fjrOOD husbancls are careful in summer to provide for winter. Then tliey gather in their winter store ; food and fuel for themselves, and fodder for their cattle. " He that gathers in summer, is a wise " son : but he that sleeps in harvest is a son that causeth shame," Prov. X. 5. A well chosen season is the greatest advantage to any action : which, as it is seldom found in haste, so it is often lost by delay. It is a good proverb which the frugal Dutch have among them : — Bonus servatius faciei honum honifacium : — A good saver will make a good benefactor. And it is a good proverb of our own, He that neglects the occasion, the occasion will neglect him. Husbandmen know that sum- mer will not hold all the year ; neither will they trust to the hopes of a mild and favourable winter, but in season provide for the worst,
W HAT excellent Christians should we be, were We but as pro- vident and thoughtful for our souls ? It is doubtless a singular point of Christian wisdom to foresee a day of spiritual straits and necessi- ties ; and, during the day of grace, to make provision for it. This great gospel-truth is excellently shadowed forth in this natural ob- servation, which I shall branch^ut into these seven particulars.
1. Husbandmen know there is a change and vicissitude of seasons and weather ; though it be pleasant summer weather now, yet win- ter will tread upon the heel of summer : frosts, snows, and great falls of rain must be expected. This alternate course of seasons, in nature, is settled by a firm law of the God of nature to the end of the world. Gen. viii. 22. " Whilst the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, " cold and heat, winter and summer, day and night, shall not " cease,"
And Christians know, that there are changes in the right-hand of the Most High, in reference to their spiritual seasons. If there be a spring-time of the gospel, there will be also an autumn ; if a day of prosperity, it will set in a night of adversity : " for God hath set " the one over against the other," Eccles. vii. 14. In heaven there is a day of everlasting serenity ; in hell a night of perfect endless hor- ror and darkness ; on earth, light and darkness take their turns, prosperity and adversity, even to souls as well as bodies, succeed eacli other. If there be a gospel-day, a day of grace now current, it will have its period and detennination. Gen. iii, 6,
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S. Common prudence and experience enable the husbandman, in the midst of summer, to foresee a winter, and provide for it before he feel it ; yea, natural instinct teaches this to the very birds of the air, and beasts of the field.
And spiritual wisdom should teach Christians to exercise their foreseeing faculties, and not suffer them to feel evil before they fear it. But, oh ! the stupifying nature of sin i Though the stork in the heavens knows her appointed time, and the turtle, crane, and swallow the time of their coming, yet man, whom God hath made wiser than the fowls of the air, in this acts quite below them, Jer. viii. 7.
3. The end of God's ordaining a summer season, and sending warm and pleasant weather is to ripen the fruits of the earth, and give the husbandman fit opportunity to gather them in.
And God's design of giving men a day of grace, is to furnish them with an opportunity for the everlasting happiness and salvation of their souls; Rev. ii, 21. " I gave her space to repent." It is not a mere reprival of the soul, or only a delay of the execution of threatened wrath, though there be much mercy in that ; but the peculiar aim of this patience and bounty of God is to open for them a way to escape the wrath to come, by leading them to repentance," Rom. ii. 4,
4. The husbandman doth not find all harvest-seasons alike favour- able : sometimes they have much fair weather, and meet with no hin- drance in their business; other times it is a catching harvest, but now and then a fair day, and then they must be nimble, or all is lost.
There is also a great difference in soul-seasons ; some have had a long and fair season of grace ; a hundred and tv/enty years did God wait upon the old world, in the ministry of Noah. Long did God wait on the gainsaying Israelites, Isg. xlii. 14. " I have a longtime *' held my peace ; I have been still, and refrained myseJf." Others have a short and catching season, all lies upon a day, upon a nick of time. Acts xvii. 30.
5. A proper season neglected and lost is irrecoverable. Many things in husbandry, must be done in their season, or cannot be done at all for that year : if he plovr not, and sow not in the proper season, he loses the harvest of that year.
It is even so as to spiritual seasons : Christ neglected, and grace despised, in the season when God offers them, are irrecoverably lost, Prov. i. 28. " Then (that is when the season is over) " they shall *' call upon me, but I will not hear." Oh ! there is a great deal of time, in a short opportunity ; that may be done, or prevented, in an hour rightly timed, which cannot be done, or prevented, in a man's life-time afterwards. There' was one resolved to kill Julius Caesar such a day : the night before a friend sent him a letter to acquaint him with it: but he being at supper, and busy in discourse, said, to-morrow is a new day ; and indeed it was dies novissima, his last day to him.
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Whence it became a proverb in Greece, To-morrow is a new day. Our glass runs in heaven, and we cannot see how much or httle pf the sand of God's patience is yet to run down ; but this, is certain, when that glass is run, there is nothing to be done for our souls, Luke xix. 42. " O that thou hadst known, at least, in this thy day, " the things that belong to thy peace ; but now they are hid from ** thine eyes."