12 - The Law of the Harvest
“Choose well; your choice is Brief, and yet endless.” — Goethe.
“Others I doubt not, if not we, The issue of our toils shall see; Young children gather as their own The harvest that the dead had sown, The dead, forgotten and unknown.”
— Clough.
“A wonderful thing is a seed! The one thing deathless forever; The one thing changeless, utterly true;
Forever old and forever new, And fickle and faithless never.
“Plant virtue and virtue will bloom;
Plant ill and ill will grow.
You can sow to-day; to-morrow will bring The blossom that proves what sort of thing Is the seed — the seed you sow.”
“One base deed, with prolific power.
Like its cursed stock, engenders more.”
“Blood for blood and blow for blow, —
Thou shalt reap as thou didst sow.
Age to age with hoary wisdom Speaketh thus to man.” — Aeschylus. THE LAW OF THE HARVEST.
’’Be not deceived; God is not mocked, for whatsoever a mail soweth, that shall he also reap.” (Galatians 6:7.) This is the law of the harvest. Everything that hath life carries within itself the principle of its own existence, that which determines the method by which it develops and the end for which it lives.
Whatever may come from without to modify or change the life, must act through its principle of life; and, although this modification or change come by some command, or law, it must act in harmony with the law ruling within. Ought we to draw so broad a distinction as we usually do between the law written in our hearts and the law given to us by revelation?
Both are given of God, have the same work and purpose, and are mutually corroborative. One of the first exercises of an awakened conscience is to testify to the truth of God’s revealed law, and of the awakened heart to respond in penitence and prayer to God’s infinite love. This correspondence between the two expressions of God’s law for human life is clearly indicated in this law of the harvest. A field produces according to the seed beneath its surface, and the fertility of the soil. The same law holds good in every soil, whether in the physical, intellectual, or spiritual world. The whole world is busy sowing and growing for a future harvest. In the physical world, how eagerly the germ of life within the seed bursts its bonds and strives to reach its appropriate harvest. All the various forms of vegetable life multiplying themselves many fold, a single seed dying to produce its many successors for the autumnal ingathering. The animal world, by increase and dispersion, is taking possession of every part of the earth, while men and their brute servants are ever urging the vegetable world to a more vigorous development to support the rapidly increasing animal life. In the Intellectual and moral world, how eagerly men are sowing for the future reaping. Thought-germs of every kind and in every form of utterance are striving for growth towards the harvest. In lecture, book, sermon, newspaper, conversation, in the very look of the face and the shrug of the shoulders, men are busy sowing and cultivating Parents and teachers are diligently scattering seeds for growth in soil more valuable and productive than any that farmer ever ploughed, and out of all this seed the final harvest of the child’s life shall be gathered.
Every human soul is entrusted with soil, seed, and opportunity for the required harvest. Your life-soil is fertile, endures forever, and is forever your own. You cannot sell it. You cannot rent it. You can mortgage it only to sin, whose certain foreclosure is death. The seed may be as immortal as truth from God, or deadly as Satanic error. The opportunity is all your life, with its wealth of resources, its innumerable calls of duty, and its wide Opportunity for truest growth and noblest work. The law of the harvest is simple and certain. According to the kind, quality and quantity of the seed sown, the fertility of the soil, and the amount and quality of labor bestowed on the sowing and the cultivation, so shall the harvest be. The Apostle starts out with the warning, “ Be not deceived; God is not mocked.” Do not deceive yourselves into thinking that you are deceiving God. No formal service that is heartless, no crying *’ Lord, Lord, have we not clone wonderful things in Thy name?” when the spirit is dead, will deceive Him who looketh upon the heart. And yet is there not a general hope, certainly a wish, that God may count what little good we have done, as some sort of atonement for what we are? What is this but expecting Him to take our occasional good deeds, and draw from them a permanent good character.
We cannot expect Him to violate His own laws of life in order to save us from the appropriate results of our neglect or wilful disobedience. God does not have special cases. Every germ of life produces after Its kind, according to a perfectly definite law of development. This law, so forcibly stated by the Apostle, contains several particulars.
Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. As the seed Is In kind, so must the harvest be. The sower must choose his harvest in his choice of the seed. A man who sows to the physical life shall reap a harvest for the physical life. One who sows all his seed for the intellectual life shall reap the Intellectual harvest. In like manner, one who sows to the spirit shall reap a spiritual harvest.
You have the power to choose which of these you will sow, but you have no right to expect that you may sow one kind of seed and reap another kind of harvest. Your power of choice lies with the seed; you cannot change the law of the harvest, which must be as the sowing. You may sow but one kind of seed, or mingle all good seed in proper proportion; but whatsoever you sow that shall you reap. All good is arranged by the Apostle in two classes, temporary good, — “ He that soweth to the flesh shall reap corruption;” and permanent good, — *’ He that soweth to the spirit shall reap life everlasting.”
Each after its kind. The two classes have many things in common and many resemblances, but in kind they are as different as earth and heaven, as temporary and everlasting.
Both may be ours, for we get what we sow for. A man may sow to the spirit, without being blessed with physical comfort. And because he has sown abundantly of the choicest spiritual seed is no especial reason that he should be prosperous in his physical life. To have both, he must sow for both.
Christ says, “ Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled.” What with?
Righteousness. Just as those who hunger and thirst after this world’s prosperity shall be filled with that. Each class gets what it seeks. “ Honesty is the best policy “ for this life and that which is to come, but that is not saying that the honest man will get rich, or keep free from disease and sorrow. A man may be a good man and get rich, or he may be just as good and remain poor. Or a man may choose to get rich and have all the comforts of this life, without a thought of the everlasting life.
“Abraham’s bosom,” heaven, was the legitimate harvest of the seed sown by Lazarus; but he had no more right to expect that he would receive the home and the luxury which the rich man enjoyed, than the rich man had to expect heaven as the harvest of his life. Each got what he sowed for. A man cannot sow to worldly success only, and have any right to expect a spiritual victory, a victory over death. “ He that soweth to the flesh shall (from that sowing) reap corruption,” and corruption is only another name for death, the end of all flesh. Every man must sow for the harvest he wants. The student who would become a learned man knows that he must sow years of self-denial, and close, hard study. He has no right to complain of his harvest of ignorance and inefficiency if he has never sown the seeds from which a richer harvest could grow.
You have no right to complain that although you are a devoted Christian, serving God with fervent spirit, yet your neighbor, who cares for nothing but his own success, is growing rich and influential, while you are hardly able to pay your just debts. You sowed for peace of mind and all the christian graces here, and eternal life in the world to come. Your neighbor sowed for worldly success.
You are both getting what you sowed for.
If you want wealth and influence, you must sow accordingly. The Master said of the hypocritical Pharisees, whose very religious services were performed for the praise of men, “ They have their reward.”
They sowed for the praise of men and they got it. The man who sows for worldly success has a right to expect worldly success, but he has no right to expect anything else.
If the Christian expects to have worldly success because he is a Christian, he misinterprets God’s law of cause and effect.
What a man sows, he shall reap. He cannot expect a harvest of physical comfort from a sowing of spiritual seed. Incidentally, the spiritual growth will help the growth of all true good, even physical good; but the seed must be planted for every part of life’s harvest.
But, some may say, there is a difference between the spiritual law of growth and the physical, in this that God loves the sinner, and nature does not; God forgives sin, and nature does not. Because God is love shall He violate laws which are altogether good and pure, laws which are the most perfect expression of His love, as of every other attribute of His nature? His love is deep as eternity, mighty as omnipotence, broad and rich as human need, and helpful as the Christ himself; but that love is shown in the perfect fulfilment of law, not in the violation of it.
Christ “ came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill.” And the divine love was displayed as much in the atoning death as in the obedient service.
God’s law of command never violates His law of principle, for what He speaks in revelation is in strict harmony with His utterance In the inherent, abiding principles of man’s moral nature.
Suppose you have a young almond stock and want a harvest of apricots, how will you secure the change of fruit? You will graft an apricot stem into the almond stock, and the fruit will be apricots. Thus you change the harvest by changing that which produces It. But then I read in this book of God that it is no exception to this law, or violation of it, that God forgives sin, but in strictest accordance with It.
“ Ye must be born again.” The seed Is changed In order to change the harvest. The law is that a seed can produce but one harvest, and that the harvest shall be of the same kind as the sowing. You may choose to sow either to the flesh or to the spirit, but you must not expect to gather both the physical and the spiritual harvest from one sowing.
Many of you are young, and you often hear this exhortation, but has it no meaning that it need not be repeated? You are sowing seed with a free hand in very productive soil — what shall the harvest be? The answer is plain — exactly what the seed was. Do you think that you can sow any kind of seed now, and then reap in later years any harvest you may wish?
There is in a distant state a man whose life is full of good works. He wears to the world a cheerful face, and helps every life he meets. But there is a load on his heart that only the redemption of his body can remove. He did a great wrong in his youth. After his conversion he made every reparation in his power, but it was too late to remove all the harm, and the sorrow of that memory goes with him through Hfe.
Say what you please about what a man ought to do, how he ought to feel at peace when he has done everything in his power to repair his wrong, and by a penitent, humble and devoted life is doing all he can to help others. The law of God and the law of nature, — if you can thus separate two methods of the same law — require that every harvest shall be as the sowing. And though a man may be born again, he cannot forget the old life, with its joys and its remorse, until the new life has swallowed up in its ever-increasing abundance all the past, and swept even its memories clean. The sins of youth are sure to produce some harvest. God forgives, and plants the seed of a new spiritual life, but He does not enable you to forget. And one mark of this new life is its power to deepen the soul’s remorse for sin, even while it increases the longing for righteousness. We have no right to expect that In later years we shall reap the harvest of honest speech and candid mind, when we filled our youth with insincere words and uncharitable thoughts. Not only will the reputation earned in youth cling to us but the habits of thought and tone of spirit will influence and modify our characters to the end of life. The most fearful of all dangers to an immortal soul is that doom which Christ said had fallen upon some who heard the Parable of the Sower, ’’their heart is waxed gross,” they had lost their capability for any higher life. We forget that “God requireth that which is past,” because we forget that there is no past with God, and fail to remember that nothing dies, and that everything produces its own harvest.
Remember the timely warning of the wise preacher in Ecclesiastes 11:9, “Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth; and let thy heart cheer thee in the day’s of thy youth, and walk in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes; but know thou that, for all these things God will bring thee to judgment.” It is the same law; as thou sowest thou shall reap.
Neither does God with His forgiveness send any new power to the body to escape the harvest of the earlier sowing. You may have become a true child of God, but if your youth has been spent in indolence, idleness and dissipation, you will feel the loss of power to the end of your days. Not only so, but if a man in early spring-time sows a crop of thorns, he will not only gather no good crop, but he is thus far weakened by loss of time and skill and opportunity when he would be very glad to sow a better seed. Many people who wish to “ do good “ after their days of business and youthful pleasure are over, find that they have lost their aptitude for it; sometimes have lost even their capability for work so different from what has busied them in all their earlier years. They sowed one kind of seed, and they must not expect to reap another kind of harvest. The old Latin proverb urges that ’’you must become an old man when young, if you would be a young man when old;” suggesting that you must apply the temperance and wisdom of maturity to youthful inclinations, if you would preserve the strength and vigor of youth to old age. As Pope puts it —
“ For fainting age what cordial drop remains, If our intemperate youth the vessel drains? “
Many of us who are yet young would repudiate our future selves with all the zeal and loathing of Hazael of old, should some Elisha make that future plain to us.
We shall reap as we sow, and yet sometimes people (not thoughtful people) say that if one is only sincere it matters little what a man believes. Wheat and rye look very much alike to one who is not familiar with them, but suppose a farmer, honestly believing that he is sowing wheat, actually scatters rye broadcast over his field, will he get a crop of wheat for his honesty? A man will get what he sows — whatever he may think he is sowing.
There is one fallacy in our reasoning about goodness that needs to be noticed. The goodness which Christ teaches and what is called the world’s goodness, or moral goodness, are different in kind. The fruits bear a close resemblance. Indeed, the world’s highest morality is a harvest of our Master’s sowing. Our noblest view of life and our highest conception of God come from Christ’s life and teachings. Yet there are men who deny Christ, and yet want to claim God as their Father. They say, perhaps, that science has taught them this view of God. Yet science tells us very little about God, except that He exists and is all-powerful.
These men take the view of God which Christianity has taught the world, and proclaim it as a discovery of their own skill and knowledge. Christ’s own answer to all such is given in St. John 8:42 “If God were your Father, ye would love Me: for I came forth and am come from God.” But whatever their view of God, and however they may have received it, there is a difference in kind between the “moral life “ and the spiritual, and the final harvests must bear the same difference. These men are entitled to all the reward of a true morality, with all it means of health and comfort and good influence. But they have no right to expect that their earthly life, beautiful as it is, will grow to a harvest in God’s likeness. They have sowed the seed of the highest earthly life, and they shall reap accordingly, but the harvest will be no higher or more enduring than the sowing.
It is still *’ sowing to the flesh,” and only he who sows to the spirit shall reap “ life everlasting.” The one is living by earthly motives, according to an earthly standard, and must always measure himself by the lives of men like himself. The other is moved by heavenly motives, according to a divine standard of life, and always measures himself by the perfect life of Christ, God’s ideal life for man. One life is guided by custom, and controlled by external influences. The other is guided by the principle of a new-born life within, and controlled by a divine spirit to whom he has surrendered his life. The “ moral life” has its life and reward this side of death, for the grave is the end of its growth. It is a beautiful and fruitful earthly plant, soon reaching maturity and death, but its seeds reproduce only in an earthly soil. The spiritual life never reaches maturity on earth, but requires a spiritual world for its fullest growth. It aims to bring forth all the good fruits of the ’’ moral life” as a legitimate harvest of its own life on earth, but looks for a still higher fruitfulness in an unending world. The “moral life” touches no higher power than its own, supported by the pressure from without of forces that are altogether earthly. The forces that control such a life rarely touch the mass of men, and have at best only a reforming power, and that is chiefly negative. These forces come into a life with all the prohibitions of the law, but with none of the gospel of a new life. It commands the life to put forth its own greatest power, but it gives no new power. The moralist is one who tries to live up to the standard of morals reached by the world under the influence of Christianity. The Christian is one in whom Christ has begotten a new life, which is lifting him by steady growth towards perfection. One may be a reformed man, but the other is a regenerated man. One life is the fruit of earthly seed, and the whole growth will be as the seed, earthly. The other life is growing towards an eternal harvest from a divine seed of God’s own planting. The one is begotten of the best spirit of the world, the other is born of the Spirit of God.
Each after its kind shall reap a harvest, but the two harvests will be as different as the sowing.
Prof. J. C. Shairp, in his ’’Studies in Poetry and Philosophy,” uses the following strong and suggestive language, “ Character, which, when regarded from a merely moral point of view, almost inevitably becomes a building up from our own internal resources, takes altogether another aspect when it is seen that true. character is in the last resort determined by the attitude in which the spirit stands to God. Then it comes to be felt that the rightness men search for cannot be evolved from within, must go beyond self, must fall back on a simple receptivity, receiving the rightness and the rightmaking power, which they have not in themselves, from out of the great reservoir of righteousness which is in God. Only on thus falling back on God, and feeling himself to be, as of everything else, so of righteousness, a recipient, is a man truly rightened. Thus the last moral experience and the first upward look of religion agree in one, * A man can receive nothing except it be given him from above.’“
Again the harvest must be as the sowing in quality. After a man decides what kind of grain he must sow in order to secure the kind of harvest he wants to reap, he is careful to select a good quality of that kind of grain, for he knows that the quality of the harvest is affected by the quality of the seed. A good farmer, when he has decided to sow wheat, seeks to get for his seed the best quality of wheat In the market; and the student, when he has decided to study any particular theme, seeks to find the ablest teachers and most helpful books, so that by the best methods and the best quality of seed he may be sure of a good quality of harvest. So it should be in the spiritual sowing. It is needful for us all to have the choicest spiritual seed, if we would have the richest spiritual harvest. This seed is the word of God. The words of men may be wise and very helpful; but every Christian knows that the power to sanctify Is the word of truth. The faith that enables us to receive aright the blessings of God, ’’cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” For this there is no safe substitute. Nor must the quantity be regarded as an unimportant matter, for If one wants to reap bountifully, he must sow bountifully. No farmer is so ignorant as to do on his farm what so many intelligent and cautious people do in the spiritual work of their lives; sow as little as possible, and yet hope to reap a very great abundance. Sowing to the flesh a hundred dollars for every dime they sow to the spirit; sowing a week’s work to the flesh for every hour they give to spiritual work; sowing a thousand fold for the body over the handful they scatter for the spiritual harvest. As they sow in kind and quality and quantity, so shall they reap.
Another particular of this law is that of increase. You plant a single grain and it gives you in return a score like itself. Your harvest is not according to the labor and money you expend upon it.
These alone do not give the full value of the product. The natural fertility of the soil, and the ability of the seed to multiply itself so abundantly, must be considered. This power of multiplication, the seed has in itself; but there is another mode of increase that must not be over- looked, that by diffusion or dispersion.
Whether it be thistle-down floating on the air, the lady-slipper exploding to scatter its little seed-bullets, or the seeds of trees and grass and grain carried by the wind, or the birds, or on the bosom of flowing waters, far and wide the life is dispersed to grow and multiply in new lands.
Everyone recognizes this law in nature, every student knows how true it is in the intellectual life, and the word of God says, as we have seen in the Parable of Growth, that it is as true in the spiritual life. You cannot keep either spiritual good or evil from increasing. The good we do and the evil we do go on producing their harvest to the end, multiplying and diffusing their influence, each after its kind. One would think that no exhortation could be needed to make us cautious in our every word and deed in presence of such a responsibility. But we are apt to forget the wisest admonition, grown familiar by its frequent repetition, even as we are apt to overlook the greatest values in things grown customary by our constant use of them.
“To do good and communicate, forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” *’ Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit.” These, to one who seeks to “sow to the spirit,” are not mere commands, but are the very principle of his life. They are commands of duty, but they are eagerly accepted as in perfect harmony with his own new-born spiritual life, and the grain does not more eagerly accept the sunshine and the rain for its growth to the harvest than does the earnest Christian accept these commands and the opportunities they give for growth towards the final harvest of his own fullgrown and ripened life. By a different emphasis, we may learn another lesson, which is also suggested by the first sentence of the Parable of Growth. ** Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap!’
Every true life is one of activity. No man drifts to real success, for while he may suddenly and without effort secure possession of great wealth or high position, he has not that discipline of self which comes with the labor of achievement. In no department of life does one gather a good harvest without a previous sowing. Hence the work, the manner of its performance, and the spirit of the worker, all enter into the life-problem of every human soul. And this is true, not only in the great affairs of life, but also in every little thing. For everything, whether great or small, is both a seed and a harvest, the seed for future growth and the fruit of a previous sowing. Contempt of littles may be contempt of the greatest values, for we never know how much of growth may lie within the smallest seed. You cast a little word of truth into a young heart, and never knew that from your sowing there sprang up great principles to control an immortal life. Nor did you see the many seeds that have fallen from that life to spring up and grow in other souls unto endless life. A divine spirit makes everything divine that it touches, and a consecrated spirit consecrates every work it performs, whether the world call it small or large. As Mrs. Gaskel’s “Ruth” expresses it:
“There is a right way and a wrong way of setting about everything — and to my thinking, the right way is to take a thing up heartily, if it is only making a bed. Why, dear, ah me! making a bed may be done after a very christian fashion, I take it, or else what’s to come of such as me in heaven, who’ve had little enough time on earth for clapping ourselves down on our knees for set prayers.”
Any man is great who does all his work for the spirit and the duty in it, who feels that each lowly task may be so performed as to help the noblest spiritual growth.
Religion “put on” is a very deadly thing, like the famed shirt of Nessus, putting the wearer to a miserable death. But religion that springs from the heart, and flows naturally with consecrating power into every walk of life, is a very noble thing, making the Hfe beautiful in all abiding graces, and ’* fruitful In every good work.” But such a life comes not by accident. Its own appropriate sowing and Its own natural growth must precede It. Evil crops grow without any care, but good seed must be sown and carefully cultivated. All plants and trees producing food for man are short-lived, and require constant care to prevent their degeneration. Even the famous breadfruit, which we once thought did not come under this rule, Is no exception to the law; for of the two varieties of the breadfruit-tree, the wild propagates Itself, and Is worthless for food, while that which yields food is seedless, and requires constant care for its growth. In the spiritual world, the very labor of sowing and cultivating enters into the quality of the fruit, and prepares the soul for the proper enjoyment and use of the harvest. The great purpose of the activity to which Christ urges his followers Is to crowd out the evil growth by the more abundant sowing and cultivation of the good. “Sow beside all waters,” however weed-grown and stony, for it is thus that Christ would “ destroy the works of the devil.” Indeed, the Master would teach us to measure our life less by the number of its years than by the spirit of its service and the abundance of its fruits. How can any soul accustomed only to reaping, without a thought of sowing, ever rightly appreciate the self-denial and never-resting service of Christ?
What can he understand of the joys of Him who delighted to do God’s will, and of the heaven that rewards the faithful steward, when he is a stranger to the spirit of devotion to the work of ministering unto others? The Saviour’s admonitions concerning hearing might well be applied to sowing; take heed how ye sow, and take heed what ye sow. Before sowing, decide what you will sow, and that will be decided by what you want to reap in the harvest. And do not overlook the fact that this law applies to every part of life. To public life and to private. To the school and the church, to the store and the home, to politics and to business.
If you want to reap success in business, you must sow accordingly; but remember that you may be so ’’diligent in business” (or in house-keeping, or in study) as to become unable to “be fervent in spirit.”
Perhaps you say, “ I will first be successful in business, and then with my wealth I will serve the Lord with all faithfulness.”
Nay, if you do not continue “fervent in spirit, serving the Lord,” while you are increasing you wealth, you will never properly unite them afterwards. Much of the devotion to business which the world applauds is the very process that is destroying spiritual growth. Many of our business men, pressing forward eagerly for wealth, need to consider this law of life which God has written in such unqualified language.
Ask yourselves whether, when you shall have secured possession of wealth, you will be richer or poorer than now? You will possess much, but will you be more or less than now? Be watchful, lest you choke your spiritual life, God’s harvest, with the too abundant growth of your own earthly harvest! ’’ It is required of stewards that they be found faithful.” Not only when they have laid by all that they want for themselves, but from the first moment of life.
Every moment this law is in full operation in every life, yet do we not often try to make ourselves believe that its action is not certain, or at least that it is far off in the future? We treat life as if it were a mere succession of acts and thoughts and words, when these are but the leaves and blossoms and partial fruits of a life which is unbroken and endless. Thinking that we can at any moment cease to perform the acts, we forget that they are but expressions of a life steadily growing to a harvest from the sowing of all the past. For all life is an unbroken series of beginnings, as well as of harvests. The slight inclination, which we may have inherited, may seem to us a very small matter, yet from it may grow a wish, an affection, an act, a habit, all doing their part in shaping and establishing our character. How careless we are of the seeds that fall into our lives, and the lives of those for whom we are responsible! We pay so little heed to the sowing, but when too late to destroy the evil, and cultivate the good to advantage, we curse ourselves for our folly, and plead for God to pity us. We are apt to think of retribution as something which belongs exclusively to a distant future and another world, yet every soul carries within itself the prophecy of its own judgment. For retribution is implied in every threat of conscience, and illustrated in every controversy between good and evil for the control of the will. In every temptation, the will is solicited by opposing feelings, and we can do no more than to choose the best or the worst that is before us. If we choose the worst thing, is it not the wickedest thing we are able to do at that moment? It is no palliation to say that others have done worse things than we ever have, for they did no more than the wickedest thing that lay within their reach, and that we have done. We know that in every temptation there is a choice between two things, and these two things are not of equal moral worth, so that we are ever choosing either the best thing or the worst. Thus we are ever casting the seed for a future harvest, habituating the will to obey the purer affections in its decisions, and quickening^ these affections to more vigorous growth; or putting the will more and more under the control of the evil in us, and thus determining our characters away from good and from God.
We know that neither good nor evil receives its full retribution in this world; every life’s experience is proof of that Conscience punishes the most spiritual with the keenest remorse for sin, while it speaks but feebly in those who dwell in crime. But the law abides forever; ’’whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” ’’Even as I have seen, they that plow iniquity and sow wickedness, reap the same.” (Job 4:8.) What a fearful meaning this gives to that last proclamation of this same law: ’* Seal not up the words of the prophecy of this book; for the time is at hand. He that is unrighteous, let him be unrighteous still, and he which is filthy, let him be filthy still: and he that his holy, let him be holy still. And behold I come quickly; and my reward (wages) is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be.” (Revelation 22:11-12.)
Solemn and threatening as this law may be in one direction, it is full of comfort and encouragement in another. A sower of good seed has only to look at the wonderful growth of “the word of the kingdom,” to see how certainly this law applies to good as well as to evil. It will make him penitent for the evil he has done, but it should make him diligent and hopeful in every faithful service of good.
Diligent, to make the future sowing both good and bountiful. Hopeful, for the harvest shall be as the sowing, for every good seed carries within itself the decree of its own certain growth to the final harvest, and is guarded and nourished by the blessing of ’’ the Lord of the harvest.”
Every seed is a beginning; if the seed be true and good, it is the beginning of blessings that cannot die. For your own soul, for your children, for all lives that feel you influence, have seeds of blessing ready in the abundant fruitfulness of your own life. Remember ’’the Sower,” who never came in contact with human life without leaving some seeds of comfort, or warning, or hopefulness, never counting any too low or too great to receive the word of life. There is no better life for this world or heaven than His, “who came not to be ministered unto, but to minister.”
“ Wherefore, be ye steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.”
“ Now He that ministereth bread for your food, multiply your seed sown, and Increase the fruits of your righteousness.”
“ Now the God of jDeace, who brought again from the dead the Great Shepherd of the sheep with the blood of the eternal covenant, even our Lord Jesus, make you perfect in every good thing to do His will, working In us that which Is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be the glory forever and ever.
Amen.”
Sow with a generous hand;
Pause not for toil or pain;
Weary not through the heat of summer, Weary not through the cold spring rain; For the sheaves of golden grain.
Scatter the seed and fear not, A table will be spread;
What matter if you are too weary To eat your hard-earned bread.
Sow while the earth is broken. For the hungry must be fed.
Sow; — while the seeds are lying In the warm earth’s bosom deep, And your warm tears fall upon it, They will stir in their quiet sleep; And the green blades rise the quicker, Perchance, for the tears you weep.
Then sow; — for the hours are fleeting, And the seed must fall to-day; And care not what hands shall reap it Or if you shall have passed away.
Before the waving cornfields Shall gladden the sunny day.
Sow; and look onward, upward, Where the starry light appears, — Where in spite of the coward’s doubting Or your own heart’s trembling fears, You shall reap in joy the harvest You shall have sown to-day in tears.
— Adelaide Procter. A PRAYER FOR THE HARVEST.
Oft as Thy word, O God, is cast, Like seed into the ground, Let the rich dews of heaven descend, And righteous fruits abound.
Let not the ever watchful foe This holy seed remove, But give it strength to root and grow, And ever fruitful prove.
Let not the world’s deceitful cares The living word destroy, But may it. free from hindering tares, Bring forth life’s purest joy.
O speed Thy message here to-night To every listening soul; And fill each heart with heavenly light, And strength to reach life’s goal. The seed is Thine, and Thine the power To give it great increase, —
O send us now a gracious shower Of faith and love and peace!