ridges need to be settled down and closed well in upon the
precious seed which they have received. The same rain that does
the one does the other : fills the furrows and settles the ridges.
Divine agriculture is economic of means, various in adaptations.
But soon the surface becomes encrusted, and might imprison the
tender blade, did not the gentler after-showers with their myriad
drops come to soften the soil and make it easily permeable. And
169
I70 THE CROWNING OF THE YEAR
so, as eyes of wonder look on, and discreet judgment calculates how many dangers have been passed as the green crop carpets the earth, devotion exclaims, " The sprouting thereof thou dost bless." God crowns the world of men as well as the world of nature. Human life and character and experience have their supreme culminating moments. Love comes to crown the solitary life. Success comes to crown legitimate ambition — not forgetting that there may be a true success in honourable failure. Influence comes to crown character. Friendship comes to crown the long- ings of the heart. Trust and confidence and admiration come to crown the life lived in honest toil, and with a single eye to the common welfare. But the culmination is a process : the crown is sometimes long deferred. It is deferred in nature, yet experience has taught us to expect it. It looks as if nothing were being done during the dreary, sterile months of winter. The earth seems to be dead, and God appears to have withdrawn. Yet if our hearing were acute enough, we might lay our ear to the ground in December and hear the pulse still beating in that mighty bosom, and by and by we shall behold again the riotous life of spring. We must not despond when there is a winter season in our mental growth, in our spiritual experience, in our church life. In these higher regions, the crown is often long withheld. But if a man is all the time reading, observing, studying, thinking, thoiigh there be no immediate visible result, there will come a moment of rapturous emancipation when he realizes that cold fetters, as it were, have fallen from his brain, and left him free to enter upon a richer and riper life of understanding. God has crowned the intellectual year.
^ Tennyson was in his 81st year when he wrote " Crossing the Bar." He showed the poem to his sou, who exclaimed, " That is the crown of your life's work." " It came in a moment," was the aged poet's reply. Yes, but however instantaneous was the inspiration, the hymn had behind it a lifetime of careful, pains- taking, even fastidious work.
^ Marcus Dods was a probationer for six years before being called to Eeufield Church, Glasgow. During these years of waiting he was sometimes so discouraged as to think of giving up the ministry altogether. In a letter to his sister he wrote : "Do these two years and more waiting not sliow that I am si.'ek- ing my work in the wrong direction, or why do they not sliow this,
PSALM Lxv. II 171
or how long would show this ? Possibly you may say, ' Wait till some evident call to some other work arises ' ; but then, of course, evident calls enough would soon arise were I to put myself in the way of them, e.g., were I to go along to Clark the publisher and ask him for some work, or go out to Harvey of Merchiston and ask him for some ; whereas, so long as I keep myself back from such openings they are not a tenth part so likely to arise. But apart from growlery, let me give you a problem. I will give it you in the concrete, as being easier stated and easier apprehended. Is it right of me to wait and see whether I get a call or no, and let this decide whether I ought or ought not to take a charge ? To me it seems not (though it's just what I'm doing), and on this ground, because in fact we find that God has often suffered men to enter the Church who were not worthy — because, that is, the call of the people does not ahvays represent the call of God." He was after- wards Professor of Exegesis and Principal of the New College, Edinburgh.^
II.
The harvest crown comes as the reward of human labour. Man is called to be a co-worker with God. The sun and the rain may do their best, and the earth yield all its quickening powers, but the harvest would be but a heap of wild and tangled weeds without the constant work and toil of man. The earth will show its wondrous fecundity. Every seed that drops into its bosom must grow or die, and it is man's part to curb the wild extrava- gance of nature, to destroy that which is mere weed or worthless, in order that there may be room for the good to grow and ripen. God gives little even in nature without our toil ; He never gives a rich and bounteous harvest unless we give our work, and care, and watchful supervision over its growth.
The world is but a great harvest-field, in which, each in his own place, we are called forth to take our part, and to do our share of labour. Neither by the structure of our nature, nor by the con- stitution of society, is there any room for the idler, or any possibility of true enjoyment and happiness without work. If we want to be truly happy, to attain in any measure to the real use and en- joyment of life, work of some kind we must have. There ought to be no play without work. No man is entitled to enjoyment who does not purchase it by labour. The sweetest holiday is that