have here a picture of the growth of the kingdom of God, both in an individual soul and in the nations. But perhaps the more direct application of the figure is to the workings of God's regenerating Word and Spirit in the individual heart.

Our Blessed Lord says that this working is like seed cast into the ground, which the earth brings forth of itself into fruit. There is here, as elsewhere, a picture of God working, and man co-operating with God. It is not God alone nor man alone, but God in man; as it is not the seed alone nor the earth alone, but the seed in the earth, and the earth by fructifying powers and tendencies given to it of God, and active according to God's arrangement. Although faith is as a seed, or a germ, implanted in a prepared soil, and growing gradually, as such a plant grows, yet the substance and the resemblance must not be confounded; for faith in man's heart is not itself a physical germ, or growing plant, set in the soul from abroad, but it is a voluntary life of the soul, a habit of the spiritual existence, by and under the grace of God. God's discipline is at work to draw out the soul into such habit, such life. When such life and habit are formed, and just so far as they are formed, the object of God's discipline, personally, is accomplished, or at least is going forward to its accomplishment. This is our education at the hand of God. It is not the communication of immediate or miraculous

C

power or knowledge, at which God, by his providence and grace, is aiming; but it is the quickening and training of our souls to the possession and exercise of the divine life. And as a child begins to learn to walk by creeping, and to read by spelling; or as a tree begins to grow by the stem first, or an ear of wheat by the blade, and then the ear, and afterwards the full corn in the ear; so with our learning of the life of faith, our growing up into the full and perfect habit of that life.

The end, object, and fulfilment of that life are future, and God is educating us not for immediate effects merely, but for eternity. All our discipline is for lasting purposes, not transitory results, and God will form us to habits of life, not mere temporary excitements. God will work in us elements of character, not mere fitful impulses. We look too much to present frames, enjoyments, fruits; God looks to eternal results, and an eternal life of holiness and glory. We look to that which is transitory; God looks to that which is permanent. We look to feelings, emotions, speculations; God looks to active habits, and a life made up of principles and habits, which shall be the eternal, inalienable nature of our being.

Even for this world alone, this is the only true conception of education. To educate a child is not merely to store the soul with knowledge, but to draw forth and strengthen the sensibilities and faculties of mind and

heart. While the understanding is yet tender, its powers in their greenness and infancy, but little knowledge, and that very gradually, can be received; but the faculties themselves must be developed and exercised; and a true education is the preparation of the mind, by such wise and well-directed discipline, by the formation of good habits, through judicious instruction and example, for the proper acting of its part in the world; for those occasions, where not mere knowledge, but a well-prepared, disciplined, and balanced judgment will be requisite, with strong habits of thought, of decision, of comparison, of selection, and just, manly, virtuous, religious principles of action. This is education; not the crowding of the mind with rules and knowledges, but the forming of the mind, from correct principles, to upright habits and energetic appliances. The mind is not a warehouse, in which goods are to be stored for sale; but a manufactory, in which great care is to be lavished first upon the selection of the material to be wrought, and next upon the machinery, the right husbanding and direction of the power, and the combination of all the agencies for the greatest activity and productiveness.

And thus it is that God deals with us, in disciplining us by faith. He will have habits of faith. He will have not merely passive emotions, but active habits, and a life. He will have not transitory forms of feeling merely, but a fountain inexhaustible, a fire for ever

ness.

burning, a principle, a power, a nature. He will draw out our native powers into a voluntary, spontaneous cooperation with his supernatural grace and providentia] discipline. Thus it is that he will make faith to increase by exercise. In order to produce that exercise, to draw forth the soul into it, he seems, sometimes, to quit the soul, to go away from it, and leave it to itself, in darkHe deals with it, sometimes, as a mother deals with a little child in teaching it to walk. Who has not watched the careful fond mother setting down her little child in one part of the room alone, then gradually retreating from it, leaving it standing by itself, half terrified, and then beckoning to it, and calling it to take courage and come? Who has not seen the little trembling creature burst into tears, because it seemed to be so deserted, and then at length, gaining courage from necessity, with little tottering steps, advance towards the outstretched arms of its mother, and at last, having performed the grand feat of a walk quite across the floor, hide itself rejoiced and comforted in her bosom? Thus God teaches us to walk by faith. Thus God teaches us to exercise our spiritual faculties; thus he draws forth our powers, our affections, into a co-operation with his own purposes, providences, and grace; into the formation of habits, that shall grow with our growth and strengthen with our strength, into life everlasting. Sometimes his providences are dark, and he seems to

have deserted the soul, when he is only going before it, and calling it to come after him. The Lord Jesus loves to behold even the feeblest exercise of faith, and will neither break the bruised reed nor quench the smoking flax. Sometimes he may seem to deny our requests, even with severity, or to pay no attention to them, when in reality he is taking the very way to answer them, and will answer them in that very way which will make the response the greater blessing. Thus was it with the Syrophenician woman. Her heart was drawn out, by the Saviour's seeming neglect, into such a fervour of prayer and power of faith, that the effect of that exercise alone upon her soul would have been a blessing beyond all price; and the production of that state of mind, before the mercy which she sought was granted, made that healing mercy itself a thousand times more precious. So it is in the case of every parent, who is anxiously seeking the conversion of a dear child. God may seem to defer his grace, may let that child long wander on in paths of sin and folly, till at length the soul of the parent shall have been brought to such an exercise of faith, that when the conversion of the child takes place, both the sad anxiety and the blessing, both the apparent denial or neglect, and the manifest answer of prayer, shall combine to work a habit of faith, such as no other discipline of the soul could possibly produce.