411. The Botany of the Bible; or, God Among the Flowers

The Botany of the Bible; or, God Among the Flowers

Luk_12:28 : ’93If then God so clothe the grass, which today is in the field and tomorrow is cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith?’94

The Botany of the Bible, or God among the Flowers, is a fascinating subject. I hold in my hand a book which I brought from Palestine. It is bound in olive wood, and within it are pressed flowers which have not only retained their color, but their aroma; flowers from Jerusalem, flowers from Gethsemane, flowers from Mount of Olives, flowers from Bethany, flowers from Siloam, flowers from the Valley of Jehoshaphat, red anemones and wild mignonette, buttercups, daisies, cyclamens, chamomile, bluebells, ferns, mosses, grasses, and a wealth of flora that keep me fascinated by the hour, and every time I open it, it is a new revelation. It is the New Testament of the fields. But my text leads us into another realm of the botanical kingdom. Though never before visited in sermonic discourse, I think before we get through it will lead us to adoration and prayer.

The lily is the queen of Bible flowers. The rose may have disputed her throne in modern times, and won it; but the rose originally had only five petals. It was under the long-continued and intense gaze of the world that the rose blushed into its present beauty. In the Bible train, cassia and hyssop and frankincense and myrrh and spikenard and camphire and the rose follow the lily. Fourteen times in the Bible is the lily mentioned; only twice the rose. The rose may now have wider empire, but the lily reigned in the time of Esther, in the time of Solomon, in the time of Christ. C’e6sar had his throne on the hills. The lily had her throne in the valley. In the greatest sermon that was ever preached, there was only one flower, and that a lily. The dreamer of Bedford jail, John Bunyan, entered the House of the Interpreter, and was shown a cluster of flowers, and was told to ’93consider the lilies.’94

Notice the perianth and the six stamens. Stenograph their sermons as they preach of God and the soul and the resurrection. We may study or reject other sciences at our option. It is so with astronomy, with chemistry, with jurisprudence, with physiology, with geology; but the science of botany Christ commands us to study when he says: ’93Consider the lilies.’94 Measure them from root to tip of petal. Inhale their breath. Notice the gracefulness of their poise. Hear the whisper of the white lips of the Eastern and the red lips of the American lily. Belonging to this royal family of lilies is the lily of the Nile, the Japan lily, the Lady Washington of the Sierras, the Golden Band lily, the Giant lily of Nepaul, the Turk’92s Cap lily, the African lily from the Cape of Good Hope. All these lilies have the royal blood in their veins. But I take the lilies of my text as typical of all flowers, and their voice of floral beauty seems to address us, saying: ’93Consider the lilies, consider the azaleas, consider the fuchsias, consider the geraniums, consider the ivies, consider the hyacinths, consider the heliotropes, consider the oleanders.’94 With deferential and grateful and intelligent and worshipful souls, consider them. Not with insipid sentimentalism or with sophomoric vaporing, but for grand and practical and every-day, and, if need be, homely uses, consider them.

The flowers are the angels of the grass. They all have voices. When the clouds speak, they thunder; when the whirlwinds speak, they scream; when the cataracts speak, they roar; but when the flowers speak, they always whisper. I stand here to interpret their message. What have you to say to us, O ye angels of the grass? This morning I mean to discuss what flowers are good for. That is my subject: What are flowers good for?

I remark, in the first place, they are good for lessons of God’92s providential care. That was Christ’92s first thought. All these flowers seem to address us, saying: ’93God will give you apparel and food. We have no wheel with which to spin, no loom with which to weave, no sickle with which to harvest, no well-sweep with which to draw water; but God slakes our thirst with the dew, and God feeds us with the bread of the sunshine, and God has appareled us with more than Solomonic regality. We are prophetesses of adequate wardrobe. ’93If God so clothed us, the grass of the field, will he not much more clothe you, O ye of little faith?’94 Men and women of worldly anxieties, take this message home with you. How long has God taken care of you? Quarter of the journey of life? Half the journey of life? Three-quarters of the journey of life? Can you not trust him the rest of the way? God does not promise you anything like that which the Roman emperor had on his table at vast expense’97five hundred nightingales’92 tongues’97but he has promised to take care of you. He has promised you the necessities, not the luxuries’97bread, not cake. If God so luxuriantly clothes the grass of the field, will he not provide for you, his living and immortal children? He will.

No wonder Martin Luther always had a flower on his writing-desk for inspiration! Through the cracks of the prison floor a flower grew up to cheer Picciola. Mungo Park, the great traveler and explorer, had his life saved by a flower. He sank down in the desert to die, but, seeing a flower near-by, it suggested God’92s merciful care, and he got up with new courage and traveled on to safety. I said the flowers are the angels of the grass. I add now they are the evangels of the sky.

If you ask me the question, What are flowers good for? I respond, they are good for the bridal day. The bride must have them on her brow, and she must have them in her hand. The marriage altar must be covered with them. A wedding without flowers would be as inappropriate as a wedding without music. At such a time they are for congratulation and prophecies of good. So much of the pathway of life is covered up with thorns, we ought to cover the beginning with orange-blossoms. Flowers are appropriate on such occasions, for in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases it is the very best thing that could have happened. The world may criticise and pronounce it an inaptitude, and may lift its eyebrows in surprise and think it might suggest something better; but the God who sees the twenty, forty, fifty years of wedded life before they have begun, arranges for the best. So that flowers, in almost all cases, are appropriate for the marriage day. The divergences of disposition will become correspondences, recklessness will become prudence, frivolity will be turned into practicality.

There has been many an aged widowed soul who had a carefully-locked bureau, and in the bureau a box, and in the box a folded paper, and in the folded paper a half-blown rose, slightly fragrant, discolored, carefully pressed. She put it there forty or fifty years ago. On the anniversary day of her wedding she will go to the bureau, she will lift the box, she will unfold the paper, and to her eyes will be exposed the half-blown bud, and the memories of the past will rush upon her, and a tear will drop upon the flower, and suddenly it is transfigured; there is a stir in the dust of the anther, and it rounds out, and is full of life, and it begins to tremble in the procession up the church aisle, and the dead music of a half-century ago comes throbbing through the air; and vanished faces reappear, and right hands are joined, and a manly voice promises: ’93I will, for better or for worse,’94 and the wedding march thunders a salvo of joy at the departing crowd’97but a sigh on that anniversary day scatters the scene. Under the deep-fetched breath, the altar, the flowers, the congratulating groups are scattered, and there is nothing left but a trembling hand holding a faded rosebud, which is put into the paper, and then into the box, and the box carefully placed in the bureau, and with a sharp, sudden click of the lock the scene is over.

Let not the prophecies of the flowers, on your wedding day, be false prophecies. Be blind to each other’92s faults. Make the most of each other’92s excellences. Remember the vows, the ring on the third finger of the left hand, and the benediction of the calla lilies.

If you ask me the question, ’93What are flowers good for?’94 I answer, They are good to honor and comfort the obsequies. The worst gash ever made into the side of our poor earth is the gash of the grave. It is so deep, it is so cruel, it is so incurable, that it needs something to cover it up. Flowers for the casket, flowers for the hearse, flowers for the cemetery. What a contrast between a grave in a country churchyard, with the fence broken down, and the tombstone aslant, and the neighboring cattle browsing amid the mullein stalks and the Canada thistles, and a June morning in Greenwood, the wave of roseate bloom rolling to the top of the mounds, and then breaking into foaming crests of white flowers all around the pillows of dust. It is the difference between sleeping under rags and under an embroidered blanket. We want Old Mortality with his chisel to go through all the graveyards in Christendom, and while he carries a chisel in one hand, we want him to have some flower-seed in the palm of the other hand.

’93Oh,’94 you say, ’93the dead don’92t know; it makes no difference to them.’94 I think you are mistaken. There are not so many steamers and trains coming to any living city as there are convoys coming from heaven to earth; and if there be instantaneous and constant communication between this world and the better world, do you not suppose your departed friends know what you do with their bodies? Why has God planted golden-rod and wild flowers in the forests and on the prairie, where no human eye ever sees them? He planted them there for invisible intelligences to look at and admire, and when invisible intelligences come to look at the wild flowers of the woods and the tablelands, will they not make excursion and see the flowers which you have planted in affectionate remembrance of them?

When I am dead, I would like to have a handful of violets’97any one could pluck them out of the grass, or some one could lift from the edge of the pond a water-lily’97nothing rarely expensive, no insane display, as sometimes at funeral rites, where the display takes the bread from the children’92s mouths and the clothes from their backs, but something from the great democracy of flowers. Rather than imperial catafalque of Russian czar, I ask some one whom I may have helped by Gospel sermon or Christian deed to bring a sprig of arbutus or a handful of China asters.

It was left for modern times to spell respect for the departed and comfort for the living in letters of floral Gospel. Pillow of flowers, meaning rest for the pilgrim who has got to the end of his journey. Anchor of flowers, suggesting the Christian hope which we have as an anchor of the soul, sure and steadfast. Cross of flowers, suggesting the tree on which our sins were slain. If I had my way, I would cover up all the dreamless sleepers, whether in golden-handled casket or pine box, whether in king’92s mausoleum or potter’92s field, with radiant or aromatic arborescence. The Bible says: ’93In the midst of the garden there was a sepulchre.’94 I wish that every sepulchre might be in the midst of a garden.

If you ask me the question, ’93What are flowers good for?’94 I answer, for religious symbolism. Have you ever studied Scriptural flora? The Bible is an arboretum, it is a divine conservatory, it is a herbarium of exquisite beauty. If you want to illustrate the brevity of the brightest human life, you will quote from Job: ’93Man cometh forth as a flower and is cut down.’94 Or you will quote from the Psalmist: ’93As the flower of the field, so he perisheth; the wind passeth over it, and it is gone.’94 Or you will quote from Isaiah: ’93All flesh is grass, and the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field.’94 Or you will quote from James the Apostle: ’93As the flower of the grass, so he passeth away.’94 What graphic Bible symbolism!

All the cut flowers will soon be dead, whatever care you take of them. Though morning and night you baptize them in the name of the shower, the baptism will not be a saving ordinance. They have been fatally wounded with the knife that cut them. They are bleeding their life away: they are dying now. The fragrance in the air is their departing and ascending spirits. Oh, yes! Flowers are almost human. Botanists tell us that flowers breathe, they take nourishment, they eat, they drink. They are sensitive. They have their likes and dislikes. They sleep, they wake. They live in families. They have their ancestors and their descendants, their birth, their burial, their cradle, their grave. The zephyr rocks the one, and the storm digs the trench for the other. The cowslip must leave its gold, the lily must leave its silver, the rose must leave its diamond necklace of morning dew. Dust to dust. So we come up, we prosper, we spread abroad, we die, as the flower’97as the flower!

Change and decay in all around I see;

O thou who changest not, abide with me!

Flowers also afford mighty symbolism of Christ, who compared himself to the ancient queen, the lily, and the modern queen, the rose, when he said, ’93I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valley.’94 Redolent like the one, humble like the other. Like both, appropriate for the sad who want sympathizers, and for the rejoicing who want banqueters. Hovering over the marriage ceremony like a wedding-bell, or folded like a chaplet on the pulseless heart of the dead. O, Christ! let the perfume of thy name be wafted all around the earth’97lily and rose, lily and rose’97until the wilderness crimson into a garden, and the round earth turn into one great bud of immortal beauty laid against the warm heart of God. Snatch down from the world’92s banners eagle and lion, and put on lily and rose, lily and rose!

But flowers have no grander use than when on Easter morning we celebrate the re-animation of Christ from the catacombs. The flowers spell resurrection. There is not a nook or corner in all the building but is touched with the incense. The women carried spices to the tomb of Christ, and they dropped spices all around about the tomb, and from these spices have grown all the flowers of Easter morn: The two white-robed angels that hurled the stone away from the door of the tomb, hurled it with such violence down the hill that it crashed in the door of the world’92s sepulchre, and millions of dead shall come forth.

However labyrinthine the mausoleum, however costly the sarcophagus, however architecturally grand the necropolis, however beautifully parterred the family grounds, we want them all broken up by the Lord of the Resurrection. The forms that we laid away with our broken hearts must rise again. Father and mother’97they must come out. Husband and wife’97they must come out. Brothers and sisters’97they must come out. Our darling children’97they must come out. The eyes that with trembling fingers we closed, must open in the lustre of Resurrection morn. The arms that we folded in death must join ours in embrace of reunion. The beloved voice that was hushed must be retuned. The beloved form must come up without its infirmities, without its fatigues’97it must come up. Oh, how long it seems for some of you! Waiting’97waiting for the Resurrection! How long! how long! I make for your broken hearts today a cool, soft bandage of lilies. I comfort you with the thought of resurrection.

When Lord Nelson was buried in St. Paul’92s Cathedral in London, the heart of all England was stirred. The procession passed on amid the sobbing of a nation. There were thirty trumpeters stationed at the door of the Cathedral, with instruments of music in hand, waiting for the signal, and when the illustrious dead arrived, these thirty trumpeters gave one united blast, and then all was silent. Yet the trumpets did not wake the dead. He slept right on. But I have to tell you, what thirty trumpeters could not do for one man, one trumpeter will do for all nations. The ages have rolled on, and the clock of the world’92s destiny strikes nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and time shall be no longer! Behold the archangel hovering! He takes the trumpet, points it this way, puts its lips to his lips, and then blows one long, loud, terrific, thunderous, reverberating and resurrectionary blast! Look, look! They rise! The dead’97the dead! some coming forth from the family vault; some from the city cemetery; some from the country graveyard: and then re-clothing themselves in forms radiant for ascension.

The earth begins to burn’97the bonfire of a great victory. All ready now for the procession of reconstructed humanity! Upward and away! Christ leads, and all the Christian dead follow, battalion after battalion, nation after nation. Up, up! On, on! Forward, ye ranks of God Almighty! Lift up your heads, ye everlasting gates, and let the conquerors come in! Resurrection! Resurrection!

And so I twist all the festal flowers of the chapels and cathedrals of all Christendom into one great chain, and with that chain I bind this Easter morning with the closing Easter of the world’92s history’97resurrection! May the God of peace that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do his will.

Autor: T. De Witt Talmage