SIN— One, the Soul’s Kikuyu-Charles Spurgeon

While I was walking in the garden one bright morning, a breeze came through and set all the flowers and leaves a fluttering. Now that is the way flowers talk, so I pricked up my ears and listened. Presently, an. old elder tree said, Flowers, shake off your caterpillars !” “Why?” said a dozen altogether — for they were like some children, who always say ” Why,” when they are told to do anything — bad children those t The elder said, ” If you don’t, they’ll cat you up alive.” So the flowers set themselves a shaking till the caterpillars were shaken off. In one of the diddle beds there was a beautiful rose, who shook off all but one, and she said to herself, ” Oh, that’s a beauty ! Ill keep that one.” The elder overheard her, and called out, ” One caterpillar is enough to spoil you. “But,” said the rose, “look at his brown and and his beautiful black eyes, and scores of little feet ; I want to keep him; surely one won’t hurt me.” A few morning* after. I paid oil the rose again; there was not a whole leaf on her ; her beauty was gone ; she was all but killed, and had only life enough to weep over her folly, while the tears stood like dew-drops on her tattered leaves. “Alas! I didn’t think one caterpillar would ruin me.”