I daresay you may have a little garden of your own. Did you ever, in spring-time, make a hole in the soft brown earth, and drop into it a little black round seed? Perhaps last March you put in a good many sweet peas, and then covered each one up in its earthy bed, and left them. People told you not to forget to take care of your garden, and so you often watered the place where the seeds lay hidden, and at last you saw something very tiny, but fresh and green and full of life, where only the dark brown earth had been the day before. You clapped your hands for pleasure, and ran to tell everybody: "My sweet peas are coming up!" You see you can tell when the seeds are growing, but you cannot tell how they grow; you can water the ground where they are lying hidden from your sight, but when you have done all you know how to do, you must still leave them to G.o.d"s care; for He alone can make those little dark b.a.l.l.s spring up and grow, and blossom in sweetness and beauty.
What wonderful thing it was that went on underground so quietly, while you were asleep or at play, neither you nor I can tell; and this dead-like seed coming to life and springing up into beauty is only one of the many things which go on in this world all around us, seen and known only by G.o.d, who says of the seed of His word, sown by His servants--not in the ground, but in the hearts of people--that it is He who "giveth the increase."
We speak of vegetable life as well as of animal life, for I am sure you have not forgotten that plants breathe through their leaves--they drink in water by their roots, and some plants even show that they are sensitive to touch by shrinking if anything comes in contact with them; but how a daisy, with its hardy little stem and its fresh green leaves and "crimson-tipped"
flower, comes to grow out of the earth, we do not know at all.
The beautiful leaves, fringed with downy hairs, are the lungs of the plants; and just as the blood runs through the veins at the back of your hand, the sap: which is the life-blood of the plant, runs through some fine veins which you see at the back of the leaf. If this sap were to cease flowing up the stem, the leaves and flowers would soon droop and die.
[Ill.u.s.tration: GREEN PASTURES.]
Look at the sheep, cropping the gra.s.s so busily that they hardly lift their heads from the ground. Every time they breathe, they give out air which feeds all the green things around them; and as the green things breathe this air, by the very act they purify it, and give it back to the sheep, fit for them to inhale again.
We see that when G.o.d made the world, everything was prepared beforehand. He did not cause the earth to bring forth living things, until all that was needful to keep them alive was ready. Before the beasts of the field were made, the gra.s.s, which was to be their food, covered the earth like a soft carpet, and their table was furnished. This is a lesson which we have already learnt, when speaking of "The Ocean of Air"--but it is one of which we cannot be too often reminded.
And now I want to point out to you that in the eleventh verse we read of three kinds of living things which G.o.d caused the earth to bring forth. Let us look at them: (1) "gra.s.s"; (2) "the herb yielding seed"; (3) "the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed was in itself."
Long ago, when I first noticed these three distinct kinds, I could not understand why there was a difference made between "gra.s.s" and "the herb yielding seed"; for the gra.s.s in our fields in autumn is, as little May said, "all full of pips." This was her way of describing those beautiful seeds which hang so gracefully that we sometimes gather the long stalks and dry them for their beauty, that we may have a winter nosegay when there are no flowers to be found. I had forgotten my puzzle about this when, not long ago, I met with a very interesting book which explained that the gra.s.s which is spoken of in Genesis as the first thing which the earth brought forth, was not the gra.s.s of our fields. If you look in the margin of your Bible, you will see that it is there called "tender gra.s.s." You might perhaps think there is not much difference; but words, which are the names of things, are very strong for good or evil. And especially in reading the Bible, it is important to get the very best English word that can be found for the Hebrew words which we could not understand. The verse has been more exactly turned from Hebrew into English in this way: "And G.o.d said. Let the earth sprout forth with tender gra.s.s."
This word "tender gra.s.s" is not the same as that which is used in a Psalm which the children were just then learning, where we read that G.o.d "causeth the gra.s.s to grow for the cattle." It means rather "the plant that shoots"
out of the ground, and would apply to any green thing just sprouting. It is thought that in the word are included all those plants such as mosses and mushrooms, whose flowers are invisible, and which multiply not by producing seed, but by budding, or by means of little living particles, looking like brown dust, which botanists call "spores."
These flowerless plants are of much simpler structure than those which have root, stem, leaf and flower, and produce plants of their own kind by means of their seeds. If you look at the back of a common fern, you will see brown specks, not bigger than silkworms" eggs, beautifully arranged upon it. Each of these is a collection of little cases containing spores, which by-and-by will split open, allowing the spores to fall into the ground.
"Then the spores are the same as seeds, after all"--you say. No; if they were seeds, each would at once grow into a fern. This is what happens, as far as I can explain it to you: from the spore springs a tiny leaf, which roots itself, and it is from this green leaf that the young fern actually grows, until it, as it were, begins life on its own account. The leaf dies down, and the first frond of the new fern peeps above ground, closely coiled up, as you have often seen, if you have been through the woods in spring-time. The earliest forms of vegetable life, then, brought forth by the earth at the word of G.o.d were the plants which have no seeds: botanists have divided such plants into groups--the seaweeds and lichens, the mosses, and the ferns.
Of the seaweeds, the lowest of all groups of plants, we were speaking some time ago. The lichens, though such lowly plants, are very interesting, for I have read that every form of lichen is composed of two distinct plants--a seaweed and a fungus--so closely interwoven that you cannot tell where the one ends and the other begins. The lichens range in colour from white to yellow, red, green, brown--and some are as black as that rare black pansy of which I told you. Each kind has its own peculiar way of growing, and these hardy little plants can live where no other plant can--on the hard black lava, on naked rocks, and even upon the highest snow-mountain.
Next time you pa.s.s an old gateway or ruined wall, and notice stains of yellow and brown and grey upon it, remember that there the lichens grow; tiny plants indeed, whose beauties are revealed only by the microscope, but each one of them made by G.o.d, and given the means of living by Him, just as much as those giants of the forest of which travellers tell us such wonderful tales. You may sometimes find a rock, or the trunk of a tree, encrusted with dry lichen, and it is interesting to know that these plants when they decay form the first mould for mosses and ferns, plants which botanists think of as higher in the scale of vegetable life than the lowly lichens themselves are.
The great family of mosses is found not only near home, but even far away amid the icefields and the snow, where the reindeer searches with its horns for the white moss which is its food, and where Sir John Franklin and his devoted men gathered the black _Tripe de Roche_ upon which they tried to live during those dark months when their ship lay fast wedged between
"... those icebergs vast, With heads all crowned with snow, Whose green roots sleep in the awful deep, Two hundred fathoms low."
But prettier than these Arctic mosses are those nearer home. Talking about them makes me think of a place where I wish you and I could go together some beautiful afternoon in winter. It is a lovely little pine-wood near Bournemouth, to which some boys, with whose friends I was staying during the Christmas holidays, wished to take me to see their favourite walk.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ICE-BOUND]
Once when we were starting for our run, on a bright frosty morning, and I was rather hoping I should be taken to the sea, I heard them say to each other, "The Pincushion Wood; that"s it; do let us go there." I wondered what kind of place this could be but when we had scrambled through some heather and come to this pine-wood, I saw at once why they had given it its name. Overhead, with their needles against the blue sky, were the pines in their dark solemn green, but under our feet the ground was bright with moss which grew, not on stones or trunks of trees, but all by itself in round b.a.l.l.s, soft and firm and cushiony. You may be sure I was delighted with the green pincushions: we gathered a quant.i.ty of them, and I took one home with me, but though I watered it carefully, it soon lost its beauty.
These moss-b.a.l.l.s lay at the roots of the pines, and we could pick up as many as we pleased; but generally even the most delicate mosses grasp the soil, and clasp their soft tendrils round the stones so firmly that you need a knife or a sharp stone to make them loose their hold. One of the uses of moss is to protect the rocks from the frost, and from the heavy rains which wash them away by degrees. The roots of trees, too, are cherished and warmed by the closely clinging mosses; and by holding the moisture from dew and rain, they form where they grow a little bed of soft mould, and so prepare the way for plants of larger growth.
Do you know the Trumpet-moss, with its red cups each holding its own little dewdrop? Perhaps not, for it is a rare treasure, and needs to be sought for in its own haunts; but there are many green mosses which are very beautiful, and so common that we see them upon every garden wall. There is the Hair-moss, the seeds of which are eaten by the birds, while its delicate tendrils serve as soft lining for their nests: it grows plentifully beside our streams; but far away in Lapland, during the short summer when the flowers all at once burst into bloom, it may be seen in full beauty. The Laps cut this moss in layers and dry it in the sun, to form a soft rug for them to sleep under during their cold nights. Then there is the velvety moss which, like the many-coloured lichen, loves to creep over old buildings, and make the ruined and desolate places bright with a beauty not their own.
Speaking of mosses reminds me of a story which is told us by a doctor named Mungo Park, who was nearly lost in an African desert about a hundred years ago. Day after day he had toiled on, under the burning sun, until he was almost in despair; for he had been robbed and deserted, and felt as if there was nothing left for him but to lie down and die in the wilderness, or become a prey to the savage animals which ranged over the country; and the remembrance of those at home in Scotland who would never know what had become of him, made him sick at heart. As these sad thoughts filled the traveller"s mind and took away all his courage, his tired eye lighted upon a tiny tuft of moss, showing green and fair even in the parched soil of the desert. It was the Lesser Fork-moss which grows in our shady woods, and beside our ponds and ditches. We should perhaps hardly notice it unless we were shown its beauty by a microscope, for it is one of the smallest and humblest of things that grow; but as he looked at it, tears of joy came to his eyes. Silently springing up in that thirsty land, the tiny moss spoke to the lonely exile of the care of G.o.d for the very smallest of His creatures, whether the restless brown bird of which the Lord Jesus spoke when He bade His disciples not to fear, saying, "Ye are of more value than many sparrows," or the creeping moss which spreads from stone to stone.
In a moment all was changed for the weary traveller. He felt that he was not alone in that great solitude, for G.o.d who had cared for that tuft of moss, and kept it green and fresh by means of some hidden spring, surely cared for him, His own child, and would show him the right way out of that desolate place. Thus the burden and the heat were forgotten in happy thoughts of the faithfulness of G.o.d; and he went on his way with new courage, and soon found the path which he had lost; but he never forgot the message which the little moss had brought him. Though the whole plant was not larger than the tip of his finger, he managed to keep it safely through all his journeys by land and sea, and had the pleasure of seeing it flourish under our cold skies just as well as it had done beneath the burning sun of Africa. If you are fond of poetry, you may like to read some lines written by the poet McCheyne about this incident.
"Sad, faint, and weary, on the sand Our traveller sat him down; his hand Covered his burning head; Above, beneath, behind, around, No resting for the eye he found-- All nature seemed as dead.
"One tiny tuft of moss alone, Mantling with freshest green a stone, Fixed his delighted gaze; Through bursting tears of joy he smiled, And while he raised the tendril wild, His lips o"erflowed with praise.
""Oh, shall not He who keeps thee green Here in the waste, unknown, unseen, Thy fellow-exile save?
He who commands the dew to feed Thy gentle flower, can surely lead Me from a scorching grave.""
The poem has many more verses, but I think these the prettiest. Moss has been spoken of by a poet as the "nest of time"; it has also been called "nature"s livery," because the earth is clothed with it; and I have read that Mungo Park"s little teacher may be found upon many a wall near London, and also clinging to those great stones which were once part of the walls of far away Jerusalem. It is nice to think that the little green plants, which we have such reason to love--because they are brightest and best in the winter-time, when all our
"Gorgeous flowerets in the sunlight shining, Blossoms flaunting in the eye of day, Tremulous leaves, with soft and silver lining, Buds that open only to decay."
have faded--grow all the world over; even down in the mines of Sweden the shining Feather-moss is said to light up the darkness with a tiny glimmer of its own.
When we were speaking of the fossil animals which are found hidden deep in the "crust" of the earth, you may remember that I told you that upon the hard grey-coloured clay which forms the roof of coal-mines beautifully traced patterns of ferns are sometimes found. I have heard that half the plants the remains of which are found buried in the coal-measures are ferns, but ferns which are now known to us as but three feet in height, appear in those early times of our earth"s history to have been grand trees with trunks three feet through, and fronds of great length.
If you want to see tree-ferns growing wild now, you must go to New Zealand or Australia, or to the south of India: but you may perhaps some day have an opportunity of looking at pictures of some of the giant mare"s-tails, and other plants with beautifully sculptured stems, of which traces have been found in our own English coal-fields; meantime, look at the vivid word-picture which Dr. Buckland has given of what he saw in a Bohemian mine. He says: "The most elaborate imitation of living foliage upon the painted ceilings of Italian palaces bears no comparison with the beauteous proportions of extinct vegetable forms with which the galleries of these instructive coal-mines are overhung.... The effect is heightened by the contrast of the coal-black colour of these vegetables with the light groundwork of the rock to which they are attached"--for you must not forget that it is upon the roof of the mine that the impressions of the plants which have been turned into coal are found, not upon the coal itself, though even there they may be discovered by a microscope.
And now leaving the mosses and lichens, ferns and mushrooms, we will turn to the "herb yielding seed," and speak of the great family of gra.s.ses; and to begin with I will quote for you two verses which were brought to me by the children when I had asked for texts about gra.s.s.
This is one: "If G.o.d so clothe the gra.s.s of the field, which to-day is, and to-morrow is cast into the oven, shall He not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?"
And the other is: "The gra.s.s withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away: but the word of the Lord endureth for ever."
When we were speaking about the former of these verses, I told them that by "the gra.s.s of the field" we must understand not only gra.s.s, but the wild flowers which grow upon the green slopes of Palestine in the spring-time, when G.o.d
"Lets His own love-whispers creep Over hills and craggies steep."
They bloom but for a short time--from February to April; for in May a burning wind from the desert sweeps over the flowery meadows, and in one short day the gra.s.s has withered and its flower has faded. All "the grace of the fashion of it perishes," and there is no more beauty in the fields till the return of spring makes them bloom again.
In a country where wood is as scarce as it is in the Holy Land gra.s.s and flowers are all cut down together, and burnt to heat the ovens in which bread is baked. The flowers of the field may live but a day, and then wither on their stalks under the hot breath of the desert-blast; or they may be cut down and "cast into the oven." But the Lord spoke of them that He might teach His disciples that they must not be anxious about how they were to live in this world, because G.o.d their Father who "so clothed the gra.s.s," cared for them much more than for the birds, and all the helpless living things which are never forgotten by Him.
The flowers have no care. Those crimson lilies, which shine like stars among the gra.s.s in Palestine in the spring-time, do nothing to make their own rich dress. But G.o.d has thought it worth while to clothe them, as well as the daisies of our English meadows, in grace and beauty; and fair and sweet as they are, not for themselves, but as the overflowings of G.o.d"s br.i.m.m.i.n.g cup of love, From His own word we learn to "consider the lilies how they grow," and receive through them the same lesson which the Fork-moss taught the lost traveller.
"For who but He that arched the skies, And pours the day-spring"s living flood, Wondrous alike in all He tries, Could rear the daisy"s purple bud?
"Mould its green cup, its wiry stem, Its fringed border nicely spin, And cut the gold-embossed gem, That, set in silver, gleams within?
"Then fling it, unrestrained and free, O"er hill and dale and desert sod, That man where"er he walks may see, In every step, the stamp of G.o.d."
The verse which speaks of the "withering" of the gra.s.s, becomes even more striking if we remember that gra.s.s in Eastern lands often grows so tall as to reach to the saddle, as a horseman rides through it. But this tall gra.s.s withers away as soon as it is smitten by the burning heat of the sun.
The apostle Peter speaks of all the glory of man as like gra.s.s which has withered; and then, in contrast with what so quickly perishes, he reminds of what can never grow old or pa.s.s away--"the word of the Lord," which "endureth for ever."
While we were speaking of the verse in Genesis which tells us that "every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth" was to be food for man, I asked the question: "What are the grain-bearing plants?"
Every voice at once replied, "Corn"; and certainly corn is one of the most beautiful, and the plant which has in a special manner given "bread to the eater." "But," I continued, "are there not other gra.s.ses whose seeds supply food for us?"
The children thought awhile, and then said, "Barley," "rye," "oats"; and presently, thinking of other countries besides England and Scotland, someone ventured, "rice"; and Chris, remembering the tall Indian corn which grows so abundantly in America, suggested "maize."
So we went on to notice (Genesis 1. 29, 30) that corn and grain of various kinds are the food specially prepared by G.o.d for man. There was the "green herb" for the animals and birds and creeping things; and for us, the "herb yielding seed." How beautiful it is to see that at the very outset food was provided for man, even before G.o.d had made him; and that all through the long years which have pa.s.sed from that time till now, it has never been wanting. It is true there have been terrible famine years, when the wheat-harvest has perished, or when the rice-crop, upon which the lives of thousands of people in India and China depend, has failed from want of water; and the hand of G.o.d in judgment may at times be seen in these years of drought; but through His goodness in giving "rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons," the earth still brings forth food, and will do so, for G.o.d"s own word a.s.sures us that "while the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest ... shall not cease." It is cheering to think of this when we pa.s.s through a corn-field, and admire the red poppies shining here and there among the wheat, and the full ears of corn waving in the sunshine, until the field looks like a sea of gold.
Interesting too it is to see, as Ernest and his friend did the other day, all that must be done ere those waving ears of corn become a loaf such as you see on the table every morning: for in this country we do not feed on "parched corn," as it is described in that lovely story of Ruth the Moabite woman, from whose line descended our Lord Jesus Christ, "Son of David, Son of Abraham."