I have finished the work of my generation; and when I have done the will of God, then to receive the promise. If thou have any work on earth to employ me in, ham content to abide. Behold, the husbandman waiteth, and so will I; for thou art a God of judgment; and blessed are all they that wait for thee,

But how does my slothful soul sink down into the flesh, says another, and settle itself in the love of this animal life! How does it wrap up itself in the garment of this mortality, not desiring to be removed hence to the more perfect and blessed state! The husbandman is indeed content to stay till the appointed weeks of the harvest; but would he be content to wait always? O my sensual heart, is this life of hope as contentful to thee as the lifeof vision will be? Why dost thou not groan within thyself, that this mortality might be swallowed up of life? Do not the scriptures describe the saints by their earnest "looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life?""by their hastening unto the coming of the day of God?" What is the reason that my heart hangs back? Does guilt lie upon my conscience? Or, have I got into a pleasant condition in the world, which makes me say as Peter on the mount, "It is good to be here?" Or want I the assurance of a better state? Must God make all my earthly comforts die, before I shall be willing to die? Awake faith, awake love. Rouse the drowsy desires of my soul, that I may say, "Make haste my beloved, and come away,"

CHAPTER XV..

On the Harvest-Season.

Observation. WHEN the fields are white to harvest, then the husbandmen walk through them, rub the ears, and finding the grain full and solid, they presently prepare their scythes and sickles, send for their harvest-men, who quickly reap and mow the corn; and after these follow

the binders, who tie it up; from the field where it grew, it is carried to the barn, where it is threshed out, the good grain gathered into a heap, the chaff separated and burnt, or thrown to the dunghill. How bare and naked do the fields look after harvest, which before were pleasant to behold! When the harvest-men enter into the field, it is, before them, like the garden of Eden, and behind them a desolate wilderness; and, in some places, it is usual to set fire to the dry stubble when the corn is housed, which rages furiously, and covers all the field with ashes.

Application. The application of this, I find made to my hands by Christ himself. "The field is the world; the good seed are the children of the kingdom; the tares are the children of the wicked one; the enemy that sowed them is the devil; the harvest is the end of the world; the reapers are the angels."

The field is the world; there both the godly and ungodly live and grow together, until they are both ripe; and then they shall both be reaped down by death: death is the sickle that reaps down both. I will open this allegory in the following particulars

1. In a catching harvest, when the husbandman sees the clouds begin to gather and grow black, he hurries in his corn with all possible haste, and houses it day and night. So does God, the great Husbandman. He hurries the saints into their graves when judgments are coming upon the world. "The righteous perish, and no man layeth it to heart; and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come,' Isa. lvii. 1. Methuselah died the year before the flood; Augustine a little before the sacking of Hippo; Pareus just before the taking of Heidelburgh; Luther a little before the wars broke out in Germany. But what speak I of single saints? Sometimes the Lord houses great numbers together, before some sweeping judgment comes. The Lord sees it better for them to be under-ground, than above-ground; and therefore, by a merciful providence, removes them out of harm's way.

2. Neither the corn nor the tares can possibly resist the sharp and keen sickle, when it is applied to them by the reaper's hand; neither can the godly or ungodly resist

the stroke of death when God inflicts it. No man can keepalive his own soul in the day of death; and there is no discharge in that war." The frail body of man is as unable to withstand that stroke, as the weak reeds or feeble stalks of the corn are to resist the keen scythe and sharp sickle.

3. The reapers receive the wheat which they cut down into their arms and bosom. Hence that expression by way of imprecation upon the wicked, "Let them be as the grass upon the house top, which withers before it

grows

up; ; wherewith the mower filleth not his hand, nor he that bindeth sheaves, his bosom," Psal. cxxix. 6. Such withered grass are the wicked, who are never taken into the reaper's bosom; but as soon as saints are cut down by death, they fall into the hands and bosoms of the angels of God, who bear them in their arms and bosoms to God their father. For as those blessed spirits did exceedingly rejoice at their conversion, and thought it no dishonor to minister to them, whilst they stood in the field, so when they are cut down by death, they will rejoice to be their convoy to heaven.

4. When the corn and weeds are reaped and mowed down, they shall never grow any more in the field; neither shall we ever return to live an animal life any more after death. "As the cloud is consumed, and vanisheth away; so he that goeth down to the grave, shall come up no more; he shall return no more to his house, neither shall his place know him any more," Job vii. 9.

5. The reapers are never sent to cut down the harvest until it be fully ripe; neither will God reap down saints or sinners until they be come to a maturity of grace or wickedness. Saints are not reaped down until their grace is ripe. "Thou shalt come to thy grave "in a full age, as "Not that every

a shock of corn cometh in its season.' godly man dies in such a full old age," says Caryl, “but yet, in one sense, it is a universal truth and never fulfilled; for whensoever they die, they die in a good age; yea, though they die in the spring and flower of their youth, they die in a good old age; that is, they are ripe for death whenever they die. Whenever a godly man dies, it is harvest-time with him, though in a natural capacity

he be cut down while he is green, and cropped in the bud or blossom; yet in his spiritual capacity he never dies before he be ripe. God ripens him speedily, when he intends to take him out of the world speedily. He can let out such warm rays and beams of his Spirit upon him,' as shall soon maturate the seeds of grace into a preparedness for glory."

The wicked also have their ripening-time for hell and judgment. "God does with much long-suffering endure the vessels of wrath, prepared for destruction." Of their ripeness for judgment the scripture often speaks. "The sin of the Amorites is not yet full," Gen. xv. 16. ́ ́ And of Babylon it is said; "O thou that dwellest upon many waters, thine end is come, and the measure of thy cove tousness," Jer. li. 13. It is worth remarking, that the measure of the sin, and the end of the sinner, come together. Now, as husbandmen judge of the ripeness of their harvest, by the color and hardness of the grain; so may we judge of the ripeness both of saints and sinners, for heaven or hell, by these following signs.

Signs of the maturity of grace.-I. When the cornis nearly ripe, it bows the head, and stoops lower than when it was green. When the people of God are nearly ripe for heaven, they grow more humble and self-denying, than in the days of their first profession. The longer a saint grows in the world, the better he is acquainted with his own heart and his obligations to God; both which are very humbling things. Paul had one foot in heaven, when he called himself the chief of sinners, and least of saints. A Christian in the progress of his knowledge and grace, is like a vessel cast into the sea, the more it fills, the deeper it sinks. "Those that went to study at Athens," says Plutarch, "at first coming seemed to themselves to be wise men; afterwards only lovers of wisdom; and after that, only rhetoricians, such as could speak wisdom, but knew little of it; and last of all, ideots in their own apprehensions; still, with the increase of learning, laying aside their pride and

arrogancy.

2. When harvest is nigh, the grain is more solid and pithy than ever it was before; green corn is soft and spungy, but ripe corn is substantial and weighty. So it

is with Christians. The affections of a young Christian are perhaps more sprightly; but those of a grown Christian are more judicious and solid. "Their love to Christ abounds more and more in all judgment." The limbs of a child are more active and pliable; but as he grows up to a perfect state, the parts are more consolidated and firmly knit. The fingers of an old musician are not so nimble; but he has a more judicious ear in music than in his youth.

3. When corn is dead ripe, it is apt to fall of its own accord to the ground, and there shed; whereby it does, as it were, anticipate the harvest-man, and calls upon him to put in the sickle. Not unlike to which are the lookings and longings, the groanings and hastenings of Christians for their expected glory. "They hasten to the coming of the Lord," or, as Montanus more fitly renders it, "they hasten the coming of the Lord;" that is, they are urgent and instant in their desires and cries to hasten his coming; their desires sally forth to meet the Lord; they willingly take death by the hand. As the corn bends to the earth, so do these souls to heaven.

Signs of the maturity of sin.-1. When conscience is grown past feeling, having no remorse for sin; when it ceases to check, reprove, and smite, for sin; the day of that sinner is at hand, his harvest is even come. The greatest violation of conscience is the greatest of sins. This was the case of the forlorn Gentiles, among whom Satan had such a plentiful harvest; the patience of God suffered them to grow till their consciences were grown seared and past feeling. When a member is so mortified, that if you lance and cut it ever so much, no blood appears, nor does the man feel any pain, then it is time to cut it off. 2. When men give themselves over to the indulgence of their lusts, to commit sin with greediness, then are they grown to a maturity of sin. When men have slipped the reins of conscience, and rush headlong into all impiety, then the last sands of God's patience are running down. Thus Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities about them, gave themselves over to wickedness and strange sins; and then justice quickly gave them up for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.