II. Notice, in the next place, that as surely as _now_ is the
time to plant, _then_ will be a time to reap.
I do not know whether the writer of my text meant the harvest, when he
put in antithesis to my text the other clause, 'and a time to pluck up
that which is planted.' Probably, as most of the other pairs are
opposites, here, too, we are to see an opposite rather than a result;
the destructive action of plucking up, and not the preservative action
of gathering a harvest. But, however that may be, let me remind you
that there stands, irrefragable, for every human soul and every human
deed, this great solemn law of retribution.
Now what lies in that law? Two things--that the results are similar in
kind, and more in number. The law of likeness, and the law of
increase, both of them belong to the working of the law of
retribution. And so, be sure that you will find out that all your past
lives on into your present; and that the present, in fact, is very
little more than the outcome of the past. What you plant as a youth
you will reap as a man. This mysterious life of ours is all sowing and
reaping intermingled, right away on to the very end. Each action is in
turn the child of all the preceding and the parent of all that
follows. But still, though that be true, your time of life is
predominantly the time of sowing; and my time of life, for instance,
is predominantly the time of reaping. There are a great many things
that I could not do now if I wished. There are a great many things in
our past that I, and men of my age, would fain alter; but there they
stand, and nothing can do away the marks of that which once has been.
We have to reap, and so will you some day.
And I will tell you what you will have to reap, as sure as you are
sitting in those pews. You will have the enlarged growth of your
present characteristics. A man takes a photograph upon a sensitive
plate, half the size of the palm of my hand; and then he enlarges it
to any size he pleases. And that is what life does for all of us. The
pictures, drawn small on the young man's imagination, on the young
woman's dreaming heart, be they of angels or of beasts, are permanent;
and they will get bigger and bigger and bigger, as get older. You do
not reap only as much as you sowed, but 'some sixty fold, and some an
hundred fold.'
And you will reap the increased dominion of your early habits. There
is a grim verse in the Book of Proverbs that speaks about a man being
tied and bound by the chains of his sins. And that is just saying that
the things which you chose to do when you were a boy, many of them you
will have to do when you are a man; because you have lost the power,
though sometimes not the will, of doing anything else. There be men
that sow the wind, and they do not reap the wind, but the law of
increase comes in and they reap the whirlwind. There be men who,
according to the old Greek legend, sow dragon's teeth and they reap
armed soldiers. There are some of you that are sowing to the flesh,
and as sure as God lives, you will 'of the flesh reap corruption.'
'Whatsoever a man soweth, that,' even here, 'shall he also reap.'
And let me remind you that that law of inheriting the fruit of our
doings is by no means exhausted by the experience of life. Whenever
conscience is awakened it at once testifies not only of a broken law,
but of a living Law-giver; and not only of retribution here, but of
retribution hereafter. And I for my part believe that the modern form
of Christianity and the tendencies of the modern pulpit, influenced by
some theological discussions, about details in the notion of
retribution that have been going on of late years, have operated to
make ministers of the Gospel too chary of preaching, and hearers
indisposed to accept, the message of 'the terror of the Lord.' My dear
friends! retribution cannot stop on this side of the grave, and if you
are going yonder you are carrying with you the necessity in yourself
for inheriting the results of your life here. I beseech you, do not
put away such thoughts as this, with the notion that I am brandishing
before you some antiquated doctrine, fit only to frighten old women
and children. The writer of the Book of Ecclesiastes was no
weak-minded, superstitious fanatic. He was far more disposed to
scepticism than to fanaticism. But for all that, with all his sympathy
for young men's breadth and liberality, with his tolerance for all
sorts and ways of living, with all his doubts and questionings, he
came to this, and this was his teaching to the young men whom in idea
he had gathered round his chair,--'Rejoice, oh young man, in thy
youth. And let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth, and walk
in the ways of thine heart, and in the sight of thine eyes.' By all
means, God has put you into a fair world, and meant you to get all the
good out of it. 'But,' and that not as a kill-joy, 'know thou, that
for all these things God will bring thee into judgment,' and shape
your characters accordingly.
III. Still further, let me say, these things being so, you especially
need to ponder them.
That is so, because you especially are in danger of forgetting them.
It is meant that young people should live by impulse much more than by
reflection.
'If nature put not forth her power
About the opening of the flower,
Who is there that could live an hour?'
The days of calculation will come soon enough; and I do not want to
hurry them. I do not want to put old heads upon young shoulders. I
would rather see the young ones, a great deal. But I want you not to
go down to the level of the beast, living only by instinct and by
impulse. You have got brains, you are meant to use them. You have the
great divine gift of reason, that looks before and after, and though
you have not much experience yet, you can, if you will, reflect upon
such things as I have just been saying to you, and take them into your
hearts, and live accordingly. My dear young friend! enjoy yourself,
live buoyantly, yield to your impulses, be glad for the beautiful life
that is unfolding around you, and the strong nature that is blossoming
within you. And then take this other lesson, 'Ponder the path of thy
feet,' and remember that all the while you dance along the flowery
path, you are planting what you will have to reap.
Then, still further, it is especially needful for you that you should
ponder these things, because unless you do you will certainly go
wrong. If you do not plant good, somebody else will plant evil. An
untilled field is not a field that nothing grows in, but it is a field
full of weeds; and the world and the flesh and the devil, the
temptations round about you and the evil tendencies in you, unless
they are well kept down and kept off, are sure to fill your souls full
of all manner of seeds that will spring up to bitterness, and poison,
and death. Oh! think, think! for it is the only chance of keeping your
hearts from being full of wickedness--think what you are sowing, and
think what will the harvest be. There are some of you, as I said,
sowing to the flesh, young men living impure and wicked lives, and
'their bones are full of the sins of their youth.' There are some of
you letting every wind bring the thistledown of vanities, and scatter
them all across your hearts, that they may spring up prickly, and
gifted with a fatal power of self-multiplication. There are some of
you, young men, and young women too, whose lives are divided between
Manchester business and that ignoble thirst for mere amusement which
is eating all the dignity and the earnestness out of the young men of
this city. I beseech you, do not slide into habits of frivolity,
licentiousness, and sin, for want of looking after yourselves.
Remember, if you do not ponder the path of your feet, you are sure to
take the turn to the left.
Again, it is needful for you to ponder these things, for if you waste
this time, it will never come back to you any more. It is useless to
sow corn in August. There are things in this world that a man can only
get when he is young, such as sound education, for instance; business
habits, habits of industry, of application, of concentration, of
self-control, a reputation which may avail in the future. If you do
not begin to get these before you are five-and-twenty, you will never
get them.
And although the certainty is not so absolute in regard to spiritual
and religious things, the dice are frightfully weighted, and the
chances are terribly small that a young man who, like some of you, has
passed his early years in church or chapel, in weekly contact with
earnest preaching, and has not accepted the Saviour, will do it when
he grows old. He may; he may. But it is a great deal more likely that
he will not.
IV. The conclusion of the whole matter is, Begin on the spot, to trust
and to serve Jesus Christ.
These are the best things to plant--simple reliance upon His death for
your forgiveness, upon His power to make you pure and clean; simple
submission to His commandment. Oh! dear young friend; if you have
these in your hearts everything will come right. You will get habit on
your side, and that is much; and you will be saved from a great deal
of misery which would be yours if you went wrong first, and then came
right.
If you will plant a cutting of the tree of life in your heart it will
yield everything to you when it grows. The people in the South Seas,
if they have a palm-tree, can get out of it bread and drink, food,
clothing, shelter, light, materials for books, cordage for their
boats, needles to sew with, and everything. If you will take Jesus
Christ, and plant Him in your hearts, everything will come out of
that. That Tree 'bears twelve manners of fruits, and yields His fruit
every month.' With Christ in your heart all other fair things will be
planted there; and with Him in your heart, all evil things which you
may already have planted there, will be rooted out. Just as when some
strong exotic is carried to some distant land and there takes root, it
exterminates the feebler vegetation of the place to which it comes; so
with Christ in my heart the sins, the evil habits, the passions, the
lusts, and all other foul spawn and offspring, will die and disappear.
Take Him, then, dear friend! by simple faith, for your Saviour. He
will plant the good seed in your spirit, and 'instead of the briar
shall come up the myrtle.' Your lives will become fruitful of goodness
and of joy, according to that ancient promise: 'The righteous shall
flourish like the palm-tree; he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
Those that be planted in the house of the Lord shall flourish in the
courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age.'