Retama
OUR GREAT HELPERS.
UNLIKE the organs of seeing and hearing, those of smelling and tasting have no remarkable machinery. No one can tell why the nose and mouth can smell and taste an orange any sooner than the hand. God has simply placed a power in those parts to perceive the fragrance and flavors which he has put into flowers, fruits, etc. Though so simple, yet how much pleasure these senses give us.
Plants might have lived and borne their fruit just as well without any beauty in their flowers or any sweet scent; these things, then, must have been made as they are for some purpose. It is necessary that we eat to sustain life, but it is not necessary that we should have good things to eat, as hunger would lead us to take food. One kind of food wou1d, have been sufficient to keep us alive, but only see the great variety of grains, fruits, and vegetables God has made, and then given us the power to enjoy them.
Of all our senses, that of smell has been called the most refined. It is certainly very useful. ‘It sits as guard over everything that approaches the mouth, and gives us warning when offensive things are about to enter it.' It also tells us of decaying and hurtful surroundings when we could usually learn it in no other way.
Fragrance was mingled with all the Jewish worship. It is the emblem of prayer, and has been called the thanksgiving of nature for the sunshine and rain. When it comes to us, it should waken an echo of thanks in our hearts to the great and good Being "who giveth us richly all things to enjoy." While he adorned the torrid zone, with more beautiful flowers than the temperate, he gave us the sweetest ones. Many of those of the richest fragrance and brightest colors carpet high mountains. The costly spikenard with which Mary anointed Jesus, was obtained from a curious plant growing on the high mountains of India. We are told that on the Peak of Tenerife, high above the clouds, and found nowhere else on the earth, grows-a strange shrub called Retama.
In the spring, like an earnest prayer sent up from earth's altar or a sweet blessing descending from on high, it bursts out into a wealth of milk-white blossoms, which perfume all the air. The peasants below take their beehives up to it, and there the bees fill them with perfumed and costly honey.
The fragrant-leaved Rhododendron, on the Himalayas, grows higher than any other shrub, scenting far around.
In small quantities, such as we would get from beds of sweet-smelling flowers around our dwellings, fragrance is purifying and health-giving; but in large quantities it is said to be poisonous.
The senses of touch and weight, with the four we have been considering, make out the list of the great helpers of our bodies. As our hands are our chief ministers, so in the fingertips, just where we need it most, the sense of touch is greatest.
We should, however, find it very unpleasant, were it as acute in all parts of our bodies.
Can we not say with those of old, "He hath done all things well"? "I will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made"?
M. E. STEWARD