God Planted a Garden

Waikato Independent, Volume XLIII, Issue 6034, 18 October 1946, Page 7

God Planted a Garden

THIS WEEK’S SIGNED ARTICLE.—

By Canon C. W. Chandler.

What ! Not God in gardens when the eve is cool ?

Nay, for I have a sign, ! Tis very sure God walks in mine,

are all very familiar with these last lines in T. E. Brown’s well-

known poem. Sometimes when readin the gardening notes in a paper I think how appropriate most of what is written therein is to the subject which I have in hand.

Everybody seems to be making some attempt, in the words of C. J. Dennis in his “Sentimental Bloke,” “to tease some fancy tucker from the soil.” “How are your peas ? Are your tomatoes in ?” These, and a dozen other questions of the same kind, have become a common topic of conversation. The instinct of selfpreservation is asserting itself during these days of uncertainty as to the prices of many essential commodities. Many, too, are resorting to the hobby as a means of escape from the constant pressure of ugly realities. The nearer man gets to the soil, the nearer he gets to his Mother, the primal source of all wealth, and the nearer he gets to God, who, as Christian Scientists rightly say, is the “source of infinite supply.”

As there is “a time to be born and a time to die,” so there is also “a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted,” as the Good Book reminds us. It is in this connection that most of us are utterely dependent upon “Gardening Notes.” There is a time to plant the seeds of Christian truth and virtue, and a time to expect some sort of ingathering of the harvest of that toil. Some things there are which merely cumber the ground. It is in this connection I think of the man who “had a fig tree planted in his vineyard,” and who “ came and sought fruit thereon and found none” and who then told his workmen to cut it down because it “cumbereth the ground.” Things that don’t produce results are due for radical treatment. The average business man is quite ruthless, in this regard. If God were half as ruthless, some of us would be in for a very bad time. I threw a whole lot of undersized spinach on a mulch heap only yesterdav.

From a Christian standpoint many are rapidly qualifying for the same place. Having our names on the parish roll will provide us with no passport for eternity. The ark of Christ’s Church has too many barnacles on it as it is. and the sooner she is put in dry dock so as to be ridded of them, the better it will be for her in the long run. My metaphors have been rudely mixed by the intrusion of this nautical observation. Let the thought of dead sea fruit act as a gangway on which we can go ashore again and return to our cabbage patch. Knowing when to plant and when to pluck up belongs to the A.B.C. of gardering, and because “to everything there is a season” it behove soifne of us, who are eligible for the mulch heap, to work while it is day, for ‘ the night cometh wherein no man can work.”

It was a bad day for weeds when somebody invented a hoe. It’s the grandest of all agricultural implements. After, having gone up and down the lines like a king inspecting his troops, one can lean upon the hoe and think of Markham’s classical poem on Millet’s famous pictuie, “The Man With the Hoe” —“the emptiness of ages on his face, and on his back the bidden of the world.” The man in Millet’s picture is a peasant in the south of France hoeing somebody else’s potatoes. What a difference it makes when one is hoeing one’s own There is something very personal about religion and the soul. In both domains weeds have to be chased continually.

“Virtue! a fig!” says the wicked old lago in “Othello.” “Tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens to which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness or manured with industry, why the 'power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills.” If we would but take as much trouble to hoe the weeds out of our dispositions as we do to take them out of our kitchen gardens, we should thereby be rendered more fruitful and a great deal more contented. As it is, the wild convolvulous of self so entwines itself around our souls that in the majority of cases the smallest item of weekly expenditure is that which we smuggle, half ashamedly, into the offertory plate on Sunday. So, too, the smallest item of our expenditure in the terms of hours or minutes is the time we spend alone with God, in the exercise of prayer. Is it any wonder that the world is all topsy-turvey, and overrun with the weeds of fear, hate, greed and distrust? Loving the hoe as we do, what a good thing we have something

serve

to hoe. This thought introduces the vast problem of why there are weeds, about which I will observe that the whole economy and balance of life would be upset without them. Indolence and ennui to the point of death, would be the quick result of having nothing to- conquer. “Then welcome each rebuff, that turns earth’s smoothness rough.” This line from “Rabbi Ben Ezra” says all that needs to be said upon the subject.

“You’ve got to get up early if you want to take in God,” says the raw farm labourer in Lowell’s “Biglow Papers.” Half an hour after sunrise in the garden is worth two hours at any other time of the day, unless it be at sunset. To begin and end the day in the garden of the soul, while the dew is on the cauliflowers and the birds are at the peas, is the finest way I know of keeping things in check and of fostering the growth of all those virtues which contribute most to happiness in life. As there are some things which, like leeks, are somewhat slow of growth, so there are Christian qualities which only years of effort can bring to fruition— and patience is one of them. There is nothing of the scarlet-runner about being a Christian except that climbing at an immeasurably slower speed is the accepted method of spiritual growth. Just as a cheering thought at the conclusion of this little contemplation I would quote Isaiah:— “For as the earth bringeth forth her bud. and as the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth; so the Lord God will cause righteousness and praise to spring forth before all the nations.”