Scientific Illustrations and Symbols Hebrews 11:4 By faith Abel offered to God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous… When, says Louis Figuier, the leaves have performed their functions, when the fruits have appeared, matured, ripened, vegetation has entered into a new phase; the leaves lose their brilliant green and assume their autumnal tint. A certain air of sadness pervades these ornaments of our fields which proclaims their approaching dissolution. The leaves, withered and deformed, will soon cumber the ground to be blown hither and thither by the wind. But when separated from the vegetable which has given birth to and matured them, they are not lost to the earth which receives them. Everything in nature has its use, and leaves have their uses also in the continuous circle of vegetable reproduction. The leaves which strewed the ground at the foot of the trees, or which have been disseminated by the autumn winds over the country, perish slowly upon the soil, where they are transformed into the humus, or vegetable moulds, indispensable to the life of plants. Thus the debris of vegetable purposes for the coming and formation of a new vegetation. Death prepares for new life; the first and the last give their hands, so to speak, in vegetable nature, and form the mysterious circle of organic life which has neither beginning nor end. When man has performed his functions here and ended his labours, he too fades like the leaf, and is borne away by the cold breeze of death. But like the leaf in death, so man, though dead, ministers to the living. He has not merely consumed so much of the productions of the earth, leaving nothing in return. He has left behind him his thoughts, his act, his example, his experiences, written or unwritten, and these will all perform their valuable ministration to the living, as do those leaves of autumn to the younger life which grows over their graves. (Scientific Illustrations and Symbols) Parallel Verses KJV: By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts: and by it he being dead yet speaketh. |
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