The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-10-28
os ANGELES, Cal, Oct. 21.-In this
 sermon. using the familiar type of

that no worthy effort at winning men and women from sin is ever wasted, but is re- warded by a spiritual harvest. The text is Ecelesiastes xxi, 1, "Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days
 This text has been impressed on my mind ever since I journeyed around the world and came home by the land or pharaohs. When I wandered amid the ruins and stood under the shadows Of It's obelisks and pyramids and reflected that all these temples and palaces were the relics of the ancient race which was at tracted by the fertility of the land lying along the banks of the river Nile, these words have had for me complete fasein- ation, for in the light of Egyptian lore I thought King Solomon was alluding to the custom with which the descendants Of the ancient subjects of the Rameses are wont to SOW their seed. That custom IS very interesting to a traveller from this hemisphere. Egypt is vast desert. From one end of the year to the other no rain falls on that parched soil. How, then. is the land cultivated? By the river Nile, which when the spring freshets How into it rises above it's banks and over flows the low lying lands on each Side. | Then, as the river Nile dries up agaln, most of the overfowing water is drawn back into the original channel and leaves the adiacent regions under a layer of thick mud with here and there small shallow lakes and pools. Then the Egyp- tian farmer goes forth and scatters ms seed upon this water The seed sink lnto the mud. They take root Then when the 1or, oIn ucif n the Nile are covered with luxuriant crops.
 In the light of this strange custom of Egyptian agriculture I-used to say: An, I know what King Solomon meant when he said, Cast thy bread upon the waters for thou shalt find it after many days He is practically saying Pick out your richest grounds Go up to the rich mud covered fields by the Nile. Drop here a seed and there a seed of God given teach- ing You will never find that those seed will die Your harvest will soon yield their thirty, their sixty, their hnndredth- fold. The ground is So rich that 1t IS certain to bring forth harvest. Thus I would always picture the Christian Tn obeying this injunction as casting his seed upon rich soil and then in few months driving up to the gospel granaries with his wagons laden with the heavy golden sheaves which he had harvested for his master.
 Not True Vision.
 That is very beautiful vision which | had about the message of my text. There was only one trouble about it. The vision was not true. When I began to look up what the Bible scholars said about this theme I found they made no illusion to the river Nile and it's vast muddy banks, with their mud filled with the sewers seed. According to Thomas Scott, this text alludes to the Palestine farmer and not to the Egyptian. It pictures Palestine farmer scattering the seed over his fields and coming to swampy region. It is the poorest part of his farm. He has never cultivated it before, because, when he came to it. he always said: What Is the use of my planting there? l will never get any return for my labor. My seed will only rot and never bring me back any sheaves." " 70 farmer go to the most un- promising parts of the farm. Scatter your good seeds amid the swampy soils, where you and all the good people are skeptical about getting any return. Your gospel seeds will never be uselessly thrown away. The harvests will come. Believe me the harvests will come" Let me read to you his very words. Cast thy bread upon the waters, for thou shalt find it after many days" Could we have more prac- tical advise for Christian work?
 Instead of seeking the richest fields, God is here telling us to SOW In the most undesirable ones. Now, as I begin to run over some of the most unpromising re- gions for gospel seed planting, my mind in the first place naturally turns toward the child who is born of dissolute or de- graded parents. "Oh," you say as you look at him, "there is no use wasting any thing upon that boyl He was born of a bad mother His father was divorced from her on account of her fragrant sins. She is never at home. You might as well .Aa.0 f1 come the parental taint in his blood" Or you say: "What is the use? that boys father is drunkard and an infidel. He daily scoffs at the Bible. Any good seed we might SOW in that chlld's heart would be rooted out in night by the ridicule of his parent" Yes, Sunday school teacher, I know how discouraged you are over that boy But do not despair. Go on sowing that gospel seed in that child's heart whenever you have an opportunity. Christ will look after the result The gospel har- vests in that life will surely come DO you not recall the divine promise given to us in Ecclesiastes, Cast thy seed in the unpromising fields, for thou shalt find 1t after many days"
 And why should we not cast the gospel seed upon the child's heart? Have you a right to say any child cannot be led to Christ until you have tried to lead him there not only seven times, but seventy times seven? child S heart seems to me like the desert of Arizona. Now, there are two kinds of desert. There is the desert of sand and rock, like that of Sahara You might as well expect a dotted sieve to hold water as such a desert You can pours rivers upon rivers into 1t and have shower after shower descend upon it, and those waters will almost instantly disap- pear. It would take centuries upon cen turies of inundations to change the Sahara sands into the rich soil of a har- vest field.
 But such a desert as that is not to be compared to the Arizona desert. There the lands are rich beyond all human com sential to develop vegetable life You could grow wheat there. You could grow corn there. You could grow orchards there. You could grow the most exquisite of flowers there, if you only had water. short rainy seasons come to the Arizona desert it will be literally covered with wild flowers and the richest of grasses will spring up as if by magic. I never cross the Arizona desert but every sage bush, every bare mound, every inch of parched soil seems to cry out to me this one sent ence: Water, water Give me drink. Give me water and I will cover these wide expanses with farm lands. Give me drink and I will feed multitudes of people who will not only dig gold out of wonder mountains, but cover these prairies with harvest and orchards worth far more than the minerals buried in my depths. Water, water! Oh, give me water and then let the starving people come and fill them- selves with my abundancen Thus I feel