up? Impossible.

The prophet's answer to that question is this parable of the husbandman,
who has to perform a great variety of operations. He ploughs, but that
is not all. He lays aside the plough when it has done its work, and
takes up the seed-basket, and, in different ways, sows different seeds,
scattering some broadcast, and dropping others carefully, grain by
grain, into their place--'dibbling' it in, as we should say. But
seedtime too, passes, and then he cuts down what he had so carefully
sown, and pulls up what he had so sedulously planted, and, in different
ways, breaks and bruises the grain. Is he inconsistent because he
ploughs in winter and reaps in harvest? Does his carrying the
seed-basket at one time make it impossible that he shall come with flail
and threshing-oxen at another? Are not all the various operations
co-operant to one end? Does not the end need them all? Is not one
purpose going steadily forward through ploughing, sowing, reaping,
threshing? Is not that like the work of the great Husbandman, who
changes His methods and preserves His plan through them all, who has His
'time to sow' and His 'time to reap,' and who orders the affairs of men
and kingdoms, for the one purpose that He may gather His wheat into His
garner, and purge from it its chaff?

This parable sets forth a philosophy of the divine operations very
beautiful and true, and none the less impressive for the simple garb in
which it is clothed.

I. All things come from one steady, divine purpose.

We may notice in passing how reverentially the prophet believes that
agriculture is taught by God. He would have said the same of cotton-