Flowers
Flowers (נַדָּה, niddah', uncleanness, as often elsewhere rendered) stands in Le 15:21,33, for the menstrual discharge of females. Flowers. 1. It was an ancient practice to strew flowers on graves. Jerome bestows the following commendation on Pammachius: "While other husbands throw thorns, lilies, violets, roses, and purple flowers upon the graves of their wives, our Pammachius waters the bones and holy ashes of his wife with the balsam of alms. With these perfumes and odors he solaces the ashes of the dead that lie at rest" (Epist. 26).
2. The practice of decorating churches with flowers is very common in the Roman, and some of the Protestant churches of the Continent, and exists in various parts of England. It probably arose out of a desire to "honor the first-fruits" of nature's most beautiful productions, and may therefore be retained among things in themselves indifferent. The modern Ritualists, however, carry this, as other things, to excess.—Bingham, Orig. Eccles. book 23, chapter 3, § 20; Walcot, Sacred Archaeology, page 280; Barrett, Flowers and Festivals, or Directions for the Floral Decoration of Churches (London, 1868).
