THE GARLAND.

Otago Witness, Issue 3312, 5 September 1917, Page 65

THE GARLAND.

. FOR THE QUIET HOUR. No. 210. By Duncan Wkight, Duncdin. SOWING! AND KEAPIXG ! A husbandman who many years Had ploughed his fields and sown in tears. G-rew weary with his doubts and fears. "I toil in vain! These rocks and sand 3 Will yield no harvest to my hands; The bast seeds rot in barren lands. "My drooping- vine is withering, No promised grapes its blossoms bring, No birds among its branches sing. "My flock is dying on -the plain; Tho heavens are brass, they yield no rain; The earth is iron. I toil in vain!" While yet he spake a breath that stirred His drooping vino, like wing of bird, And from its loaves a voice he heard: "The germs and fruits of life must be For ever hid in mystery; Yet none can toil in vain for me. "A mightier hand, more skilled than thine, Must hang the clusters on the vine, And make the fields with harvest shine. "'Man can but work; God can create; But they who work, and watch, and wait Have their reward, tho' it com© late. "Look up to heaven! behold .and hoar The clouds and thunderings in thy ear— An answer to thy doubts and fear." He looked, and lo! a cloud-draped car, With trailing smoke and flames afar, Was rushing from a distant star; And every thirsty flock .and plain' Was rising up to meet the rain That came to clothe the fields with grain; And on the clouds he saw again Tho covenant of God with men, Rewritten with His rainbow pen: "Seed-time and harvest shall not fail, And tho' the gates of hell assail, My truth and promise shall prevail."

Dr N. D. Hillis tells us

"One day Louis, King of France, was riding through the forest, near his gorgeous and guilty palace of Versailles. He met a peasant carrying a coffin. 'What did the man die of?' asked the King. 'Of hunger/ answered the But the sound of the hunt was in the King's ear, and he forgot the cry of want. Soon the day came when the King stood before the guillotine, and with mute appeals for mercy fronted a mob silent as statues, unyielding as stones, grimly waiting to dip the end of their pikes* in regal blood. He gave cold looks; he received cold steel.

"Marie Antoinette, riding to Notre Dame for her bridal, bade her soldiers command all beggars, cripples, and ragged people to leave the line of the procession. The Queen could not endure for a moment the sight of these miserable ones doomed to unceasing poverty and squalor. What she gave others she received herself, for soon, bound in an executioner's cart, she was riding toward the plaee of execution amidst crowds who gazed upon her with hearts as cold as ice and hard as granite. When Foulou was asked how the starving populace was to live, he answered, 'Let them eat grass.' Afterward, Carlyle says, the mob, maddened with rage, 'caught him in the streets of Paris, hanged him. stuck his head upon a pike, filled his mouth with grass, amid shouts as of Tophet from a grass-eating peonle.' " What kings and princes gave they received. This is the voice of Nature* and Conscience: "Behold, sin crouches at the door." No man or woman, he they rich or poor, dare despise, neglect, or "scorn the voice and far-reaching warning of Almighty God when, with- majesty and no crouching apology, he declares: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap. '•For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit, shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting." (Ephesians vi, 7, 8.) Truly terrible reading, but never popular teaching. Now is the seed-time: God alone. Beyond our vision weak and dim. Beholds the end of what, is sown : The liarvcst-timo is hid with Him. S"et, vm forgotten where it lies, Tho' seeming- on the desert cast, The seed of generous sacrifice Shall rise with bloom and fruit at last. And he who blesses most is blest; For God and man shall own his worth Who toils to leave as his bequest An added beauty to the earth. —John G-. Whhticr. A GOOD STORY by an anonymous correspondent: There is nothing that.l ought to remember more than it is my dutv to sow the seed and leave the result to God. I ought also. to remember the patience of the man that won me to Christ. We were in the sains office together: We did not like one another at all. My salary was small, and he offered to share his room with me, to save the expense of lodging, and he did this for Christ's sake. He set me thinking. It was the first time I roomed with a Christian man. The first night I sat with my feet on the windowsill smoking; it was half-past ten or eleven o'clock. He waited. I'd smoked two or three cigars, and I lit another. Then he said : "Well, Charlie, I read in the Bible and pray every night; I'll do as I did when I was alone." "Very well," said I. He read his Bible and prayed, and prayed for me. I kept my feet on the window-sill and smoked all the way through. I never in all my life felt so mean. The next night he did the samt, but I did not smoke. He prayed for me every time. After a while I felt convicted. I thought I, too, must pray;

I'll kneel down, and when he gets up I'll get up. That man's patience with me, because Christ died for me, was what broke my heart. It is wonderful how God takes the little patience we can use and makes it work. The joy of the" Lord is our strength and song.

Sow with' a generous hand, Pause not for toil or pain; Weary not through the heat of summer, Weary not through the cold spring rain; But wait till the autumn comes. For the sheaves of golden grain. Scatlcr tho seed and fear not; A table will be spread; What matter if you are too weary To earn your hard-earned bread: Sow while tho earth is broken, For the hungry must be fed. Sow while the seeds are lying In the warm earth's bosom deep, And your warm tears fall upon it — They will disturb in their quiet sleep; And tho green blades rise tho quicker, Perchance, from the tears you weep. Then sow —for ihc hours are fleeting, And the seed must fall to-day; And care not what hands shall reap it, Ot if you shall have pass'd away Before tho waving cornfields' Shall gladden the sunny day. Sow, and look forward, upward, Where the starry light appeal o, Where, in spite of the coward's doubting, Or your own heart's trembling fears, You shall reap in joy the harvest You have sown to-day in ter,rs.

Personally, I honour and respect the preacher who, sometimes at least, speaks out courageously, and always in love, in the name of his' Master. * Personally, I despise the man who, in these perilous times, trims or temporises or seeks to secure popular applause. I have just come across one of these brave preachers, Rev. Alexander Maclaren, of Manchester, whose note on "Sowing and Reaping" is clear as a trumpet :

"Wherever," he says, "a human nature is self-contred, God-forgetting, and therefore God-opposing (for whoever forgets God defies Him), that nature has gone down below humanity and has touched the lower level of the brutes. . . .

"Look at the unblushing sensuality which marks many 'respectable people' nowadays. Look at the foul fleshliness of much of popular art and poetry. Look at the way in which pure animal passion, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the love of good things to eat and plenty to drink, is swaying and destroying men and women by the thousand among us. Look at the thin veneer of culture over the ugliest hist. Scratch the gentleman and you find the satyr. Is it much of an exaggeration, in view'of the facts of life to-day, to. say that all the world wanders after and = worships this beast? '

"Men are so made as that they must either rise to the level of God or certainly go down to the level of the brute. . . . "If there were no judgment at all the natural result of the simple rejection of the Gospel is that; bit bv bit, all the lingering remains of nobleness that hover about the man, like scent about a broken vase, shall pass away; and that, step bv step, through the simple process'of saying, 1 will not have Christ to rule over me. and the whole being shall degenerate until manhood becomes devilhood. and tho soul is lost by its own want of faith." Is that straight enough? Through the long years that are past and gone my memory is clear to some of the lovely songs by Mr Ira D. Sankev. and I quote from one of them now: Sowing the seed of a lingering pain, Sowing the seed of a maddened brain, ' Sowing the seed of a tarnished name,' Sowing the seed of eternal shame. Oh, what shall the harvest be? In one striking instance at least these words gripped the conscience : "These words pierced mv heart." said the changed man. "In' desperation I rushed downstairs and out into the snowy streets. I soon found a saloon, where I asked for liquor to drown mv sorrow. On every bottle in the bar-room' I could read, in words of burning fire, 'What shall the harvest be?' When I took up mv class to drink I read, written on it,''What shall the harvest be?' and I dashed it to the floor and rushed out again into the dark, cold night. The song still followed me wherever I went, and finally drew me back to the Tabernacle two weeks later. I found my way into the inquiry room, and was spoken to by a kindly man. With his open Bible he'pointed me to the Great Physician, who had power to cure and heal me of my appetite if I would only receive Him. * Broken, weak, vile, and helpless, I came to Him. and by His grace I was able to accept Him as ray Redeemer; and I have come to-day to bear my testimony to the. power of Jesus to save to the uttermost."

"A week later this man came into our waiting room and showed me" (that is, Ira D. Sankev) "a letter from his little daughter, which read about as follows: " 'Dear Papa,—Mamma and I saw in the Chicago papers that a man had been saved in the meetings there who was once a lieutenant in the army, and I told mamma that I thought *it was you. Please write to us as soon as you can. as mamma cannot believe that it was you.' "

Sequel: Joy in the home and gladness in the heart of all concerned.