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THE

CHRISTIAN SPECTATOR.

NOVEMBER, 1863.

THE HARVEST.

A WEEK-NIGHT ADDRESS DELIVERED TO AN ASSEMBLY
OF LONDONERS.

"The earth bringeth forth fruit of herself, first the blade, then the ear, then full corn in the ear." MARK iv. 28.

NE of the most bountiful harvests known for many years has just en reaped, not only over the breadth of England, but over the ole continent of Europe; and its in-gathering has been celeated by a series of joyful harvest-homes throughout all the rural stricts of the empire. Churches beautifully adorned with flowers id wheatsheaves, and ringing with the high praises of the merciful ord of Heaven, have everywhere testified to the thankfulness of e agricultural people to Him who giveth us rain and sunshine id fruitful seasons, "filling our hearts with food and gladness." he great cities, which are the principal consumers of all this inease of the earth, surely ought not to withhold their tribute of ankfulness to the God of Providence. Our temples too ought to echo the joyful praises which we have heard ascending around us om all the plains and vales and hills of England.

Yet, generally speaking, the dwellers in great cities have no very vid feelings of either gladness or thankfulness at harvest times. hey are cut off in these vast abodes of life, "cities of three days' urney," from the changing aspects of nature, and the scenes of ural fertility and abundance. There, in the country, men look pon the ever-varying aspects of the earth; now-upon the russet lods gleaming in the autumnal sun, and rising in furrows to the right plough-share-now smoothed down over the precious seed that as been strown, and covered in winter with a warm garment of the urest snow-now dressed in living green with the tender shoots of pring over valley and rolling hill-now covered with a waving tide

of strengthening ears that rattle in the hot summer gale-and then at length yellow to the far horizon with golden breadths of full corn in the ear, broken only by the splendour of the crimson flowers that adorn the sunbrowned expanse that stretches on every hand around. There the sky is visible from the horizon to thej zenith, and from one end of the heavens to the other, visible with its sunrises and sunsets, with its tints of night and morning, with its full lustre of noon and tender gleams of evening. There men can see the hedges covered with their showers of thorn-blossom lightly resting on a background of delicate green leaves that peep forth, fresh with spring dew and rain, from the wonderful leaf-buds;-there they can see for miles together orchards in May gleaming in one prolonged vision of vernal delight, with every tint of purest white and purest carnation on the bloom that foretells a fruitful autumn; and there they can commune with God while He "talketh with them by the way," and "makes their hearts to bur within them" as He opens His revelations of beauty in the forest dell, strewn with blue-bells like another sky upon the floor, or in the golden mullen, or the daisy, or the forget-me-not, which light up the hedgerows, or the banks of glittering streams.

But here there are no changes. These three millions of city men look down upon roads and pathways of stone, beaten into one enor mous pavement as hard as iron, into which no flower can send ita rootlets between the fragments of granite. Living Nature is here crushed down in her grave to death beneath one enormous tomb stone, on which not even her name is engraven, and on which living men walk and labour, forgetful of the beauteous mother that lies buried below. The soil is never turned up except to excavate for drainage, or gas, or water, or telegraphic wires, or to lay the founda tion of new houses. Here, there are multitudes who seldom see the sky, who pass years without setting eyes upon a sunrise or a sun set, and to whom a breadth of cloudless blue is almost unknowa Here, therefore, men may easily forget that there is a God, who gives bread, unless they are reminded of it by other means than by the spectacle of nature. Man made the town." Men may come in a great city to think of food exclusively as a manufactured articleof the loaf and never of the wheat-sheaf; and wholly to forget that all pervading Spirit of Life and Power, who has "crowned the year with his goodness.'

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Let us not fall into this "error of the wicked." Let us not add another to the numerous examples in history of the fact, that in great cities, men most easily lose their view of the living God, and sink into base idolatries. Rather from London let the loftiest s arise to God-to God who "giveth food to all flesh," for His mercy endureth for ever. An abundant harvest all over Europe signites cheap bread, and a whole world of concomitant blessings for the space of another twelvemonth.

We must learn to include the works of God in nature among our bitual meditations in religion. If we fail to think of nature, our igion will become a doctrinal fanaticism. The Bible was written the broad sunlight, and amidst the effulgent beauty, of Western ia. It must be read, in order to be understood in, at least, all light which our more northerly climate affords-in the light of sun as well as in the light of the Spirit, rather let us say in h the outward and the inward lights of that Spirit, "which rketh all in all." There are many who, if they thought a little upon doctrinal propositions, and a little more on those "lilies 1 "fowls" which Christ invites us to consider, would possess a great l more of real and practical religion. They would be taken out the artificial sphere of a human theology, and be translated into region of a living divine revelation; and they would return to ir Bibles with a zest, to which at present many of them are ingers. They would find its pages illuminated with a manyoured tracery of beauty and delight, to which their eyes were sed before; for a man sees in the Bible as in the world, very ich according to the knowledge and insight which is behind his 8. I heard lately of a Sunday-school boy in London, of thirteen fourteen years of age, who had never yet seen a corn-field. And se who would allow that to have seen one, would materially have reased his understanding of the Scripture, must perforce allow a at deal more besides. Nature and Scripture are two broad Books Jod, in both of which He daily reveals himself, and each of ich throws light upon the other. Much of the unthankfulness, gloom, the dulness, and the stupor of city religion would be noved, if we were to take some lessons from the more festal relin of the country.

Now, for once, since we must take a week-night text out of the rious Bible, let it be a text on the growth of one ear of cornit process which, repeated thousands of millions of times, has duced the great harvest which makes Europe glad. He who lects most wisely on one stalk of wheat will reflect most wisely

the harvest.

The growth of an ear of wheat, nothing is more common and niliar, yet, nothing more wonderful! Some might say, (speaking th the atheism of their drowsy thought), "Why wonderful? hy shouldn't it grow? Isn't it the nature of a corn of wheat to ow up into an ear, bearing thirty, sixty and one hundred-fold? hy must we wonder at this common sight?" Nay, rather let us now rn aside and see this great sight-how and why the one grain comes thirty, packed so beautifully in the ear. The fields are tended to feed our minds as well as our bodies.

All life has something mysterious in it-even the life of that ain which you bury in its grave in the furrow, until the spring

resurrection. Much of it dies; but there is a germ which does not die. "Unless it die it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." A man casts a seed into the ground; it " springs and grows he knoweth not how." Ah! the science of eighteen hun dred years has not altered essentially the degree of this ignorance We can trace the process from without; but who can explain the mystery of that inner life which governs the development of the seed? This grain, when buried, throws out two fibres, one toward the earth, one towards heaven, one for the root, one for the stalk and ear. It turns itself round, so that the root shall go downwar and the stalk shall rise upwards to the sun. And then it substance from the earth and air-and, as we say, "grows with increasing size and strength, according to a fixed pattern; future ear enfolded delicately in a sheath, until the time for i expansion is come, when it is unfolded and ripened in the summer sun; this ear containing twenty, thirty, forty little packages of flour each most beautifully and securely encased in a waterproof enve lope, and the whole number arranged in a structure, which, for beauty or for purposes of shelter or of carriage, could not le surpassed.

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It has "grown," we say. Yes, it has grown. But what is growth!. We shall see this better if we look at it through a microscope-the microscope of steady thought; for as God, that is mighty, hath magnified us, by looking at us through the vast transforming lens his mercy, so that the insects of time are made to appear greater and better than they are, so must we look at his works through the magnifying glass of attentive reflection-though here the effect ca never be to make them seem more wonderful than they are, but only to reveal their glory. Magnificat anima mea Dominum Deu -My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in Go my Saviour." Take, then, a small plant, a grain of wheat, and sider what occurs when it grows into a ripe and golden ear. Wh is growth? It is the increase of a living body according to a fixed pattern, and by materials derived from without, materials changed into its own substance or substances. Here, then, are two miracies or wonders-the power of taking fresh materials from the earth air, and changing them into living substance, and the powerf arranging these new materials according to a fixed pattern. Sup pose we could watch the grain of corn beneath the soil when begins to strike, watch it with an enormous microscope, so that th grain should appear 10,000 times larger than it is, so that we cou perceive the movement of the small particles which compose it. We should see the swelling of the germ that lies hid in the damp earth and the commencement of the shooting out of those filaments & threads which are to form the root and the blade. It grows larger every day, and requires therefore new substance. But whence does

is substance come? From the air, from the water. Air particles, ter-particles, have been drawn from around, under the stimulus the sunbeams and the warmth of the earth's bed, and they have en changed into corn-root and corn-leaf particles, and have become ve, full of a power of drawing and changing other particles from › earth and air in the same manner. It is as wonderful as if an n seed had begun to strike out, and had gathered from around nps of clay, or pieces of wood, and changed them into iron, and el, and copper, and built them up into the form of a steam-engine, h its various metallic fixtures and appurtenances.

This, then, is most wonderful-the gathering of the new mateIs, and changing the air, and water, gas, and the earth's flint and t into the substance of a wheat stalk, and straw, and chaff, and ur. But more wonderful still is that other miracle, the arranging the new particles in a pattern according to a plan, and that plan plan of an organised structure, loaded at the top with food for nkind. Let us try to think again. When a little cubic crystal ows in the water, that is wonderful-when each atom attracts other atom, and fastens it to itself by a particular side or end, and builds up a larger cube, as in common salt. But we say, this is stalization, and so get rid of more troublesome reflection. That nost wonderful. But here is something much more surprisingt the new particles of matter gathered from the air and soil und the grain, should go into their proper places, so as to form right shape of root, or leaf, or stalk, or ear, or husk, of the flourder, or the flour itself. Suppose we could see this process magni1, so that the particles should seem as large as marbles. What uld we say if we could see them first gathered from the air, then nged into something quite different, and then running about and ing themselves in one spot, just where it was necessary, in order to nplete the pattern, and make increase of the growth-here some rching to the root, others to the stalk, others to the ear, with its chaff d flour. If 10,000 variously-coloured marbles could be thrown upon e ground, and we should see them arranging themselves into the ttern of a plant-its stalk, its leaves, its flowers, its fruit, we ould say, as we watched the process, Why, they are alive! and ey seem each to have sense, to know where to go, and where to y, as if each one could look at the whole pattern, and see where $ place ought to be! But no; they cannot have this sense. When diers form in line, in square, in wedge, in circle, in echelon, or ove quick or slow according to command, this is because each man intelligent, each unit has a mind. But each of these marbles has

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mind, yet it acts as if it had; takes up its place, or moves, cording to the necessity of the general plan of the flower. How this? If each particle has not a mind, and an idea of the pattern the whole plant, who or what has such an idea, or pattern?-for

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