HEN God bade the earth to bring forth thorns, in His tender pity He left the sweet flowers to grow among them. Spilled over the banks of closed Eden, and sending their seeds to sail with light wing above its trees, with what a smile of hope they must have transfigured earth's sad and chidden face. And how Adam and Eve, leaving that Garden Home for exile, and expecting perhaps only a drear thorny waste, must have thanked God and taken courage, when met on their journey by the quiet reassuring sympathy of the flowers. "Relics ye are of Eden's bowers, As pure, as fragrant, and as fair, They followed them out, and their quiet love looked up at them, until Adam might have said to weeping Eve, "All Eden is not lost to us; we are not wholly shut out from the Garden of God." As a child that cannot understand its parents' sorrow, yet understands that they are unhappy, and will not let curiosity ask, and stills even the wonder in its eyes, and busies itself in some small tender ministry, or stands quietly by, all yearning timid love, until a kindly noticing smile brightens in the sad brow, and satisfies the true little heart-something in this way those innocent Eden companions waited beside the banished pair. And in them earth found words to comfort her child-earnest and crowding consolations and arguments, succeeding in endless succession upon her lips; and though many might wither and not convince, yet she would not be disheartened, and would cheer by love, if not by logic. "I share your curse, my children, yet I bid you cheer; there is hope, there is hope, there is hope." So, in a great trouble, an earnest heart will often press arguments of comfort upon us, which, if they do not persuade, at least help us with a grateful sense of the affection that dictates them. And, both Adam and earth under their curse,-how touched and cheered they must have been by God's tender love, when they saw the very thorns of that curse bursting into flower! That spiked bush which Adam saw with a shudder at its gaunt fulfilment of the dread sentence, as he left summer Eden for the winter plains; a little while later he passed it, and, behold, a broad white mass of rose-tinted blossom! Then might he begin to understand how, even in God's judgments, Musings among the flowers. Truly the subject ought to make lovely thoughts crowd up over the barest heart, even as naked earth was suddenly clad with these flowers upon her natal day. And if flowers were first invented on that day, what an exquisite treat the angels must have had! One moment ago, a bare sullen waste; and now, one word-and the wilderness is a garden! What poet, whether in prose or rhyme, but has loved, like the children on May-day, at one time or another, to gather his garland of flowers? Thomson has a well-culled wreath, woven of the Spring flowers first, and then linking in the Summer-wealth: |