CHAPTER II.

FRAGRANCE.

"Thy plants are an orchard of pomegranates, with pleasant fruits camphire, with spikenard, spikenard and saffron ; calamus and cinnamon, with all trees of frankincense; myrrh and aloes, with all the chief spices."-SOLOMON'S SONG, iv. 13, 14.

;

OF F all man's sources of enjoyment, none display more clearly the bountifulness of God than the fragrant odours of nature. The world might have been made entirely scentless, and yet every essential purpose have been fulfilled. The vegetable kingdom, which is the great storehouse of perfumes, might have performed all its functions, and yet not a single plant exhaled an agreeable odour. Fragrance seems so wholly superfiuous and accidental, that we cannot but infer that it was imparted to the objects which possess it, not for their own sakes, but for our gratification. We regard it as a peculiar blessing, sent to us directly from the hand of our heavenly Father; and we are the more confirmed in this idea by the fact that the human period is the principal epoch of fragrant plants. Geologists inform us that ail the eras of the earth's history previous to the Upper

Miocene were destitute of perfumes. Forests of clubmosses and ferns hid in their sombre bosom no brighteyed floweret, and shed from their verdant boughs no scented richness on the passing breeze. Palms and cycads, though ushering in the dawn of a brighter floral day, produced no perfume-breathing blossoms. It is only when we come to the periods immediately antecedent to the human that we meet with an odoriferous flora. God placed man in a sweet-scented garden as his home. He adorned it with labiate flowers, modest in form and sober in hue, but exhaling a rich aromatic fragrance at every pore. And so widely and lavishly did He distribute this class of plants over the globe, that at the present day in the south of Europe they form one nineteenth part of the flora; in the tropics one twenty-sixth ; and even on the chill plains of Lapland, out of every thirty-five plants, one is a sweet-smelling labiate. In our own country, the tribe is peculiarly abundant and highly prized. Basil, marjoram, and lavender, balm and mint, rosemary and thyme, are dear to every heart, and are as fragrant as their own leaves with the sweetest poetry of rural life. Banished now from the garden to make room for rich and rare exotics, they still linger in romantic, old-fashioned places, and are carefully culti vated by the cottager in his little plot of ground. In quiet country villages the lavender-sprig still scents the household linen; the bouquet of balm or mint is still carried to church with the Bible and the white pockethandkerchief, and mingles its familiar perfume with the devotional exercises; and the rosemary is still placed on

the snowy shroud of the dead cottager, soothingly suggestive of the sweet and lasting perfume left behind in the dark tomb, by the Rose of Sharon, Mary's son, who once lay there. All these are indeed "plants of grey renown," as Shenstone calls them. They came into the world with man; they were created for man's special gratification; and they have continued ever since in intimate fellowship with him as ministers to some of his simplest and purest joys. They were prepared, too, against the day of Christ's anointing and burying; for some of the finest spices with which Joseph of Arimathea embalmed his dead body, were products of the labiate family; and in this sacred use they have received a consecration which for ever hallows them to the Christian heart.

No sense is more closely connected with the sphere of soul than the sense of smell. It reaches more directly and excites more powerfully the emotional nature than either sight or hearing. It is an unexplored avenue, leading at once, and by a process too enchanting to examine, into the ideal world. Its very vagueness and indefiniteness make it more suggestive, and quicken the mind's consciousness. Its agency is most subtle and extensive-going down to the very depths of our nature, and back to the earliest dawn of life. Memory especially is keenly susceptible to its influence. Every one knows how instantaneously a particular odour past circumstances associated with it. ciation long forgotten-glimpses of old familiar things— mystic visions and memories of youth, beyond the reach

will recall the Trains of asso

even of the subtle power of music-are brought back by the perfume of some little flower noteless to all others. Looks of long ago answer to our gazing; touches of hands, soft as a young trembling bird, lying in ours; words that were brimful of tenderness; joys that had no sorrow in their satisfying fruitage, come back with the passing breath of mignonette, caught from some garden by the wayside in the sweet, sad autumn eve. Lime-blossoms, murmurous with bees in the shady avenue-hyacinth-bells, standing sentinel beside some sapphire spring-violets, like children's eyes heavy with sleep, on some greenwood bank-each exhales a fragrance into which all the heart of Nature seems to melt, and touches the soul with the memories of the years. It is on account of this far-reaching power of fragrance, its association with the deep and hidden things of the heart, that so many of the Bible images appeal to our sense of smell. It is regarded as an important means of communication with heaven, and a direct avenue for the soul's approach to the Father of spirits. The acceptance of man's offerings by God is usually represented in the anthropomorphism of the Bible, as finding its expression in the sense of smell. When Noah offered the first sacrifice after the flood, "the Lord," we are told, "smelled a sweet savour." The drink-offerings and the various burnt-offerings prescribed by Levitical law, were regarded as a sweet savour unto the Lord. Christ, the antitype of these institutions, is spoken of as having given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour. And the Apostle Paul, employing

the same typical language, speaks of himself and the other Apostles as 66 unto God a sweet savour of Christ in them that are saved and in them that perish. To the one we are the savour of death unto death, and to the other the savour of life unto life." The Psalms and the prophetic writings are full of the most beautiful and expressive metaphors, applied to the most solemn persons and things, borrowed from perfumes; while the whole of the Song of Solomon is like an Oriental garden stocked with delicious flowers, as grateful to the sense of smell as to the sense of sight.

In the gorgeous ceremonial worship of the Hebrews, none of the senses were excluded from taking part in the service. The eye was appealed to by the rich vestments and the splendid furniture of the holy place; the ear was exercised by the solemn sound of the trumpet, and the voice of praise and prayer; and the nostril was gratified by the clouds of fragrant smoke that rose from the golden altar of incense and filled all the place. Of these, the sense of smell occupied, perhaps, the most prominent place; for, as we have seen, the acceptance of the worship was always indicated by a symbol borrowed from this sense: "The Lord smelled a sweet savour." The prayer of the people ascended as incense, and the lifting up of their hands as the evening sacrifice. The offering of incense formed an essential part of the religious service. The altar of incense occupied one of the most conspicuous and honoured positions in the tabernacle and temple. It stood between the table of shewbread and the golde.. candlestick in the holy place.