ade, it grew--our common sense would tell us that that was only
a still more wonderful contrivance, and that there must be some one who
gave it the power of growing, and who makes it grow. And so our common
sense would tell us, as it told the heathens of old, that there must be
GODS--beings whom we cannot see, who made the world. But if we watch
things more closely, we should find out that all things are made more or
less upon the same plan; that (and I tell you that this is true, strange
as it may seem) all animals, however different they may seem to our eyes,
are made upon the same plan; all plants and flowers, however different
they may seem, are made upon the same plan; all stones, and minerals, and
earths, however different they may seem, are made upon the same plan.
Then common sense would surely tell us, one God made all the animals, one
God made all the plants, one God made all the earths and stones. But if
we watch more closely still, we should find that the plants could not
live without the animals, nor the animals without the plants, nor either
of them without the soil beneath our feet, and the air and rain above our
heads. That everything in the world worked together on one plan, and
each thing depended on everything else. Then common sense would tell us,
one God must have made the whole world. But if we watched more closely
again, or rather, if we asked the astronomers, who study the stars and
heavens, they would tell us that all the worlds over our heads, all the
stars that spangle the sky at night, were made upon the same plan as our
earth--that sun and moon, and all the host of heaven, move according to
the same laws by which our earth moves, and as far as we can find out,
have been made in the same way as our earth has been made, and that these
same laws must have been going on, making worlds after worlds, for
hundreds of thousands of years, and ages beyond counting, and will, in
all probability, go on for countless ages more. Then common sense will
tell us, the same God has made all worlds, past, present, and to come.
There is but one God, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.

So we should learn something of how all things were made; and then would
come a second question, why all things were made? Why did God make the
worlds?

Let us begin with a very simple example. Simple things will often teach
us most. You see a flower growing, not in a garden, but wi