Milford chronicle., 1908-02-28
The Wrong Seed.

The Wrong Seed.
The next great mistake in our spir-
itual sowing is that we do not use the |
right kind of seed. We do not use the
spiritual seed that will bring forth the
greatest harvest. l am not asserting
that some Of US do not use good seed
But we do not use the one great seed
which will always insure us the great
est returns for our spiritual sowing
Let me illustrate my thought by COM
monplace comparisons.
When l was a resident Of Chicago, l
passed two or three summers among
the Michigan hills. While there l be-
came quite intimate with a gentleman
who owned an enormous peach Or
chard. One day he told me the history
of his life: Il inherited this land from
my father. For years he was the
largest producer of wheat in this re-
gion. But after l grew up TO be a
man | commenced to be a diligent stu
dent of the reports of the agricultural
department at Washington. The more
l studied the science of agriculture
and the formation of this soil the more
came to the conclusion that l could
0uadruple the value of my land II
would cease planting wheat and turn
nv acres into peach orchards. All the
old settlers around here laughed at me.
They said my father knew more in
ten minutes than l knew in ten years.
They said / would ruin myself finan-
cially. But went ahead. l believed
those agricultural reports from Wash
ington, and though it took me many
years to develop a good orchard, yet
as the result l am today making each
year five times the amount Of money
nv father made of the same land"
The wheat crop was all right in its
way, but that mans father did not
plant the seed that brought the maxi
mum return from his farm. The son
did, and that is the whole story In
nutshell.
Now. I am not here to state that
your life is a useless life. You are not
a liar or a thief or a drunkard or
libertine. Perhaps you give away
hundreds of dollars annually to help
the poor and the sick. But l ask You
to consider whether you plant the best
seed to obtain the spiritual harvests.
Christian work means more than sim
DIV giving bread to the hungry, clothes
/ to the naked and medicine to the sick.
Christian work emphatically means
the seed planting Of Jesus Christ in
the hearts of your fellow men. If you
will only bring the divine personality
of Christ in touch with your fellow
men. he will lift men up out of their
sins and make men like unto himself.
Oh. friend. from now let the chief pur-
pose of your life be to get the greatest
spiritual harvest by seeking chiefly to
plant the spirit of Jesus Christ in the
hearts of your fellow men! Consider
your ways. Ye have sOwn much, but
bring in little" Will you not ponder
well upon his promise? He tells US
what he can do if we only plant him
Alright "And l, if l be lifted up, will
draw all men unto me-"
Barrenness of Soil.
But l am not more impressed with
the poorness Of the seed which we go
forth to plant in our spiritual fields
than / am with the rockiness and bar
renness Of the soil in which we are
dropping this seed. l care not how
good the seed may be. if the soil is
barren there is no use in planting any
seed there For instance, the soil lin
ing the banks of the river Nile is the
richest in the world. On it you can
grow two or three crops Of wheat each
year. But if you turn your back upon
the river Nile and travel five, ten miles
over the Sahara sands you can have
the land for nothing, for it is a bar
rem land. The water will run through
it as through a sieve. Besides that, no
water can be drawn so far away from
the Nile to irrigate the desert, even
though the sands would hold the wa
ter
A soil for the farmer is worth just
in proportion to what it can produce,
no more and no less. A few years ago
l was travelling over the Dakota prai-
ries, and l stopped with the owner OF
a large wheat ranch. The mans farm
extended for miles and miles away. If
that farmer had been dependent Upon
the old fashioned ways of scattering
the seed with his hand and reap'ng
with the sickle, he could not have
placed under cultivation one-tenth of
his farm. l asked him: How can you
fertilize such an immense area of agri.
cultural land? The winter SNOWY
come on so soon after harvest shiouiG
think you would not have the thme.'
The man laughed why" faia ne
ege never fertilize the Dak@ia wheat
fields. This is practically rAsin SOL
Then he led me to deep noe ne was
digging. 1t was rich. biaSk soil, able
to produce anything. "iT9eneVer we
feel" said he that we are eShapsting
the land of its strength, an 7@t We
have to do is to drive IN the Nv a