part be due
to his unfaithfulness.

Further, when it is said that the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself,
the influences of heaven are not excluded, any more than the collateral
care of the husbandman. We know how and in what sense the earth brings
forth spontaneously, after it has received the seed into its bosom: if
the sun were kept from shining, or the rain from falling on it, the
earth would produce nothing. It is thus also with grace in the heart:
the Spirit ministering the things of Christ is as necessary in the
kingdom of grace, as rain and sunshine are in the kingdom of nature.

Surrounding circumstances, moreover, tend powerfully to help
or to hinder the growth of the new life. The seed grows indeed by its
own vitality: the most favourable circumstances that are possible on
earth could not produce a harvest of grace without the seed of the Word;
but these circumstances go far instrumentally to help or to hinder the
growth and ripening of the seed. The family of which you are a member,
either as child or servant,--the Church with which you worship,--the
companions with whom you associate,--the tone of the society in which
your social life moves on,--the business that occupies your day,--and
the amusements that refresh you when you are wearied;--these and many
others affect for good or evil the growth of grace in Christians, as wet
or dry, cold or warm seasons, affect the growth of the seed after it has
been committed to the ground. Watch and pray; one of these small points
may be the turning-point of your destiny.

The seed grows gradually from stage to stage. Three stages are
specified; first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear.
This does not determine the time occupied in the spiritual process. In
this respect there is not uniformity: the spiritual growth from spring
to maturity sometimes requires more than one natural season, and
sometimes is accomplished in less.

In the first stage of growth, it is not easy to distinguish with
certainty between the wheat and common grass; it is when the ear is
formed and filled, that you know at a glance, which is the fruitful and
which the fruitless plant There is a similar ambiguity, in as far as
appearance is concerned, in the earliest outgrowth of convictions from
the hearing of the word. Not that there is any uncertainty in the nature
of the things: the wheat is wheat, and the grass is grass from the
first: but an observer cannot so surely at