made new. We learn to look at the whole routine of our ministry, with all its varied calls, and opportunities, and watchings, and waitings, and actions, as a sea with many waves. Each wave is to do its mite toward rounding the stones, and then it retires, and another comes, and so on endlessly. Each has, we believe, an influence, imperceptible it may be, but we have learned to work without such feverish expectation of immediate and palpable results. There is a gravity, perhaps even a sadness, upon our work; still, if it be not less earnest, it need not grieve us that it is done in a quieter spirit than before it had gained the full ripening of experience. That ardour of inexperience was a thrilling and exhilarating thing. But experience is better than that was, even if it lack some of the ardour. Our work at forty, even if it be more sober-hued, is, if still as earnest, of far greater value than it was when on the young side of thirty. Many a young man who used to rebel at his father's theories, practices, and cautions, and think him only growing mouldy and behind the times, looks back to acknowledge in after-life that the full ripe corn, although more sober-hued than that hardly ripe, was yet assuredly of greater value. I have been so long on my way to the field, where the few first sheaves are rising-what with the sitting on stiles, and leaning against gates, necessary on such a day-that I can do little else, now I am in it, than sit in the shade of a hedge and watch the children, left to keep company with each other at this corner of the field while their parents are at work among the grain. Ah, these few sheaves suggest to me how, when Р ripeness is attained, reaping begins; and how, when we cease to grow, we begin to die! "When the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come." Yes, it may take some time in the reaping; but the sickle was put in then. We may take some time in going down the hill, but we begin the descent when we have ceased to climb. And these things also have a sad and a cheerful side. Is it not something to have the corn mature, and cut, and standing there, free from those old threats of mildew and blight? Oh, well then, if, by God's help, we have been enabled to set by some results of our life's gradual growth, in useful and acceptable sheaves for Him! Well if, as the day falls, and the shadows lengthen, and the field grows bare, there are still rising, and shall still rise, those long rows of goodly sheaves ! |