Passengers on the London "Underground" have often seen the sign-boards,
telling the travellers where to wait for the class they mean to travel
in. And there is sure to be a large group near one--the notice for third-
class passengers. It is so in the road to heaven. Forgetting that the
Master has paid first-class fare for us, too many ride third, meaning,
when they get to the station where tickets are collected, to change into
the first, for all want to die happy. Live holy. Be first-class
Christians, and then God will see to it that you die so as to bring
honour to Him.
X. SPIRITUAL FARMING.--NO. 3.
CULTIVATION.
We have already called the attention of our readers to the subject of
ploughing, but we feel we have not pressed upon them with the force it
deserves, the necessity of what the Bible calls "breaking up the fallow
ground." What the plough and spade do for the land we must have done for
the minds of those who sit in Methodist pews. Unsaved men and women must
be compelled to look the truth in the face. Farmers know that so long as
the land is hard and cloddy, the seed has no chance to get the
nourishment by which it lives; besides by turning it over, the plough
exposes that which has been hidden to the light of day, and it is by
turning it up that it gets the benefit of the atmosphere. The nitrogen
contained in the air is filled with that which the growing seed requires
to find in the land, if it is to do well for the worker. Have we not
thirty-fold crops where we ought to have hundredfold, for want of better
ploughs? The heathen who spoke of preaching as "turning the world upside
down" hit on the truth; and those of us who fail to turn up the soil are
not likely to reap all we might do. The other day we heard an
intelligent man tell the story of his conversion. He was awakened under
the preaching of Mr. Robinson Watson. He said, "I never used to listen
to sermons, I sat in the corner of the pew and thought of business, or
any machine I was planning, and did not hear a word, but Mr. Robinson
compelled me to think and act."
Does not this man represent many? Are these people to be allowed to come
and go, without, in some way or other, being compelled to listen? Let
every one of us, from the top to the bottom of the Plan, say, God helping
me, I will break up the ground. Indifference shall become difficult.
Some of us can remember listening to men whom we feared when they opened
the hymn book, for if they began the service with one of the hymns in
"Exhorting sinners to return to God," we knew there would be difficulty
in getting to sleep, either in the pew then, or in bed, hours afterwards.
Perhaps the greatest want of the church to-day is men who can, by
handling the Bible like a gardener does his spade, cause it to be said
"The sinners in Zion are afraid, tearfulness hath surprised the
hypocrites."
BETTER FEED A
FAT PIG
THAN A PUBLICAN.
XI. SPIRITUAL FARMING--NO. 4.
SOWING.
Those of us who live in the country are reminded, as we see the springing
corn, that some one has been at work--the blade comes from the buried
seed. Honest work has been done before there can be seen the appearance
of good.