THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 PRESENTED BY 
 
 PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND 
 MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID 
 
 KOLOGY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 

 THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
V 
 
THE OLIVE LEAF 
 
 BY 
 
 HUGH MACMILLAN, D.D.,LL.D.,F.R.S.E., 
 
 AUTHOR OF "BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE," "TWO WORLDS ARE OURS, 
 
 " THE SABBATH OF THE FIELDS," ETC., ETC. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO. 
 
 1886. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
QHfl 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 LI 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 r I. THE OLIVE LEAF, . . . .. T- ^V \ I 
 
 II. THE ONENESS OF THE TABERNACLE, . 15 
 
 III. THE HOSPITALITIES OF, NATURE, . . 39 
 
 POE TR Y THE A VALANCHE. 
 
 IV. THE THIRST OF GOD, . .. .. _ . ... 60 
 V. A TUFT OF MOSS, . -.. . .. . '. 77 
 
 VI. THE STATUE AND THE STONE, . . 106 
 
 VII. THE SWALLOW? S NEST, -^ . . . 119 
 POETRY A NEST IN A HEATHER BUSH. 
 
 VIII. THE STAFF AND THE SACRIFICE, . .136 
 
 IX. THE VERONICA, .* . . . . . . T 5 2 
 
 X. THE LOOKING-GLASS AND THE LAVER, . 169 
 POETRY THE SUPERGA. 
 
 XI. THE AUTUMN CROCUS, 185 
 
 OETRYA CORN-FIELD IN GLENCROE. 
 
vi CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 XII. THE AMARANTH, 202 
 
 POETRYTHE LAST DAISY. 
 
 XIII. THE GATES OF PEARL, . '. . .219 
 
 XIV. THE CEDARS AND THE CANDLESTICKS, 241 
 
 POETRY THE CORN. 
 
 XV. A POTTERY MOUND, . . . . .264 
 XVI. APPLES OF SODOM, . . . . . 280 
 
 XVII. THE STONES BURIED IN THE JORDAN, 301 
 
 POETRY THE TWO WRITINGS. 
 
 XVIII. THE BUFFET-GAME, 3 J 5 
 
 XIX. THE BLOOD OF THE PASCHAL LAMB, . 330 
 
 XX. UNTO GAZA, WHICH IS DESERT, . . 343 
 
 POETRY " FATHER EVEREST." 
 
 XXI. BEAUTY FOR ASHES, . . . '. . 358 
 POETRY THE CHRISTMAS ROSE. 
 
THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAR 
 
 " And lo ! in her mouth an olive leaf pluckt off." GENESIS viii. n. 
 
 OWING to the wickedness of man, God brought 
 back the earth to its primeval condition, when 
 it was without form and void. The changes of the 
 climates and zones, the order of the seasons, the 
 varieties of the landscape, were all obliterated by the 
 dreary uniformity of the flood. When the flood sub- 
 sided, the original work of creation was, therefore, 
 representatively, enacted over again in the growth of 
 plants upon the new soil, in the descent of the 
 animals from the ark, in the appearance of the rain- 
 bow in the clouds, and in the establishment of the 
 great world covenant, that seed-time and harvest, cold 
 and heat, summer and winter, day and night, should 
 never cease. At the first creation, the Spirit of God 
 brooded over the face of the waters, like a dove with 
 expanded wings, preparing the world to be the abode 
 
2 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP 
 
 of vegetable, animal, and human life. At the second 
 creation, the dove's wings hovered over the waters of 
 the deluge, announcing the termination of the divine 
 judgment, and the preparation of a new green world, 
 that should emerge purified from its baptism and be 
 to Noah what Eden had been to Adam. At the 
 new creation of God, the Holy Spirit, in the form of 
 a dove, appeared over the waters of our Lord's bap- 
 tism, as a symbol of the better covenant which, 
 under the Prince of Peace, should restore the order 
 and harmony of the world, and terminate the evil 
 and confusion which sin had made in human hearts 
 and lives. 
 
 i. Let us look at the profound, far-reaching sig- 
 nificance of the green leaf in the mouth of the dove, as 
 the first production of a new and regenerated world. 
 In the first place, the green leaf is the great purifier of 
 nature. This is one of the most important offices which 
 it was created to fulfil. In the early ages of the earth, 
 long before man came upon the scene, the atmosphere 
 was foul with carbonic acid gases, so poisonous that a 
 few inspirations of them would be sufficient to destroy 
 life. These formed a dense covering which kept in the 
 steaming warmth of the earth, and nourished a rank and 
 luxuriant vegetation. Gigantic ferns, tree-mosses, and 
 reeds grew with extraordinary rapidity and absorbed 
 these noxious gases into their own structures, consoli- 
 dating them into leaves, stems, and branches, which in 
 the course of long ages grew and decayed, and by subtle 
 chemical processes and mechanical arrangements were 
 
THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
 changed into coal-beds under the earth. In this 
 wonderful way two great results were accomplished at 
 the same time and by the same means ; the atmosphere 
 was purified and made fit for the breathing of man, and 
 animals useful to man, and vast stores of fuel were pre- 
 pared to enable future generations to subdue the earth 
 and spread over it the blessings of civilization. And 
 what the green leaves of the early geological forests did 
 for the primeval atmosphere of the world, the green 
 leaves of our woods and fields are continually doing for 
 our atmosphere still. They absorb the foul air caused 
 by the processes of decay and combustion going on over 
 the earth, and by the breathing of men and animals, and 
 convert this noxious element into the useful and beauti- 
 ful products of the vegetable kingdom. They preserve 
 the air in a condition fit for human breathing. Without 
 them, carbonic acid gas would soon accumulate to such 
 an extent that animal life would be impossible. There 
 would be no gaily- coloured blossoms to delight our 
 senses and stimulate the poetical side of our nature ; for 
 flowers are as pure breathers as man himself, and can- 
 not exist in a foul atmosphere. We little think when we 
 inhale the fresh air that its purity and healthfulness come 
 to us by the beautiful mission of the green leaf. Nor 
 have we only the green leaves of our own fields and woods 
 to thank for this blessing; the air that we breathe has 
 been purified for us, thousands of miles away, by the palms 
 of the south and the pines of the north, by the birches 
 of America, and the gum-trees of Australia. Nothing is 
 more wonderful in nature than the balance which is 
 
THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 constantly kept up between the animals that contaminate 
 the air and the plants that purify it ; the refuse of the 
 one kingdom being the food of the other. Were even 
 so small a proportion as ten per cent, of carbonic acid 
 gas allowed to accumulate in the atmosphere, it would 
 destroy every living animal that breathed it. And yet 
 out of a much smaller proportion of this noxious sub- 
 stance in the atmosphere, the green leaf builds up all 
 the immense and varied mass of the vegetation that 
 covers the surface of the earth ; while by the very same 
 act it restores to man and the other animals the atmos- 
 phere in healthy purity. 
 
 These considerations will show us how significant it 
 was, that the first object of the new world that was 
 about to emerge from the flood should be a green leaf. 
 It was a symbol, a token to Noah that the world would 
 be purified from the pollution of those unnatural sins 
 which had brought death and destruction upon it, and 
 would once more be fitted to be the home of a peculiar 
 people zealous of good works. What the green leaf is 
 in nature, the leaves of the tree of life are in the spiritual 
 sphere. The gospel of Jesus Christ which the Heavenly 
 Dove carries to the homes and the hearts of men, is the 
 great purifier of the world. The moral atmosphere is 
 being constantly contaminated by the noxious exhal- 
 ations of human sins and follies. Blessings are abused, 
 and in their abuse turn into evils. It was necessary 
 therefore that some counteraction should be provided. 
 And He who has so wonderfully balanced the natural 
 world by the ministry of the green leaf has also balanced, 
 
THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
 in a more wonderful way still, the moral world by the 
 ministry of Him upon whom the dove descended at His 
 baptism, and who bore our sins in His own body on the 
 tree, and in so doing brought in an everlasting right- 
 eousness. And not only does His salvation balance 
 the evil of the world, convert baneful and noxious things 
 to good and noble uses, change sinners into saints, and 
 cause all things to work together for good to them that 
 love God ; it does far more than produce a moral 
 equilibrium. It is a victorious principle, and is destined 
 in the end to overcome all the evils of the world, and to 
 make of this sin-ruined creation a new heaven and a 
 new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness. 
 
 2. In the second place, the green leaf is the source of 
 all the life of the world. It is by its agency alone that 
 inert inorganic matter is changed into organic matter, 
 which furnishes the starting-point of all life. Nowhere 
 else on the face of the earth does this most important 
 process take place. Everything else consumes and 
 destroys. The green leaf alone conserves and creates. 
 It is the mediator between the world of death and the 
 world of life. The crust of the earth was once 
 like a burnt cinder ; and the reason why it has not 
 continued so, why, unlike the moon which revolves 
 round the earth a great lifeless desert of solid 
 lava, it has been peopled with all kinds of living things, 
 is owing to the ministry of the green leaf. It is because 
 of this ministry that in a world once burnt up is found 
 an abundant supply of combustible materials for all our 
 wants. During the long geological periods the silent 
 
6 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 agency of the leaf has been slowly recovering combus- 
 tible materials from the wrecks of the first conflagration 
 that should enter anew into the great vortex of life and 
 use and beauty. The quiet sunbeams, working by 
 means of the most delicate of all structures, the cellu- 
 lar tissue of the green leaf, and by a process the most 
 subtle and wonderful in the whole range of chemistry, 
 have partly undone the work of the fire ; and whatever 
 now exists on the earth unburnt wood, coal, animal 
 and vegetable tissue, the wondrous body of man him- 
 self we owe to that simple agent, the green leaf. 
 There is a mighty conflagration still going on con- 
 tinually all over the earth, not with the roar and fury 
 of a great fire consuming an extensive building, in 
 which the elements rush into combination with an 
 appalling force which no human power can resist ; 
 but unseen, unheard, unknown to us, except when in 
 the end we see the dreary results, reducing all things 
 to decay, corruption, dust and ashes, burning every- 
 thing that can be burnt, and converting the earth into 
 a uniform lifeless desert. But there is a mightier force 
 ceaselessly at work undoing all the destruction, giving 
 beauty for ashes, and the rich variety of life for the 
 dreary uniformity of death ; working not amid the con- 
 vulsions of nature and the crash of the elements, but 
 quietly, unseen, unknown, except when in the end we 
 see the results of its beneficent labours ; and that force 
 is the green leaf. Methinks the little leaf is the most 
 wonderful thing in nature. I am not surprised that 
 God should have chosen it in the burning bush as 
 
THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
 the medium of His revelation to Moses, or in the 
 Cross of Calvary as the instrument of the salvation 
 of the world. I never see a green leaf without ever- 
 increasing wonder and admiration ; amazed at the 
 apparent inefficiency of the means and the stupendous 
 magnitude of the result 
 
 In this light how suitable it was that an olive leaf 
 freshly plucked should have been the first object brought 
 to Noah in the ark ! For just as the green leaf is the 
 means in the natural world of counteracting all the 
 destructive forces that are reducing its objects to dust 
 and ashes, and clothing its surface with vegetable and 
 animal life, so the olive leaf in the mouth of the dove 
 spoke to Noah of the undoing of the work of destruction 
 caused by the flood, and of the raising up of a new and 
 fairer creation out of the universal wreck. That olive 
 leaf was the earnest of a mighty redemption, of the 
 restitution of all things. It foretold the destruction of 
 the death which had already destroyed the world, and 
 the opening up of a new world beyond the wide drear 
 wilderness and the floods of time, in which Eden itself 
 would be forgotten in the transporting joy of heaven, 
 and the tree of life would be restored in a grander 
 multiplied form. And just as all this beautiful world of 
 life and joy is the product of the work of the green leaf, 
 so all that mankind has achieved and enjoyed since the 
 flood the great results of civilization, and the still greater 
 results of redemption arose out of the work of grace 
 whose dawning the green leaf intimated, and whose 
 operation it typified. For sin and grace are in constant 
 
8 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 antagonism like the force of the fire that burns every- 
 thing to ashes, and the force of the green leaf that builds 
 up life and beauty out of the ashes; and God has 
 suffered sin to continue because He knows that grace 
 can conquer it, strip its spoils, and convert its ruins into 
 higher and nobler forms of life. 
 
 3. In the third place, the green leaf is the best con- 
 ductor of electricity that most powerful and destruc- 
 tive of all the forces of the earth. To guard our homes 
 and public buildings from its destructive action we erect 
 our lightning-rods whose sharp points quietly drain the 
 clouds, or, failing to do this, receive the discharge and 
 bear it harmlessly to the earth. But ages before Frank- 
 lin pointed the first lightning-rod to the storm, God has 
 surrounded the dwellings of man with a protection far 
 more effectual than this; for since the creation of 
 organic life every pointed leaf and blade of grass have 
 been silently disarming the clouds of their destructive 
 weapon. A twig covered with leaves, sharpened by 
 nature's exquisite workmanship, is said to be three 
 times as effectual as the metallic points of the best 
 constructed rod. And when we reflect how many 
 thousands of these vegetable points every large tree 
 directs to the sky, and consider what must be the 
 efficacy of a single forest with its innumerable leaves, 
 or of a single meadow with its countless blades of grass, 
 we see how abundant the protection from the storm is, 
 and with what care Providence has guarded us from the 
 destructive force. And was not that green leaf which 
 came to Noah in the ark God's lightning conductor? 
 
THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
 Did it not bear down harmlessly the destructive power 
 of heaven ? Did it not assure Noah that the wrath of 
 God was appeased, that the storm was over, and that 
 peace and safety could once more be enjoyed upon the 
 earth? And is not He to whose salvation that leaf 
 pointed who is Himself the "Branch" God's light- 
 ning conductor to us? He bore the full force of the 
 Father's wrath due to sin ; He endured the penalty 
 which we deserved, and having smitten the shepherd, 
 .the sheep for whom He laid down His life are scathless 
 and unharmed. He is now our refuge from the storm ; 
 and under His shadow we are safe from all evil. 
 
 4. In the fourth place, the green leaf is' the source of 
 all the streams and rivers in the world. It is by the 
 agency of the leaf that water circulates as the life-blood 
 of the globe. In a leafless world there would be no 
 rains and no streams. Destroy the woods, and you 
 destroy the balance of nature ; you prevent the forma- 
 tion of clouds, you dry up the rivers, and you produce 
 an arid desert. Whereas, on the other hand, foster the 
 growth of leaves, and they will alter the nature of the 
 climate, and change the wilderness into a fruitful field. 
 And how appropriately in this light did the green leaf 
 come to Noah as the earnest and the instrument of the 
 re-arrangement of a world which had been reduced to 
 a desert by the punishment of man's sin ! That leaf 
 assured him that the old rivers would flow again ; that 
 the former fields would smile anew; that the forests 
 would, as in previous times, cover the earth with their 
 shadow; and that all the conditions of seed-time and 
 
io THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 harvest, and of a pleasant and useful home for man, 
 would be present as of yore. And is not the Heavenly 
 Dove bringing to us in the ark of our salvation a leaf of 
 the tree of life, whose leaves are for the healing of the 
 nations, as a token that beyond the destructive floods 
 of earth, beyond the final conflagration in which all 
 things shall be burned up, the river of life will flow 
 again ; and amid the green fields of the paradise 
 restored, the Lamb shall lead us to living fountains of 
 waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from our 
 eyes ? The chaos of this weary and disordered earth 
 will be re-arranged and moulded into fairer forms and 
 brighter hues, as a fit home for renewed and glorified 
 humanity, by Him who will do what Noah failed to do ; 
 comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, 
 because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed. 
 
 5. In the fifth place, the green leaf is the type upon 
 which the forms of all life are moulded. All the parts 
 of a plant are but modifications of the leaf. The stem 
 is a leaf rolled up tight; the blossom is a leaf trans- 
 figured for a higher purpose ; the fruit is a leaf changed 
 into a receptacle for the seed; and the seed itself is 
 a leaf packed together in a case to protect it from 
 unfavourable weather, and furnished with a sufficient 
 amount of food for its unfolding and growth into a new 
 plant in more favourable circumstances. Take a pea 
 or a bean, and if you strip off its envelope or skin, 
 you find that it consists of a short joint and a pair 
 of leaves; as it grows in the ground, another joint with 
 its pair of leaves is formed ; as it still grows in the 
 
I. THE OLIVE LEAF. TI 
 
 air and sunshine, another joint with its pair of leaves 
 is formed ; and then another joint with its pair of 
 leaves is formed, and so on. The whole stem con- 
 sists of a mere repetition of these single elements 
 joints and leaves. And as all the vegetable kingdom is 
 thus built up of leaves, so the animal kingdom is con- 
 structed on the same model. All organisms, whether 
 animal or vegetable, are similar in their elementary 
 structure and form ; and the most complicated results 
 are attained by the simplest conceivable means, and 
 that without the slightest violation of the original plan 
 of nature. The palm of the human hand and the back- 
 bone of the human form are both constructed upon the 
 model of the leaf. Thoreau has said that the whole 
 earth is but a gigantic leaf, in which the rivers and 
 streams resemble the veins, and the mountains and 
 plains the green parts. And did not He who sent the 
 dove with the olive leaf to Noah, thereby assure him 
 that out of that leaf would be evolved the whole fair 
 world of vegetable and animal life, which for a while had 
 perished beneath the waters of the flood ; that it would 
 be reconstructed upon the old type and developed 
 according to the old pattern ? And did not He who 
 developed this great world of life out of the single 
 leaf, develop all the great scheme of grace, all the 
 wondrous history of redemption, out of the first simple 
 promise to our first parents after their fall ? Amid all 
 the varying dispensations of His providence, He has 
 been without variableness or shadow of turning, unfold- 
 ing more and more the germinating fulness of the same 
 
I2 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 glorious plan of grace. The kingdom of heaven, which 
 was first small as a grain of mustard seed, has become 
 a great tree filling the earth with its shadow, and satis- 
 fying mankind with its fruit; and from first to last it 
 is but the evolution of one great idea. And He has 
 assured us that the things of the new heavens and 
 the new earth will be the things of the old, only 
 purified, and ennobled, and removed for ever beyond 
 all risk of change and death. 
 
 Of all the green leaves of the earth it was most fitting 
 that the olive leaf should have been selected as the first 
 product of the new restored world. The olive tree 
 spreads over a large area of the earth ; it combines in 
 itself the flora of the hills and the plains. It clothes 
 with shade and beauty arid slopes where no other 
 vegetation would grow. It extracts by a vegetable 
 miracle nourishment and fatness from the driest air 
 and the barest rock ; on it may be seen at the same 
 time opening and full-blown blossoms, and green and 
 perfectly ripe fruit. Each bough is laden with a wealth 
 of promise and fulfilment ; beauty for the eye and 
 bounty for the palate. No tree displays such a rich 
 profusion and succession of flowers and fruits. It is 
 the very picture of prosperity and abundance. Its 
 very gleanings are more plentiful than the whole 
 harvest of other trees. It strikingly illustrates, there- 
 fore, the overflowing goodness of the Lord to whom 
 belong the earth and the fulness thereof. While the 
 twisted and distorted passion of its trunk and branches, 
 like a vegetable Laocoon writhing in agony, strikingly 
 
THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
 pictures the labour and the groaning, and travailing 
 together in pain of the earth, through which all its 
 fair births and bright promises of abundance are pro- 
 duced, it has also been universally regarded as an 
 emblem of peace ; and when the dove was divinely 
 guided to come with it in its bill to Noah when the 
 waters were subsiding, God wished it to be understood 
 as a token of peace and goodwill on earth. 
 
 What the olive leaf began in Noah's case, was 
 consummated under the olive trees of Gethsemane. 
 He who destroyed the antediluvian sinners by the 
 flood, endured the contradiction of greater and more 
 aggravated sinners against Himself. He who sent the 
 flood as a punishment of sin, now suffered it Him- 
 self in a more terrible form as an atonement for sin. 
 The olive leaf of Noah's dove showed that God's 
 strange work was done, and that He had returned 
 to the essential element of His nature, and love shone 
 forth again. The olive leaves of Gethsemane that 
 thrilled with the fear of the great agony that took 
 place beneath them, tell us that God so loved the 
 world that He gave His only begotten Son, that who- 
 soever believeth in Him should not perish but have 
 everlasting life. What sweeter message, what dearer 
 hope could come to us in our sins and sorrows than this ! 
 
 We read in classic authors that men used to study 
 the flight of birds across the sky, and draw good or 
 bad omens from the manner of their flight ; hence one 
 of our English words, auspicious, means literally, be- 
 holding the favourable flight of a bird. And another 
 
I4 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. i. 
 
 word, temple, meant originally a portion of the sky 
 marked out by the rod of the diviners or augurs, in 
 which the flight of birds was to be particularly 
 observed. All this superstition is, perhaps, only a 
 relic or survival of Noah's sending out the raven and 
 the dove for indications of the state of the flood. Let 
 us practise a higher divination. God has brought us 
 into His temple and bade us consider the Heavenly 
 Dove that has come on the auspicious errand of our 
 salvation. Let us take Him in, and may the olive 
 leaf of the gospel which He brings heal all the wounds 
 and evils which sin has inflicted upon us, and impart 
 to us the hope which maketh not ashamed of the 
 inheritance, incorruptible and undenled, and that fadeth 
 not away. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 THE ONENESS OF THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 "And it shall be one tabernacle." EXODUS xxvi. 6. 
 
 BEING a work, the tabernacle must, like every 
 other work, have been designed as well as 
 executed. Scripture presents to us this twofold view 
 of it ; shows it to us in plan and in progress. We are 
 taken up with Moses to the Mount, and there we see 
 unfolded before us the pattern as it existed in the 
 Divine mind. This architectural plan is a grand whole. 
 Notwithstanding the many separate parts of which it 
 is composed, it exhibits the most complete structural 
 harmony the most perfect mutual consistency. It is 
 to be one tabernacle not in the sense of singleness 
 and uniqueness, as if God had forbidden more than 
 one tabernacle to be constructed for His service but 
 in the sense of a real and profound unity. By the 
 golden taches or clasps binding together the curtains 
 which covered it, the whole structure was made one 
 tent or tabernacle, and all its parts and objects were 
 united. Unity is the hall-mark which God stamps 
 15 
 
j6 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 upon all His works. It is His autograph written in 
 the stars of heaven and in the flowers of the field, 
 attesting that they all proceed from the same Mind. 
 The universe is a great kaleidoscope which He is 
 perpetually turning round, in which a few simple ele- 
 ments are exhibited in endless diversity ; in which the 
 variety is not more wonderful than the unity. 
 
 i. In unfolding this sublime lesson, let us look, in 
 the first place, at the illustration of it which the taber- 
 nacle itself afforded. This remarkable structure was 
 one in regard to its parts. It was divided into two 
 rooms, the holy place and the most holy, by a veil 
 that hung between them. Only one man was permitted 
 to enter the inner apartment viz., the high priest; 
 and he only once a year, on the great day of atonement. 
 The outer sanctuary was daily frequented by the priests, 
 who, there, barefooted and clothed in their linen gar- 
 ments, accomplished their ordinary ministrations. But 
 although thus separated, the two divisions were essen- 
 tially one. The same boards of shittim wood enclosed 
 them ; they rested on the same silver sockets ; the 
 same curtains covered them, united by the golden 
 taches ; the same pillar of cloud rested over them ; 
 the same glory filled them. The ark in the holy of 
 holies was the focus to which all the parts, objects 
 and services, of the whole structure converged; the 
 culminating point to which they led up. The cherubim 
 which stood above the mercy-seat were embroidered 
 on either side of the dividing veil, so that those who 
 were in the outer sanctuary could form some idea of 
 
ir. THE ONENESS OF THE TABERNACLE. i; 
 
 the mystery in the inner shrine. And the oneness of 
 the tabernacle, which these mutual relations and the 
 clasped curtains of the same common roof betokened, 
 was in due time clearly proclaimed by the rending of 
 the separating veil from the top to the bottom at the 
 death of Christ, which threw the two apartments into 
 one, and gave the worshipper in the holy place en- 
 trance into the immediate presence of God. 
 
 This truth of the oneness of the tabernacle was also 
 taught by the intimate mutual relations that existed 
 between all its objects and services. The first object 
 we behold on entering the court of the tabernacle is 
 the altar of burnt-offering. It stands at the threshold, 
 indicating that only by an avenue of death can God 
 be approached; that without shedding of blood there 
 can be no remission of sins, no acceptable worship in 
 His sight. Around this altar all the services of the 
 tabernacle group themselves ; and from it they derive 
 all their significance and efficacy; a fact strikingly 
 indicated by its very size, which is such that all the 
 other vessels of the sanctuary can be included within 
 it. Between this altar and the door of the tabernacle 
 we see the laver filled with water, at which the priests 
 who minister in the holy place have to wash their 
 hands and feet before going in. The altar of burnt- 
 offering makes atonement for the guilt of their sins, 
 the laver purifies them from the defilement of their 
 sins ; so that while the one legally opens up the way 
 of approach to God, the other morally qualifies for 
 communion with Him. The door of the tabernacle 
 
1 S THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 may now be entered, and the first object which we 
 behold in the holy place is the altar of incense, which 
 is the counterpart of the altar of burnt-offering without 
 in the court. Both are intimately and inseparably 
 linked together. It is an altar, and therefore has a 
 reference to a sacrifice already presented ; and the holy 
 fire which causes the sweet incense to ascend is that 
 which had first consumed the victim on the altar of 
 burnt-offering. The perpetual incense rising within the 
 holy place thus forms an appropriate accompaniment 
 to the burnt-offering perpetually presented in the court. 
 One fire slowly consumes them both; and any fire 
 employed to raise the cloud of incense in the sanctuary, 
 except that which had been taken from the altar of 
 burnt-offering, is strange fire, rendering the incense 
 produced by it unhallowed, and exposing the profane 
 worshipper to the penalty of death. Even the incense 
 itself, it may be added, indicates the oneness of the 
 service; for it is composed of various spices of like 
 weight, so skilfully mingled together that no one in- 
 gredient shall predominate over the other, but each 
 shall harmoniously combine to make one exquisitely 
 fragrant perfume before the Lord. 
 
 The next object within the holy place is the seven- 
 branched golden candlestick. With its seven stems 
 proceeding from one, and its rich floral ornamentation, 
 the most elaborate of all the holy vessels, it was beaten 
 from one solid mass of gold by the hand of the artist, 
 who must have had the pattern and the symmetry of the 
 whole and of every part in his mind as he slowly and 
 
ii. THE ONENESS OF THE TABERNACLE. 19 
 
 carefully worked it out. The light shed by it, though 
 proceeding from seven different lamps, is but one light ; 
 the lamps being never said to send forth their lights, 
 but only their light. The oil supplied to each is the 
 same kind of oil, beaten, not squeezed, from the olive 
 berries, that it may be more clear and pure. The 
 candlestick is connected with the altar of incense by 
 means of its tongs and snuff-dishes. These bring the 
 fire by which the lamps are lighted, and trim and raise 
 the wicks that they may burn more brightly. The fire 
 of the altar becomes the light of the candlestick ; and 
 this connection between the two sacred vessels shows 
 the intimate relation between holiness and light, and 
 teaches that only the pure can see God only those 
 who are transfigured into the Divine likeness can shine 
 as lights in the world. The next object we see is the 
 table of shewbread, which is placed opposite the 
 candlestick, in order that its light may shine upon it ; 
 and it is connected with the altar of incense by means 
 of the precious frankincense, which is put upon each 
 row of the bread, " that it may be for a memorial, even 
 an offering made by fire unto the Lord ; " and also by 
 the golden spoons which are employed to carry away 
 this frankincense. When, therefore, the high priest 
 puts incense on the golden altar, he has to go to the 
 table of shewbread to fetch the spoonful from thence. 
 In this act he links these two vessels- the table and 
 the altar together ; the sustenance of the soul with its 
 purification. Passing into the inner shrine, we find 
 that the sole object there is the ark, with its golden lid 
 
THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
 of the mercy-seat, of the same dimensions with itself, so 
 as exactly to cover it ; both forming together one vessel 
 of the sanctuary. Out of its two ends were beaten the 
 cherubim, originally placed at the east end of the Gar- 
 den of Eden to keep the way of the tree of life, one at 
 each end, with their outstretched wings meeting and 
 over-shadowing the mercy-seat ; associated, not with the 
 flaming sword of vengeance, but with the symbol of the 
 Divine grace. We have, therefore, to regard it always 
 as a whole. It is the one vessel, as I have said, with 
 reference to which all the ministrations and ritual of the 
 tabernacle service are conducted. Over it the God to 
 whom all the worship is paid, and from whose presence 
 alone it derives its sanction and blessing, dwells in the 
 Shechinah cloud, and manifests His glory. Before it 
 the holy perfume of the incense altar yields its per- 
 petual fragrance ; and on it the blood of the sin-offering 
 of atonement is annually sprinkled. Thus we find, if 
 we study carefully the description given of the different 
 vessels of the tabernacle, that there was a clear and dis- 
 tinct intention on the part of God to link them together 
 into one great harmony of meaning and service. Each 
 vessel has its own distinct use, and each can be viewed 
 apart from the others ; and yet in every act of priestly 
 service, all are joined together, and are in active opera- 
 tion at the same time. It needs the combination of the 
 whole to make a complete and perfect act of worship, 
 just as it needs the harmonious action of all the mem- 
 bers of the body to constitute the act of living. And 
 just as the golden taches link the curtains of the taber- 
 
ii. THE ONENESS OF THE TABERNACLE. 2 i 
 
 nacle together, and make of them one covering for 
 one structure, so the smaller golden vessels attached to 
 the golden candlestick, the altar of incense, and the 
 shewbread table the tongs, snuff-dishes, spoons, and 
 censer link together the different vessels of the sanc- 
 tuary into one ministration, forming in this way one 
 golden chain of service simultaneously carried on in the 
 presence of God in behalf of Israel. 
 
 2. The words of the Lord to Moses have a wider 
 reference than to the immediate object which called 
 them forth. They may be applied to nature. It may 
 be said that the tabernacle pointed back to the creation. 
 It was a symbol of the great world of nature, as at once 
 manifesting and concealing God. It was, indeed, as a 
 Rosetta stone, to explain to man the spiritual hiero- 
 glyphics in the typology of nature, which had become 
 dark and insignificant to him when he sinned and fell, 
 that God devised the clearer typology of the taber- 
 nacle, and set the cherubim, which were the symbols of 
 creation in connection with the redemption of man, 
 above the mercy-seat in its holiest place, and em- 
 broidered them on the veil that divided the outer from 
 the inner sanctuary. There was no typical object or 
 service in the tabernacle which might not have been 
 seen in nature if man had not lost the key of interpreta- 
 tion. The very rainbow, which was the illuminated 
 initial letter of God's covenant of grace, painted on the 
 first cloud after the deluge, might have been recog- 
 nized in the varied colours of the veil, and of the 
 wrappings that covered the sacred places when not in 
 
22 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 use. The world was only a larger tabernacle, with the 
 same symbols, only darker and more mysterious ; prov- 
 ing that they emanated from the same Being. Many of 
 the most thoughtful minds among the covenant people 
 were impressed with this wonderful unity. They saw in 
 the darkness of night the pavilion of God ; they spoke 
 of His having made a tabernacle for the sun, spread 
 out His heavens as a curtain, and laid the beams of His 
 chambers in the mighty waters. In God's creation the 
 wise and good are guarded by the cherubim, and dwell 
 in the secret place of the Most High, under the feathers 
 of His wings. The psalms and hymns of Israel bear 
 constant reference to this beautiful resemblance. And, 
 as a crowning proof that this was no mere accident, 
 discovered only by a poetical mind, but an intention of 
 the Almighty, we find that the work of creation is de- 
 scribed in precisely the same way as the construction of 
 the tabernacle. We see the work of creation in plan 
 and in progress, in design and execution. The first 
 chapter of Genesis gives us the antecedent plan the 
 pattern shown on the Mount, as it were of the making 
 of the heavens and the earth, and of every plant of the 
 field, before it was in the earth^ and of every herb of the 
 field before it grew ; and in the narrative that follows we 
 have the actual execution and unfolding of this ante- 
 cedent plan of creation by the common operations of 
 nature, by continuous physical action. 
 
 If the creation be thus a greater tabernacle, in which 
 all the objects are meant to show forth the praise of 
 God, and to symbolize His work of grace, we should 
 
ii. THE ONENESS OF THE TABERNACLE. 23 
 
 expect to find in it the same unity, the same oneness of 
 design and harmony of all parts, that we see in the 
 Jewish tabernacle ; and this is what we actually find. 
 This is the great lesson which modern science has 
 taught us so effectually. It has brought forward in- 
 numerable striking illustrations to impress it more 
 deeply upon our minds. It is finding out more and 
 more in this marvellous structure of the visible creation 
 that all the joints are well fitted, that the adaptations 
 are mutual and universal. Instead of looking at things 
 separately, it views them as parts of one great, articulate, 
 concatinated whole, and members one of another. In- 
 deed, science may be defined, in the w r ords of a French 
 philosopher, as "the incessant effort of the human spirit 
 after rest," a rest which can only be attained by the 
 reduction of all things to a unity. 
 
 The forces of nature are mutually convertible. The 
 forms of nature have mutual likenesses. The whole 
 mineral kingdom is seen in the structure of a grain of 
 sand ; the whole vegetable kingdom in the form of a 
 single leaf; the whole animal world in the construction 
 of a single rib. Flowers are transfigured sunbeams; and 
 colour, heat, and sound are but modes of molecular 
 motion. That which we find in the whole we find over 
 again in every part. The climates, zones, seasons, and 
 products of the whole earth we find epitomized on a 
 single tropical snow mountain ; and the whole earth is 
 like two great mountains, set base to base at the equator, 
 with their tops at either end covered with the arctic and 
 antarctic snows. The climates and seasons, with their 
 
2 4 THE OLIVE LEAF. CIIAI-. 
 
 vegetable and animal productions, were distributed in 
 geological time, as we find them distributed in geo- 
 graphical space. Each element has counterparts of 
 every other element. The sea repeats the mountains 
 and valleys of the earth in its waves, the rivers in its 
 currents, and the trees and flowers in its ocean gardens. 
 Animals resemble plants ; plants possess analogies with 
 animals. The globule of blood and the rolling planet 
 are one. BufTon said that there was but one animal ; 
 and Faraday expressed his conviction that in the end 
 there will be found but one element with two polarities. 
 Owing to the imperfection and limitation of our powers, 
 we are obliged to deal with fragments of the universe, 
 and to exaggerate their differences. But the more pro- 
 found and varied our study of the objects of nature, the 
 more remarkable do we find their resemblances. And 
 we cannot occupy ourselves with the smallest province 
 of science without speedily becoming sensible of its 
 intercommunication with all other provinces. The 
 snowflake leads us to the sun. The study of a lichen or 
 moss becomes a key that opens up the great temple of 
 organic life. If we could understand, as Tennyson pro- 
 foundly says, what a little flower growing in the crevice 
 of a wayside wall is, root and all, and all in all, we should 
 know what God and man are. And the same unbroken 
 gradation or continuity which we trace throughout all 
 the parts and objects of our own world, pervades and 
 embraces the whole physical universe so far, at least, 
 as our knowledge of it at present extends. By the 
 wonderful discoveries of spectrum analysis, we find the 
 
ii. THE ONENESS OF THE TABERNACLE. 25 
 
 same substances in sun, moon, and stars which compose 
 our own earth. The imagination of the poet is conversant 
 with the whole, and sees truth in universal relations. 
 He attains by insight the goal to which all other know- 
 ledge is finding its way step by step. And the Christian 
 poet and philosopher, whose eye has been opened, not 
 partially, by the clay of nature's materials worked upon 
 by human thought so that he sees men as trees walking, 
 but fully and perfectly, by washing in the fountain 
 opened for sin and uncleanness, whose pure heart sees 
 God in everything, and in God's light sees light he 
 stands at the shining point where all things converge to 
 one. Wherever he turns his inquiring gaze, he finds 
 " shade unperceived so softening into shade, and all so 
 forming one harmonious whole," that not a link is want- 
 ing in the chain which unites and reproduces all, from 
 atom to mountain, from microscopic moss to banyan 
 tree, from monad up to man. And if the unity of the 
 tabernacle proved it to be the work of one designing 
 Mind, surely the unity of this greater tabernacle, this 
 vast cosmos, with its myriads of parts and complications, 
 proves it to be no strange jumbling of chance, no 
 incoherent freak of fortuity, but the work of one intelli- 
 gent Mind having one glorious object in view. 
 
 " The whole round world is every way 
 
 Bound with gold chains about the feet of God." 
 
 3. But not only did the tabernacle repeat in minia- 
 ture the whole creation as God's dwelling-place, it also 
 more especially typified the new creation the Church of 
 
2 6 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 God. In fact, this is the aspect in which it is commonly 
 regarded. The Epistle to the Hebrews is the key 
 which interprets the relation of the Levitical institutions 
 and rites to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and explains 
 their fulfilment in the Christian economy. And so 
 looking at the Church of God, we find that the same 
 characteristic of oneness belongs to it too. Under all 
 the varying dispensations of His grace, God's Church 
 has been one. The Jews were in the outer court be- 
 cause the way into the holiest was not yet made 
 manifest. Gentiles, by the new and living way opened 
 up through the rent veil of Christ's flesh, have entered 
 into the inner shrine. But Jews and Gentiles alike are 
 now united in one communion and fellowship in Christ. 
 The Saviour the Jews looked forward to in rites and 
 sacrifices, we look back to in the ordinances of the 
 Gospel. The religion that was veiled to them has 
 been unveiled to us. They saw the types and shadows ; 
 we behold the living and glorious realities. Over all is 
 the tabernacling of the same God ; and the Church of 
 Jews and Gentiles is "built upon the foundation of the 
 apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the 
 chief corner-stone, in whom all the building, fitly 
 framed together, groweth into an holy temple in the 
 Lord." 
 
 In this way, those who were far off as well as 
 those who were nigh have been made members of the 
 one household of faith. And still, notwithstanding the 
 many diversities of circumstance, creed, and experience ; 
 notwithstanding the multiplication of sects and denom- 
 
ii. THE ONENESS OF THE TABERNACLE. 2 ; 
 
 inations, each marked out by well-defined lines of doc- 
 trine and discipline, each clearly and sharply dis- 
 tinguished from its neighbour, there is in reality but 
 " one body, one Spirit, and one hope of our calling ; 
 one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father 
 of all, who is above all, and through all, and in all." 
 Amid accidental diversities there is substantial unity 
 unity in all that is truly essential beneath. These 
 diversities, arising from different temperaments, habits, 
 and culture, are necessary to the development of the 
 truth, and of the freedom and power of the spiritual life. 
 Each bears witness to some essential part of the Divine 
 counsel ; each holds forth prominently some truth 
 which has been suffered by others to fall into the back- 
 ground; each is indebted to the other for "supple- 
 mental influences which make its faith and life grander 
 and wider than it could have shaped out for itself 
 unaided." 
 
 The same process by which physical life advances, 
 through diversity of organs and functions to a higher 
 unity, and society is developed from its rudimentary 
 condition, takes place in the Church. The lowest 
 organism possesses in a single cell all the organs neces- 
 sary for the preservation and perpetuation of life ; but 
 as life advances in the animal or vegetable scale the 
 organism divides itself into many cells, some being 
 specially set apart for nutrition, and others for repro- 
 duction ; and the wonderful unity of the human body, 
 which is at the top of the scale, is secured by the com- 
 plex and harmonious operations of numerous parts and 
 
28 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 organs that have eacli a particular purpose to serve. So 
 with society. In its primitive condition each man per- 
 forms for himself all the arts of life. But in proportion 
 as society advances, in the same proportion does 
 specialization of social functions advance, until in the 
 perfectly organized society each man has his own busi- 
 ness to carry on, and his own contribution to make to 
 the well-being of the whole. So, too, in the Church, 
 specialization of function, differentiation, is the law of 
 development. Each Church knows in part, and prophe- 
 sies in part ; turns the ray of heavenly light into its own 
 characteristic hue. And it needs that all the Churches 
 should be gathered together by that charity which is the 
 bond of perfectness, supreme love to God, and fervent 
 love to one another, in order that the one perfect 
 Church of Christ should be formed. It needs that all 
 the hues should be combined to make the one pure 
 white beam of truth. Not in their separate state, but 
 " with all saints," can the different Churches go on to 
 comprehend what is the length and breadth and height 
 and depth of the love that passeth knowledge, and to be 
 filled with all the fulness of God. While Christ has 
 many folds in which He is educating His people in dif- 
 ferent circumstances, by variations of character and cul- 
 ture, He has only one flock who are led in the same 
 way to the everlasting fold. The Saviour's intercessory 
 prayer that all the dispersed of Israel may be gathered 
 into one, that all the disciples of every name may be 
 one, as God and Christ are one, is being fulfilled more 
 and more in proportion as men of all Christian creeds 
 
ii. THE O A" EN ESS OF THE TABERNACLE. 29 
 
 and communions are ready to draw and act together, 
 and to regard the differences that divide them, not 
 as hindrances to loving intercourse, but as helps to the 
 widening of each other's spiritual vision, and to the 
 rendering of a fuller manifestation of the mind of God 
 to the world. Bringing all the tithes of what they have 
 gained by their separate training and discipline into one 
 common storehouse, they will prove the Lord there- 
 with until He pour down a blessing so great that there 
 will not be room to receive it ; and through this unity 
 and community the world will believe at length that 
 Christ came forth from God. 
 
 But the Church on earth is only part of God's great 
 Church. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 speaks of the outer division of the tabernacle as the type 
 of the Church on earth, and of the inner part of the 
 sanctuary as a type of heaven, where the true High Priest 
 is now pleading with His own blood for us. Between 
 the Church below and the Church above, the veil of 
 death seems to intervene; and there seems to be no 
 connection between those who worship in the earthly 
 sanctuary, and those who serve God day and night in 
 His heavenly temple. But this veil has been rent in 
 twain by the death, resurrection, and ascension of our 
 Lord ; and the two divisions of God's house have been 
 thrown into one. The powers of the world to come have 
 entered into and transfigured the vain show of this pass- 
 ing and perishing world. The life which we live on 
 earth is part of the life which the angels and spirits of 
 just men made perfect live before the throne. Our 
 
3 o THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 citizenship is even now in heaven ; we are come even 
 here to Mount Zion, the city of the living God. Of one 
 Lord the whole family, the one family, in heaven and 
 earth is named. Living and dead believers make but 
 one communion, constitute the body of Christ, the ful- 
 ness of Him that filleth all in all. We are under the 
 narrow, sensible horizon of time ; they are under the 
 great rational horizon of eternity, which comprehends 
 ours as the great sky comprehends the tent that is 
 erected beneath it. We have here on earth, in the 
 beauties of nature, and in the joys of life, types and 
 shadows of brighter substances and more satisfying joys 
 in heaven. We have golden taches and foretastes and 
 antepasts of 'the things unseen and eternal, connecting 
 this life with the next. The glories of the inmost shrine 
 are embroidered upon the veil that falls between us and 
 the full realization. In our more immediate approaches 
 to the God who fills both worlds with His presence, we 
 stand on the same ground with the redeemed in glory ; 
 we feel that this is none other than the house of God 
 and the gate of heaven. If we worship God in spirit 
 and in truth, the substance of that worship, whether in 
 the body or out of the body, is the same. In purely 
 spiritual exercises the wall of partition is thrown down, 
 and heaven and earth are one. And while we believe 
 and continue in the communion of saints, and partake 
 of the same celestial food, we are not altogether parted 
 from them. Between the spirits of just men made per- 
 fect and believers remaining on the earth there is a 
 unity far more intimate than we commonly suppose. 
 
ii. THE ONENESS OF THE TABERNACLE. 3I 
 
 The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in remark- 
 able words, whose full meaning we are not able to 
 gauge, says, " that they without us should not be made 
 perfect." They are indeed made perfect in holiness and 
 in Divine rest, but there is a perfection still before them. 
 They form a great cloud of witnesses, watching with 
 keen and unflagging interest the fortunes of the Church 
 on earth ; and just as that which is behind in the suffer- 
 ings of Christ will not be filled up until He Himself has 
 wiped away all tears from the eyes of His people, so the 
 perfection of the saints will not be complete till the 
 whole Church has entered into everlasting bliss. 
 
 4. The tabernacle was the Bible of the Israelites. 
 God taught them by its object-lessons in their child- 
 hood and pupilage in the wilderness. But that age 
 of shadows and symbols has disappeared ; man has 
 passed from the childhood's stage of education into 
 the higher school. We have been trained for a clearer 
 perception and a fuller possession of the truth. God 
 has given to us His own written Word, in which His 
 thoughts are woven with man's thoughts, making of 
 the whole Book the speech to the world of Immanuel, 
 God with us. Its record extends over a period of 
 more than four thousand years. It was written by men 
 belonging to different ages and civilizations, possessed 
 of the most varied temperaments and tastes, and 
 living in widely different ranks and circumstances. It 
 contains almost all the forms of human composition, 
 is characterized by the utmost variety of subject and 
 treatment, and is adapted to all kinds of experiences. 
 
3 2 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 But amid this extraordinary diversity, the most con- 
 spicuous as well as the grandest feature of the Book 
 is its unity. There are a thousand golden taches 
 linking together all the parts of the fabric ; and, from 
 Genesis to Revelation, we have the gradual unfolding 
 of only one scheme of grace, the slow manifestation 
 of the same kingdom of heaven. The great thoughts 
 which the latest books contain had their roots at 
 the very gate of the Garden of Eden, in the earliest 
 book. The promise of the seed of the woman given 
 at the beginning develops more and more of its 
 germinant fulness as the ages and generations pass 
 on, until at last it flowers and fruits in the life and 
 death of Christ, in the formation of the Christian 
 Church, and in the organization of a perfected Christian 
 society. The Gospel is cast into the mould of the 
 law ; the New Testament is the complement and 
 explanation of the Old ; and in the book of Revelation 
 the circle of sacred doctrine and history is rounded 
 and completed, the latest developments of grace coal- 
 escing with the earliest dealings of God with man, 
 and the paradise lost is restored. It is this wonderful 
 unity that constitutes the grandest evidence of its 
 inspiration. Like the artists employed in the manu- 
 facture of the Gobelins tapestry, who work behind 
 the upright loom and do not see the pattern which 
 they are producing, the sacred writers themselves 
 could not have had before their minds the complete 
 plan of the Divine operation which they were partially 
 working out. They inquired diligently, indeed, what 
 
ii. THE ONENESS OF THE TABERNACLE. 33 
 
 the Spirit which was working within them did signify; 
 but while they felt that there was more in their words 
 than they could master, they could not grasp with their 
 understanding the relations of their own share of the 
 work to the whole. Behind the particular scope and 
 purpose of each book, we discern the great plan 
 which rules the whole revelation, the great pattern to 
 which God works, the inspiration of the one Mind 
 that is uttering its thoughts through manifold forms 
 and independent organs. 
 
 The construction of the Book is like that of a perfect 
 plant, whose growth is according to unity of plan, and 
 whose parts are modifications of one fundamental 
 typical form, so that they may be compared with one 
 another and with the whole. We find stamped upon 
 it the same impress of unity which we see in all 
 God's works. He who throughout all the realms of 
 nature acts upon the great principle of unity of type 
 with variety of development, modifying by successive 
 steps the first embodiment of the vertebrate idea, as 
 it appeared in the lowest and oldest fishes, until at 
 length it became arrayed in the glorious garb of the 
 human form, has acted upon the same principle in 
 the different dispensations of His grace, which were 
 but successive disclosures, clearer and fuller as time 
 went on, of the same primitive dispensation. Through- 
 out all God's gracious dealings with man, we can 
 trace a wonderful sameness and continuity, akin to 
 that which science reveals to us in the constitution 
 
 and arrangements of the earth and of the stars. And 
 c 
 
34 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 what an overwhelming idea does this thought give 
 us of the unchangeableness, the all-comprehensive 
 intelligence, and foreknowledge of God ! The wonder- 
 ful manifoldness of Scripture, the infinitely varied 
 experiences of which it is the utterance and to which 
 it addresses itself, are but the unfolding of the kingdom 
 of redeemed humanity from its root in the promise 
 made to our first parents in Eden ; just as the infinite 
 diversity of nature is but the manifestation of the 
 original conception contained in the first strokes of 
 the Great Artist's pencil in the first creative fiat, 
 "Let there be light." And between the revelation 
 of nature and the revelation of the Bible there is 
 a continuity of relationship which proves that the one 
 is the complement and fulfilment of the other, and 
 that they are both the work of one Mind. For He 
 who commanded the light at first to shine out of 
 darkness, and so wrought out all the forces and forms 
 of creation, hath shined into our hearts to give us 
 the light of the knowledge of His glory in the face 
 of Jesus Christ, and so hath wrought out all the forces 
 and forms of the new creation. 
 
 5. Man's body is a tabernacle the greatest of all 
 temples. It is fearfully and wonderfully made, the 
 very highest possible form of organization, the master- 
 piece of creation. It, too, is one in the fullest sense 
 of the word, being indeed the most complete and vital 
 unity in the material universe. It is the finished result 
 of all the strivings and tentative efforts which make 
 up the history of the creature, and contains in its 
 
ii. THE ONENESS OF THE TABERNACLE. 35 
 
 structure clear traces of all the stages through which 
 it has passed, and by which it has been perfected, 
 linking its vesture with that which clothed in succession 
 of development the inferior animals from the lowest 
 forms. The rudimentary organs that are useless in the 
 lower animals in which they occur acquire use and 
 significance in man's body; while the structures that 
 exist as dwarfed survivals in him are eminently useful 
 in the lower creatures in which they are found. In 
 both cases they are the golden taches linking them 
 together into one grand tabernacle. Man's body sums 
 up in itself all the forms, forces, and substances of the 
 world furnishes the key to the whole order of nature, 
 being a microcosm, or "in little all the sphere." It 
 builds out of the common dust of the ground a shrine 
 on whose altar the fire of conscious life is ever burning, 
 and the sacrifice of one part of its substance for the 
 maintenance of the rest is being constantly offered; 
 through which pass communications alike from the 
 lower and the higher spheres matter being stamped 
 with its lofty impress and linked with the world of 
 mind and spirit. 
 
 But that which gives the body its wonderful 
 unity, which builds up its parts, and compacts 
 them into one grand vital whole, and makes of it a 
 temple, is the human soul that pervades and possesses 
 it. Body and soul constitute together man's personality. 
 Neither is complete without the other. We are apt to 
 separate between them, and to cast the things of the 
 body into an unkindly and unnatural shade, while we 
 
36 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 unduly exalt all that refers to the soul. But the Gospel 
 in its wholeness includes them both, and insists upon 
 our being complete not only in our spiritual but also 
 in our bodily nature ; for each element of our complex 
 being has its own distinct use and function, and the 
 true human completeness is the sanctification of body, 
 soul, and spirit. By the unity of body and spirit we 
 have always a sense of our own personal identity, and 
 realize the intellectual and moral continuity of our lives. 
 And our Christian belief in the resurrection of the body 
 is but the logical consequence the last and highest 
 expression of our intense belief in the indestructible 
 unity of man ; for we believe that this unity would be 
 mutilated, if at death the body, which is as necessary 
 as the soul to constitute man's personality, were to 
 perish altogether. Reason and revelation alike assure 
 us that man's unity, in its unimpaired completeness, will 
 be preserved through all the changes of life and death, 
 and when this mortal shall have put on immortality. 
 
 Man is the high-priest of God, in whom the world 
 is conscious of its own harmony, and who is to exhibit 
 that harmony in its highest form in the order of his life, 
 and in this way to show forth consciously and willingly 
 the praise of God which the inferior creation is showing 
 forth without either consciousness or will. For his sake 
 the wonderful unity of the universe, the unity of the 
 tabernacle, the unity of the Church, the unity of the 
 Bible exists. They have been thus constructed and 
 ordained that by the teaching and training they afford 
 he might grow up into an holy and harmonious habita- 
 
THE ONENESS OF THE TABERNACLE. 
 
 37 
 
 tion of God through the Spirit. But through the 
 exercise of his unique gift of liberty, sin has introduced 
 disorder into his person and life. He broke away from 
 the law of his being, from the gravitation of God, and 
 lost the cohesion of his nature, which henceforth be- 
 came disintegrated and corrupt. The flesh now lusteth 
 against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh. 
 There is a law in the members warring against the 
 law of the mind. We have broken up our life into 
 little fragments ; we contrast secular and sacred, assign- 
 ing this part to the world and that to God living 
 exclusively for heaven or exclusively for earth ; wholly 
 carnal or wholly spiritual. There is a ceaseless struggle 
 within us, and a ceaseless strife without us. We are 
 the centre of a whirlpool of contending and discordant 
 forces which we ourselves have set in motion. Our 
 wheels and those of nature are out of gear, and 
 therefore continually clash. We are homeless and 
 restless in a world where all other creatures are at 
 home and at rest All the scenes and objects of 
 creation witness that we only are changed, that we 
 only have introduced disorder into God's works. Of 
 this strife the noblest spirits are the most conscious. 
 But God has not left man to be thus the only discord 
 in the music of His works. He has sent His own Son 
 to tabernacle in our world and in our nature, and so 
 establish the balance between all the parts of our being, 
 and restore the lost harmony between man and nature. 
 By His atoning death our Lord made an end of that 
 sin which caused the discord and confusion. By His 
 
3 8 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. n. 
 
 perfect life He consecrated alike all the parts and 
 offices of life. And by taking up with Him into 
 heaven at His ascension the results of His thirty years 
 of obscure physical labour, as well as the three years 
 of His spiritual ministry, and transfiguring them both, 
 He has abolished the distinction between secular and 
 sacred, and restored a real unity to human existence. 
 Order, beauty, harmony, life, joy, are all brought back 
 by Him. What a wonderful grandeur of meaning do 
 the revelations of science in regard to the chain of life, 
 from the lowest monad up to man, give to the old 
 words which we usually read with so little apprehension 
 of their significance : " A body hast thou prepared for 
 me !" Looking back from the incarnation through the 
 long dim vista of the world's development, we see how 
 God was slowly and gradually preparing a tabernacle 
 in which creation and the Creator should meet, not 
 in semblance but in reality. " In Him all things con- 
 sist;" or, as the idea contained in the Greek word 
 thus translated might be conveyed, He is the key- 
 stone that binds together and rounds to perfection the 
 glorious arch of the universe. "For it hath pleased 
 the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell," the 
 fulness of the creature and the fulness of the Godhead; 
 " and having made peace through the blood of His 
 cross, by Him to reconcile all things unto Himself; 
 by Him, I say, whether they be things in earth or things 
 in heaven." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 THE HOSPITALITIES OF NATURE. 
 
 " As for the stork, the fir-trees are her house." PSALM civ. 17. 
 
 VERY remarkable was the feeling with which the 
 ancient poets of Israel regarded the cedars of 
 Lebanon ; a feeling which has survived in the worship 
 which the Maronite priests celebrate annually under 
 their shade during the Feast of the Transfiguration. 
 For long ages these venerable trees clothed the slopes 
 and valleys of the great Syrian range ; and with their 
 roots planted in old glacial moraines, they bore witness 
 regarding the amazing luxuriance and abundance of 
 the pines of the far-off Miocene world, and still car- 
 ried out their important uses in the economy of nature. 
 The Psalmist, whose keen eye even for the humblest 
 objects is strikingly seen in the great hymn of nature 
 set to the music of the spheres the io4th Psalm was 
 struck with the wide hospitality which they afforded. 
 The grove of belated cedars the last survivors of a 
 most hospitable old race in its retired nook on the 
 north-western slope of Lebanon attracted the mi- 
 
 39 
 
4 o THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 gratory birds ; and in the quiet retreat, in the fragrant 
 shade, protected from the wild storms that raged over 
 the snowy plateaus outside, they built their nests and 
 reared their young in safety. There could not be a 
 greater contrast than between the wind-swept desola- 
 tion around and the oasis of life created in the midst of 
 it by these magnificent trees. Outside is the stillness of 
 death ; within, nature is never silent. All day the shrill 
 sound of the grasshopper is heard, and the grove re- 
 sounds with the short, clear notes of little birds. Eze- 
 kiel gathers all animal life around these cedars, for 
 there, he says, " All the fowls of heaven made their 
 nests in his boughs, and under his branches did all the 
 beasts of the field bring forth their young." The 
 Psalmist also shows the fitness of the fir-trees of the 
 lower heights of Lebanon for the nests of the stork, 
 these being better adapted for their habitation than the 
 roofs of the houses, which they frequent in Europe ; 
 for in the East such situations are too frequently 
 made use of in domestic economy to suit the quiet and 
 retiring habits of the bird. And he goes on to notice 
 the beautiful adaptation that exists between the timid 
 marmot or coney and the clefts of the inaccessible 
 rocks to which it flees in danger; and between the 
 chamois or wild goat of Syria and the snow-clad haunts 
 over which it freely ranges, secure from the pursuit of 
 man or beast of prey. 
 
 The relation between birds and particular trees is 
 especially interesting. It would seem, indeed, as if 
 some trees grew dense, and matted together their 
 
in. THE HOSPITALITIES OF NATURE. 41 
 
 branches, that they might thus afford a secure asylum 
 for little birds. This would appear to be the final 
 cause of the lime tree to give a single example 
 which, instead of spreading out its boughs and branches 
 widely like other trees, crowds them together, and so 
 fills up the vacant spaces with slender little twigs that 
 the whole centre of the tree forms an impervious laby- 
 rinth of brushwood, within which the little bird is safe 
 from the pursuit of its foes. 
 
 Some objects are repellent and exclusive. They give 
 no shelter or support to any created thing. They 
 suffice for themselves, and stand out clearly defined in 
 their distinct and independent existence. The surface 
 of the snow is barren ; the chilly glacier has no com- 
 munion with the mountain glen through which it passes. 
 The clear, sharp-cut crystal harbours no stain from 
 earth or sky to show its sympathy with the materials 
 out of which it sprang. The marble rock, like the 
 snow, does not invite the green things of the soil 
 around to share its existence with it, and give to and 
 take from it an element of picturesqueness and beauty. 
 
 And yet, as in human society, when social laws over- 
 bear private plans, and the social design is fulfilled in 
 spite of selfish opposition, so in nature the substances 
 that seek to exclude others are made to contribute to 
 the general harmony and the beautiful balancing of 
 creation. The very snow is made to be friendly and 
 hospitable, for it nourishes on its stainless bosom a 
 simple, one-celled plant which grows with such rapidity 
 and in such marvellous profusion that it gives to whole 
 
4 2 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 fields of polar and alpine snow a deep crimson hue, as 
 if a creature's blood had dyed them. In the shallow 
 parts of water melted on the surface of the glacier by 
 the hot noon-day sun may be seen jelly-like masses of 
 vegetation ; while under the stones which the rocks 
 around hurl down upon it, as if in anger at its hostility, 
 may be found lively colonies of the small black glacier 
 flea. Nature will not allow this cold, frigid substance 
 to maintain a separate existence j for besides boulders 
 from the rocks, she persists in soiling its surface with 
 dirt-bands and masses of debris from the crumbling 
 mountain-side, so that a line of demarcation between 
 ice and earth cannot be drawn, and the glacier blends 
 with the rest of the mountain ; while the sky claims 
 kindred with the deep cerulean blue that shines in the 
 crevasses. Marble, too, takes on the warm, golden tint 
 of the sunset, and is stained by time with a russet hue 
 that brings it into partnership with the common rocks, 
 with which all things make friends the mosses, lichens, 
 vines, and birds. Even the hardest crystals and preci- 
 ous stones have occasional cavities filled with fluids, 
 which indicate their origin. Nay, so anxious is nature 
 to assimilate every object, that on the thatch of man's 
 lowly cottages she plants her tufted mosses ; on the 
 slates of his statelier roofs she paints her frescoes of 
 golden lichens ; and even on his windows she produces 
 not only the iridescence of age, but also a growth of 
 curious, minute algae. On his dark unsightly cinder- 
 walks, which seem like spots of ink disfiguring nature's 
 fair page, she makes her dandelions to open their sun- 
 
THE HOSPITALITIES OF NA TURE. 
 
 43 
 
 shine ; and on the raw new walls which he builds 
 around his possessions, to separate them from nature's 
 wastes, she spreads her hoary nebulae of vegetation. 
 Man's works are thus made kindred to the earth and 
 the elements : and nature, by her hospitalities, makes 
 them at home in every situation. 
 
 Some objects are more hospitable than others. The 
 beech, of all trees, is perhaps the most self-contained. 
 It fills out its trunk so thoroughly ; its bark is so hard 
 and stuffed and rounded with its wood, that it has not a 
 rift nor a crevice in which any living thing might find 
 refuge. No moss forms a green tuft upon it ; no leafy 
 or shrubby lichen finds a foot-hold on its smooth bark. 
 And even the crustaceous species that consist of a 
 mere film of grey matter grow thinner on its hard repel- 
 lent surface than on the rock itself. They cling so 
 closely that they cannot be separated. No botanist 
 would go to the beech expecting to find on its trunk 
 the wealth of lowly plants in which he delights. To 
 the entomologist it is equally uninteresting, the number 
 of insects that frequent it being exceedingly few. Nor 
 is it chosen usually by birds to build their nests on its 
 boughs. Darwin mentions that worms hardly ever 
 make their curious castings under its shade. The 
 ground beneath it nourishes no green grasses, and only 
 its brown mast and polished three-cornered nuts carpet 
 the soil. 
 
 Why is the beech so inhospitable ? Why does it thus 
 stand alone, apart from the rest of creation, and 
 proudly maintain its own self-sufficient existence? It 
 
44 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 is indeed one of the grandest of our forest trees. No- 
 thing can be lovelier than its translucent foliage in 
 spring, making, as Coleridge says, " the level sunshine 
 glimmer with green light" Nothing can be more 
 splendid than its blaze of amber tints lighting up the 
 whole woodland in autumn like a pillar of fire. Its 
 shade is ample ; its leaves are sweet and tender ; its 
 nuts pleasant and nutritious. And yet all creatures, 
 with the exception of the pig, which feeds upon its 
 nuts, seem to shun it ; and hardly any moss or lichen 
 ornaments its trunk and arms with its quaint jewellery. 
 It stands in the natural world of pictures around us as a 
 type of a thoroughly selfish and unsocial nature. Only 
 the lover seeks it to carve upon its smooth, hard bark 
 the name of the beloved one, fondly hoping that it may 
 long retain, clear and sharp as if cut in stone, the 
 cherished inscription. But even this tender secret it 
 refuses to keep ; its trunk swells, and the letters be- 
 come dilated and distorted, and in a few years a new 
 growth smooths out and obliterates the name, without 
 leaving a trace on its callous wood. Perhaps this 
 smoothness and hardness of the bark and wood, as 
 well as the dryness of its shade for no other woods 
 are so free from damp and so pleasant to walk in as 
 beech woods may be the reason why it shelters so 
 little dependent life. Even the rain-drops refuse to 
 linger about it, and though the sunbeams may play 
 through the green meshes of its transparent foliage and 
 tremble on the lines of silky hairs that project from the 
 margins of its young leaves " like eyelashes from the 
 
in. THE HOSPITALITIES OF NATURE. 45 
 
 margin of the eyelid," yet without moisture the light 
 can favour no growth of fern or moss or lichen, which 
 loves a damp atmosphere ; and without these lowly 
 plants no insect or bird-life can flourish. 
 
 Another inhospitable tree is the pine. Its degree of 
 selfishness varies with the species, some being much 
 more tolerant of alien life than others ; the common 
 larch and the cedar being, perhaps, the least exclusive, 
 and the aurucaria the most. The trunk and branches 
 of the larch are covered from head to foot with tufts 
 and rosettes of hoary lichens, which cling specially to 
 this tree and give it a most venerable appearance ; but 
 the aurucaria surrounds itself with an impenetrable 
 armour of spears and daggers, within whose formidable 
 circle no living thing dare intrude. I once saw a 
 squirrel skipping along a lawn and, suddenly stopping 
 at the foot of a tall, wide-spreading aurucaria, it looked 
 up at the bristling trunk and branches with evident 
 astonishment, as if it had never seen anything of the 
 kind before ; and with an expression of disappointment 
 and fear that was almost human, and certainly was 
 exceedingly comical, it turned away and climbed up a 
 more propitious-looking species of pine near at hand. 
 But whatever may be the case in regard to individual 
 trees, the pine-tribe in its social character is decidedly 
 inhospitable. A pine wood is one of the loneliest 
 scenes in nature, not merely as regards the intrusion of 
 man, but as regards the intrusion of any other living 
 thing. Nothing breaks up its uniformity and monotony. 
 It has none of the rich variety of. life that characterizes 
 
46 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 other woods. The seasons themselves make no im- 
 pression upon it, for it is dressed in perennial green, 
 <ind it retains its shade alike in summer's heat and 
 winter's desolation. It prevents all undergrowth ; no 
 brambles dare to stretch their long, trailing, thorny 
 arms like the feelers of some creature of prey within 
 its guarded enclosure. No wild roses can open their 
 trembling petals white with fear or crimson with blushes, 
 in its solemn sanctuary. No hazel-bush will drop 
 there its ringlets of smoking catkins in spring, or its 
 ruddy clusters of nuts in autumn. No mimic sunshine 
 of primrose tufts, no pale star-beams of anemone or 
 sorrel will light up its gloom. No glimpses of blue sky 
 are let into it by hyacinths, or blue-bells, or violets. 
 To all the lowly plants that find refuge in other woods, 
 and in turn adorn and beautify their hosts, the pine 
 trees in their dignified independence refuse admission. 
 No song of bird or hum of insect is heard beneath 
 their boughs. And on the ground below, strewn deep 
 with a carpet of brown needles and emptied cones that 
 have silently dropped in the course of long years from 
 overhead, and are slow to decay, only a few yellow 
 toad-stools and one or two splendid scarlet mushrooms 
 make up for the painful dearth of vegetation. It seems 
 as if the balsamic breath of the pines, which is so 
 wholesome to human life preventing all fevers and 
 infectious diseases were as deadly as the upas shade 
 to other forms of life. 
 
 How widely different is it with the oak ! This of all 
 trees of all living things is the most hospitable ; and 
 
in. 7 HE HOSPITALITIES OF NATURE. 47 
 
 in this respect it is well chosen as the badge of 
 England, which has the proud distinction of affording a 
 refuge to every political outcast and victim of ecclesi- 
 astical tyranny throughout the world, and fosters by its 
 love of freedom and constitutional government every 
 type and variety of human life. A whole book might 
 easily be written upon the multitude of living things 
 that obtain food and shelter from the oak. The 
 natural history of its inmates and boarders is like that 
 of a garden or, indeed, a county. Some creatures are 
 peculiar to it, and find their home nowhere else ; and 
 to many more that are free to come and go, it extends 
 a kindly welcome. Were it to perish altogether from 
 off the face of the earth, many insects and plants would 
 disappear utterly. The insect population alone of the 
 oak tree, including beetles, butterflies, and a great 
 variety of tiny creeping things which none but a 
 naturalist cares for, or is aware of, would furnish 
 materials for study of a most interesting and absorbing 
 kind for many summer weeks together. When we do 
 not see themselves, we see the evidence of the exist- 
 ence and working of the insects in the great variety of 
 curious galls which they produce upon the trunk and 
 branches : oak-apples that hang on the twigs like some 
 mysterious unknown fruit, and are as wondrously 
 fashioned, although excrescences and abortions of the 
 vital sap, as the legitimate acorn cups and eggs them- 
 selves ; and beautiful golden-brown spangles that crowd 
 all the under-surface of the withering leaves in autumn 
 like the seeds, or the " fairy's money " as it is called, 
 
48 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 on the back of the ferns, thus linking the oak-leaf and 
 the fern-leaf the highest and the lowest type of vege- 
 tation together in the wondrous unity of nature by a 
 strange similitude of appearance. 
 
 But it is among the plants that we find the most beautiful 
 occupants of the oak-tree. The ivy climbs up its trunk, 
 which affords admirable support for its myriads of little 
 feet, and changes its glossy leaves, as it creeps higher 
 and higher, from the deeply-cut angular pattern to the 
 oval and pointed one ; and at the top it waves its airy 
 sprays among the oak-leaves, and produces beside the 
 acorns at the extremities of the branches, the light 
 green flowers that blossom only when the plant has 
 nothing to cling to, and must shift for itself; as if 
 nature were taking care that when the life of the indi- 
 vidual was in danger, the life of the race should at least 
 be made sure. Then there is the mystic mistletoe, with 
 all its dim and sacred associations with the Druid 
 worship of our remote ancestors. It clings still closer 
 to the oak, for it is not an epiphyte like the ivy 
 merely making use of the tree for support, and finding 
 its own food independently from the soil and air but 
 a partial parasite that strikes its root into the substance 
 of the oak, and while to some extent feeding upon its 
 prepared juices, is capable of showing a little indepen- 
 dent spirit and working for its own support, as is 
 evident from the fact of its having green leaves, which, 
 however pale, can still decompose, to some extent, the 
 sunshine into materials of growth. The mistletoe is 
 thus a partial boarder of the oak ; it gets, so to speak, 
 
THE HOSPITALITIES OF NATURE. 
 
 49 
 
 its principal meal from it, while for its lighter refresh- 
 ment it is dependent upon its own resources. A beauti- 
 ful emblem truly it is, thus growing on our royal English 
 tree. According to the suggestive mythology of our 
 ancestors, which had, indeed, much in it of the deeply 
 philosophical, as well as of the practical and religious, 
 the oak was Hesus, the god best and greatest, strongest 
 and everduring ; and the mistletoe was man, weak and 
 poor, but living in him and clinging to his everlasting 
 arms. 
 
 It would be difficult to enumerate the various kinds 
 of mosses, lichens, and ferns that show a preference for 
 the oak, and share its grand and liberal hospitality. 
 Its trunk seems as if made to harbour those lowly 
 Liliputian members of the vegetable kingdom whose 
 quaint forms and curious properties harmonize so well 
 with the fairy scenery of midsummer night dreams. 
 Unlike the smooth bark of the beech, made to keep all 
 visitors aloof, the bark of the oak is full of furrows, 
 crevices, irregularities, porches and out-buildings as it 
 were, where wandering seeds find lodgment, and first 
 tender growths can secure their hold against scorching 
 sunbeam and cruel wind. The huge patriarch, hoary 
 with years, whose life-time bridges across the whole 
 history of England, allows the tiny imps of vegetation 
 that are but of yesterday the perpetual infants, so to 
 speak, of plant-life freely to clamber over its roots and 
 arms, and hang upon its rugged bosses which time has 
 used so cruelly, reducing them almost to bone and 
 muscle, their emerald bracelets of moss, their plumes of 
 
5 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 polypody ferns, and their rosettes of lichen, adorning 
 the magnificent old grandfather of the woods with the 
 ornaments of youth and beauty! What a wonderful 
 picturesqueness do these lowly forms of life, crowding 
 around the oak as it grows in years and in size, give to 
 it ! They richly repay the hospitality they receive in 
 the added charm which they impart to the forest patri- 
 arch. They show an exquisite sympathy even with its 
 weaknesses, hiding its defects by their fairy sprays, and 
 covering its dead members with a lovely pall of vege- 
 table velvet. It teaches us thus the touching lesson 
 that the grandest things in nature may be made more 
 beautiful and picturesque by the simplest; as the 
 greatest man may be indebted for his chief happiness 
 to the smiles and the prattle of the little children that 
 climb on his knee. Even to the fairy shapes that 
 played- among these mystic forms of plant-life, when the 
 world was younger and more credulous, the oak was 
 more hospitable than any other tree. The Dryads took 
 their name from it, and flitted in and out among the 
 flickering shadows cast by its leaves upon the ground, 
 and gave to those whose eyes were purged with the 
 eye-salve of faith to see them, glimpses of a realm fairer 
 and brighter than the. common human world of care and 
 toil. And how open to all the flowers and shrubs of 
 the wildwood are its wide-spreading arms ! The grass 
 may grow up to the very foot of its trunk unreproved 
 by any dark frowning shadow cast by its leaves. The 
 hyacinth may make a fragrant mist of blue about its 
 roots, and the primrose need not blanch its sunny 
 
in. THE HOSPITALITIES OF NA TURE. 5 r 
 
 cheek as it creeps up to its venerable bole; and all the 
 seasons may bring their varied gifts to bloom and fade 
 within its circle without let or hindrance. Royal as it 
 is, there is no solitude or exclusiveness of royalty about 
 it. Rather does its dignity consist in its hospitality; 
 and its nobility is indicated by its freeness of access 
 and kindly and generous welcome to all that may hold 
 within it the sacred principle of life. The gates of its 
 hospitality, like the Bokharian nobleman's, are " nailed 
 open." Sturdy and independent as it is, there is thus 
 no object that is more closely linked with the general 
 life of nature, that blends more harmoniously with the 
 operations which different creatures carry on for their 
 own advantage, and makes of them one genial system of 
 mutual benefit. 
 
 Nature, in all her departments, is a system of mutual 
 accommodation. Every object affords hospitality to 
 every other object. I except, indeed, the whole class of 
 parasites, whose existence is not only peculiarly objection- 
 able, but exceedingly mysterious, and which seem to 
 militate so much against the argument of design and the 
 goodness of creation. For it cannot be said that they 
 are hospitably received and entertained by their hosts. 
 The connection between them is a compulsory one, 
 and is inevitably disastrous to the entertainer. These 
 parasites take all and give nothing in return; they 
 benefit no single created thing. And their existence 
 seems to have no other purpose than to point out the 
 moral, how loathsome and terribly degraded living 
 creatures become that have ceased to support them- 
 
5 2 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 selves and prey upon others; how parasitism inevit- 
 ably reduces form and function alike in the mental 
 and spiritual as in the physical world to the lowest 
 and basest point. No creature can abdicate its glorious 
 individuality and independence with impunity. Nature 
 stamps upon it her hall-mark of degradation. 
 
 But there is another principle besides parasitism 
 throughout nature, viz., commensalism. The term was 
 applied, in the first instance, to a class of humble 
 animals living in the sea that are taken under the 
 protection of a higher class, feed at the same table, 
 and associate together in the various pursuits of 
 life, but have otherwise no connection with each 
 other. The commensals partake of the same food 
 with their hosts, but they do not feed upon them, 
 do not make use of the pabulum that has been 
 organized for them by passing through the system of 
 their associates. There is a large number of these 
 curious creatures, whose habits are exceedingly interest- 
 ing and instructive. But the term that describes them 
 might be extended so as to include plants as well as 
 animals, on land as well as in the sea, which exhibit 
 similar peculiarities. Ferns, lichens, and mosses are 
 not parasites, for they do not injure the trees upon 
 which they grow. They feed upon the same air and 
 sunshine, and imbibe the same moisture, but they pro- 
 cure their own living independently of the structures 
 which give them support and protection. So, too, with 
 the ivy, for though it attaches itself to the bark of a tree 
 by thousands of rootlets, it does not derive its susten- 
 
in. THE HOSPITALITIES OF NATURE. 53 
 
 ance from the tree, but from the air and soil by means 
 of its genuine roots and green leaves ; and if its stem be 
 severed it will die like any other plant. The ivy is, 
 therefore, a commensal, and not a parasite. Perhaps 
 the most beautiful and striking examples of commensal- 
 ism are the large class of plants called epiphytes, which 
 simply rest upon the trunks and branches of trees, and 
 adorn them with wreaths and garlands such as they 
 themselves could not develop, beautifying the aged 
 structure with new bursts of bud and blossom, and 
 casting even over death a vesture of loveliness which 
 makes the end brighter than the beginning. Orchids 
 are the most familiar representatives of this class. In 
 dense tropical forests they live upon the decaying 
 matter that accumulates on the boughs and in the forks 
 of old trees; or they send out long aerial roots that 
 enter into and feed upon no soil, but extract nourish- 
 ment solely from the moisture and carbonic acid gas of 
 the atmosphere. They have huge gouty joints which 
 contain a store of organized nourishment, from which 
 the materials of the exquisitely-fashioned blossoms are 
 drawn forth ; and the insect-like shapes and colours of 
 these blossoms, and the articulations of their stems, as 
 well as their aerial habitats, point them out as the 
 counterparts in the vegetable kingdom of the insects in 
 the animal. 
 
 In tropical countries this system of mutual accom- 
 modation exists to a large extent. It is created by 
 the exigencies of the situation. The luxuriance of 
 tropical vegetation developed by the hot sun and 
 
54 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 steaming vapours forbids the strong assertion of indi- 
 vidual life. Each must give way to a certain extent 
 to its neighbour that is seeking a share of the same 
 benefits, and pushing forward to the full blaze of 
 sunlight Hence many plants become of necessity 
 epiphytal or commensal ; and plants that are elsewhere 
 sturdy and independent trees become there dependent 
 and climbing. In such climates, where the struggle 
 of life with life is keenest, nature must be hospitable 
 if she is to accommodate the vast variety of species 
 which she calls into existence. Each individual must 
 help another ; and the higher must lift up the lower 
 to something like its own level of advantage. In 
 temperate climates, where the struggle is more with 
 the elements than with living things, nature must 
 take in from the cold and the storm many lowly and 
 tender forms that would perish outright if left alone 
 and undefended. The trees must do this timely service 
 to the flowers and ferns that grow beneath their shade, 
 and to the still lowlier plants that find a lodgment upon 
 their trunks and branches. On the wild, inhospitable 
 moor the hardy heather affords protection to thousands 
 of humble forms of life, which without its shelter 
 would not have been able to exist. Even in the quiet 
 valleys, many species require the shade of the woods 
 and forests ; and when these are cut down and they 
 are exposed to the full effect of the sunshine and the 
 wind they perish outright. The same species, too, 
 extend hospitality to each other. In temperate clim- 
 ates the most striking characteristic of plants is this 
 
m, THE HOSPITALITIES OF NATURE. 
 
 55 
 
 gregarious or social tendency. They crowd together 
 into tufts and colonies and clumps, for the sake of 
 mutual warmth and shelter ; and strive, by combination, 
 to ward off evils and achieve results which they could 
 not do individually. The heather, by reason of its 
 social habit, is enabled to live on the wild, desolate 
 moorland ; and the pine on the mountain-crest main- 
 tains itself by the sympathy of its congregated fellows. 
 Even the moss, which in mild and agreeable circum- 
 stances in the deep shade of the wood or on the 
 sheltered bank of the stream becomes individual, 
 in exposed situations forms large tufts and cushions, 
 and spreads itself over a wide, continuous area. 
 
 A spring or stream of water is the most hospit- 
 able of all things. It is the heart of nature, from 
 which circulates the vital fluid that nourishes all 
 the verdure and life around. Without it there could 
 be no exercise of hospitality anywhere; and all 
 living things only pay to each other the debt which 
 they first of all owe to the spring or stream. The 
 complex civilization of man himself originates in it ; 
 and finding it, he finds in it the fountain head of much 
 that he is seeking in this world. 
 
 But it is impossible to follow to the end this curious 
 chapter in the natural history of our world. We find 
 that, in the vast majority of cases, nature is open on 
 every side like a tree to the visits of all her living forms. 
 She is continually on hospitable thoughts intent, and 
 has so thoroughly imbued her offspring with her own 
 ideas that they readily fall in with her plans. She 
 
5 6 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 places before us, in the kind shelter which the larger 
 and more richly endowed objects afford to the smaller 
 and poorer, a silent picture of what should be our own 
 conduct in the intercourse of human life. And in the 
 added beauty and charm which the exercise of this grace 
 of hospitality imparts to the objects that bestow it, she 
 teaches us that, by receiving strangers, we too may be 
 entertaining angels unawares. In the few exceptional 
 cases where her dumb and soulless things maintain a 
 dignified exclusiveness, and give to all comers a haughty 
 refusal of admission, we have, in her own hieroglyphic 
 language which is so expressive, teaching eye and heart 
 at the same time, a rebuke to that human selfishness 
 which would confine to itself all the benefits which it 
 enjoys, and refuses to carry them over into some higher 
 usefulness. As nature is ever defeating the plans of 
 selfishness, by making all her objects mutually de- 
 pendent, none being allowed to live entirely for itself, 
 so God, by the arrangements of His Providence, is 
 breaking down all human monopolies, and enforcing a 
 wide hospitality, allowing no man to live for himself 
 alone. 
 
 In the plan -of religion His intention is still more 
 manifest. The growth of His kingdom on earth is like 
 that of a mustard-tree, which, springing from the smallest 
 seed, develops into the grandest form, covering the 
 earth with its shadow, and lodging the birds of the air 
 among its boughs, protecting the poorest and feeblest 
 things which men may despise. And because of their 
 want of hospitality, because they confined to themselves 
 
in. THE HOSPITALITIES OF NATURE. 57 
 
 the blessings of their favoured condition, and were heed- 
 less of the Divine charter by which they held their 
 peculiar privileges, that in them and by them all the 
 families of the earth should be blessed, God deprived 
 His people Israel of their heritage. The barren fig-tree 
 that had yielded no fruit to satisfy the hunger, no shade 
 to cool and refresh the weariness of other nations, but 
 kept for its own selfish leaves only all the blessings of 
 heaven and earth might be cut down as a cumberer of 
 the ground. 
 
 From every lonely, hungry soul Jesus seeks hospitality, 
 standing at the door without, waiting patiently for the 
 opening of it ; and when He is welcomed in there is a 
 mutual feeling of love, and the guest becomes a generous 
 host. And what His thoughts of hospitality to the race 
 whom He has come to seek and redeem are, is strikingly 
 seen in that most beautiful parable where the feast is 
 spread, and the servants are sent first to individuals 
 favoured by fortune, and then to the poor and the 
 outcast, to bid them all come, for all things are ready. 
 However full, there is yet room in the Father's heart 
 and in the Father's house ; and not till He has gathered 
 all the dispersed wanderers from the four corners of the 
 earth, and made them to sit down in the everlasting 
 kingdom, to satisfy the mighty longings of eternity with 
 the meat that endureth for ever, will He the Great 
 Giver, the type and source and end of all hospitality 
 see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied 1 
 
5 8 THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 THE AVALANCHE. 
 
 THE Alpine peasant in his lonely glen, 
 
 Who sees the sudden lake formed at its head 
 
 Burst all at once its icy barrier. 
 
 And sweep his village from its perilous ledge ; 
 
 Or hears the avalanche roar down the heights, 
 
 A cataract of snow, whose very breath 
 
 The stoutest pine-tree snaps like brittle reed, 
 
 Scattering destruction in its awful path, 
 
 And burying home and field in one white grave ; 
 
 His vision bounded by his narrow hills 
 
 His sense impressed by his own loss alone 
 
 Imagines that these evils are the work 
 
 Of some dread Power, that loves but to destroy. 
 
 But we who live beneath more spacious skies, 
 
 And take a wider survey of the world, 
 
 See in these evils but the needful links 
 
 In a vast scheme, by which the parched earth 
 
 Is watered, and the treasures of the snow, 
 
 For ever melted and renewed, are borne, 
 
 With most beneficent economy, 
 
 Down from their storehouse on the lofty peaks, 
 
 To give prosperity and wealth to realms 
 
 That otherwise would have been barren wastes. 
 
 And so the sorrows that o'erwhelm our life, 
 
 The pains and losses that make bare our lot 
 
 And chill our hearts, which, in the narrow space 
 
 Of their own dark horizon, we are apt 
 
 To view with terror, as the wanton sport 
 
THE AVALANCHE. 
 
 Of some malicious fate that seeks our hurt ; 
 
 Viewed from a loftier vantage-ground of faith, 
 
 With wider outlook of experience, 
 
 Are seen to be but transient incidents 
 
 In a great plan of loving-kindness, meant 
 
 To make our whole life richer and more blest, 
 
 And spread the fruitage of a heavenly love 
 
 O'er deserts useless both to God and man. 
 
 Beyond those hills that high as mountains rise, 
 
 And hem us in, and darken all our sky, 
 
 Stretch the fair lands which these white realms make 
 
 green, 
 
 The watered gardens, whose serener heavens 
 Through distant storms have gained a purer blue. 
 Why should a living man complain, whose life 
 Transcends the limits of all mortal woe, 
 And ranges far beyond, where absolute 
 And everlasting compensations are ! 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 THE THIRST OF GOD. 
 
 "Jesus saith unto her, Give me to drink." ST. JOHN iv, 7. 
 
 ALL paths lead to a well. It is the focus of 
 interest, the vital point, and creative centre 
 of the landscape. It attracts all things to itself, 
 and diffuses its blessings, as a star diffuses its light, 
 far around. It is the place where life begins and 
 where it is constantly renewed. It has a perpetual 
 springtime about it. Our Lord's steps, in His toil- 
 some journey northwards from Judaea to Galilee, along 
 the arid rocky back-bone of Palestine, led naturally to 
 such a well. The same cause that drew to its side the 
 blade of green grass, the lily of the field, and the over- 
 shadowing tree, the timid coney, and the thirsty wayfarer, 
 drew Him who shared the sympathies and experiences 
 of His creation, and linked the wants of His own life 
 with those of the least of His creatures. The well on 
 whose shaded brink He sat down, in the fervid heat of 
 the Eastern noon, to rest His weary frame, was one not 
 
 more celebrated for its delicious water than for its august 
 
 60 
 
CHAP. iv. THE THIRST OF GOD. 61 
 
 associations. It was as old then, to the great Pilgrim 
 who had wandered to it from Judaea, as it is now to the 
 modern pilgrim who visits it from England. Ebal and 
 Gerizim, on whose twin peaks the altars of an alien 
 faith had smoked for ages, looked down upon it; and 
 around it the same corn-fields which had nourished the 
 ancient Shechemites, spread their golden aureole. The 
 shadows of eighteen centuries rested on it : and during 
 all that long period 3 from the time when the patriarch 
 Jacob dug and bequeathed it to his favourite son, its 
 pulse had continued to beat, and its living waters to 
 minister refreshment to the passing generations. 
 
 What were the meditations of our Lord in this storied 
 spot, as He waited patiently for the return of His dis- 
 ciples, who had gone to buy food in the neighbouring 
 city, we cannot tell. But the necessities of the present 
 would overmaster the memories of the past. He was 
 not only worn out with fatigue, He was also faint with 
 thirst. The well of Sychar was not a spring or fountain, 
 whose sparkling waters wimpled up to the brim, and 
 overflowing with their own fulness, ran rejoicing over 
 the fields, diffusing life and gladness wherever they 
 11 owed. On the contrary it was a draw-well, more than 
 a hundred feet deep. Far down, through the filmy green 
 meshes of the maiden-hair fern that lined like lace-work 
 its damp, shady mouth, He could see the glimmering of 
 the cool, sweet water; and He longed for a draught. 
 But He had no rope or bucket with which to draw it 
 up ; and His thirst was intensified by the inaccessibility 
 of the water that seemed so near. He might indeed 
 
62 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 have supplied His want by a miracle. He who in olden 
 times had caused the flinty rock to pour forth fresh, 
 sparkling water at the touch of Moses' rod, might have 
 made the well itself a cup, and caused the water, deep 
 down beyond the reach of an unaided arm, to bubble 
 up spontaneously and offer itself in homage to His lips. 
 But instead of availing Himself of His supernatural 
 power, Jesus sat down beside a well dug by human 
 hands, and waited patiently for human help to relieve 
 Him in the ordinary way, and by the common machinery 
 in use. True to the purpose of His life, He submitted 
 to the human limitations which He had imposed upon 
 His Divine power, when He entered our flesh and so- 
 journed in our world ; and fulfilled the high purposes 
 of God in ways and by means accessible to all men. 
 And just as in the wilderness He endured the pangs of 
 hunger for forty days rather than convert stones into 
 bread at the suggestion of Satan ; so here, at the well of 
 Sychar, He bore the pangs of thirst and faintness rather 
 than separate Himself from the lot of humanity which 
 He had voluntarily assumed, and fall back upon His 
 power as God to relieve His wants. He waited in the 
 former case, in a place where human help was not pro- 
 curable, with a sublime patience and self-abnegation, till 
 the angels relieved His necessities ; He waited, in the 
 case before us, till a woman came up to the well to draw 
 water, as her custom was, for household purposes ; and 
 to her He said, " Give me to drink." 
 
 We have in this request of Jesus a strange reversal of 
 the relations between the Creator and the creature. He 
 
iv. THE THIRST OF GOD. 63 
 
 who sat there weary and thirsty beside the well was the 
 Author of every good and perfect gift, He whose dis- 
 tinctive name is the Giver. And yet we find Him a 
 suppliant at the feet of His own creature, begging for a 
 portion of His own gift from her. Does it not show in 
 a striking manner how in giving Himself to save a 
 perishing world, Jesus made Himself a complete sacri- 
 fice, emptied Himself of everything, and became poor 
 as the very poorest ? 
 
 In the thirsty East a request for water is everywhere 
 answered with the utmost readiness and courtesy. The 
 sense of a common need, and the inestimable value of 
 the element that supplies it, make even the rudest 
 peasant at once sympathetic and anxious to give relief. 
 But religious hatred had dried up this fellow-feeling in 
 the heart of the Samaritan ; and instead of at once offer- 
 ing the pitcher full of water which she had drawn up 
 from the well to the lips of the thirsty Jew before her, 
 she expressed her astonishment that such a request 
 should have been made to her at all. It is possible that 
 having thus given expression to the hostility of race and 
 creed that separated her nation from His, she might 
 have speedily repented of her churlishness, and granted 
 Jesus the simple favour which He had asked. But no 
 opportunity was given to her. Absorbed in the interest 
 of the conversation that ensued, she forgot all about her 
 own errand and the necessities of the mysterious 
 Stranger before her, and laid the pitcher down beside 
 the well that she might listen more attentively ; while 
 Jesus Himself was so engrossed with His exposition of 
 
6 4 THE OLIVE LEAP. CHAP. 
 
 Divine truth to the ignorant and sinful woman, that He 
 completely lost all sense of thirst and weariness. Re- 
 calling to her the dark secrets of her life, He aroused 
 her slumbering conscience. He saw within her a spirit- 
 ual susceptibility, vague hopes and aspirations after 
 higher and purer things which her loose and careless life 
 had not wholly stifled ; and to these He appealed in the 
 most gentle manner. He dug, by His close personal 
 dealing, through the hard rocky strata deposited over 
 her truer nature, and thus prepared a well in her heart, 
 from which the living water she had idly asked from 
 Him without any trouble to herself, should flow as the 
 result of her own experience. And she was the first to 
 receive that glorious revelation, to whose full unfolding 
 all after ages have listened with the deepest joy 
 " I that speak unto thee am He." 
 
 And how refreshing must this interview have been to 
 Jesus ! He had just begun His public ministry. During 
 several weeks He had remained in Jerusalem after 
 the Passover preaching the Gospel of repentance. 
 But He produced almost no impression upon the 
 bigoted Jews. The Pharisees were irritated against 
 Him because He had expelled the traders from the 
 Temple, and had dared to interfere with their time- 
 honoured customs; and began to manifest their op- 
 position in various trying ways. He was filled with 
 grief and indignation when He saw the spirit of envy 
 and jealousy that moved the holiest men, dashing 
 fiercely the cup of life from the lips of a dying world, 
 lest their own privileges and vested rights should be 
 
iv. THE THIRST OF GOD. 65 
 
 imperilled. His heart was disconsolate when He saw 
 how unsuccessful had been His mission. Wearied and 
 dejected more by the cruel hardness of men's hearts 
 than by the tropical fierceness of the sun and His own 
 physical wants; athirst more for the saving of men's 
 souls than for the water of any earthly well, we can 
 imagine how the successful result of this interview must 
 have cheered Him. Rejected by His own people, He 
 was welcomed by this Samaritan stranger. And there 
 was a gentleness and winningness about His whole man- 
 ner to her, which shows how much she had touched 
 His heart, how intensely personal and individual was 
 the interest which He felt in her. We realize as we 
 gaze and listen how near Jesus has come to us ; how 
 truly He is our brother. He had indeed drink as well 
 as meat which the world knew not of. His spirit, 
 revived and strengthened by heavenly influences, bore 
 up the sinking body; and the joy of bringing back 
 this poor lost sheep to the fold was to Him as the 
 sweetness of water to the parched lip. She had not 
 given Him to drink from Jacob's well, but she gave 
 Him to drink the joy of saving and blessing her. This 
 was the true water that He wanted when He said to 
 her, "Give me to drink." The natural was but the 
 type of the spiritual. 
 
 The whole incident is an acted parable of the Gospel. 
 The words of Jesus, "Give me to drink," are an expres- 
 sion of the thirst of God. We are accustomed to speak 
 about the thirst of man, and deem it an all-important 
 thing that his thirst should be satisfied. But we hardly 
 
66 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 ever speak of the thirst of God. We think it natural 
 for man to say to God, " Give me to drink," but we 
 imagine that God can have no thirst. Such a desire 
 would seem to us an imperfection; and we cannot 
 associate the faintest idea of want or imperfection with 
 Him. We think of His infinite self-isolation. We pic- 
 ture Him in the vast loneliness of space satisfied with 
 His own glory. The old pagan idea of the gods con- 
 tained in Lucretius 
 
 " Who haunt 
 
 The lucid interspace of world and world, 
 Where never creeps a cloud, or moves a wind, 
 Nor ever falls the least white star of snow, 
 Nor ever lowest roll of thunder moans, 
 Nor sound of human sorrow mounts to mar 
 Their sacred everlasting calm." 
 
 This pagan idea we transfer to the living and true God. 
 We imagine that He cannot have anything correspond- 
 ing to the experiences of humanity ; that He is raised 
 infinitely above all that we can know or feel. But the 
 object of Revelation is to counteract this erroneous 
 conception ; to show to us that God has no self-love, 
 does not live for His own glory in the sense that mis- 
 taken men impute to Him. We believe that God made 
 us in His own image, that our nature is but a reflection 
 of His nature ; that there is that in the creature which 
 corresponds, though at an infinite distance, to some- 
 thing in the Creator. If this be so, then it cannot be 
 wrong of us to say that God has wants as we have, 
 which require to be satisfied, desires that need fulfil- 
 
iv. THE THIRST OF GOD. 67 
 
 ment. What does the creation of the world indicate, 
 but the fulfilment of God's desire for self-manifestation, 
 for giving away that He may get back again? He 
 created the multitude of waters upon which He sitteth, 
 to satisfy a want in Him corresponding to the sensation 
 of thirst in man. This is the final end of water, not 
 merely to quench the thirst of plant and animal, and 
 make the earth fertile and beautiful these are second- 
 ary and mediate ends but to minister to God's own 
 enjoyment; for we are expressly told that for His 
 pleasure water and all other objects of nature are and 
 were created. Long ages before there was any rational 
 self-conscious being who could understand and enjoy 
 this most wonderful, and yet most familiar element, to 
 whose wants it might minister, God called it into ex- 
 istence. He thirsted for water, and water appeared in 
 the desert world ; deep called unto deep, and the sea 
 without responded to the sea in the Infinite Being. 
 And for unknown aeons He drank a divine joy from the 
 boundless ocean and the flowing river, from the foaming 
 cascade and the sparkling fountain. He needed all 
 these forms of water to satisfy the mighty thirst of His 
 nature ; and He was satisfied, for He said of them all 
 that they were very good. The beauty and the glory of 
 the multitude of waters form a fountain of joy, of which 
 only He who created them can drink in its fulness. It 
 can be said of all the waters of the earth, in the highest 
 sense, that they are rivers of God which are full of 
 water, which He keeps ever full and flowing, that they 
 may be sources of perpetual refreshment to Himself. 
 
68 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 And it is a sublime thought that He quenches His 
 thirst day after day, not only from the streams which 
 man frequents, but also from the central sea, over 
 whose vast solitude no ship has ever passed, and 
 from the little spring that wells up on the lonely 
 mountain side where human foot has never trodden. 
 All their beauty and their glory minister to the thirst 
 of God. 
 
 What, too, is the creation of man, but the satisfaction 
 of a want of God? He who said of Adam, " It is not 
 good for man to be alone ; I will make an helpmeet for 
 him," must Himself have had the same feeling, wished 
 not Himself to be alone, unrevealed and unloved. He 
 desired, so to speak, to find an helpmeet for Himself, 
 to surround Himself with intelligent and moral beings 
 on whom He might lift the light of His countenance, 
 who could in some measure understand His thoughts 
 and sympathize with His ends, who could obey Him 
 not from the necessity of their being, but from the 
 spontaneous affection of their heart. And therefore 
 He made man in His own image, endowed him with 
 the marvellous gifts of reason and liberty, reflecting the 
 spontaneity of the Divine will not the slave, but the 
 servant and friend of God. God's Spirit could not find 
 rest in the creation of sun, moon, and stars, or in the 
 creation of rocks and seas, plants and animals ; He 
 could not rest in dead matter or in physical life ; He 
 rested only when He had made man, another spirit like 
 Himself with whom He could hold communion, in the 
 mirror of whose being He could see His own image 
 
iv. THE THIRST OF GOD. 69 
 
 reflected, and from the full river of whose life He could 
 drink and be satisfied. 
 
 And when the waters of this fountain of God's joy 
 were embittered and poisoned by sin, we can imagine 
 in the dry and parched land of the world, what a thirst 
 came upon His Spirit. The Psalmist speaks of thirst- 
 ing for God like the hart for the water-brooks ; but this 
 is only a faint image of the great thirst which God has 
 for the restoration of man to holiness and happiness. 
 There is a hard unimaginative school of Christian 
 thought, the members of which say that God's glory 
 would not be lessened, God's happiness would not 
 be diminished in the least degree, if the whole human 
 race had been destroyed; and by such a statement 
 they think that they are exalting our conceptions of 
 God. But such an idea has no warrant in Scripture. 
 It is immeasurably dishonouring to God. In the 
 divinity of indifference no true human heart can pos- 
 sibly believe. Science tells us that the force of gravi- 
 tation is a mutual thing ; the great sun itself bending 
 in its turn to the smallest orb that revolves around 
 it. And is not the highest gravitation of all a mutual 
 thing too? If God attracts human souls, do not human 
 souls attract Him also ? Science may tell us of His 
 infinite power and greatness ; and theology may speak 
 to us of a God afar off; but the Gospel tells us of His 
 infinite love, that He who is highest above us, is most 
 one of ourselves. And love like His cannot sit in grand 
 and cold estrangement from His fallen and ruined crea- 
 tures, cannot find rest under the loss of His human 
 
-jo THE GLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 race in the consolation that they are as nothing com- 
 pared with His universe, and cannot be missed. A 
 God of love has told us again and again, in language 
 which cannot possibly be mistaken, that He hath need 
 of us. We find innumerable statements in the Bible 
 which show how God is grieved, suffers loss and pain, 
 because of human sin and misery. He longs after 
 His creatures' affection, and is sorrowful because they 
 exclude Him from their hearts and their ways. He 
 complains of their coldness and alienation. If I am 
 a Father, where is my honour ? " Oh ! that my people 
 had hearkened unto Me." His righteousness is not an 
 abstract principle that can be satisfied equally by the 
 conversion or by the punishment of the sinner; it is 
 conjoined with the infinite tenderness of paternal love, 
 and equally with His mercy yearns for the sinner's 
 restoration. The history of man's redemption is not 
 merely the history of his good fortune, as if he had 
 escaped by accident from the hands of a Being capable 
 of very different conduct ; it is a manifestation of the 
 essential character of God, which is love. 
 
 On an old Mexican temple was written the beautiful 
 inscription, expressing an unconscious longing of the 
 heathen world after Christ, " Blessed be Thy coming, 
 O heart of heaven." And is not this the inscription 
 that ought to be written above the portal of every 
 Christian Church, whose mission it is to testify of Jesus 
 as the revelation of the heart of heaven, ever beating 
 for us? The love of Jesus is just the love of God 
 made visible ; the sufferings of Jesus are just the suffer- 
 
iv. THE THIRST OF GOD. 71 
 
 ings of God brought in a bodily form within the limits 
 of our senses. The appearing of Jesus as the God-Man 
 declares the infinite love of the Father; a love that has 
 a great want at the heart of it, that misses something 
 infinitely dear to it, and for the sake of that something 
 is willing to endure any toil, and to make any sacrifice. 
 Jesus suffered on account of human sin, to show to us 
 how the Father suffers because of our sin ; how dreadful 
 has been the burden upon Him through all the ages of 
 the wrong and anguish with which human sin has filled 
 the world ! Jesus thirsted beside the well of Sychar to 
 show to us that thus God thirsts for our recovery from 
 our state of sin and misery. He who from the begin- 
 ning, as the Head of His great house the universe, and 
 as' such has felt most sorely all its evils and sorrows, 
 says to us, as Jesus said to the ignorant, sinful woman 
 of Samaria, in the greatness and eagerness of His thirst, 
 with pleading voice and gesture, with infinite love in 
 every look and tone " Give me to drink." 
 
 The physical attitude of Jesus beside the well of 
 Sychar is the type of His spiritual attitude beside the 
 well of salvation. What He was then He is now, for 
 He is " Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and 
 for ever." Weary, faint, as it were, after that finished 
 work of redemption which cost Him so much a Lamb 
 as it had been slain, He has sat down beside the well 
 of salvation which His own hands have dug in the 
 wilderness and His own grace hath filled, and He says 
 to every unsatisfied soul, to every thirsty one that comes 
 to the means of grace to draw water " Give me to 
 
72 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 drink." Though He hath now all power on earth and 
 in heaven, still in the matter of the soul's salvation He 
 is as weak and dependent as in the days of His flesh. 
 He cannot draw water from the well of salvation for 
 Himself by a miracle, any more than He could from the 
 well of Jacob. He cannot employ supernatural means 
 to convert the soul. He cannot compel the sinner to 
 give Him the joy of saving him. He must wait beside 
 the well till the soul is made willing in the day of His 
 power. He can only use persuasive means ; He can 
 only beseech and entreat the sinner by the story of 
 His self-sacrifice, by the pathos of His redeeming love, 
 by all that He has done and suffered for men. He 
 could not save the sinners of Jerusalem by miraculous 
 power ; and because they disregarded the day of their 
 merciful visitation, and the things of their peace were 
 for ever hid from their eyes, He could only weep in 
 deepest anguish over them. He could not draw the 
 young ruler to his side by compulsion ; and therefore, 
 though He loved him, He had to allow him to go away 
 grieved. Much as Jesus has done for us, only we our- 
 selves can give Him the reward of His work. We must 
 give Him to drink out of the very well which He Him- 
 self has opened and filled for us. We must, of our own 
 free will, of our own spontaneous love, give Him the 
 joy for which He craves, and for which He endured the 
 Cross, despising the shame. 
 
 Wonderful mystery of grace, that sinful creatures 
 can satisfy the thirst of the Infinite God ; and that this 
 should be His method of satisfying the immortal thirst 
 
iv. THE THIRST OF GOD. 
 
 73 
 
 of their own souls ! Wonderful reciprocities of love by 
 which the Saviour sups with the sinner, and the sinner 
 with the Saviour ; by which the sinner abides in Christ, 
 and Christ in him. If we bring our tithe of water to 
 Him and prove Him therewith, He will open the win- 
 dows of heaven and pour down upon us an overflowing 
 blessing. The clouds which draw their dull vapour 
 from the thirsty earth, return it again to the parched 
 soil, in the shape of bright summer showers that make 
 the fields laugh with verdure and bloom. In the 
 spiritual as in the natural sense the law holds ever 
 good that "unto the place from whence the rivers 
 come, thither they return again." And God gives us 
 back what we give to Him with a hundred-fold in- 
 crease. As in the natural world He gives us a waving 
 golden harvest, in return for the small sacrifice of seed 
 which we entrust to His keeping in the spring ; so in the 
 spiritual world, He gives us back a fountain of living 
 water springing up in our hearts into eternal life, in 
 exchange for the few drops of love with which we 
 seek to quench His thirst. 
 
 It is told in the life of Sir John Herschel, the great 
 astronomer, that when he was a boy he asked his father 
 on one occasion what he thought was the oldest of all 
 things. The father took up a small stone from the 
 garden walk and said, " There, my child, there is the 
 oldest of all the things that I certainly know." But the 
 astronomer in saying this, surely spoke without due 
 consideration. The stone tells of something far older 
 than itself; for what was it that made the stone broke 
 
74 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 it off from its parent rock and rounded it to its 
 present shape ? Was it not water ? The substance of 
 the stone was deposited originally as mud at the 
 bottom of some primeval sea \ and it was shaped by the 
 action of the waves, or by the running waters of a river. 
 Water, therefore, is older than the stone, older than the 
 mountains and hills which have from time immemorial 
 been taken as the emblems of what is everlasting. It 
 is the oldest of all material things, and also that which 
 will endure the longest. And in this respect, as in all 
 other respects, is it not an emblem of the Gospel, which 
 was foreordained before the foundation of the world ? 
 It is the old water of life of which Jacob drank, and of 
 which the Apostles and all Christians since have drunk, 
 that we come to the well of salvation from time to time 
 to drink. And the water is all the more precious that 
 it comes to us from eternal sources, associated with the 
 memories of many ages and generations. The Gospel 
 is all the more impressive that it belongs to all time, to 
 all eternity ; that it sets before the eye of the frail and 
 perishing sons of men the eternal counsels and the 
 absolute unchanging purposes of God. But while thus 
 old, the Gospel is ever fresh and new, just as water is 
 the oldest and yet the newest of all things. It has the 
 same suitableness, the same power of adaptation to the 
 wants and circumstances of to-day that it had to the 
 wants and circumstances of the first Christians nearly 
 two thousand years ago. 
 
 Thirst is the most urgent desire of our nature. It is 
 the most painful feeling we can experience. We can- 
 
iv. THE THIRST OF GOD. 
 
 75 
 
 not bear it long; it cannot be put off. Unless soon 
 gratified we perish in torment and misery indescribable. 
 But the physical want the physical longing of thirst 
 is but a feeble and inadequate emblem of the craving 
 that is in the heart of Jesus to save us. He needs our 
 salvation. He represents Himself as empty, as incom- 
 plete without it. We help to fill up the fulness of Him 
 that filleth all in all. It was prophesied that He should 
 see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. It was 
 a world's redemption that He sought, and only a 
 world's redemption can satisfy the infinite thirst of His 
 soul. He says to each of us as He said to the woman 
 of Samaria, " If thou knewest the gift of God and who 
 it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink, thou wouldst 
 have asked of Him, and He would have given thee 
 living water;" thou wouldst have been the petitioner, 
 and not Jesus.- What He wants from us is not our sub- 
 stance, our profession of religion, our ceremonialism. 
 These bear no true relation to the thirst of His soul, 
 any more than a bag of pearls would bear any relation 
 to the thirst of our body. He desires what is co-natural 
 with His own want. Only like can satisfy like; only 
 love can satisfy love. He says, "Son, daughter, give 
 me thine heart," and if we put Him orf with all that we 
 possess, our devotions, our alms, and our good deeds, 
 and withhold our heart, He will remain unsatisfied, and 
 we shall remain unblessed. Among the native tribes of 
 Japan, the thirstiest man is considered the holiest ; and 
 is it not so in the Christian sense, for the thirstiest man 
 shall receive the most of the water of life ? Let us then 
 
7 6 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. iv. 
 
 drink deeply of the living water which Jesus gives, that 
 thus we may give Him to drink ; refresh ourselves and 
 refresh Him at the same time. He asks this simple 
 favour from us ; and He will become our debtor, and 
 will give us in return the benediction of heaven. "Come, 
 ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared 
 for you from the foundation of the world for I was 
 thirsty and ye gave me drink." 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 A TUFT OF MOSS. 
 
 " Take heed that ye despise not one of these little ones." 
 ST. MATTHEW xviii. 10. 
 
 EVERY one has heard of the touching incident in 
 r the life of Mungo Park, the celebrated African 
 traveller, how the sight of a little tuft of green moss 
 growing in the barren sand of the desert cheered him 
 when he was almost reduced to despair. Like a lighted 
 candle placed within a dim transparency, bringing out 
 its rich hues and pattern, the sorrowful circumstances in 
 which he was placed invested the familiar common- 
 place object with new beauty and significance. It 
 seemed aflame with thoughts of God's providential care, 
 like the bush on Horeb. It became a wicket-gate 
 through nature into heaven. Its marvellous grace, its 
 lovely structure, its preservation in such an inhospit- 
 able waste by the constant gentle ministry of the sun- 
 shine and the dew, inspired him with such comforting 
 thoughts of that great Being whose tender mercies are 
 over all His works, and who is a very present help in 
 
 77 
 
7 8 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 every crisis of human need, that he rose up with fresh 
 energy and hope to pursue his journey. In gratitude 
 for the good service it had done him, he brought home 
 some specimens of the moss, which, when submitted to 
 scientific men, was found to be identical with a species 
 that grows abundantly on our own woodland banks, 
 called Fissidens bryotdes, or the Lesser Fork-Moss. It 
 is a delicate little thing about a quarter of an inch in 
 height. Even to the eye that looks at it carelessly it 
 presents a beautiful appearance ; but the microscope 
 brings out fully its hidden charms, and reveals wonders 
 of structure before unknown. It has two sisters in this 
 country that have the same family features, but are 
 distinguished from it, among other peculiarities, by the 
 different positions of the seed-vessel ; in the one case 
 springing from the root, and in the other from the side 
 of the stem. They all grow on moist woodland banks, 
 or in the wet crevices of rocks ; and, owing to the 
 brightness and transparency of their foliage, whenever 
 they catch and imprison a stray sunbeam passing into 
 their dwelling-place, it lights them up with a golden 
 gleam like a cluster of topazes. 
 
 Let us take this little moss with so interesting a 
 history as a type of its class, and proceed to examine 
 some of its details ; and we shall be no less struck than 
 Mungo Park was with its marvellous formation and 
 adaptation to its circumstances. The leaves are trans- 
 parent and are arranged in one plane on either side of 
 a pale pink stem. Their structure is very curious and 
 totally unlike that of any other moss. For about half 
 
v. A TUFT OF MOSS. 79 
 
 their length they are divided into two blades on each 
 side of the nerve, the lower part of which embraces the 
 stem, and the upper a portion of the leaf placed imme- 
 diately above it. They are composed of minute cells 
 closely packed together, and have a central nerve 
 running from the base to the apex, and a distinct border 
 round the plain edge. When dry they are crisp, but 
 are easily revived when moistened. The habit of the 
 moss is scattered or gregarious, forming little tufts, 
 sending up from the summit of each individual a pink 
 fruit-stalk, somewhat longer than the stem, crowned with 
 a little oval urn or capsule, which stands erect when 
 in the green unripe state, but bends down when it is 
 brown and mature. 
 
 This curious vessel contains the spores, or seeds, in 
 its interior, attached to a little central column which 
 supplies nutriment to them : and the arrangements 
 made for their safety and ripening are very remarkable. 
 First, a veil, slightly split on one side, covers the seed- 
 vessel like the extinguisher of a candle, the object of 
 which is to afford protection, like the scales that cover 
 the bud in flowering plants. It remains attached until 
 the seed-vessel has grown strong enough to bear 
 exposure, and then by its expansion it throws it off an 
 operation which is made easier by the convenient split 
 made for the purpose in its side. When the veil is 
 removed a conical lid is seen adhering to the mouth of 
 the seed-vessel, which also in due season withers and 
 disappears. The mouth of the seed-vessel thus exposed 
 is seen to be furnished with a single row of sixteen 
 
go THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 equidistant teeth, cloven half-way down, which stand 
 upright and look like an elegant fringe. The purpose 
 of these teeth, which have the power of contracting and 
 expanding and fit into each other from opposite sides, 
 is to close up the orifice in damp or rainy weather, so as 
 to keep the precious contents dry and warm till the sun 
 again shines, when they speedily open and resume their 
 original upright position. One can see this wonderful 
 mechanism in operation at any time, by simply breathing 
 upon the fringe of teeth or applying a little moisture to 
 them, when they fall down and form a wheel-like lid of 
 many spokes, completely closing the mouth of the seed- 
 vessel ; expanding immediately when exposed to the 
 sunshine, or as soon as the moisture is dried up, and 
 standing round in an upright position like watchful 
 sentinels ready to do their duty. In addition to this pre- 
 caution, at an earlier stage of growth, the little central 
 column in the interior of the seed-vessel, around 
 which the seeds are clustered, is endowed with the same 
 sensitiveness to the condition of the weather ; in a dry 
 state of the air stretching and turning itself in a spiral 
 manner so as to raise the lid, which at this period 
 covers the seed-vessel, thus letting in the air and warmth, 
 but collapsing immediately should the air become damp, 
 so as to close the orifice securely and protect the seeds 
 from injury. 
 
 T. The most curious thing about the teeth of mosses 
 is that they are either four in number, or constitute 
 some multiple of four. In every moss the number of 
 teeth is invariably one or other of the following series : 
 
v. A TUFT OF MOSS. 81 
 
 four, sixteen, thirty-two. No seed-vessel is ever 
 found with an intermediate number. In the vast 
 majority of species the number of teeth is thirty-two. 
 This is also the number of teeth which the most perfect 
 animals possess. In man the first set contains twenty, 
 and to these in the permanent set twelve are added, 
 making thirty-two in all. Other parts of animals are 
 remarkable for the constancy of these numbers when 
 the development is complete; the body of man and 
 of the flocks and herds associated with him having 
 ten fingers and ten toes, which being added to the 
 three parts of both arms and of both legs, make in 
 all thirty-two parts. This train of thought might be 
 extended to a great length and applied throughout 
 the vegetable and animal kingdoms. Two or four 
 and its multiples is the prevailing number in the lowest 
 orders of plants, according to which all the parts of 
 ferns, mosses, lichens, seaweed, and fungi are arranged. 
 Three, or multiples of three, is the typical number 
 of monocotyledonous or endogenous plants, without 
 branches and with parallel veins, to which the grass, 
 the lily, and the palm belong. Five with its multiples 
 is the model number of the highest class of plants with 
 branches and reticulated leaf-veins, to which the apple 
 and the rose belong. The same numerical relations 
 may be traced in the animal kingdom ; three being the 
 number of joints in the typical finger and the regnant 
 number in the Crustacea ; while five prevails among 
 vertebrate animals, and is of frequent occurrence among 
 marine forms of life, being the law of growth of star- 
 
82 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 fishes, sea-urchins, and the like. A curious series, in 
 ancient times supposed to possess mystical virtues 
 before it was discovered in nature, i, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 
 34, etc., in which any two numbers added together 
 give the succeeding one, regulates the general arrange- 
 ment of leaves round the stem of plants, and the scales 
 round the cone of a pine or a fir. In every department 
 of nature from the quantitative laws that regulate the 
 distances, movements, and attractions of the stars of 
 heaven, to the arithmetical laws of definite proportions 
 and equivalents which lie at the basis of all the com- 
 positions and decompositions of the substances of the 
 earth, and the numerical relations that are found among 
 all the living creatures, animal and vegetable, that 
 exist on the land, and in the air and water physical 
 science shows that recurrent or typical numbers have 
 a most important place and influence, and constitute 
 the Principia of the universe. The more our studies 
 and researches extend, the more numerous and striking 
 do we find the proofs and illustrations of the fact, 
 perceived long ago by the great philosophers, that 
 numbers pre-existing in the Divine mind form the 
 model according to which all things are brought to- 
 gether and linked in order. 
 
 It is a strange thought that the typical number of 
 teeth, barely visible to the naked eye, in the seed-vessel 
 of a minute moss, should be thus correlated with the 
 numerical arrangements in the highest plants and 
 animals, in the body of man himself, and among the 
 stars of heaven. It shows, in a most interesting way, 
 
A TUFT OF MOSS. 
 
 the unity of the universe, the unity of the Being who 
 causes all its phenomena, and the unity of the plan 
 by which these phenomena are bound together. There 
 is no physical reason, so far as we know, why the 
 numerical law of gravitation should be what it is. We 
 should be inclined indeed to suppose that the force 
 of gravitation would decrease just in proportion as the 
 distance is increased ; whereas we actually find the 
 decrease of the force is proportioned to the square of 
 the number expressing the distance, so that at twice 
 the distance the force is not twice less but four times 
 less, at thrice the distance, nine times, and so on. 
 Similarly, no anatomical reason can be given why the 
 number of teeth in the seed-vessel of a moss should 
 be arranged in multiples of four, and why leaves should 
 be arranged on their stem in a series of which any two 
 numbers added together give the succeeding one. The 
 fact then that the numerical law of gravitation is 
 universal, controlling all the matter with which man 
 is surrounded, and that certain numbers, rather than 
 others, prevail throughout all the departments of nature, 
 conclusively proves on the same grounds that we 
 establish the authorship of a book by the significant 
 peculiarity of its style and expression that the universe 
 is the product of one Mind, whose geometry is the 
 same in heaven and earth ; inorganic creation constitut- 
 ing its elementary, and organic its higher form. 
 
 And if we further find that in the Sacred Scriptures 
 there is an order in respect of number a numerical 
 relation in the Divine dispensations and ordinances, 
 
84 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 not unlike that which science has disclosed in nature 
 are we not justified in attributing the same origin to 
 the Word as to the works ? He who showed to Moses 
 on the Mount the pattern of the tabernacle, according 
 to which every object was constructed with the most 
 precise numerical proportions and relations, is the same 
 who showed to Kepler the numerical laws of the 
 planetary movements which have formed historically 
 the foundation of modern astronomy. And the dimen- 
 sions of the altars of burnt-offering and incense, and 
 the ark and the mercy-seat, were arranged upon the 
 same numerical principles which regulate the disposi- 
 tion of the leaves of a plant around their stem, and 
 the teeth of a moss round the mouth of its seed-vessel. 
 It was as imperative that the altars should be four 
 square, so representing the completeness and fulness 
 of the work effected thereon, whether of sacrifice or 
 incense the same perfect measure and estimate being 
 thus presented every way, whether towards God or 
 towards man as that the teeth of a tiny moss gleaming 
 under the sunbeam on its woodland bank should be 
 in fours and multiples of fours, so indicating the uni- 
 formity and perfection of the plan upon which the 
 whole great class of plants to which it belongs is 
 modelled. The law which arranges the series of leaves 
 round a stem, so that any two numbers added together 
 shall form the succeeding one, is of the same character 
 as the law which ordained the brazen altar to be of 
 such dimensions as to be capable of including all the 
 other vessels of the sanctuary within it, and to be 
 
v. A TUFT OF MOSS. 85 
 
 exactly twice the size of the ark. We cannot interpret 
 the meaning of the law in the case of plants, but we 
 can understand, in the case of the altar, that the 
 numerical facts were intended to foreshadow, first, that 
 every priestly ministration is involved in or connected 
 with the death of Christ, as every vessel of the taber- 
 nacle was smaller than, and could be included in, the 
 sacrificial altar ; and secondly, that intercourse with 
 God, of which the ark is the symbol and the medium, 
 results from the fact of sacrifice, and is closely con- 
 nected with it, as the size of the ark was dependent 
 upon the size of the altar. From all these considera- 
 tions, and many more of a similar nature that might 
 be urged, the conclusion is irresistible that nature and 
 revelation have one Author; and we are impressively 
 taught that the law of the Lord, whether expressed in 
 His Word or in His works, is perfect. 
 
 2. Another lesson we learn from this subject is 
 the intimate correspondence between the Mind that 
 planned the universe and the mind that is in ourselves. 
 The principles upon which God acts in regard to the 
 numerical relations in all parts of His works are prin- 
 ciples thoroughly intelligible to man himself; and the 
 fact that human sagacity has actually discovered and 
 scientifically demonstrated these laws of numerical 
 proportions is a clear indication that there is the 
 closest link between man's reason and the Supreme 
 Intelligence by which all things have been ordered. 
 No other creature possesses this capacity. Animals 
 show many points of resemblance to man in regard to 
 
86 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP, 
 
 power of affection, association, memory, wilfulness 
 faintly resembling man's freedom of action, and even 
 some degree of moral sense. But they have shown 
 no sign that they possess the power to apprehend the 
 relations of number. In this respect there is an im- 
 passable gulf between man and all the other creatures ; 
 and we are driven to the conclusion that man must 
 have derived this unique power, not from a creature 
 origin, but directly from the Creator Himself. And 
 the fact that man is able to make use of numerical 
 relations in all his own works cind in all the details 
 of his life, shows that he is indeed made in the image 
 of Him who makes use of the same relations in the 
 ordering of His universe. If we find arithmetical sums 
 or geometrical problems traced on the black-board of 
 a deserted schoolroom, we know as surely that a mind 
 conversant with numbers had been engaged upon them 
 as if we actually saw the teacher or the pupil at work. 
 Why should we hesitate to come to the same conclusion 
 when we see the same or similar arithmetical sums and 
 geometrical problems wrought out by an invisible Hand 
 in the parts of living creatures of plants and animals ? 
 In regard to the moral link between the human race 
 and its divine Author there may be some uncertainty, 
 owing to the fact that we have lost our holiness, and 
 have no infallible standard of righteousness within us. 
 That part of the image of God in which we were 
 created has been lost or effaced ; but in regard to our 
 intellectual power of discerning the relations of number 
 pervading all His workmanship, and regulating all our 
 
A TUFT OF MOSS. 87 
 
 own doings also, there is no uncertainty. We worship, 
 so far as this quality is concerned, no longer at an 
 altar to the unknown God ; and we are no longer 
 dubious that "we are His offspring." When I count 
 the petals of a flower, or follow the spiral arrangement 
 of leaves on the branch of an apple-tree, or mark the 
 carefully numbered divisions of the tiny membrane 
 which closes the fruit-vessel of a moss, I discover in 
 myself, with feelings of solemn awe, a capacity for 
 entering into ideas which . permeate the whole universe, 
 and which must, therefore, be ever-present in the mind 
 of Him who created and upholdeth all things. Kepler 
 deeply realized this when, in reference to his numerical 
 discoveries among the orbs of heaven, he gloried in the 
 conviction that he had been privileged "to think the 
 thoughts of God." And the Christian should feel it 
 with even greater power when it is his privilege and 
 consolation to address God as One who acts towards 
 him on principles intelligible to his own understanding, 
 and in accordance with that rule of everlasting right- 
 eousness which He has written in his heart who says 
 to him in all his approaches to the mercy-seat, " Come 
 now, and let us reason together." 
 
 3. And this brings me to notice another lesson which 
 may be deduced from this subject, viz., that God deals 
 with us as He deals with all His creatures, according 
 to the law of numerical proportion. What a world of 
 meaning, looking at them in the light of our present 
 reflections, is in the words addressed by God to His 
 people, as twice recorded by Jeremiah " Fear thou 
 
88 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 not, O Jacob my servant : for I am with thee ; for I will 
 make a full end of all the nations whither I have driven 
 thee : but I will not make a full end of thee, but correct 
 thee in measure" When the foundations of the earth 
 were laid, we know that God arranged all things, both 
 according to proportion and to place that He " mea- 
 sured the waters in the hollow of His hand, and meted 
 out the heavens with a span, and comprehended the 
 dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the moun- 
 tains in scales, and the hills in a balance." We know 
 with equal certainty that His covenant of grace is a 
 similar system of exquisite adaptations and compensa- 
 tions that it is ordered in all things and sure. And if 
 the mathematician can demonstrate that the leaves of a 
 plant are arranged around its stem so as to give them 
 the fairest possible freedom of access to air and light, 
 and the planets placed at such distances from the sun 
 as to give them the fairest possible chance of revolving 
 around him undisturbed by their neighbours, surely the 
 Christian can prove from his own experience and 
 observation that God " performeth the thing that is 
 appointed," and adapts His special dealings to the 
 circumstances and necessities of His people. He who 
 telleth the number of the stars and calleth them all by 
 their names, has assured us that in His book all our 
 members were written, which in continuance were 
 fashioned, when as yet there were none of them ; 
 and that since we were born He numbereth our 
 steps, that the number of our months is with Him, 
 that our times are in His hand, that even the very 
 
A TUFT OF MOSS. 89 
 
 hairs of our head are all numbered. The conclusion 
 therefore is as irresistible as it is welcome, that we 
 need not fear any of the ills of life, for they could 
 have no power at all against us, except it were given 
 them from above by One who is too wise to err, and 
 who so loved us that He did not spare His own Son, 
 but delivered Him up for us all. In our sorest affliction 
 He keepeth all our bones ; not one of them is broken. 
 
 All these precious thoughts are brought home with 
 greater power and tenderness to our hearts because 
 the object that suggests them is not one of the mighty 
 things of creation, but one of the smallest and humblest. 
 Our Lord's argument with regard to the lilies of the 
 field has even greater force to those who can appreciate 
 it, when it comes from the inconspicuous bloom of a 
 moss which needs the microscope to disclose its beauty 
 and wonder. It teaches us that it is the production, 
 not of One who is infinitely great and far removed from 
 us, so that we can only reverently admire Him at an 
 immeasurable distance; but of One who in His un- 
 fathomable love has come down and assumed our 
 nature, and who cares for the minutest things of our 
 individual life. When we look up and consider the 
 heavens, the work of God's fingers, we are awed and 
 dwarfed into insignificance in our own estimation; 
 but when we look down and consider the lowly moss 
 that adorns the wayside wall, we recover the sense of 
 our individuality, and feel that we are of more value 
 than all these things. And just as in human experience 
 it is not the bestowal of costly gifts, which may be 
 
9 o THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP, 
 
 conferred by a careless hand at a distance, which binds 
 us to our fellow-creatures, but the little loving services 
 of daily life which imply that the giver and receiver 
 meet in personal contact ; so it is not the great truths 
 of our salvation, nor the great bounties of God's natural 
 providence, which impress us with a sense of His near- 
 ness and fill our hearts with love to Him : but the 
 intimate details and familiar scenes of our Saviour's 
 sojourn on earth, and the little happinesses that God 
 confers upon us in the common by-paths of life. When 
 we study the wonderful arrangements in the seed-vessel 
 of the unheeded moss, whereby its safety is cared for, 
 and its humble ministry in the world is carried on, we 
 have a proof before our eyes how infinitely God can 
 condescend, and with what confidence we may cry, 
 "Abba, Father," and feel that all things under His 
 wise and loving care will work together for our good. 
 We hear the meek and lowly Jesus, who took the little 
 children in His arms and blessed them, saying to us 
 in regard to the little moss too, " Take heed that ye 
 despise not one of these little ones." For if he who 
 humbleth himself as a little child is greatest in the 
 kingdom of heaven, he who regardeth the little moss 
 will find that it has more than the wisdom of Solomon 
 to teach him. 
 
 4. Mosses, as a rule, grow in very exposed situations 
 and amid the most primitive conditions. They come 
 into contact directly with the severe forces of the 
 inorganic world, having often no mediator between 
 them and the naked hardness of the rock and the rigid 
 
v. A TUFT OF MOSS. 9 ! 
 
 inhospitalities of the sky. They belong to inclement 
 seasons and climates, being mostly in perfection during 
 the winter months ; and although they are found in all 
 parts of the world, some of the largest and loveliest 
 species growing in the deep shades of tropical and sub- 
 tropical forests, yet as a class their maximum exists in 
 the north temperate and polar regions, where the skies 
 are always grey and cold, and the mists and rains in 
 which they luxuriate are almost constantly present. To 
 such desolate places, especially when lit up with the 
 mimic sunshine of the primrose and in the deeper 
 shades the pale moonlight of the sorrel and the 
 anemone, they impart no small share of that tender 
 pathetic beauty in the landscape which in northern 
 lands comes home with irresistible power to the heart. 
 They form the first film of verdure that gathers over the 
 newly-formed soil, and cover with a veil of delicate 
 beauty the ravages made by the storm and the glacier 
 on the mountain peak. They afford a striking proof 
 how nature loves to do gentle things even in her most 
 savage moods. I have seen the track of a winter 
 avalanche which had mown down great pines as if they 
 had been blades of grass, lined with the softest and 
 greenest moss, and the dry bed of an old torrent that 
 had cleft the side of a hill from top to bottom and 
 scattered destruction in its path, spread over with a rich 
 velvet carpet of the same beautiful material, out of 
 which grew myriads of forget-me-nots, whose brilliant 
 petals waving in the breeze and flashing in the sunlight, 
 looking like a little blue stream that had come direct 
 
92 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 from the sky, perpetuated the memory of the sparkle 
 and murmur of the vanished water. In carrying on 
 their beneficent ministry of repairing the gaunt ruins 
 and healing the severe wounds of nature, mosses 
 encounter unprotected the pitiless violence of the 
 elements, the bitter cold and the scorching heat, the 
 drenching rain and the arid drought. And like a desert 
 spring that supplies the wants of every creature that 
 comes to it, but is obliged to resort to heaven for its 
 own supply, so the moss that shelters and blesses 
 objects higher in the scale of life than itself, is depend- 
 ent for its support entirely on the influences of the sky. 
 Rooted in the clayey soil, or on the bare rock, it 
 extracts its nourishment solely from the viewless air, 
 weaving the sunbeams and the dews into tissues that 
 are hardly less delicate and exquisite in their golden 
 radiance and transparent purity. It gathers about its 
 tiny roots the grains of rock which its slow attrition 
 has worn away, and the particles of white dust which 
 the wind has whirled to its bleak home ; and over these 
 spoils from the mineral kingdom it raises its soft silken 
 cushions, and lays the green foundation upon which 
 flowers and trees may afterwards build their beautiful 
 and complicated structures. 
 
 The lichen-crust is but an enamel on the face of the 
 stone, or a grey rosette on the aged tree; the alga is but 
 a slippery green gleet on the rocky channel of the 
 stream, or a tress of naiad hair floating on the snowy 
 current. All these plants at the bottom of the scale of 
 vegetation creep flat upon the surface of the inorganic 
 
A TUFT OF MOSS. 
 
 93 
 
 world, out of whose chaos they have barely emerged 
 The low vitality of these humble organisms is scarce 
 able to overcome the gravitation of the inert mineral 
 world. But the moss strikes the key-note of a new 
 ascending series that overcomes the earthward force, 
 and lifts its fairy domes into the sky. It is the first 
 thing endowed with life that rises above the rock and 
 aspires towards the source of the sunshine and the dew 
 by which it is sustained. It was the first green leaf 
 which the Spirit that brooded like a dove over the 
 primeval waters brought out of the universal chaos that 
 was without form and void. In it we see for the first 
 time the marvellous ministry of the green leaf, purifying 
 the foul air by fixing it into shapes of beauty, and 
 creating living matter out of dead earth, and thus pre- 
 paring a world in which higher life could breathe, and 
 finally feel and think. In it we have for the first time 
 the distinctions of root, stem, foliage, flower, fruit and 
 seed so familiar to us, which enter into our most simple 
 conceptions of plant-form. The lichen shares the eter- 
 nal passivity and sameness of the rocks, but the moss 
 exhibits for the first time in the history of living things 
 the pathetic mystery of change, swaying perpetually 
 between birth and dissolution. It feels the sweet influ- 
 ences of the Pleiades, and puts on a fresh tint of living 
 green with the tassels of the larch ; it unfolds its little 
 forest of seed-vessels under the long lingering light of 
 the April afternoons ; and its leaves are touched with 
 the hectic hues of the autumn decay. The waves of 
 revival and decadence ebb and flow in its hidden cells ; 
 
94 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 and growth and death counterbalance each other on its 
 little unheeded stage. Had we the eyes of the little 
 countless tribes of insects that find in its tangled mazes 
 all the scenery that they need to shelter and support 
 them, the moss-tuft would be to us what the woodland 
 and the forest are now, and we should see in it the same 
 vicissitudes marking the varying seasons of the year. 
 
 Most admirably has the moss been adapted for the 
 part which it serves in the economy of nature, not only 
 by the structure of its single individuals, but also by its 
 social habit. Not only is the foliage by its shape and 
 character fitted to endure the extremes of temperature, 
 of dryness and moisture, and the fructification so 
 simple and yet so efficient that it cannot fail of success 
 even in the most unfavourable circumstances, but the 
 habit of the whole moss tribe is to grow in thick tufts 
 and thus secure to the individual the solidarity of a 
 multitude. This habit is one of the most remarkable 
 things connected with this curious class -of plants. It 
 is a wise provision for securing both prominence and 
 security. The little single moss would be inconspicu- 
 ous ; it would have no effect in clothing the nakedness 
 of the soil and making the surface upon which it grew 
 picturesque. It would besides be powerless in resisting 
 the hostile influences opposed to its welfare, and would 
 speedily perish. But in the form of a tuft or aggre- 
 gated mass of individuals, the united force of the whole 
 can overcome the physical evils , that would be fatal to 
 the single plant. The purpose of the moss can also be 
 achieved more perfectly through the tuft than through 
 
v. A TUFT OF MOSS. 
 
 95 
 
 the individual. It is in this form made more per- 
 manent, the individual dying but the tuft enduring; 
 and gathering all its powers into a common storehouse, 
 the moss community attracts to itself a far larger share 
 of the attention of the beneficent powers of nature than 
 could possibly be bestowed upon any one of the units 
 of which it is composed separately. The moss in its 
 tufted form affords to its individuals the same protection 
 and help which a dense forest affords to its trees. If 
 these trees stood in the open a brisk wind would 
 throw them down, or a hot sun dry them up ; but in the 
 shelter of this nursery of nature they are fostered, and 
 struggle up through the gloom branchless and leafless 
 till their whole pent-up life bursts out together, and 
 they are crowned at a great height with a dense canopy 
 of foliage, all their glory at the top ; and so with the 
 moss-forest. It is to this social habit of mosses that 
 we owe the picturesque beauty which they impart to 
 our old walls and secluded sanctuaries of nature. What 
 can be lovelier than the soft green cushions, composed 
 of myriads of individuals uniting all their charms to- 
 gether, which they spread over the bank of some wood- 
 land stream, stealing all noises from the intruding foot, 
 and inviting with the delicious play of light and shade 
 that flickers over them to noontide rest and dreamy 
 meditation : or the emerald bracelets which they clasp 
 round the knotted arms of the forest trees, imitating the 
 jewel in the brilliancy of its lustre and the endurance of 
 its verdure ! 
 
 The key to this social habit of the moss is man, to 
 
9 6 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 whom it points onward in the order of creation and 
 upward in the scale of life. The mystery can only be 
 fully explained by his social life. In him the highest 
 exemplification of its meaning and use are the words of 
 the sacred writer, "Two are better than one, and a 
 threefold cord is not easily broken." There is a Greek 
 proverb that says, " One man, no man." A single 
 isolated human being knows little of the mysteries of 
 his own being, of the universe around him, or of the 
 nature and relations of God. The dimensions of his 
 being contract ; its quality deteriorates ; he parts one 
 by one with the great essential attributes of humanity, 
 those which raise him above the level of the beasts that 
 perish. But when he is united with his fellows the 
 bounds of his being are enlarged. He sees with their 
 eyes and feels with their hearts. He knows more of 
 himself, more of God, more of the universe. There are 
 duties we should never understand or perform except 
 by association with our fellows. " A man's belief," says 
 Novalis, "gains quite infinitely when he has convinced 
 another thereof." Our consciences are strengthened 
 by the sight of each other; and the consciousness of 
 being members of a larger body helps immensely all 
 our efforts to resist temptation, to do what is right, 
 and to help on the cause of truth and love. And just 
 as by the mixture of chemical substances results are 
 obtained which are not found in the separate in- 
 gredients, so by the association of human beings with 
 each other, outward actions and inward traits of the 
 soul are realized which would have no existence in the 
 
A TUFT OF MOSS. 97 
 
 single individual. " It is not good for man to be 
 alone ; " and this law of God is expressed in the origi- 
 nal plan of his constitution. The social state is not a 
 discovery of his own, or an accident of his circum- 
 stances; it is an essential element in his complex 
 organization, existing from the very beginning. It 
 was not a number of isolated units, but a social body 
 which God contemplated when He said, " Let us 
 make man in our own image ; " and prefigurations 
 of that design and preparations for carrying out that 
 appointment were made from the foundation of the 
 world. 
 
 We have thus found the key to the social habit of 
 the moss to be man ; and as man is the key that ex- 
 plains the meaning and use of the social condition of all 
 the lower organisms, so the Church of the living God is 
 the key that explains the social condition of man. It is 
 for the purpose of bringing out and educating to the 
 utmost the nature of man that the social life and social 
 worship of the Church are designed. As members of 
 the Church we find ourselves partakers of a corporate 
 life and a history larger than our own. By association 
 with our fellow-members our view-point is elevated and 
 our horizon widened. Our own experience is individual 
 and special ; our own capacities are narrow and limited, 
 and therefore it is but a small part of the love that 
 passeth knowledge that we know, and of the fulness 
 of God that we are filled with. Others possess qualities 
 in which we are deficient, and are led in ways that we 
 know not ; others bring out new relations of God that 
 
9 8 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 we have not realized, and enter into larger and wider 
 fields of thought and action. The members of each 
 congregation, the members of each Church, through 
 their communion with one another, rise to higher con- 
 ceptions of the Divine nature, and attain to richer 
 experiences of the Divine grace than would be possible 
 to any one of them in a separate isolated state. This 
 great truth is beginning to be more recognized than it 
 ever was before. Christians of different names and 
 denominations are feeling the need of confederation 
 and co-operation ; and are realizing that their differences 
 may help tp bring out new or forgotten aspects of 
 Christian truth, and to enlarge their view of it as a 
 whole. 
 
 5. Closely connected with the social habit of the 
 moss is its power of branching multiplying itself by 
 self-extension. Some species of moss have simple 
 stems ; and these are more fugacious, having a less 
 hold upon the supplies of life, and smaller forces to 
 overcome their enemies. Others are much branched and 
 last for years. Examples of the two kinds are found in 
 the little peculiar group to which the Mungo Park moss 
 belongs. As a rule the mosses that produce their seed- 
 vessel from the summit of the stem are simple and 
 unbranched, and may therefore be said to be analogous 
 to annuals among flowering plants, which perish when- 
 ever they have produced their blossom and seed ; 
 while mosses that send forth their seed-vessel from the 
 side of the stem are much branched and are analogous 
 to perennial plants, which are provided with the means 
 
A TUFT OF MOSS. 
 
 99 
 
 of continuing not only the species but the individual, 
 and therefore last for many years. The family of the 
 Mungo Park moss, though it produces the seed-vessel 
 from the top of the stem, nevertheless branches pro- 
 fusely by innovations, or with the tops of the fertile 
 stems several times divided. This family, therefore, is 
 very enduring, and forms one of the principal features in 
 the mossy decoration of the woodland banks and 
 trees. 
 
 In this branching of the tiny moss we have the 
 earliest premonition of the corporate relationships of 
 life. We are so familiar with this fact that it has 
 become a commonplace and uninteresting truism which 
 lies bed-ridden in the dormitory of the soul. But when 
 we trace it back to its first feeble beginning in the first 
 kind of life that rose out of the forces and forms of the 
 inorganic world, we realize something of its wonder and 
 significance. All beginnings have a strange interest to 
 us, whether it be the source of a mighty river in the 
 little mountain well or the beginning of the gospel of 
 Jesus Christ, the performance of the first miracle or the 
 formation of the Christian Church. The thought that 
 there was a time when these things had no existence 
 gives a vividness to the feelings with which we regard 
 them, and brings back the freshness that has evaporated 
 with long familiarity. We are familiar with the relations 
 of human life ; but it is strange to go back to a time 
 when there was nothing like them, when life consisted 
 of units. The angels that were in existence before man 
 had no corporate life. They were created as mere 
 
i oo THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 individuals, whose number from the first was fixed and 
 perfect. They came direct from the hand of God ; and 
 thus were the sons of God, but were not the sons of one 
 another. They had no father, or son, or brother no 
 blood-relationship. And therefore we can understand 
 how the Lord Jesus could not have taken upon Him the 
 nature of angels. Between Him and these beings there 
 could be no federal tie through the possession of a 
 common nature acquired by hereditary descent. And 
 we can understand with what profound interest the 
 angels would desire to look into the mystery of the 
 creation of a being who should be so different from 
 themselves, who should inherit the Divine blessing of 
 being fruitful, and multiplying and replenishing the 
 earth, with all that it involves of sorrow and joy of 
 spiritual education and probationary discipline. Through 
 the social relationships of man a way was prepared for 
 the incarnation of the second Adam, " the Lord from 
 heaven," in whom creation and the Creator met to- 
 gether not in semblance but in reality in whom all 
 fulness dwells the fulness of the creature as well as 
 the fulness of the Creator. And through this rela- 
 tionship resting on a participation of our flesh and 
 blood, man has the hope of nearer and more blessed 
 communion with God than even angels or archangels 
 know. 
 
 Regarding the organization and the highest social 
 well-being of man then as the ultimate end of creation, 
 and taking specially into account the manifest uniformity 
 and continuity in the plans observed by the Creator 
 
A TUFT OF MOSS. 
 
 throughout all the formations of the earth, it is surely 
 not a vain imagination to suppose that in the constitu- 
 tion of the lower forms of vegetable and animal life, 
 which were made by Him long ages before man, He 
 who seeth the end from the beginning, and to whom a 
 thousand years are as one day, should have had an eye 
 to the constitution of the wonderful being that was one 
 day to occupy the highest place in the organic world. 
 We cannot but suppose that God worked up to this new 
 thing in His universe, as His manner always is, by hints 
 and forecasts of it in lower and earlier forms. He 
 traced, in the structure and habits of the first emerald 
 tuft of moss that crept over the newly -formed soil, the 
 first faint indication of the idea that was to be unfolded 
 in all its wonderful fulness of meaning in the human 
 world. The moss-tuft composed of its branching and 
 mutually related individuals, had its real origin in man, 
 its primary source in man's moral nature, and its true 
 meaning in the institution of man's social condition ; 
 that condition for which God made provision in the 
 formation of man, which He inaugurated when He gave 
 him a help-meet, taken as a rib from his side, and which 
 He means to perfect and complete in that heavenly 
 " city " towards which from the first the desires of 
 man and the preparations of God have been alike 
 directed. 
 
 6. A compact tuft or cushion of moss is a solid mass 
 that has a smooth surface and a rounded outline. It is 
 like the uniform pile of plush or velvet, as even and as 
 closely pressed together. We know how the velvet or 
 
102 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 the plush pile is produced, by the sharp knife of the 
 manufacturer passing over the woven and rugged threads 
 under heavy pressure. But what shears of Atropos cut 
 each individual thread of life in those smooth, soft, 
 rounded cushions of green and gold to the same size ? 
 How much has been sacrificed to gain that uniformity 
 of surface ! No single moss is allowed to grow at its 
 own sweet will, but is trimmed in its Procrustes' bed by 
 an inexorable law by the same law which has shaped 
 the crystals in the rock upon whose surface it grows. 
 Each individual is adapted to its own place in the 
 rnossy mound, diminishing in size from the centre 
 where the cushion is thickest to the edge where it is 
 thinnest ! The separate filaments, though independent 
 of each other, are subdued to the same spherical 
 obedience as the round dome of the full-foliaged tree 
 whose branches and twigs radiate from a common 
 central stem. We have the interpretation of this 
 peculiarity in the economy of the moss-tuft in the higher 
 world of man, where the same social law moulds the 
 tastes, characters, and habits of the individuals who 
 live together. They grow to one uniform likeness. 
 Should each individual insist upon having his mathe- 
 matically exact due, there can be no such thing as 
 general harmony or social life at all. Should each be 
 determined to stand upon his absolute rights, there will 
 be painful discord throughout the community ; but, on 
 the other hand, if each yields a little to his neighbour, 
 and circumscribes a little of his own individuality in 
 order to make room for his neighbour's, there will be an 
 
A TUFT OF MOSS. 
 
 103 
 
 agreeable unity of sentiment and unanimity of life. It 
 is no more possible to secure harmony among Church 
 members unless in honour they prefer one another, than 
 it is to secure harmony among musical notes unless 
 each is tuned a little lower than its exact due to suit the 
 next note. Only when the ends of God's discipline in 
 us and with us here are accomplished, shall we be 
 brought to the perfect enharmonic condition in heaven, 
 in which each shall have his exact absolute right, and 
 yet be in perfect accordance and sympathy with all 
 others. 
 
 And this self-sacrifice of its own fair proportions 
 which each single moss in the tuft must make in order 
 to accommodate its neighbour, is still further carried on 
 in the way in which the whole tuft is developed. Take 
 to pieces and examine carefully any little cushion of 
 moss from the nearest wall, and you will find that it 
 consists of two layers ; the upper of a rich vivid green, 
 and the lower of a dark brown or black colour. The 
 former is living and growing, and the latter is decaying 
 or dead. The moss-tuft grows in what is called a pro- 
 liferous manner, that is by young shoots springing from 
 the sides or summits of the old ones, and thus often 
 increasing many feet in depth, and forming layer above 
 layer, the uppermost stratum alone being vital, the rest 
 decomposed into peat forming a rich organic soil for its 
 nourishment. Ruskin calls the dark colour of the 
 lower layer " the funereal blackness " of the moss tuft, 
 inasmuch as it is in that way that the moss-leaves die, 
 not of a visible decay and falling, like the leaves of 
 
104 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 trees, bat invisibly in continual succession beneath the 
 ascending crest. Their final duty is to die ; their main 
 task is not, like other leaves, in their life, but in their 
 death : to form by their decay and decomposition the 
 soil out of which first the topmost crest of the moss- 
 tuft, all green and bright, may be formed, to drink in 
 the dew and to gleam in the sunshine, and then higher 
 forms of life, the flowers to assume the colours of the 
 rainbow, and the cedars to cover the earth with their 
 shadow. " None teach so well the humility of death ; " 
 the sacrifice of one generation that another may come 
 in its place ; the sacrifice of one epoch of thought and 
 effort that a higher state of progress may be reached ; 
 the self-sacrifices that respond to a parent's tenderness 
 and a friend's devotion, the root of which is love ; the 
 presenting ourselves a living sacrifice, which is the 
 ground of all true performance of duty to the family, 
 the Church, and the world. The moss-tuft interprets 
 in higher form what the rock crumbling away in death 
 in order that its dust may afford support to the plant 
 itself proclaims. All lower things live unconsciously 
 for the sake of higher things. Everywhere beneath is 
 life unfolding through struggle, suffering, and death. 
 And the highest sacrifice of all, the laying down of His 
 own life upon the cross by the Son of God, that we 
 might not perish but have everlasting life, is the key 
 that explains the mystery hid from the foundation of the 
 world the mystery of the growth of the first moss-tuft 
 on the rock whose green leaves above, that never 
 withered, were nourished by the dark leaves beneath 
 
A TUFT OF MOSS. 105 
 
 that existed but to wither and the mystery later on 
 of the germination of the first corn of wheat that 
 fell into the ground and died, and so brought forth 
 much fruit. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 THE STATUE AND THE STONE. 
 
 " Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, 
 which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay, 
 and brake them to pieces." DANIEL ii. 34. 
 
 IN primitive times dreams were often used as the 
 mediums of Divine intimations. " In slumberings 
 upon the bed," says Elihu, " God openeth the ears of 
 men, and sealeth their instruction:" Prophets and 
 others were thus brought into immediate contact with 
 things lying beyond the reach of human discernment, 
 and coming events of weal or woe cast their shadows 
 before. The boundary of reason and consciousness, 
 which hems in men's minds like the glass chimney of a 
 lamp during the waking hours, was removed during 
 sleep, in order that the flame of knowledge might be 
 increased and flicker out farther into the darkness. So 
 was it with Nebuchadnezzar. He saw in a vivid vision 
 of the night, based upon representations of outward 
 things familiar to him in his waking moments, a huge 
 
 Colossus towering up to heaven, and covering with its 
 
 106 
 
CHAP. vi. THE STATUE AND THE STONE. 107 
 
 own vast bulk and the shadow which it projected a 
 large space of ground. It was in human form, but 
 terrible in its exaggerated proportions and fierceness of 
 expression. It was composed of various metals the 
 head of pure gold, the breast and arms of silver, the 
 belly and thighs of brass, the legs of iron, and the feet 
 part of iron and part of clay. It reflected from its 
 polished surface a radiance that dazzled the eyes. 
 Gazing upon this monstrous embodiment of grandeur 
 and terror, he saw from a neighbouring mountain-side 
 a small stone cut out from the quarry, raised from its 
 place and flung by viewless hands with tremendous 
 force against the colossal image ; which immediately 
 fell with a loud crash to the ground, and was broken to 
 atoms and swept away by the rising wind caused by its 
 own fall, like the chaff of the summer threshing-floor. 
 The stone that effected this amazing destruction then 
 grew larger and larger before his eyes, until at last it 
 became a great mountain and filled the whole earth. 
 
 With the general interpretation of this remarkable 
 dream given by Daniel we are all familiar; but there 
 are some most interesting details of contrast between 
 the statue and the stone, upon which it may be 
 profitable to meditate. The first point of contrast is 
 the enormous bulk of the statue, as compared with 
 the smallness of the stone. Man estimates the import- 
 ance of things by their size and appearance. Vast 
 proportions produce a feeling of awe; and primitive 
 races strove to minister to this feeling by building 
 gigantic structures which would exalt the idea of human 
 
I0 8 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 genius in contrast with man's personal insignificance. 
 The idol which the Babylonish monarch saw in his 
 dream was in harmony with the huge monoliths, 
 temples, and human-headed bulls which formed the 
 architectural ornaments of his capital. Its colossal size 
 admirably represented the material power and extent 
 of his kingdom. Mere bulk and physical massiveness 
 were the characteristics of the great empires of an- 
 tiquity. But God's thoughts are not as man's thoughts. 
 In nature He accomplishes His mightiest operations 
 by the most insignificant agencies. The limestone 
 rocks which constitute so large a portion of the earth's 
 crust are formed, not of the bones of huge animals, 
 but of minute shells. Large islands are created by 
 the labours of tiny coral polyps. And as in nature, 
 so in grace. The kingdom of heaven is like a grain 
 of mustard-seed, which is the least of all the seeds 
 that be in the earth. God chooses the weak things 
 to confound the mighty, and things that are not to 
 bring to nought things that are, that no flesh may 
 glory in His presence. What was Palestine but a very 
 little country among the mighty continents of the earth? 
 And what was Israel but an insignificant people in 
 comparison with the great nations of antiquity? And 
 was not Bethlehem where Jesus was born one of the 
 least of the cities of the land, and the house of 
 Joseph among the poorest and most obscure families 
 in it? The barley cake of Israel overthrew the tent 
 of the Midianites, and the small stone of God's king- 
 dom upset the mighty idols of the world's empire. 
 
THE STATUE AND THE STONE. 
 
 2. Another point of contrast is the heterogeneous 
 character of the statue, as compared with the homo- 
 geneous nature of the stone. The statue was composed 
 of gold arid silver, iron and clay ; and these substances 
 were moulded and held together in a human shape, 
 not by a vital organization, nor by chemical affinity, 
 but by mere mechanical force. And in this respect 
 the statue graphically represented the outward sym- 
 metry of the great world-kingdoms of antiquity, which 
 was the result, not of a natural spontaneous association, 
 but of a forced union of 'discordant elements by human 
 power. The might of the autocrats of Egypt, Assyria, 
 and Rome blended together races and creeds that 
 had no natural affinity or sympathy with each other 
 into one form of government, one mode of political 
 life, and one mould of religious profession. This hard 
 mechanical uniformity was secured by crushing the 
 instincts of human nature, and the liberties of the 
 individual. And hence there was a constant tendency 
 in this compulsory unity towards disintegration. On 
 the slightest temptation there was a fierce attempt 
 made to throw off the hated yoke ; and frequent 
 revolutions, and chronic internal dissensions showed 
 how forced and unnatural was the compression. And 
 as with these mighty kingdoms of old, which over- 
 weighted and overshadowed the world, so is it with 
 every combination which men form for their own 
 wicked and selfish purposes. It is a forced and un- 
 natural association. There is no real unanimity. The 
 kingdom of Satan is a kingdom divided against itself, 
 
I0 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 and therefore cannot stand. Men who hate each 
 other, and have nothing otherwise in common, will 
 combine for some wicked purpose, like Herod and 
 Pilate, who became friends over the condemnation of 
 Jesus, or like the chief priests and the traitor Judas, 
 who conspired together to take Him. But the un- 
 hallowed alliance has in it a principle of schism, and 
 Herod speedily accuses Pilate to his imperial master, 
 and the chief priests say to the conscience-stricken 
 traitor who has come to them with the price of blood, 
 "What is that to us? See thou to it." 
 
 But widely different was the stone, which symbolized 
 the kingdom of heaven. It was a homogeneous sub- 
 stance. All its particles were of the same nature, and 
 they were held together by the law of mutual cohesion 
 and chemical affinity. The same force that united 
 these particles into this compact form, changing the 
 mud at the bottom of the ocean, or the sand on its 
 .shore, by pressure under massive rocks, or by the 
 induration of volcanic outbursts into stone, still held 
 these particles together because of their similarity, and 
 resisted the processes of weathering to which they 
 were exposed. The stone of the vision was no con- 
 glomerate or breccia in which pebbles or fragments 
 of different minerals were held together by mechanical 
 force, but in all likelihood, judging from the geological 
 formation of the region where the vision occurred, a 
 mass of limestone or marble, whose substance was 
 homogeneous composed of the same calcareous sedi- 
 ment, which fire and pressure had metamorphosed 
 
vi. THE STATUE AND THE STONE. IIT 
 
 into this solid and enduring form. And how strikingly 
 in this respect did it symbolize the city of God, which 
 is compactly built together the kingdom of God, 
 which is composed of those who are all one in Christ 
 Jesus. Believers have a strong family resemblance. 
 They all bear the likeness of their Father and Elder 
 Brother, and consequently of one another. Notwith- 
 standing their individual peculiarities, and their varieties 
 of character, culture, and circumstance, they are all 
 essentially one, after the image of God's unity, and 
 consequently of His eternity. Their unity is not legal, 
 but spiritual ; not of dull uniformity, but of bright 
 unanimity. Rooted and grounded in mutual love, 
 they comprehend with all saints the love that passeth 
 knowledge, and are filled with the fulness of God. 
 "There is one body, one spirit, and one hope of our 
 calling ; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God 
 and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, 
 and in us all." 
 
 3. Another point of contrast is the limitation of 
 the statue, as compared with the illimitable development 
 of the stone. The statue was of gigantic size, but 
 its human shape circumscribed its boundaries. Its 
 outlines were rigidly determined. And this was the 
 characteristic of the vast empires of antiquity, which, 
 almost as soon as they were formed, became stereo- 
 typed and incapable of progress. They speedily 
 crystallized into a permanence and immobility of 
 aspect like the changeless deserts and plains out of 
 which they had emerged. The pyramids, with their 
 
! 1 2 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 broad base and enormous bulk and fixed limits, re- 
 presented the primitive civilization of Egypt. The 
 human-headed bulls, and the other huge idols strangely 
 combining the human and the brutal, for which Nin- 
 eveh and Babylon were distinguished, were expressive 
 symbols of the state of Assyria, in which the mental 
 freedom and independence of men were still held in 
 bondage by the lower powers of nature. When the 
 light of history dawns upon these empires they are 
 seen to be completely organized ; uniform and universal 
 law, education, government, moulded all their subjects 
 to one type of character, and trained them to an un- 
 questioning obedience. Unassisted human nature had 
 reached in the Egyptian, Assyrian, and Roman empires 
 its utmost limits, and disclosed its fullest capacities ; 
 and we see how incapable it was of bringing any- 
 thing to perfection how stunted and stereotyped all 
 its mightiest efforts were. China has lived for two 
 thousand years upon the work of five centuries; it 
 has never got beyond the doctrines of Confucius as 
 explained and unfolded by Menucius. Five or six 
 centuries cover the whole ground of Greek history 
 from the rise of Sparta to the fall of Corinth ; while 
 Mahometan civilization in all its essentials completed 
 and stereotyped itself in the first three hundred years 
 of its existence. 
 
 In striking contrast with the fixed limits and de- 
 finite proportions of these human civilizations is the 
 indefinite size and shape of the kingdom of God. 
 The stone is an appropriate symbol of it, the rough 
 
THE STATUE AND THE STONE. 
 
 stone taken out of the quarry the amorphous boul- 
 der lying on the moor, not the stone crystallized 
 into the mathematical facets of the gem. The statue, 
 moulded by human art, shares in the limitations 
 of man's own nature. Made by God, the stone 
 shares in His infinitude. The mystic stone in the 
 vision grew and expanded until it became a great 
 mountain and filled the whole earth. The landscape 
 consisted of itself and its shadow. It presented a 
 different aspect from each new point of view. The 
 uniform monotonous despotisms of antiquity were 
 created by man for his own aggrandizement; they 
 had therefore fixed bounds of space and duration 
 beyond which they could not pass. But the kingdom 
 of God is the creation of Divine love and grace, and 
 therefore it unfolds with the need of man, and develops 
 new capacities of blessing him, and endures for ever. 
 
 The image of the stone does not suitably convey this 
 idea. Every stone, however rough, has a limit as fixed 
 as the statue. But the idea of fixed shape is not so 
 inherent in the stone as in the statue. A stone may be 
 of any shape may be weathered by the elements, or 
 roughened by violent contact with other stones into the 
 most varied forms ; but a human statue must preserve 
 the human shape and observe the fixed proportions of 
 the human form. So, in like manner, the idea of de- 
 velopment is not inherent in a stone. It is of a fixed 
 size ; it cannot become larger. But Scripture imparts 
 the power of growth to it, and secures, by a combina- 
 tion of images, what one alone cannot effect. We see 
 
1 1 4 TILE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 this in the union of ideas borrowed from the mineral 
 and vegetable kingdoms from architecture and plant 
 life in some of the images employed to designate the 
 Christian Church and the Christian life . " In whom all 
 the building framed together, groweth into an holy 
 temple in the Lord"; " Rooted and grounded in love." 
 We see it in the tradition of the Targumists, partially 
 adopted by St. Paul and used as a Christian image 
 that the rock which Moses smote followed the Israel- 
 ites in all their wanderings through the wilderness, and 
 furnished water to every man at his own tent door ; the 
 Christian application of it implying the adaptation of 
 the Gospel of Jesus to all the circumstances of man 
 marching with him in all his progress, and ministering 
 to all his wants wherever he finds himself. The gran- 
 deur of the Bible gives the grandeur of its own concep- 
 tions to every comparison it uses, expands its powers 
 and imparts to it qualities which it does not inherently 
 possess, and thus makes it more elastic to represent the 
 expansive force of the kingdom of God. There is 
 nothing fixed or stereotyped in this kingdom. It has a 
 wonderful power of adjustment and assimilation. It 
 expands its horizon as humanity progresses. It grows 
 with human growth. As with a mountain, whose true 
 greatness foreshortened when seen from the plain 
 can only be ascertained at its own height, the higher we 
 ascend, the higher it rises up before us, and its top, 
 from the utmost point of our attainment, is lost in the 
 clouds. The most progressive nations have found the 
 most significance in its eternal truths ; and the greater 
 
THE STATUE AND THE STOXE. 
 
 1*5 
 
 our individual growth in grace, the more we have cause 
 to exclaim : " Oh, the depth of the riches, both of the 
 wisdom and knowledge of God ! How unsearchable 
 are His judgments, and His ways past finding out ! " 
 
 The statue remained as it was, a monument of human 
 pride and weakness, casting a small shadow before it in 
 the dreary desert which it did nothing to relieve ; the 
 stone grew into a huge mountain which served the 
 most important purposes in the economy of the world, 
 sent down from its summit the cooling winds and re- 
 freshing rains and fertilizing streams which redeemed 
 the wastes of the earth, and made the wilderness and 
 the solitary place to be glad, and the desert to rejoice 
 and blossom as the rose. 
 
 The idea of growth is inherent in the Christian reli- 
 gion. It has created for itself a literature and an art in 
 which progress is essential. The horizontalism and 
 exact regularity of Greek and Assyrian architecture ex- 
 pressed the permanence and immutability of the reli- 
 gious system associated with it; while the verticalism 
 and endless variety of the Gothic architecture embodied 
 in a physical form the ideas of advancement, elevation, 
 and progress contained in the Christian religion, which 
 has chosen that style of art for its own. The religions 
 of the heathen keep man as he is confined to the 
 earth, limited and bounded on every side by the restric- 
 tions and incapacities of his faith ; the religion of Jesus 
 raises man from the ground, lifts up his nature to 
 another world, arouses his intellect and lightens his 
 cares, bursts the fetters of his flesh, sublimes his affec- 
 
n6 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 tions, fills the whole sphere of his vision with grand 
 and aspiring spectacles, and embodies itself in struc- 
 tures which exhibit a similar analogy. The religion 
 that will satisfy the soul is a religion that makes provi- 
 sion for its growth and expansion, that shares in the 
 infinitude and indefinite progressiveness of man. The 
 stone must destroy the statue. The stone of the 
 Gospel the Rock Christ Jesus that has no fixed 
 shape, but grows and adapts itself to the growing neces- 
 sities of the race and the individual, must conquer and 
 destroy the statue that has a definite shape and fixed 
 limits the creed of the Pharisee, the Mahometan, and 
 the Pagan, that bounds man's spirit with its hard, 
 monotonous, mechanical lines. 
 
 4. Another point of contrast is the brilliant appear- 
 ance of the statue, and the value of the materials of 
 which it is composed, as compared with the meanness 
 and commonness of the stone, and the worthlessness of 
 its substance. With the exception of the clay, out of 
 which its extremities were partly moulded, all the other 
 materials used in the composition of the statue were 
 exceedingly valuable according to the human standard. 
 The gold and silver of the head and breast were the 
 most precious of all substances, the symbols of human 
 wealth and the representations of human glory and 
 power; the gold, the sacred metal, employed in the 
 sacred services of the world, and the silver employed in 
 the every-day uses of common life as money passed 
 from hand to hand, " the pale and common drudge 
 between man and man." The brass which formed the 
 
vr. THE STATUE AND THE STONE. 117 
 
 middle part of the statue was the metal of which the 
 armour of the ancients the breastplate and the gyves 
 was made ; and the iron of the legs and feet was the 
 metal which, stronger and more useful than all the 
 others, was the symbol of man's proud position on the 
 earth, and his power to subdue all its elements to his 
 use. These materials are the highest forms which the 
 mineral kingdom assumes the sublimation of the sub- 
 stance of the earth, and therefore they fitly represent all 
 the pomp and circumstance of the proud kingdoms of 
 the world all that is strongest, most precious, and 
 enduring in human sovereignty. 
 
 On the other hand, the stone which smote the 
 magnificent statue had no value or splendour. It was 
 a rude aggregation and consolidation of the common 
 sand or mud or dust of the earth. It was made up 
 of the materials which are trodden under foot or em- 
 ployed only in the humblest uses. Who values a 
 rough stone by the wayside? It is left unheeded 
 where it lies, or kicked aside as an obstacle. And 
 in this respect it is a fit symbol of the Founder of the 
 heavenly kingdom, who, while on earth, had no form 
 or comeliness, and was despised and rejected of men. 
 Christ in His life and death presents no attraction to the 
 natural eye. The stone is disallowed of men, a stone 
 of stumbling and a rock of offence even to those which 
 stumble at the word. His Church was the filth and 
 offscouring of all things to the world. The subjects of 
 His kingdom were the weak, the foolish, the ignorant, 
 and the poor those who, like their Master, had a 
 
u8 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. vi. 
 
 Galilean name of reproach among men. To human 
 view, where were there ever such glory and pomp and 
 power as the vast world-empires of antiquity possessed ? 
 And, on the other hand, where were there ever such 
 weakness and insignificance as characterized the origin 
 and early progress of the kingdom of Christ upon earth ? 
 And yet in the contest between them the weakness of 
 the one was stronger than all the strength of the other. 
 The little worthless stone smote the huge magnificent 
 statue; and on the site where it stood, and where its very 
 ashes were swept away by the wind of destiny, leaving 
 not a wreck behind, the mountain of the Lord's house 
 shall be established on the top of the mountains, and 
 shall be exalted above the hills, and all nations shall 
 flow unto it. 
 
 The dream of the night has become the grandest fact 
 of history ; the vision of a heathen monarch has be- 
 come the reality of Christendom ; and every age will 
 give the vision and the dream a grander and yet grander 
 interpretation. God has made the stone which the 
 builders rejected the headstone of the corner ; and on 
 it is built all that is most precious and enduring in 
 the world the Church which was bought with the 
 blood of Christ, against which the gates of hell shall 
 not prevail. The living stones built upon the Living 
 Stone will partake of the life, durability, and value of 
 their foundation. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 THE SWALLOW'S NEST. 
 
 " The swallow hath found a nest for herself, where she may lay 
 her young, even thine altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my 
 God." PSALM Ixxxiv. 3. 
 
 THIS is one of the Psalms composed when the 
 Jewish King and nobles were carried away to 
 Babylon. The plaintive wail of the exile is heard in 
 each of its lines. Far away is his native land. Its moun- 
 tains are too distant to make even a faint line of purple 
 cloud at the farthest extremity of the wide plains. The 
 captive dwells with a yearning tenderness upon the 
 memories of the past, and contrasts his own helpless 
 imprisonment with the liberty which his people enjoy of 
 going on a pilgrimage to the Holy City, and taking part 
 in the services of the Temple there. He envies even 
 the birds of passage, which are free to go wherever they 
 please. The swallow especially comes up before his 
 mind, whose Hebrew name, meaning freedom, and de- 
 noting its love of liberty and the impossibility of keep- 
 ing it in captivity, has a deep significance to him in his 
 119 
 
120 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 mournful circumstances. He remembers how it used to 
 build its nest in the narrow loopholes in the lofty stone 
 walls surrounding the outer court of the Temple, in 
 which the brazen altar was placed, and how he used, 
 while engaged in the holy services, to watch its swift 
 movements as it darted in and out, and skimmed the 
 atmosphere in its short arrowy flights. Would that he 
 could borrow its wings, that he might hasten to the 
 shrine of his devotions, and enjoy the blessed privileges 
 of the past, to which his long privation had lent a dearer 
 value ! 
 
 The swallow, like the robin and the wren, is one of 
 the sacred birds of Christendom. It does not need to 
 build its nest within hallowed precincts to enjoy the 
 right of sanctuary. A gentle, humanizing superstition 
 has connected it with the higher mysteries of the uni- 
 verse, and brought it within the limit of a catholic bless- 
 ing. Its own beauty throws a shield of protection over 
 it ; and by rude and gentle natures alike it is regarded 
 with a feeling of veneration akin to that which pervades 
 the quaint rhymes of the " Ancient Mariner." It makes 
 its nest under the lowly cottage eaves, almost within 
 reach of eager childish hands stretched forth from the 
 dormer window ; but it is as safe and unmolested there 
 as under the porch of the rural sanctuary, whose pro- 
 found quiet is disturbed only once a week by feet of 
 reverent worshippers. Nor can we wonder at this 
 beautiful feeling which extends to a few favoured birds 
 and flowers an interest in that blessed religion which 
 guards and hallows everything that God has made, as an 
 
vii. THE SWALLOW'S NEST. I2I 
 
 earnest that it shall yet embrace all nature. It has 
 more and other beauty than the mere grace of its form 
 and the glossy sheen of its plumage. All the past sum- 
 mers of life have shed their halo around it. To the 
 careworn mind there is childhood in every twitter of 
 its little throat, and in every flash of its purple wing. It 
 is full of our own human heart. The reappearance 
 every season of this little prophet of the year awakens all 
 the glad instincts that slumber even in the coldest 
 nature. It is associated with long days full of light and 
 soft air and dreamy beauty, in which every one is in- 
 clined to imitate the example of the little child who 
 woke at earliest dawn and begged to be dressed quickly, 
 saying, " I must get up early there is so much to do 
 to-day; there are so many flowers to be plucked." 
 This fairy Ariel, who is chasing summer for ever round 
 the world, brings with it thoughts of far-off climes, which 
 the imagination clothes with ideal charms, filling the 
 heart with a wistful yearning, a longing for wings to flee 
 away and be at rest It has no connection with winter 
 gloom or autumn decay, but comes when earth is fairest 
 and human life is brightest. It is impossible to watch 
 the movements of the active, joyous creature without 
 feeling some sentiment of love towards it. The eye is 
 fascinated, and so is the heart, by its wonderful grace 
 and velocity as it wheels its ceaseless and untiring flight 
 from sunrise to sunset. If one swallow does not make 
 a summer, we certainly cannot imagine a summer with- 
 out this winged seraph, that brings into our northern clime 
 a glimpse of the glory and mystery of regions unknown. 
 
122 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 One of the pleasantest experiences of country life is 
 to be awakened at early morning by the twitter of the 
 swallows, and to see the sunlight flashing upon their 
 shining backs as they dart in and out of their nests 
 under the eaves. The sound seems to belong more to 
 the faint far-off world of dreams which has just been left, 
 than to the cold, hard world of reality into which one 
 has awakened. It has in it thoughts of things of beauty 
 and delight that have been dreamed of or overjoyed. 
 The nearness of the nest gives a near view of the bird ; 
 and what a beautiful creature it is, with the glossy blue 
 of its slender wings made for rapid flight, and the soft 
 snowy whiteness, mingled with a tawny hue, of its breast 
 and throat, and the quick sparkle of its fearless eye 1 
 Scarcely less wonderful than itself is the nest which it 
 builds, in defiance of the laws of gravity, against the 
 smooth masonry of the gable. The nest of any bird, if 
 we think seriously of it, is a very remarkable object. It 
 is not a home for permanent habitation, but a place for 
 the rearing of young, to be abandoned when that pur- 
 pose is served. Although the same eyrie may be used 
 by the eagle for many generations, and the crow may 
 frequent the same rookery for hundreds of years, the 
 generality of birds use their nests only for hatching and 
 nursing. Each spring, as the season returns, the bird is 
 guided by an instinct as undeviating as the law of gravi- 
 tation, to spend weeks in building a warm and delicate 
 abode for its future young, while all the rest of the year 
 it seeks no other shelter for itself than what it finds 
 among the thick branches of trees, or in the crevices of 
 
vir. THE SWALLOW'S NEST. 
 
 123 
 
 rocks, or in holes of banks and walls. The nest varies 
 in construction according to the purpose which it serves. 
 If it is used only for incubation, it is of the simplest 
 structure, being often a mere hollow scratched in the 
 bare ground without any regard to form; if, on the 
 other hand, it is used both for incubation and sheltering 
 the young, it is shaped with much care and skill, an ex- 
 quisitely rounded cup frosted with lichens, and packed 
 with green moss, and lined with the softest down and hair, 
 looking as if it had been turned on a potter's wheel. 
 These gradations in nest architecture harmonize with the 
 differences in the bodily structure of birds and in their 
 habits and modes of life. We recognize a close family 
 resemblance between the nests of birds belonging to the 
 same species or order, although occasional differences 
 may be detected when the situation is peculiar and the 
 choice of materials limited. 
 
 It is supposed that the nests of birds show no pro- 
 gress during the long period they have been under the 
 observation of man. The nest of the bird is commonly 
 regarded as the equivalent of the matrix in other 
 creatures ; and the processes which go on unseen and 
 unconsciously in their internal economy, are carried on 
 externally by the bird, visibly and consciously, by an 
 instinct which corresponds with the physiological law in 
 the former case. Hence the product in the one instance 
 is supposed to be as fixed and unalterable as in the 
 other. But acute observers have noticed, nevertheless, 
 that the faculty of nest-building is capable of education, 
 and that the first attempts of young birds are much more 
 
124 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 crude and imperfect than those of their parents, or than 
 those which they themselves afterwards make. The 
 best-constructed nests are formed by birds whose young 
 remain a long time in them, and thus have more oppor- 
 tunity of seeing how they are made. We see almost 
 the same display of reasoning powers in the selection of 
 locality, choice of materials suitable for warmth and 
 concealment, and adaptation of parts to requirements, 
 which the savage evinces in the construction of his rude 
 hut ; and the nests of birds do not vary less from gen- 
 eration to generation than the abodes of primitive man. 
 The bird-instinct seems to be like some lost human 
 sense, teaching it what man cannot know the mystery 
 of our common nature that lies beyond the reach of 
 reason. 
 
 As the swallow's nest is intended for incubation and 
 nursing, it is made durable and compact. It is said 
 that men acquired the first notions of architecture from 
 birds; and according to this theory we are told that 
 Doxius, the inventor of clay-houses, took the hint from 
 the swallow's nest. The same variety characterizes the 
 one as the other. No two in either case are exactly 
 alike. It is from want of long-continued observation 
 that we fail to discover any progress in the construction 
 of the swallow's nest. M. Pouchet, who carefully 
 studied the subject, found a decided improvement in 
 the nests of swallows at Rouen during his own life- 
 time. It is certain that in historical times the bird has 
 modified its habits to some extent. In pre-Christian 
 ages in this country there were no stone buildings. 
 
vn. THE SWALLOW'S NEST. 125 
 
 Human habitations were mostly circular huts of woven 
 twigs, plastered over with clay, and covered with thatch, 
 affording no suitable coigne of vantage for "the pendant 
 bed and procreant cradle" of this bird. In these cir- 
 cumstances the swallows that visited our country in 
 those far-off days built their nests in the hollow trunks 
 of aged trees, just as two centuries ago they did in the 
 United States of America, and still do in those distant 
 regions which even at the present day are but partly 
 settled. How did they find out the many conveniences 
 of stone dwellings for establishing their nests, and, 
 abandoning their ancient retreats, take possession of the 
 gables, friezes, or buttresses, which they now frequent? 
 Did the instinct of the bird in this respect keep pace 
 with the civilization of man ? 
 
 The association of the swallow's nest with man's 
 habitation is altogether a curious circumstance. In 
 every department of nature we find objects that are 
 brought into closer connection with man than others. 
 They still continue in a wild state ; they are not 
 dependent upon human care, and yet they are never 
 found at a distance from the haunts of man. We 
 gather the stones of the earth around us in our dwel- 
 lings, and the trees and flowers of the earth in our 
 gardens, and the wild animals that come and go in their 
 freedom about our homes, in token that humanity by 
 its principles extends throughout the whole of nature, 
 and that the Adam in us still gives all living things 
 their names. Between the swallow's habitation and 
 its nature there is a striking contrast. We should have 
 
T 2 6 THE OLIVE LEAF, CHAT-. 
 
 expected that a bird which is in constant motion, flying 
 swiftly through the air, catching its prey on the wing, 
 and hardly ever alighting on the ground, would build 
 its nest on a branch of some slender tree, where it 
 might be rocked by the wind like a sailor's hammock. 
 Between such a resting-place and its own restless habits 
 there would, in our estimation, be a suitable harmony. 
 And yet the swallow chooses a very different kind of 
 home. It builds in the corners and under the roofs 
 of strong substantial human dwellings where it may be 
 safe alike from wind and rain. It attaches its frail nest 
 to the enduring structure of man that it may share in 
 its endurance. It seeks, as the Psalmist tells us, the 
 vicinity of the altar of God, the safe sanctuary of holy 
 places. 
 
 i. And is there not a profound lesson for us in 
 this curious contrast ? We, too, are wandering crea- 
 tures, finding no rest for the sole of our foot, because 
 God has endowed us with a nature so vast that no 
 earthly thing can satisfy it. We are pilgrims and 
 strangers on earth. We are migratory like the swal- 
 low ; and the land from whence we have come and 
 to which we are hastening is fairer than any tropical 
 dream of groves of palm and violet skies of unfading 
 summer. We wear immortal wings within ; and no 
 small part of the sadness of human life arises from the 
 incongruity between our capacities and attainments, our 
 longings and enjoyments ; between the infinite duration 
 of our immortal spirits and the transitoriness of all 
 things here. The fox finds its hole and the bird its 
 
vii. THE SWALLOW'S NEST. 127 
 
 nest, and they are satisfied. Their limited nature is 
 at home in a world that has been straitened to their 
 wants. But man finds no nest for his hopes, no home 
 for his affections in any created good. Our Saviour 
 bids us consider the lilies of the field and the fowls of 
 heaven ; but the pity of our life is that we cannot be 
 as they are the careless, happy children of nature, for 
 whom she richly provides, and whom she perfectly 
 satisfies. We are the cuckoo in her nest; and even 
 though we should be fed and clothed with unfailing 
 regularity, without a care of our own, we should still 
 have the burdens, the yearnings, and regrets imposed 
 upon us, because of our Godlike nature, and the awful 
 freedom which has been given to us to sin and to suffer. 
 Amid the whirl of circumstances, the changes of time, 
 and the groanings and travailings together of the whole 
 creation because of our want of adaptation to it, and 
 our violation by our sins of its holy peace and beauty, 
 how needful, then, is it that we should build our trust 
 on the Rock that is higher than ourselves ; that we 
 should seek in aim and affection and action the City 
 which hath foundations whose builder and maker is 
 God ! God's house, and all that it represents, afford 
 to us here the only adequate shelter, the only sure place 
 of safety. There only do we find rest to our souls, the 
 higher fellowship which ennobles duty, sanctifies sorrow, 
 and enriches life above all else. There only do our 
 burdens fall off our spirits, our cares and perplexities 
 subside into a divine calm, and the mysteries of the 
 world reveal a clue which guides us safely through them 
 
I 2 8 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 to a glorious issue. There the true business of life is 
 transacted. We need the things of the world, the sense 
 of human fellowship in our daily life, that through them 
 we may know God and ourselves in the light of God. 
 But we need higher things than these, and a grander 
 association. 
 
 2. The swallow, aerial as is its flight, transient as 
 is its stay, graceful and ethereal as is its form, never- 
 theless builds its nest of the common clay of the 
 ground ; but compensates for the seeming degradation 
 by attaching that nest to the home of man and the very 
 altar of God. And so God has made our bodies of the 
 dust of the earth, and closely connected our life with it. 
 We must make our nest of clay. But while by our 
 bodies we belong to one set of circumstances, we 
 belong by our souls to another and higher. Parts of 
 a passing material world, so far as our corporeal nature 
 is concerned, we have a personality that has nothing in 
 common with the dust of the earth, with its decay and 
 death. We are immortal guests dwelling within a 
 transient house of clay that must one day crumble 
 and fall and be resolved into the elements out of 
 which it was built. And we, too, must build our 
 clay-nest against the house of God, near the very altar 
 of heaven, if its vanity and insignificance are to be 
 redeemed, if we are to learn most richly the meaning 
 of our discipline, and find strength to endure unto 
 the end, and lay up provision in a storehouse which 
 death cannot rifle. 
 
 The swallow, as we have seen, has changed its 
 
vii. THE SWALLOW'S NEST. 129 
 
 habits within historical times. It has left the woods 
 and frequented the haunts of man ; it has ceased to 
 build its nest upon the trees, and with its friendly 
 masonry has attached itself to our houses. To its own 
 natural, less commodious dwelling, it has preferred 
 that which is offered to it by man. And surely we 
 may learn a lesson from it in regard to the great change 
 of habit which we must all undergo if we are to be 
 saved. We, too, must build the home of our spirits, 
 not amid the passing and perishing things of the world, 
 but amid the things that remind us of God and eternity. 
 We are strangers and sojourners on earth; but if we 
 hide ourselves in the secret place of the Most High, 
 the sure, satisfying realities that abide for ever will 
 transform for us the vain show of the world. We shall 
 have the same home wherever the place of our encamp- 
 ment may be, whether beside the sweet wells of Elim 
 or the bitter waters of Marah ; God will cover us with 
 His feathers, and under His wings shall we trust. And 
 in the end we shall exchange our earthly house of this 
 tabernacle in which we groan, and which shall be dis- 
 solved, for the building of God, the house not made 
 with hands, eternal in the heavens. 
 
 3. The mode in which the swallow builds its nest 
 is equally instructive. If we extend to the confiding 
 bird the hospitality which is a duty we owe to man 
 and beast, and leave it to rear unmolested its " loved 
 mansionry" under our porch or above our window, 
 it will amply reward us. We shall find that we have 
 been entertaining an angel unawares, sent to teach us 
 
I3 o THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 wise and tender truths which we should do well to 
 heed. The little creature has itself been taught by a 
 wonderful instinct to make its nest of the size exactly 
 necessary to contain the future young, and to furnish 
 it in the proper manner ; and it has learned by slow 
 degrees to modify its shape so as to afford more room 
 for its inmates, and to protect them better from rain, 
 cold, and foreign enemies than the old nests. The 
 mortar with which it builds is mud from cart-ruts, sides 
 of wells, and such like places. This it makes more 
 adhesive by moistening it with some salivary fluid of 
 its own, kneading it thoroughly, and forming it into 
 a solid mass with much patience and skill, adding 
 bits of broken straw and dry bents to make it hold 
 together. The wisdom and foresight which the 
 swallow displays in the use of this mortar are not 
 unworthy of a reasoning mind. Instead of working 
 continually at building the nest until completed, it 
 takes more than a week for the process. Each morn- 
 ing it finishes a certain portion of its task by the first 
 light of the sun, and then gives up work for the rest 
 of the day. In this way each layer of mud has time 
 to dry and consolidate before the next is added, and 
 the safety of the structure is not endangered by imprud- 
 ent haste. The little bird takes time to perfect its 
 work to make it secure and lasting ; and its patience 
 and perseverance are rewarded in the end by finding 
 itself the possessor of a tiny edifice of loam as wonder- 
 ful and as admirably adapted for its purpose as anything 
 which the Temple of Solomon itself had to show. It 
 
vii. THE SWALLOW'S NEST. I ^ I 
 
 will last many seasons, and may continue to be used 
 as a family mansion for several generations, needing 
 little or no repairs each spring. In this respect the 
 swallow's nest rebukes our undue haste to accomplish 
 our human tasks, our attempts to produce great results 
 with the least expenditure of time and labour. This 
 vice lies at the root of all our inferior and unstable 
 workmanship. The nations of old built slowly, and 
 they built as if for eternity. It is almost as difficult to 
 dig a stone out of an old Roman building as it was 
 to extract it from its original quarry. How different 
 from the houses which we construct with untempered 
 mortar, and hasty, careless workmanship, and which 
 consequently need continual repairs, are never satis- 
 factory, and hardly last out a single generation. 
 
 The swallow's nest has a wise lesson for us in the 
 building of many other structures, mental and moral, as 
 well as material. To labour steadily and to wait 
 patiently is the precept which it enforces. Only by 
 slow and cautious degrees can any human effort reach 
 perfection. The secret of success is to bide our time, 
 and allow our work to settle and acquire the compact- 
 ness and solidity which mature consideration alone pro- 
 duces. Every day something should be attempted, 
 something done, by which to earn our night's repose. 
 Especially in the growth of the spiritual being, the forma- 
 tion of the Christian character, do we need to act upon 
 the swallow's motto of " Haste is slow." We must not 
 force our higher nature into premature or impatient de- 
 velopment lest it become weak and unstable. Like all 
 
132 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 Nature's operations, which proceed by a wise and 
 orderly progression from the seed to the blade, and 
 from the blade to the ear, and from the ear to the full 
 corn in the ear, never anticipating at any stage what 
 belongs to a more advanced one, never exhibiting an 
 abnormal precocity, the kingdom of heaven in us should 
 develop its germinating fulness with the same ease and 
 quietude and steady progress. There need be no 
 anxiety on our part in thus tarrying the Lord's leisure, 
 for the work is His more than it is ours, and He, like 
 every true workman, has respect unto the work of His 
 own hands, so that what He has begun He will com- 
 plete, and perfect that which concerneth us. And what 
 we are to do in regard to the work of our own souls, we 
 are taught by the same object-lesson to do in regard to 
 the work of building up the house of God in the world. 
 We must not disregard the day of small things, but labour 
 on faithfully and patiently. What God requires is not 
 our success, but our work, for it will teach us as nothing 
 else can do what is the true value of our own life and 
 that of others. 
 
 As the swallow builds its nest by minute accretions, 
 and deems no particle of clay too small to be of use, as 
 it makes its precious nest of the humblest materials, so 
 let us deem no opportunity too small for service, no 
 human being so sunk in vice and ignorance as to be 
 beneath our regard ; remembering that the nest of clay 
 which we are constructing is for the rearing of immortal 
 souls. And as the bird uses its own saliva, parts with a 
 portion of its own substance, to cement its nest, so 
 
THE SWALLOW'S NEST. 
 
 should we expend in the precious labour of winning 
 souls and building up this spiritual house not made with 
 hands, not what costs us nothing, but what may involve 
 much self-denial and self-sacrifice ; not the light toil of 
 our leisure moments, but the sweat of our soul in our 
 busiest; remembering that He for whom we labour 
 made clay of His own saliva with which to open the eyes 
 of the blind ; and in the crowning consummation of His 
 work gave Himself for us on the cross. The first crea- 
 tion formed us out of the dust of the earth without toil or 
 trouble ; the new creation opens our blind eyes by the 
 addition to the dust of the earth of a part of the very 
 substance of the Saviour, by the expenditure of much 
 toil, and sorrow, and suffering. And in this we must 
 imitate His example if we are to be successful master- 
 builders. No labour of ours will endure form part of 
 the eternity of God unless it be mingled not only with 
 faith and prayer, as the swallow's nest is constructed of 
 bits of straw to give the clay strength and coherence, 
 but also, like the swallow's nest, with a part of ourselves, 
 with the love, and the sympathy, and the self-denial of 
 our souls. The instinctive, unconscious love of the 
 swallow for its prospective young is shown by the sacri- 
 fice of itself in the building of its home ; and our love 
 for the little children, to use the apostle's words, of 
 whom we travail in birth again until Christ be formed 
 in them, should be shown by a similar self sacrifice, only 
 conscious and willing, and greater in degree as the 
 object is so much more important. 
 
7Y77i OLIVE LEAF, CHAP. 
 
 A NEST IN A HEATHER BUSH. 
 
 ONE day in June I found a dainty nest, 
 
 So cunningly hid in a heather bush 
 
 That fringed a way-side rock, no human eye 
 
 Would e'er have seen the secret hidden there, 
 
 Had not the bird betrayed it, flying out. 
 
 'Twixt nest and bush a subtle harmony 
 
 Revealed itself, suggesting precious thoughts. 
 
 The nest grew to its round completeness, formed 
 
 By skill unconscious, as the heather sprays 
 
 Grew naturally around its mossy sides, 
 
 Keeping the bright eye of the laughing day 
 
 From peering in with glance too curious. 
 
 And when the crimson bloom burst through the leaves 
 
 Seven tiny eggs, blue as a summer wave, 
 
 Blushed 'neath the warm reflection which it cast. 
 
 Love built the nest, love shaped the heather-bloom ; 
 
 And both are tender products of the same 
 
 Mysterious heart that throbs in Nature's breast. 
 
 The nest is but a flower-cup, in whose depth 
 
 The bird-life blossoms ; and the heather-flower 
 
 Is but a brighter-hued and tenderer nest, 
 
 In which the plant expends its richest grace. 
 
 The mate's sweet song upon the neighbouring tree. 
 
 The brightened feathers on its bosom soft, 
 
 The deftly-woven nest and gem-like eggs, 
 
 The mother's love that quickens them to life, 
 
 Are but the counter-parts in higher form. 
 
[i. A NEST IX A HEATHER BUSH. 135 
 
 Of hue, and shape, and fragrance, of the flo\ver 
 
 Both making up the marriage-feast of spring. 
 
 The heather-bells make silent music, which 
 
 The inner ear of soul alone can hear; 
 
 The bird's sweet song expresses all the joy 
 
 Of young life budding from the old and sere 
 
 The perfect harmony of means and ends 
 
 In God's great world, of kindred natures made. 
 
 Above the mystery of a higher life 
 
 Hid in its heart the seed of future wings 
 
 And future song the wayside heather-bush, 
 
 Burning with its own crimson fire of bloom, 
 
 Reveals the presence of the great " I Am," 
 
 Who clothes the lilies feeds the fowls of Heaven, 
 
 Associates Himself with all His works, 
 
 Dwells in the bush and in the human heart, 
 
 And gives expression full in various modes 
 
 To the same primal element of love ; 
 
 So that the passer-by, who looks within, 
 
 And understands the meaning of the sight, 
 
 Puts off his shoes in reverence, and feels 
 
 The place whereon he stands is holy ground. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 THE STAFF AND TEE SACRIFICE. 
 
 1 ' And Gehazi passed on before them, and laid the staff upon the 
 face of the child ; but there was neither voice nor hearing. . . . 
 And Elisha went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth 
 upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon 
 his hands ; and he stretched himself upon the child ; and the flesh 
 of the child waxed warm. Then he returned, and walked in the 
 house to and fro ; and went up, and stretched himself upon him : 
 and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes." 
 2 KINGS iv. 31, 34, 35. 
 
 story of the Shunammite and her son is one of 
 -I the most charming idyls in the Bible. It abounds 
 in the most beautiful touches of nature ; and though the 
 mould in which it is cast is peculiarly Eastern, its simple 
 pathos appeals to the universal human heart. It is 
 full of suggestive meanings, and contains lessons upon 
 which a whole volume might be written. But passing 
 from the simple, obvious instruction which the narra- 
 tive bears upon the surface of it, I wish to use the 
 significant incidents connected with the child's restora- 
 tion as an acted parable. It is in this way that 
 the miracles of the Old and New Testaments have a 
 
 136 
 
CH. viii. THE STAFF AND THE SACRIFICE. I3 y 
 
 permanent use and value. The supernatural element 
 in them cannot be repeated, for, like all creative acts, 
 it is unique ; but the moral element can be perpetuated, 
 and we can proceed on the lines of action which the 
 miracles have laid down, just as we can use what has 
 been created, for our own purposes, though we cannot 
 create. Looking at the incidents of the miracle of 
 Shunem in this light, they seem to me to afford ad- 
 mirable illustrations of the two prevailing methods of 
 doing good, both on a large scale, as affecting the 
 highest interests of the whole human race ; and on a 
 small scale, as affecting the spiritual and temporal 
 interests of individuals. The one method of doing 
 good, which may be called the impersonal, is illustrated 
 by Gehazi putting the staff of the prophet upon the face 
 of the dead child; the other, or personal method, is 
 illustrated by the prophet stretching himself upon the 
 dead body, and by his own exertions and sacrifices 
 restoring the life that had fled. Let me consider these 
 two illustrations separately. 
 
 :. The impersonal method. Although an inspired 
 prophet, Elisha was a man subject to like passions with 
 ourselves. He had to grow in grace, to increase in 
 faith, and to grope through darkness for light, like any 
 other person. He was not always inspired. There 
 were times when he had to acquire his knowledge as 
 we have to acquire ours, by painful experience, by slow 
 degrees, and repeated failures and disappointments. In 
 regard to this matter of the Shunammite's son, he him- 
 self confesses his ignorance. He says, "The Lord 
 
138 THE OLIVE LEAF, CHAP. 
 
 hath hid it from me, and hath not told me." In 
 sending Gehazi with his staff to lay it upon the dead 
 child's face, he was therefore trying an experiment \ 
 he was doing not what the Lord had revealed to him, 
 but what he himself imagined was the best thing to do 
 in the circumstances. He transferred the mantle of 
 Elijah from himself to Gehazi in perfect faith. He 
 expected that some good might be done, if the grand 
 miracle of restoration could not be accomplished. The 
 circumstances brooked no delay. The child was dead ; 
 and in that hot Eastern clime, burial speedily followed 
 upon death, for the work of decay began almost as soon 
 as the breath left the body. If therefore the dreadful 
 process of dissolution was to be prevented, and the 
 corpse was to be restored, while the echoes of life were 
 still ringing as it were about its central parts, no time 
 was to be lost. The prophet himself could not go ; he 
 could not leave the poor mother in her anguish; he 
 must try and do something to comfort her while she is 
 clinging to his feet and imploring his sympathy and 
 aid. And therefore he sent his servant with his staff: 
 that instrument of power which on former occasions 
 God had honoured with success which, like Moses' 
 rod, had wrought wonderful miracles ; hoping that if it 
 could not restore life, it might at least avert decomposi- 
 tion, and preserve the body in that exquisite marble 
 beauty which in little children is so like an angel's 
 sleep. He did what he could at the time ; but it was 
 not sufficient. His action was impersonal ; it was 
 wrought by another, by a mere servant ; it did not 
 
VIH. THE STAFF AND THE SACRIFICE. i^ 
 
 proceed from a true knowledge of the case, and it 
 did not contain the requisite amount of faith. For 
 these reasons it did not succeed. Death would not 
 release his prey at the bidding of such a feeble and 
 inadequate instrumentality. Elisha himself did not 
 manifest any surprise when Gehazi returned from his 
 fruitless errand, and told him, saying, " The child is 
 not awaked." Having adopted the measure as a 
 human precaution, and not at the instigation of God's 
 Spirit, he could not count upon success ; and therefore 
 there was no revulsion of feeling, no shock to his faith. 
 He knew by the result that he had committed an error 
 in judgment, that he had adopted the wrong expedient; 
 and upon its failure he was prepared to try the personal 
 method, by going himself to the scene of death, and 
 doing what he could himself to raise the dead to life. 
 
 It will be lawful, in the first place, to apply this 
 incident to the mode of salvation that existed in the 
 time of Elisha the method of imparting life to the 
 dead body of humanity by the dispensations previous 
 to the Gospel. These modes were all impersonal. 
 God Himself did not come into closest contact with 
 men, did not identify Himself with their interests, did 
 not assume their nature or tabernacle with them. As 
 Elisha sent his servant to restore the dead child, so He 
 sent His prophets and priests and godly men, and spoke 
 to mankind at sundry times and in divers manners. 
 He sent His servants with His commission, and gave 
 them His staff, the rod of His power. He entered into 
 covenant with Israel, and gave them laws and institu- 
 
140 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 tions for their guidance and blessing. But the result 
 of all His impersonal dealings with the human race 
 before the appearance of the Saviour, was like the 
 result of Gehazi's laying the prophet's staff upon the 
 face of the dead child. Some good indeed was done. 
 The decay of religion was prevented ; the process of 
 spiritual decomposition was arrested ; the possibilities 
 of restoration were conserved ; and the body of 
 humanity was kept at least from sinking into a deeper 
 spiritual death, and yielding to the dissolving forces 
 which were assailing it in the world. But no spiritual 
 life was enkindled ; the sleep of death was not broken ; 
 mankind, dead in trespasses and sins, heard no voice, 
 and felt no touch potent enough to break the spell that 
 bound it down in spiritual torpor and coldness. Scrip- 
 ture itself tells us of the insufficiency of all the means 
 and appliances that were used under the old dispen- 
 sations to quicken mankind into newness of life. It 
 tells us that " the law made nothing perfect " ; that 
 it could not effect the restoration which it pro- 
 claimed " in that it was weak through the flesh " ; 
 that it had only "a shadow of good things to 
 come." The whole Bible declares the truth that the 
 law not the ceremonial law, which was done away 
 with by the coming of the Gospel, but the eternal 
 and unchangeable rule of righteousness, which is the 
 transcript of the Divine nature and the harmony of 
 the universe was unable, notwithstanding its awful 
 threatenings and glorious rewards, to cope with human 
 corruption, and remedy the evils of sin. Even when 
 
THE STAFF AND THE SACRIFICE. 141 
 
 it had been brought home with enlightening efficacy 
 and convincing power to the heart and conscience, its 
 effect was often only to stimulate dormant evil longings 
 and latent corrupt affections into virulent action. Its 
 prohibitions and restraints, so far from killing sinful 
 desire, had a tendency to increase it ; sin took " occa- 
 sion by the commandment," and that which " was or- 
 dained to life," proved "to be unto death." 
 
 St. Paul records his own experience of its futility : 
 " I had not known sin," he says, " but by the law. 
 For I was alive without the law once; but when the 
 commandment came, sin revived, and I died." Its 
 rewards were abstractions which, however beautiful and 
 alluring in description and prospect, were nevertheless 
 powerless to counteract the present temptations that 
 came to human beings in warm, living, breathing shapes 
 of flesh and blood. The law may induce a man actu- 
 ally to refuse the offers and allurements of evil, but it 
 cannot grapple with the sin of the heart, and order 
 aright the government of that invisible kingdom within 
 where Satan wages his most successful war. Its terrors 
 and its blessings have no effect in that inner world 
 where we have to do, not with the realities, but with 
 the ideal forms of sin where there are none of the 
 restraints and mitigations that hinder the full power of 
 evil in the world without ; where ambition is uniformly 
 successful, and pleasure leaves no stains or stings be- 
 hind ; and vice, instead of being clothed in rags and fed 
 on the beggar's dole, is clothed in purple and fares 
 sumptuously every day. " If," says the Apostle, " there 
 
1 42 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 had been a law given which could have given life, 
 verily righteousness should have been by the law." 
 But such is the inherent corruption of human nature, 
 that no law, however holy or however sanctioned, could 
 reach and cure the disease. The laying of it as a stan- 
 dard of righteousness before a soul dead in trespasses 
 and sins, is as useless as was the laying of the prophet's 
 staff on the dead child's face. It only shows the dead- 
 ness of the soul all the more. 
 
 And if this be the case with the great impersonal 
 method for the salvation of the whole race and of 
 the whole of human nature from all the evil effects 
 of sin, we find that it is very strikingly the case with 
 every individual attempt to overcome the individual 
 evils of sin in particular persons. Much of the ex- 
 ercise of benevolence in these days is impersonal. As 
 our agricultural occupations are now carried on by the 
 aid of machinery; as our fields are sown and reaped, 
 not by manual labour coming into close contact with 
 the seed In the sowing and with the stalks of ripe corn 
 in the reaping, but by means of implements that remove 
 the human agency to a greater distance from the objects 
 that are acted upon ; so much of our spiritual sowing 
 and reaping is also done by means of formal organiz- 
 ations committees, associations, and societies, with 
 limited liability. Many try to do good by means of 
 others. They bribe substitutes to undertake the duty 
 which rests upon every human being to relieve per- 
 sonally the brother whom he sees in want, and by 
 paying an occasional fine in money or money's worth, 
 
vin. THE STAFF AND THE SACRIFICE. 143 
 
 they seek exemption from being their distressed brother's 
 keeper, and freedom to carry on their own selfish busi- 
 ness or pleasure unmolested. They send their servant, 
 as the prophet sent Gehazi, to heal some clamant evil 
 by the aid of their staff; by the help of something that 
 is useful to them, but not indispensable ; something that 
 belongs to them, but is not a part of themselves ; some- 
 thing that they can spare without inconvenience. The 
 staff that they use represents their money, their help, 
 whatever shape it assumes; and their Gehazi is the 
 missionary or minister, the society or collector, whom 
 they use in distributing their help. Thus they them- 
 selves never come into contact with the evil they seek 
 to redress; they never see the objects of their charity; 
 they have no personal interest in them, no sympathy of 
 heart and soul with them as brothers and sisters sharing 
 the same human nature. And acting in this impersonal 
 way, having our good deeds done for us by proxies and 
 substitutes; subjecting ourselves to no real sacrifice, no 
 pain or trouble or inconvenience; sending our alms by the 
 hands of a servant who may turn out to be as covetous, 
 hard and careless of the interests of those for whom he 
 acts and to whom he administers help as Gehazi; doing 
 the work only for the sake of the reputation, or the sub- 
 stantial loaves and fishes connected with it we need 
 not wonder that so many of our efforts to remove the 
 evil of the world should be so unsuccessful. Its dead, 
 cold form remains pulseless and motionless under the 
 pitying heavens. There is no answering thrill of life, 
 no voice to. break the awful stillness. Instead of mak- 
 
144 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 ing the miserable better, we have made them more un- 
 grateful and improvident, and we have made ourselves 
 callous, world-bound, and deeper sunk than ever in the 
 very barbarism of our prosperity. In spite of the mul- 
 titudes of our societies and our innumerable efforts, the 
 dead body of the misery that is in the world is as cold 
 and impassive as ever ; and we are ready to despair of 
 its ever being raised to life at all, and can think of 
 nothing better than to let it slowly disappear, by its 
 own corruption and disintegration, off the face of the 
 earth. 
 
 2. But there is a more excellent way the personal 
 method of doing good, as illustrated by Elisha stretching 
 himself upon the dead body of the child. When the 
 prophet learned the failure of Gehazi's application of his 
 staff to the corpse, he went himself to the upper cham- 
 ber where the child was laid out stiff and cold on his 
 own bed ; and there, along with fervent prayer to God, 
 repeatedly and pressingly presented, he used the most 
 elaborate means to restore the life that had fled. He 
 stretched himself upon the dead child ; each part of his 
 own body being laid upon the corresponding part of the 
 body of the child. He put his mouth upon his mouth, 
 his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands. 
 In this way he did all he could to revive the pulses and 
 restore the functions which had been frozen into immo- 
 bility by death. He strove to impart his own vital 
 caloric, and so make the body plastic for the use of the 
 spirit when it should come back " to heat the iron upon 
 which the hammer of the Almighty was about to strike." 
 
THE STAFF AND THE SACRIFICE. I45 
 
 He himself lost the virtue which he thus communicated 
 to the system of the child ; for we find that, chilled by 
 contact with the cold corpse, he rose from the bed and 
 walked to and fro in the room, as if to recover by exer- 
 cise the warmth that had passed from him. And thus 
 putting himself as far as possible in the room of the 
 dead, taking all the evil to himself, feeling the sorrow of 
 the bereaved mother as though it were his own sorrow, 
 by God's power and grace he succeeded in gradually 
 bringing the child to life, and had the infinite happiness 
 of restoring him to his rejoicing mother. And how sig- 
 nificant is all this of the Divine method of restoring the 
 dead body of humanity through the life and death of 
 Christ. Does not the stretching of the prophet upon 
 the dead child each member of his own body being 
 applied to the corresponding member of the lifeless 
 corpse, and by this sympathetic contact imparting his 
 own vitality to it, and ultimately raising it to life figure 
 forth in the most beautiful and suggestive manner the 
 incarnation of God, by which He brought His infinitude 
 within the limitations of human nature and human exist- 
 ence, touching it at every sympathetic point, and so 
 raised it from a death in sin to newness of life in 
 Himself? What does each joyful Christmas morning 
 proclaim ? Is it not the wonderful fact that the Eternal 
 God incarnated Himself in the body of a little child ; 
 was born in Bethlehem, lay as a helpless babe on a 
 mother's breast, grew in wisdom as in stature, and lived 
 in humble dependence upon and submission to earthly 
 parents in a human home in Nazareth ? Does it not tell 
 
I4 6 7 HE OLIVE LEAP. CHAP. 
 
 us that God in Christ was united to us by blood-relation- 
 ship ; knew all " the things of a man " ; filled all the 
 moulds of our conduct, and passed along all the lines of 
 our experience ? Does it not powerfully proclaim to us 
 the one only method of salvation, to which all other 
 methods, by their weakness and failure, pointed, and for 
 which all other methods prepared the way the personal 
 method of God assuming the very nature that had 
 sinned and suffered, and in that nature bringing back 
 life and holiness and happiness and all that man had 
 lost ? Yes ! we deeply feel that what no authority 
 human or divine, no terrors or promises or entreaties 
 could do, has been done by the Son of God Himself 
 becoming from the beginning and altogether a man ; and 
 thus claiming human nature in its entirety for sonship 
 with God drawing near to us that we might be enabled 
 to draw near to the Father in heaven. " What the law 
 could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, 
 sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and 
 for sin, condemned sin in the flesh ; that the righteous- 
 ness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not 
 after the flesh, but after the Spirit." 
 
 And consider the awful cost of this personal method 
 of salvation. It was with much toil and trouble that 
 Elisha raised the dead child to life. That act involved 
 a great expenditure of heart-sympathy, of spiritual 
 power and of physical warmth. It was through loss to 
 himself that he imparted gain to the mother and child. 
 But his effort and trouble and loss .cannot be compared 
 for a moment with those of the Saviour in rescuing us 
 
vin. THE STAFF AND THE SACRIFICE. 
 
 147 
 
 from spiritual death. Elisha, though he stretched him- 
 self upon the dead body, and put all his members into 
 closest connection with all the corresponding members 
 of the dead body, was still separate from the child. The 
 connection between them was only an outward one. 
 But Jesus became bone of our bone, and flesh of our 
 flesh. In the first creation God stood aloof at an im- 
 measureable altitude above the creation when He 
 summoned it into existence. But in the new creation 
 He identified Himself with the work of His hands. He 
 assumed the nature which He had made ; He dwelt in 
 the world which He had fashioned ; He came under the 
 laws and limitations which He had ordained. He Him- 
 self shared the lot to which He condemned us ; He Him- 
 self groaned under the burden which He laid upon us ; 
 He Himself trod the wilderness to which He banished us. 
 He became "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with 
 grief" ; afflicted in all our afflictions. It was by fasting 
 and prayer that He cast out devils ; it was with groaning 
 and tears that He raised the dead. He suffered loss 
 that others might reap gain. He came into contact 
 with sin and impurity that others might be cleansed and 
 healed. In the miracle which most nearly approximated 
 a creative act the restoring the vision of the man blind 
 from his birth He used not only the dust of the earth 
 out of which the eye and the whole human frame were 
 originally formed, but also His own saliva a part of 
 Himself; He gave away a portion of His own substance 
 in the clay with which He anointed the blind man's eyes. 
 And this act is significant of the whole of His work, 
 
148 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 and of every detail of it which in its self sacrifice 
 and self-expenditure anticipated and prefigured the final 
 crowning act of oblation upon the Cross. Contrast the 
 first creative fiat, " Let there be light : and there was 
 light," with the last cry of our Lord as He was sinking 
 out of life, in the horror of a darkness unexampled in 
 the history of the universe : " My God ! My God ! why 
 hast Thou forsaken Me ? " and you will form some idea 
 of what the new creation cost the Son of God ! 
 
 The same remarks that are applicable to the great 
 salvation of Jesus Christ, are applicable to every in- 
 dividual effort we make in the track and in the power 
 of that salvation to redress the evil of the world. 
 Among the many great lessons which the incarnation of 
 the Son of God is designed to teach us, this lesson is 
 assuredly not the least important that if it was neces- 
 sary for Christ to take human nature upon Himself in 
 order to redeem it, so it is necessary for us to become 
 incarnate as it were in the nature we wish to benefit. 
 The servant, in this respect, cannot be greater than his 
 Lord. We too must take upon us the nature of the 
 sufferer whom we try to heal and save. We must, like 
 Elisha, take the evil that we would remove to our own 
 room ; we must lay it upon our own bed ; we must bear 
 it upon our own heart ; we must identify ourselves with it 
 as far as we possibly can. We must stretch our own living 
 body upon the dead body that we would seek to raise 
 to life and blessedness ; we must put our whole nature 
 into contact and communion with its whole nature. 
 Each part of us must be brought by a thorough sym- 
 
THE STAFF AND THE SACRIFICE. I49 
 
 pathy into the fellowship of love with each corresponding 
 part of the body of suffering and evil. Like a Greater 
 than Elisha, we must touch the bier with the true human 
 touch of fellow-feeling, if we would turn the shadow of 
 death into the morning. We must touch the leper, if we 
 would purify and restore him. We must become poor 
 ourselves ; part with our possessions ; give what we shall 
 miss, what will cost us much self-denial and self-sacrifice ; 
 give our very substance our vital warmth, our tears, our 
 heart's blood if we are to make others rich and happy. 
 Virtue must go out of ourselves, if we are to impart 
 virtue to others. 
 
 There is a wide perennial moral in that old worn- 
 out classic story of Curtius. Into the gulf that opened 
 suddenly in the Roman Forum the citizens poured all 
 their richest possessions their gold and silver and 
 jewels ; but the dark gulf yawned before them as wide 
 and terrible as ever. It was not till one of Rome's 
 noblest youths threw himself into it, that the abyss 
 closed for ever and the place became solid ground. 
 And so in vain with our alms and gifts of gold and silver, 
 of food and medicine, with the labours of our societies and 
 committees, shall we seek to fill up the dreadful gulf of 
 the world's misery and sin. Not till we give ourselves 
 after the manner of our Lord shall the abyss be closed. 
 What the world needs more than anything else more 
 than theories and plans of benevolence ; more than gifts 
 of money, laws, speeches, sermons, organizations, and 
 the thousand and one panaceas which men in their des- 
 pair of solving the dreadful problem have adopted for 
 
1 50 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 the cure of the world's evil is the revival of personal 
 agency ; the touch of hearts sore with pity, the look of 
 eyes full of tears, the voice quivering with the pathos of 
 tenderness and hope; the humble, loving, devoted 
 Christian life, in which the teaching of the Master is 
 embodied in a living, breathing human form. This 
 would succeed when all other methods would fail. 
 
 Let us never lose sight, then, of the great truth that, 
 in the husbandry of souls, it is necessary that the sower, 
 alone, solitary, individual should scatter the seed 
 with his own hand, and the reaper gather each ripe 
 stalk separately into his sheaf as he cuts it down. 
 In the blessed labours of the Cross, it is required that 
 there should be a real crucifixion with Christ; that 
 His servants should even "fill up that which is be- 
 hind of the afflictions of Christ for His body's sake, 
 which is the Church." Every Christian who has him- 
 self been saved by the coming of Jesus into his own 
 nature and taking upon Him his sins and sorrows, 
 should imitate Christ in this should seek to save 
 others who are still dead in "trespasses and sins "by 
 bearing, through sympathy and solicitude for their 
 welfare, their sins and sorrows. Every Christian should 
 endeavour, by personal contact with the evil of the 
 world, to remedy it by the influence of personal faith 
 and living love. Every Christian, who is a debtor to- 
 all men, should go home with the poor, and the 
 ignorant, and the miserable, and make their trials his 
 own, that thus he may truly relieve and bless them. 
 In the first creation God acted alone ; but in the new 
 
VIIT. THE STAFF AND THE SACRIFICE. 15 1 
 
 creation He needs human help, human faith, and 
 human suffering. He is giving to each human being 
 the opportunity and the honour of being a fellow- 
 worker with Himself; and enabling all who engage 
 in this blessed work to know, by their own experience, 
 something of the yearning compassion for men which 
 caused Himself to take the form of a servant, and to 
 become "obedient unto death, even the death of the 
 cross"; and something, too, of the joy in the salvation 
 of men that was set before Himself, for which He 
 'endured the cross, despising the shame" ; the earnest 
 and foretaste of the everlasting rest and blessedness 
 which they shall share with Him when the work of 
 redemption is completed. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 THE VERONICA. 
 
 "The face of Jesus Christ." 2 CORINTHIANS iv. 6. 
 
 AMONG the fringes of grass along the white dusty 
 waysides may often be seen, in the beginning 
 of summer, the little spikes of the germander speedwell. 
 The blue of its flowers harmonizes with the green of 
 its own foliage and the lush herbage of the bank in a 
 way that nature alone could effect. And what a blue 
 it is ; clear, deep, transparent, like that of an Eastern 
 sky suffused with moonlight, cold and brilliant, and 
 yet soft like the lambent azure depth of a glacier 
 crevasse ! A little circle of white forms the centre, 
 beautifully relieves the blue, and gives to the eye of 
 the blossom a wondrous expressiveness. Slender lines 
 of darker hue radiate from it to the edge; one petal, 
 that along which the pistil lies, being narrower and 
 smaller than the other three, and, unlike them, destitute 
 of lines ; while two stamens, like the antennae of an 
 insect, project from the eye and remain attached to 
 the corolla, which falls off entire, almost with a touch, 
 
CHAP. ix. THE VERONICA. 153 
 
 as if a small blue butterfly had alighted for a moment 
 on the spike, and had been scared away. It is an 
 exceedingly shy flower, and lasts but a very short 
 time; its heavenly colour, like that of the sky from 
 which it has got it, changing in the most disappointing 
 manner, so that a cluster of the loveliest blossoms 
 looking out upon us to-day from among the tall spears 
 of the grass, may to-morrow be dim, grey, or cloudy, 
 all their sparkle and brightness gone ; as if the dew 
 that nourished them had been tears, and the light that 
 called forth their beauty had also the power to fade it. 
 And the magic tint, which in a happy moment we 
 surprised, never reappears in the after-flowers. Or else 
 the corolla drops from the stalk, leaving an empty 
 socket where a little eye of blue had laughed back to 
 heaven. A succession of blossoms and fruit may be 
 seen on the same spike : and the seed-vessels, wedged 
 in the axils of the long leaves of the persistent calyx, 
 are like those of the shepherd's purse, containing in 
 them a small portion of summer's precious wealth, 
 waiting for the revelation of next season. 
 
 This little speedwell, whose "darling blue" Tennyson 
 and a host of other poets have noticed with peculiar 
 delight, is known by the more learned name of 
 Veronica. It belongs to a large and varied family 
 of plants which are either shrubby or herbaceous, and 
 whose flowers grow on spikes. Blue is the predomin- 
 ating colour of their blossoms ; and they have received 
 their generic name of vera icon^ or true image, because 
 they seem to mirror exactly in their delicate hue the 
 
^4 ? HE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 deep azure colour of the sky above. It is an in- 
 teresting example of the ancient doctrine of plant 
 signatures, according to which the pious ideas of our 
 forefathers were recorded in the popular names of 
 flowers. The cowslip, for instance, was dedicated to 
 St. Peter, and used to be called Herb Peter, from 
 the resemblance of its hanging tuft of blossoms to a 
 bunch of keys ; the common pansy was called Herb 
 Trinity, on account of its having three colours on one 
 flower; and the Hypericum or St. John's wort, which 
 was gathered to scare away demons on St. John's Eve, 
 derived its name, being made up of uper, over, and 
 icon, an image, from the halo of golden stamens which 
 surrounds the petals, like the nimbus of glory around 
 the sacred icon or image of our Lord. 
 
 With the Latin name of the speedwell a beautiful 
 legend is connected. We can trace the gradual growth 
 of it, according to the usual laws which regulate the 
 development of a myth, from the well-known fable of 
 the message of Abgarus, King of Edessa, to Christ. 
 This prince, worn out by a dreadful disease, and hear- 
 ing of the wonderful miracles which Jesus did, sent a 
 special messenger, entreating Him to come and cure 
 him. Various accounts are given of the way in which 
 Jesus dealt with this messenger. One states that He 
 sent an autograph letter; another adds that with the 
 letter was forwarded a miraculous portrait of Himself, 
 taken by simply pressing a part of His mantle or a 
 piece of linen to His face, which ever afterwards 
 retained the sacred lineaments. A third account says 
 
THE VERONICA. 
 
 155 
 
 that the servant of Abgarus, called Ananias, who was 
 a painter, was commissioned to bring back the likeness 
 of our Lord to his master, if he failed to bring Him in 
 person ; and that our Lord, seeing the vain attempts 
 which he made to accomplish his task, owing to the 
 dense crowd that surrounded him, washed His face in 
 water, and whilst drying it with a towel, left the impress 
 of His features upon it This relic the servant was 
 commanded to give to the king, whose disease it would 
 cure at the same time that it would satisfy his curiosity. 
 At the siege of Edessa the sacred icon was brought to 
 Constantinople and placed in a suitable shrine in the 
 Church of St. Sophia. Its subsequent history, when 
 Constantinople fell into the hands of the Maho- 
 metans, is involved in obscurity. Either the picture 
 itself or copies of it were found in different parts of 
 Italy about this time the Genoese asserting that it was 
 brought to their city in 1384 by Montalto, and by him 
 was presented to the Armenian Church of St. Bartho- 
 lomew, where it is still preserved and exhibited once 
 a year ; while the Venetians, on the other hand, claim 
 to have brought it to Rome, and to have presented it 
 to the Church of St. Sylvester there. 
 
 At this point the legend diverges and assumes a 
 different form. It leaves the Eastern Church, in which 
 it originated, and is taken up by the Western Church, 
 which thereupon forges the story of St. Veronica in its 
 desire to possess a relic of equal importance with that 
 which belonged to the rival Church. When Jesus was 
 on His way to Calvary to be crucified, a woman, whose 
 
156 THE OLIVE LEAR CHAP. 
 
 name was Prounikos or Bernice, afterwards Latinized 
 into Veronica, supposed to be no other than the woman 
 with the issue of blood whom Jesus healed, deeply com- 
 passionating His sufferings, and in gratitude for her own 
 wonderful cure, gave Him her veil, that He might with 
 it wipe away from His face the sweat caused by the 
 heavy burden of the cross, and the blood oozing from 
 the wounds inflicted by the crown of thorns. Our 
 Saviour returned the veil to her when it had done its 
 work of mercy, with His sacred features indelibly im- 
 pressed upon it. With this miraculous portrait the holy 
 woman went to Rome, where she met with St. Clement. 
 The Emperor Vespasian at this time was seriously ill, 
 and St. Clement accompanied her to the palace, when 
 the sacred icon at once restored him to health. The 
 Roman Catholic Church has introduced this legend of 
 St. Veronica into the office of the Via Dolorosa. 
 Several miraculous veils or veronicas exist in Christen- 
 dom at the present day ; one is at Jaen in Andalusia, 
 another at Laon, a third at Cologne, and a fourth at 
 Milan. But the most celebrated are the two Roman 
 ones in the Chapel of the Blessed Sacrament in St. 
 Peter's and in the Church of St. Sylvester, and the one 
 preserved in the Church of St. Bartholomew at Genoa. 
 The late Mr. Thomas Heapy, who devoted a lifetime to 
 the subject, in his magnificent monograph, " The Like- 
 nesses of Christ : being an enquiry into the verisim- 
 ilitude of the received likeness of our Blessed Lord," 
 gives what the English public had never seen before 
 representations of these three veronicas. 
 
THE VERONICA. 
 
 The first and most important, the " Volto Santo," as 
 it is called, is contained in a shrine hollowed out of one 
 of the huge piers which support the dome of St. Peter's, 
 with a balcony in front of it, and a statue of St. 
 Veronica holding the miraculous veil or sudarium 
 immediately below in a niche. No one who has not 
 the rank of a canon of the Church is allowed to see 
 this relic ; and when foreign sovereigns and princes are 
 admitted to examine it, they have the rank conferred 
 upon them as an honorary distinction for the purpose. 
 Ten times a year it is exhibited to the pope, the cardin- 
 als, and the other dignitaries of the Church, who kneel 
 on the pavement of the nave in front of it. To the 
 general public it is shown on Holy Thursday, Good 
 Friday, and Easter Day, from the balcony, and seven 
 thousand years of indulgence are promised to all who 
 witness the sight. But the height is so great that 
 nothing but a black board hung with a cloth, before 
 which another featureless cloth is held, can be dis- 
 tinguished. So-called facsimiles on linen of the sacred 
 face are sold to strangers in the sacristy of St. Peter's ; 
 but though they are sealed with the seal and bear the 
 signature of one of the canons of the Church, who are 
 the custodiers of the relic, this is no guarantee that the 
 copy at all resembles the original. M. Barbier de 
 Montault, Canon of Anagni, who saw the veronica on 
 the occasion of the promulgation of the dogma of the 
 Immaculate Conception, describes it as a dark, dim 
 picture, covered with a thin plate of glass, and enclosed 
 in a simple square frame of silver. He could not dis- 
 
158 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 tinguish the nature of the material upon which the 
 portrait was impressed ; and all he could see on the 
 blackish surface was a vague outline of flowing hair 
 reaching to the shoulders, and a short bifurcated beard, 
 but no other evidence of human features. Mr. Heapy, 
 however, who could hardly as a Protestant have seen 
 the original, gives a beautiful representation of the 
 picture in his book, which is so distinct, so noble and 
 full of feeling that, as the author says, he who produced 
 it must have actually seen what he depicted. Whatever 
 we may think of this discrepancy, however, there can 
 be no doubt that the portrait is a very ancient one. It 
 is said to have been originally preserved in a box in the 
 Church of St. Mary of the Martyrs, more commonly 
 known as the Pantheon. It was placed in the Vatican 
 by John VII. in 707, and afterwards transferred to the 
 Church of Santo Spirito, from which it was taken to 
 its present position in St. Peter's in 1440. Hemans 
 thinks it is a work of Byzantine art of the seventh or 
 eighth century. It is possible, however, that it may be 
 considerably older ; for if Mr. Heapy's picture at all 
 resembles the original, it is entirely unlike the work of 
 the Byzantine school, and approximates to that of the 
 classical. The likeness is the traditional one with 
 which we are all familiar in pictures and engravings ; 
 the oval face, the smooth lofty brow, arched eyebrows, 
 hair parted and flowing in curls to the shoulders, 
 straight nose, beard short, scanty, and bifurcated, the 
 expression grave and mild, and the whole appearance 
 that of a man of from thirty to forty years of age. 
 
THE VERONICA. 
 
 This generally accepted type of countenance attri- 
 buted to the Saviour was not arbitrarily invented. 
 When so many independent persons, both in the East 
 and the West, portrayed the sacred lineaments in a 
 way so remarkably similar, and according to a type 
 entirely different from the classical ideal, it is difficult 
 not to believe that they had a common traditional 
 guide before them. And when we bear in mind that 
 some of the portraits go as far back as the earliest cen- 
 turies of our era, the conviction almost forces itself 
 upon our minds that this common traditional type of 
 countenance must have been derived directly from the 
 description of those who had beheld the Saviour's liv- 
 ing countenance. Although no mention is made in 
 Scripture of our Lord's personal appearance, and no 
 hint given by which any true conception of it could 
 be formed, we cannot suppose that it was allowed to 
 fade away utterly from human memory when the cloud 
 received Him out of the sight of the disciples. His 
 own generation would describe it to the next, and that 
 again to the following, until the tradition had become 
 the fixed heritage of the Church ; and believers in the 
 following ages were able to form a reverent idea, 
 approaching the reality, of the bodily features of Him, 
 whom having not seen they loved. 
 
 Such is the origin and history of the Veronica myth 
 of the Roman Catholic Church. It was a beautiful 
 superstition which transferred it to a common wild 
 flower. Why that wild flower should have been se- 
 lected for this honour in preference to other more 
 
160 THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
 striking plants it is difficult to tell. Its blossom is not 
 more like a human countenance than any other blos- 
 som. It is not like the flowers of the orchis family, 
 which mimic so strangely the peculiarities of insect and 
 other animal life. It is only by a poetical analogy that 
 the eye can see in it any human resemblance. Perhaps 
 its colour may be the secret of its fascination, for blue is 
 peculiarly the colour of heaven of its serenity and 
 love. It is the colour of the sea out of which all life 
 comes, and of the air in which all things live and 
 move and have their being. It is the colour of the eye 
 that sees the beauty of the world, and of the robe 
 of the ephod worn by the high priest ordained to 
 make the unconscious beauty of things the conscious 
 beauty of holiness before the Lord. And no one can 
 gaze upon the large fragile blossom of the Alpine 
 veronica so exquisitely constructed, so delicately 
 tinted, reflecting the deepest blue of the overarching 
 summer sky and of the profoundest depth of the 
 glacier-crevasse, almost on whose brink it trembles 
 without being struck with the suitableness of its name. 
 It came to me like a sudden revelation when I found 
 a large shivering cluster of it growing in the roar and 
 spray of a mighty waterfall in the heart of Norway. 
 Even the little species that grows as a troublesome 
 weed in our fields and gardens is not undeserving of its 
 august name. Its blossom is very diminutive, its blue 
 is pale and washed out, and on the odd petal dis- 
 appears altogether in whiteness ; but it retains enough 
 of the family likeness to make it easily recognized. 
 
THE VERONICA. j6i 
 
 And perhaps its smaller size and its quieter and more 
 hidden beauty may all the more appropriately associate 
 it with Him who, Himself meek and lowly, and having 
 no form or comeliness, had for this reason a peculiar 
 love for what others despised for the little and humble 
 objects of nature and of human life. 
 
 The instinct which led pious souls to canonize the 
 veronica was deeper and truer than they themselves 
 knew. Our reason scornfully rejects the fable of the 
 Saviour's features stamping themselves ineffaceably upon 
 a linen veil or handkerchief; but our imagination joy- 
 fully accepts the idea, that in the modest blossom of a 
 little wayside flower, the Face that was fairer than that 
 of the sons of men is seen reflected anew every summer. 
 The veronica of the Church is a palpable falsehood, 
 fabricated for purposes of superstition or gain ; and 
 thus degrading the nature and function of the Church, 
 which should be the pillar and ground of truth, and a 
 sure incorruptible witness against all the falsehoods of 
 the world. Instead of holding the mirror up to nature, 
 it throws an additional veil over nature's already dark 
 intimations. The veronica of the fields, on the con- 
 trary, is a faithful and true representative of Him who 
 dwelt in the bush, and without whom was not anything 
 made that was made. Its pure open face is the very 
 image of innocence ; it is a creature indeed in which 
 there is no guile. It has caught the blue of its petals 
 from a steadfast gazing into the candid heavens, and 
 the white radiance of its eye from the immaculate snow 
 
 of the summer clouds. The lineaments of the sudarium 
 L 
 
i6 2 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 are said to have been imprinted by means of the sweat 
 and blood of the Prince of sufferers upon a material 
 that speaks of the nakedness of the curse and the toil 
 in the sweat of the face to which sin condemned man, 
 and is itself the product of toil. The face of the flower 
 veronica has developed without labour or sorrow; it 
 has never sinned, it cannot sin, but perfectly fulfils 
 God's purpose in its creation. There is no crown of 
 thorns on its brow, no sweat of labour on its calm, un- 
 ruffled face, no blood of anguish coursing through its 
 veins, but a green sap, the very milk of the grass, 
 and the leaves, the showers, and the sunbeams, and all 
 the sweet and tender things of the summer world. It 
 toils not, neither does it spin ; it is wrought in a loom 
 not made with hands ; it has no other reason for its 
 existence than its beauty, and in its beautiful idleness is 
 fulfilling the highest ends of existence. The likeness 
 that we discern in the countenance of the veronica 
 is not that of Him who was weary and heavy laden and 
 found no rest under the awful burden of Calvary ; but 
 the image of Him who walked with our first parents 
 among the trees of the garden in the purity and bliss of 
 the unfallen Eden. It has the clear, open, fearless eye 
 of the young child that knows no sin or care, and has 
 no self-consciousness of an anxious restless life different 
 from that of the birds and the flowers. And to those 
 who gaze upon its innocent beauty with eyes that tears 
 have dimmed, it seems like a little glimpse of the 
 fathomless blue of heaven that opens up amid the dark 
 clouds that usually cover the sky of the world. 
 
ix. THE VERONICA. ^3 
 
 What the blossom is to the rest of the plant, the face 
 of man is to his body and his whole being. Human 
 life flowers in the human face. It brings the whole 
 man to the surface; and as the mirror of the inward 
 man, it reflects every subtle shade of thought and every 
 varying light of feeling. It is moulded from within 
 according to the likeness of the mind and heart which 
 it envelops. The matter of the universe in it bears the 
 soul's expression. God re-creates the world in the face 
 of man. In it alone He fully accomplishes His divine 
 idea. The loveliness of nature becomes in it conscious 
 of itself. The light of the sun is transfigured in its eye 
 into the light of intelligence ; the crimson of the rose 
 passes on its cheek into the bloom and blush of love ; 
 the murmur of the stream and the sigh of the wind are 
 transformed upon its lips into music and eloquence. 
 It implies society ; for were man destined to live alone 
 his countenance would not have been formed as it is to 
 exhibit upon it every thought and emotion that ani- 
 mate him, which, in spite of the most careful drilling 
 of the features, reveal themselves to others by unmistak- 
 able signs. Think how it would be with us if we had 
 only the presence of our friends without their faces. 
 There could be no intercourse of love, no meeting of 
 heart with heart, no sharpening by the countenance of 
 a friend as iron sharpeneth iron. Life would be a dark, 
 dreary void, like the earth without the sun. 
 
 In like manner the blossom is the face of the plant, 
 in which all that is in its life appears to view, and the 
 beauty hidden in the dark cloud of its foliage breaks 
 
j6 4 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 out into rainbow splendour. It is a revelation as 
 through an open door of the loveliness that in the other 
 parts is concealed by the common garments of eco- 
 nomic use. The plant clings to the skirts of life with 
 the utmost tenacity until it can show this beautiful 
 reason for its existence : and when it has told in bloom 
 of petal and fragrance of honey-cup the precious life- 
 secret, it is content to die, like the dolphin, in its own 
 sunset hues. It is in the flower-face that we recognize 
 the kinship of the flowers their relationship to each 
 other, and the differences that distinguish them. It 
 is in the flower-face that the plant aspires to the 
 human nature, breathes as man breathes, sleeps as he 
 sleeps, and up to its own straightened limits loves as 
 he loves; for the gay colours and sweet odours and 
 graceful forms of the blossom are literally the signs of 
 the deep inbreathing spirit of love in nature, the pre- 
 parations for the bridal hour in the plant. The flower- 
 face too, like the human, is thus seen to be made for 
 the social life ; for the leaf belongs to the individual, 
 and the blossom to the race. And just as Stephen's 
 face looked like the face of an angel when he was 
 dying the martyr's death, and Jesus was transfigured 
 when He spoke of the decease which He should 
 accomplish at Jerusalem, and the skin of Moses' 
 countenance shone when he sacrificed himself for the 
 good of Israel on the Mount; as sometimes, in rare 
 moments of the soul's supremacy, we see our friends 
 lifted up by some noble act of self-denial above them- 
 selves, putting on the heavenly face that shall be theirs 
 
 
ix. THE VERONICA. 
 
 hereafter, and we behold them as they shall look when 
 this mortal shall have put on immortality ; so the 
 blossom is so radiant and graceful, full of all sweetness 
 and light wears the angel face because in it the life 
 of the individual is sacrificed for the life of the race. 
 Hegel in his " Philosophy of History " has taken notice 
 of the peculiar, almost unearthly beauty, unlike the 
 complexion of mere health and vital vigour, seen in the 
 faces of women when their sorrow has passed into the 
 joy that a man is born into the world a refined and 
 most delicate and transparent beauty, breathed as it 
 were from the soul within. Such an exquisite bloom of 
 beauty does the plant assume in the flower-face, as the 
 seed is born of it which is to perpetuate the species and 
 to grow and blossom in its turn into self-sacrificing 
 loveliness. What would our springs and summers be 
 without their flower-faces ? And yet for ages untold a 
 flowerless earth turned its sombre face up to the sun. 
 It had not learned to smile or laugh or blush in those 
 dim far-off fern-ages before the flowers came to light up 
 the gloom. 
 
 Every flower-face, properly speaking, may be called a 
 veronica. It is a likeness of Him who is not only the true 
 vine, but also the true daisy, the true rose, the true lily. 
 He is the ideal of which each flower is the partial and 
 transient representation ; the Substance that casts this 
 dim shadow of itself in the fields; the Light that is 
 refracted into this beautiful radiance by the materials of 
 earth. For, just as the instances which He gives of 
 the resemblance between the kingdom of heaven and 
 
j66 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 various objects of nature and arts of human life were 
 not meant to be exhaustive and exclusive, but com- 
 prehensive and representative, showing that the king- 
 dom of heaven is like everything that God has made 
 and instituted in the natural and human worlds ; so we 
 may, by parity of reasoning, believe that the sayings, 
 "I am the true bread," "the true light," "the true 
 vine," are similarly comprehensive and representative, 
 and that Jesus is in reality, in the highest and com- 
 pletest form, what all the flowers of the field are in ap- 
 pearance and in subordinate and shadowy representation. 
 Every flower-face with its limited capacities expresses 
 some thought or quality or feature of Him who, while 
 He is the image of the invisible God, is also the first- 
 born of every creature, for He is before all things, and 
 in Him all things consist. The human nature in which 
 He became incarnate is a nature that up to a certain 
 limit is shared by the lilies which He bade us consider 
 as most significant interpreters of the mysteries of our 
 own life. The face of the blossom anticipates the face 
 of man ; it is an intimation and prefiguration of what in 
 the human countenance is realized and fulfilled ; while 
 that human countenance itself is the image of the 
 Deity, and the sufficient medium prepared for the 
 visible manifestation of the Father to the world. And 
 while we gaze upon the lowly Shechinah blossoming at 
 our feet, a cloud from heaven overshadows us, and a 
 voice proclaims, " This is my beloved Son " ; and we 
 realize that God has now made known to us the 
 mystery of His will, that in the dispensation of the 
 
THE VERONICA. 167 
 
 fulness of times He might gather together in one all 
 things in Christ, both those which are in the heavens 
 and those which are in the earth, even in Him. 
 
 We see God's back parts in the works of His 
 hands. The lilies of the field and the stars of 
 heaven reveal to us His working and power. We 
 see His form walking on the waters and producing 
 a great calm, gilding the mountain tops with the 
 cloud of glory at morn, and at sunset burning in the 
 bush of the desert and in the trees of the wood. But 
 all that we see of God in nature and providence is a 
 vague vast presence, a shadow projected by His form. 
 It is only in Christ Jesus, who is the brightness of the 
 Father's glory and the express image of His person, 
 that we see the countenance of God and truly learn 
 what His thoughts and feelings towards us and towards 
 His creation are. We needed the revelation of the 
 face to expound the revelation of the works. The 
 living lips of Jesus gave utterance to what the flowers 
 since their creation had been unable to impart; and 
 the loving face of Jesus bending over the pure flower- 
 faces beamed with the intelligence which they could 
 not convey, and reflected in meaning looks and signifi- 
 cant play of thought and feeling what the lights and 
 shadows that passed over the kindling and the fading 
 of their beauty implied. And as He thus gave expres- 
 sion by look and word to the helpless dumbness of the 
 flowers, so by a beautiful reciprocity of service they lend 
 their faces to interpret Him, and all their beauties to be 
 His signs and witnesses. And so it comes to pass that 
 
r68 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. ix. 
 
 the little germander speedwell, which from the grassy 
 fringe of the white dusty wayside touches the blue hem 
 of His garment as He passeth by, catches from that 
 magic touch the virtue of its lovely hue, like that of 
 those serene azure depths into which the larks and our 
 wishes go, and in its turn smiles upon the weary wayfarer 
 with the simple holy greeting which has given it its 
 name, and which is so suitable in a world of changes 
 and chances like this speed thee well ! And the lovely 
 veronica, in whose sweet innocent face we now see as 
 through a glass darkly the dim, faint, anticipative 
 lineaments of Him who is the crown of its loveliness, 
 speaks to us mutely but eloquently of the beatific 
 vision, when we, whom He truly made in His own 
 image and after His own likeness, shall be like Him, 
 for we shall see Him as He is. " And they shall see 
 His face; and His name shall be in their foreheads." 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 THE LOOKING-GLASS AND THE LAVER. 
 
 " And he made the laver of brass, and the foot of it of brass, 
 of the looking-glasses of the women assembling, which assembled 
 at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation." EXODUS 
 xxxviii. 8. 
 
 IN providing materials for the construction of the 
 tabernacle, the Israelites responded most nobly to 
 the call of the Lord delivered to them by Moses. With 
 the utmost cheerfulness and liberality they brought their 
 free-will offerings every morning. Each person contri- 
 buted whatever he possessed with a lavish hand and a 
 generous heart. For a while they were lifted above 
 the bondage of the law, and they acted in a princely 
 manner as the true Israel the princes of God. They 
 felt that they were accomplishing a work which 
 should be a witness for many generations to the God of 
 Heaven, not only among themselves but also among 
 the surrounding nations ; and they were humbled and 
 grateful that such as they were permitted to give for 
 such a transcendent object. So great indeed was their 
 
 zeal and munificence that they had actually to be 
 
 169 
 
1 7 o THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 restrained from giving for the stuff which they brought 
 was more than sufficient for the purpose. Foremost 
 among these princely givers were the women. As on a 
 previous occasion they were most conspicuous in devot- 
 ing their personal ornaments to the service of idolatry 
 for the construction of the golden calf, so now they 
 were the most large-hearted and open-handed in giving 
 up their bracelets, ear-rings, rings, and jewels of gold 
 for the construction of the tabernacle. These personal 
 ornaments, which if worn by themselves would have 
 enhanced their own charms, they gladly sacrificed for 
 the adornment of the costly shrine in which the God 
 of their fathers was to be worshipped in the beauty of 
 holiness. 
 
 Even their much-valued mirrors were not withheld. 
 Unlike our looking-glasses made of silvered glass r 
 which did not come into use till the thirteenth century, 
 these primitive looking-glasses were made chiefly of an 
 alloy of copper, tin, and lead, wrought with such admir- 
 able skill that it was capable of receiving the highest 
 and most enduring polish. The mirror itself was a 
 round or pear-shaped plate, often encircled with a 
 wreath of leaves, or adorned with figures engraved 
 upon the rim; and it was attached to a handle often 
 carved with some elegant form of life. Numerous 
 specchi of this kind have been found in Etruscan tombs, 
 retaining their polish so brightly as sometimes to fit 
 them for their original purpose; and having on their 
 disks scenes of Etruscan life and manners, and repre- 
 sentations or symbols of the national faith, illustrated 
 
x. THE LOOKING-GLASS AND THE LATER. I7I 
 
 by inscriptions in the native character, they have 
 been well called by Bunsen "a figurative dictionary," 
 eminently useful to the archaeologist for the light they 
 throw upon the creed and history of this ancient and 
 most mysterious race. In Japan certain metal mirrors 
 have acquired a magic fame, and are brought to this 
 country as curiosities, on account of the figures which 
 shine through them when seen in a certain light, while 
 directly viewed they reflect only on their polished sur- 
 face the face that looks into them. 
 
 The specula of the Hebrew women were brought 
 with them from Egypt, and doubtless formed part of 
 the spoil which the Israelites took from the Egyptians 
 at the time of the Exodus. In that country they were 
 used not only in domestic economy, but also in the 
 idolatrous worship of the temples ; and probably the 
 Hebrew women who assembled at the door of the 
 tabernacle of the congregation had adopted this cus- 
 tom, and worshipped the God of Israel as the Egyptian 
 women worshipped Isis or Anubis, dressed in linen 
 garments, holding a sistrum in their right hand and a 
 mirror in their left. With these bronze looking-glasses 
 Bezaleel and Aholiab, the artists of the tabernacle, 
 constructed the laver which stood at the door of the 
 sacred tent, in which the priests were required to wash 
 their hands and their feet when they went into the 
 Shrine to minister before the Lord. 
 
 It is not without deep significance that this holy 
 vessel, typical of spiritual cleansing, should have been 
 formed of such materials. And if the looking-glasses 
 
I 7 2 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 had previously been employed in the service of idolatry, 
 the circumstance affords another striking example of 
 the Divine economy which constructed the tabernacle 
 itself and instituted its rites in large measure upon the 
 models of the Egyptian religion ; which has always 
 poured its higher truths into moulds with which men 
 had been familiar before ; and has brought out of the 
 false system the measure of truth which it contained, 
 and which made it influential and suitable to human 
 needs, setting its seal upon the truth and issuing it with 
 a brighter image, a sharper outline and a more para- 
 mount authority from its own mint. The false andlia 
 of man's forging, reflected in some degree, if they did 
 not distort, the true image of heaven. The things 
 which the heathen saw in them were not optical 
 illusions of the soul, but images of great and enduring 
 realities. And by the adoption of these in the worship 
 of the God of Israel, He emphatically showed that His 
 religion, so far from having no relation with anything 
 that went before, was the substance of the world's 
 dream, the fulfilment of man's hope, the revelation of 
 the transcendent wisdom which had been kept secret 
 from the beginning of the world, after which in their 
 blindness the nations were consciously or unconsciously 
 groping. The mystic mirrors of the Egyptians which 
 caught the dim unsatisfying likenesses of their gods 
 many and lords many, which the Hebrew women used 
 to better purpose and in a higher and holier service, 
 were melted down and moulded into the bronze laver 
 of the tabernacle, in whose waters the worshipper 
 
THE LOOKING-GLASS AND THE LAVER. 173 
 
 should wash and be clean, and thus have the blessed- 
 ness of the pure in heart and life, who should see the 
 living and true God. These mirrors, in which the 
 women of the Hebrew congregation saw their features 
 passively reflected, were adapted to their noblest pur- 
 pose when they became the active agent in producing a 
 purity and comeliness in which the Divine Being should 
 see the reflex of His own image. The whole trans- 
 action is a most beautiful and expressive symbol of the 
 vast difference between the beauty which man sees in 
 himself, and the beauty which God induces in him by 
 the means of grace. In fact, the whole gospel scheme 
 might be represented to the eye pictorially by these two 
 emblematical objects the looking-glass and the laver ; 
 for it shows us to ourselves, and it cleanses us from our 
 impurity. 
 
 i. Let us look, in the first place, at the gospel as a 
 mirror showing us to ourselves. Contemplating the 
 features of our character in our own natural looking- 
 glass, we are satisfied with the image that is reflected 
 there. Comparing ourselves with ourselves we have no 
 sense of contrast ; we come up to our own ideal ; we 
 realize our own standard of goodness. Comparing 
 ourselves with others we are raised in our own esti- 
 mation ; we see many guilty of meannesses and follies 
 which we should scorn. We feel like the self-righteous 
 Pharisee in the temple, and thank God that we are not 
 as other men, or as the publican beside us. But the 
 gospel is the true mirror in which we see our true image 
 reflected. Even those who like the Hebrew women, 
 
174 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 assemble at the door of the tabernacle, who are diligent 
 in the performance of every religious duty, and have a 
 pious reputation among their fellow men when they 
 gaze into this looking-glass have to confess that they are 
 vile and polluted, and that their own righteousness is as 
 filthy rags. In the courts of God's house the visions of 
 their own comeliness which please them in human 
 society are dispelled, and they learn lessons of a hum- 
 bling but wholesome nature, and are conscious that He 
 who looks at the heart cannot be deceived by the 
 appearances which impose upon man. So was it with 
 the godly men of old who in the truest sense assembled 
 at the door of the tabernacle, and had communion with 
 God face to face. Job had been considered and called 
 a perfect man comparatively ; he stood the severe tests 
 to which Satan had subjected him, and was proved to 
 be true gold. But the revelation of heaven disclosed 
 the dross that was mingled with it, and caused him to 
 exclaim, " I have heard of Thee by the hearing of the 
 ear, but now mine eye seeth Thee, wherefore I abhor 
 myself and repent in dust and ashes." A similar effect 
 was produced upon the mind of Isaiah by the vision of 
 God's holiness in the temple. He had previously 
 denounced the iniquity of Israel, as if he himself had 
 nothing to do with it, as one standing on a pedestal 
 high above its polluting waves; but now he realizes 
 that he himself is personally and deeply implicated in 
 it, and he cries out in great distress of soul, " Woe is 
 me ! for I am undone ; because I am a man of unclean 
 lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips, for 
 
x. THE LOOKING-GLASS AND THE LAVER. I75 
 
 mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts." 
 When Daniel, the man greatly beloved, saw in a vision 
 the ineffable glory of God, he exclaimed, " My comeli- 
 ness is turned in me into corruption " ; and the impul- 
 sive Peter, when the consciousness of the Divine 
 presence like a lightning flash disclosed the dark depths 
 of his nature to him, on the occasion of the miracle in 
 the Sea of Galilee, said, " Depart from me, for I am a 
 sinful man, O Lord." 
 
 And so is it still. The holiness of God, as it is 
 revealed to us in the face of His Son Jesus Christ, is 
 the best mirror in which to see reflected our own sinful 
 image. That holiness is the part of the Divine image 
 which we have completely lost in our fallen state. Every 
 human being can form some conception, fainter or 
 clearer, according to his own moral condition, of 
 the other attributes of God His justice, wisdom, 
 power, goodness, mercy, love; because of these 
 qualities there are still traces remaining in human 
 nature, and even in their ashes live their former fires. 
 But the image of God's holiness has completely van- 
 ished from human nature, and, therefore, we have no 
 materials within ourselves, from which, according to the 
 primeval law by which we make God in our own image, 
 to construct the idea of holiness as ascribed to God. 
 This power is the peculiar prerogative of the renewed 
 mind, to which the Holy Spirit gives back the original 
 image in which it was created. And the holiness of 
 God thus realized is that which, more than anything 
 else, convinces the soul of sin. When the pure search- 
 
176 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 ing light of His law shines into our hearts, how defiled 
 and unworthy do many things appear which before were 
 regarded as clean and good ! What secret unsuspected 
 sins are made manifest like the myriad motes which 
 float in the sunbeams that enter a dark room ! How 
 true it is, that those who are ignorant of God are 
 ignorant of themselves ! They assume a sort of easy 
 average morality, and form a very favourable judgment 
 of themselves and others. But those who know God 
 know themselves. Referring all things to Him who is 
 of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, who cannot look 
 upon sin, in whose sight the very heavens are not clean, 
 their standard of judgment is raised to the very highest ; 
 and judged by this lofty ideal, the best merely human 
 character comes lamentably short. 
 
 So exquisitely sensitive is the speculum or metal 
 mirror of a reflecting telescope that the slightest 
 inequality in the supporting apparatus is fatal to its 
 correct performance. The ponderous mirror of Lord 
 Rosse's telescope is six feet in diameter and six 
 inches thick, and weighs several tons ; and yet the mere 
 pressure of the hand at the back of it produces flex- 
 ure sufficient to destroy the image of a star. It is a 
 work of the utmost difficulty and patience to produce 
 its perfectly polished surface, and it is a work of equal 
 delicacy so to place it that it may do its work of 
 reflection efficiently. And so if the human soul is to 
 mirror the beauty of holiness and the glory of heaven, 
 it must be made and kept sensitive by the Holy 
 Spirit. The least appearance of evil mars the Divine 
 
THE LOOKING-GLASS AND THE LAVER. 
 
 177 
 
 image, and would be fatal to distinct vision of things 
 eternal. 
 
 The gospel is a mirror that has shown to us human 
 corruption most clearly and fully. There are, indeed, 
 numerous intimations of this truth in the Old Testa- 
 ment, particularly in the Psalms ; but the full disclosure 
 of it was reserved for the Gospel; just as there are 
 intimations of a future life in the Old Testament, but 
 it is in the New Testament only that life and immor- 
 tality are clearly brought to light. The doctrine of 
 the ruin of man belongs especially to the gospel. It 
 is there fully brought to light for the first time. The 
 law took cognizance only of outward violations of its 
 rules, of the external manifestations of sin that appeared 
 to the senses. It was only when sin blossomed and 
 fruited, as it were, so that all men could see its true 
 nature, that the law interfered. There might be malice 
 to men and alienation from God in the heart ; but the 
 law did not step in with its punishment till there was 
 an outward breach of the second table or a patent 
 lapse into idolatry; just as there might be leprosy 
 lurking in the blood and poisoning the very fountain 
 of life, but the restraints of the law only came in when 
 leprosy had unmistakably declared itself by outward 
 marks on the face and hands. The Mosaic economy 
 taught that contact with death and uncleanness would 
 ceremonially defile an Israelite; but it did not teach, 
 except by implication, that the nature of the sinner 
 was depraved that out of the heart proceed the things 
 
 that really pollute a man. And the reason of this is 
 if 
 
178 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 obvious. If the law had declared the ruin of man, 
 and at the same time had commanded men to obey 
 its precepts, and so work out their own righteousness 
 by their own efforts, it would have been as self- 
 contradictory as the conduct of the physician who 
 pronounced his patient incurable and at the same 
 time prescribed to him a regimen meant to restore 
 his health. In such a case the law would only bind 
 the soul with firmer chains and tantalize it with streams 
 that would dry up and fruits that would wither at its 
 touch. The full disclosure of man's ruin, therefore, 
 was only made when He was revealed who was to 
 remove it by His obedience and death. 
 
 And so it is still in the experience of the Christian. 
 The full revelation of sin comes with the revelation of 
 Christ's atonement. The Spirit convinces of sin at the 
 same time that He convinces of righteousness. Were 
 the corruption of our nature revealed to us without the 
 corresponding revelation of the righteousness of Christ 
 justifying the ungodly who believe, the knowledge 
 would drive us to despair. But no sooner is our sin 
 shown to us than the Saviour, who can take away 
 our sin, is made known to us. No sooner do we see 
 our Saviour than we see our ruined, miserable con- 
 dition. And all through the Christian life^while the 
 heart learns to loathe itself, the Saviour becomes more 
 precious; and as the Saviour becomes more precious, 
 so does the sense of sin become more painful. The 
 gospel is thus a mirror revealing to us our true 
 character, the lowest depths of our sinfulness, be- 
 
x. THE LOOKING-GLASS AND THE LAYER. 179 
 
 cause it reveals to us the mode of purification and 
 deliverance. 
 
 It might seem unnecessary to say what is so simple 
 and self-evident, that the contemplation of our own 
 image in this divine looking-glass of itself can produce 
 no moral change in us. And yet there are many 
 professors of religion who imagine that by the mere 
 confession of sin they are spiritually benefited, that 
 by the mere cry of " Unclean, unclean " in their 
 public and private devotions, they are magically 
 cleansed from their spiritual leprosy. They look 
 into the mirror of the gospel, and they see their 
 own vile image reflected; and they suppose that 
 gazing upon this image, and describing what they see 
 is all that their religion demands of them. They have 
 a sort of " acquiescent self-reproach," which reconciles 
 the mind to the sinfulness it confesses and the corrup- 
 tion it laments, as if this were a stereotyped and normal 
 state of things that could not be remedied. But this 
 is obviously an abuse of the mirror. It is necessary 
 that a man should not only know himself, but also 
 a way of escape from himself, lest he should sink 
 into chronic and indolent despair, or grow to tolerate, 
 and even take pride in, the evil which he does not 
 remove. The mirror must lead to the laver. Having 
 learned what our true condition is, we must cease to 
 look at ourselves, and have recourse to the cleansing 
 bath which God has provided in the gospel for the 
 sinner conscious of his sin. The fact that the laver 
 was made of the looking-glasses teaches this practical 
 
i8o THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 lesson to us. We see our impurity in order that we 
 may apply for cleansing. Our uncomeliness is revealed 
 to us for the very purpose of causing us to seek for 
 the beauty of holiness. 
 
 2. The laver made of the looking-glasses of the 
 women stood in the court of the tabernacle between 
 the altar of burnt-offering and the door of the holy 
 place. As the altar removed the legal obstacle that 
 lay in the way of a sinner's access to God, so the 
 laver removed the moral. The one by the atone- 
 ment which it presented opened up the way to God ; 
 the other by the purification which it effected qualified 
 the believer for coming into God's presence. 
 
 And viewed in this light, what an expressive symbol 
 is it of the spiritual fountain opened in the house of 
 David for sin and uncleanness ! The blood of the 
 altar of burnt-offering and the water of the laver of 
 purification both came out of the pierced side of the 
 crucified Redeemer. The idea of the altar and the 
 idea of the laver are both united and implied in the 
 blood of sprinkling that speaketh better things than 
 the blood of Abel ; that does not merely remove 
 ceremonial and superficial defilements, but penetrates 
 to the very source of corruption, and completely 
 removes it. In the Levitical economy no washing 
 was permitted to the priests, except what took place 
 at the sacred vessel of the tabernacle appointed for 
 the purpose. And so it is the precious blood of 
 Christ alone that can wash away our sins, and give 
 us that purity of heart which shall enable us to see 
 
x. THE LOOKING-GLASS AND THE LAYER. 181 
 
 God. No penitential tears can wash away the stain 
 of a single sin. The waters of baptism may flow over 
 us ; the wine of the sacramental cup may be adminis- 
 tered; penances and mortifications may be had recourse 
 to, but all in vain; our crimson and scarlet sins will 
 prove indelible throughout all the painful process. 
 
 Our Lord sent the blind man, whose eyes He 
 opened, to the pool of Siloam, that he might wash, 
 and- thus have his cure completed. The first object 
 which his newly-acquired vision beheld was his own 
 image reflected in the water. And is not this circum- 
 stance a type of what Jesus does still in the miracle 
 of grace ? It is the washing in His own blood that 
 completely cures our blindness, and enables us to see 
 ourselves as we truly are. The laver in which we 
 are washed becomes the mirror in which we see our 
 own reflection ; and the mirror of self-complacency, 
 in which hitherto we sought to see visions of our 
 own comeliness whereof to glory in the flesh, is con- 
 verted into the fountain of life in which the discovery 
 of our own vileness is overborne by the discovery of 
 the surpassing, all-compensating loveliness of Him in 
 whom God sees no iniquity in Jacob, and no per- 
 verseness in Israel. Formerly hearers of the word, 
 but not doers of it, we were like a man beholding 
 his natural face in a glass ; " for he beholdeth himself 
 and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what 
 manner of man he was." But now, washed in the 
 blood of Jesus, sanctified by His Spirit, made new 
 creatures in Him, " we all with open face beholding 
 
X 82 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into 
 the same image from glory to glory, even as by the 
 Spirit of the Lord." 
 
 THE SUPERGA. 1 
 
 BEFORE a noble votive church I stood, 
 
 Raised o'er the dead of Savoy's royal blood, 
 
 Crowning the summit of a lonely height; 
 
 And what a wondrous view burst on my sight ! 
 
 It seemed as if heaven's door were opened wide, 
 
 The very portals of the grave beside. 
 
 On the horizon, from the boundless plain, 
 
 From end to end rose the whole Alpine chain. 
 
 Each peak stood out against the cloudless blue ; 
 
 The more I gazed, the more sublime they grew. 
 
 Life rolled its green waves to their feet, and broke 
 
 In spray of pines upon each highest rock; 
 
 ] About five miles down the river Po, in the neighbourhood of 
 Turin, there is an isolated hill, about 1,440 feet high, called 
 the Superga. On the summit stands a magnificent dome- 
 shaped church, built by Vittorio Amadeo II. in fulfilment of a 
 vow when the French, in 1706, abandoned the siege of the 
 Sardinian capital. In the subterranean vaults are the sarcophagi 
 containing the remains of Princes of the House of Savoy. From 
 the grassy terrace in front of the church may be obtained on a 
 clear day one of the grandest views in Europe, embracing the 
 vast green plain of Piedmont, with the Po glittering through it, 
 and bounded on the horizon by the whole range of snowy Alps, 
 from Mount Viso to Monte Rosa, rising straight up like an 
 enormous wall, each peak clear cut like a cameo against the 
 blue sky. 
 
THE SUPERGA. 183 
 
 While far above the calm white snow-fields shone 
 
 Without a shadow in the noonday sun. 
 
 From every stain of life's contention free, 
 
 The radiant floor of heaven they seemed to be ; 
 
 By hands angelic swept and garnished, meet 
 
 For the free tread of pure immortal feet. 
 
 So overpowering was the sight, I knelt 
 
 Awestruck upon the grassy sod, and felt 
 
 As if I breathed the intoxicating air 
 
 Of other worlds, raised high above the care 
 
 And turmoil of the common earth ; each sense 
 
 In ecstasy stretched to its utmost tense. 
 
 How dark by contrast seemed the vaults beneath, 
 
 Where, in the dreadful loneliness of death, 
 
 Cut off from all that made their world, discrowned, 
 
 Slept the great rulers of the realms around ; 
 
 In all the splendour owning now no share, 
 
 Their dust to dust returning unaware ! 
 
 But not in vain does the spectator face 
 
 This great apocalypse in such a place. 
 
 His mind may reason with assurance just, 
 
 Had man been meant to perish in the dust, 
 
 His God a vision so surpassing fair, 
 
 Would not have shown to mock his dark despair. 
 
 These scenes of earth are but the counterparts 
 
 Of nobler scenes, to which they lift our hearts. 
 
 These hoary Alps, whose pomp the horizon fills, 
 
 Are but the shadows of eternal hills. 
 
 The glow of superadded beauty seen 
 
 In every spot, by mortal vision keen, 
 
1 84 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. x. 
 
 Is kindled there, the shadowy path to light, 
 That leads us to the Presence Infinite ; 
 And be to us, lest we should go astray, 
 The symbol of His glory by the way. 
 From the cold ashes wasting in the tomb, 
 A deathless loveliness shall one day bloom ; 
 And eyes long sealed in dust, with rapt surprise, 
 Shall wake amid a grander paradise. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 THE AUTUMN CROCUS. 
 
 ft He shall return to the days of his youth." JOB xxxiii. 25. 
 
 T F the snowdrop may be called the morning star 
 -L that ushers in the dawn of the floral year, the 
 crocus may be said to be its sunrise. No vernal sight 
 is more charming than the yellow yolks of this flower 
 appearing in clusters above the naked soil in the deso- 
 late garden borders. And when the closed petals open 
 their warm hearts to the sun, the golden cups are filled 
 to the brim with beauty, and have a jewel-like brilliancy 
 in the transfiguring light that reminds us of the fine 
 gold of the New Jerusalem "like unto transparent 
 glass." The first-born of the children of the sun, it is 
 the beginning of his excellency and strength. It seems 
 as if nature's wondrous alchemy had changed all vege- 
 table life at this season into the crocus-gold; at the 
 sight of which our heart leaps up as the poet's did 
 when he saw the rainbow. But besides this beautiful 
 species, whose perfection leaves nothing to be altered 
 or added, there is another spring crocus whose original 
 
,86 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP, 
 
 purple and white blossom has sported into a great 
 number of varieties under cultivation. It is the crocus 
 of the Alps, where its flowers actually pierce the lin- 
 gering snows in June, and form with them a more 
 harmonious picture than with the purplish-brown of 
 the naked earth out of which in our gardens they 
 emerge. Its broad sheets cf lilac bloom growing wild 
 in the Nottingham meadows have a fine effect when, 
 out of the early grass just beginning to be tinted with 
 the first vivid green, they unfold the graceful curves 
 of their petals to the fitful sunshine of the quiet spring 
 afternoon. 
 
 So much is the crocus associated with the showers 
 and the sunbeams of April, that it requires a special 
 mental effort, even when the fact is known, to realize 
 that it also blooms in the fading light and amid the 
 withering foliage of September. There are well-known 
 species of crocus that flower only during the autumnal 
 months. In the same meadows of Nottingham where 
 the purple crocus of spring flowers so abundantly, may 
 be seen side by side with them dark green flowerless 
 patches of the pale purple autumn crocus ; and the 
 curious thing is, that the flowers of the spring crocus 
 appear before the leaves, which attain their full vigour 
 and luxuriance when the blossoms have disappeared; 
 whereas, on the other hand, the flowers of the autumn 
 crocus appear after its leaves, that have grown all 
 winter and summer, have withered. In Switzerland 
 the sandy meadows along the banks of the Alpine 
 streams are covered with myriads of autumn crocuses, 
 
XT. THE AUTUMN CROCUS. 187 
 
 whose exquisitely pure and delicate amethystine hue 
 in the glowing sunshine is a feast of colour of which 
 the eye never wearies. And every one is familiar with 
 the pale violet saffron crocus, once largely cultivated 
 in this country for the production of saffron from its 
 rich orange style, which blooms according to soil and 
 position from the end of September to the beginning 
 of November. If the yellow spring crocus is the 
 golden sunrise of the floral year, the lilac autumn 
 crocus is its sunset, when the mountains in the west 
 have a rich purple bloom up.on them, and the radiant 
 amber clouds that lie over them seem like the stamens 
 and petals of some gigantic blossom. 
 
 It is strange to think of this beautiful familiar flower 
 being associated alike with a season in which nature 
 is renewing her youth, and with a season when upon 
 everything has settled down a long Sabbath of decay. 
 It is not the only flower that has this peculiarity. The 
 cyclamen is a spring flower, blossoming from April to 
 the end of May, the leaves rising before the flowers; 
 but there is a species whose flowers begin to appear 
 at the end of August, continuing until October, the 
 leaves rising after the blossoms and lasting through 
 the whole winter and early spring. It covers every 
 sheltered copse and mossy bank with profuse blooms, 
 which look like the spectres of the spring flowers. 
 Colourless and in a large measure scentless, it haunts 
 the woods till the fall of the year, when it vanishes 
 to reappear again in its representative species in spring. 
 The snowflake is a resuscitated snowdrop, only of 
 
 
j88 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 larger size and less delicately fashioned. It stands 
 in the same relation to the summer that the snowdrop 
 does to the spring. It is simply a snowdrop striving 
 to emulate the lily by its taller stems and leaves, its 
 wider bell-shaped blossom composed of petals all white 
 and similar, only touched on their tips with a faint 
 yellowish green, and affording ample room for the play 
 of the orange stamens. And I have frequently seen 
 in different places in Southern Europe a little flower 
 called the Acis autumnalis, which looks like an au- 
 tumnal snowdrop; the pure snowy blossom of the 
 spring flower being in its autumn representative tinted 
 with a delicate pink blush. We thus find that Nature 
 loves to repeat her forms, and to cast the productions 
 of different seasons into the same mould, with charac- 
 teristic differences which may serve to distinguish them. 
 The autumn crocus is a type of one of the most 
 interesting phenomena of nature and of human life. 
 In many departments there are numerous instances of 
 the recurrence at a later period of something that 
 belongs to an earlier time. The crimson and gold 
 of the sunrise is repeated in the splendour of sunset. 
 The common light of day has the same chromatic 
 border at both its edges. The curtain of night at both 
 its ends is finished off with fringes of rainbow loveli- 
 ness, betraying by its selvage the rich variety of the 
 threads that compose it. The morning star that 
 heralds the dawn of day appears again in the evening, 
 and announces the magic hour once sacred to God's 
 presence, when His voice was heard among the trees 
 
THE AUTUMN CROCUS. 
 
 of the garden, and still keeping itself calm and pure 
 from the touch of evil the holiest hour of earth. 
 The weather of September has many of the character- 
 istics of the weather of April ; the same rapid alterna- 
 tion of cloud and sunshine, of calm blue sky and dark 
 storm-change. The woodland foliage of October 
 departs with the same bright hues upon it with which 
 it burst forth in May. In the late autumn the exquisite 
 days of the Indian or St. Martin's summer come like 
 a mockery of June, when there is such a universal 
 harmony of earth and heaven that worship rises from 
 the heart like a spring; and God gives us, ere stern 
 winter closes the farewell scene, a Sabbath of the year, 
 in which the sunbeams, having done their work in 
 ripening the grain and the fruit, are now radiating their 
 glory all around for pure enjoyment a Sabbath which 
 we do not have to make but only to keep holy. And 
 whose heart is not touched to the core by the plaintive 
 little song of the robin, heard in the quiet hush of the 
 fading year in the aged apple-tree of the garden, from 
 whose boughs ripened fruit and withered leaf have 
 alike fallen? All the other birds are silent; but this 
 tiny, wavering, uncertain trill is an echo at the far-off 
 end of the year of the gush of song with which the 
 fair young creation of spring was ushered in. The 
 first authentic notification of spring is the song of the 
 robin, and the last lamentation over the declining 
 autumn is a plaintive repetition of it. Thus we find 
 that wherever nature sets she has an after-glow that 
 reminds us of the beauty and freshness of her prime. 
 
I9 o THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 The older one grows the more pathetic does the ten- 
 der grace of each spring become. So much of what we 
 loved and lost never comes back, that the beauty of the 
 spring touches us like the brightness of a perfect day, 
 when the grave is closing over dear eyes that shall 
 never more behold it. Why should the inferior things 
 of nature return, and those for whose use they were all 
 made lie unconscious in the dust ? The youthful heart 
 feels itself in sympathy with spring. The universal 
 freshness is as much a part of human youth as of the 
 herbs of the field. All the sights, sounds, and impulses 
 of the bright season have feelings and thoughts in the 
 young bosom corresponding to them. Hope springs 
 up with the sprouting grass, and love opens with the 
 unfolding blossoms, and all life is vernal with the vernal 
 landscape. But the aged heart has no part in the 
 bright renewal. It is outside of all the music and 
 bloom. It has outlived the fresh sympathies which 
 the season could kindle into gladness, and can no more 
 enter into the pleasures of hope. The aged live in the 
 springs of the past ; and their life goes forward to 
 another and brighter spring in the eternal world, of 
 which the springs of earth are only fleeting types and 
 shadows. But though the bright flame of their spring 
 crocus has burnt down to the socket, and only the 
 green monotonous melancholy leaves remain behind, is 
 there no re-kindling in the withered plot of their life 
 of the autumn crocus, whose more sober hue befits the 
 sadder character of the season ? Yes ! man's life, too, 
 has its Indian summer and its autumn crocus. The 
 
7 HE AUTUMN CROCUS. 
 
 191 
 
 season of decay brings to him also reminiscences of the 
 bright season of renewal. As on the woodland paths in 
 spring, beneath the withered leaves of last year, when 
 the south wind sweeps them away, the fairest flowers 
 are seen growing ; so on the beaten tracks of the aged 
 life, strewn with the wrecks of the past, are still seen 
 flourishing the joys of youth, when a breeze of hope re- 
 moves the superficial tokens cf decay. And often, 
 where others see only withered leaves, the heart feels 
 the springing of vernal flowers. 
 
 Job, describing the happiness which he had in former 
 years, and longing for its return, says, " O, that I were 
 as I was in the days of my youth ! " This phrase liter- 
 ally means the vintage season, the time of fruit-gather- 
 ing ; and the authorized version, adopting another 
 translation which the phrase also bears, unwittingly 
 -expresses the subtle connection between youth and age, 
 the spring and the autumn, the blossoming and the 
 fruit-time of life. The true days of Job's youth was the 
 period when his life became young again through the 
 maturity of his powers and the consummation of his 
 hopes. It was in the autumn of his life that he en- 
 joyed all those blessings of prosperity whose loss he 
 deplores ; and in calling it by a term which may be 
 rendered either " days of youth," or " time of gathering 
 in fruits," a striking example is given of the legitimate 
 symbolic use of autumn as the season not of decay but 
 of ripeness fulness of power. That there are days 
 and signs of youth in the time of the harvest and vint- 
 age of life every one can testify. The autumn fields 
 
I92 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 are " happy " with the flowers that tell of spring, with 
 the remembrance of days that are no more ; and the 
 Laureate's beautiful words touch with a tender power the 
 chord with which memory faithfully knits together the 
 opening and the closing of human life. True, indeed, 
 the autumn crocus is not the same flower as the spring 
 crocus. It has hues deeper and more intense. It 
 speaks of change and decay. Nature never goes back 
 altogether to the point from which she started ; and she 
 renews only some of the features of her dead past. So 
 the joys of our early life which we recall in late years 
 are not the same as when they stirred our young blood ; 
 we colour them with the deeper and tenderer hues of 
 our own spirit. The past seems to us so lovely because 
 the present reflects upon it its own matured beauty and 
 mournful intensity ; just as the level light of the after- 
 noon transfigures with a warmer glow the trees and 
 flowers that stood forth clear and cold in the morning 
 rays. But the golden harvest, and the bright autumnal 
 foliage, and the red fire of sunset burning low, are 
 nearer the eternal fruition and the everlasting renewal 
 than the field of the sower, and the April woodland, 
 and the dewy sunrise. The gold of the withered leaf 
 is that of the streets of the New Jerusalem ! 
 
 In the physical sphere of man there are numerous 
 instances of the spring crocus blooming again in the 
 autumn. The cutting of new teeth and the growth of 
 young hair in old age are by no means so infrequent as 
 we might suppose. The eagle's power of self-renewal 
 has been manifested by many an aged form. And the 
 
xi. THE AUTUMN CROCUS. ! 93 
 
 wonderful rejuvenescence of Abraham and Sarah when 
 a century old shows to us that the human body has the 
 same capabilities which the bird possesses in the annual 
 renewing of its plumage, and the tree in the annual 
 renewing of its leaves and flowers. What a beautiful 
 autumn crocus was the coming of Isaac the " laugh- 
 ter " of spring into the aged worn-out life of Abraham ! 
 The venerable patriarch grew young again in the child- 
 hood of his son. A whole new world of beautiful emo- 
 tions and first affections was called into existence by 
 the presence of that child in his home. Every one 
 has observed that as life nears its close it returns to 
 the days of its youth, and brings back again much that 
 marked its beginning. The old man becomes a little 
 child ere he enters the kingdom of heaven. Second 
 childhood plants its vernal flowers amid the sere and 
 yellow leaves of nature's decadence. And the grand- 
 father has more sympathy with, and more that is akin 
 to, the little grandchild, who reminds him of what ' he 
 himself once was, than with his own busy careworn son 
 who has left his childhood so far behind him. 
 
 In the mental sphere the growth of the autumn 
 crocus is much more common than in the physical, and 
 much more precious and beautiful. The physical signs 
 of growth in the midst of old age strike us as a painful 
 incongruity. It is a pathetic and pitiful sight ; for the 
 bloom of youth comes back in such a case without its 
 strength and hope, and the vigour of the child without 
 its unconscious innocence and fresh beauty. But there 
 is no such drawback connected with the renewal of the 
 
194 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 mind in old age. How numerous and splendid are the 
 examples of intellect disclosing its fullest powers at the 
 very close of life ! As an old man Cato learnt Greek. 
 Goethe was fourscore years old when he completed the 
 second part of Faust. Jussieu between his eighty-third 
 and eighty-eighth year occupied himself with dictating a 
 new edition of his famous " Introduction to Botany," 
 not in his mother tongue, but in the most elegant 
 Latin. Mason, on his seventy-second birthday, wrote 
 one of the most beautiful sonnets in our language ; and 
 Milton produced the grandest work of his wonderful 
 intellect when he was nearly sixty years of age. It is 
 related of James Watt that he mastered the Anglo- 
 Saxon language with facility when he was upwards of 
 seventy ; a task which he had undertaken in order to 
 prove whether his intellectual faculties were then unim- 
 paired. And who does not know how early tastes 
 revive in declining years, when the pressure of the 
 world's cares and activities in an assured position is 
 removed, as the native wild flowers bloom again in 
 the fallow field which is no more turned up by the 
 plough ? We go back to the poets who first showed 
 us the beauty of the world, and to the philosophers 
 who first taught us the power of thought, with fresh 
 interest and new enjoyment, acquired by our own 
 wider experience. Literary men have often recorded 
 the peculiar delight with which in their later years 
 they have returned to the studies of their youth. 
 What is genius but a return of the mind from exhausted 
 ways and methods to the freedom, simplicity, and ever- 
 
xi. THE AUTUMN CROCUS. ! 95 
 
 fresh novelty of nature ? The highest genius is that in 
 which manhood's trained power of expression is com- 
 bined with an eternal element of childhood. There is 
 a spontaneity and an unconsciousness in its art, an in- 
 stinctiveness in its revelations, which belong essentially 
 to youth, and which, appearing amid the matured 
 experiences of after life, has the charm of a September 
 day which reminds us of April. 
 
 The higher we climb the hill of knowledge the 
 nobler and more elevated the thoughts we make 
 our own the more do we bring back the joyous, 
 fearless mind of childhood, which we believe is fresh 
 from the hand of God, and still bears upon it traces 
 of its likeness to the Uncreated Light; just as the 
 Alpine traveller sees on the very edge of the glacier 
 on the mountain height the same kind of exquisitely 
 pure and lovely flowers which in March and April 
 in the valleys skirted the edge of winter. M. de 
 Tocqueville used to remark that mental exertion was 
 as necessary in age as in youth, nay, even more neces- 
 sary. Man, he would say, is a traveller towards a 
 colder and colder region, and the higher his latitude 
 the faster he ought to walk. Many give up all thought 
 of beginning a new study when they have reached the 
 autumn of life under the impression that it is not worth 
 while. They fancy themselves older than they really 
 are, and so give up further intellectual effort with a 
 certain indolent feeling of relief. The Chinese encour- 
 age their students to persevere in their mental pursuits 
 to extreme old age, by bestowing the golden button of 
 
I 9 6 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 the successful candidate upon a man when he is eighty 
 years old, although he has failed in all his previous 
 examinations. 
 
 The love of nature is a sentiment in which we carry 
 our youth along with us through all the dreary wastes of 
 middle age, and it revives with peculiar force at the 
 close of life. Sated with the possessions and experiences 
 of life, we come back in the end of our days with the 
 old freshness of feeling to the simple familiar objects 
 that once formed all our joy. The gold of the vernal 
 crocus yields us more wealth of pleasure than all the gold 
 of the banks that we have accumulated : and the purple 
 bloom of its autumn relation is more precious than all 
 the purple and fine linen in which we have succeeded 
 in clothing ourselves. The heart never grows really old 
 if it brings with it from childhood a lively interest in the 
 varied objects of nature. These objects soothe and 
 ennoble, not by their own intrinsic charms only, but by 
 their immediate connection with that spiritual world 
 whose outward and visible representatives they are ; that 
 world which is ever near to us, but especially so in the 
 solitudes of nature where we are face to face with the 
 unsullied works of God. That world never grows old, 
 and the objects of nature which reveal it to our senses 
 are permanently young. The foliage that springs from 
 an old withered tree, for instance, is as perfect as that 
 which grew on its first shoot ; the grass grows as green 
 now as a thousand years ago ; the streams are as fresh 
 and the sunshine as bright. And therefore the heart 
 that communes with the spiritual through the medium 
 
THE AUTUMN CROCUS. 
 
 197 
 
 of these natural things, according to the Divine Sacra- 
 mental law by which spiritual blessings and their 
 influences on the heart are best enjoyed in the presence 
 of their material representatives, shares in the perpetual 
 youth of nature. It will have a perennial well of glad- 
 ness springing up in it an artesian well gladdening the 
 desert of old age, whose waters come from the far-off 
 hills of childhood ; and under the snows that have 
 whitened the mountain-tops of life, there will be pre- 
 served many a bright nook, green with all the spring 
 freshness of thought and feeling. 
 
 But it is in the sphere of the soul that the autumn 
 crocus blooms most beautifully. The rejuvenescence 
 of the mental faculties, the renewal of the intellect, 
 belongs only to the exceptionally great and gifted. It is 
 only men of rare faculty and genius who become young 
 again in their minds ; whose intellectual life acts more 
 vitally and intensely when decay has touched all their 
 physical life. But the rejuvenescence of the soul, the 
 renewal of the spiritual life, may be the experience of all. 
 This youthful victoriousness the inward man being 
 renewed more and more while the outward man is 
 decaying is the glory of every true Christian's old age. 
 Only the fire that comes down from Heaven can preserve 
 the youth of the spirit amid all the changes and sorrows 
 of life. Religion really lived keeps the heart always 
 young, always tender. Its truths belong to a world 
 which knows no change, no succession of time ; and 
 therefore the soul that cherishes them, and is moulded 
 by their power, partakes of their unchanging freshness. 
 
198 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 Our blessed religion teaches us that nothing beautiful 
 or good once possessed is wholly lost to us ; that there is 
 a deeper truth in the words, " a thing of beauty is a joy 
 for ever," than even its poet knew. That thing of 
 beauty goes away as our Saviour went away, only to 
 come again, dearer and closer to be with us alway, 
 even unto the end of the world. Our religion engages 
 to give to him that overcometh the besetting sins which 
 lay waste the life and make the heart old to eat of 
 those fruits of the tree of life which once in the garden 
 of innocence hung within reach of infant humility and 
 helplessness. And out of the sunset and the after 
 glow, when the glory and the dream of life have 
 vanished, comes the sweetest of all its promises, " I 
 will give him the morning star." And He who is the 
 resurrection and the life the Alpha and the Omega 
 will make the outgoings of the fair, innocent morning of 
 the world's childhood with its fresh poetic visions, so 
 dear even to remember in this weary, worn-out prosaic 
 world to rejoice for all who live and believe in Him ; 
 and the hour of splendour in the grass and glory in the 
 flower will come back again. 
 
 Youth's joys to cheer life's autumn gloom, 
 
 Fond memory back will bring ; 
 As in September fields will bloom, 
 
 The crocus of the spring. 
 
 So may we live, that all our past 
 
 May light our future track ; 
 And all our best for us at last, 
 
 In higher form come back. 
 
A CORN-FIELD IN GLENCROE. 199 
 
 A CORN-FIELD IN GLENCROE. 
 
 DEEP in the emerald cup of circling hills, 
 A corn-field lies along the rugged bank 
 Of a wild river, that has cut its way 
 Through rocky orbit, filled with pastures old 
 Lit up with yellow stars of tormentil, 
 Where once had laughed the blue eye of a lake. 
 Redeemed from nature's wildness by man's toil, 
 The little lonely croft smiles in the waste, 
 And speaks of all the tender things of home. 
 The poppy kindles not its cross of fire, 
 Nor lifts the corn-flower its blue banner there, 
 Nature's stern struggle with itself to wage. 
 The mountains dower with their own floral gifts 
 The foster child they have so gently reared ; 
 And twine among its yellow hair their wreaths 
 Of purple scabious, snowy euphrasy, 
 And silken Alpine lady's- mantle rare. 
 Day after day I've watched the lean ears fill 
 With secret sweetness from the earth and sky, 
 And o'er each stem and glume the russet hue 
 Of ripeness creeping from the sunsets low, 
 Until the field, whose greenness blended once 
 With the green hills, now stands a thing apart, 
 A patch of mimic sunshine prisoned there, 
 A golden aureole round Nature's brow. 
 What sacred memories gather round the plot, 
 That take us back to old idyllic days, 
 When all men laboured in the harvest-field, 
 
200 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 And deemed its joy the typal joy of life ! 
 The first ripe crop that grew above the grave 
 Of the old world, arched by the covenant bow, 
 The pledge and surety of all harvests since ; 
 The plenteous years that fed the famished ones 
 Upon the Nile's green banks ; the touching tale 
 Of the fair Gleaner in her kinsman's fields, 
 Who found love's solace for the stranger's heart ; 
 The Sabbath walk among the rustling corn, 
 With Him who claimed to be the Sabbath's Lord, 
 When His disciples plucked the husky ears, 
 And broke their fast with meat from God's own hand, 
 And felt it was a sacrament indeed ; 
 And more than all, the wondrous miracle, 
 Wrought far from cultivated haunts of men, 
 When the slow seasons' work was done at once, 
 And bread that never knew the curse of toil 
 Grew swiftly as it passed from hand to hand 
 Along the hungry ranks. These memories 
 The ages and the generations link, 
 And make one family of all mankind, 
 Living in one great home, and fed each day 
 From one kind Father's store. This corn-field seems 
 A silent gospel. Here I see once more 
 The Master's steps beside the conscious corn, 
 Making a Sabbath of the common day ; 
 I see the hand that works behind the veil, 
 Stretched forth anew to multiply the loaves, 
 And crown with heavenly glory common things. 
 Above, Ben Arthur in the opal air 
 
A CORN-FIELD IN GLENCROE. 2 oi 
 
 Lifts its huge altar to heaven's outer door ; 
 Beside me chants its ceaseless hymn of praise 
 The pure-lipped river ; while the laden ears 
 Store up the manna, like the pot of old 
 Within the Hebrew ark. The sordid world, 
 With all its money-changers, care-worn toils, 
 Is shut out from this shrine not made with hands. 
 From sowing time, when man had done his part, 
 To reaping time, when man must work again, 
 The field has been in the sole charge of God ; 
 The farmer slept and woke, and all the time 
 The earth brought forth its fruit unaided how, 
 Man knoweth not. Beneath the patient heavens, 
 In presence of all enemies subdued, 
 The storm and drought, the blight of worm and rust, 
 God spread a table in this wilderness 
 His annual corn beside the unfailing stream, 
 The bread and water that are sure to all. 
 With thankful hearts shall we not worship here, 
 Look to those higher hills whence comes our help, 
 And feel that man lives not by bread alone, 
 But by each word that cometh from God's mouth, 
 Expressed in Nature's mute symbolic speech, 
 In lofty mountain and in lowly glebe ! 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE AMARANTH. 
 
 " That fadeth not away." i PETER i. 4. 
 
 NOTHING can be lovelier than the meadows of 
 Greece and Southern Italy, covered in spring 
 with myriads of wild flowers, whose vivid colours are 
 illuminated by the strong light of a southern sun, 
 which defines outline and shadow and gives value to 
 the faintest hue. These flowers grow in rich profusion 
 year after year among the hoary ruins of man's work, 
 renewing their brightness while all around them is 
 decaying, and adorning with a garland of ever-living 
 beauty the haunts of the gods of old, and the scenes of 
 departed greatness and pride. And yet instead of 
 transferring in imagination to the Elysian fields this 
 goodly sight with which the classic poets were familiar 
 from their childhood, and thus making it ideal, seen 
 paler in the celestial light, but not more beautiful, they 
 pictured their pagan paradise as remote from it as pos- 
 sible. Out of all the vast wealth of earth's floral beauty, 
 
 they selected only two flowers to adorn its dim and 
 202 
 
CFIAP. xir. THE AMARANTH. 
 
 203 
 
 misty scenes ; and these by no means the fairest and 
 most graceful, possessing no representative character 
 to entitle them to the immortality thus conferred upon 
 them. 
 
 The Sicilian legend of the Rape of Proserpine depicts 
 the maiden as gathering, in the meadows of Enna, the 
 snow-white lilies and the golden and crimson flowers 
 that hid the grass with a maze of dazzling brightness 
 like the fret-work of sunset clouds. Seized by Pluto 
 while engaged in this innocent amusement, she was 
 carried down to the infernal regions, with her hands 
 still full of the mortal flowers she had gathered, shed- 
 ding their strange radiance over the joyless land of 
 shadows. These flowers became immortal, and year 
 after year bloomed in the sunless and dewless air, with- 
 out a blossom falling or a leaf fading. But this beautiful 
 fable stands out in marked contrast to the common 
 dreams of the poets. It is a gleam of familiar light 
 seen in the mist. The flowers of Proserpine introduced 
 an unknown sunshine into a shady place. They were 
 not natives of this waste outside region ; they did not 
 grow in the barren soil. They were only sweet remini- 
 scences of the dear old scenes of earth tenderly 
 cherished amid associations altogether different 
 
 The two flowers specially mentioned by the poets as 
 growing in the fields of the immortals were the asphodel 
 and the amaranth. Numerous beautiful allusions occur 
 to them in the classic writings ; but no such description 
 is given as would enable us to identify them with any 
 of the flowers at present growing in the famous scenes 
 
204 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 of antiquity. The plant now known as the asphodel 
 grows in great profusion everywhere in Southern 
 Europe. It is a kind of lily our dear old English 
 word daffodil being but a corruption of it distin- 
 guished by its thick tuft of long narrow leaves, out of 
 which rises a tall rod covered with white star-like 
 flowers, whose petals are streaked with purple lines. It 
 is a majestic flower, and gives a fine effect to the fore- 
 ground of an Italian landscape. Whether this was the 
 Homeric asphodel which blossomed early across the 
 Styx, and which the Greeks planted in their graveyards 
 as food for the Shades, we do not know, but it is cer- 
 tainly worthy of such a destiny. It has a grey spectral 
 gleam when seen in misty weather ; and even in the 
 clear garish noon its spire of blossoms seems to have 
 derived its silvery sheen from the cold moonbeams, 
 rather than from the warm sunshine. A bare hillside 
 covered with its dark green grassy tufts and ghostly 
 flowers looks like a bit of extra-mundane scenery. 
 
 The amaranth is involved in still deeper obscurity. 
 The flower known to the classic poets, we believe, how- 
 ever, to be the Gomphrena globosa, as its round flowers 
 of a deep purple resembling those of the common 
 clover, produced on long stiff stalks bare of leaves, 
 answer better than any other species the description of 
 Pliny. The calyx of this globe-amaranth which consti- 
 tutes the flower, is of so dry a texture that it seems 
 dead even while it is growing ; and it is to this fine thin 
 membranous texture that the flower owes its glossy 
 beauty, and its persistent endurance. It was a favourite 
 
xn. THE AMARANTH. 205 
 
 decoration at funerals. Homer describes the Thes- 
 salians as wearing chaplets of amaranth ; and Milton, 
 when speaking of the multitude of angels before God 
 casting down their crowns " inwove with amarant and 
 gold," at His feet, says : 
 
 " Immortal amarant, a flower which once 
 In Paradise, fast by the Tree of Life, 
 Began to bloom ; but soon, for man's offence, 
 To Heaven removed, where first it grew, there grows, 
 And flowers aloft, shading the fount of Life, 
 And where the river of bliss through midst of Heaven 
 Rolls over Elysian flowers her amber stream." 
 
 The globe-amaranth belongs to a family whose flowers, 
 notwithstanding their small size individually, produce a 
 striking effect by the great numbers of them that are 
 clustered together. They have properly speaking no 
 corolla, but produce the appearance of blossoms by 
 their coloured sepals and bracts, whose texture is so dry 
 and thin that they do not decay like the other parts of 
 flowers. Upwards of three hundred species are known, 
 growing as herbs or shrubs in tropical and temperate 
 regions. The leaves of many kinds are wholesome food, 
 and are not unfrequently used in their native countries 
 like spinach, to which indeed the family is closely allied 
 botanically. They were eaten as kitchen herbs by the 
 ancient Greeks ; and hence they were appropriately laid 
 upon graves as the food of the dead. Among the most 
 characteristic and best known examples of the family 
 may be mentioned the curious cockscomb of our green- 
 houses, and the princes feather and love-lies-bleeding of 
 our gardens with their crimson velvety tassels. 
 
206 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 But whatever may have been the original plant which 
 gave rise to the amaranth of the Elysian fields, it has 
 come in our common language to be regarded, not as 
 .a distinct botanical species, but as the type of a peculiar 
 class of plants, comprehending many species and even 
 genera, which, on account of their dry, juiceless texture, 
 retain their colour and form indefinitely, and are there- 
 fore called immortelles, or everlasting flowers. How- 
 ever widely they may differ in other respects, all these 
 curious plants have one remarkable feature in common. 
 The petals of the corolla, which in other plants are 
 usually the largest and most brilliant parts of the inflor- 
 escence, in them are reduced to the smallest size, and 
 are made sober and inconspicuous ; while the sepals 
 of the calyx and the bracts, which in other plants are 
 modest and subordinate, assume in them the predomin- 
 ance, are gaily coloured, and owing to their naturally 
 dry, scarious texture are permanent and indestructible. 
 The petals of flowers being the parts most modified 
 from the typical leaf of vegetation, and having only a 
 temporary purpose to serve, are exceedingly fugacious ; 
 whereas the sepals and the bracts are parts compara- 
 tively little modified, have a more continuous use in the 
 economy of the plant, and are therefore usually more 
 persistent. It is to the durability and showiness of their 
 involucral bracts therefore, more than to their actual 
 florets, that the beauty of the everlastings is due. The 
 great majority of the species are natives of warm coun- 
 tries, such as South Africa and Australia, where the 
 vegetation generally is less succulent and more leathery- 
 
xii. THE AMARANTH. 207 
 
 leaved than that of moist, cool climates ; but many of 
 them are easily cultivated in our own country, and are 
 very extensively grown in Southern France and Ger- 
 many, from whence immense quantities are sent to our 
 large London warehouses. All over the Continent they 
 are used for bouquets, wreaths, or for general floral 
 decorations. From France and Germany we have 
 learned the custom of laying wreaths and crosses made 
 of them upon the coffins and graves of the dead ; and 
 that custom now very widely prevails in this country. 
 
 Many of the everlastings cultivated in our green- 
 houses are strikingly beautiful. They belong chiefly 
 to the composite family. The French immortelle with 
 small yellow flowers, of which the chaplets used at 
 Pere la Chaise are made, is furnished by Helichrysum 
 vrientale, a native originally of Crete and South Africa, 
 but now largely cultivated in the south of France in 
 the neighbourhood of Hyeres, entirely for the sake of 
 its flower-heads. Various other species of Helichrysum 
 from Australia and South Africa have flower-heads an 
 inch across, varying in colour from white to yellow, 
 orange, crimson and pink, some annual and others 
 perennial. On our dry moorlands and hillsides an 
 everlasting grows in great quantities, with silvery 
 foliage and little tomentose balls of flowers of a pure 
 white or a pale pink colour. It is known by the 
 name of the Catspaw or Mountain Everlasting. And 
 on the summits of our highest hills a tiny species of 
 cudweed forms, on the bare tempest-beaten turf, a 
 knot of leaves, out of which emerges a pale brown 
 
208 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 blossom, without any form or comeliness, bravely 
 maintaining its existence in spite of the fierce buffet- 
 ings of the polar blasts. But the most interesting 
 species of all is the Edelweiss of the Swiss Alps, so 
 popular among the peasantry on account of its romantic 
 associations. It is distinguished for its beautiful whorl 
 of leaves springing star-like from beneath the closely- 
 set small yellowish flowers, and almost covered with 
 pure white down. This white down, which covers the 
 leaves of so many of the mountain composites, reaches 
 its highest development in a most extraordinary ever- 
 lasting called the Raoulia, which forms gigantic woolly 
 masses, spreading over the ground on the higher 
 mountains of New Zealand, and looking at a distance 
 so like a flock of sheep grazing that it has become 
 known to the settlers as the " vegetable sheep." But 
 besides the great variety of natural plants of the ever- 
 lasting character, numerous flowers of widely different 
 families, which do not possess this peculiarity, are 
 dried and preserved on the Continent with their natural 
 colours, along with a host of ornamental grasses. In 
 Germany this art is carried to great perfection, and 
 flowers and grasses thus treated are dyed in a great 
 variety of unnatural colours. Of late a great improve- 
 ment has been effected in the artificial colouring of 
 immortelles ; but there is still ample room for the 
 exercise of a more refined taste, many of the flowers 
 and grasses operated upon being too graceful and 
 delicate to bear heavy colouring, and becoming in 
 the process positively ugly. 
 
THE AMARANTH. 
 
 109 
 
 The instinct that has led to the choice or creation 
 of these natural or artificial everlastings is easily ac- 
 counted for. Most of those that come to this country 
 from France and Germany are used at Christmas-time, 
 when all vegetation is dead or dormant out of doors, 
 and even the conservatory has hardly a blossom to 
 show. They also supply the place of freshly-cut 
 flowers in other seasons when these fail or the re- 
 sources are not equal to the demand. But the deeper 
 reason doubtless is the desire which every one feels 
 to perpetuate the beauty of the world around us. 
 The saddest thing about that beauty is its evanescent 
 character. When the summer foliage has developed 
 its utmost fulness of form and hue, it begins to fade; 
 when the plant crowns its life- with the radiant blossom, 
 in that self-kindled flame of loveliness it expires. The 
 height of its perfection is the funeral pyre upon which 
 it is consumed into the grey ashes out of which it 
 arose. We wish to arrest this beauty that captivates 
 us and make it our own for ever. And hence the 
 favour with which we regard those flowers, which in 
 nature seem to escape the general doom of decay, and 
 preserve their charms uninjured by autumn's blight 
 or winter's frost ; that once perfected keep intact the 
 seal of that perfection for ever, and henceforth know 
 no quickening thrill of spring, or magic unfolding of 
 summer, but remain for ever the same. These em- 
 balmed flowers floral mummies or beautiful fossils 
 of the air, as they may be called, conserve for us 
 the passing beauty of the world and the glory of the 
 
210 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 summer that has vanished away. They appeal to 
 that touching yearning for permanence which amid 
 the vain show in which we live has taken such a deep 
 hold of our hearts. In them our affections find an 
 eddy in which time plays as it were with its own 
 seasons, and the ever-flowing stream of progress dim- 
 ples upon itself. They afford an anchor to our hearts 
 by which they may be steadied for a little amid the 
 incessant change and the bewildering whirl of things. 
 And how appropriately do these never-withering 
 flowers form wreaths for the dead ! The lush life-full 
 flowers of summer are associated with the tragedies, 
 the silences, the heart-breaks of life, and come in 
 with their own voiceless unconfuted arguments fresh 
 as it were from the Creator's heart, when human 
 words are vain, and even music fails to touch a chord, 
 to tell us that the power within all silences and pains 
 and tragedies is love, and that the possibilities of 
 life are endless. Save for the wonderful flower-facts 
 before us we could never have dreamed that such 
 beauty lurked in the dark earth, was latent in the 
 dry root or tiny seed. And so we bring these fair 
 summer flowers to the sick-room and the bedside of 
 the dying, and place them around the known unknown 
 face so pathetic in its white patience, and lay them 
 on the green mound which is all that belongs now 
 to our beloved ones of the beauty and glory of the 
 world. But they wither and pass away like what we 
 loved and lost ; on them too is written the doom of 
 mortality ; they seem more akin to the decay of the 
 
xii. THE AMARANTH. 211 
 
 grave than to the unchangeable affections of the world 
 within, and the immortal hopes of the world beyond. 
 The immortelles therefore are more in harmony with 
 our feelings ; they supply what the other flowers lack. 
 Unhurt by the mouldering decay of the sepulchre, 
 they seem the fittest types of that human love which 
 is not of the things that rust and perish in the tomb. 
 They tell us that there is a Beyond for love, though 
 not for pride ; for the things associated with the 
 flowers, though not for the things associated with 
 gold : that there is something besides the divine as- 
 pirations of religion which will survive and endure 
 for ever; something purely human and yet susceptible 
 of immortality. They give us the blessed assurance 
 that life here below is not all transitory and vain 
 " a chain of yesterdays, which have but lighted kings 
 the way to dusty death." Laid in the form of the 
 wreath or the cross on the marble head-stone, or on 
 the green sod, they whisper to us that, planted together 
 in the likeness of Christ's death, we shall be planted 
 together in the likeness of His resurrection. For if 
 the lowly flowers in their death retain the likeness of 
 their life unchanged, and triumph over the physical 
 forces which seek to decay and decompose them, 
 surely the lofty creature made in the image of God 
 will retain that image unimpaired amid all the decays 
 of death and the grave, and this same mortal shall 
 put on immortality, and this same human love shall 
 be glorified. 
 
 The amaranth of the ancients was a fitting type of 
 
212 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 their future state. The immortality they conceived 
 was as lifeless and joyless as the juiceless leaves and 
 flowers of this representative plant, which, though they 
 preserved their form and colour after having been 
 plucked for an indefinite period, had none of the 
 bloom and freshness of life about them. Their hell 
 had indeed a singularly distinct and vivid realization 
 in their minds ; there are no pictures of the fate of 
 the wicked more dreadful even in the Inferno of Dante 
 than those which their poets present before us in Ixion 
 and his wheel, Tantalus and his draught of water, 
 Sisyphus and his stone, Prometheus and his vulture, 
 and the Danaids and their leaky buckets. Their only 
 distinct idea of a future world was confined to the 
 incidents of punishment. All distinctness, on the other 
 hand, disappears as we enter the melancholy meadows 
 of asphodel which constituted their shadowy image 
 of Elysium. Their amaranthine bowers were dry and 
 ghostly, having the semblance of life, but none of its 
 play and blessedness. The world of the immortals 
 was a world of shadows inhabited by shades, wherein 
 there was nothing but the exuvice of life the phan- 
 toms of former existence. Ossian never imagined more 
 misty outlines, or peopled his heath of Lodi with 
 forms more pale and unsubstantial. There the ex- 
 periment of the alchemist was performed on a great 
 scale. Out of the ashes of the flower that had been 
 consumed arose a delicate apparition of stalk and 
 leaf and blossom the phantom plant faithful to its 
 former image as the lovely transcript of scenery in 
 
THE AMARANTH. 213 
 
 still water, but without the old bloom and fragrance. 
 Well might Achilles in such an Elysium declare 
 
 " I had rather live 
 
 The servile hired for hire, and eat the bread 
 Of some man scantily himself sustained, 
 Than sovereign empire hold o'er all the shades." 
 
 Not a whit more satisfactory are the Christian 
 conceptions of the future world in the minds of many 
 persons. They have fearfully vivid ideas of the punish- 
 ment of the wicked ; but regarding the reward of 
 the righteous they believe in the most literal manner 
 that " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor have 
 entered into the heart of man the things which God 
 hath prepared for them that love Him." It is a 
 far-off realm, receding into dimness and vagueness 
 by the distance to which we remove it, like a star 
 of the tenth magnitude ; leaving all past experience, 
 all hopes and forms of happiness which the imagination 
 had hitherto conceived, and the heart had learned to 
 love, utterly behind it. And hence it is that descrip- 
 tions of heaven, however gorgeous and transcendental, 
 usually fail to interest or impress us. The mind is 
 lost in the vagueness, and the heart knows not where 
 to fix. Permanence is the only definite idea we 
 associate with it. We accept the jewelled walls and 
 golden streets of the heavenly city, substances the 
 most precious and indestructible that we know, as 
 satisfactory symbols of its unchanging endurance. And 
 the contrast between this feature and our experience 
 of the fleeting possessions and enjoyments of earth 
 
214 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 is so grateful, that we care not if the one element 
 of permanence be secured even at the expense of all 
 that makes permanence desirable. We, whose gourd 
 grows up in a night and withers in a night, fancy 
 that we should be perfectly happy in fields of immor- 
 tal asphodels, and under the shadow of amaranthine 
 bowers. 
 
 But can permanence beautiful sculpture of life as it 
 were, placed safe and changeless in Elysian bowers 
 in reality satisfy this "nature of ours which we would 
 transfer to eternity ? That nature has been formed and 
 educated amid perpetual change, and all its conscious- 
 ness is built upon and interlaced with it. We owe to 
 the death that is always with us half the beauty of every 
 scene, and more than half the enjoyments we derive 
 from life. How then should we like to live here in a 
 world where the only flowers were immortelles, and the 
 only trees cypresses and yews, pines and evergreens ? 
 And is the idea any more tolerable because we place the 
 scene beyond the grave ? We enjoy these permanent 
 and unchangeable forms of vegetation by way of contrast 
 to the deciduous and fading forms that awaken the ten- 
 derest and deepest feelings of our hearts by the vernal 
 and autumnal changes they undergo, and for the sake of 
 the needed lesson which they teach of permanence in 
 the midst of change, raising our thoughts from a scene 
 of fleeting shadows to a scene of enduring realities. 
 But were the woods formed of, and the fields decked 
 with, such unfading objects alone, our eye would weary 
 of the eternal monotony, and our minds would grow 
 
THE AMARANTH. 
 
 215 
 
 stagnant in the everlasting sameness. And transferring 
 the conception to the future world we should in such a 
 case sympathize with the little girl who asked her father, 
 " If she were so good that she had to go to heaven, 
 whether after a hundred years God would not let her die 
 out ! " Change, we must remember, is not in itself an 
 element of misery. All changes are not necessarily sad. 
 There are changes caused by sin changes on the down- 
 ward scale death, decay of feeling, retrogression, cor- 
 ruptions and all unrests associated with sin ; and these 
 changes will doubtless be altogether unknown in 
 heaven. But there are other changes associated with 
 holiness and life and progress changes on the upward 
 scale, from one degree of beauty and perfection and en- 
 joyment to another; and we cannot imagine a heaven 
 suitable for beings like us without these. True to 
 human nature, the Bible in its revelations of the future 
 world brings before us pictures of such changes. It 
 speaks to us indeed of the everlasting materials of the 
 eternal city, but it shows us, in the midst of its streets 
 and on either side of the river, the tree of life bearing 
 twelve manner of fruits, to which every month brings the 
 freshness of spring and the ripeness and mellowness of 
 autumn, which shows in constant succession opening 
 and fading blossoms and forming and falling fruits. 
 And the river in whose waters the healing foliage and 
 the satisfying fruit are mirrored, is no dull Lethe 
 stagnant and motionless, for ever the same, but a river 
 of life, incessantly changing and being renewed the 
 very fulness of all life in which the past, present, and 
 
2i6 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 future are seen in perpetual flux. And these objects 
 are typical and representative. They indicate what 
 the nature of the scenery and of the life of heaven 
 will be. 
 
 The changeless asphodel and amaranth may form the 
 adorning of the pagan heaven ; but they have no place 
 in the Christian's fields of living green beyond the river. 
 We are begotten again unto a lively hope a living, life- 
 ful hope of an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and 
 that fadeth not away. That phrase, " fadeth not away," 
 is the translation in our version of the Greek word 
 amarantos, from which the name of the amaranth is de- 
 rived. And that very word " inheritance " tells us that 
 it is no strange, unknown realm into which we shall be 
 ushered by death ; but a familiar scene, which we shall 
 be prepared by our acquaintance with earthly things, 
 which are the draughts and shadows and foretastes of its 
 heavenly things, to enter into and enjoy, as the heir 
 who has grown up on an estate enters into his inherit- 
 ance when he comes of age. Our Christianity teaches 
 us by the ascension of Christ's body and the resurrection 
 of our own, that the whole scene with its circumstances 
 and objects must be accommodated to the tastes and 
 character of man, as he now is, only purified and glori- 
 fied, to the mortal immortalized. It is not a world of 
 shadows, but a world glowing with all the infinite beauty 
 and variety of life. The tree of life, with its twelve 
 kinds of fruit every month, will be its appropriate sym- 
 bol, and not the dry, changeless amaranth. And all 
 who here have worn the white flower of a blameless life 
 
THE LAST DAISY. 
 
 217 
 
 will find, to their glad surprise, that the waste outside 
 wilderness which they pictured the heaven that awaited 
 them to be, is a part of their own earthly home, made 
 to rejoice and blossom as the rose. 
 
 THE LAST DAISY. 
 
 OUR dear wee Callum, on the river's brink, 
 A solitary ox-eye daisy found, 
 That lingered in the late September light, 
 The last of its fair sisterhood ; with all 
 The sadness in its eye of joys o'erpassed ; 
 Its golden disk and silver halo dimmed 
 By Autumn's breath. Scarce taller than its stem. 
 With large round eyes of wonder innocent, 
 And almost on a level with the flower. 
 The child gazed fondly on the lone earth-star, 
 Raying its beauty round it in the grass, 
 And saw strange mystic glory in its face, 
 Unknown to older eyes which sin has filmed. 
 Do not the angels of these little ones 
 Behold always the Father's smiling face 
 Bent o'er each thing of beauty He has made ? 
 With childlike glee, subdued by soft regret, 
 He plucked the precious prize, and quaintly said, 
 " Tis the last go wan of the happy year ! " 
 Fair flower ! fair child ! so lovely in their life, 
 And not divided in their lovely death ! 
 In one short week the little feet were still, 
 The soul-full eyes closed to all earthly sights. 
 
2 i8 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. xn. 
 
 He vanished with the daisies loved so well, 
 And with him all the summer of our heart. 
 We will not murmur ; for a tenderer Hand 
 Than ours has plucked our human daisy here, 
 To plant it in His fadeless fields above, 
 Beside the stream of life. Not his the fate 
 Of the late autumn flower to linger on, 
 With all his loved ones gone, and pine away 
 In the cold feeble light of lonely age. 
 Kind death has saved him all the waste of life, 
 Conserved his beauty at the fairest point, 
 And kept for us our boy in heaven unchanged 
 Through all our changes an immortal child 
 To love for evermore. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 THE GATES OF PEARL. 
 
 ' ' And the twelve gates were twelve pearls ; every several gate was 
 of one pearl." REV. xxi. 21. 
 
 THE earthly Jerusalem and its temple had fallen. 
 To the lonely exile of Patmos the event was 
 one of awful significance. The foundations of the 
 universe seemed to be removed, and a vast void 
 created which nothing could fill. In the deep des- 
 pondency created by the knowledge of the fallen 
 Jewish commonwealth, the apostle was permitted to 
 gaze with tearful eyes, through the door opened in 
 heaven, upon the archetypal vision. Like Moses on the 
 Mount who saw the pattern of the tabernacle . in the 
 wilderness before it was constructed the seer of Pat- 
 mos, on his solitary rock in the sea, saw the pattern 
 of the earthly Jerusalem after it was destroyed. When 
 the real vanished, the ideal, of which the real was but 
 a mere passing shadow, was revealed in all its glory. 
 All that was essential in the old polity, with its visible 
 
 accompaniments, re-appeared in the new, associated 
 219 
 
220 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 with things unspeakably higher and more precious. 
 The vision discovered to him the principle and mean- 
 ing of the earthly facts that had been familiar to him 
 from his earliest years, led him away from the transitory 
 and the accidental to the fixed and enduring, and 
 comforted him with a deep sense of the harmony and 
 permanence of the Divine plan amid all the varying 
 dispensations of Providence. 
 
 It was no fantastic vision separated from all earthly 
 associations that the seer of Patmos beheld. On the 
 contrary, it was linked to all that was dear and sacred 
 to himself and to his race. The forms were the same, 
 but the materials were changed. The old walls of 
 the earthly city stained with the russet hues of time 
 and battered by the fierce assaults of war now ap- 
 peared as a glorious cincture composed of twelve mas- 
 sive courses or tiers of burnished jewels, clasping the 
 heavenly city round and round as with a marriage ring 
 of inviolable sanctity and incorruptible unity. It was a 
 rainbow of precious stones ; a solid and enduring rain- 
 bow, confirming and establishing for evermore what the 
 sign of the earthly covenant, imprinted upon a fleeting 
 vapour by a passing sunbeam, intimated to the genera- 
 tions of perishing men. The toil-worn streets, defiled 
 by sordid traffic and trodden by weary human feet, 
 appeared paved with gold, clear and transparent as 
 glass, pure for the tread of feet which the Saviour's 
 hands had washed, and the sweep of robes which His 
 blood had made white. The materials of the earthly 
 city were substances that faded and decayed, for they 
 
xnr. THE GATES OF PEARL. 221 
 
 had only a temporary purpose to serve ; those of the 
 heavenly were unchangeable and indestructible, matter 
 in its most sublime and enduring form connected with 
 the unceasing service of bodies and spirits of just men 
 made perfect. 
 
 Out of the sunset splendours of his nation's glory 
 emerged the sunrise of the everlasting commonwealth ; 
 and in hues and forms suggested by the aerial land- 
 scapes of the ^Egean, the cheering vision manifested 
 itself to him. On the lonely heights of Patmos, we 
 can picture the aged apostle standing at early dawn 
 and looking eastward to the point where the sea and 
 the sky blended together on the horizon. He sees the 
 faint grey glimmer that marks the struggle of light with 
 darkness along that line. And gradually as the sun 
 rises the neutral tint glows with burnished hues of 
 crimson and purple ; the amber colours passing at last 
 into the clear crystal of the new-born day, and the 
 azure that cools the sky when the sun has taken com- 
 plete possession of it, and the strife with darkness is 
 over. Like these different layers of aerial hues, mark- 
 ing the varying struggles in the birth of day, are the 
 different tiers of gleaming jewels in the walls of the 
 celestial city, each stone being a letter in a radiant 
 alphabet, the crimson hue of suffering passing into the 
 white of purity and the blue of calm, settled peace, and 
 the golden radiance of joyful triumph, and the ame- 
 thystine hue of hope, of the far-distance of ineffable 
 things. The gates of pearl seem like the soft fleecy 
 clouds on the horizon, which stand between the dark- 
 
222 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 ness and the dawn, and behind which the sun is 
 struggling to appear. As they open up, letting out 
 the imprisoned sunshine, they disclose in their inner 
 depths the radiant hues which glorify the sunrise; just 
 as through the gates .of pearl thrown wide open the 
 awe- struck apostle beholds in the innermost centre 
 of the sapphire light the unspeakable splendours of 
 the heavenly city. 
 
 Not from his recollections of his own old home 
 could the unique feature of the gates of pearl have 
 been derived. It must have been suggested by the 
 circumstances of his island home, as Peter's vision 
 on the housetop at Joppa took shape from the hunger 
 of his body and the occupation of the tanner with 
 whom he lodged. There was nothing to remind him 
 of the gates of pearl in the earthly Jerusalem. That 
 city was perched on a far inland height. It was a 
 mountain city breathing mountain air. Unlike other 
 capitals, it had no connection or commerce with the 
 outlying nations. No murmur of foaming wave 
 mingled with the hum of its traffic ; no salt-breath 
 of ocean came with its crisp keenness and memories 
 of far-distant regions into the close air of its crowded 
 streets. The sleep that is among the lonely hills 
 was around it. Its gates were made of the stout 
 cedars of Lebanon or the oaks of Bashan, or the 
 brass of Hermon, the productions of the land itself, 
 and they opened and closed not for commercial 
 but for agricultural purposes. Why then should the 
 gates of the heavenly Jerusalem be so different? 
 
xin. THE GATES OF PEARL. 223 
 
 Why should they be composed each of one pearl, 
 of a substance that is intimately connected with the 
 sea, whose associations bring the mind out of the 
 shadow of the inland mountains to the shores of 
 the open ocean, and from the lonely sanctuary of a 
 secluded race to the wide and busy parliament of the 
 world? I believe that a special emphasis is placed 
 upon this remarkable feature of the heavenly vision. 
 Let us examine it particularly then, and we shall find 
 that it is full of precious significance. 
 
 i. The first point of consideration is the number of 
 the gates. There were twelve of these gates ; three on 
 the east, three on the north, three on the south, and 
 three on the west. What a contrast does this feature 
 of the heavenly city present to the narrowness and 
 exclusiveness of the old Jewish polity ! The Jews were 
 the hermits of the human race. They were kept apart 
 from all other nations on the high plateau which had 
 walls of mountain, desert, river-trench, and stormy sea 
 hemming them in on every side. It was considered 
 unlawful for a Jew to keep company with or come in to 
 one of another nation. The people prided themselves 
 on their exclusive privileges as the favourites of heaven, 
 and pushed to an extreme the restrictions of their 
 religion. Even St. John himself could not altogether 
 divest his mind of his Jewish prejudices. He could 
 hardly yet realize the idea that the world was greater 
 in God's eyes than Judaea ; that the Church of Christ 
 was to be one in which the Jew was to have no ex- 
 clusive privileges and the Gentile to be subject to no 
 
224 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
 disabilities. And therefore he needed the silent rebuke 
 presented in the vision of the New Jerusalem as a type 
 of the boundless freeness and fulness of the love that 
 passeth knowledge. Unlike the little Jewish capital, 
 type of its narrow creed, the heavenly city was vast as 
 the largest thought or hope could compass, a perfect 
 cube of twelve thousand furlongs, capable of containing 
 all the cities of the world within its circuit Through 
 the earthly Jerusalem no river ran, no highway passed. 
 Its gates were shut for safety and security in its moun- 
 tain fastness. But through the heavenly Jerusalem the 
 broad full river of life flowed ; and through its gates or 
 up the river the nations brought their wealth into it. 
 Through its gates, open to the four quarters of the 
 globe, a multitude which no man could number of all 
 nations and kindreds and people and tongues had 
 entered in. From the east and the west, from the 
 north and the south, they sat down with Abraham, 
 Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. There 
 was a time when the beloved disciple might have felt 
 what Peter felt when the sheet full of four-footed beasts 
 and creeping things was let down before him. The 
 spectacle of aliens from the commonwealth of Israel 
 admitted to the same blessedness as the chosen people, 
 would have tempted him to exclaim, " Not so, Lord." 
 Even now he is overwhelmed with astonishment at the 
 unexpected sight, and can only give to the angel's ques- 
 tion, " Who are these ? and whence came they ? " the 
 wondering answer of one in a dream, " Sir, thou 
 knowest." 
 
xin. THE GATES OF PEARL. 
 
 225 
 
 There is, I cannot help thinking, something signifi- 
 cant in the very place where the vision of the New 
 Jerusalem was given to St. John. It was not in a 
 narrow, consecrated place, connected with the limita- 
 tions of thought and feeling, but on an island in the 
 ocean, surrounded by the mighty waters, emblem of 
 the Divine justice that is broad and deep as floods. 
 There is a similar significance in the place where 
 Christ gave His last command to the disciples. It 
 was a mountain in Galilee, the least Jewish part of 
 Palestine, far removed from the temple and the city 
 of Jerusalem, from all sacerdotalism and ritualism, from 
 all the restraints of human creeds and ordinances. 
 There above the low, petty world of human strifes 
 and questionings, with the largest view of God's world 
 around Him, and the widest horizon of sympathy and 
 hope ; on a mountain, such as that on which Satan 
 showed Him all the kingdoms of the world and the 
 glory of them, and promised to give them to Him, if 
 He would fall down and worship him there He de- 
 clared the vast extent of His kingdom, and commanded 
 the disciples to teach all nations. 
 
 The vision of the New Jerusalem was unlike anything 
 that had ever been seen on earth. It was a revelation 
 that was made to the Jews, but it did not originate among 
 them. The idea was not formed on earth, it was 
 wrought out in heaven. It far transcended human 
 conceptions and earthly instincts. We see all through 
 the history of the Jews that God's thoughts were high 
 above their thoughts as the heavens above the earth. 
 
22 6 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 He was continually telling His covenant people that 
 their history was included in a larger and grander 
 history ; that in their seed all the families of the earth 
 should be blessed. But the best and wisest of them 
 were continually misunderstanding His intentions, and 
 gauging them by their own narrow prejudices. If there 
 was one thing especially opposed to the whole tenor of 
 Jewish thought, it was Christ's command to go into 
 all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. 
 And to us in the Christian Church, who have been 
 placed on a more elevated standing-point, and have 
 been educated by eighteen centuries of Christian ex- 
 perience, the range of the Divine regard seems as 
 limited as ever. We are accustomed to hear about 
 the strait gate and the narrow way and the few who 
 find it; and we make out of the saying a straitened 
 faith and a narrow Gospel. To take an image from 
 the garden instead of the seashore, our Christianity is 
 too much like a trained tree, stretched flat along a 
 trellised wall that looks to the south, fastened by nails 
 and rags of party, Church creeds and ordinances. We 
 do not believe much in a Christianity that grows like 
 a standard freely all round, with branches, blossoms, 
 and fruits stretched out in every direction to the 
 north as well as to the south, to the east as well as 
 to the west. We fancy that there is no salvation out 
 of the Church or the denomination to which we our- 
 selves belong; that the sun of God's favour shines 
 only in the little circle of holy ground in which we our- 
 selves move. The Kingdom of Heaven which even the 
 

 xin. THE GATES OF PEARL. 227 
 
 most charitable and hopeful picture to themselves is a 
 miserably little one. We need, indeed, the vision of 
 the vast heavenly city with its twelve gates pointing 
 to every part of the compass, and its multitude, which 
 no man can number, out of every nation to correct 
 our narrow, selfish judgments of men, and to enlarge 
 our hopes of the destiny of the race. 
 
 That vision is the highest illustration of the teaching 
 of Scripture by precept and example, that God is no 
 respecter of persons. It confirms what the Word of 
 God uniformly declares, that the True Light lighteth 
 every man that cometh into the world, and makes Him- 
 self known even in the midst of the most profound 
 moral darkness, and keeps hold of the most unlikely 
 human hearts by cords of a man unknown to us. God 
 has everywhere, even in the vilest dens of ignorance 
 and sin, heaven-sunned natures ; men and women 
 who keep by some blind love or instinct a portion 
 -of heaven in the midst of all that shrouds and 
 shuts out heaven, who have some good thing towards 
 God in their hearts, some gentle thing towards men 
 in their conduct, by means of which God is purify- 
 ing and drawing them to Himself. And we know that 
 there are men and women who develop even from an 
 unsound creed and corrupt circumstances a beautiful 
 faith and a fragrant life as the pure lily grows out of 
 the vile mud, or the exquisite blossoms of a tropical 
 orchid spring from roots adhering to the rotten trunk 
 of a fallen tree. Christ proclaimed to the Jews, what 
 He is still proclaiming to Christians, "Other sheep I 
 
228 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 have, which are not of this fold : them also I must 
 bring." Out of every nation, out of every creed, out 
 of every Church, out of every circumstance, Christ 
 attracts faithful and loving hearts to Himself, as the 
 magnet picks the particles of iron congenial to itself 
 out of a heap of sand ; and by diversities of belief, 
 action, and experience He educates and prepares them 
 for His everlasting fold. Some enter by one gate, 
 some by another. Some are led forward out of their 
 darkness to the gate; others are led backward from 
 the light, to grope through their darkness to the gate, 
 made blind that they may see. Some whose natural 
 goodness hinders their grace, are brought through 
 much tribulation to enter in by the door; and some 
 whose life is evil are conducted by a discipline of 
 love at once into the shining path of the just. 
 
 But while there are many modes of entrance into 
 the heavenly city corresponding to the varying condi- 
 tions and circumstances of men, there is only one 
 way of salvation. The gates of the New Jerusalem, 
 although twelve in number and placed on different 
 sides, are nevertheless composed of the same material. 
 Every several gate is of one pearl. The redeemed 
 are not saved by the sect to which they belong, or 
 the creed which they profess, or the circumstances by 
 which they have been disciplined. They are saved 
 by the one Name which is given under heaven, in 
 whatever way they became acquainted with that Name. 
 It is the one cross that draws all men to the Saviour. 
 It is by the rugged, tear-stained, path to Calvary that 
 
THE GA TES OF PEARL. 
 
 229 
 
 the Good Shepherd finds every lost sheep straying 
 in the wilderness and brings it back to the fold. He 
 accepts in every nation those who live up to the light 
 that is given them, not for their own sakes, but through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord. The folds are many, the flock 
 is but one. There are many mansions, but one home. 
 The gates of the city are numerous, but the mode of 
 entrance is the same for all ; and the keys of death 
 and of the eternal world hang at the girdle of Him 
 who for Jew and Gentile, bond and free, for those who 
 are afar off as well as for those who are near, is the 
 Way, the Truth, and the Life. 
 
 We are told that the gates are not shut day or night. 
 They are not needed for defence or security like those 
 of the earthly city, for the inhabitants dwell in a peace- 
 able habitation, and in a sure dwelling and in a quiet 
 resting-place. I remember seeing an ancient pre- 
 historic tomb opened, in which a bronze sword broken 
 in two lay beside the mouldering skeleton. That 
 broken sword told an eloquent story of the wonderful 
 change that had come over the faith of men. In 
 former ages the dead were buried with their armour 
 and swords ready for action ; for they fell asleep in the 
 belief that in the next world they would rise up to 
 renew the battles of this, and find their chief happiness 
 in celebrating their victories over their foes. But when 
 men broke the sword which they laid in the tomb by 
 the side of its owner, it showed that they had begun 
 to realize the blessed truth that in the future life there 
 would be no need for the sword, for all the weary 
 
230 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 warfare of earth would be done with for ever. Like 
 the broken sword laid in the grave are the gates of the 
 celestial city. Their existence reminds the inhabitants 
 of a former condition of warfare and insecurity, while 
 their open state shows the contrast between the old 
 guarded fortress, exposed to continual alarms, and the 
 present freedom and enlargement of the quiet habita- 
 tion, defended only by the glory of God, as the wide 
 border of Canaan was guarded by angel sentinels 
 during the keeping of the solemn feasts. For beauty 
 therefore, not for use, the heavenly city has its twelve 
 gates. Useful things exhaust their meaning in their 
 use. But beautiful things, like pearls and flowers, have 
 an exhaustless significance, and are suggestive of a 
 purer and higher world. The pearly gates are there- 
 fore beautiful instead of useful, or rather they have a 
 higher use than their earthly prototypes had. They 
 are for a symbolical purpose. Like the staves that 
 bore the ark during the wilderness wanderings and 
 were finally drawn out when the ark was brought into 
 the temple, but not removed, being still kept in the 
 most holy place, although no longer needed, for the 
 sake of the precious memories and associations con- 
 nected with them, the gates of the heavenly city, 
 though no longer needed for defence against the 
 enemy, are still preserved because of the deep lessons 
 of Divine grace which they teach. All that might 
 cause fear or a feeling of insecurity will be gone for 
 ever; but all that will remind the redeemed of the 
 way by which they had been led in the past, all that 
 
THE GATES OF PEARL. 
 
 231 
 
 will enhance the value of the Saviour's love and serve 
 to deepen their own peace, will be kept before their 
 minds by everlasting memorials. 
 
 2. And this brings me to the second point of con- 
 sideration the material of which the gates were com- 
 posed. Every several gate was of one pearl. What 
 a beautiful symbol this is ! Death is the gate by 
 which every one must enter the heavenly city. And 
 what a dark and gloomy appearance does it present to 
 us on this earthly side ! The exit from this mortal life 
 usually appears to us as an iron gate closing a vista 
 of funereal cypresses. The way to it is strewn with 
 faded flowers and withered leaves. It is corroded 
 with rust ; it creaks miserably on its hinges ; it is 
 carved with the skull and the cross-bones emblems of 
 our sad mortality. About it grows the deadly night- 
 shade and the gloomy ivy. On the top is the urn of 
 ashes draped with the weeper's towel ; and on the sides 
 are the upturned torches whose flame has been ex- 
 tinguished. A chill that penetrates to the soul pervades 
 all the place ; and the darkness that broods there per- 
 petually has no ray of light to cheer it. Such is the 
 dread picture which the end of this life presents to our 
 imaginations. Sin has done everything possible to make 
 the gate unsightly to poor creatures of sense. But how 
 different is the entrance into the heavenly life ! We 
 pass through the iron gate of death, and looking back 
 from the other side, from the golden street of the 
 celestial city, we see it transformed into a gate of pearl. 
 All its gloom has disappeared ; all its relics of mortality 
 
232 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 have vanished. It gleams before our eyes, purged by 
 the heavenly eye-salve, in the soft tender radiance of one 
 of the fairest and most precious objects that we know 
 on earth. Beneath it flows the river of life ; over it 
 waves the unchanging foliage the ever-beautiful blos- 
 soms and the unfading fruits of the tree of life. Upon it 
 is blazoned the armorial bearings of Christ, the crown of 
 righteousness, beside whose splendour all earthly glories 
 vanish. It is a triumphal arch for the passage of 
 those who have been made more than conquerors 
 through Him that loved them. How strange will be the 
 transition to many of God's timid saints who are in 
 bondage all their lifetime to the fear of death, who 
 dread every allusion to it, and keep every object and 
 association connected with it away from their eye and 
 their mind ! Like Peter, led by an angel, they will pass 
 forth from their narrow prison here in which they 
 groaned, through the iron gate, and awake to find them- 
 selves in a trance of joy on the golden street of the New 
 Jerusalem. Through darkness into light, through pain 
 and weeping into everlasting joy, through fear and dread 
 into a bright and blessed assurance for evermore; the 
 gate of iron changed into a gate of pearl ; that which 
 was an object of the utmost abhorrence into an object 
 of admiration unbounded ! Who has not seen the 
 transfiguration of the dying, the gleam of the pearly 
 gates shining upon the face growing pale and cold in 
 death, like a winter sunbeam on a wreath of snow, and 
 giving to the meanest countenance a dignity and 
 beauty which it never knew before ! Who has not 
 
xiii. THE GATES OF FEARL. 233 
 
 heard the dying describe sights of exquisite beauty as 
 the shades of darkness were gathering round the outer 
 eye, and the inner eye was opening upon the unutter- 
 able wonders within the gates ! The cloud that over- 
 shadowed all their life is thus, at the gates of the west, 
 becoming radiant with the glory that shall be revealed 
 in them. Jesus Himself bowed His head and passed 
 through the iron gate. He entered the region of death 
 and all heaven entered with Him, and He^annexed to 
 the Kingdom of Life this dark outer realm which sin 
 had estranged from the government of God ; and like a 
 mightier Samson, carrying the gates of the prison that 
 had held Him captive up the hill of God, the gates of 
 pearl were opened wide at the angel-song of triumph 
 " Lift up your heads, oh! ye gates ; and be ye lifted up, 
 ye everlasting doors ; and the King of Glory shall come 
 in." Through the opening of the gates by His resurrec- 
 tion and ascension we have caught bright glimpses of 
 the glorious things which He hath prepared for them 
 that love Him ; we have seen the other side of death 
 the heavenly side and a light has streamed down upon 
 all this dark, death-stricken world that shall never 
 more be lost out of it. 
 
 How much do these gates of pearl say to the re- 
 deemed souls that have passed through them ! In some 
 far inland home you put your ear to the cool pink lips 
 of a shell you had picked up from the ocean marge, and 
 it murmurs to you of the warm ripples that curl on the 
 creamy beach, and the soft winds that make a low 
 speech tenderly sad on the lonely shore. The deep 
 
234 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 voice of the unresting sea is in that strange far-away 
 murmur. And so to the inner ear these gates of pearl, set 
 up where there is no more sea, speak of the far-off 
 vanished seas of earth, through whose dangers the 
 redeemed escaped safe to land. In them is heard, as it 
 were, deep calling unto deep. They tell of days when 
 words like those which Jonah uttered from the depths 
 of the sea come instinctively to the lips " All thy 
 waves and thy billows are gone over me " ; and of 
 stormy winds by which they were driven up and down 
 in Adria, and they had no resource in the dark night 
 and under the starless skies but to cast forth the anchor 
 and wait for the morning. None can gaze upon these 
 gates of pearl without thinking of the resistless, pitiless 
 power, the impassive fixedness of purpose which makes 
 the sea the most appropriate image of the calamities of 
 life ; or of that other aspect of it the profound mono- 
 tony, the absence of feature, the constant yet aimless 
 and formless movement, the expression of deep melan- 
 choly, which so well illustrates the dreary hours of life, 
 less tolerable even than its calamities, when nothing 
 interests, and the whole head is sick and the whole 
 heart faint. None, too, can gaze upon the gates of 
 pearl without being reminded of their wonderful de- 
 liverances, when the Lord " drew them out of great 
 waters " and cheered them with a precious promise 
 like a pearl found in the depth " When thou passest 
 through the waters I will be with thee, and through the 
 rivers they shall not overflow thee." They cannot 
 think of the storm without thinking of Him who came 
 
xin. THE GATES OF PEARL. 
 
 235 
 
 through the storm to their help, and said to the waves 
 within and without, " Peace, be still." The pearly gates 
 are therefore the survivors of the seas that have fled r 
 after their changes and storms had done their work in 
 preparing the redeemed for their rest. Through these 
 pearly gates they pass from the tempestuous sea of 
 earth to the sea of glass before the throne, whose crystal 
 purity no sin can stain, whose eternal calm no billow 
 can ruffle. And as on the morning after a storm that 
 has made many wrecks we walk along the shore, with 
 the diamond sand sparkling in the sunshine, and the 
 calm sea smiling under the cloudless heavens, so after 
 life's night of storm the redeemed walk upon the sea of 
 glass within the pearly gates and rejoice in everlasting 
 sunshine. 
 
 How were these gates of pearl formed? The walls 
 of the heavenly city are formed of jewels, each of 
 which was crystallized in the dark depths of the mine, 
 under the pressure of rocks, by igneous or aqueous 
 agency. Rubies are derived from granite rocks ; 
 sapphires from metamorphic limestones. Quietly as 
 they lie now around the eternal home, they were once 
 exposed to forces which shook the earth to its found- 
 ations. They took their crimson hue from the devour- 
 ing fire, and their sapphire gleam from the destructive 
 flood. The coloured light that throbs imprisoned in 
 their translucent walls, more intense because of its 
 concentration, was focused in them by the throes of 
 the earth during the long ages of its geological history. 
 From sand and clay and coal, and other worthless or 
 
236 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 repulsive substances, they were sublimed into their 
 present beautiful forms and hues, as the blossoms of 
 the mineral kingdom. 
 
 But the truth that what is fairest and most precious 
 is obtained only through sore and long-continued 
 struggle, which the jewelled walls witness to, is 
 attested in a more tender and touching way by the 
 gates of pearl. This substance is not of mineral 
 but of animal formation. It is intermediate be- 
 tween the world of life and the world of death, 
 between the lifeless matter which is the only thing 
 that is permanent here, and the living matter which 
 is continually changing. It has not the hardness of 
 the diamond, which is farthest removed from life, nor 
 the softness of the animal or vegetable cell, which is the 
 most variable of all things. It is not produced by the 
 dead inert earth, but by a living creature ; and therefore 
 it affords a better analogy of human nature than jasper 
 and sapphire, emerald and amethyst. It represents 
 more clearly and fully the free play of human life. A 
 pearl is caused by the irritation of a minute parasite, or 
 by the presence of a particle of sand or other extraneous 
 matter accidentally introduced between the mantle and 
 the shell of a species of mussel. The creature cannot 
 get rid of it, and therefore to allay the irritation, covers 
 it over with a series of layers of nacre or pearly matter. 
 This smooth, round, shining object, which feels so soft 
 and pleasant to the touch, which reflects the light in a 
 tender way like snow or moonlight, which is so precious 
 that it is deemed worthy of a place in the crown of a 
 
XITI. THE GATES OF PEARL. 237 
 
 monarch, is caused by a struggle with difficulties, an 
 effort to overcome a trial ; subliming by a wonderful 
 alchemy, by the victorious power of life, into enduring 
 patience a source of irritation, turning a worthless grain 
 of sand into a pearl. 
 
 The fact therefore that the heavenly gates are made 
 of a substance with such a remarkable history as this, 
 irresistibly suggests the trials by which those who pass 
 through them are made meet for their abundant 
 entrance into the city. The gate through which the) 
 enter is that of purification and ennobling through 
 suffering; the earthly element in their nature which 
 is the cause of all their suffering transformed into the 
 celestial through the fellowship of the sufferings of Him 
 who is the pearl of great price. That gate speaks 
 of temptations vanquished, of degrees of excellence 
 reached through suffering, of a Divine beauty destined 
 to supersede every mark of sorrow and be eternal. 
 Who would have thought that out of the rough, broken, 
 coarse-looking shell, as it appears on the outside, and 
 by the labours and sufferings of a creature almost at 
 the lowest point in the scale of life, whose structure is 
 as simple as it can well be, without beauty of form or 
 hue to attract, the glistening loveliness and preciousness 
 of the oriental pearl could be produced! And who 
 could have thought that out of the dark and sorrowful 
 experiences of earth, purified by suffering, could have 
 come the great white-robed multitude within the gates 
 of pearl ! To themselves while on earth it might have 
 seemed wonderful grace that they should ever have 
 
238 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 seen the faintest vision of the glory afar off. How then 
 can they ever cease to adore the far more wonderful 
 grace that through the grave itself when they said to 
 corruption, thou art my father, and to the worm, thou 
 art my mother and my sister led them within the gates 
 .and established their feet upon the golden pavement, 
 never more to go out ! 
 
 When the North Bridge of Edinburgh was widened 
 some years ago, they found in the arched vaults under 
 the roadway the most wonderful caves of snow-white 
 stalactites. The rain percolating through the roof 
 carried with it the lime with which the stones were 
 cemented, and by a slow and silent process carried on 
 for many years, transformed the gloomy vaults into a 
 fairy scene. Who would have suspected that under the 
 common roadway, under the tread of the feet of toil 
 and the busy traffic of the world, such a wonderful 
 transformation was going on ! And who would suppose 
 that in the midst of this common every-day life of ours, 
 the walls of an eternal city were growing up without 
 noise of axe or hammer, our visible life being merely 
 the scaffolding of it ; that out of the common materials 
 of our hard earthly experience there were being formed 
 gates of pearl through which we shall enter into the 
 heavenly city. Here, and now if at all, these walls and 
 gates must for us be formed. Christ says, " I am the 
 door." By what sufferings and toils inconceivable was 
 that pearly gate formed ! He was made sin for us that 
 we might be made the righteousness of God in 
 Him. He passed through the reality of death that 
 
xin. THE GATES OF PEARL. 239 
 
 only the shadow of it might remain to us. And we too 
 must know the fellowship of His sufferings if we are to 
 enter within the gates into the enjoyment of His 
 glory. We must be dead with Him if we are to live 
 with Him ; we must suffer with Him if we are to reign 
 with Him. Through purity of soul alone can we enter 
 the gates of purity into that place where nothing that 
 defileth can enter. 
 
 The dweller in the far inland glen brings back a 
 few shells to remind him amid the altogether dis- 
 similar scenes of his daily life of his visit to the sea- 
 shore ; the sailor brings home corals and other strange 
 productions of the deep as memorials of the foreign 
 lands where he has been. My own early home was 
 far away from the sea, in the heart of the inland moun- 
 tains ; and I remember well how my father and mother 
 used, on their occasional visits to some seaside watering, 
 place, to bring back a quantity of shells with them, and 
 how delighted we children were with the strange objects, 
 and the curious speculations regarding a world to us un- 
 known they gave rise to. So I desire to bring from the 
 land that is very far off into the midst of our worldly 
 pursuits and enjoyments a few inspiring thoughts 
 regarding the gates of pearl. Here we are walking 
 upon the shore of the eternal sea, whose deep-voiced 
 murmur is ever in our ears, breaking in at every pause 
 in the music of life, and rising to fuller power in the 
 solemn night, when all things else are hushed. Day by 
 day the mighty deep creeps slowly up the shore and 
 sweeps away the sand upon which we had erewhile 
 
240 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. xm. 
 
 stood. One by one the grains of golden sand which 
 we had gathered creep through our fingers back to the 
 deep. One by one the bright pebbles or shells we 
 had picked up are dropped in weariness and loss of 
 interest. Many of the friends who walked with us 
 have crossed over to the other side, and as the warm 
 soft sand received ages ago the impress of some 
 creature that crawled over it. and we cleave the dark 
 bosom of the rock and see the immemorial print safe 
 in its core, so our hearts retain the memory of the 
 friends who vanished on the eternal shore, and of the 
 days and things that are past. Our own day is far 
 spent, and the shades of evening will soon fall. Soon 
 our time too will come. But if we have the talisman of 
 the Pearl of Great Price in our bosom, for whose sake 
 we may well part with all our own goodly pearls, our 
 eyes will be opened like those of the Seer of Patmos; 
 and beyond the sunset and the darkness, and on the 
 other side of the sea, we shall behold the battlements 
 of the celestial city ; we shall trust the wave with Him 
 who made the rolling deep a crystal pavement, and 
 death itself will be to us only a warder beside a gate of 
 pearl ! 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 THE CEDARS AND THE CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 " And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the 
 garden in the cool of the day." GENESIS iii. 8. 
 
 " And being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks ; and in 
 the midst of the seven candlesticks One like unto the Son of Man." 
 REVELATION i. 12, 13. 
 
 THE book of Revelation is a mosaic, in which the 
 previous parts of the Bible are brought together 
 and formed into a new picture, illustrative of the 
 fortunes of the Church and the world. By its constant 
 use of the imagery of former books in new combinations, 
 we are impressively taught how the future arises from 
 and is shaped and conditioned by the past. The 
 moulds of older history are used over again for the inci- 
 dents of the present and the forecasts of the future. As 
 Genesis is the book of beginnings, so Revelation is the 
 book of completions, in which the copestone is placed 
 upon the building, which, in the previous Scriptures, 
 has been slowly constructed through the ages, and the 
 capital laid on the pillar of truth whose foundation is 
 seen in Eden, and whose top reaches to heaven. 
 Q 241 
 
242 THE OLIVE LEAF. . CHAP. 
 
 i. Between the two revelations of God to man which 
 meet us respectively at the commencement and at the 
 close of the sacred Scriptures, we find the closest con- 
 nection. He who appeared to our first parents walking 
 among the trees of the garden, appeared in vision to 
 the beloved disciple in the midst of the seven golden 
 candlesticks in the Isle of Patmos. The two Divine 
 manifestations were essentially the same, although they 
 differed in outward form and circumstances. Between 
 them there were connecting links. The experience of 
 the exile on Horeb, for instance, was repeated in the 
 case of the exile in Patmos. The same vision of the 
 burning bush which appeared to Moses appeared to 
 John in the vision of the seven golden candlesticks. 
 The Son of Man associated Himself with the one symbol 
 in the same way that He had associated Himself with 
 the other. The occasion in both cases was similar. 
 The Hebrew race and the Divine purpose contained in 
 its history seemed on the eve of extinction under the 
 severe pressure of the bondage in Egypt The same 
 race was threatened with dispersion over the face of 
 the earth, and its civil and religious polity with destruc- 
 tion by the Roman power. And as the vision of the 
 burning bush assured Moses that no fire of persecution 
 could destroy His people, or prevent His purpose of 
 mercy in their education and discipline from being 
 carried out ; so the vision of the golden candlesticks 
 assured John that He who was in the midst of them 
 would never suffer the light which they were privileged 
 to hold forth among the nations to be extinguished. 
 

 THE CEDARS AND CANDLESTICKS. 243 
 
 The two symbols were witnesses that God's election of 
 His covenant people had not been in vain ; that the 
 original charter in virtue of which they were to conquer 
 the earth and bless, alike under the form of Judaism 
 and of Christianity, all the families of the earth, was not 
 abrogated, but was to be fulfilled to the utmost. The 
 burning bush was never to be extinguished, it was to be- 
 come a candlestick ; and the fire of God's dealings with 
 His people for their purification was to become a con- 
 spicuous light held aloft to lighten the whole world. 
 
 The same truth is still further illustrated by the fact 
 that the vision of John in Patmos was based upon the 
 Jewish tabernacle and temple. The candlesticks which 
 the beloved disciple saw were like the one which Moses 
 was commanded to place in the tabernacle, and the 
 slightly different one which Solomon caused to be 
 wrought when he built an house for the God of Israel. 
 He who was banished from the earthly sanctuary from 
 the visible symbols saw, like Moses on the Mount, the 
 patterns of those things. He entered within the veil, 
 and in the spirit beheld the realities of which the temple 
 objects and services were the mere passing signs. The 
 resemblance was dear to him, and it was doubtless 
 meant to remind the followers of the Lord Jesus of a 
 sacred past with which they were closely connected ; 
 that though the former revelation was to cease, it was to 
 appear in a higher form, which should nevertheless pre- 
 serve the essential features and elements of what had 
 been familiar to them. Separated outwardly from the 
 solemnities of the ancient worship from the priesthood, 
 
244 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 the altars, the sacrifices, the festivals, the Hebrew Chris- 
 tians could still enjoy all that was most precious and 
 enduring in the possessions of their race. In losing the 
 temple and its services, they lost only the visible symbols 
 of the true atonement for sin and of spiritual access to 
 God ; and they found in the Christian Church a more 
 satisfying communion with eternal things than their 
 fathers had ever found in the tabernacle and temple. 
 And the modification in the old form which the 
 Apostle beheld was itself full of significance. The single 
 candlestick of pure gold, whose light illumined the holy 
 place which was the pattern of the Church upon earth, 
 appeared before John in the darkness and loneliness of 
 his exile, multiplied into seven distinct candlesticks, as 
 if each branch of the prototype had become a separate 
 candlestick ; in token that the original Jewish Church, 
 which was one the Church of a single people had 
 differentiated into the Christia'n Church, which while one 
 as to its unity of faith and love, is also many as regards 
 its organization and individual life, the Church of all 
 nations and peoples and tribes and tongues. The in- 
 crease of lights, seven being the number of mystical 
 completeness, indicated the enlargement of the concep- 
 tion of the Church, the removal of the narrow boundaries 
 and restrictions which so long confined God's revelation 
 to one people and one country. And the fact that the 
 seven candlesticks were seen in vision, not in the holy 
 place of the temple where the Jewish candlestick stood, 
 not confined within the walls of the Jewish sanctuary, 
 but in the open air, under the broad heavens and sur- 
 
THE CEDARS AND CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 245 
 
 rounded by the wide sea, indicated that they had no 
 more a merely limited Jewish, but a universal human 
 signification. The candlestick was carried in triumph to 
 Rome, when Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed; 
 and the place of its captivity proved the scene of 
 its freedom and enlargement. The Roman sword had, 
 as it were, severed its seven branches from the main stem, 
 and made of them the seven separate Churches of Asia, 
 from which have come all the Churches of Christendom. 
 He who had kindled the great light in Jerusalem, to be 
 a witness of Himself and of His own presence with men, 
 was henceforth to be known as the Light of the World 
 the true Light that lighteth every man that cometh 
 into the world. 
 
 And as the vision of Patmos was thus connected with 
 the tabernacle and temple, and with the vision of 
 Horeb, so we can trace them all back to the Adamic re- 
 velation, whose symbol was the tree of life in the midst 
 of the garden. The sacred fire that appeared to Moses 
 burnt in a bush of the desert ; the candlesticks of the 
 tabernacle and temple, and of the Apocalyptic vision, 
 resembled a tree with its branches. And what is a tree ? 
 It is in reality a pillar of fire, a burning lamp an em- 
 bodiment of the same sunlight that burns in the fire on 
 the hearth, or in the flame of the candlestick. It is the 
 sunlight that enables the tree to build up its cells and 
 fibres from the carbon of the atmosphere ; and the 
 burning of wood or coal in the household fire, or the 
 consuming of the wick and the oil in the lamp, is 
 just the liberation of the ancient sunlight that formed 
 
246 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP, 
 
 the trees and forests of the past. The difference between 
 the living tree and the dead fuel on the hearth or in the 
 lamp, is that the fire in the one, owing to the conserving 
 power of the vital principle, is burning without being 
 consumed ; whereas in the other it is burning and con- 
 suming reducing to dust and ashes, because of the 
 absence of the vital conserving principle. Like Aaron's 
 rod that budded, the mystical candlestick had buds, 
 blossoms, and fruit. The bowls which contained the oil 
 were shaped like an almond-nut, the knops looked like 
 the flower buds, and the carved flowers resembled the 
 fully-expanded blossoms of the almond tree. This tree 
 was selected as the pattern of the golden candlestick, 
 and as that which yielded Aaron's miraculous rod, be- 
 cause it is the first to awaken from the sleep of winter, 
 as its Hebrew name signifies. Its early bloom, coming 
 in January before there is any green leaf on herb or tree, 
 and the ground is naked and desolate, heralds the ap- 
 proach of spring. I remember being greatly struck with 
 this circumstance among the ruins of the Palaces of the 
 Caesars at Rome. The soft clouds of almond bloom 
 looked surpassingly lovely, clinging to the leafless trees, 
 that grew among the grey old ruins, and looking down 
 upon the Arch of Titus on which, among the spoils of 
 Jerusalem, the golden candlestick is sculptured, still re- 
 taining delicately cut in the Pentelic marble the almond 
 ornaments on its shaft and branches. It was a symbol 
 of the life of nature, rising in perpetual youth and beauty 
 out of the decaying ruins of man's works. And so the 
 Hebrew candlestick might be regarded as emblematical 
 
xiv. THE CEDARS AND CANDLESTICKS. 247 
 
 of the life of the Church, being the first to awaken out 
 of the wreck of human sin, exhibiting its beauties of 
 holiness, and fruits of righteousness, while all around the 
 world is wrapt in the winter sleep of spiritual torpor. 
 
 The golden candlestick was meant to be a remini- 
 scence of that Eden where out of the ground the Lord 
 God made to grow every tree that was pleasant to the 
 sight and good for food ; the tree of life also, in the 
 midst of the garden. It was the symbol of the natural 
 revelation of God, the primitive religion of unfallen man, 
 when everything in nature spoke to him of God, and 
 showed forth the Divine glory. The candlestick in the 
 sanctuary was what the tree of life was in the garden; it 
 revealed in a typical form the deep spiritual things of 
 God. The truths shadowed forth by the candlestick 
 were indicated by the objects of the garden ; and the 
 one revelation was but the unfolding of the other. We 
 find, indeed, in the history of God's scheme of grace, 
 several connecting links between the different dispensa- 
 tions which show their continuity, and mark successive 
 stages in the evolution of Divine truth. The burning 
 lamp and the smoking furnace that passed between the 
 divided pieces of Abraham's sacrifice, the burning bush 
 that appeared to Moses, the pillar of cloud by day and of 
 fire by night that guided the Israelites through the wil- 
 derness, Aaron's rod that budded in the holy place, the 
 seven branched golden candlestick of the tabernacle and 
 temple, the fiery furnace of Babylon, the vision of the 
 olive trees and the candlestick of the prophet Zechariah, 
 and the parable and miracle of the barren fig-tree of our 
 
248 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 Lord in the Gospel all these symbolical incidents and 
 objects point back to the trees of Eden, and forward to 
 the candlesticks of the seven Churches of Asia. They 
 combine the two ideas of the tree and the light, the fire 
 that vegetates harmlessly in the foliage and bloom of the 
 summer tree and the fire that blossoms destructively 
 in the flame of the lamp and the furnace. They prepare 
 the way for and are shadows cast before of the final 
 revelation in the fulness of time. He who communed 
 with our first parents among the trees of the garden ap- 
 peared to Moses on the Mount, in the midst of a bush 
 burning without being consumed and manifested Him- 
 self to the last of the inspired witnesses at Patmos, in 
 the midst of the seven golden candlesticks made in the 
 form of the stem, branches, and flowers of a tree, 
 preserving in this form the memory of the primitive 
 revelation. He connected with every Theophany, the 
 cherubim, the symbols of creation, indicating that the 
 revelation affected nature as"well as man. The cheru- 
 bim that guarded the lost Eden for man preserved it 
 in its original purity and beauty for the purpose of re- 
 storing it to him when he should become worthy of it, 
 the new Adam in the new Eden were transferred to the 
 tabernacle and appeared above the mercy-seat, beaten 
 out of the same solid mass of gold in token that the 
 Mosaic dispensation was only a continuation of the 
 Adamic that our Creator became our Redeemer, and 
 that our redemption was the fulfilling of a purpose 
 deeply and mysteriously interwoven with the whole 
 history of the world. The Lamb was slain from the 
 
THE CEDARS AND CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 249 
 
 foundation of the world. That world was created by 
 Christ, without whom was not anything made that was 
 made, to be the theatre of redemption; and the Gospel 
 is the manifesting of the mystery which was hid from the 
 foundation of the world. 
 
 2. But between the revelation of Eden and the reve- 
 lation of Patmos there are some striking points of 
 contrast. The revelation of Eden was given in circum- 
 stances of peace and happiness. The life of our first 
 parents in their unfallen state was an idyllic one. They 
 wandered among the soft bowers of the garden, plucking 
 at will the rich clusters tint hung within easy reach of 
 their hand ; their only labour, the healthful, gentle exer- 
 cise needed to dress and prune Nature's luxuriance. 
 Nature was a faithful outward reflection of man's moral 
 state. Its beauty and fruitfulness coincided with man's 
 moral beauty and fruitfulness. Nature was in harmony 
 with him whose will was in harmony with the great Will 
 which expresses itself in the whole economy of the world. 
 As naturally and freely as the trees grew and the flowers 
 blossomed and the fruits ripened in Eden by the sweet 
 law of growth so naturally and freely did man in his 
 innocent state display the beauties of holiness and pro- 
 duce the fruits of righteousness. His religious experi- 
 ence grew as the plants around him, without effort or 
 struggle. What nature did unconsciously and willessly, 
 he did consciously and willingly. God walked and 
 talked with him among the trees in the garden face to 
 face, as a man with his friend. 
 
 But the revelation of Patmos was amid widely different 
 
250 THE OLIVE LEAR CHAP, 
 
 circumstances. The symbol of it was not the tree that 
 grew spontaneously by the laws of natural growth, but 
 the candlestick wrought by human hands, with the sweat 
 of the face. The gold of which it was composed was. 
 dug with toil and trouble from the mine, melted in the 
 furnace, purified from its ore, and not cast into a mould, 
 but beaten out of a solid piece with the hammer into 
 the form in which it appeared. The workman who 
 fashioned this most elaborate of all the vessels of the 
 sanctuary must have pondered minutely over and be- 
 stowed immense labour and skill upon every part ; and 
 yet the pattern and symmetry of the whole must have 
 been clearly in his mind while from one solid mass of 
 gold he beat out each shaft and floral ornamentation. 
 The oil for the light was also beaten from the olive 
 berries grown, gathered, and expressed by human toil and 
 skill ; and the wick in like manner was a human manu- 
 facture made of the fine twined linen which formed part 
 of the curtains of the tabernacle. The whole idea of the 
 candlestick implied toil and trouble. And this is the 
 great characteristic of the revelation of which it is the 
 symbol. Everything connected with it indicates salva- 
 tion from sin through toil and suffering. The first Adam 
 in the unfallen Eden had only the pleasant labour of 
 dressing and keeping the trees and flowers ; the second 
 Adam was a carpenter, converting the trees in the sweat 
 of His face into implements of toil. The cherubims at 
 Eden, the symbols of creation, were associated with the 
 flaming sword, the pains and sacrifices through which 
 alone the joys of life can now be obtained ; and their 
 
xiv. 7 HE CEDARS AND CANDLESTICKS. 251 
 
 effigies on the mercy-seat in the tabernacle were 
 sprinkled with the blood of atonement, in token that all 
 creation felt the blow of man's fall, and groaneth and 
 travaileth together in pain with him, waiting for its re- 
 demption. The burning lamp and the smoking furnace 
 appeared to Abraham in the horror of the great darkness 
 that had fallen upon him, and was a symbol of the 
 mingled suffering and triumph, darkness and light, 
 which were to characterize his own history and that of 
 his descendants. The burning bush on Horeb ap- 
 peared to Moses in his exile and daily toil, and spoke 
 of the sorrowful experiences of the Hebrews in Egypt, 
 with whose lot God had identified Himself. 
 
 Every image, every symbol and type in sacred Scrip- 
 ture, speaks of the curse of the ground and the sorrow 
 of the soul which sin had brought into the world. This 
 great factor is taken into account in all remedial 
 schemes. The first promise to our race announces re- 
 demption through pain and toil and sorrow. The 
 bruising of the serpent's head is to be accomplished 
 only through the wounding of the victor's heel. God 
 talked with Abraham among the oak trees of Mamre, 
 as He talked with our first parents among the trees of 
 Eden. It was the commencement of the new dispen- 
 sation and covenant of grace, through which all the 
 families of the earth were to be blessed ; and therefore 
 God came to Abraham as He came to Adam before he 
 fell, and converted by His promise the oak grove of 
 Mamre in the wilderness into a beautiful reminiscence 
 of the lost Eden. But it was not altogether the 
 
252 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 Edenic state into which Abraham was brought back. 
 It had traces of the curse of sin in it, which must ever 
 defile and sadden even the most blessed experiences of 
 the holiest saints in this world. Abraham was sitting at 
 his tent door ; and how suggestive was the tent of the 
 pilgrim and stranger condition of man, and of the wil- 
 derness-life to which sin had banished him ! Not in the 
 cool of the day, as to Adam in Eden, did God appear 
 to the patriarch, but in the burning noon so expressive 
 of the sweat of the face, the weariness and languor, and 
 all the other trials of man's fallen condition. 
 
 The Levitical institutions disclose the painfulness of 
 the covenant of grace in a most remarkable manner. 
 Their limitations, their restrictions, their heavy burdens, 
 their awful sanctions, their sacrifices of blood and death, 
 all speak in the most impressive manner of the evil of 
 sin and the costliness of the deliverance from it. And 
 the life and death of our Saviour disclose this in a way 
 still more solemn and emphatic. Before the incarnation 
 He came in the noon-day heat to the tent-door of Abra- 
 ham ; and His appearance of humanity, His lassitude, 
 His fatigue, His dust-stained feet and garments, His 
 hunger and thirst, to which Abraham ministered, show 
 to us in a most remarkable way how the Lord identified 
 Himself with the lot of humanity, and made Himself a 
 partner in man's new experience of toil and pain, And 
 when He became incarnate in our nature and lived in 
 our world, He took up our condition at the low, 
 wretched point of privation and suffering to which sin 
 had reduced it. He came not into a garden, but into a 
 
THE CEDARS AND CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 253 
 
 wilderness. He became a Man of Sorrows and ac- 
 quainted with grief. The triumphs of His grace were 
 accomplished through the sorrows and toils, of His 
 humanity. His very miracles themselves show most con- 
 spicuously the pains and sufferings through which they 
 were wrought. The trees of Eden in His case were con- 
 verted into the cross of Calvary ; and the glorious fiat 
 of the first creation, " Let there be light, and there was 
 light," into the awful cry of darkness and death the 
 birth pang of the new creation, " My God, my God, 
 why hast thou forsaken me?" And even after the 
 triumphs of resurrection and glorification in heaven, He 
 appeared ever and anon to favoured witnesses with the 
 old tokens of suffering and death. To Saul He revealed 
 Himself on the way to Damascus as " Jesus of Nazar- 
 eth whom thou persecutest." In the midst of the seven 
 golden candlesticks the beloved disciple heard Him say- 
 ing, " I am He that liveth and was dead." In the midst 
 of the throne, John, through his tears, saw "a Lamb as 
 it had been slain." And as the history of man's salva- 
 tion is thus a record of toil and pain and sacrifice, so the 
 Christian life in the individual and in the Church is de- 
 veloped only by laborious spiritual effort, by the sweat 
 of the soul. It grows no longer as a tree, but as a build- 
 ing, a city of toil and suffering. How expressive, when 
 viewed in this light, are the promises given to the seven 
 Churches of Asia in connection with the overcoming of 
 some easily besetting sin, some special evil. It is to 
 him that overcometh the hindrance in himself and in the 
 world, that God now gives to eat of the tree of life. It 
 
254 TIIE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 is to the same Church the Church of Ephesus that 
 Christ manifests Himself as " He that walketh in the 
 midst of the seven golden candlesticks," and gives the 
 promise, " To him that overcometh will I give to eat 
 of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the para- 
 dise of God," thus showing the intimate connection 
 between the candlesticks of Patmos and the tree of 
 life of Eden; how the latter is gained through the 
 pains and toils and sacrifices indicated by the former. 
 3. Another point of contrast between the revelation 
 of Patmos and the revelation of Eden is the clearness 
 and fulness of the one, in comparison with the dimness 
 and obscurity of the other. God talked with Adam not 
 only among but through the medium of the trees of the 
 garden, conveyed to him spiritual instruction by the 
 objects and processes of nature around him. But what- 
 ever knowledge of spiritual truth he could thus glean 
 from the hieroglyphics of the natural world, there was 
 much- in the character and relations of God which of 
 necessity was unknown to him ; there was much in the 
 constitution of the world, in the wildernesses and deaths 
 of nature, in the whole physical order of the earth 
 which was set to the keynote of struggle, toil, and 
 suffering, which, because of his childlike innocence, he 
 could not understand. The revelation among the trees 
 was therefore supplemented when he fell by the revela- 
 tion among the candlesticks. Sin brought a terrible 
 darkness upon the world and upon man, but the Divine 
 light shone in the darkness. Man's eyes were opened 
 .to know good and evil. The darkness of sin brought 
 
xiv. THE CEDARS AND CANDLESTICKS. 255 
 
 out stars in heaven, formerly invisible ; showed to him a 
 side of God's nature, His justice, and His mercy, which 
 had not been formerly revealed ; disclosed to him 
 powers in himself of endurance and courage, hope 
 and faith, such as no dressing and keeping of the 
 garden in Eden could ever have brought into play, and 
 set forth a wonderful adaptation between a world whose 
 objects and processes are memorials of struggle, pain, 
 and death, and his own constitution, which has been so 
 organized that his purest joys should spring out of his 
 greatest sorrows, and his noblest gains out of his most 
 utter sacrifices. 
 
 The witness of the trees of Eden to Adam was simple 
 and intelligible. The tree of life was to him the symbol 
 of all spiritual blessings. The tree of the knowledge of 
 good and evil was the emblem of the whole moral law. 
 Every time that he beheld the beauty of the tree of life 
 he was reminded of the blessedness of obedience to 
 God's will. The eating of its fruit was a natural sacra- 
 ment in which he realized his communion with and tasted 
 of the goodness of God. Every time that he looked 
 upon the forbidden tree he was reminded of the penal- 
 ties of disobedience, expulsion from God's presence, 
 the loss of His favour, misery and death. Religion 
 meant to him simply the knowledge, worship, and 
 service of God as He was revealed by the objects and 
 processes of nature ; and on these points nature could 
 give him all the light that he needed. But we have 
 sinned and fallen, and religion to us includes, besides 
 these elements, repentance of sin and dependence upon 
 
256 THE OLIVE LEAR CHAP. 
 
 an atonement. Nature therefore cannot solve the awful 
 doubts which arise in the human heart regarding the 
 justice of God. Its testimony regarding His ways has 
 so many apparent contradictions that we can get no sure 
 and certain sound. Let us consider the lilies of the 
 field, or the stars of heaven, or any other objects of 
 nature, and they will return no answer to the moment- 
 ous question of the unquiet conscience and the sin- 
 stained soul, " How shall man be just with God ? " We 
 need therefore a special revelation. We need that He 
 who at first commanded the light to shine out of dark- 
 ness, should give us the light of the knowledge of His 
 glory in the face of Jesus Christ. God has given to us 
 this special revelation, suited to our altered sinful state, 
 in the economy of redemption. The candlesticks of 
 the sanctuary disclose to us in the darkness what the 
 trees of nature fail to teach. He who is in the midst of 
 these candlesticks reveals the Father to us, and is Him- 
 self the way by which we may worship Him. In His 
 cross we see the love that hates the sin and saves the 
 sinner ; how God can be just and yet the justifier of the 
 ungodly who believe in Jesus. 
 
 In the tabernacle of nature many of the typical 
 objects and processes were unintelligible to Adam, 
 because of his sinless state. The wilderness was there 
 waiting, but it had no meaning to him who was in Eden. 
 The thorns were on the trees, but they suggested no 
 analogy to him who had no thorns in his own heart and 
 life ; the thistles spread over the ground, but they con- 
 veyed no lessons regarding the sweat of the face to him 
 
xiv. THE CEDARS AND CANDLESTICKS. 
 
 257 
 
 whose light labour was to dress and keep the garden. 
 The leaves faded and the fruits fell, and the plants and 
 animals died around him, but the fading and the death 
 appeared to him, who knew nothing of death in his 
 own soul, only as part of God's order in the world, 
 mere phenomena of growth and progress. The whole 
 system of things in the midst of which he lived was 
 constituted with a view to redemption, but man had not 
 the key to the mystery, which was hid from the founda- 
 tion of the world, because as yet he needed not redemp- 
 tion. When man fell therefore God instituted the 
 tabernacle and its services to explain to him the types 
 of nature that were suitable to his case as a sinful and 
 perishing mortal. The garden of Eden became the 
 tent in the wilderness ; and the trees in the midst of 
 the garden, the golden candlestick in the sanctuary. 
 The cherubim were engraved upon the veil and 
 appeared above the mercy-seat, in order to unfold the 
 true meaning of the cherubim of nature. The holiness 
 of God, the sin of man, his need of forgiveness and 
 that forgiveness through the sufferings of another in his 
 stead these things were taught the ancient Hebrews by 
 object-lessons. And the shadows of the law were clearly 
 explained when the Gospel realities, which cast them be- 
 fore, appeared when the veil that covered spiritual truths 
 w^as rent in twain, and inarticulate symbols had given 
 place to the Divine Word made manifest in the flesh. 
 The trees of Eden are Shechinah clouds, that conceal 
 while they reveal the light that gives substance, shape, 
 
 and colour to them. But in the candlestick the light 
 R 
 
258 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 shines forth clear, naked, unveiled. In nature we see 
 the back parts of God the shadow cast by His pre- 
 sence ; but in grace we behold the light of the know- 
 ledge of His glory in the face of Jesus Christ. Without 
 the teaching of the True Light the revelation of the 
 works would be an enigma ; and apart from His Person 
 their glories would be a dream. If He had not inter- 
 preted the voices of nature, the lilies of the field would 
 have gone on preaching to us for ever in vain. The 
 falling of the corn of wheat into the ground and dying, 
 and through this sacrifice multiplying itself, would have 
 been regarded as a mere natural occurrence, if He had 
 not explained the reference which it had to the Lamb 
 slain from the foundation of the world. The mere 
 natural uses of the vine would alone have been re- 
 garded if He had not shown its higher use as the 
 shadow of Himself. What innumerable lessons regard- 
 ing the Kingdom of Heaven would have been lost to 
 us if He had not revealed in His parables its connec- 
 tion with the objects of nature and of human economy. 
 Seated beside Jacob's well He pointed to the living 
 water ; in the presence of bodily disease He manifested 
 Himself as the spiritual Physician ; at the grave of 
 Lazarus He revealed Himself as the resurrection and 
 the life. He imparted to us the blessed " second sight," 
 enabling us to recognize under the masks of earth the 
 angels of heaven. Every object in nature became in 
 His hands significant of eternal truth. He showed 
 that all the objects of creation were but uttering one 
 mighty prophecy all were but one united type of Him 
 
xiv. THE CEDARS AND CANDLESTICKS, 259 
 
 who is the first-born of every creature. And it is a 
 solemn thought that through toil and struggle, loss and 
 death, this clearer and fuller revelation comes to us. 
 The flame that burns in the candlestick is maintained 
 at the expense of the wasting oil and the consuming 
 wick. Through similar waste and consuming of heart, 
 and brain, and life, comes the higher knowledge of the 
 things that belong to our peace. The true light streams 
 out to us through the rent veil of Christ's flesh. Only 
 by passing through the thick darkness of the Cross 
 can we enter into the light inaccessible in which God 
 dwells everlastingly. 
 
 4. And now we come to the last point of contrast 
 between the revelation of Eden and the revelation of 
 Patmos, namely, the transitory nature of the one and 
 the permanence of the other. God appeared to our 
 first parents walking among the trees of the garden. 
 These trees were in their very nature evanescent. 
 They were mere passing forms, consolidated shadows 
 and vapours that appeared for a little and then vanished 
 away. What a tender and fragile growth is the grass ! 
 How short-lived is the goodliness of the flower of the 
 field ! How fleeting the life of the largest and oldest 
 patriarch of the forest, whose age has bridged across 
 almost the whole of human history ! The dirge of the 
 revelation of nature is, " All flesh is as grass, and all the 
 glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass 
 withereth and the flower thereof fadeth away." And 
 it is so evanescent because nature is the mere scaffold- 
 ing of grace ; and its decays and deaths, its toils and 
 
260 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 struggles are only for the strengthening and unfolding 
 of the spiritual and immortal. But, on the other hand, 
 God in Christ appeared to the beloved disciple in 
 Patmos in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks ; 
 and these candlesticks were the symbols of the Word 
 of the Lord which endureth for ever. The form and 
 substance of these candlesticks indicated the imperish- 
 able nature of the revelation which they symbolized. 
 They were all beaten out of solid gold the most 
 enduring of all earthly materials the very pavement 
 of heaven itself. They were carved with the figures 
 of flowers and fruits, preserving the exquisite loveliness 
 of the fading flowers and fruits of earth in an imperish- 
 able form. Thus they are appropriate emblems of the 
 beauty and glory of the new creation of God, a creation, 
 though new, yet founded as it were on the ruins of the 
 old, fashioned of lasting and unfading materials, and 
 yet combining all the beauty and glory of that which 
 shall pass away. The trees of nature speak of fading 
 leaves and falling blossoms and decaying fruits. The 
 candlesticks of grace made in the form of a tree, and 
 carved with blossoms and fruits, speak of leaves that 
 shall never fade, of flowers that shall never die, and 
 of fruits unto holiness, whose end is everlasting life. 
 And the fact that the candlesticks preserve the form 
 of the trees and the flowers of nature, indicates that 
 nothing good shall be lost, but only restored in a higher 
 form ; that the things of this world are all meant to 
 prepare for the new heavens and the new earth, wherein 
 ehvelleth righteousness. What is most precious and 
 
xiv. THE CEDARS AND CANDLESTICKS. 2 6i 
 
 vital in this transitory state of things has an enduring 
 existence. The form perisheth, but the essence re- 
 maineth. The teaching, the enlargement of heart and 
 mind, the purification and ennobling of the nature, the 
 beauty and the glory, which the discipline and educa- 
 tion of life have formed, remain and become the 
 possession of the immortal soul for evermore. 
 
 And the light, too, of the candlesticks, which shines 
 on these imperishable trees, and brings out the full 
 beauty and glory of these unfading flowers and un- 
 wasting fruits, is an appropriate symbol of the crowning 
 dispensation of God. Light was the first thing that 
 was created. It is the principle of order and beauty. 
 By means of it, chaos assumed shape and was clothed 
 with varied hues. It is the essential element of life, 
 health, growth, energy. Beyond its influence death 
 and silence reign supreme. And as it thus preceded 
 and forms all the things of earth, so it shall outlast 
 them all. The forms of tree and flower in which the 
 sunlight temporarily manifests itself, disappear, but the 
 sunlight itself survives ; so all that in religion is merely 
 instrumental the use of sacraments, the exercise of 
 self-denial and prayer, even faith in Christ all these, 
 which are but means, shall vanish, and the glorious end 
 shall be the beatific vision of the Lamb in the midst 
 of the throne, as the great everlasting Light of heaven. 
 " The sun shall be no more thy light by day ; neither 
 for brightness shall the moon give light unto thee ; but 
 the Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light, and 
 thy God thy glory." 
 
262 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 THE CORN. 1 
 
 THEY tell us that the homely corn that grows, 
 From russet stem and leaf, our daily bread, 
 Was once a lily ; which by various steps 
 Of menial work, became degraded thus. 
 It left its high-born sisters, in their robes 
 Of gorgeous idleness, to clothe itself 
 In this plain dress for common household use. 
 Its bright-hued petals, nectar-cup, and store 
 Of fragrance sweet, that insect lovers wooed, 
 It sacrificed ; and only wandering winds, 
 That have no sense of beauty or delight, 
 Now woo its sober blooms with heedless sighs. 
 But for this noble humbling of itself, 
 God has more highly honoured it, to be 
 The chief support of human beings, made 
 In His own image rulers of the world. 
 And now bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, 
 Its being mingles with our nature high ; 
 And through that union, it ascends our throne, 
 And gains in us the wondrous power, by which 
 The lilies wake to consciousness, and know 
 That they are beautiful, and find a speech, 
 
 1 The corn along with all the grasses belongs to the second great 
 division of the world of plants the liliaceous order; and according 
 to evolutionists is either a lily in its lowest stage of development, 
 or a degraded form of the higher type ; the latter supposition being 
 more probably its true history. Whatever foundation in reality it 
 may have, the idea is a most beautiful and suggestive one. 
 
 
xiv. THE CORN. 263 
 
 In which their worship may go up to heaven, 
 And their wise lessons reach immortal souls, 
 To train them for their glorious destiny. 
 And greater honour still has God bestowed, 
 Choosing it at the Holy Feast, for type 
 Of His own Son, who laid aside His robes 
 Of glory, worn in the far heavenly home, 
 And girded with the linen towel His loins, 
 That He might be our servant, wash our feet, 
 And feed our souls with food convenient ; 
 Nay, more ! become through the last sacrifice, 
 Stripped not of costly robes, but costly life 
 Himself the living bread, that nourishes 
 Unto eternal life a dying world. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 A POTTER Y MO UND. 
 
 " And He shall break it as the breaking of the potters' vessel that 
 is broken in pieces." ISAIAH xxx. 14. 
 
 ONE of the most curious objects in Rome is a 
 huge artificial mound called Monte Testaccio. 
 It stands near the gate of St. Paul's, between the 
 Aventine Hill and the Tiber, in the neighbourhood of 
 the Protestant Cemetery and of the pyramid of Cains 
 Cestius, and must have been one of the last objects 
 upon which the Apostle Paul gazed as he was led to 
 execution on the Ostian Road. It is a conspicuous 
 object, being nearly one third of a mile in circumfer- 
 ence, and about a hundred and fifty feet high, com- 
 manding from its top an extensive view of the most 
 desolate and historical parts of the Eternal City, and 
 the Campagna beyond. It is an easy task to climb 
 it, for on different sides there are well-worn tracks from 
 the base to the summit. The surface is covered in a 
 few places with a little sprinkling of soil, and a sparse 
 
 vegetation of grass and coarse weeds; but a close 
 264 
 
c HAP. xv. A PO TTER Y MO UND. 265 
 
 examination reveals the remarkable fact that the mound 
 is almost entirely composed of fragments of broken 
 earthenware. Specimens of ancient pottery of all kinds 
 may be found lying loosely on the surface of the heap, 
 or by digging a little way into the mass. Pots em- 
 ployed in menial offices in the kitchen ; testae, from 
 which the hill gets its name, or large jars of baked 
 clay, employed by builders to diminish the weight 
 of a dome, or the upper part of a wall, and huge 
 amphoras that had contained the classic wines of 
 antiquity, were all mingled indiscriminately together. 
 Not one vessel was whole, nor could the broken pieces 
 be united to form even the least important part 
 of any vessel. I searched in vain for a partially com- 
 plete specimen. It is an utter chaos of useless waste 
 and rubbish. The mound, from the nature of its 
 materials, is evidently of very ancient origin, nothing 
 having been added to it since the early Christian ages ; 
 but it must have taken many centuries to form it by 
 slow accumulation. 
 
 Various theories have been proposed regarding it ; 
 but the most plausible conjecture is that which con- 
 nects it with the neighbouring Emporium or Custom 
 House, where all the goods that were landed at the 
 ancient quay of Rome were stored up for a time. It 
 was the practice in those days to import not only wine 
 and oil, and other fluids, but also corn and solid articles 
 of food and of domestic use into the imperial city in 
 earthenware jars for more convenient carnage. In the 
 act of unloading, immense quantities of these fragile ves- 
 
2 66 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP, 
 
 sels would be broken, and the fragments carried away 
 to this spot, where they would accumulate in course of 
 time into the huge heap which now astonishes every 
 spectator. This explanation, however, is only a partial 
 one ; for were it complete we should expect to find in 
 the mound only vessels of one kind, fitted for storage 
 purposes. But it contains, as I have said, fragments of 
 the most varied assortment of vessels for household use 
 and for ornamental and even for sepulchral purposes. 
 And this fact proves that, although the broken jars of 
 the Emporium may have formed the foundation of the 
 mound and added considerably to its bulk, vast quanti- 
 ties of broken pottery from other quarters found their 
 way to it afterwards, and it grew in size owing to the 
 carelessness not only of the sailors at the port in un- 
 loading their vessels, but also of the slaves in the 
 Roman households. It became, in fact, the general 
 receptacle for the broken pottery of the whole city. 
 That this was carefully collected into this one spot, 
 instead of being thrown out anywhere, and that no 
 other rubbish was allowed, except accidentally, to 
 mingle with it, shows clearly that the heap was intended 
 for some economical use. We have indeed reason 
 to believe that this broken earthenware, ground into 
 smaller fragments and pulverized, formed an ingredient 
 in the famous Roman cement employed in the con- 
 struction of buildings whose hardness and durability 
 were proverbial. 
 
 But it is not in Rome only that such ancient mounds 
 of broken pottery are found. Similar heaps of pot- 
 
xv. A POTTERY MOUND. 267 
 
 sherds, not on quite so large a scale, may be seen 
 outside the walls of Alexandria and Cairo. The sites, 
 indeed, of many ancient towns, especially those built of 
 crude, sun-dried bricks, are often covered with great 
 quantities of such fragments exposed to view and col- 
 lected together by the disintegrating action of the 
 weather upon the ruins, giving them the appearance 
 of a deserted pottery rather than that of a town. Parti- 
 coloured heaps of broken pottery are common in the 
 neighbourhood of old villages and towns in Palestine. 
 They are especially abundant in one or two places near 
 Jerusalem. One of the gates of the city was called the 
 Potter's Gate, opening upon the Valley of Hinnom to 
 the south, because broken vessels of earthenware were 
 carried through it to be thrown out beyond the walls, 
 and also because it led to a place called the Potter's 
 Field the only spot in the neighbourhood of Jer- 
 usalem where potters still carry on their work. 
 Heaps of rubbish in the valley immediately outside 
 the recently discovered site of this gate have been 
 found to consist almost exclusively of broken and very 
 old pottery. The Potter's Field received afterwards 
 the name of Aceldama, or Field of Blood, from its 
 well-known association with the tragic fate of Judas ; 
 and it was purchased by the Jewish priests for the 
 thirty pieces of silver, the price of blood, which Judas 
 returned to them, as a burial place for strangers dying 
 in the city during the great festivals. Large quanti- 
 ties of earth were taken away to Europe from this spot 
 in the Middle Ages, under the impression that it had 
 
268 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 the power of very rapidly consuming the dead bodies 
 buried in it ; and a part of the Campo Santo at Pisa, 
 and of the crypt of the Capuchin Church at Rome, 
 was formed of this sacred soil. It was even brought 
 as far as Scotland; for a cargo of it intended for 
 the old burying-place at Kilmun on the Clyde was 
 wrecked off the shore, and gave in consequence to 
 this romantic arm of the Frith the name of the Holy 
 Loch. 
 
 As in ancient Rome, the broken pottery in the 
 neighbourhood of Jerusalem was pounded into dust 
 in order to be mixed with lime as a cement for 
 building purposes. Much of the durability of the 
 older structures is to be attributed to this cement. 
 It was especially adapted for lining the inside of 
 large underground artificial cisterns, which belonged 
 to every dwelling, and collected the rain-water from 
 the surface drainage, and stored it for use during 
 the year. Many of these cisterns are of very ancient 
 date, and are still in a fine state of preservation, 
 although every other trace of man's work has perished 
 in the places where they occur. The numerous aque- 
 ducts of the country, which belonged to an extensive 
 and singularly thorough system of irrigation, were also 
 plastered and made water-tight by this peculiar mortar. 
 It has the valuable property of the Roman pozzolana, of 
 hardening under water, becoming as firm and durable as 
 the native rock to which it adheres. There are num- 
 erous specimens still in existence, between three and 
 four thousand years old, upon which it would be as 
 
xv. A POTTERY MOUND. 269 
 
 difficult to make an impression with a chisel as upon 
 the hardest granite in the quarry. 
 
 This cement was manufactured at a very early period. 
 We have no record of a time when it was not in use. 
 And it is still one of the most essential articles of pro- 
 duction and commerce throughout Palestine. In that 
 dry and parched land cisterns and aqueducts are con- 
 stantly required ; and the preparation by the peasants 
 of one of the most important ingredients in the cement 
 for lining them is a familar process which the traveller 
 constantly witnesses in the towns and villages of Judaea. 
 In the very same places, and by the very same simple 
 methods employed by their ancestors three thousand 
 years ago, broken pottery is still ground down in order 
 to form this valuable cement. We read in the Bible 
 of the process having been carried on in the Potter's 
 Field in the Valley of Hinnom outside of the Potter's 
 Gate at Jerusalem in the days of Isaiah and Jeremiah ; 
 and in the very same place, every season still, the 
 visitor may see the peasants carrying it on in exactly 
 the same way ; a most striking example of the change- 
 lessness of Oriental customs and industries. Nothing 
 can be more primitive than the process. The peasant 
 collects the broken fragments of earthenware which he 
 finds on the spot, or brings from some other place, into 
 a little heap ; and, sitting down beside it, he rolls back- 
 wards and forwards over it a large round stone, until 
 every fragment is broken into the smallest possible 
 pieces and the whole mass is reduced to the state of 
 fine powder suitable for his purpose. It is very inter- 
 
270 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 esting to watch a process so primitive and archaic : the 
 picturesque figure, and the curious bits of pottery over 
 which he is bending spouts, lips, sides, and bottoms of 
 jars and vases and earthen bottles, some of a dull, red- 
 dish-brown colour, belonging to vessels in common use, 
 and some richly glazed with bright colours and beauti- 
 ful intricate patterns, belonging to some precious orna- 
 mental vase all gleaming in the brilliant sunshine, 
 making, along with the picturesque dress of the 
 labourer, and the romantic setting of the white lime- 
 stone rocks and dusky olive trees of the Valley of 
 Hinnom, a picture dear to a painter's eye. The sight, 
 too, is apt to awaken speculations as to the probable 
 origin and history of these bits of pottery, and moral 
 reflections as to the vanity of their end. 
 
 It could hardly be expected that a custom so ancient 
 and so suggestive as this should have remained un- 
 utilized by the spiritual teachers of Israel to point a 
 moral. It lent itself so easily and naturally to the 
 peculiar didactic method of instruction which the 
 Orientals affect, that it was early taken advantage of for 
 this purpose. Throughout the Bible there are numer- 
 ous direct and indirect allusions to it. In the second 
 Psalm it is said of those who oppose the Messianic 
 Kingdom of God that they shall be dashed in pieces 
 like a potter's vessel ; and Isaiah foretells that a similar 
 fate should happen to those who despised God's Word 
 and placed their confidence in Egypt. They should be 
 like one of those high mud walls like the cob-walls of 
 Devonshire, said to be derived from the East which so 
 
A PO TTER Y MO UNO. 2 7 T 
 
 often decline from the perpendicular, and bulge out in 
 different parts. " And he shall break it as the breaking 
 of the potter's vessel that is broken in pieces ; he shall 
 not spare ; so that there shall not be found in the burst- 
 ing of it a sherd to take fire from the hearth, or to take 
 water withal out of the pot." There is a still more 
 striking allusion in the prophecies of Jeremiah, in the 
 description of one of those remarkable acted parables 
 which abound in the prophetic writings, and of which 
 our Lord Himself made frequent use. The prophet is 
 Divinely commanded to go down to a potter's house, 
 and watch the process of fashioning a vessel of clay 
 upon the wheel ; and he is told that as the clay is 
 plastic in the hands of the potter, so are the children of 
 Israel in the hands of God; an image which the Apostle 
 Paul afterwards employed in his Epistle to the Romans, 
 and which has been so often grievously misinterpreted. 
 Both passages, it may be remarked, refer exclusively 
 to the temporal destiny of a nation, and have nothing 
 to do with the question of the ultimate fate of 
 individuals, which they have been supposed to involve. 
 It is of the outward providential sphere of God's action 
 that both the prophet and the apostle are speaking, not 
 of the inward spiritual relation of God to the personal 
 soul, according to which its destiny is fixed for time and 
 eternity. And this distinction should be carefully 
 observed when the passages in question are explained. 
 The nation in the hands of God is undoubtedly as clay 
 in the hands of the potter, governed by fixed laws in its 
 temporal political relations ; but this cannot be said in 
 
272 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 the same sense of the individual, so far as his spiritual 
 relations are concerned, for he enjoys a large measure of 
 freedom, and his destiny is shaped to a large extent by 
 his own conscious, willing action. 
 
 But leaving this subject, and passing on to the pic- 
 torial dramatic parable of the prophet, he is next com- 
 manded to get a potter's earthen bottle, and along with 
 the oldest members of the priesthood and the people to 
 go to the Valley of Hinnom, and there break the bottle 
 in the sight of his companions. The place to which 
 the prophet was commanded to go was the spot that, 
 from time immemorial, had been devoted to the recep- 
 tion of broken pieces of pottery. It was the same part 
 of the Valley of Hinnom, immediately outside the 
 Potter's Gate in Jerusalem, where, to this very day, the 
 peasant may be seen employed in crushing and grinding 
 into dust the little heap of broken pottery which he has 
 accumulated for the manufacture of the material used 
 for mortar or cement. There, where a number tf 
 peasants were hard at work, passing their heavy stones 
 over the little heap of pottery before them, and rousing 
 the echoes of the desolate valley by the continuous 
 sound of their blows, he was to hurl the earthenware 
 vessel upon the rocky ground in the presence of the 
 crowd ; and then, like the peasants beside him, he was 
 to gird up his flowing garments, take from one of them 
 his large grinding stone, and proceed to pound the 
 broken sherds into smaller fragments, until at last it 
 should be all reduced to powder. And when this 
 solemn action was finished, he was to give the awful ex- 
 
xv. A PO TTER Y MO UND. 273 
 
 planation : " Thus saith the Lord of Hosts, even so will 
 I break this people and this city." Surely no incident 
 could be more picturesque than this : no method of 
 instruction more graphic and telling ! The place in 
 which it occurred was one well calculated to increase 
 the impressiveness of the incident. It was on the top of 
 a conspicuous rock overhanging the Valley of Hinnom, 
 and commanding a fine view of the doomed city. All 
 the associations of the place were peculiarly terrible. 
 The Valley of Hinnom was the scene of some of the 
 most debasing orgies of paganism. Altars smoked there 
 to the gods of lust and cruelty in the near neighbour- 
 hood of God's holy shrine. Human sacrifices were 
 there offered to Baal and Moloch. Tender children 
 were made to pass through the sacred fires, and the cries 
 of their torment were drowned by the drums of Tophet. 
 In the days of Ahaz and Manasseh, all kinds of abomin- 
 ations were practised in the delirium of idolatry, and 
 human nature was outraged to the very utmost. To 
 stop these awful orgies, the pious Josiah sought to 
 desecrate the valley by making it a charnel house, or a 
 receptacle for the filth and garbage of the city. It be- 
 came afterwards the chief burying-ground of the inhabi- 
 tants, because there was no place elsewhere for the 
 overflowing dead ; and the prophets, in denouncing the 
 judgments of heaven upon the wickedness of the people, 
 declared that the whole valley would be turned into a 
 place of slaughter, where the carcases of the slain should 
 form food for the beasts of the field and the fowls of the 
 air, and the fire of God's wrath should consume them. 
 
274 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 One can therefore easily understand, how, associated 
 as this place was with the consummation of man's 
 wickedness on the one hand, and of God's judgments 
 on the other, it should have received from the Jews the 
 infamous name of Ge-Hinnom or Gehenna, and be re- 
 garded as the appropriate earthly type of the place of 
 eternal misery an awful symbolism to which our Lord, 
 adopting on this point the current language of the time, 
 attached the seal of His authority. All these associa- 
 tions could not fail to make Jeremiah's dramatic sermon 
 in the Potter's Field one of the most solemn and 
 impressive ever preached. There was surely, too, a 
 singular appropriateness in the death of the arch-traitor 
 in such a place of sinister memories. His tragical fate 
 was an individual, but a most startling, illustration of the 
 doom which the prophet foretold concerning the whole 
 nation. Like a potter's vessel he was broken to pieces 
 in the very field which had been purchased with the 
 reward of his iniquity. And not long afterwards the 
 inhabitants of the city, sharing in his guilt, were put to 
 death by the Romans in the same way in the same place, 
 until there was no room for the crosses on which they 
 were crucified, and no wood to make them with. 
 
 Our Lord, in His parable of the wicked husbandmen, 
 referred to the same striking image. He said, " Did ye 
 never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the 
 builders rejected, the same has become the head of the 
 corner ? Whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be 
 broken ; but on whomsoever it shall fall it shall grind 
 him to powder." The stone here alluded to was 
 

 xv. A POTTERY MOUND. 275 
 
 obviously the stone with which the Jewish peasant 
 shattered the broken pottery to pieces in the Valley 
 of Hinnoni. And we can easily see why it should have 
 been rejected by the builders. It was a rough, roundish 
 lump of hard rock, which no builder would naturally 
 choose if he could find anything better for his purpose ; 
 whose shape was not suitable for a well-built structure 
 of squared stones, and whose hardness did not admit of 
 its being easily chiselled into proper form. But while it 
 did not seem suitable for a foundation-stone to the archi- 
 tect, its shape and hardness of material were admirably 
 adapted for the use to which it was put. It could 
 effectively grind broken pottery to powder. And how 
 expressive in this light does the parable appear ! The 
 builders wanted a squared, shapely stone, that could be 
 put into their structure without any trouble, a stone that 
 conformed to their preconceived ideas and rules, just as 
 the Jews wanted a Messiah who should be really the 
 product of the popular expectation, and should answer 
 faithfully to his origin a Messiah who should deliver 
 them from the hated rule of the Romans, and establish 
 an earthly sovereignty of more than Solomonic glory. 
 And because Jesus did not conform to this anticipation, 
 but, like a rude, roundish stone, unfit for their purposes 
 setting up a spiritual kingdom in men's hearts and in 
 the world for which they had no desire they rejected 
 Him. And just as the stone that was thus deemed unfit 
 for the purpose of the builder was fit for crushing and 
 grinding pottery, so the Messiah, who was rejected as un- 
 suitable to rule over the Jews, was qualified to punish 
 
276 THE OLIVE LEAF, CHAP. 
 
 them for their sins. The rejected stone having become the 
 head of the corner is itself the instrument of vengeance 
 upon those who set it at nought. 
 
 There is a lighter and a more severe punishment 
 threatened. Woe to those who shall fall upon this 
 stone, who are offended by the Messiah's low estate, 
 and will not have Him to reign over them because 
 of His weakness and poverty ; for like an earthenware 
 vessel that falls upon the stone of the pottery-crusher 
 and is broken, so they will inflict by their conduct a 
 grievous injury upon themselves : they shall suffer pain 
 and loss. This sin the Jews have already committed, 
 and this punishment they have already drawn upon 
 themselves. But a far direr woe is in store for those 
 upon whom the stone shall fall who set themselves 
 in final and self-conscious opposition to the Messiah ; 
 for, just as the stone of the pottery-crusher is rolled 
 backwards and forwards upon the broken potsherds, 
 pounding them to the finest dust, so the finally im- 
 penitent shall be condemned to utter destruction from 
 the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of His 
 power. To reject Jesus as He appeared before them in 
 the lowly guise of flesh and blood was like an earthen- 
 ware vessel falling upon the stone of the pottery-crusher ; 
 pain and loss and present harm would be suffered, but 
 there might be recovery from such a fall ; the pot might 
 be broken in pieces sufficiently large to allow them to 
 be joined together and mended, and the vessel might be 
 made useful again. But to be found thus rejecting Jesus 
 when He should come again in His glory would be like 
 
xv. A POTTERY MOUND. 277 
 
 the stone of the pottery-crusher falling upon the broken 
 earthenware falling as from the height of heaven with 
 fearful momentum, and by a mighty hand rolled back- 
 wards and forwards over the fragments, grinding them to 
 powder, so that there could be no possibility of restora- 
 tion. To reject Christ would ruin them as a nation ; but 
 to be rejected by Him would destroy them utterly and 
 for ever. 
 
 The last allusion to this peculiar image is in the pro- 
 mise given to the Church of Thyatira " And he shall 
 rule them with a rod of iron ; as the vessels of a potter 
 shall they be broken to shivers, even as I received of my 
 Father." The reference here is obviously to the second 
 Psalm. The power conferred upon the Messiah will be 
 delegated to all His victorious saints. When the true 
 David is shepherd-king over all the earth, His people 
 shall share His pastoral rule. They shall shepherd the 
 nations with the shepherd's club that is, treat the 
 nations who refuse to acknowledge the gentle sway of 
 Jesus as the shepherd deals with the wild beasts or the 
 robbers who seek to injure his flock. Not with an iron 
 rod of oppression, after the manner of the tyrants of the 
 earth, but with the sceptre of righteousness shall they 
 exercise a sovereign and irresistible sway. Their rod 
 shall only be upon ill-men, to resist and destroy evil. 
 Too often, indeed, has the Church grasped at the pro- 
 mise, " And he shall rule them with a rod of iron," and 
 forgotten the redeeming clause, " as I have received of 
 my Father " which prescribes the spirit of meekness 
 and righteousness and the method of justice and mercy 
 
278 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 in which the delegated power is to be exercised. And 
 in consequence she has used her rod to increase instead 
 of to relieve the misery and evil of the world ; and in the 
 end the rod of oppression and cruelty which she has 
 wrenched from the nations has been turned against her, 
 and she has herself in turn been oppressed and cruelly 
 used. But when she exercises the rod aright, in the 
 spirit and after the manner of the Lord Jesus, and by 
 virtue of the holy authority communicated by the Father, 
 as the result of her own triumph over all the pride of 
 life, and the lusts of the flesh, and the selfishness and 
 injustices of the world : when she maintains her own 
 moral standing-ground inviolate ; then, in marvellous 
 ways, does the world acknowledge her power a power 
 which shall subdue all its superstitions and corruptions, 
 and make the nations confess that the Messiah's king- 
 dom is, indeed, a blessed reality. 
 
 But the second part of the vivid representation brings 
 up a different image altogether. There is an abrupt 
 transition from the shepherd's to the pottery-crusher's 
 work. It is not the idea of a potter's vessel struck by a 
 shepherd's iron-faced club that is brought before us ; but 
 the idea of the heap of broken pottery, over which the 
 huge stone of the cement-manufacturer is made to pass 
 repeatedly, until every fragment is ground to powder. 
 This is a much more terrible idea. The potter's vessel 
 struck by the shepherd's club would be broken to pieces 
 more or less large ; but the vessel ground by the stone 
 of the crusher would be shivered to the smallest atoms, 
 so that there could be no restoration. And it is this 
 
xv. A POTTERY MOUND. 279 
 
 idea of the multitudinous fragments reduced together to 
 a heap of powder that is conveyed by the words in the 
 original. And what an impression of complete subjuga- 
 tion and final destruction does it produce ! As frail and 
 perishable as the potter's earthenware vessel is the con- 
 dition of the enemies of the Church. They can no more 
 resist the Almighty power than the broken fragments of 
 the potter's earthenware vessel can resist the heavy stone 
 that is crushing them to dust. Such a fate has befallen 
 all who have stood in the way of God's righteous admin- 
 istrations. The Jews who rejected Him were broken in 
 pieces and dispersed like the dust of the shivered earth- 
 enware scattered by the wind. Heathen Rome, where 
 the blood of His martyrs was shed, has long since been 
 destroyed ; and all the other anti-Christian powers shall 
 share the same doom when the Lord shall take unto 
 Him His great power and reign. It is no jealous, cap- 
 ricious tyrant who inflicts this doom ; an Almighty Being 
 who treats His creatures as the potter treats the clay 
 which he makes without any reason, except his own 
 capricious choice, either into a vessel of honour or into 
 a vessel of dishonour, and who closes the mouths of 
 those who question the justness of His procedure with 
 the peremptory rebuke, " Nay, but, O man, who art thou 
 that repliest against God ? " whose rights over His 
 creatures are absolute. It is, on the contrary, a God of 
 love, who acts in all things upon the fixed and immut- 
 able principles of righteousness, which comprehend in 
 their bosom pity, patience, and mercy. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 APPLES OF SODOM. 
 
 " For their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of 
 Gomorrah ; their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are 
 bitter." DEUT. xxxii. 32. 
 
 WHAT the apple of Sodom was we cannot tell 
 with certainty. A hundred conjectures have 
 been formed, and different kinds of fruit the gourd 
 of the colchicum, the Solatium melongena, and various 
 other bitter substances growing in the Jordan valley 
 and in the neighbourhood of the Dead Sea have 
 been identified as this famous apple. By many it has 
 been classed in the list of vulgar fables, kept up from 
 age to age, like many other allusions inherently false, 
 as Lord Bacon says, because they serve for good 
 illustrations and help the poets to apt similitudes. 
 There can be no doubt, however, that this strange 
 fruit did actually exist ; for the accounts of various 
 travellers, and the descriptions of the naturalists Strabo 
 and Pliny, are too minute and circumstantial to permit 
 us to believe that it was a creation of the imagination 
 280 
 
CHAP. xvi. APPLES OF SODOM. 281 
 
 alone, without any real objective existence in the 
 natural world. Mr. Curzon, in his interesting work 
 on the " Monasteries of the Levant," mentions that on 
 one occasion, when travelling among the mountains 
 to the east of the Dead Sea, on a remarkably sultry 
 day, he and his companions saw before them the 
 tempting sight of a fine plum-tree loaded with fresh 
 plums, with a beautiful bloom upon them ; but when 
 they came up to it, and snatched the plums from the 
 branches and began to eat, instead of the cool delicious 
 pulp which they expected, their mouths were filled 
 with dry bitter dust, which they immediately sputtered 
 out with loathing. Mr. Curzon brought home speci- 
 mens of this object, which were given to the Linnaean 
 Society, and by them described in their "Transactions" 
 at the time. This, which may fairly be classed among 
 the most curious productions of the Holy Land, was 
 found, on scientific examination, to be a kind of gall- 
 nut ; and it occurs in several places in the East, as 
 well as on the plains of Troy, where Mr. Curzon 
 afterwards found it. There can be little doubt that 
 it is the famous Dead Sea fruit, or apple of Sodom. 
 It grows on a kind of ilex or evergreen oak ; it is 
 pear-shaped, about two inches long, of a rich dark 
 purple colour, and comes to a point at the head ; it 
 is marked around its circumference with a ring of 
 little dots or shields like those on the under surface 
 of the oak leaf. 
 
 The way in which it is produced is exceedingly 
 curious. A little fly-like insect punctures the bark or 
 
282 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 stem of the young shoots of the tree, and deposits 
 its eggs in the wound, from which, in consequence, 
 the sap issues and forms over them a roundish fruit- 
 like excrescence, enclosing them in its interior. After 
 a time, the eggs become white grubs, which undergo 
 their transformations within the gall, and then eat 
 their way through the substance of the interior to the 
 skin, and finally escape, through a little hole which 
 they have made, into the open air in the form of 
 winged flies. The number and variety of these galls 
 are very great. They are very common in this country. 
 The shapes which they assume are often singular, and 
 in many instances very beautiful. One of the most 
 remarkable is the bedeguar gall, or the robin redbreast's 
 pincushion, which looks like a tuft of bristling red 
 moss growing on the extremity of a shoot of the wild 
 rose, in the interior of which are numerous cells, each 
 of which serves as a habitation for a larva. Perhaps 
 the loveliest is the cherry gall, one of the commonest 
 of our species, produced in great abundance on the 
 under side of the oak leaf in July and August. It 
 is a little less than the fruit after which it is named ; 
 perfectly round ; at first pale green and semi-trans- 
 parent, exhibiting a kind of granular structure like 
 condensed honey, and afterwards becoming rosy on 
 one side, the crimson spreading and deepening until 
 the whole surface is at length dyed as red as a ripe 
 cherry. Nothing can be prettier than an oak coppice 
 covered with myriads of these tempting-looking fruits. 
 On the leaf of the maple another species of gall in- 
 
xvi. A PPL ES OF SOD OM. 283 
 
 sect gives rise to the numerous red spines which are 
 well known to all. Upon many of our indigenous 
 plants and trees a great variety of curious and in- 
 teresting galls is formed, the history of which in many 
 cases is still imperfect; but the oak-tree is more infested 
 than all others. Upon it the nests of upwards of 
 twenty different species of insects of this kind may 
 be found. One attacks the young shoots, originating 
 the well-known oak-apples ; another develops flower- 
 like leaves like a little brown artichoke on the buds ; 
 a third gives rise to a series of galls resembling a 
 small bunch of red currants on the catkins ; while 
 every one is familiar with the little round oak-spangles 
 which cover the under side of almost every leaf, con- 
 sisting of a crowd of greenish or reddish hairs, as if 
 they had been cut out of a piece of velvet, and 
 looking so like the shields of a fern or the cups of a 
 fungus that they were at one time supposed to belong 
 to these orders. They change their colour with the 
 growing and fading foliage, and during the winter 
 they may be found on the red fallen leaves with the 
 same rusty hue, the flies being developed from them 
 in the following spring. A gall is produced on the 
 willow called the rose-willow, which is like the oak 
 artichoke, and consists of a cluster of short leaves 
 arranged like the petals of a rose. 
 
 Some very extraordinary galls occur in foreign coun- 
 tries. I saw, in the neighbourhood of Nice, several 
 elm-trees whose topmost branches were covered with 
 large clusters of black pear-shaped bags, looking like 
 
2 g 4 THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 leaves that had been blackened and curled up by 
 the action of fire. They contrasted very strikingly 
 with the tender spring foliage sprouting by their side. 
 These were the empty nests of a species of green aphis, 
 in which the young had been hatched the preceding 
 autumn. In Persia, China, and along the Levant this 
 most remarkable gall used to be employed, under 
 the name of " baizonges," to assist in extracting the 
 scarlet dye from the cochineal insect. It contains a 
 liquid formerly greatly in demand for curing wounds, 
 under the name of "Oil of St. John." The astringent 
 quality and viscidity of the fluid may have had some 
 healing effects, and beneficially excluded the air from 
 open wounds. But the most important of all the 
 species is the common gall-nut of commerce, which 
 grows on a kind of shrubby oak seldom exceeding six 
 feet in height, found abundantly in the Levant. The 
 galls are hard woody and heavy, about the size of a 
 marble, usually round and studded with protuberances. 
 The best are those which are gathered before the 
 departure of the insect, because they are heavier and 
 contain more of the tannin principle. They have a 
 bluish colour; whereas those that have been left by 
 the insect are whitish, light, and pierced by a little 
 round hole. They are perfectly astringent, and are 
 frequently employed in medicine and also in dyeing, 
 while they form an essential ingredient in making ink. 
 It is strange to think that to the nest of an insect 
 we are indebted for the prime element of literature 
 and of written thought. The words which I have 
 
xvi. APPLES OF SODOM. 285 
 
 written owe their existence to the labours of this tiny 
 manufacturer ! 
 
 The insects which produce galls generally belong 
 to the family of small flies called Cynipidce. Their 
 ovipositor is a kind of needle in a sheath like the 
 sting of a bee when in repose, which can be extended 
 to double the length of the insect itself. With this 
 they bore into the tissues of plants and trees, and 
 there deposit their eggs. The instinct which guides 
 each species to select the particular plant or the par- 
 ticular part of the plant best adapted for its operations 
 and for the reception of its larvae, is one of the most 
 remarkable examples of contrivance or design in nature. 
 We see this very specially in the case of the rose- 
 bedeguar, the grub of which lives in the curious 
 structure all the winter, but whose hibernaculum is 
 composed of close non-conducting moss-like bristles, 
 and therefore affords a snug protection from the 
 severity of the weather. This prospective wisdom, 
 however, is not always infallible. Sometimes a case 
 of perversion of instinct occurs. In order to escape 
 from its prison when fully formed, the young insect 
 has in many cases to traverse about half an inch of 
 the walls of the gall-nut, and it has strength for that 
 and no more. But it occasionally happens that two 
 galls are fused together, and the little creature seeks 
 to pierce its way out in the usual way, which happens 
 in this case to be the point of junction between the 
 two nuts. The substance to be traversed at this point 
 is an inch and a half ; the insect has not strength 
 
2 $6 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 to accomplish this feat, and therefore perishes in the 
 attempt. 
 
 Not the least extraordinary fact in the strange history 
 of these products is the great variety of effects produced 
 by apparently the same instruments and agencies. Out 
 of the juices of the same oak are formed galls of very 
 dissimilar appearance by the punctures of the different 
 gall-flies. The cause of this diversity is still one of the 
 unexplained mysteries of nature. Not only are the 
 forms different, but the tissues are also different. In 
 some the structure is soft and juicy; in others hard and 
 woody outside, having within a layer of cellular tissue 
 filled with starch grains, which afford food to the larvae. 
 
 Galls are morbid growths, caused, as we have seen, 
 by the puncture of a minute fly. The abnormal vital 
 action that is set up by the irritation of the wound 
 produces a change of organization, from which results a 
 complete change in the external form and even in the 
 internal substance of the part attacked. The cellular 
 tissue swells, the parts which were naturally long be- 
 come round, and starch, which is formed in those parts 
 of a plant whose vital activity has been suspended, is 
 deposited. There is a curious parallelism between the 
 gall-nut and the acorn, the animal and the vegetable 
 product. The gall-nut goes through the same changes 
 with the acorn, remaining green as a simulated fruit 
 through the summer, but assuming in autumn the russet 
 hue of the foliage and fruit. In winter the acorn falls 
 from the tree and is buried in the soil that it may produce 
 the young sapling ; in winter the gall-nut remains upon 
 
xvi. APPLES OF SODOM. 287 
 
 the bough, but in spring the imprisoned germs of life 
 within it are emancipated and take part in the active 
 vitality of the world. 
 
 How are we to account for this beauty of form and 
 perfection of structure in these morbid products, which 
 almost rival the natural products developed in full 
 accordance with the type of the plant? The oak- 
 apple is in its own way as admirably constructed as 
 the acorn, although it is nothing more than a mass of 
 extravasated sap dried and consolidated by exposure 
 to the atmosphere. What normal structure of the tree 
 is more beautifully formed than the golden oak-spangle 
 with which the under surface of every leaf is so 
 richly jewelled? What cherry can be more tempting- 
 looking than the apparently similar fruit which covers 
 the young leaves of the oak -coppice in such lux- 
 uriant abundance? Is the natural moss that adorns 
 the most beautiful of all the tribe the moss-rose more 
 wonderful than the red bedeguar moss of the wild-rose, 
 which is simply the nest of a colony of minute larvae ? 
 The insects do not form these remarkable galls as the 
 bee moulds its cell, or the wasp its nest, or the cater- 
 pillar its cocoon, or the bird its nest. They do not 
 carry on the whole operation, as in these cases, from 
 the beginning to the end : they simply puncture the leaf, 
 or bud, or stem, deposit in the wound their eggs, and 
 leave the plant to do the rest ; so that there is no exer- 
 cise of animal instinct in the formation of these curious 
 galls beyond the initial impulse. How then are the 
 galls so regular, so beautiful in structure and appear- 
 
288 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 ance, so varied in their forms, and so admirably adapted 
 for the purpose which they serve? The symmetry of 
 all disease is a wide and as yet unexplained subject. 
 The phenomenon seems one of those blind, unconscious 
 operations of nature which irresistibly suggest the exist- 
 ence of a Conscious Mind working through them. 
 
 As the result of vegetable activity directed into an 
 unusual channel by insect action, the pathology of galls 
 strikingly illustrates the law of accommodation in 
 nature. When a plant grows up in circumstances alto- 
 gether favourable it attains its ideal form, and is beauti- 
 ful and perfect, as God meant it to be ; but when the 
 circumstances are unfavourable when it is marred by 
 storm or drought, by insect blight or pressure of other 
 objects then it accommodates itself to the circum- 
 stances and develops an inferior form on a lower plane. 
 An acorn that has fallen into a cleft of the rock springs 
 up into the best representation of the ideal form which 
 its untoward lot will allow ; but it will not be like the 
 magnificent tree that has sprung up from the acorn that 
 has fallen into suitable soil and circumstances. A bean 
 develops a finely-proportioned stem and beautiful leaves; 
 but man comes and cuts off its first perfect growth, and 
 from the original root or stem grow two other plants of 
 an inferior type. An insect punctures the leaf-bud of 
 an oak, and it has its legitimate growth spoiled by the 
 operation : its tiny leaves are opened prematurely, and 
 they become simple brown scales like those of an 
 artichoke. All these are specimens, as it were, of 
 God's after-work, which is not ideally beautiful, like the 
 
xvi. APPLES OF SODOM. 289 
 
 first work, but the most beautiful in the altered circum- 
 stances. 
 
 The world abounds with these marred forms, 
 the after-efforts of nature after the first have been 
 spoiled. We see them in the animal as well as in the 
 vegetable kingdom. The process of cicatrization in 
 which a new and highly vascular structure of a spongy 
 appearance, called granulation, is produced, which grad- 
 ually fills up a wound, and makes it appear like the rest 
 of the surface is an example in point. So also is the 
 remarkable process of reparation in the case of a frac- 
 tured bone, in which cartilage is formed in an unusual 
 situation, and that cartilage is converted with unwonted 
 rapidity into bone. It is only our familiarity with this 
 fact, that living bodies are capable of repairing most of 
 the injuries they may sustain, that takes away the true 
 wonder of it ; and as an argument of design it cannot 
 be impugned by the suspicion that circumstances have 
 determined the adaptation, because the adaptation 
 itself shows that provision has been made for events 
 of which it is uncertain whether they will ever occur. 
 And this power of reparation shows how inherent in 
 the organism is the typical idea, the definite pre- 
 ordained plan upon which it is constructed. It is a 
 part of the same mysterious process by which, in 
 the usual structure developed naturally, the new series 
 of particles take the pattern of those which they re- 
 place, and our own organs and tissues, though they are 
 continually changing their substance, yet preserve 
 their identity unimpaired. Every organism must work 
 
290 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 out its own pattern, and it cannot overstep the laws 
 of its form. 
 
 But in the effort to conform to this primitive pattern 
 in the case of parts that are wounded, nature cannot 
 attain to a complete identity of form or substance. The 
 scar of a wound on the finger is not effaced, but grows 
 as the body grows, and is clearly distinguishable to the 
 end of life; and the substance with which the wound 
 has been filled up and assimilated to the surrounding 
 structure is of a lower kind with a lower energy. Vital 
 action in parts that have been injured and then healed 
 cannot rise to its specific elevation ; the vitality of the 
 part has undergone a certain degeneration, and material 
 of an inferior order to the proper element of the part is 
 produced, in which an inferior kind of action is alone 
 possible. The lymph that is thrown out to heal the 
 wound is the simple result of a deterioration of energy ; 
 just as the convergence of the nutritious juices of an 
 oak-tree towards the wound caused by an insect for the 
 introduction of its egg is a kind of hypertrophy of the 
 tissues, in which starch, which is an inferior product, is 
 deposited in the cells. It is an exceedingly curious fact 
 that the animal and vegetable kingdoms, which have 
 such remarkable correspondences in other respects, also 
 resemble each other in the repairing of their wounds. 
 The cicatrical tissue in plants as well as in animals does 
 not acquire the full structure of that which it replaces. 
 The new tissue is devoid of stomata or breathing-pores, 
 and, as in animal scars, there are produced no sweat- 
 glands or hair-follicles. But though the substance and 
 
xvi. APPLES OF SODOM. 291 
 
 the vital action in the repaired parts of both plants and 
 animals be thus inferior, the type of the general 
 organism is retained. The gall-nut resembles the 
 appearance and structure of the acorn; the abnormal 
 robin redbreast pincushion, produced by an insect on a 
 shoot of the wild-rose, is formed on the same model as 
 the normal moss that appears on a variety of the culti- 
 vated rose. No new forces or laws appear in the 
 organism, no new structure is produced in it under the 
 circumstances which are described as disease. The 
 phenomena of morbid action illustrate the character 
 and relations of vital action. The destructive cancerous 
 mass, that seems as if it were a parasite that had set up 
 an independent life and structure of its own, is governed 
 by the same laws of organic growth and activity which 
 operate in the beneficial formation of the healthy organs 
 of the body. All morbid structures conform to physi- 
 ological types ; all disease-produced cells have their 
 patterns in the cells of healthy structure. 
 
 All these specimens of God's after-work the sprouts 
 of a pollarded willow, the various varieties of galls, the 
 cicatrix of a wound, the callus formed by the union of 
 the parts of a broken bone are therefore beautiful on a 
 lower plane than the original one. And among all such 
 marred forms, which are beautiful not according to 
 God's intention, but according to the limits imposed by 
 the circumstances of the case, it is the province of art 
 and poetry to find out the ideal of God's first work. 
 And in this noble quest the standard of comparison is 
 not wanting. For notwithstanding the numerous blights 
 
292 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 and malformations that have appeared on the face of 
 nature, there is still so much of God's primary beauty 
 remaining in the world, that the mind has no difficulty 
 in rising through them all to the ideal of which they so 
 eloquently testify. Consequently, he who copies nature 
 literally is a mere photographer, painting the blemishes 
 with the excellences ; whereas he who endeavours from 
 the marred to picture forth the unmarred form, to trace 
 back the after-work which is an accommodation to the 
 circumstances to the first work which expresses perfectly 
 the idea of the Creator, is the true poet, the true artist. 
 This too, in its own higher sphere, is the province of 
 religion. Everywhere we see the effects of the curse 
 in the marring and blighting of a world which God had 
 pronounced to be very good. And the effects in the 
 wilderness of nature are only a reflex of the still more 
 disastrous effects in the wilderness of the human heart 
 and of human life. But though man has departed from 
 the law and the type of his being, and sought out many 
 inventions of his own, he has not succeeded in alto- 
 gether obliterating the original pattern of his life. The 
 most lost of men still retain, though darkened and de- 
 faced, some lingering traces of that glory in which they 
 were at first created. The soul still bears some linea- 
 ments of that Divine image with which it once was 
 stamped, and makes its own darkness visible with the 
 dying embers of its native fire. And it is because of 
 this continuance of the primitive type, notwithstanding 
 its degradation, that the salvation of man is possible. 
 Had this been lost then all had been lost. 
 
APPLES OF SODOM. 
 
 293 
 
 And in the work of redemption, this glorious after- 
 work of God an after-work only so far as its historic 
 sequence is concerned, for redemption is no accident, 
 but lay deep down in the intimate plans of the Creator 
 from the beginning we see the pattern of God in con- 
 formity with which all things are to be made new. The 
 object of Christianity, by the power and example of the 
 new life from above which had come into the world, is 
 to remove all the disabilities, to restore all the marred 
 and blighted forms of sin, and to realize the ideals of 
 creation. Through the straitness of its nature, the bond- 
 age of necessity, and limitation of life imposed upon it, 
 the world of animals and plants, when once it sinks 
 below its primitive level, cannot again fully regain it. 
 It must be content with the lower mould to which its 
 unfavourable circumstances have reduced it. It cannot 
 heal its wounds and injuries up to the original ideal. 
 But it is widely different in the human world. Man is 
 not fixed by fate ; he has the glorious gift of liberty ; 
 and that power through the exercise of which he sinned 
 and fell is the power through the exercise of which he 
 recovers his position. Out of the possibility of sin arises 
 the possibility of goodness. On the freedom of his 
 will, which is the true image of God, the fore-ordaining, 
 nay, even the possibility of the incarnation rested ; and 
 through the wondrous incarnation he who " declined on 
 a range of lower feelings and a narrower heart " is lifted 
 to a nobler position, and realizes a higher blessing than 
 unfallen humanity could have known. Jesus came that 
 he might have, not a bare life rescued from death, but a 
 
294 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 more abundant life than he had in his state of inno- 
 cence ; and through that wondrous coming he has grown, 
 with all his sins and sorrows, to something which is 
 nearer to God, nearer to the divine level. He is made 
 capable, not of presenting the divine image merely, but 
 of partaking of the divine nature, and of entering, as 
 Adam never could have done, into all the high employ- 
 ments and holy fellowships of heaven. 
 
 This is the grand distinction of man, that which 
 separates him at an immense distance from the rest 
 of the creation that while the after-work of God 
 in the restoration of the lower world of plants 
 and animals is only an accommodation the best 
 possible in the circumstances, a descent from the 
 ideal the after-work of God in the case of man is 
 the attainment of a higher ideal than the first work. 
 It is the redemption of free spirits which is God's 
 final and most perfect work, for the accomplishment 
 of which all things were made and are subordin- 
 ated. His chiefest glory is not to be shown in the 
 loveliness of animal and vegetable forms that have 
 never been marred, but in the purity, the love, the 
 spiritual greatness of beings who have sinned and fallen 
 and lost His image ; not in the paradisiacal life of our 
 first parents, exquisitely beautiful, lovely as a poet's 
 dream or a memory of childhood's sunniest hour, 
 although that vision may appear, but in the heavenly 
 life to which, through the atoning work of the Saviour 
 and the discipline of his own nature, man ultimately 
 attains, beyond the wilderness life of transgression, and 
 
xvi. APPLES OF SODOM. 295 
 
 beyond the river of death. Blessed beyond Adam, 
 blessed beyond the angels of heaven, are they who are 
 called to the marriage supper of the Lamb. There 
 through the loss of the divine image they have attained 
 to the divine likeness ; and, created anew in Christ Jesus 
 in the image and likeness of God, the spirits of just 
 men are waste perfect. 
 
 In the light of these reflections, what a deep signifi- 
 cance attaches to the apples of Sodom ! As symbols 
 of the fruits which sin produces, they are exceedingly 
 striking. These fruits are galls morbid, not natural, 
 products the result of the working of a foreign element, 
 a poisonous principle in the human soul. The spirit 
 that worketh in the children of disobedience gives rise to 
 them. The life of the soul is perverted thereby from its 
 original purpose ; and that which ought to have gone to 
 develop the peaceable fruits of righteousness, in con- 
 formity with God's design, produces instead the evil 
 works of the flesh. God made man upright made the 
 human tree good, and the fruit would have been the 
 harmonious outcome of his nature had he continued in 
 God's plan and order of his life ; but he sought out 
 many inventions, he corrupted his nature, so that the 
 fruit which it yields is the suitable outcome of a corrupt 
 and degenerate nature. But notwithstanding this per- 
 version, this sad deviation from God's purpose, the 
 morbid excrescences of sin retain the type of the normal 
 fruits of righteousness. Evil is an imitation of good, 
 only on a lower plane, in defect or excess. Sin cannot 
 altogether depart from the pattern of holiness, and 
 
296 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 fashion out something altogether new. Satan cannot 
 originate ; he can only copy. Just as the galls of the 
 oak resemble the normal products, so do the results of 
 sin resemble the results of righteousness. And it is this 
 likeness that constitutes their charm and power. As 
 the parched and weary traveller is tempted by the 
 apparently luscious fruits that hang on the solitary bush 
 of the desert, having a striking resemblance to those 
 which tasted so sweetly and refreshingly in his own 
 northern land ; so the sinner in his thirst for happiness, 
 amid the weariness and monotony of his daily life, is 
 tempted by the pleasures of sin, that seem so substantial, 
 so satisfying, so admirably adapted in every respect to 
 meet the wants of his case. But with this superficial re- 
 semblance how wide and woful is the essential differ- 
 ence ! The oak-apple is only a bitter gall with a worm 
 at its core. The delicious fruit when tasted turns out to 
 be a nauseous excrescence which fills the mouth with 
 ashes. How dreadful is the undoing of all who have 
 eaten the apples of Sodom ! The first experience in 
 Eden has been repeated continually ever since. The 
 same false promise followed by the same cruel dis- 
 appointment, which operated in the case of our first 
 parents when the forbidden fruit, which they were told 
 would make them as gods, brought them under the 
 laws of suffering, toil, and death, have operated in the 
 case of all their descendants. The type of the primeval 
 sin and its punishment is the type upon which all the 
 baleful and monstrous growth that has sprung from 
 this bitter root has been developed. 
 
APPLES OF SODOM. 
 
 297 
 
 But a wonderful thought is suggested here. It is very 
 remarkable how a morbid product an abnormal excres- 
 cence should be made as beautiful as if it were the 
 flower or the fruit of the plant upon which it occurs. 
 The cherry-gall on the oak-leaf is as fair as the cherry 
 itself, and the bedeguar-gall as the moss on the moss- 
 rose. So, too, the pearl is the result of disease, caused 
 by an irritation of the mantle of the mussel by the 
 presence of the little Distoma parasite. God in this 
 way overrules the perversions and irritations of evil 
 chance, the abnormal products of disease, to add to the 
 beauty of the natural world. Evil is not always ugly or 
 chaotic without form or void. It has a beauty and 
 order of its own. It falls from a higher law to come 
 under a lower one, which in its own degree is not less 
 wonderful. Even the normal things of the world are, 
 many of them, the result of weakness, poverty, and 
 death. The legitimate blossom and fruit are produced 
 from the axil of the leaf and stem from the joint in the 
 armour of the plant, which is equivalent to a wound in 
 its side or at the top of the stem, where the vital 
 energy is feeblest and the amount of material for growth 
 most scanty, and is the result of incipient decay. It is 
 the dying plant alone that flowers and fruits. And just 
 as the artichoke-gall of the oak and the rose-gall of the 
 willow assume flower-like forms through the wound 
 inflicted by an insect, so the normal blossom of every 
 plant is made to assume its rounded clustered form and 
 bright colour through the wound inflicted by nature's 
 own hand. The same law that fashions the gall fashions 
 
298 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 the blossom ; and they both owe their origin to wounds 
 and weaknesses. 
 
 It must strike every thoughtful mind how much 
 special beauty is conferred by imperfection and decay ; 
 nay, " how necessary it is, even in order to be beauti- 
 ful, that some objects should subserve their purpose 
 inadequately." Has not the ruined abbey a more 
 picturesque charm about it than the new church in 
 which the worship of God is carried on? Is not the 
 peasant's thatched house, foul with damp, which totally 
 fails to subserve its intended purpose, more gratifying to 
 the artistic sense and fancy of the spectator than the 
 solid, well-built cottage in its neighbourhood, which pos- 
 sesses all the modern appliances for health and comfort? 
 Does not the poet's eye rest with more instinctive 
 pleasure upon a meandering stream than upon a 
 stream that flows like a canal ? What object can be 
 more beautiful artistically than an old wall, weather- 
 stained, hoary with moss and lichen, mantled with ivy 
 and weeds, shattered and full of breaches, through 
 which the cattle leap into forbidden pastures; more 
 pleasing far in this ruinous condition than a straight 
 strong wall of masonry, clean and firm, from which not a 
 stone has fallen or broken out of line ? It is not the 
 clump of noble oaks, with trunks as straight and well- 
 formed as pillars, and richly rounded and perfect masses 
 of foliage, which appeals to our love of the beautiful, so 
 much as the cluster of aged trees, with gnarled boles 
 and broken and ragged branches and scanty leaves, that 
 are fast succumbing to the ravages of time ! All beauti- 
 
xvi. APPLES OF SODOM. 2 99 
 
 ful things in nature are set to the same key-note of 
 sorrow, suffering, and death ; and their beauty is devel- 
 oped through the suffering and death, through the im- 
 perfection and decay. To the ruin or abrasion of its 
 shores the Mediterranean Sea owes the lovely blue of its 
 waters; and the bright azure of the summer skies is 
 caused in large measure by the diffusion through them 
 of the dust of life. 
 
 And this is the way of God in the human world. 
 Evil is the minister of beauty. How often of our 
 failures and disappointments, of the worm in the bud of 
 our hopes, are made galls that seem almost as fair and 
 satisfying, at least to the eye, as the fruits of success 
 themselves would have been. The beauty is shown in 
 these arrested and perverted growths, which if allowed 
 to develop and ripen in a natural way, would have 
 bloomed in the flower and satisfied in the fruit. The 
 most beautiful poems, which appear the appropriate 
 fruit of a happy and prosperous life, are thus often mere 
 galls, caused by the poison or blight of some secret 
 sorrow or frustrated hope ; and the life that bears these 
 apples of Sodom has learned in suffering what it taught 
 in song. The tears of humanity have been turned into 
 pearls, its wounds into fruits, its sighs into music. Men 
 and women, like the trees of the forest, grow more 
 beautiful with age and decadence ; and in the autumnal 
 face is seen truer and higher loveliness than ever shone 
 in its spring fairness and freshness. Human ruins, like 
 architectural, are much more suggestive than perfect 
 lives, " richer and more various in the ideas and 
 
3 oo THE OLIVE LEAR CHAP. xvi. 
 
 emotions they call up." Many a body broken down by 
 disease has become a shrine in which the sweetest 
 worship is held ; the familiar daylight being charged 
 with heavenly visions, and the common air turned into 
 heavenly music. The saddest things of life are ever 
 the most beautiful, and the most provocative of that 
 mental activity which is itself a joy ; and if they 
 suggest thoughts of the infinite life beyond, the sadness 
 in them grows short and dim as a shadow at noon. 
 
 And still more in the highest world of all, the 
 spiritual, in the things that concern the everlasting 
 peace of man, we see the same beneficent principle at 
 work. Out of the thorny curse of the ground God 
 brings the purple blossom of the world's blessing. That 
 sin which darkened the world has been made the means 
 of its brightest illumination ; has brought to view attri- 
 butes in the nature of God which neither man nor angel 
 could ever otherwise have known. Out of the cross has 
 flowered the salvation of the world ; and through the 
 temptations and falls of individual men come forth their 
 highest virtues. Man's divinest life is the result of his 
 sorest pains. By the discipline of suffering, his sins and 
 backslidings, his repentances and restorations are made 
 the means of enabling him to rise to the full height of his 
 Godlike stature and grow into the likeness and fellow- 
 ship of God. The apples of Sodom may become by 
 divine transforming grace the fruits of the tree of life 
 in the midst of the heavenly paradise. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 THE STONES BURIED IN THE JORDAN. 
 
 " And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan, in the 
 place where the feet of the priests which bare the ark of the cove- 
 nant stood : and they are there unto this day." JOSHUA iv. 9. 
 
 IN the extreme south of Italy there is an interesting 
 river that washes the walls of the old town of 
 Cosenza, the capital of Calabria, and flows through the 
 valley with a considerable volume of water even in the 
 driest weather. This river is called the Busento, and is 
 famous as the site of Alaric's grave. The king of the 
 Goths with his army was advancing south through Italy 
 for the invasion of Sicily, when he was suddenly over- 
 taken with a violent fever which terminated fatally at 
 Cosenza. By the enforced labour of the people around, 
 the course of the river was diverted at the point where a 
 tributary stream, called the Crati, falls into it, and its bed 
 exposed. In this dry channel of the river they con- 
 structed a magnificent sepulchre which they adorned 
 with the splendid spoils and trophies taken from the 
 sack of Rome. There they laid in royal state the dead 
 301 
 
302 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 body of the king; and having closed the grave, they 
 allowed the imprisoned waters to return to their native 
 bed, and to flow over the spot. No one now can 
 point out the exact place where Alaric lies, although its 
 immediate neighbourhood is well known ; and the faith- 
 ful river, which has jealously kept the secret confided to 
 it for well nigh fifteen hundred years, ever murmurs as it 
 flows past its solemn requiem for the mighty dead. 
 
 Two thousand years before this barbaric funeral, we 
 read of another equally remarkable and far more signifi- 
 cant, which took place in the bed of the Jordan. When 
 the Israelites came from the wilderness to the banks of 
 this river they found it in flood, for it was the spring- 
 time of the year, and the snows of Hermon were melt- 
 ing in the warm sunshine into the sources of the sacred 
 stream, which in consequence filled the whole of its bed 
 up to the margin of the jungle, with which its nearer 
 banks were fringed. But as the priests stood with the 
 ark on their shoulders on the bank, ready to plunge in, 
 depending upon God's promised help, the raging 
 waters suddenly retreated up the gorge and piled them- 
 selves in great crystal walls at its upper end, leaving the 
 whole bed of the river dry from north to south, through 
 its long windings. The mass of the Israelites, men, 
 women, and children, who were in the rear, quickly fol- 
 lowed the priests, and safely crossed over to the other 
 side. As a memorial of this wonderful passage, twelve 
 stones were selected from the rocky bed of the river, one 
 for each of the twelve tribes of Israel ; and these were 
 borne across before them on the shoulders of twelve 
 
xvn. THE STONES BURIED IN THE JORDAN. 303 
 
 men, and planted on the upper terrace of the valley 
 beyond the reach of the annual inundation. In this 
 manner was formed the first sanctuary of the Holy Land, 
 which was a circle of upright stones like one of the 
 so-called Druidical circles in which our pagan ancestors 
 worshipped in our own country. The twelve stones of 
 which it was composed continued for several generations 
 to attract the reverence of the people, and the spot was 
 chosen as the site of the tabernacle, where it remained 
 till it was removed to Shiloh. 
 
 But besides this memorial which was set up on the 
 western bank of the Jordan, there was another set up in 
 the bed of the river itself. In the place where the feet 
 of the priests who bore the ark of the covenant stood, in 
 the centre of the channel, twelve stones like those which 
 had been carried across to the opposite bank, were ar- 
 ranged probably in the same manner; and when the 
 river, which had been temporarily driven backwards to 
 allow the Israelites to cross, returned to its forsaken 
 bed, its dark muddy waters flowed over the buried 
 stones and hid them for ever from view. Thus there 
 were two monuments of the miraculous passage of the 
 Jordan taken from the materials of its own bed ; one 
 that gave rise to the sacred shrine of Gilgal, which was 
 for a long time the appointed place of worship in the 
 land ; and another that was buried out of sight for ever 
 in the muddy ooze of the deep rushing river. The 
 sacred narrative tells us what were the purpose and 
 meaning of the monument that stood on the dry land 
 and was visible to every eye ; but we have to find out 
 
3 o 4 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 what were the purpose and meaning of the monument 
 that was invisible beneath the waters of the river. In- 
 deed, so great is the difficulty, that not a few able com- 
 mentators have alleged that the text is an interpolation, 
 and that in reality there was only one monument of the 
 event erected. The reference to an apparently double 
 memorial, they contend, is simply a continuation of the 
 description of the manner in which God's commands 
 were fulfilled, as " Thus Joshua set up the twelve stones 
 which they had taken from the midst of the Jordan in 
 the place where the feet of the priests which bore the 
 ark of the covenant stood." Against this plausible 
 theory, however, there is the formidable authority of the 
 Septuagint translators, who have accepted the text as it 
 is rendered in our version. 
 
 There can be no doubt that all the circumstances con- 
 nected with the entrance of the Israelites into the Holy 
 Land by the passage of the Jordan were meant to have 
 a deeper significance than a mere natural one. For 
 just as the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and their 
 wanderings in the wilderness, while truly historical, may 
 be regarded as a religious parable written for our in- 
 struction, so the circumstances connected with the 
 entrance of the Israelites into Canaan, while truly his- 
 torical, may be regarded as a pictorial representation of 
 spiritual experiences. Look, for instance, at the fact 
 that the Israelites were shut up by Providence to enter 
 the Holy Land where they did. They attempted to 
 enter by the open desert of the south-west directly from 
 Egypt, but they failed, and were driven back, con- 
 
XVIT. THE STONES BURIED IN THE JORDAN. 305 
 
 demned by their unbelief to wander in the wilderness ; 
 and, the old easy route Divinely forbidden, they had to 
 skirt round the mountains on the right hand, and then 
 to descend into the valley of the Jordan, and cross over 
 that formidable river. The place where they entered 
 the Holy Land is unique. There is no other place like 
 it in the world. It is the deepest chasm on the surface 
 of the earth at a great depth below the level of the 
 sea. Is there no spiritual significance in this remark- 
 able fact that the Israelites should have entered the high 
 mountain land of Palestine, not by a high mountain 
 pass, but by the lowest part of it, the deepest defile on 
 the face of the earth ? Do we not see in this circum- 
 stance a symbol of the deep repentance and self-abase- 
 ment which a people so sensual, so ignorant, required 
 before they could be fitted to occupy the heights of 
 worship in God's holy heritage ? 
 
 Then look further at the fact that the time when 
 the Israelites crossed the Jordan was the spring-time, 
 which in Palestine is the commencement of the barley- 
 harvest. We are told elsewhere in Scripture that the 
 harvest is emblematical of the judgment. It was there- 
 fore a time of judgment when the Israelites crossed 
 the river; their past sins, their numerous rebellions, 
 and outbursts of unbelief, deserved condemnation and 
 punishment ; their iniquities rose up against them, 
 and demanded their exclusion from the Land of 
 Promise as unworthy. But God in His great mercy 
 held back the waters of the Jordan, the waters of 
 judgment and death, which would otherwise have 
 
306 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 overwhelmed them, whilst His holy ark stood in the 
 midst of the stream, and Israel crossed in safety ; a 
 token surely that though He was angry with them, His 
 anger had passed away, and He was about to give them 
 double for all their sins. Look further still at the sig- 
 nificant fact that when the Israelites had erected their 
 first sanctuary on the other side of Jordan, on the soil 
 of the Holy Land, which by this solemn act became 
 their own inheritance, they were immediately circum- 
 cised, and thus consecrated anew to the Lord, made 
 new creatures as it were from their birth to Him. So 
 that we see in this incident, as well as in the circum- 
 stance that the older generation which had left Egypt all 
 perished in the wilderness, and only their children 
 entered the Holy Land, what we may regard as the 
 origin and illustration of our Lord's profound saying, 
 " Except ye be converted and become as little chil- 
 dren, ye cannot enter the kingdom of heaven." 
 
 Seeing then that all the incidents and circumstances 
 of the passage of the Israelites across the Jordan form 
 a very focus of symbolism, we are surely warranted in 
 looking for a spiritual significance in the burying of the 
 memorial stones in the bed of the river. The Jordan 
 was a boundary river, separating between the wilderness 
 and the Promised Land. It flowed down to the dreary, 
 lifeless solitude of the Dead Sea. Its waters, laden 
 with mud, were dark and drumly, and concealed their 
 bed and whatever they flowed over completely. Its 
 course also was very rapid and impetuous. In all these 
 respects it was a most expressive symbol to the Israel- 
 
xvii. THE STONES BURIED IN THE JORDAN. 307 
 
 ites. The transition from the wilderness to Canaan 
 was not made over continuous dry land; a water- 
 boundary was interposed, through which they had to 
 pass. And did not this teach them that in the pas- 
 sage from the wandering life of the desert to a settled 
 home in the Land of Promise they were not to con- 
 tinue the same persons in the new circumstances that 
 they had been in the old; but, on the contrary, 
 were to undergo a moral change, a spiritual reforma- 
 tion. They were to be made a holy nation, in order 
 to be fit occupants of the Holy Land. Their passage 
 of the Jordan was therefore a baptism of repentance ; 
 the river at the entrance of the Holy Land, like the 
 laver at the entrance of the tabernacle, afforded a 
 bath of purification ; and the memorial stones laid in 
 the bed of the river, over which the waters, when they 
 had safely crossed on dry land, returned, burying them 
 for ever from sight, represented the fate which should 
 have been theirs had God dealt with them according 
 to their sins. There was a stone for each of the 
 twelve tribes ; and these twelve representative stones 
 stood in the room of the whole people, and underwent 
 the doom from which, by the mercy of God, they 
 escaped. And just as the scape-goat carried away 
 the sins of the people, confessed on its head, into 
 the wilderness, into a land of forgetfulness, so the 
 dark, muddy waters of the Jordan carried away the 
 stones which represented the sins of the Israelites into 
 the Dead Sea, there to be engulphed for ever. 
 
 In the former miraculous passage of the Red Sea, 
 
3 o8 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 which was an incident of a similar character and signifi- 
 cance to this, the Egyptians who pursued them were 
 drowned, when the Israelites escaped safely to the other 
 side; and their dead bodies, like the memorial stones 
 placed in the bed of the Jordan, represented the death 
 and burial of all that hindered their spiritual advance- 
 ment and welfare. From their own dead selves, from 
 their besetting sins and spiritual foes, they were now 
 delivered. These all perished in the waters of forget- 
 fulness ; never more' should they rise up to condemn 
 or annoy them ; and they were to emerge from their 
 baptismal purification in the Jordan no more the slaves 
 of sin, but the servants of God. While, on the other 
 hand, the memorial stones erected on the opposite side 
 of the river, like the altars which Abraham built in the 
 places where God had appeared to him, and the pillar 
 which Jacob set up at Bethel, clearly indicated the new 
 consecration of their lives to God. It was an archi- 
 tectural vow a token that they took possession of 
 the Holy Land, not for selfish greed or aggrandise- 
 ment, but for unselfish religious purposes, to subserve 
 the high ends for themselves and mankind which God 
 had in view in bringing them into it. Grateful for their 
 deliverance for all the wonderful way by which they 
 had been led they built their first temple of worship 
 out of the stones which they had gathered from the 
 bed of the river, which had proved to them the path 
 of life, and not of death, and resolved that they would 
 live no more unto themselves, but unto God. 
 
 Our Lord Himself though purer than the purest 
 
xvn. THE STONES BURIED IN THE JORDAN. 309 
 
 water was baptised in the Jordan, and thus fulfilled 
 all righteousness, not after the manner of God, but 
 after the manner of man ; made sin for us who knew 
 no sin. In that baptism He passed from His obscure 
 life of preparation to His public life of service. The 
 rite was the gate through which He entered upon His 
 path of warfare and sorrow. And as He crossed this 
 boundary, or crisis of His life, there were experiences 
 in His case too that corresponded with the two memo- 
 rials connected with the passage of the Jordan by the 
 Israelites. There was the identification of Himself 
 with us as a sinner, who occupied our place and en- 
 dured our penalty, indicated by the flowing of the 
 waters of the Jordanic baptism over Him ; and there 
 was the personal consecration of Himself to His life of 
 sacrifice, and the approval of it given by the audible 
 voice of the Father, and the descent upon Him of the 
 Holy Ghost like a dove. 
 
 All baptism is in a spiritual sense the crossing of 
 a boundary. When a child is baptised it crosses a 
 boundary between nature and grace between ignor- 
 ance and knowledge. And when in later life we 
 are baptised with a spiritual baptism, born again of 
 water and the Spirit, we cross the boundary between 
 spiritual death and life from the kingdom of Satan 
 to that kingdom which is not meat and drink, but 
 righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. 
 Now the river of baptism is a river of death. In 
 crossing it we die to sin and live to righteousness. 
 In entering into the new life the old life perishes. 
 
3io THE OLIVE LEAK CHAP. 
 
 Through the death of the old man there is the resur- 
 rection of the new man. All that is connected with 
 the old life of sin and unbelief is taken from us and 
 carried down to the Dead Sea. The body of sin is 
 drowned in the waters of forgiveness, and shall no 
 more rise up against us. Like the stones in the bed 
 of the Jordan, there is no resurrection for that which 
 was connected with our former dead sinful selves. 
 And how precious is the significance of the buried 
 stones when looked at in this light ! It is not a 
 truth that pleases the intelligence by its ingenuity 
 only ; it is a truth that satisfies the heart by its suit- 
 ableness to its wants. The Israelites could not have 
 understood the full meaning of the symbolic rite to 
 which they were parties. They had a partial com- 
 prehension of what the memorial stones placed in 
 the bed of the Jordan indicated. But Christ has 
 come, and the Spirit has taken the things that are 
 Christ's and shown them to us; and now the Gospel 
 sheds its light back upon the strange stones, and 
 shows to us the link which was not seen under the 
 law, between the waters that cleansed and the waters 
 that overwhelmed in destructive judgment. It was 
 not manifest to the Israelites what has been re- 
 vealed to us by the death of Christ that cleansing 
 by means of death was God's appointed way. Jesus 
 came not by water only but by water and blood. He 
 came to purify men from their sins by His own blood ; 
 and Christian baptism, Christian conversion, combines 
 the two things, judgment and life, death and resur- 
 
xvn. THE STONES BURIED IN THE JORDAN. 311 
 
 rection, salvation through destruction. The sinner 
 through grace passes into the kingdom of God ; but 
 his old sinful life dies in the passage. He reckons 
 himself as indeed dead unto sin, but alive unto God 
 through faith; just as the representative stones lay 
 overwhelmed in the bed of the Jordan while the 
 Israelites were safe on the other side. And hence 
 the profound meaning of the words of the Apostle, 
 " Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are 
 risen with Him through the faith by the operation of 
 God, who hath raised Him from the dead." Wash- 
 ing and burial are thus combined; for God's method 
 of washing the sinner is through death the death of 
 His own Son, by whose grace, as typified by the 
 waters of baptism, the believer has been raised 
 quickened into new life, purified, and consecrated to 
 the service of God. 
 
 How comforting and reassuring is the thought that 
 when, through faith in Christ, we have crossed from a 
 state of nature to a state of grace all our sins are cast 
 into the sea of God's mercy. They are as completely 
 buried out of sight as the stones in the ooze of the 
 Jordan. The peace that is like a river and the right- 
 eousness that is like the waves of the sea flow over them. 
 The Israelites indeed knew that the stones which were 
 the memorials of their sinful, rebellious life in the wilder- 
 ness lay in the bed of the river which they had crossed 
 and left behind, although no trace of them was visible, 
 and they had been carried by the swift current down to 
 an unfathomable grave in the Dead Sea. And so with 
 
3I2 THE OLIVE LEAF, CHAP. 
 
 our sins ; they are buried in the channel of Christ's 
 pardoning grace, and can no more rise in judgment 
 against us. But we know they are there still ; they have 
 entered into our memory and into the substance of our 
 being, and the recollection of them will follow us 
 through all our life. Things cannot be obliterated or 
 abolished ; they remain, and the record of them remains 
 for ever. The memorial of Adam's transgression re- 
 mained in the curse on the ground ; the memorial of 
 Abraham's unbelieving laughter remained in the name 
 of his son Isaac ; the memorial of Jacob's deceitfulness 
 remained in his halting step ; the memorial of David's 
 crime remained in the sword that hung suspended over 
 his house ; and when Jesus finished the work which His 
 Father had given Him to do, and passed into the glory 
 which He had with the Father before the world was, 
 neither did He leave behind the memorial of the sins 
 which He bore for us. We see it still in the wounds of 
 the cross which mark His glorified body in the midst of 
 the throne a lamb as it had been slain. And so we 
 carry in the depths of our being the memorials of the 
 sins which God has forgiven ; we bear their conse- 
 quences, if they have been translated into outer deeds, 
 in our lives. But while there is thus no obliteration of 
 the past, while there is no Lethe of forgetfulness flowing 
 for man on earth, and even in heaven we cannot forget 
 the sins for which the Lord of glory was slain, and a 
 sinner's experience must be ours for evermore ; still the 
 waves of the river that maketh glad the city of our God 
 flow over our sins, hide them from view, and separate 
 
THE TWO WRITINGS. 
 
 us from them by as broad a gulf as that which separates 
 the dead from the living. Christ has expressly taken 
 them upon Himself; and in His death and resurrection 
 we have the assurance that those who live unto Him 
 need fear no condemnation. Let us therefore take out 
 of the past what will help and not hinder us in the 
 future. Let the memorial of sins buried out of sight, 
 and separated from us by the river of God's pardoning 
 mercy, deepen our penitence in the newness of life to 
 which we have crossed over ; keep us more humble and 
 watchful, and enable us to magnify the mercy that has 
 forgiven much, in order that we may be stimulated to 
 love much. 
 
 THE TWO WRITINGS. 
 
 IN awful majesty, veiled in dark clouds, 
 'Mid roar of thunder, -lightning's vivid flash, 
 And earthquake shaking the eternal hills, 
 God wrote His law upon a granite stone, 
 Shaped from the rough, rude rock on Sinai's crest, 
 In letters which no change could weather out, 
 Which no soft moss could fill with tenderness, 
 Or lichen hoar subdue to mellow age. 
 Hard as the stone on which it was inscribed, 
 That law reigns throughout nature pitiless, 
 And says " The soul that sinneth it shall die ! " 
 But when God came to earth in lowly form, 
 Without a cloud to veil His face with awe, 
 Gentle and peaceful, as the morning light 
 
314 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP, xvn, 
 
 That shines upon the lily's dew-bent cup ; 
 
 And one poor sinner, crushed with shame and fear, 
 
 VVas brought before Him by unfeeling men, 
 
 That He might give her sin its due award, 
 
 He stooped as if He saw and heard them not, 
 
 With His own thoughts of pity occupied : 
 
 And with His finger in the fleeting dust, 
 
 That gathered on the temple's marble floor, 
 
 He wrote the law that she had broken there. 
 
 Inscribed in dust, the motes displaced, again 
 
 Would settle in the lines and fill them up ; 
 
 A careless passing foot would stamp them out ; 
 
 Or the same Hand that made them could efface 
 
 Their transient record of a moment's guilt. 
 
 Not on hard granite does He write our sins, 
 
 But in the dust from which frail man was formed, 
 
 And into which he soon returns again 
 
 Which a mere touch or breath obliterates. 
 
 He knows the weakness of the human heart ; 
 
 And while no jot or tittle of His holy law, 
 
 Tho' heaven and earth should be dissolved in mist, 
 
 Can pass away until it be fulfilled 
 
 His grace can pardon all iniquities, 
 
 And blot them out of His recording book. 
 
 Transferred from granite stone and temple floor, 
 
 To the dread tree on which He hung for us, 
 
 The handwriting that was against our sins 
 
 Was nailed ; His blood has washed the record clean. 
 
 And now nor God nor man can us accuse ; 
 
 We go in pardoned peace and sin no more. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 THE BUFFET-GAME. 
 
 "And when they had blindfolded him, they struck him on the 
 f ice, and asked him, saying, Prophesy, who is it that smote thee ? " 
 LUKE xxii. 64. 
 
 NOTHING is more remarkable than the per- 
 sistency with which the out-door games of 
 children recur season after season. 'No sooner do the 
 days begin to lengthen than we hear in the lingering 
 light of the quiet February afternoon the merry noise of 
 the children, released from school, over their play- 
 alike on the village green and in the streets of the 
 large town. Old, familiar sports, that during the rest of 
 the year had been laid aside and forgotten, are now 
 again introduced, and carried on with fresh energy and 
 enthusiasm. And the spectator, whose grey hairs and 
 stiffened limbs and sense of dignity prevent him, even 
 though his heart is young, from joining in the merry 
 pastimes as he used in the far-off days to do, recognizes 
 in the happy scene a reproduction of his own youthful 
 experience. The games that he engaged in while a boy 
 
316 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 are the same as his grandchildren now pursue with un- 
 abated interest. Year after year and generation after 
 generation these games are perpetuated, as if exempt 
 from the ordinary causes of human decay and forget- 
 fulness. Fashion has no power over them. Whatever 
 may be the changes in other respects in social habits 
 and pursuits, however great may be the progress in 
 knowledge, art, and social refinement, they change not. 
 This, if we think deeply of it, is a curious circumstance. 
 We are apt to fancy that the games of children 
 originated in caprice, and that another caprice might at 
 any time supersede them. Especially in an age of in- 
 ventions like this, when everything is revolutionized, 
 when school-books and methods of education are 
 entirely changed, we might expect that some new sug- 
 gestions, some fresh novelties would displace the 
 familiar sports of children from their old position. But 
 it is not so. They seem as suitable to the wants and 
 tastes of the young people of the present day as they 
 were to those of our youthful ancestors. Like the 
 favourite stories of the nursery, they come with new 
 power of adaptation to each generation. As the fathers 
 and children alike begin the experiences of life in the 
 same Eden of innocence and joy, so they each find 
 there the same means of amusement and delightful 
 exercise ; and the world grows continuously young 
 again over the same toys, sports, and story-books. 
 
 When we come to investigate this matter, to apply to 
 it the scientific method which has been so fruitful of dis- 
 coveries in other directions, we find that the games 
 
THE BUFFET-GAME. 317 
 
 which we see our children practise year after year are so 
 firmly rooted in the regard of the young of each genera- 
 tion because they are the heirlooms of an immemorial 
 antiquity. We can trace them far back to their original 
 source among primitive races, in much the same way as 
 the botanist traces his plants to their geographical 
 centres of distribution. And as our common nursery 
 tales, which once had a religious and social significance 
 which in the course of long ages has entirely evaporated, 
 when examined in this manner, have yielded striking 
 evidences of the early condition and spread of man- 
 kind ; so our common children's games in the hands of 
 men like Mr. Tylor have been used as ethnological 
 arguments to show the connection in remote times of 
 different races with each other and the various steps of 
 their civilization. Many of the sports of children arise 
 from the imitative faculty which is so strong in children 
 everywhere. They will mimic in their play, the seri- 
 ous work of grown-up people ; they will buy and sell in 
 their little toy-shops, act the doctor and the lawyer to 
 the life ; and an upturned chair will furnish to them a 
 pulpit, from which they will imitate the services of the 
 sanctuary, and preach a children's sermon to an audi- 
 ence that is, indeed, not far from the kingdom of 
 heaven. And such mimic games may have sprung up 
 of their own accord in different places. Our Lord's 
 allusion to the Jewish children sitting in the market- 
 place and acting alternately the part of a marriage 
 and a funeral, and saying to their fellows, "We 
 have piped unto you, and ye have not danced ; 
 
3 i8 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 we have mourned unto you, and ye have not 
 lamented," is one that might be applicable to many 
 a similar scene among our own children. 
 
 But there are other games that have something 
 artificial and distinctive about them ; and these can 
 hardly have been invented independently by different 
 races having no connection with each other. It is such 
 special games that are full of archaeological interest, 
 and have much to tell us of our remote ancestry in 
 the East. Battledore and shuttle-cock and kite-flying 
 came from South-Eastern Asia, and a few centuries 
 ago naturalized themselves all over Europe. The 
 childish diversion of cat's-cradle, with its various 
 representations of familiar objects, has been practised 
 from the most remote times by the natives of New 
 Zealand. Tennis so tragically associated with the 
 massacre of St. Bartholomew, during which Charles IX. 
 divided his time between playing at this game and 
 firing out of one of the palace windows upon the 
 Huguenots is one of the oldest sports in the world. 
 It was known to the Greeks under the name of sphair- 
 isis and to the Romans as pila. The game of morra, 
 so common in Naples and Rome, played between two 
 persons by suddenly raising or compressing the fingers, 
 and at the same instant guessing each at the number of 
 the other, was familiar to the ancient Greeks and 
 Romans, and has been perpetuated in the same region 
 during a period of more than three thousand years. 
 The analogous game of odd and even has descended to 
 us from our remote Aryan ancestors, and is as old as 
 
xvni. THE BUFFET-GAME. 
 
 319 
 
 the time when the idea of the classification of numbers 
 into the odd and even series first dawned upon the bar- 
 baric minds of pre-historic men. 
 
 A most remarkable example of the indefinite duration 
 of children's sports is to be found in the game whose 
 title is prefixed to this chapter. The buffet-game meets 
 us for the first time in the extensive and beautifully de- 
 corated tombs of Beni-Hassan, a town in Middle Egypt 
 formerly called Specs Artemidos. On the walls of these 
 tombs, where many of the great officers of the earlier 
 Egyptian dynasties were buried, are represented some of 
 the most graphic details of archaic Egyptian life ; among 
 others, the famous scene of the arrival of the thirty-seven 
 members of a tribe of Syrian people called the Aahmu, 
 who visited Egypt during a famine in the time of 
 Khnumhotep, Governor of Upper Egypt, and were 
 long supposed to have been the Israelites under Jacob. 
 Many of the ancient Egyptian games are depicted 
 among these most interesting illuminations of the tomb. 
 One particularly is sketched with life-like vividness. It 
 represents a group of men standing with their clenched 
 fists around a central figure, whose head is bent down so 
 that he cannot see what the others are doing. They 
 -are evidently playing the buffet-game. One of them has 
 just struck the blindfolded player in the middle, and 
 they are asking him to tell which of them inflicted 
 the blow. It is most interesting to see in this old 
 world picture how thoroughly human nature is the same 
 in all ages ; and the association of the light amusement 
 of an idle hour with the awful mysteries of the tomb 
 
3 20 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAI-. 
 
 gives a most touching tenderness to the whole inci- 
 dent. 
 
 Among the ancient Greeks the sport under the name of 
 kolophismos, from kolophos, a blow, was very popular. 
 From them it passed on to the Romans, among whom 
 it speedily established itself; and by them in turn it was 
 handed on to the western countries which they had con- 
 quered. During the Middle Ages it was universally 
 practised under the name of " Qui feri?" or "Who 
 strikes ? " the person blindfolded having to guess by 
 whom he had been hit and with which hand. Among 
 the French the game has long been a great favourite ; 
 and the name of mainchaude which they have given to it 
 conveys a humorous sense of the warm exercise of the 
 hand which it calls forth when carried on with anima- 
 tion. In our country it is called hot-cockles, and is 
 known to every child, especially in the southern parts. 
 We thus see that the game has a wide range of distribu- 
 tion, and may be traced back to the very limits of his- 
 torical antiquity. Whether Egypt was the place where it 
 originated, or how long before the representation on the 
 tomb of the Beni- Hassan it was practised, we cannot 
 tell ; but in that country we have the earliest trace of it, 
 and in all likelihood it spread throughout Europe and 
 Asia from that source. The form pictured in the 
 Egyptian tombs seems to have been the primitive type 
 of the game. But various modifications of it were con- 
 trived at a later time. Our own children are familiar 
 with one variety, in which the principal figure is not 
 blindfolded at all, but is simply struck by one who runs 
 
xvm. THE BUFFET-GAME. 321 
 
 away and is chased, and if overtaken becomes in his 
 turn the pursuing figure. And blind-mart s-bvff> which is 
 one of the most charming and enjoyable of our indoor 
 amusements, is another development in which the ad- 
 ditional features of pursuit and capture are introduced ; 
 and the game, from being a sedentary, becomes an ex- 
 ceedingly active one. "Blind-man's-buff," it may be 
 remarked, was known to the ancient Greeks by the 
 name of " Muinda," and is supposed to have originated 
 in the fable of Polyphemus a cruel giant son of Nep- 
 tune, who had but one eye in the middle of his fore- 
 head, which Ulysses burnt out with a fire-brand, having 
 first made him drunk. Of the game of " hot-cockles " 
 it may be said that it used to be one of the pastimes 
 played at funerals in some parts of Yorkshire. Could 
 its history be traced far enough back, it might be found 
 from various associations connected with it to be not a 
 mere innocent game, but a dark religious rite connected 
 with some primitive nature-worship. 
 
 Venerable and remarkable as these associations are, 
 they are altogether lost sight of in the surpassing interest 
 which its tragical connection with our Saviour's last 
 hours on earth imparts to the game. We are told that 
 when Jesus was judged worthy of death in the palace of 
 the high priest, a scene of disorder and brutal ferocity 
 began worthy of the darkest orgies of paganism. The 
 lowest menials of Caiaphas and the members of the San- 
 hedrim joined together in heaping upon Him all the 
 abuse of vulgar spite and religious hatred. They spat 
 in His face ; they smote Him with sticks ; they struck 
 
3 22 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 Him with their clenched fists and their open palms. Dr. 
 Farrar says that " in the fertility of their furious and 
 hateful insolence they invented against Him a sort of 
 game. Blindfolding His eyes, they hit Him again and 
 again, with the repeated question, ' Prophesy to us, O 
 Messiah, who it is that smote thee.'" But we have seen 
 that the sport in which they so basely indulged was no 
 new thing no invention of their own. It was an old 
 game practised by their own innocent little children, 
 and shamelessly perverted by them to hold up the Holy 
 One of Israel to derision. Three of the Evangelists re- 
 late the incident in very nearly the same terms, except 
 that in the accounts given by St. Matthew and St. 
 Mark the words in the original which are translated 
 " buffeted" are ekolophisan and kolophizein derived 
 from the name by which, as I have said, the buffet-game 
 was known among the Greeks. The Jews doubtless 
 obtained their knowledge of the game from the Egyp- 
 tians; and the incident in the palace of Caiaphas 
 irresistibly connects itself in our imaginations with the 
 picture in the tomb of Beni-Hassan, that takes us back 
 to the days of Jacob's visit to Egypt. 
 
 We cannot but regard it as a significant circum- 
 stance that it was the Jews and not the Romans who 
 compelled Jesus to take part in this humiliating sport. 
 The Komans, as I have said, were well acquainted 
 with the game ; but they would have deemed it utterly 
 out of place to introduce it on such an occasion. 
 Everything connected with their judicial procedure was 
 grave, orderly, and subdued to the majesty of law. 
 
xvin. THE BUFFET-GAME. 323 
 
 The vilest criminal was treated with consideration, and 
 his case calmly and dispassionately investigated to the 
 utmost. A dignified and impartial administration of 
 justice was one of the noblest contributions by the 
 Romans to the civilization of the world. We may 
 therefore be sure that even the facile Pilate would 
 not have allowed such a puerile exhibition to take 
 place in his presence. Vacillating as he was between 
 what he wished and what he dared to do, we are never- 
 theless struck with the immense moral difference between 
 the procedure in his court and that in the court of our 
 Lord's Jewish judges Annas, Caiaphas, and Herod. 
 No doubt the Roman soldiers took part in another 
 childish game connected with our Lord's trial. They 
 arrayed Him in the mimic robes, and placed in His 
 hand and on His head the mock insignia of a king, and 
 offered Him homage on bended knee, in derision of His 
 pretensions to royalty. But they were instigated to this 
 by Herod and his men-of-war. It was a method of 
 throwing ridicule upon claims supposed to be un- 
 founded more consonant with Jewish than Roman 
 practice. All Orientals are children of nature bora 
 dramatists, and take a passionate delight in histrionic 
 displays. They would prefer to show by a spectacle 
 appealing to the eye what they thought of a pretender, 
 than by grave, argumentative investigation to prove 
 him one. 
 
 Olshausen, however, takes a different view of the 
 incident He does not believe that such a violation 
 of judicial decorum as would be involved in the buffet- 
 
THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
 game could have happened in the actual presence of 
 the Sanhedrim, the highest tribunal of the land. He 
 imagines that the infamous scene took place after the 
 retirement of the high priest and his council, when 
 Jesus was left alone among the common crowd of 
 servants and guards. But there is nothing in the his- 
 torical sequence or spirit of the narrative to justify 
 this supposition. On the contrary, everything goes to 
 prove that the insolent acts with which the trial and 
 condemnation of Jesus were so largely interspersed 
 were performed when the council was actually sitting. 
 The forward official who earned for himself the notoriety 
 of having been the first to begin the illegal persecution, 
 struck Jesus with the palm of his hand in the presence 
 of the high priest, unreproved by that ruthless ecclesi- 
 astic. That act itself shows that the dignity of the 
 court was not even externally preserved, and the hor- 
 rible outburst of violence that followed was entirely 
 in keeping with it ; so that we may well believe that 
 the appointed rulers of Israel witnessed, approved of, 
 and even took part in the awful game taking and 
 giving license to do with Jesus as they liked. 
 
 How long the buffet-game lasted we know not. The 
 Jews had to wait till the break of day before they could 
 bring Jesus to the judgment-seat of Pilate. And dur- 
 ing these miserable, lingering hours, the Man of Sor- 
 rows in all probability endured the insults and the 
 violence of His self-constituted judges and their brutal 
 band of servitors. What a contrast between His con- 
 duct and theirs ! How dignified His demeanour, how 
 
xvni. THE BUFFET-GAME. 325 
 
 noble His silence, how godlike His meekness ! In 
 some respects it was the climax of His humiliation 
 and shame. Life had no more humiliating experience 
 to offer. The cross had its scoffing and its sneers in 
 equal measure, but its very awfulness gave it the heroic 
 grandeur which obliterated its meaner features. The 
 men who mocked the Saviour's dying agonies were 
 overwhelmed by the transcendent majesty of the scene, 
 and they must have felt that their mockery was inap- 
 propriate. But here, in the hour of His condemnation, 
 there was nothing to relieve the naked shame nothing 
 to dignify the occasion, except the demeanour of the 
 Sufferer. All the circumstances were ignominious. 
 The power of forbearance and self-restraint which our 
 Saviour showed in the midst of this most humiliating 
 pantomime seems greater than any called forth by 
 His mightiest miracles. Such a picture of meek, un- 
 complaining patience taking all these insults and 
 mockeries calmly, as if He had fully expected them, 
 and was quite prepared for them the world has never 
 seen. No response was made to the question of the 
 buffeters, "Prophesy who is it that smote thee " ; but 
 the conduct of Jesus was a fulfilment to the very letter 
 of the prophecies uttered long ages previously regarding 
 Him : " I gave my back to the smiters, and my cheeks to 
 them that plucked off the hair ; I hid not my face from 
 shame and spitting." "He was oppressed, and He was 
 afflicted, yet He opened not His mouth : He is brought 
 as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her 
 shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth." One 
 
3 26 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP, 
 
 witness only gazed with loving and pitying eyes upon 
 the mournful spectacle ; and how deep and lasting was 
 the impression produced upon him we learn from the 
 touching words which he wrote long years afterwards 
 in his exile : " I John, who also am your brother and 
 companion in tribulation, and in the kingdom and 
 patience of Jesus Christ." 
 
 All the circumstances and incidents connected with 
 the death of our Lord are typical and representative. 
 Sin flowered and fruited on the cross that its true 
 nature might be shown. It culminated in the most 
 deadly crime in the universe. And one of the most 
 significant forms in which it acted itself out was that 
 of mockery. And we cannot help seeing in this mockery 
 something much more evil than the thoughtless iniquity 
 of those who simply acted out their own depraved 
 natural instincts. We feel that it was inspired by a 
 malignant hatred the hatred of a wronged and re- 
 jected benefactor. We recognize in the buffet-game, 
 and all the revolting incidents connected with it, the 
 intense dislike of a people who were not without 
 visions and convictions of the truth, and who de- 
 liberately set themselves to despise what they were 
 led by the most sacred obligations to reverence. It 
 was appropriate that they should pervert an innocent 
 game of childhood, associated with life's simplest and 
 brightest hours, in order to enhance the tragic features 
 of the awful drama which they enacted in order to- 
 express by the unhallowed perversion their scornful 
 rejection of the holy child Jesus, who came to reveal 
 
xvin. THE BUFFET-GAME. 327 
 
 the Father to them. In this vile mimicry they were 
 acting over again the part of Ishmael when he mocked 
 and made sport of Isaac instead of sharing in the joy 
 of the household ; and the apostle shows that this con- 
 duct was typical of the ridicule that should be heaped 
 upon the righteous by, the self-righteous in every age 
 and nation. The whole circumstances of the buffet- 
 game show how true were the Lord's own touching 
 words regarding the Jews : " I have nourished and 
 brought up children, and they have rebelled against 
 me ; " how utterly wanting, in spite of all their long- 
 continued divine training and teaching, they were in 
 moral earnestness and the sense and love of truth ; 
 how ripe as a nation they had become for rejection 
 and destruction. 
 
 What made our Lord the subject of vulgar and pro- 
 fane sport to the Jews was the seeming incongruity be- 
 tween His lowly position and His lofty claims. It was 
 the dwelling in His person of the fulness of the God- 
 head in the tabernacle of our flesh, and the consequent 
 conjunction in Him of the vast extremes of heaven and 
 earth, that exposed Him to the misconception and ridi- 
 cule of those who knew Him not. And it is the per- 
 ception of a similar incongruous mixture of things 
 actually unsuitable and disproportionate to each other 
 that causes fools everywhere to make a mock at sin. 
 There is a disruption in human nature ; the flesh lusteth 
 against the spirit, and there is a law in the members 
 that warreth against the law of the mind. It is in this 
 antagonism and contrast that the source of the ludi- 
 
328 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAI-. 
 
 crous lies that light and frivolous minds find what 
 gives them amusement in the weakest frailties of man- 
 kind. The wider the incongruity the more ridiculous 
 does the case become in their eyes. Our Lord endured 
 this contradiction of sinners against Himself that He 
 might deliver us from it. He has brought back the 
 unity of man's original nature, reconciled him to God 
 and to himself, recreated the soul in the image of its 
 Maker, and- refashioned its tabernacle into a temple of 
 the Holy Ghost an habitation of God through the 
 Spirit ; and thus the believer in the Lord Jesus Christ 
 becomes the highest type of man, distinguished for the 
 soberness of his mind, the dignity of his manner, and 
 the consistency of his conduct, and the incongruities of 
 a nature that is at variance with itself, and of a life that 
 is the sport of discordant principles disappear, and with 
 them the occasion of unhallowed mirth. 
 
 How little do we think when we see our innocent 
 children engaged in a merry game appropriate to their 
 age which has come down to them from the remotest 
 antiquity, and is widely spread over the world that the 
 Holy Child Jesus was in the most awful circumstances 
 compelled to take part in it. May He whose suffering 
 was greatly aggravated by it who was wounded to the 
 quick by the thorn, that they might have the beauty and 
 fragrance of the blossom purify their merry sports, 
 make them healthful for the soul as well as for the body, 
 and so fill their hearts with His own gentleness and love 
 that they can never seek their pleasure in the pain of 
 the meanest thing that lives ! And let us grown-up 
 
XVIIT. THE BUFFET-GAME. 329 
 
 men and women, who have laid aside childish things, 
 think of the share that we ourselves have had in the 
 awful game. We too have mocked at sin and have set 
 the Saviour at naught. We see in our own bosoms the 
 counterpart and likeness of the crime of the Jews. Our 
 own personal guilt in connection with our Lord's humili- 
 ation and death is the great truth which the gospel strives 
 to bring home to our hearts and consciences, but which 
 we are so apt to repudiate. And it is from this great 
 cardinal fact that our salvation springs. It was because 
 Jesus was despised and rejected, not by the Jewish 
 rulers or the Roman soldiers only, but by every sinner 
 of mankind, that there is hope in His work of expiation 
 for all. It is only when we realize our guilt in mocking 
 Him that we can enjoy the blessings of His exaltation 
 at the right hand of God, to which the ignominy of 
 earth was the hard pathway. When the Spirit opens the 
 eyes that Satan has blindfolded, and we recognize in the 
 victim of our lawlessness the Saviour who loved us and 
 gave Himself for us, then life ceases to be a dreary 
 pastime in which the most sacred things are made light 
 of, and becomes a glorious reality in which the things 
 unseen and eternal are objects of our earnest desire and 
 pursuit. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 THE BLOOD OF THE PASCHAL LAMB. 
 
 " For the Lord will pass through to smite the Egyptians ; and 
 when he seeth the blood upon the lintel, and on the two side posts, 
 the Lord will pass over the door, and will not suffer the destroyer 
 to come in unto your houses to smite you." EXODUS xii. 23. 
 
 WE know that the Mosaic institutions had in the 
 first instance a special adaptation to the com- 
 mon wants and circumstances of the Israelites. The 
 law of food, the distinction made between clean and un- 
 clean animals, had its foundation in sanitary reasons ; it 
 had a primary relation to the nature of the climate, and 
 the best kind of nourishment adapted to the Jewish 
 constitution in such a climate. Bodily health, vigour, 
 and purity were doubtless the objects which the laws 
 regarding cleanliness were meant first of all to subserve. 
 And did we investigate all the Levitical laws with the 
 same object in view, we should find in like manner that 
 there was nothing arbitrary or capricious about them ; 
 that there was a reason for them in the nature of things 
 as well as in the scheme of grace. We may be sure 
 therefore that the command of God to the Israelites, to 
 33 
 
CH. xix. THE BLOOD OF THE PASCHAL LAMB. 33 T 
 
 sprinkle their door-posts with the blood of the sacrificial 
 lamb on the ever memorable night of the Exodus, was 
 not an irrelevant sign, an accidental or capricious choice, 
 for which any other thing would have done equally well. 
 There must have been a fitness in the proceeding be- 
 coming an all-wise and all-gracious Providence, dealing 
 with reasonable and intelligent creatures. Modern 
 science has enabled us to discover such an adaptation. 
 
 Of late years numerous experiments have been made 
 by scientific men in order to ascertain the origin of life. 
 These experiments have been conducted in the interests 
 of two opposite parties ; those who maintain that dead 
 matter in certain favourable circumstances is capable 
 itself of originating life, and those who hold that all life 
 must spring from the germs of previous life. The advo- 
 cates of the former doctrine, known as the doctrine of 
 spontaneous generation, have not hitherto succeeded in 
 proving their theory. Their experiments when more 
 carefully repeated by their opponents have invariably 
 turned out failures. Indeed, the result of experimenta- 
 tion has been entirely and exclusively on the side of 
 those who argue that matter itself cannot in any circum- 
 stances originate life. So ubiquitous are the germs of 
 life that it is almost impossible to imagine a spot alto- 
 gether destitute of them. They are so difficult to get 
 rid of in conducting any experiment requiring their 
 exclusion, that after using the utmost precaution, and 
 placing them in circumstances the most unfavourable, 
 we cannot be quite sure that we have succeeded. In 
 the earth, air, and water they are everywhere present. 
 
332 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 Every room in every habitation is full of them ; and 
 could we magnify these germs so as to make them vis- 
 ible, we should see the atmosphere loaded with myriads 
 upon myriads of them, dancing up and down upon the 
 currents that pervade it. They are ever ready to alight 
 quick with life ; and they require the presence of only a 
 few simple conditions to start into full vigorous growth. 
 The great processes of fermentation and putrefaction are 
 caused by them ; and many diseases and epidemics 
 affecting both human beings and the animal and vege- 
 table world have been traced to their rapid increase and 
 luxuriant development, under certain favourable condi- 
 tions. They perform a most important function in the 
 economy of the world, taking to pieces effete substances 
 that had once formed part of living organized beings, 
 and so preparing the materials for entering into new 
 combinations. And while they thus attack the dead, 
 they also hasten the decay and dissolution of the weak 
 and dying. This action is undoubtedly most useful in 
 the lower world of plants and animals, leaving room for 
 the development of strong and useful organisms. But 
 in the higher world of man, where the same tendency of 
 nature operates equally, other considerations outweigh 
 the mere physical ones, and the medical man must step 
 in and do what he can to prevent this tendency, and so 
 save life. By the antiseptic mode of treatment that is, 
 by the careful exclusion of living germs from wounded 
 or exposed surfaces cures have been accomplished 
 which some years ago would have been considered 
 hopeless, and the most formidable operations may be 
 
xix. THE BLOOD OF THE PASCHAL LAMB. 333 
 
 undertaken with some reasonable prospect of suc- 
 cess. 
 
 In conducting experiments that have yielded such 
 satisfactory results to the scientific theorist and the 
 practical physician who has to fight against disease, all 
 kinds of substances have been used in all possible con- 
 ditions. One experiment is of special interest in con- 
 nection with our present subject. Infusions of various 
 materials carrots, apples, and leaves of various plants 
 have been made, and placed in bent and rounded 
 tubes, through which atmospheric air, that had been 
 made to pass over pieces of pumice-stone steeped in 
 fresh blood or in a solution of gelatine or sugar, was 
 forcibly drawn by a special pump. It was invariably 
 found that the infusion which had received into it the air 
 that had passed over the blood, continued longer fresh 
 and sweet than the infusions which had received their 
 air through the sugar or gelatine. The fresh blood 
 seems to have attracted the germs that were floating up 
 and down in the air of the room more powerfully than 
 the gum or the sugar, in spite of their adhesive proper- 
 ties, and thus prevented these germs more effectually 
 from reaching the infusions in the glass tubes and 
 setting up a process of putrefaction in them. The con- 
 clusion from this experiment was irresistible that fresh 
 blood has a peculiar attraction for germs floating in the 
 atmosphere, which cannot be accounted for on the 
 mere ground of its glutinous character. It has long 
 been well known that butchers and those who are 
 engaged in the slaughter of animals, and are therefore 
 
334 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 always more or less surrounded by fresh blood and 
 have their persons and clothes stained with it, are 
 among the healthiest classes in the community, and are 
 singularly free from infectious diseases. In a plague, or 
 pestilence, or epidemic, this class has always seemed to 
 enjoy almost complete immunity. This fact has been 
 known as a fact of observation for ages, but it is only 
 within the last few years that the true reason of it has 
 been ascertained. 
 
 Blood, if externally applied, attracts to itself from 
 the atmosphere the germs of disease, and so secures 
 immunity to the person upon whom it is placed. 
 Professor Lister found that an undisturbed blood-clot 
 has a special power of preventing the development 
 of septic bacteria, owing to the fact that the white 
 corpuscles still retain their vitality long after the 
 blood has been shed from the body, and like all vital 
 elements of a healthy living body, have the power of 
 counteracting morbific germs. For these reasons we 
 find a wonderful wisdom in the sanitary legislation of 
 Moses regarding this substance. The Jewish lawgiver 
 could have known nothing in those unscientific days 
 about the living germs that are the cause of putrefaction 
 in organic substances. This is the latest result of 
 experiment and research in a remarkably scientific age. 
 But he was Divinely inspired, and his code of legisla- 
 tion was communicated to him by that God who made 
 all things, and therefore knew the secret of their proper- 
 ties. And there cannot be a more striking proof of the 
 inspiration of the Mosaic legislation than just this fact 
 
xix. THE BLOOD OF THE PASCHAL LAMB. 335 
 
 that the primary reasons upon which it was founded 
 could not have been known to Moses himself at the 
 time, and have now only, after the lapse of three 
 thousand years, been discovered by careful scientific 
 research. In some respects this ancient legislation on 
 sanitary matters is* far superior to our boasted modern 
 efforts in that direction. We find all our improvements 
 anticipated, and carried out with a systematic faithful- 
 ness which leaves our sanitation boards far behind. In 
 proof of the thoroughness of the Levitical laws of 
 purity and food, the Jews can point to the superior 
 healthiness of their nation during the whole period of its 
 history. From an actuary's point of view, the life of a 
 modern Jew who still conforms to the Mosaic legis- 
 lation, and who has inherited a constitution from a long 
 line of ancestors bound by their very religion to use all 
 precautions to preserve their health and purity is of 
 higher value than that of his Gentile neighbour, whose 
 blood has been contaminated by long centuries of 
 neglect. 
 
 There is every reason to believe that the last plague 
 of Egypt, which destroyed all the first-born of the land, 
 and gathered up in itself in increased intensity and 
 meaning all the others, was some zymotic disease, or 
 epidemic of a peculiarly deadly character. All the 
 other plagues were natural to the land. As each was 
 aimed at some peculiar feature of the wide-spread 
 Egyptian idolatry, so each was in the line of the 
 natural phenomena of the country. The conversion 
 of the water of the Nile into blood was in accordance 
 
336 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 with what happens naturally on rare occasions when 
 the river is exceptionally low, and a vast growth of 
 crimson microscopic plants takes place in consequence. 
 The darkness that might be felt was caused doubtless 
 by the khamsin a storm of sand driven by the wind 
 from the desert, every particle stinging the skin like a 
 needle, and causing the people to stay indoors while it 
 prevails. And so with all the others. Their super- 
 natural character consisted in the coincidence of their 
 occurrence with the Divine threatenings, in their inten- 
 sification and portentous character, and in the special 
 results which they accomplished. God economized the 
 supernatural element in His working, and made use, as 
 far as they could go, of the natural phenomena of the 
 land to carry out His purposes ; just as He makes use 
 in all His miracles of what is already in existence and 
 available on the spot. We must consider the destroy- 
 ing angel as a personification of some natural but awful 
 means of destruction which God employed to punish 
 the Egyptians. The suddenness, the stealthy character 
 of the visitation, giving no warning of its approach, 
 coming in the stillness of the night, and leaving behind 
 wailing and anguish unspeakable in every home 
 throughout the land all these circumstances irre- 
 sistibly suggest the idea of some pestilence walking in 
 darkness, of some terrible epidemic not unlike some of 
 the famous plagues of the Middle Ages. It was a 
 stupendous miracle ; but the miraculous element in it 
 consisted in its severity, its indiscriminate incidence 
 upon man and beast, and in its selection only of the 
 
xix. THE BLOOD OF THE PASCHAL LAMB. 337 
 
 first-born of each creature. In these respects it differed 
 from any natural pestilence recorded in history. But 
 the destructive agency itself was only a portentous and 
 well-timed employment for a moral purpose of a natural 
 occurrence. It was like the smiting of Sennacherib's 
 army, and the punishment of the murmurers among the 
 Israelites in the wilderness, which were brought about 
 by an extraordinary wielding in the hands of Omnipo- 
 tence of natural causes. The Jewish Psalmist, referring 
 to the event in the seventy-eighth Psalm, ascribes it to 
 a sudden visitation of the plague : " He spared not 
 their soul from death, but gave their life over unto the 
 pestilence." 
 
 Now, if the death of the first-born in Egypt was 
 caused by some natural epidemic or pestilence of this 
 kind, Divinely employed to accomplish this particular 
 purpose, its proximate cause would be the presence of 
 morbific germs to an unusual degree in the atmosphere. 
 The unhealthy conditions produced by the previous 
 plagues, which were all linked together, would favour 
 an undue development of these ; and the occurrence of 
 a pestilence in such circumstances is what we should 
 have naturally expected. By sprinkling the lintels and 
 door-posts of the Israelites with the fresh blood of the 
 paschal lamb, the morbific germs would be attracted 
 and absorbed by the fluid, and so prevented from 
 passing the threshold and reaching the inmates, who 
 would thus enjoy immunity from the pestilence which 
 devastated the homes of their enemies not similarly pro- 
 tected. This view of the case is still further strength- 
 
33 8 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 ened by the command given to the Israelites to remain 
 in their houses all night, and on no account to go out 
 until the morning. 
 
 Such a conclusion does not eliminate in the least 
 degree the supernatural from the event and reduce it to 
 the level of an ordinary occurrence. The miraculous ele- 
 ment still remains even though we are thus able to show 
 that the destructive agent was a pestilence or a plague, 
 and that the protecting blood served a prophylactic 
 purpose, owing to the natural power which this fluid 
 possesses to attract and absorb the deadly germs of an 
 epidemic. There are circumstances in the event which 
 can only be accounted for by the direct interposition of 
 the Divine hand. We cannot attribute the safety which 
 the Israelites enjoyed solely to the natural power of the 
 blood any more than we can attribute the selection 
 exclusively of the first born in every Egyptian home 
 for destruction to the natural power of the pestilence. 
 These were undoubtedly miraculous elements, and can- 
 not be explained away. All that is meant to be inferred 
 is simply that, in conformity with the principle of 
 economy in miracles, the supernatural element took its 
 departure from the natural destructive power of the 
 pestilence and the natural conservative power of the 
 blood. These were the fulcrums upon which the mighty 
 lever of the miracle operated. And the more in this, as 
 well as in every other miraculous occurrence, we find 
 that God's procedure is based upon natural and neces- 
 sary reasons, the more does it commend itself to us as 
 the acting of a God of order, a God whose word and 
 
xix. THE BLOOD OF THE PASCHAL LAMB. 339 
 
 works are bound together by a wonderful unity and 
 harmony. It is the discovery of such harmonies be- 
 tween the Divine and the human, the spiritual and the 
 natural, that approves the religion of the Bible to us as 
 eminently truthful and reasonable. 
 
 Nor do these considerations detract from the fitness 
 of the occurrence as a type of higher things in the 
 sphere of grace. The fact that the incense of the Old 
 Testament worship was composed of substances which 
 modern science has proved to be eminently favourable 
 to purifying and deodorizing the air, does not take 
 away from the force of its spiritual significance, as a 
 symbol of the prayers of God's people and the inter- 
 cession of our great High Priest. Rather does this 
 new information give a new appropriateness and force 
 to the old symbol. Is it less appropriate that incense 
 should have been used symbolically in the house of 
 God, because we know how useful it is to purify the 
 air of hot, close places in an Eastern climate, where a 
 large number of people congregate together, and to 
 neutralize the effluvia arising from the decomposition of 
 animal matters in the sacrifices of the sanctuary ? Is 
 it less appropriate to plant flowers and shrubs in 
 churchyards, by the graves of our dead, because we 
 have found out in these days what our forefathers, who 
 followed a mere blind sentiment a natural sense of 
 fitness were ignorant of, viz., that shrubs and flowers 
 actually do purify the air and disinfect the noxious in- 
 fluences that emanate from places of interment ? And 
 reasoning in a similar way, is the blood of the paschal 
 
340 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 lamb, sprinkled upon the door-posts of the Israelites, 
 less significant as a spiritual symbol, because we have 
 found out recently that blood has a property which was 
 previously unsuspected the property of retaining and 
 absorbing the germs of disease in the atmosphere ? On 
 the contrary, the natural discovery gives a new and 
 deeper significance to the spiritual symbol. While the 
 application of the blood of the paschal lamb was 
 meant, in the first instance, to guard the Israelites 
 from the pestilence by absorbing and retaining in itself 
 morbific germs that was not its only or its ultimate 
 object and reference. It was meant to be a sign or 
 type of our redemption through the application to our 
 hearts and consciences of the blood of the Lamb of 
 God slain for us. And if common blood is essentially 
 cleansing removing the effete particles of the body, 
 and useful in certain refining processes of human manu- 
 facture if it is so powerful to deodorize and render 
 innocuous the evils of the natural world, how much 
 more powerful must be the blood of the Lamb of God, 
 without blemish or spot, to deodorize and render in- 
 nocuous the evils of the spiritual world ! The spiritual 
 fact is thus based upon the natural ; the health of the 
 soul and the health of the body are intimately bound 
 up together ; and the laws that are designed to pro- 
 mote our highest welfare as immortal souls must take 
 cognizance also of our welfare as passing and perishing 
 creatures dwelling in mortal bodies. 
 
 The historical incident in Egypt is spiritually re- 
 peated in the experience of every Christian believer. 
 
xix. THE BLOOD OF THE PASCHAL LAMB. 
 
 341 
 
 We are all exposed to the deadly plague of our own 
 sins which destroys soul and body for ever. Only the 
 blood of Jesus Christ sprinkled upon our hearts and 
 consciences can protect us. It was the fresh blood 
 upon the door-posts of the Israelites that possessed the 
 wonderful prophylactic virtue. When blood becomes 
 old and dry it loses its power of counteracting the 
 deadly influences of the atmosphere. Here, too, the 
 spiritual is based upon the natural. The sacrifices of 
 the Levitical law we find were continually renewed, 
 because only fresh blood could be efficacious. In the 
 nineteenth verse of the tenth chapter of Hebrews it is 
 said "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter 
 into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and 
 living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through 
 the veil, that is to say, his flesh." The word conse- 
 crated is translated "new-made" in the margin; and 
 the word new is a remarkable one, literally meaning 
 " fresh-slain," being obviously intended to denote the 
 difference between the blood of bulls and goats shed 
 on the great day of atonement, which soon became 
 old and stale, requiring therefore to be continually 
 renewed and the blood of Jesus Christ, God's aton- 
 ing sacrifice, as of a lamb just slain, which con- 
 tinually retained its first efficacy and needed not to 
 be repeated. Jesus died once for all ; by one offering 
 He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified. 
 But His sacrifice is as fresh in all its life-giving value 
 and in all its cleansing power to-day as it was on the 
 very day it was offered. The blood of Him who is the 
 
342 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF, CHAP. xix. 
 
 same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, never grows old 
 or stale or dry ; it never loses its virtue. And shel- 
 tered under that wonderful sign of grace there is now 
 no condemnation unto us. There shall no evil befall 
 us, neither shall any plague come nigh our dwelling. 
 
 It may be further remarked, in conclusion, that natural 
 blood has not only a prophylactic power, but also acts 
 as a passive agent in bringing about organization. 
 When applied in an effused and coagulated form on 
 a wounded surface, it will stimulate the vessels of the 
 underlying parts to expand and to penetrate the sub- 
 stance of the clot, until, finally, it becomes trans- 
 formed into vascular tissue. And as the clot of blood 
 on the wound thus becomes organized, it acquires a 
 defensive property against the septic elements that 
 would produce putrefaction and disease. So in like 
 manner the blood of Jesus Christ not only protects, 
 but heals ; not only justifies, but sanctifies. The soul 
 to which it is applied is not only saved from the pestil- 
 ence, but is made spiritually vital, every whit whole, 
 safe and sound ; so that it is able more and more to 
 resist the devitalizing influences of a world full of the 
 germs of spiritual disease. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 UNTO GAZA, WHICH IS DESERT. 
 " Unto Gaza, which is desert." ACTS viii. 26. 
 
 WHEN Philip is introduced to us in the sacred 
 narrative, we find him engaged in very inter- 
 esting and promising work, in common with the apostles 
 of Christ. His labours in Samaria and in other places 
 in the neighbourhood had yielded the most wonderful 
 results. The white fields ready unto harvest, of which 
 our Lord spoke in striking prophetic terms after His 
 interview with the Samaritan woman at the well of 
 Jacob, had been reaped by St. Peter and himself, and 
 many golden sheaves had been added to the barn of the 
 Lord. There was much still to do in this place in the 
 way of confirming the converts, and building them up 
 on the foundation of their most precious faith, and in 
 extending the knowledge of Gospel truth throughout 
 the outlying districts which were Divinely prepared to 
 receive it. Philip might justly have supposed that he 
 would be allowed to remain in such a rich and suitable 
 field until he had exhausted all its possibilities. And 
 343 
 
344 THE OLIVE LEAR ' CHAP. 
 
 yet he was Divinely summoned to abandon it, to leave 
 his work there, and go away to the south-western region 
 of Palestine, the old land of the Philistines not to a 
 larger sphere of usefulness, not to a scene of more 
 crowded and varied human life, but " unto Gaza, which 
 is desert." 
 
 This place was on the very border-line, at the extreme 
 south of the Holy Land, farthest removed from all the 
 scenes and associations of Philip's ordinary life. The 
 region round about was without towns or villages, lonely 
 and desolate. It had been laid waste by the ravages ot 
 war j and the encroachment of the drifting sands of the 
 coast completed the ruin which man had begun. For- 
 merly, the traveller going north from Egypt to Syria, or 
 south from Syria to Egypt, had to pass through it ; and 
 here provisions were laid in for the journey either way. 
 But this route, owing to the lawless tribes roaming about 
 ready to rob and maltreat the traveller, -and to the de- 
 struction of the city of Gaza and the surrounding villages, 
 had been abandoned ; and now the only objects that 
 diversified the landscape were a few solitary palm-trees, 
 and perhaps the dusky tent of a wandering desert Arab. 
 
 If Philip had reasoned about the Divine command, 
 he would naturally have wondered much why he should 
 be sent to such an out-of-the-way desert-place. What 
 motive could there be for such an apparently arbitrary 
 proceeding ? What good could he do in such a spot ? 
 And yet, whatever his thoughts might have been, he 
 immediately obeyed the Divine command. He left 
 Samaria, and " went into the way that goeth down from 
 
xx. UNTO GAZA, WHICH IS DESERT. 
 
 345 
 
 Jerusalem unto Gaza, which is desert." And as he did 
 the will of God, the purpose of the commandment was 
 made known to him. He found in the desert a more 
 fruitful field of usefulness than he had found even in 
 Samaria. Scientific men have shown us lately the won- 
 derful arrangements by which insects and flowers are 
 brought together, in order to carry out the ends of the 
 vegetable world. The blossom is furnished with a 
 nectary, or honey-cell, is painted with brilliant hues, 
 enriched with fragrance, and shaped in a particular way, 
 in order to attract and guide insects, by whose agency 
 the plant may be fertilized and enabled to produce seed. 
 More wonderful still are the providential arrangements 
 by which God brings together the soul and the Saviour ; 
 the means by which a man may be brought to the 
 knowledge of the truth as it is in Jesus and the man 
 himself. So was it in the case before us. Just as, in 
 the curious blossom of a common orchid, the insect is 
 guided by the peculiar shape and colour of the blossom 
 to the particular spot where it can carry out the higher 
 purposes of the plant, and cannot chose any other path, 
 so Philip was guided to the very place where he should 
 meet the Ethiopian eunuch on his way home from Jeru- 
 salem. He was shut up in Providence to that one only 
 course. 
 
 Some, who have an inadequate estimate of the value 
 of a human soul, may say that it was not worth while to 
 take Philip away from the great task of converting mul- 
 titudes in Samaria for the purpose of saving a single 
 benighted stranger in the southern desert. But such 
 
346 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP, 
 
 persons have not so learned of Christ, who said, " What 
 shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose 
 his own soul ? " and who told His beautiful parable of 
 the one lost sheep straying in the wilderness, for the 
 sake of seeking and finding which the shepherd leaves 
 his ninety and nine sheep in the fold, in order to impress 
 upon men the blessed truth that it is not the will of the 
 Father in heaven that one of the least of His little ones 
 should perish. 
 
 But it was not the salvation of a single soul only that 
 was involved. The Ethiopian eunuch was one of the 
 greatest African dignitaries. He was next in rank to the 
 Queen of Ethiopia ; and the influence which the con- 
 version of such a man to the Christian faith might be 
 expected to exercise, would, in the nature of things, be 
 immense and far-reaching. We know not as a matter 
 of history what effect had actually been produced by 
 the spiritual change upon his countrymen at the time. 
 But tradition ascribes to him the conversion to his new 
 faith of Candace and of many of her subjects. And if 
 we include in the territory of ancient Ethiopia, the 
 region now known as Abyssinia, it is possible that this 
 single conversion may have prepared the way for the 
 wonderful work which took place among the Ethiopians 
 at a later period, when the whole nation renounced 
 their heathen idolatries and became Christian, and the 
 ancient prophecies of Scripture, that Ethiopia would yet 
 lift her hands to God, were fulfilled. Valuable manu- 
 scripts of the Gospels and of the New Testament, that 
 go back to an early period, have been found in the 
 
xx. UNTO GAZA, WHICH IS DESERT. 347 
 
 monasteries of this country ; and the occupation of the 
 land by our victorious army lately introduced to our 
 notice the unique example of a people, savage and yet 
 Christian, possessing among gross superstitions and vile 
 social practices many of the religious customs and 
 modes of worship of the early Christian Church. The 
 superiority in religious faith and in all the arts of life 
 which the Abyssinians enjoy over all the benighted 
 children of the sun may be attributed in the first 
 instance to the work of the Ethiopian eunuch. We may 
 well believe therefore that it was not without adequate 
 reason, even from the human point of view, that Philip 
 was asked to abandon his populous and hopeful field of 
 usefulness at Samaria and go down " unto Gaza, which 
 is desert." And just as afterwards the conversion of 
 Lydia, who was compelled by a Divine impulse to leave 
 her native place and go to Philippi, and who, after her 
 conversion, returned to Thyatira, and founded, in all 
 likelihood, the Christian Church there a Church which 
 afterwards formed that of Lyons, whose martyrs, during 
 a terrible persecution, were the noblest in the annals of 
 Christianity ; just as this wonderful event was brought 
 about through St. Paul being obliged to abandon his 
 large and important field of labour in Asia, and, at the 
 instigation of the heavenly vision of the man of Mace- 
 donia, to go over into Europe, which seemed to him, in 
 comparison, a desert place, so the conversion of the 
 Ethiopian eunuch in Palestine, who, on his return to his 
 native country, founded in all likelihood the Christian 
 Church there, was brought about through Philip being 
 
348 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 obliged to leave his large and important field of labour 
 at Samaria, and go down " unto Gaza, which is desert." 
 The Gospel was introduced into the African continent 
 in much the same wonderful providential way that it 
 was introduced into Europe. 
 
 It may be remarked that the scene of the Ethiopian 
 eunuch's conversion was admirably adapted for the pur- 
 pose. We are told that when Jesus was about to cure 
 the deaf and dumb man, He took him aside from the 
 multitude ; and that when He was about to open the 
 eyes of the man born blind, He took him by the hand 
 and led him out of the town. And the significance of 
 these incidents is obvious. Jesus isolated the man in 
 both cases, not merely in order to avoid all show and 
 ostentation, but that apart from the din and tumult and 
 interruptions of the crowd, in solitude and silence the 
 man himself might be made more receptive of deep and 
 lasting impressions. And so was it with the Ethiopian 
 eunuch. He had gone up from his own country to the 
 Paschal feast at Jerusalem, to which thousands from dif- 
 ferent parts of the world had resorted . He had taken part 
 in all the solemn services of the grandest of Jewish 
 festivals. He had mingled in the crowd of worship- 
 pers. We have reason to believe that he was present 
 at the Feast of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit was 
 manifested in the miraculous gift of tongues, and three 
 thousand souls were converted in a single day. A 
 stranger of rank and influence like him, a proselyte, 
 moreover, to the Jewish faith, would have had opened 
 up to him many opportunities of intercourse with 
 
xx. UNTO GAZA, WHICH IS DESERT. 349 
 
 the chief priests and rulers of the city, and would 
 receive from them much attention and consideration. 
 He was in Jerusalem, when the most wonderful things 
 that had ever taken place in the world the life and 
 death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth and the 
 marvellous miracles that had been wrought by His 
 disciples were the common subjects of conversation, and 
 divided the community in opinion. But he left the 
 Holy City without any new insight into the faith which 
 he professed, without any enlargement of his spiritual 
 horizon. His mind was distracted and torn by doubts 
 and difficulties. Doubtless his curiosity was deeply 
 roused ; but he got no rest to his mind and heart. The 
 atmosphere of the Holy City at such a time especially 
 was unfavourable to the quiet meditation which clears 
 the inner eye, develops the spiritual life, and opens the 
 heart to receive the truth of God. Amid the noise 
 and confusion inseparable from the presence of such an 
 immense multitude, he could not gain sufficient calmness 
 and leisure to get the full good of the holy associations 
 by which he was surrounded, or a clear understanding 
 of the wonderful things that had lately happened and 
 were still happening in the city of his faith. But what 
 he could not obtain in the crowded city he found in the 
 lonely desert. Returning alone in his chariot, when he 
 reached the border of the Holy Land he sought to be- 
 guile the way by reading a scroll of the prophecies of 
 Isaiah. A spirit of inquiry had been stirred up within 
 him by his visit to Jerusalem ; and here, in the solitude 
 of the desert, with the great blue sky overhead, and the 
 
350 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 wide, monotonous landscape around, he could freely 
 indulge his memories and reflections, with nothing to 
 distract his thoughts. 
 
 When Philip joined himself to him, he was fully pre- 
 pared to receive his teaching \ his mind was made plastic 
 and his heart sensitive to spiritual impressions. Shut out 
 from the world, alone with God and the works of His 
 hands, reduced to their primitive simplicity, both the 
 eunuch and the Evangelist felt how dreadful was this 
 desert-place. It was none other than the House of 
 God and the gate of heaven. There the ladder 
 was set up by which the benighted African climbed 
 from his ignorance and darkness to the light and 
 the joy of heaven. There the mystery of the burn- 
 ing bush was revealed to him ; and as he realized 
 the great truth that He who died for his sins rose 
 again for his justification, and ever lived to make 
 intercession for him, he put off the shoes, as it were, 
 from the feet of his soul, and felt that the place in which 
 he stood was holy ground. He found there in the desert 
 not only water by which he was baptized as a Christian, 
 but in his own soul a well of water springing up into 
 everlasting life. He realized in his own experience the 
 precious word of promise contained in that very book of 
 the prophet Isaiah which he read in his chariot: 
 4t Neither let the eunuch say, Behold I am a dry tree. 
 For thus saith the Lord unto the eunuchs that keep my 
 Sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take 
 hold of my covenant; Even unto them will I give, in mine 
 house and within my walls, a place and a name better 
 
UNTO GAZA, IV HIGH IS DESERT. 
 
 351 
 
 than of sons and of daughters ; I will give them an ever- 
 lasting name, that shall not be cut off." 
 
 This incident in the history of Philip the Evangelist 
 is not unique, but representative. It is a type of what 
 has often happened in the experience of God's people. 
 It is an illustration of God's method of procedure still. 
 The proper immediate application of the lesson which 
 it teaches is to the case of ministers and evangelists, 
 who, like Philip, are summoned from a larger and more 
 important sphere of usefulness to one which, in com- 
 parison with it, may be called a desert. Our Lord Him- 
 self on one occasion left the busy, crowded cities and 
 villages, where He was carrying on a most beneficent 
 ministry of healing and teaching among multitudes that 
 thronged Him wherever He went, to cross over the Sea 
 of Galilee, to the lonely desert on the other side, in 
 order that there He might cure the solitary demoniac 
 who lived among the tombs ; who, in his turn, was the 
 means of a wonderful spiritual awakening among the 
 people of Decapolis, to whom he told what great things 
 Jesus had done for him. Peter was sent from the large 
 maritime city of Joppa, where he had ample scope to 
 preach the gospel to persons from all parts of the world, 
 in order to instruct a single Gentile family in the small 
 and, in comparison, unimportant town of Caesarea. 
 And so God bids His servants still leave the ninety and 
 nine in the fold, and, like Himself, go after the one lost 
 sheep in the wilderness ; leave the crowded scene, and 
 pass over to the other side, to some lonely, out-of-the- 
 Avay place, where He Himself has prepared some soli- 
 
35 2 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 tary individual, or family, or little flock, to receive 
 benefit from the visit. 
 
 Numberless instances are on record of such provi- 
 dential leadings, and of the good that has resulted 
 from them, not only to individuals, but also to com- 
 munities and nations. We fancy' that only in the 
 crowd can good be done, that we need to get together 
 large meetings, and an overflowing congregation, in 
 order to produce a deep and widespread impression. 
 But this is not always the case. Crowds have not 
 always been helpful in the matter of healthy and sure 
 progress. Not unfrequently, by their bustle and noise 
 and distractions, they have placed hindrances in the 
 way. A man has in a crowd no calmness of mind 
 to think, but is swayed exclusively by the feelings 
 of the moment. He loses his sense of individuality, 
 which is the very first element of responsibility ; and 
 may even lose his moral sensitiveness, and sanction 
 words and deeds which, when alone, he would indig- 
 nantly repudiate. The best work has always been done 
 by the few, and not by the many. Our Lord's own best 
 work, so to speak, was not done in crowds, but in the 
 desert ; and the sayings of His that sink deepest into 
 our hearts, and open up to us the grandest vistas into 
 the eternal world, were uttered, not when thronged 
 by the multitude, so that He had no room or time 
 even to eat, but when conversing with a solitary 
 woman, beside a well or near a tomb. The fickle 
 crowds fell away from Him in His hour of need ; and 
 only the solitary souls whom He called to Him one 
 
xx. UNTO GAZA, WHICH IS DESERT. 353 
 
 by one from the sea-shore and the receipt of custom, 
 and the desolated home, clung faithfully to Him to the 
 last. 
 
 But we may give a wider application to the lesson. 
 Whatever outward circumstance or inward motive in- 
 duces us to leave the crowd and go down unto " Gaza r 
 which is desert," for rest and meditation, we may be sure 
 that it is the prompting of the angel of the Lord. We 
 need to obey the Divine injunction more frequently, 
 for our religious life is too social, exhibits too much 
 of the common zoophyte type; it depends too much 
 upon the excitement of meetings and associations, and 
 is too often incapable of standing alone. It is urgently 
 required, therefore, that not only in the enjoyment of 
 the means of grace, but much more in their absence, 
 we should work out our own salvation. We need more 
 quiet, more reflection, more of the blessed solitude of 
 prayer, in order that the heavenly may overshadow 
 and shut out the earthly, and that we may hear the 
 still, small voice of our Heavenly Father, which we 
 are so apt to lose amid the tumults of the world and 
 the distractions of society, even the most religious. 
 If our careworn faces are to acquire and retain the 
 "print of heaven," and our character and conduct 
 the beauty of holiness, we should often retire from the 
 world, leave the crowd, and "go down unto Gaza, 
 which is desert." 
 
 It was at the back side of the mountain on which he 
 fed his flock that the vision of the burning bush ap- 
 peared to Moses. In the front he saw no door opened 
 
354 
 
 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 in heaven ; the rocky horizon bounded his view and 
 hemmed him in ; he saw no sight save the common 
 features of the landscape, and heard no sound save the 
 sigh of the wind and the rustle of the acacia. In the 
 foreground of the mountain he was surrounded with 
 nothing but nature in its ordinary mood ; and he 
 himself was but a common shepherd engaged in the 
 familiar task of feeding his flock on the scanty herbage 
 around. But when he led his flock to the back side of 
 the mountain, it was like passing behind the scenes to 
 behold the unseen and eternal realities of the things 
 seen and temporal. It was like going through the veil 
 from the outer court of nature into the inner ; from the 
 holy place where everything testifies of God's creation 
 and providence into the most holy place where is the 
 immediate and unveiled face of God. At the back side 
 of the mountain the common air syllabled God's name, 
 and the common bush revealed His presence, and the 
 common sunshine that quivered on the leaves of the 
 bush flamed with His glory. Heaven came down to 
 earth. Moses became an inspired seer; he was let into 
 the secret of the sufferings of Israel, the meaning of 
 God's discipline of them, and the design and end of 
 their captivity. And the vision changed him from 
 being a shepherd of sheep into being a shepherd of 
 men. And so, too, if we are to behold something 
 of the sight which Moses beheld, and to be changed 
 in some measure as he was changed, we must often 
 retire to the background of the mountain on which we 
 live and labour. In the foreground we see only the 
 
xx. UNTO GAZA, WHICH IS DESERT. 355 
 
 common sights and hear only the common sounds of 
 the world. In the background we see the sights and 
 hear the sounds of heaven. In the foreground we are 
 buying and selling, spending and toiling, sorrowing and 
 enjoying, amid things that perish in the using ; in the 
 background we are brought into contact with the 
 eternal archetypes of the passing things of time. And 
 as the dull common earth becomes to us from this view- 
 point the purple distance of a celestial land, so the 
 vision works in us a wonderful transfiguration. Even 
 in our ordinary speech how great is the difference 
 between the quiet, low speech of the rural solitude and 
 the sharp shrill dialect of the busy urban crowd. City- 
 life, with its hard pavements and noisy carriages and 
 Babel sounds, sharpens the pronunciation and gives an 
 upward tendency to the vowels; while country-life in its 
 grassy fields and mossy woodlands, hushing all noises, 
 operates upon the phonetic system of the language and 
 lowers the pitch of the voice to a gentle tone. 
 
 If we refuse to go voluntarily unto " Gaza, which is 
 desert," God will providentially compel us. He will 
 make a desert around us, so that under its bitter 
 juniper-tree we may learn the true lessons of life, and 
 realize the tenderness of the " Brother born for ad- 
 versities." Many a closed lip and deaf ear have been 
 cured by Jesus in the way "unto Gaza, which is desert." 
 Many a short-sighted mortal, in his banishment, has 
 seen a door opened in heaven, and beheld visions like 
 the apocalypse of St. John in Patmos. Many a restless, 
 fiery disposition has felt the infinite calmness of the 
 
356 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 blue sky that broods over the waste, and been subdued 
 by the awful silence and steadfast patience of the hills. 
 Many a bitter, repulsive nature has joined the society of 
 his fellow-creatures with garments smelling of myrrh, 
 cassia, and aloes, the fragrant plants that grow only in 
 the desert. The gain to individuals themselves and to 
 society at large by the training of enforced loneliness 
 cannot be over-estimated ; and wanting in the best and 
 highest qualities is that man or woman to whom Christ 
 does not say, at one period or other of life, " Come ye 
 yourselves apart into a desert-place, and rest awhile." 
 
 " FATHER EVEREST." 
 
 THE summit of the Himalayan range * 
 
 Wears the resemblance of an aged man, 
 
 With head and shoulders bowed as if in prayer. 
 
 'Tis fitting that the highest point of earth 
 
 Should thus assume the lowly attitude 
 
 Of adoration, near Heaven's Great White Throne. 
 
 As earth's high-priest, clothed in a spotless robe 
 
 Of snow, unmelted since creation's dawn, 
 
 That awful peak enters within the veil 
 
 Of braided clouds, into the inmost shrine 
 
 Of nature's sanctuary inviolate, 
 
 Bearing the crimson blood of dying suns 
 
 * The highest point of Mount Everest, locally called " Father 
 Everest," the loftiest mountain in the world, when clearly seen 
 against the blue sky, presents a most startling resemblance to an 
 old man praying. 
 
' ' FA THER E VEREST." 357 
 
 Upon its brow, and on its bosom bare, 
 A dazzling breast-plate of snow-jewels, formed 
 From dews and rains that feed the trees and flowers, 
 And all the fair luxuriance below ; 
 Appearing thus before High Heaven, in room 
 Of the great world that clings unto its skirts 
 A sacrifice of white and silent death 
 That Heaven's rich blessings may descend to earth, 
 And burning plains be green with varied life. 
 What earth-throes vast, what ages fierce of storm, 
 Have perfected that mediatorial form ; 
 Sculptured its attitude sublime of prayer, 
 Against the stillness of the azure air ; 
 And calmed it to a patience infinite ! 
 Youngest of peaks ! * earth's last consummate work ; 
 Raised to that height supreme, above the hills 
 That stood there with the stars when time began ; 
 Above the wreck of seas and shores forgot. 
 The oft-attempted task to scale the heavens, 
 And reach the gods, accomplished in the end, 
 Not by defiance, but by humble prayer ! 
 
 * The highest mountains of the world are the most recent, 
 having been produced by geological causes of comparatively late 
 occurrence. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 BE A UTY FOR ASHES. 
 
 "To appoint unto them that mourn to give unto them beauty 
 for ashes." ISAIAH Ixi. 3. 
 
 THE well-known fable of the Phoenix is one that 
 has been often truthfully enacted on our earth. 
 Successive platforms of creation, with all their varied 
 life and loveliness, have been reduced to ruin, and out 
 of the wreck new life and beauty have emerged. The 
 earth has reached its present perfection of form through 
 repeated geological fires. The fair Eden, in the midst 
 of which the history of the human race begins, was de- 
 veloped from the ashes of previous less lovely Edens. 
 The soil of the earth is composed of the ashes of sub- 
 stances that have been oxidized, burned by the slow, 
 soft caresses of the very air that breathed upon them 
 and whose gentle smile gave them colour and form. 
 The building of the world was a process of burning, and 
 its foundations were undoubtedly laid in flames. Its 
 crust was originally like a burnt cinder. The rocks and 
 the earths, the sands and the clays, the very seas them- 
 
 358 
 
CHAP. XXL BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 359 
 
 selves are, as it were, the ashes of a long-continued and 
 universal conflagration. But during the long geological 
 periods, by the silent agency of vegetable life working 
 in unison with the sunshine, the work of the fire has 
 been partially undone, and a considerable amount of 
 combustible matter has been slowly rescued from the 
 wreck of the first conflagration. Whatever now exists 
 on the earth unburnt is owing to the wonderful co- 
 operation of plant life and solar light. These two forces 
 have given to us all the beauty which now spreads over 
 the ashes of the world. 
 
 Nay, the very ashes of the earth themselves contribute 
 in the most marvellous manner to its beauty. How 
 much does the scenery of our world owe to its 
 picturesque rocks, and sandy deserts, and lonely seas, 
 which, as we have seen, are but the ashes of the prim- 
 eval fire ! What wonderful beauty God has brought out 
 of water ! It is strange to think of water being the 
 ashes of a conflagration the snow on the mountain- 
 top, the foam of the waterfall, the cloud of glory in the 
 heavens, the dew-drop in the eye of the daisy. With- 
 out the intervention of vegetable life at ail, God has thus 
 directly, from the objects themselves, given beauty for 
 ashes. He might have made these ashes of our globe 
 as repulsive to the sight as the blackened relics of forest 
 and plain, over which the prairie fire has swept, while, 
 at the same time, they might have subserved all their 
 ends and uses. But He has, instead, clothed them with 
 incomparable majesty and loveliness, so that they min- 
 ister most richly to our admiration and enjoyment ; and 
 
360 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 some of the noblest conceptions of the human mind 
 have been borrowed from their varied chambers of 
 imagery. Even the mourning dress of our mother earth 
 the dress which she assumes in her lonely wastes 
 when she strips off the outer floral coat of many colours, 
 and is seen arrayed only in her sackcloth and ashes is 
 beautiful and becoming to her. But she acquires an 
 added loveliness when, in her fertile fields and luxuriant 
 forests, she clothes herself with her garments of praise 
 her emerald robe of vegetation the common house- 
 hold dress in which she waits upon the daily wants of 
 her creatures, and contributes most to the joy of her 
 noblest sons. And, most marvellous paradox of all, she 
 has made all life vegetable, animal, and human to be 
 sustained by combustion ! 
 
 And like the old processes of nature are the new ones 
 that take place still. In the beautiful balancing of crea- 
 tion the same recuperative process follows every such 
 loss. Out of the ashes of the local conflagration that 
 has reduced the fields and forests to one uniform 
 blackened waste, come forth the beauty of greener fields 
 and forests of species unknown there before. Very 
 strikingly is this seen on the dry hillsides of the Sierra 
 Nevada, covered with dense scrub which is often swept 
 by fire. All the trees in the groves of pine that grow on 
 these hillsides, however unequal in size, as a recent 
 writer has strikingly shown, are of the same age, and 
 the cones which they produce are persistent, and never 
 discharge their seeds until the tree or the branch to 
 which they belong dies. Consequently, when one of 
 
xxi. BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 361 
 
 the groves is destroyed by fire, the burning of the trees 
 causes the scales of the cones to open, and the seed 
 which they contain is scattered profusely upon the 
 ground ; and on the bare blackened site of the old grove 
 a young green plantation of similar pines springs forth. 
 This curious adaptation explains the remarkable circum- 
 stance that all the trees of the grove are of the same 
 age. In an equally remarkable way the fires in the 
 Australian bush, which * are so destructive to the forests 
 of that country, are made the very means of reproducing 
 the vegetation. One of the most common trees of these 
 forests, the wattle, or native acacia, is specially adapted 
 not only to survive these bush fires, but even to profit 
 by them. Its seeds will not germinate until they are 
 plunged in boiling water, or, if left to themselves, until 
 they have been scorched by a forest fire. The burning 
 of an old forest is therefore necessary to develop a new 
 generation of fresher and more vigorous trees. 
 
 Another illustration of the principle may be derived 
 from volcanic regions. No scenes of earth are lovelier 
 than those which are subjected to the frequent de- 
 structive action of volcanoes. The Bay of Naples is 
 confessedly one of those spots in which scenic beauty 
 has culminated, in which are focused all the charms of 
 landscape loveliness. Its beauty seems more a revela- 
 tion of the inner soul of the universe than a mere re- 
 flection of transparent air and brilliant sunshine. And 
 yet this second Eden is the creation of volcanic fires. 
 No soil is so fertile as crumbling lava and volcanic 
 ashes. The destroyer of the fields and gardens is thus 
 
362 THE OLIVE LEAF CHAP. 
 
 the renovator ; and out of each successive baptism of 
 fire, the scene emerges with a richer luxuriance and a 
 more passionate loveliness. The ashes of the burning 
 that have devastated homestead and vineyard, reappear 
 in the delicate clusters of the grape, and the vivid ver- 
 dure of the vine leaves which embower a new home of 
 happiness on the site. 
 
 And a case of extremes meeting frost has the same 
 effect as fire. No meadows are greener, no corn-fields 
 more luxuriant, than those which spread over the soil 
 that has been formed by the attrition of ancient glaciers. 
 The cedars of Lebanon grow on the moraines left be- 
 hind by ice streams that had sculptured the mountains 
 into their present shape ; and over the ranges of the 
 Sierra Nevada, the coniferous forests, the noblest and 
 most beautiful on earth, are spread in long curving 
 bands, braided together into lace-like patterns of charm- 
 ing variety an arrangement determined by the course 
 of ancient glaciers, upon whose moraines all the forests 
 of the Nevada are growing, and whose varied distribu- 
 tion over curves and ridges and high rolling plateaus, 
 the trees have faithfully followed. Elsewhere through- 
 out the world pine-woods usually grow, not on soil 
 produced by the slow weathering of the atmosphere, but 
 by the direct mechanical action of glaciers, which 
 crushed and ground it from the solid rocks of mountain 
 ranges, and in their slow recession at the end of the 
 glacial period, left it spread out in beds available for 
 tree-growth. Thus, from the ashes left behind by the 
 slow grinding of the ice-ploughs of the earth's great 
 
XXI. BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 
 
 363 
 
 secular winter, has sprung up the wonderful beauty of 
 the pine-forests, which welcome the winter's snow and 
 the summer's sunshine, and maintain their youthful 
 greenness unimpaired from century to century through 
 a thousand storms. 
 
 Is there not beauty for ashes, when the starchy 
 matter which gives the grey colour to the lichen is 
 changed by the winter rains into chlorophyl, and the 
 dry, lifeless, parchment-like substance becomes a bright 
 green pliable rosette, as remarkable for the elegance of 
 its form as for the vividness of its colour ? Does not 
 the corn of wheat, when God, as Ezekiel strikingly says, 
 " calls " for it and increases it, develop out of the grey 
 ashes that wrap round and preserve the embers of its 
 life, the long spears of bright verdure which pierce 
 through the dark wintry soil up to the sunshine and the 
 blue air of heaven ? Does not the ivy which, at the 
 close of autumn, in spite of its eternal monotony of hue 
 and freshness, sympathizes with the fading leaves around, 
 and assumes, in harmony with them, colours varying 
 from dark brown to brilliant scarlet and purple, produce 
 out of the ashes of its summer growth which have caused 
 these russet tints in the leaves, a new and even more 
 striking beauty in the following spring ? What are the 
 materials that enter more or less into the composition 
 of those parts of a plant in which the life is arrested for 
 a time before it starts anew with increased vigour the 
 root, the stem, the fruit, the seed ; what are starch, 
 gum, sugar, and most of the products of vegetation, so 
 useful in human economy, and so absolutely necessary 
 
364 THE OLIVE LEAF. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 in the economy of plants, but just the ashes deposited 
 by the flame of life as it burns away the structure, con- 
 serving the embers of that life for a fresh conflagration 
 of beauty when the new impulse of growth is felt ? 
 Without these ashes there could be no resuscitation of 
 vegetable life, when once it had burnt itself away. All 
 the beauty of the green fields and woods thus springing 
 from the root, or the seed, or the bud, is produced from 
 the ashes of previous vegetation. On the lawn, the 
 golden suns of the dandelion expire in the grey ashes of 
 their downy seeds, which float away on the breeze to 
 kindle into golden suns on other lawns. The very soil 
 out of which vegetable life starts is made up of the 
 ashes of former plants ; and the tree that feeds upon 
 the decay of its own fallen leaves displays the richest 
 luxuriance of foliage. What is all the fair summer 
 growth of this year but the beauty that has sprung out 
 of the ashes of last summer's growth ? The combustion 
 that has produced those ashes in the intervening autumn 
 and winter has taken place so quietly and gradually 
 that we have not been conscious of it. And yet, in im- 
 portance and magnitude, the grandest conflagration 
 compared with it sinks into insignificance. And the 
 power that has developed new beauty out of the ashes 
 has also been working slowly and silently in the tiny 
 laboratory of every green blade and leaf that unfolds 
 itself to the mellow sunshine. 
 
 Some plants are found only where something has 
 been burnt. Farmers say that wood ashes will cause 
 the dormant white clover to spring up; and fields 
 
xxi. BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 365 
 
 treated in this manner will suddenly be transfigured 
 with the fragrant bloom. A lovely little moss, whose 
 seed-vessels, by the twisting and untwisting of their 
 stems, indicate the changes of the weather like a baro- 
 meter, grows on moors and in woods in spots where 
 fires have been; and it covers with its bright green 
 verdure the sites of buildings, marking with its soft 
 delicate cushions where the hearthstone had been. 
 From its fondness for growing in such places, it is 
 known in France by the familiar name of La Char- 
 bonniere. In similar spots is found the common morel, 
 a crisp white fungus, everywhere esteemed as a valuable 
 and delightful article of food; its presence being an 
 unfailing evidence of the former existence of fire in the 
 place. It grows in the greatest profusion in the woods 
 where charcoal has been made. Thus out of the eater 
 in the most literal manner comes forth meat. After 
 the great London fire, a species of mustard grew up 
 on every side, covering with its yellow blossoms the 
 charred ruins and the recently exposed soil strewn with 
 ashes ; and, as if to show some curious affinity between 
 the conflagration of cities and the mustard tribe, after 
 the more recent burning of Moscow, another species of 
 the same family made its appearance among the ruins, 
 and is still to be met with in the neighbourhood of that 
 city. When an American forest is burnt down, a dif- 
 ferent class of trees usually spring up on the spot ; and 
 by this rotation of crops nature maintains the fertility 
 of the soil, and brings beauty out of ashes. 
 
 Passing from the applications of the principle in the 
 
3 66 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 sphere of nature to those which may be made in the 
 human world, I may observe that out of the ashes of 
 the burnt-offering all the beauty of the Hebrew faith 
 emanated. These ashes of the victim on the altar were 
 the evidence that the fire had done its utmost, and con- 
 sequently that the offering had been fully completed 
 and accepted, having ascended to God as an odour 
 of a sweet savour. To consume the burnt sacrifice 
 to ashes was equivalent to a full and perfect acceptance 
 of the offering, as we find in the words of the Psalmist : 
 " The Lord remember all thy offerings and accept " 
 or, as the margin correctly renders the original word, 
 turn to ashes "thy burnt sacrifice." And upon this 
 symbolical fact, as a foundation, rested the whole Heb- 
 rew ritual and polity. The beauty of the religious ser- 
 vices of the Israelites, the peace of their homes and 
 hearts, the prosperity of their nation, all depended 
 upon the great truth which the ashes of the burnt- 
 offering implied. Indicating, as they did, that the 
 penalty incurred by sin had been fully met, and the 
 means of a complete atonement provided, the Israelites 
 could enjoy freely all the blessings of life under the 
 smile of heaven. The Jewish priest, in a white linen 
 dress the garment of mourning and penitence which 
 he assumed for the purpose, carefully removed the 
 ashes from the top of the altar, and laid them, in the 
 first instance, on the ground beside it, on the east side. 
 Here, where the first rays of the rising sun would touch 
 and illumine them, they were allowed to remain for a 
 while, as a further proof of the fact that the sacrifice 
 
xxi. BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 367 
 
 was complete that all which the law of atonement had 
 prescribed had been done, not hurriedly, but with the 
 utmost deliberation. The priest then changed his gar- 
 ments of mourning and penitence, and put on others 
 not connected with the sacrificial ritual, but expressive 
 of triumph and joy ; and thus arrayed, carried forth the 
 ashes the record of atonement completed without the 
 camp into a clean place. As out of the ashes of the 
 burnt-offering laid on the barren sand, under the dews 
 of heaven, would spring forth rich verdure, marking out 
 the places of the completed sacrifice, as little green 
 oases, or fairy rings in the desert, so God would give to 
 His repenting and believing people beauty for ashes ; 
 and as the priest exchanged his garments of mourning 
 for garments of joy, so God would give them garments 
 of praise for the spirit of heaviness. 
 
 And how expressive was this type of the atoning 
 death of the Son of God ! The victim in His case too 
 was reduced to ashes. We see as clearly on the cross 
 on which was stretched His lifeless body, that the work 
 of atonement was finished, and that a complete satis- 
 faction had been made to God for human sin, as the 
 priest saw in the ashes on the altar how entirely the 
 sacrifice had met with the Divine approval and accept- 
 ance. As the ashes were laid beside the altar for a 
 while, so the body of Jesus remained upon the cross 
 some time after death, exposed to the idle and mocking 
 gaze of the multitude, but most precious in the sight of 
 Him whose law He had magnified and made honour- 
 able by His obedience unto death. As the ashes, fur- 
 
368 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 ther, were placed on the east side of the altar, because 
 from that quarter the bright light of the morning sun 
 arose a natural symbolism common to nearly all re- 
 ligions, Christians, Mohammedans, and Pagans alike 
 turning to the east in prayer, and laying their dead 
 and building their sacred shrines in that direction- 
 so the Sun of Righteousness rose from that point of 
 the compass, and cast back the light of the glory of the 
 resurrection upon all the incidents and circumstances 
 of His death. The radiance of the rising sun shone 
 on the ashes beside the Jewish altar, making it manifest 
 that the lamb had .been entirely consumed; the sun 
 rose upon the morning of the Sabbath after Christ's 
 crucifixion upon a cross from which the slain Lamb of 
 God had been taken away, and upon a sepulchre nigh 
 at hand, wherein had lain the body of Him who was 
 the end of the law for righteousness. And lastly, as 
 the Jewish priests carried the ashes of the sacrifice 
 without the camp into a clean place, so the body of 
 Jesus was laid outside the city of Jerusalem in a new 
 sepulchre wherein no man had ever before been laid. 
 His grave was in a garden which was close to Golgotha, 
 where He was crucified. Truly God gave beauty for 
 ashes in that garden sepulchre ! How significant is the 
 circumstance that the ashes of our great atoning sacri- 
 fice were laid in this clean place ! What a garden of 
 loveliness and fruitfulness have they made of this deso- 
 late wilderness world ! All old things have passed 
 away and all things have become new. A new crea- 
 tion, grander and fairer than the first, rose out of the 
 
xxi. BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 369 
 
 place of ashes, over which the morning stars sang to- 
 gether, and the sons of God shouted for joy in a 
 higher way than at the beginning. The brightest and 
 sweetest things of earth now bloom around the sepul- 
 chre ; the place of a skull is embosomed in beauty, and 
 the smile of heaven plays over its darkest and saddest 
 aspect. 
 
 To the sinner who repents and believes in this great 
 atoning sacrifice, God gives beauty for ashes. Sin is 
 an infringement of God's law of order, through which 
 alone all the brightness and variety of life can be 
 evolved. It disintegrates, decomposes, reduces to 
 ashes. Its great characteristic is its wearisome same- 
 ness and monotony, a dreary movement without variety 
 from iniquity to iniquity. It is a defacement and 
 destruction passing over the soul and life of man, like 
 an earthquake over a city, overthrowing into one 
 common heap of similar ruins all the fair variety of 
 its architecture ; or like a fire through a forest, 
 reducing all the multitudinous life and variety of 
 vegetation to the same uniform dreary level of black 
 cinders and grey ashes, on which no dew falls, and on 
 which the sun itself shines with a ghastly and mocking 
 smile. Out of this melancholy wreck the grace of God 
 constructs the fresh and infinite variety of blessedness 
 which belongs to the converted soul. The work of 
 righteousness is the ever- varied unfolding of life, as 
 compared with the silent motionless sameness of death 
 the growing of a plant in the desert from seed to 
 
 foliage, and from foliage to blossom and fruit, with all 
 2 A 
 
370 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 its new revelations of beauty and wonder, and all its 
 varied influences upon nature and reactions of nature 
 upon it, as compared with the shifting of the same 
 barren sands from one place to another, or the blowing 
 of the dead chaff to and fro, by the same weary wind of 
 the wilderness. Not more remarkable was the contrast 
 between the little green spots growing over the ashes of 
 the sacrifices deposited outside the camp, that marked 
 the resting-places of the tabernacle by the way the 
 places of death thus becoming the places of new and 
 brighter life than is the contrast between the garden 
 of the renewed soul and the dreary wilderness of its 
 former dead condition. And as the circles of greener 
 and taller grass spread in the fairy ring over the sward, 
 fed by the rich nitrogenous materials, resulting from the 
 decay of the mushrooms that form them, so from the 
 mortification of the lusts and passions of the unrenewed 
 nature will spring up and ripple over the heart and life 
 a rich luxuriance of spiritual graces. 
 
 To the sorrowful, God gives beauty for ashes. 
 Grievous to sensitive human hearts are sorrow and 
 suffering ; but they play a gracious part in the moral 
 economy of the world. They are the furnace in which 
 our evil nature is reduced to ashes the trial of our 
 faith which is more precious than that of gold, even 
 though it be tried by fire. We are laid with the great 
 Sufferer of our race upon the altar and share the fellow- 
 ship of His sufferings, and like Him are made perfect 
 through suffering. " I believe," says Heine, in one of 
 his far-reaching sentences, " that by suffering animals 
 
BE A UTY FOR ASHES. 37 1 
 
 could be made human." It certainly refines the rudest 
 nature ; its mystery lies at the root of all art and liter- 
 ature, of all the high life and progress of the world ; and 
 when sanctified it elevates the humblest sinner into a 
 companionship in the kingdom and patience of Jesus 
 Christ. Fairer than the moss that spreads its soft 
 velvet pall over the cold ashes of the deserted hearth ; 
 more precious than the delicate verdure of spring that 
 covers over and obliterates the deaths and decays of 
 autumn, is the moral beauty that comes out of the ashes 
 of worldly loss and mortal pain and dark bereavement. 
 On the most awful battlefields of life grow the greenest 
 pastures of peace ; on the fierce lava streams that have 
 desolated the heart, bloom the sweetest virtues and 
 flourish the peaceable fruits of righteousness. As 
 Nature spreads over her trap-rocks a bright garniture 
 of lichen, moss, and wild-flower, making what had been 
 the product of fiery convulsions that had shaken the 
 whole earth to its foundations the most picturesque 
 features in the landscape : so the Spirit of God lays His 
 rich adornment of grace upon the greatest difficulties 
 and the most disturbing trials, subduing them into har- 
 mony with heavenly things, and making the life in 
 which they occur more attractive and useful. The pure 
 white snow of the Divine peace falls upon that volcanic 
 grief which lifts the soul highest to heaven ; and where 
 the lurid flames of pain and passion vent forth their 
 intolerable heat and their devastating fire-streams, the 
 radiance of sunrises and sunsets, burning low, falls 
 softly and innocently as the crimson stain on the snow 
 
372 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 of the apple-blossom. And what a glory crowned the 
 brow of the Redeemer when His suffering life was 
 ended ; a glory different from and in some respects 
 higher than that which belonged to Him in virtue of 
 His essential Godhead ! The head that was covered 
 with ashes, the life that was one embodied mourning 
 and expiation for the sins of the world, is now anointed 
 with the oil of gladness, and clothed with the garment 
 of praise, girt about the paps with a golden girdle. 
 And for all His suffering ones He has henceforth broken 
 the connection of suffering with evil, as the work of an 
 enemy who seeks only to waste and destroy, and associ- 
 ated it with heaven as the discipline of a loving Father, 
 and the training of a nobler and more blessed life. 
 
 And lastly, there are the ashes of the dead ! These 
 are the saddest of all. Even the ashes of the com- 
 monest household fire are melancholy things, for they 
 remind us of what was once bright, and suggest 
 thoughts of loss and ruin, with which our sad experi- 
 ence of life's changes enables us to sympathize. 
 More melancholy still are the brown withered leaves 
 of autumn, blown by the. chill November winds about 
 our path ; the ashes of Nature's gorgeous funeral pyre, 
 in which the pomp and glory of the summer burnt 
 itself out ; each of which tells us of a miracle of beauty 
 and design, and a life of gladness which have perished 
 for ever. We mourn the awful waste that goes on 
 in the world, the extinction of species, the myriads of 
 seeds that never germinate, of blossoms that fall in 
 their perfection, and of fruits that never set or ripen. 
 
xxi. BEAUTY FOR ASHES. ^3 
 
 But there is no waste in nature equal to the waste 
 of human life. The ashes of the dead speak of the 
 greatest humiliation, the uttermost loss, highest hopes 
 extinguished, and noblest ideas perished. The gifts 
 and gains of our civilization have made human life 
 more precious than of old ; the results of science, 
 showing through what long stages and by what wonder- 
 ful processes it has reached its present perfection, have 
 greatly exalted the conception of its importance ; the 
 revelation of Divine grace has made known to us that, 
 for its sake, the Son of God Himself died, and what 
 unspeakable issues hang upon it ; and the experience 
 of every heart that deeply loves, confirms the truth 
 that in this human life love is by far the greatest and 
 most blessed thing, " the most divine flower that 
 Nature, in the long course of her evolutions, has 
 evoked." And here, in the ashes of the dead, it has 
 all come to an end; Nature has wasted all her 
 gathered gains, thrown away her grandest thing just 
 when it was perfected ! Other wastes may be repaired. 
 Every spring, the earth rises in fresh loveliness from 
 the baptism of the autumnal fire. It passes out 
 through winter's dark valley of the shadow of death 
 into green pastures and beside still waters beyond. The 
 leaves appear again in the old tenderness ; and out 
 of the dry bulbs and withered-looking branches come 
 the fair young flowers wearing the immortal bloom of 
 Eden. But, what shall repair the waste of human 
 death ? Can any following spring revive the ashes of 
 the urn ? Spring lays its magic wand upon the green 
 
374 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP, 
 
 mound of the churchyard, as Gehazi laid the prophet's 
 staff upon the face of the dead child ; but, while the 
 lower lives on the surface of the mound, that come 
 there and show the sympathy of nature, rise out of 
 their sleep at the touch the grass roots sending forth 
 their green blades, and the daisies opening their round 
 eyes in wonderment there is no response from the 
 precious dust beneath. Ashes to ashes and dust to 
 dust still maintain their physical connection. 
 
 To the pagan, all was hopeless ! The runners in the 
 Promethean games of old set out in the contest bearing 
 each a lighted torch ; and he gained the prize who first 
 came to the goal with his torch still burning. But at 
 the goal of death the torch of victor and vanquished 
 alike was extinguished ; and no wiser or bolder spirit 
 could carry it burning into the unexplored darkness 
 beyond. On the tomb its image was carved, turned 
 upside-down, never more to be lighted. Death was 
 the eternal farewell ; and the handful of human ashes 
 in the cinerary urn was only rescued for a little while 
 from its ultimate fate of mingling with the indistinguish- 
 able elements of the universe. Even the Hebrew faith 
 itself could scarcely imagine that any conscious beauty 
 could ever come from such ashes; and its helpless cry 
 ascended up to the pitiless heaven, "Wilt thou show 
 wonders to the dead?" And, in our days, cruel science 
 comes and employs all its strength in ruthlessly rolling 
 a great stone to the mouth of the sepulchre. It tells 
 us that nature has nothing to suggest regarding a resur- 
 rection, nothing indeed that can be used as the faintest 
 
BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 
 
 analogy of it. The fair blossom from the seed, the 
 winged insect from the chrysalis these common fam- 
 iliar illustrations are examples of rejuvenescence or 
 development, and not of resurrection. These living 
 things do not spring from previously dead and decom- 
 posed forms, but are simply the outcome of a latent life 
 that has never for one moment been interrupted ; and 
 before we can use such analogies as arguments in favour 
 of the resurrection, we must be shown some germ of 
 animal or vegetable life, ground into dust and scattered 
 by the winds, and entering into the composition of 
 other bodies, whose materials have, nevertheless, been 
 gathered together anew, and its old life restored unim- 
 paired. But, of such a process in nature there has 
 never been a single instance. There has never been, 
 in all the physical world, a single example of life raised 
 from actual death; all its revivifying processes attach 
 only to things that are alive and representative of life. 
 
 But the Christian religion assures us that for the 
 ashes of our dead we shall yet have immortal beauty. 
 The truth of the resurrection is the new fact upon 
 which Christianity rests its claims ; which Christianity 
 asserts to be itself a Gospel. It is undoubtedly true 
 that we once woke from nothing to consciousness ; and 
 Revelation asserts that this mystery and miracle will 
 be repeated, and in a higher form, from the nothing- 
 ness of the grave. This is a truth in beautiful accord- 
 ance with all the natural instincts and longings of our 
 souls. Our deepest heart affections are the helpers of 
 our highest hopes, and the instinctive guarantee of a 
 
376 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 life to come. Love builds the heavenly as well as the 
 earthly home. Love creates its own immortality ; for 
 love is love for evermore. He who made the union 
 of hearts here more powerful than the attraction of 
 star to star, more beautiful than the blossoming of 
 flower to flower, more precious than the highest flights 
 and attainments of intellect, must " grant the reunion, 
 having made the union so sweet." He who has 
 wakened in us such great capacities, who has un- 
 folded to us such countless wonders of creation for 
 our instruction and delight, and lighted up the uni- 
 verse with a glory and a beauty so divine, would .not 
 have done so if death were our extinction and the 
 dust our end. He has sent His Son out of His 
 own bosom, to say to the multitudes in all the Chris- 
 tian ages who have devoted themselves to His work 
 and sacrificed their lives for His sake, with the deep 
 conviction in their souls that the sufferings of this 
 life were not worthy to be compared with the glory 
 that should be revealed in them; to the myriads 
 who have laid their beloved dead to rest in the sure 
 and certain hope of a happy reunion "If it were 
 not so, I would have told you." He has not told 
 us ; and therefore all concerning the future life upon 
 which He has caused our hearts to hope is true. 
 
 It is not beauty for ashes that we want; but beauty 
 from ashes. The inmost longing of every human heart 
 is not for an unknown and untried future happiness, 
 but for a restoration, beautified and unalloyed, of what 
 has already been. We do not care for substitutes 
 
xxi. BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 377 
 
 for what we have lost ; what we want is a resurrection 
 of our dead loves, our past joys. We feel safer and 
 surer with what we have already experienced. The 
 faint blue smoke that ascends from the shepherd's 
 lowly shieling on the mountain waste is more precious 
 to the wanderer than the gorgeous sunset clouds that 
 hang high above it in the western sky. And dearer far 
 to the human heart is the old familiar earth, with its 
 homely ways and common experiences, than all the 
 gorgeous descriptions of heaven with its golden streets 
 and jewelled walls. No imaginable or unimaginable 
 beauty could possibly compensate us for the ashes of 
 what we had previously loved. 
 
 The hope that is set before us in the gospel appeals 
 to this universal human feeling. It is not altogether 
 a new heaven and a new earth that are to arise from 
 the conflagration and ashes of the old ; but a place 
 prepared by Him who wears our nature and knows 
 our experience, filled with objects long familiar 
 to us, and furnished with delights which we have 
 already enjoyed in part. It is no new creature, no 
 strange being, forgetful of the past, soaring out of the 
 power and memory of the beautiful affections of the 
 earthly home to the ethereal fellowship with God and 
 angels, that will be raised from the dust to dwell in 
 that new earth, and under these new heavens, but the 
 friend we loved here, whose mortal form and human 
 love will put on immortality. The alchemists of old 
 believed that in the embers of all things their prim- 
 ordial forms existed, and that therefore they could 
 
378 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 
 
 create the rose with its green foliage and crimson blos- 
 soms complete from its own ashes, but without the 
 bloom and fragrance a delicate apparition like the 
 ghostly downy head of the dandelion that springs up 
 where the golden sun of the flower had set. But a 
 more cunning Alchemist will restore from the ashes of 
 our beloved dead the old human form in all its human 
 perfection, the self-same being with whom on earth 
 and in time we took sweet counsel, transfigured, glori- 
 fied, but still unchanged in all essential elements ; the 
 glorious influences of heaven only quickening within 
 the heart the dear familiar memories of earth. In the 
 highest and fullest sense shall beauty then be given for 
 ashes ; and the revelation of a glory that eye hath not 
 seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, shall 
 be seen in the " little dust that here we over-weep." 
 Very specially at the close of the year are we 
 reminded of the substitution of beauty for ashes, in the 
 history of the world, in the experience of man. The 
 anniversary then comes round of the birth of Him who 
 came into our world and into our nature for the very 
 purpose of giving beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for 
 mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of 
 heaviness. He Himself proclaimed in the synagogue 
 of Capernaum that this was the great object of His 
 mission. He came into our nature to make us new 
 creatures ; He came into our world to make all its 
 old, sinful, miserable things new. He set agoing, by 
 His life and death, a redemptive process, which has 
 been going on ever since, developing more and more of 
 
xxi. BEAUTY FOR ASHES. 379 
 
 its power and grace, and producing greater and nobler 
 results. And at that season we are specially invited to 
 share in the blessings of His grace, and to rejoice in the 
 triumph of His righteous cause over the evils of the 
 world. Whether we are then sitting beside the cold 
 ashes of some once bright glowing hope or dream 
 of love ; whether we are bearing upon our head and 
 heart the ashes of mourning for some beloved one, 
 whose hand will never more clasp ours, whose face will 
 never more smile in tenderness upon us ; whether we 
 are looking back upon the ashes of a wasted life that in 
 its burning has shed light upon no noble or useful work ; 
 whatever may be the nature of the ashes beside which 
 we stand at the close of the year, and feel how much 
 meaning lies in the little mournful monosyllable, "gone," 
 the holy child Jesus can give us beauty for them, beauty 
 from them; can give us back far more than we have 
 lost, can restore in a higher form what is gone. From the 
 ashes of our sins and the ashes of our sorrows, He can 
 give us a beauty of hope and a beauty of holiness which 
 will be a true gladness in our hearts. The narrowing 
 and descent of our life into these ashes is, through re- 
 pentance and faith, for the broadening and brightening 
 of it into glimpses and foretastes of the larger and 
 grander life beyond. 
 
380 THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP, 
 
 THE CHRISTMAS ROSE. 
 
 UNTO the cradle of the Wondrous Child, 
 
 Heaven brought its star, and man his gold and myrrh ; 
 
 But nature brings each year a living gift 
 
 To halo the Divine event ; a star 
 
 Of earth, that once came from the East, and sheds 
 
 Its silver radiance round our common homes. 
 
 It comes, like Him whose birth it celebrates, 
 
 To cheer the winter of the world, and make 
 
 The very snow to blossom into life. 
 
 When earth has reached its darkest hour, this gleam 
 
 Of coming dawn appears. We seem to see 
 
 The snowdrop's mystic presence on the lawn ; 
 
 The crocus kindle where its light went out ; 
 
 The copse grow dense with purple haze of buds ; 
 
 And willows deck their wands with silken plumes. 
 
 Long mute, the birds, whene'er they see this sign, 
 
 Take heart to twitter; and the sunbeams pale 
 
 Grow warmer as they shine upon its flowers ; 
 
 And where it breathes its subtle fragrance round, 
 
 The very air seems conscious of the Spring. 
 
 Last child of the old year, first of the new 
 
 Ghost of the past, soul of the future rose 
 
 It links the seasons with its silver clasp, 
 
 And blends our memories and hopes in one. 
 
 In this pale herald of the flowery year 
 
 Are sketched the types of lily and of rose, 
 
 Which afterwards, from its fair side in death, 
 
xxi. THE CHRISTMAS ROSE. 381 
 
 Are separated to make the seasons gay. 
 
 From roots of ebon darkness, through the mould, 
 
 Spring up the pure white blossoms, one by one ; 
 
 Like human heart whose roots are dark with woe, 
 
 And yet produce the brightest flowers of heaven. 
 
 Its seeming petals green leaves glorified 
 
 Are moonlike made, through the December gloom, 
 
 To light dim insects to their honeyed task, 
 
 And so fulfil the higher ends of life. 
 
 At first, they come up pale and blanched with cold, 
 
 But as the days grow long, a warmer hue, 
 
 Like that which deepens in the summer rose, 
 
 Or tips the daisy's frill, creeps over them ; 
 
 As if they blushed in a white flowerless world, 
 
 To find themselves the only blooming things. 
 
 Unchanged they last until the seed is ripe, 
 
 In which the single life dies for the race. 
 
 And then, their purpose served, they darken down 
 
 Into the dusky green of common leaves. 
 
 Transfiguration strange ! A lowly sign 
 
 Of Him whose robe and face shone whiter far 
 
 Than Hermon's crest, while of His death He talked ! 
 
 That which exalts the flower above its wont, 
 
 Ennobles everything. The priestly dress 
 
 Of beauty and of glory clothes each life 
 
 That yields itself a sacrifice to love. 
 
 THE END. 
 
PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, BY 
 ROBERT MACLEHOSE, 153 WEST NILE STREET, GLASGOW. 
 
BY THK 
 
 REV. HUGH MACMILLAN, LL.D., F.R.S.E. 
 
 BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE. Fifteenth Edition. 
 Crown Svo, cloth. 6s. 
 
 "Ably and eloquently written. It is a thoughtful book, and one that is 
 prolific of thought." Pall Mall Gazette. 
 
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 Guardian. 
 
 " We part from Mr. Macmillan with exceeding gratitude. He has made the 
 world more beautiful to us, and unsealed our ears to voices of praise and mes- 
 sages of love that might otherwise have been unheard. We commend the 
 volume not only as a valuable appendix to works of natural theology, but as 
 a series of prose idylls of unusual merit." British Quarterly Review. 
 
 SEQUEL TO " BIBLE TEACHINGS IN NATURE." 
 
 THE SABBATH OF THE FIELDS. Fifth Edition. Globe 
 Svo. 6s. 
 
 " This book is a worthy sequel to Mr. MacmUlan's admirable ' Bible Teach- 
 ings in Nature.' In it there is the same intimate communion with nature and 
 the same kind of spiritual instruction as in its predecessor. " Standard. 
 
 " This volume, like all Dr. Macmillan's productions, is very delightful read- 
 ing, and of a special kind. Imagination, natural science, and religious instruc- 
 tion are blended together in a very charming way. " British Quarterly Review. 
 
 OUR LORD'S THREE RAISINGS FROM THE DEAD. 
 
 Globe Svo. 6s. 
 
 " His narrative style is pleasant, and his reflections sensible." Westminster 
 Review. 
 
 THE MINISTRY OF NATURE. Seventh Edition. Globe 
 Edition. 6s. 
 
 " The author exhibits throughout his writings the happiest characteristics 
 of a God-fearing, and, withal, essentially liberal and unprejudiced mind. Of 
 the Essays themselves we cannot speak in terms of too warm admiration." 
 Standard. 
 
 "We can give unqualified praise to this most charming and suggestive 
 volume. As studies of nature they are new and striking in information, 
 beautiful in description, rich in spiritual thought, and especially helpful and 
 instructive to all religious teachers. If a preacher desires to see how he can 
 give freshness to his ministry, how he can clothe old and familiar truths in 
 new forms, and so invest them with new attractions, how he can secure real 
 beauty and interest without straining after effect, he could not do better than 
 study this book. Nonconformist. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON. 
 
Worhs by the Reu. Hugh Macmillan, LLD., F.R.S.E. 
 
 (Continued.) 
 
 THE TRUE VINE; OR, THE ANALOGIES OF OUR 
 LORD'S ALLEGORY. Fifth Edition. Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 " The volume strikes us as being especially well suited for a book of 
 devotional reading." Spectator. 
 
 1 ' Mr. Macmillan has thrown beautiful light upon many points of natural 
 symbolism. Readers and preachers who are unscientific will find many of 
 his illustrations as valuable as they are beautiful.'* British Quarterly Review. 
 
 " It abounds in exquisite bits of description, and in striking facts clearly 
 stated. "Nonconformist. 
 
 FIRST FORMS OF VEGETATION. Second Edition. Cor- 
 rected and Enlarged. With Coloured Frontispiece and 
 numerous Illustrations. Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 The first edition of this book was published under the name of 
 ' ' Footnotes from the Page of Nature ; or, First Forms of Vegeta- 
 tion." Upwards of a hundred pages of new matter have been 
 added to this new edition, and eleven new illustrations. 
 
 " Probably the best popular guide to the practical study of mosses, lichens, 
 and fungi ever written. Its practical value as a help to the student and col- 
 lector cannot be exaggerated, and it will be no less useful in calling the 
 attention of others to the wonders of nature in the most modern products of 
 the vegetable world." Manchester Examiner. 
 
 HOLIDAYS ON HIGH LANDS; OR, RAMBLES AND 
 INCIDENTS IN SEARCH OF ALPINE PLANTS. 
 
 Second Edition. Revised and Enlarged. Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 " A series of delightful lectures on the botany of some of the best known 
 mountain regions. " Guardian. 
 
 " Mr. Macniillan's glowing pictures of Scandinavian nature are enough to 
 kindle in every tourist the desire to take the same interesting high lands for 
 the scenes of his own autumn holidays." Saturday Review. 
 
 TWO WORLDS ARE OURS. Second Edition. Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 " Any one of the chapters may be taken up separately and read with pleas- 
 ure and profit by those whose hours for helpful reading are limited. The ease 
 and grace of style common to all Dr. Macmillan 's writings are palpable in this 
 volume. The miracles of the Old Testament, as well as the teachings of 
 nature, have interesting elucidations in it, and readers have the benefit of 
 scriptural studies and extensive researches in nature and science, made by 
 the author, to add to their information and sustain their interest." The 
 Theological Quarterly. 
 
 THE MARRIAGE IN CANA OF GALILEE. Globe 8vo. 6s. 
 
 "Dr. Macmillan expounds the circumstances of this miracle with much 
 care, with a good sense and a sound judgment that are but rarely at fault, 
 and with some happy illustrations supplied by his knowledge of natural pre- 
 cept." The Spectator. 
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., LONDON.