first determine which is
wheat, and which is merely grass.

Thus, many hopeful impressions that appear for a while in the young, die
away, and bring forth no fruit; but at later stages, a judgment may be
formed with greater confidence. The plant assumes by degrees a more
definite form, and a more substantial fulness: the fruits of the Spirit,
green at first, but growing gradually more and more mellow, crown the
profession of a Christian.

Let us not deceive ourselves, in connection with the acknowledged
secrecy of the Spirit's work. The growing is an unseen thing; but
the grown ripened grain is visible. It is the inner power that is hid;
the fruit may be seen by all. There is indeed an invisible Christ, who
is already within his people the resurrection and the life; but there is
no invisible Christianity. How grace in the heart grows is an
inscrutable mystery; when it is grown, it is known and read of all men.
Your life, as to its source and supply, is hid with Christ in God: but
your life, as to its practical effects, is a city set on a hill. There
is a great difference between the light that you get and the light that
you give. The Lord in heaven is the light of Christians; but Christians
are the light of the world.

The source of the mighty Ganges is secret; and that secret the
superstition of the Hindus has converted into a religious mystery. But
the Ganges is not a secret unseen thing, as it flows through the plains
of India, fertilizing a continent.

"The harvest is come." It is not the end of the world; it is not even
the close of a Christian life in the world. There is a ripening and a
fruit-bearing while life in the body lasts: there is also a reaping and
an enjoying of the harvest by those who sow the seed, or their
successors. The announcement, "one soweth and another reapeth," clearly
implies that the same one who sows may also to some extent reap. There
is part of both: a sower gathers some of the fruit of his labour in his
own lifetime; and some of it is gathered by others after he has
departed.

Here is a lesson for ministers and teachers. The Lord, who sends them
out to sow, expects that they will look and long for fruit, and be
disappointed if it does not appear. When the case occurs, as occur it
may, in which the sower is not permitted to reap, the delay, although
not a ground of despair, should be a source of disappointment: the
stroke will be felt painful, if there is life where the stroke fal