ew hopeful, happy, and strong. Here is a living seed,
but it is very small an awakened, exercised, conscientious, believing
monk, is an imperceptible atom which superstitious multitudes, and
despotic princes, and a persecuting priesthood will overlay and smother,
as the heavy furrow covers the microscopic mustard-seed. But the living
seed burst, and sprang, and pierced through all these coverings. How
great it grew and how far it spread history tells to-day. We have cause
to thank God for the greatness of the Reformation, and to rebuke
ourselves for its smallness. Through the grace of God it made rapid
progress at the first, and by the passions of men it was arrested before
its work was done;--not arrested, but impeded; it is growing still, and
growing more vigorously in our own day than it has done in any
generation since its youth.

But the present time supplies examples of the kingdom's growth from
small to great, as distinct and characteristic as any period since the
apostles' days. The revivals of these times are vigorous off-shoots from
the great stem of Christ's kingdom in the world, and the part observes
the same law of increase that operates in the whole. Trace any one of
the local awakenings back to its source, and you will discover that the
interest in spiritual, personal religion, which now overtops and
overshadows all other interests in the neighbourhood--which has led many
wanderers back to Christ's fold--which has caused friends to sing aloud
for joy, and enemies to stand mute in astonishment--which has emptied
jails and filled prayer-meetings--which has changed the wilderness into
a garden, and drawn wondering witnesses from distant lands--sprang from
some upper or lower room in which two or three unnoticed and unknown
believers were wont to meet at stated times for prayer. Many of those
small but living seeds have burst through the ground and made themselves
known by their magnitude; and many similar seeds are lying hid to-day
under the capacious folds of our vast and earnest industry. May great
trees spring from these small seeds in the Lord's good time!

Robert Haldane in Geneva, with his Bible in his hand and a group of
students around him, is a modern example of the same law in the growth
of the kingdom.

II. The kingdom of heaven _in a human heart_ is like a mustard-seed,
both in the smallness of its beginning and the greatness of its
increase. In the grand design of God, moral qualities hold t