d together they all
drink in the influence of the sunlight and the showers, and unitedly
they build up the great oaks and elms and poplars, and all the trees of
the fields and forest. The coal, which is now dug from the mines, was
once a great tropical growth of forest trees which were afterwards
buried by some great convulsion in nature, and now when we dig up the
coal and burn it in our stoves we are simply releasing the buried
sunshine which was accumulated and stored up by the individual leaves of
the great forests of centuries ago.

As we look upon the leaves of the trees I think we must be impressed
with the fact, that each one labors in his own appointed place. There is
no conflict, there is no crowding of one, thinking to exalt himself
above the others. There are no little parties of leaves joining
together and trying to crowd themselves to the top of the tree, but each
and all work faithfully and zealously in the place which God has
appointed them.

[Illustration: The Budding of the New Leaf.]

They are not only faithful workers, but they are unselfish workers. No
leaf can have the joy which belongs to another, or the glory of all the
leaves. Each leaf has the reward of doing a little, and when its work is
done it must drop to the ground and perish in the dust. The work which
it has done and the tree which it has helped to build will be its
monument and reward. If each leaf gives its life faithfully for the
building up of the tree, no leaf can fall to the ground or be shaken
from its place by the autumn wind and perish in despair.

If you will go into the forest at the autumn period of the year, or go
into the orchard and examine where the leaves are about to drop off, you
will find that at the base of the stem of each leaf, already there
appears the budding of the leaf which is to be unfolded next spring, and
even though the leaf withers and falls to the ground, leaving the barren
limb alone to battle with the winter storms, yet there is the promise
and the evidence that when the gentle breath of spring shall come and
break open the icy sepulchres of the winter, these little buds will feel
the genial warmth and unfold their green beauty in a radiant springtime
of beautiful foliage. So one generation of men may die and pass away, to
have their work continued and completed by those who are to come after
them.

But these leaves also teach us of our mortality. For, as Isaiah says,
"We all do fade as a leaf."