All through the Patriarchal ages-the spring time of our religious history-the blade was struggling up. Those first fathers of men knew something of God. Enoch and Methuselah much. Yet God is known only as he reveals himself. And it is by his acts largely that he reveals himself.

Comparatively little therefore could he be known; for comparatively few of those great moral acts by which we know God were known by men in that April time. Yet the blade grew! The Noachian deluge, with its mighty lesson about sin, was to this plant of the knowledge of God like a very rain of May. How it had increased when the sun broke out again! Those long soft days of Abraham's, and of Isaac's, and of Jacob's time-then grew well the strengthening blade. Abraham from Moriah's top saw even in vision the perfect ear.

But better still were the hot Egyptian and Arabian airs to quicken this plant. When God went before Israel in a pillar of fire; when he cleft the sea; when he smote the rock; when the opening earth swallowed Dathan and his troop; when Sinai thundered or when Jordan parted to keep covenant with Israel's entrance to the promised land, how grew in men's minds the knowledge of God! A God of Power; a God of Holiness; yet a God of love and faithfulness too. Men knew him better than before.

And so down through prophetic and kingly times: from David at once king and prophet also, to Jehoiakim under whom Judah was carried to far Babylon; and Daniel and Ezekiel who in that distant land still told of a kingdom yet to be, how wonderfully in all these times was the knowledge of God growing among men! Surely the blade was lifting toward the ear!

But when did the ear disclose itself? We cannot mistake the time. It was when He came and spoke, who now beside the Galilean lake told what was the law of the kingdom's growth. When he spoke-not as Moses had done and as Israel generally had believed, of a God of Jews only-but of a God and Friend of all men everywhere. Of a God who was a Father. Of a Son who was also God. Of God the blessed Comforter abiding with men forever.

It was while he lived his lofty and simple life; it was when

he died his mysterious and redeeming death, that the crowning ear came forth upon this plant of time, and the wheat grains shaped themselves in its folded heart. And all the ages since that day have been only a later summer to perfect the grain. Days of the Holy Ghost. Calm August of the Comforter. Days ripening and rounding out the thought of God in all mankind.

Look back and see the change! Our thought of God and Enoch's thought-how different, yet the same! The blade and ear are different, but one plant. We call not with Moses on the indistinguishable One. No! by the Son it is we come unto the Father, led by the Holy Ghost. Yet Moses' God is our God. Not ours only. This is the knowledge of the being of God which is going out through all the earth. This patriarchal blade, this prophetic stalk, this Christian ear and grain, is to be the knowledge of every family of man. The plant of Eden's conception of God the Creator, has ripened to Christendom's conception of the Triune Father, Redeemer, and Sanctifier of mankind. And can we tell the process of this growth of the knowledge of God among men, in any truer phrase than that the Master used: First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear? Even so, he says, comes on the kingdom of heaven.

Or take another example of the truthfulness of Christ's symbol: The growth in men of the understanding of God's law.

Doubtless some knowledge of God's law was with men from the beginning. Paul speaks truly when he says man was "made under the law." Physical laws of man's own being there were of course always. Moral intuitions and sanctions of conscience, there must have been from the first. And some outward and positive requirements-however communicated— surely were recognized as imposed by God in the earliest times.

But it is very difficult for us, after all, to discover precisely what perceptions of Divine Law the Patriarchal fathers had. Through those long generations from Seth to Abraham-which common chronology counts as upward of twenty centuriesthis plant of the divine knowledge seems to have had a growth as hard to discern as that of the wheat grain when first it struggles upward to a tiny blade.

There have been however, since that Abrahamic hour-itself an hour of unwonted revelation on this matter-two great periods when this plant of the knowledge of God's law made sudden and vigorous growth.

One of these periods was when, in the valleys underneath Arabia's quaking mountain, this feeble blade shot up in a day toward the bearded ear. That was indeed the period of the plant's external glory. Then statute was piled upon statute. Then the whole life of the Hebrew was hedged about by commandments. A "thus saith the Lord" was written on every utensil of his house, on every circumstance of his behavior. There was this requirement for a theft, this for a vow, this for the accidental touch of a dead body, or a bone dropped by the wayside. The new moon had its legislative enactments, and so had sowing time and harvest.

This was a state of things fitted doubtless to important uses, but raw and temporary ones. Majestic and imposing, it had for its single end the purpose of training men up to the knowledge of a law more spiritual; and, compared with what preceded it, undemonstrative and invisible.

And when did that ripe grain disclose itself? We know the time! It was when God and his law became manifest in Christ. It was when he rent the husk of old Hebrew ceremonial, and scattered its chaff to the winds. It was when he promulgated the law, not of Mount Sinai but of Mount Olivet; not of Judaism but of Christianity; not of endless prohibitions and commands concerning outward matters, but one whose simple provisions penetrate the invisible places of the heart. How wonderful yet how potent the change!

The old law said, "Thou shalt have no other Gods before me." The new law said, "Our Father which art in Heaven." The old law said, "Thou shalt not swear, or steal, or kill; wash your hands before you sacrifice; put off your shoes when you draw nigh the tabernacle; pay a tithe of all you possess.' The new law said, with all comprehending simplicity, "Be perfect even as your father in heaven is perfect." This was the full corn in the ear. The blade of patriarchal rule had withered, and the husk of Mosaic statutes had dropped away, but the grain for which they had lived remains, the bread of the Christian world.

And with this new conception of law came also a new conception of obedience. The old Hebrew trembled as he took his goat or lamb to the priest lest some undiscovered blemish should vitiate his offering. Or perhaps he might have touched some unclean person in the throng. Not a rag that fluttered in the air but might bring him defilement.

Now how changed! How How open the way to God, when the invitation is, "whosoever will, let him come." How confident the bringer of the heart's loving offering-be it great or small -when it is read: "If there be first a willing mind it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not." Then too that other table of obedience, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself."

Not now is there one law of kindness for the Hebrew brother of our blood, and another for the stranger within our gates. No more is there any Moabite or Ammonite under sentence never to enter the congregation of our Israel. The fellowship of men is no longer an inference from such commands as bid us not to steal or kill Ah, rather see how the full grain of this plant of brotherhood gladdens already the hungry of a hundred lands! See how the new principle translates itself into the living experience of the world! Feet it is to the lame; eyes it is to the blind; strength it is to the weak; wits it is to the feeble-minded; comfort to the suffering of every And still the plant grows! And so will it grow more and more. Its ripening and harvesting is but just begun. The blade and stalk of Moses' law-that was certainly imposing in his days. But the full corn of the law-the uplifting of the loving heart to a loving God, and the life of outgoing endeavor for one's fellow men-that is the beauty of our time and the glory of our future. So, says the Master, so is the kingdom of heaven.

race.

Or notice as one more illustration of the truth of Christ's symbol in the past of human experience-the thought of worship.

We will pass by the uncertain beginnings of this growth in early Scripture times, and come at once to the period when the plant of worship shot up into a luxuriant blade. God had doubtless before, in some way, guided individuals-Abel, Noah,

Abraham. Now he undertook to instruct a race how rightly to worship him.

And how did he do it? The imposing array of appliances shows the difficulty of the task. Look into the gorgeous ritual established in the Levitical code designed to captivate the imagination and hold the allegiance of a fickle multitude who were to be won to the grave and uncongenial duty of the worship of God. Behold the glory of the tabernacle, with its volumed folds of purple and scarlet tapestries, wrought with all manner of cunning needle work. See the ark, overlaid with gold, and over-shadowed by the wings of the golden cherubim. Remember the Altar-whether in the tabernacle or the temple which succeeded the tabernacle - the altar whereon burned the ever-lighted flame of perpetual offerings. Behold the clouds of incense. See the procession of splendidly attired ministrants. Observe the expectant throng, awaiting the coming out from behind the veil of an anointed man, sole man of all the nation permitted to enter there. Most impressive certainly, and in parts most beautiful!

But what now, underneath this pomp of lusty blade and stalk was the inward principle-the little seed grain, which was the object of it all? We can scarcely find it wrapped about by the beautiful husk and canopied by the flowing leaf. But it is there. Weak, unseen almost, it lies within all this gorgeousness and show. And what is it? Ages were required to give the answer. All the long summer of Israel's kingly and prophetic times must pass. All the chill autumn of those four hundred years when history was closed and prophecy was silent, must also go. Then at last the full corn dropped from the rent and scattered ear. "In this mountain," said the Samaritan. "Only at Jerusalem," said the Jew. "Nay," said the Master, "not in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem. God is a spirit and they that worship him, must worship in spirit and in truth." That was the full corn, the bread of Christendom forever.

Some, indeed, still seem more to admire the stalk than the grain. Some unable to reach to the Master's idea of worship "in the spirit" only, revert to aids and symbols of religion's weaker time. Vestments and rituals are a help to such.