"Sally Strike doesn't often say any thing very wise, my dear, and this is no exception to the rule. You had better answer her out of her own mouth. Ask her, when she gathered all the flowers her own garden could produce to decorate the little 'Rehoboth'--as they call that meeting-house on Wanderer's Heath--when they held their last 'love feast,' and had tea and cake in their chapel, did she put the flowers there to make the place look gloomy, or to make it look festive and gay? Or, why did she do the same thing a little while ago, when they gave a children's treat in their meeting-house? Was it because it was a time of sadness or of rejoicing? No doubt, she will tell you it was the latter. Well, we decorate our churches for a similar reason. We regard all the Christian festivals as seasons for great gladness and rejoicing, and whilst at other times we are obliged, for the most part, to content ourselves with such ornamentation of God's House as our own poor imitations of the forms and colours of Nature can supply, on these high days we press into the service of the temple the lovely originals of all those forms and colours, fresh and pure as when they first left the hand of their Divine Maker. "'Tis true that the heathen used flowers in decorating their temples and altars, and also their victims prepared for sacrifice[180]. But they used them just as Sally Strike uses them at her meeting-house, for the _sole_ purpose of _decoration_. Now, though we use flowers to give a festive appearance to our churches, our use of them has, too, always a meaning beyond that: how they remind us of the _love of God_ in arraying this earth with so much beauty for our enjoyment; how they remind us of the pure and lovely delights of the Paradise that is lost; and of our future resurrection[181] to a Paradise of yet greater beauty. And it is from our Bibles that we learn to give, too, an _emblematic_ meaning to particular flowers, so that, whether carved by man, or moulded by the hand of Nature, each one teaches its own useful lesson. There we find the lily mentioned as the emblem of God's providence; the rose as the type of youthful beauty; the cedar, of manly strength. Nay, my dear Ellen, we may even find in Holy Scripture itself our authority for decorating our churches with these pure and unsinning works of God. You remember, no doubt, the verse to which I allude: 'The glory of Lebanon shall come unto thee: the fir-tree, the pine-tree, and the box together, to beautify the place of My sanctuary[182]'." "Thank you, sir, I quite understand your explanation. But Sally Strike said she didn't object to the way the church used to be decorated thirty years ago, when plain twigs of evergreen were put at the corners of the pews, and some large branches fixed here and there on the walls; but she does not like the triangles and circles and crosses, and the other designs we now use."