IV.  Grass, in its withered state, is an emblem of two things: 
   1.  Of the sorrow and faintness of an afflicted heart.  This is most pathetically and touchingly set forth in Psalm 102.  That psalm is called “A prayer of the afflicted, when he is overwhelmed, and poureth out his complaint before the Lord.”  After a lengthened description of his sorrowful state, and the use of many similes to illustrate it, among which is that of withered grass, the Psalmist closes the whole by repeating that one similitude, “My soul is withered like grass.”  (Compare Psalm 102:1-12.)  How many a sorrowful spirit realises all that is here described!  And how often have individuals, now present, had to say in secret, “My heart is smitten, and withered like grass.”  Their comforts seem dried up; and that, which was once flourishing within them, appears sapless and parched.  “Withered grass” is the very thing which represents the state in which they feel themselves to be.  And no marvel, for it was the state of him who was the afflicted One, and whom Psalm 102 prophetically described.  For us and for our consolation, was the tender heart of the Saviour “smitten and withered like grass.”  The sharp blast of Almighty wrath fell upon him, and he was dried up like a potsherd, and withered like a tuft of tender grass which the lightning has scorched.
   His spiritually minded people must expect similar tribulation.  He often tries them as himself was tried, to constrain them to see that they have nothing in themselves, and that all grace, comfort, and help, must be sought from him.  Other persons cannot understand these things.  “They are foolishness unto them.”  But they are truthful realities, and wise experiences with those who are destined to survive all witherings, and to flourish for ever in the field above.
   2.  Grass in its withered state is an emblem also of the frailty of human life, and the suddeness with which it is liable to be cut off.  “The voice said, Cry.  And he said, What shall I cry?  All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness there of is as the flower of the field.”   “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand forever.”  (Isaiah 40:6,8.)  The picture here drawn is vivid and complete.  Look on the pleasant meadow.  See the health, strength, and beauty of its crop, as the wind gently waves its surface.  But think how the next frost can nip it, or the next blast level it, or how certainly, if it reaches to ripeness, the mower will one day cut it down.  And then bring away your eye from that scene, and let it gaze on the great company of mankind, on this city, this parish, this congregation, on yourselves.   Like grass we perish, for “surely the people is grass.”  Yes, let no one take refuge in generalities, but let each one say to himself or herself, “I am but as a blade of grass, and shall and must as certainly die, as all grass withereth, and every flower fadeth.”
   They and they alone, who have wisdom and faith to say this, and to act consistently therewith, will be prepared for the comfort of a closing thought or two.

   1.  Though the grass withereth, “the word of the Lord endureth for ever.”  This was Isaiah’s consolation.  St. Peter took it up, and by inspiration added to it, saying, “And this is the word, which by the gospel is preached unto you.”  Not one syllable of all that God stands pledged to perform shall fail or perish.  His gospel is yours for ever.
   2.  That which resembles grass, in the visible church, may be withered and cut down, but the living grass of the living church, “shall never perish.”  “And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth:  and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power.  And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree, but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.”  (Revelation 9:3,4.)
   In coming times, the Son of man will clear out of his field only that which offends.  The false professor, as well as the profligate,–all who bear not the stamp of godliness, will be clean cut down.  But, the godly, the green, the living grass of the true field, shall not be hurt:  they shall abide for ever.
   3.  The wonders of the world’s first week will never cease to be admired by those whom God creates anew in Christ Jesus.
   And, if grass be a wonder, how wonderful must that parent mind be, which saw, from the beginning, all that it was to teach us until the end!  Then let us say, “Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and power; for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.”  (Revelation 4:11.)

William Henry Havergal from Sermons, Chiefly on Historical Subjects from the Old and New Testaments:  Volume I

Frances Ridley Havergal from Memorials, Letters and Biographical Works

     III.  Grass, in its over luxuriant and rank state, is an emblem of wicked men in prosperity.  This is revealed to us in Psalm 92:7:  “When the ungodly are green as the grass, and when all the workers of wickedness do flourish, then shall they be destroyed for ever.”
     How fearful are these words, and yet how easy to be understood!  Every observer of a field or meadow knows that grass, in certain spots, grows so coarsely, and so rankly, and harbours so many weeds, that it is cut down for the dunghill.  Thus sinners, who grow wild in sin, or rank in iniqity, are no better than the offal grass of the swamp, or of the boggy spot of a meadow.  They are not only useless, but injurious.  Like the grass now described, they occupy the place of better vegetation, and only spread mischief so long as they remain in it.  But then their end, what is that?  It is that they shall be cut down, and “be destroyed for ever.”
     O that all therefore, who hear these things, would take heed respecting them!  Let no sinners mistake their character or position, by falsely comparing themselves with other sinners.  They may not be so gross, or so daring, or so hardened, as many whom they know; but they are in the way to become such.  A patch of rank and worthless grass is not composed of tufts of only one size, nor of only one sort.  Many a tuft may be coarser and more towering than another; and many a younger shoot, or milder blade may be found among them.  But they all are bad together:  they partake of the same root, grow in the same soil, and perpetuate the same mischief.  
     Let all sinners then remember that the great Husbandman may send his workman, Death, with his inevitable scythe, and cut them off in all the horrid freshness of their guilt.  Their only safety is in repentance towards God, and faith in his dear Son.

   II.  Grass, in the beauty of its freshness, and the luxuriance of its tender springing, is an emblem of the Lord Jesus, and of the rich and pleasant provision which God makes, in the gospel, for his people.  It is remarkable that the margin for our text, as the literal Hebrew, is “tender grass.”
   1.  When David was departing this life, he uttered one of the most beautiful of all his prophecies.  The inspiring Spirit nerved and brightened him for speaking thus of the Messiah:–”And he shall be as the light of the morning, when the sun riseth, even a morning wihthout clouds; as the tender grass springing out of the earth by clear shining after rain.”  (2 Samuel 23:4.)
   Rarely has the character of the Saviour for loveliness, gentleness, and tenderness, been so happily exhibited, as by this simile of “tender grass springing out of the earth, by clear shining after rain.”  Who has not gazed upon the beauty of such grass, when such shining has freshened it up?  What an aspect of health does it put on; and how is that health adorned with dewy gems of inimitable hue; and how inviting to the pearly teeth of the suckling lamb, or promising in the thirsty scythe of the husbandman!  Who has not seen all this?  But, who has thought of him, who not only made it all, but has by it intended us to learn living lessons of himself?  Who thinks of that “tender grass” as an emblem of his tender frame and gentle nature, springing up from our vile earth, and presently to be trampled under foot of Jews and gentiles, or mown down with their rude and ruthless hands?  Who thinks of its sunny freshness, and spangled verdue, as types of his healthful grace and spiritual comliness, which he sustains for his believeing people?  Henceforth let us after this manner think of him, when returning spring presents David’s picture of him to our eyes.
   2.  In Psalm 23:2, the Psalmist shepherd-boy, comparing Jehovah to a shepherd, and himself to a sheep, says,”He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;” which literally, and as translated in the margin, is “in pastures of tender grass.”
   When therefore you see a field or plot of young, juicy, healthy shooting grass, you see an exhibition of the sweet food, and pleasant blessings which God has provided for the sheep of his pasture, for all true believers, in his holy Word, his holy ordinances, and especially in his holy gospel.  O how rich are they, how wholesome, how palatable, how nutritious, how joyously pleasant!  And never we may truthfully say, does sheep or lamb luxuriate in green pastures of tender grass, half so much as the lively believer delights himself amid the wholesome verdure of a faithfullly preached gospel.
   Let us now turn to another class of topics, which the Holy Ghost teaches us from God’s creation of grass.

   I.  Grass, as to its author, its variety, and its growth, is an emblem of divine grace.
   1.  Strange as it may sound, it is strictly true, the God of the grass is “the God of all grace.”  He, who created the one, imparts the other.  Both are utterly beyond the power of man to produce.  Were all the philosophers and all the agriculturists in the world to meet together, they could not of themselves make one blade of grass.  Neither could all the angels in heaven, or all the divines upon earth, bestow one particle of grace to a sinful soul.  All is of God.  He is jealous of his power, even with re spect to the prodction of grass.  Though men, under the name of science, talk arrogantly, or, through forgetfulness, speak flippantly, yet does God constantly assert his sovereignty with respect to the gift of grass.  The creation of it is, in the chapter before us, as solemnly annouced as the creation of light, or the
formation of the sun and the moon, or of any of the grandest  objects in our universe.  In Deuteronomy 11:15, Jehovah says, “I will send grass in thy fields for thy cattle.”  In Psalm 104:14, David says, “He causeth the grass to grow for cattle.”  The like in Psalm 147:8, “Who maketh grass to grow upon the mountains.”  And our Lord, in his sermon on a mountain, reminded his hearers that it was God who clothed the grass.  Equally, too, is God the sole author of all grace.  It requires the same power to produce a blade of grass as to create a soul and save it.  This is what the Bible everywhere asserts, and what every saint feels.  “Thou renewest the face of the earth,” says David:  and who but the same God can renew the heart of sinful man? “By the grace of God I am what I am,” is the grateful and adoring acknowledgement of every saved sinner.  Let thoughtless ones also be reminded that, as grace is covenant grace, so also is grass covenant grass.  The very verdure of our meadows can come round to us, in coming months, only by virtue of that covenant which God made with Noah.  “While the earth remaineth, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.”  (Genesis 8:22.)  With what double, yea more than double interest then, does the spiritual naturalist look upon the pleasant green of the springing grass, beyond anything that the mere natural naturalist can possibly feel!
   2.  As to the value of grass, who can estimate that?  Were God to destroy it, all the world over, what an upturn and overthrow would it make in all the essential departments of animal life.  What then the earth would be without grass, the church must be without grace.  Where grass has been withheld, there a desert has been formed; and where grace has been stopped, there a moral wilderness has followed.  What is a heathen land but a graceless country?  It is a desert in which grows no grass.  Ah, and what are graceless hearts but dreary wastes of sin and evil imagination?  Grace is everything to us, much as we may slight it, and little as we may seek it.  Grass is provendar, and grace is our very life.  If the cattle perish without grass, so do we die the second death, if destitute of saving grace.
   3.  Though grass is so common, and we speak of it as one and the same thing, yet are its varieties both numerous and wonderful.  Botanists tell us of not merely scores of species, but hundreds of varieties; and yet countless as are the blades of all those varieties, not two are alike.
    After the same manner, the grace of God is very diversified, both in itself and in its effects upon different persons.
   When too all the sons and daughters of God shall be assembled in the last great day, and they shall be spread out like a beauteous field of grass which the Lord hath blessed and scented, not one will be found exactly like another.  All indeed will resemble Christ, and be one with him, but each will bear a distinct and separate likeness:  so wonderful will the wisdom and the power of our God be in the article of variety alone!
   4.  The growth of grass, like the growth of grace, is not only remarkable but, mysterious.*  We often speak of seeing the grass grow.  The process of its growth certainly is at times rapid; still no human sight can perceive its actual gradations.
   Far more mysteriously does divine grace advance its growthin the human heart.  “It groweth up,” as our Lord said of the sower sowing grain, “he knoweth now how.”  This however we all know, that Christians are to “grow in grace;”  that their growth in it will be perceptible, if not always to themselves, yet often to others; and that some things hinder, and other things forward its growth.
    Think for a moment of this last named fact!  The frost and the chilling wind check the growth of grass, while a rainless and scorching sky soon parch it up.  On the other hand copious dews, warm rains, and genial suns promote its growth abundantly.
   And does not sin and evil passion of every kind, from rampant lust to sordid covetousness, check, even to annihilation, the growth of grace in the soul?  Will not even pride and prejudice do much the same?  And, as to pleasure and prosperity, who has not beheld the seemingly fair and verdant professor gradually drained of all spiritual moisture by them, so as to be-
come like scorched grass, useless for all the purposes for which it was destined?  If, dear brethren, we would grow as the grass, which rejoiceth the cattle and repayeth the husbandman, we must both pray for the outpouring of the Holy Spirit upon our souls, and cherish it carefully, when it has been vouchsafed to us.

*Grass is remarkable as being a sort of universal vegetable.  The earth everywhere produces it.  It  grows, more or less, in every clime and during every season.  In like manner divine grace is subject to no restrictions of time or place.  The Holy Spirit dispenses it “to every man severally as he will.”  Hence the heathen wilderness and the christian city are alike capable of receiving its implantation and witnessing its growth.  “There shall be a handful of corn in the earth upon the top of the mountains; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon; and they of the city shall flourish like grass of the earth.”–Psalm 72:16.

“And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass.”  GENESIS 1:11

THE reading of the first chapter of Genesis, on the present Sunday, can hardly fail to arrest the attention of a churchman.  It tells him that another year is gone, and that another season of the church is again come round.  It reminds him too, that the minister of his Church has turned back the leaves of the great Bible, and has begun it again, with the reading of its very first page.  And then the solemn recital of the origin of our world, which no other book can tell us, is itself an interesting circumstance.  What is more, it is impossible for a really thoughtful mind to hear that chapter annually read, without finding some new topic start up for contemplation.
   But who, on hearing of the wonders of the creation-week, gives a thought about the production of so simple and so common a thing as grass?  And who thinks of making a sermon upon it? Many a whispering heart is ready to reply, the grass we tread on is so common a thing, that nothing need be said about it; or, if anything is said about it, it can amount to no more than what
every child knows, and every rustic well understands.
   But how unwise are such whisperings, and how prone are we to forget that the commonest things are often the most important, and the most instructive!  Were an angel to come down from heaven, and call around him a class of the cleverest natural philosophers in the world, how would they be astonished at the thousand things which he could tell them about a single blade of grass!  And, if he were to summon a conclave of the most learned theologians, and proceed to preach about that blade, what babes in divinity would they all appear!
   Dear brethren, the mysteries of grace, and the practical truths which are represented by the grass which God made, are worthyof an angel’s teaching, and absolutely necesary for our learning. It is only our ignorance, or our iniquity, which makes us insensible to the instruction which God has attached to the commonest things around us.  Our blessed Lord often took the text of his parables, or discourses, from those very things:  he consequently preached about sparrows, ravens, lilies, grass.  Let none dispise what such things, by the aid of the Bible, teach us.  May the great Teacher help us, at this pesent, to understand and receive his own lessons upon grass.  “And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass.”

Note:  This was preached in the parish Church of St. Nicholas, Worcester by the Rev. William Henry Havergal, A.M., Rector of St. Nicholas’s and Honorary Canon, Worcester on Sunday Morning, February 18, 1851.  This is the Introduction to the sermon, the following four parts to be posted sequencially.   (William Henry was the father of  F.R.H.) 

William Henry Havergal from Sermons, Chiefly on Historical Subjects from the Old and New Testaments:  Volume I

Frances Ridley Havergal from Memorials, Letters and Biographical Works

SUMMER-TIDE is coming,
   With all its pleasant things;
Every bee is humming
   And every songster sings.
Mornings now are brightsome,
   Inviting student thought;
Evenings, too, are lightsome,
   With balmy quiet fraught.
Hearths no longer lure us,
   The fields instead we roam;
Hearts albeit insure us
   A happy, happy home.

Summer-tide, I hail thee,
   The empress of the year!
But thou soon wouldst fail me,
   Were not thy Maker near.
He thy course disposes,
   Thy light, thy scent, thy glow;
He tints all thy roses,
   And paints thy brilliant bow.
Laud Him, all creation,
   The sinner’s mighty Friend;
Near Him be our station,
   Where summer ne’er shall end.

                          W. H. H.

Frances Ridley Havergal from RED LETTER DAYS

                                                                          (To Margaret W. continued)

   At the meeting, Mr. W_____ opened it and then went away.  Then I told them I had meant to sing them beautiful songs of Handel, but I could not and dare not; that I could not, after what my King had shown me last week, sing even partly to please them, it must be “only for my King.”  Then I told them about this “only,” not merely totality of surrender but exclusiveness of allegiance, and how I wanted everyone there to take this step with me that night, and to accept with me “ONLY for Jesus,” as our life motto, henceforth.  To keep my word as to singing, I just sang “Precious Saviour, may I live only for Thee”* (to “Onesimus”).  After prayer, I resumed the subject and then distributed the Consecration Hymns (very systematically done in one minute without disturbance); and, after running through it, asked those and those only to sign their names who meant it.  Oh, M_____, it was such singing, one felt it was so real!
   Then I gave an interval of silent prayer which I felt was a time of real consecration.  I was sure of His presence, so sure that He was  bowing the hearts before Him by the Holy Spirit’s power.  Was it not strange that the first “consecration meeting” I ever came in for should have been in my own hands?
   After, I gave each at the door “Enough.”  I hardly liked giving my own leaflets, but I really couldn’t think of anyting else just suitable for what I wanted.  One, whom I had spoken to after church on Sunday evening, stayed to tell me how bright her hope continued; but she needn’t have spoken, the change of expression was quite enough to tell.  Well, dear M_____, I felt there had been real blessing.

*Hymn 695 in “Songs of Grace and Glory.”

Frances Ridley Havergal from MEMORIALS

                                                                    (To Margaret W.)

. . .I came to Newport with the idea of not being responsible for any one’s soul at all!  I enjoyed the first three days in a general sort of way, but no real gain to myself.  I declined addressing the Y.W.C.A. meeting, but was present and was asked to sing.  I sang my arrangement of Isaiah xii.  After a few more words, and prayer from Mr. W_____, I sang for them “When thou passest.”*  After that I had to shake hands with many.  It was all very nice but not real work.  I felt dissatisfied, notwithstanding the affectionate greetings and thanks for singing.  Saturday I said I should like to go to work, and went with Mr. W______ to the Infirmary.  In the women’s ward I read and prayed and sang, and then spoke to each alone.  I saw there was sowing and reaping work wanted, and many entreated me to come again.  When I went again God sent much blessing.  One, very suffering, and who had a most distressed expression the day before, had found peace soon after I left her.  She lay looking so happy, saying, “I’ve left it all with Him now, and oh it’s so beautiful!”  Another a moping groping Christian, told me that the words God helped me to say to her lifted her straight up into the sunlight.  Before I left the ward, I do think another was enabled by God’s Spirit to trust in the Lord Jesus.  From that time, it pleased God to send such continuous blessing.  But (I hardly know how it began, I think from my own couplet “. . .let me sing, Always, only, for my King,” in connection with that Thursday evening) somehow I felt that on both sides, singer and listeners, it was not really “only for Him,” but too much of F.R.H.  The word “only” seemed to be pressed on my own heart.  I saw it as I never saw it before, and that the “all for Jesus” must be supplemented and sealed with “only for Jesus.”  It was a great and humbling revelation to me of failure in full consecration, where I really did not see it before; and of course, I dare not and would not hold back from accepting and following, at any cost, what I felt God’s Holy Spirit was teaching me.  I felt I could not, and would not, sing again the next Thursday as before, and that I must pass on this “only” to the Y.W.C.A.  Then I had copies printed of the Consecration Hymn, and had my name left out, and a blank line instead for the signature, which each might fill up alone and prayerfully.

*”When thou Passest through the Waters.”  Music by F.R.H.
London:  Hutchings and Romer

Frances Ridley Havergal from MEMORIALS

Note:  Havergal’s life is detailed in a biography entitled “Ever, Only, All for Thee” by Pamela Bugden.  The book is offered by VCY America’s Crosstalk radio program for a donation of $12 or more.  Here is the link:
http://www.crosstalkamerica.com/shows/2007/11/one_life_consecrated_to_god.php

                               I.

I AM SO weak, dear Lord, I cannot stand
     One moment without Thee!
But oh!  the tenderness of Thine enfolding,
And oh!  the faithfulness of Thine upholding,
And oh!  the strength of Thy right hand!
     That strength is enough for me!

                               II.

I am so needy, Lord, and yet I know
     All fulness dwells in Thee;
And hour by hour that never-failing treasure
Supplies and fills, in overflowing measure,
My least, my greatest need; and so
     Thy grace is enough for me!

                               III.

It is so sweet to trust Thy word alone:
     I do not ask to see
The unveiling of Thy purpose, or the shining
Of future light on mysteries untwining:
Thy promise-roll is all my own,–
     Thy word is enough for me!

                                IV.

The human heart asks love; but now I know
     That my heart hath from Thee
All real, and full, and marvellous affection,
So near, so human; yet divine perfection
Thrills gloriously the mighty glow!
     Thy love is enough for me!

                                  V.

There were strange soul-depths, restless, vast, and
        broad,
     Unfathomed as the sea;
An infinite craving for some infinite stilling;
But now Thy perfect love is perfect filling!
Lord Jesus Christ, my Lord, my God,
     Thou, Thou art enough for me!

Frances Ridley Havergal from THE POETICAL WORKS

     A FEW months ago
          I was singing through the snow,
Though the dead brown boughs gave no hope
        of summer shoots,
     And my persevering fall
     Seemed to be no use at all,
For the hard, hard frost would not let me reach
          the roots.

     Then the mists hung chill
     All along the wooded hill,
And the cold sad fog through my lonely dingles
        crept;
     I was glad I had no power
     To awake one tender flower
To a sure swift doom!  I would rather that it slept.

     Still I sang all alone
     In the sweet old summer tone,
For the strong white ice could not hush me
        for a day;
     Though no other voice was heard
     But the bitter breeze that whirred
Past the gaunt, grey trunks on its wild and
        angry way.

     So the dim days sped,
     While everything seemed dead,
And my own poor flow seemed the only living
        sign;
     And the keen stars shone
     When the freezing night came on,
From the far, far heights, all so cold and
        crystalline.

     A few months ago
     I was singing through the snow!
But now the blessed sunshine is filling all the
        land,
     And the memories are lost
     Of the winter fog and frost,
In the presence of the summer with her full and
        glowing hand.

                                                        
     Now the woodlark comes to drink
     At my cool and pearly brink,
And the ladyfern is bending to kiss my rainbow
        foam;
     And the wild rose buds entwine
     With the dark-leaved bramble-fine,
And the centuried oak is green around the
        bright-eyed suirrel’s home.

     O the full and glad content
     That my little song is blent
With the all-melodious mingling of the cho-
        risters around!
     I no longer sing alone
     Through a chill surrounding moan,
For the very air is trembling with its wealth of
        summer sound.

     Though the hope seemed long deferred,
     Ere the south wind’s whisper heard
Gave a promise of the passing of the weary
        winter days,
     Yet the blessing was secure,
     For the summer time was sure
When the lonely songs are gathered in the
     mighty choir of praise.
                         February 18th, 1879.

Frances Ridley Havergal from UNDER HIS SHADOW