with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in you to will and to do of His own good pleasure.”  To will and to do.  It is His own good will and pleasure that the soul shall be fitted and lifted up to its high destiny through this co-working.  It was His power to raise it to that condition without man’s participation or conscious acquiescence; but it was His will and pleasure to enact this law of salvation.  Looking across the circumference of the individual soul, what says this law?  “Go ye out into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature, and, lo, I am with you unto the end,”—­not as an invisible companion, not merely with the still, small voice of the Comforter to cheer you in trial, weakness and privation; but with you as a co-worker, with the irresistible energies of the Spirit of Power.  He might have done the whole work alone.  He might have sent forth twelve, and twelve times twelve legions of angels, and given each a voice as loud as his who is to wake the dead, and bid them preach His gospel in the ears of every human being.  He might have given a tongue to every breathing of the breeze, an articulate speech to every ray of light, and sent them out with their ceaseless voices on the great errand of His love.  It was his power to do this.  He did not do it, because it was His will and pleasure to put Himself under this law we have followed so far; to make men His co-workers in this new creation, and co-heirs with Him in all its joy and glory.  So completely has He made this law His rule of action, that, for eighteen hundred years, we have not a single instance in which the life and immortality which He brought to light have been revealed to a human soul without the direct and active participation of a human instrumentality.  So completely have His meekest servants on earth put themselves under this law, that not one of them dares to expect, hope, or pray that He will reveal Himself to a single benighted heathen mind without this human co-working.

Thus, begin where you will, in the flower of the field or the hyssop by the wall, and ascend from sphere to sphere, until there is no more space in things and beings created to draw another circumferential line, and you will see the action and the result of this great law of Co-operative Activities.  When I first looked within the lids of that hollyhock, and was incited to read the rudimental lessons of the new leaves that man’s art had added to its scant, original volume, I had no thought of finding so much matter printed on its pages.  I have transcribed it here in the order of its paragraphs, hoping that some who read them may see in this life of flowers an interest they may have partially overlooked.

CHAPTER IX.

VISIT TO A THREE-THOUSAND-ACRE FARM—­SAMUEL JONAS—­HIS AGRICULTURAL OPERATIONS, THEIR EXTENT, SUCCESS, AND GENERAL ECONOMY.