Sown Among Thorns

“And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them.” — Matthew xiii. 7. “He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.” — Matthew xiii. 22.

WHEN that which conies of his sowing is unfruitful, the sower’s work is wasted: he has spent his strength for nought. Without fruit the sower’s work would even seem to be insane; for he takes good wheat, throws it away, and loses it in the ground. Preaching is the idlest of occupations if the word be not adapted to enter the heart, and produce good results. 0 my hearers, if you are not converted, I waste time and energy in standing here! Men might well think it madness that one whole day in the week should be given up to hearing speeches: madness, indeed, it would be if nothing came of it to conscience and heart. If you do not bring forth fruit unto holiness, and the end is not everlasting life, I should be better employed in breaking stones on the road-side than in preaching to you.

Fruit-bearing made the difference appear in the various soils upon which the sower scattered seed. You would not so certainly have known the quality if you had not seen the failure or success of the seed. We do not know your hearts till we see your bearing towards the gospel. If it produces in you holiness and love to God and man, then we know that there is good soil in you: but if you are merely promising people, but not performing people, then we know that the ground of your heart is hard, or stony, or thorny. The word of the Lord tries the heart and reins of the children of men, and in this it is as the fire which distinguishes between metal and dross. 0 my dear hearers, you undergo a test to-day! Peradventure you will be judging the preacher, but a greater than the preacher will be judging you: for the Word itself shall judge you. You sit here as a jury upon yourselves: your own condition will be brought clearly out by the way in which you receive or refuse the gospel of God. If you bring forth fruit to the praise of God’s grace, well; but if not, however you may seem to hear with attention, and may retain what you hear in your

0.2040.

memories, if no saving effect is produced upon your souls, we shall know that the soil of your heart has not been prepared of the Lord, but remains in its native barrenness.

What fruit have you borne hitherto from all your hearing? May I venture to put the question to each one of you very pointedly? Some of you have been hearers from your childhood — are you any the better? What long lists of sermons you must have heard by now 1 Count over your Sundays; how many they have been! Think of the good men now in heaven, to whom you once listened! Remember the tears that were drawn from you by their discourses! If you are not saved yet, will you ever be saved? If you are not holy yet, will you ever be holy? Why has the Lord spent so much on one who makes no return? To what purpose is this waste? Surely you will have much to answer for in that great day when the servants of God shall give in their accounts, and shall have no joy when they come to mention you. How will you excuse yourselves before God for having occasioned them so much disappointment?

At this time I will only deal with one class of you. I will not speak to those of you who hear the Word, and retain none of it because of the hardness of your hearts; such are the wayside hearers. Neither will I address myself to those who receive the. truth with sudden enthusiasm, and as readily quit it when trial befalls them; such are the rocky-ground hearers. But I will deal with those of you who hear the Word attentively, and, in a sense, receive it inta your hearts and understandings, so that the seed grows in you, though its fruit never comes to perfection. You are religious persons, and to all appearance you are under the influence of godliness. You exhibit plenty of leaf, but there is no corn in the ear, no substance in your Christianity. I cannot speak with any degree of physical vigour to you, by reason of the infirmity under which I struggle; but what I do say to you is steeped in earnest desire that the Lord may bless it to you. An eloquent congregation will make any preacher eloquent: help me then this morning. If you will give me your ear, you will make up for my deficiency of tongue: especially if you give to God your hearts, he will bless his truth, however feebly I may utter it.

First, I desire to talk to you a little about the seed which you havereceived; secondly about the thorns; thirdly about the result.

I. First a little about THE SEED. Remember, first, that it was the same seed in every case. Yonder it has brought forth thirty -fold; it was the same seed which was lost upon you. In a still better case, the seed has brought forth a hundred-fold; it was precisely the same corn with which your field has been sown. The sower went to hia master’s granary for all his seed; how is it that in your case it is all lost? If there were two gospels, we might expect two results with out fault in the soil which failed. But with many of you to whom I speak there has been only one gospel throughout the whole of your lives. You have been attending in this house of prayer, where we have never changed our seed, but have gone on sowing the one eternal truth of God. Many have brought forth fruit a hundred-fold from the seed which has been scattered broadcast from this platform.

§OWN AMONG THORNS. 471

They heard no more than you have hoard, but how much better they treated it than you have done! I want you to consider this. How covered with briars and thorns must your mind be that the gospel which converted your sister or friend never touched you! Though you may be nominally a believer in the Word of God, it has never so affected you as to make you gracious and holy. You are still a hearer only. How is this? The fault is not in the seed, for it is the same which has been so useful to others.

You have heard the gospel with pleasure. “Heard it!” you say, “I heard it when a little child.” Your mother brought you to the house of God in her arms. You have heard it, and still hear it, though it is rather like an old song to you: but is this to be all? I am very grateful that you do hear the gospel, for I hope that one of these days God may cause it to grow in you, and yield fruit. But still a grave responsibility is upon you. Think how favoured you have been! How will you answer for this privilege if it is neglected and rendered useless by that neglect? Dear hearers, if we lived in the heart of Africa, and we died without believing in a Christ of whom we had not heard, we could not be blamed for that: but here we are in the heart of London, where the gospel is preached in all our streets, and our blood will be on our own heads if we perish. Do you mean to go down to hell? Are you so desperate that you will go thither wearing the garb of Christians? If you do persist in ruining your souls, my eyes shall follow you with tears; and when I cannot warn you any longer, I will weep in secret places because of your perversity.

Those described in my text were not only hearers, but in a measure they accepted the good Word. The seed fell not only on this ground, but into it, so that it began to grow. Of you it is true that you do not refuse the gospel, or raise disputes concerning it. I am glad that you have no difficulties about the inspiration of Scripture, or the Deity of our Lord, or the fact of his atonement. You do not befog yourself with “modern thought,” but you avow your belief in the old, old gospel. So far so good; but what shall I make of the strange fact that your acceptance of the truth has no effect upon you? It is a very lamentable case, is it not, that a man should believe the gospel to be true, and yet should live as if it were a lie? If it be the truth, why do you not yield obedience to it? The man knows that there is an atonement for sin, but he has never confessed his sin, and accepted the great sacrifice. Those great truths, which circle about the cross like a coronet of stars, he has seen their beauty and enjoyed their brilliance, but he has never allowed their light to enter his heart, and find a reflection in his moral character. This is evil, only evil. If you believe the truth, what do you more than the devil? Nay, you are behind him, for he believes, and trembles, and you have not gone so far as the trembling. It should be so, that every great truth which is believed should influence the mind, sway the thoughts, and mould the life: this is the natural fruitage of great spiritual truth. The doctrine of grace, when it takes possession of the mind, and governs the heart, produces the purest results; but if it be held .in unrighteousness, it is a curse rather thaa a blessing to have a head-knowledge. Is it not a dreadful thing to believe God’s revelation without receiving God’s Spirit? This is to accept a well, but never to drink of the water; accept corn in the barn, and yet die of hunger. God have mercy upon the possessors of a dead faith!

The seed sown among thorns lived and continued to grow. And in many men’s minds the gospel of divine truth is growing after a fashion: they understand it better, can defend it more valorously, and speak of it more fluently. Moreover, it does influence them in some form and degree, for gross vices are forsaken. They are decent imitations of believers: you can see the shape of an ear: the stalk has struggled up through the thorns until you can see its head, and are led to expect corn. But go to that apparent wheat-ear, and feel it: there are the sheaths, but there is nothing in them; you have all the makings of an ear of wheat, but it will yield no grain. I would speak to those before me who, perhaps, have been baptized, and are members of the church; I want to ask of them a question or two. Do you not think that there is a great deal of empty profession nowadays? Do you not think that many have a name to live and are dead? uYes,” say you, “I know a neighbour whom I judge to be in that condition.” May not another neighbour judge the same of you? Would it not be well to raise the question about yourself? Have you really believed in the Lord Jesus? Are you truly converted from sin and self? Turn that sharp eye of yours homeward for a while. Examine your own actions, and judge your condition by them. Put yourself into the crucible. 0 my God, what if I should be a preacher to others, and should be myself a castaway! Will not every deacon and elder, and every individual church-member, speak to himself after the same fashion. You will go to your Sunday-school class this afternoon; will you be teaching the children what you do not know? You mean to go to a meeting this evening, and talk to others about conversion; will you be exhorting them to that which you have never yourself experienced? Will it be so? You do not need fine preaching, but you do need probing in the conscience. A thorough examination will do the healthy no harm, and it may bless the sick. “Lord, let me know the worst of my case,” is one of my frequent prayers, and I suggest it to you.

So much then about the seed: it was good seed, it was sown, it was received by the soil, it grew and promised well, but yet in the end it was unfruitful. No doubt multitudes, who receive Christianity, become regular attendants at our place of worship, and are honest in their moral character; but Christ is not all in all to them; he holds a very secondary place in their affections. Their wheat is overshadowed with a thicket of thorns, and is so choked that it come* to nothing. Their religion is buried beneath their worldliness. Sad will their end be. God in mercy save us from such a doom!

H. But now, secondly, I would speak a little about THE THORNS. They are by Matthew described as “the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches.” Luke adds, “and pleasures of this life”; and Mark still further mentions, “the lusts of other things.” I suppose that the sower did not see any thorns when he threw the handful of corn: they had all been cut down level with the surface.

He probably hoped that it was all good ground, and therefore he cowed it, little suspecting that the thorns were in possession.

Note well that thorns are natural to the soil. Since the fall these are the first-born children of the ground. Any evil which hinder? religion is not at all an extraordinary thing — it is what we ought to expect among fallen men. Grace is an exotic; thorns are indigenous. Sm is very much at home in the human heart; and, like an ill weed, it grows apace. If you wish to go to heaven, I might take a little time to show you the way, and I should need to stir you up to diligence; but if you must needs go to hell — well, “easy is the way to destruction” — it is only a little matter of neglect. “How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation?” Evil things are easy things: for they are natural to our fallen nature. Eight things are rare flowers that need cultivation. If any of you are being injured by the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches, I am not astonished; it is natural that it should be so. Therefore, be on your guard against these mischiefs. I pray you say to yourself, “Come, there is something in this man’s talk. He is very slow and dull, but still there is something in what he says. I may, after all, be tolerating those thorns in my heart which will kill the good seed, for I am of like passions and infirmities with other men.” I beseech you look to yourselves, that you be not deceived at the last.

The thorns were already established in the soil. They were not onlv the natural inhabitants of the soil, but they were rooted and fixed m it. Our sins within us claim the freehold of our faculties, and they will not give it up if they can help it. They will not ‘give way to the Holy Spirit, or to the new life, or to the influences of divine grace, without a desperate struggle. The roots of sin run through and through our nature, grasp it with wonderful force, and keep up their grasp with marvellous tenacity. 0 my dear hearer, whoever you may be, you are a fallen creature! If you were the Pope himself, or the President of the United States, or the Queen of England, it would be true of you that you were born in sin, and shapen in iniquity, and your unregenerate heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked. The established church of the town of Mansoul has the devil for its archbishop. Sin has enclasped our nature as a boa-constrictor encircles its victim; and when it has maintained its hold for twenty, forty, or sixty years, I hope you are not so foolish as to think that holy things will easily get the mastery. Our evil nature is radically, conservative, and it will endeavour to crush out every attempt at a revolution by which the grace of God should reign through righteousness. Wherefore, watch and pray, lest temptation choke that which is good in you. Watch earnestly, for grace is a tender plant in a foreign soil, in an uncongenial clime; while sin is in its own element, and is strongly rooted in the soil.

Do you know why so many professing Christians are like the thorny ground? It is because processes have been omitted which would have gone far to alter the condition of things. It was the husbandman’s business to uproot the thorns, or burn them on the spot. Years ago, when people were converted, there used to be such a thing as conviction of sin. The great subsoil plough of soul-anguish was used to tear deep into the soul. Fire also burned in the, mind with exceeding heat: as men saw sin, and felt its dreadful results, the love of it was burned out of them. But now we are dinned with braggings about rapid salvations. As for myself, I believe in instantaneous conversions, and I am glad to see them; but I am still more glad when I see a thorough work of grace, a deep sense of sin, and an effectual wounding by the law. We shall never get rid of thorns with ploughs that scratch the surface. Those fields grow the best corn which are best ploughed. Con verts are likely to endure when the thorns cannot spring up because they have been ploughed up. Dear hearer, are you undergoing to day a very severe conviction of sin? Thank God for it. Are you in awful trouble and anguish? Do not think that a calamity has happened to you. May God himself continue to plough you, and then sow you, and make sure work in you for years to come! So you see these thorns were natives, and old-established natives, and it would have been well had they been cut up.

The thorns were bound to grow. There is an awful vitality in evil. First the thorns sent up a few tiny shoots. These shoots branched out, and more and more came to keep them company, till the wheat stood as a lonely thing in a thicket of briars, and was more and more over topped and shadowed by them. The thorns aspired to the mastery, and they soon obtained it; and that done, they set to work to destroy the wheat. They blocked it up, crowded it out, and some of the thorn- shoots twisted around it, and held the wheat by the neck till it was choked.

The thorns sucked away all the nutriment from the wheat, and it was starved; for there is only a certain quantity of nourishment in the soil, and if the thorns have it, the wheat must go without it. There is only a certain amount of thought and energy in a man; and if the world gets it, Christ cannot have it. If our thoughts run upon care and pleasure, they cannot be eager about true religion: is not that clear? That is the way in which those thorns served the wheat; they starved it by devouring its food, and they choked it by keeping off the air and sun; and the poor thing became shrivelled and weak, and quite unable to produce the grain which the sower expected of it. So it is with many professing Christians. They are at first worldly, but not so very worldly. They are fairly religious, though by no means too zealous. They seek the pleasures of the world, but by no means quite so much as others we could name. But very soon the thorns grow, and it becomes doubtful which will win, sin or grace, the world or Christ. Two masters there cannot be; and in this case it is specially impossible, since neither of the contending powers will brook a rival. Sin has sprung from a royal, though evil stock, and if it be in the heart, it will struggle for the throne. So it came to pass that the tares, being tolerated, choked the good seed.

Let me describe these thorns a little. Putting together Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we find that there were four sorts of thorns. The first is called “The care of this world” This assuredly comes to the poor: they are apt to grow anxious and mistrustful about temporal things.” What shall we eat? What shall we drink? Wherewithal

8OWX AMONG THORNS. 475

shall we be clothed? “This trinity of doleful questions much afflicts many. But anxiety comes to rich people also. Care dwells with wealth as well as with poverty. “How shall I get more? How shall I lay it up? How shall I still increase it?” — and so on. It is “the care of the age” which we are most warned against. Each age has its own special fret. It is not a care for God — that is not the care of any age; but the care of the age is some vanity or another, and as a standing thing it is the ambition to keep up with your fellows, to be respectable, and to keep up appearances. This is the care which eats as doth a canker in the case of many. Grim care turns many a black hair white, and furrows many a brow. If you let care grow in your soul, it will choke up your religion: you cannot care for God and for Mammon too. “We must have care,” says one. There is a care which is proper, and there is an anxiety which is improper. That is proper care which you can cast upon God — “Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you.” That is an improper care which you dare not take to God, but have to bear yourself. Take heed of anxiety; it will eat the heart out of your religion.

There were others who felt “the deceitfulness of riches” Our Lord does not say “riches,” but “the deceitfulness of riches.” The two things grow together: riches are evermore deceitful. They deceive people in the getting of them, for they judge matters very unfairly when a prospect of gain is before them. The jingle of the charming guinea, or of “the almighty dollar,” makes a world of difference to the ear when it is hearing a case. Men cannot afford to lose by integrity, and so they take the doubtful way, and either sail near the wind, or speculate till it amounts to gambling. They would not endure the idea of such conduct, were it not that the hope of gain deceives them. Our line of conduct ought never to be ruled by gain or loss. Do right if the heavens fall. Do no wrong, even though a kingdom should be its reward. Men turn to Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” a wonderful book, and there they find certain laws which I believe to be as fixed and unalterable as the laws of gravitation; led on by the deceitfulness of riches, men make these laws into an excuse for grinding the faces of the poor. They might as well take people to the top of a rock, fling them down, and dash them to pieces, and then cry out, “This is the natural result of the law of gravitation.” Of course r the law of gravitation operates remorselessly, and so will the law of supply and demand; but we must not use either of these laws as a cover for cruelty to the poor and needy: yet. many do so through “the deceitfulness of riches.”

Biches are very deceitful when they are gained, for they breed in men many vices which they do not themselves suspect. One man is purse-proud, but he thinks he is humble. He is a self-made man. and worships him that made him. Is it not natural that a man should worship his maker? In his heart he thinks: “I am somebody. I came up to London with half -a- crown in my pocket, and now I could buy a whole street!” People ought to respect a man of that kind, ought they not, even though he may have made his money by very queer practices? It little matters how you make money nowadays: Galy get it, and you will have plenty of admirers, and the deceitfulness of riches will enable you to admire yourself. With pride comes a desire for wealthy society and vain company; and thus again religion receives severe injury. There is apt to grow up in the mind an idolatry of this world and its treasures. “I don’t love money,” says one. “You know it is not money that is the root of all evil, but the love of it.” Just so; but are you sure that you do not love it? Your thoughts run a good deal after it. You hug it rather closely, and you find it hard to part with it. I will not accuse you; but I would have you awake to the fact that riches worm themselves into a man’s heart before he is well aware of it.

You may perceive the deceitfulness of riches if you note the excuses which men make for getting so much and withholding it from the cause of Q-od. “They intend to do a great deal of good with it.” Did you hear the devil laugh? I am not speaking of many dear brethren in this place who are doing a great deal of good with their means; but I am speaking of those who are simply living to accumulate wealth, and say that they will one day do a great deal of good with it. They say so. Will it ever be more than saying? I fear that in this thing many lich men deceive themselves. They go -on accumulating the means, but never using them: making bricks, but never building. All they will get will be a corner in “The Illustrated London News” to say that they died worth so much. 0 sirs, how can you be content thus to have your good things choked? Wherever this deceitfulness of riches is allowed the upper hand, it chokes the good seed. A man cannot be eager to get, and eager to keep, and eager to increase, and eager to become a millionaire, and at the same time be a true servant of the Lord Jesus. As the body grows rich the soul grows poor.

Luke tells us of another kind of weed, namely, “the pleasures of this life” I am sure that these thorns play a dreadful part nowadays. I have nothing to say against recreation in its proper place. Certain forms of recreation are needful and useful; but it is a wretched thing when amusement becomes a vocation. Amusement should be used to do us good “like a medicine”: it must never be used .as the food of the man. From early morning till late at night some spend their time in a round of frivolities, or else their very work is simply carried on to furnish them funds for their pleasures. This is vicious. Many have had all holy thoughts and gracious resolutions stamped out by perpetual trifling. Pleasure so called is the murderer of thought. This is the age of excessive amusement: everybody craves for it, like a babe for its rattle. In the more sober years of our fathers, men had something better to live for than silly sports. The thorns are choking the age.

Mark adds, “and the lusts of other things.” I will not enumerate all those other things; but all things except the things of Christ and of the Father are “other things.” If anybody spends his life on any object, however good, short of the glory of Glod, the good seed is choked by the inferior object. One person is eminently scientific, and he will do well if his science is used for holy purposes; but it can be used to choke the seed. One man is a great proficient in the arts, and tie does well if the arts are used as a mule for Christ to ride upon; but if art is to ride upon Christ, then it is ill enough. I met with -a clergyman many years ago who was going a long distance to find a new beetle. He was a great entomologist, and I did not blame him for it, for to a thoughtful man entomology may yield many profitable lessons. But if he neglected his preaching to catch insects, then I do not wonder that a parishioner should wish that the beetles would nibble his old sermons, for they were very stale. I call it choking the seed -when any inferior pursuit becomes the master of our minds, and the <:ause of God and truth takes a secondary place. The seed is choked in our souls whenever Christ is not our all in all. You see my drift: be it what it may — gain, glory, study, pleasure — all these may be briers that will choke the seed.

Mr. Jay was never more pleased than when at Bristol he had a note «ent up to him which ran as follows: — “A young man, who is prospering in business, begs the prayers of God’s people that prosperity may not be a snare to him.” Take care that you look thus upon your prosperity. My dear friend, Dr. Taylor, of New York, speaks of some Christians nowadays as having a “butterfly Christianity.” When time, and strength, and thought, and talent are all spent upon mere amusement, what else are men and women but mere butterflies? l Society” is just a mass of idle people, keeping each other in countenance. 0 dear hearers, surely we did not come into this world to play away our days! I do not think we came into this world either to slave ourselves to death, or to rust away in laziness. We have come here as a man enters into the porch that he may afterwards enter the house. This life is the doorway to the palace of heaven. Pass through it in such style that you may enter before the King with holy joy. If you give your minds and thoughts to these passing things, be they what they may, you will ruin your souls, for the good seed cannot grow.

III. So I close in the last place by noticing THE RESULT. The seed was unfruitful.

These briers and thorns could not pull the seed up, or throw it away: it remained where it was, but they choked it. So it may be that your business, your cares, your pleasures, have not torn up your religion by the roots — it is there still, such as it is. But these things suffocate your better feelings. A man that is choked is not good for much. If a thief gets into his house, and he desires to defend his property, what can he do while he is choked? He must wait till he gets his breath again. What an amount of choked religion we have around us! It may be alive: I do not know whether it is or not; but it looks very black in the face. God save you from having your religion choked!

I have already told you it was drained of all its sustenance. Look at many Christians; I call them Christians, for they call themselves so. A boy in the streets, selling mince-pies, kept crying, “Hot mince-pies!” A person bought one of them, and found it quite cold. “Boy,” said he, “why did you call these pies hot?” “That’s the name they go by, sir,” said the boy. So there are plenty of people that are called Christians, but they are not Christians — that’s the name they go by; but all the substance is drained out of them by other matters You see the shape of a Christian, the make of a Christian, and some of the talk of a Christian, but the fruit of a Christian is not there. That is the result of the choking by the thorns of care, riches, pleasure, and worldliness in general.

What life there was in the wheat was very sickly. Let me remind certain persons that their spiritual life is growing weak at this time. Morning prayer this morning, how long did it take? Do not grow red in the face. I will say no more about it. You are not coming out to night, are you? Half a Sunday is enough worship for you. Would you not like to live in some country place, where you did not need to go out to a place of worship even once? Bible-reading, how much do you do of that? Family prayer, is that a delight to you? Why, numbers of so-called Christians have given up family religion altogether. How about week-day services? You are not often at a prayer-meeting. No, the distance is too great! Thursday night service? “Well, well, you see I might come, but there happens to be a lawn-tennis party that night.” Will you come in the winter? “Yes, I would, but then a friend drops in, and we have an evening at bagatelle.” How many there are in this condition! I am not going to judge them; but I remember that an eminent minister used to say, “When week-day services are forsaken, farewell to the life of godliness.” Such people never seem to bathe in their religion, but they give themselves a wetting with the end of the towel j thus they try to look decent, but they are not inwardly cleansed.

As to confessing Christ before men, many fail altogether. If you were pushed into a corner, and were asked if you were a Christian, you would say, “Well, I do go to a place of worship,” but you are by no means anxious to own the soft impeachment. Our SalvEStion Army friends are not ashamed of their religion; why should you be? Our Quaker friends used to wear broad brims, but they are very properly giving up their peculiar garb: I hope it is not to be to you an. indication that you may conceal your religion, and be as much as possible like the world. Do you hope to be soldiers, and yet never wear your regimentals? This is one of the marks of feeble religion.

When it comes to defending the gospel, where do you see it in this age? I hoped that many would be found among Baptists who would care for the truth; but now I come to the conclusion that it is with many, as with the showman, when asked which was Wellington, and which was Buonaparte: “Whichever you please, my little dears. Pay your money, and take your choice!” Free will or free grace, human merit or Christ’s atonement, it does not matter now. New theology or old theology, human speculation or divine revelation — who minds? What do they care whether Grod’s truth stands or the devil’s lies? I am weary of these drivellers! The thorns have choked the seed in the pulpits and in the churches as well as in private individuals. Oh, that God would return! Oh, that his Spirit would raise up among us men who believe indeed, and prove the power of their belief!

The fruit of much modern piety is nil. I sat down one day with three or four old Christian men. We had no sooner met than we began to speak of the providential dealings of God with his people: ws related instances of answers to prayer, and we spoke of the sovereign grace of God, and his faithfulness to his saints. When we had gone a little forward in the conversation, one remarked how he had enjoyed the talk. “Alas!” said he, “nobody talks about God now: his providence and his readiness to hear prayer are seldom mentioned now the talk is all about the markets, and the weather, and Home Rule, and Mr. Gladstone, and Disestablishment; but little enough about the Lord Jesus Christ.” That witness was true. In old times the Lord’s people spake often one to another, and the Lord stood at the window and listened: — “The Lord hearkened, and heard it.” He liked their talk so well, that he said he would print it — “A book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name.” Where do you get experimental Christian talk now? The thorns choke holy communion upon the best things.

Fervent prayer! Mighty prayer! Where do you meet with it? Thank God, we have some brethren here whose prayers could unlock the windows of heaven, or shut them up; but it is not so with many. Oo to the prayer-meetings of most of the churches. What poor things! Of course I find in country places that many drop the prayer-meeting during hay- time and harvest. In London they do not drop the prayer-meetings in summer, because they are too small to need dropping: they take up the fragment of a prayer-meeting and mend with it the worn-out lecture, so that it becomes neither lecture nor prayer-meeting. How can we expect a blessing when we are too lazy to ask for it? Is it not evidence of a dying religion when, to cover their carelessness about meeting for prayer, we even hear ministers doubting the value of prayer-meetings, and calling them “religious expedients “?

Where do you meet with intense enjoyment of the things of God? The spiritual life is low when there is little delight in holy service. Oh, for the old Methodistic fire! Oh, to feel our hearts dance at the sound of Jesus’ name! Oh, to flame up like beacon fires, and blaze towards heaven with holy ecstasy! It is a sorrowful day when religion goes abroad without wearing her ornaments of joy. When an army has left its flag behind, it has evidently given up all idea of victory.

If there is a declension in spiritual life, we cannot expect to see deeds of holy consecration. Oh, for men and women who bring their alabaster boxes to Jesus! I am glad when I hear this kind of lamentation. u Mj’- dear sir, I have not done for the Lord what I ought to have done. I have been a believer now for many years, but I have not given to his cause what I ought to have given; tell me what I can do.” There are hopeful signs in such enquiries, and therefore they are well; but it would be better to begin early, and avoid such regrets.

I would put it to you, my dear hearer, have you been fruitful? Have you been fruitful with your wealth? Have you been fruitful with your talent? Have you been fruitful with your time? What are you doing for Jesus now? Salvation is not by doings, you are saved by grace; but if you are so saved, prove it by your devoted lives. Consecrate yourself anew this day wholly to your Master’s service. You are not your own, but bought with a price; and if yoa. would not be like these thorn-choked seeds, live while you live, withall-consuming zeal.

“Well,” says one, “but there are the thorns.” I know there are :. they were here when our blessed Lord came anmng us, and they made him a cruel crown. Are you going to grow more of them? May I urge, you to give up cultivating thorns? They are useless; they come to no good. Whatever the pursuit is, short of the glory of God, it is a thorn, and there is no use in it. It will in the end be painful to you as it was to your Lord. A thorn will tear your flesh, ay, tear your heart. Specially when you come to die will these thorns be in your pillow. Even if you die in the Lord, it will grieve your heart to think you did not live more to Jesus. If you live for these things, you will, rue the day, for they are like thorns, painful in the getting, painful in the keeping, and painful in the extraction: you who have had a thorn in your hand know what I mean. Worldly cares come with pain, they stay with pain, and they go with pain.

Still, there is a use for thorns. What is that use? First, if you have thorns about you to-day, make a child’s use of them. WTiat does a child do? If he gets a thorn in his finger, he looks at it, and cries. How it smarts! Then he runs off to his mother. That is one of the sweet uses of his adversity, it admits him to his mother at once. She might say, “What are you coming in for? Run about the garden.” But he cries, “Please, mother, I’ve got a thorn in my finger.” This is quite enough argument to secure him the best attention of the queen of the house. See how tenderly she takes out the little dagger! Let your cares drive you to God. I shall not mind if you have many of them if each one leads you to prayer. If every fret makes you lean more on the Beloved, it will be a benefit. Thus make good use of the thorns.

Another service to which thorns may be put is to make a hedge of them, to keep the goats of worldly pleasure from eating the young shoots of your graces. Let the sorrows of life keep off temptations which else might do you serious mischief.

May we meet in heaven! Oh, may we all meet in heaven! What a congregation I have addressed this morning! I feel overawed as-I look at you. From the ends of the earth have many of you come. The Lord bless you! Strangers are here in vast numbers, for the most of our regular hearers are at the sea-side. I may never see you again on earth. May we all meet in heaven, where thorns will never grow! May we be gathered by the angels in that day when the Lord shall say, “Gather the wheat into my barn “! Amen. So let it be.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Matt. xiii. 1 — 23.

HYMNS FROM” OUR OWN HYMN BOOK’’ — 916, 643, 30

This sermon will be issued separately, in book form, for distributioa, Price One Penny.

cti[0ptitmt Wrmrade

THE SEED UPON STONY GROUND.

DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 14ra, 1873, BY
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

“And some fell on stony ground, where it had not much earth; and immediately it sprang up, because it had no depth of earth: hut when the sun was up, it was scorched; and because it had no root, it withered away.1’ — Mark iv. 5, 6.

THE gospel seed, according to the parable, falls upon all kinds of soil. Some of its precious grains drop upon the hard pathway, some upon the rock, some amongst the thorns, and only a portion, perhaps a smaller proportion than one in four, falls upon good ground, in which it finds a congenial abiding-place. The preacher, therefore, will not meet with unmixed success in all directions. He may look for a full recompense from his work as a whole, but he must not fondly suppose that everywhere the good word will become effectual; for in many it will be a savour of death unto death, and not of life unto life. Even when Jesus preached but few received him, and of Paul’s ministry it is recorded that “some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not.” It is for the beginner in holy service to go forward with reasonable expectations, lest he should ere long weary of the work and leave it because of his bitter disappointments.

Mark, with care, that the sower in the parable is not blamed for having scattered his seed upon soil which proved to be unproductive; not a word of censure is recorded against him on that account; from which it is fair to infer that he did no more and no less than his duty, and that the minister of Christ is to scatter the seed of the gospel broadcast among all mankind. It is God’s work to direct the saving word into the chosen hearts which he has prepared to receive it, but as for us, we are to preach the gospel to every creature, and going out into the streets and lanes of the city, as many as we find we are to bid to the supper. Many are called but few are chosen; it was never intended that the external call should be as narrow as the election; yet there are some ministers whose preaching consists far more of an analysis of soils than of a sowing of seed. Leaving the analyzing of the soil to God, I take my commission from his hands and desire No. 1,132 61 to fulfil it. Stony-ground hearer, there is a handful of seed for you; you who are hard like the trodden road, there is a handful for you; and even among the thorns, which are plentiful enough in this age, shall the good seed fall like a heavenly shower; and if God shall graciously direct it to his own chosen, and they, like the good ground, shall receive it, it will be his doing, it will never be effected by any skill of mine. It is mine to sow beside all waters, and his to give the increase. The best shot that was ever made with bow and arrow was taken at a venture, and Ahab the king was pierced between the joints of his harness; so also, while drawing my bow to preach the gospel to every creature, my faith feels confident that the Lord will direct the arrow and effect his purposes of grace.

I feel that I have very solemn work on hand. I have always pleasure in preaching upon encouraging topics, but this morning my themes are for sifting and testing. We have to deal with certain apparently good people, and to show that they are not what they seem. We have to put corn from the barn-floor into the sieve, and it may be there will be much chaff to be blown away; this is an operation not pleasant to the flesh, and one which needs much of the Spirit of God that we may perform it aright, lest the weak ones be sorely troubled, which is far enough from our desire. Solemn discourse should have a solemn heart to utter it, and solemn hearts to hear it: may God grant it may be so at this time, that the sermon may be greatly profitable to every one of us, whether professors of the gospel or not.

First, we shall read the history of stony-ground hearers; secondly, we shall mark the radical defect of their character; and, thirdly, we shall try to learn a lesson from the whole.

I. First, we have here A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY OF CERTAIN PROFESSORS OF RELIGION. Let us read it carefully. It is said of them, first, that they heard the word. “These are they which are sown on stony ground wno, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness.” They enjoyed the great privilege of hearing God’s word They heard the real gospel, they did not attend upon ritualistic falsehoods, or philosophic speculations: it was the word which they heard. The sower did not sow tares, but he sowed good corn. How happy are those who sit under a downright gospel ministry! May God be pleased to multiply such ministries everywhere, and the lovers of them! How can we expect salvation to come to us if we do not hear the soul-saving gospel? If we are listening merely to opinions and notions and philosophies and superstitions, and not to the very word of God, we cannot expect to find salvation. The Holy Ghost does not save men by means of lies, but if we hear the truth as it is in Jesus, we may hope that he will make it effectual to our conversion.

Remember, next, that hearing is not enough. “Hearers only” will not enter heaven; there must be a doing of the word as well as a hearing of it. These people were good hearers, capital hearers, for they went further than hearing — they received the word; not in the divine power or supernatural efficacy of it, but they nevertheless received it, that is to say, they never cavilled at it, they assented to it: as they heard it, and recognised it as ‘God’s truth. Receiving it, it produced an effect upon them. They were, in a measure, impressed by it.

If the sermon spo* e of the wrath of God on account of sin, they were alarmed if it told them of the love of God in Ohi’ist Jesus, they were encouraged. They did not always hear with dry eyes; they were not always like the seuts they sat upon, unmoved and stolid; but they received the word, it stirred their affections and their emotions, they felt its moving effects, and were thus led to many changes of life. They went home and swept the chambers which had been full of filthiness; they cleansed, at any rate, the outside of their cups and platters, and took care that the sepulchre, if not cleansed of the dead men’s bones, should be decently whitewashed, so as to shock no passer by. They were improved and reformed externally by what they heard, and so far they received it.

And there is this said about them, in the third place, that they received it immediately. In them it excited no questions, doubts, or conflicts. The preacher said, “This the word of God,” and they were content to believe him, though they knew not why. While other minds were asking for the authority of the message, and then, having recognised the authority, were battling hard with a thousand difficulties, these persons saved themselves a world of trouble by never thinking at all. It was their father’s religion and their mother’s religion, therefore they believed it, they swallowed the pill with their eyes shut, caring nothing whether it was God’s truth or Satan’s lie. Any thing like spiritual mastication of the doctrine they did not attempt, but they endorsed wholesale whatever they were taught. Priests themselves could not desire more plastic material. These hearers had no hard strugglings to get at the Saviour, no sense of sin to hold them back, no horrors of conscience to make them afraid, no alarms lest they should not be the Lord’s own people after all, no testings and sittings to see whether they possessed real repentance and acceptable faith. They sprang into religion as a man may leap into a bath, head over heels at once. They said, “Surely this is the right thing, and we will have it;” and after a certain sort they did have it: not with any depth of consideration or weight of judgment, but immediately they received the word.

It is added, they received it with giadness. The immediate effect 01 receiving the word was to make them very happy; and there are not a few who suppose that to be made very happy is a sure sign of being converted. Believe me, it is a very dubious sign indeed. No doubt, one grand effect of the reception of the gospel into the heart is to bring joy and peace through believing, but there are many kinds of joy, and many sorts of peace; and there is a joy which is not the fruifc of grace, but the growth of nature, and a peace which comes from delusion, and not from the Spirit of God. We must take care we do not conclude that we are safe because we are “so happy.” The rich man who went to hell was happy when he i’ared sumptuously every day; the farmer, who said he would pull down his barns and build greater, was happy when he surveyed his stores; and so was the prodigal son happy while he was spending his living riotously, but’ theirs was a very different kind of joy from that which is the fruit of the Spirit. The characters in our text looked at the happy side of religion exclusively. “There, “said the stony-ground hearer,” there is my mother; what a happy Christian she is. I have seen her in deep trial borne up by the Spirit of God; I have marked her when we have had deaths in the house, and seen how peaceful and quiet she has been: I will lay hold on Christ, for then I shall be as happy as she is.” These stony-ground hearers thought what a happy thing it must be to be forgiven; and so, indeed, it is, but they dwelt “upon that alone. To be pardoned, to be a child of God, to be accepted in the Beloved, what precious things these must be! And what a delightful thing to be numbered with God’s saints, to go to the communion table, and to be thought much of in the church! Are not all these ways of pleasantness? And to go to heaven at last, to die triumphantly, to be taken up to dwell where Jesus is amidst the glory; what joyful things! Who doubts it? But these people dwelt only upon this view of the matter, and did not recollect that between this and heaven there are temptations to be combatted and to be overcome, trials to be endured, stern trials, too, through which we can only be brought by divine help. Right arms must be cut off, and right eyes must be plucked out; there are costs to be counted, and reckonings to be made, as to whether the future will repay for the labours of the present. Youthful Hopefuls vow that they will have the brave country of Canaan, but they do not recollect the roughness of the road thither. Like Pliable, they set out for the Celestial City, but they have not reckoned upon the Slough of Despond, and therefore after the first mouthful of mud they are ready to turn back, and let those have the brave country who care for it; as for them, if they can keep whole bones in their body, they will be well content to let the future go as it may.

These people, then, immediately received the word with joy. How hopeful all this must have looked to the sower! Do you not see how easily ministers may be deceived? When you have only to preach, and men are willing to hear; only to preach and men are willing to receive, — to receive the gospel at once, without causing you any difficulty in arguing with them; when they receive it with gladness, and you have not the trouble to cheer them up, and to meet their doubts and anxieties with a thousand promises selected out of the word of God; is not this splendid work, which will richly repay the sower? Alas, we must not reckon our fruit by our buds! All is not gold that glitters, and it is not every egg that will be hatched.

We read yet further that these characters made rapid progress, — they sprang up because they had no depth of earth; because of their shallow soil they were very rapid in their growth. These people heard the gospel one day, received it, and felt sure that they were saved; at once they were full of joy and transport, and hastened to make a profession. They did not require time to sit down and see whether they could bear out that profession, or seek grace that they might not run before they were called; but away they went, just as if a spark had been dropped into so much powder. They made a profession, and the next week they were teaching in the Sunday-school. They were so sure they were on the r’ght road, that they were very vexed with other pilgrims who did not travel so rapidly. When they heard of Christians being anxious as to their condition, they said, “What nonsense! What reason was there for it v “If they sw a deep-taught Christian tremblingly examining himself, they said,” Oh, you must not look at all at yourself; nevei consider what is going on within.” They had received a one-sided gospel only, and that quite contented them; but as to anything like the work of the Spirit of God in the soul, and the holy jealousy which is one of the best fruits of vital godliness, these they quite dispensed with. They were going to drag the church behind them, and drive the world before them; and very soon they would distance even the ministry which had been the means, as they said, oi their conversion. They grew from hyssops on the wall to cedars of Lebanon in about a week. They were THE men, and wisdom would die with them. Grand work to have to deal with these men, is not it? “We shall see by-and-by, and shall have to learn that not every stem that puts forth leaves is a fruit-bearing branch.

In due time, according to the parable, came the trial. The seed was up, and soon the sun was up too, and began to scorch it. None will get to heaven without being tried on the road. Ask concerning those who stand in their white robes before the throne of God, who are those, and whence came they? And the answer will be, “These are they that came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb.” There is not a fragment of gold in all God’s temple but what has passed through the fire. Untried faith is no faith, untried grace is no grace. God will try his people and discern between the precious and the vile.

According to the Saviour’s explanation of the text, the trial came in the form of persecution. Ah! how many there are who have received the word with gladness, who, if there were a stake in Smithfield, would very soon drop the profession of Christianity, for it would be too hot for them; or if there were a prison ready for them in which they must lie till the moss grew on their eyelids, they would soon forsake the truth and turn aside to error. We need not be much afraid of the revival of such tests, but there are other forms of persecution which mere professors are equally unable to bear. A sneer in society; a remark against Christianity from a person whom you are accustomed to respect; a look from someone who is above you in wealth, as he despises you for professing to be a follower of Christ; unkind remarks from a father, opposition from a husband, the desertion of some young companion with whom you hoped your life would be linked;” such matters — nothing like the stake or the prison — are yet quite sufficient to overcome flimsy professors, so that they are offended, and turn their backs upon the religion which they once so quickly espoused. In many instances to follow principle would involve a great loss in business: they could not afford to incur such a loss. If Christ could be had at a cheaper rate, they would have him, but to lose all the treasures in Egypt! No, they could not do that, and so they renounce again that Christ whom they once called their all-in-all.

With others it has not been such a trial as that, but providential affliction. I painfully remember a man and his wife, who were members of this church for some time, and it was certainly true, as they affirmed, that from the very hour they made profession of religion they began to be in trouble; and therefore they renounced the consolation because of the affliction, for they drew the conclusion that surely they could not be the people of God, or else God would not have so tried them, a conclusion the reverse of the teachings of Scripture. Many will have Christ if he will pat them on the cheek, but not if he flog them with the rod. They will follow the Lord while he is on the giving hand, but they cannot believe in a God who takes away. They can bless him while he enriches them, but they know nothing of that Job-like faith which exclaims, “The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Or, perhaps, it may be that when they first made a profession of religion they did not know much about the temptations of life, but now they have moved from home, they have obtained a situation where there are young men who tell them of haunts of pleasurable vice; or they have left the circle’ of godly people in which they once moved, and are cast amongst ungodly ones, and, alas, their mouths are watering for the sweets of the world: the basilisk of sinful pleasure has cast a spell over them, and now Christ may go for Belial, true religion for worldliness, and following God for the indulgence of the flesh. Ah, how often is this the case!

Or, perhaps, another shining of the sun has come upon them. They thought they believed the gospel, but they have fallen among debaters; they are surrounded by a sceptical circle, where they have heard arguments they never heard before, and never having weighed anything, or considered the reasons why they believed in God and in Christ, they are quite staggered. They have no depth of earth, no root-hold of the truth by conviction, and solemn judgment of it; and so as soon as they meet with an atheist or a deist, or a sceptic of any form, they are like thistledown before the wind. Having no ballast in their vessel, the first breeze oversets them and they are lost. What a grand thing it is to be established in the faith, rooted, grounded, settled. I remember reading of one who said, “When I read the arguments brought by infidels against the gospel, I laugh them to scorn, because they are nothing like so deep, cunning, or hard to answer, as the arguments which my own heart has brought against the Lord in years gone by, which having answered and overcome, I feel myself more than a match for the puny oppositions of ungodly men.” It is a grand thing not to be moved in these sceptical times, but to know the Lord by secret intercourse with him, to know his truth by inner consciousness, and by a devout reading of his word with <eyes opened from above. Alas, many hearers and receivers of the word have been destroyed by carping infidels; they knew nothing thoroughly, and so were readily deceived.

It is said of the stony-ground people that immediately they were offended. They were just as soon out of love with the gospel as they were in with it. “Immediately they were offended.” They did not at first stop to enquire why they should be Christians, and now they do not stop to argue why they should renounce their profession. They took their religion hot from the oven, and dropped it before it was cool enough to feed on. Somebody said, “Believe, believe, believe!” and they were excited; and now another speaker says, “Do not believe; do not believe!” and they are excited the other way. They went in with a, crowd of others all on a sudden during a revival; and now they are going out with the crowd during a season of lukewar ainess. The minister took them in at the front door, and now he has to let them out at the back door. They have disappointed him, they have brought scandal upon the church, and double responsibility upon themselves, and now they are just as earnest to give up religion as they were to profess it. Unhappy souls, volatile in everything, frivolous about the solemnities of eternity, ready to be right if rightly led, and as ready to be wrong if wrongly driven. Having no mind of their own, they are molluscous creatures — without a backbone, mere jelly-fish; nothing solid or consistent can be found in them. Their sand-built houses are no sooner up than they are washed down by the tide; they have no rocky foundations, no strong grips of truth, no principles; their motive powers are submission to persuasion, admiration of eloquence, and desire of approbation. Unhappy! Unhappy! Unhappy! God grant that we may not belong to such a class.

II. I shall show THEIR RADICAL DEFECT. Their radical defect, in the first place, lay in an unbroken heart. The parable does not refer to ground with stones in it, such as we commonly call stony ground, for that will grow corn well enough, but to soil where there was a hard rock underneath, and only a very thin covering of earth. A hard pan of iron rock was at the bottom, and it was barely hidden by a little mould created by the lichens and mosses, enough to catch the seed and make it germinate, but not enough to feed its roots for any length of time. In these people their hearts have never been broken. “Is not my word like a hammer, saith the Lord? “They do not know, for it never hammered them. They got their joy and peace without a blow. What is to be done with a piece of ground which has the rock so close to the surface? Nothing can be done with it by man. The only thing that can be done is for God to come in, and when God in his infinite mercy changes the rock into good soil, then the wheat will grow, but not till then.” A new heart also will I give you, and a right spirit will I put within you. I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh.” There must be a work of the Holy Ghost by which the natural rock of nature shall be turned into the good soil of grace, or else all the sowing in the world will never produce a harvest. These people skipped over that, and in fact they did not like to hear of it. They liked preachers who always preached simple faith in the work of Jesus, but never mentioned the work of the Holy Spirit, — lopsided preachers, messengers whose legs are not equal, who deliver half God’s message and no more: and under such teaching they found peace without soul-trouble, and comfort without the new birth. As for repentance, that old-fashioned grace, they despised it. Weeping before God on account of sin, terror under a sense of God’s wrath, or fear lest the sentence of his law should be executed, they never knew. They passed into the land of hope without going round by Weeping Cross, and every day I grow more and more suspicious of a man’s religion if he has not gone round by that road. A man who was healed before he was wounded, clothed before he was stripped, filled before he was empty, made alive before he was slain, has good reason to suspect whether sovereign grace has ever laid its hand upon him. These people with the unbroken heart had gladsome hopes and joyful confidences, but they all came to an end, as they will do in your case and mine if we are strangers to contrition. Ever be it remembered that, true as it is that whosoever believeth in Jesus Christ shall be saved, it is equally true “Ye must be born again; “” Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven; “” That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit;” and “flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.” It is only the birth of the spirit, the spiritual nature, that can enter into spiritual matters and become a possessor of truly spiritual joys. An unbroken heart is a fatal defect.

This led to a second fault, namely, want of depth. The stony-ground hearer was all surface; everything about him was superficial. The rock never having been broken there was no depth of earth to plough. So in many men who profess to be converted, there has been no real estimate of sin. “Yes, we are sinners,” they say, “Oh, vest, yes, of course we are all sinners;” but to feel what it is to be a sinnei is quite another thing. To be crushed down to the earth under a sense of having violated the thrice holy law of God, this many have never felt. And Jesus Christ — yes, he is a Saviour, and they will say they take him for a Saviour; but what it is to be saved, what it was he suffered, why he needed to suffer, what was the tremendous guilt that compelled such a sacrifice, they have never considered; in fact, they have never thought at all, and they do not mean to think. Bees descend into the flowers and suck out the honey, but butterflies alight on the lilies for a moment, and are away again, true emblems of flippant pretenders to grace. Many persons who profess to be Christians seem to have no acquaintance with the plague of their own hearts; they believe that there is something amiss within, but they do not know that their heart is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked;” consequently, though they admit they need divine grace, they do not know how much they need it. They would subscribe to the truth, “Without me ye can do nothing,” but they do not know it experimentally. They are ‘Strangers to those failures and inward disappointments which lead a man to feel his nothingness. It is surface work; nothing is deep about them. When they became professors of the religion of Christ they never weighed the truth, or searched the Scriptures to see whether things are indeed so. They were Calvinists because the preacher was Calvinistic; they would have been Arminians quite as readily if the preacher had been Arminian; in fact, they would have been anything they were taught to be; they never judged, weighed, and considered for themselves. In espousing the truth as it is in Jesus they never calculated the difficulties of a religious life. It did not strike them that they would have to fight with sin without and sin within; they never looked at that mighty trinity, the world, the flesh, and the devil, with which they would have to wage a life-long combat. They took the sweets, and thought not of the bitter herbs. They were volatile, and are volatile still. They cannot think, neither can you persuade them to attempt it. This is a fault indeed.

And then there was a third defect: the secret part of their religion was i failure. The seed on the stony ground did not fail in the sprouting, nor in the blade wb ich appeared above; but it had no root. If you were to trace some professors home, you would find no secret, prayer. Let that woid go through this congregation, if there are any of you living in the neglect of secret prayer. No secret prayer, no secret reading of the Word of God, no chewing of it to get the essence and the juice out of it, no vital contact with Christ in private, no communion of the soul in secret with the living God! This is a deadly sign! They were at the public meeting; they were fussy enough upon committees; they could be first and foremost if there were any singing to be done, or if there were any preaching required; but oh, the secret prayer, the secret living with God, the soul-searching, the trying of the reins to see whether they were right or wrong — they had given this all up. Taking it for granted that they must be right because they have a sort of faith, they look upon every question as to their safety as so much unbelief, and the work of Satan, and so they wrap themselves up in their delusions. They think they must be the people of God because they profess themselves to be such, but they have never looked for the fruit which must be borne by every branch of the true vine.

And go, fourthly, there was another thing which I do not think you will find in Mark, but you will see it in one of the other evangelists — they lacked moisture. Now, a plant must have moisture. Dew, rain, or some sort of watering must come to it. On that little soil with a hard rock at the bottom there was plenty of heat when the sun shone, and so the little moisture it had made the seed sprout at once, but it had no further moisture, and therefore became parched. So certain hearers get a little moisture, as it were, by contact with an earnest preacher, they come under that word which drops as the dew an<i distils as the rain, but they have not the vitalizing Holy Ghost at their root to be the perpetual source of life. They have their lamps, but they have no oil in their vessels to keep them trimmed. They lack the moisture of the Holy Ghost. He it is that comes to his own people secretly, at the roots of their life, so that from him they suck up the life of God, and so they live: but the mere stony-ground convert has not the Holy Ghost. And oh, permit me to say most solemnly to every one here, if we have no more than nature gave us under its best conceivable circumstances, we have no more than the Pharisees, and that landed them in hell. We must have the Spirit of God, and from first to last the religion of our hearts must be wrought of the Spirit, and sustained by the Spirit, and if it be not, the sooner we are rid of such a religion the better, for it will only deceive us. I feel the necessity of preaching such a sermon as this, because I perceive church members going aside into open sin, and others turning aside to one or another of the new delusions of the present age, and there seems to be a new one every month. Some foolish people stand with their mouths open ready for any novelty to fly down their throats. They are as dry straw, only wanting some impostor to apply the spark to them, and yet they call themselves Christians. There are so many now-a-days who do not know what they believe, and so become the prey of Romanists, Ritualists, Atheists, or some other deceivers. There is a little plant in the garden, and a thief comes along and takes away root and all; he will not do so with a well rooted oak, I warrant you: and if we were well rooted like the oak, we should believe what we do believe, and know what we do know; and should have principle to keep us steady. The old Nonconformists, might have been dragged to prison or to the stake without difficulty; but to get them to yield their nonconformity, or put aside their principles, was not possible; alas for the degenerate sons of such sturdy fathers. If what you believe be not true, fling it away; but if it be true, let your faces be like flints and your natures like iron against all the temptations of this wicked, ever-changing age, which flies this way and that, but always away from its God. Oh, when shall it be that those who know the Lord shall stand fast, and having done all, shall still stand!

III. Thirdly, I must close by trying to teach THE LESSON OF THE TEXT. That lesson is four-fold. It says to each one of us, le deeply in earnest. Do not play at religion. Do not think of a religious profession as a garb which you can put on and take off. Pray God to make sure work in your soul, sure work for eternity. You have to die, you have to face the judgment seat; have a religion that will bear those ordeals. Pray to have such a work of the Spirit in your soul that neither death nor judgment can alarm you. Cry to God that repentance may be cut deep into you, making lasting marks in you, that your faith may be no sham faith, but a giving up of your soul entirely into the hands of Christ; that your love to Christ may be no rhapsody, but a matter of real heart-affection; that your religious walk may not be for other people to see, but be a walk before God; that all your actions may be the result of principle, and that you may not be swayed by company, but rather may sway company, and may have a vital force within yourself of God’s implanting, that will bear you on in the straight road, whichever way others may take. I say again, Be awfully in earnest about everything that concerns religion, and pray God to forgive you if in any measure you have been flippant concerning it.

Secondly, watch the effect of your own daily trials. See how they affect you. If a boat is ready to sink in the Thames, it ought never to be trusted at sea. If your religion already begins to fail you, what will it do by-and-by? You were laughed at, and you were half inclined to give it all up: what would you do if you were more sternly persecuted? You have already been willing to go back, your heart has faltered: what will you do if fiercer temptations assail you? You have already been terribly put to it by the arguments of a fool: what would you do if some of the deep thinkers were to argue with you? “If thou hast run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, how wilt thou contend with horsemen? And if, in the land of peace wherein thou hast trusted, they have wearied thee, what wilt them do in the swellings of Jordan?” I do not object to your growing slowly if you grow surely. If my house takes a long time in building, I would rather give the builder his time than tell him to run it up in a week or two, and make it so frail that the first wind would blow it away like cardboard. You have to live in this house eternally, pray God to build it surely. As to building fast, that little matters <) you that can hardly go a step towards heaven without question and dispute, I do not so much tremble concerning you, as about some who never have any question or doubt, because they have never any thought at all, but pass it all by with a heedless carelessness, taking things for granted. See, then, how you stand in your present trials. You have grown richer; do you love the Lord as much as you did? You transact more business; can you still keep the world out of your heart? You have received more praise of late; can you still cling to Christ as you used to do when you had but few friends? You have been in health lately; have you lived as near to God as when you were ill? Or you have come down in the world and are numbered with the poor; do you love the Lord as much as you did when he -enriched you? You have lately heard the remarks of a cunning hater of the gospel; were you able to feel that, though you could not answer him in words, yet your heart answered him, and threw off his falsehood as the roof throws off the rain? If not, look to it. If your vessel is ready to go down in smooth water, what will she do in a storm? If you cannot keep the water out of her now, what will you do when the hurricane overtakes her? It will be all over with you then, I fear-Another lesson is, constantly examine yourself. A great many persons get into the Bankruptcy Court, but as far as I recollect never -one came there through too much attendance to his business. I never heard of a farmer losing his crop through being too diligent in husbandry; and of all the souls that are lost not one has perished through being too much in earnest as to self-examination. Dear brethren, choose a faithful, testing ministry. Do not look after a smooth-tongued preacher who will always cry, “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people.” You want comfort, and should have it, but you want searching as well, and you must have it. Do pray that you may be faithfully dealt with, that there may be no glozing over matters, no filming of wounds, but that there may be honest dealings between you and the minister, and between you and your God. God grant that we may be willing to be searched, for when we are unwilling to be searched we may reckon it quite certain that there is something amiss with us. When we cry, “I am afraid I atn a hypocrite,” there is very little fear of it; but presumption is fatal.

Now, lastly, let all this show us how necessary it is that we cast all the stress and burden of our salvation entirely upon the Lord Jesus Christ, .because wherever a man does that, there is honest and good ground in his soul, and the seed has sprung up aright. Whenever a man caB truly say,” I rest alone in Jesus;

1 Nothing in my hand I bring:
Simply to thy cross I cling,’”

that is the great secret of a true hope. Jesus lived and died for us and if we do entirely and alone depend upon him it is well with our souls.

It is well to live continually at the foot of the cross, looking up to Jesus, finding all our hope in him, and none in ourselves. Beloved,. it is the work of the Spirit of God to bring us there and keep us there. If we search ourselves in the light of the cross we shall be willing to judge ourselves that we be not judged; in the presence of those dear wounds from whence distils the atoning blood, we shall cry,. “Try my reins and my heart.” But if any man say, “I believe in Jesus, therefore I will not search: I trust in Jesus, therefore I will live as I like,” that man’s religion is vain; he has profaned the cross by his reckless reasoning, and let him take heed how God shall judge him, for of all judgments surely that will be the heaviest which shall come upon the man who dared to take the doctrine of the cross as a reason for careless living, and made the mercy and the cleansing power of the Redeemer himself an apology for walking heedlessly before God, and continuing in vain presumption. God grant us grace to receive the seed into good ground, for Jesus sake*

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Mark iv. 1 — 34.

HYMNS FROM “OuR OWN HYMN BOOK “^42 (Version I.), 15, 645*

Cjre Jfar |1ark Start |1nl]rit

THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER.

DKLIVKRED ox SABBATH MOUSING, APRIL 15TH. 1860, BT TIIB

REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

AT EXETEU HALL, STRAND.

“And when much people were gathered together, and were come to him out of every city, ha spake by a parable: a sower went out to sow his seed: and as he sowed, some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down and the fowls of the air devoured it. And some fell upon a rock; and aa soon as it was sprung up, it withered away, because it lacked moisture. And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprang up with it, and choked it. And other fell on good ground, and sprang up, and bare fruit an hundredfold. And when he had said these things, he cried, He that hath ears to hear, let him hear.” — Luke viii. 4 — 8.

IN our country when a sower goes forth with his seed, he enters into an enclosed field, and begins at once with due order and precision to scatter the seed from his basket along every ridge and furrow; but in the East, the corn-growing country, hard by a small town, is one vast unenclosed plain. True, it is divided into different properties, but there are no hedges, no divisions, except the ancient landmark, or perhaps on rar occasions, a simple ridge of stones to divide one man’s field from another. Through these wide open common lands there are footpaths, the most frequented being called the highways. You must not imagine these highways to be in the slightest degree like our macadamized roads, but simply frequent paths, which are trodden tolerably hard. Here and there, there are bye- ways, along which travellers who wish to avoid the public road may journey with a little more safety when the main road is infested with robbers, and the hasty pedestrian can strike out a short cut for himself across the plain, and so open a fresh road for others who are journeying in the same direction. When the sower goes out in the morning to sow hi? seed, he finds, perhaps, a little spot of ground scratched over with the primitive Eastern plough; he begins to scatter hia seed there of course most plentifully, but there runs a path right through the very centre of his field, and unless he is willing to leave a broad headland, he must throw a handful on the pathway; and yonder, there is a rock cropping out just in the midst of the ploughed land, and the seed falls on that; and there too, fostered by the negligent husbandry of the East, there is a corner 1 u|J of the roots of nettles and thistles, and the sower sows his seed there too; the corn and the nettles come up together, and as we know by the parable, the thorns being tnt, strongest spring up and choke the seed,. BO that it bringeth forth no fruit unto perfection. The recollection that the Bible wa» written in the East, and that its metaphors and allusions are fully to be explained to. us only by Eastern travellers, would very often help us to understand a passage fat better than the common English reader possibly can do.

Now the preacher of the gospel is like the sower. He does not make his seed; the seed is given him by his Master. It would not be possible for a man to make the tioallest seed that ever germinated upon the earth, much less that celestial seed of eternal life. The minister goes to his Master in secret, and asks him to teach him his truth, and thus he fills his basket with the good seed of the kingdom. What the minister has to do, is to go forth in his Master’s name and scatter precious truth. If he knew where the best soil was to be found, perhaps he might limit himself to that which had been prepared by the plough of conviction. But not knowing men’s hearts, it i» his business to preach the gospel to every creature — to throw a handful on that hard heartyonder, and another handful on that overgrown heart, which is full of cares and richet and pleasures of this world. He has to leave the fate of the seed in the care of the Master who gave it to him, for well he understands that he is not responsible for thr harvest, he is only responsible for the care, the fidelity, and the integrity with which he scatters the seed, right and left with both his hands. What, if not a single ear should ever make glad the sheaves; if never should there be seen a single green blade starting up among the furrows, the man would be accepted and rewarded by his Maiter, if he had but sown the right seed, and sown it with careful hand. Alas! alas! — if it

No. 308. £2 were not for this fact — that we are not responsible for our success — with w agony must we remember, that too often we labour in vain, and spend our strength for nought. The cry of Esaias of old. must be our cry still, “Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” But one seed in four finds hopeful soil. The three portions out of the four scattered on evil places, produce no good effect, but they are lost, and shall ne’er be seen again, except when they shall rise up in judgment against our ungracious hearers to condemn them. Here let me remark, that the measure of our duty is not limited by the character of our hearers, but by the command of (3-od. We are bound to preach the gospel, whether men will hear, or whether they wil *orbear. Let men’s hearts be what they may, I am not loosed from my obligation to sow the seed on the rock as well as in the furrow, on the highway as well as in thf ploughed field.

My plan this morning will be very simply to address myself to the four classes of hearers that are to be found in my congregation. We have, first of all, those who are represented by the way-side, the mere hearers; then those represented by the stony-ground hearers, those in whom there is a transient impression produced, so transient, however, that it never comes to any lasting good. Then, those on whom a large and good impression is produced, but the cares of this life, and the deceitfulness of riches, and the pleasures of this world choke the seed; and, lastly, that small class — God be pleased to multiply it exceedingly — that small class of good-ground hearers, in whom the Word brings forth fruit, in some thirty, in some sixty, and in some hundred fold.

T. First of all, then, I am to address myself to those hearts which are like the WAY SIDE — “Some fell by the way side; and it was trodden down, and the fowls of the air devoured it.” There are many of you who did not come here this morning to get a blessing. You did not intend to worship God, or to be affected by anything that you might hear. You are like the highway which was never intended to be a corn field. If a single grain of truth should fall into your heart and grow it would be a miracle, as great a wonder as for the corn to grow upon the hardly-trodden wayside. You are the wayside hearer. If the corn, however, shall be dexterously scattered, some of it will fall upon you and rest for a while upon your thoughts. Tis true you will not understand it, but nevertheless if it be placed before you in an interesting style, it will lodge for a little season. Until some more congenial entertainment shall attract you, you will talk of the wards which you heard from the minister of truth. But even this slender benefit is brief, for in a very little season yon will forget what manner of man you are. Would to God I could hope that my words would tarry with you, but we cannot hope it, for the soil of your heart is so well beaten by continual traffic, that there is no hope of the seed finding a lasting and living roothold down its roots. There is too much traffic in your soul to let the good see.d remain uncrushed. The foot of Satan is always passing over your heart, with his herd of blasphemies, lusts, lies, and vanities. Then the chariots of piide roll along it, and the feet of greedy mammon tread it till it is hard as adamant. Alas I for the good seed, it finds not a moment’s respite; crowds pass and re pass; in fact, your soul is an Exchange, across which continually pass the busy feet of the merchants, that make merchandise with thn souls of men. You are buying and selling, but you little think that you are selling the truth, and that you are buying your soul’s destruction; you are busy here and there about this body, the husk of your manhood, but you are negligent of that internal, precious thing, your soul. You have no time, you say, to think of religion. No, the road of your heart is such a crowded thoroughfare, that there is no room for this wheat to spring up. If it did begin to germinate, some rough foot would crush the green blade ere it could come to anything like perfection. There have been times with you when the seed has lain long enough to begin to germinate, but just then there was some place of amusement open, and you entered there, and as with an iron heel, the spark of life that was in the seed was crushed out; it had fallen in the wrong place; there was too much traffic there for it possibly to grow. During the plague of London, when men were carried to their long home by multitudes, .the grass grew in the streets; but corn could not grow in Cornhill, however excellent might be the seed which you should sow there. Ransack the world, and you cannot purchase a wheat that would flourish where such traffic continually rolls along. Your heart is just like that crowded thoroughfare; for there are so many thoughts, and cares, and sins, so many proud, vain, evil, rebellious thoughts against God, continually trafficking through it; that the truth is like seed cast on the highway; it cannot grow, it is crushed down; and if it does remain a moment, the birds of the air come and steal it away. Ay, but it is a very sad thought, that if you should scatter seed on the highway, it is not only the foot of a bad man that would ’ prevent its growing, but the foot even of a saint would help to destroy its life Alas 1 men’s hearts may be hardened, nut merely by sin, but by the very preaching of tiu gospel. There is such a

thing as being gospel-hardened; it ia possible to sit under sermons till your heart becomes dead, and callous, and careless. Like the blacksmith’s dog, that lies and sleeps while the sparks are flying about his nostrils, so you will lie and sleep under the hammer of the law, while the sparks of damnation are flying about you, never startled, never astonished. You have heard all that before; we tell you but a thrice-told tale when we warn you of the wrath to come. The men that work in the huge boilers in the Southwark manufactories, when they are first put inside to hold the hammer, their ears are stunned, they cannot hear a sound; but by degrees, I am told, they are so used to that hideous noise, that they could sleep in the midst of the engine while men were battering it and beating it, although the reverberations are like the loudest thunder. So has it become with you; minister after minister has trodden along the highway of your soul, till it has become so hard, that unless God himself shall be pleased to crack it in sunder with an earthquake, or with an heartquake, there will never be room for the seed of heaven to lodge there. Your soul has become lika a hard, well-beaten path, that hath much traffic on it.

We have marked this hard road-side, let us now describe what becomes of the good word, when it falls upon his heart. It does not grow, it would have grown if it had fallen on right soil, but it is in the wrong place, and it remains as dry as when it fell from the sower’s hand. Its life lies asleep, the life-germ in the gospel hides itself, and it lies upon the surface of the heart, but never enters into it. Like the snow, which sometimes falls upon our streets and does not lie there for an instant, but drops upon the wet pavement and is dissolved and gone, so is it with this man. The word has not time to quicken in the souls of such casual hearers of it. It lies there an instant, but it never begins to strike its root, or to take the slightest effect.

But, we say, why do men come to hear if the word is never made useful to them, and never enters the heart? That has often puzzled me; there are some of our hearers who would not be absent on the Sunday for all the world, and who seem to be quite delighted to come up with us to worship, but yet the tear never trickles down their cheek, their soul never seems mounting up to heaven on the wings of praise, nor do they truly join in our confessions of sin. When do they ever think about the wrath to come, or the future state of their souls? Their heart is iron; the minister might as well preach to a heap of stones as preach to them. What brings these senseless sinners here? Shall we talk to brows of brass and hearts of steel? Surely we are as hopeful of converting lions and leopards as these untamed, unmoved hearts. Oh feeling! thou art fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason. I suppose these men often come because it is respectable, and again, because it even helps to make them hard; if they stopped away conscience <vould prick them, there would be a little life in them, but they go that they may be able to flatter themselves with the notion that they are doing right after all. They are not irreligious, not they; they are not regardless of God’s house and of his servant; they come, that they may get hardened, and may be more and more stultified in their state of sin and insensibility. Oh! my hearers, your case is one that might make an angel weep; to have the sun of the gospel shining on your faces, and yet to have blind eyes that never see the light. The music of heaven sounds sweetly, but your ears are deaf, and the faintest accent never reaches your poor spirit; the minister is to you as one who plays upon a goodly instrument, but he plays before a statue that has no ears to hear. You can catch the turn of a phrase, you can find out the meaning of a metaphor, but the hidden meaning, the divine life, is all lost upon you. You are sitting down at the marriage feast, but you eat not of the dainties, you drink not of those wines; you hear the bells of heaven sounding joy over ransomed spirits, but you yourself live unransomed, without God, and without Christ. You are standing at the gate of the narrow way, at the very gate, but yet you do not enter it; you are close to the house of mercy, and the door is on the jar; you stand, and sometimes look within, but never take the final and decisive step. Let us do what we may to urge you, let us plead with you and pray for you, and weep over you, you still remain just as hardened, as careless, and as thoughtless as ever you were. Oh! may God have mercy on you, and bring you out of this evil state, that you may yet be saved. O Holy Spirit, break up this hard highway, and cause it yet to bring forth abundantly.

We have not, however, completed the picture. The passage tells us, that the fowls of the air devoured it. Is there a man here, this morning, who is one of these way side hearers? Perhaps he did not mean to come in, bub he saw a great crowd standing in the Strand, and he thought he would even turn in and spend the hour, and he will hear something, perhaps, which he will not readily forget; but when he shall get outside and go home, some old companion will propose to him that they should go on some excursion this afternoon. He agrees, and that poor seed which fell on such an anpropitious spot, will be devoured by the fowls of the air. There are plenty of evil ones ready always to eat up this good seed. There is the devil himself, that prince of the air, ready at any time to snatch away a good thought, or quench a holy resolution. And then, the devil is not alone — he hath legions of helpera. He may set a man’s own wife, a man’s own children, he may set that shop of yours upon you, and it may eat up the good seed. There may be a customer waiting at the door, and though you have no wish to serve him to-day, yet you may be afraid of losing him, and you may do it, and then the good seed is gone, and all its good effect is carried away. Oh, sorrow upon sorrow, that heavenly seed should become devil’s meat; that God’s corn should feed the devil’s birds.

Let me turn personally to you again, this morning. 0 my hearers, if you have heard the gospel from your ycuth, what waggon-loads of sermons have been wasted on you! In your younger days, you heard old Dr. So-and-so, and how that dear old man was wont to pray for his hearers till his eyes seemed red with tears! Do you recollect those many Sundays when you said to yourself, “Let me go to my chamber and fall on my knees and pray •?” But you did not; the fowls of the air ate up the seed, and you went on to sin just as you had sinned. Since then, by some strange impulse, you are very rarely absent from God’s house; but now the sparks of the gospel fall into your soul as if they dropped into an ocean, in which they are quenched for ever. The law may be thundered at you, you do not sneer at it, but it never affects you. Jesus Christ may be lifted up; his dear wounds may be exhibited; the streaming blood may flo w before your very eyes, and you may be bidden with all earnestness to look to him and live; but it has now become a matter of perfect indifference to you. You have not said so much in words, “If I am to be lost, I shall be lost, and if I am to be saved, I shall be saved;” you have not said so much, but you have come to think so, and now we may do what we will with you, and what we will for you, your flinty spirits we cannot penetrate, and into your hard heart wexiannot thrust a holy thought. What shall I do for you? Shall I stand here, and rain tears upon this hard highway? Alas! my tears will not break it; it is far too hard for that. Shall I bring the gospel-plough upon it? Alas! it will break the steel; but the share will not enter. What shall we do? 0 God, thou knowest how to dash the flint in pieces. Thou canst melt the stony long-travelled heart with the precious blood of Jesus. Do it now, we beseech thee, to the praise and glory of thy grace, that the good seed may yet live, and yet produce that heavenly harvest, after which the soul of thy servant yearns, without which he cannot live, but with which he can rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

II. I shall now turn to the second class of hearers. “And some fell upon a KOCK, and as soon as it was sprung up it withered away, because it lacked moisture.” You can easily picture to yourselves that piece of rock cropping out in the midst of the field. By some disruption of nature, it has been heaved upwards into the midst of the plain, and of course the seed falls there as it does everywhere else. We have hearers who cause us more pleasure and yet more subsequent pain than many of you would believe. None but those who love the souls of men can tell what hopes, what joy, and what bitter dashings of our expectations to the ground these stony places have caused us. We have a class of hearers whose hearts inwardly are very hard, but outwardly they are apparently the softest and most impressable of men. While other men see nothing in the sermon, these men weep. It is but an ordinary discourse to the most of our hearers, but these men are affected to tears. Whether you preach the terrors of the law or the love of Calvary, they are alike stirred in their souls, and the liveliest impressions are apparently produced. I have some such here this morning. They have resolved, re-resolved, and yet have procrastinated. They are not the sturdy enemies of God who clothe themselves in steel, but they seem to bare their breasts, and lay them open, and say to the minister, “Cut here; here is a naked breast for you. Here aim your arrows. They shall find a ready lodging place.” Rejoiced in heart, we shoot our arrows there, and they appear to penetrate; but, alas, there is a secret armour worn underneath the flesh which blunts every dart, and though it abides awhile, it falls away, and no work is done. We read of this character under this language — “Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth.” Or as another passage explains it: “And these are they likewise which are sown on stony ground; who, when they have heard the word, immediately receive it with gladness; and have no root in themselves, and so endure but for a time; afterward, when affliction or persecution ariseth for the word’s sake, immediately they are offended.” Oh! have we not tens of thousands of our hearers who receive the word with joy? They have no deep convictions, it is true, no terrible alarms, but they leap into Christ on a sudden, and profess an instantaneous faith in him, and that faith too has all the appearance of being genuine. When we look at it, the seed has really sprouted.

* kind of life in it, there is the real green blade. We thank God, and how our knee*, And clap our hands — mere is a sinner brought back we say, there is a soul born to God, there is an heir f heaven. But our joy is premature — they sprang up on a sudden, and received the v***rd with joy, because they had no depth of earth, and from that very <;ause which hastened their reception of the seed they also by-and-bye when the su in risen with his fervent heat, withered away. These men we see every day in the week. They often come to join the Church; they tell us a story of how they heard us preach on such-and-such an occasion, and oh the word was so blessed to them, they never felt «o happy in their lives! “Oh sir, I thought I must lea from rny seat when I heard about a precious Christ, and 1 believed on him there and th’Ti; I am sure I did.” We ask them whether they ever felt their need of a Saviour. They say “Yes,” but they mean “No.” We question them as to whether they were ever convinced of sin. Well they think they were, but they don’t know; but one thing they know, they eel a great pleasure in religion. We put it to them, “Do you think you will hold on?” Oh, they are confident they shall. They could not go back to their old acquaintance, they are quite sure of it. They hate the things they once loved, they are sure they do. Everything has become new to them. And all this is on a sudden. We enquire when the good work began. We find it began when it ended, that is to say, there was no previous work, no ploughing of the soil, but on a sudden they sprang from death to life and out of condemnation into grace, as a man standing on the edge of a river might leap into the flood Still we are very thankful for these men. We cannot deny that there seems to be every appearance of grace. Perhaps we receive them into the Church; but in a week or two they are not so regular as they used to be at a place of worship. We gently reprove them, and they say, well, they meet with such opposition in religion, that they are content to yield a little. Another week and we lose them altogether. The reason is that they have been laughed at, exposed to a little opposition, and they have gone back. They are the Mr. Pliables; they will go to heaven with Christian, for heaven is a brave country. So they walk arm in arm, chatting so sweetly together about the world to come. But by-and-bye there is a bog — the Slough of Despond — and in goes poor Christian, and Mr. Pliable falls in too. “Oh!” says he, “I did not bargain for this; I did not bargain to have my mouth filled with dirt; if I can once get out, and get back, you may have the brave country all to yourself for me.” So the poor man flounders out as best he can, and lands on the same side as his own house; and back he goes, so glad to think he has escaped from the melancholy necessity of being a Christian. And what think you are the feelings of the minister? He feels that he had reckoned too early upon his success. He is like the husbandman, who sees his field all green and flourishing, and at night a frost nips every shoot, and the poor farmer mourns because his hoped-for gains are gone. So does the minister; he goes to his chamber, and casts himself on his face before God, and cries, “Oh, I have been deceived; this man hath returned like the dog to his vomit; like the sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire.” You will remember that ancient picture of Orpheus, who had such skill upon the lyre, that the ancients said he made the very oaks and stones dance around him. It is a poetical fiction, and yet hath it sometimes happened to the minister, that not only have the godly rejoiced, but the very oaks and stones have danced from their places; but alas! they have been oaks and

stones still Hushed is the lyre, and the oak returns to its rooting place, and the stone casts itself once more heavily to the earth. The sinner, who, like Saul, was among the prophets, goes back to plan mischief against the Lord Most High. He who sung yesterday, and prayed the day before in tke public assembly, goes to the tavern to curse; he rolls through the streets on the Sabbath night which follows his reception into the Church visible on earth. I had one man who caused me many bitter tears. In a certain village he was the ringleader of all that was bad; he was a tall, fine, big fellow, and a man that could drink more largely than, perhaps, any man for miles around him. He was the terror of the neighbourhood, — a man who would curse and swear, and never knew a thought of fear. He stepped in one day to hear the Word of God, and he wept. All the parish was astonished. There was old So-and-so weeping, and it was rumoured about that Tom felt impressed; he began regularly to attend the chapel, and was manifestly an altered man. The public-house lost an excellent customer; ‘he was not seen in the skittle alley, nor was he detected in the drunken rows that were so common in the neighbourhood. At last he ventured to come forward at tha prayer- meeting; he talked about what he had experienced, what he had felt and known. I heard him pray; it was rough, rugged language, but there was such impassioned earn3stness. I set him down as being a bright jewel in the Redeemer’s crown. He held out six, nay, nine months he persevered in our midst. If there was romrlj work to be done, he would do it; if there was a Sunday-school to be maintained six op seven miles away, he would walk there At any risk, he would be out to help in the Lord’s work; if he could but be of service to the meanest member of the Church of Christ, he rejoiced greatly. So he went on; but at last, the laughter to which he was exposed, the jeers and scoffs of his old companions, — though at first he bore them like a man, — became too much for him. He began to think he had been a little too fanatical, a little too earnest. He slunk up to the place of worship instead of coming boldly in; he gradually forsook week-night service, and forsook the Sabbath day at last; and though often warned, and often rebuked, he returned to his old habits, and though never again such a monster in sin as he had been before, yet any thoughts of God or godliness that he had ever known, seemed to die away. He could again take the blas phemer’s oath; once more could he act wickedly with the profane; and he — of whom we had often boasted, and said in our meetings together, “Oh! how much is God to be glorified by this! what cannot grace do ‘<” — to the confusion of us all, was to be seen sometimes drunk in our streets, and then it was thrown in our teeth, “This is one of your Christians, is it? — one of your converts gone back again, and become as bad as he was before?”

If it is bad to be like the wayside hearer, I cannot think it is much better to be like the rock. And yet this second class of hearers certainly give us more joy than the first. There is a sort of people who always come round a new minister; and I have often thought it is an act of God’s kindness in Providence that he always sends some of these people at first, while the minister is young, and has but few to stand by him. — a class of people who are easily moved, and if he preaches earnestly they feel it, and they love him, and they gather round him. But time, that proves all things, proves them. They seemed to be made of good and true metal, but they are put in the fire, they are tested, they are proved, they are consumed in the furnace. I see as I look her* some one or two of that kind. I do not know the most of you, but I do see some of whom I must say, “Ye are the very persons here described.” I have looked at you when I have been preaching, and often have I thought, “There, that man one of these days will come out from the world, I am sure he will.” I have thanked God for him. Ah! but these seven years have we preached to you and you are the same as you were. Well, there may be seven years more, who can tell? and are those to be seven years of wasted efforts? are those to be seven years of warnings rejected and of invitations refused? Can it be so, and must you be carried to your tomb at last, and shall I stand over the mouth of that open sepulchre, and think, “Here lies a blasted hope, a flower that withered in its bud, a man in whom grace seemed to struggle, but in whom it never reigned, who gave some hopeful spasms of life, and then they all subsided into the coldness and languor of eternal death?” God save you! Oh! may he deal with you effectually, and may you, even you, yet be brought in, that Jesus may have all the glory.

III. I shall have very briefly to treat of the third class, and may the Spirit of God assist me to deal faithfully with you. “And some fell among THORNS, and the thorns spxung up and choked it.” Now this was good soil. The two first characters were bad; the wayside was not the proper place, the rock was not a congenial situation for the growth of any plant, but this is good soil, for it grows thorns. A soil that will grow thistles, will surely grow wheat. Wherever the thistle will spring up and flourish, there would wheat flourish too. This was right rich, fat, fertile soil; it was no marvel therefore that the husbandman dealt largely there, and threw handful after handful upon that corner of the field. See how happy he is when in a month or two’s time he visits the spot. The seed has sprung up. True, there’s a suspicious little plant down there of about the same size as the wheat. “Oh!” he thinks, “that’s not much, the corn will outgrow that; when it comes up it will choke these few thistles that have unfortunately mixed with it.” Ay, Mr. Husbandman, thou dost not understand the force of evil, or thou wouldst not thus dream! He comes again, and the seed has grown, there is even the corn in the ear, but the thistles, the thorns, and the briars have become intertwisted with one another, and the poor wheat can hardly get a ray of sunshine. It is so festooned with brambles every way, that what with the drippings from the brambles and the absence of sunlight, it looks of a yellow and sallow hue. Still it lives; it perseveres in growing, and it does seem as if it would bring forth a little fruit, but it never comes to anything. With it the reaper never fills his arm. There is the sign of fruit, but there is no reality in it, it brings forth no fruit unto perfection.

Now we have this class very largely among us. We have the gentlemen and ladies

who come up to hear the word, and they understand what they hear too. They are

not ignorant and uneLlightened men and women, who cast away what they have heard.

We arc not throwing pearls before swine wht:n we preach to them, but they recollect and treasure up the words of truth; they take them home; they think them over jthey come, they come, they come again. They even go the length of making a profession of religion. The wheat seems to bud, and bloom and blossom, it will soon come to perfection. Be in no hurry, these men and women have a great deal to see after; they have the cares of a large concern; their establishment employs so many hundred hands; do not be deceived about their godliness — they have no time for it. They will tell you that they must live; that they cannot neglect this world; that they must anyhow look out for the present, and as for the future, they think they will be able to take care of that by-and-bye. They continue to attend, and that poor little dwindled blade keeps on growing: and now they have got rich, they can come up to the place of worship in their carriage, they have all that heart can wish now. Ah! now the seed will grow, will it not(? No, no. They have no cares now; the shop is given up, they live in the country; they have not to ask, “Where shall the money come from to meet the next bill;” or “how they shall be able to provide for an increasing famil”.” No, now they have too much instead of too little, for they have their riches. ““Well but,” says one, “they might spend their riches for God; they might be talents that they could put out at interest.” Oh! no, it is not that; their riches are deceitful. Now they have to entertain much company, now they must bo respectable, now they must think about becoming members of parliament, now they must have all the deceitfulness which riches can possibly confer. Yes, but they begin to spend their riches, so they have surely got over that difficulty. They give largely to the cause of Christ, they are munificent in the cause of charity, and the like; now that little blade will grow, will it not? No, for now behold the thorns of pleasure. Their liberality to others involves liberality to themselves; they take pleasure in what they have, and quite right they should too; but at the same time these pleasures become so tall and so big that they choke the wheat, and the good grains of gospel truth cannot grow because they have this pleasure, that musical party, that ball and that soiree; so they cannot attend to the things of God, because the pleasures of this world choke the seed. I know several fearful specimens of this class. It were not fair to tell the story if it should be known again, but I might tell of scores. I know one who stands high in court circles, who has often confessed to me that he wishes he were poor, for he thinks that then he might enter the kingdom of heaven. He holds a high position, but he has said it — and said it too with marks upon his countenance- which showed that he meant what he said — “Ah! sir, these politics, these politics, I wish I were rid of them, they are eating the life out of my heart; I cannot serve God as I would. I only wish I could retire to some sequestered place to seek my Saviour.” I know of one, too, overloaded perhaps with riches, always kind and noble with them too; that man has said to me — when we Ivave walked together and I have read his very thoughts- “Ah! sir, it is an awful thing to be rich, for one cannot rind it easy to keep to the Saviour with all this earth about me.”

Ah! my dear hearers, I will not ask for you that God may lay you on a bed of sickness, that he may strip you of all your wealth, that he may bring you to beggary, that he may take away your comforts; I will not ask that; but oh, if he were to do it, and you were to save your soul, it would be the greatest bargain you could ever make. If the king could doff his diadem to be saved; if those mightiest among the mighty who now make this complaint, that the thorns choke the seed, could give up all their riches and be banished from all their pleasures; if all their luxury should be turned into poverty, and if they that fare sumptuously every day could take the place of Lazarus on the dunghill, and have dogs to lick their sores, it were a happy change for them if their souls might be but saved. Mind you, I do not believe but what a man may be honourable and rich, and have much pleasure in the mercies of God, and then go to heaven hereafter; but it will be hard work with him: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of heaven.” Some of those camels do go through the needle’s eye; God does make some rich men enter the kingdom of heaven, but hard is their struggle, and desperate is the strife they always have against their proud flesh, to keep it under and subdue it. Steady, young man, steady! hurry not to get up there. It is a place where thy head will turn. Do not ask God to make thee popular; they that have popularity hate it, and would be rid of it. Do not ask that he would make thee famous and rich; they that are famous and rich often look within, and wish that they could go back to the quietude they once enjoyed. Cry with Agur — “Give me neither poverty nor riches.” God give me to tread the golden mean, and may I ever have in my heart that good seed, which shall bring forth fruit a hundredfold to his own glory.

IV. I now close with the last character, namely the GOOD GROUND. Of the good toil 3Jt you will mark, we have but one in lour. Ah! would to God there were on* in four of us here, with well-prepared hearts to receive the Word. The ground was good; not that it was good by nature, but it had been made good by grace. God had ploughed it; he had stirred it up with the plough of conviction, and there it Jay in ridge and furrow as it should be. And when the Gospel was preached, the heart received it, for the man said, “That’s just the Christ I want. Mercy!” said he, “it’s just what a needy sinner requires. A refuge! God help me to fly to it, for a refuge I sorely want.” So that the preaching of the gospel was THE thing to give comfort to this disturbed and ploughed soil. Down fell the seed; it sprung up. In some cases it produced a fervency of love, a largeness of heart, a devotedness of purpose, like seed which produced a hundredfold. The man became a mighty servant for God, he spent himself and was spent. He took his place in the vanguard of Christ’s army, stood in the hottest of the battle, and did deeds of daring which few could accomplish, — the seed produced a hundredfold. It fell in another heart of like character; — the man could not do the most, still he did much. He gave himself, just as he was, up to God, and in his business he had a word to say for the business of the world to come. In his daily walk, he quietly adorned the doctrine of God his Saviour, — he brought forth sixtyfold. Then it fell on another, whose abilities and talents were but small; he could not be a star, but he would be a glow-worm; he could not do as the greatest, but he was content to do something, even though it were the least. The seed had brought forth in him tenfold, perhaps twentyfold. How many have I of such in this vast congregation to-day? I came here with my soul all on fire to preach to you; but a sudden darkness and heaviness of soul has possessed me, and while I have been addressing you, I have preached in my own spirit against wind and tide. But may I hope that notwithstanding the awkwardness with which I throw the seed it may light on some good spot, some happy soil? Is there one who prays within himself, “O Lord eave me; God be merciful to me a sinner?” The seed has fallen in the right spot. Soul, thy prayer shall be heard; God never sets a man longing for mercy without intending to give it. And does another whisper, “Oh! that I might be saved?” Soul, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou, even thou, shalt be saved.” Hast thou been the chief of sinners? Trust Christ, and thy enormous sins shall vanish as the millstone sinks beneath the flood. Is there no man here that •*’!! now trust the Saviour? -Can it be possible that the Spirit is entirely absent? that be is not moving in one soul? not begetting life in one spirit? We will pray that now he may descend, that scattered badly as the seed may be, the protecting God may watch over it, and foster and nourish it, till it shall come to an eternal harvest.

What a solemn thought it is — to think of these great Sunday gatherings these many years, coming and going, coming and going, and so many yet unsaved! I suppose it is my lot to address more than one or two millions every year of precious immortal spirits, and how many out of these millions hear with deaf ears, are not moved in their souls, but continue as they were, dead in trespasses and in sins! The thought some times staggers me — shall these congregations pass before my eyes in eternity, and if I have been unfaithful, shall I be spit upon by every mouth of every man whom I have deceived? Shall every eye of the millions I have addressed flash fiery damnations on me throughout eternity? They must, they must, if I have not sought your welfare, and if I have not preached to you the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. I implore you, I beseech of you, if your blood must fall somewhere, at least take heed to what I say now, or permit me to hope that you will accept me as having tried to be faithful to you, lest your blood be found on my skirts. But why should that blood be scattered anywhere? Is there not hope? Is there not salvation? Is there not, while life lasts, still an open door of escape? Flee, flee, my hearer, flee! I beseech the flee, I implore thee by the living God, by time, by eternity, by heaven, by hell, flee, flee to Jesus, ere Death o’ertakes thee, for he is after thee — that skeleton rider on his pale horse, and ere damnation reaches thee flee, flee to him whose opened arms are ready to receive thee now. Trust Jesus and thou art saved: “He that believeth on the Lord Jesus, and is baptized, shall be saved, he that believeth not must be damned,” Am I fanatical or enthusiastic in begging, in beseeching you to think of these things? “Fanatic,” at the day of judgment, will only mean a man who was in earnest. An •” Enthusiast,” will only mean one who meant what he said. Oh, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, lest now, even while you are here, God’s wrath should burn, and his swift justice overtake you: —

“Come, guilty souls, and flee awtiy,

To Christ, and heal your worinde;
This is the welcome gospel-day,

Wherein free grace abounds,”
dijoplitmi Sfaberaade fhtljit

SATAN’S PUNCTUALITY, POWER, AJND PURPOSE.

IR, I T? T IE IST .A. T IMI IE IT T O IT 33, BY

“Then cometh the devil, and tnketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should bilieve and be saved.” — Luke viii. 12.

IT is a great comfort that such multitudes are willing to hear the word of God. Even though many should turn out to be as the rock, the wayside, or the thorny ground, still it is a cheering circumstance that the seed can be sown broadcast over so large an acreage. Yet the thoughts excited by the sight of a vast congregation are not all pleasurable; the question most naturally arijs — What will come of all this preaching and hearing? Will the heavenly seed produce a harvest or fall on barren soil? The thoughtful Christian, in considering this question, takes into consideration the condition of the persons addressed, and remembers that many are unprepared for the gospel. So far from being like a field furrowed to receive the seed, they are like a trodden pathway. They hear the gospel, and so far we are hopeful of them, but they have no idea of allowing it to enter their inmost souls. The ground of their hearts is too much occupied already, other feet will tread there and speedily obliterate the sower’s footprints, and as for the good seed, it may lie where it falls, entrance into the inner man it can have none. Nor is this all, the anxious observer remembers that there is yet another difficulty: the arch-enemy of God and man is opposed to the salvation of souls, and therefore he is present with destructive power wherever the seed of the Word is being sown. It is of this we shall now speak, — the activity of Satan during the preaching of the gospel. He is out of sight, but we may not allow him to be out of mind: he does all the more mischief if men sleep; let us watchfully turn our eyes towards him, and prove that we are not ignorant of his devices.

Our divine Lord in the words before us reminded his hearers of the devils punctuality, — “then cometh the devil”; of his vower, — “and taketh away the word out of their hearts”; and of his purpose, which is the prevention of saving faith, — “lest they should believe and be saved.” At this time, when special services are being held, it may be well to bring these points clearly forward that all may be warned against the wicked one, and so by the grace of God his designs may be frustrated.

I. First observe the evil one’s PUNCTUALITY. No sooner does the seed fall than the fowls devour it. Our text says “then,” that is, there and then, “cometh the devil.” Mark renders it, “Satan cometh immediately.” Whoevev else may loiter, Sacan never does. No sooner doea a Nos. 1,459 63 camel fall dead in the wilderness than the vultures appear. Not a bird was visible, nor did it seem possible that there could be one within a radius of many miles, yet speedily there are specks in the sky, and soon the devourers are gorging themselves with flesh: even thus do the spirits of evil scent their prey from afar, and hasten to their destroying work. The lapse of time might give opportunity for thought, and thought might lead to repentance, and therefore the enemy hurries to prevent the hearer from considering the truth he has heard. When the gospel has somewhat affected the hearers, so that in some slight degree it is in their hearts, then swifter than the flight of the eagle is the haste of the devil to take the word out of their hearts. A little delay might put the case beyond Satanic power, hence the promptitude of diabolic activity. 0 that we were half as quick and active in the service of our Lord, one half as prompt to seize every opportunity for blessing the souls of men!

No doubt Satan acts at times directly upon the thoughts of men. He personally suggested to Judas the selling of his Master, and many another black insinuation has he cast into men’s minds. Like the foul vulture which constantly feasted itself upon the vitals of Prometheus, so does the devil tear away the good thoughts which would be the life of a man’s soul. Insatiably malicious, he cannot endure that a single divine truth should bless the heart. Fearful blasphemies, lewd imaginations, gross unbeliefs, or vain frivolities the devil casts into the mind like infernal bombshells to destroy any new-born thought which looks toward Christ and salvation. At one time he fascinates the mind, and anon he terrifies it; his one aim being to distract the man’s thoughts from the gospel, and prevent its lodgment in the conscience and heart.

As Satan cannot be everywhere present at one time, he frequently does his evil work by his servants, sending the inferior spirits to act a& fowls in devouring the seed, and these again employ various agents. With great cunning are the common incidents of life used in the evil business, so that even by things indifferent in themselves the purposes of the adversary are brought about. The preacher has some speciality in his manner, utterance, or appearance, and this becomes the bird which devours the seed: the hearer is so taken up with a trifling oddity in the minister that he forgets the truth which was spoken. An anecdote wasrelated, an illustration employed, or a word used which awakened a memory in the hearer’s breast, and away went the word out of his heart to make room for mere vanity. Or if the sermon was preserved to its close, it then encountered a fresh peril: a lost umbrella, an extra pressure in the aisle, a foolish jest overheard in the crowd, or the absurd dress of an unknown person, may any one of them answer the devil’s purpose and snatch away the word. Little does it signify whether the seed is devoured by black crows or white doves, by great fowls or little sparrows: if it does not abide in the heart it cannot bring forth fruit, and hence the devil arrangesthat somehow he will take away the seed at once. If he never visits a place of worship at any other time, he will be sure to be there when a revival has begun, — “then cometh the devil.” He lets many a pulpit alone, but when an earnest man begins preaching,” Satan cometh immediately’’’

II. Secondly, we will now for a moment notice his POWER. “And taketh away the word out of their hearts.” It is not said that he trie* to do it, but that he actually does so. He sees, he comes, and he conquers. The word is there, and the devil takes it away as easily as a bird removes a seed from the wayside. Alas, what a sway has the evil one over the human mind, and how ineffectual is the preacher’s work, unless a divine power is put forth with it. Perhaps from the striking manner in which it was stated, a little of the truth abides in the memory, but the enemy takes it quite out of the heart; and so the main part, the all-important part of our work is undone. We may be foolish enough to aim at the head only, but he who is crafty beyond all craft deals with the heart. Who will may win the intellect, if Satan can keep the affections he is quite content. To the man’s heart the good seed is lost, the fowls have devoured it; it has become to him a nullity, having no power over him, no life in him. Not a trace is left, any more than there would be a mark remaining of seed cast on the wayside after the birds had taken it away: so effectual is the work of the prince of the power of the air. When Satan thinks it worth his while to come, and come immediately, he means business, and he takes care that his errand shall not fail.

His power is partly derived from his natural sagacity. Fallen as he now is, he was once an angel of light, and his superlative faculties, though perverted, defiled, and dimmed by the blighting influence of sin, are still vastly superior to those of the human beings upon whom he tries his arts. He is more than a match for preacher and hearer united if the Holy Spirit be not there to baffle him. He has also acquired fresh cunning by long practice in his accursed business. He knows the human heart better than anyone, except its Maker; for thousands of years he has studied the anatomy of our nature, and is conversant with our weaker points. We are all young and inexperienced compared with this ancient tempter, all narrow in our views and limited in our experience compared with this serpent, who is more subtle than all the beasts of the field: what wonder that he takes away the word which is sown in hard hearts.

Moreover, he derives his chief power from the man’s condition of soul: it is easy for birds to pick up seed which lies exposed on a trodden path. If the soil had been good and the seed had entered it, he would have had far greater difficulty, he might even have been foiled; but a hard heart does the devil’s work for him in great measure; he need not use violence or craft; there lies the unreceived word upon the surface of the soul, and he takes it away. The power of the evil one largely springs from our own evil. Let us pray the Lord to renew the heart that the testimony of Jesus may be accepted heartily, and may never be taken away. Great is the need for such prayer. Our adversary is no imaginary being, his existence is real, his presence constant, his power immense, his activity indefatigable. Lord, match him, and overmatch him. Drive away this foulest of fowls, break up the soil of the soul, and let thy truth truly live and graciously grow within us.

III. Our short sermon closes with the third point, which is the devil’s PURPOSE. He is a sound theologian, and knows that salvation is by believing in the Lord Jesus; and hence he fears above all things lest men should “bslieve and be saved.” The substance of the gospel lies in those few words, “believe and be saved,” and in proportion as Satan

hates that gospe? we ought to prize it. He is not so much afraid of works as of faith. If he can lead men to work, or feel, or do anything in the place of believing, he is content; but it is believing that he dreads, because God has coupled it with being saved. Every hearer should know this, and be instructed thereby to turn all his attention to the point which the devil considers to be worthy of his whole activity. If the destroyer labours to prevent the heart’s believing, the wise will have their wits about them, and regard faith as the one thing needful.

“Lest they should believe and be saved” Satan takes away the word out of their hearts. Here also is wisdom, — wisdom hidden within the enemy’s cunning. If the gospel remains in contact with the heart its tendency is to produce faith. The seed abiding in the soil springs up and brings forth fruit, and so will the gospel display its living power if it dwells within the man, and therefore the devil hastens to take it away. The word of God is the sword of the Spirit, and the devil does not like to see it lie near the sinner for fear it should wound him. He dreads the influence of truth upon the conscience, and if he cannot prevent a man’s hearing it he labours to prevent his meditating upon it. “Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God “: to obliterate that which has been heard is the Satanic method of preventing faith. Here, again, is a practical word for the ear of prudence: — let us keep the gospel as much as possible near the mind of the unconverted, let us sow and sow again, if haply some grain may take root. Countrymen were wont in planting certain seeds to put in “one for the worm, and one for the crow, and then a third which would surely grow,” and we must do the like. In the book of Jeremiah the Lord describes his own action thus, — “I spoke unto you rising up early and speaking, but ye heard not; and I called, but ye answered not “: surely, if the Lord himself has thus continued to speak to an unanswering race we need not mnrmur if much of our preaching should appear to be in vain. There is life in the seed of the gospel, and it will grow if it can be got into the soil of the heart; let us therefore have faith in it, and never dream of obtaining a crop except by the old-fashioned way of sowing good seed. The devil evidently hates the word, let us then keep to it, and sow it everywhere.

Reader or hearer, you have often heard the gospel, have you heard it in vain? Then the devil has had more to do with you than you have dreamed. Is the thought a pleasant one? The presence of the devil is defiling and degrading, and he has been hovering over you as the birds over the high-road, and lighting upon you to steal away the Word. Think of this. Fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ you are missing by your unbelief, and instead thereof you are having fellowship with Satan. Is not this horrible? Instead of the Holy Ghost dwelling in you as he dwells in all believers, the prince of darkness is making you his resort, coming and going at his pleasure into your mind. You remember Jacob’s dream of a ladder, and angels ascending and descending from himself to heaven: your life-experience may be set forth by another ladder which descends into the dark abyss, and up and down its rounds foul spirits come and go to yourself 1 Does not this startle you? The Lord grant it may. Do you desire a change? May the Holy Spirit turn your heart into good ground, and then shall the seed of divine grace grow in you, and produce faith in the Lord Jesus.

f ulpit

THE MUSTARD SEED:
A SERMON FOR THE SABBATH-SCHOOL TEACHER.

DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 20x11, 1889,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

“Then said he, Unto what is the kingdom of God like? and whereunto shall I resemble it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.” — Luke xiii. 18, 19.

I SHALL not attempt fully to explain this great little parable. A full exposition may be left for another occasion. The parable may be understood to relate to our Lord himself, who is the living seed. You know also how his church is the tree that springs from him, and how

freatly it grows and spreads its branches until it covers the earth, rom the one man Christ Jesus, despised and rejected of men, slain and buried, and so hidden away from among men — from him, I say, there ariseth a multitude which no man can number. These spread themselves, like some tree which grows by the rivers of waters, and they yielded both gracious shelter and spiritual food. I called it a great little parable, and so it is: it has a world of teaching within the smallest compass. The parable is itself like a grain of mustard eeed, but its meanings are as a great tree.

But at this time of the year, Sabbath-school teachers come together specially to pray for a blessing on their work; and pastors are invited to say a word to cheer them in their self-denying service. This request I would cheerfully fulfil; and therefore my discourse will not be a full explanation of the parable, but an adaptation of it to the cheering of those who are engaged in the admirable work of teaching the young the fear of the Lord. Never service more important: to overlook it would be a grave fault. We rejoice to encourage our friends in their labour of love.

In this parable light is thrown upon the work of those who teach the gospel. First, notice a very simple work: “a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden.” Secondly, observe what came of it: “it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.”

I. First, NOTICE A VTTHY SIMPLE WORK. The work of teaching No. 2,110. 64 the gospel is as the casting of a grain of mustard seed into a garden.

Note, first, what the nameless man did. “It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, a man took.” He took it; that is to say, picked it out from the bulk. It was only one grain, and a grain of a very insignificant seed; but he did not let it lie on the shelf; he took it in his hand to put it to its proper use. A grain of mustard seed is too small a thing for public exhibition; the man who takes it in his hand is almost the only one who spies it out. It was only a grain of mustard seed, but the man set it before his own mind as a distinct object to be dealt with. He was not sowing mustard over broad acres, but he was sowing “a grain of mustard seed’’ in his garden. It is well for the teacher to know what he is going to teach; to have that truth distinctly in his mind’s eye, as the man had the grain of mustard seed between his fingers. Depend upon it, unless a truth is clearly seen and distinctly recognised by the teacher, little will come of it to the taught. It may be a very simple truth; but if a man takes it, understands it, grasps it, and loves it, he will do something with it.- Beloved, first and foremost let us ourselves take the gospel, let us believe it, let us appreciate it, let us prize it beyond all things; for truth lives as ifc is loved, and no hand is so fit for its sowing as the hand which grasps it well.

Further, in this little parable we notice that this man had a garden: “Like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden.” Some Christian people have no garden — no personal sphere of service. They belong to the whole clan of Christians, and they pine to see the entire band go out to cultivate the whole world; but they do not come to personal particulars. It is delightful to be warmed up by missionary addresses, and to feel a zeal for the salvation of all the nations; but, after all, the net result of a general theoretic earnest-. ness for all the world does not amount to much. As we should have no horticulture if men had no gardens; so we shall have no missionary work done unless each person has a mission. It is the duty of every believer in Christ, like the first man, Adam, to have a garden to dress and to till. Children are in the Sunday-schools by millions: thank Grod for that! But have you a class of your own? All the church at work for Christ! Grlorious theory! Are you up and doing for your Lord? It will be a grand time when every believer has his allotment, and is sowing it with the seed of truth. The wilderness and the solitary place will blossom as the rose when each Christian cultivates his own plot of roses. Where should this unnamed man sow his mustard seed but in his own garden? It was near him, and dear to him, and thither he went. Teach your own children, speak to your neighbours, seek the conversion of those whom Grod has especially entrusted to you.

Having a garden, and having this seed, the man sowed it: and simple as this is, it is the hinge of the instruction. You have a» number of seeds in a pill-box. There they are: look at them! Take that box down this day twelve months, and the seeds will be just the same. Lay them by in that dry box for seven years, and nothing will happen. Truth is not to be kept to ourselves: it is to be published and advocated. There is an old proverb, “Truth is mighty, and will prevail.” The proverb is true in a sense; but it needs to be taken with a grain of salt. If you put truth away, and leave it without a voice, it won’t prevail; it will not even contend. When have great truths prevailed? Why, when brave men have persisted in declaring them. Daring spirits have taken up a cause which has been, at the first, unpopular, and they have spoken about it so earnestly, and so often, that at length the cause has commanded attention: they have pressed on and on till the cause has triumphed altogether. Truth has been mighty, and has prevailed; but yet not without the men who gave it life and tongue. Not even the gospel itself, if it be not taught, will prevail. If revealed truth be laid on one side and kept in silence, it will not grow. Mark how, through the dark ages, the gospel lay asleep in old books in the libraries of monasteries, till Luther and his fellow reformers fetched it out and sowed it in the minds of men.

This man simply cast it into his garden. He did not wrap it round with gold leaf, or otherwise adorn it; but he put it into the ground. The naked seed came into contact with the naked soil. 0 teachers, do not try to make the gospel look fine; do not overlay it with your fine words, or elaborate explanations. The gospel seed is to be put into the young heart just as it is. Gret the truth concerning the Lord Jesus into the children’s minds. Make them know, not what you can say about the truth, but what the truth itself says. It is wicked to take the gospel and make a peg of it to hang our old clothes upon The gospel is not a boat to be freighted with human thoughts, fine speculations, scraps of poetry, and pretty tales. No, no, the gospel is the thought of God: in and of itself it is the message which the soul needs. It is the gospel itself which will grow. Take a truth, specially that great doctrine, that man is lost and that Christ is the only Saviour, and see to it that you place it in the mind. Teach plainly the great truth that whosoever believeth in him hath everlasting life; and that the Lord Jesus bare our sins in his own body on the tree, and suffered for us, the just for the unjust — I say take these truths and set them forth to the mind, and see what will come of it. Sow the very truth; not your reflections on the truth, not your embellishments of the truth, but the truth itself. This is to be brought into contact with the mind; for the truth is the seed, and the human mind is the soil for it to grow in.

These remarks of mine are very plain and trite; and yet everything depends upon the simple operation described. Nearly everything has been tried in preaching of late, except the plain and clear statement of the glad tidings and of the atoning sacrifice. People have talked about what the church can do, and what the gospel can do: we have been informed as to the proofs of the gospel, or the doubts about it, and so forth; but when will they give us the gospel itself? Brethren, we must come to the point and teach the gospel, for this is the living and incorruptible seed which abideth for ever. It is an easy thing to deliver an address upon mustard seed, to pive the children a taste of the pungency of mustard, to tell them how mustard seed would grow, what kind of a tree it would produce, and how the birds would sing among its branches. But this is not sowing mustard seed. It is all very fine to talk about the influence of the gospel, the ethics of Christianity, the elevating power of the love of Christ, and so on; but what we want is the gospel itself, which exercises that influence. Sow the seed: tell the children the doctrne of the cross, the fact that with the stripes of Jesus we are healed, and that by faith in him we are justified. What is wanted is not talk about the gospel, but the gospel itself. We must continually bring the living word of the living God into contact with the hearts of men. Oh for the aid of the Holy Ghost in this! He will help us, for he delights to glorify Jesus.

That which is described in the parable was an insignificant business: the man took the tiny seed and put it into his garden. It is a very common-place affair to sit down with a dozen children around you, and open your Bible and tell them the well-worn tale of how Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. No Pharisee is likely to stand and blow a trumpet when he is going to teach children: he is more likely to point to the children in the temple, and sneeringly say, “Hearest thou what these say?” It is a lowly business altogether: but yet to the mustard seed, and to the man with a garden, the sowing is the all-important matter. The mustard seed will never grow unless put into the soil: the owner of the garden will never have a crop of mustard unless he sows the seed. Dear Sunday-school teacher, do not become weary of your humble work, for none can measure its importance. Tell the boys and girls of the Son of Grodj who lived and loved and died that the ungodly might be saved. Urge them to immediate faith in the mighty Saviour, that they may be saved at once. Tell of the new birth, and how the souls of men are renewed by the Holy Spirit, without whose divine working none can enter the kingdom of heaven. Cast in mustard seed, and nothing else but mustard seed, if you want to grow mustard. Teach the gospel of grace, and nothing but the gospel of grace, if you would see grace growing in the hearts of your young people.

Secondly, let us consider what it was that the man sowed. We have seen that he sowed: what did he sow? It was one single seed, and that seed a very small one; so very, very small, that the Jews were accustomed to say, “As small as mustard seed.” Hence the Saviour speaks of it as the smallest among seeds; which it may not have been absolutely, but which it was according to common parlance; and our Lord was not teaching botany, but speaking a popular parable. Yes, the gospel seems a very simple thing: Believe and live! Look to Jesus dying in the sinner’s stead! Look to Jesus crucified, even as Israel looked to the brazen serpent lifted up upon a pole. It is simplicity itself: in fact, the gospel is so plain a matter that our superior people are weary of it, and look out for something more difficult of comprehension. People nowadays are like the negro who liked to hear the Scriptures “properly confounded “; or like the other who said, “You should hear our minister dispense with the truth.” Sowing seed is work too ordinary for the moderns: they demand new methods. But, beloved, we must not run after vain inventions: our one business is to sow the Word of God in the niind of children. It is yours and mine to teach everybody the simple truth, that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, and that whosoever believe th in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. We know nothing else among men or among children. This one seed, apparently so little, so insignificant, we continue to sow. They sneeringly say, “What can be the moral result of peaching such a gospel? Surely it would be better to discourse upon morals, social economics, and the sciences?” Ah, friends! if you can do any good in those ways, we will not hinder you; but our belief ia that a hundred times more can be done with the gospel; for it is the power of God unto salvation unto every one that believeth. The gospel is not the enemy of any good thing; say, rather, it is the force by which good things are to be carried out. Whatsoever things are pure and honest and of good repute, are all nurtured by that spirit which is begotten by the simple gospel of Christ. Yet conversions do not come by essays upon morals, but by the teaching of salvation by Christ. The cleansing and raising of our race will not be effected by politics or science, but by the Word of the Lord, which liveth and abideth for ever. To bring the greatest blessings upon our rising youth, we must labour to implant in their minds faith in the Lord Jesus. Oh, for divine power in this work!

But the seed, though very small, was a living thing. There ig a great difference between a mustard seed and a piece of wax of the same size. Life slumbers in that seed. What life is, we cannot tell. Even if you take a microscope you cannot spy it out. It is a mystery: but it is essential to a seed. The gospel has a something in it not readily discoverable by the philosophical enquirer, if, indeed, he can perceive it at all. Take a maxim of Socrates or of Plato, and enquire whether a nation or a tribe has ever been transformed by it from barbarism to culture. A maxim of a philosopher may have measurably influenced a man in some right direction; but who has ever heard of a man’s whole character being transformed by any observation of Confucius or Socrates? I confess I never have. Human teachings are barren. But within the gospel, with all its triteness and simplicity, there is a divine life, and that life makes all the difference. The human can never rival the divine, for it lacks the life-fire.. It is better to preach five words of God’s Word than five million words of man’s wisdom. Men’s words may seem to be the wiser and the more attractive, but there is no heavenly life in them. Within God’s Word, however simple it may be, there dwells an omnipotence like that of God, from whose lips it came.

Truth to tell, a seed is a very comprehensive thing. Within the mustard seed what is to be found? Why, there is all in it that ever comes out of it. It must be so. Every branch, and every leaf, and every flower, and every seed that is to be, is, in its essence, all within the seed: it needs to be developed; but it is all there. And so, within the simple gospel, how much lies concentrated? Look at it! Within that truth He regeneration, repentance, faith, holiness, zeal, consecration, perfection. Heaven hides itself away within the gospel. Like u young bird in its nest, glory dwells in grace. We may not at first see all its results, nor, indeed, shall we see them at all, till we sow the seed and it grows j but yet it is all there. Do you believe it, young teacher? Have you realized what you have in your hold when you grasp the gospel of the grace of God? It is the most wonderful thing beneath the skies. Do you believe in the gospel which you have to teach? Do you discern that within its apparently narrow lines the Eternal, the Infinite, the Perfect, and the Divine are all enclosed? As in the Babe of Bethlehem there was the Eternal Q-od, so within the simple teaching of “Believe and live” there are all the elements of eternal blessedness for men, and boundless glory for Q-od. It is a very comprehensive thing, that little seed, that gospel of God.

And for this reason it is so wonderful: U is a divine creation. Summon your chemists: bring them together with all their vessels and their fires. Select a jury of the greatest chemists now alive, analytical or otherwise, as you will. Learned sirs, will you kindly make us a mustard seed? You may take a mustard seed, and pound it and analyze it, and you may thus ascertain all its ingredients. So far so good. Is not your work well begun? Now make a single mustard seed. We will give you a week. It is a very small affair. You have all the elements of mustard in yonder mortar. Make us one living grain: we do not ask for a ton weight. One grain of mustard seed will suffice us. Great chemists, have you not made so small a thing? A month has gone by. Only one grain of mustard seed we asked of you, and where is it? Have you not made one in a month? What are you at? Shall we allow you seven years? Yes, with all the laboratories in the kingdom at your service, and all known substances for your material, and all the world’s coal-beds for your fuel, get to your work. The air is black with your smoke, and the streams run foul with your waste products; but where is the mustard seed? This baffles the wise men: they cannot make a living seed. No; and nobody can make a gospel, or even a new gospel text. The thinkers of the age could not even concoct another life of Christ to match with the four gospels which we have already. I go further: they could not create a new incident which would be congruous with the facts we already know. Plenty of novel writers nowadays can beat out imaginary histories upon their anvils: let them write a fifth gospel — say the gospel according to Peter, or Andrew. Let us have it! They will not even commence the task. Who will write, a new Psalm, or even a new promise? Clever chemists prove their wisdom by saying at once, “No, we cannot make a mustard seed “; and wise thinkers will equally confess that they cannot make another gospel, My learned brethren are trying very hard to make a new gospel fot this nineteenth century; but you teachers had better go on with the old one. The advanced men cannot put life into their theory. This living Word is the finger of God. That simple grain of mustard seed must be made by God, or not at all; and he must put life into the gospel, or it will not have power in the heart. The gospel of Sunday-school teachers, that gospel of “Believe and live,” however men may despise it, has God-given life in it. You cannot make another which can supplant it; for you cannot put life into your invention. Go on and use the one living truth with your children, for nothing else has God’s life in it.

I want you to see what a little affair the sowing seemed, as we answer the question, What was it to him? It was a very natural act; he sowed a seed. It is a most natural thing that we should teach others what we believe ourselves. I cannot make out how some professors can call themselves Christians, and yet never communicate the faith to others. That the young people of our churches should gather othei young people around them, and tell them of Jesus, whom the love, is as natural as for a gardener to put seeds into his prepared ground.

To sow a mustard seed is a very inexpensive act. Only one grain of mustard: nobody can find me a coin small enough to express its value. I do not know how much mustard seed the man had; certainly it is not a rare thing; but he only took one grain of it, and cast it into his garden. He emptied no exchequer by that expenditure; and this is one of the excellencies of Sabbath-school work, that it neither exhausts the church of men nor of money. However much of it ia done, it does not lessen the resources of our Zion: it is done freely, quietly, without excitement, without sacrifice of life; and yet what a fountain of blessing it is!

Still, it was an act of faith. It is always an act of faith to sow seed; because you have, for the time, to give it up, and receive nothing in return. The farmer takes his choice seed-corn, and throws it into the soil of his field. He might have made many a loaf of bread with it; but he casts it away. Only his faith saves him from being judged a maniac: he expects it to return to him fifty-fold. If you had never seen a harvest, you would think that a man burying good wheat under the clods had gone mad; and if you had never seen conversions, it might seem an absurd thing to be constantly teaching to boys and girls the story of the Man who was nailed to the tree. We preach and teach as a work of faith; and, remember, it is onty as an act of faith that it will answer its purpose. The rule of the harvest is, “According to thy faith, be it unto thee.” Believe, dear teacher, believe in the gospel. Believe in what you are doing when you tell it. Believe that great results from slender causes spring. G-o on sowing your mustard seed of salvation by faith, expecting and believing that fruit will come thereof.

It was an act which brought the sower no honour. The Saviour has chronicled the fact that the man took a grain of mustard seed and sowed it; but thousands of men had gone on sowing mustard seed for half a lifetime without a word. Nobody has ever spoken in your honour, my friend, though you have taught the truth. Dear teacher, go on sowing, though nobody should observe your diligence, or praise your faithfulness. Sow the seed of precious truth in the garden of the child’s mind; for much more will come of it than you have dared to hope.

It seems to me that our Lord selected the mustard seed in this parable, not because its results are the greatest possible from a seed — for an oak or a cedar are much greater growths than a mustard tree — but he selected it because it is the greatest result as compared with the size of the seed. Follow out the analogy. Come to yonder school, and see! That earnest young man is teaching a boy, one of those wild creatures of the street; they swarm in every quarter. A dozen young f

Turks are before him, or say young Arabs of the street; he is teaching them the gospel. Small affair, is it not? Yes, very; but what may come of it? Think of how joyfully much may grow out of this little! What is that young man teaching? Only one elementary truth. Do not sneer; it is truth, but it is the mere alphabet of it. He touches upon nothing deep in theology: he only says,” Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners. Dear boy, believe in the Lord Jesus, and live.” That is all he says. Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? The teacher himself is teaching the one truth in a very poor way; at least, lie thinks so. Ask him, when he has done, what he thinks of his own teaching; and he replies, “I do not feel fit to teach.” Yes, that young man’s teaching is sighed over; and in his own judgment it is poor and weak; but there is life in the truth he imparts, and eternal results will follow — results of which I have now to speak in the second part of my sermon. May the good Spirit help me so to speak as to encourage my beloved friends, who have given themselves up to the Christ-like work of teaching the little ones!

II. Secondly, let us enquire, WHAT CAME OF IT?

First, “it grew” That was what the sower hoped would come of it: he placed the seed in the ground, hoping that it would grow. It is not reasonable to suppose that he would have sown it if he had not hoped that it would spring up. Dear teacher, do you always sow in hope, do you trust that the Word will live and grow? If you do not, I do not think your success is very probable. Expect the truth to take root, and expand and grow up. Teach divine truth with earnestness, and expect that the life within it will unveil its wonders.

But though the sower expected growth, he could not himself have made it grow. After he had placed the seed in the ground, he could water it, he could pray God to make the sun shine on it; but he could not directly produce growth. Only he that made the seed could cause it to grow. Growth is a continuance of that almighty act by which life is at first given. The putting of life into the seed is God’s work, and the bringing forth of the life from the seed is God’s work too. This is a matter within your hope, but far beyond your power.

A very wonderful thing it is, that the seed should grow. If we did not see it every day, we should be more astonished at the growth of seed than at all the wonders of magicians. A growing seed is God’s abiding miracle. You see a piece of ground near London covered with a market-garden, and after a few months you go by the place, and you see streets, and a public square, and a church, and a great population. You say to yourself, “It is remarkable that all these houses should have sprung up in a few months.” Yet that is not at all so wonderful as for a ploughed field to become covered four feet high with corn, and all without the use of waggons to bring the material, or tools to work it up into a harvest. Without noise of hammer, or the ringing of trowels; without handiwork of man, the whole has been done. Wonder at the growth of grace. See how it increases, deepens, strengthens! Growth in grace is a marvel of divine love. That a man should repent through the gospel, that he should believe in Jesus, that he should be totally changed, that he should have a hope of heaven, that he should receive power to become a child of God — these

A SERMOX FOR THE SABBATH-SCHOOL TEACHER. O<->

are all marvellous things; and yet they are going on under our eyes, and we fail to admire them as we should. The growth of holiness in such fallen creatures as we are, is the admiration of angels, the delight of all intelligent beings.

To the sower this growth was very pleasing. How pleasant it is to see the seed of grace grow in children! Do you not remember when you first sowed mustard-and-cress as a boy, how the very next morning you went and turned the ground up to see how much it had grown. How pleased you were when you saw the little yellow shoot, and afterwards a green leaf or two! So is it with the true teacher: he is anxious to see growth, and he makes eager enquiry for it. What he expected is taking place, and it is most delightful to him, whatever it may be to others. An unsympathetic person cries, “Oh, I do not think any thing of that child’s emotions. It is merely a passing impression: he will soon forget it.” The teacher does not think so. The cold critic says, “I don’t think much of a child’s weeping. Children’s tears lie very near the surface.” But the teacher is full of hope that he sees in these tears a real sorrow ior sin, and an earnest seeking after the Lord. The questioner says, “It is nothing for a child to say that he gives his heart to Jesus. Youngsters soon think that they believe. They are so easily led.” People talk thus because they do not love children, and live with the desire to save them. If you sympathize with children, you are pleased with every hopeful token, and are on the watch for every mark of divine life within them. If you are a florist, you will see more of the progress of your plants than if you are no gardener, and have no interest in such things. Think, then, of what my text says: “It grew.” Oh, for a prayer just now, from all of you this morning, “Lord, make the gospel grow wherever it falls! Whether the preacher scatters it, or the teacher sows it; whether it falls among the aged people, or the young; Lord, make the gospel grow!” Pray hard for it, brethren! You cannot make it grow: but you can prevail with God to bless it to his honour and praise.

Next, having started growing, it became a tree; Luke says, “It waxed a great tree.” It was great in itself; but the greatness was seen mainly in comparison with the size of the seed. The growth was great. Here is the wonder: not that it became a tree, but that, being a mustard seed, it should become “a great tree.” Do you see the point of the parable? I have already brought it before you. Listen! It was only a word spoken — “Dear boy, look to Jesus.” Only such a word, and a soul was saved, its sin was forgiven, its whole being was changed, a new heir of heaven was born. Do you see the growth? A word produces salvation! A grain of mu8’«d,rd seed becomes a great tree! A little teaching brings eternal life. That is not all: the teacher, with many prayers and tears, took her girl home, and pleaded with her for Christ, and the girl was led to yield her heart to the dominion of Christ Jesus — a holy, heavenly life came out of that pleading. See! she becomes a thoughtful girl, a loving wife, a gracious mother, a matron in Israel, such a one as Dorcas among the poor, or Hannah with her Samuel. What a great result from a little cause! The teacher’s words were tearfully spoken; they could not have been printed, for they were far too broken and childlike; but they in God’s hands, the means of fashioning a life most sweet, most chaste, most beautiful.

A boy was about as wild as any roamer of our streets: a teacher knelt by his side, with his arm about the lad’s neck. He pleaded with Q-od for the boy, and with the boy for Q-od. That boy was converted, and as a youth in business he was an example to the work room; as a father, he was a guide to his household; as a man of God, he was a light to all around; as a preacher of righteousness, he adorned the doctrine of God his Saviour in all things. There is much more which I might easily picture; but you can work it out as well as I can. All that is to be desired may spring out of the simple talk of a humble Christian with a youth. A mustard seed becomes a great tree; a few words of holy admonition may produce a noble life.

But is that all? Beloved, our teaching may preserve souls from the deep darkness of the abode of the lost. A soul left to itself might hurry down from folly to vice, from vice to obduracy, from obduracy to fixed resolve to perish; but by the means of loving teaching all this is changed. Rescued from the power of sin, like a lamb snatched from between the jaws of the lion, the youth is now no longer the victim of vice, but seeks holy and heavenly things. Hell has lost its prey; and see up yonder, heaven’s wide gate has received a precious soul. “Sweeping through the gates of the New Jerusalem” many have come who were led there from the Sunday-school. They who once were foul are now white-robed, washed in the blood of the Lamb. Hark to their songs of praise! You may keep on listening, for those songs will never come to an end. All this was brought about through a brief address of a trembling brother who »**ood up one Sunday afternoon to close the school and talk a little -V>ut the cross of Jesus. Or all this came of a gentle sister who oould never have spoken in public, but yet was enabled to warn a young girl who was growing giddy, and seemed likely to go sadly astray. Wonderful that a soul’s taking the road to heaven or to hell should be made, in the purpose of God, to hinge upon the humble endeavours of a weak but faithful teacher! You see how the mustard seed grew till it waxed a great tree.

This great tree became a shelter: “the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it.” Mustard in the East does grow very large indeed. The commonest kind of it may be found eight or ten feet high; but there is a kind which will grow almost like a forest tree, and there probably were some of these latter trees in the sheltered region wherein our Lord was speaking. A mustard which grew here and there in Palestine was of surprising dimensions. When the tree grew, the birds came to it. Here we have unexpected influences. Think of it. That man took a mustard seed which you could hardly see if I held it up. When he took the mustard seed, when he put it into his garden, had he any thought of bringing birds to that spot? Not he. You do not know all you are doing when you are teaching a child the way of salvation by Jesus Christ. When you are trying to bring a soul to Christ, your action has ten thousand hooks to it, and these may seize on innumerable things. Holy teaching is the opening of a well, and no one knows all the effect which the waters will produce on that spot. There seems no link between sowing a grain of mustard seed and birds of the air; but the winged wanderers soon made a happy connection. There may seem no connection between teaching that boy and the reclaiming of cannibals in New Guinea; but I can see a very possible connection. Tribes in Central Africa may have their destiny shaped by your instruction of a tiny child. When John Pounds bribed an urchin with a hot potato to come and learn to read the Bible, I am sure John Pounds had no idea of all the Eagged-schools in London; but there is a clear line of cause and effect in the whole matter. A hot potato might be the coat of arms of the Ragged-school Union. When Nasmyth went about from house to house visiting in the slums of London, I do not suppose that he saw in his act the founding of the London City Mission and all the Country Town Missions. No man can tell the end of his beginnings, the growth of his sowings. Go on doing good in little ways, and you shall one day wonder at the great results. Do the next thing that lies before you. Do it well. Do it unto the Lord. Leave results with his unbounded liberality of love; but hope to reap at least a hundred-fol4-

How many fowls came and roosted under that one mustard tree I do not know. How many birds in a day, how many birds in the year, came and found a resting-place, and picked the seeds they loved so well, I cannot tell. When one person is converted, how many may receive a blessing out of him none can tell. Now is the day for romances: our literature is drenched with tales religious or irreligious. What stories might be written concerning benefits bestowed, directly and indirectly, by a single godly man or woman! When you have written a thrilling story upon the subject, I can assure you I can match it with something better still. One single individual can scatter benedictions across a continent, and belt the world with blessing.

But what is that I hear? I see this mustard tree — it is a very wonderful tree; but I not only see, I hear! Music! music! The birds! the birds! It is early morning, the sun is scarcely up — what torrents of song! Is that the way to produce music? Shall I sow mustard seed, and reap songs? I thought we must buy an organ, or purchase a violin; or by some wind or stringed instrument come at music; but here is a new plan altogether. Nebuchadnezzar had his flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music; but all that mingled sound could not rival the melody of birds. I shall sow mustard seed now, and get music in God’s own way. Friends, when you teach your children the gospel of the Lord Jesus, you are sowing the music of heaven. Every time you tell the tidings of pardon bought with blood, you are filling the choirs of glory with sweet voices, which, to the Eternal Name, shall, day and night, trill out songs of devout gratitude. Go on, then, if this is to be the result. If even heaven’s high harmonies depend upon the simple teaching of a Ragged-school, let us never cease from our hallowed service.

Having said so much, I now close with these three practical observations. A.re we not highly honoured to be entrusted with such a marvellous thing as the gospel? If it be a seed comprehending so much within it, which will come to so much if it be properly used, blessed and happy are we to have such good news to proclaim! I thought this morning, when I awoke into the damp and rain, and felt my bones complaining I shall be glad when four more Sundays shall have gone, and I shaL be free to take a little rest in a sunnier clime. Jaded in mind, and weary in spirit, I braced myself with this reflection — what blessed work I have to do! What a glorious gospel have I to preach! I ought to be a very happy man to have such glad tidings to bear to my fellows. I said to myself, “So I am.” Well now, beloved teacher, next Sunday, when you leave your bed, and say, “I have had a hard week’s work, and I could half wish that I had not to go to my class “; answer your self thus:” But I am a happy person to have to talk to children about Christ Jesus. If I had to teach them arithmetic or carpentering, I might get tired of it; but to talk about Jesus, whom I love, why, it is a joy for ever.

Let us be encouraged to sow the good seed in evil times. If we do not see the gospel prospering elsewhere, let us not despair; if there were no more mustard seed in the world, and I had only one grain of it, I should be all the more anxious to sow it. You can produce any quantity if only one seed will grow. So now to-day there is not very much gospel about; the church has given it up; a great many preachers preach everything but the living truth. This is sad; but it is a strong reason why you and I should teach more gospel than ever. I have often thought to myself — Other men may teach Socialism, deliver lectures, or collect a band of fiddlers, that they may gather a congregation; but I will preach the gospel. I will preach more gospel than ever if I can; I will stick more to the one cardinal point. The other brethren can attend to the odds and ends, but I will keep to Christ crucified. To the men of vast ability, who are looking to the events of the day, I would say, “Allow one poor fool to keep to preaching the gospel.” Beloved teachers, be fools for Christ, and keep to the gospel. Don’t you be afraid: it has life in it, and it will grow: only you bring it out, and let it grow. I am sometimes afraid that we may prepare our sermons and addresses too much, so as to make ourselves shine. II: so, we are like the man who tried to grow potatoes — he never grew any, and he wondered much; “for,’’ said he, “I very carefully boiled them for hours.” So, it is very possible to extract all the life out of the gospel, and put so much of yourself into it that Christ will not bless it.

And, lastly, we are bound to do it. If so much will come out oi so little, we are bound to go in for it. Nowadays people want ten per cent, for their money. Hosts of fools are readily caught by any scheme, or speculation, or limited liability company, that promises to give them immense dividends! I should like to make you wise by inviting you to an investment which is sure. Sow a mustard seed, and grow a tree. Talk of Christ, and save a soul: that soui saved will be a blessing for ages, and a joy to God throughout eternity. Was there ever such an investment as this? Let us go on with it. If on our simple word eternity is hung, let us speak with all our heart. Life, death, and hell, and worlds unknown, hang on the lips of the earnest teacher of the gospel of Jesus: let us never cease speaking while we have breath in our body. The Lord bless you! Amen, and Amen.