by bulb and tuber, sucker and
shoot, without going through the stripping and scattering that we
have been watching. But the law of creation is "the herb yielding
seed and the fruit-tree yielding fruit after its kind, whose seed is
in itself." And let us count it all joy if this law is carried out in
us.

"If it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." Whether it is laid down in
toil among the lost, or in travail of soul among His children that
Christ be formed in them, either way there will be life brought forth.

It does not follow that every seed will spring up: it is not so in
the natural world. The plant's business is to scatter it, not
withholding, not knowing which shall prosper, either this or that, or
whether they both shall be alike good; once scattered, the
responsibility is transferred to the ground that receives it. But the
aim of the plant--the goal of all the budding and blossoming and
ripening--is that every seed should carry potential life.

Thus are we responsible, not for the tangible results of our ministry
to others, but for its being a ministry in demonstration of the
Spirit and of power, such a ministry as will make those around us
definitely responsible to God for accepting or rejecting the fulness
of His salvation. If so, the "signs following" will not be wanting.
It will be to the one the savour of death unto death, and to the
other the savour of life unto life, but "whether they will hear, or
whether they will forbear, they shall know that there hath been a
prophet among them."

* * * * * * * *

But even when the plant's goal is reached, it is not a finality.
"There is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning. Every
ultimate fact is only the beginning of a new series."[Footnote*:Emerson]
"While the earth remaineth seed-time and harvest . . . shall not cease."
Life leads on to new death, and new death back to life again. Over and
over when we think we know our lesson, we find ourselves beginning
another round of God's Divine spiral: "in deaths oft" is the measure
of our growth, "always delivered unto death for Jesus' sake, that the
life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our mortal flesh."

This bit of sphagnum shows the process in miniature: stage after
stage of dying has been gone through, and each has been all the while
crowned with life. Each time that the crown has sunk down again into
death, that death has again been crowned in the act of dying: and the
life all the time is t