And why should it not be so with you, townsfolk though you are?  Every Londoner has now, in the public parks and gardens, the privilege of looking on plants and flowers, more rich, more curious, more varied than meet the eye of any average countryman.  Then when you next avail yourselves of that real boon of our modern civilization, let me beg you not to forget the lesson which I have been trying to teach you.

You may feel—­you ought to feel—­that those strange and stately semitropic forms are indeed plants of God; the work of a creative Spirit who delights to employ His Almighty power in producing ever fresh shapes of beauty—­seemingly unnecessary, seemingly superfluous, seemingly created for the sake of their beauty alone—­in order that the Lord may delight Himself in His works.  Let that sight make you admire and reverence more, not less, the meanest weed beneath your feet.  Remember that the very weeds in your own garden are actually more highly organized; have cost—­if I may so say, with all reverence, but I can only speak of the infinite in clumsy terms of the finite—­the Creator more thought, more pains, than the giant cedars of Lebanon, and the giant cypresses of California.  Remember that the smallest moss or lichen which clings upon the wall, is full of wonders and beauties, as inexplicable as unexpected; and that of every flower on your own window-sill the words of Christ stand literally true—­that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed as one of these:  and bow your hearts and souls before the magnificent prodigality, the exquisite perfection of His work, who can be, as often as He will, greatest in that which is least, because to His infinity nothing is great, and nothing small; who hath created all things, and for His pleasure they are, and were created; who rejoices for ever in His own works, because He beholds for ever all that He makes, and it is very good.

And then refresh your hearts as well as your brains—­tired it may be, too often, with the drudgery of some mechanical, or merely calculating, occupation—­refresh your hearts, I say, by lifting them up unto the Lord, in truly spiritual, truly heavenly thoughts; which bring nobleness, and trust, and peace, to the humblest and the most hardworked man.

For you can say in your hearts—­All the things which I see, are God’s things.  They are thoughts of God.  God gives them law, and life, and use.  My heavenly Father made them.  My Saviour redeemed them with His most precious blood, and rules and orders them for ever.  The Holy Spirit of God, which was given me at my baptism, gives them life and power to grow and breed after their kinds.  The divine, miraculous, and supernatural power of God Himself is working on them, and for them, perpetually:  and how much more on me, and for me, and all my children, and fellow-creatures for whom Christ died.  Without my Father in heaven not a sparrow falls to the ground:  and am I not of more value than many sparrows?  God feeds