2

130 THE SHIPWRECK,

parched earth could afford no nourishment to their roots,
It seemed as if death was unwilling to permit any living
thing to diminish the hideous desolation of his melancholy
domain.

From time to time they interrupted their studies and
their employments to read some passages of the New Tes-
tament, which they regarded as their greatest treasure ;
they especially relished those passages that seemed to refer
to their present condition, or to their former dissensions and
animosities. In this arid desert, where they found them-
selves far removed from the rest of mankind, where the
invisible hand of the All-Powerful was protecting and pro-
viding for them in the most beneficent manner, they could
not often enough read those cheering invitations to put all
their confidence in a benignant and most bountiful Provi-
dence.

* Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither
do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your Heavenly
Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they ?

“Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they
toil not, neither do they spin: and yet even Solomon in all
his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

“‘Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the fields,