The Dawson news. (Dawson, Ga.) 1889-current, 1920-12-14
Divine Lessons In Garnering Of
The Golden Grain.
Charles G. Miller in Christian Herald.

Charles q. Miller In Christian Herald.
The summer is over and the harvest is past.
The sad skies, the bleak fields the bare trees,
the raw winds that whistle and groan and
sob and sigh their dirges mournfully remind
us that the season of fruitage has gone by and
the time has come when we can only turn
away each to himself, and measure up our
gatherings.
Nature gives us a seed time and a harvest
time.
But these would be meaningless to us did
she not also send a season when, at the warn
ing touch of winter chill, we must measure
our gains and consider our losses.
But for the lessons of this season no man
would labor; we would know naught OF tenn
perance or thrift; we would go through the
bright spring only singing, and idle away the
summer III dreams.
So it is part OF the divine plan that each
of us should now go apart and carefully sep
arate the wheat from the chaff, the flowers
from the weeds, and that which is good and
sound and enduring from all that perishes and
taintS. 1t is now that each must honestly ex-
anime and weigh the product OF his own
works.
1t were useless now to try to deceive even
ourselves.
Now, if at no other time, we see the vast
difference in value between the picked fruit
and the windfalls.
The one heap we proudly store away, know
ing it will keep sweet and whole to the win
tiers depths, and the other we cast aside, that
it may not contaminate as it rotS.
1t is a sad, sweet task-sweet for the count
ed gains, sad for the opportunities lost and
to come no more.
And as we garner the. grains we also gar
ner wisdom.
AS we separate the wheat from the chaff
and the sound fruit from the windfalls so,
whether we will or not, we must in the inner
consciousness separate the true from the false
in principles of labor and living
No man, even of the threescore-yea, four
score and ten-has ever known this law to
fail in single season. 1t knows no varia
tons in all the cycles OF time.
But grains and fruits are not all that we are
garnering. Chaff and weeds are not all we
ought to separate and cast away. There are
things more important still In the store
house OF the heart and mind and soul is it
not we'll to seek, just as carefully, though
sometimes in vain, to keep only the better
the brighter, the more enduring things?
When the bleak November of life comes
we shall have need of them.
Dreary will be the winter to him whose
granaries are empty. But drearier and more
desoate still must be the winter OF old age
to the man or woman whose mind and heart
and soul have brought from the harvest only
the joys that are chaff and the virtues that
are mere Windfalls, attained and adhered to
only through easy convenience.
When that winter comes, as it must to
many OF us, we shall have only ourselves to
turn to, and we shall find only that which we
have sown and harvested in the bright spring
and golden summer-the good grain, the
sound fruit, the flowers, the high impulses,
the sacrifices, the loves, yes, and the cheat,
the chaff, the weeds, the windfalls, the hates,
the jealousies, the low passions-all these and
nothing more to sustain to render us
desoate.
We may, if we will, make each day cycle
of all the seasons. We sorrow each morning
and reap each noon and garner each evening
the fruits OF our living in this little day. Day
by day, if we strive on in right and hope and
courage, must our knowledge and our strength
and our store increase. Day by day, through
many faiings and fallngs, do we come nearer
to the true manhood and the true womanhood