They are the mature effects of former causes. Equally so are Rest, Peace and Joy.-HENRY DRUMMOND. The Miracles of a Seed. Faith is not a state of inaction, security and contentedness. It is a constant reaching forth toward a higher and fuller life. The least exercise of it is productive of wonderful results. God has set such a value upon the least grain of faith, and given it such a power, that it can overcome mountainous difficulties and effect extraordinary transformations. But God means that the seed should become a tree. Plant a seed in a flower-pot that is full of soil-motionless, changeless, inert; which would remain as it is for ever—and at once the presence of the seed in the soil creates a vortex of motion and change. The seed, as it germinates and grows, draws the particles of the soil into its own composition and structure, imparts to them a higher nature, organizes the sand and makes it living material, attracts the dew and the sunshine, and brings all the powers of Nature to its help, that it may grow. And so plant a seed of faith in Christ in a dead human heart, and what a change and commotion it causes! It raises up the nature into newness of life; it lays all the powers of Heaven and earth under contribution for its help and sustenance. it grows it accomplishes greater wonders in the tree-stage than in the seed-stage. The produce of the minute grain of mustard-seed is the greatest of herbs, occupying a large space and doing a great work. See what a tree does in the economy of Nature-how it forms the source But as of rivers and streams! How it regulates the seasons and alters the climate of a locality! And more astonishing still is the effect of faith when it reaches the tree-stagewhen it becomes a resting-place for weary creatures on its boughs and gives refreshment to multitudes by its shade and fruit.-HUGH MACMILLAN. Sunset. Nature has a thousand ways and means of rising above herself, but incomparably the noblest manifestations of her capability of color are in the sunsets among the high clouds. I speak especially of the moment before the sun sinks, when his light turns pure rose-color, and when this light falls upon a zenith covered with countless cloudforms of inconceivable delicacy, threads and flakes of vapor, which would in common daylight be pure snowwhite and which give, therefore, fair field to the tone of light. There is then no limit to the multitude and no check to the intensity of the hues assumed. The whole sky from the zenith to the horizon becomes one molten, mantling sea of color and fire; every black bar turns into massy gold, every ripple and wave into unsullied, shadowless crimson and purple and scarlet, and colors for which there are no words in language and no ideas in the mind-things which can only be conceived while they are visible the intense hollow blue of the upper sky. melting through it all-showing here deep and pure and lightless, there modulated by the filmy, formless body of the transparent vapor, till it is lost imperceptibly in its crimson and gold.-RUSKIN. |