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Looking Back: Harvest Thoughts

Seasonal reflections from September 1879.

HARVEST THOUGHTS.

By JAMES RANKIN, D.D., Muthill

The God who speaks in the Bible is the same who works in the fields. While the ordinary duty of a Christian minister is to deal with the revealed word, if that is done too exclusively there is a tendency to look upon nature as a common and outside thing, or even as a rival. We are so much more in immediate contact with natural objects than with Scripture, that we are very apt to separate the two in our thoughts, and to entertain one set of feelings when we read a chapter of the Bible and another set of feelings when we are face to face with nature. But such separation in thought and feeling is a thing to be avoided and regretted, for it adds a fresh glory to each province of God’s kingdom when, in the proper way, we unite nature and grace. The very same God who created sea and sky, and earth and seasons, is He who has had mercy on sinners, who has revealed His mercy in the Bible, and who has set up His Church in the world to proclaim that mercy in a living voice from age to age. Scripture itself recognised habitually this unity. The miracles of Christ especially combine the two provinces, proving that He is Lord over nature as well as our High Priest, that He can influence almightily the body of man in sight, or hearing, or speech, or life itself, as well as the soul in relation to God’s law and the Judgment Day. Such a belief brings us closer to God in time and space, and greatly promotes spiritual communion with Him.

In harvest we witness God’s bounty in supplying our daily necessities and answering the petitions “Give us this day our daily bread.” To daily food is appropriate daily prayer. To the harvest which comes but yearly is correspondingly appropriate a special day of thanksgiving. It is difficult to conceive the vastness of God’s bounty to man, especially in harvest year by year. Food and raiment for one person for a year is something considerable. How many millions of times has this to be multiplied even for our own country? Many of us appear in our professions and trades to be far removed from connection with pasture, or agriculture, or fishing, yet these primitive callings are the basis of all human society, however advanced in science, art or religion. Man can never on earth escape from dependence on the earth’s fertility, which God originally appointed and still regulates. In these circumstances there is a propriety in taking note of harvest in town as well as country, and it is proper for the richest as well as the poorest. Piety is not complete without distinctly including this, alike in petition and thanksgiving, whereof we have so perfect an example when Jesus taught His disciples how to pray.

The season of harvest suggests thoughts of growth and privilege preceding. Year by year in spring the farmer takes out to his fields the various seeds to be sown, some earlier, some later. Were all the seed for the year for a farm of 100 acres taken out at one time, one or two carts would easily hold all. It is put into the ground and lost sight of for a little; a few months of spring and summer pass, and when at last in autumn he goes forth to bring back the result to his farm-yard again, it takes whole days to cart back again what in spring-time was only a single load or two. This increase and multiplication is a great marvel, although it happens every year, and has happened every year since the world’s creation, and is divinely guaranteed to happen every year while the world lasts. There is no haste about this growth, and yet there is unceasing diligence; it proceeds day and night, so gradually that we cannot see it moment by moment, yet can easily note progress and its rate week by week and month by month. It gives no satisfaction to prying curiosity, but reveals itself to judicious investigation. The growth, while gradual, is not mechanically regular.  There is always some amount of variation and peculiarity such as marks a free and living agent. These are the principles taught in the parable of the seed growing secretly and of the great parable of the Sower.

The season of harvest finally suggests thoughts of the end of the world and its judgment. The parable to the point here is specially that of the Wheat and the Tares. “The harvest is the end of the world, and the reapers are the angels.” Every instance of a worldly and unconverted man is an example of a man not looking forward to prepare for harvest, forgetful that he has an account to render to God. This autumn let us think how many times we have been privileged by God in His good providence thus to witness in our own lifetime the renewal of the earth’s fertility in fruit and grain, in increase of flocks and herds. If there be true gratitude mingled with our harvest thoughts, it will find expression, now and in days to come, in fresh efforts to have our life more pure and useful; to be more considerate of the poor – for whom of old field-corners were left unreaped, and fields themselves ungleaned; to be considerate of the claims of all the various branches of the work of the Christian Church, so that God should receive again, for His kingdom’s sake, some tribute for all His bounty in nature and His love in Christ Jesus.

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