A Sermon by Rev. F. HOARE, M.A., Vicar of Holy Trinity, Derby. "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." T is a general acknowledgment that each season of the year has its own charms. It will be as readily conceded that the summer is the perfection of the year. But whilst to all nature wears a lovely aspect, it is the soul of the intelligent Christian only that reads the beautiful in nature. He finds sermons in stones, sees Christ in the lily, discerns death in the falling leaf, beholds the resurrection in the snowdrop. Summer is the beauty of the year. The fields are clothed with verdure, the trees covered with the foliage. The rose which seems to be God's favourite flower for it is said He has made nearly five hundred varieties of it, blossoms with beauty. Nero was once said to have paid £30,000 for one wreath of roses with which to adorn his supper table. table. In the fairy-like valley of the Shipka, which means wild rose, where Russian and Turk now meet in deadly fray, the rose is not as with us, cultivated in pots and gardens, but in fields and on the banks. They say nothing is more pleasing to sight than those fields of rose bushes. Millions of red leaves are spread out over the bright green of the rose fields, and sweet perfume is manufactured from these roses. But this year there will be no rose harvest in the fairy-like valley of the Shipka. The fields are indeed crimson, but not with the pleasant rose crop, and the farmers have more terrible work to do in defending their homes from a powerfully invading foe. The summer is ended and the harvest is past. The fields that were covered with golden grain have all been reaped. The fruits of the earth have been gathered into the barn, and the songs of the "harvest homes" have made the valleys ring with the echoes of gladness and joy. The harvest may not have been so luxurious and abundant as in some former seasons, nor may the weather have been so bright and warm for the ingathering of the harvest to the garner. But God has not left Himself without witness in doing us good. The harvest is past and now the tints of autumn are beginning to adorn woodland and tree branch. The sap of the tree is halting in its upward current. The leaf is rapidly turning sear and yellow, and will soon fall withered to the ground. The night is fast winning in its race with the day. Crowded railway trains are full of returning tourists. Soon the chills, and frosts, and snows of winter will be upon us. "The harvest is past and the summer is ended." Perhaps we ourselves feel, “We all do fade as a leaf," and some perhaps must say in the affecting words of the text "And we are not saved." At the time Jeremiah uttered these words, the Jews were on the eve of destruction. Their temporal prosperity was from the first made to depend on their obedience to God. Secular good was promised as a reward to their obedience, and secular evil threatened as a penalty for their disobedience. They were taught to expect an immediate judgment from heaven if they rebelled against the constitution of their government. Up to this time many acts of treason had they committed against their Supreme Ruler. Josiah had lately effected a reformation in the land, but after his death the kingdom fast hastened to ruin. Infidelity and irreligion had taken entire possession of the nation. Kings, nobles, priests and citizens, with one universal declension, had finally turned their backs upon Jehovah and yielded themselves up to the abominations of the heathen. Truth, justice, and mercy had fallen in the streets, and falsehood, injustice, and cruelty rioted without control. The king was a mere cipher. A sensual and brutal nobility had weakened every social tie, and the people encouraged by their example, and stimulated by their influence, had reached the verge of anarchy. The political body was infected with the plague. All were in fact revolted and gone. They had often been reproved, but had steadily hardened their necks. God had urged them with the most tender solicitude to return to duty; but they had despised, rejected, and scorned His counsel. Their day of hope was now hiding behind the mountains and they were to be suddenly destroyed and that without remedy. The time of harvest in Judea was the time when the inhabitants, and the nations by which the country was surrounded, usually went out to war. At this time their faithless allies the Egyptians, in whose aid they chose to trust rather than in that of the living God, and who, almost of course, deceived their fond hopes of succour, were expected to bring them assistance against the king of Babylon. But the harvest came, and no Egyptian friends appeared. The summer was also ended, but these auxiliaries had never come. Their last hope had vanished and they were left to make the mournful cry, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." Now there are many situations in the life of man, to which this lamentation may be applied with the utmost propriety and force. Wherever great blessings have been enjoyed and abused, or hopes have been cherished and lost, where God has been long indulgent and has finally withdrawn, all those who are specially concerned may very properly adopt this sad and affecting exclamation, “The harvest," etc. 1. A person who has long enjoyed the ordinances of God's house and the faithful preaching of the Gospel, but without improvement, may, as each year passes by, well take up the words of the text, "The harvest," etc. It is a great privilege to sit under a faithfully preached gospel. It is a talent not to be hid in a napkin, but to be diligently, faithfully and prayerfully improved, for it must certainly be accounted for before the great white throne. To hear Sunday after Sunday of Salvation free, full, finished, everlasting and effected for the chief of sinners by the precious bloodshedding of the Glorious Son of God, to hear of the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ in justifying once and for ever all who believe in Him, washing away their sins, giving them new hearts and new spirits, sending the Spirit of adoption into their hearts, giving them " the glorious liberty of the sons of God," and "performing the good work until the day of Jesus Christ "-to hear those melting, persuasive invitations of His love to "weary and heavy laden" sinners to come unto Him and find rest, and to listen to His faithfulness as "a brother born for adversity," who in all the changing scenes of life is ever the same, never leaving nor forsaking His people, but right onward to a dying bed manifesting that gracious presence which cheers the mourner's heart, comforts in the heaviest trial and brightens a dying eye with the hope of a glorious and blissful immortality—to listen to such a gospel is a privilege which few estimate aright. But it is a deeply sad and melancholy thing for persons to sit under the gospel for years and to be conscious that it has never been "the power of God to their salvation." They have not only retained their hardness of heart, but it has been increasing by the resistance and dislike by which they have met the gospel. While others have crowded around the pool of healing, they have stood secure on the brink, and have employed themselves in watching their companions, in laughing at their eagerness and anxiety, in wondering if their credulity can persuade them to expect a cure, and have perhaps been curiously reasoning on the nature of the waters, and in concluding that the remedy is the result of natural causes, and not supernatural, of the peculiar quality of the waters themselves, and not of any virtue infused by the angel of health. Of such persons although usually very sagacious in their own opinion, it may be said they have ears, but they hear not, eyes have they, but they see not, and hearts have they but they do not understand, for their heart and their ears are dull of hearing and their eyes have they closed, lest at any time they should see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and be converted and healed. If there be any such in this church to whom these things are applicable, let me intreat them, since they have put from themselves the gospel, and judge themselves unworthy of everlasting life, to remember the solemn address made to such as they are, by the apostle Paul, "Behold ye despisers, and wonder and perish, for I work a work in your days, a work which ye shall in no wise believe though a man declare it unto you." A man who resists the gospel and dislikes its faithfulness provokes God in a peculiar manner, and hardens his own heart to a degree and with a rapidity which ought to fill him with alarm and terror lest the harvest should be past. 2. An aged person who has lived all his days without God and without Christ, may well take up these words and say, "The harvest," etc. Such an one feels life passing away. He stops at the top of the stairs all out of breath, his eye is not so quick to catch a sight, nor his ear a sound. The step is less quick and elastic, the voice is trembling, and the hand that never failed to send the bullet to the mark, has lost its steadiness. The bloom and verdure of his life has drooped. "The summer is ended." Blessed old age that is ripe for glory! God Himself puts a crown upon it saying, "The hoary head is a crown of glory, if it be found in the way of righteousness." But there is no sadder sight on earth than the hoary head that is careless and indifferent to the peace of its eternity. Age is to him the dreary and melancholy evening of a dark and distressing winter's day. He stands on the verge of the grave, his face covered with wrinkles and his head with hoary hairs, his body bent towards the ground, and his limbs trembling over the tomb, yet postponing the great work of salvation to a future day, and believing that repentance might yet be safely begun at some distant day. The king of terrors will soon be knocking at his door, yea is knocking, the judgment will be set for him, the books opened, the veil of the miserable world rent in twain, the voice of God be heard, "Thou fool, this night thy soul is required of thee," whilst he from his unconcern and drowsy condition will be wakened up to exclaim, "The harvest," etc. O my aged friends, ere the last sand in your hour glass be run out, ere the last stroke on the great clock of time be struck, if such as I have described, prepare to meet thy God. Seek ye the Lord while He may be found. Betake yourselves to the precious fountain of our dear Redeemer's blood, and pray, "Remember not you are against me the sins of my youth, nor the multiplied transgressions of my riper years, but pardon mine iniquity for it is great, and say unto my soul, thy sins and thine iniquities will I remember no more." 3. A dying sinner may well take up the words of our text. Human life is one continued scene of delusion. Present objects demand all our attention and all our care. To them alone we attach importance, and that an importance far beyond what their value will warrant. They engage, they engross our labour, our anxiety, our hopes, our fears, our joys, and our sorrows. In the language of most men, worldly success is the only meaning of prosperity. To be rich, to be splendid, to be great, to be honoured, to be luxurious, and to fill the wishes of sensuality, are the only objects coveted by most men, the only happiness known. One is almost tempted to think that no passage of scripture is regarded by such men except the proverbial expression of brutishness. "Let us eat and drink for to-morrow we die." Now there are two things about which I do not want to be troubled on a dying bed. The one is, my worldly affairs. I want all those to be so clear and plain, that all can be arranged with the greatest ease. The other is, I do not want to be troubled in my last hour about the safety of my soul. God forbid that I should crowd into the last feeble, languishing, delirious hour, questions of more momentous concern than ten thousand worlds. The saddest sight I ever beheld on earth was the death bed where a wasted life stood on one side of it, and gloomy eternity on the other side of it, and no Jesus was in the midst. The pillow I want under my head in the last hour is the loving hand of Jesus, on which I have seen many fall sweetly asleep. That hand may not seem to the world half so "soft as downy pillows are," but there will be given comforts and consolations as will extract every sting, hush every fear, and brighten into assurance every hope and expectation of victory through the blood of the Lamb. The commonest thing in the world is for a man to die without hope. But if on a dying bed, sickness and patience leave a person in possession of his reason, and conscience be alive and active, what a prospect it beholds from that pillow. It looks back on life and sees one vast stretch of mercies, mercies unimproved, wherever it looks it sees mercies unimproved. Those which will most terribly oppress his heart will be his negligencce, abuse and prostitution of the means of grace. God, all along through the various parts of his life put into his hands, with unspeakable kindness, His word, His sabbath, and the blessing of His sanctuary. He gave him line upon line, and precept upon precept, warnings of His word and Providence without number, and with the terrible conviction that he has |