Simple things will often teach
us most. You see a flower growing, not in a garden, but wild in a field
or wood. You admire its beautiful colours, or if it is fragrant, its
sweet scent. Now, why was that flower put there? You may answer, "to
please me." My dear friends, I should be the last person to deny that.
I can never see a child picking a nosegay, much less a little London
child, born and bred and shut up among bricks and mortar, when it gets
for the first time into a green field, and throws itself instinctively
upon the buttercups and daisies, as if they were precious jewels and
gold;--I never can see that sight, I say, without feeling that there are
such things as final causes--I mean that the great Father in heaven put
those flowers into that field on purpose to give pleasure to His human
children. But then comes the question, Of all the flowers in a single
field, is one in ten thousand ever looked at by child or by men? And yet
they are just as beautiful as the rest; and God has, so to speak, taken
just as much pains with the many beautiful things which men will never
see, as with the few, very few, which men may see.
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