and the rushing of whose melodies is those which he reaps. But we think it in the wings of the day-light.

possible that we may have contented But, though we go not into the ge- ourselves with too superficial a view of neral inquiry, we take one great prin- this principle; and that, through not ciple, the principle of a resurrection, searching into what may be termed its and we affirm, in illustration of what philosophy, we allow much that is imhas been advanced, that it runs alike portant to elude observation. The seed through God's natural and spiritual sown in the earth goes on, as it were, by dealings. Just as God hath appointed a sort of natural process, and without dithat man's body, after moldering away, rect interference from God, to yield seed shall come forth quickened and renew- of the same description with itself. And ed, so has he ordained that the seed, we wish it well observed, whether there after corrupting in the ground, shall be not in spiritual things an analogy the yield a harvest of the like kind with most perfect to what thus takes place itself. It is, moreover, God's ordinary in natural. We think that, upon a carecourse to allow an apparent destruction ful examination, you will find groundas preparatory, or introductory to, com- work of belief that the simile holds plete success or renovation. He does good in every possible respect: so that not permit the springing up, until there what a man sows, if left to its own vehas been, on human calculation, a tho- getating powers, will yield, naturally, rough withering away. So that the a harvest of its own kind and descripmaxim might be shown to hold univer- tion. sally good, "that which thou sowest

We shall study to establish this point is not quickened, except it die." 1 Cor. in regard, first, to the present scene of 15: 36. We may observe yet further, probation; and, secondly, to the future that, as with the husbandman, if he sow scene of recompense. the corn, he shall reap the corn, and if We begin with the present scene of he sow the weed, he shall reap the probation, and will put you in possesweed; thus with myself as a responsi- sion of the exact point to be made out, ble agent, if I sow the corruptible, I by referring you to the instance of Phashall reap the corruptible; and if I sow raoh. We know that whilst God was the imperishable, I shall reap the im- acting on the Egyptians by the awful perishable. The seed reproduces itself. apparatus of plague and prodigy, he is This is the fact in reference to spiritual often said to have hardened Pharaoh's things, on which we would fasten your heart, so that the monarch refused to attention; "whatsoever a man soweth, let Israel go. And it is a great questhat shall he also reap." tion to decide, whether God actually Now we are all, to a certain extent, interfered to strengthen and confirm the familiar with this principle; for it is obstinacy of Pharaoh, or only left the forced on our notice by every-day oc- king to the workings of his own heart, currences. We observe that a disso- as knowing that one degree of unbelute and reckless youth is ordinarily lief would generate another and a followed by a premature and miserable stancher. It seems to us at variance old age. We see that honesty and in- with all that is revealed of the Creator, dustry win commonly comfort and re- to suppose him urging on the wicked spect; and that, on the contrary, levity in his wickedness, or bringing any enand a want of carefulness produce pau- gine to bear on the ungodly which shall perism and disrepute. And yet further, make them more desperate in rebellion. unless we go over to the ranks of infi- God willeth not the death of any sindelity, we cannot question that a course ner. And though, after long striving of disobedience to God is earning man's with an individual, after plying him eternal destruction; whilst, through with the various excitements which are submission to the revealed will of his best calculated to stir a rational, and Master, there is secured admittance agitate an immortal being, he may withinto a glorious heritage. We are thus draw all the aids of the Spirit, and so aware that there runs through the Crea- give him over to that worst of all tytor's dealings with our race the prin- rants, himself; yet this, we contend, ciple of an identity, or sameness, be- must be the extreme thing ever done tween the things which man sows and by the Almighty to man, the leaving

him, but not the constraining him, to be more feebly and faintly. There will do evil. And when, therefore, it is said be a less difficulty in overpowering the that God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and admonition. And the feebleness of rewhen the expression is repeated, so as monstrance, and the facility of resistto mark a continued and on-going har- ance, will increase on every repetition; dening, we have no other idea of the not because God interferes to make the meaning than that God, moved by the man callous, but because the thing sown obstinacy of Pharaoh, withdrew from was stifling of conscience, and therehim, gradually, all the restraints of his fore the thing reaped is stifling of congrace; and that as these restraints were science. The Holy Spirit strives with more and more removed, the heart of every man. Conscience is but the voice the king was more and more hardened. of Deity heard above the din of human We look upon the instance as a precise passions. But let conscience be resistillustration of the truth, that "whatso-ed, and the Spirit is grieved. Then, as ever a man soweth, that shall he also with Pharaoh, there is an abstraction reap." Pharaoh sowed obstinacy, and of that influence by which evil is kept Pharaoh reaped obstinacy. The seed under. And thus there is a less and was put into the soil; and there was no less counteraction to the vegetating need, any more than with the grain of power of the seed, and, therefore, a corn, that God should interfere with more and more abundant upspringing any new power. Nothing more was required than that the seed should be left to vegetate, to act out its own nature. And though God, had he pleased, might have counteracted this nature, yet, when he resolved to give up Pharaoh to his unbelief, he had nothing to do but to let alone this nature. The seed of infidelity, which Pharaoh had sown when he rejected the first miracles, was left to itself, and to its own vegetation. It sent up, accordingly, a harvest of its own kind, a harvest of infidelity, and Pharaoh was not to be persuaded by any of the subsequent miracles. So less and less energy; if the solemnithat, when the monarch went on from ties of the judgment lose more and more one degree of hardness to another, till their power of alarming him, and the at length, advancing through the cold terrors of hell their power of affrighting ranks of the prostrated first-born, he him; why, the man is nothing else but pursued, across a blackened and devas- an exhibition of the thickening of the tated territory, the people for whose harvest of which himself sowed the emancipation there had been the visible seed; and he puts forth, in this his conmaking bare of the arm of Omnipo- firmed and settled impenitence, a detence, he was not an instance-perish monstration, legible by every careful the thought-of a man compelled by his Maker to offend and be lost; but simply a witness to the truth of the principle, that "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

of that which was sown. So that, though there must be a direct and mighty interference of Deity for the salvation of a man, there is no such interference for his destruction. God must sow the seed of regeneration, and enable a man, according to the phraseology of the verse succeeding our text, to sow "to the Spirit." But man sows for himself the seed of impenitence, and of himself, he soweth to his flesh." And what he sows, he reaps. If, as he grows older, he grow more confirmed in his wickedness; if warnings come upon him with

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observer, that there needs no apparatus for the turning a man gradually from the clay to the adamant, over and above the apparatus of his own heart, left to itself, and let alone to harden.

Now that which took place in the We greatly desire that you should case of this Egyptian is, we argue, pre- rightly understand what the agency is cisely what occurs in regard generally through which the soul is destroyed. to the impenitent. God destroys no It is not that God hath sent out a deman. Every man who is destroyed cree against a man. It is not that he must destroy himself. When a man throws a darkness before his eyes which stifies an admonition of conscience, he cannot be penetrated, and a chillness may fairly be said to sow the stiflings into his blood which cannot be thawed, of conscience. And when conscience and a torpor into his limbs which canadmonishes him the next time, it will not be overcome. Harvest-time bring

ing an abundant produce of what was duced a wide crop of the same grain as sown in the seed-time-this, we con- was sown. And thus-all kinds of optend, is the sum-total of the mystery. position to God propagating themselves God interferes not, as it were, with the he who becomes wrought up into an processes of nature. He opposes not, infidel hardihood, or lulled into a seor, to speak more correctly, he with- pulchral apathy, is nothing but the sowdraws gradually his opposition to, the er living on to be the reaper, the husvegetation of the seed. And this is all. bandman in the successive stages of an There is nothing more needed. You agriculture, wherein the ploughing, and resist a motion of the Spirit. Well then, the planting, and the gathering, are all this facilitates further resistance. He his own achievement, and all his own who has resisted once will have less destruction. difficulty in resisting the second time, Now we have confined ourselves to and less than that the third time, and the supposition that the thing sown is less than that the fourth time. So that wickedness. But you will see at once, there comes a harvest of resistances, that, with a mere verbal alteration, and all from the single grain of the first whatever has been advanced illustrates resistance. You indulge yourself once our text when the thing sown is righin a known sin. Why, you will be more teousness. If a man resist temptation, easily overpowered by the second temp- there will be a facility of resisting ever tation, and again more easily by the augmenting as he goes on with selfthird, and again more easily by the denial. Every new achievement of fourth. And what is this but a harvest principle will smooth the way to future of sinful indulgences, and all from the achievements of the like kind; and the one grain of the first indulgence? You fruit of each moral victory-for we may omit some portion of spiritual exer- consider the victory as a seed that is cises, of prayer, or of the study of the sown-is to place us on loftier vantageword. The omission will grow upon ground for the triumphs of righteousyou. You will omit more to-morrow, ness in days yet to come. We cannot and more the next day, and still more perform a virtuous act without gaining the next. And thus there will be a har- fresh sinew for the service of virtue; vest of omissions, and all from the soli- just as we cannot perform a vicious, tary grain of the first omission. And without riveting faster to ourselves the if, through the germinating power of fetters of vice. And, assuredly, if there that which man sows, he proceed natu- be thus such a growing strength in harally from bad to worse; if resistance produce resistance, and indulgence indulgence, and omission omission; shall it be denied that the sinner, throughout the whole history of his experience, throughout his progress across waste of worldliness and obduracy and We would yet further remark, unimpenitence-passing on, as he does, der this head of discourse, that the printo successive stages of indifference to ciple of reaping what we sow is speGod, and fool-hardiness, and reckless- cially to be traced through all the workness-is nothing else but the mower of ings of philanthropy. We are persuaded the fruits of his own husbandry, and that, if an eminently charitable man thus witnesses, with a power which out- experienced great reverse of circumdoes all the power of language, that stances, so that from having been the "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall affluent and the benefactor he became he also reap?" the needy and dependent, he would atIt is in this manner that we go into tract towards himself, in his distress, what we term the philosophy of our all the sympathies of a neighborhood. text, when applied to the present scene And whilst the great man, who had had of probation. We take the seed in the nothing but his greatness to recomsoil. We show you, that by a natural mend him, would be unpitied or unprocess, without the interference of cared-for in disaster; and the avariGod, and simply through his ceasing to cious man, who had grasped tightly counteract the tendencies, there is pro- his wealth, would meet only ridicule

bit that every action makes way for its repetition, we may declare of virtue and righteousness that they reproduce themselves; and is not this the same thing as proving that what we sow, that the also do we reap?

when it had escaped from his hold; ties of Jehovah, or a loftier bounding the philanthropic man, who had used of spirit at the thought of your own his riches as a steward, would form, in deathlessness: and if you feel tempted his penury, a sort of focus for the kind- to count it strange that in teaching liness of a thousand hearts; and multi- another you teach also yourself, and tudes would press forward to tender that you carry away from your interhim the succor which he had once course with the mechanic, or the child, given to others; and thus there would be a mighty reaping into his own granaries of that very seed which he had been assiduous in sowing.

such an accession to your own knowledge, or your own love, as shall seem to make you the indebted party, and not the obliging; then you have only to remember-and the remembrance will sweep away surprise-that it is a fixed appointment of the Almighty, that "whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

We go on to observe that it is the marvellous property of spiritual things, though we can scarcely affirm it of natural, that the effort to teach them to others gives enlargement to our own sphere of information. We are per- In respect, moreover, to alms-giving, suaded that the most experienced chris- we may assert that there is evidently tian cannot sit down with the neglected such a present advantage in communiand grossly ignorant laborer-nay, not cating of our temporal good things, with the child in a Sunday or infant- that the giver becomes the receiver, school and strive to explain and en- and thus the principle under review force the great truths of the Bible, with- finds a fresh illustration. The general out finding his own views of the Gospel comfort and security of society depend amplified and cleared through this en- so greatly on the well-being of the gagement in the business of tuition. lower orders, that the rich consult most The mere trying to make a point plain for themselves when they consult most to another will oftentimes make it far for the poor. There must be restlessplainer than ever to ourselves. In illus- ness and anxiety in the palace, whilst trating a doctrine of Scripture, in en- misery oppresses the great mass of a deavoring to bring it down to the level population. And every effort to increase of a weak or undisciplined understand- the happiness, and heighten the characing, you will find that doctrine present-ter of the poor, will tell powerfully on ing itself to your own minds with a the condition of those by whom it is new power, and unimagined beauty; made, seeing that the contentment and and though you may have read the good order of the peasantry of a counstandard writers on theology, and mas- try give value to the revenues of its tered the essays of the most learned nobles and merchants. For our own. divines, yet shall such fresh and vigor- part, we never look on a public hospious apprehensions of truth be derived tal or infirmary, we never behold the often from the effort to press it home alms-houses into which old age may be on the intellect and conscience of the received, and the asylums which have ignorant, that you shall pronounce the been thrown up on all sides for the cottage of the untaught peasant your widow and the orphan, without feelbest school-house, and the questions ing that, however generously the rich even of a child your most searching come forward to the relief of the poor, catechisings on the majestic and mys- they advantage themselves whilst proterious things of our faith. And as you viding for the suffering and destitute. tell over to the poor cottager the story These buildings, which are the best of the incarnation and crucifixion, and diadem of our country, not only bring inform him of the nature and effects of blessings on the land, by serving, it Adam's apostacy; or even find your- may be, as electrical conductors which self required to adduce more elemen- turn from us many flashes of the lighttary truths, pressing on the neglected ning of wrath; but, being as centres man the being of a God, and the im- whence succors are sent through dismortality of the soul; oh, it shall con- tressed portions of our community, stantly occur that you will feel a keener they are fostering-places of kindly dissense than ever of the preciousness of positions towards the wealthier ranks; Christ, or a greater awe at the majes- and may, therefore, be so considered

as structures in which a kingdom's the voluptuary, or exposing the madprosperity is nursed, that the fittest in-ness and misery of the proud, comes scription over their gateways would down on that individual with the startbe this, whatsoever a man soweth, ling announcement, "thou art the man." that shall he also reap." And the individual goes away from the Now before we turn to the second sanctuary, convinced of the necessity topic of discourse, we would make a of subduing the master-passion; and he close application of some of our fore- will form, and for a while act upon, the going statements. You perceive the resolution of wrestling against pride, likelihood, or rather the certainty, to or of mortifying lust, or of renouncing be, that in all cases, there will be a avarice. But he proceeds in his own self-propagating power in evil, so that strength, and, having no consciousness the wrong done shall be parent to a of the inabilities of his nature, seeks line of misdoings. We have shown you, not to God's Spirit for assistance. In for example, that to stifle a conviction a little time, therefore, all the impresis the first step in a pathway which sion wears away. He saw only the leads directly to stupefaction of con- danger of sin he went not on to see science. And we desire to fasten on its vileness. And the mind soon habithis fact, and so to exhibit it that all tuates itself, or soon grows indifferent, may discern their near concernment to the contemplation of danger, and, therewith. We remark that men will above all, when perhaps distant. Hence flock in crowds to the public preach- the man will return quickly to his old ing of the word, though the master haunts. And whether it be to moneynatural passion, whatsoever it be, re- making that he again gives himself, or tain undisputed the lordship of their to sensuality, or to ambition, he will spirits. And this passion may be ava- enter on the pursuit with an eagerness rice, or it may be voluptuousness, or heightened by abstinence; and thus the ambition, or envy, or pride. But, how- result shall be practically the same, as ever characterized, the dominant lust though, having sown moral stupor, he is brought into the sanctuary, and ex- were reaping in a harvest tremendousposed, so to speak, to the exorcisms of ly luxuriant. And, oh, if the man, after the preacher. And who shall say what this renouncement, and restoration, of a disturbing force the sermon will of the master-passion, come again to the tentimes put forth against the master- sanctuary; and if again the preacher passion; and how frequently the word denounce, with a righteous vehemence, of the living God, delivered in earnest-every working of ungodliness; and the ness and affection, shall have almost fire be in his eye, and the thunder on made a breach in the strong-holds of his tongue, as he makes a stand for Satan? Ay, we believe that often, God, and for truth, against a reckless when a minister, gathering himself up and semi-infidel generation; alas! the in the strength of his master, launches man who has felt convictions, and sown the thunderbolt of truth against vice their stiflings, will be more inaccessible and unrighteousness, there is a vast than ever, and more impervious. He stirring of heart through the listening will have been hardened through the assembly; and that as he reasons of vegetating process which has gone on righteousness, temperance, and judg- in his soul. A far mightier apparatus ment to come," Acts, 24: 25, though than before will be required to make the natural ear catch no sounds of anx- the lightest impression. And when you iety and alarm, attendant angels, who think that there the man is now sitting, watch the workings of the Gospel, hear unmoved by the terrors of the word; the deep beatings of many souls, and that he can listen with indifference to almost start at the bounding throb of the very truths which once agitated aroused and agitated spirits. If Satan him; and that, as a consequence on the ever tremble for his ascendency, it is reproduction of the seed, there is more when the preacher has riveted the at- of the marble in his composition than tention of the unconverted individual; before, and more of the ice, and more and, after describing and denouncing of the iron, so that the likelihood of the covetous, or pouring out the tor- salvation is fearfully diminished; ye rent of his speech on an exhibition of can need no other warning against tri