ster met in the Paradise of
God, the sister, who gave her life for love, carried a beautiful flower
in her hand, and said, "Willie, here's your rose." So thinks the
writer, and I think so too.

SERMON LXII.

DAILY BREAD.

(Harvest Thanksgiving.)

PSALM lxv. 9.

"Thou preparest them corn."

"Come, ye thankful people, come," and let us thank God for another
harvest. Once more the Father, the Feeder, has given bread to
strengthen man's heart, and we turn from the corn stored in the garner,
to God's own garner the Church, where He has stored up food for our
souls.

And first of all, my brothers, let us be honest with ourselves. Are we
quite sure that we _are_ thankful to God for the harvest? We have
decorated God's House with the first-fruits of the year, we have met
together now to celebrate our Harvest Festival; but is there real
_meaning_ in all this? Are we thankful to God? if not our Festival is
a mockery. Let me give you a few thoughts which may help you to be
thankful. The first thought is this: the harvest is _God's_ harvest,
not yours. "Thou preparest them corn," is spoken of God, not of man.
Corn is unlike any other kind of food, it is the direct gift of God to
man in fully-developed state. Other fruits of the earth are given to
man in a wild state, and he must improve them by care and cultivation,
till the wild vine is turned into the rich wine-producing plant of the
vineyard, and the sour crab into the delicious apple. It is not the
case with corn. No one, says a writer, whose thoughts I am following,
has ever discovered wild corn. Ages ago, when the Pharaohs reigned in
Egypt, and the Pyramids were a'building, men sowed just the same corn
that you sow to-day. Corns of wheat like our own have been found in
the hands of Egyptian mummies which have been dead for thousands of
years. The grain which Joseph stored in Pharaoh's granaries, and with
which he fed his brethren, was precisely similar to the produce of your
own fields. Geologists tell us that there is no trace of corn to be
found in the earth before the creation of man. When God made man He
created corn to supply him with food. The old Greeks and Romans had a
dim perception of this when they thought that corn was the gift of the
goddess Ceres. You know we call all varieties of corn _cereals_, after
that same goddess. In these days there is, with some, less religion
than ever the old heathen possessed. They would shut God