next
spring the ground was covered with seedling oaks, though not an
oak-tree was in sight. Unnumbered years before there must have been a
struggle between the two trees, in which the firs gained the day, but
the acorns had kept safe their latent spark of life underground, and
it broke out at the first chance.

And if we refuse to stay our faith upon results that we can see and
measure, and fasten it on God, He may be able to keep wonderful
surprises wrapt away in what looks now only waste and loss. What an
up-springing there will be when heavenly light and air come to the
world at last, in the setting up of Christ's kingdom! The waste
places may see "a nation born in a day."

All that matters is that our part should be done. We are responsible
for sowing to the Spirit--responsible, with an awful responsibility,
that power should be set free in our lives, power that shall prevail
with God and with men--responsible like the seed-vessel, for
fulfilling our ministry to the last and uttermost. Let the cry be on
our hearts, as it was on the heart of Jesus, to "finish the work"
that the Father has given us. "My meat is to do the will of Him that
sent Me, and to finish His work." On He went with it, though it cost
Him the strong crying and tears of Gethsemane to fight through to the
end--to live on to the "It is finished" of Calvary.

Is it our souls' hunger and thirst that, before He comes, we may have
given every message He had for us to deliver--prevailed in every
intercession to which He summoned us--"distributed" for His kingdom
and "the necessity of saints" every shilling He wanted--shared with
Him every call to "the fellowship of His sufferings" for
others--pouted out His love and sympathy and help as He poured them
out on earth? Are we longing that He should find when He comes no
unspent treasure, no talent laid up in a napkin, like the unshed seed
in its shelly fold? Are we acting as if it were our longing? "By Him
actions" (not longings) "are weighed!"

Take one more look at our meadow. The summer days are cooling down,
and the storms have begun to come. The ground is bare and blackened,
the stalks and leaves are battered to shreds: but seeds are
everywhere. The earth is strewn with the husks. Whence they come none
can tell, and they are broken down into nothingness. All is
death--death reigning. The first showers are only bringing in a fresh
stage of it where all seemed dead before, beating them, bleached and