The Pulpit Commentary — Jeremiah — Volume 1 — Section 143

gospel, but many who gather with them Sunday by Sund,i,y, and in their ,veek-day assemblies, are yet unconverted and unsaved. 'Where is the harvest? vVhy does it not come? "How long, 0 Lord, how long?" these servants of God continually cry to him. And so, too, with the individual worker for Christ. He, too, can look back on a time when he began his holy labour, whether in more prominent or more obscure place it matters not; but there was given to him the early, and since then there has been the latter, rain. But he looks round his class, his family, his school, his conare- gation, and oh, what a scant portion of the field is as yet even begun to be garn:red for Christ! How powerless his words seem to fall on many of them I How unanswered his prayers on- their behalf still seem to be I Now, what are we to say to all thi4i 1 Well, these three things we may surely say : First, that God ruerves the weeks of harvest. He has appointed them, but the day of their coming he has reserved in his own power. The husbanJman must have long patience; the growth and development of the holy seed is an orderly, and is generally a slow, process. All God's greatest works are slow. Science is ever teaching us this. What ages upon ages do the geologist and the astronomer demand for the processes of which they tell! How our little chronologies dwindle into insignificance besides those vast periods which they have conclusively shown to have been occupied by the Creator in perfecting those phenomena of which their several sciences take account I And, in the far greater and more difficult work of the moral and spiritua.l regeneration of human souls, shall we be impatient if God do not begin, continue, and end it all in the short space of our little lives? Surely this is to be unreasonable, is improper, is wrong. But remember, too, that the harvest itself is a long process. They are "weeks of harvest." The ingathering has begun when only one sheaf in a field has been reaped. The Lord Jesus said, "The fields are white already unto harvest," when he held in his hand only one solitary ripe ear of corn, the conversion of the woman of Samaria. Hence we may possibly be mourning that the harvest has not come, when in fact it has actually begun. Why, my brqther, it began in you from the first hour that you were converted to God. He was cutting the bonds that bound you to this world when he first called you to himself; and all the varied means by which he is separating you from the world is but the reaping continually going on; and when the sickle of death comes and cuts down this bodily life of yours, it will be but the last stroke of the reaper that tells that the harvest for you is finished at last. And so with your work. The harvest is begun. That child's heart you won for Christ here, that soul that was brought to Jesus through the Word preached by you there, those others gathered to the Redeemer's feet elsewhere,-what were these blessed facts but the beginning of the harvest, a beginning that is to go on? You are not strong enough to reap all the Lord's field; be content that he lets you reap a part. Other workmen are to enter in where you may not, and to their ann shall fall the sheaves that you may not gather. So say not any more, "The harvest is delayeJ." Why, you are actually engaged in it now. You are not a mere sower, but you are a reaper too. And remember the full harvest shall be reaped. He is the Lord of it, and will not let it waste; by one means or another it shall all be gathered in. 'fhis is what we have to say to you who mourn at the harvest's delay. III. But there are others less happy still. THOSE WHO 0AN CLAIM TO HAVK REALIZED ONLY ONE OF THESE THREE GIFTS OF GoD. The harvest is not theirs, nor both the former and the latter rains, but only one of them. Now, this one may be only the former rain. In their religious life they were blessed with this ; the wonted happy results followed; but since then there has been a standstill, and those observing them are, as St. Paul was in reference to the Galatians," in doubt" about them, and sorrow- fully ask the question," Ye did run well; who did hinder you?" 'l'heir goodness has been "like the morning cloud and the early dew "-it has gone away. And so also in much of religious work. At the beginning there was a zeal and fervour and force which promised great things, but it all soon died down. They had no staying powor, and because all was not accomplished in one vigorous rush and charge, and because the difficulties that had to be overcome presented a more stubborn and obstinate front than was anticipated, those who went forth to do battle with them became discouraged and soon turned back. In these cases, both in the life e.nd the work, though there was 11:e former rain, the latter has not as yet fallen. Now where, ns is often the case, tliis has OH, v. 1-31.] 'l'HE BOOK OF THE PROPHET JEREMIAH. 141