“As the Garden Causeth the Things That Are Sown in It to Spring Forth”

He air has been balmy with the breath of spring,

and all Nature has felt the influence of the “ethereal mildness.” The earth — of which, through the long winter, we might have said, “she is not dead but sleepeth” — has now awakened, and she beginneth already to put on her garments of glory and beauty. Wild flowers are springing up in the hedgerows, buds upon the trees are hastening to burst, the time of the singing of birds is come, and if the voice of the turtle be not heard in our land, yet we trust the winter is past — -the rain is over and gone. Now, Nature is not at work to amuse and please us merely — its mission isinstruction. Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, are God’s four Evangelists, bringing each one a different version of the self-same Gospel of Divine Love. Spring has its own peculiar evangel, and it is for us to read it,and to interpret it, by the light of God’s Spirit. A close analogy is often hinted at in the Old and New Testaments between the spring-time and the work of God in the hearts of men. As God has promised, in the outward world, that there shall be seed-time, and then harvest — winter and a following summer, so He declares, over and over again, that His word, which, when it goeth forth, is like unto the

* [saiah lxi. 11.

sowing, shall not return unto Him void, but shall prosper in the thing whereto He hath sent it. As surely as in due season the earth bringeth forth her bud, and the garden causeth the things that are sown in it to spring forth, so shall God’s great purposes be accomplished, and righteousness and praise shall spring forth before all the nations.

There is a spiritual spring-time appointed of God, and it will surely come; as certainly as spring comes to the earth physically, so surely will it come to the church spiritually: there may be in God’s work, and in our work for God, a pertod of unrequited labour. The analogy between the processes of Nature and God’s work in the church holds good not only as to the revivals of spring, but as to the depressing incidents of winter. There is a time when the husbandman is occupied with the plough and with the scattering of the seed, while from day to day he sees no result from his labour. He trusts to the earth his golden grain, and buries it in hopes of a future upspringing, but month after month he has noreturn. He watches patiently, he sees the dreary months go round, but not a single ear is brought home to give him promise; much less do ample sheaves reward his toil. ‘“Dread winter reigns tremendous o’er the conquered year,” the vegetable world lies dead. As it is in the natural world we must expect it to be in the spiritual world; there will ordinarily be a time of unrequited sowing for the Lord’s labourers. To a great extent this was so with the church of God in her early history; then she was fitly imaged in these words — “a sower went forth to sow.” True, through the infinite compassion of the great Husbandman, there were souls saved at

once by the preaching of the Gospel; but yet the wide spread of the Gospel was not a work of a few months — years of self-denial were needed. Good men had to toil throughout the whole of their lives, ay, and to lay down those lives, too, by painful and bloody deaths, and yet at the first Christ’s kingdom did not come. Generation after generation of holy martyrs and confessors went to prison and to death to bear testimony to the truth as it is in Jesus. It was the church’s time of sowing, and her seed was steeped in tears and blood. God’s presence and power did not so much reveal themselves in immediate success as in patient endurance, heroic fortitude, and boundless self-sacrifice. Holy hymns were not sung by assembled thousands where passers-by could hear them, but in the crypts and in the catacombs the righteous praised the Lord. The Word of God was in those days hidden away like a buried thing, concealed like the seed-corn beneath the clods. The church parted with her holiest sons, who died that she might live, and grow, and multiply, and subdue the earth; but for many. years it seemed as if the sacrifice had been made in vain, for her truths were still the scoff of the age, the butt of perpetual ridicule. It looked as if her principles, as well as her martyrs, would be buried. Imperial tyrants boasted that they would exterminate Christianity, and leave to the church neither root nor branch, nor place, nor name. This was but the Lord’s winter, with its bitter chills and driving tempests and stormy winds, fulfilling His word; and we also must expect to see the great sowing work of the church proceed under the same trying conditions. We must not always reckon

to see nations converted the moment the Gospel is preached to them; and especially where new ground has been broken up, where countries have just received the Gospel message, we must not be disappointed if neither to-day nor to-morrow we are rewarded with abundant results. God’s plan involves ploughing, sowing, and waiting, and after these the up-springing and the harvest. “Be patient, therefore, unto the coming of the Lord. Behold the husbandman waiteth for the precious fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it, until he receive the early and the latter rain.”

While the seed is under the ground a thousand adversaries present themselves, all apparently in array against its ever rising from the earth. The seed might look up from the soil and say of the frosts and storms of winter, “All these things are against me.” It was but a few weeks ago that the earth wherein the husbandman had sown his grain was frozen as though it were of iron; beneath his foot it was hard as the share with which he had formerly ploughed it. Then came the snow and buried the green blades beneath its fleecy showers. Who could imagine that harvests would spring forth from frost-bound clods or from beneath so thick a shroud of snow? Then came the rain, again and again. It deluged everything. The weeping months followed each other in mournful procession; and yet despite frost, snow, rain, and floods, seeds are peeping forth in the garden, the almond blossom is in its beauty, the golden cup of the crocus is brimmed with sunshine, and the trees are bursting into leaf.

So we must expect to see in the church of God:

desperate obstacles will obstruct the spread of the Gospel, fearful disappointments will wither hope, solemn calamities will overthrow success, iniquity will abound, and the love of many will wax cold! When we survey the condition of affairs apart from faith in God, it may even seem to us that our cause is hopeless, and the further prosecution of it a forlorn endeavour. We must expect to see it so. If it be so in Nature so may it also be in grace, and I sometimes think that we have fallen upon such times even now. I admit that there is a tendency among men advanced in years to depreciate the present, and to say that the former times were better than now; with that feeling I think I have little or no sympathy, neither my age nor my temperament lead me in that direction, yet I fear that in some respects the present era is peculiarly trying to the Christian church in this country. Our nation has grown enormously rich. Pride and fulness of bread have taken off men’s thoughts from God and His salvation. Boundless luxury has bred indifference to the Gospel. The lower classes, as they are called are less than ever within the reach of the Gospel.