees in it only an 
 admirable book of laws, whereby men may be 
 controlled and society harmoniously organized m 
 this world ; but does not accept it as the veritable 
 Word of God, spoken in order that men might 
 become wise unto salvation. What the Bible 
 teaches by language, the earth teaches by types 
 and figures. 
 
 Weeds were not created, and do not grow so 
 rankly, because they are in themselves good, 
 although while they live they do their part in con- 
 suming the carbonic acid gas with which the atmos- 
 phere becomes loaded by the breath of animals, 
 and in their decay by enriching the soil, even as 
 the Psalmist tells us the wrath of man is over- 
 
WEEDS. 55 
 
 ruled to praise the Lord, and its remainder re- 
 strained. They were created for our instruction, 
 and are permitted to infest our cultivated ground 
 to show us how false doctrines spring up in our 
 hearts, and turn what should correspond to a well- 
 tended garden into that which is represented by 
 a tangled labyrinth of unsightly and useless or 
 noxious weeds. 
 
 Those regions of the earth where man lives in a 
 purely savage state, represent the human race 
 destitute of the truths of religious faith, abounding 
 here in natural goodness and there in natural 
 wickedness, sometimes teeming with fertility and 
 beauty, and sometimes barren and repulsive. In 
 the more general meaning of this correspondence 
 savage nations are typified; but it applies with 
 equal truth and force to show us our own individual 
 state before we awake to the necessity of regene- 
 ration. 
 
 Man, in the progress of civilization, becomes 
 pastoral before he learns to be agricultural. To 
 feed his flocks and herds he seeks for the natural 
 pastures of the earth, where they may find grass, 
 and uses some simple means for protecting and 
 encouraging its growth. Grass, the most simple 
 form of vegetable growth that is widely useful to 
 
56 WEEDS. 
 
 man, is the type of that goodness and truth which 
 come into life when man first begins to acknowl- 
 edge his dependence upon the Heavenly Father, 
 and to desire to obey Him. It is the lowest form 
 of goodness and truth, such as reforms the exter- 
 nal life, but does not bring the whole heart and 
 mind into willing obedience ; for grass is not food 
 for man, but only for harmless brutes, such as are 
 made subservient to the wants of man. The soul is 
 planted only with grass when man lives in a state 
 of natural obedience to the laws of God, just as 
 the ox and the horse live in obedience to the hand 
 that feeds them, but without that free growth of 
 the affections which results in the entire bowing 
 down of the whole spiritual man before the throne 
 of the Heavenly Father, whom he worships with 
 the joyous freedom of perfect love. The higher 
 states of regenerate life are represented by corn, 
 the varieties of which are all grasses, but bearing 
 seeds which are fit for the use of man. Corn 
 growing in the fields is, like the grass of the pas- 
 ture, the type of natural goodness, but of a much 
 higher order ; because its seeds, by grinding and 
 baking, can be transformed into bread, or other 
 food for man, so nutritious and wholesome to the 
 body that it is the type which represents the celes- 
 
WEEDS. 57 
 
 tial goodness of the Lord, which nourishes and 
 sustains the growth of the soul. 
 
 All wholesome fruits and seeds correspond to 
 different forms of goodness and truth ; for the 
 soul requires variety of nutriment no less than the 
 body, and the All-Beneficent Father creates want 
 and supply with an even hand. Could man but 
 be content with Eden, — could his soul crave only 
 that which favors its heavenly growth, the instruc- 
 tion to be gained from weeds would have been un- 
 necessary, and the trouble they occasion us would 
 have been spared. 
 
 In order that man should be capable of good- 
 ness above that of the brutes, he must be created 
 free ; and he can be free to do good only so far as 
 he is also free to do evil. As the forms of beauty 
 and utility in the vegetable world illustrate, for 
 our example, the virtues and graces of the soul, 
 so its unsightly and noxious forms illustrate, for 
 our warning, the vices and deformities that destroy 
 the image and likeness of God in the spiritual 
 body of man. 
 
 The tendency of the soil to produce weeds is 
 commensurate with the enrichment bestowed upon 
 it ; just as the tendency to embrace false doctrines 
 in the mind of man is commensurate with his in- 
 
58 WEEDS. 
 
 tellectual cultivation. The Lord tells us that while 
 we are blind we are free from sin, but when we 
 say we see, our sin remaineth. Uncultivated 
 tracts of country correspond to man ignorant of 
 religious truth. Here the ground is not encum- 
 bered with weeds, and many wild flowers and 
 fruits are produced, which are pleasant and bene- 
 ficial to -man. When something more and better 
 is desired the turf is torn up by the plough-share, 
 the natural flowers and fruits destroyed, and the 
 seed of something esteemed more valuable is 
 planted. The weeds are now sure to spring up 
 side by side with the product of the good seed, 
 and the struggle commences between nature and 
 cultivation. Here is imaged the warfare of regen- 
 eration, and in the more or less careful cultivation 
 of the field and the garden, which meets the eye 
 as we traverse the country, each one of us may 
 find the state of his own soul represented. While 
 the turf remains unbroken in the pasture there is 
 rest ; but no sooner does the plough-share stir up 
 the capacities of the soil than unceasing watchful- 
 ness and labor are called for. So there is quiet in 
 the soul so long as that natural innocence of the 
 mind continues which is the result of ignorance ; 
 but when truth breaks up this superficial virtue, 
 
WEEDS. 59 
 
 and opens the soul to the influx of heavenly light, 
 we begin to experience that the Son of Man came 
 not to bring peace to the earth, but a sword. The 
 war begins between good and evil, truth and 
 falsehood. If we look forth upon our gardens we 
 may learn much that will help us to understand 
 the nature of this conflict ; and in studying the 
 success of the flowers and fruits of summer and 
 autumn we may learn to comprehend many of the 
 results brought about by the culture we bestow 
 upon our own souls. 
 
 If we are careful to remove the weeds in the 
 early part of the season, comparatively few spring 
 up as the autumn approaches, and the offspring of 
 the good seed finds, week by week, less opposition 
 to contend with. Happy are those who work 
 while it is spring-time in the garden of their souls ; 
 for vices that have been left to grow in the strong 
 heat of the summer of life are very hard to up- 
 root ; and if we suffer them to abide till autumn 
 we have little right to hope for anything but a 
 winter of despair. 
 
SQUIRRELS. 
 
— «<<3< > »^ 
 
 " I said of laughter, it is mad." 
 
 " There is a time to laugh."— Solomon. 
 
 ~*suif>~ 
 
V, 
 
 SQUIRKELS 
 
 Ijl^NTIL quite recently troops of the little 
 §^§1% striped squirrel have formed a pretty feature 
 of my garden and its neighborhood. A large 
 walnut tree near the house furnished them with 
 their winter stores, and their merry gambols were 
 a source of almost constant entertainment during 
 the warmer months. Nothing could be more 
 graceful than their mode of traversing the whole 
 village, leaping from tree to tree with a rapidity 
 and ease that seemed almost like the flight of a 
 bird. No one, for a long time, thought of dis- 
 turbing them, and they multiplied from year to 
 year, and grew more familiar as they found 
 nothing in the treatment they received to awaken 
 their fears. 
 
 Nothing could seem more harmless than these 
 happy little creatures ; but, as their numbers in- 
 (63) 
 
64 SQUIRRELS. 
 
 creased, it was found that they were so destructive 
 to the fruit of the pear tree that it became evident 
 we must make our choice between destroying the 
 squirrels or giving up this delicious fruit to their 
 enjoyment. A neighboring sportsman soon set- 
 tled the question beyond debate ; and now, though 
 I miss the squirrels, I should not be willing to re- 
 call them at the price of the fruit. Their destruc- 
 tion of the pears was the more aggravating, be- 
 cause they ate nothing but the seeds. With their 
 sharp little teeth they would cut off the flower end 
 of the fruit, as if with a knife, just above the 
 seeds ; and, after picking these out, leave the stem 
 end hanging upon the tree. The quantity of fruit 
 they would destroy in a single day was quite as- 
 tonishing. 
 
 Another vexatious trick of these graceful little 
 animals, is their fondness for robbing birds' nests ; 
 devouring the eggs, or the recently-hatched birds, 
 with great avidity. 
 
 A few days since, as I was driving through a 
 retired wood, my attention was attracted by the 
 cries and alarmed excitement of two birds flutter- 
 ing around the bough of a tree that overhung the 
 way. I stopped to ascertain what was the matter, 
 and soon found sufficient cause for the distress of 
 
SQUIRRELS. 65 
 
 the poor birds in the person of a squirrel, who had 
 ensconced himself in their nest, looking as much 
 at home as if he were there of right. 
 
 The birds were of the smallest variety of spar- 
 row, scarcely larger than humming-birds, and so 
 much smaller than the squirrel, that their attacks, 
 as they pounced upon him in their circling flights, 
 seemed not to disturb his enjoyment in the least. 
 
 When I first caught sight of him he had an egg 
 entirely within his jaws, which he could not quite 
 close over it, so that I could see the shell all 
 round his mouth between his teeth. He seemed 
 to use a good deal of care in breaking the shell, 
 as if he feared losing its contents, and then took 
 one half of it out of his mouth with his right paw 
 and tossed it from him, and then with the other 
 paw removed the other half, with a jaunty sort of 
 impertinence, as if he wished to show me he was 
 quite at his ease out of my reach. For a few 
 seconds he seemed to give himself up to the enjoy- 
 ment of the delicate morsel, like a veritable epi- 
 cure; then folding himself up, as if he intended 
 passing the day in his stolen quarters, he put his 
 head on one side, and fixed his keen little black 
 eyes upon me, with an air that seemed to say, 
 " And now, what do you propose doing about it ?" 
 
66 SQUIRRELS. 
 
 I watched him for some minutes ; unable to reach 
 him with any weapon I had at command, and 
 then, finding he kept his position as if he never 
 meant to stir, so long as I continued looking at 
 him, I drove on, leaving the old birds still circling 
 about him, and darting down upon him in vain 
 efforts to drive him away. 
 
 It is difficult to restrain one's self from feelings 
 of anger and resentment on seeing animals prey- 
 ing upon other animals ; and yet it seems to be a 
 law of the Divine Providence that each family of 
 the animal races should be decimated to serve as 
 food for some other family. Where any species is 
 protected from such destruction it soon becomes so 
 numerous as to be troublesome, and perhaps even 
 injurious, although it may seem in its nature, like 
 the squirrel, perfectly harmless and innocent. 
 Restraint seems to be the first law of order in all 
 created things. Without it everything impinges 
 upon the liberty of its neighbor. 
 
 So, in the mind of man, no one trait, however 
 innocent it may seem, can be indulged without re- 
 straint and not prevent the due development of 
 other traits. Take for instance the playfulness of 
 the mind, which seems to correspond to the gam- 
 
SQUIREELS. 67 
 
 bols of the squirrel. This is one of the most 
 pleasing attributes of childhood, and it is very de- 
 sirable that it should be retained through life, for 
 it helps to lighten care and to keep the mind fresh 
 and buoyant. Still, this trait must, like every 
 other quality of the mind, be restrained, or it be- 
 comes positively vicious in its development, de- 
 generating into a levity that saps the foundation of 
 all those serious views of life which are absolutely 
 essential in the formation of a character of any 
 moral worth. 
 
 Levity is often an amusing trait, and when ac- 
 companied by grace and beauty has sometimes a 
 fascinating power, when one is unconscious of, 
 or indifferent to, its dangerous tendencies. Pleas- 
 ing persons, in whom levity is a dominant vice, are 
 often excused for the faults, and even the sins, into 
 which it betrays them ; because, as their apologists 
 say, "they are so good-hearted." The phrase 
 " good-hearted," when used in this manner, means 
 only that the individual has a pleasant way of giv- 
 ing an amusing or impertinent reason for his 
 wrong doing ; and it implies nothing of that good- 
 ness of heart which finds its life in love to the 
 Lord and to the neighbor. 
 
68 SQUIKRELS. 
 
 Playfulness that degenerates into levity is the 
 offspring of vanity and irreverence, and contains 
 no element of goodness. There is no more hope- 
 less state of the mind than when it finds pleasure 
 in sporting with what others deem sacred, and 
 laughing at things morally wrong. 
 
 The sportiveness of the human mind that ex- 
 presses itself in laughter is something entirely 
 peculiar to the human race. The brute creation 
 demonstrate their joy by various bodily move- 
 ments, but no one of them has the power of laugh- 
 ter. The reason of this is, that laughter is the 
 expression of a certain kind of intellectual plea- 
 sure. Other animals are purely aifectional, while 
 man is intellectual beside being aifectional. All 
 animals display the delight of their affections by 
 various movements of the body, and man by 
 smiles ; but laughter is the result of intellectual 
 satisfaction at some novelty of thought. 
 
 Laughter is of two distinct kinds. The one is 
 the result of sympathy, the other of antagonism. 
 The one laughs with its object, the other laughs at 
 it. The one partakes of the character of its ob- 
 ject, and may be either good or evil. The other 
 always despises its object, and is, by its own nature, 
 
SQUIEEELS. 69 
 
 necessarily evil. We laugh with the ludicrous ; 
 we laugh at the ridiculous. 
 
 The wisest of Jewish kings tells us in one place 
 that laughter is madness, and in another that 
 there is a time to laugh. When we hear the free, 
 ringing, innocent laughter of childhood, we can 
 feel that there is a time to laugh. When we hear 
 the depreciating, the triumphant, or the bitter 
 laugh of manhood, we can understand that it is 
 madness. 
 
 The mode in which a person laughs is a very 
 sure index of the character. The laugh of early 
 childhood is free from sin as the song of birds, or 
 the gambols of beasts. The whole being is so 
 single that the gayety of the soul dances forth into 
 the movements of the body, and the joyousness of 
 the affections vibrates along the vocal organization 
 with impulses too interior to be formed into words, 
 and so they express themselves in laughter. There 
 is, perhaps, no purer emotion excited in the adult 
 mind than that which we feel when listening to the 
 happy laughter of childhood. It carries us back 
 to our own early life, and renews within our soul 
 glimpses of the time when our angels continually 
 beheld the face of the Heavenly Father. 
 
70 SQUIRREL 
 
 This sweet, childish laughter is rarely retained 
 through life. As fast as evil passions are aroused 
 in the mind, so fast the character of the laughter 
 changes. There is the loud, empty laugh "that 
 speaks the vacant mind ; " the tittering of silliness ; 
 the coarse laugh of vulgarity ; the scornful laugh 
 of the cynic ; the bitter laugh of the misanthrope ; 
 the sardonic laugh of the hypocrite ; the exulting 
 laugh that rejoices in the inferiority of its subject ; 
 the refined, intellectual laugh, which delights in 
 subtle distinctions and acute witticisms ; and in the 
 depraved, who seldom laugh heartily, there is the 
 " depreciating sneer," at which the painter Allston 
 used to say he thought the devil must laugh more 
 heartily than at anything else. 
 
 The laughter of childhood is almost purely af- 
 fectional, and has its life in the same influx from 
 heaven that, descending into the lower animals, 
 produces gambols and songs. As childhood 
 ceases, if its purity remain, this same affection dis- 
 plays itself in a happy, smiling countenance, that 
 seems radiant with inward joy. There is nothing 
 in it that ever suggests the idea of supercilious- 
 ness or self-complacency. The kindly old age 
 that follows tells every year more and more of 
 
SQUIRRELS. 71 
 
 purity, and gentleness, and love, and peace. It 
 is full of Christian charity, and, though laughing 
 seldom, in its laughter it is always sympathetic. 
 It laughs only with innocently ludicrous things 
 that invite laughter; while ridiculous things at 
 which others laugh give it only pain. 
 
BIRDS AND OTHER THINGS. 
 
Analogy sometimes carries a clearer conviction to the mind 
 than argument. 
 
VI 
 
 BIRDS AND OTHER THINGS. 
 
 *ALKIIS T G lately along the border of the 
 
 intervale that stretches away for two or 
 three miles to the North of my garden, I observed 
 a pair of red-winged black-birds flying near me. 
 I suppose I had approached their nest, from the 
 manner in which they flew around me in rather a 
 wide circle ; but keeping sufficiently near to show 
 that I was an object of suspicion to them. Some- 
 times their flight was rapid, with a quick fluttering 
 of the wings ; then they would close the wings 
 entirely, and dart a considerable distance through 
 the air, descending a little, and looking more like 
 a fish than a bird. When they were preparing to 
 alight, they floated downward with a movement so 
 graceful, and withal so gentle, that it could be com- 
 pared to nothing but that of a wreath of smoke. 
 They almost always chose some slender weed for 
 (75) 
 
76 BIRDS AND OTHER THINGS. 
 
 their alighting place, which one would have sup- 
 posed too feeble to sustain them, but which swayed 
 so slightly under their weight that it seemed as if 
 there were some secret sympathy between the 
 plant and the bird, by which the one became 
 strong to bear, while the other became light to 
 be borne. 
 
 The way in which the crimson feathers of the 
 outer side of the wing came into view and then 
 disappeared again, as the birds circled around me, 
 was very beautiful. Sometimes only the jetty 
 black of the under parts of their little forms could 
 be seen. Then a sudden turn in their flight would 
 bring the crimson feathers flashing in the sun, and 
 make them gaudy as butterflies. 
 
 While I stood watching them, a crow came in 
 sight, and sailed heavily over the meadow, pur- 
 sued by a little bird who, having mounted into a 
 higher region of the air, and being much quicker 
 in its movements than the crow, was able to tor- 
 ment him by darting down and striking his back 
 with its bill, in a way that evidently tormented the 
 great, clumsy bird; but from which he seemed 
 quite unable to escape. 
 
 The grace and elegance of the black-birds, the 
 ponderous weight of the crow, and the agile 
 
BIRDS AND OTHER THINGS. 77 
 
 combativeness of the little bird, thus brought 
 into direct contrast, offered an interesting illustra- 
 tion of some of the doctrines of correspondences, 
 as they have been given us through Swedenborg. 
 
 All winged animals correspond to thoughts, true 
 or false, wise or foolish, pacific or combative, pure 
 or unclean. 
 
 Endlessly varied as are the tribes of insects and 
 of birds, even so varied are the thoughts that 
 throng the brain of man. The old Greeks, when 
 they called man a microcosm or little universe, 
 comparing him with the macrocosm or great uni- 
 verse, uttered a literal and precise truth. It is 
 probable that this truth was handed down orally 
 from the most ancient Church that dwelt in Eden, 
 and the wise Greeks could see, in a general way, 
 that it was a truth. In the light of the New 
 Church we are enabled to perceive this truth with 
 a particularity to which the Greeks could not have 
 attained, and which fills the natural sciences with 
 a life and interest hitherto unknown. 
 
 To know ourselves is of the utmost importance, 
 in order that we may be able rightly to cultivate 
 ourselves ; and for this reason the world around 
 us was created a vast mirror, in which our thoughts 
 
78 BIRDS AND OTHER THINGS 
 
 and affections, which constitute the all of our hu- 
 manity, are reflected. 
 
 The love and the wisdom of the Heavenly- 
 Father, coining down into the world of matter, 
 are shaped by His power into the various orders of 
 existence. Every mineral, every vegetable, and 
 every animal creation, if it be innocent, is the ex- 
 pression of some Divine affection or thought. On 
 these Jehovah looks and declares them good. 
 These are created to lead us upward toward Him, 
 by showing us the beauty of the Divine order. 
 These are the music of the universe, attuned into 
 heavenly harmonies ; and we harmonize with them 
 when we love the Lord with the whole heart, and, 
 because we so love Him, love the neighbor as 
 ourselves. 
 
 But there are discords as well as harmonies in 
 the universe ; things noxious as well as beneficent ; 
 fearful as well as lovely. These too exist from 
 the power of God, but by His permission, not by 
 His approval. In them are mirrored the traits of 
 man's soul, distorted by love of self and love of 
 the world. Passions like wild beasts, that hide 
 themselves from the light of day in dens of false- 
 hood, to prowl secretly in darkness and destroy 
 the neighbor. Lusts that crawl like ' _ A "?es upon 
 
BIRDS AXD OTHER THINGS. 79 
 
 the earth, defiling it with their touch. Thoughts 
 that soar with strong wing, as if to scale the 
 heavens, but in reality only the better to scan the 
 earth for living prey, or, baser yet, for carrion. 
 Fantasies soaring in clouds like locusts, obscuring 
 the light of the heavenly sun, and then falling 
 upon every green thing that sun vivifies, leav- 
 ing nothing in their track but desolation and 
 famine. 
 
 Man's spiritual nature is not yet sufficiently 
 educated to enable him to comprehend his own 
 soul, so as to perceive all the correspondences that 
 have relation to it in the world around him. En- 
 ough may however be learned to be of great use 
 to him in self-analysis, and the capacity for learn- 
 ing increases wonderfully by use. Every time we 
 make a direct personal application to ourselves of 
 what we have already learned, we cast out some 
 portion of that blinding beam of self-love which 
 makes it so hard for us to perceive the truth ; for 
 it is not abstractly studying the truth, but doing 
 it, that gives us the ability to know the doc- 
 trines. 
 
 Whatever we see around us has its correspon- 
 dence within us, either in the natural or the spir- 
 itual part of our being. As we contemplate the 
 
80 BIRDS AND OTHER THINGS. 
 
 external objects of nature we should not stop when 
 we have admired or condemned, when we have 
 experienced either delight or disgust. In all our 
 observations we should bear in mind that what we 
 contemplate is the type of something within our- 
 selves ; that everything we see corresponds to and 
 illustrates some active principle, or some latent 
 capacity, either good or evil, within our own souls. 
 When we contemplate things evil or noxious, if 
 we do not remember that we have a capacity for a 
 corresponding evil in our own nature, our self- 
 esteem is stimulated, and we gain only harm from 
 what we see ; but if we keep this truth in mind 
 our humility is awakened, and we are put upon 
 our guard against giving way to the impulses of 
 our lower nature. So in observing things good, 
 if we are not awake to the truth that here is some- 
 thing for our imitation, something to guide us in 
 the formation of our own souls, we gain no more 
 to our spiritual being than we should gain to our 
 natural bodies if we took food into our mouths 
 and then neglected to swallow it. 
 
 The same truth holds good in our observations 
 of our fellow beings. If we study human nature 
 in the neighbor, unmindful of our common hu- 
 manity, all that we see of evil makes us censorious 
 
BIRDS AXD OTHER THINGS. 81 
 
 or self-complacent ; and we constantly grow more 
 fond of finding out and condemning evil in those 
 around us, forgetting that as we judge, even so 
 shall we be judged. When, on the contrary, we 
 remember our common brotherhood, we see the 
 vices of the neighbor with pain ; and feeling our 
 own liability to fall in the same way, we judge him 
 compassionately, and are put upon our guard 
 against falling into a similar vice in our own per- 
 sons. In the one case we are learning to hate the 
 
 neighbor, in the other to love him. In the one 
 case we are cultivating hardness of heart, in the 
 other we arejearning to be perfect after the man- 
 ner in which the Heavenly Father is perfect. 
 
THE SOWING OF SEED. 
 
■ *« s<>a »» » 
 
 '■' Sow with a generous hand, 
 Pause not for toil or pain, 
 Weary not through the heat of summer, 
 Weary not through the cold spring rain, 
 But wait till the autumn cometh, 
 For the sheaves of golden grain." 
 
 -*$/%*- 
 

 vn. 
 
 THE SOWING OF SEED. 
 
 ^HERE is no garden process more instruc- 
 tive than the sowing of seed. Sow it care- 
 fully as we may, it often comes to naught, for 
 several circumstances must combine to make it 
 spring up and grow. In the first place it must be 
 good seed, then it must not be sown carelessly on 
 the surface of the earth, nor buried too deeply be- 
 low the surface. Then the soil must Ije appro- 
 priate to the kind of seed we sow, and it must be 
 well dug up, and prepared to nourish the little 
 plant when it begins to grow. All these prelimi- 
 naries being attended to, we still are not sure of 
 the result, because that, finally, depends on the de- 
 scent of a due proportion of sunshine and of rain, 
 over which we have no control. Though we do 
 all that we know how to do, we still work in igno- 
 rance of the final result of our efforts. Should 
 (85) 
 
86 THE SOWING OF SEED. 
 
 this discourage us, or make us less willing to sow 
 our seeds ? Surely not ; for though we may be 
 many times disappointed, we are also sure of many 
 times succeeding. Only let us be patient, and re- 
 member that Providence is over all, the least as 
 well as the greatest, of the efforts of our lives. 
 In the garden, as everywhere else, we learn that 
 there is a power above us that controls all things ; 
 and our disappointments, when we do all that it 
 is in our power to do to insure success, never 
 come any oftener than we need them to check the 
 pride and presumption of our self-love. Results 
 are in the hand of Infinite Love and Infinite Wis- 
 dom, and are measured out in perfect adaptation 
 to the needs of each individual. Happy are we if 
 we accept the lesson that each success and each 
 disappointment is designed to teach. Happy are 
 we if, though we may be unable to comprehend 
 the lesson, we use our success as a talent entrusted 
 to us by our Heavenly Father, or bow before our 
 disappointment in humble faith that He withholds 
 success because we are not in a state to be benefit- 
 ed by it. 
 
 Our whole lives are a continual sowing of seed ; 
 for not only every thing we say and do, but even 
 our silence and indolence, are seeds which, sooner 
 
THE SOWING OF SEED. 87 
 
 or later, will produce each its appropriate harvest. 
 We scatter words carelessly around us as if 
 nothing were to come of them ; but they are ever 
 liable to find a place where they may take root in 
 the mind of some person who hears them, and we 
 should beware that the seed we thus sow is such 
 that good fruit may be its result. If thistles are 
 suffered to grow in our own garden, the seeds will 
 surely blow over and take root in some garden 
 near us ; and just so will the idle words that over- 
 flow from our evil passions cling in the mind of 
 some neighbor, and bring forth fruit to our shame. 
 Our example, top, sows seeds more deeply and 
 effectually than our words, and this should make 
 us doubly careful what we do. In a careless and 
 unthrifty neighborhood, if one individual puts his 
 own place in order, an example and a stimulus are 
 given to others, and in a little while the aspect of 
 the whole village will be changed to neatness and 
 order. In like manner the example of a truly de- 
 vout and virtuous life is a blessing that we cannot 
 measure to all who come within its influence. 
 There is no exhortation so eloquent, no reasoning 
 so unanswerable. We must not, however, think 
 too much of sowing the gardens around us ; for 
 in that case we shall be liable to neglect our own, 
 
88 THE SOWING OF SEED. 
 
 and it is there our first duty lies. ISlo amount of 
 care for the interest of the neighborhood will com- 
 pensate for unfaithfulness at home. If we pluck 
 up the noxious weeds at home before the seeds 
 ripen, we shall be sure of doing no injury to the 
 neighbor by planting evil seed in his ground, and 
 we shall make space for the growth of good and 
 beautiful plants in our garden that may furnish 
 seed for others by and by. Only let us be careful 
 to retain seed enough for our own ground. We 
 may think so much of giving the truth to others 
 that we forget to make any application of it to 
 ourselves, thereby making our gift of no avail ; for 
 preaching has little or no effect unless enforced 
 and illustrated by a life in accordance with its pre- 
 cepts. 
 
 When a child first begins gardening, he is so 
 impatient to see the result of his work that he is 
 almost sure to dig up his seeds in order to find if 
 they are sprouting. The parent looks on and per- 
 haps smiles complacently at the child's folly, bid- 
 ding him be patient for a few days till the little 
 plants have time to show themselves. Yet it is 
 quite probable that that very parent treats the 
 seeds of thought he sows in the mind of the child 
 with an impatience just as foolish as that of the 
 
THE SOWING OF SEED. 89 
 
 child over his flower-seeds. He tells him a truth 
 and expects it to spring up and bear fruit as soon 
 as it is sown. He looks to reap the harvest in the 
 character of his child before the seed time is over. 
 He probes his child's heart with questions to find 
 out if the truth he sows is germinating before the 
 warmth of the Divine Love has had opportunity 
 to expand the germ and quicken it into life. He 
 will not wait for the gradual way in which the 
 Divine Providence, through the ministry of cir- 
 cumstance, quickens the spiritual nature of the 
 child ; and then by the rain of His truth and the 
 sunshine of His love causes the seeds sown, it 
 may be years before, and lying till then darkly and 
 inertly, to take root and grow, and bear fruit 
 many fold. 
 
 Seeds have many ways of springing. Some of 
 them come up almost immediately, and in a few 
 weeks are covered with bloom. Others come up, 
 but remain of little worth during the first year of 
 their life, blooming only the second. Others again 
 require long terms of years to bring the time of 
 the blossom and the fruit ; and it is the' plants of 
 the greatest value that, for the most part, require 
 the longest time to arrive at perfection. In one 
 point they all agree. Before there is any growth 
 
90 THE SOWING OF SEED, 
 
 upward into the light and air, there is always a 
 growth downward, in darkness and secrecy. The 
 delicate rootlets must first clasp the earth, and be 
 prepared to draw nourishment from it, before the 
 tender blade begins to grow. All this corresponds 
 precisely with the growth of the principles of 
 truth in the human mind ; and all this should teach 
 us to sow patiently, and wait the Lord's good time 
 for the springing of the seed and the whitening of 
 the harvest. Our touch is too rude to permit our 
 opening the ground with safety ; and we must con- 
 tent ourselves with letting the seed go through the 
 first stages of growth in the secret places of the 
 soul, that can be penetrated only by the eye of 
 Omniscience. 
 
 In like manner we must be patient with our- 
 selves. We understand little, if anything, more 
 of the growth of truth inward in our own souls 
 than in the souls of neighbors ; but this inward 
 growth must, nevertheless, take place before there 
 can be any outward sign. We cannot tell whence 
 or how the Holy Spirit breathes the breath of life 
 into the soul. There are times when we feel as if 
 we were making no progress. Our minds seem so 
 dead that nothing can grow there, just as the earth 
 lies in our gardens when long, cold rains come 
 
THE SOWING OF SEED. 91 
 
 after seed-sowing. We must wait and watch, 
 sustained by faith that the sun is behind the clouds, 
 and will after a while prevail over them. Mean- 
 while we must not let the weeds grow and choke 
 the ground, for then there will not be room enough 
 for the good plants. It is not the will of the 
 Divine Gardener that any of His seed should 
 perish ; and it will not, if we keep the ground 
 clear of weeds, and softened by cultivation, so 
 that the warmth of the sun may penetrate it, and 
 the little roots may be able to find their way be- 
 tween its particles. In other words we must resist 
 all temptation to do evil, and must strive to live 
 in charity with those around us. Just so far as 
 the heart is shut up with selfishness and with in- 
 difference to the happiness of those around us, -t 
 is hardened against receiving the- influences of the 
 Divine Love ; while every kind thought and word 
 and deed that warms the heart towards the neigh- 
 bor prepares it to receive the life-giving influx that 
 comes down to us from Him who has said, " In- 
 as much as ye have done it to the least of these ye 
 have done it unto me." 
 
 Probably every person who has reached mature 
 life has experienced the sudden and unexpected 
 quickening of truths that had long lain inert in the 
 
92 THE SOWING OF SEED. 
 
 mind, and almost forgotten. The being placed in 
 new circumstances, bringing out new wants or 
 capacities in the mind, or setting in motion new 
 trains of thought, will often recall some text of 
 Scripture, or some wise saying of man, which we 
 long since heard or read without giving any special 
 heed to it, but which now rises in the memory and 
 suddenly expands into a growth of beauty and of 
 power that fills us with surprise and delight. 
 
 In the tribulations and bereavements of life, 
 when the heart is bowed down and bruised and 
 torn in every fibre, so that it seems impossible its 
 wounds can ever heal, after days and weeks, per- 
 haps months of despair, all at once, we know not 
 how or why, some phrase of consolation will rise in 
 the memory like a strain of soft music, and subdue 
 us into listening silence, as the stormy waves sank 
 into quietness at the ' ' Peace ! Be still ! " of the 
 Lord. We had, perhaps, known the words from 
 our childhood, but they had never been of any 
 personal interest to us before. We had not 
 thought of them, it may be, for years. Now they 
 come to us with a tender pleading that cannot be 
 resisted, and suggest new trains of thought, and 
 open new sources of emotion, and there is a great 
 calm in the tempest wherein we had been strug- 
 
THE SOWING OF SEED. 93 
 
 gling so long. We are lost in wonder at what 
 manner of power this is that has suddenly taken 
 possession of us and subdued us to His own pater- 
 nal will, till our anguish and our want of submis- 
 sion are lost in the enfolding arms of eternal love. 
 The little seed, so small we had never before given 
 it a thought, has grown into a great tree, over- 
 shadowing our whole being. 
 
 One such experience in a life should suffice to 
 teach us the lesson of sowing seed in faith, and 
 waiting for its upspringing in patient hope and 
 loving charity. One such life experience is better 
 than anything the garden can tell us ; but still it 
 is pleasant to see how the natural ever illustrates 
 the spiritual, and a new interest is given to the 
 processes of nature when we observe how they 
 correspond with the workings of the spirit. 
 
 Some years since I planted a handful of the red 
 seed-vessels of the sweet-brier, without being 
 aware how slowly they germinate. I looked for 
 them all through the summer in vain, and sup- 
 posed they had perished in the ground. The next 
 season the earth was dug up without any regard 
 to them, and other flowers were planted over them 
 that grew and blossomed more readily, but no. sign 
 came from the briers. The third year I was care- 
 
94 THE SOWING OF SEED. 
 
 lessly weeding the spot, not supposing anything 
 of worth was there, when I perceived the peculiar 
 odor of the sweet-brier. I was puzzled for a mo- 
 ment whence it could come, as there were no plants 
 of it in the garden that I knew of. Then I re- 
 membered that here was the spot where I had so 
 long since planted the seeds, and on carefully sepa- 
 rating the weeds I found ten little briers, which, 
 though scarce an inch in height, filled the air all 
 around them with delicious fragrance. They have 
 grown and flourished since into tall and graceful 
 plants, and as I look upon them they preach me 
 this sermon. 
 
 When you sow precious seed, have faith that it 
 will, under the Heavenly Father's Providence, some 
 day spring into life ; and in the name of Ham who 
 has said, I will not break the bruised reed, nor 
 quench the smoking flax, I conjure you beware 
 that in rudely plucking up weeds you do not de- 
 stroy the infant germs of immortal and heavenly 
 life. Not only must you sow your seeds with 
 care, but you must also be tender of the little 
 plants. Silence your impatience when it tells you 
 that the seeds of truth have died in the mind of 
 him whom you would influence; neither be too 
 eager in your endeavors to weed out the vices that 
 
THE SOWING OF SEED. 95 
 
 may obstruct their growth. By too impatient or 
 rude a handling you may kill or discourage his 
 virtues. In plucking the mote from his eye, if 
 your touch be not delicate you will, at the same 
 time, quench his sight. 
 
ABOUT SEEDS. 
 

 The seed with its germ and its albumen, the cause and the end 
 of all vegetable life, is the type of the Divine Wisdom with its 
 truth and its goodness, the cause and the end of all spiritual life. 
 
 ^2ffl22? 
 
vm. 
 
 ABOUT SEEDS. 
 
 (||ffl)HE seed is the beginning and the end of all 
 igjyg plants. From it the plant springs, and to 
 produce it the whole plant tends. When a plant 
 has gone to seed, it has completed a cycle of ex- 
 istence. With many plants there is but one such 
 cycle. The seed being perfected, the plant withers 
 away, its whole use performed. Other plants 
 produce seed year after year ; but still the produc- 
 ing of the seed is the crowning act of their lives ; 
 the completion of a cycle. 
 
 The seed is composed of two parts ; the germ, 
 and the albumen, which is the food on which the 
 germ is to live during the first stage of its growth. 
 The development of the germ requires moisture, 
 warmth, and air, in order that the albumen may 
 be softened so that it can be absorbed by the germ, 
 and in order to quicken the germ so that it may be 
 (99) 
 
100 ABOUT SEEDS. 
 
 in a state to absorb the food prepared for it. Light 
 impedes, and sometimes even prevents germina- 
 tion, by producing a chemical change in the albu- 
 men that renders it unfit for nourishing the germ. 
 The germ is the form of life in the seed, the albu- 
 men its essence. Either separated from the other 
 cannot live and grow. The germ is as it were the 
 body, and the albumen the soul of the seed. 
 
 The germs of seeds are so small that they have 
 very little value as food for man ; but the albumen 
 forms a very large proportion of tbe food of the 
 human race. In all the cereal grains, in rice, and 
 all the seeds and nuts that man uses for food, it is 
 the albumen that nourishes his life. The albumen 
 that is created expressly as food for germs, be- 
 comes also the bread of life for the material body 
 of man. 
 
 Man has two bodies, the one material, the other 
 spiritual. He does not live by bread alone, but 
 by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth 
 o£ God. Precisely as bread sustains his material 
 life, so the Word of God sustains his spiritual 
 life. 
 
 Truth, as it comes from God, is never separated 
 from goodness. Truth is the germ in the seed 
 that God sows, and it is always sustained and 
 
ABOUT SEEDS. 101 
 
 nourished by the albumen of goodness. E very- 
 Divine truth is a germ that grows because it is a 
 form adapted to receive the inflowing life of good- 
 ness. If a truth lies in the mind without any 
 appropriate accompanying goodness, it dies there 
 as surely as a seed dies in the ground if the albu- 
 men is separated from the germ. 
 
 It is one of the besetting sins of man to desire 
 to separate truth from goodness ; to strive after 
 salvation by faith alone. The belief in the saving 
 power of faith is not confined to the sects that 
 hold it as a dogma, but is one of the most common 
 traits in the mind of man. He is ever fancying 
 that he shall finally be saved by the good thoughts 
 he entertains, though his life may be far from ex- 
 emplifying them. 
 
 We read the life of some admirable man, or the 
 story of some noble deed, or we hear preached a 
 delineation of some exalted virtue, and our en- 
 thusiasm is excited, and we fancy that we possess 
 in ourselves capacities for the virtues we admire ; 
 and that opportunity alone is wanting to enable us 
 to exemplify them in our own lives. We feel so 
 good as we read or listen, that we are quite sure 
 we must be quite as good as we feel. Others 
 may deny the Lord, but we never can. Within 
 
102 ABOUT SEEDS. 
 
 the hour, as it were before the cock crows, the 
 opportunity is given us to do something requiring 
 but a tithe of the sacrifice or the effort we have 
 been admiring, and we refuse to do it. We are 
 told perhaps a second and a third time that it is 
 our duty, but we deny it ; we know nothing of 
 this man whom we are supposed to follow and to 
 serve. If there is a genuine love of goodness in 
 our hearts, founded upon an acknowledgment of 
 the Lord as the only source of true goodness, 
 the cock will crow before we have done with the 
 matter; and we shall, like Peter, acknowledge 
 our sin with repentant tears. If, on the con- 
 trary, we love goodness only because the abstract 
 contemplation of it makes us feel happy by ex- 
 citing a self-complacent idea that we also are 
 good, we are aiming at salvation by faith alone, 
 and there is no true love of goodness in us. We 
 are separating the ideal from the real, the true 
 from the good, faith from works. Our spiritual 
 nature does not live by the undivided words of 
 God. We are separating the parts of the Divine 
 seed that is given for our nutriment, and our 
 spiritual bodies can never be developed into the 
 image and likeness of the Divine Being, who 
 created us with capacities by means of which we 
 
ABOUT SEEDS. 103 
 
 might attain to heavenly happiness, by resem- 
 bling Him. 
 
 In turning from the temptation to believe in 
 salvation by faith alone, we are liable to fall into 
 the opposite one of believing in salvation by works 
 alone. This belief often results in a life of great 
 external purity, but it is very sure to engender 1 a 
 pride and self-complacency that is quite foreign 
 to that denial of self which the Lord so constantly 
 inculcates. This has been carried to such an ex- 
 tent that it is not uncommon to hear pride spoken 
 of as a virtue. The phrases, proper pride, be- 
 coming pride, and even virtuous pride, are used 
 by many with apparent unconsciousness that there 
 is anything in them opposed to the words of 
 Christ; but if we exalt pride among the virtues, 
 how are we to dispose of the inculcations to hu- 
 mility, meekness, and self-denial with which the 
 gospels abound. To deny self is the first require- 
 ment the Lord makes of us ; the initial step into 
 the Christian life ; while pride is the very opposite 
 of this, and so entirely incompatible with it that 
 both cannot exist in the same mind* excepting 
 in a state of warfare which must result in the 
 triumph of one and the destruction of the other ; 
 
104 ABOUT SEEDS. 
 
 whenever the mind becomes established either in 
 good or evil, as every mind eventually must. 
 
 When we believe in salvation by works alone, 
 we reject the germ from the seed the Heavenly 
 Gardener plants in our minds, and so the truth 
 ceases to grow within us. We soon get to think 
 that it is of no consequence what we believe, or 
 whether we believe anything ; and while our faith 
 in God grows daily weaker, our faith in self as 
 constantly grows stronger; and the end is that 
 we worship self instead of God. 
 
 Whether we reject the germ or the albumen 
 from the heavenly seed, the result is alike fatal 
 to Christian growth ; for that demands of us to 
 accept the whole truth, undivided, as it comes 
 down from heaven. We must love the Lord 
 supremely, and believe in Him as the only source 
 of goodness and truth ; and looking to Him as 
 the fountain whence we draw all knowledge of 
 what is true, and all power to do that which we 
 know, we must be perfect in our daily lives after 
 the manner in which our Heavenly Father is per- 
 fect. Then we shall be free from the bigotry 
 that results from believing in salvation by faith 
 alone, and from the pride of life that results from 
 believing in salvation by works alone ; for neither 
 
ABOUT SEEDS. 105 
 
 of these vices can exist in a mind that worships 
 the Lord in humility, and loves the neighbor as 
 itself. 
 
 If our minds have proved a grateful soil for the 
 reception of heavenly seed, we shall desire to scat- 
 ter it in turn for the benefit of others. To do this 
 wisely, we should remember that if we give the 
 bare, hard truth, it is only a germ we have sowed, 
 and we have no right to expect that it will grow. 
 Our thoughts must be enfolded in our affections, 
 and nourished by them, before they can expand, 
 and shape themselves into a Christian life, and 
 before they can utter themselves in words that will 
 express the truth as it comes down to us from the 
 Lord. Love is the albumen that nourishes truth. 
 If we would teach our neighbor we must love him, 
 and we must love the truth. We must love the 
 truth because it is the Word of God, and there- 
 fore infinitely perfect; and we must love the 
 neighbor because he is one of God's children, and 
 we owe to him every act of spiritual kindness that 
 he will receive from us. 
 
 The Lord describes the Heavenly Gardener 
 sowing seed in all soils, and we must imitate Him. 
 We cannot be sure of the adaptations of the soils 
 in which we sow material seed, for there are secret 
 
106 ABOUT SEEDS. 
 
 powers m the earth which the chemist has vainly 
 sought-to understand, which prevent us from be- 
 ing able to decide positively, beforehand, whether 
 it is adapted to the kind of seed we wish to sow. 
 Far more difficult is it for us to decide upon the 
 capacities of the spiritual soils we would cultivate, 
 and we shall often be surprised by a rich harvest 
 where we sowed with little hope, and disappointed 
 by failure where we anticipated success. 
 
 The same traits of character that prepare us for 
 receiving heavenly seed to advantage qualify us 
 for giving it to others. Humility in receiving, aad 
 patience in well-doing, give us the power of be- 
 stowing what we receive in a way that will make 
 it acceptable to those to whom we give it. What 
 we receive humbly we give in the same way ; for 
 we hold it and give it as something that is not 
 ours, but the Lord's. When we acquire a truth 
 and hold it as if it were our own, our pride is 
 inflated ; and then, if we try to teach it to another, 
 we do it in such a way that we excite his pride in 
 opposition to ours, and cause him to close his 
 mind against us. It was our truth we were trying 
 to give him, and not the Lord's ; therefore the 
 Lord could not help us to give it, and we were 
 left with no sustaining impulse but that which 
 
ABOUT SEEDS. 107 
 
 comes from the demon of Pride. The sun and 
 the rain of heaven could not reach and soften the 
 albumen of such seed, and the germ was dried up 
 and destroyed by the fire of earthly passion. 
 
 When we find ourselves angry because people 
 do not take the truth we offer, we may be sure 
 that we are not offering them the truth as it is in 
 Jesus. We may have the form of truth, but we 
 have not its spirit ; and we should turn at once 
 and examine our own hearts, and convert our- 
 selves before we undertake the conversion of 
 others. We can give only after the same manner 
 that we receive. If we receive in the love of self 
 we shall give in the love of self, and have small 
 reward for what we do. If we receive in love to 
 the Lord, we shall give in the Lord's name, and 
 much fruit will be the result. 
 
 Patience in well-doing is the trait second in im- 
 portance in qualifying us to sow seed rightly; 
 because if we work patiently in cultivating our 
 own souls Ave shall appreciate the troubles and 
 difficulties that obstruct the progress of others, 
 and we shall learn to wait patiently for their 
 growth in grace. 
 
 There is great danger of saying too much when 
 we would instruct, especially to children. The 
 
108 ABOUT SEEDS. 
 
 truth is very simple, and does not need to be en- 
 larged upon elaborately in order to make it mani- 
 fest. We are more apt to obscure it than to 
 make it plain by many words. Having spoken 
 it, let it be, quietly ; and do not repeat day after 
 day the same thing. It is not good to overseed 
 ground, for thereby all growth is choked. Remem- 
 ber, too, that seeds cannot sprout well in the 
 light ; and, therefore, refrain from trying to look 
 in upon the early stages of mental growth in your 
 child or your friend. The influence of your affec- 
 tion going forth constantly in kind words and 
 deeds, will keep the truths you give warm and 
 soft, like the sunshine and rain of heaven, and 
 they will probably germinate in good time ; but if 
 they do not, your much talking and watching 
 would have done no more good than it would to 
 keep stirring up the soil in your garden in order 
 to quicken the sprouting of the seeds you plant 
 there. 
 
 It is probably overseeding of the mind that 
 causes the children of pious but over-anxious 
 parents often to grow up with no religion at all. 
 Too much preaching is as bad for the soul, as too 
 much seed for the soil. No fruitful growth will 
 come of it. 
 
ABOUT SEEDS. 109 
 
 Plant and water as we may, it Is God who 
 glveth the increase. We should endeavor to be 
 sure that we sow good seed, and that we sow it 
 with a loving spirit. Having done that, we should 
 not try to compel its growth by perpetually work- 
 ing over the soil, nor sow too soon again, nor at 
 an inappropriate season, in our eagerness to pro- 
 duce a harvest. 
 
THE CHANGING SEASONS. 
 
■ ««$ <>fr»»»^ 
 
 Change is the renewing of all things. An atmosphere without 
 motion, an ocean without tide, will not more certainly breed 
 miasma and death to the body than will unchanging circumstance 
 bring stupor and destruction to the soul. 
 
 -*sifp~ 
 
IX. 
 
 THE CHANGING SEASONS. 
 
 ||UTUMN has laid its hand heavily upon my 
 \$ garden, and all that remains to be done 
 there now is to prepare for winter. There is 
 much that is desolate both in Spring and Autumn ; 
 but there is a great contrast between the desola- 
 tion that precedes the winter and that which fol- 
 lows it. Autumn is in itself very beautiful ; far 
 more so than the Spring ; but the natural tendency 
 of the mind is to mourn in the fall of the leaf, 
 and to rejoice in its putting forth. Still no season 
 is truly mournful. Each has its appropriate en- 
 joyments ; and there is enough to enjoy in each to 
 fill the devout heart with thanksgiving. 
 
 We are prone to criticise and condemn things 
 
 as well as persons for what they are not, instead 
 
 of valuing them for what they are. We dwell 
 
 upon their deficiencies instead of their qualifica- 
 
 8 (113) 
 
114 THE CHANGING SEASONS. 
 
 tions. If we compare Spring and Autumn in 
 relation to what they really possess of positive 
 beauty, Autumn has a very great superiority ; and 
 yet most persons call the Spring the most beauti- 
 ful, because then their own imaginations are 
 filled with the anticipation of the beauty of Sum- 
 mer ; while in Autumn they are blinded to the 
 present beauty by the wintry images filling the 
 perspective that stretches away before the mind's 
 eye. 
 
 In the Spring nothing is left but the bare forms 
 of hills and valleys, of forests and scattered trees, 
 brown and desolate ; while harsh winds and cold 
 rains continually check and disappoint our hopes. 
 " Winter lingering in the lap of Spring," allows 
 us few days of genial warmth until Summer has 
 almost come ; yet we constantly comfort ourselves 
 under our disappointments with the hope that 
 Summer must come. Until almost the very last 
 of the Spring we have nothing of beauty in color 
 to gratify the eye as it wanders over the landscape, 
 and almost nothing of warmth to console the 
 touch ; but we feed on hope day by day, and so 
 endow the Spring-time with a beauty not its own. 
 Compare the best day that Spring can give us 
 with any fine Autumn day, and how poor it seems ! 
 
THE CHANGING- SEASONS. 115 
 
 The scattering days, and now and then a week of 
 what is called the Indian Summer, are unsurpass- 
 able for beauty in the Whole circle of the year. 
 The air is dry and soft and warm, and the land- 
 scape glowing with purple and crimson and gold. 
 As I walk through my garden now, if I am 
 saddened by the black and withered plants that 
 surround me, I have but to lift my eyes to the 
 hills, and I am helped. The trees near by have 
 most of them cast their leaves ; but their shade, 
 that was so grateful in summer, is no longer 
 wanted ; and the neighborhood being now less 
 embowered, the eye can wander at will over the 
 graceful outlines of the hills that encircle the 
 view, clothed in robes that seem beautiful enough 
 for curtains to paradise. Crimson oaks, and rich 
 evergreens, and yellow chestnuts, mingle their 
 hues, and golden vistas between the hills invite 
 the eye to look for something even more beautiful 
 beyond, like gateways leading into a celestial city. 
 A fair, high, round hill lies to the westward, 
 crowned with a wood of chestnuts, all clad in 
 yellow of the softest and richest tint, their rounded 
 tops looking like curled, soft wool ; suggesting to 
 my fancy a golden fleece spread out in the sun- 
 shine. Jason could hardly have needed a vision 
 
116 THE CHANGING SEASONS. 
 
 more beautiful to lure him onward in his adven- 
 turous search. 
 
 For all that affords perfect sensuous delight, I 
 know of nothing in the whole circle of the year 
 that equals the fine days of Autumn. Genial 
 warmth to the touch, exquisite beauty to the eye, 
 and for the ear that almost supernatural stillness 
 that suggests rest after toil, peace after struggle. 
 It is the Sabbath of the year. The labor of the 
 seed-time and the harvest is past, and now is the 
 season for quiet thought, for counting up our pos- 
 sessions, and seeing what we have gathered that 
 will sustain us through the winter that is soon to 
 come. 
 
 The four seasons are, like all of life, just what 
 we choose to make of them. If we accept them 
 as gifts from the hand of the Heavenly Father, 
 they are all rich in bounty. If we look at them 
 without reference to the Divine Hand, they will 
 all receive the shadow of our ingratitude, and 
 reflect to our minds the discontent we carry to 
 them. 
 
 The seasons correspond to the different periods 
 of the life of man. Youth, with its little of attain- 
 ment and its much of hope; mid-life, with its 
 fulness of vigor, bodily and mental; full age, 
 
THE CHANGING SEASONS. 117 
 
 when the bodily powers become less active, and 
 the mind more given to contemplation ; and old 
 age, when that which we have actually attained 
 through all the preceding seasons is made mani- 
 fest ; and the poverty or wealth of the character 
 we have been building up is displayed in gloomy 
 discontent at the remembrance of the things of 
 this world which we are losing, or in peaceful 
 happiness at the anticipation of the world we are 
 soon to enter. 
 
 The seasons also correspond to the progressive 
 states through which we pass in the different pe- 
 riods of the mind's development. The inner life 
 is counted by years as well as the outer, — spir- 
 itual years, having all the varied phases of the 
 changing seasons in the natural year. The mind 
 has its spring-times of hope, when some new truth 
 is germinating within it, and filling it with visions 
 of heavenly uses that are to result from it in the 
 daily life ; — its summers of joy, as these uses 
 develop in kind words and loving deeds ; — its 
 autumns of contemplation, when the soul, having 
 completed a cycle of progress, and gathered from 
 it all the fruits that it can harvest, passes into a 
 winter of sadness and desolation, through fear that 
 its progress has come to an end, and that it is 
 
118 THE CHANGING SEASONS. 
 
 capable of no higher growth In grace. These 
 winters are sometimes long and very hard to bear, 
 and we are tempted under their influence to lose 
 faith in the paternal Providence that is ever seek- 
 ing to lead us onward in the regenerate life. Evil 
 spirits throng the mind at these seasons, striving 
 to drag it downward into the insanity of despair. 
 To escape the power of these wintry spirits we 
 must wrap our spiritual bodies in the garments of 
 truth, and quicken them by the faithful perform- 
 ance of our daily duties ; and some day when we 
 are not looking for it, some hour when we are not 
 aware, the light of the Divine Sun will suddenly 
 flash upon us, and its warmth thrill through us. 
 Thus a new cycle of life will begin for us with its 
 succession of seasons, whose history will form a 
 new chapter in the Book of our life. 
 
 The length of these spiritual seasons varies with 
 each individual ; but as the regenerate life advances, 
 its winters become shorter and milder, and its 
 periods of hope and fruition longer and more 
 delightful. 
 
 If we heartily believe that this life is a prepara- 
 tion for the life to come, and death a door through 
 which we pass from a world of types and things 
 transient, into a world of realities and things 
 
THE CHANGING SEASONS. 119 
 
 permanent, and if we live lives in harmony with 
 this belief, the advancing age of the body will not 
 be painful to us. As we pass through the autumn 
 of life, and feel its winter approaching, we shall 
 not dwell upon the idea that our hands are losing 
 their cunning and our feet their firmness of step ; 
 that our siolit is becoming dim, and our ear 
 forgetting to hear, and that we are sinking down- 
 ward into the grave. Such thoughts belong to 
 those who have built their houses upon the sand, 
 and laid up their treasures upon earth. If they 
 come to us we shall put them away as temptations 
 from below, and we shall feel that our Heavenly 
 Father is gently loosing the material bonds that 
 connect us with this world, in order that we may 
 turn our hearts towards the mansions He has pre- 
 pared for us in the heavens. As our material eye 
 becomes dim to the things of the earth, the spir- 
 itual eye within it will learn to see more clearly 
 the things which pertain to heaven ; and as our 
 ear grows dull to earthly noises, it will listen more 
 intently to the words of eternal life. All that we 
 lose of the material will serve to quicken our sen- 
 sibilities to the spiritual, and instead of wasting 
 our thoughts in vain regrets for the earth which 
 
120 THE CHANGING SEASONS. 
 
 we are leaving, we shall be looking forward in 
 joyful hope to the heaven we are about to enter. 
 
 It is a remark often made, that one would like 
 to live so long; as the faculties remain bright and 
 the health firm ; but these attributes being just 
 those which prevent us from being willing to die, 
 Providence kindly takes them from us, that, feel- 
 ing the imperfections of the material body, we 
 may become willing to put it off, and so come into 
 the superior life of the spiritual body. 
 
 The poet Waller beautifully expresses this truth 
 in a single couplet : — 
 
 " The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd, 
 Lets in new light through chinks that time has made. 
 
 The trouble is, that we are too prone to shiver 
 and complain about the inclemencies that we feel 
 through these chinks, instead of looking for the 
 heavenly light that comes to us through them if 
 we will but seek for it. 
 
 My garden, with its withered flowers and bar- 
 renness of fruit, is no longer a pleasant place to 
 walk in for anything contained within its narrow 
 limits, and I will not pretend that I can look with- 
 out regret upon the havoc that the frost has made ; 
 but I can certainly bear it with much more pa- 
 
THE CHANGING SEASONS. 121 
 
 tience, and even with some degree of contentment, 
 as I look beyond it and see what the falling of the 
 leaves from the elms that surround me has reveal- 
 ed. Through the bare but stately boughs I can 
 trace the graceful outlines of the surrounding hills, 
 rising one beyond another in the most charming 
 variety, clad here and there with fine woods, or 
 ornamented with trees, standing solitary or in 
 groups, glowing with autumn colors, their bril- 
 liancy softened into the most exquisite tenderness 
 of hue by the delicate haze that fills the air and 
 saves the eye from being pained and dazzled by 
 excess of brightness. Beyond this I can trace the 
 horizon where heaven seems to clasp hands with 
 earth, and to say, " Come up hither." Over all 
 bends the dome of the sky, the view of its hem- 
 isphere now scarcely interrupted by the delicate 
 tracery of the tree-tops, so that I can watch 
 at will the motions of the clouds and of ' ' the 
 greater and the lesser lights." 
 
 I cannot but feel sorry that the season of flowers 
 and fruits is departing ; but the joyous smiles with 
 which it leaves us promise a speedy return ; and 
 I should be unwilling to lose all this autumnal 
 beauty, rich as it is in spiritual suggestions, even 
 though I might have summer always. 
 
AUTUMN LEAYES. 
 
" Let the dead past bury its dead."— Longfellow. 
 
X. 
 
 AUTUMN LEAVES. 
 
 (J T |jpHE brightness of Autumn is gone, and the 
 
 £UI1 fallen leaves, brown and sear, scattered 
 everywhere as they rustle beneath our footsteps, 
 remind us, either sadly or thoughfully, as the 
 mind's tendency may be, of the beauty that has 
 passed away. If we choose to take a sad view of 
 life and nature, we can find apt illustration for our 
 moody and morbid fantasies in the suggestions the 
 withered leaves will furnish us ; and as we crush 
 them under our feet, the sound they give forth will 
 be mournful to us as a funeral bell, telling us only 
 of death and desolation. 
 
 All sorrowful views of the inevitable changes 
 that Providence has ordained to take place in this 
 world are, however, either mistaken or superficial ; 
 and if we find ourselves saddened by them, we 
 should seek to understand them more wisely, and 
 (125) 
 
126 AUTUMN LEAVES. 
 
 we shall then be very sure to find everywhere 
 beauty instead of ashes. 
 
 Leaves correspond to truths, and withered 
 leaves to the truths that, belonging to the external 
 memory, pass out from our immediate cognizance, 
 but are still ours when we wish to recall them for 
 some special purpose. 
 
 Our thoughts are occupied every day by a suc- 
 cession of truths bearing upon our duties, em- 
 ployments, or amusements ; and these truths, for 
 the most part, seem to be of little or no value ex- 
 cepting for the moment ; yet they are all impor- 
 tant to the moment. Small as they are, it is the 
 constant repetition of the impressions received 
 from them that makes up the whole external of 
 our minds, clothing them as the leaves clothe the 
 trees. They pass away from us day by day, and 
 even hour by hour ; and to the superficial obser- 
 ver the truths that occupied the thoughts yester- 
 day are of as little consequence to-day as last 
 year's leaves are to the trees in the greenness of a 
 present summer. 
 
 The cultivator finds that nothing nourishes the 
 growth of plants so well as decayed leaves, and 
 that each variety of plant is best nourished by its 
 own decayed leaves. Herein we find a perfect 
 
AUTUMN LEAVES. 127 
 
 correspondence between the plant and the human 
 being. It is the accumulation of truths or facts 
 filling the thoughts day by day that produces ex- 
 perience, and it is our own personal experience 
 that builds up our mental strength and gives the 
 most perfect growth in wisdom. The thoughtful 
 person is like a careful cultivator, who gathers up 
 the fallen leaves and uses them to nourish his 
 plants ; but the thoughtless person is like one who 
 suffers the idle winds to blow away the leaves, or 
 perchance sets fire to them. The one is con- 
 stantly gathering into the garner of his experience 
 truths taught him by the successes and even by 
 the failures of to-day, whereby to guide his life 
 to-morrow ; while the other, reflecting upon noth- 
 ing, adds nothing to his mental stores, and taking 
 no thought about the mistakes of to-day, re- 
 peats them again to-morrow. 
 
 The past is a beneficent teacher to us if we 
 look to it thoughtfully, seeking to find instruction 
 for the present and future, and never allowing 
 ourselves to dwell upon its disappointments and its 
 sorrows with morbid regret, or upon its successes 
 with proud rejoicing. If we would gain true wis- 
 dom from the past, we must study it, constantly 
 bearing in mind that it was all overruled by 
 
128 AUTUMN LEAVES. 
 
 Providence ; that it was not our unaided strength 
 that gained the battles of life, or won its prizes ; 
 and that it was no idle chance that disappointed 
 our hopes, or took from us our treasures. 
 
 Life is made up of a very few great events scat- 
 tered among a multitude of small ones. From 
 the small ones we may gather intelligence to guide 
 us through the daily duties of our lives, and from 
 the great ones we may attain wisdom that shall 
 make our way plain in the darkest places through 
 which we may be called to pass. 
 
 In order that the experience of the past may 
 form a healthful nutriment for the life of the pres- 
 ent, we must look back upon it without wishing 
 for its return, and with eyes not blinded by regret- 
 ful tears. It is only when the past has become 
 dead to us that it can help to make us live. 
 While we strive to keep the past alive by clinging 
 to its memory with sighs and tears, wishing we 
 could make it return to us, and losing our con- 
 sciousness of the present, so far as we can, by 
 dwelling in the world of memory, the past can 
 only nourish our morbid passions, and unfit us for 
 every duty. When, on the contrary, we give up 
 the past as something not to be mourned for or 
 wished back again, because our Heavenly Father 
 
AUTUMN LEAVES. 129 
 
 has placed it beyond our power, making it irre- 
 vocable, and as it were dead, then it begins to give 
 us life, and to nourish our souls by its very decay. 
 Then we gather our dead leaves, not to weep over 
 them, but to gain new life from them. 
 
 It is a tendency of the merely natural mind to 
 cling with fondness to the memory of the past, as 
 if the present could not give us anything so desir- 
 able as the pleasures and blessings we have already 
 enjoyed. It believes the careless gayety of child- 
 hood to be better than the developed usefulness 
 and tranquil pleasures of mature life. It depre- 
 ciates the manners and morals of the present day 
 in comparison with those that prevailed formerly ; 
 and rarely finds in a present blessing compensation 
 for the loss of a former one. It esteems mourn- 
 ing for the dead a sacred duty, and clothes itself 
 in sable weeds, the livery of an insubordinate will, 
 that help to keep up the delusion that God does 
 not wisely number our days, and mercifully over- 
 rule the issues of life. Just so far as we give way 
 to these natural tendencies of the mind, we check 
 its spiritual growth, because we put ourselves in 
 direct opposition to the eternal law of progress 
 which the Creator has ordained for everything that 
 He has made. A never-resting movement is the 
 
130 AUTUMN LEAVES. 
 
 tenure by which we hold our lives. If we pause 
 anywhere our intelligence stagnates, our affections 
 rust, our powers are dwarfed, and our faculties 
 paralyzed. To desire to be always a child is to 
 desire to be a mental dwarf. To hope to abide in 
 any term of growth, or to enjoy always the self- 
 same happiness, is to hope to place a bar beyond 
 which our development shall not pass. To wish 
 that our friends or ourselves might never die, is to 
 wish that they ancj we may never know the highest 
 culture, the purest happiness, the noblest useful- 
 ness, of which humanity is capable. To talk of 
 untimely death, of premature departure from this 
 world, is to deny an overruling Providence, or to 
 put our judgment above His. 
 
 The leaf falls from the tree because the fyid of 
 a future leaf swells beneath the end of its stem, 
 and pushes it off from the bough. It has done its 
 appointed work, and must make way for another 
 that can perform the work that is yet to be done. 
 The truths that clothe the mind as the leaves 
 clothe the trees, forming the whole texture of the 
 thoughts, change like the leaves if we make any 
 mental growth. New relations in life, new objects 
 of pursuit, new associates, new books, new vicis- 
 situdes, everything in short that makes one day 
 
AUTUMN LEAVES. 131 
 
 different from another, introduces new thoughts 
 into the mind, and pushes out the old ones, and 
 by these changes our minds grow, if they grow at 
 all. Each time that the tree puts on a new cover- 
 ing of leaves, a new ring is added to the wood of 
 its stem, and its branches spread higher toward 
 heaven. What the trees do thus involuntarily, 
 they do, under Providence, for our instruction ; 
 and if we accept the lesson they teach we shall 
 pass through life's seasons striving to mourn as 
 little as possible for the past, but so strengthened 
 and quickened by its experience that our faith in 
 the unslumbering love and unerring wisdom of our 
 Heavenly Father will constantly become more 
 firmly fixed, and our aspirations rise more ardently 
 towards the heavenly mansions. 
 
THE USES OF GARDENING. 
 
^« 3 < >fr»^- 
 
 The culture of plants, whether in-doors or out, affords a recrea- 
 tion to the mind so innocent in itself, and so suggestive of wise 
 thought in its relations to all other culture, that the refraining 
 from it seems a neglect of privilege, if not of duty. 
 
 V^fJUP 
 
XI. 
 
 THE USES OF GARDENING. 
 
 "OW that the earth is so thickly covered with 
 13 snow that I can no longer go out into my 
 garden, I try to continue something of my connec- 
 tion with the vegetable world by having a few 
 plants in the house. These are perhaps all the 
 dearer to me that there are so few of them, and 
 that they are so dependent on my care ; since now 
 nature gives them only light, while water and heat 
 must come to them by artificial means. When 
 plants become members of the household they are 
 brought into a nearer relation to us, and seem 
 more like personal friends than when they are in 
 the garden. In the abundance of summer foliage 
 and flowers we do not think so much of individual 
 beauty as of the universal luxuriance of nature. 
 We gather bouquets at will, to adorn our rooms, 
 and so soon as they begin to fade we throw them 
 (135) 
 
136 THE USES OF GARDENING. 
 
 away with little remorse or regret ; for there are 
 plenty more to supply their place. In the winter, 
 with perhaps only a dozen plants, every leaf be- 
 comes a personal acquaintance, and a blossom is 
 an intimate friend, watched over with loving inter- 
 est from the time the tiny bud is first discovered 
 till the faded petals droop and die. 
 
 However keenly we may enjoy the abounding 
 beauty that surrounds us in the prosperity of sum- 
 mer, there is an interior delight in the pleasures 
 we receive from nature in the adversity of winter, 
 that often touches the soul far more deeply. Un- 
 interrupted prosperity and unlimited affluence too 
 often produce but an imperfect growth of the 
 mind, because it enjoys them without reflection. 
 One pleasure succeeds another too rapidly to leave 
 space for thought between them. The mind grows 
 under their influence like a fruit-tree planted in 
 fine soil, but which has never been pruned. There 
 will probably be a luxuriant growth of wood and 
 foliage, but few blossoms and still fewer fruits. If 
 nature gives us less to enjoy in winter than in 
 summer, she allows us more time to follow out 
 her suggestions ; and if we do so faithfully, we 
 shall find that many of the thoughts we gain from 
 her, like many of the best sorts of pears and 
 
THE USES OF GARDENING. 137 
 
 apples, ripen only in the house. The household 
 is a garden where human development goes on in 
 a way corresponding to the growth of the animal 
 and the vegetable world; and it is through the 
 various relations the household involves, that we 
 best learn to apply to life the truths we gather in 
 our studies out of doors. 
 
 Most persons suppose that gardening, as a 
 pleasure, is a merely optional thing, and not a 
 question with which conscience has anything to 
 do ; but there is a right and a wrong to most 
 questions, and to me it seems that not to have a 
 garden, where it is practicable, and not to have 
 plants in the house, which is almost always prac- 
 ticable, is neglecting to make use of a very impor- 
 tant means of mental and moral culture. 
 
 We may receive the doctrines that Swedenborg 
 has unfolded in relation to the correspondences of 
 the vegetable kingdom in a general way, by simply 
 reading about them ; but when we study -them by 
 the actual observation of plants, we gain a knowl- 
 edge of them incomparably more clear and vivid 
 than abstract study can give. If a chemist or 
 other student of natural science should confine 
 himself to books, refusing to make use of a labor- 
 atory, or to examine specimens of the animal, 
 
138 THE USES OF GARDENING. 
 
 vegetable, or mineral kingdoms about which he 
 studied, affirming that he could learn just as well 
 from books, every one conversant with such sub- 
 jects would exclaim at his folly. Is it not a folly 
 much more to be shunned, when one who believes 
 in the science of correspondences, neglects the 
 observation of natural objects offered so freely to 
 him by the beneficent Creator ? It is nearly twenty 
 years since I became a reader of Swedenborg, and 
 it is only two years that I have had a garden ; but 
 I think I do not exaggerate when I say that in 
 these two years, through the aid my garden has 
 given me, I have learned more about correspon- 
 dences than in the whole preceding eighteen. 
 
 Not long before I had a garden of my own, I 
 remarked to an enthusiastic horticulturist, who 
 was talking to me of his fruits and flowers, " You 
 must find great pleasure in your garden." " Not 
 pleasure only," said he, "but culture also.'* I 
 did not comprehend at that time what he meant, 
 and was surprised at his reply. I had not, how- 
 ever, enjoyed my own garden a month before my 
 eyes began to open, for I found that my garden 
 was educating me in the true sense of the word ; 
 leading out my faculties by suggesting new trains 
 of thought, and illustrating old and new thoughts 
 
THE USES OF GARDENING. 139 
 
 by correspondences so exquisite, that I felt intro- 
 duced through them into a new world. 
 
 One may love flowers, and enjoy them as they 
 grow under the care of other hands ; but plants 
 are like children ; they tell their secrets only to 
 those who show their love by doing something for 
 them ; and the more one does, so it be done for 
 love, the more secrets one hears and sees. 
 
 Many suppose that things may be appreciated 
 by contemplation, apart from action ; but when 
 they experiment actively in these same things, 
 their senses are opened, and they discover that 
 hitherto they have had eyes but saw not, ears but 
 heard not. Abstract knowledge is automatic and 
 external, while practical knowledge is living and 
 internal. What we learn practically becomes a 
 part of ourselves, and results in something that 
 remains with us forever. 
 
 Thus has it been with my garden. I began it 
 merely as an amusement, but found it a true 
 recreation. I began thinking only of cultivating 
 it; and, to my surprise, found it immediately 
 began to cultivate me. I hoped to find bodily 
 health from working in it, and found mental health 
 far more. 
 
 There has always been a belief in the popular 
 
140 THE USES OF GARDENING. 
 
 mind that the odor of freshly cultivated earth pos- 
 sessed a health-giving power, and feeble children 
 are thought to be invigorated by " playing in the 
 dirt." I am convinced that this popular opinion 
 is no fallacy, for my own experience has proved to 
 me that the breath of our mother earth is a tonic 
 of surprising power. 
 
 It was a fable of the Greek Mythology, that 
 when Antaeus, the son of Earth and Ocean, con- 
 tended with an enemy, as often as he was thrown 
 upon the ground, his mother gave him strength to 
 renew the combat until he was victorious. Since 
 I have become intimate with mother Earth, and 
 have experienced her renovating power, I have 
 felt as though the Greeks symbolized the hygienic 
 force of the soil in the fable, and that Antaeus was 
 but a type of all of us who wrestle in the garden 
 and in the field to escape from the thrall of in- 
 validism. I have found health, recreation, and 
 mental culture in my garden ; and I write my 
 experiences in the hope that it may draw others to 
 seek the same blessings from the same source. I 
 will not promise them to any one save upon con- 
 dition that they are sought lovingly, as a child 
 goes to its mother for aid. I believe the earth is 
 a beneficent mother to those who go to her with a 
 
THE USES OF GAKDENING. 141 
 
 truly filial feeling ; but if you have no love for her, 
 — if no answering emotion rises in your breast 
 when she clothes herself in her beautiful garments, 
 and offers you her bounty of flowers and fruits, I 
 will promise you nothing for all the toil you may 
 expend. If you have lost your health, you must 
 go to the druggist for help, for your heart is too 
 cold and your brain too heavy to be permeated by 
 the soft, life-giving breath that renews the being 
 of every true child of Earth, when he turns lov- 
 ingly towards his mother. 
 
 Everything that is high in the creation contains 
 within itself everything that is lower ; we are all 
 that is below us and something more, and the 
 something more is what gives us our distinctive 
 individuality. 
 
 We are born children of the Earth, and we do 
 not cease to be such when we become spiritualized. 
 The external of our spirit draws its nutriment 
 from the external world, and we do not leave it 
 behind us as we live more in the internal ; but we 
 fill it with a higher life. Thus our enjoyment of 
 everything beautiful becomes indefinitely heightened 
 in proportion as our affections and thoughts be- 
 come purified and elevated ; and the more brightly 
 light comes down to us from heaven, the more 
 
142 THE USES OF GARDENING. 
 
 distinctly are we able to read the book of nature, 
 and to perceive that it was written by the hand of 
 God. Irreverent minds are confirmed in their in- 
 difference to spiritual things by the study of nature. 
 They look down till they lose the power of looking 
 up ; and sometimes dwell upon the wonders of 
 creation till they deny a Creator ; but the reverent 
 eye scans the heavens all the more steadfastly if 
 the feet are planted firmly upon the earth ; and 
 finds a new incentive to worship in every fact of 
 science and every form of nature. 
 
 Formerly I cared little for house-plants ; but now 
 I feel as though they were indispensable, and that 
 I must have a little garden in the house, when the 
 severity of the season compels me to desert the 
 garden out of doors. All the phases of plant- 
 growth correspond perfectly with those of the 
 mind ; and the more carefully we watch them, the 
 better are we able to understand the development 
 of the mental powers, and to gain true ideas in 
 relation to the training of our own faculties, and 
 the directing of other minds over whom our influ- 
 ence may extend. 
 
 A mother would find an hour a day spent 
 among her flowers, a very useful preparation for 
 the hours she spends with her children. It is a 
 
THE USES OF GARDENING. 143 
 
 great mistake, too often made by mothers, that 
 hours spent apart from the cares in which their 
 families involve them are stolen hours, to which 
 they have scarce a right. Apart from the instruc- 
 tion to be derived from the tending of plants, the 
 relaxation of the mind from care past, and its re- 
 creation for care to come, renew the life of the 
 mind, and through that the life of the body ; so 
 that more would be accomplished in the hours that 
 are left, than if that one had not been taken from 
 them. Do not, then, if you are a mother with 
 many cares, deny yourself the pleasure and benefit 
 of plants, because you think you have not time for 
 them. 
 
 You may as well forbid your children to take 
 advantage of the recess at school, hoping that they 
 will learn more from studying all the time they 
 are at school, as to deny yourself the recess from 
 care in your long days at home, supposing that 
 you can accomplish more by uninterrupted effort. 
 The child can learn more when he has a proper 
 recess during his school hours, and the mother can 
 do more, with less effort and less fatigue, if she 
 too has a recess from her cares. A little time 
 spent with your plants each day, will unbend your 
 mind from the strain perpetual care brings upon 
 
144 THE USES OF GARDENING. 
 
 it, and will rest your eyes, which are so apt to be 
 overtasked; and by giving a new turn to your 
 thoughts, for a little while, will reanimate you to 
 return to your family duties. You will come back 
 to your work with new alacrity, as the child 
 comes into the house, from his play, all alive and 
 joyous. 
 
 The early passing away of youth in the women 
 of America has long been observed, and various 
 causes have been assigned for it. I am convinced 
 that it is the want of relaxation from family cares. 
 Whenever I have observed a woman who retains 
 her youthful appearance, I have always found she 
 had some special taste that drew her away from 
 her cares. It might be music, or painting, or 
 reading; but always something apart from the 
 daily requirements of her life. She, perhaps, in- 
 dulged her taste by stealth, and doubting if she 
 were right in doing so ; but the wrong is to refrain 
 from such indulgence. Mind and body suffer 
 alike for lack of it, and the dwelling place be- 
 comes, through unremitted toil, a weary house of 
 bondage, instead of a free and happy home. 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GARDEN. 
 
" Home is the source, channel, issue, of all those principles and 
 powers which bless earth and promise immortality. The inmost 
 of the circles which spread out widening, and, amidst change, 
 still enduring, into societies, nations, churches, and whatever 
 forms humanity may receive."— T. T. Stone. 
 
 ~<JL9r»~ 
 
XII. 
 
 THE HOUSEHOLD GAEDEN. 
 
 (|F|fpHE correspondence existing between the 
 iyjJ-§ mind of man and the forms and operations 
 of the natural world, is frequently referred to in 
 the Scriptures. The righteous man is compared 
 to ' ' a tree planted by the rivers of water." The obe- 
 dient are encouraged with the promise that ' ' their 
 soul shall be as a watered garden." The sowing 
 of seed, the springing up of the blade, the pro- 
 duction of fruit, are made to illustrate the plant- 
 ing of truth in the mind and the results that come 
 from it, according to the quality of the mind in 
 which it is planted. The garden may be con- 
 sidered as representing a society of human beings, 
 in which each plant represents an individual ; or it 
 may be looked upon as one man, the earth of it 
 corresponding to the mind, and the various plants 
 representing its different traits. In either case the 
 (147) 
 
148 THE HOUSEHOLD GARDEN. 
 
 correspondence is perfect, as the Scriptures testify. 
 The institution of a society for any purpose is thus 
 the planting of a garden, and in order that it may 
 succeed it must be well chosen as to soil, and then 
 it must be watered by heavenly truth, and warmed 
 by heavenly love. If a society is ineffectual for 
 the purposes for which it was organized, it is be- 
 cause it is deficient in one or more of these re- 
 quisites. It looks perhaps to self for light, in- 
 stead of turning to the Lord : and is warmed by 
 hatred for evil, rather than by love for goodness. 
 
 Of all the social gardens with which the earth 
 is planted, none is so important in its results to 
 the whole fabric of society, none so powerful in its 
 influence upon individual life, as the household. 
 The political, the moral, and the religious life of a 
 nation depend upon the influences that gather 
 round the homesteads of its people. The seeds 
 there sown will spring up into plants and trees 
 that will be transplanted into larger spheres, to 
 grow into forms of beauty and of use, bearing 
 flowers and fruits that shall minister to the wants 
 and to the pleasures of all who surround them ; or 
 else into perverted and hateful deformities, ready 
 to poison the atmosphere and blast the touch, 
 wherever their influence may be borne. 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GARDEX. 149 
 
 The household is the only social garden in which 
 every human being has a personal interest ; and 
 this fact alone, is sufficient to prove that it is the 
 most important of them all. 
 
 The salvation of the souls of men is the first 
 object in the Providence of God ; and as the set- 
 tins: of human beings in families is a universal 
 arrangement of His Providence, it seems a natural 
 inference that the influences coming to the soul 
 through the family relations are those which most 
 powerfully effect its growth and development. 
 
 We cannot look around us without being forced 
 to acknowledge that a large proportion of families 
 are organized in such a way, that no true develop- 
 ment of the soul is effected through their means. 
 This want of success is not always the result of 
 depravity.. Many earnestly desire and strive to 
 bring up their children wisely, and to fulfil all the 
 family relations as they should ; and yet they fail. 
 Many more take no proper thought about their 
 duties ; but go on at random, satisfied if they do 
 about as well as their neighbors, and thinking it no 
 fault of theirs when their children disappoint their 
 hopes. The variety of mistaken culture every 
 social circle affords is so painful, that sometimes 
 those who are childless are tempted to con^ratu- 
 
150 THE HOUSEHOLD GARDEN, 
 
 late themselves ; since they thereby escape a re- 
 sponsibility which so few are able to bear with" 
 success. 
 
 It is commonly believed that moral science is 
 not exact and positive, like the sciences that deal 
 with material objects ; and that cause and effect do 
 not cling together in human development as in the 
 growth of plants and animals. If I assert the 
 contrary belief, it may be brought against me that 
 not having had personal experience in training a 
 family, my opinion is of little value. Still the 
 subject is one that has deeply interested me all my 
 life, and the very fact of having no family of my 
 own has left me time and opportunity to extend 
 my observations over a wider circle of the families 
 of other people ; so that I build my theories upon 
 a foundation of facts far more numerous than if I 
 had been experimenting at home. 
 
 My leading theory is briefly this. The parents 
 of every family control the characters of their 
 children with a power corresponding to that which 
 a cultivator of the soil exercises over his farm or 
 his garden ; and the limitations of this power are 
 in like manner corresponding. 
 
 Humanity is nowhere omnipotent. "Paul may 
 plant, and Apollos may water ; but it is God who 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GARDEN. 151 
 
 giveth the increase." God works constantly in 
 two ways, directly and indirectly : through human 
 means and overruling human means. The gar- 
 dener is not certain of success in all his efforts, let 
 him work diligently and wisely as he can. Some 
 of his plants will die, and some of them will repay 
 his toil but meagrely ; still, taking all things to- 
 gether, his reward is, on the whole, proportionate 
 with his efforts. 
 
 A gardener who wishes to excel in his profession 
 must make a study of the science of gardening, 
 and then he must learn the art of applying that 
 science. The scientific and the practical must ever 
 go hand in hand, in order to attain to excellence. 
 So the parent who would really educate a child 
 must have a definite knowledge of what he is aim- 
 ing at ; and then he must pursue his object by 
 means adapted to the end to be attained. 
 
 When two persons unite their destinies for life 
 with the same kind of thoughtlessness that they 
 would take partners for a cotillon, and then bring 
 up children as heedlessly as if they were not re- 
 sponsible beings, they have as much right to com- 
 plain of their want of success, as a gardener who 
 buys a lot of land without seeing it, and cultivates 
 it only in the night. 
 
152 THE HOUSEHOLD GAEDEN. 
 
 Plants sown at random, and children brought 
 up without care, sometimes turn out well, because 
 other influences reach them, and do for them what 
 their natural protectors failed of doing ; but the 
 possibility of such a result does not in the least 
 diminish the responsibility of those to whom the 
 duty of training rightly belongs. The sin of their 
 neglect hangs as heavily about their necks as if it 
 resulted in the failure it deserved. 
 
 Humanity loves to sit at ease, and to find ex- 
 cuses for putting off, or setting aside, its duties. 
 Those who yield to their indolent tendencies have 
 no right to complain that life with them is a failure, 
 and that their children bring their gray hairs in 
 sorrow to the grave : but to those who look life, 
 with all its responsibilities, calmly in the face ; who 
 feel the Divine Providence always and everywhere 
 surrounding them ; who seek to know the law of 
 the Lord that they may do and teach it, ascribing 
 the power and glory always to the Lord, failure is 
 almost impossible. 
 
 The majority of parents begin their duties with 
 no fixed principles, with little knowledge of their 
 own hearts, and still less of that most delicate of 
 all organizations, the heart of a little child. Not 
 accustomed to the control of their own evil dis- 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GARDEN. 153 
 
 positions, they begin by indulging the evil disposi- 
 tions of their child, until they clash with their 
 own ; and then, mistaking violence for power, 
 they resort to angry words or blows to exorcise 
 the evil spirits their own neglect has permitted to 
 take possession of their child. They rely on the 
 evil spirits that infest themselves to cast out those 
 that infest their children. Then the household be- 
 comes a field of battle, in which anger and violence 
 are the overruling powers, in which there is no- 
 thing of confidence on either side ; in which the 
 child grows up cunning, deceitful, and false ; and 
 the parents, simply because they reap the natural 
 harvest of the seed they sowed, deny that children 
 are a blessing, as they sink morosely into the old 
 age that feels itself in the way of all that is young, 
 because it has no sympathy with the perennial 
 pleasures of innocence. 
 
 Another class of parents, of a naturally gentle 
 disposition, by their devotion to their children 
 pamper their selfishness until they develop charac- 
 ters the direct opposite of their own. Society 
 looks on and says : " Here is a mother who has 
 given up all social pleasures to take the whole care 
 of her children upon herself, and her sons are 
 growing up dissipated, and worthless, and her 
 
154: THE HOUSEHOLD GARDEN. 
 
 daughters thinking of nothing but dress and dis- 
 play. What has she gained by all this self-sacri- 
 fice ? " The truth seems to me to be that she has 
 gained just what she had a right to expect. Her 
 love for her children was a mere natural impulse. 
 She devoted herself to them because she loved 
 them with her whole heart and soul and mind and 
 strength ; as if they were her very own, and not 
 recollecting that they were confided to her care by 
 one who bids us love Him first, and make His 
 Word the law of our lives. Parental affection is 
 but a blind guide when it walks by its own insight ; 
 and is very sure to lead the way into tangled 
 woods, and bewildering mazes that end in destruc- 
 tion. 
 
 Parental love, when viewed superficially, seems 
 more free than any other from the taint of selfish- 
 ness. During infancy and early childhood, parents 
 often seem to live only for ministering to the wants 
 and pleasures of their offspring ; but even here 
 selfishness may be the life of all this devotion. 
 The child is but a part, an expansion of self; and 
 just as parents love themselves so they love their 
 children. Wilful, self-indulgent parents love to 
 pamper the wilfulness and self-indulgence of their 
 children ; vain parents inflate the vanity of their 
 
THE HOUSEHOLD GAKDEN. 155 
 
 children ; worldly parents train their children to 
 worldliness ; and so on through the whole cata- 
 logue of vices. There is no more virtue in such 
 love than in that of the pickpocket who teaches his 
 child to steal ; or the drunkard who pets his child 
 with a taste of his drams. The only difference is, 
 that one parent teaches vulgar vices, while the 
 other teaches the vices of refined society. 
 
 When the child becomes of an age to manifest 
 its own thoughts and desires independently of the 
 parent, the difficulty that the parent often feels in 
 yielding the child its just freedom, in acknowledg- 
 ing the liberty that belongs to it as a child of God, 
 — a liberty that should not be denied it, when it 
 becomes of an age to judge for itself, because then 
 it becomes accountable to an authority higher than 
 that of the earthly parent, — proves the selfishness 
 that may lie hidden within even a mother's de- 
 votion. 
 
 The loves of dominion and of possession too 
 often give a zest to parental love. We love that 
 which is ductile in our hands, that which yields it- 
 self to our power ; and we love that which belongs 
 to ourselves because it is in reality a part of self. 
 
 When the loves of self and of the world rule in 
 the heart of the parents, the natural products of 
 
156 THE HOUSEHOLD GARDEN. 
 
 the household garden are offensive flowers and bit- 
 ter fruits ; but where love to the Lord rules su- 
 premely, and His Word is the household law, 
 home becomes an Eden, a genuine garden of God, 
 wherein no leaf shall wither and no fruit shall 
 blast. 
 
HOME VIRTUES. 
 
" To the child, the parent stands as the embodied reason, the 
 form of truth and virtue, the highest type of the Supreme Being." 
 
 T.T.Stone. 
 
XIII. 
 
 HOME VIRTUES. 
 
 ^^^HE natural affections, such as conjugal, 
 |^j|^| parental, filial, and fraternal love, and the 
 love of home, which would seem to bind all the 
 others into a single sheaf of household virtues, are 
 supposed by many persons to be inherently and of 
 necessity pure and holy. Yet every one of these 
 affections may be only modifications of the love of 
 self. Self-love clings, like the Pilgrim's burden, 
 to every trait of our nature ; and can be cast off 
 only at the foot of the cross. Natural affection, 
 until it has been spiritualized by regeneration, is a 
 body without a soul, the form of love without its 
 immortal essence. 
 
 We may test the quality of any of our affec- 
 tions, by honestly answering such questions as the 
 following : Does it make us love to minister to 
 others, or demand that others should minister to 
 (159) 
 
160 HOME VIRTUES. 
 
 us ? Do we seek our own happiness in loving, or 
 the happiness of the person we love ? Do we love 
 to be at home, because there we can rule, and fret, 
 and find fault without restraint, and devote our- 
 selves to our own pleasure ; or because there we 
 reciprocate all kindly affections, and help to fill 
 out the harmony of a happy household ? 
 
 We are all prone to love those who flatter our 
 vanity, who pet our foibles and weaknesses, who 
 look with an indulgent eye upon our vices, or who 
 minister to our comfort ; and among our family 
 relatives, we usually find more of all this than in 
 any other social circle. We love to be ministered 
 to, and to exercise selfishness in many ways, and 
 a very ardent love of home may dwell in our 
 hearts, because there we are ministered to more 
 than elsewhere — because there we can be more 
 selfish than anywhere else. 
 
 If the love of dominion and of selfish indulg- 
 ence were put away from the human heart, a 
 home would be more delightful from containing a 
 numerous family, and involving every variety 
 of relationship ; because the various faculties of 
 the heart would be called into more complete ac- 
 tivity, and a fuller and higher life attained, than is 
 possible in a small home circle. The affections 
 
HOME VIRTUES. 161 
 
 lose their pliancy and expansiveness by being con- 
 fined within narrow limits ; and it is more difficult 
 to avoid becoming more indulgent towards our- 
 selves, and less so towards others, in a small 
 household, where there are few interests, than in 
 a large one, where there are many. 
 
 A happy home, like heaven, is a place where 
 each individual is seeking to make others happy. 
 There is no class of persons who find so little hap- 
 piness as those who seek it directly, through self- 
 indulgence of any kind ; no matter how innocent 
 the mode of indulgence may be. Self-forgetful- 
 ness is the first, and a desire to benefit others the 
 second, requisite in a happy life. AYe must think 
 of ourselves in order to cultivate our powers 
 of usefulness, our moral and intellectual faculties, 
 and to keep our bodies in a state of health, that 
 they may may be able to serve the mind ; and we 
 shall find happiness in such thoughts of ourselves ; 
 but the moment we begin to form plans of life that 
 have our own individual happiness as means and 
 end, we are taking the most direct method of mak- 
 ing ourselves miserable. Just so far as the mem- 
 bers of a household seek their happiness in making 
 others happy, home becomes a correspondence 
 of heaven ; and just so far as they seek their own 
 
 11 
 
162 HOME VIRTUES. 
 
 individual happiness without regard, or in oppo- 
 sition to, the happiness of the rest, home becomes 
 a correspondence of hell. 
 
 Parents who would make home a heavenly 
 abode, must bear in mind that they are to the 
 little child what the Heavenly Father is to them- 
 selves. A little child's only idea of God is based 
 upon the ideas of love, wisdom, and power that 
 he receives from the daily life of his father and 
 mother. A child who sees his parents religiously 
 self-controlled, and just and affectionate, will be 
 sure to respect and love and obey them, and the 
 filial virtue they arouse in his mind will form a 
 generous soil, on which piety and reverent obedi- 
 ence to God will spring up and grow until they 
 overshadow the whole being. But if the child is 
 so unfortunate as to see his parents without self- 
 control ; if they indulge or thwart his wishes in 
 accordance with the mood of their own tempers, 
 and without regard to propriety and justice; if 
 they deny him at first, and then yield to his teas- 
 ing importunities ; if they tell him to do right, and 
 yet permit him to do wrong ; if they pet him when 
 they feel good-natured, and scold him when they 
 feel cross, it is impossible that he should have any 
 feeling of true respect for them. He may love 
 
HOME VIRTUES. 163 
 
 tliem fitfully, as they love him ; and he will obey 
 them when he cannot help it ; and all this prepares 
 him to think of God as an arbitrary being, very 
 fearful and terrible, and altogether removed from 
 the plane of his love. 
 
 A little child is almost intuitively pious, if the 
 least help is given him by those who are about 
 him ; for the angels that continually behold the 
 face of the Heavenly Father, are lending all their 
 influence to draw his heart upward ; and if his 
 earthly guardians would but cooperate with his 
 heavenly ones, his spiritual growth would be as 
 certain and as easy as his material growth. His 
 course would not be steadily upward, because the 
 soul has its natural and inherited diseases like 
 the body ; and these will, from time to time, be 
 brought out by temptation, as the physical dis- 
 eases incident to childhood are developed by favor- 
 ing circumstances ; but these would all be miti- 
 gated by a previously wise training, and overcome 
 by wise treatment, with much more success in the 
 mental education than in the physical ; because 
 the will has far more power to modify the traits of 
 the mind than of the body. In order to develop 
 true filial respect in the minds of children, parents 
 must first have developed a true a^d childlike 
 
164 HCME VIRTUES. 
 
 piety in themselves. They must recognize their 
 own responsibility to their Heavenly Father before 
 they can see clearly to direct the hearts of the 
 little beings whom He has intrusted to their care. 
 The child has no reason or conscience of its own ; 
 and they must be reason and conscience for him. 
 
 Parental authority, during the first few years of 
 the child's life, should be entirely arbitrary. Rea- 
 son and conscience develop slowly in a child, 
 through instruction and training. Until they are 
 developed he should be made implicitly obedient 
 to the reason and conscience of his parents. To 
 tell a child that an act is foolish or wrong, and 
 then to let him do it, is throwing a responsibility 
 from the parent, who ought to bear it, upon the 
 child, who is too weak to bear it. Every time 
 this is done the child is confirmed in indifference 
 to wrong, and in contempt of parental authority. 
 If the parent has too little self-control to enforce 
 obedience in a child, it is much better to let him 
 alone entirely than to attempt to throw off the re- 
 sponsibility which belongs entirely to the parent. 
 The selfish weakness that attempts to quiet its 
 own conscience, by merely telling a child it is 
 wrong to do anything, and then permitting him to 
 do it, is just* as reprehensible as acknowledging a 
 
HOME VIRTUES. 165 
 
 thing to be wrong and then doing it one's self. 
 There are persons who seem to think it mitigates 
 the sin of an evil act, if one confesses it to be 
 WTong; but to sin in the face of conviction is 
 something that admits of no palliation. If you 
 have so little moral strength that you will not en- 
 force obedience in your child, at least have the 
 forbearance to let him sin ignorantly. Do not 
 confirm him in disobedience towards yourself, and 
 in indifference to right and wrong, by laying bur- 
 dens of responsibility upon his shoulders that he 
 is wholly unable to bear. Your child cannot ap- 
 preciate the consequences of a wrong action, 
 because he has had almost no experience or obser- 
 vation of life ; you know what the consequences 
 are, and it is your duty to shield him from them 
 by preventing him from doing wrong. We, who 
 are grown men and women, all know how hard it 
 is to resist the evil desires of our own hearts, 
 although we can measure the consequences of in- 
 dulging them so fully ; and yet we wonder that a 
 little child is not ready to put away his evil desires 
 the moment we tell him they are wrong. His 
 passions about little things are just as hard for him 
 to resist as our greater passions about greater 
 things ; while his ignorance of consequences is 
 
166 HOME VIRTUES. 
 
 almost total. He needs every aid we can give 
 him to prevent Ms little feet from stumbling over 
 the pebbles in his pathway, that to our greater 
 strength are scarcely noticeable. We must not 
 think we have done our duty, because we have 
 told him of the danger. It is for us to hold him 
 up, till he can walk safely by his own strength ; 
 to restrain him, till by degrees he learns to 
 restrain himself; to guide him till he has learned 
 all we can teach him of the right way. 
 
 Simple obedience is the only virtue a little child 
 can practise, and it is the foundation of every 
 other virtue. The child should be trained to it in 
 the very first year of its existence ; with all possi- 
 ble tenderness, but with equal firmness. Every 
 month that this training is put off its difficulty in- 
 creases ; and lost time and opportunity are two 
 things that can never be recovered. Be very 
 careful that you are right in what you require of 
 your child, and then bear in mind that just in the 
 degree it is right, you will be wrong if you do not 
 enforce obedience in him. 
 
 It is not always easy to know exactly what is 
 right, and how much one should require of a little 
 child. The more one lives a life of childlike 
 obedience to the Heavenly Father, the better one 
 
HOME VIRTUES. 167 
 
 understands what to ask of. one's child ; and to do 
 this, one must keep as near Him as possible, 
 through prayer and study of His Word. He is 
 nearer to the parent than the parent, is to the 
 child ; and if the heart is opened to Him, he will 
 teach it " wondrous things out of His law." 
 
PARENTAL DUTY. 
 
"Remember how sacred childhood is; no ground so holy, no. 
 temple so reverent : God is within. Far off from the hallowed 
 scene, let profaneness, irreverence, unkindness, pass and disap- 
 pear."— T. T. Stone. 
 
 ~*Slffr~ 
 
XIV. 
 
 PARENTAL DUTY. 
 
 |3ffel HAVE said that parental government should 
 ^HlH at first be entirely arbitrary. How long it 
 should continue so must depend upon the rapidity 
 with which the mental powers of the child unfold 
 themselves. If you attempt to reason with a 
 child, in order to convince his understanding of the 
 difference between right and wrong, before he is 
 old enough to appreciate what you say, you will 
 confuse and worry him if he is of a mild disposi- 
 tion, and you will confuse and irritate him if he is 
 combative. In neither case have you made obe- 
 dience easier to him or control easier to yourself. 
 You must judge of the use of your reasoning by 
 the effect it produces, and not be impatient to see 
 your child a man in comprehension, while he is 
 scarcely more than an infant in years. Very early 
 development of conscience or reason in a child is 
 (171) 
 
172 PARENTAL DUTY. 
 
 almost always the result of a diseased brain ; and 
 should never be sought for nor encouraged. The 
 memoirs of pious little children, so often found in 
 juvenile libraries, would be far more appropriate in 
 the library of the medical student ; for they illus- 
 trate a peculiar form of disease, and not a healthy 
 growth. 
 
 If your child at seven years of age is affec- 
 tionate and obedient, you should be content with 
 him, though he does not accurately reason about 
 right and wrong. Affection and obedience will go 
 hand in hand with the child, if the power you have 
 exercised over him has been truly parental. If 
 you find him fearful towards you, seeking to avoid 
 you in his pursuits, and silent and constrained in 
 your presence, you have made a mistake some- 
 where. You have exercised too much power or 
 too little affection, or you have not sympathized 
 enough in his pursuits and pleasures ; or perhaps 
 you have laughed at him, which, to a sensitive 
 child, is of all hard things the hardest to bear. 
 You may be content with your child if he is simply 
 obedient, but do not be content with yourself un- 
 less he is affectionate also. If he loves you as a 
 companion in his walks and his talks and his 
 sports, and yet is obedient to you when you do 
 
PAKENTAL DUTY. 173 
 
 not indulge him in his wishes, then it is well with 
 the child and with you also. 
 
 Different children require very different modes 
 of training. In the vegetable world, not only do 
 different species of plants require different modes 
 of treatment, but even different varieties of the 
 same species. What will be entirely favorable to 
 one kind of apple or pear, will be entirely destruc- 
 tive to another. So with children in the same 
 family ; one needs to be encouraged, and another 
 to be restrained ; one needs protection, while 
 another is as well or better without it ; some are 
 discouraged by opposition, while to others it is 
 exciting; and so on with endless variety. To 
 do justice to a family of children, much thought 
 must be given to their peculiarities. The father 
 and mother must not feel that when they have 
 provided for the material wants of the children, 
 and sent them to school, thev have done what is 
 most important. Careful and troubled about the 
 many things that constitute the comfort of life 
 they may have been, but there is one thing abso- 
 lutely needful; and if they would choose the 
 better part they must not exhaust all their strength 
 and thought in providing for that which belongs 
 only to this world. 
 
174 PARENTAL DUTY. 
 
 Children are not gifts to be held as your per- 
 sonal property, and to do with as you please. 
 You hold them simply in trust from the Lord ; 
 and you will have presently to account to Him for 
 the care you have taken of them. He is saying 
 to you in His Holy Word now, just as authorita- 
 tively as He said to the disciples when He walked 
 openly in Judea : ' ' Suffer little children to come 
 unto me." Are you leading them to Him, or are 
 you shutting them out from Him ? You are doing 
 one of these things, for no parental influence is 
 negative. 
 
 If the father of a family looks upon making 
 money as the paramount duty of his life, and the 
 mother puts keeping the house and clothing the 
 children above all other duties, the lives of both 
 are perpetually forbidding the little children to 
 come near the Lord. Most persons are obliged to 
 spend their days in work for the support and com- 
 fort of the body, and industry is one of the great- 
 est virtues ; but this does not make it needful that 
 the mind should be absorbed in work to the exclu- 
 sion of everything else. Such a life is slavery of 
 the basest kind, because self-assumed ; and the 
 more wealth that is accumulated by such labor, 
 the more degrading becomes the bondage. 
 
PARENTAL DUTY. 175 
 
 Some of the finest examples of parental educa- 
 tion I have ever seen have been among persons 
 who were compelled by poverty to lives of con- 
 stant labor ; and no class of human beings afford 
 examples more numerous or more reprehensible of 
 parental neglect, than those whose wealth places 
 them beyond the necessity of effort. 
 
 Perhaps I can best illustrate the ideas I wish to 
 present by examples. There was once a family in 
 the circle of my acquaintance, containing many 
 children, the father and mother of whom, begin- 
 ning in narrow circumstances, had arrived at a 
 somewhat advanced age, their children grown up 
 around them, and property enough laid by for an 
 easy independence. Both parents had been inde- 
 fatigably industrious, the one in his calling, the 
 other in her household ; but their industry had 
 limited itself, almost entirely, to life in its relations 
 with this world. The mother had begun life with 
 religious impressions and feelings, but the cares of 
 this world overcame them, and choked them up. 
 The children grew up indifferent to spiritual things, 
 and with passions uncontrolled by principle. I 
 was more than once present in this family when 
 the most painful exhibitions were made of ill-tem- 
 per and irreverence ; but on one such occasion the 
 
176 PARENTAL DUTY. 
 
 mother turned to me, with tears in her eyes, and 
 said, " I have lived a life of toil and care for my 
 family, and I felt at the time that I was doing as 
 I ought ; but now, in my old age, my children 
 prove to me that I have been unfaithful to my 
 highest duty." What a conviction to carry to 
 one's grave ! Never, in the whole course of my 
 life, have I seen physical poverty or suffering that 
 seemed to me so pitiful as the spiritual destitution 
 and grief of that mother. 
 
 Another example will ever remain green in my 
 memory, of the mother of a large family of 
 young children, left a widow, and entirely desti- 
 tute. She was a woman of profound religious 
 principle, and she took up her cross and bore it 
 steadfastly. Her children saw that she governed 
 herself and them from the highest and purest mo- 
 tives, and they followed as she led the way. A 
 life of patient industry still left her time to incul- 
 cate wise principles in the hearts of her children, 
 and they remained faithful to them. No black 
 sheep marred the beauty of her fold. She fed 
 the lambs intrusted to her care, remembering that 
 they belonged to the Lord ; and the best success 
 has attended them thus far through life. 
 
 Such examples are not rare or peculiar. They 
 
PARENTAL DUTY. 177 
 
 are types of the two great classes into which hu- 
 manity is divided. The one sees this world only, 
 and lives only for the favors and rewards that this 
 world can give. The other is ever looking through 
 and beyond the things of this world, and valuing 
 them as leading to something higher, something 
 eternal. I do not mean to say that one class is 
 entirely worldly-minded, and the other entirely 
 heavenly-minded ; for absolute perfection or de- 
 pravity does not belong to this world. What I 
 mean is, that in every human being there is a cen- 
 tral and supreme love that dominates over all the 
 other affections, giving them an upward or a down- 
 ward tendency, according as it aspires to heaven 
 or clings to this world. In the social relations of 
 life the character of this central love is not usually 
 distinctly shown ; but in the freedom of home it 
 appears much more clearly, and it acts upon the 
 impressible minds of children with very great 
 power. Every time a child perceives that its 
 parents do things to please society, or refrain from 
 doing things through fear of society, he takes a 
 lesson from them in worldly servility ; and every 
 time he perceives that they do things because they 
 are right, or abstain from doing things because 
 
178 PARENTAL DUTY. 
 
 they are wrong, lie takes a lesson in Christian 
 freedom. 
 
 It is no uncommon thing for a child to be more 
 severely scolded or punished for offending against 
 manners than against morals. The parent is mor- 
 tified and angry at the rudeness or awkwardness 
 of a child, but only moderately sorry if he lies. 
 The child soon learns to look upon rudeness as a 
 greater offence than lying, and acts accordingly. 
 In very little children lying is sometimes even 
 laughed at as being very funny, or as showing 
 great brightness. As the child grows older, and 
 becomes confirmed in the habit, the parents begin 
 to wonder at his depravity, and finally set it down 
 as a general rule that all children are liars. Lying 
 is no doubt a fearfully common vice ; but so far as 
 my observation has gone, it is much more com- 
 mon with grown people than with children. The 
 difference between the true and the false is one of 
 the earliest distinctions a child can appreciate, and 
 the parent cannot be too careful in teaching him 
 to speak the truth, both by example and precept. 
 If a child finds that his parents are faithful in 
 keeping their promises to him, and that they never 
 deceive him in any way, he will respect the truth 
 in them; and if he sees that falsehood always 
 
PARENTAL DUTY. 179 
 
 grieves and troubles them, he will be sure to avoid 
 it. He should be taught that it is a sin against 
 God to tell a lie, and therefore an act to be very 
 sorry for. If parents are angry or violent towards 
 a child, they destroy their moral power over him, 
 and he looks upon what he has done as merely an 
 offence against them. If they are impressed with 
 a true feeling of reverence for God's law, they will 
 not be angry when their child offends against it, 
 but sorry ; and their sorrow will awaken a true 
 feeling of penitence in the child, which will make 
 him strive to abstain from a repetition of his 
 offence, with far more earnestness than could have 
 been induced by any degree of anger or severity. 
 Violence in the parent wakens only fear towards 
 the parent, while it is fear of the sin that can 
 alone regenerate the child's heart Fear towards 
 the parent will lead him to hide his wrong doings ; 
 but fear towards sin will lead him to put it away. 
 He cannot be too early taught to feel the nearness 
 of Ins Heavenly Father, and the impossibility of 
 hiding anything from Him. Parents must, how- 
 ever, beware that their own lives show that they 
 feel all that they teach ; for if children find a nicer 
 morality is expected from them than their parents 
 practise in their own persons, they will soon see 
 
180 PARENTAL DUTY. 
 
 through and despise the hypocrisy. If you would 
 make your child reverent, and obedient, and truth- 
 ful, you must make your own life the exemplifica- 
 tion of your teachings. You have no right to 
 expect your child to be better than yourself; but 
 if he should be, — for a child much oftener rises 
 above his education than sinks below it, — you 
 must remember that his respect for you must 
 diminish in proportion as his virtue increases. 
 
SIMPLE PLEASURES. 
 
" We must sow the seeds, and tend the growth, if we would en- 
 joy the flower." 
 
 " If happiness is the rarest of blessings, it is because the recep- 
 tion of it is the rarest of virtues." — Souvestre. 
 
XV. 
 
 SIMPLE PLEASURES. 
 
 [MONG the very small number of plants that 
 has formed my winter garden are two rose- 
 bushes, a Safrano and a Giant of Battles ; the 
 one the saffron yellow that we see occasionally in 
 the sky at sunset, and the other so richly red that 
 it reminds me of Herbert's stanza : 
 
 " Sweet rose ! whose hue, angry and brave, 
 Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye : 
 Thy root is ever in its grave ; — 
 
 And thou must die." 
 
 The plants are small, and have given me only 
 one or two blossoms at a time ; but I have found 
 so much pleasure in watching them, from the time 
 the bud first formed until the petals unfolded their 
 perfected beauty, that I have been drawn to think 
 a good deal of the many pleasures with which this 
 world abounds, and which we neglect to enjoy. 
 (183) 
 
184 SIMPLE PLEASURES. 
 
 We look at a fine hot-house full of flowers and 
 think how delightful it must be to own such a 
 place ; and possibly, instead of enjoying its beauty 
 heartily, as we would that of a fine prospect, or a 
 glorious sky, that thought of possession embitters 
 our heart, and we turn moodily away, wondering 
 why God is so much more indulgent to our neigh- 
 bor than He is to us. 
 
 Now it is my conviction that the enjoyment of 
 possessions does not increase in proportion to their 
 number and magnitude. It does not seem to me 
 that persons who keep gardeners to take care of 
 their plants gain as much actual enjoyment from 
 them as I gain from mine, of which I take the en- 
 tire care myself. It is not the having things in 
 our possession merely that enables us to enjoy 
 them, but it is the way our affections are developed 
 by their means. There is, to be sure, the base- 
 born pleasure of shining in the eyes of our neigh- 
 bors, which may be gotten through fine houses, fine 
 clothes, fine gardens, or any possession we may 
 have ; but such pleasure is not happiness, and does 
 not involve the true enjoyment of anything that 
 we possess. If we are vain of anything we have, 
 it is no longer that thing which gives us pleasure, 
 
SIMPLE PLEASURES. 185 
 
 but only the admiration excited by it in our neigh- 
 bors. 
 
 The true enjoyment of anything which helps to 
 make us happy, is based upon the adaptation of 
 that thing to the wants of our own minds, and is 
 entirely independent of anything our neighbor may 
 think about it. 
 
 The use of pleasure is to rest and recreate the 
 mind, and our enjoyment of it is in exact propor- 
 tion to the rest and recreation we get from it. 
 One person may be surrounded by the greatest 
 variety of luxuries, in houses, gardens, and 
 grounds, of his own possession, and yet not get 
 so much enjoyment and recreation from them as 
 another will from strolling among simple scenes of 
 nature, and contemplating earth and sky as God's 
 glorious handiwork. When we give ourselves 
 heartily up to the enjoyment of anything which, 
 like the ocean, the sky, or a vast landscape, by 
 its very nature precludes all thought of posses- 
 sion, we are lifted into a far higher enjoyment than 
 when we can say, " How much I wish this was 
 mine ! " and if we cast all feelings of envy out 
 from our hearts, we can enjoy the possessions of 
 our neighbors as much as if they were our own. 
 Vanity of our own possessions, and envy at those 
 
186 SIMPLE PLEASURES. 
 
 of our neighbor, are different expressions of the 
 same vice. A man who is rich and vain, would 
 be envious if he were poor ; and the poor man who 
 is envious will be sure to become vain if he become 
 rich. With both it is the opinion of the neighbor 
 that constitutes the value of all that is possessed. 
 
 Domestic happiness depends in a very great de- 
 gree on the enjoyment that is derived from simple 
 pleasures. If a mother devote herself entirely to 
 work, she cannot make an attractive home for her 
 husband and children, any farther than the wants 
 of the body are concerned. A boy will like to 
 come home at meal times, and to sleep, if his 
 mother supplies him with good bed and board ; 
 but if that is all she prepares for him, he will seek 
 entertainment in the streets at other hours, and 
 each year of his life will find him less able to en- 
 joy the innocent pleasures that belong to a happy 
 home. A girl who sees her mother so devoted to 
 household care that she allows herself no time for 
 anything else, learns to look upon domestic duty 
 as mere drudgery, and avoids it as far as she pos- 
 sibly can. 
 
 There is nothing children wish for so much as 
 sympathy, and this can be given without interfer- 
 ing with any domestic avocation. There is noth- 
 
SIMPLE PLEASURES. 187 
 
 ing in sewing, or cooking, or washing, or ironing, 
 that need absorb the thoughts so that a mother 
 cannot talk to a child, or listen to its story-books, 
 while she is engaged in them. I have observed 
 that women who thus keep their sympathies open 
 to their children do not grow nervous, and prema- 
 turely old, like those who fix their minds entirely 
 upon the work that engages their hands, and who 
 have only impatient words to give their children 
 when they try to talk with them while they are at 
 work. 
 
 There is nothing in the recollections of my own 
 childhood that I look back upon with so much 
 pleasure as the reading aloud my books to my 
 mother. She was then a woman of many cares, 
 and in the habit of engaging in every variety of 
 household work. Whatever she might be doing 
 in kitchen, or dairy, or parlor, she was always 
 ready to listen to me, and to explain whatever I 
 did not understand. There was always with her 
 an under-current of thought about other things, 
 mingling with all her domestic duties, lightening and 
 modifying them, but never leading her to neglect 
 them, or to perform them imperfectly. I believe 
 it is to this trait of her character that she owes the 
 elasticity and ready social sympathy that still ani- 
 
188 SIMPLE PLEASURES. 
 
 mates her under the weight of almost four-score 
 years. How much I owe to the care and sym- 
 pathy she gave to my childish years, I cannot 
 measure. 
 
 I am induced to speak of my own personal ex- 
 perience on this point because mothers not unfre- 
 quently deny that they can talk and work at the 
 same time ; and find in their various needful oc- 
 cupations a ready excuse for giving their children 
 short answers, and keeping them away from their 
 presence as much as possible. My purpose is to 
 recommend nothing as a duty that I have not seen 
 practised with success, and which I am not sure is 
 entirely within the power of every parent who is 
 willing to perform the duties belonging to that 
 holy office. 
 
 But I have wandered very far away from the 
 roses whence I set out, and which I intended to 
 have made the leading text of my discourse. 
 
 The love of flowers is almost universal among 
 children. The baby in its cradle stretches its tiny 
 fingers eagerly after them, and the older child 
 passes many of its happiest hours in seeking for 
 wild-flowers. We always enjoy those posses- 
 sions most which we have done something our- 
 selves in order to obtain ; and children at a very 
 
SIMPLE PLEASURES. 189 
 
 early age find not only an interesting, but a very 
 valuable amusement in cultivating plants. 
 
 Our Heavenly Father gives the most valuable 
 and the most beautiful of his gifts to us with an 
 abounding liberality : light and air and water for 
 the body, the glories of earth and sky for the soul ; 
 the sky sown with stars, shining for every one of 
 his children ; earth sown with flowers, blooming 
 freely for all. 
 
 One of the purest of all the simple pleasures 
 that go to make up domestic happiness, is the cul- 
 ture of flowers. They come within the means of 
 every one. If you have a garden you can soon 
 fill it with beautiful plants brought from the woods 
 and fields, with no expense but the pleasure of col- 
 lecting them. If you live in a city, and in the 
 winter, whether in city or country, a few cents 
 will give you a plant that will be a source of enjoy- 
 ment to you for months ; and a few shillings will 
 fill your window with them. Raising plants your- 
 self, either from seeds or slips, is very easy ; and 
 the process will be full of interest for your children. 
 This interest may be greatly increased if you will 
 get some simple work on Botany and read it with 
 your children. Gray's " How Plants Grow," is 
 the best book for this purpose that has ever been 
 
190 SIMPLE PLEASURES. 
 
 published, and simple as a child's talk. If the 
 subject be new to you you will very probably find 
 yourself desiring to know more about plants after 
 you have made yourself acquainted with this 
 charming little book ; and if so, you will find the 
 larger works by the same author full of interest. 
 If you wish to understand how to manage your 
 plants skilfully, Mrs. Loudon's "Ladies' Com- 
 panion to the Flower-Garden " will probably an- 
 swer every question you will wish to ask. 
 
 You will soon find that plants are not mere 
 playthings ; mere sources of amusement ; but a 
 cheering presence in your solitude, a manifold re- 
 source for pleasure and instruction with your chil- 
 dren ; and in watching the various stages of their 
 growth, and the varying care they require, you 
 will gain valuable suggestions for the mental as 
 well as, physical training of yourself no less than 
 of your children . The development of thought and 
 affection in the mind is so curiously analogous to 
 vegetable growth, that plants are an endless source 
 of instruction ; and the more we learn from them, 
 the more our perceptions are quickened for new 
 discoveries. A window full of plants has more 
 material for thought in it than one who has not 
 tried it can possibly imagine. It is all healthy 
 
SIMPLE PLEASURES. 191 
 
 thought, too, unless the mind is very perverse or 
 morbid ; and throws a grace about the matter-of- 
 fact cares of daily life, which, without some re- 
 creative resource, are apt to make mind and body 
 grow old before their time. 
 
 There is one common mistake to be avoided in 
 the selection of plants for house culture ; and that 
 is o-ettin^ too manv. and taking them too indis- 
 criminately. A few nice plants will afford you 
 much more pleasure than many indifferent ones. 
 Do not have more than you can accommodate 
 without inconvenience, and take thoroughly good 
 care of without their becoming troublesome. The 
 attempt to possess too much of any thing dimin- 
 ishes our enjoyment of it even more than the hav- 
 ing less than we could conveniently use. The true 
 enjoyment of anything depends upon its adaptation 
 to our tastes, and the amount of mental recreation 
 and development we get from it ; and not upon its 
 quantity, or its value in the estimation of the 
 world. 
 
FILIAL AND PARENTAL LOVE. 
 
^« < >fr»»— 
 
 "Call no man your father upon the earth: for one is your 
 Father, which is in heaven."— Words of the Lord. 
 
 <SSIZZ22? 
 
XVI. 
 
 FILIAL AND PARENTAL LOVE, 
 
 (jfefj^HAT the relationship existing, between pa- 
 llid rent and child, as implying one ruling and 
 the other ruled, belongs wholly to our temporal 
 state, is a truth that must become apparent so 
 soon as we reflect upon the eternal relation exist- 
 ing between every human being and the Heavenly 
 Father. In the future life parent and child will 
 doubtless seek each other and love each other, 
 with an affection growing out of the love that 
 bound them together here; but in the heavens, 
 where all exist forever in the prime and perfection 
 of adult life, a relationship, the essence of which 
 is the result of difference in age, must naturally 
 be lost, and those who were parents and children 
 here must there become brothers and sisters, all 
 filial and parental feeling being forgotten in a 
 (195) 
 
196 FILIAL AND PARENTAL LOVE. 
 
 universal and childlike adoration of the one only 
 Father. 
 
 Parents should bear this truth in mind, that it 
 may modify the control they exercise over their 
 children from the very beginning of their lives. 
 Children should be controlled in order, that they 
 may learn to control themselves ; guided, that 
 they may learn to guide themselves. The parent 
 should teach the child to feel that in obeying him 
 he obeys the law of God ; and as the child advan- 
 ces in years, he should be taught to seek in God's 
 law for the guidance and control that he found in 
 his parents at an earlier age. 
 
 Pride and love of dominion in the heart of the 
 parent often make it very hard to give up parental 
 authority, even after children become men and 
 women ; but the happiest, because the most heav- 
 enly, domestic relations can only be established 
 where the filial and parental affections are gradu- 
 ally merged into a brotherly and sisterly love, no 
 one seeking to command another, but all seeking 
 to obey the Heavenly Father. 
 
 The ease with which parents control their chil- 
 dren depends upon the degree in which they control 
 themselves. A parent who is petulant, or irrita- 
 ble, or passionate, never can control a child with- 
 
FILIAL AXD PARENTAL LOVE. 197 
 
 out a contest, because the child is never sure that 
 he shall be obliged to obey if he resist. Petulance 
 and ill-temper are childish weapons ; and parents 
 who make use of them put themselves on a level 
 with their children, and have no true authority 
 over them. Self-control is a weapon a child can- 
 not use, and the parent who is armed with it is 
 sure of an easy victory. 
 
 Self-control is not always a virtue, because it 
 may be the result of pride of character. When 
 this is the case, the parent may exercise a perfect 
 control over the child, but his power will be evil, 
 because he will endeavor to be as a god in his 
 own house, and instead of lifting the minds of his 
 children to the worship of the Heavenly Father, 
 he will try to fix them upon himself with an idol- 
 atrous reverence. Parents who take pride in the 
 obedience of their children never wish to give 
 up their power over them, and they sometimes 
 induce a pride of filial feeling in their children 
 that leads them to continue their obedience so 
 long as they live in this world. This is very 
 wrong on both sides ; for the parent asks* and the 
 child gives, what of right belongs to the Lord. 
 Every adult person is responsible in the first and 
 highest degree to the Lord, and breaks the first 
 
198 FILIAL AND PARENTAL LOVE. 
 
 and greatest Commandment if he suffer his sense of 
 right and wrong to be controlled by any human 
 being. Idol worship cannot cease to be a sin, 
 even though the idol be a parent. 
 
 More frequently pride of dominion in the parent, 
 though it may control the child in early life, rouses 
 opposition as he becomes older ; and the most 
 painful discord is the result of the attempt of the 
 parent to retain what no longer of right belongs 
 to him. Parents who are unwilling to acknowl- 
 edge that their children are men and women when 
 they become so, and who endeavor to keep from 
 them the liberty wherewith the Lord makes all his 
 children free, have no true conception of the pa- 
 rental office ; and in striving to retain that which 
 does not belong to them, they lose the affectionate 
 respect which they might always enjoy, if they 
 would but love their children as free human beings 
 and not as property ; as belonging not to them 
 but to the Lord. Parents who are governed by 
 pride and the love of dominion are apt to deceive 
 themselves into the belief that their love for their 
 children is truly parental ; and if their children op- 
 pose them as they grow older, they feel themselves 
 deeply wronged, and often become full of resent- 
 ment towards them. The Scriptures tell us a 
 
FILIAL AKD PARENTAL LOYE. 199 
 
 mother may forget her child, but that the Lord 
 will never forget us ; and the indulgence of pride, 
 and the love of rule, which is very sure to accom- 
 pany pride, render a mother peculiarly liable to 
 forget her maternal love. They only are true 
 parents who cannot feel anger and resentment to- 
 wards their children. 
 
 It is a very noticeable fact that a parent almost 
 never turns away from a child who leads a bad 
 life, a life of opposition to the law of God. When 
 we hear that a parent has turned from his child, 
 forgotten his parental feeling, we are almost sure 
 to hear that the child has thwarted the parent's 
 will. If he had opposed only the will of his 
 Heavenly Father, his earthly father could have 
 forgiven him ; but opposition to his own will is an 
 offence not to be overlooked. 
 
 I am inclined to believe that we may lay it down 
 as an axiom, that it is never religious principle, 
 but always pride, that holds dominion in a pa-' 
 rent's heart when he turns away from his child. 
 
 To those in whom filial and parental affection 
 are very strong, it may be a painful thought that 
 these will be changed into friendship in the world 
 to come ; although there need be no diminution 
 of the tenderness of affection on either side. 
 
200 FILIAL AND PARENTAL LOYE. 
 
 When, however, faith is changed to sight, we can 
 now but faintly imagine the fulness of filial devo- 
 tion with which we shall turn to the Lord. 
 Herein must be infinite scope for the exercise 
 of all that part of our nature that craves parental 
 support ; that delights to look up and worship ; 
 that seeks a returning love that cannot grow cold 
 or forgetful. For those too who find their great- 
 est happiness in the exercise of parental care, there 
 will be an endless joy afforded by the multitudes 
 of little children daily and hourly passing away 
 from earth, and ascending to the heavenly man- 
 sions. These are all to be trained step by step in 
 the other life as here, only with a certainty of per- 
 fect training there that cannot be insured here. 
 Every child who passes away from this world, as 
 it leaves its mother's arms, is received "by angels 
 who are of the female sex, who in the life of the 
 body tenderly loved infants, and at the same time 
 loved God," and who are of a character precisely 
 adapted to meet the wants of these children 
 of their adoption, and to educate them into angelic 
 life. Thus parental love will find an endless field 
 for exercise, and will live on through the coming 
 ages ; for heaven can never become full, and earth 
 
FILIAL AND PARENTAL LOVE, 201 
 
 never cease to swell the tide of life that flows on- 
 ward from time to eternity. 
 
 If parents would but awake to a distinct con- 
 viction that the children born to them are not 
 absolutely their own, but only intrusted to them 
 by the Lord, in order that they may receive their 
 first lessons in an education that, if rightly begun 
 here, will go on unfolding and expanding through 
 all eternity into a heavenly life, the progress 
 of which will never end, it seems to me that they 
 would feel an irresistible incentive to strive to the 
 utmost of their ability to bring up their children 
 rightly, and to seek from the Lord the instruction 
 which He alone can give to guide them in their 
 endeavors. 
 
 There is an appalling ignorance and misconcep- 
 tion of Scripture, and want of faith in the efficacy 
 of prayer, in a large proportion of this so-called 
 Christian community, that make Christian life an 
 impossibility; and without this there can be no 
 true education, no leading out of those higher 
 faculties of man which lift him above the brute. 
 
 In order to educate your children, you must 
 first be educated yourself; and you should exam- 
 ine yourself to ascertain how well you are pre- 
 pared for your office of teacher. You may train 
 
202 FILIAL AND PARENTAL LOVE. 
 
 them into all worldly wisdom by means of the in- 
 struction the world will give you; but if you 
 believe in a future life, and that there is a connec- 
 tion between that and the present, you must feel 
 desirous that your children should be prepared to 
 enter upon it with a reasonable hope of happiness. 
 The world can give you no information in regard 
 to a preparation for heaven. It can teach you to 
 lay up all manner of earthly treasure, but it is 
 dumb when you interrogate it concerning heavenly 
 things. 
 
 God and the Bible are the only sources whence 
 positive truth can come to humanity; and they 
 only are truly educated who have learned how to 
 obtain the truth from these sources. It will not 
 do to confine the reading of Scripture to Sunday, 
 or to days when you have leisure. It must be 
 daily food to you if you would have a symmetrical 
 growth to your spiritual nature. The soul de- 
 pends on daily food as much as the body, in order 
 to become healthy and strong. You cannot com- 
 prehend the Scriptures if you only read them now 
 and then. They yield their wisdom only to those 
 who seek to make them the daily law of their 
 lives, and who come to them reverently and pray- 
 
FILIAL, AND PARENTAL LOYE. 203 
 
 erfully, believing them to be the veritable Word 
 of God. 
 
 More directly still we may obtain heavenly 
 truth from the Heavenly Father himself, in an- 
 swer to our prayers, if we will pray to Him as 
 children pray, believing that He is our personal 
 friend, ready to help us through every doubt and 
 emergency, to strengthen us in all weakness and 
 trial, to give unto us whatever we ask in devout 
 faith. 
 
 God's Word and prayer to Him are as needful 
 to one who would lead a Christian life, as the 
 compass and the observations of the heavenly 
 bodies are to the mariner. We should all con- 
 demn the folly of a shipmaster, who let his vessel 
 sail on without daily observations of his latitude 
 and longitude ; but if we begin a day without 
 looking for aid to our Heavenly Father, we drift 
 through our affairs just as foolishly. Rocks and 
 quicksands are all about us, and we are liable to 
 mistakes at every moment. Unless the spiritual 
 sun is shining into our souls we are walking in 
 darkness, and we have no reason to expect to re- 
 ceive its light unless we open our hearts to it by 
 prayer. We must ask before we receive; we 
 
204 FILIAL AND PARENTAL LOVE, 
 
 must seek before we Shall find ; we must knock 
 before the heavenly door will be opened to us. 
 
 I suppose there is no duty in life more difficult 
 to perform rightly than the training of children, 
 and no parent has any right to hope for success 
 unless he uses every means that the Divine Provi- 
 dence affords. The Lord tells us: "I am the 
 light of the world : he that followeth me shall not 
 walk in darkness, but shall have the light of life." 
 There is no light for the soul but that which Com- 
 eth from Him ; but unless the soul turns itself to- 
 wards Him it cannot receive His light, though it 
 shines perpetually with abounding fulness. It 
 forces itself upon no one, and we cannot perceive 
 it until we feel that we are wandering in darkness, 
 and voluntarily seek after it. No day is wisely 
 begun that does not begin with prayer, and when 
 moments come throughout the day in which we 
 are perplexed with doubt as to which way our 
 duty lies, or troubled with temptation to do that 
 which is wrong, or to refrain from doing that 
 which is right, momentary aspiration heavenward 
 will instruct us, and strengthen us better than all 
 that the world or our own souls can tell us. 
 Could we but remember this at all times we might 
 lead heavenly lives while yet dwelling upon earth ; 
 
FILIAL AXD PARENTAL LOYE. 205 
 
 but the world and our own self-love too often 
 blind our eyes to heavenly visions, stop our ears 
 to heavenly voices, and make us forget their exist- 
 ence when we stand most in need of their aid. 
 Through them alone our spiritual natures can be- 
 come educated, and through them alone can we 
 learn how to meet the daily exigencies that arise 
 in the training of children. The ear of the Lord 
 is ever open to our questionings. Let us strive 
 not to forget to ask of Him all that we need. 
 
DISAPPOINTMENTS. 
 
K^N3 / 3/S@\§ v e^>^ 
 
 "Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; who passing 
 through the valley of misery maketh of it a well. ,, — Psalms of 
 David. 
 
 Q^5> 
 
xvn. 
 
 DISAPPOINTMENTS. 
 
 1THERT0 I have said little of the disap- 
 RjHj pointments of a garden, yet they are not 
 unfrequent, scattered among its many pleasures. 
 The frosts of winter and the droughts of summer 
 are often fatal to plants ; while their roots, stalks, 
 leaves, and blossoms, each have their peculiar 
 enemies among the worm and insect tribes ; some- 
 times working insidiously beneath the ground or 
 within the bark, and sometimes infesting leaf and 
 blossom with their disgusting forms, which are 
 rendered the more revolting by the beauty of the 
 objects they destroy. Sometimes plants perish 
 without any apparent cause, perhaps from some 
 natural defect in themselves that incapacitates them 
 from being nourished into a healthy growth. Then 
 too our own ignorance or indolence, carelessness or 
 14 (209) 
 
210 DISAPPOINTMENTS. 
 
 forgetfulness, often stand in the way of our suc- 
 cess in the garden, as in all other departments of 
 life. 
 
 Were it not for this liability to disappointment 
 the garden would offer but a very imperfect cor- 
 respondence to human life ; for there uncertainty 
 hangs over all things. Many, and indeed most 
 disappointments in life, as well as in the garden, 
 are the direct consequence of our own shortcomings 
 in the fulfilment of our duties ; but there are others 
 which come from causes we cannot foresee nor 
 control, which the natural man hates as the work 
 of chance ; but before which the spiritual man 
 bows in humble submission, for the voice within 
 his soul says: "Be still, and know that I am 
 God." 
 
 When we fail in our endeavors we should be 
 careful to ascertain if some neglect of our own is 
 not the cause of what we suffer. In our unwil- 
 lingness to criminate ourselves, we may call that a 
 dispensation of Providence which is the direct 
 result of our own misconduct ; and unless we 
 acknowledge this honestly, we shall be liable to a 
 life of disappointment. It is generally quite easy 
 for us to understand why our neighbor does not 
 succeed in his undertakings ; and if we would but 
 
DISAPPOINTMENTS . 211 
 
 silence the pratings of self-love, we might as 
 easily comprehend our own failures. 
 
 If we procure roots and seeds, and place them 
 m our gardens without knowing anything of the 
 habits of the plants that are to come from them, 
 we must look forward to probable failure in their 
 growth ; yet it is no uncommon thing to see men 
 and women, in the daily walks of life, setting causes 
 at work with just as little regard to consequences ; 
 as it were sowing seeds at random, and then com- 
 plaining that things do not come up right ; — sow- 
 ing dog-wood and ivy, and wondering that they 
 will come up poisonous ; scattering the seeds of all 
 manner of ill-named plants, and then complaining 
 that their ground is full of weeds. 
 
 Ignorance is one reason for all this, but it is not 
 an excuse ; because we have no right to work 
 ignorantly. Want of thought is another reason ; 
 but neither have we a right to be thoughtless. 
 
 An unsuccessful life sometimes appears to be 
 the result of mental incompetency ; but if we look 
 a little closer we are pretty sure to find that this 
 incompetency is moral, and that a better morality 
 would have obviated it. Pride, vanity, self-indul- 
 gence, ignorance, thoughtlessness, and indolence 
 are the immoralities that are perpetually bringing 
 
212 DISAPPOINTMENTS . 
 
 failure to the endeavors of those who are their 
 slaves ; and it is seldom we can find failure apart 
 from one or another of them. 
 
 When disappointment comes to us, do not let 
 us fold our hands and call it a dark Providence 
 until we have catechised our own hearts honestly 
 with such questions as these : — 
 
 Did vanity induce me to attempt something I 
 might have known was beyond my ability to reach ? 
 Did pride make me .unwilling to do all that I 
 should to attain my purpose, or prevent me from 
 seeking information from others as to the means 
 of attaining it? Did self-indulgence lead me to 
 spend extravagantly the property or the time that 
 should have been used in my business, or indolence 
 prevent my making a due application of it ? Did 
 the desire of shining in the eyes of my neighbors 
 lead me to live beyond my income, and incur 
 debts that I had no reason to expect I should be 
 able to pay ? 
 
 It is not often that failure in endeavors after 
 worldly success comes to us if we can answer all 
 questions involving our own fault in the negative. 
 In fact, failure in social life, with no moral cause 
 by which it may be accounted for, is as rare as 
 failure in gardening with no apparent physical 
 
DISAPPOINTMENTS . 213 
 
 cause. If we choose a situation in a good soil, 
 and plant and cultivate with such knowledge as we 
 may readily attain if we will, we can hardly fail to 
 have a fine garden ; and even a poor soil may with 
 patience and skilful industry be made to produce 
 some kinds of plants and fruits quite worth the 
 pains. So in all positions of life, if we will but 
 work with determined industry, and spend with 
 conscientious economy, it must be some extra- 
 ordinary cause that prevents our success ; and if 
 we fail for a while, we are almost sure to succeed 
 at last. 
 
 In speaking of spending with conscientious 
 economy, I do not wish to be understood as mean- 
 ing spending money alone. Strength both of 
 mind and body, eye-sight, and every pow r er and 
 means of effort and of use that we possess, we 
 may squander uselessly, or in vain and impatient 
 endeavors after too speedy a success. Health and 
 strength of body and of mind are the two choicest 
 gifts we can inherit, and if w^e waste them we are 
 more foolish and more reprehensible than they who 
 throw away external wealth ; because that may be 
 regained, while impaired faculties can never be 
 restored to their original vigor. Moreover, the 
 waste of any power or means, even though it be 
 
214 BIS APPOINTMENTS . 
 
 recovered, involves a waste of time that can never 
 be recovered. Time lost is lost forever, and the 
 greatness of the loss is something we cannot 
 measure. The gifts of God are many and various, 
 and happy are we if we use them, whatever they 
 may be, remembering that they are His gifts ; and 
 that whether we have one talent or ten intrusted 
 to our keeping, we are alike responsible to Him, 
 each in our proportion, for the manner in which 
 we employ them. 
 
 To meet disappointments, that come to us we 
 know not from what cause, or to what end, with a 
 serene faith in the wisdom and love of our Hea- 
 venly Father, is one of our most important, and 
 often one of our most difficult duties. Human 
 pride wishes to understand all things, and to sub- 
 due all things to its will ; and when it finds itself 
 entangled and overcome in a web of circumstance 
 that it can neither comprehend nor control, it is 
 wounded to its inmost depths, and feels itself un- 
 kindly and unjustly dealt by. 
 
 While we are successful in our undertakings, 
 and all goes well with us, we are apt to be con- 
 tent with ourselves, and to suppose we are leading 
 very good lives, and we offer our thanksgivings 
 and prayers to heaven in a joyful spirit, running, 
 
DIS APPOINTMENTS . 215 
 
 as it were, to meet the Lord, like the young man 
 who had great possessions. The Lord looks upon 
 us with a clearer vision than our own, and sees 
 that we lack that love for Him which would make 
 us feel that all we have is His and not our own, 
 and He tells us this by taking from us some- 
 thing we highly prize ; wealth or health, child or 
 friend. Instead of perceiving and worshipping the 
 Infinite Mercy, we turn away sorrowing, for we 
 had deemed our possessions our own ; and pride 
 so blinds our eyes that we are incapable of seeing 
 why we should be called upon to give them up. 
 
 The implicit obedience which a wise parent re- 
 quires of a young child, is the counterpart of the 
 submission which we owe to our Heavenly Father. 
 Spiritually we are but children so long as we re- 
 main in this world. We are often as unable to 
 comprehend why our Heavenly Father denies our 
 wishes, as a baby is why his mother will not suffer 
 him to put his hands into the pretty flame of the 
 lamp he grasps after so eagerly. Painful experi- 
 ence soon teaches the child that wisdom and love 
 came between him and his desires ; and so we, if 
 we make any advances in spiritual growth, can 
 look back and comprehend many things which 
 were quite dark to us when they took place. 
 
216 DIS APPOINTMENTS . 
 
 Discipline is always painful to us while we are 
 suffering it, just in proportion as it is needful to 
 us ; and it is not until we have reached a plane 
 above it that we can fully comprehend it. The 
 early growth of every good principle planted in 
 the soul is dark and secret, like the sprouting of 
 seed in the earth, and it is only He who plants 
 who knows what should come of it. If we submit 
 ourselves in faithful love to the culture of the 
 Heavenly Gardener, we shall gradually discover 
 the result of His work in the development of traits 
 of character that will be a perpetual source of 
 peace and joy to us. 
 
 A child who has been brought up by religious 
 parents in the habit of implicit obedience, has re- 
 ceived from them the best possible preparation for 
 meeting the disappointments of life with calm and 
 patient trust in the parental providence of God ; 
 and this is the surest foundation on which human 
 happiness can be built. We sometimes hear 
 parents say that they will indulge their children in 
 everything they can, because care and disappoint- 
 ment will come fast enough as they grow up ; but 
 such indulgence in early life makes care and dis- 
 appointment doubly hard to bear when they come. 
 A child whose wilfulness and selfishness and in- 
 
DIS APPOINTMENTS . 217 
 
 dolence are indulged is never happy in child- 
 hood ; and when he grows up and finds his plans 
 and wishes thwarted by a power he cannot with- 
 stand, and whose wisdom and mercy he is incom- 
 petent to comprehend, he "kicks against the 
 pricks" in impotent rage or despair, having no 
 staff to support him under the chastisement of the 
 Divine rod. Trusting obedience to the earthly 
 parent is a germ that naturally and easily unfolds 
 and expands into an obedient and loving faith in 
 the Heavenly Parent ; and that is the only never- 
 failing support in the hour of trial and disappoint- 
 ment. 
 
DROUGHT. 
 
" My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as 
 the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the 
 showers upon the grass." — Deuteronomy. 
 
 ~*J£/fi>- 
 
xvm. 
 
 DROUGHT. 
 
 IING the past spring our neighborhood 
 suffered from a drought of such severity as 
 occurs not more than once in a long series of years. 
 The air was so dry and parched that it could not 
 give its usual refreshment to the lungs, and the 
 earth lacked moisture to feed the roots of the 
 vegetable world. 
 
 My garden, instead of luring me out in the 
 pleasant days of April, as it has done in previous 
 years, repelled me by its aridness ; and I found so 
 little pleasure in doing what seemed absolutely 
 essential for its preservation, that it was difficult 
 for me to remember that hitherto all I had done 
 there had been a labor of love. 
 
 Such seasons, though poor in what we love to 
 seek after, are rich in instruction ; and though 
 (221) 
 
222 DROUGHT. 
 
 natural fruits may be denied us, spiritual ones are 
 always to be found. 
 
 A period of drought in the natural world cor- 
 responds to the periods in our spiritual experience 
 when we lack heavenly truth to support the wants 
 of the soul ; when our spiritual bodies are parched 
 and feverish, and we have not strength to bear the 
 heat of the Divine Love. The Divine Love shines 
 always upon us, just as the sun shines always 
 upon the earth ; but unless its heat is tempered by 
 clouds and rain it becomes distressing, and seems 
 baneful rather than beneficent. 
 
 The soul that has made little or no progress in 
 the regenerate life cannot feel that the Divine 
 Providence is always full of tenderness and mercy 
 in its dealings with mankind. It writhes under 
 the bereavements and disappointments of life, like 
 an infant undergoing some surgical operation when 
 it is -too young to have any comprehension of its 
 necessity. The parents look on and weep at the 
 suffering of the child, but pray the surgeon to go 
 on in spite of its cries ; for they can understand 
 that some future good is to follow, so essential to 
 the child's health or life that the present pain is 
 not to be weighed against it for a moment. So 
 the angels, if they are aware of our mental suffer- 
 
DROUGHT. 223 
 
 ing under the knife of the Divine Surgeon, would 
 not ask him to stay His hand ; for they would 
 perceive the disease from which he was striving to 
 deliver us, and would beg us to yield ourselves 
 confidingly to His efforts in our behalf, that we 
 might be made whole. 
 
 The water and the mineral substances which 
 plants take up through their roots out of the earth, 
 correspond to natural truth and goodness. The 
 light and heat which come down to them from the 
 sun, correspond to spiritual truth and goodness. 
 These four aliments, in due proportion, are all 
 essential to the complete development of the plant ; 
 and if either becomes excessive, or is diminished, 
 so as to lose its proportion with the rest, the plant 
 suffers, and perhaps dies. 
 
 The human soul is just as dependent for its 
 regenerate life and growth upon natural and spir- 
 itual goodness and truth as the plant is upon the 
 varieties of sustenance it derives from earth and 
 sky. 
 
 Natural truth and goodness guide and support 
 us in all the duties of life that relate to natural 
 things. They make us faithful in the performance 
 of all that relates to the professions, trades, and 
 daily external duties of every kind that belong to 
 
224 DROUGHT. 
 
 life in this world. Spiritual truth and goodness 
 guide and support us in the duties that belong to 
 the internal life, bringing the thoughts and affec- 
 tions into harmony with the Divine Law, so that 
 we not only do our duty, but love to do it; 
 because we feel that inasmuch as we are faithful in 
 the performance of all the daily charities of life 
 towards our fellow-beings, we are doing them unto 
 the Lord, and so coming day by day nearer to 
 Him. 
 
 A plant may grow quite rankly into foliage 
 under a clouded sky, sustained by a much larger 
 proportion of water and of minerals than of light 
 and heat ; but in order to produce blossoms and 
 fruits, which is the essential object of a plant, 
 light and heat must come from above in due 
 proportion to the nutriment its roots suck up from 
 below ; while, at the same time, the plant never 
 requires so large a quantity of what it draws from 
 the earth as when it is lifting its crowning graces 
 of flowers and fruits towards heaven. Herein* is 
 involved a very important correspondence, teaching 
 a truth but little understood in the world at large. 
 
 It is quite a common idea that spiritual life lifts 
 us out of and above material and natural life; 
 instead of which, the more spiritualized we become, 
 
DROUGHT. 225 
 
 the better we appreciate the value of the natural 
 life, and the more faithful we become in the dis- 
 charge of our material duties. A human being 
 can no more rise above the duties of the natural 
 life than a plant can rise above drawing up nutri- 
 ment through its roots. One who tries to lead a 
 spiritual life apart from the world, and without 
 recognizing the social duties, is like a cut flower in 
 a vase of water, which, though it may retain its 
 beauty for many days, can never perfect its fruit. 
 
 Whenever the dispensations of Providence are 
 contrary to our wishes, and we are not able to 
 comprehend them, we suffer spiritual drought. 
 The love of our Heavenly Father is invariable ; 
 and He is constantly doing all that He can, with- 
 out infringing upon our liberty, to draw us to 
 Himself. We are not always able to receive the 
 dispensations of His love, because we have not 
 truth enough in our minds to comprehend that it 
 is love. So long as the desires of our hearts are 
 satisfied, we feel that His love is blessing us, and 
 we rejoice in the warmth of the Heavenly Sun ; 
 but when His love denies us our desires, and 
 bereaves us of our possessions, if we cannot per- 
 ceive the wisdom and mercy of the dispensation, 
 we no longer feel that the heavenly sun sheds a 
 
 15 
 
226 DROUGHT. 
 
 grateful warmth upon us, for it seems like a 
 " consuming fire." Then the soul is parched with 
 drought, and its good affections and true thoughts 
 languish and wither; but they do not perish 
 entirely if we have any remains of genuine faith in 
 the Lord within our souls. Such remnants of 
 faith are like the moisture stored up in the earth, 
 which is made to rise by the heat of the soil when 
 it is parched in the sunshine. The more care- 
 fully the soil of the garden is cultivated during a 
 drought the easier it is for the heat of the sun to 
 penetrate it, and to bring the hidden moisture 
 upward to the roots of the plants. So when we 
 are most severely tried by spiritual drought we 
 suffer much less if we go on doing our duty 
 faithfully in all the external details of life, and 
 weed out evil affections and irreverent thoughts as 
 they spring up, and threaten to choke the better 
 growth of the mind. If we neglect our duties, 
 our hearts become hardened so that the rays of 
 the Divine Love cannot penetrate them, and the 
 roots of our good affections find no moisture to 
 feed upon. Then, too, the more carefully we 
 keep our hearts tender by striving to do our duty 
 towards every one around us, the better prepared 
 we shall be to receive fresh supplies of the Divine 
 
DROUGHT, 227 
 
 Truth ; just as a soil mellowed by constant culture 
 drinks in the falling rain readily, while it is shed 
 off if the soil has been suffered to lie baking in the 
 sun till a hard crust is formed upon it. Selfish 
 repining, that dwells morbidly upon its own griefs, 
 neglecting, or forgetting, to open its heart towards 
 the neighbor in the daily charities of life, forms 
 just such a hardened crust about the soul, impene- 
 trable to the Divine Truth that strives to bless it 
 by telling it what it should do to be saved. 
 
 There is no form in which water falls from 
 heaven to earth which is not used in the Scriptures 
 to illustrate the coming down of Heavenly Doctrine 
 to the soul. It " comes down like rain upon the 
 mown grass ; as showers that water the earth." 
 It comes in ' ' a plentiful rain to confirm the 
 inheritance of the Lord when it is weary." It 
 44 distils as the dew" and drops " as the small rain 
 upon the tender herb." "As the rain cometh 
 down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth 
 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." 
 
 Varying as the states of the human beings to 
 whom it is addressed, it modifies itself to our 
 
228 DROUGHT. 
 
 necessities, not waiting for us to seek it, but 
 striving ever to approach in some form that we 
 may be willing to open our hearts and receive 
 when it stands and knocks at our door. How 
 mean and pitiful is the pride of man when we 
 compare it with the infinite humility of the Lord. 
 We never sink so low that His love does not 
 follow us. We never make our hearts so hard 
 that His truth does not strive to penetrate them. 
 Even when frost-bound, in the very winter of 
 faithlessness, His truth falls about us like the 
 snow, and waits till the influence of some good 
 affection softens our hearts with its spring-like 
 warmth; and then, gently dissolving, it sinks into 
 the soil, making it " bring forth and bud, that it 
 may give seed to the sower and bread to the 
 eater." 
 
 While we remain in this world we must not 
 expect to arrive at a spiritual perfection that will 
 carry us beyond the changes of state that cor- 
 respond to the different seasons of the year, with 
 their variations of heat and cold, drought and 
 moisture. Human progress is never steadily 
 upward, never unwaveringly onward, towards the 
 heavenly goal. The loves of self and of the world 
 
DROUGHT. 229 
 
 never die out entirely even in the best ; and so 
 often as we yield to their allurements we forget 
 the Lord and the neighbor, thinking only how we 
 may follow out the devices of our own hearts. 
 But we can never find peace or rest w^hile we are 
 thus led astray, unless pride and selfishness be- 
 come so entirely dominant in our souls as to 
 suffocate our capacity for distinguishing between 
 right and wrong, truth and falsehood. The image 
 and likeness of God into which the spiritual body 
 of the human race was originally created, though 
 defaced and broken in our fallen natures, still 
 mourns and laments within us, asserting its claim 
 to be restored to its integrity ; and we can never 
 escape from its complaints unless we banish every 
 heavenly aspiration from our souls. Accordingly 
 as we resist or yield ourselves to these aspirations 
 our pilgrimage is through drought, and coldness, 
 and sterility, or through softly-falling rain, and 
 grateful sunshine, and fertile fields. 
 
 As the manner in which the earth inclines itself 
 towards the sun, and the condition of its garment 
 of atmosphere, decide in what form moisture shall 
 fall upon its surface, so our states and spheres 
 decide whether the Divine Truth shall be presented 
 
230 JDEOUGHT. 
 
 to us with a harshness corresponding to hail, or 
 snow, or tempest, or whether it shall come like 
 the gentle dew or the softly-falling rain. Happy 
 are we if we recognize and accept it when it 
 comes 5 be its form or its medium what it may ! 
 
INSECTS AND WORMS. 
 
— **««<>#»*— 
 
 Noxious insects and worms are to the garden what sensuous 
 falsities are to the spiritual life : small and unimportant as they 
 may seem, they are possessed of a fearful power to destroy. 
 
 <^22£ 
 
XIX. 
 
 INSECTS AND WORMS. 
 
 ||9|I/HEEE are no disappointments connected 
 l^llli w ^h g ar den culture that are more hard to 
 bear than those which we suffer through the depre- 
 dations of insects and of worms. We often ob- 
 serve some thrifty young plant wilting without any 
 apparent cause. If we touch it it falls into the 
 hand, and we find that it has been cut off just be- 
 low the surface of the earth ; and on opening the 
 earth we find a large white worm who has done the 
 mischief. Many seedlings are devoured by insects 
 as soon as their leaves are formed, and others suf- 
 fer in foliage and flowers at a later period. In- 
 sects so small that one can hardly imagine them 
 capable of doing much harm, yet come in such 
 numbers as to prove a pest over a whole garden. 
 The more highly we cultivate, the more varied and 
 numerous these enemies become, and the choicest 
 (233) 
 
234 INSECTS AND WORMS. 
 
 flowers and the most delicate fruits are those which 
 are most attractive to them. To conquer them re- 
 quires unwearying watchfulness and perseverance, 
 and some of them can hardly be overcome even by 
 these. 
 
 Repulsive and annoying as these creatures are, 
 they have a lesson for us which we shall do well to 
 learn and lay to heart ; for, like all other creatures, 
 they exist because they correspond to things with- 
 in us, and we should struggle to cast these out 
 with far more earnestness than we strive to banish 
 insects from our gardens. 
 
 All winged creatures correspond to thoughts or 
 perceptions ; and, unwilling as we may be to be- 
 lieve it, we all of us have thoughts which are re- 
 presented for our instruction in the disgusting 
 insect no less than in the beautifully painted butter- 
 fly or the graceful bird. 
 
 The flight of birds and insects corresponds to 
 the movement of our thoughts ; and we may 
 readily perceive many illustrations of this as we 
 watch the motions of the common frequenters of 
 our gardens. 
 
 There are birds of long and rapid flight, like 
 those swift thoughts that sweep the universe and 
 scan the whole creation. Birds of strong and 
 
INSECTS AXD WORMS; 235 
 
 heavy flight, like thoughts that build up arguments, 
 and wall themselves around what we accept as 
 truth. Birds rapid and combative, flying like the 
 thoughts that contend in argument, and often tor- 
 ment the stouter enemy although they may not 
 overcome him. Birds such as the friendly robin, 
 so tame as to be almost domestic, flying but short 
 distances , and remaining near the same spot all the 
 year around, hibernating in hollow trees and snug 
 corners, resembling the thoughts that belong to our 
 domestic duties and daily cares ; quiet, unexciting 
 thoughts, that build up our homes by forming 
 the domestic virtues. And there are birds that 
 scale the atmosphere, singing as they rise, until 
 they pass beyond human sight and hearing, like 
 the adoring thoughts that contemplate the Divine 
 perfections. 
 
 Wings correspond to spiritual truths. They are 
 the powers by which birds and insects lift them- 
 selves upward, just as spiritual truths lift up our 
 thoughts towards heaven. 
 
 All things can be perverted, and we are prone 
 to turn to evil that which was created good. Our 
 thoughts do not always move on wings of spiritual 
 truth. Too often we make to ourselves wings of 
 falsehood, and it seems to us that they give us 
 
236 INSECTS AND WORMS. 
 
 power to rise with a bolder and freer flight than 
 the others. Not that we acknowledge to ourselves 
 that they are of falsehood ; but that we, through 
 looking to ourselves instead of to the Lord, as the 
 source whence we may draw the truth, distort and 
 pervert it, or else lose ourselves in total error. 
 When we try to see by our own light, we lose the 
 power of seeing by the light which cometh down 
 from heaven, and flutter hither and thither with 
 uncertain flight, having no sun to direct our course. 
 Then our thoughts correspond to unclean birds and 
 noxious insects, and worms which are insects in 
 their rudimentary states ; and they devour the 
 truths we may hold in our memories, perverting 
 them into their own forms, just as those creatures 
 consume and fatten upon the produce of our gar- 
 dens. If the mind becomes wholly immersed in 
 falsities it is like a region overspread with locusts, 
 that leave neither fruit, flower, nor foliage unde- 
 stroyed. 
 
 We sometimes hear a spiritual truth that we re- 
 ceive with satisfaction, and it takes root and grows 
 like a healthy plant ; but perhaps it is an incon- 
 venient truth that lies in the way of the gratifica- 
 tion of some selfish desire hidden within our hearts 
 so deeply that we are hardly aware of its existence. 
 
INSECTS AND WORMS. 237 
 
 Every evil desire is married to a lie that is ready 
 to assert, so often as we will listen, that its mate 
 is good, and that we are fools if we will not in- 
 dulge it. If we listen long this lie will bite off the 
 root of the opposing truth, and it will wilt away 
 and die, and an evil weed of falsehood will pres- 
 ently flourish in its place. 
 
 It is a noteworthy fact, that worms do not eat 
 up weeds. The hand of the gardener must re- 
 move them. Things poisonous and things useless 
 flourish freely; but things which serve for food 
 and for the delight of the eyes the worm is always 
 waiting to devour. 
 
 The slug which has been introduced to our gar- 
 dens upon the perpetual roses, is an excessively 
 destructive enemy, often making that disgusting 
 which would otherwise be the most beautiful of all 
 our flowering plants. So society in its most re- 
 fined state is probably most full of all manner of 
 falsehoods, making for itself a code of convention- 
 alisms which it puts in place of all moral and re- 
 ligious law, till it is as bare of spiritual truth as a 
 rose-bed is bare of greenness when the slug has 
 been left to work out its will. In spite of this de- 
 struction to the leaves, the roses bloom for several 
 seasons, though the life of the plant is eventually 
 
238 INSECTS AND WORMS. 
 
 overcome by it ; and in this we may see a corres- 
 pondence to those persons who make themselves 
 attractive in society by the grace and elegance of 
 their manners, but in whom all the truths that are 
 stored up in childhood, or which are presented to 
 them from time to time in later life, are destroyed 
 by the sensuous falsities of fashion, that perpetu- 
 ally put that which belongs only to the externals 
 of life, above that which must remain with us for- 
 ever. 
 
 The rose-bugs that devour the blossoms but do 
 not touch the leaves, may be compared to those 
 falsities which destroy all that is graceful in life, 
 basing all ideas of wisdom on a bare and frigid 
 utilitarianism. The utilitarian has no idea of good 
 beyond material wealth ministering to the physical 
 wants of humanity ; and his whole plan of culture, 
 intellectual and moral, is based on a desire for the 
 attainment of happiness in this world. All that 
 leads to purely moral or intellectual happiness, 
 apart from material possession, is to him futile 
 and visionary. Flowers have no place in his gar- 
 den, and the fig-tree should be his favorite plant, 
 because it bears fruit without apparently blossom- 
 ing. To him it must be an unintelligible mystery 
 that the All- Wise has created so many plants that 
 
INSECTS AND WORMS. 239 
 
 finish their work, so far as we are concerned, when 
 they expand their flowers. To be sure, the seeds 
 of such plants may feed a great many birds ; but 
 then most birds are as useless as flowers. 
 
 We are apt to feel that refinement and culture 
 must be inherently good, and that persons sur- 
 rounded by ^Jegance and luxury are shielded from 
 temptation to evil far more than those who dwell 
 amid poverty and ignorance. Yet in truth no 
 class of human beings are in greater danger of 
 putting truth for falsehood and falsehood for truth, 
 than those who dwell at ease amid the luxuries of 
 wealth. The senses are so constar+ly ministered to 
 in the refined life of the present day, that it requires 
 no small amount of determination to avoid becoming 
 completely enslaved by them. The eye and ear, 
 the touch and taste and smell, are all pampered to 
 the utmost by the luxurious appointments of 
 modern civilization, till their wants often become 
 paramount to all others, and a refined sensualism 
 becomes the highest good to which the soul aspires. 
 Out of this sensualism a whole code of laws is 
 evolved, upon which the morality of society is 
 based, without regard to the absolute and eternal 
 laws of right and wrong, which have been sent 
 down from heaven for our guidance. The falsities 
 
240 INSECTS AND WORMS. 
 
 of this code, like the slugs in our rose-beds, cling 
 upon every thought of the mind, destroying all 
 truth, till nothing but bare forms without life re- 
 main. The skeletons, in the shape of leaves, but 
 incapable of performing any of their functions, 
 that deface the beauty of our gardens, are no more 
 useless to the plant than the semblances of truth 
 are to the mind, which cling about it when it has 
 become enslaved to the senses. 
 
 Sap rises in a plant in a crude state, and is of no 
 use until it passes into the leaves, and becomes 
 elaborated there into something that can nourish 
 vegetable growth, and perfect the fruit ; just as in 
 the bodies of animals the blood must be elaborated 
 in the lungs before it can nourish the system. 
 Truth is to the mind what blood is to the body, or 
 sap to the plant ; but it must go through a process 
 of elaboration by rational thought in the under- 
 standing, before it can promote the mind's growth. 
 The understanding is to the mind what the 
 lungs are to the body, or the foliage to plants. 
 If the understanding is filled with falsities the 
 truth cannot abide there, but is driven out or per- 
 verted, so that the mind can gain no healthful 
 growth. Our highly cultivated gardens breed 
 worms and insects no faster than the fastidious re- 
 
INSECTS AND WORMS. 241 
 
 finement and luxurious self-indulgences of elegant 
 society breed falsities ; and spiritual life is nowhere 
 in greater danger than where the appliances of 
 material life are most abounding. 
 
 These sensuous falsities will tell us that refine- 
 ment of feeling is commensurate with refinement of 
 external life ; that persons who live poorly think and 
 feel coarsely, and are incapable of refined enjoy- 
 ment or of tender affection ; and if we believe all 
 this, our hearts will be closed against the sufferings 
 of the larger part of our fellow beings, and we 
 shall be indulgent to ourselves and indifferent to 
 them, just in proportion to the degree of faith we 
 give to this falsehood. Again, the fallacies of the 
 senses may tell us that refinement of feeling is al- 
 ways accompanied by refinement of manner, and 
 may lead us to a fastidiousness of culture in this 
 direction that will shut out from our sympathies 
 all who, from ignorance or carelessness, do not 
 submit themselves to the same laws of courtesy, 
 or elegance, or etiquette, which we choose to adopt 
 as our standard. Refined society often condemns 
 awkwardness of manner or bluntness of remark, 
 as greater sins than impurity of life, and refuses 
 its favors to those on whom fashion does not set its 
 seal. Christian truth enlarges the heart and 
 
 1G 
 
242 INSECTS AND WORMS. 
 
 widens the sympathies, while worldly fallacies 
 make the heart that feeds upon them narrower and 
 colder day by day. 
 
 Sensualism is not, however, confined to refined 
 society, any more than worms and insects are con- 
 fined to flower-gardens. I have dwelt upon it 
 there, because, to many persons, it does not seem 
 to occur that there may be just as much of it in 
 elegance as there is in coarseness ; and because it 
 seems to me that self-asserting fastidiousness of 
 manner and conversation rarely has any other 
 foundation than sensualism. Christian charity 
 pervading the character gives to it a genuine re- 
 finement that always respects the rights of others, 
 and never puts forth its own claim to homage or 
 observation. The fastidiousness of sensualism 
 loves to display its fancied superiority by self- 
 assertion, and by criticisms upon others ; and this 
 often in a way so unfeeling, as to show a total want 
 of that genuine Christian refinement that never- 
 inflicts a wanton wound. Fastidiousness in man- 
 ners, like spiritual pride in morals, draws all its 
 life from the love of self and of the world ; while 
 true refinement, like true morality, is the outward 
 form of love to the neighbor, purified and in- 
 structed by love to the Lord. It is very easy for 
 
IXSECTS AXD WORMS. 243 
 
 every one to perceive that a drunkard or a glutton 
 is given up to sensualism ; but this vice in its re- 
 finement is not so apparent as in its coarseness. 
 The one is, however, no less fatal to spiritual growth 
 than the other. We may lead what the world 
 calls a faultless life, and yet be wholly immersed 
 in sensualism. We may have what the world calls 
 perfect taste in art, in literature, in manners, and 
 yet never have a thought or feeling that rises above 
 the plane of sensualism. 
 
 The sensualism of poverty has but few ways of 
 showing itself, and so is manifested with a violence 
 that shocks us at once by its coarseness. Every 
 advance we make towards wealth opens new modes 
 of sensual enjoyment to us, and thus diminishes 
 the apparent strength of our sensualism, by spread- 
 ing it over a Avider surface. We are disgusted as 
 we meet a poor creature in the street, reeking with 
 tobacco and spirits, and are full of wonder that he 
 will spend so much of his earnings in such coarse 
 indulgence of his senses ; and yet perhaps the 
 power of spreading a luxurious table for ourselves 
 is all that saves us from just such coarseness, and 
 we are perhaps as extravagant in this as he whom 
 we condemn. ^ So fast as we become possessed of 
 the means, we almost all of us lavish all that we 
 
244 INSECTS AND WORMS. 
 
 can afford, and sometimes much more than we can 
 afford, on fine clothes, fine houses, fine furniture, 
 delicate food, pictures, statues, plate, horses and 
 carriages, and all for the gratification of the senses ; 
 and then we lift up our hands in horror at the 
 poor who indulge their senses in the only way 
 their means permit. And those who indulge 
 themselves most lavishly, are usually the loudest 
 in condemning the want of self-control in others. 
 
 There is nothing wrong in loving beautiful 
 things, or in seeking to possess them, for the senses 
 were given us for enjoyment as well as for instruc- 
 tion. The sin lies in making enjoyment first, and 
 paramount to, the instruction and the use ; and per- 
 haps even in forgetting everything but enjoyment ; 
 resting, like the brutes that perish, in the now, 
 without thinking of the hereafter, which must be 
 the result of the now. 
 
 So far as the enjoyments of luxury make us in- 
 different to our duties as human beings, account- 
 able to our Heavenly Father for the use we make 
 of His beneficence, we are resting in the sensual- 
 ism of luxury. So far as the possession of luxury 
 inflates our pride and vanity, we extinguish our 
 intellectual and moral perceptions, .and measure 
 all things by a sensual standard. The things 
 
INSECTS AXD WORMS. 245 
 
 which we perceive through the means of our senses 
 are intended to form a basis upon which the things 
 of intellectual and moral perception are to be 
 built up. If we rest contentedly on the' plane of 
 development which belongs to the senses, we in- 
 vert the order of our being, putting the intellectual 
 and the moral below the sensual ; for we always 
 make that which is least developed in our minds 
 subservient to that which is more so. 
 
 Whenever our love for music, for art, or for 
 luxury in any of its forms, overpowers our judg- 
 ment or our morality, making us extravagant in 
 acquisition, or selfish in enjoyment, it is because 
 our love is sensuous, and we are becoming enslaved 
 by the lusts of the eye or the ear, or by the pride 
 of life. Purified from what is selfish and worldly, 
 the enjoyments that come to us through the senses 
 lead us upward to the highest spirituality. Not 
 by destroying the senses, but by regenerating them, 
 are we to be reformed into the Divine image. 
 
 Some insects lay their eggs in the heart of the 
 blossoms of fruit-bearing trees, and as the fruit 
 grows the worm hatches, and eats its way into the 
 outer world through the food that surrounds it. 
 The more delicate fruits are entirely destroyed by 
 this means ; but apples and pears thus infested 
 
246 INSECTS AND WORMS. 
 
 ripen by some morbid process sooner than they 
 otherwise would, and drop from the tree, giving 
 ns what we call windfalls. These, though inferior 
 in quality to those which remain their proper time 
 upon the tree, serve us usefully until we can get 
 that which is better. Fruits correspond to good 
 works ; blossoms, to the the aspirations of the 
 mind when it has received the truth, and is de- 
 siring to bring it out into good works. The worm 
 that is born in the blossom represents a falsity that 
 comes into the mind in connection with a truth, 
 sometimes stimulating it to good works from bad 
 motives. 
 
 We seldom act from entirely true or entirely 
 false principles. The true and the false sometimes 
 struggle within us for the mastery, and sometimes 
 act so harmoniously that we are not aware, unless 
 we examine our hearts very carefully, that we are 
 actuated by anything but the truth. Pride and 
 vanity and selfishness are worms continually com- 
 ing to life within the better aspirations of the mind, 
 and stimulating it to an activity that makes us 
 eager to do seemingly good works ; works wherein 
 zeal runs before knowledge, and consequences are 
 disregarded as unworthy of consideration. Such 
 works are but windfalls of the mind, and not its 
 
INSECTS AND WORMS. 247 
 
 ripened fruits. The works which are done from 
 love to the neighbor, founded upon love to the 
 Lord, are like fair, full-grown fruits, ripened duly 
 by sun and shower. Works seemingly good, but 
 which derive their impulse wholly or in part from 
 the love of self and of the world, are like fruits 
 full of gnarls and imperfections, occasioned by the 
 secret enemy within, winding his crooked way 
 through the flesh, and producing premature falling 
 from the tree and speedy decay. 
 
 Whenever we are wrathful or regardless of con- 
 sequences in the doing of what we call good works, 
 we may be sure that the worm of self-love is at 
 work in our hearts, and that what we are calling 
 philanthropy, or charity, or any other good name, 
 is only a form of the love of doing our own will. 
 If we have an impetuous temper, which we ac- 
 knowledge should not be indulged indiscriminately, 
 we find perhaps great relief, and even a kind of 
 self-satisfaction, in indulging it in what we consider 
 a discriminating way, upon those who differ from 
 us in politics, in religion, or in matters of social 
 reform. We perhaps condemn our neighbor with 
 the utmost virulence on such grounds, calling 
 our intemperate wrath righteous indignation, or 
 holy hatred ; and do not seem to think we thereby 
 
248 INSECTS AND WORMS. 
 
 tarnish the purity of our philanthropy, our 
 patriotism, or our piety. The Almighty makes 
 even ' ' the wrath of man to praise Him ; " over- 
 ruling and restraining it till He can bend its effects 
 to His own wise and loving purposes ; but this 
 does not make our indulgence of it the less per- 
 nicious to our own souls. Offences must come, 
 but this does not diminish the woe to those by 
 whom they come. Philanthropy that measures the 
 depth of its love for its favorites by the violence of 
 its hatred towards the rest of society, has no better 
 foundation than the love of its own self-will ; and 
 religion that cannot believe there is any way of 
 salvation but the one in which itself walks, is based 
 upon a self-asserting spiritual pride. The wind- 
 fall works that are born of fanatical zeal, are dis- 
 credited in the great harvest of the ages, while the 
 ripened results that come from the calm self-control 
 of true piety and charity go on blessing the world 
 in ever-widening results from century to century. 
 We all know that the poor have claims upon us ; 
 but to aid the poor in such a way as will really 
 benefit them, requires time, and care, and thought. 
 Our indolence makes us unwilling to give these, 
 and tells us that it is better to aid nine worthless 
 objects than to let one worthy object go empty 
 
INSECTS AND WORMS. 249 
 
 away ; and we are thus often led to scatter our 
 means indiscriminately, without reflecting that each 
 unworthily bestowed alms takes from us just so 
 much power of worthy benefaction ; and that while 
 we pay premiums to vice, we cannot, by just so 
 much, do justice to virtue. This windfall charity 
 is better for us than to shut our hearts against the 
 calls of suffering, whether seeming or real ; but we 
 should not close our eyes to the fact that the worm of 
 indolence is preventing the ripening of a far better 
 fruit. A discriminating charity strengthens the 
 hands of the poor to help themselves, while the 
 indiscriminate giving of alms only makes the 
 poor poorer, by teaching them to look to others for 
 that which their own industry should provide. 
 
 In domestic life we are liable to fall into similar 
 errors, through an impatient zeal that others 
 should do what seems right in our eyes, or through 
 an indolence that leads us to indulge the vices 
 and foibles of those under our care or influence, 
 rather than to take the trouble to curb them in their 
 beginnings. A patience that is wise and yet 
 earnest, that hastens not and yet rests not, ripens 
 the domestic virtues into fulness of beauty, making 
 home the type of heaven ; but how seldom do we 
 
250 INSECTS AND WORMS. 
 
 see this ; how hard is it for us to do our part in 
 forming such a home. 
 
 We are at the best short-sighted and fallible 
 creatures, liable to err at every step ; and know- 
 ing this, we should walk humbly with our fellows, 
 not presuming to judge them as He who reads the 
 heart alone can. Let us keep our judgments for 
 our own works, and strive not to imagine them 
 fair and beautiful while they are limited by our in- 
 dolence, or sullied and alloyed by selfishness and 
 pride. Let us remember that there is an eternal 
 world, in which the worm dieth not ; and let us 
 hasten to cast it from us, and trample it under our 
 feet, while we abide in the world of things that can 
 be made to pass away. 
 
THE POWER 
 
 AND 
 
 USE OF CIRCUMSTANCE. 
 
^^\9 / 2/^@\S s e^»^ 
 
 " Every form changes to its own quality whacever flows into 
 
 it " — S WEDENBORG. 
 
 " Where the bee sucks honey the spider sucks poison." 
 
 Proverb. 
 
 QA3> 
 
XX. 
 
 THE POWER AND USE OF CIRCUMSTANCE . 
 
 fel^HE garden teaches us innumerable lessons 
 i^JSgf in its many forms of use and of beauty, 
 and varied as these forms are, even so varied are 
 the sermons they preach to those who willingly 
 and reverently seek for instruction. There is, 
 however, one great lesson which, though taught 
 by the whole creation, is expressed more emphati- 
 cally and more clearly in the garden than else- 
 where, because there, more than anywhere else, 
 a greater variety of forms is brought under the 
 influence of similar circumstances. This lesson is, 
 that circumstance has no power to create anything, 
 nor even any part of anything ; and that its power 
 of modifying things after they are created, is lim- 
 ited by the innate peculiarities of those things. 
 
 Cultivation develops latent powers and charac- 
 teristics in all things, but it gives them no new 
 (253) 
 
254 THE POWER AND USE 
 
 properties or parts. By enriching the juices of the 
 plant it changes a worthless into a delicious fruit ; 
 turns leaf-buds into flower-buds, thereby increas- 
 ing the quantity of fruit; and it may go still 
 farther, by developing stamens and pistils into 
 petals, till it destroys the fruit-producing power in 
 the blossom. All this is but development, not 
 creation. The plant-stems are full of latent leaf- 
 germs, which appropriate nourishment develops 
 into a branch, a leaf, or a blossom, which is but a 
 cluster of leaves ; for science teaches us that petal, 
 pistil, and stamen, each result from the same 
 kind of germ that produces a leaf, and that the dif- 
 ference in form and hue is the result of circum- 
 stance and not of innate peculiarity. 
 
 When we see how much may be done by cul- 
 ture in improving plants, we are liable to exagger- 
 ate our ideas of its power, and to feel as if it were 
 almost, if net quite, creative. Still we cannot, 
 through its means, change the absolute character- 
 istics of anything. No amount of culture over- 
 comes the poisonous qualities of a plant, and no 
 neglect can make an innocent plant poisonous. 
 Unless the germ of goodness was originally 
 formed in the plant, no labor of ours can develop 
 anything good ; and if its original germ was evil, 
 
OF CIRCUMSTANCE. 255 
 
 we labor in vain to subdue it except by total 
 destruction. 
 
 The human mind is as a garden, and its various 
 traits are as plants in a garden. We are born 
 with good traits and evil ones, and for these 
 inborn traits we are neither to be praised nor 
 blamed. We are no more responsible for them 
 than for the color of our hair or eyes. They come 
 to us by no will of our own, just as an inheritance 
 of property may come to us by legal right. Our 
 responsibility lies in the use that we make of our 
 inheritance, in the culture that we give to our 
 traits. Every one of these traits is as full of 
 thought-germs as a plant is of leaf-germs, and the 
 culture they receive decides whether they are to 
 remain latent, or be developed into leaf, flower, 
 fruit, or branch. 
 
 In our judgments of others we are apt to think 
 too little of the power of circumstance in the for- 
 mation of character ; but in our judgments of our- 
 selves we are almost sure to err on the opposite 
 side. We can see quite plainly how our neighbor 
 falls, but we cannot measure the influence that 
 nature, education, or circumstance has had to 
 strengthen his evil propensities, or to weaken his 
 power of self-control. With ourselves it is 
 
256 THE POWER AND USE 
 
 just the reverse. If we do wrong, we know 
 how hard it would have been to resist temptation ; 
 and we fly at once to circumstance, inborn propen- 
 sity, education, — anything that we can call to our 
 aid, — as a scape-goat, to carry the responsibility 
 for our sins away from us. Then we do not 
 know how many times our neighbor may have 
 resisted temptation where he has once fallen ; but 
 for ourselves we are ready to say, only this once 
 have I sinned, as though previous resistance to 
 temptation made present failure a venial thing. 
 
 The garden, though corresponding truly with 
 the mind of man, is, like all other things and 
 creatures that surround us in this world, separated 
 distinctly from man by being a fixed image, hav- 
 ing no voluntary principle by which it is able to 
 make itself better or worse. The plant is incapa- 
 ble of love or hate, and so cannot desire goodness 
 nor shun evil. The animal can only love its 
 own propensities, and hate all that is other than 
 itself, and is as powerless to change its own nature 
 as to alter the color of its skin. 
 
 All living things else love and seek only that 
 which feeds their own natural propensities. Man 
 alone can distinguish between good and evil, aside 
 from his own propensities. He alone can see 
 
OF CIRCUMSTANCE. 257 
 
 good and evil apart from himself; and, coming as 
 it were out from himself, can look at his own 
 characteristics as if he were another person, and 
 perceive what in himself is evil and should be sup- 
 pressed, and what is good and should be en- 
 couraged. 
 
 The natural traits of every human mind make 
 up its identity, and we can neither destroy an 
 original one nor create a new one. All that lies 
 in our power is to suppress the evil and to encour- 
 age the good. 
 
 We sometimes see a little child who is sur- 
 rounded by good influences at home seem pure as 
 an angel, and we perhaps suppose that he has no 
 evil propensities. The same child goes to school, 
 and soon seems like another creature, — wild, sel- 
 fish, and obstinate. Some will say he has been 
 taught all this by evil companions ; but the truth 
 is, that they have only brought out the latent 
 qualities of the child's mind. One may as well 
 guess at what lies in the bottom of an unfathomed 
 pool, as to suppose one knows the heart of a child 
 that has lived only in a refined and virtuous seclu- 
 sion. 
 
 So it is with all of us, so long as we live. We 
 may fancy ourselves pious and kind, if we live 
 
 17 
 
258 THE POWER AND USE 
 
 very much by ourselves ; but if we go out into the 
 world we are surprised to find how worldly and 
 selfish we are ; how irritable, and vain, and en- 
 vious, and ambitious ; how we love to criticise 
 others, and how offended we are at being criticised 
 in turn. The monk in his cloistered retirement, 
 the hermit in his solitary cell, may spend a life in 
 rigid and conscientious self-examination, and yet 
 never learn what manner of spirit they are of. 
 
 The world, through its temptations, brings out 
 our latent qualities, and shows us what we are. 
 Retirement lulls many of our qualities asleep, and 
 so hides us from ourselves. The world may take 
 such entire possession of us that we do not stop 
 to see what are the qualities it is developing in our 
 being; but he who truly desires to know what 
 lies within his heart, can hear what it tells him 
 even amid all the confusing voices with which the 
 world strives to drown its words. 
 
 In training a child, much time and strength are 
 often wasted in the attempt to change his identity. 
 Instead of trying to find out what his traits are, 
 and then cultivating, modifying,, or suppressing 
 them, according as they are good or evil, the 
 parent often tries to create traits, and to fashion 
 the child over, after some model in his own mind. 
 
OF CIRCUMSTANCE. 259 
 
 So in training one's self the same mistake is often 
 made. A model is set up in the mind to imitate, 
 instead of search being made within to see what 
 there is there already to be cultivated or rooted 
 out. 
 
 This striving to change the mind's identity is as 
 if a gardener should strive to change not the qual- 
 ity of a fruit, but the fruit itself; to make an 
 apple-tree bear peaches, or a blackberry bush bear 
 raspberries. True, grafting and budding accom- 
 plish something of this sort, but only between 
 plants of similar characteristics ; and the resulting 
 tree or branch is tender and short-lived in compar- 
 ison with a well-cultivated natural growth. 
 
 If our garden is a level surface, it is idle for us 
 to attempt the imitation of the picturesque beauty 
 of a neighbor's, which is gracefully undulating. 
 If our garden is high and dry, we had better not 
 plant water-lilies in it. We can, to be sure, scoop 
 out valleys and heap up hills, and make a tank 
 where the lilies will grow; but the same labor 
 spent in bringing out the natural capacities of the 
 soil would bring about a far more satisfactory 
 result. There is a kind of landscape gardening, 
 and an abundance of plants, adapted to every 
 locality ; and the true grace of nature is brought 
 
260 THE POWEE AND USE 
 
 out with a more pleasing effect where her original 
 capacities are consulted than where they are set 
 aside. 
 
 So in the human mind ; wise education is the 
 drawing out of the good which lies latent, not 
 the putting in of something foreign. Training 
 is the culture and modification of traits inborn, not 
 the striving to introduce new ones. 
 
 We may bring the plants of every zone to set 
 out in our garden, but those only of particular 
 latitudes can live and flourish there. We may 
 crowd our memories with the literature of all 
 times and nations, but only that which finds an 
 answering sympathy in our minds will make its 
 home with us. Once or twice in a century a mind 
 exists which seems to possess capacities so various 
 that it is capable of every kind of culture, as a 
 mountain in the torrid zone may furnish climate 
 and soil adapted to the wants of every plant the 
 earth produces. These are, however, so rare, 
 and so surprising when they appear, that they 
 prove themselves exceptions, and therefore are not 
 to be taken as standards or models. 
 
 Circumstance is seldom in our power, but the 
 freedom of our will gives us the ability to make a 
 good use even of the worst. Circumstance is our 
 
OF CIRCUMSTANCE. 261 
 
 great educator; the great power that leads out 
 the faculties of the mind by nurturing its good 
 and tempting its evil propensities. It does not 
 develop our characters so much by shaping as by 
 simply expanding what it finds within us. The 
 shaping of our faculties is, for the most part, 
 accomplished by our own choice and will, after cir- 
 cumstance has expanded them. The beneficent nu- 
 triment contained in the wheat is fed by the same 
 juices of the earth that give their virulence to the 
 night-shade and the ivy. The same social circle 
 nurtures charity, purity, and piety in one man, and 
 envy, malignity, and infidelity in another. The 
 plant is a unit without freedom. Man is a little 
 world with freedom. He is not, like the ivy, all 
 poison, or, like the wheat, all goodness. He is a 
 garden, stocked with many plants, good and evil, 
 and he can choose between them, which to culti- 
 vate and which to weed out, unless the evil 
 preponderates so as to make him morally an idiot, 
 in which case his responsibility ceases. 
 
 We cannot too early in life come to a fixed con- 
 viction that circumstance is just such an educator 
 as we choose to make of it. If we are indolent 
 and careless, it will rule us with the rod of a des- 
 pot, and bow us down to the very dust of the 
 
262 THE POWEft AND USE 
 
 earth, till we crawl there the slaves of its power. 
 If we are earnest of purpose, thoughtful to scan, 
 and industrious to use the opportunities it offers 
 us, we may walk erect in the full stature of the 
 children of the heavenly kingdom, upon the way 
 that leads to eternal life. 
 
 We are often surprised at the effect change of 
 circumstance produces upon our neighbors, bring- 
 ing out traits we had not before discovered, or 
 stimulating traits we had before thought unimpor- 
 tant, till they overshadow the whole character. 
 Sometimes our friends disturb us by sinking below 
 the estimate we had formed of them; and some- 
 times they delight us by rising above what we had 
 anticipated of them, under the pressure of adver- 
 sity or the stimulus of prosperity. Looking into 
 our own hearts we find similar causes of surprise, 
 both joyful and sorrowful ; for probably no person 
 was ever placed in new circumstances without 
 finding himself thereby affected in some way that 
 he would never have anticipated. Yet we are all 
 prone to think we know how we should feel if 
 placed where others stand, and are ready to ex- 
 claim : "If I were rich as this man, how much 
 more generous I would be, and how much less 
 ostentatious;" or, "If I were celebrated as that 
 
OF CIRCUMSTANCE. 263 
 
 man, how much more magnanimous I would be 
 towards my rivals, and how much more kind to 
 aspirants who sought my aid." Imperfectly as we 
 may use our own limited possessions, we can with 
 the utmost ease decide how wisely we should act 
 if more largely endowed, or how much better use 
 we could make of a talent very much smaller than 
 that with which we have been intrusted. We can 
 measure the true relations of anybody's position 
 easier than our own. Self-love perpetually finds 
 some peculiarity in our own standpoint that pre- 
 vents us from applying the same rules to ourselves 
 that we use for others. Temptation is very easy 
 to resist while we only imagine what its power 
 may be ; and the practice of every virtue almost 
 a matter of course as its beauty is revealed before 
 the mind's eye. Yet which of us has a mental 
 garden wherein an unexpected stirring of the soil 
 does not bring the seeds of evil plants near enough 
 the surface to cause them to germinate, and soon 
 to come to a mischievous growth, unless we are 
 ever on the alert to tear them up so soon as they 
 appear. Nothing but the most prayerful watch- 
 fulness can save us from falling, if not just as our 
 neighbors do, in ways just as evil. Every soil has 
 scattered through it the seeds of the most divers 
 
264 THE POWER AND USE 
 
 plants, and so fast as they are brought near the 
 surface by culture or accident, they are ever ready 
 to spring into life. Just so in our mental gardens, 
 we can never know what germs of good or evil 
 lie hid beneath the surface, till the varied discip- 
 line of life develops them. 
 
 During the ages that have rolled by since the 
 creation of the earth, the soil has been gradually 
 accumulating, and burying within itself every 
 variety of vegetable seed. Wherever the under 
 soil is brought to the surface by agriculture it is 
 soon sprouting with vegetation. Even the soil 
 that is thrown out from the depths of mines and 
 of Artesian wells is often found to be full of these 
 germs of vegetable life. In like manner the hu- 
 man mind is compacted from the minds of all its 
 ancestors. We inherit the traits of hundreds of 
 generations ; and not only during this life, but 
 during the life of eternity, these traits will be 
 brought to light, unfolding successively as circum- 
 stances favor their development. 
 
 In unmingled prosperity the mind may lie like 
 a natural meadow, where rich turf is overshadowed 
 by stately trees, and nothing unseemly interrupts 
 the Arcadian picture. The Divine Providence, 
 through the discipline of toil, and the common 
 
OF CIRCUMSTANCE.' 265 
 
 vicissitudes to which life is subject, breaks up this 
 natural turf as with a ploughshare, and goodly- 
 seed is planted ; but there springs up with it the 
 seed hidden underneath the turf, and as much care 
 and toil is required to destroy the weeds as to cul- 
 tivate the useful plants. 
 
 Sometimes events come to us like earthquakes, 
 rending the soil, subverting its whole form, and 
 bringing to the light of day things so deeply hid- 
 den, that their existence had never before been 
 suspected. Latent wealth of capacity may appear 
 like masses of virgin gold, or less noble metal 
 that with greater effort may be wrought, like iron, 
 to the most useful purposes. And, on the con- 
 trary, such a convulsion may cover the before fair 
 face of nature with barren sand. 
 
 It is for us to bear in mind that it is in our 
 own power to lay up treasures of truth and wis- 
 dom that will be ready to do us good service when 
 the earthquakes come. The mind that has only 
 poverty within its depths is such by its own indo- 
 lence and indifference. There is abundant treas- 
 ure offered us by the Heavenly Father, if we will 
 but gather it in. No mind, however finely en- 
 dowed, has wealth sufficient unto itself; and must 
 
266 THE POWER AND USE 
 
 sooner or later become bankrupt, if it strive to 
 live upon its own riches, without drawing new 
 supplies from the infinite treasury. The Divine 
 Goodness and Truth are ever coming down to us 
 through the Scriptures, through the workings 
 of Providence in nature and in history, and 
 through the personal experience of every indivi- 
 dual mind. Blessed are the eyes that see and the 
 ears that hear. We must look and listen if we 
 would receive of the Divine beneficence ; for full to 
 overflowing as it is, our perceptions may be so 
 obscured as to be inaccessible to its influx. As 
 the ivy sucks poison from every variety of soil, so 
 the perverted mind finds food to nourish and in- 
 flame its evil passions in every fountain of truth 
 that the Heavenly Father causes to flow for our 
 benefit. That which is a limpid well-spring of 
 sweet and refreshing water to him who seeks 
 heavenly support, is insipidity or bitterness to him 
 who seeks only the excitement that comes from 
 selfish indulgence or worldly applause. The 
 Heavenly Physician stands ever ready to heal us 
 of the infirmities that incapacitate us for the enjoy- 
 ment of spiritual life ; but whatever we receive 
 from Him must be in accordance with our faith in 
 
OF CIRCUMSTANCE. 267 
 
 His power and our love for His person. Those 
 who approach Him only as a good master, and 
 relying in the riches of their own good works, will 
 be disappointed in His replies now as when He was 
 on earth ; but those who worship Him as their 
 Lord and God, now as then, will find their infir- 
 mities healed and their sins forgiven. 
 
 The test of this healing and this forgiveness 
 must be found in the lives we lead, and in the 
 relations we hold to those who are round about us. 
 All that we receive with the heartfelt acknowledg- 
 ment that it is a heavenly gift, we shall be willing 
 to share with others. The more clearly we per- 
 ceive that the Lord is our Father, the more ready 
 we shall be to acknowledge the common brother- 
 hood of humanity, and so to give with the same 
 freedom that we receive. Then we shall compre- 
 hend how small a part of the virtue of charity lies 
 in almsgiving ; and though we may be as poor in 
 worldly wealth as the disciples, we shall, like 
 them, hear the command addressed to us, " Freely 
 ye have received; freely give." We shall learn 
 that we may compel a goodly harvest out of 
 whatever soil may have been intrusted to our 
 cultivation; and we shall be convinced that if 
 
268 THE POWER AND USE OF CIRCUMSTANCE. 
 
 the gardens of our own hearts are warmed with 
 Heavenly Love, and watered with Heavenly Truth, 
 they will tolerate within then* bounds only such 
 products as spring from, and at the same time 
 nourish, love to God and to the neighbor. 
 
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