ning of a Christian life to a more convenient season. A more convenient season! What would you say of the farmer, who, when his wheat was ripe on the ground, and the sun was shining in its summer strength, instead of putting the sickle to the corn, began to make excuses, and say: "No, it is rather too hot to-day; and it may rain next week; and there is a wedding I wish to go to at the other end of the county. I will put off my harvest for a month or so. then will be more convenient to would count such talk folly and

The season

me." If you

madness in a

Surely "the

farmer, what must it be in you? life is more than meat." If it would be madness to put off the harvest of the bread that perishes, how worse than madness must it be to put off the harvest of holiness and obedience!

Again, another practical application of the text may be made to the way of keeping Sunday. Sunday is to the rest of the week in spirituals, what summer is to the rest of the year in temporals. It is the chief time for gathering knowledge to last you through the following week, just as summer is the chief season for gathering food to last you through the following twelvemonth. Do you make the most of this weekly summer? Do you, like wise sons, gather instruction by listening to the reader and the preacher? Do you gather fresh

stores of grace and strength by diligent and humble attendance on the ordinances of God? Or do you sleep? Surely this question may well be asked in church. For many do sleep away their Sunday, some at church, and some at home: and many who keep the eyes of their body open, allow the eyes of their mind to close, and are no wiser. and no better for all they hear with their ears and repeat with their lips in this place, than if they had not set their foot in it. Verily I must warn you, brethren, such sleepers do indeed cause shame. They are a shame to their minister, whose teaching they refuse to profit by. They are a shame to the Church, which received them when infants into her bosom. They are a disgrace to the Lord and Master, whose name they bear, but whose word they pay no heed to, and whose day they waste in sloth and carelessness.

Such are some of the simplest ways in which the text may be applied to spiritual and practical truths. Such are some of the various harvests which we are called to gather in; the harvest of youth, when we should gather knowledge,—the harvest of manhood, when we should gather holiness, the harvest of the sabbath, when we should gather spiritual instruction, and meat for our soul's need. At all these seasons and in all these ways it behoves us, my friends, to gather. Do you

ask, how much? Why, all we can. Let your harvest then increase, until you yourselves are gathered to the Lord by Jesus Christ in the great harvest, according to the saying of the Psalmist : "He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him." (cxxvi. 6.) You see, the Psalmist says, doubtless he shall come again. And so it must needs be. He who came once as the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, bringing us the precious seed of God's word, will doubtless return again; but he will return no longer sorrowing. He will have seen of the travail of his soul, and be satisfied. He will have collected the fruits of his glorious labours, the souls he has won, the spirits he has purified. So will he come again rejoicing, bringing these his sheaves with him. That you, my brethren, may have a place in that blessed harvest-home, God of his infinite mercy grant!

487

SERMON XXIX.

GOD'S PATIENCE, AND MAN'S PERVERSENESS.

ROMANS ii. 4, 5.

Despisest thou the riches of God's goodness and forbearance and long-suffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance? But after thy hardness and impenitent heart treasurest up to thyself wrath against the day of wrath, and revelation of the righteous judgement of God?

THIS question, I fear, is still as applicable to some in every Christian congregation, as it can have

been to the Romans when St Paul asked it. Therefore it should be asked in every congregation from time to time. And what occasion can be fitter, what season more suitable for asking it, than when by God's mercy we have just been brought to the close of a year in safety, and are about to step as it were out of the old year into a new

one? At such a season it cannot be ill for us— rather must it be our duty, to halt awhile and take breath, to look back over the ground we have been crossing the last twelve months, to look forward to the point we should be making for, and thus to find out whether during the last year we have indeed been traveling toward the heavenly Jerusalem, and walking on the road that leads to life. If not, if we have not been walking along that road, and walking too pretty briskly,— if we have been sauntering, or stopping, or sleeping on our journey,-much more if we have been going backward, like some, or have broken away from the path, like others, and have lost sight of God and heaven,-great reason shall we have to ask ourselves, why God has continued us so long in life? and what will happen to us, if we go on to the end as negligently, or as slothfully, or as crookedly and wrongfully, as we have been going on the last year?

right: look carefully The road of life is not path which every one

Do not take it for granted, I beseech you, that you have been going on whether you have or not. a turnpike road. It is a must find out for himself, by the help of such directions as God has given us: and there are so many other paths crossing the true one in all quarters, and the wrong paths are so well beaten, and the true