SOWING.
THE SPRING TIME OF LIFE.
Suggestion:—The object used is a bag or sack, or a pillow slip would answer the same purpose, hung about the neck as a farmer uses it when sowing seed. While this is not essential, it can be used if desired.
MY DEAR YOUNG FRIENDS: Spring is the most pleasant season of the year; the snow has melted, the cold weather has passed away, and now the warm, pleasant days have come. The trees are all in blossom, the fields look beautiful, and the air is full of sweetness. If you go into the country at this season of the year you will find the farmers plowing their fields, and some are sowing grain. The spring wheat has already been sown, the oat fields will soon begin to look green, and in the course of a few weeks the farmers will be planting their corn.
It must have been at a corresponding period of the year in the East, when Jesus spoke those beautiful words which are found in the 13th chapter of St. Matthew, contained in the parable of the sower who went out to sow. A great multitude of people had gathered to hear the words which fell from the lips of Jesus. They could no longer gain admission into the house, and so Jesus went down by the sea, or the large lake, and getting into a boat he pushed out just a little way from the shore, so all the people standing along the shore could see and hear Him, and then He began to preach to them. Just back of them on the plain was a farmer who was more intent upon sowing his field than upon listening to the words of the Saviour. As Jesus saw him pacing to and fro across the field, scattering the grain in the furrows, Jesus very likely pointed to the man, calling the attention of the multitude to what he was doing, and said to the people, "Behold a sower went forth to sow," and then called the attention of the people to the character of the soil in the different places where the seed fell.
In the country the farmers use a sack or bag. After having tied the opposite ends together, they hang this over their neck and shoulder, and with the right hand left free, they march up and down the field, sowing the grain. This sowing is not so common any more, because farmers now often plant their grain fields with a machine called a drill.
With this sack suspended about the neck, in this way, the farmer reaches in and takes out a small handful of seed, and then swinging his hand, throws the seed over a considerable portion of the ground. Thus he walks from one end of the field to the other, sowing the seed, until he has the entire field sown and ready for the men who follow with the harrow to cover up the grain.
Well, boys and girls, this is the spring-time of life with you. These are the pleasant days and years of your life. You have very little care. Yet it is, nevertheless, the spring-time. You are now making preparations which will tell what is to be the harvest in the later years of your lives. As the farmer goes out and plows the field, so by discipline and by counsel, and by instruction are your parents preparing your minds and hearts that in after years you may enjoy a harvest of great blessing.
