They go forth like the knights of our famous English legend—imperfect no doubt and erring, but each one of them inspired with the consciousness that his life is a holy quest.
There are other societies and schools among
them which seem to possess everything but this one power.
What, then, are we to say of our hopes? What is to be the mission of our generation here? Shall we contribute anything to raise the common type? Or shall we drift on as the world drifts, a little better, or a little worse?
Shall we not rather pray and hope as we begin once more to weave the web of mutual influence, that you may grow up here not altogether like the herd of common men, but emancipated early from the life of selfish desire, feeling the spirit of Christ within you, remembering your baptismal vows, with eyes open to heavenly visions, and not disobedient unto them?
XII. THE SOWER AND THE SEED.
“A sower went out to sow his seed.”—St. Luke viii. 5.
It is significant that the first of the Saviour’s parables is the parable of the sower, that the first thing to which He likens His own work is that of the sower of seed, the first lesson He has to impress upon us by any kind of comparison is that the word of God is a seed sown in our hearts, a something which contains in it the germ of a new life.
It is no less significant that He returns so often to this same kind of comparison for the purpose of impressing us always with the primary fact, that our relationship to God, the Father of Spirits, in other words our spiritual condition at the present moment, our hope for the time to come, does not depend upon some body of doctrine, but on
our having received into the secret places of the heart the seeds of a new life.