II. Human life has one or the other of two great characters, and will issue in one or the other of two great results.—1. They sow to the flesh who live under the influence of their natural inclinations and desires, pleasing only themselves and despising or neglecting the holy will of God. They live to the Spirit the whole current of whose being has been supernaturally reversed under the grace of the Gospel. 2. The sowers to the Spirit live. And this true and proper life of man, in its maturity and full perfection, is the great and glorious reward which, by Divine appointment, shall eventually crown the labours of the sowers to the Spirit. The sowers to the flesh sow seed which brings forth death. Even now their life is death in rudiment, and in the end, they must reap it in its full and external development. Degraded existence, miserable existence, everlastingly degraded and miserable existence.

III. We are liable to delusions with respect to these great verities.—All history and experience teem with illustrations of the spiritual spells and juggleries which men, prompted by the invisible potentate of evil, practise upon themselves, that so they may reduce to their convictions the sinfulness of sin, and may tone the booming of the great bell of Scripture menace down to the gentle whisper of an amiable reprimand.—J. D. Geden.

On the Difference between sowing to the Flesh and to the Spirit.

I. The man who soweth to his flesh.—It is to spend our lives in doing these works of the flesh—to lay out our time, our thoughts, and our care in gratifying the vain, sensual, and selfish inclinations which the evil state of the heart naturally and continually puts forth. Broken health, loathsome diseases, ruined fortunes, disappointed wishes, soured tempers, infamy, and shame are among those things which usually come from walking after the flesh.

II. The man who soweth to the Spirit.—It is to live under the guidance of God’s Holy Spirit, and in every part of our conduct to bring forth the fruits of the Spirit. He enjoys even at present the fruit of his labour: inward peace and joy, and a hope full of immortality.—Edward Cooper.

The Principle of the Spiritual Harvest.

I. The principle is this, “God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.”—There are two kinds of good possible to men—one enjoyed by our animal being, the other felt and appreciated by our spirits. Reap what you have sown. If you sow the wind, do not complain if your harvest is the whirlwind. If you sow to the Spirit, be content with a spiritual reward, invisible, within, more life and higher life.

II. The two branches of the application of this principle.—1. Sowing to the flesh includes those who live in open riot. 2. Those who live in respectable worldliness. 3. Sowing to the Spirit, the harvest is life eternal. 4. The reward is not arbitrary but natural. The thing reaped is the very thing sown, multiplied a hundredfold. You have sown a seed of life, you reap life everlasting.—F. W. Robertson.

Ver. 7. Sowing and Reaping in their bearing on the Formation of Individual Character.—There are three plots in which every man is perpetually engaged in sowing and reaping—in the plot of his thoughts, in the plot of his words, and in the plot of his deeds. And there is a storehouse into which the harvests from these three plots are being secretly but unmistakably garnered—the storehouse of individual character. The moral condition of the man to-day is the inevitable result of his thoughts, words, and deeds; his selfhood is rich or poor according to his sowing and reaping in these respective fields.

I. Whatever a man sows in thought that will he also reap in the formation, tone, and tendency of his intellectual and moral nature.—1. Vain thoughts. If we indolently sport with vain and foolish thoughts, they will inevitably produce a crop of the same kind. The mind will be garnished with flimsy and unprofitable fancies, inflated with a too conscious self-importance, and the outcome is heard in “the loud laugh that proclaims the vacant mind,” and seen in the pompous swagger of the intellectual fop (Prov. xiii. 16; Ps. xciv. 11).