ON a bleak February day a citizen of a great city, in the midst of the roar of the streets and smoke of the chimney forests, suddenly found himself before a shop window filled with the sweetest of roses and other flowers. The sight was as refreshing as the odor was sweet, and for a moment the din of the streets and the smoke of the chimneys were forgotten. But while gazing upon the gentle reminders of calmer scenes and fresher air, he remembered that the roses and the mimosas were all cut flowers. Not one of them grew, or had grown, nay, nor ever could be grown in that shop window. Cut flowers, memories of other scenes―not growing flowers, part of the sweet scenes themselves. What a difference!
True spiritual graces are not cut flowers, brought up from the country to be shown and sold; they belong to the scenes where they grow. The cut flowers seemed to say, “There are places on the earth where we grow; there is blue sky and a beaming sun, but not where we now are―in this shop window.”
Cut flowers! Ah, this spirituality soon fades; it is only imported spirituality; it is not grown of the person who bears it. Perhaps it came with someone from a heaven-like religious meeting, to be worn for a few days; perhaps it was brought away from some interview with a truly holy christian on his death-bed, to fade away at home.