I remember that when we began our morning lesson about the THIRD DAY, we noticed that God caused the earth, which had no life in itself, to bring forth that which was alive; for every green thing which grows upon the surface of the earth, no matter how tiny it may be, is quite different from those rocks which form its crust, about which we have been learning. Rocks and stones are without life, but every blade of grass which you tread under your feet, every blossom which scents the breeze, is alive. We had a good deal of talk about this, for life is a very wonderful thing; one of those "secret things" which belong to God, and which no one has ever been able to understand. But though we cannot know what this wonderful secret is, we can understand how great a difference there is between living things and those which have never had any life in them. If you were to take a pebble and hide it in the earth, you might water it every day, and the sun might shine upon it, while you waited and waited till you were quite old; but no change would come to the pebble, If you dug for it you would find it a pebble still. But with a plant, how different! See how those weeds in your garden grow. You may cut them down, or bury them underground--do anything indeed except pull them up by the roots--and still they will force their way through the soil which you pressed down so tightly over them; their leaves will push themselves up into the light and air, and their roots will strike deep into the earth, for every bit of them is alive; as the "Song of the Crocus" says-- "My leaves shall run up, and my root shall run down, While the bud in my bosom is swelling." Long ago, when I was a child, I saw a field covered with beautiful white things, smooth and rounded like the top of an egg, which seemed to rise here and there from the grass. They grew out of the ground, but yet they did not look like any flowers I had ever seen. I was told that the pretty white things were mushrooms, and that I might gather as many as I could in my pinafore, and take them home for breakfast. You may fancy how delightful it was to search about in the dewy grass, every minute finding a mushroom finer and whiter than the rest; but what puzzled me was the wonder of it--how had they all come there? They had grown up in the night, I was told, while I had been asleep in my bed; and I knew it must be so, for I had been in that field only the evening before, and had seen nothing there but the sheep, eating the grass and daisies. The thought of these beautiful white things growing up so quietly in the night-time, when no one could see them, was very wonderful to me, and I only wished that I might stay up all the next night in that field, and see them come, and find out how they grew: I was sure I could keep awake all night!