REVERIES

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 77, Issue 23, 27 January 1934, Page 4

REVERIES

ALL IN A GARDEN. (H.G.G.) A garden is a love.sumc thing, God wot, Rose plot, Fringed pool, Ferned grot. The veriest school <>f peace, and yet the fool Maintains that God is not, Not God in gardens when eve is cool? Nay, but I have a sign; ’Tis very sure, He walks in mine. There was a beautiful sweetness in the air, the music of running water, the song of many birds, the gentle soughing sound of wind in the trees. The Spirit of the Garden spoke to me. •‘You are seeking a message, sir?” As f thought to ask for one in answer, an old favourite saying came: “He wno would have beautiful roses in his gar den must have beautiful in his heart. ” The garden may be empty. The hedgerow may be bare. Put mid the gloom there’s leaf ana bloom In plenty and to spare: Not bought from any basket. Nor sold in any man, They breathe, they blow, all scent and glow,— Roses in the heart! “Tell me, 0 Spirit of the Garden,’’ said 1, ‘‘how can one grow these ‘Roses in the heart’?” “Why, sir, by tnoughts of purity and truth, by acts of kindness and love, by smiles of cheerfulness and touches of sympathy.’’ “But, 0 Spirit of the Garden, how am I to grow these where so many weeds come up to choke them?” Back camthe quiet answer; but it was a command: “Fill the heart with beauty ana goodness and hope; they will fix the weeds without you thinking anymore about them.” “But, Spirit, of the Garden, I find so many have taken root already. How can they be rooted out? Then, too I have much in me that is overgrown, and needs pruning, and i do not know how to cut wisely am! well.” And the reply was given: “Cali in God’s good Gardener and He will live in your heart. When He reigns weeds die out and all plants come in their season to their brightest and best.” Then I cried, “O Spirit of the Garden, who is God’s good Gardener?’’ Softly came the whisper like a fra grance of flowers on the breeze: “Jesus, your Saviour and King!’’ Visions and Tasks. Early one morning I handed plants r Q a friend as he filled in a bed. Like all true gardeners he was a philosopher. The mention of a name caused him to say: “To do any worthy task one must have vision.” With that as his text he preached me one of the most striking sermons 1 have heard. One illustration came from our immediate surroundings. When my friend first settled in the town he looked around for i place to build a home in the midst of a garden. To everyone’s amazement he bought a large section with a tumbledown house in an old, neglected orchard and surrounded by high trees and overgrown hedges. The ground was rough and choked with weeds. Down in a hollow a dirty, smelly creek provided an excellent breeding place for mosquitoes and other foul brood. Many did not hesitate to call him a fool. None congratulated him on his choice. But you see, they only saw things as they seemed to be. My friend did more than That. He saw unneces-' sary trees felled, others topped and some left as they were; hedges rooted out here and trimmed there; the useless fruit trees removed, or good strains grafted on the old stock; the tumbling house pulled down and a handsome structure in its place; the ground cleaned and levelled and terraced; lawns laid down, flower beds planted and vegetables in their appointed [dace; the noisome creek running clear and clean with lilies on the banks and rustic bridges giving access to a shrubbery of native plants c.nd trees. That was something of his vision; he applied himself to the task. As he talked wilh me that morning, 1 saw the glorious result and rejoiced with him. But that was not enough for my friend. He began to give me a picture of that, garden as he saw it in succeeding years and said: “Without vision the people perish.” An eminent painter gives us an axiom: “An artist must see his picture finished in his mind’s eye before he begins it, or he will never be an artist at all.” A clear conception of what at the end any undertaking will be like is the mark of all wisdom. But we must add to this the steady applying of ourselves to the task. Many people dream most wonderful dream;wherein they accomplish prodigious feats, but they are never anything more than dreamers. To conjure up most glorious visions of conquest and attainment is comparatively pleasant. Alas’ so many of us are only visionaries. As we talked In the garden the words of the great Apostle came: •Whereupon, 0 King Agrippa, 1 was not disobedient unto the heavenly vision: but declared both to them of Damascus first, and at Jerusalem, and throughout all the country of Judea, and also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, doing works worthy of repentance.” Words of Life. One evening we sat on a balcony overlooking that garden. In the hot hours of the early afternoon we had placed in the grave, the body Of a brave little woman whose life had been as the broken alabaster box of precious ointment. The fragrance had filled the whole of the community. But coolness had come as the after-glow of sunset gradually’ faded. The perfume of the garden rose and enveloped us. A soft evening breeze made music among some pines over on a nearby hill. Now and then a bird chirped while a morepork sent out its mournful cry. From the gently-flowing stream at the bottom of the terraced lawn came the croaking of frogs. Then a cricket set up its merry, piercing chatter. "We sat in quiet contemplation, as, dimly conscious of our environment we thought over the mysteries of life and death. There came a sudden silence. The wind dropped and all nature seemed hushed in a solemn stillness. A quiet voice no more than breathed the lines: — “Speak to Him thou for He hears, And Spirit with Spirit can meet— Closer is He than breathing, And nearer than hands and feet.” Once again the morepork took up its mournful wailing, the frogs swelled and croaked, the breeze stirred in the treetops, and as we sat in an awed stillness some people passed along the, road in merry- mood. It seemed to us we

had heard the “voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the lay.” The spell was broken by one of

us rising with the certitude of re-es-tablished faith: “Jesus saith, I am the Resurrection and the Life; he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and bclicveth in Ale shall never die.”