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 oleanders, 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 who understood our Lord, when He said, “Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.  They toil not, neither do they spin.  And yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not compared unto one of these.”