ing by on rightful business, and the stage and the pedestrian are in their place; simply the seed is not. It is not the wrongness of the impressions which treads religion down, but only this, that outside religion yields in turn to other outside impressions which are stronger.

Again, conceptions of religious life, which are only conceptions outward, having no lodgment in the heart, disappear. Fowls of the air came and devoured the seed. Have you ever seen grain scattered on the road? The sparrow from the housetop, and the chickens from the barn rush in, and within a minute after it has been scattered not the shadow of a grain is left. This is the picture, not of thought crushed by degrees, but of thought dissipated, and no man can tell when or how it went. Swiftly do these winged thoughts come, when we pray, or read, or listen; in our inattentive, sauntering, way-side hours and before we can be upon our guard, the very trace of holier purposes has disappeared. In our purest moods, when we kneel to pray, or gather round the altar, down into the very Holy of holies sweep these foul birds of the air, villain fancies, demon thoughts. The germ of life, the small seed of impression, is gone-where, you know rot. But it is gone. Inattentiveness of spirit, produced by want of spiritual interest, is the first cause of disappointment.

2. A second cause of failure is want of depth in character. Some fell on stony ground. Stony ground means often the soil with which many loose stones are intermixed; but that is not the stony ground meant here: this stony ground is the thin layer of earth upon a bed of rock. Shallow soil is like superficial character. You meet with such persons in life. There is nothing deep about them; all they do and all they have is on the surface. The superficial servant's work is done, but lazily, partially-not thoroughly. The superficial workman's labor will not bear looking into-but it bears a showy outside. The very dress of such persons betrays the slatternly, incomplete character of their minds. When religion comes in contact with persons of this stamp, it shares the fate of every thing else. It is taken up in a superficial

way.

There is deep knowledge of human nature and exquisite fidelity to truth in the single touch by which the impression of religion on them is described. The seed sprang up quickly, and then withered away as quickly, because it had no depth of root. There is a quick, easily-moved susceptibility that rapidly exhibits the slightest breath of those emotions which play upon the surface of the soul, and then as rapidly

passes off. In such persons words are ever at command→ voluble and impassioned words. Tears flow readily. The expressive features exhibit every passing shade of thought Every thought and every feeling plays upon the surface; ev ery thing that is sown springs up at once with vehement vegetation. But slightness and inconstancy go together with violence. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.' True; but also out of the emptiness of the heart the mouth can speak even more volubly. He who can always find the word which is appropriate and adequate to his emotions is not the man whose emotions are deepest: warmth of feeling is one thing, permanence is another. On Tuesday last, they who went to the table most moved and touched were not necessarily those who raised in a wise observer's breast the strongest hope of persistence in the life of Christ. Rather those who were calm and subdued: that which springs up quickly often does so merely from this, that it has no depth of earth to give it room to strike its roots down and deep.

It had

A young man of this stamp came to Christ, running, kneeling, full of warm expressions, engaging gestures, and profess ed admiration, worshipping and saying, "Good Master!" Lovable and interesting as such always are, Jesus loved him. But his religion lay all upon the surface, withered away when the depth of its meaning was explored. The test of self-sacrifice was applied to his apparent love. He was ready for any thing. Well, "Go, sell that thou hast," "and he went away sorrowful, for he had great possessions." sprung up quickly; but it withered because it had no root. And that is another stroke of truth in the delineation of this character. Not wealth nor comfort is the bane of its religion; but "when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by-and-by they are offended." A pleasant, sunny religion would be the life to suit them. "They receive the word with joy." So long as they have happiness they can love God, feel very grateful, and expand with generous emotions. But when God speaks as he spoke to Job out of the whirlwind, and the sun is swept from the face of their heaven, and the sharp Cross is the only object left in the dreary landscape, and the world blames, and friends wound the wounded with cold speech and hollow commonplaces, what is there in superficial religion to keep the heart in its place, and vigorous still?

Another point. Not without significance is it represented that the superficial character is connected with the hard heart. Beneath the light thin surface of easily-stirred dust

lies the bed of rock. The shallow ground was stony ground. And it is among the children of light enjoyment and unsettled life that we must look for stony heartlessness: not in the world of business-not among the poor, crushed to the earth by privation and suffering. These harden the character, but often leave the heart soft. If you wish to know what hollowness and heartlessness are, you must seek for them in the world of light, elegant, superficial fashion--where frivolity has turned the heart into a rock bed of selfishness. Say what men will of the heartlessness of trade, it is nothing compared with the heartlessness of fashion. Say what they will of the atheism of science, it is nothing to the atheism of that round of pleasure in which many a heart lives: dead while it lives. 3. Once more, impressions come to nothing when the mind is subjected to dissipating influences, and yields to them. "Some fell among thorns."

There is nutriment enough in the ground for thorns, and enough for wheat; but not enough, in any ground, for both wheat and thorns. The agriculturist thins his nurseryground, and the farmer weeds his field, and the gardener removes the superfluous grapes for that very reason, in order that the dissipated sap may be concentrated in a few plants vigorously.

So in the same way the heart has a certain power of loving. But love, dissipated on many objects, concentrates itself on none. God or the world-not both. "No man can serve two masters." If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him." He that has learned many accomplishments or sciences, generally knows none thoroughly. Multifariousness of knowledge is commonly opposed to depth, variety of affections is generally not found with intensity.

Two classes of dissipating influences distract such minds. "The cares of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word." The cares of this world-its petty trifling distractions-not wrong in themselves-simply dissipating -filling the heart with paltry solicitudes and mean anxieties -wearing. Martha was "cumbered with much serving.' Her household and her domestic duties, real duties, divided her heart with Christ. The time of danger, therefore, is when life expands into new situations and larger spheres, bringing with them new cares. It is not in the earlier stages of existence that these distractions are felt. Thorns sprang up and choked the wheat as they grew together. You see a religious man taking up a new pursuit with eagerness. At first no danger is suspected. But it is a distraction

something that distracts or divides; he has become dissipat ed, and by-and-by you remark that his zest is gone; he is no longer the man he was. He talks as before, but the life is gone from what he says: his energies are frittered. The word is "choked."

Again, the deceitfulness of riches dissipate.. True as al ways to nature, never exaggerating, never one-sided: Christ does not say that such religion brings forth no fruit, but only that it brings none to perfection. A fanatic bans all wealth and ail worldly care as the department of the devil: Christ says, "How hardly shall they that trust in riches enter into the kingdom of heaven." He does not say the divided heart has no religion, but that it is a dwarfed, stunted, feeble religion. Many such a Christian do you find among the rich and the titled, who, as a less encumbered man, might have been a resolute soldier of the Cross; but he is only now a realization of the old Pagan fable-a spiritual giant buried under a mountain of gold. Oh! many, many such we meet in our higher classes, pining with a nameless want, pressed by a heavy sense of the weariness of existence, strengthless in the midst of affluence, and incapable even of tasting the profusion of comfort which is heaped around them.

There is a way God their Father has of dealing with such which is no pleasant thing to bear. In agriculture it is called weeding. In gardening it is done by pruning. It is the cutting off the over-luxuriant shoots, in order to call back the wandering juices into the healthier and more living parts. In religion it is described thus: "Every branch that beareth fruit he purgeth." . . . . Lot had such a danger, and was subjected to such a treatment. A quarrel had arisen between Abraham's herdsmen and his. It was necessary to part. Abraham, in that noble way of his, gave him the choice of the country when they separated. Either hand for Abraham-either the right hand or the left-what cared the Pilgrim of the Invisible for fertile lands or rugged sands? Lot chose wisely, as they of the world speak. Well, if this world be all-he got a rich soil-became a prince, had kings for his society and neighbors. It was nothing to Lot that "the men of the land were sinners before the Lord exceedingly "-enough that it was well-watered everywhere. But his wife became enervated by volup tuousness, and his children tainted with ineradicable corruption-the moral miasma of the society wherein he had made his home. Two warnings God gave him: first, his home and property were spoiled by the enemy; then came the fire

from heaven; and he fled from the cities of the plain a run. ed man. His wife looked back with lingering regret upon the splendid home of her luxury and voluptuousness, and was overwhelmed in the encrusting salt: his children carried with them into a new world the plague-spot of that profligacy which had been the child of affluence and idleness; and the spirit of that rain of fire—of the buried Cities of the Plain-rose again in the darkest of the crimes which the Old Testament records, to poison the new society at its very fountain. And so the old man stood at last upon the brink of the grave, a blackened ruin scathed by lightning, over the grave of his wife, and the shame of his familysaved, but only "so as by fire."

It is a painful thing, that weeding work. "Every branch in me that beareth fruit, He purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit." The keen edge of God's pruning-knife cuts sheer through. No weak tenderness stops Him whose love seeks goodness, not comfort, for His servants. A man's distractions are in his wealth-and perhaps fire or failure make him bankrupt: what he feels is God's sharp knife. Pleasure has dissipated his heart, and a stricken frame forbids his enjoying pleasure-shattered nerves and broken health wear out the Life of life. Or perhaps it comes in a sharper, sadder form; the shaft of death goes home; there is heard the wail of danger in his household. And then, when sickness has passed on to hopelessness, and hopelessness has passed on to death, the crushed man goes into the chamber of the dead; and there, when he shuts down the lid upon the coffin of his wife, or the coffin of his child, his heart begins to tell him the meaning of all this. Thorns had been growing in his heart, and the sharp knife has been at work making room-but by an awful desolation-tearing up and cutting down, that the life of God in the soul may not be choked.

II. For the permanence of religious impressions this parable suggests three requirements: "They on the good ground are they which, in an honest and good heart, having heard the word keep it, and bring forth fruit with patience."

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1. An honest and good heart." Earnestness: that is, sincerity of purpose. Now, sincerity is reckoned by an exaggeration, sometimes, the only virtue. So that a man be sincere, they say, it matters little what he thinks or what he is; but in truth is the basis of all goodness; without which goodness of any kind is impossible. There are faults more heinous, but none more ruinous, than insincerity. Subtle