A Sermon. (No. ). Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, October 20th, , by. C. H. SPURGEON,. At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. "Then said he.
Table of contents
As the morning breaks for all weary, watching eyes, so shines the light of the glorious Gospel for all who sit in darkness and long for the light of God. Beloved, the great thing to be desired is that the light which is so freely given forth by the Lord Jesus may become light within our souls. There He stands, as the lamp placed upon the lamp stand, conspicuous to all.
But we need that the light outside in the room may become light inside, within the soul. Nothing more truly needs light than our inner man. We are, by nature, as a lantern with the candle blown out. Whether we will believe it or not, by nature we are in thick Egyptian night. Well says the Apostle, "You were sometimes darkness. Much is said about the light of conscience but in many this is but a glimmering taper whose beams are "not light but darkness visible.
Light is absolutely essential to spiritual life. Ignorance is not the mother of devotion but of superstition. Knowledge, Divine Grace, the Truths of God, are the nurses of true faith. The light of God is needful to the life of God. We must know Christ, we must be illuminated by His Holy Spirit, we must have fellowship with the Father's Truth—or else we are dead—as well as dark. Light within we must have, or the light outside will not benefit us. Upon that subject we will speak at this time. May God grant us the light of His Spirit, for it would be idle for us to try to explain the action of light while ourselves in darkness.
Shine within, O Holy Spirit, that we speak not of theory but of actual experience! First, we will consider how the light enters—"The light of the body is the eye: Into the body the light enters through the eye. The eye is as needed as the lamp, if a man is to see. The most brilliant light that ever has been invented, or ever can be discovered, will be of no use to the person who has no eye.
Therefore it is true, "The light of the body is the eye. For in vain does Christ Himself shine if His light cannot enter our souls. The condition of the eye of the mind is of the utmost importance—our light or our darkness will depend upon it. The eye of the soul may be viewed as the understanding, the conscience, the motive, or the heart.
It would not be possible to confine it to any one of these names. I venture to call it, "the intent of the mind.
Or, if you will, "the aim of the heart," the honesty of the understanding. When God has given a man a true intent to see the light of the Gospel, He has in that honest intent furnished him with an eye for the heavenly light. The worst of it is that men have no will to see the light of God—their foolish heart is darkened, and therefore they do not understand, but altogether misrepresent the doctrine of the Lord Jesus.
The battle of Divine Grace is with man's unwillingness to see those Truths of God against which he is naturally at enmity. If a man wills to see the honest Truth and submits himself to the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit, he will not be left in darkness. When a man does not want to see, he cannot see—when he is determined not to learn, when Truth is unpalatable to him, when he designedly twists it from its meaning, then his eye is diseased and the light is hindered from its due effect. Many things darken the eye of the soul. One of the most common is prejudice. The man conceives that he already has light.
His father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather and previous generations—were brought up in a certain religion—and therefore it must be right. Whether the lamp gives light or not, is not the question—it is the family lamp— and he will have no other. He will not enquire—he is quite sure and wants no evidence. When the light of God comes to him, he at once repels it. He cannot be disturbed, and therefore he will not hear, nor read, nor consider the matter—he is satisfied to let things be as they are.
The very supposition that he may be wrong he regards as an insult—maliciously invented by an uncharitable mind. What is to be done with one so blinded? Are there not many such? Sloth, too, is a great blinder of the eye—it draws down the eyelid and shuts out the light by the spirit of slumber. The man does not care what the Gospel is, or is not. Like Pilate, he asks, "What is truth? It is too much trouble to some people to think, to search the Scriptures, and to pray. They have no heart for a process so troublesome. I go my way to my farm and to my merchandise.
Let graceless bigots fight about creeds and the like. It matters not one jot what a man believes. Ah me, how dark are they who prefer an indolent ease to the light of God! The light is often shut out by gross error. I cannot go over the list of the favorite errors of the present hour. For that list has grown too long for one day's reading. Speciously taught in selected phrases, cunningly supported by a dreamy. Falsehoods of which we heard when we were children—but only heard of them as loathsome heresies—long ago decayed and thrown into the limbo of worthless and mischievous imaginations—are now refashioned, freshened up with touches of bright color and brought out as advanced ideas.
When any of these are permitted to occupy the mind, as they so commonly do nowadays, the old Gospel is no longer seen, because the eye is inflamed by the incoming of a foreign and irritating substance. Can it be that what was true a hundred years ago, is not true now? Can it be that the Gospel, which saved souls in the days of the Apostles, cannot save souls now? Is it so, that some men are wiser than God and are qualified to sit in judgment upon Prophets and Apostles? Surely, judicial blindness has. One thing darkens the eye more than any other, and that is the love of sin.
Nine times out of ten, allowed sin is the cataract which darkens the mental eye. Men cannot see the Truth of God because they love falsehood. The Gospel is not seen because it is too pure for their loose lives and lewd thoughts. Christ's holy example is too severe for the worldly.
His Spirit is too pure for lovers of carnal pleasure. When people reject the doctrines of the Gospel, they also tolerate laxity of morals and give predominance to the customs of the world. How can men see, when sin has pricked the very eyeballs of the mind! When sin, like a handful of mud, seals up the eye, you need not wonder that the man becomes an agnostic, a doubter, a caviler. To have a clear eye one must have a clean heart. The pure in heart shall see God. And therefore the pure in heart see God's Truth, so as to appreciate it and delight in it.
Oh, that the Spirit of God may wash the filth out of our eyes, that we may walk in the light, as God is in the light. Pride, too, is a great darkener of the soul's eye. When a man admires himself he never adores God. He that is taken up with the conceit of his own righteousness will never see the righteousness of Christ. If you believe yourself to be pure, you will never prize the blood which cleanses from all sin.
If you believe yourself to be already perfect, you will not prize the Holy Spirit, the Sanctifier. No man cries for Divine Grace till he perceives his own need of it—if, therefore, we are puffed up with the notion that we. The light of God dwells not with human self-sufficiency. A man's own shadow is very often the means of keeping him in the dark. Self-seeking, in every form, is a sad cause of obscuring the light of the soul. Self-seeking, in the grosser form of avarice, makes men grope in the daytime.
The glitter of gold is injurious to the eye. How could Judas see the beauty of Christ when he saw such value in the thirty pieces of silver? How can a man set store by a future Heaven when a present fortune is Heaven enough for him? Mammon repays its worshippers with blind eyes.
Self does the same when it appears as ambition, desire of honor, and respect, or a wish to have a finger in one's own salvation. The proud desire to share the glory of our salvation with Free Grace prevents the entrance of the light of God. Self, in the form of magnifying the nobility of human nature, extolling the grandeur of our common humanity and all that, is a very blinding thing. How can a man that has his eye upon self have any sight for Jesus? Of all antichrists, self is the hardest to overcome. It is written, "He must increase but I must decrease.
The Mustard Seed: A Sermon for the Sabbath-School Teacher
There is no room for Him in my heart. Appreciation of self leads to depreciation of the Lord Jesus. Multitudes are kept in darkness through fear of men. They dare not see. They feel bound to think as the fashion goes—and there is a fashion of opinions as well as of coats and bonnets. If you resolve to hold fast the faith once delivered to the saints, you will be regarded as antiquated and you will be as much pointed out for your faith, as you would be for your dress if you should walk down the street in the costume of the reign of Queen Elizabeth.
To many it would be great sin to be singular. They never think for themselves. In fact, they are mentally shiftless. They ask their way of a certain person supposed to be a deeper student than themselves—of him they enquire what they ought to believe, disbelieve, praise, or blame. I remember well a man who never knew whether he liked a sermon till he had asked a certain knowing old gentleman whether it was a good one or not—he had no home-grown judgment—he. His brains, for safe keeping, were placed in another person's head—this is a very convenient thing and saves a good deal of headache.
But it has its drawbacks. Some persons put all their thinking out and have it done for them by the dozen—but he that would have God's light knows that it comes not to the coward who fears the frown of a mortal and makes man his god. God could have given to the crowd a common judgment and have left us to be guided by a central authority, if He had thought it right to do so. But having given to each individual an understanding, He expects us to use it and to an honest personal use of understanding He gives the light. The eye of the sparrow or of the ant may be very small, yet it sees the great light, if it is a single and clear eye.
Pray, then, for Divine Grace, that you may search out for yourselves the Truth of God, free from the fear of man which brings a snare. Let us never enquire, "Have any of the rulers believed? God save you, dear Friends, from having your eye injured by any of the mischiefs I have mentioned. There are legions more of these blinding things—may Divine Grace guard you from them!
God give you a "single eye," by which is meant an eye which does not look at two things at a time—a mind which is free from sinister motives and from anything which would cause you to choose falsehood rather than the Truth of God and wrong rather than right. God grant that we may have a desire to be right, a resolute design to know the Truth of God as it is in Jesus, and to feel and act in sincere conformity to it! Oh, to be sincere, simple-hearted, child-like and true! We want neither great genius nor sparkling wit—we need an unsophisticated mind—for so the light gets entrance into the soul through the Spirit.
Some men might have light enough but.
I suppose that in the natural world light could not actually become darkness. But in the spiritual kingdom it is certainly so—"When your eye is evil, your body also is full of darkness. Take heed therefore that the light which is in you be not darkness. A man has heard the Gospel of Free Grace and dying love—he has heard a message full of love concerning the forgiveness of sin and pardon bought with blood and freely given to him that believes.
The doctrine of justification by faith has been clearly explained to him. He believes firmly in these great evangelical Truths and calls them glorious and precious. But he draws an inference from this teaching which is ruinous to his soul. He considers that, after all, sin is of small consequence and he may indulge in it freely, for God is merciful and Divine Grace is infinite.
At some time or other he will repent and believe in Jesus and then he will be set right, however grossly he may have offended. God is gracious, and therefore, he may be sinful—God freely forgives—and therefore he may recklessly offend.
Bible Library: Spurgeon
This is to turn light into darkness. Such turning of the Grace of God into lasciviousness is infamous. Words cannot set forth the hideous ingratitude of such depraved arguments. We may justly say of a man who thus turns light into darkness, "his damnation is just. Yet no doubt there are many such who silently, in their own hearts, draw from the goodness of God a license to sin.
If your eye is in this condition, the more freely we preach to you the Gospel of the Grace of God, the more surely will you go from sin to sin. What shall I do with you? You make me wish to be dumb, lest I minister to your condemnation. In the lowest Hell you are digging for yourselves a deeper Hell—you use the promises of mercy as the instruments of your own destruction.
Can you hang yourselves nowhere but on the Cross? Can you drown yourselves nowhere but in the waters of Siloah? What has come to you, that you are so infatuated as to find your death in the Gospel which is ordained for life? Let me set before you another form of this evil. A man perceives the great value of the means of Divine Grace, but he goes further and misuses them. Having been brought up religiously, he has a deep respect for the ministers of God's House, for the services of the sanctuary, and especially for the two ordinances which Christ has established in His Church—Baptism and the Supper of the Lord.
He reverences the Sabbath, and the inspired Word, and the Church and all its sacred ministries. But it may be that he proceeds from a due regard of these things to a superstitious trust in them, making of them what God has never made of them—thus his light becomes darkness. He regards attendance upon public worship as a substitute for inward religion. He looks upon membership with a Church as a certificate of salvation. He may be so foolish as to speak of Baptism as an ordinance whereby he was made a member of Christ and a child of God. And of the Supper of the Lord as a saving ordinance, or even as a sacrifice for the quick and dead.
When instructive symbols are perverted into instruments of priest-craft, the light is turned into darkness. By multitudes, in these days, aids to faith are degraded into the machinery of superstition. The Church, which is our mother and nurse, is made into an antichrist and men look to her for salvation instead of looking wholly and alone to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Outward modes of worship and instruction may be very beneficial, but if they are allowed to usurp the confidence of the soul, they may gender disease and death. When a man's religion becomes his destruction, how sure is that destruction! I have known many go another way—they have said, "I care very little about the shape or form of religion. A sincere spirit is everything. The letter kills, the spirit gives life.
- Tales of the Ellium : Graphic Novel.
- .
- Ripper;
He believes everything to have some measure of truth in it— every evil practice to have some good point about it. This is a poisonous atmosphere for any man to breathe. Hear him talk, if you would see how the worse can be made to seem the better. Nothing to him is fixed truth, nor even settled right. He is like the chameleon, which takes its color from the changing light about it.
This he calls "liberty. Say, rather, it is the light of charity turned into the darkness of indifference. How great is this darkness! How many are deceived by it! After all, there is light and there is darkness— and they are not the same thing. There is Truth, taught of God and there is a lie, which is the devil's own. And these will never sit at the same table. There is a blessing for the preacher of the Truth of God. But if any man preaches another Gospel, for him there is an anathema which none can reverse.
I have also seen this light turned to darkness in the case of the student who has gathered great erudition and enrolled himself among the learned. He begins to criticize. Do not condemn him for that—he judges very properly at first—he criticizes things that ought to be criticized.
But he stops not there. Once having his critical faculty aroused, he is like a boy with a new knife. He must cut something or other. Nothing comes in his way more often than the Scriptures. And he must have a cut at them. He whittles at Genesis. He makes a gash in Deuteronomy. He takes slices out of the Gospels and cuts the Epistles into slivers.
You see, he has so sharp a knife that he must use it. By-and-by, from a critic he advances to an irreverent fault-finder—and from that to an utter unbeliever—hard in the mouth and stiff in the neck. His light has blinded him. He has taken his own. We have seen the light turned to darkness in a further sense. There is a blessed light called the full assurance of faith—the more we have of it the better. Blessed is that man who never doubts his God, who hangs with holy confidence upon the eternal promises and the immutable Covenant and is never staggered through unbelief.
Do you believe it, young teacher? Have you realized what you have in your hold when you grasp the Gospel of the grace of God? It is the most wonderful thing beneath the skies. Do you believe in the Gospel which you have to teach? Do you discern that within its apparently narrow lines the Eternal, the Infinite, the Perfect, and the Divine are all enclosed? As in the babe of Bethlehem there was the Eternal God, so within the simple teaching of "Believe and live" there are all the elements of eternal blessedness for people, and boundless glory for God.
It is a very comprehensive thing, that little seed, that Gospel of God. And for this reason it is so wonderful: Summon your chemists, bring them together with all their vessels and their fires. Select a jury of the greatest chemists now alive, analytical or otherwise, as you will. Learned sirs, will you kindly make us a mustard seed? You may take a mustard seed, and pound it and analyze it, and you may thus ascertain all its ingredients.
So far so good. Is not your work well begun? Now make a single mustard seed. We will give you a week. It is a very small affair. You have all the elements of mustard in yonder mortar. Make us one living grain; we do not ask for a ton weight. One grain of mustard seed will suffice us. Great chemists, have you not made so small a thing? A month has gone by. Only one grain of mustard seed we asked of you, and where is it? Have you not made one in a month? What are you at? Shall we allow you seven years? Yes, with all the laboratories in the kingdom at your service and all known substances for your material and all the world's coal beds for your fuel, get to your work.
The air is black with your smoke and the streams run foul with your waste products; but where is the mustard seed? This baffles the wise; they cannot make a living seed. No; and nobody can make a Gospel, or even a new Gospel text. The thinkers of the age could not even concoct another life of Christ to match with the four Gospels which we have already. Plenty of novel writers nowadays can beat out imaginary histories upon their anvils: Let us have it! They will not even commence the task. Who will write a new psalm, or even a new promise?
Clever chemists prove their wisdom by saying at once, "No, we cannot make a mustard seed"; and wise thinkers will equally confess that they cannot make another Gospel. My learned brethren are trying very hard to make a new Gospel for this nineteenth century, but you teachers had better go on with the old one.
The advanced men cannot put life into their theory. This living Word is the finger of God. That simple grain of mustard seed must be made by God, or not at all; He must put life into the Gospel, or it will not have power in the heart. The Gospel of Sunday-school teachers, that Gospel of "Believe and live," however people may despise it, has Godgiven life in it. You cannot make another which can supplant it, for you cannot put life into your invention. Go on and use the one living truth with your children, for nothing else has God's life in it.
I want you to see what a little affair the sowing seemed, as we answer the question, What was it to him? It was a very natural act; he sowed a seed. It is a most natural thing that we should teach others what we believe ourselves. I cannot make out how some professors can call themselves Christians and yet never communicate the faith to others. That the young people of our churches should gather other young people around them and tell them of Jesus, whom you love, is as natural as for a gardener to put seeds into his prepared ground.
To sow a mustard seed is a very inexpensive act. Only one grain of mustard: I do not know how much mustard seed the man had; certainly it is not a rare thing, but he only took one grain of it and cast it into his garden. He emptied no exchequer by that expenditure; this is one of the excellencies of Sabbath-school work, that it neither exhausts the church of people nor of money.
However much of it is done, it does not lessen the resources of our Zion; it is done freely, quietly, without excitement, without sacrifice of life, and yet what a fountain of blessing it is! Still, it was an act of faith. It is always an act of faith to sow seed, because you have, for the time, to give it up and receive nothing in return. The farmer takes his choice seed corn and throws it into the soil of his field.
He might have made many a loaf of bread with it, but he casts it away. Only his faith saves him from being judged a maniac: If you had never seen a harvest, you would think that someone burying good wheat under the clods had gone mad; if you had never seen conversions, it might seem an absurd thing to be constantly teaching to boys and girls the story of the Man who was nailed to the tree. We preach and teach as a work of faith, and remember, it is only as an act of faith that it will answer its purpose.
The rule of the harvest is, "According to thy faith, be it unto thee. Believe in what you are doing when you tell it. Believe that great results from slender causes spring. Go on sowing your mustard seed of salvation by faith, expecting and believing that fruit will come thereof.
It was an act which brought the sower no honor. The Saviour has chronicled the fact that the man took a grain of mustard seed and sowed it, but thousands of people had gone on sowing mustard seed for half a lifetime without a word. Nobody has ever spoken in your honor, my friend, though you have taught the truth. Dear teacher, go on sowing, though nobody should observe your diligence or praise your faithfulness. Sow the seed of precious truth in the garden of the child's mind, for much more will come of it than you have dared to hope.
Follow out the analogy. Come to yonder school, and see! That earnest young man is teaching a boy, one of those wild creatures of the street; they swarm in every quarter. A dozen young Turks are before him, or say young Arabs of the street; he is teaching them the Gospel. Small affair, is it not? Yes, very; but what may come of it? Think of how joyfully much may grow out of this little! What is that young man teaching? Only one elementary truth. Do not sneer; it is truth, but it is the mere alphabet of it. He touches upon nothing deep in theology; he only says, "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
Dear boy, believe in the Lord Jesus and live. Can any good thing come out of Nazareth? The teacher himself is teaching the one truth in a very poor way; at least, he thinks so. Ask him, when he has done, what he thinks of his own teaching, and he replies, "I do not feel fit to teach. May the good Spirit help me so to speak as to encourage my beloved friends, who have given themselves up to the Christlike work of teaching the little ones!
It is not reasonable to suppose that he would have sown it if he had not hoped that it would spring up. Dear teacher, do you always sow in hope, do you trust that the Word will live and grow? If you do not, I do not think your success is very probable. Expect the truth to take root and expand and grow up. Teach divine truth with earnestness and expect that the life within it will unveil its wonders.
But though the sewer expected growth, he could not himself have made it grow. After he had placed the seed in the ground he could water it, he could pray God to make the sun shine on it, but he could not directly produce growth. Only He that made the seed could cause it to grow. Growth is a continuance of that almighty act by which life is at first given. The putting of life into the seed is God's work, and the bringing forth of the life from the seed is God's work too.
This is a matter within your hope, but far beyond your power. A very wonderful thing it is that the seed should grow. If we did not see it every day, we should be more astonished at the growth of seed than at all the wonders of magicians. A growing seed is God's abiding miracle. You see a piece of ground near London covered with a market garden, and after a few months you go by the place and you see streets and a public square and a church and a great population.
You say to yourself, "It is remarkable that all these houses should have sprung up in a few months. Without noise of hammer, or the ringing of trowels; without handiwork of man, the whole has been done. Wonder at the growth of grace. See how it increases, deepens, strengthens! Growth in grace is a marvel of divine love.
The growth of holiness in such fallen creatures as we are is the admiration of angels, the delight of all intelligent beings. To the sower this growth was very pleasing. How pleasant it is to see the seed of grace grow in children! Do you not remember when you first sowed mustard-and-cress as a child, how the very next morning you went and turned the ground up to see how much it had grown? How pleased you were when you saw the little yellow shoot, and afterward a green leaf or two!
Available formats
So is it with the true teacher: What was expected is taking place and it is most delightful to that teacher, whatever it may be to others. An unsympathetic person cries, "Oh, I do not think anything of that child's emotions. It is merely a passing impression: The cold critic says, "I don't think much of a child's weeping. Children's tears lie very near the surface. The questioner says, "It is nothing for a child to say that he gives his heart to Jesus. Youngsters soon think that they believe.
They are so easily led. If you sympathize with children, you are pleased with every hopeful token and are on the watch for every mark of divine life within them. If you are a florist, you will see more of the progress of your plants than if you are no gardener and have no interest in such things. Think, then, of what my text says: Whether the preacher scatters it, or the teacher sows it; whether it falls among the aged people, or the young; Lord, make the Gospel grow!
You cannot make it grow, but you can prevail with God to bless it to His honor and praise. Next, having started growing, it became a tree. Luke says, "It waxed a great tree. The growth was great. Here is the wonder, not that it became a tree, but that being a mustard seed, it should become "a great tree. I have already brought it before you. Do you see the growth? A word produces salvation! A grain of mustard seed becomes a great tree! A little teaching brings eternal life. That is not all: What a great result from a little cause! The teacher's words were tearfully spoken; they could not have been printed, for they were far too broken and childlike; but they were, in God's hands, the means of fashioning a life most sweet, most chaste, most beautiful.
A boy was about as wild as any roamer of our streets; a teacher knelt by his side with his arm about the lad's neck. He pleaded with God for the boy, and with the boy for God. That boy was converted, and as a youth in business he was an example to the workroom; as a father he was a guide to his household; as a man of God he was a light to all around; as a preacher of righteousness he adorned the doctrine of God his Saviour in all things.
There is much more which I might easily picture, but you can work it out as well as I can. All that is to be desired may spring out of the simple talk of a humble Christian with a youth. A mustard seed becomes a great tree; a few words of holy admonition may produce a noble life. But is that all? Beloved, our teaching may preserve souls from the deep darkness of the abode of the lost.
A soul left to itself might hurry down from folly to vice, from vice to obduracy, from obduracy to fixed resolve to perish; but by the means of loving teaching all this is changed. Rescued from the power of sin, like a lamb snatched from between the jaws of the lion, the youth is now no longer the victim of vice, but seeks holy and heavenly things. Hell has lost its prey, and see up yonder, heaven's wide gate has received a precious soul. They who once were foul are now white-robed, washed in the blood of the Lamb. Hark to their songs of praise!
You may keep on listening, for those songs will never come to an end. All this was brought about through a brief address of a trembling brother who stood up one Sunday afternoon to close the school and talk a little about the Cross of Jesus. Or all this came of a gentle sister who could never have spoken in public, yet was enabled to warn a young girl who was growing giddy and seemed likely to go sadly astray. Wonderful that a soul's taking the road to heaven or to hell should be made, in the purpose of God, to hinge upon the humble endeavors of a weak but faithful teacher!
You see how the mustard seed grew until it waxed a great tree. This great tree became a shelter: The commonest kind of it may be found eight or ten feet high, but there is a kind which will grow almost like a forest tree, and there probably were some of these latter trees in the sheltered region wherein our Lord was speaking.
- Sounding Out the Word of the Lord!
- Mission Mongolia (Book 1 of the Adventure Mission series for youth).
- Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 35: 1889.
A mustard which grew here and there in Palestine was of sur prising dimensions. When the tree grew, the birds came to it. Here we have unexpected influences. That man took a mustard seed which you could hardly see if I held it up. When he took the mustard seed, when he put it into his garden, had he any thought of bringing birds to that spot? You do not know all you are doing when you are teaching a child the way of salvation by Jesus Christ.
When you are trying to bring a soul to Christ, your action has ten thousand hooks to it, and these may seize on innumerable things. Holy teaching is the opening of a well, and no one knows all the effect which the waters will produce on that spot. There seems no link between sowing a grain of mustard seed and birds of the air, but the winged wanderers soon made a happy connection.
There may seem no connection between teaching that boy and the reclaiming of cannibals in New Guinea, but I can see a very possible connection. Tribes in Central Africa may have their destiny shaped by your instruction of a tiny child. When John Pounds bribed an urchin with a hot potato to come and learn to read the Bible, I am sure John Pounds had no idea of all the Ragged schools in London, but there is a clear line of cause and effect in the whole matter. A hot potato might be the coat of arms of the Ragged school Union.
When Nasmyth went about from house to house visiting in the slums of London, I do not suppose that he saw in his act the founding of the London City Mission and all the Country Town Missions. No one can tell the end of his beginnings, the growth of his sowings. Go on doing good in little ways and you shall one day wonder at the great results. Do the next thing that lies before you. Do it unto the Lord. Leave results with His unbounded liberality of love, but hope to reap at least a hundredfold. How many fowls came and roosted under that one mustard tree I do not know.
How many birds in a day, how many birds in the year, came and found a resting place, and picked the seeds they loved so well, I cannot tell. When one person is converted, how many may receive a blessing out of him none can tell. Now is the day for romances: What stories might be written concerning benefits bestowed, directly and indirectly, by a single godly man or woman!