Little Plants in the Garden

Ne of the duties of a Christian is oy. That is

a blessed religion which among its precepts commands men to be happy. When joy becomes a duty, who would wish to neglect it? Surely it must help every little plant to drink in the sunlight when it is whispered among the flowers that Jesus is the gardener. “Qh,” you say, “I am such a little plant; I do not grow well; I do not put forth so much leafage, nor are there so many flowers on me as on many round about me!” It is quite right that you should think little of yourself: perhaps to droop your head is a part of your beauty: many flowers had not been half so lovely if they had not practised the art of hanging their heads. But “supposing Him to be the gardener,” then He is as much a gardener to you as He is to the most lordly palm in the whole domain. In the Menton garden right before me grew the orange and the aloe, and others of the finer and more noticeable plants; but on a wall to my left grew common wallflowers and saxifrages, and tiny herbs such as we find on our own rocky places. Now the gardener had cared for all of these, little as well as great; in fact, there were hundreds of specimens of the most insignificant growths all duly labelled and described. The smallest saxifrage could say, “He is my gardener just as surely as he is the gardener of the Gloire de Dijon or Maréchal Neil.” Oh, feeble child of God, the Lord taketh care of you! Your heavenly Father feedeth ravens, and guides the flight of sparrows; should He not much more care for you, oh ye of little faith? Oh, little plants, you will grow rightly enough. Perhaps you are growing downward just now rather than upward. Remember that there are plants. of which we value the underground root much more than we do the haulm above ground. Perhaps it is not yours to grow very fast; you may ‘be a slow-growing shrub by nature, and you would not be healthy if you were to run to wood. Anyhow, be this your joy, you are in the garden of the Lord, -and, “supposing Him to be the gardener,” He will make the best of you. You cannot be in better hands.

Another duty is that of valuing the Lords presence, and praying for it. ‘We ought whenever the Sabbath morning dawns to pray our Well-beloved to come into His garden and eat His pleasant fruits. What can we do without Him? All day long our cry should go up to Him, “O Lord, behold and visit this vine, and the vineyard which Thy right hand has planted.” We ought to agonize with Him that He would come and manifest Himself to us as He does not unto the world.. For what is a garden if the gardener never comes near it? What is the difference between it and the wilderness if he to whom it belongs never lifts up a spade or pruning-hook upon it? So that it is our necessity that we have Christ with us, “supposing Him to -be the gardener”; and it is our bliss that we have Christ walking between our beds and borders, watching every plant, training, tending, maturing all. ‘“Supposing ‘Him to be the gardener,” it is well, for from Him is our fruit found. Divided from Him we are nothing; only as He watches over us can we bring forth fruit. Let us have done with confidence in men, let us forego all attempts to supply facts.of His spiritual presence by routine or rant, ritualism or rowdyism; but let us pray our Lord to be ever present with us, and by that presence to make our garden grow.

“Supposing Him to be the gardener,’ there is another duty, and that is — let each one yzeld entirely to Him. A plant does not know how it ought to be treated; it knows not when it should be watered or when it should be kept dry: a fruit-tree is no judge of when it needs to be pruned, or digged, or dunged. The wit and wisdom of the garden lieth not in the flowers and shrubs, but in the gardener.

“Supposing Him to be the gardener,” thou mayest well say, “I would neither have will, nor wish, nor wit, nor whim, nor way, but I would be as nothing in the Gardener’s hands, that He may be to me my wisdom and my all. Here, kind Gardener, Thy poor plant bows itself to Thy hand; train me as Thou wilt.” Depend upon it, happiness lives next door to the spirit of complete acquiescence in the will of God, and it will be easy to exercise that perfect acquiescence when we suppose the Lord Jesus to be the gardener. If the Lord hath done it, what has a saint to say? Oh, thou afficted one, the Lord hath done it: wouldst thou have it otherwise? Nay, art thou not thankful that it is even so, because so is the will of Him in whose hand thy life is, and whose are all thy ways?

The duty of submission is very plain, “supposing Him to be the gardener.”

Let this be a stimulus to your fruit-bearing, that Jesus is the gardener. Where you have brought forth a single cluster, bring forth a hundred, “supposing Him to be the gardener.” If He is to have the honour of it, then labour to do that which will give Him great renown. Jf our spiritual state were to be attributed to ourselves, or to our minister, or to some of our fellow Christians, we might not feel that we were under a great necessity to be fruitful; but if Jesus be the gardener, and is to bear the blame or the honour of what we produce, then let us use up every drop of sap and strain every fibre, that, to the utmost of which our manhood is capable, we may produce a fair reward for our Lord’s travail. Under such tutorship and care we ought to become eminent scholars. Doth Christ train us? Oh, let us never cause the world to think meanly of our Master. Students feel that their alma mater deserves great things of them, so they labour to make their university renowned. And so, since Jesus is teacher and university to us, let us feel that we are bound to reflect credit upon so great a teacher, upon so divine a name. Surely we ought to do something worthy of such a Lord? Each little flower in the garden of the Lord should wear its brightest hues, and pour forth its rarest perfume, because Jesus cares for it. The best of all possible good should be yielded by every plant in our Father’s garden, supposing Jesus to be the gardener,

I have found in this supposition a relief from crushing responsibility. One has a work given him of God to do, and if he does it rightly he cannot do it carelessly. The first thing when he wakes he asks, “How is the work prospering?” and the last thought at night is, “What can I do to fulfil my calling?” Sometimes the anxiety even troubles his dreams, and he sighs, “O Lord, send now prosperity!” How is the garden prospering which we are set to tend? Are we broken-hearted because nothing appears to flourish? Is it a bad season? or is the soil lean and hungry? It is a very blessed relief to an excess of care if we can fall into the habit of “supposing Him to be the gardener.” If Jesus be the Master and Lord in all things it is not mine to keep all the church in order. am not responsible for the growth of every Christian, nor for every backslider’s errors, nor for every professor’s faults of life. This burden must not lie on me so that I shall be crushed thereby. “Supposing Him to be the gardener,” then, the church enjoys a better oversight than mine; better care is taken of the garden than could be taken by the most vigilant watchers, even though by night the frost devoured them, and by day the heat. “Supposing Him to be the gardener,” then all must go well in the long-run. He that keepeth Israel doth neither slumber nor sleep; we need not fret and despond. I beg you earnest workers, who are becoming depressed, to think this out a little. You see it is yours to work under the Lord Jesus; but it is not yours to take the anxiety of His office into your souls as though you were to bear His burdens. The under-gardener, the workman in the garden, need not fret about the whole garden as though it were all left to him. No, no; let him not take too much upon himself. I pray you bound your anxiety by the facts of the case. So you have a number of young people around you, and

you are watching for their souls as they that must give account? This is well; but do not be worried and wearied; for, after all, the saving and the keeping of those souls is not in your hands, but it rests with One far more able than yourself. Just think that the Lord is the gardener. I know it is so in matters of providence. A certain man of God in troublous times became quite unable to do his duty because he laid to heart so much the ills of the age; he became depressed and disturbed, and he went on board a vessel, wanting to leave the country, which was getting into such a state that he could no longer endure it. Then one said to him, “Mr. Whitelock, are you the manager of the world?” No, he was not quite that. “Did not God get on pretty well with it before you were born, and don’t you think He will do very well with it when you are dead?” That reflection helped to relieve the good man’s mind, and he went back to do his duty. I want you thus to perceive the limit of your responsibility: you are not the Gardener Himself; you are only one of the Gardener’s boys, set: to run on errands, or do a bit of digging, or to sweep the paths. The garden is well enough managed even though you are not head manager in it.

While this relieves us of anxiety it makes labour for Christ very sweet, because if the garden does not seem to repay us for our trouble we say to ourselves, “It is not my garden after all. ‘Supposing Him to be the gardener, I am quite willing to work on a barren piece of rock, or tie up an old withered bough, or dig a worthless sod; for, if it only pleases Jesus,

77 the work is for that one sole reason profitable to the last degree. It is not mine to question the wisdom of my task, but to set about it in the name of my Master and Lord. ‘Supposing Him to be the gardener, lifts the ponderous responsibility of it

from me, and my work becomes pleasant and
delightful.”