Twilight and Dawn; Or, Simple Talks on the Six Days of Creation

by Caroline Pridham

THE THIRD DAY.

THE GREEN EARTH.

"The earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof."—PSALM xxiv. 1.

"Thou visitest the earth, and waterest it:… Thou preparest them corn, when Thou hast so provided for it."—PSALM lxv. 9.

"Every tree is known by his own fruit."—LUKE vi. 44.

I want you to read carefully verses 11, 12, 13, and then 29 and 30, of our chapter in Genesis; for in them God has told us of His work upon the THIRD DAY of Creation, when at His word the earth—no longer waste and bare, as when it came up from beneath the waters—was clothed in garments of beauty; "dressed in living green," as the hymn says.

I remember that when we began our morning lesson about the THIRD DAY, we noticed that God caused the earth, which had no life in itself, to bring forth that which was alive; for every green thing which grows upon the surface of the earth, no matter how tiny it may be, is quite different from those rocks which form its crust, about which we have been learning. Rocks and stones are without life, but every blade of grass which you tread under your feet, every blossom which scents the breeze, is alive.

We had a good deal of talk about this, for life is a very wonderful thing; one of those "secret things" which belong to God, and which no one has ever been able to understand. But though we cannot know what this wonderful secret is, we can understand how great a difference there is between living things and those which have never had any life in them. If you were to take a pebble and hide it in the earth, you might water it every day, and the sun might shine upon it, while you waited and waited till you were quite old; but no change would come to the pebble, If you dug for it you would find it a pebble still.

But with a plant, how different! See how those weeds in your garden grow. You may cut them down, or bury them underground—do anything indeed except pull them up by the roots—and still they will force their way through the soil which you pressed down so tightly over them; their leaves will push themselves up into the light and air, and their roots will strike deep into the earth, for every bit of them is alive; as the "Song of the Crocus" says—

"My leaves shall run up, and my root shall run down,
While the bud in my bosom is swelling."

Long ago, when I was a child, I saw a field covered with beautiful white things, smooth and rounded like the top of an egg, which seemed to rise here and there from the grass. They grew out of the ground, but yet they did not look like any flowers I had ever seen. I was told that the pretty white things were mushrooms, and that I might gather as many as I could in my pinafore, and take them home for breakfast.

You may fancy how delightful it was to search about in the dewy grass, every minute finding a mushroom finer and whiter than the rest; but what puzzled me was the wonder of it—how had they all come there?

They had grown up in the night, I was told, while I had been asleep in my bed; and I knew it must be so, for I had been in that field only the evening before, and had seen nothing there but the sheep, eating the grass and daisies.

The thought of these beautiful white things growing up so quietly in the night-time, when no one could see them, was very wonderful to me, and I only wished that I might stay up all the next night in that field, and see them come, and find out how they grew: I was sure I could keep awake all night!

But since then I have learnt that there are many, many things about which we grown people, as well as you children, may ask questions, and say, "How do they come?" and there is no answer ready for us except that old wise answer—God has made them to be.

I daresay you may have a little garden of your own. Did you ever, in spring-time, make a hole in the soft brown earth, and drop into it a little black round seed? Perhaps last March you put in a good many sweet peas, and then covered each one up in its earthy bed, and left them. People told you not to forget to take care of your garden, and so you often watered the place where the seeds lay hidden, and at last you saw something very tiny, but fresh and green and full of life, where only the dark brown earth had been the day before. You clapped your hands for pleasure, and ran to tell everybody: "My sweet peas are coming up!" You see you can tell when the seeds are growing, but you cannot tell how they grow; you can water the ground where they are lying hidden from your sight, but when you have done all you know how to do, you must still leave them to God's care; for He alone can make those little dark balls spring up and grow, and blossom in sweetness and beauty.

What wonderful thing it was that went on underground so quietly, while you were asleep or at play, neither you nor I can tell; and this dead-like seed coming to life and springing up into beauty is only one of the many things which go on in this world all around us, seen and known only by God, who says of the seed of His word, sown by His servants—not in the ground, but in the hearts of people—that it is He who "giveth the increase."

We speak of vegetable life as well as of animal life, for I am sure you have not forgotten that plants breathe through their leaves—they drink in water by their roots, and some plants even show that they are sensitive to touch by shrinking if anything comes in contact with them; but how a daisy, with its hardy little stem and its fresh green leaves and "crimson-tipped" flower, comes to grow out of the earth, we do not know at all.

The beautiful leaves, fringed with downy hairs, are the lungs of the plants; and just as the blood runs through the veins at the back of your hand, the sap: which is the life-blood of the plant, runs through some fine veins which you see at the back of the leaf. If this sap were to cease flowing up the stem, the leaves and flowers would soon droop and die.

[Illustration: GREEN PASTURES.]

Look at the sheep, cropping the grass so busily that they hardly lift their heads from the ground. Every time they breathe, they give out air which feeds all the green things around them; and as the green things breathe this air, by the very act they purify it, and give it back to the sheep, fit for them to inhale again.

We see that when God made the world, everything was prepared beforehand. He did not cause the earth to bring forth living things, until all that was needful to keep them alive was ready. Before the beasts of the field were made, the grass, which was to be their food, covered the earth like a soft carpet, and their table was furnished. This is a lesson which we have already learnt, when speaking of "The Ocean of Air"—but it is one of which we cannot be too often reminded.

And now I want to point out to you that in the eleventh verse we read of three kinds of living things which God caused the earth to bring forth. Let us look at them: (1) "grass"; (2) "the herb yielding seed"; (3) "the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed was in itself."

Long ago, when I first noticed these three distinct kinds, I could not understand why there was a difference made between "grass" and "the herb yielding seed"; for the grass in our fields in autumn is, as little May said, "all full of pips." This was her way of describing those beautiful seeds which hang so gracefully that we sometimes gather the long stalks and dry them for their beauty, that we may have a winter nosegay when there are no flowers to be found. I had forgotten my puzzle about this when, not long ago, I met with a very interesting book which explained that the grass which is spoken of in Genesis as the first thing which the earth brought forth, was not the grass of our fields. If you look in the margin of your Bible, you will see that it is there called "tender grass." You might perhaps think there is not much difference; but words, which are the names of things, are very strong for good or evil. And especially in reading the Bible, it is important to get the very best English word that can be found for the Hebrew words which we could not understand. The verse has been more exactly turned from Hebrew into English in this way: "And God said. Let the earth sprout forth with tender grass."

This word "tender grass" is not the same as that which is used in a Psalm which the children were just then learning, where we read that God "causeth the grass to grow for the cattle." It means rather "the plant that shoots" out of the ground, and would apply to any green thing just sprouting. It is thought that in the word are included all those plants such as mosses and mushrooms, whose flowers are invisible, and which multiply not by producing seed, but by budding, or by means of little living particles, looking like brown dust, which botanists call "spores."

These flowerless plants are of much simpler structure than those which have root, stem, leaf and flower, and produce plants of their own kind by means of their seeds. If you look at the back of a common fern, you will see brown specks, not bigger than silkworms' eggs, beautifully arranged upon it. Each of these is a collection of little cases containing spores, which by-and-by will split open, allowing the spores to fall into the ground.

"Then the spores are the same as seeds, after all"—you say. No; if they were seeds, each would at once grow into a fern. This is what happens, as far as I can explain it to you: from the spore springs a tiny leaf, which roots itself, and it is from this green leaf that the young fern actually grows, until it, as it were, begins life on its own account. The leaf dies down, and the first frond of the new fern peeps above ground, closely coiled up, as you have often seen, if you have been through the woods in spring-time. The earliest forms of vegetable life, then, brought forth by the earth at the word of God were the plants which have no seeds: botanists have divided such plants into groups—the seaweeds and lichens, the mosses, and the ferns.

Of the seaweeds, the lowest of all groups of plants, we were speaking some time ago. The lichens, though such lowly plants, are very interesting, for I have read that every form of lichen is composed of two distinct plants—a seaweed and a fungus—so closely interwoven that you cannot tell where the one ends and the other begins. The lichens range in colour from white to yellow, red, green, brown—and some are as black as that rare black pansy of which I told you. Each kind has its own peculiar way of growing, and these hardy little plants can live where no other plant can—on the hard black lava, on naked rocks, and even upon the highest snow-mountain.

Next time you pass an old gateway or ruined wall, and notice stains of yellow and brown and grey upon it, remember that there the lichens grow; tiny plants indeed, whose beauties are revealed only by the microscope, but each one of them made by God, and given the means of living by Him, just as much as those giants of the forest of which travellers tell us such wonderful tales. You may sometimes find a rock, or the trunk of a tree, encrusted with dry lichen, and it is interesting to know that these plants when they decay form the first mould for mosses and ferns, plants which botanists think of as higher in the scale of vegetable life than the lowly lichens themselves are.

The great family of mosses is found not only near home, but even far away amid the icefields and the snow, where the reindeer searches with its horns for the white moss which is its food, and where Sir John Franklin and his devoted men gathered the black Tripe de Roche upon which they tried to live during those dark months when their ship lay fast wedged between

"… those icebergs vast,
With heads all crowned with snow,
Whose green roots sleep in the awful deep,
Two hundred fathoms low."

But prettier than these Arctic mosses are those nearer home. Talking about them makes me think of a place where I wish you and I could go together some beautiful afternoon in winter. It is a lovely little pine-wood near Bournemouth, to which some boys, with whose friends I was staying during the Christmas holidays, wished to take me to see their favourite walk.

[Illustration: ICE-BOUND]

Once when we were starting for our run, on a bright frosty morning, and I was rather hoping I should be taken to the sea, I heard them say to each other, "The Pincushion Wood; that's it; do let us go there." I wondered what kind of place this could be but when we had scrambled through some heather and come to this pine-wood, I saw at once why they had given it its name. Overhead, with their needles against the blue sky, were the pines in their dark solemn green, but under our feet the ground was bright with moss which grew, not on stones or trunks of trees, but all by itself in round balls, soft and firm and cushiony. You may be sure I was delighted with the green pincushions: we gathered a quantity of them, and I took one home with me, but though I watered it carefully, it soon lost its beauty.

These moss-balls lay at the roots of the pines, and we could pick up as many as we pleased; but generally even the most delicate mosses grasp the soil, and clasp their soft tendrils round the stones so firmly that you need a knife or a sharp stone to make them loose their hold. One of the uses of moss is to protect the rocks from the frost, and from the heavy rains which wash them away by degrees. The roots of trees, too, are cherished and warmed by the closely clinging mosses; and by holding the moisture from dew and rain, they form where they grow a little bed of soft mould, and so prepare the way for plants of larger growth.

Do you know the Trumpet-moss, with its red cups each holding its own little dewdrop? Perhaps not, for it is a rare treasure, and needs to be sought for in its own haunts; but there are many green mosses which are very beautiful, and so common that we see them upon every garden wall. There is the Hair-moss, the seeds of which are eaten by the birds, while its delicate tendrils serve as soft lining for their nests: it grows plentifully beside our streams; but far away in Lapland, during the short summer when the flowers all at once burst into bloom, it may be seen in full beauty. The Laps cut this moss in layers and dry it in the sun, to form a soft rug for them to sleep under during their cold nights. Then there is the velvety moss which, like the many-coloured lichen, loves to creep over old buildings, and make the ruined and desolate places bright with a beauty not their own.

Speaking of mosses reminds me of a story which is told us by a doctor named Mungo Park, who was nearly lost in an African desert about a hundred years ago. Day after day he had toiled on, under the burning sun, until he was almost in despair; for he had been robbed and deserted, and felt as if there was nothing left for him but to lie down and die in the wilderness, or become a prey to the savage animals which ranged over the country; and the remembrance of those at home in Scotland who would never know what had become of him, made him sick at heart. As these sad thoughts filled the traveller's mind and took away all his courage, his tired eye lighted upon a tiny tuft of moss, showing green and fair even in the parched soil of the desert. It was the Lesser Fork-moss which grows in our shady woods, and beside our ponds and ditches. We should perhaps hardly notice it unless we were shown its beauty by a microscope, for it is one of the smallest and humblest of things that grow; but as he looked at it, tears of joy came to his eyes. Silently springing up in that thirsty land, the tiny moss spoke to the lonely exile of the care of God for the very smallest of His creatures, whether the restless brown bird of which the Lord Jesus spoke when He bade His disciples not to fear, saying, "Ye are of more value than many sparrows," or the creeping moss which spreads from stone to stone.

In a moment all was changed for the weary traveller. He felt that he was not alone in that great solitude, for God who had cared for that tuft of moss, and kept it green and fresh by means of some hidden spring, surely cared for him, His own child, and would show him the right way out of that desolate place. Thus the burden and the heat were forgotten in happy thoughts of the faithfulness of God; and he went on his way with new courage, and soon found the path which he had lost; but he never forgot the message which the little moss had brought him. Though the whole plant was not larger than the tip of his finger, he managed to keep it safely through all his journeys by land and sea, and had the pleasure of seeing it flourish under our cold skies just as well as it had done beneath the burning sun of Africa. If you are fond of poetry, you may like to read some lines written by the poet McCheyne about this incident.

"Sad, faint, and weary, on the sand
Our traveller sat him down; his hand
Covered his burning head;
Above, beneath, behind, around,
No resting for the eye he found—
All nature seemed as dead.

"One tiny tuft of moss alone,
Mantling with freshest green a stone,
Fixed his delighted gaze;
Through bursting tears of joy he smiled,
And while he raised the tendril wild,
His lips o'erflowed with praise.

"'Oh, shall not He who keeps thee green
Here in the waste, unknown, unseen,
Thy fellow-exile save?
He who commands the dew to feed
Thy gentle flower, can surely lead
Me from a scorching grave.'"

The poem has many more verses, but I think these the prettiest. Moss has been spoken of by a poet as the "nest of time"; it has also been called "nature's livery," because the earth is clothed with it; and I have read that Mungo Park's little teacher may be found upon many a wall near London, and also clinging to those great stones which were once part of the walls of far away Jerusalem. It is nice to think that the little green plants, which we have such reason to love—because they are brightest and best in the winter-time, when all our

"Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining,
Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day,
Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining,
Buds that open only to decay."

have faded—grow all the world over; even down in the mines of Sweden the shining Feather-moss is said to light up the darkness with a tiny glimmer of its own.

When we were speaking of the fossil animals which are found hidden deep in the "crust" of the earth, you may remember that I told you that upon the hard grey-coloured clay which forms the roof of coal-mines beautifully traced patterns of ferns are sometimes found. I have heard that half the plants the remains of which are found buried in the coal-measures are ferns, but ferns which are now known to us as but three feet in height, appear in those early times of our earth's history to have been grand trees with trunks three feet through, and fronds of great length.

If you want to see tree-ferns growing wild now, you must go to New Zealand or Australia, or to the south of India: but you may perhaps some day have an opportunity of looking at pictures of some of the giant mare's-tails, and other plants with beautifully sculptured stems, of which traces have been found in our own English coal-fields; meantime, look at the vivid word-picture which Dr. Buckland has given of what he saw in a Bohemian mine. He says: "The most elaborate imitation of living foliage upon the painted ceilings of Italian palaces bears no comparison with the beauteous proportions of extinct vegetable forms with which the galleries of these instructive coal-mines are overhung…. The effect is heightened by the contrast of the coal-black colour of these vegetables with the light groundwork of the rock to which they are attached"—for you must not forget that it is upon the roof of the mine that the impressions of the plants which have been turned into coal are found, not upon the coal itself, though even there they may be discovered by a microscope.

And now leaving the mosses and lichens, ferns and mushrooms, we will turn to the "herb yielding seed," and speak of the great family of grasses; and to begin with I will quote for you two verses which were brought to me by the children when I had asked for texts about grass.

This is one: "If God so clothe the grass of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?"

And the other is: "The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth for ever."

When we were speaking about the former of these verses, I told them that by "the grass of the field" we must understand not only grass, but the wild flowers which grow upon the green slopes of Palestine in the spring-time, when God

"Lets His own love-whispers creep
Over hills and craggies steep."

They bloom but for a short time—from February to April; for in May a burning wind from the desert sweeps over the flowery meadows, and in one short day the grass has withered and its flower has faded. All "the grace of the fashion of it perishes," and there is no more beauty in the fields till the return of spring makes them bloom again.

In a country where wood is as scarce as it is in the Holy Land grass and flowers are all cut down together, and burnt to heat the ovens in which bread is baked. The flowers of the field may live but a day, and then wither on their stalks under the hot breath of the desert-blast; or they may be cut down and "cast into the oven." But the Lord spoke of them that He might teach His disciples that they must not be anxious about how they were to live in this world, because God their Father who "so clothed the grass," cared for them much more than for the birds, and all the helpless living things which are never forgotten by Him.

The flowers have no care. Those crimson lilies, which shine like stars among the grass in Palestine in the spring-time, do nothing to make their own rich dress. But God has thought it worth while to clothe them, as well as the daisies of our English meadows, in grace and beauty; and fair and sweet as they are, not for themselves, but as the overflowings of God's brimming cup of love, From His own word we learn to "consider the lilies how they grow," and receive through them the same lesson which the Fork-moss taught the lost traveller.

"For who but He that arched the skies,
And pours the day-spring's living flood,
Wondrous alike in all He tries,
Could rear the daisy's purple bud?

"Mould its green cup, its wiry stem,
Its fringèd border nicely spin,
And cut the gold-embossèd gem,
That, set in silver, gleams within?

"Then fling it, unrestrained and free,
O'er hill and dale and desert sod,
That man where'er he walks may see,
In every step, the stamp of God."

The verse which speaks of the "withering" of the grass, becomes even more striking if we remember that grass in Eastern lands often grows so tall as to reach to the saddle, as a horseman rides through it. But this tall grass withers away as soon as it is smitten by the burning heat of the sun. The apostle Peter speaks of all the glory of man as like grass which has withered; and then, in contrast with what so quickly perishes, he reminds of what can never grow old or pass away—"the word of the Lord," which "endureth for ever."

While we were speaking of the verse in Genesis which tells us that "every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth" was to be food for man, I asked the question: "What are the grain-bearing plants?"

Every voice at once replied, "Corn"; and certainly corn is one of the most beautiful, and the plant which has in a special manner given "bread to the eater." "But," I continued, "are there not other grasses whose seeds supply food for us?"

The children thought awhile, and then said, "Barley," "rye," "oats"; and presently, thinking of other countries besides England and Scotland, someone ventured, "rice"; and Chris, remembering the tall Indian corn which grows so abundantly in America, suggested "maize."

So we went on to notice (Genesis 1. 29, 30) that corn and grain of various kinds are the food specially prepared by God for man. There was the "green herb" for the animals and birds and creeping things; and for us, the "herb yielding seed." How beautiful it is to see that at the very outset food was provided for man, even before God had made him; and that all through the long years which have passed from that time till now, it has never been wanting. It is true there have been terrible famine years, when the wheat-harvest has perished, or when the rice-crop, upon which the lives of thousands of people in India and China depend, has failed from want of water; and the hand of God in judgment may at times be seen in these years of drought; but through His goodness in giving "rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons," the earth still brings forth food, and will do so, for God's own word assures us that "while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest … shall not cease." It is cheering to think of this when we pass through a corn-field, and admire the red poppies shining here and there among the wheat, and the full ears of corn waving in the sunshine, until the field looks like a sea of gold.

Interesting too it is to see, as Ernest and his friend did the other day, all that must be done ere those waving ears of corn become a loaf such as you see on the table every morning: for in this country we do not feed on "parched corn," as it is described in that lovely story of Ruth the Moabite woman, from whose line descended our Lord Jesus Christ, "Son of David, Son of Abraham."

As they were walking along the road, the boy noticed a large piece of bread which someone had thrown away.

"How wrong to throw away such a nice piece as that!" he remarked to a friend at his side.

"Indeed it was," she replied. "Whoever threw it away never thought how much it cost to make that piece of bread." And she began to tell how the hard ground must be broken by the plough, and smoothed by the harrow, to make it ready for the seed; then, after the seed has been sown and covered up, water, air, and sunlight are all needful, that the roots may sink down deep into the earth, and the green stalks shoot up into the light; so that where there was once only the bare brown field may be seen "first the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear"—the harvest-field in all its glory. As the "Sower's Song" says:

"Fall gently and still, good corn;
Lie warm in thy earthly bed,
And stand so yellow some morn,
For man and beast must be fed."

Then come the reaping and the threshing, and the winnowing and crushing of the grain, and the making of the flour into bread, and its baking. All this must be done before our tables can be furnished with "our daily bread."

[Illustration: WITH THE REAPERS.]

For the birds, which "neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn," God makes the grass to grow of itself; but all those seed-bearing plants, which He has given to man, must now be cultivated. Rice needs a great deal of water that it may grow; and corn, if no care is given to its cultivation, soon becomes but a poor and useless sort of grass. It must be sown fresh every year in ground which has been made ready for it. Did you ever pluck one of the golden ears from a field of corn, and sit down and count how many grains there were upon one slender stalk? And then did you think that every little grain in that ear was itself a seed which, just as the egg contains the bird that is one day to fly and sing, wraps up within itself a young wheat-stalk with all the golden ears which may wave and rustle when next year's harvest time has come? No longer then the one lonely seed dropped by the hand of the sower into the good soil prepared for it, but many, many grains instead. So true is it that

"A grain of corn an infant's hand
May plant upon an inch of land,
Whence twenty stalks may spring and yield,
Enough to stock a little field.

"The harvest of that field may then
Be multiplied to ten times ten,
Which, sown thrice more, would furnish bread
Wherewith an army might be fed."

And such life is there in seed, that even grains of corn which had been hidden away for thousands of years—wrapped up in an Egyptian tomb within a mummy like those you saw at the Museum the other day—when sown still brought forth fruit; not in Egypt where they first grew, but in England. But those grains which had slept the sleep of ages would never have thus wakened into life and fruitfulness unless they had been sown in the earth; for before we can see the "full corn in the ear," the one grain from which so many were to come, must "fall into the ground and die": in darkness and silence and death the plant is born, and begins to show signs of life. Did you ever think of this?

The Lord Jesus once spoke of it to two of His disciples, Andrew and Philip. I do not know whether they understood then that He was speaking of Himself when He said the words, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." "Much fruit"—even that great multitude redeemed by His blood, who shall be with Him and praise Him for ever, as they remember how He died that they might live.

I hope that you belong to the happy company who shall sing that new song in heaven. If you have known and believed the love of God in giving His own beloved Son to die instead of you, and the love of Christ in coming into the world and laying down His life for you, you can say of the Lord Jesus the very words which the great apostle Paul said, when he spoke of Him as "the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."

How much there is for us to learn, and how much to admire, in the wonderful works of God! Far, far more than we have been speaking of to-day in the lichens, covering the bare rocks with "cloth of gold," and in the leafy mosses which the birds weave into soft lining for their nests; the palms, pines, reeds, and grasses, and the beautiful waving corn, which is God's special gift to man. But we must now turn to the third division of plants, which is described as "the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself."

There is a pretty poem which Sharley learnt the other day, beginning—

"I praised the earth, in beauty seen,
With garlands gay of various green."

When she had repeated it to me, I asked, "What are the 'gay garlands,'
Sharley—flowers?"

But no, they could not be, because the flowers are not "green"; so Sharley answered that she thought they must be beautiful trees with which the earth is covered; for their brightly coloured leaves, especially in autumn, are as gay as wreaths of flowers, with their many shades of red and brown, as well as "various green."

The more we notice the trees and flowers, the more we wonder at their loveliness; for God has "made everything beautiful in his time," whether the rich trees of autumn or the tender green of the spring-time, when all the earth seems young again.

Beautiful indeed this earth must have been; still so fair, even in its ruins; when it came fresh from the hand of God, prepared by Him to be the dwelling place of His creatures; but who can tell how fair it will be when every trace of sin and its sad work shall be gone for ever, and the Lord Jesus, the Prince of Peace, shall reign over it?

And although it is all done so quietly and secretly, and seems so natural to us that we hardly give it a thought, even still more wonderful than their beauty is the way in which these trees, yielding fruit after their kind, "whose seed is in itself," go on constantly, not only living, but producing other living plants, which increase and multiply, each in its turn again producing more and more "after its kind."

Perhaps you save up your pennies, as I did long ago, until you have enough to buy a packet of flowerseeds. As you unfold the packet, and see the pictures of the flowers that are to be, on the little papers inside—the scarlet poppy, the yellow marigold, the blue lupin, and the many-coloured sweet peas—you almost feel as if you already saw these bright flowers blooming in your garden. But open the little parcels one after the other, and what do you find? Nothing bright or sweet or beautiful; only little brown seeds, tiny as grains of March dust, or so light and feathery that your breath would blow them away.

Do you then throw them into the fire, and say they are no good? Not so. You take the greatest care of these little grains. You prepare the earth, and make a soft bed for them, then cover them up, carefully marking the spot with the name of the flower whose seed you have sown there. You water that bare place, and wait to see green leaves push themselves up through the dark soil; for well you know that within each tiny brown seed the flower that is to be, lies hidden.

To see your seed grow, and your plant live and bloom, does not surprise you at all. But how astonished you would be if, in the spot where you had sown white candytuft, you were to find yellow tulips!

Such a thing can never be; for the mother-plant from which the seed came must always produce plants of its own kind. You never saw a bean grow into a cherry-tree, or a pink change into a rose, did you? God gives the seed a body "as it hath pleased Him, and to every seed its own body."

It is true that what are called "varieties" can be produced among cultivated plants, as among birds and animals, by change of food and climate, and by care and training. The same plant will soon look very different if taken from a dry, sunny spot, and placed in a damp, shady corner. I have heard that if plants are moved from their home on the seashore, and placed in a dry, hot place, their thick, fleshy leaves will in time quite change their character, becoming thin and hairy. In the same way a tree, if given room, will spread its branches wide, but will shoot upwards if hemmed in on all sides. It is important, however, to remember that man has never been able by his skill to produce a new kind of either plant or animal. But we were speaking of your seeds, so tiny, yet so unlike each other. These differences become much more apparent if the seeds are looked at through a microscope, and the varieties in their way of growing are endless.

You know where to look for the tiny seeds of the apple-tree; but may not have noticed, that while they lie safely hidden inside the fruit, the strawberry's yellow seeds are outside. Then some seeds, such as peas and laburnums, grow in pods. Some, like the hips and haws, we must look for between the stalk and the flower, or in the place where the flower has been. You may have seen a hawthorn-tree in the spring all white with its scented blossoms. If you pass by the same place months later, when spring and summer are past, what a change! Where the sweet flowers had been, the red berries, which the birds like so well, hang in clusters. This is what has happened: the wind has blown away the soft blossoms; then the parts beneath them which held the seeds grew larger and turned into berries; the sun shone upon them and dyed them their brilliant red; and now they are quite ripe, and ready for the birds' winter supply; or perhaps one here and there may bury itself in the ground, and become a young hawthorn.

The power of life in the seed is a very wonderful thing. I have read of a grave far away in Hanover upon which a very massive stone was laid, and upon the stone were engraved the words, "This grave shall never be opened." We know that the time will come when the seal of every tomb will be broken, but even now it may be seen that those proud words were written in vain. A seed which had fallen into the grave has grown into a tree, which has actually raised and pushed aside the heavy stone to make room for itself and force its way into the light and air.

I wonder if you ever thought of the fruits which you so much enjoy, as seeds? Such they really are. Almonds and grapes and oranges, yes, and the blackberries of the hedges, are either the seeds of plants or what are called their seed-vessels, because they hold the seed. But fruits like apples and pears have a double use; they were made not only to serve as seed-holders, but God has given them to us for food. And those horse-chestnuts you are so fond of gathering—next time you pick one up just stop and think that in the round smooth nut, which you can hide in your closed hand, lies the baby plant which may one day become a spreading tree like those you have seen in the park. Can you believe that such a mighty tree, with its branches and leaves and blossoms, is folded up in one small horse-chestnut, such as that with which you were playing the other day, whirling it round your head at the end of a string? The life of a plant, could it be told, would be indeed a tale of wonder; and I should like to try to tell you a little more about it, as well as something about how flowers are made; but as we have had so long a chapter, we must end with another story, the true story of what a flower, growing alone in a yard, just springing up in its green sweetness between the flagstones, taught a poor man who was as lonely as itself, and also very unhappy.

He was a Frenchman, and had been in prison a long time, because the Emperor Napoleon considered him his enemy. One day while he was walking in the prison-yard, pacing backwards and forwards, up and down the narrow space which was allowed him, he noticed something green at his feet, and stooping down to see what it could be, found that a busy little plant was bravely pushing its way up between the crevices of the paving stones, to reach such light and air as could be found in a prison-yard. "How could it have come here?" the prisoner thought. A seed must have been dropped by some passing bird, and "the scent of water" from some hidden spring must have caused it to bud and to send down the slender fibres of its roots, with their little sponges, to suck up all the moisture, so that the plant should grow, and shoot up those fresh green leaves which had attracted his attention.

If the poor prisoner had been happy and busy, he perhaps would have thought no more of the little plant; but he was very sad and lonely, and he could not be busy as he had no books to read, and all the occupations which he most cared for had been taken from him. So this living thing was to him like a country in which he was constantly discovering some new wonder and beauty. He loved to watch the lonely plant, which was, to his fancy, a prisoner like himself; and when at last the buds unfolded, and the flowers—such sweet flowers with such gay colours—bloomed, he was filled with delight; he guarded his treasure with the most anxious care, for if a hasty foot had trodden it down, he would have lost a friend which had cheered for him many a sad hour.

But I have not yet told you what this prison-flower taught the lonely prisoner. As day by day he watched the growth of that humble little plant, God spoke to him. He had spent his life without thinking much about God, and when he had thought about Him, he had been like that poor proud man of whom God's word says that he is a "fool," although men may think him very clever.

He had many times said in his heart, "There is no God;" and he used to try to believe that there was no one greater or wiser than a man like himself, and that all that he saw in the world—the mountains, and sea, and all the wonderful works of God—came of themselves; or, as he said, "by chance." He had even written these words upon the wall of his cell, "All things come by chance."

But it was not by chance that he was allowed to see something of the work of God in one little flower. As day by day he watched the leaves grow, the buds unfold, and then the blossoms open in all their fragrance, he knew that God alone could work the miracle of life and growth which was going on before his eyes. His proud, scornful heart was bowed in the presence of a power at which he could but wonder, for it was past all his understanding, and he humbly owned that God had taught him by his pet plant lessons which the wisest men in the world could not have taught.

It was by means of the flower, too, that at last the prison doors were opened, and a message came to tell him that Napoleon had given him leave to go home.

It would take too long to tell this part of the story, but you will not be surprised to hear that, like the African traveller, he could not bear to part with his cherished flower. He carefully dug it out from between the stones, carried it home with him, and never forgot the simple but great lesson which he had learned while in prison.

We have been able to say very little about the "green earth," and the wonders of the work of God on the THIRD DAY of Creation, but perhaps you will understand something of what a student of nature meant when he wrote, "The earth may be looked at as a vast seed-plot of life, seen from the point of view of the Great Sower."

I think you will like these verses which were repeated to me by an old friend who remembered having learnt them from his mother's lips, long ago. They seem just fit to close our chapter about the earth in its verdure and beauty.

"All the world's a garden,
God hath made it fair;
Living trees and flowers
He hath planted there.
Rain and sunshine giving,
All His goodness prove;
There is nothing living
But has felt His love.

"Every home's a garden,
Clustering side by side,
Each to others yielding,
Flow'rets should abide.
Word or thought of anger
Ne'er should enter there;
Buds of loving kindness
Opening everywhere.

"Every school's a garden,
Hedged and fenced around;
Nothing vile or useless
Should within, be found.
Teachers are the gardeners,
Sowing precious seed,
Training up the tender plants,
Plucking every weed.

"Every heart's a garden;
It should bring forth fruit;
But foul weeds and briars
In its soil have root.
Envy, wrath, and hatred,
Malice, strife, and pride,
Lies and disobedience,
And many more beside.

"Cast them out, I pray, Lord,
And supply in place
Gentleness and goodness,
Lovely plants and grace;
Patience and longsuffering,
Faith and hope and love—
These will bear transplanting
To the world above."