The Atheist and the Flower.
WHEN Napoleon Bonaparte was Emperor of France, he put a man by the name of Charney into prison. He thought Charney was an enemy of his government, and for that reason deprived him of his liberty. Charney was a learned and profound man, and as he walked to and fro in the small yard into which his prison opened, he looked up to the heavens, the work of God's fingers, and to the moon and stars which he ordained, and exclaimed, “All things come by chance.” One day, while pacing his yard, he saw a tiny plant just breaking the ground near the wall. The sight of it caused a pleasant diversion of his thoughts. No other green thing was within his inclosure. He watched its growth every day. “How came it there?” was his natural inquiry. As it grew, other queries were suggested. “How came these delicate little veins in its leaves? What made its proportions so perfect in every part, each new branch taking its exact place on the parent stock, neither too near another, nor too much on one side.” In his loneliness the plant became the prisoner's teacher, and his valued friend. When the flower began to unfold, he was filled with delight. It was white, purple, and rose-colored, with a fine, silvery fringe. Charney made a frame to support it, and did what his circumstances allowed to shelter it from pelting rains and violent winds. “All things come by chance,” had been written by him on the wall, just above where the flower grew. Its gentle reproof, as it whispered: “There is One who made me so wonderfully beautiful, and he it is who keeps me alive,” shamed the proud man's unbelief. He brushed the lying words from the wall, while his heart felt that “He who made all things is God.” But God had a further blessing for the erring man through the humble flower. There was an Italian prisoner in the same yard whose little daughter was permitted to visit him. The girl was much pleased with Charney's love for his flower. She related what87she saw to the wife of the jailer. The story of the prisoner and his flower passed from one to another, until it reached the ears of the amiable Empress, Josephine. The Empress said: “The man who so devotedly loves and tends a flower, can not be a bad man.” So she persuaded the Emperor to set him at liberty. Charney carried his flower home, and carefully tended it in his own green-house. It had taught him to believe in a God, and had delivered him from prison.