Seed-time and Harvest

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 3, 1863

Seed-time and Harvest.

LIFE is a seed-time; the harvest is to be reaped hereafter. In this world we sow: in eternity we shall reap. This is according to the analogy of nature. We always sow before we reap; and some space of time intervenes between seed-time and harvest. We never expect to gather a crop as soon as we put the seed into the ground. The harvest follows seed-time after an interval; it does not precede nor accompany it. It is so in this case. Some think we reap as we go along—that harvest and seed-time are all together—that we are punished in this world for our sins; but it is not so. This is contrary to nature. This life is the seed-time; the harvest is not yet, but will be by and by; the judgment is to come. The judgment is not before death, but after it; just as the harvest is not before seed time, but after it. And it is well to remember that the harvest always follows seed-time, and partakes of its nature; for whatever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. If he sows wheat, he shall reap wheat; if he sows tares, he must reap them. They who spend their youth and prime in idleness and vice cannot be respected and happy in old age. They who waste their seasons of improvement, instead of preparing for the duties of after life, and to fill with honor the sphere in which they may be called to move, cannot expect to be honored or useful. They who sow idleness must reap barrenness. The same analogy holds in spiritual things. The sluggard must beg in harvest, and have nothing. It is only by the use of diligence that the heart can be kept, and it is only in the same diligent use of means that growth in grace can be secured. In the same way, too, is a joyful harvest to be reaped hereafter. Here we must sow if there we would reap.—Sel.