in this hope I preach to you), or again it is sown in the common ways of
daily life, by the reading of some book, or by the word or example of a
friend, or by some casual sight or experience. We remember how the seed
of an unresting and beneficent life, a life devoted to the good of the
poor and the suffering, was sown in Lord Shaftesbury by the shocking
sight of a pauper funeral when he was a boy at Harrow. So it may be sown
in your hearts you know not beforehand when or where, to grow up and bear
fruit an hundred fold.

The wind bloweth where it listeth--so is every one that is born of the
Spirit. You never know what Divine seed it may deposit in your heart at
any moment; but this you do know, that if the word of Christ be true,
whenever this gift of life comes to you it is a new birth.

And there is all the more mystery and sacredness about our common life
just because we never know how or when these seeds may fall upon our life
to bless it, and because men are often altogether unconscious of the
beginnings of their growth in them. Some seed of good influence falls
into the soil of their heart, and seems to lie there buried in the winter
of neglect or waste.

Thus some men may carry the seeds long and far, not knowing the power or
the potency of the life that is in them; but some day they strike root
and grow and bear fruit in new convictions, or in new desires and
purposes; and this may be the case with any one amongst us, and hence it
is natural that we should press the question on ourselves and on each
other--What are you making of those seeds of higher life which have been
sown in you by your mother's love, by your father's words, by all the
lessons and influences of such a place as this, seeds which are falling
around you continually, and may possibly be trodden down or overlaid?