h
worketh in us mightily": the prayer that knows not what it should
pray for as it ought, and yields itself to His "intercession for us
with groanings that cannot be uttered." These are the things which,
small as they are in this world's count, have the very pulse of
eternity beating through them. Nothing but that which He inspires can
carry quickening power: no experience--no spirituality even, can set
the spark alight. It is not the seed-vessel that can do the work, any
more than a bit of leaf-stalk or flower petal, but simply and only
the seed. "It is the Spirit that quickeneth." "I believe in the Holy
Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life." Hallelujah!

Let us watch the seed-shedding, and see what it can teach us about
sowing to the Spirit.

* * * * * *

There is a definite moment at which the seed is ripe for being
liberated--that is the first thing we notice: and at that moment it
is absolutely ready for its work. The storing of the nourishment for
the young plant began on the very day when the new life entered the
flower long ago, and it is finished now. All prepared too are the
hooks, or spikes, or gummy secretions, needed to anchor it to the
ground, and so to give a purchase to the embryo shoot when the time
comes for it to heave its tombstone and come out to the light. Even
its centre of gravity is so adjusted that, in falling from the
sheath, the germ is in the very best position for its future growth.
If it is torn out of the husk a day too soon, all this marvellous
preparation will be wasted and come to nothing.

Can we not read our parable? How often we have had an impulse or a
plan which we knew to be of God, with a flash of intuition, or with a
gathering certainty: and the temptation has come to carry it straight
off by ourselves, without waiting His time--the very temptation that
beset the Master in the wilderness.

Oh! let us learn of Him the lesson of letting God's seed-purposes
ripen!--they can bear no fruit till they have come to their maturity:
we shall but waste all He was preparing if we drag it out before its
time. And only in a path in which we are learning to do nothing of
ourselves but what we see the Father do, can we know when His hour is
come. How accurately Jesus knew it! "I go not up yet unto this feast,
for My time is not yet full come," He said to His brethren--and yet
in a day or two He was there. "Mine hour is not yet come," He said to
His mother, when it was only a question of mi