nders, by the
brook outside, were not God's shrubs; or the lilies and anemones upon the
down below were not God's flowers? Some folk have fancied so.--It seems
to me most unreasonably. I should have thought that here the rule stood
true; that that which is greater contains the less; that if the Psalmist
knew God to be mighty enough to make and plant the cedars, he would think
Him also mighty enough to make and plant the smallest flower at his feet.
I think so. For I know it was so with me. My feeling that those
enormous trees over my head were God's trees, did not take away in the
least from my feeling of God's wisdom and power in the tiniest herb at
their feet. Nay rather, it increased my feeling that God was filling all
things with life and beauty; till the whole forest,--if I may so speak in
all humility, but in all honesty--from the highest to the lowest, from
the hugest to the smallest, and every leaf and bud therein, seemed full
of the glory of God. And if I could feel that,--being the thing I am--how
much more must the inspired Psalmist have felt it? You see by this very
psalm that he did feel it. The grass for the use of cattle, and the
green herb for men, and the corn and the wine and the oil, he says, are
just as much God's making, and God's gift. The earth is "filled," he
says, "with the fruit of God's works." Filled: not dotted over here and
there with a few grand and wonderful things which God cares for, while He
cares for nothing else: but filled. Let us take the words of Scripture
honestly in their whole strength; and believe that if the Psalmist saw
God's work in the great cedars, he saw it everywhere else likewise.

Nay, more: I will say this. That I believe it was such teaching as that
of this very 104th Psalm--teaching which runs, my friends, throughout the
Old Testament, especially through the Psalmists and the Prophets--which
enabled the Jews to understand our Lord's homely parables about the
flowers of the field and the birds of the air. Those of them at least
who were Israelites indeed; those who did understand, and had treasured
up in their hearts, the old revelation of Moses, and the Psalmists, and
the Prophets; those who did still believe that the cedars were the trees
of God, and that God brought forth grass for the cattle, and green herb
for the service of men; and who could see God's hand, God's laws, God's
love, working in them--those men and women, be sure, were the very ones
w