CHAPTER VII.

THE BEST FLOWER.

I am the Rose of Sharon."-SONG OF SOLOMON, ii. 1. THIS world is full of beauty. The blue sky overhead is beautiful. The clouds which float in the sky are beautiful. The sun is beautiful when it rises in the morning and sets at night. The moon is beautiful when it shines in the sky, after the sun has disappeared. And when there is no moon, the stars, that twinkle quietly there all through the night, are very beautiful. The sea is beautiful. The fields are beautiful, with the green grass covering them like a carpet. The woods are beautiful, with the trees waving and rustling in the summer's breeze. The hills are beautiful, as they rise in gentle swellings like the waves of the

sea.

And the mountains are beautiful, in their grandeur, as they rise up, like great giants, and lift their heads to the skies. Everything that God has made is beautiful. But, among all these beautiful things, there is nothing more beautiful than the flowers-the sweet, gentle flowers, which God has scattered like jewels over the earth. God has made them beautiful, on purpose that we should love to look at them, and that when we look at them we should think how wonderfully wise and kind and good He is, to make so many lovely things for our comfort and happiness. How beautiful are their shapes and forms! How beautiful their colours are! How pleasant their fragrance is! Jesus, who made the flowers, spoke about them when He was on earth. Do you remember what flowers He particularly spoke about? The lilies. Yes, the beautiful lilies. He said-" Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these." And this is one out of many places in which the Bible speaks about flowers. Why, there are more than three hundred places in the Bible in which flowers are referred to!

Of roses alone And of all other

In

How great the number of flowers is! there are thousands of different kinds. kinds of flowers there are hundreds of thousands. deed, their number is so great, that it can hardly be told. And no two of them are exactly alike. How wonderful the variety of flowers! In shape and size how astonishingly different! You have seen the green scum called duckweed on the surface of the ponds in the fields. If you should take up a small portion of it on the end of your

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finger, and examine it with a microscope, you would find it made up of very small plants, with the tiniest little flowers, that cannot be seen with the naked eye. And then from this exceedingly small specimen, there is every possible variety of size and shape, up to the great water-lily called the Victoria Regia. This has a leaf which spreads out, on the top of the water, six feet across, and eighteen feet around. One single leaf is about large

enough to make a boat in which a boy might sail. And the flower when open is three feet round.

We find flowers of some kind or other growing everywhere. They spring up in the sandy desert. On the tops of bleak and snow-capped mountains, where even trees will not grow, the little flowers may be seen. Travellers who have gone up near the North Pole, where ice and snow last all the year, have been surprised to find in some places red snow. And when they came to examine it with a microscope, they were surprised to find

that the colour of it was owing to an exceedingly small kind of plant, bearing a flower too little for the naked eye to see.

But among all the multitude of flowers which grow on the earth, there is none like this which Solomon speaks of in the verse before us. "I am the Rose of Sharon." This we suppose refers to Jesus. He is the "Rose of Sharon." Sharon was the name of a large plain, or level tract of country, in Palestine, famous for the number of flowers which grew there. And if we consider this 'Rose of Sharon" as referring to our blessed Saviour, then we may well say that this Rose is the best flower. We may speak of five reasons why this is so. The "Rose of Sharon" is the best flower, in the first place, BECAUSE IT WILL GROW EVERYWHERE. This cannot be said of any other flower. It is very true, as I have said, that flowers of some kind or other may be found almost everywhere. But these are of many different kinds. There is no other one flower that will grow everywhere. The Alpine rose, which grows so beautifully on the tops of mountains, where the snow may be seen all the year, and where the winds are cold and piercing, will wither and die if you take it home and plant it in your well-kept, fertile garden. And the flowers that grow so finely and bloom so sweetly in warm countries like Italy or India, will perish at once if you take them to Greenland or Labrador. Take a waterlily from the pond where it spreads its leaves so broadly, and plant it in a dry, sandy soil, and it will soon shrivel up and die. And so, if you take any plant or flower accustomed to grow in a rocky or sandy soil, and set it in

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a marsh, or by the borders of a pond, directly it will begin to decay and perish. Some plants will die if they are removed even a short distance from the place where they first spring up and grow.

But ah! how different it is with this best flower, the "Rose of Sharon!" This will grow everywhere. Yes, and it will not only grow, but flourish and blossom too. This flower does not grow in the ground like other flowers. You must not look for it in the beds of the garden; nor in the fields, the valleys, or the mountains. The soil in which it grows is the human heart. And when any person learns to love and serve Jesus, and is made happy by Him, then we say that the "Rose of Sharon" is growing in that person's heart. This flower is sometimes found growing in the hearts of very young people. And the old as well as the young-the poor as well as the rich-may have it if they will. It is growing now in the hearts of people in all the different nations of the earth. This is the meaning of that verse of the hymn which says

This Rose is flourishing in every part of England. In different parts of Europe it may be found. John Williams, the martyr missionary of Erromanga, planted it in the sunny islands of the South Seas. Robert

Moffat has planted it far up into the southern part of Africa. Missionaries, and others, are planting it all along

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