which it is sought, through the acts and operations of nature, to bring within the compass of human comprehension the higher truths and mysteries of grace, by the known, and perceived, and out-lying, to explain the unknown, and unseen, and in-lying. Besides, the writings of the Church fathers, from the earliest ages, show a deep appreciation of these mysterious harmonies, and in their use, a ready acknowledgment of the "force of the arguments derived from them." "All things in nature," says Tertullian, "are prophetic outlines of Divine operations, God not merely speaking parables, but doing them." Nature, thus apprehended and used, is a help at once to our faith and to our understanding. Every where, you see a busy preparation for planting. The seed-time has come again. The gardener is fertilizing and digging up the incrusted ground. The husbandman, with a sharp ploughshare, is seaming, with deep and long-drawn furrows, his inclosed fields. The fallow ground is being broken up, that after its year's rest it may be more productive. And although this "pent-up Utica" contracts a garden-spot into the narrowest dimensions, yet what are we doing? Subsoiling, renewing, fixing up our small flower-beds, planting seed in this spot-in that one replanting a rose-stock. From all this, now, we are taught the necessity of bringing the seed into direct connection with the ordinary and indispensable conditions of vegetation. Seed must be brought into contact with the soil, in order to their germination and growth. They cannot sprout on the stony street, on the beaten road-side. They must have the moisture of the earth; they must be put in the ground; they must be planted; and the richer the soil, the more luxuriant their growth. All this, now, we know full well, is, in the world of nature, absolutely necessary to flower and fruitage. We act accordingly. We plant the seed in a fertile place, that in summer we may have flowers. The farmer sows his seed, that his heart may be gladdened in the harvest-time. The Psalmist tells us, that a like necessity exists in the higher, spiritual world. The soul that would bring forth the fruit of pious living, must be planted in the house of the Lord. Spiritual growth needs spiritual surroundings. Christian life needs Christian influences. A gracious state needs gracious conditions-means of grace. These are only found in the Church. The soul, then, that would be spiritually "fat and flourishing," must be planted in the Church-the garden of the Lord. The fruitful vine must stand on a fruitful hill. By nature, wild exotics, and if ever trees of righteousness, we must have a divine planting-a planting "by the rivers of water." The analogy of nature bears us out in this fundamental thought, that spiritual growth, the development of Christian character-any degree of spiritual vitality and fruitfulness, is inseparable from personal connection with the Church of Christ. There must be an individual planting in the house of the Lord. Let us look a little more narrowly at this analogy of nature. In every seed there is the plastic power of life. You may hold a thousand of them in your hand, but in each there is the hidden principle of vitality—a germ capable of producing a stock of fruit exactly like the parent plant. But there must be a power around that seed in order to call out the latent power within it. With what beauty and force does our Lord give us to understand this, when, foreshadowing the necessity of His death, in order to His own and the resurrection of the race-life through the grave. He says: "Except a grain of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit"-i. e., the unfolding of its hidden vitality requires contact with the quickening and nourishing properties of the soil. A seed is a living possibility, a slumbering germ, destined to be no more than a seed until brought into organic connection with the necessary conditions of growth. When that is done, it bursts open its prison doors, shoots a tiny blade above the ground, a green sprig instinct with life, an actual living thing. Several years ago, wheat was brought from one of the Egyptian monuments. Who shall fix the date when it grew in the fat valley of the Nile? Who shall tell by whose hands, and when it was placed in that safe garner? Those monuments were ancient things when Christ, to escape the wrath of Herod in the slaughter of the innocents at Bethlehem, was brought, in earliest infancy, down to Egypt. Older, then, than our Lord, was that wheat, taken from the tombs of Egypt's unknown kings. The inscriptions on the monuments warrant the supposition of extreme antiquity. They reach back of Daniel, of Isaiah, of David and of Samuel, in sacred history, and back of Virgil, of Cæsar, of Herodotus and Homer, in classic history. The particular age in which they were reared is, and, in all probability, will forever remain an unsettled point. For centuries upon centuries, had that wheat remained there, safely garnered, its germinant properties preserved unimpaired, its vital power, in the absence of vegetative conditions, continuing dormant. But no sooner, after the lapse of untold ages, is it planted, than that wheat of the Nile valley, ripened, perhaps, in some Pharaoh's time, is grown in American soil. The germs which had so long slumbered, standing in the midst of the means of mination and growth, is apprehended and laid hold on by that mysterious power which calls out the long-hidden life. ger You hold in your hand an acorn. It is, in possibility, an oak. The trunk, and branches, and leaves of the future tree, are all wrapped up in that tiny vessel. Plant it, give it richness of soil, let vegetative powers touch it, and that imprisoned life will burst the outer shell, and, in after ages, wave grandly in the swaying boughs of the majestic oak. All nature is full of this; that a power around the seed is necessary to evoke the power within it. The whole agricultural world is acting just now upon this fact. Upturned fields show what has been done, that, when the reaping season shall again have come, granaries may be well filled, and gaunt famine kept from our doors. Seed-time and harvest are linked to each other by inward and inseparable necessity. The seed must be planted, must stand in midst the means of growth, be apprehended by vegetative powers. But all this now is not any more necessary and true, in the sphere of nature, than in the higher sphere of grace. The natural is here the pattern and type of a supernatural necessity. The presence and operation of heavenly powers are alike indispensable to a gracious life. To be individually reached by the grace which sanctifies and saves, we must stand in the divinely-constituted order of grace; or, as the Psalmist expresses it: "Be planted in the house of the Lord, and flourish in the courts of our God." If a seed must be encircled and laid hold upon by vegetative powers, in order to its sprouting, it follows that there must be the presence of gracious powers, both in order to the quickening of a soul "dead in trespasses and sins," and the steady progress of a "tree of righteousness" in spiritual vitality and fruitfulness. We have read our Bibles to little purpose, if we have never discovered this: that the most common representation of religion is under the form of life. Believers are called spiritual plants, trees of righteousness, cedars of Lebanon, fruitful branches in the true vine, babes in Christ, little children, young men, fathers; and steady growth in grace is represented as a going on to perfect manhood, "unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ." All life requires the continued presence and operation of nourishing powers. This is just as true and necessary of spiritual life as of vegetable and animal life. Hence, the Church is called a nursery, a garden, a fertile hill, the house of the Lord, the family of God, where, for the children, is spread in the wilderness a table bearing the cup of salvation and the bread of life. In the Church, by sacramental institutions, the soul is mysteriously apprehended by the necessary conditions of a gracious life. Hence, we can no more have Christians outside of the Church, than we can have a forest of oaks growing on barren rock, or blooming roses in that stone-paved street. Spiritual life needs a supernatural order of grace; must stand in the midst of heavenly powers; in the communion of the saints; in the use and within the operation of sacramental grace; and the quickening activities of that spirit moving within the bounded sphere of heavenly places and powers. The phrase: "The house of God," indicates the need, the fertility and suitableness of this prepared soil. The wicked world is like a barren wilderness, a dreary, sandy desert. It has not the resources and means of spiritual growth. Nay, we have not yet to learn that, as now constituted, all its powers and influences are adverse to holiness. Its reigning life and spirit are hostile to all pious inclinations and duties. Its foul breath is the hot, destructive simoom. In all its arrangements and forces, it is ministering to and intensifying the demands of human depravity. By malign influences, more numerous than can be definitely marked or now specified, it is working out man's moral degradation and ruin. At every step and turn of life, it is meeting man with solicitations to sin adroitly suited to every one's tastes, temperament and time of life. The avaricious man is met by much to excite his greed, and rivet upon his soul the chains of indurating selfishness and sordidness. The epicure, the sensualist, the inebriate, are met daily by temptations to sinful indulgence and excess. The world, in all its relations and activities, its maxims and customs, its fashions and follies, its vices and pleasures, its friendships and enmities, its smiles, no less dangerous than its frowns, is directly opposed to a religious life. The very atmosphere with which it every where encircles the sinner, is foul with pollution and profanity. It is the sphere of impiety and wickedness. It hinders instead of helping on holy living. It is a hot-bed of iniquity. It ripens the soul only and rapidly for hell. Its forces forward, as plants are in a hot-house, all man's prurient desires and evil propensities. In the world, there is in fearful operation every thing tending to drag man down to the dust and devil; nothing to help him on to God and glory; every thing to make his heart the dwelling-place of the vilest passions; and nothing to restrain, purify and ennoble him. "This vile world 's no friend to grace To help us on to God." In the world, there are no restraining agencies, no sanctifying influences, no gracious means, no heavenly powers. In the absence of all these, and with all the tendencies and activities of the wicked world arrayed in bitter hostility and incessant opposition to the claims and duties of personal relations, is it possible for a man thus situated-apprehended only by adverse influences-to become a Christian in feeling, thinking and acting? Hence, the absolute necessity of being surrounded through our entire earthly life by heavenly powers; of standing in heavenly places; in a word, being planted in the house of God, and drinking up the juices of that divine garden. And here is another powerful fact which we must not fail to take into consideration, viz.: That which surrounds us, moulds and fashions us. The character of the soil is every thing to the growth of plants. In thin soil, vegetation is dwarfed and stunted, the cereals are not so productive ast when sown in richer ground, nothing, trees or plants, attain their usual size. They are affected by the place in which they stand. This is equally and necessarily true in the higher sphere of morals and grace. The reigning life of the family in which we stand, and the society in which we move, have left their deep impress upon us. It makes all the difference imaginable whether worldliness or piety be the reigning order of the family circle. Silently, but potently, does its influence operate upon the members thereof, making them giddy and gay, or serious and sedate. The scriptural adage thus holds good: "As is the mother, so is the daughter;" as is the family, so is the child. All this is equally true in the sphere of grace. We are here apprehended, by a higher order of life, to our spiritual advancement and increasing good. We are seized by the mysterious power of a Divine life, and steadily we find our old, corrupt, Adamic nature falling away, and we are lifted into the sphere of the new man in Christ Jesus. The heavenly communion and heavenly powers, here finding place, are continuously operating to our own advancing sanctification. These holy surroundings are steadily intensifying our holiness, increasing our love for God and our hatred to sin. Enjoying here intimate fellowship with the Father and with His Son, our Saviour; brought under the sanctifying operations of the Holy Ghost; commingling with the society of the redeemed; in the holy sacraments standing in the direct line of the communication of saving grace, we do find ourselves steadily lifted up to a higher and holier sphere of being, more and more assimilated to the character of our heavenly Master, ripening more and more for the communion of the glorified in the immediate presence of the great God. The fact, now, that it is in the fellowship of the Church and the use of its positive means of grace where only a fitness for eternal life can be secured, must force upon the mind of every one a deep conviction of the necessity of being individually planted in the house of God. The Church thus serves the place and purpose of a fertile and well-attended garden. It is not a garner, where ripe sheaves are gathered, but it is a garden in which plants are to be cultivated. Here, the soul is watered, cared for. Here, it is refreshed by the continual dew of God's blessing. Here, it is replenished with the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit. Here, it grows in meetness for the Church above. Here, it is encompassed on every hand by the powers of grace instituted by God for its salvation. There are many persons who lightly esteem the Church. They see no great necessity in standing in its communion. They count its holy sacraments of no special advantage. They deem salvation just as easy and certain outside of its pale. We can believe that, just so soon as we can believe that corn will sprout, if you throw it into a pile of stones, or trees root themselves on the surface of the flinty rock. It is in the Church only where we have access to those means of grace, and the use of those Divine helps, by which, alone, we can grow in grace. And to stand aloof from its communion-its Divine nourishment and nurture-is, in the exercise of our own perverse will, to refuse to allow ourselves to be apprehended by the supernatural powers of grace, absolutely essential to our spiritual quickening and our maturing for the heavenly garner. The Holy Easter of our blessed King; The sun at highest noon moved on his way; Kissing the earth with the first love of spring: We bent around the cradle of our suffering boy, Chanted, "The Lord is ris'n-our glorious Head;" "Georgie is dead!" |