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I remember once passing by a bleak hillside in Scotland, when winter was already far advanced, and seeing a field of oats still green, though harvest had long since been closed. There was some. thing most melancholy and almost weird in the aspect of that ill-starred crop, There it stood in the cold hillside, seeming as if nature and man had alike over looked and forgotten it. You could almost have thought you heard those green ears, shrivelled with the early frost, but still unripe, sighing, as they swayed to and fro in the wintry gusts — "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved." I wonder what became of that crop? Perhaps it may have been given to the dunghill; perhaps it may have been eaten down and trampled under foot by the cattle where it stood; but very sure I am the shout of harvest home was never heard in that field that season, as the laden cart passed to the granary with its golden freight. It had failed, for some reason or other, to answer its proper purpose; it had missed its season; and there it was, rubbish rather than treasure. Each of us has a season allotted to us in which we may bring forth "the peaceable fruits of righteousness," and with each of us this season is a period necessarily limited in extent, a period which it is possible to trifle away, so that when the time for the harvest comes there shall be nothing for God to gather, nothing that can be saved into the eternal garner and treasured among the precious things of heaven. Heaven's resources have been taxed to the uttermost to make earth spiritually fruitful; no expense has been spared, and He who is the Lord of the soil has a right to expect some adequate return. How is this living harvest to be produced, and from whence shall it spring? Christ Himself shall give us an answer, as we hear Him say, "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." He was the spiritual "corn of wheat" from which the spiritual harvest is ordained to spring, and He fell to the ground and died in order that from Him, as from the true seed, we might spring up into newness of life, and grow up as the harvest crop of living souls in a world which He hath redeemed. And "He shall see His seed." In every age of the world's history the harvest will continue to be produced, until at last the great harvest day comes. Then, when a multitude that no man can number stands before the throne, with joyful acclamations ascribing "salvation unto our God and unto the Lamb," it will be seen at last how vast a product has sprung from that solitary corn of wheat which fell to the ground and died eighteen hundred years ago. What and if any of you should be found left behind in that great harvest day, like the bundles of tares that lie there waiting for the burning, while the wheat is carried into the barn? There is something strangely sad in these familiar words of our text, in whatever sense they are employed, but surely this will be the saddest sense of all. Oh, think of that moment, that terrible and tragic moment, when the gates of the heavenly granary shut, as the last sheaf passes in, and some of you, perhaps, find yourselves left behind l With what unspeakable anguish, with what dire despair, must this cry then be wrung from your sinking hearts, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved!" And then to have to thank yourselves for it all! For think how inevitable, how righteously inevitable, is this doom of exclusion! You have not answered the end of your existence; you have failed of the proper purpose and object of life. How can you hope to be stored amongst the precious things of eternity, and to add in your own persons to the treasures of heaven! You might as reasonably expect to see a sane farmer crowding his barn with thistles and darnel as to see Almighty God filling heaven with those who have never been "born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God." But now I want to point out to you further, that with us, as with the Israelites of old, the harvest is a thing of the present as well as of the future. It is possible even now to be garnered in safety, by being brought into our proper relations with the Saviour. And just as from time to time God was pleased of old to give special seasons of visitation to His ancient people — times of religious revival, when many no doubt were gathered in, and when the nation as a whole might have been — even so now He sends from time to time a special call, and moves upon localities and individuals with special power. But, remember, no mission, no season of special visitation, can leave you as it found you. With each fresh opportunity wasted the heart necessarily becomes harder, and thus the harvest season of your life must needs at length be lost. The time in which God might have reaped a harvest in you will at last have passed away, and then, — What then? What then! Surely such a curse as fell upon the barren fig tree of old: "No man eat fruit of thee henceforth and forever." What then l Then the terrible sentence: "Ephraim is joined to his idols, let him alone." But why should this be so? "Is not the Lord in Zion? is not her King in her?" Here in our very midst He is today, willing to enter your heart, and bring His own salvation with Him. You need not be left behind; you need not continue unsaved. "Is there no balm in Gilead? is there no Physician there?" There is! There is! A thousand joyous voices can attest it — voices of those who once were wounded and stricken and dying. It seemed as if they were once like a blighted crop, too sorely diseased to be capable of any satisfactory harvest; but in their barrenness they found a Healer, and now they are themselves the harvest of the Lord. Why should not you be healed too? Ah, think of what it has cost Him to obtain the right and the power to heal such sin-stricken souls as we! Some physicians amongst ourselves risk their lives in attending their plague-stricken patients, and who can deny to such their meed of praise; but our good Physician actually laid down His life as the preliminary condition of His being able to exercise His healing skill. Only because He has taken our diseases upon Himself, was it possible for Him to cure them. Only because He died our death, is it possible for Him to bring life and immortality to light by His Gospel. But He has borne our sicknesses, and died our death, and now He has the right to heal and to save, and He is in our midst to do it today. I saw an interesting inscription on the wall of a country church, not long ago, on a stone erected in memory of God's preserving mercy shown to a man wile fell from half-way up the steeple in the year 1718, and yet escaped with his life, and actually lived to be seventy-three. But the inscription went on to state that he died in the year 1761, some forty-three years after the accident. As I stood there reading it, more than a hundred years after the man's death, what a small acquisition after all did it seem, those forty years added to the life that had been so nearly cut short — what were they now? Passed as a watch in the night. Yet we do not wonder at his being grateful for even such a prolongation. But here is a good Physician who offers to heal your dying soul and to impart the blessing of life for evermore — to do it freely, and to do it now. Why, then, oh why, in the name of reason, is not your health recovered?

(W. Hay Aitken, M. A.)

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KJV: The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.

WEB: The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.