nutes. And by what
marvellous insight He recognised the dawning of that final "hour"
when He was asked for by those nameless Greeks--a hint of the
ingathering of the travail of His soul! God can give us the same
Divine instinct, when He has weaned us from our natural energy and
impatience. And when His hour has struck, the whole powers of the
world to come will be set free in the tiny helpless seed. "One day is
with the Lord as a thousand years." He is a God worth waiting for!

And there is another thing closely linked with this patience in the
seed-shedding. As we watch it going on in nature, we see how it is
all done in cooperation with the forces at work outside itself. The
wind knocks off and tosses away the dainty shutde-cocks of the
scabious as they ripen one by one, and the pods wait for the hot
touch of the sun to split them with the sudden contracting twist that
sends the grains flying, like stones from a sling.

More wonderfully still we see this "working together" in the seeding
of the cranesbill. The seeds stand together as they ripen, like
arrows in a quiver, with their points downwards, and their feathered
shafts straight up. When the time for action comes, the sun-heat
peels them off, from below and above, so quickly that you can see
them cue under your eyes, and turn into a spiral by their continued
contractions. They fall, spike downward, by the weight of the seed,
and the sun finishes the work he began. Closer still the gimlet
winds, and as it does so it bores down into the hardest soil: and
such is their strange power of penetration, as they are driven in,
spite of all their weakness, that they bury themselves up to the very
hilt, leaving only the last long curve flat on the surface. Then this
snaps off, and leaves the head deep hidden. The spear-like grass you
see opposite p. 40 follows the same rule: it is so sensitive to the
heat that even the warmth of one's hand will set it twisting and
thrusting its barb in. Cannot we trust the God Who planned them, to
give us arrows that will be sharp in the hearts of His enemies, and
to drive them home? At each fresh adaptation of the plants to their
aim, we hear an echo of the words of Jesus, "Shall He not much more
clothe you, O ye of little faith?"

And the restfulness of waiting God's hour for seed-shedding deepens
as we learn to recognise the outward dealings of the Spirit as well
as the inward, and watch the marked way in which He co-operates with
th