SEED TIME AND HARVEST

A SERMON

Preached on Sunday Morning October 15th 1865

By Mister JAMES WELLS

At the New Surrey Tabernacle, Wansey Street

Volume 7 Number 359

“In the morning sow your seed, and in the evening withhold not your hand.” Ecclesiastes 9:6

No doubt some very advantageous remarks might be made from such a text as this upon the excellency and he healthfulness of industry and determined perseverance in those occupation, and positions in life in which the Lord is pleased to place us; but then we are assembled, valuable as that may be in its place, for purposes far more important; and therefore, of course, I shall take the words, as they will bear taking, in their spiritual meaning. I shall take the morning to mean regeneration, which is the spiritual morning of the soul; all of us being by nature, as we have been reading, children of the night; and unless we undergo that change so as to come out of that darkness into light, unless we are brought into this new morning, this new day, this gospel day, this spiritual and everlasting day, if we die without that change we must be lost. And then I shall take the evening to mean the Christian's death; the morning the beginning of his spiritual existence, the morning of his spiritual life; and the evening to mean his death. I shall therefore take the text in a threefold form, by what it expresses and by what it implies. The first thing, then, shall be the times, the morning and the evening. The second shall be the employment; “In the-morning sow your seed, and in the evening withhold not your hand.” The third, and last, shall be the perseverance; perseverance is implied, because here is a sowing commanded in the evening as well as in the morning; implying that such have borne the heat and burden of the day, and are still found at eventide in the same heavenly employment. Happy the people when the Lord comes that shall be found so doing.

We notice then, first, the times, the morning and the evening. First, the morning. I shall notice, of course, some of the characteristics of the morning of regeneration. First, it is a morning of freedom. This we may gather from the 11th chapter of the Book of Job, where the soul born of God is set forth as being as the morning. And Zophar's description there, when taken in the gospel sense, I think, is very beautiful. He says, “If you prepare your heart.” Now when a sinner is convinced of his state as a sinner before God, he is then anxious that his heart should be prepared for the good seed of the gospel, he is then anxious that his heart should be prepared for the grace and for the mercy of the Lord Jesus Christ. “And stretch out your hands toward him;” which, of course, must be taken spiritually; that is to say, your confidence must be in God by Jesus Christ; and stretching out the hand will also mean the hand of prayer; that your prayer must be toward God, “God be merciful to me, a sinner;” in a word, it means the powers of the soul stretching out, as it were, toward God. And so those who are born of God, their hearts are thus prepared to receive his truth, and they stretch out their hands toward him, not only in a way of confidence and prayer, but also to lay hold, as the apostle beautifully expresses it, of eternal life. And then the next step, the next mark or sign of being born of God, is the putting away of sin. “If iniquity be in your hand, put it far away, and let not wickedness dwell in your tabernacles.” Now it may seem to some of you a very strong expression I am about to use, but it is solemnly true, that by nature we have nothing else in our hand but iniquity, and that by nature nothing else but wickedness dwells in our tabernacles where we dwell. We dwell in the first Adam, and there is nothing but sin there; we dwell in self, and there is sin there; we dwell in the world, and there is sin there; we dwell in the law of God, though we do not know it; I am not going to say there is sin there, but I will say that there is the strength of sin there. Now, then, when a sinner is convinced of this he says, How I should like to find out a way in which this iniquity can be put far from me! how I should like to find out a way in which I could come out of those tabernacles where wickedness is, and dwell in those tabernacles where wickedness is not! By-and-bye the secret is opened up to him, and he reads something like this, that Jesus Christ has put sin away, put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Ah, says such an one, I begin to see a little; I see that if I put iniquity far away from me, it must be by faith in that sacrifice which alone can form an infinite distance between me and iniquity; and if I dwell in tabernacles where there is no wickedness, for the word tabernacle signifies dwelling, if I dwell in tabernacles, that is, in dwellings where there is no wickedness, where all is pure, where all is in contrast to what I am as a sinner, then I must dwell in God's love, I must dwell in God's Christ, who is our wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; I must dwell in God's truth; “sanctify them through your truth.” And if you are thus brought to dwell in God by faith in the Lord Jesus Chris, then the Scriptures come to you in this form: “Far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.” Ah, you will say, blessed morning this, that ever showed to me my state as a sinner; blessed morning this, this morning star, this day star, beginning thus to dawn upon my benighted soul, shining into my soul as into a dark place, and thus showing me the way in which there are dwellings that are eternally tranquil, where the wicked cease from troubling and the weary are at rest. “Then,” said Zophar, “shall you lift up your face without spot.” Such a one says, Is that possible? What I lift up my face without spot? What I a poor leper like me, that has labored by other means to change the spots of the leopard, and not been able? What! a poor leper like me, that is all over leprosy? What! a poor creature like me, full of wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores; shall I lift up my face without spot? How can that be? By the blood of Jesus Christ cleansing from all sin; so, he shall present his people without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing. So Zophar goes on describing this beautiful and wondrous process. He says, “Yes, you shall be steadfast, and shall not fear.” Well he might, for:

“If sin be pardoned, I'm secure.”

If sin be thus put away; if I am thus made to arise by grace divine to see this heavenly day, I may well be steadfast, because I am brought to depend upon that that is steadfast. God is steadfast to his promise; Christ is steadfast; the Holy Spirit is steadfast; and the blessed word of God can never, never fail. “Because you shall forget your misery.” I like that. Ah, the man that is born of God knows something of the misery of sin, and of the misery of self, and of the misery of God's absence, and of the misery of Satanic incomings like a flood, and of the misery of feeling as though he had no hope. But here, by this light, which discovers to him the dear Savior, he shall forget his misery, “and remember it as waters that pass away.” Here, then, it is a morning of freedom, wherein we are thus led to look to the Lord, sin put away, we constituted spotless and faultless before him, blessed with sweet confidence, and that such shall forget their misery, and remember it as waters that pass away; that their misery is dried up, and dried up for ever, virtually never to return again. Now Zophar might well say that “your age” as you stand in Christ, “shall be clearer than the noonday; you shall shine forth; you shall be as the morning.” Come, then, you will begin to see now; you are alive now; yes, and you have some ground to sow in now, and you have some seed, good seed, to sow too, which I shall describe when I come to that part. Now let us stop here for one moment, and let me put the question to this assembly, What know we of our hearts being thus prepared to receive the truth of God? what know we of thus stretching out our souls in prayer, in faith, and confidence toward God? what know we of seeing we have nothing but iniquity in our hands by nature, and that God alone could take this cup of trembling out of our hands, and that the tabernacles wherein we dwell by nature are all corrupted by sin? what know we of this? and what know we of welcoming to our inmost soul the delightful truth that by the blood of Jesus Christ, God's dear Son, cleansing from all sin, we are left without spot, without wrinkle, without a fault laid to our charge, unblameable, unrebukable, and unreproveable in his sight? and what know we of seeing that it is by this covenant interposition of our covenant God that we forget our misery in the remembrance of his mercy, his mercy being greater than our misery, broader and deeper and higher and longer than our misery, swallowing up the whole, that our misery shall thus be forgotten as waters that pass away? what know we of seeing that by Christ Jesus we have an age, “Your age shall be clearer than the noonday,” what age, think you? Why, your eternal age. You are born to die no more; you are constituted perfect, to be tarnished no more; you are justified, to be condemned no more; you are accepted, to be rejected no more; you are brought into that day that will never end; Christ is your day, and he dies no more; God is your day, and it is thus an everlasting day. Here, then, “your age”, your eternal age, your eternal standing, “shall be clearer than the noonday; you shall shine forth” by what Jesus Christ is to you, “you shall be as the morning,” always fresh, always youthful, and always having a long day before you, so that, after innumerable cycles of ages, if I may, because of the infirmity of speech, so speak, after cycles and cycles of ages have rolled over, you still have before you an eternal day. That is the morning. Second, it is a morning not only of freedom but of perfection. 110th Psalm: “From the womb of the morning,” that is, from Christ's resurrection; he had undergone the night, and the night was past, and the morning was the morning of his resurrection; and how did he rise? He rose into the fulfilment of the next verse, which says, “The Lord has sworn,” I want you to see this, and to understand this, and to receive this, and to abide by this as an evidence that you are born of God, “The Lord has sworn, and will not repent, You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek.” The apostle Paul explains this to mean this one thing, it is all pointing to this one thing, that “he has by his one offering perfected forever them that are sanctified.” Ah, said one, there is something so deep about this I cannot understand it, and I do not wish to trouble myself about it. My answer to that is this, However ambiguous it may appear to you, it cannot appear more ambiguous to you, some of you, it cannot appear more impossible to understand than it once did to myself; I was once as dark about it; I knew not what was meant by Jesus Christ perfecting forever by his one offering his people; I could not understand it; and you must forgive me if I say that to me now it is as plain as A B C. “The wayfaring man shall not err therein.” And therefore, do not say that there is something in it so deep you will never get at it. Yes, you will; you wait and you look; you will understand it by-and-bye, and the more it puzzles you, and the more you look at it, the more you seem unable to understand it, the more you abide by it, and the God of heaven will be with you, he will look at your desire. “The meek will he guide in judgment.” So, they need his guiding, and you need his guiding; and by-and-bye, when you understand clearly, you will then bless the Lord that you were earnest in trying to understand it, and to your surprise you find out presently. Why these very things that I have been looking into, the Bible shows me that even angels desire to look into these things; they do not know enough of them yet, they are still seeking to know them; they seek more, and understand and enjoy more of the great Creator by the eternal perfection of Christ, than in any other way. So, then, here is the morning, Christ's resurrection; “from the womb of the morning you have the dew of your youth;” and in the light of this resurrection morning we seek that eternal perfection that is by the priesthood of Christ. There are many more scriptures upon this same point, which, if I were to detain you upon, I should occupy all your time upon this first part. I will therefore pass by them, only here just observing that we are upon a most essential matter. You cannot be saved without this eternal perfection of the priesthood of Christ; you cannot be saved without the reception of it. It was a great grief to the apostle that some in his day, good people, seemed very slow in understanding their own blessedness which the Lord had given them, in understanding their own mercies which the Lord had treasured up for them; in understanding the greatness of the Savior's work, and the greatness of the mercy of God, all embodied in, and governed by, the priesthood of Christ; therefore, saith the apostle, “Of whom we have many things to say, and hard to be uttered, seeing you are dull of hearing.” Some of you that have not yet been quite enough in Jonah's hell, in Job's ditch, not yet knocked about enough, you are still dull of hearing, dull of apprehension; but by-and-bye, when you get on a little farther, many little bits in the shape of gospel that may amuse and do for you now will all go off like chaff, and you will by-and-bye come to listen with unwavering care to that perfection that is in Christ, to that immutability of God's counsel manifested by Jesus Christ. He therefore rose from the dead, the night passed away, he brought in this eternal perfection, established the immutable oath of God: here we have a faithful and unchanging God. Now these are the tests of being born of God. As it is so essential, I may just run over some of these points again. In the first place, then, the heart, it begins with the heart, “If you prepare your heart;” it is done by the quickening power of the Holy Spirit. “The preparation of the heart in man is of the Lord;” but that does not hinder the Christian being led by the Spirit of God, as it were, to prepare his heart, and say, Now, Lord, speak to me concerning your mercy, for my heart is prepared to receive that mercy; speak to me concerning what is done by your dear Son; my heart is desolate, my soul is desolate, and I am prepared to listen to, and to receive these blessed tidings; speak to me now concerning that perfection, that completeness that is in your dear Son, that shall bring me off at the last more than conqueror; for you know, Lord, that I do now desire to hear the voice of the Great Shepherd in that way that shall make me feel he is mine, and the gospel is my gospel, and that Jesus Christ is my Jesus Christ, that he lived and died for me. Those of you that have not these feelings, you are certainly not brought into this morning, and if you die in that state you will to eternity be lost. On the other hand, those of you that are thus brought, those of you that have these feelings, you will be drawn towards Christ, for every one that is taught of God is sure to be drawn to Christ, because every one that is taught of God is taught the maladies and the miseries into which sin has brought the soul, and is so led to know that:

“None but Jesus, none but Jesus,

Can do helpless sinners good.”

I will now, then, go on to the next part, after just noticing the evening. Now, then, what is the evening? The evening we shall take here to mean the Christian's death, and we will have two scriptures upon the death of the Christian, and only two. “The dove came in to Noah in the evening.” Ah, do you believe in Jesus, and love his truth, and receive it, and abide by it? It will be evening with you by-and-bye; and as sure as the Holy Spirit has been the peaceful dove to you, so sure as the truths of the gospel have been testimonies of peace to you to give you peace with God, the dove shall come to you in the evening. “And, lo! in her mouth was an olive leaf the symbol of peace, of life, of plenty: “so Noah knew that the waters were abated from off the earth.” And so, the dying Christian; “mark the perfect man” in Christ; “behold the upright” in the faith, “the end of that man is peace.” “Lo; in her mouth was an olive leaf.” Jesus will come to you in peace, the Holy Spirit in peace. God be unto you a God of peace. “Peace be unto you” was the language, is the language, and will be the language to the believer. Oh, happy man, this heavenly dove ministering peace to your soul when it is with you, the evening of this life. One more scripture, 14th of Zechariah, “It shall come to pass in that day, that the light shall not be clear, nor dark.” Does not that describe us? It is not altogether dark, because we are not now in a state of nature, that is, those of you that know the Lord; and it is not yet perfectly clear, for we know only in part, we see through a glass darkly, so that we know only in part. So then here, in this our state of grace, it is not clear glory yet, and bless the Lord, it is not dark nature, that is past. “But it shall be one day which shall be known to the Lord.” Ah, your spiritual birthday perhaps was not known on earth, but it was celebrated through all the realms of heaven; you do not know, perhaps, the day when you were born again, and some others hardly know whether they are born again or not; but God knew, angels knew, saints in glory knew; angels rejoice when repentance by the grace of God is wrought in the heart of the sinner. Your spiritual birthday, born to glory, born to eternal bliss, was celebrated through all the realms of heaven. “At evening time it shall be light.” “It shall be one day which shall be “known to the Lord.” He knew before he called us what day we should be called, and he knew when he did call us, and he knows it now, and always will know it; it is a day known to the Lord. There are many senses in which the word day may be there taken; it may be taken to mean the appointed time, and it may be also taken to mean Christ. But not to linger. “At evening time it shall be light.” Why, that is the time the sun goes down, that is the time it is dark. You that know not the Lord, it will be a dark evening with you, because when your nature's hope is gone with you all is gone, when your world's hope is gone all is gone; when what you possess in this world is ended all is ended. But to the man that is thus brought to Jesus Christ, to receive in the understanding of it God's truth, “at evening time it shall be light.” Just as you enter upon the last conflict God will give you faith to say, “Sun, stand you still upon Gibeon; and you, moon, in the valley of Ajalon,” until my soul shall achieve the last conquest in departing from this world. And so, as Jesus triumphed over death in the midst of death, so shall you triumph over death in the midst of death. Oh, then, happy morning, happy people, happy day, happy evening; that while it is a dark evening with others it will be a light evening with you; the sun of others will go down in the clear day, but your sun will set no more forever.

We now come to the employment, “In the morning sow your seed.” Now this seed will mean four things, and let us enter upon this part with all the care that the solemn importance of the subject demands. Be careful as to what seed you sow; “for what a man sows, that shall he also reap;” and if we sow corruptible seed, then the harvest will be a heap of desperate grief, and will subject us to eternal sorrow. I feel a great deal more anxious about getting the right seed than I do about sowing it; we shall not be afraid of sowing it if we get the right seed. Let us be careful. Now what is the first seed I should like to sow? Here is the answer, Jesus Christ. I want to sow him in my heart the hope of glory; and if he be the seed, from him and by him I am sure to have a good harvest. Let us have the word of God to help us in this matter. He is the good seed to begin with. 12th of John, “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abides alone.” Shall I be wrong in saying that the dear Savior is pleased here for our instruction to call himself a corn of wheat? and does he not show us that without his death there will be no life for us, there will be no harvest for us? The palmer worm (curious things they are, some of them), and the locust, and the caterpillar, and the canker worm of sin and mortality, would have their own way, and we should lie down in eternal famine, if the Savior did not die. “Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground,” except the Savior die, there can be no end put to the spiritual famine we are under by nature, and no plenty brought in; “but if it die,” now the next words are too great for me to meddle with them, “if it die, it brings forth much fruit.” Ah, by his death what promises he has brought forth! what mercies he has brought forth! what eternal plenty he has brought forth! You really must forgive my littleness in this part; I feel at a loss what to say upon those words, “it brings forth much fruit.” Ah, let heaven's unnumbered millions to eternity testify the truth that Jesus by his death has brought forth much fruit; so much that he himself by the harvest he has brought in shall feed them forever, shall lead them to living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from off all faces. Here, then, be careful, Christ is the first seed that must be sown in your heart, in your soul, in your hope. “In the morning sow your seed.” So, you that are just born of God, just peeping out of obscurity, you cannot receive this promised seed too soon; Christ cannot be too soon planted in your heart, sown in your heart, and take root in your heart. And he does take a wonderful root in the heart, wonderful. Where this seed is sown in the soul of a man, you may take that man's goods from him, take his liberty from him, and you may grind his body to powder; you cannot get Christ out of the man's soul. The devil has been permitted to try this in gone-by ages; and to think that if he swept Job's property away, and his family away, and as Job's parsonic friends would turn against him, surely that will root the seed out, surely Job will turn round now and curse the Lord. No, no. Well, Job, what do you say to it now? Well, says Job, I say this, I have four wishes, and these tour wishes are fulfilled. “O that my words were now written so they are, Job; “O that they were printed in a book;” so they are printed; “that they were graven with an iron pen;” so they are; “and lead in the rock forever;” so they are. Well, what are you going to say? I know the seed sown in my heart; I know what has taken root in my soul; “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth; and though after my skin,” poor Job's skin was eaten of worms; he must have been a wretched object to look at, and poor Job, when he felt this, must have been wretched too; yet he could not get this seed out of his soul; “though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God; whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.” Well, now, Job, just give your friends a word of advice. Well, my advice to them is this, “You should say, Why persecute we him, seeing the root of the matter is found in me;” and there it will remain; I in Christ, and Christ in me; I in God, and God in me; he one with me, and I one with him; and who shall sever me from this love of God; “he is of one mind, and who can turn him.” And thus, Job sowed the right seed, it took a good root, brought forth fruit, and Job was right at the last. So, we must be careful as to this part, friends. “In the morning sow your seed.” It is the object of every gospel minister to sow this one promised seed, Christ Jesus; because included in him, I was going to say, are all the seeds. But, secondly, to sow means also, I think, the graces of the Spirit; that we are to go on self-examining, and to go on believing, and to go on seeking the Lord, and to leave off on no account whatever. Well, is it not a pleasing thought to us, friends, within our favored land, scattered up and down this land we have our twenties, and fifties, and hundreds, perhaps in very few cases thousands; nevertheless, we have our congregations up and down the land that do personally, voluntarily, led by the fear of God, constrained by the love of Christ, and from necessity, do personally, and honestly, and really, from day to day, and especially from, sabbath to sabbath, seek the Lord their God. Ah, what is this but sowing unto the Spirit? And think you that you will thus sow in tears and not reap in joy? No. Think you that you shall thus go forth weeping, bearing the precious seed, Christ Jesus, and bearing in your heart the seed of faith, and life, and love, and not come again rejoicing, bringing your sheaves with you? No. Therefore “in the morning sow your seed,” and go on to the evening of your days, for you shall not be disappointed. Then, third, the seed will mean the truths of the gospel; and you are not to sow your field with mingled seeds, duty-faith and free-grace seed, free will and free grace, they will never stand together. If you expect a free-grace crop, you must sow free-grace seed. I was going to boast, I hardly ever preach a sermon without some weakness or another; but I was going to say that as a minister I have been sowing free-grace seed now for thirtyeight years, and I have seen a good many crops; some are gathered home to glory. I have a goodly number on earth, some in pretty well all parts, of the world; the seed has taken root, and, as we observed last Lord's day evening, they received the word, understood the word, abode by it, the free-grace word. Now, then, here is the doctrine of free grace. Ah but then, say some, these free-grace doctrines are dangerous; they do not lead people to good works. How do you know? Did you ever try? Well, they never led me to good works, says one. That is because you were never led by them. Why you are no judge, know nothing at all about it. Does your love to your relations lead you to treat them unkindly? No. Does your love to the house of God lead you to neglect it? Does your love to the commandments of the Lord lead you to despise them? Well, no, say you. Just so. I make no hesitation in saying that there is not one gospel truth that is not a loving truth. Why did the Lord choose you? Because he loved you. Why did he ordain you to life? Because he loved you. Why did Jesus Christ live for you? Because he loved you. Why did he die for you? Because he loved you. And why are you now made concerned, though some of you are perhaps a little cloudy as yet in this matter? Read the word of God, that will inform you. “God, who is rich in mercy, and for his great love wherewith he loved us.” One old divine was so well versed in this that he declares even our troubles are all sent in love.

“E'en crosses from his sovereign hands,

Are blessings in disguise.”

So that there is not one gospel truth that is not a loving truth. Ah, says one, but there are some I have not received the love of yet. Well, it does not follow you might not, you know; no, you will by-and-bye. You have got a wrong view of them now. I recollect a friend asking me some time ago to go with him to see a very handsomely built chapel, and when I got within half a mile of it; I thought it was the worst laid out building I ever saw in my life. I said, “You are no judge of architecture.” “Ah,” he said, “stop till you get into a right position, and can have a square view of it.” And I was then as pleased as I had before been disappointed. So, when you get into a right position, and get a square view of salvation, you will look at the city of God, and you will say, What foundations, what jasper walls, what pearly gates, what a compact city, what an everlasting spring-like scene, what a clear river, what beautiful fruit, what happy inhabitants! how well built, not to be taken down again forever! But coming back to my subject, “you shall not sow your field with mingled seed;” and the same doctrine is conveyed in two more things, “neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woolen come upon you.” Now you Christians understand this; that is, you must be justified by Christ's righteousness alone; you must mix nothing of yours, but it must be his alone. You must be brought, to just where David was when he said, “I will go in the strength of the Lord God; I will make mention of your righteousness, even of your only.” And then those who are thus led to sow Christ in the heart, free-grace seeds, they stand severed from the world. Hence it said, “You shall not plough with the ox and the ass yoked together.” I take the ox there to represent the believer, and the ass to represent the unbeliever. And I take the apostle's explanation in the 6th chapter of 2nd Corinthians, “Be you not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.” Well, says one, if I am an unbeliever, then you are calling me that sort of creature. Well, don't be offended, but be serious with what I say, and remember the word of God, that man is born, not only like an ass's colt, but like a wild ass's colt; there is the account given by divine inspiration. We are filled by nature with stupidity concerning eternal things; God alone can bring us to our senses. “Be you not unequally yoked together with unbelievers; for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness?” And what communion “has light,” the light of the gospel, “with darkness," the darkness of this world? “and what concord has Christ with Belial? or what part has he that believes with an infidel? and what agreement has the temple of God with idols?” “Wherefore,” the Lord says, “come out from among them, and be you separate, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.” Sowing this seed, then, means four things, three of which I have mentioned; Christ first, then the exercise of the graces of the Spirit, and then the truths of the gospel, and lastly good works; never be weary of good works. Hence the first verse of this chapter I shall show you in a minute or two realizes a beautiful and a very striking fulfilment. “Cast your bread upon the waters, for you shall find it after many days.” Now we will take that; I will not even spiritualize that; I could do so, of course, but I will not. “Cast your bread upon the waters;” that is, do all the good you can to the poor of God's people, for you cannot cast bread upon the waters when you have none to cast; therefore it means those that have something to cast upon the waters. And we look forward and hope here, that while the old Surrey Tabernacle has for many years given publicly as a body, to say nothing of their personal and private ministrations, the friends in Christ, upon the average about £500 a year to the poor. How much we ought to give here I don't know; that we have yet to prove. “Cast thy bread upon the waters, for you shall find it after many days.” Why, we had forgotten it. How many a want have you relieved and forgotten it; how often have you subscribed to the great helps that have been rendered to many needy ministers, and to many causes, and to your 150, or pretty well 200 at Christmas, and so on. You have been thus casting your bread upon the waters, and you say, “We have done nothing, we do not wish to think of it. That is right; I never like that sermon that is always talking about wonderful works. I like to pay nothing at all about it. Now you think that is lost, but you will find it after many days. How many days? I will tell you. Yet I cannot tell you; the number of days depends entirely upon the duration of the world. Matthew 35:34, &c.