A flower service, intended to give thanks for the beauties
and 'bounties of the summer, was held in the Church of St. Katharine
• Cree, Leadenhall Street, on Tuesday, every child who attended 'bringing a bouquet of flowers. The Rector preached the sermon, which was upon the text, " Can the flag grow without water ?" the flag being the iris, on the loveliness, the beauty, the moist nourish- ment, and the glorious destiny of which in suggesting the fieur de lis of the French Monarchy, the rector descanted at length. He wished the children to learn from it that the divine care was given to wild flowers and the most gorgeous exotics alike, that they must be content to be nourished by simple teaching at first, as the iris lives on water, and that good qualities do not always lie on the surface, as the root of the iris has medicinal virtues. This is surely a rather hazardous mode of teaching such lessons. Sup- posing the Rector had discoursed on the berries of the deadly nightshade or on the autumn crocus, would he have descanted on the care Providence had spent in pouring a hidden poison or a 'hidden remedy for prospective gout, into these seemingly beauti- ful forms? Surely the natural lesson of flowers is the lesson of beauty generally, and the most obvious subject of discourse is the relation,—a relation sometimes of similarity, sometimes of differ- once,—between the beautiful and the good. Forced analogies are weeds of parasitic growth, not flowers.
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