• Sins of lust bring disease into the bodily frame.


• Sins of idolatry have led men to cruel and degrading practices.


• Sins of temper have caused murders, wars, strifes, and misery.


• Sins of appetite, especially drunkenness, cause want, misery, delirium, etc.

4. This is seen when the sinner becomes himself disappointed in the result of his conduct. His malice eats his heart; his greed devours his soul; his infidelity destroys his comfort; his raging passions agitate his spirit.

5. This is seen when the impenitent is confirmed in evil and eternally punished with remorse. Hell will be the harvest of a man's own sin. Conscience is the worm, which gnaws him.

• Towards God, we sow in the Spirit, faith and obedience.


• Towards men, love, truth, justice, kindness, forbearance.


• Towards self, control of appetite, purity, etc.

It is not an open question at all whether I shall sow or not today. The only question to be decided is, Shall I sow good seed or bad? Every man always is sowing for his own harvest in eternity, either tares or wheat. According as a man soweth, so shall he also reap. He that sows the wind of vanity shall reap the whirlwind of wrath. Suppose a man should collect a quantity of small gravel and dye it carefully so that it should resemble wheat and sow it in his fields in spring, expecting that he would reap a crop of wheat like his neighbor's in harvest. The man is mad; he is a fool to think that by his silly trick he can evade the laws of nature and mock nature's God. Yet equally foolish is the conduct and far heavier the punishment of the man who sows wickedness now and expects to reap safety at last. Sin is not only profitless and disastrous; it is eminently a deceitful work. Men do not of set purpose cast themselves away; sin cheats a sinner out of his soul.

But sowing righteousness is never and nowhere lost labor. Every act done by God's grace and at his bidding is living and fruitful. It may appear to go out of sight, like seed beneath the furrow; but it will rise again. Sow on, Christians! Sight will not follow the seed far; but when sight fails, sow in faith, and you will reap in joy soon. — William Arnot

"Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," — No blight, nor mildew, nor scorching sun, nor rain deluge, can turn that harvest into failure.

Cast forth thy act, thy word into the ever-living, ever-working universe. It is a seed-grain that cannot die; unnoticed today, it will be found flourishing as a Banyan grove (perhaps, alas! as a Hemlock forest) after a thousand years. — Thomas Carlyle

So it is with all temptations and lusts. They are ever scattering seeds — as weeds do. What a power there is in seeds! How long-lived they are, as we see in the mummies of Egypt, where they may have lain for thousands of years in darkness, but now come forth to grow. What contrivances they have to continue and to propagate themselves. They have wings, and they fly for miles. They may float over wide oceans and rest themselves in foreign countries. They have hooks and attach themselves to objects. Often they are taken up by birds, which transport them to distant places. As it is with the seeds of weeds, so it is with every evil propensity and habit. It propagates itself and spreads over the whole soul and goes down from generation to generation. — Dr. James McCosh

Doth any think he shall lose by his charity? No worldling, when he sows his seed, thinks he shall lose his seed; he hopes for increase at harvest. Darest thou trust the ground and not God? Sure, God is a better paymaster than the earth; grace doth give a larger recompense than nature. Below, thou mayest receive forty grains for one, but in heaven (by the promise of Christ) a hundred-fold: a measure heapen, and shaken, and thrust together, and yet running over. "Blessed is he that considereth the poor"; there is the seeding. "The Lord shall deliver him in the time of trouble" (Ps. 12: 1); there is the harvest. Is that all? No. Matthew 25:35: "Ye fed me when I was hungry, and gave me drink when thirsty" — comforted me in misery; there is the sowing. Venite, beati. "Come, ye blessed of my Feather, inherit the kingdom prepared for you"; there is the harvest. — Thomas Adams

When we rebuke others, we must take care to go right ourselves; hence, he says, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross."

It is a subject of rejoicing and glorying that we have such a Savior. The world looked upon him with contempt, and the cross was a stumbling-block to the Jew and folly to the Greek. But to the Christian, that cross is the subject of glorying. It is so because: (1) of the love of him who suffered there; (2) of the purity and holiness of his character, for the innocent died there for the guilty; (3) of the honor there put on the law of God by his dying to maintain it unsullied; (4) of the reconciliation there made for sin, accomplishing what could be done by no other oblation and by no power of man; (5) of the pardon there procured for the guilty; (6) of the fact that through it we become dead to the world and are made alive unto God; (7) of the support and consolation which go from that cross to sustain us in trial; and (8) of the fact that it procured for us admission into heaven, a title to the world of glory. All is glory around the cross. It was a glorious Savior who died; it was glorious love that led him to die; it was a glorious object to redeem a world; and it is unspeakable glory to which he will raise lost and ruined sinners by his death. Oh, who would not glory in such a Savior! — Albert Barnes

If you have not yet found out that Christ crucified is the foundation of the whole volume, you have hitherto read your Bible to very little profit. Your religion is a heaven without a sun, an arch without a key stone, a compass without a needle, a clock without spring or weights, a lamp without oil. It will not comfort you; it will not deliver your soul from hell. — J. C. Ryle

Do not be satisfied with so many others only to know the cross in its power to atone. The glory of the cross is that it was not only to Jesus the path to life, but that each moment it can become to us the power that destroys sin and death and keeps us in the power of the eternal life. Learn from your Savior the holy art of using it for this. Faith in the power of the cross and its victory will day by day make dead the deeds of the body, the lusts of the flesh. This faith will teach you to count the cross, with its continual death to self, all your glory. Because you regard the cross not as one who is still on the way to crucifixion with the prospect of a painful death, but as one to whom the crucifixion is past, who already lives in Christ, and now only bears the cross as the blessed instrument through which the body of sin is done away (Rom. 6:6, RV). The banner under which complete victory over sin and the world is to be won is the cross. — Andrew Murray

When Ignatius, pastor of the church at Antioch, was condemned by the emperor Trajan to suffer death at Rome, he was apprehensive that the Christians there, out of their great affection for him, might endeavor to prevent his martyrdom; and therefore wrote a letter from Smyrna to the Roman Christians, which he sent on before him, wherein he earnestly besought them to take no measures for the continuance of his life, and amongst other things, said, "I long for death," adding as a reason why he was desirous of thus testifying his love to Christ, "My love is crucified."

Brethren, the cross of Christ is your crown, the reproach of Christ your riches; the shame of Christ your glory. — Joseph Alleine, written from "The Common Prison"

By these windows, we look into the things which God has prepared for them that love him. "He hath revealed them unto us by his Spirit?"

Ungodly men may pretty clearly guess what sin will bring them to when it has ripened. Let them learn from—

There is great resemblance betwixt an earnest and the indwelling of the Spirit with the graces, which he works in us. (1) The earnest is part of the whole sum, which is on a certain account to be paid at the time appointed. So the Spirit we have and his grace are the beginning of that glorious being which we shall ultimately receive — the same for substance, though differing in degree. (2) An earnest is but little in comparison of the whole. Twenty shillings is earnest sufficient to make sure of a hundred pounds; thus, all the grace we have is but a small thing in comparison of the fullness we look for, even as the first-fruits were in comparison of the full harvest. (3)An earnest doth assure him that receiveth it of the honest meaning of him with whom he contracteth; so the Spirit and grace which we receive from God do assure us of his settled purpose of bringing us to eternal glory. — Paul Bayne

Christians! God is nearer to us than our nearest friend, nearer to us than Christ himself would be if we only felt the touch of his hand and the sweep of his vesture; for he takes up his abode within us. Plato seemed to have a glimpse of this glorious truth when he said, "God is more inward to us than we are to ourselves?' What was to him a beautiful speculation is to us an inspiring reality; for we are the "temple of the Holy Ghost?' — Dr. Charles Stanford

As soon as we have set out on our journey to go home, our home by foretastes comes to meet us. The peace of our home embraces us; the Spirit, like a dove, rests upon our hearts; the glory of our home allures us; and angel-servants from our home bear us company and help us on our road. Oh, what a sweet home ours must be that can send us such pledges of its sweetness while we are yet a great way off! — John Pulsford

"The earnest." The Greek word is arrhabon. It is Hebrew (at least, Semitic) by derivation; the identical Hebrew word appearing in Genesis 38. By derivation it has to do with exchange, and so first means a pledge; but usage brought it to the kindred meaning of an earnest. It was used for the bridegroom's betrothal gifts to the bride, a case exactly in point here. In ecclesiastical Latin, it appears usually in the shortened form, arra. It survives in the French arrhes, the money paid to strike a bargain. Arrhabon occurs elsewhere in the New Testament: 2 Corinthians 1:22; 5:5. There, as here, it denotes the gifts of the Holy Spirit given to the saints, as the part payment of the coming "weight of glory," the inmost essence of which is the complete attainment (1 John 3:2) of that likeness to the Lord which the Spirit begins and develops here (2 Cor. 3:18). A kindred expression is "the first fruits of the Spirit" (Rom. 8:23). — "Cambridge Bible for Schools and Families."A work which we commend to all ministers.