There is one strange and interesting passage in John's Gospel, xv. 1: "I am the true vine." My father used to tell us that the Greek word [Greek: alêthinê], rendered true, is usually employed of the genuine in distinction from the counterfeit, the reality in distinction from the shadow and image. Is not this perhaps the clew to our Lord's use of natural imagery? Nature was always the presentation to his senses of the divine thought and purpose. He studied the words of the ancient Scripture, he found the same words and teachings clearly and concretely embodied in the processes of Nature. The interpretation of the Parable of the Sower was no mere play of fancy to him; it was the genuine and fundamental truth, deeper and more real than the existence of the sower, the soil, and the seed. The spiritual truth was the substance; the tangible soil and seed really only the shadow. And thus all Nature was to him divine. We all of us need to offer the prayer of the blind man, "Lord, that our eyes may be opened." Let us learn, too, from the old heathen giant, Antæus, who, after every defeat and fall, rose strengthened and vivified from contact with his mother Earth. You will experience in life many a desperate struggle, many a hard fall. There is at such times nothing in the world so strengthening, healing, and life-giving as the thoughts and encouragements which Nature pours into the hearts and minds of her loving disciples. She will set you on your feet again, infused with new life, filled with an unconquerable spirit, with unfaltering courage, and an iron will to fight once more and win. In every battle her inspiring words will ring in your ears, and she will never fail you. We may not see her deepest realities, her rarest treasures of thought and wisdom; but if we will listen lovingly for her voice, we may be assured that she will speak to us many a word of cheer and encouragement, of warning and exhortation. For, to paraphrase the language of the nineteenth Psalm, "She has no speech nor language, her voice is not heard. But her rule is gone out throughout all the earth, and her words to the end of the world." CHAPTER II PROTOZOA TO WORMS: CELLS, TISSUES, AND ORGANS