September 13

Your goodness is as a morning cloud. — HOSEA vi. 4.

But he that receiveth the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended. — MATT. xiii. 20, 21.

IN religion, as in agriculture, everything depends upon the thoroughness with which initial processes are conducted. In opening the way for the reception of the gospel, the ploughshare of the Spirit must be permitted to go deep enough not only to stir the thin soil of emotion which lies upon the surface of the “evil heart of unbelief” that is by nature in us all, but to upturn and remove the underlying rock itself. Only thus will the good seed of the kingdom find its way into that deep subsoil where the conditions of permanent vitality and fruitful development can be found. No mere surface-work will do here; nothing but such a radical regeneration as shall “take away the heart of stone out of the flesh,”—such as shall make old things to pass away and all things to become new. Emotions are transient; only principles abide. A religion that flourishes in times of revival in the Church, and withers as soon as they are gone, is a miserable cheat. The sooner it is detected and renounced, the better for the soul.

J. D. Witherspoon

Dear Lord, and shall we ever live At this poor dying rate, Our love so faint, so cold to thee, And thine to us so great?

WARTS.