Isaiah's parable.

IV. All the processes end in garnering the grain.

There is a barn or storehouse for the ripened and threshed crops. The
farmer's toil and careful processes would be absurd and unintelligible
if, after them all, the crop, so sedulously ripened and cultivated and
cleansed, was left to rot where it fell. And no less certainly does the
discipline of this life cry aloud for heaven and a conscious personal
future life, if it is not to be all set down as grim irony or utterly
absurd. There must be a heaven if we are not to be put to intellectual
bewilderment.

What was needed for growth here drops away there, as blossoms fall when
their work is done. Sunshine and rain are no more necessary when the
fields are cleared and the barn-yard is filled. Much in our nature, in
our earthly condition, in God's varying processes, will drop away. When
school-time is done the rod is burned. But nothing will perish that can
contribute to our perfecting.

So let us ask Him to purge us with His fan in His hand now, lest we
should be found at last fruitless cumberers of the ground or chaff which
is rootless, and fit only to be swept out of the threshing-floor.




'QUIETNESS AND CONFIDENCE'

'In returning and rest shall ye be saved; in quietness and confidence