en him to go and curse the chosen people
of God, but Balaam, moved by covetousness, and eager for honours from
the king, started on his way to go. Then an angel stood in the way
with a drawn sword to stop him. Balaam did not see the angel, but the
ass did, and fell down under Balaam. Then he cried out in a rage, "I
would there were a sword in mine hand, for now would I kill thee," and
he beat the ass savagely with his stick. Do you see! Balaam expects
the ass to obey him blindly, to go where he chooses; but he himself
will not obey God, and refrain from going whither he is forbidden.

How is it with you? Is it not with you as with Balaam? You expect the
earth to yield you what you choose, and are wroth if it withholds the
crop; but you do not yield to God what He desires, and show a harvest
of good fruit unto life everlasting from the seed of Grace He has sown
in you. You expect your sheep to give their wool, and your cows their
milk, and to obey you, and come into the fold, or go out into the
pasture, docile to your will. But do you act thus to God? Are you
docile to His will? Do you eat that heavenly food He has prepared for
you in the pastures of his Church? You expect your orchard to yield
you apples. Do you show any fruit of the Spirit? When Christ comes
and searches among the leaves of your profession, does He find any
fruit of good works there?

CONCLUSION.--Then, Brethren, in your farm-work, bear this ever in mind,
that as you expect the fields and the cattle to yield to you what is
your due, so render also yourselves unto God that honour, that worship,
that gratitude, which are God's.

LXIV.

_THE FORMATION OF HABITS._

School Sermon.

Proverbs xxii. 6.

"Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will
not depart from it."

INTRODUCTION.--There is a district, high up in the Black Forest, where
the ground is full of springs. It is a plain some nine hundred feet
above the sea. Thousands upon thousands of little springs gush out of
the soil; you seem to be on the rose of a vast watering-can. Now, from
this great source flow a good many rivers, and they flow in very
different, nay, opposite directions. There rises the Danube, which
runs East and dies in the Black Sea, and also the Neckar and a hundred
other tributaries of the Rhine, which flows West, and falls into the
North Sea. A very little thing on that plain--a slight rise or fall in
the ground, this w