on: John Murray.
1876.

"The Natural Conditions of Existence as they Affect Animal Life." Karl
Semper. London: C. Kegan Paul & Co. 1881.

GROWTH.

"Is not the evidence of Ease on the very front of all the greatest
works in existence? Do they not say plainly to us, not 'there has
been a great _effort_ here,' but 'there has been a great _power_
here?' It is not the weariness of mortality but the strength of
divinity, which we have to recognize in all mighty things; and that
is just what we now never recognize, but think that we are to do
great things by help of iron bars and perspiration; alas! we shall
do nothing that way, but lose some pounds of our own
weight."--_Ruskin._

"Consider the lilies of the field how they grow."--_The Sermon on
the Mount._

"Nunquam aliud natura, aliud sapientia dicit."--_Juvenal._

What gives the peculiar point to this object-lesson from the lips of
Jesus is, that He not only made the illustration, but made the lilies.
It is like an inventor describing his own machine. He made the lilies
and He made me--both on the same broad principle. Both together, man and
flower, He planted deep in the Providence of God; but as men are dull at
studying themselves He points to this companion-phenomenon to teach us
how to live a free and natural life, a life which God will unfold for
us, without our anxiety, as He unfolds the flower. For Christ's words
are not a general appeal to consider nature. Men are not to consider the
lilies simply to admire their beauty, to dream over the delicate
strength and grace of stem and leaf. The point they were to consider was
_how they grew_--how without anxiety or care the flower woke into
loveliness, how without weaving these leaves were woven, how without
toiling these complex tissues spun themselves, and how without any
effort or friction the whole slowly came ready-made from the loom of God
in its more than Solomon-like glory. "So," He says, making the
application beyond dispute, "you care-worn, anxious men must grow. You,
too, need take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat or what ye
shall drink or what ye shall put on. For if God so clothe the grass 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?"

This nature-lesson was a great novelty in its day; but all men now who
have even a "little faith" have learned this Christi