ween the spring and the harvest time of
life; but be assured, my dear young friends, that the early years will
speedily pass. Before you are aware of it, you will be men and women
with all the responsibilities of life upon you, and then you will be
sure to reap the reward of what you do now while you are boys and girls.
Lord Bacon said that "Nature owes us many a debt until we are old," but
nature is always sure to pay its debts. The ancients had an adage that
said, "Justice travels with a sore foot," but it usually overtakes a
man.

A few Sundays ago I told you that as the result of planting a single
grain of corn, a fruitage sufficient to plant the entire earth might be
secured in only five years. It is told us by historians that, in olden
times, the harvest in Egypt and Syria would return an hundred fold for
one sowing, and in Babylonia oftentimes two hundred fold for one sowing.
Now, if a single grain of wheat were planted in soil as fertile as that
of Egypt, at the end of eight years of sowing and reaping, if we had a
field large enough, the product would be sufficient to feed all the
families of the earth for more than a year and a half. But if we were to
undertake to plant one grain of wheat in this way, after a few years we
would fill all the fields which would be suited for a wheat harvest.
Down near the equator it would be too hot for the wheat to grow
successfully. In the north it would be altogether too cold. On the
mountain side the soil is not fertile, and oftentimes is very rocky. For
these, and various other reasons, it would be impossible to cover any
large portion of the earth with wheat, for not every portion would be
suited to produce a harvest. Were it not for this fact, in the course of
seven or eight years, the entire earth might be made to wave as one vast
field of wheat.

But there is one truth which God has planted in this world. That truth
is God's love manifested in the gift of His Son Jesus Christ for the
salvation of all mankind. This truth is suited to every age of the
world, to every nation of the earth, to all classes and all conditions
of people, and to every human heart. During the past centuries men have
been planting and replanting this seed of divine truth, sowing and
resowing the earth with it, gathering and reaping the harvest and sowing
again. And the days are coming when all the earth shall wave as one vast
harvest field, waiting for the reapers of God, who shall gather this
b