Religion Emblemed In Flowers.
"Wondrous truths, and manifold as wondrous,
God hath written in the stars above;
But not less in the bright flowerets under us
Stands the revelation of his love.
And with childlike, credulous affection
We behold their tender buds expand—
Emblems of our own great resurrection,
Emblems of the bright and better land."
Of all the poetic and suggestive traditions that linger with us from the early ages—those ages when art revived through religion, and symbolized the truths of eternity by the creation and application of such esthetics which, under the dominion of heathendom, had been perverted to purely sensual enjoyment—of all these traditions, then, we find few more beautiful in their various types, more elevating in their idealization, or which form a stronger connecting link between the soul's aspirations and our material enjoyment, than those frailest children of the beautiful that belong to the floral kingdom. Coeval with the creation, the solace, companions, and delight of our first parents, they shared the punishment, likewise, of man's transgression, in the flood; but when the waters subsided, they were the chosen symbols to announce to Noah the cessation of omnipotent vengeance, and the first to greet the weary wanderers, as their feet again touched the earth; raising their lowly heads from around the tree-roots, and through the rocky fissures, as emblems of the life immortal that springs from decay.
Among those which seem to be the chosen ones, as most expressive of religious sentiment, both in the Old and New Testament as well as in early legendary lore, are the rose, the lily, the olive, and the palm.
To each of these has been given a significance, from the earliest times, that has made them cherished with our households and associated with our faith. Although the rose was perverted by the heathen into a type of sensual love and luxury, yet, through the marvellous beauty and variety of its creation, it was reclaimed by the Christian poets, to be the attendant of the pure and holy, wherever an ornament was needed to paint a moral victory, or glorify decay.
That this flower was largely cultivated by the Jews, and used in their religious festivals as an ornament, is made clear by the frequent use we find of it, as a simile in the Bible. Solomon, in his song, compares the church to the "rose of Sharon and lily of the valley." Again, in the book of Wisdom, we see their appreciation in the admonition, "Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds ere they be withered." Also, in Ecclesiasticus, occurs this metaphor, "I was exalted like a palm-tree in Engaddi, and as a rose-plant in Jericho." Again, "Hearken to me, ye holy children, and bud forth as roses growing by the brook."
It was a belief among the Jews, according to Zoroaster, says Howitt, "that every flower is appropriated to a particular angel, and that the hundred-leaf rose is consecrated to an archangel of the highest order." The same author relates, that the Persian fire-worshippers believe that Abraham was thrown into a furnace by Nimrod, and the flames forthwith turned into a bed of roses.
In contradistinction to this in sentiment is the belief of the Turk, who holds that this lovely flower springs from the perspiration of Mohammed, and, in accordance with this creed, they never tread upon it or suffer one to lie upon the ground.
I think it was Solon who held the theory that the rose and the woman were created at the same time, and in consequence thereof, there sprang up a contest among the gods, as to which should be awarded the palm of superior beauty. Certainly there may yet be traced a close resemblance between these native queens, not only in the matter of beauty, but also in the variety and fragility for which the rose, above all others, is distinguished. Everywhere has God planted this exquisite work of his hand. In the bleak polar regions, where the days of sunshine are so short, and so few, there is seen among the first breathings of the summer zephyrs the "Rosa rapa," its slender stem covered with pale double flowers, lifting its head to greet those ice-bound prisoners as they issue from the stifling air of their winter huts. Degraded as are that people in their tastes, the magic of these silent messengers from God is so forcible, that they greet them with a poet's joy, and deck their heads and rough sealskin clothing with their tender blossoms. Even to the broken-hearted Siberian exile, there come a few short days in his life when these frail comforters rise from the frozen earth to greet him, like messengers from his lost home and friends. … It is not to be wondered, then, with all the associations of Eden ever clinging about these eloquent voices, that the early Christians transferred their ornamental and suggestive beauties from the saturnalian rites of heathendom to the honor of God and his saints. Hence it is, that, in so many of the beautiful legends that have come down to us, we find these frail memorials so often associated as types of some noble deed accomplished, or the given reward of some heavy human sacrifice. To those who look upon these legends as myths, or simply religious fairy tales, we can only say, with Mrs. Jameson, that we most sincerely pity all such sceptics from our heart; for, where they outstrip the bounds of even miraculous probability, there may yet be found in their pages both entertainment and instruction. And after all, why should not religion have her fairyland, as well as material life? Why should not the soul enjoy the privilege of an occasional transport into a world of poetical visions, as well as the imagination, which finds in the fairy-dreams of childhood only a dim vista of annual blooms, upon which the breath of heaven can never blow? Weary with the turmoil of life, with the noise and whirl of the shifting scenes that open continuously upon a vista of pain, and sorrow, and unrealized hopes, such legends recall to the soul auroral gleams of childhood's purity, and transport her into fields that are redolent with the flowers of that eternal land where earthly woes can never come. In this Dodona grove, the soul hallows the heart; the impossible becomes the real; and as all the aspirations for the higher life possess it, the skies seem to open, we catch a flutter of the angels' robes, the perfume of the flowers of paradise, and a glimmer even of the golden gates shoots radiantly across the uplifted, tear-dimmed eye; and we feel, for these few moments at least, that God and heaven are very nigh, ay! even in our heart of hearts. What matters it, then, if it be not all truth, since it serves the purpose, and for the time being decks the soul in regal splendor, and makes the unattainable and dim worth the longest toil and hardest battle that the short span of human life can compass? In those early ages, when the heathen idols were tottering on their thrones, and the voice of Pan had died out in a mighty wail at the sound of a feeble infant's cry—in those dawning Christian days there was felt the need of mental food of a nourishing and elevating kind for the masses. Heretofore, they had been kept occupied by public games, periodical saturnalian revels, gladiatorial combats, and other heathen abominations, in order to allow the philosopher to pursue his subtle theories in quiet, and the wheels of government to run smoothly on. As years and numbers, however, increased the Christian fold, and the first fervor began to abate under the influence of human passions and the need of life's varieties, it became evident that some food was necessary to meet the hunger of the craving mind. The time and thoughts of the philosophers and theologians were too deeply engrossed with the abstruse problems of the day—the esoteric and exoteric—to give other time beyond that of the soul's immediate requirements to the ignorant. Hence it was, that, as human blood was poured out like water, in libations to the true God, when beauty and innocence, rank and lowliness, wealth and poverty, found a common centre wherein to pray and suffer—hence it was, that the religious, poetic heart of the people idealized and beatified these deeds of heroic sanctity; and the church, while striving to repress extravagance, yet welcomed and fostered a taste which she saw, in her mighty wisdom, would be productive of elevating thought and emulative example. "And it is a mistake," says Mrs. Jameson, "to suppose that these legends had their sole origin in the brains of dreaming monks. The wildest of them had some basis of truth to rest on, and the forms which they gradually assumed were but the necessary results of the age which produced them. They became the intense expression of that inner life which revolted against the desolation and emptiness of the outward existence; of those crushed and outraged sympathies which cried aloud for rest, and refuge, and solace, and could nowhere find them." Mrs. Jameson disclaims any idea of treating these legends save in their poetic and artistic aspect. But as religion is the root from whence all have their source, so it is insensibly transmuted throughout the whole work. And how could she do otherwise, Protestant though she was? For the great trunk, the massive column, around which all these delicate fibres of poesy cling, is religion. Without such support, they would fall, and be trailed in the dust, and long, long ere this, their ephemeral life would have been crushed out, as were the oracular voices of the marble gods.