s; they were made by the laws of nature and nothing else.
Well: I believe that the so-called philosophers who say that, will be
proved at last to be no more right, and no more rational, than those
heathen workmen of Tyre. But meanwhile, what the Psalmist says, and what
the Bible says, is--Those trees belong to God. He made them, He made all
things; the sap--the mysterious life in them, by which each grows and
seeds according to its kind--is His gift. Their growth is ordered by
Him; and so are all things in earth and heaven.

Then why speak of them especially as trees of God? Because, my friends,
we can only find out that something is true of many things, by finding
out that it is true of one thing; and that we usually find out by some
striking instance; some case about which there can be no mistake. And
these cedars of Lebanon were, and are still, such a striking instance,
which there was no mistaking. Upon the slopes of the great snow-mountain
of Lebanon stood those gigantic cedar-trees--whole forests of them
then--now only one or two small groups, but awful, travellers tell us,
even in their decay. Whence did they come? There are no trees like them
for hundreds, I had almost said for thousands, of miles. There are but
two other patches of them left now on the whole earth, one in the Atlas,
one in the Himalaya. The Jews certainly knew of no trees like them; and
no trees either of their size. There were trees among them then,
probably, two and three hundred feet in height; trees whose tops were as
those minster towers; whose shafts were like yonder pillars; and their
branches like yonder vaults. No king, however mighty, could have planted
them up there upon the lofty mountain slopes. The Jew, when he entered
beneath the awful darkness of these cedars; the cedars with a shadowy
shroud--as the Scripture says--the cedars high and lifted up, whose tops
were among the thick boughs, and their height exalted above all the trees
of the field; fair in their greatness; their boughs multiplied, and their
branches long--for it is in such words of awe and admiration that the
Bible talks always of the cedars--then the Jew said, "God has planted
these, and God alone." And when he thought, not merely of their grandeur
and their beauty, but of their use; of their fragrant and incorruptible
timber, fit to build the palaces of kings, and the temples of gods; he
said--and what could he say better?--"These are trees of God;" won