(Luke 8:26-40.)

There is a fresh-water plant called "eel grass," common in sluggish streams in all parts of the world. It looms much like grass; the ribbons starting close to the root, without a stem.

It has two distinct kinds of flowers-never found together on the same individual plant. One flower is green, about the size and shape of a clove, containing the seed pod, borne on a slender stem that grows until it reaches the surface, where it floats and opens. The others, containing the pollen, are borne in a tight cluster about the size of a lead-pencil and close to the root. These pollen buds break loose, rise to the surface, open, and scatter their pollen over the other flowers in waiting.

As soon as the seeds are fertilized, the long stem begins to coil up in a tight spiral (hence the botanical name, Valisneria spiralis) thus drawing it back to the root from whence it came, and where, through the summer, it ripens, and scatters its seeds for new plants.

Is not this an illustration of God's method of spreading the gospel, as it is given in Luke 8:26-40?

The waters, with all the mud and uncleanness at the bottom, answers to this present evil world; the seed answers to the individual, without any divine life, dead in trespasses and sins, and is parallel with the good ground of ver. 15; the cluster of staminate flowers, with their myriads of pollen dust, to the word of God, any of its myriad statements or verses able to give eternal life.

The pistils of the seed-bearing flowers, which transmit the life principle from the pollen to the seed, are like the individual faith that receives the life-giving Word. The fertilization takes place in the air of heaven, not in the water; just as souls are born from above; heaven is their "native land;" and from there they are sent into the world (Jno. 17:18). If but one minute particle of pollen touch one of the delicate pistils, in one moment life is communicated to the dead seed. It is not that the seed had life once, and, having lost it, now has it anew; but it never had anything in it which would ever have become life. The life is in the pollen, not in the seed. The mysterious communication of it by the touch of the pollen is through the pistils' delicate threads, of which the silk of corn is a good example. The base of each hidden seed is attached to one of these threads, which is exposed at the end of the ear. If one is injured before being touched by the pollen, there will be a blank kernel in time of harvest; it will not fill out nor grow; the pollen from the tassel above may fall, but there is no reception of life. Just so, men may hear the life-giving Word, but without faith there is no effect, no growth, and no fruit. No goodness of ground can take the place of the good seed. Job, Nicodemus, and all others, must be born again-have the very life of God implanted in the soul; they must be "born of the word of God, that liveth and abideth forever."

Here is a fundamental principle of the very first importance running through the vegetable world and the spiritual world:-all seeds must have life imparted to them; and every soul must be born again.

There are hundreds of individual scriptures able to give life; but one is needed. In Spurgeon's case, Isa. 45:22, "Look unto Me, and be ye saved;" in others, John 3:16, or 5:24, is received by faith, and instantly the soul is born of God. Other scriptures may be enjoyed later, but that one verse has done the work, never to be undone, and never to be repeated. In many cases, where there was deep exercise of conscience, the effect has been so sudden and violent as never to allow of doubt afterwards as to the time and fact of new birth.

I do not think we have in eel grass an illustration of fruit exactly, for fruit is to be eaten-the vine and fruit-trees would give us that view:here we have reproduction ; just what we have in vers. 39, 40:a soul born again, taken out of the world, and then with a new life sent back into it to his old friends and neighbors to minister the same to them-the work of the evangelist.

For one born of God this world is a scene of evil and temptation, "where foes and snares abound"- this present evil world. Here the Lord found us, and back into it He sends us to multiply what we have received. In the world, but not of it; not taken out of it, but not to be defiled by it, even as a plant is not defiled by the earth in which it grows:on our part, using the very evil as a means and stimulus of growth (i Peter 1:6, 7):and it is just such an evil world that needs the knowledge of Christ-not from the lips of angels, but of redeemed sinners (Acts 10:3-6).

In the case of the man possessed of demons, the first result was, that when the Lord returned, those who had prayed Him to depart were now waiting for Him. Just so the seed ripening in the water grows amid its old surroundings, and produces flowers which scatter their pollen abroad to fertilize other dead seeds. And so the early disciples went everywhere preaching the word (Acts 8:4).
T. M.
"I'D RATHER SUFFER LOSS."