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Break up your Fallow Ground, for it is time to seek the Lord,
Till
He comes and rains righteousness on you (Hosea 10:12)
Break
up your follow ground for it is time to seek the Lord till He come and
rain righteousness upon you. Hos. 10:12.
The Jews were a nation of farmers, and it is therefore a common thing
in the scriptures to refer for Illustrations to their occupation, and
to the scenes with which farmers and shepherds are familiar. The
prophet Hosea addresses them as a nation of backsliders; he reproves
them for their idolatry, and threatens them with the judgments of God.
My design in this Lecture is to show how a revival is to be promoted.
A revival consists of two parts: as it applies the Church, and as it
applies the ungodly. I will speak on this occasion of a revival in the
Church. Fallow ground is ground which has once been tilled, but which
now lies waste, and needs to be broken up and mellowed, before it is it
is ready to receive grain. I will show, as it applies to a revival in
the Church 1. What it is to break up the fallow ground, in the sense of
the text. 2. How it is to be performed.
I. WHAT IT MEANS TO BREAK UP THE FALLOW GROUND.
To break up the fallow ground, is to break up your hearts, to prepare
your minds to bring forth fruit unto God. The mind of man is often
compared to the ground in the bible. The word of God is the seed sown
there, the fruit representing the actions and emotions of those who
receive it. To break up the fallow ground therefore, is to bring the
mind into such a state that it is fitted to receive the Word of God.
Sometimes your hearts get matted down, hard and dry, until there is no
such thing as getting fruit from them until they are broken up, and
mellowed down, and fitted to the Word. It is this softening of the
heart, so as to make it feel the truth, which the prophet calls break
up your fallow ground.
2. How is the fallow ground to be broken?
It is not by any direct efforts to feel. There are great errors on the
subject of the laws which govern the mind. People talk about religious
feeling as if they could by direct effort, call forth religious
affection. But this is not the way the mind acts. No man can make himself
feel in this way, simply by trying to feel. The feelings of the mind
are not directly under our control. We cannot just will or decide to
have religious feelings. They are purely involuntary states of mind.
They naturally and necessary exist in the mind under certain
circumstances calculated to excite them. But they can be controlled
indirectly otherwise there would be no moral character In our feelings,
if there were not a way to control them. We cannot say, "Now I
will feel so-and-so toward such an object." But we can command our
attention to it, and look at it intently, until the proper feeling
arises. Let a man who is away from his family bring them up before his
mind and will he not feel? But it is not by saying to himself,
"Now I will feel deeply for family." A man can direct his
attention to any object about which he ought to feel and wishes to
feel, and in that way he will call into existence the proper emotions.
Let a man call up his enemy before his mind, and his feelings of enmity
will rise. So if a man thinks of God, and fastens his mind on any of
God's character, he will feel, emotions will come up by the very laws
of mind. If he is a friend of God, let him contemplate God as a
gracious and holy being, and he will have emotions of friendship kindled
in his mind. If he is an enemy of Cod, only let him get the true
character of God before his mind, and look at it, and fasten his
attention on it, and then his bitter enmity will rise against God, or
he will break down and give his heart to God.
If you mean to break up the fallow ground of your hearts, and make your
minds feel on the subject of religion, you must go to work just as you
would to feel on any other subject.
Instead of keeping your thoughts on everything else, and then imagining
that by going to a few meetings you will get your feelings started, go
the common-sense way to work, as you would on any other subject. It is
just as easy to make your minds feel on the subject of religion as it
is on any other. God has put these states of mind under your control.
If people were as unphilosophical about moving their limbs as they are
about regulating their emotions, you would never have reached this
meeting.
If you mean to break up the fallow ground of your hearts, you must
begin by looking at your hearts: examine and note the state of your
minds, and see where you are. Many never seem to think about this. They
pay no attention to their own hearts, and never know whether they are
doing well in religion or not; whether they are gaining ground or going
back; whether they are fruitful, or lying waste. Now you must draw off
your attention from other things, and look into this. Make a business
of it. Do not be in a hurry. Examine throughly the state of your
hearts, and see where you are: whether you are walking with God every
day, or with the devil; whether you are serving God or serving the
devil most; whether you are under the dominion or the prince of
darkness, or of the Lord Jesus Christ.
To do all this, you must set yourself to work to consider your sins.
You must examine yourselves. And by this I do not mean you must stop
and look directly within to see what is the present state of your
feelings. That is the very way to put a stop to all feeling. That is
just as absurd as it would be for a man to shut his eyes on the lamp,
and try to turn his eyes inward to find whether there was any image
painted on the retina. The man complains that he does not see anything!
And why? Because he has turned his eyes away from the objects of sight.
The truth is, our moral feelings are as much an object of consciousness
as our senses. And the way to find them out is to on acting, and using
our minds. Then we can tell our moral feelings by consciousness, just
as I could tell my natural feelings by consciousness if I should put my
hand in the fire.
Self-examination consists in looking at your lives, in considering your
actions, in calling up the past, and learning its true character. Look
back over your past history. Take up your individual sins one by one,
and look at them. I do not mean that you should just cast a glance at
your past life, and see that it has been full of sins, and then go to
God and make a sort of general confession, and ask for pardon. That is
not the way. You must take them up one by one. Get a pen and paper and
write them down as you remember them. Go over them as carefully as a
merchant goes over his books and as often as a sin comes before your
memory, add it the list. General confessions of sin will never do. Your
sins were committed one by one; and as they come to you, review and
repent of them one by one. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you your past
sins. Now begin, and take up first what are commonly, but improperly,
called Sins of Omission.
1. Ingratitude. Take this sin and write down under that heading all the
times you can remember where you have received favors from God and
others for which you have never expressed gratitude or thankfulness.
How many cases can you remember? Some remarkable change of events, that
saved you from ruin. Write down the instances of God's goodness to you
when you were in sin, before your conversion, for which you have never
been half thankful enough; and the numerous mercies you have received
since. How long the list of instances, where your ingratitude has been
so black that you are forced to hide your face in confusion! Go on your
knees and confess them one by one to God, and ask forgiveness. The very
act of confession, by the laws of suggestion, will bring up others to
your memory. Put these down. Go over them three or four times in this
way, and see what an astonishing number of mercies there are for which
you have never thanked God.
2. Lack of love to God. Think how grieved and alarmed you would be if
you discovered any lack of affection for you in your wife, husband, or
children; if you saw another absorbing their hearts, and thoughts, and
time. Perhaps in such a case you would nearly die with a just and
virtuous jealousy. Now, God calls Himself a jealous God; and have you
not given your heart to other loves and infinitely offended Him?
3. Neglect of the Bible. Put down the cases when for perhaps weeks, or
longer, God's Word was not a pleasure. Some people, indeed, read over
whole chapters in such a way that they could not tell what they had
been reading. If so, no wonder that your life is spent at random, and
that your religion is such a miserable failure.
4. Unbelief. Recall the instances in which you have virtually charged
the God of truth with lying, by your unbelief of His express promises
and declarations. God has promised to give the Holy Spirit to them that
ask Him. Now, have you believed this? Have you expected Him to answer?
Have you not virtually said in your hearts, when you prayed for the
Holy Spirit: "I do not believe that I shall receive"? If you
have not believed nor expected to receive the blessing which God has
expressly promised, you have charged Him with lying.
5. Neglect of prayer. Think of the times when you have neglected secret
prayer, family prayer, and prayer meetings; or have prayed in such a
way as more grievously to offend God than to have omitted it
altogether.
6. Neglect of the means of grace. When you have made stupid and
meaningless excuses to prevent your attending meetings, have neglected
and poured contempt upon the methods of salvation, simply because you
dislike spiritual duties?
7. The manner in which you have performed those duties. That is, with
lack of feeling and lack of faith in a worldly frame of mind, so that
your words were nothing but the mere chattering of a wretch who did not
deserve that God should feel the least care for him. When you have
fallen down upon your knees and "said your prayers" in such
an unfeeling and careless manner that if you had been put under oath
five minutes after, you could not have said for what you had been
praying.
8. Lack of love for the souls of your fellow-men. Look around upon your
friends and relatives, and remember how little compassion you have felt
for them. You have stood by and seen them going right to hell, and it
seems as though you did not care if they did go. How many days have
there been, in which you did not make their condition the subject of a
single fervent prayer, or display a glowing and devoted desire for
their salvation?
9. Lack of care for the lost. Perhaps you have not cared enough for
them to attempt to learn their condition; perhaps not even to take a
missionary magazine. Look at this, and see how much you really care for
the lost, and write down honestly the real amount of your feelings for
them, and your desire for their salvation. Measure your desire for
their salvation by the self-denial you practice, in giving of your
substance to send them the Gospel. Do you deny yourself even the
hurtful and unnecessary desires of life, such as tea, coffee, and
tobacco? Do you cut back on your style of living, and hesitate not to
deny yourself any inconvenience to save them? Do you daily pray for
them in private? Are you putting money aside to put into the treasury
of the Lord when you go up to pray? If you are not doing these things,
and if your soul is not agonized for the poor benighted heathen, why
are you such a hypocrite to pretend to be a Christian? Why saying you
are a Christian is an insult to Jesus Christ!
10. Neglect of family duties. Think how you have prayed before your
family, how you have prayed, what an example you have set before them.
What direct efforts do you habitually make for their spiritual good?
What duty have you not neglected?
11. Neglect of social duties.
12. Neglect of watchfulness over your own life. In how many instances
you have hurried over your private duties, and have not been fully
responsible in preforming your duties, nor honestly made up your
accounts with God; how often have you entirely neglected to watch your
conduct, and, having been off your guard, have sinned before the world,
and before the Church, and before God!
13. Neglect to watch over your brethren. How often have you broken your
covenant that you would watch over them in the Lord ! How little do you
know or care about the state of their souls! And yet you are under a
solemn oath to watch over them. What have you done to make yourself
acquainted with them? In how many of them have you interested yourself
to know their spiritual state? Go over the list, and wherever you find
there has been a neglect, write it down. How many times have you seen
your brethren growing cold in religion, and have not spoken to them
about it? You have seen them beginning to neglect one duty after
another, and you did not reprove them, in a brotherly way. You have
seen them falling into sin, and you let them go on. And yet you pretend
to love them. What a hypocrite I Would you see your wife or child going
into disgrace, or into the fire, and hold your peace? No, you would
not. What do you think of yourself, then, to pretend to love
Christians, and to love Christ, while you can see them going into
disgrace, and say nothing to them?
14. Neglect o/ self-denial There are many professors who are willing to
do almost anything in religion, that does not require self-denial. But
when they are required to do anything that requires them to deny
themselves-oh, that is too much I They think they are doing a great
deal for God, and doing about as much as He ought in reason to ask, if
they only doing what they do just as well as not; but they are not
willing to deny themselves any comfort or convenience whatever for the
sake of serving the Lord. They will not willing suffer reproach for the
name of Christ. Nor will they deny themselves the luxuries of life, to
save a world from hell. So far are they from remembering that
self-denial is a condition o! discipleship that they do not know what
self-denial is. They never have really denied themselves a ribbon or a
pin for Christ and the Gospel. Oh, how soon such people will be in
hell! Some are giving of their abundance and are giving much, and are
ready to complain that others do not give more; when, In truth, they do
not themselves give anything that they need, anything that they could
enjoy if they kept it. They only give of their surplus wealth; and
perhaps that poor woman who puts in her mite, has exercised more
self-denial than they have in giving thousands.
From these we now turn to Sins of Commission.
1. Wordily mindedness. What has been the state of your heart in regard
to your worldly possessions Have you looked at them as really yours-as
if you had a right to dispose of them as your own, according to your
own will? If you have, write that down. If you have loved property, and
sought after it for its own sake, or to gratify lust or ambition, or a
worldly spirit or to lay it up for your families, you have sinned, and
must repent.
2. Pride. Recall all the times you can, in which you have detected
yourself in the exercise of pride. Vanity is a particular form of pride.
How many times have you detected yourself in consulting vanity about
your dress and appearance? How many times have you thought more, and
taken more pains, and spent more time about decorating your body to go
to Church, than you have about preparing your mind for the worship of
God?
You have gone caring more as to how you appeared outwardly in the sight
of mortal man, than how your soul appeared in the sight of the
heart-searching God. You have, in fact, set up yourself to be worshiped
by them, rather than prepared to worship God yourself. You sought to
divide the worship of God house, to draw off the attention of God's
people to look at your pretty appearance. It is in vain to pretend
flow, that you do not care anything about having people look at you. Be
honest about it would you take all this pains about your looks if every
person were blind?
3. Envy. Look at the cases in which you were envious of those whom you
thought were above you in any respect. Or perhaps you have envied those
who have been more talented or more useful than yourself. Have you not
so envied some, that you have been pained to bear them praised? It has
been more pleasant for to you to dwell upon their faults than upon
their virtues, upon their failures than upon their success. Be honest
with yourself; and if you have harbored this spirit of hell, repent
deeply before God, or He will never forgive you.
4. Censoriousness and bitterness. Instances in which you have had a
bitter spirit or harbored a grudge toward someone? How many times have
you spoken of Christians in a manner completely lacking charity and
love? Love always hopes for the best but count the time in which you
suspected the worst.
5. Slander and gossip. The times you have spoken behind people's backs
of the faults, real or supposed, of members of the Church or others,
unnecessarily, or without good reason. This is slander. You need not
lie to be guilty of slander: to tell the truth with the design to
injure is to slander.
6. Levity. How often have you joked before God as you would not have
dared to joke in the presence of an important official? You have either
been an atheist, and forgotten that there was a God, or have had less
respect for Him, and His presence, than you would have had for an
earthly judge.
7. Lying. Understand now what lying is. Any form of designed deception.
If the deception be not designed, it is not lying. But if you design to
make an oppression contrary to the naked truth, you lie. Put down all
those cases you can recollect. Do not call them by any soft name. God
call them LIES, and charges you with LYING, and you had better charge
yourself correctly How innumerable are the falsehoods perpetrated every
day in business, and in social intercourse, by words and looks, and
actions, designed to make an impression on others, for selfish reasons
that is contrary to the truth.
8. Cheating. Set down all the cases in which yon have dealt with an
individual, and done to him that which you would not like to have done
to you. That is cheating. God has laid down a rule in the case :
"All things whatsoever you would that men should do to you, do
even so to them." That is the rule. And if you have not done so
you are a cheat. Mind, the rule is not that you should do "what
you might reasonably expect them to do to you: for that is a rule which
would admit of every degree of wickedness. But it is : "As you
WOULD they should do to you.
9. Hypocrisy. For instance, in your prayers and confessions to God. Set
down the instances in which you have prayed for things you did not
really want. And the evidence is, that when you have done praying, you
could not tell for what you had prayed. How many times have you
confessed sins that you did not mean to break off and when you had no
solemn purpose not to repeat them? Yes, have confessed sins when you
knew you as much expected to go and repeat them, as you expected to
live.
10. Robbing God. Think of the instances in which you have misspent your
time, squandering the hours which God gave you to serve Him and save
souls, in vain amusements or foolish conversation, in reading novels or
doing nothing; cases where you have misapplied your talents and powers
of mind; where you have squandered money on your lusts, or spent it for
things which you did not need, and which did not contribute to your
health comfort, or usefulness. Perhaps some of you have laid out God's
money for tobacco. I will not speak of intoxicating drink for I presume
there is no professor religion here that would drink it, and I hope
there is n one that uses that filthy poison, tobacco. Think of
teachers, of religion using God's money to poison themselves with
tobacco!
11. Bad temper. Perhaps you have abused your wife, or your children, or
your family, or employees, or neighbors. Write it all down.
12. Hindering others from being useful. Perhaps you have, weakened
their influence by insinuations against them. You have not only robbed
God of your own talents, but tied the hands of somebody else. What a
wicked servant is he who not only loiters himself but hinders the rest!
This is done sometimes by taking their time needlessly; sometimes by
destroying Christian confidence in them. Thus you have played into the
hands of Satan, and not only showed yourself an idle vagabond, but
prevented others from working.
If you find you have committed a fault against an individual, and that
individual is within your reach, go and confess it immediately, and get
that out of the way. If the individual you have injured is too far off
for you to go and see him, sit down and write him a letter and confess
the injury. If you have defrauded anybody, send the money, the full
amount and the interest.
Go thoroughly to work in all this. Go now. Do not put it off; that will
only make the matter worse. Confess to God those sins that have been committed
against God, and to man those sins that have been committed against
man. Do not think of getting off by going around the stumbling-blocks.
Take them up out of the way. In breaking up your fallow ground, you
must remove every obstruction. Things may be left that you think little
things, and you may wonder why you do not feel as you wish to feel in
religion, when the reason is that your proud and carnal mind has
covered up something which God required you to confess and remove.
Break up all the ground and turn it over. Do not "balk" it,
as the farmers say; do not turn aside for little difficulties; drive
the plough right through them, dig deep, and turn the ground up, so
that it may all be mellow and soft, and fit to receive the seed and bear
fruit 'an hundredfold."
When you have gone over your whole history in this way, throughly, if
you will then go over the ground the second time, and give your solemn
and fixed attention to it, you will feel that the things you have put
down will suggest other things of which you have been guilty, connected
with them, or near them. Then go over it a third time, and you will
recollect other things connected with these. And you will find in the
end that you can remember an amount of history, and particular actions
even in this life, which you did not think you would remember in
eternity. Unless you take up your sins in this way, and consider them
in detail, one by one, you can form no idea of the amount of them. You
should go over the list as thoroughly, and as carefully, and as
solemnly, as you would if you were just preparing yourself for the
Judgment.
As you go over the history of your sins, be sure to decide upon present
and entire reformation. Wherever you find anything wrong, take care of
it at once, in the strength of God, to sin no more in that way. It will
be of no benefit to examine yourself, unless you determine to change in
every particular that which you find wrong in heart, temper, or
conduct.
If you find, as you go on with this duty, that your mind is still all
dark, cast about you, and you will find there is some reason for the
Spirit of God to depart from you. You have not been faithful and
thorough. In the progress of such a work you have got to do violence to
yourself and bring yourself as a rational being up to this work, with
the Bible before you, and try your heart till you do feel. You need not
expect that God will work a miracle for you to break up your fallow
ground. It is to be done by means. Fasten your attention to the subject
of your sins. You cannot look at your sins long and thoroughly and see
how bad they are, without feeling, and feeling deeply. Experience fully
proves the benefit of going over our history in this way. Set yourself
to work now; decide that you never will stop until you find you can
pray. You never will have the Spirit of God dwelling in you until you
have unraveled this whole mystery of iniquity, and spread out your sins
before God. Let there be this deep work of repentance and full
confession, this breaking down before God, and you will have as much of
the spirit of prayer as your body can bear up under. The reason why so
few Christians know anything about the Spirit of prayer is because they
never would take the pains to examine themselves properly, and so never
knew what it was to have the hearts all broken up in this way. You see
I have only begun to lay open this subject I want to lay it out before
you, in the course of these Lectures, so that if you will begin and go
on to do as I say, the results will be just as certain as they are when
a farmer breaks up a fallow field, and mellows it, and sows his grain.
It will be so, if you will only begin in this way and bold it on till
all your hardened and callous hearts break up.
REMARKS.
1. It will do no good to preach to you while your hearts are in this
hardened, and waste, and fallow state. The farmer might just as well
sow his grain on the rock. It will bring forth no fruit. This is the
reason why there are so many fruitless ministers in the Church, and why
there is so much organization and so little deep-toned feeling. Look at
the Sunday school, for instance, and see many tools there are and how
little of the power of godliness. If you go on in this way the Word of
God will continue to harden you, and you will grow worse and worse,
just as the rain and snow on an old fallow field make the turf thicker
and the clods stronger.
2. See why so much preaching is wasted, and worse than wasted. It is
because the Church will not break up their fallow ground. A preacher
may wear out his life, and do very little good, while there are so many
"stony ground" hearers, who have never had their fallow
ground broken up. They are only half converted, and their religion is
rather a change of opinion than a change of the feeling of their hearts.
There is mechanical religion enough, but very little that looks like
deep heart-work.
3. Preachers should never satisfy themselves, or expect a revival, just
by starting out of their slumbers, and blustering about, and talking to
sinners. They must get their fallow ground broken up. It is utterly
unphilosophical to think of getting engaged in religion in this way. If
your fallow ground is broke up, then the way to get more feeling is to
go out and see sinners on the road to hell, and talk to them, and guide
inquiring souls, and you will get more feeling. You may get into an
excitement without this breaking up; you may show a kind of zeal, but
it will not last long, and it will not take hold of sinners, unless you
hearts are broken up. The reason is, that you go about it mechanically,
and have not broken up you fallow ground.
4. And now, finally, will you break up your fallow ground? Will you
enter upon the course now pointed out and persevere till you are
thoroughly awake? If you fail here, if you do not do this, and get
prepared, you can go no farther with me. I have gone with you as far as
it is of any use to go until your fallow ground is broken up. Now, you
must make thorough work upon this point, or all I have further to say
will do you little good. No, it will only harden, and make you worse.
If, when next Lecture-night arrives it finds you with unbroken hearts,
you need not expect to be benefited by what I shall say. If you do not
set about this work immediately I shall take it for granted that you do
not mean to be revived, that you have forsaken your minister, and mean
to let him go up to battle alone. If you do not do this, I charge you
with having forsaken Christ, with refusing to repent and do your first
works. But if you will be prepared to enter upon the work propose, God
willing, in the next Lecture, to lead you into the work of saving
sinners.
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