Flowers: Humbled & Exalted

To those who admit - and who can deny it? - that flowers are a special and most unmerited gift to brighten the path which man’s transgressions have darkened with sadness, and strewn with thorns, it is a touching circumstance that, be the seasons what they may, there is no month in the twelve without its attendant blossoms.

If the human eye possessed a microscopic power, what a spectacle of beauty would burst upon it, and that too in wintry time, among the family of mosses alone! But such not being the extent of the visual organ entrusted to us, we are not left to go groping about with glasses. Enough is given to common ken to prompt a song of praise, ‘Wonderful are Thy works, Lord God Almighty!’

It is a peculiar feature in this part of those wonderful works, that, although we lack not tall shrubs, even trees, that win the upturned eye to explore the abundance of their beautiful tints, still the far greater portion of our most valued flowers draw the gaze downwards by their lowly stature; while their own faces, raised to heaven, set us the example of looking thitherward.

It is remarkable that the blossoms of lofty plants are most frequently pendulous; those of the dwarf family the reverse. The golden clusters of the beautiful laburnum, and the shining silver of the yet lovelier acacia, how gracefully they bend and fall, as though ashamed of being placed so high; while the innocent daisy, made to be trampled on, and her neighbor, the spruce little butter-cup, lift up their broad bright eyes, in unreserved freedom.

Thus the great one of the earth, when touched by Divine grace, rejoices to be brought down; and the brother of low degree can also rejoice in that he is exalted into a greatness that the world knows not of.