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Just now all nature is saying to us, "The summer is ended." The plashing rain and fierce winds proclaim it, the lightning writes, it in fiery letters on the sky. The dying leaves lie like monuments bearing the epitaph, "The summer is ended." And now that the harvest is past, and the summer ended, and the fruit gathered, will you not think a little of yourselves, about the time that is past, about the harvest for which God looks, about the future of your souls? There are various classes among us to which the text applies.

1. "The summer is ended." This is true of the old and feeble. The winter of age has sprinkled snow on the hair, and sent a chill frost into the bones, and frozen the current of the blood. For the old the summer is ended. But though the summer be ended for the body and the mind, though it be winter with the limbs, and the eyes, and the ears, and the brain, it need not be winter for the soul.

2. For those, too, who have endured severe affliction the summer is ended. For those whose house is left unto them desolate, whose fireside shall never more be bright with happy faces, or merry with the music of children's voices, and who know that on earth they shall see their dear ones no more, except in memory, for such as these "the summer is ended." And for those who have lost their worldly property, whose savings have been swallowed up in bankruptcy when they are too old and infirm to retrieve their fortunes; for those families left destitute by the death of the bread winner, and reduced from ease and comfort to poverty and dependence, for such as these, also, "the summer is ended." But every one of these cases is but the type and parable of the deepest meaning of all. The wise man tells us that "there is a time to get and a time to lose." You know that this is true of worldly matters. It is thus with the things of daily life, it is thus with the things of life eternal. There is a time to get a chance of repentance and amendment, a time to escape from the clutches of some bad habit or besetting sin; a time to get, and a time to lose. Shall not the gathered harvest remind you of God's goodness to you and to all men, and warn you that the Lord of the harvest is looking for fruit from you, the fruit of a holy life and the flowers of purity and meekness? You who live in the summer time of pleasure, sitting down to eat and rising up to play, flitting through life as a summer butterfly flits from flower to flower, will you not be serious when you remember that the summer is ended, and that your gay, useless life must likewise end one day? And you who are living in the summer dream of careless indifference, who say, "Tomorrow shall be as today," how long will you sleep before the awakening comes? Think of the death bed of the worldling, of the indifferent, of the careless. It is related that a certain Eastern slave was once bidden by his master to go and sow barley in a certain field. The slave sowed oats instead, and when his master reproached him, he answered that he had sown oats in the hope that barley might spring from them. The master reproved the servant for his folly, but the man answered, "You yourself are ever sowing the seeds of evil in the field of the world, and yet expect to reap in the resurrection day the fruits of virtue." You have doubtless heard of the great painter who, when asked by a brother artist why he produced so few pictures, answered, "You paint for time; I paint for eternity." We must sow for eternity, if we expect to reap the harvest of eternal joy.

(The Literary Churchman.)

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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.