of nature; the grain field must get its
bosom opened without impediment permanently to the sun. It is thus that
snatches of spiritual exercise do not avail to promote the growth, or
even to preserve the life of grace in a heart that in the main is
habitually overshadowed by a crowd of overgrown imperious worldly cares.
Evening and morning you may open the Bible and bend the knee, but the
tender plant of righteousness in your heart is not effectually revived
by these brief and fitful glances. Before the drooping leaves have had
time to feel the genial warmth, another cloud has closed the orifice and
left them again in the chill damp shade. Even the Lord's day, as a gap
left open between earth and heaven, is not by any means so wide as it
seems; for the memory of the past week's business and pleasure stretches
over on the one side, until it meet, or almost meet, the anticipation of
the next week's business and pleasure, so that even on the Sabbath the
world still overshadows the soul of its votary. Shut out, except at
short and uncertain intervals, from the Light of Life, he passes through
the summer of his probation with a well-proportioned but empty form of
godliness; and the Lord, when he comes at the close to gather the wheat
into his garner, finds on that portion of the field only the rustling
chaff of a hollow profession, instead of the fruit unto holiness that
grows on living souls.

Some lessons suggest themselves in connection with this portion of the
parable, and claim a brief notice at our hand.

1. As the thorns are indigenous and spring of their own accord, while
the good seed must be sown and cherished; so, vain thoughts, lodged in
our hearts from the dawn of our being, have the advantage of first
possession, and get the start of their competitors in the race for
supremacy. Lurking unobserved between the folds of nature's faculties,
before the understanding is developed, they come away early and grow
rapidly, and obtain a firm footing before the saving truth, the seed of
the kingdom, has burst the kernel and broken through the ground. Crucify
the flesh with its affections and lusts; begin that work early, and
persevere in that work to the end.

2. As long as the weeds live they grow. Every moment, until they are
cast out of the field, they spread themselves more widely over its
surface and drain away more of its nutritive juice. Delay is dangerous.
If it be painful to pull out the root of bitterness from