bright, life-like look of the bursting blossoms, we could not but draw a somewhat similar idea; for these seemed the nearest to joy that an inanimate thing could express, and they were also the means of giving joy to our minds. But here,—in the tones of affection expressed between the little lamb and its mother, we are one step nearer the fountain-head; here is not merely a manifestation of love in the Maker evinced by the joy of the thing made, but here is love itself, manifest affection,—uttered, indeed, but in an inarticulate bleat, yet expressed as distinctly as in a mother's lullaby.
But look! yonder comes the sturdy ploughman to his labors. He harnesses his horses to the plough, where it stands in the furrow; and now he moves onward, turning up the bosom of the soil to the fresh air, preparing it to receive the seed. Now consider this wonder; for, common as it has become to our sight, it is not the less in itself a wonder. Consider how the millions that people this earth, are nourished. Into the ground thus opened, seed is scattered, and covered over again—buried allve, as it were. But, by and by, it "springs and groweth up, we know not how." A living power, seemingly, moving within the seed, causes it to burst and send a root downward and a shoot upward. The little blade becomes a strong stalk, and, growing taller and taller, crowns itself at length with a head, containing tens and hundreds of seeds precisely similar to the solitary one that was sown in the ground—so many children, as it were, of this little parent. What a wonderful process and result, (when we stop to consider it)! altogether beyond the reach of our knowledge, and understood only by Him who contrived it!
