derful
and glorious works of a wonderful and a glorious Creator. If he had not,
he would have had less reason in him, and less knowledge of God, than the
Hindoos of old; who when they saw the other variety of the cedar growing,
in like grandeur, on the slopes of the Himalaya, called them the
Deodara--which means, in the old Sanscrit tongue, neither more nor less
than "the timber of God," "the lance of God"--and what better could they
have said?

My friends, I speak on this matter from the fulness of my heart. It has
happened to me--through the bounty of God, for which I shall be ever
grateful--to have spent days in primeval forests, as grand, and far
stranger and far richer than that of Lebanon and its cedars; amid trees
beside which the hugest tree in Britain would be but as a sapling;
gorgeous too with flowers, rich with fruits, timbers, precious gums, and
all the yet unknown wealth of a tropic wilderness. And as I looked up,
awestruck and bewildered, at those minsters not made by hands, I found
the words of Scripture rising again and again unawares to my lips, and
said--Yes: the Bible words are the best words, the only words for such a
sight as this. These too are trees of God which are full of sap. These,
too, are trees, which God, not man, has planted. Mind, I do not say that
I should have said so, if I had not learnt to say so from the Bible.
Without the Bible I should have been, I presume, either an idolater or an
atheist. And mind, also, that I do not say that the Psalmist learnt to
call the cedars trees of God by his own unassisted reason. I believe the
very opposite. I believe that no man can see the truth of a thing unless
God shews it him; that no man can find out God, in earth or heaven,
unless God condescends to reveal Himself to that man. But I believe that
God did reveal Himself to the Psalmist; did enlighten his reason by the
inspiration of His Holy Spirit; did teach him, as we teach a child, what
to call those cedars; and, as it were, whispered to him, though with no
audible voice: "Thou wishest to know what name is most worthy whereby to
call those mighty trees: then call them trees of God. Know that there is
but one God, of whom are all things; and that they are His trees; and
that He planted them, to shew forth His wisdom, His power, and His good
will to man."

And do you fancy that because the Jew called the great cedars trees of
God, that therefore he thought that the lentiscs and olea