ourselves to the individual case; and, without further preface, we ask your close attention, whilst we examine how the kingdom of God is like unto seed cast into the ground, and which springeth up, the man knoweth not how; and then, with what truth it can be said, that, when the fruit is brought forth, the sickle is immediately put in, because the harvest is come.

Now you observe that the parable under review derives, like many others, its figures from the processes of agricul ture. When the husbandman has once cast the seed into the ground, there is little or nothing more that he can do towards ensuring a harvest. He will therefore employ himself on other business, leaving to the vegetating powers of the seed, and the influences of the sun and the shower, the covering his fields with the rich livery of plenty. It is this representation which is furnished by the first two verses of the parable. The kingdom of God is likened to a man who casts seed into the ground, and then sleeps, and rises night and day-that is, betakes himself to other occupations and the seed springs and grows up, he knoweth not how. He has nothing to do with the seed after he has sown it. Nay, in place of being able to help on the springing up of the corn, he is profoundly ignorant of the secret operations of nature; there is not to him a greater mystery than that of the buried grain reproducing itself, a hundredfold multiplied.

We have in this a most simple, yet striking, representation of the business, and, at the same time, of the helplessness, of the spiritual husbandman. Unto the ministers of the Gospel, who are the great moral labourers in the field of the world, there is entrusted the task of preparing

the soil, and of casting in the seed. And if they bring to this task all the fidelity and all the diligence of intent and single-eyed labourers; if they strive to make ready the ground by leading men to clear away the weeds of an unrighteous practice, and to apply the spade and ploughshare of a resistance to evil, and a striving after good; and if, then, by a faithful publication of the grand truths of the Gospel, they throw in the seed of the word; they have reached the boundary of their office, and also of their strength; and are to the full as powerless to the making the seed germinate, and send forth a harvest, as the husbandman to the causing the valleys to stand thick with corn. And, indeed, in the spiritual agriculture, the power of the husbandman is even more circumscribed than in the natural. With all the pains, with which a minister of Christ may ply at the duties of his office, he can never be sure that the ground is fit for receiving the grain: he must just do always what the tiller of the natural soil is never reduced to do, run the risk of casting the seed upon the rock, or of leaving it to be devoured by the fowls of the air.

So that, after all, the office of a minister of the Gospel, though the very noblest with which man can be charged, is, in every respect, singularly limited. It is not the office of the sculptor who takes the rude block, and, fashioning it, day by day, with industry and skill, leaves it not till it emulates the loveliness of life. It is not the office of the artisan, who, with his apparatus of tools, and his assemblage of material, toils sedulously at his occupationeach portion of the work depending equally on his care and his handicraft-till the finished piece of mechanism

counts the hours, and tells the minutes. The minister of Christ can do little more than scatter the seed; and he may live and die altogether ignorant, whether much, or whether any, have sprung up into a harvest of righteousness. And even if he be privileged to behold the ground covered with a luxurious produce, he cannot be said to have been otherwise instrumental to so beautiful a result, than as having strewed the earth with the grain entrusted to him by the great Proprietor of the soil. To him, as well as to the natural husbandman, the vegetation of the seed will ever be a deep and impenetrable mystery. It springs and grows up, "he knoweth not how." Wonderful and unapproachable is the Creator in all his dealings; but in none more so than in the conversion and renewal of sinners. There can be no question, that the method, which He ordinarily employs, is the preaching of the word. You come to the sanctuary week after week; and this gathering together of the children of immortality presents the surface on which the husbandman is to labour. And, if he be faithful to the work entrusted to his performance, he brings out, from the granary of Scripture, the seeds of wholesome truth and pregnant doctrine; and, with prayer unto Him, who can alone give the increase, casts them on the ground which he hath been appointed to cultivate.

And it may be, that, though a vast quantity of this seed falls by the wayside, and is utterly lost, whilst another portion, deposited on a light and insufficient soil, sends up quickly a produce which as quickly withers, yet some is received into a well-prepared heart, and there waits the influence of the shower and the sunshine. But

who shall scrutinize that agency by which the word is applied to the conscience? Who shall explain how, after weeks, it may be, or months, or even years, during which the seed has lain buried, there will often but unexpectedly come a moment when the preached word shall rise up in the memory, and a single text, long ago heard, and to all appearance forgotten, overspread the soul with the big thoughts of eternity? It is a mystery, which far transcends all our power of investigation, how spirit acts upon spirit; so that, whilst there are no outward tokens of an applied machinery, there is going on within a mighty operation, even the effecting a moral achievement which far surpasses the stretch of all finite ability. We are so accustomed to that change which takes place in a sinner's conversion, that we do not ascribe to it, in right measure, its characteristic of wonderful. Yet wonderful, most wonderful, it is wonderful in the secrecy of the process, wonderful in the nature of the result. I can understand a change wrought upon matter. I have no difficulty in perceiving that the same substance may be presented under quite different aspects; and that mechanical and chemical powers may make it pass through a long series of transformations. But where is the mechanism which shall root from the heart the love of sin? where the chemistry which shall so sublimate the affections that they will mount towards God? It is this internal revolution, which we have no power of scrutinizing except in its effects. "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof; but canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth; so is every one that is born of the Spirit." We observe that some thorough change

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has been effected. The things, which were once delighted in, are now shunned; whilst those, which were disliked, are cherished as most precious. There is a clear and direct opposition to the desires and inclinations which were formerly and naturally uppermost; whilst motives, by which humanity seems ordinarily incapable of being stirred, operate overpoweringly on every faculty and feeling. But if we would look in, and behold the appliances by which this change is wrought out; if we would survey, as it were, spirit handling spirit, refreshing, remoulding, or, rather, actually recreating it-oh, it were even easier to dive into the secrecies of nature, and investigate, with curious accuracy, what goes on in her hidden laboratories, than, by all the strivings of thought, to imagine to ourselves this lifegiving process.

The mystery is great of the natural seed, which must rot in the earth, and become, to all appearance, wasted and worthless, before it can reward with an increase the husbandman's anxieties. "That which thou sowest is not quickened, except it first die." But the mystery of the spiritual seed-a solitary verse, it may be, sinking, unobserved and unfelt, into the heart; lying there, unperceived or unregarded, whilst evil passions are still holding their court, and carrying on their revelry; and then, sending out suddenly fibres and roots, which occupy the space, and twine themselves, like chains, round the former possessors -this, though it be taking place every day, so that long usage has familiarized us to the fact, remains, to every inquiring and right-thinking mind, amongst the most inapproachable of marvels; and the simple verdict of the parable contains the decision of all who pour forth their