SERMON II.

THE LILIES OF THE FIELD.

MATTHEW 6: 28, 29.

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these.

Ir is worthy of remark, that flowers, to a single specimen of which our Savior calls our attention, are universally attractive and agreeable. They light up the infant's eye, and cover its face with a smile. Children delight in them, stop amidst their sports and along their path to gaze at them; and gather them as the prettiest tokens of affection for their parents, teachers and friends; and fill their houses and schools with their beauty and fragrance. And amidst the cares and toils and glooms and cheerings of busy life, the gloomy as well as the cheerful are pleased with them; and the more in proportion as men give free scope to their natural love of flowers, and still more as they cherish a propensity designed to be made the instrument of faith and hope. The first bloom of spring is welcomed with a smiling face and a cheered heart, by rejoicing

crowds; and successive flowers spread cheerfulness through all the months of summer. We add to the smiles of nature around us by the culture of the garden, and accept the privilege which a gracious Providence has given us of adding thus to the cheerfulness of home; and even amidst the dreariness of winter, try, with our house-plants and green-houses, to produce and preserve the cheering lesson of the summer months. Even half-blind old age, too lame to go forth and dimly see the new beauties of an eightieth summer, welcomes the beautiful nosegay, which a child's love of flowers has wrought for a worn-out and withering grandmother. Nay; I have seen a cluster of flowers come in, fragrant and beautiful messengers of peace, to greet and cheer the sick, and a new and heavenly smile light up the face of the dying, as, for the last time, their beautiful robe was beheld by their fading eyes. "Do you know," said the lovely and excellent Wilberforce, as he was sinking under the infirmities of old age, "do you know," said he, (opening upon some flowers shut up in the Psalms,) "that I am very fond of flowers? The corn and things of that nature I look upon as the bounties of Providence; flowers I look upon as his smile."

They are the delight of all nations. Their line is gone out into all the earth. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard. God has provided blossoms in the wilderness to attract the eye of the savage, and they speak of mercy among all heathen nations. In India, particularly, the seat of the

most extensive idolatry on earth, I have witnessed the remarkable attachment of the people to flowers. They are an article of extensive traffic, and, in a profusion to which we are unaccustomed, form a part of every entertainment, are thrown at the feet and hung around the necks of those whom they wish to honor, till the whole air is filled with their fragrance. They are scattered in the temples, cover the shrines, and are hung around the necks of their gods. They blossom, too, in the fables of their mythology; and, we may gain from one of their most remarkable perversions of the truth, a striking illustration of the religious lesson of the flowers as our Savior interprets it. Is it not remarkable, that, in the leading superstition of the earth, the God of salvation should be the God of the lily? that from Vishnoo the Preserver should spring the water-lily, the sacred lotus, from which Brahma should arise the Creator of a world, of which Vishnoo should be again and again the incarnate deliverer and Savior?

"The lilies of the field" were mentioned, no doubt, because they were before the eyes of our Lord, at the time when he spoke, and because they furnish a conspicuous and beautiful specimen of that innumerable variety of flowers, which adorn and instruct all the months of summer. It is not, I believe, quite certain, what the flower was, which is here termed the lily: nor is it very important to know, since any of the different species of the lily, or of the rose even, or any other flower, would offer in substance the same lesson

to the eye.* I have always, from my earliest childhood, in reading or remembering our Savior's words, had in my own eye, the common lily of the mowing field, which I used to see in great abundance around the home of my childhood, and which fell in time of harvest before the mower's scythe, the morrow, to pass from its glory, not to the oven, but to be buried unseen amidst the winter's fodder. This lily we all know, a lily of golden robe, arrayed above the glory of Solomon, and standing, with its sister species and all the races of the flowers, a lesson to our faith. Let us consider the lily, according to the command of our Savior.

Consider the lilies how they grow. There is more to be done than to glance the eye over the blooming fields, and to be cheered by the beauty of the fullblown lilies. Their growth is to be considered; that hidden, silent, wonderful process, which at length covers the plant with glory surpassing Solomon's. First, is to be noticed, the preparation without, by means of which the lilies grow; a soil in which they may rest, and through which their nourishment may flow. Then above them, aronnd them, and even

*Horne has the following note. "In this passage, Jesus Christ is commonly supposed to have referred to the white lily or the tulip, but neither of these grows wild in Palestine. It is natural to presume that, according to his custom, he called the attention of the hearers to some object at hand; and as the fields of the Levant are overrun with the Amaryllis Lutea, whose golden, liliaceous flowers, in autumn, afford one of the most brilliant and gorgeous objects in nature, the expression, That Solomon, in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these, is peculiarly appropriate."

mingling with the soil, an atmosphere capable of dissolving water; secreting it in its own transparent chambers, lest it be too abundant; - of condensing it, and distilling it in dew, and pouring it down in rain, lest there should be any lack. Then again, thought is borne away in an instant, ninety-six millions of miles to the sun, which, from that immense distance, sends the necessary heat to warm the bed of the lily; to call around its roots the food of the lily, to exhale into the atmosphere the superfluous waters, and to hold them "above the firmament," for their future supply. What power above all human power, is exerted around and above the dwelling-place of the lily, while its glorious robe is wrought! Around its humble bed, what ministering elements are transfused, and what aid bestowed by that immense body which governs and binds together the whole system of the wandering stars! As it rests in that humble bed, drenched in the floods which have fallen on it, the sun, penetrating to its roots, expands the water into vapor, and dissolves the vapor in the air, until its resting place seems turning into a parched and powdered bed of death. But scarcely is he withdrawn at evening, when the cooled air distils the water gently upon it, and the dew lies all night upon its branches. Or it is condensed into clouds, and the gathering drops fall an abundant rain on the lilies of the field. Such pains does God take in preparation for the growth of the lily, which "to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven."