WHILE the earth abideth, with her seed-time and harvest, some men will be tillers of the soil. The day may come when there will be no more squires, but there will be sure to be farmers. Whether there be lords, they shall cease; or lawyers, they shall vanish away; but farmers shall remain. Both good and evil husbandmen, Cains and Noahs, will plough furrows and reap harvests until the end come. Hence there will always be need of Farm Sermons. Sermons to slingers and archers, to falconers and troubadours would now find scarce a reader; but farmers are as plentiful as ever, and discourses designed for them will find hearers if they deserve them.
It is fit that farmers should have sermons gathered out of their own occupation, for it is one which, above all others, abounds in holy teaching; and, as it would be ill for dwellers in the Indies to go from home for gold and spices, so would it be unwise to leave the field and the plough in search of instruction. He who dwells at Newcastle wastes time when he goes far for coals; he who lives by the labour of the field will be foolish if he neglects the teaching of nature for the most glittering philosophy. Some of the mightiest of prophets and preachers came from the plough, and surely that must be a good college which has furnished such able divines. As all the world is fed by the produce of the farm, so may all men’s minds find food in meditating upon the ways of God in nature and providence, as seen by the husbandman. Hence we have sought Lessons from the Acres.
He who despises truth because it wears in this case no other adornment than a garland of the flowers of the field about its neck, or a wreath of barley around its brows, has no eye wherewith to discern beauty, which is as fascinating in rural dress as in classic attire. So long as the soul is fed it is small matter whether the subjects were suggested by the palace or the barn. Reader, if you are a farmer, it will be for your eternal pleasure and profit if the Great Husbandman should meet you by his Holy Spirit in the pages of this book, and exercise his skill upon you, that you may become in his hand as a land which is both tilled and sown. Paul says of believers, “Ye are God’s husbandry”: may this be true of both reader and author.
Farmers should make brave Christians when grace renews them, for God is everywhere about them, and in his presence gracious souls are sure to thrive. Of old the Lord met men by the bush, the brook, and the well, and spake with them in the field, the threshing-floor, and the sheepfold; and he still seems nearer in the country than in the grimy town. Never can the tiller of the ground open his eyes without learning something if he is willing to be taught. Weeds and plants, frost and sunshine, green shoots and yellow ears, drills and reapers, hedges and ditches, foxes and sheep, drought and flood, waggons and horses, harrows and ploughs—all reveal some spiritual mystery concerning God and our own souls. Surely those men should learn much who find a schoolmaster and a lesson-book in every acre which they cultivate.
