My reference to a child reminds me of that often quoted similitude of the Word, in which our children are spoken of as our plants. Among the blessings promised to him that feareth the Lord, it is said, "Thy children shall be as olive plants round about thy table." They are indeed plants, committed to our care; and no volume would be sufficient to disclose the correspondence between the care and cultivation which we should take of the plants around our table, and of those in our gardens. Let us now remember, one fact at least, or one law-it is, that here is but the beginning of their growth. All that it is possible to do for them or to give them here, even through the longest life, can only prepare them to be transplanted to the garden of our Father. There, only, can an unstained blossom be put forth; there only can the perfect fruit be ripened.

Sometimes the heavy burden rests upon us to acquiesce in this transplanting, and offer up our children to Him who gave them, at the very moment when the roots of their being are most closely entwined with those of our own life. The heathen of old, in their awful blindness and depravity, caused their children to pass through fire to their false gods; but this woful and almost unimaginable wickedness was but the perfect perversion of good. For we, too, may be called upon to see our children pass away from us, through fire; not the fires of sinful passion, which the flames that rose in honor of Moloch represented, but the fire of affliction, of sickness, and disappointment, and pain.

But we know they go from us to their home in the garden of God. We know that He asks us to give up to Him the plants we have raised, and watched, and loved, that He may take them in their tender beauty and in their fairest and richest hope, and cultivate them, as we cannot.

No one can care much about his garden, without thinking of the rain; of that gift, falling before his eyes, from a higher region, and bringing with it life and fertility. But of the rain, in connection with the clouds, I say something elsewhere. Here let me advert only to one point, in part because it is immediately connected with our gardens; and in part because it is not generally known, or considered. What a blessing these rains are, and how absolutely necessary to all life and all health, every one knows, and always has known; and yet none know it sufficiently. For example: it is but of late that science has ascertained that one of the most important functions of rain, is to wash the air. Every breath we draw, and not we only, but every breath of every animal, from an elephant to a worm or a fly, cleanses from the body that breathes it some foul substance, which would soon destroy him if it were not removed; and this is the reason that all animals, even fishes, soon die if deprived of air. All these impurities, which result from every motion of a living animal, go forth into the atmosphere, and are

retained there, and thoroughly mixed and diffused by the winds. If they gather into a crowded room and stay with us there, we suffer; and if this is carried very far, as with those imprisoned in what was called the Black Hole in Calcutta, men must die. If these impurities pass out into the open air, we are relieved. But why do they not, by their gradual accumulation during the long series of ages, poison the air itself? Because the rain washes the air clean. It used to be supposed that the driest season was the most healthy. I heard some persons mourn over the copious rains of a recent summer and predict much disease. But it was at once the wettest and healthiest summer on record. It is sometimes too wet for health; but unless the rain is so continuous as to prevent the needful sunshine, it is useful, because it washes away from the air the impurities which gather there, and makes it pure, and bright, and healthful. Gather a cup of rain at the beginning of a shower after long sunshine, and when the water dries away, the cup will be stained; but gather it after a long rain, and it will evaporate and leave nothing or very little behind.

But when the rain thus washes the air, it carries the impurities which it gathers down to the ground, and bears them to the roots of the growing plants. To us these impurities are poison; to the plants they are food, and the very food which the hungry vegetables ask. The snow flake, which we regard as the emblem of purity, is loaded with the impurities of the air; and the ancient proverb which calls the snow "the poor

man's manure," is now verified and explained by science. So also is the fact, that rain water is far better than any other for our plants.

The correspondence which connects all this with the laws of spiritual life and growth, could not be exhibited with any fulness, without trenching upon ground elsewhere occupied. Yet it may be seen, at once, whither this correspondence leads us, by the mere suggestion of one of the most familiar principles of the science of correspondence, that water corresponds to truth; that water, in all its nature and all its functions, and all its utility, corresponds to truth; and in many texts of Scripture this is so obvious, that it has always been noticed. Thus, cleansing waters signify and represent cleansing truth; and when spiritual rain falls on us, this too may be truth, born of the earth and of our earthly experience, but lifted far above it by the influence of our spiritual sun, and in his own time, and in his own way, but always as we need it most, made to fall down upon us. It may be the water of affliction, and it may hide from us for a season all sunshine. But if it teaches us to know our evils, and to repent of them, it will convert even these defilements of the soul into nutriment for whatever germs of goodness may be living within us. She loved much to whom much was forgiven.

As with the rain, so with the winds. Every season has its tempests; and sometimes we look on with dismay, while the trees of our garden bow and tremble, as if under the lash of a strong and cruel enemy.

A

very good gardener tried this experiment:-he selected two trees of the same kind, of equal age, size, and health, and near together. One he secured, so that it moved freely when the north or south wind blew, and was stiff when an east or west wind blew; the other yielded readily to the eastern or western wind, but could not be moved in any other direction. After a few years he found the stem of each tree oval, and not round; and the longer diameter of each was in that direction in which the tree had been moved freely by the wind; that is, he found that each tree grew fastest on the two sides which were often being bowed because the tree could move readily to and fro in that direction, and slowest on the sides that were guarded against all motion and all influence of the winds. The gardener of our souls knows this too, but He, unlike us, can control the winds that blow upon His garden. On all of us tempests sometimes beat; winds of peril or of affliction; they shake our health, our position among men, our fortunes, or in some way bring distress or danger. But whatsoever be the direction in which they bend us, even to the ground, all, all are from the hollow of His hand; over their fierce anger His love reigns; their wildest fury is guided by His wisdom; and the good for which they are let loose upon us is our spiritual growth.

If winter be the season of repose for the vegetable world, and spring the season for depositing the seed in