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: — Every spring there is repeated before our eyes a phenomenon which in the beginning was a miracle. Let us, in imagination, view the scene where, on the first sand beach that was heaved up from the water-covered globe, the grass came forth to prepare the way for the subsequent spread of life. To one whose world showed nothing but sand and water, what a miracle the first appearance of sprouting grass! Here is something wonderfully new, moving of itself amid motionless particles, and by some hidden power of its own thrusting them aside and mysteriously increasing in body and bulk, while they remain as they were. Such a thing of life entering such a world without life is plainly supernatural be that world. Mark here that all the subsequent stages of advancing life have likewise been successively supernatural, each to its predecessor. As the grass is supernatural to the sand, so is the ox to the grass, so is the man to the ox, so also is the spiritual Christ to the natural man. Here is a lesson in the grass for those who fancy that science has eliminated the supernatural, and put miracles out of the audience-room of reason. There was, once at least, an indisputable miracle. It was when life first broke the dead uniformity of an inanimate world. Life is the thing most unaccountable in origin, but most manifest in fact, most common in form, most mysterious in power, the thing most natural, but also most supernatural, being the producer of nature, not its product. Life, says the scientist, can come only from life. The world which has it not can have it only from beyond the world. Thus the living grass was the primeval witness to the living God. "Through every star, through every grass-blade," said Carlyle, "the glory of a present God still beams." And so this ancient psalm of praise to the Author of the humblest of living things reads to us its primitive lessen of God as the all-originating Life of all that lives, whom to know is life eternal, whom to forsake is death indeed. Let us, then, further contemplate that primeval sea-beach, where life has begun its everlasting process. We there see the grass first by its strong roots fortifying the shore, as one may observe to-day where the beach-grass aids to build the dunes; then by its annual decay forming a soil in which nobler forms of life may root. "Time and I," said a statesman, "are enough." So might the feeble but persevering power of the grass say. As the land slowly rose above the sea, the grass went on with its spreading preparations for the further advance of life, making the soft for edible grains and fruits to grow from, till at length the animal tribes came forth and found their sustenance secure. Thus is the grass a parable of the way of God, which we have ever to imitate. Every good thing we bring to pass has first to wait for the period of grass to do its work, slowly preparing the conditions of a permanent advance. Wearisome sometimes is this humble method of patience, the creeping which precedes running, gaining each day an atom of goodwill, a grain of influence, a trifle of experience and education. To our impatience at such slow gain the grass reads its lesson, "Despise not the clay of small things." The small thing is the beginning of the large thing. The grains and fruits will grow when the grass has made the soil for them. In the grass is the first glimpse of the coming cedars. The great reform which frees a race of slaves must wait till the beginnings of humane sentiment have risen in a humble band of protestants against legalized iniquity, the agitators whom society trod under foot like the grass, but who kept on growing and making soil for the edict of emancipation. Such is the quiet work that no record is made of till its results appear in the better life of succeeding times. The Christian family is doing it; the school, the Church is doing it; the germinating power of ideas is doing it in little circles of reformers everywhere, ridiculed, perhaps, because at present so powerless, but educating the fundamental sentiment from which better and stronger institutions are to spring.

(J. M. Whiten, Ph. D.)

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KJV: Who covereth the heaven with clouds, who prepareth rain for the earth, who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.

WEB: who covers the sky with clouds, who prepares rain for the earth, who makes grass grow on the mountains.