constant prayer will surely be: "Create in me a clean
heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me."

The effective servant of God is always the man who has been prepared and
purified by the vision of God in his own soul.

If, then, we desire to contribute some good to our society and no evil,
we must take care to keep our hearts open to the cleansing influences of
the spirit of holiness, so that no habit of sin shall cast its dark
shadow around us, or vitiate that atmosphere which is inseparable from
our personal life.

IX. SOWING BESIDE ALL WATERS.

"Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters."--ISAIAH xxxii. 20.

These words form part of a great prophetic vision. The prophet is
standing among his countrymen like a watchman on the walls of Jerusalem.
And far away, as he looks, the distant horizon of his stormy sky is
bright with Messianic hopes, but around him the shadows lie dark and
heavy.

It was his destiny to speak to a people whose ears were dull of hearing
and their hearts without understanding; but he never lost the conviction
that the holy seed of God's spirit was alive in them. Amidst all present
discouragement he lived in the hope of a brighter and better day, when
the eyes of those around him would be opened, and their hearts changed,
and a new spirit would take hold of them, and righteousness, peace,
prosperity, and gladness would prevail. And no man's life is worth much
which is not inspired by some such hope.

What Isaiah saw immediately around him was sin and moral blindness. What
he saw immediately in front of him was the consequence of these in woe
and desolation. "Year upon year," he cries, "shall ye be troubled, ye
careless ones: thorns and briers shall come upon the land of my people:
until the spirit be poured upon us from on high, and the wilderness shall
become a planted field." But in the day of that outpouring, the heart of
the people would turn and be uplifted, renewed, and purified, the
wilderness would become a planted field. And this thought brings him to
the final outburst of the text I have just read to you, which is a
blessing on those true Israelites who realised the high calling of God's
people, and were inspired to fulfil it, sowing everywhere and always the
seeds of Divine influence. The whole vision is highly instructive, for
it is the vision of what occurs again and again in all human history; but
it is of this blessing with which it closes that I d