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.