all
seeds of truth, or purity, or right feeling which he scatters among you,
independent of his sowing, and he never knows in what soul some seed may
lodge and germinate and grow up and bear fruit here and hereafter, even
to the endless life.

So we believe that every work of good influence, whether of man or boy,
will prosper, because we remember it as a part of God's providential law,
that His seed if sown grows of itself, mysteriously. And we need not
wonder at the mystery, for it is the Spirit of God which is in the seed;
and it is ready to swell and grow and bear new fruits as it lodges in
your heart.

Through and in that seed of good influence it is God Himself who is
working in you.

Such, as we learn from the word of Christ, such, as we see it exemplified
in His person, is the mystery of the Divine life in the hearts of men--not
in some other lives, but in your life and mine.

But this only leads us to another vital question--a question which I
leave with you for the present, and to which we may return another
day--What is your share of active duty in regard to these seeds of good
influence and good purpose that are sown in you; what are you doing, and
what are you intending to do, to secure that they shall be bearing some
fruit in your own daily life?

XIII. THE LENTEN FAST.

"This kind can come forth by nothing, but by prayer."--ST. MARK ix.
29.

You remember the narrative from which I have taken this verse. Jesus, as
we read, had just come down from the Mount of Transfiguration, and when
He was come to the multitude, a certain man besought him saying, "Have
mercy on my son, for he is lunatic and sore vexed, and I brought him to
Thy disciples, but they could not cure him." Then Jesus rebuked the
devil, and the child was cured from that hour. Thereupon His disciples
came to Him with this inquiry--"Why could not we cast him out? And He
said to them, Because of your little faith. This kind can come forth by
nothing, but by prayer;" or, as our Authorised Version has it, "by prayer
and fasting."

Here, then, we have set before us a very striking and significant
contrast: the contrast between the spiritual power of Jesus fresh from
the Mount of Transfiguration, and the want of such power in His
disciples, who represent to us the common life of the multitude and the
plain. His reply to their question was clearly intended to suggest to
them the cause of their spiritual feebleness.