(2) First we may think of God's people as a worked, a cultivated fidd. Israel was brought up in the knowledge of God's covenant and character, trained to take note of His providence and law. But His people became content with their furrow, careless of the seed for which it was cut. They maintained their religious services and traditions, but as time went on they ceased to put anything into them. They did not love God with their mind and strength, did not explore His will in the matter of social problems. That was the chief complaint of the prophets. "My people are destroyed for lack of thought (4.6.): "they have left off taking heed to the Lord" (4.10).
And does not this charge pierce through to the Church? We are in the phrase of St. Paul, God's husbandry," His furrowed land. We have been subject to Christian influence, example and teaching: we are familiar with the habits and the doctrines of the Church. It is as if our nature had beer turned over towards God. But this is a halfway position. It leads nowhere if there is not on our part any momentum for the Kingdom, any witness for God, any secret that is hidden from the world.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.