[Illustration: WITH THE REAPERS.]
For the birds, which "neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn," God makes the grass to grow of itself; but all those seed-bearing plants, which He has given to man, must now be cultivated. Rice needs a great deal of water that it may grow; and corn, if no care is given to its cultivation, soon becomes but a poor and useless sort of grass. It must be sown fresh every year in ground which has been made ready for it. Did you ever pluck one of the golden ears from a field of corn, and sit down and count how many grains there were upon one slender stalk? And then did you think that every little grain in that ear was itself a seed which, just as the egg contains the bird that is one day to fly and sing, wraps up within itself a young wheat-stalk with all the golden ears which may wave and rustle when next year's harvest time has come? No longer then the one lonely seed dropped by the hand of the sower into the good soil prepared for it, but many, many grains instead. So true is it that
"A grain of corn an infant's hand
May plant upon an inch of land,
Whence twenty stalks may spring and yield,
Enough to stock a little field.
"The harvest of that field may then
Be multiplied to ten times ten,
Which, sown thrice more, would furnish bread
Wherewith an army might be fed."
And such life is there in seed, that even grains of corn which had been hidden away for thousands of years—wrapped up in an Egyptian tomb within a mummy like those you saw at the Museum the other day—when sown still brought forth fruit; not in Egypt where they first grew, but in England. But those grains which had slept the sleep of ages would never have thus wakened into life and fruitfulness unless they had been sown in the earth; for before we can see the "full corn in the ear," the one grain from which so many were to come, must "fall into the ground and die": in darkness and silence and death the plant is born, and begins to show signs of life. Did you ever think of this?
The Lord Jesus once spoke of it to two of His disciples, Andrew and Philip. I do not know whether they understood then that He was speaking of Himself when He said the words, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." "Much fruit"—even that great multitude redeemed by His blood, who shall be with Him and praise Him for ever, as they remember how He died that they might live.
I hope that you belong to the happy company who shall sing that new song in heaven. If you have known and believed the love of God in giving His own beloved Son to die instead of you, and the love of Christ in coming into the world and laying down His life for you, you can say of the Lord Jesus the very words which the great apostle Paul said, when he spoke of Him as "the Son of God, who loved me, and gave Himself for me."
How much there is for us to learn, and how much to admire, in the wonderful works of God! Far, far more than we have been speaking of to-day in the lichens, covering the bare rocks with "cloth of gold," and in the leafy mosses which the birds weave into soft lining for their nests; the palms, pines, reeds, and grasses, and the beautiful waving corn, which is God's special gift to man. But we must now turn to the third division of plants, which is described as "the fruit tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is in itself."
There is a pretty poem which Sharley learnt the other day, beginning—
"I praised the earth, in beauty seen,
With garlands gay of various green."