But why was this pansy black?
Ah! it was quite different from the snow; it kept all the light which fell
upon it, and gave away none. You see that God has given to some things the
power of absorbing light and to others that of reflecting it. If it were
not so, our world would be very different from the beautiful world which it
is--as different as an engraving is from a coloured picture, with fields,
gardens, sea and sky all of varied hue. Almost all the flowers are so
beautiful because, while they keep some of the colours from the light which
falls upon them, they do not keep all.
Now look at the flowers in that glass upon the table. The lovely rose keeps
part of its ray of light, but gives us back the red; the larkspur gives
back the blue; and those pure white lilies, which show so fair beside the
roses, give back all the light in its bright whiteness just as it comes to
them, so that a poet, who loved them well, calls them "those flowers made
of light."
And the water in the glass, why is it white?
Because water is what is called transparent; it does not drink in the
light, but lets the whole ray pass through it, as it passes through the
window-pane.
Now my lesson about colours is over, and I will tell you a story. I don't
know whether you have as good a memory as some of my children had, and
whether you remember my promise to explain to you about types. I daresay
you have heard this word used in more than one way, and a word which has
two meanings is rather a puzzle, is it not? I know how it used to set me
thinking, when I heard someone say of a new book that it was pleasant to
read, because of its good type; the word was not new to me, but I had heard
it used in quite another way, the way in which it is used when we say of
the serpent of brass lifted up by Moses in the wilderness, that the dying
people might look at it and live--that it was a type of the Lord Jesus
Christ lifted up upon the cross, as He Himself tells us it was.
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