Flowers — They Display God's Goodness to Man

MY DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS: Last Sunday I spoke to you of the wisdom of God, and to-day I want to speak to you of the goodness of God as displayed in the flowers. When God created the world, He made the rivers and the clouds and the trees, to conform to the needs of man.

These things were necessary to the existence and comfort of man with his present needs. But it was not absolutely necessary for man’s existence that God should have created the flowers.

He might have left the earth without its beautiful carpet of green. God might have ordained that we should receive our food direct from heaven, like the Israelites in the desert when, morning after morning, they went out and gathered up the manna.

Or He might have so constituted everything that we should gather our food from the surface of the earth, just the same as we now dip up from the earth the water we drink. But God saw best to supply our food by the agency of seeds and plants, which bear fruit, like wheat and corn and all kinds of vegetables and fruits.

Your mother and father might place you in a room where the walls are all blank, with nothing on the floor, and not a single ornament to be seen anywhere, and yet this room might protect you from the storms and the cold; but because they love you, therefore they make the room very beautiful and attractive. Just so it is with God. In the creation of the world, He did not make the abode of His children blank and bleak, but He rendered it very beautiful by picting flowers everywhere.

God might also have made the flowers without any fragrance, but to most of them He has given a very delightful perfume. The violet and the mignonette, and these large and beautiful roses, and these tube roses also, fill a whole room with their fragrance. With all the study of men they have not been able to discover how it is that these flowers give forth such a pleasant perfume. The combined wisdom of all those who have devoted much thought and study to this subject, would not enable one or all of them to give to a single plant the power to secrete and send forth this fragrance.

If they could make the dahlia fragrant it would greatly enhance its value. If they could cause the chrysanthemums to secrete and send forth a sweet perfume, the man who sells them could get twice as much for them as he can now. Among the great variety of flowers which God has created, He has left one or two without fragrance, in order to teach us that He might have created them all without any fragrance. But to all the rest He has given sweet perfume, so that we might derive this added pleasure from flowers.

In order that the flowers might constantly tell us of God’s wisdom and love, He has placed them everywhere. In the garden, by the roadside, in the fields, down in the valleys and up on the mountain side. One of the pleasant surprises in crossing the Alps, in Switzerland, is to discover that when you have passed far up the mountain, where trees do not grow, and where there is no grass, yet you find very beautiful flowers.

Wherever among the rocks there is a sufficient amount of earth for these little plants to secure nourishment for their roots you will find flowers, which, although not large, are yet very beautiful. Some are white, like the surrounding snow, and others are blue, like the overarching sky. God has placed the flowers everywhere, so that no matter where we are He can still teach us of Himself. We are even told that in some places the sea is covered with a great variety of plants, some of which are as beautiful as those which grow in our gardens.

It is related of Mungo Park, the famous African traveler, that one day, when he was traveling alone, he was almost worn out, and in his exhaustion he laid down, almost in despair. The sun was shining with overpowering heat, and the dry sand of the desert seemed almost hot enough to scorch his flesh. When he was almost ready to give up in despair, he noticed near him a little moss plant growing green and fresh, even in the desert.

The sight of it brought to his mind the recollection that God was everywhere. This little plant taught him that God cared for it, even in the desert, and the thought gave fresh courage to the lonely traveler. He was moved to tears with the sense of God’s presence, and rising to his feet with new courage, he pressed on and was delivered out of that which seemed to be certain death. Not only does God plant the flowers everywhere, so that we may never escape from the sermons which they are continually preaching to us, but God has caused that the flowers shall bloom at all seasons of the year.

Some in the spring, some in the summer, some in the fall, and others even in the winter, while still others bloom at various seasons of the year. There are also those that bloom in the morning, to cheer us when we begin our work for the day, and others, like the night-blooming cereus, that bloom only in the darkness of the night.

There is not an hour in the day which has not been chosen by some flower, or which God has appointed for it, as the time for it to burst into beauty, to cheer man in his journey through this world. If so much of beauty and fragrance still abides in the flowers, even after this world has been cursed by sin, what must have been the beauty of the world, and the fragrance of its flowers when God created it, and placed man in the Garden of Eden, and when looking upon the creations of the fourth day, with its flowers and its fragrance, God pronounced all very good?

Some day the earth and the flowers shall be redeemed from the curse of sin, for the Bible tells us “that the whole creation groaneth and traveleth in pain,” waiting for redemption, that it may be pure again. Oh! how beautiful it will then appear!

Since God has made this world so beautiful as our present abode what can we not properly expect to find in Heaven which He has created above, where all is holiness, and purity and love; “where everlasting spring abides, and never withering flowers?”