It is the same rain which falls upon the rock, as upon the soil at its base, but the rock remains barren, while the soil becomes fruitful. Is, therefore, the rain in fault, or is the result due to the nature of the soil?
So the Word of God – the same Word falls upon different hearts, and some continue barren and unfruitful, while others yield fruit a hundred fold. The fault lies in the hardness of heart of the hearer.
Tract Distribution
“Tract distribution is going too much out of fashion. It is a blessed and heaven-honored agency for doing good. Everyone who has some spare time and a tongue and a little tact can go out with a bundle of tracts.” Dr. Cuyler.
Many readers may have heard of the hawker who handed a tract into a little cottage which fell into the hands of Richard Baxter and was the means of his conversion. Baxter wrote thy “Saint’s Everlasting Rest,” which aroused Doddridge to seek salvation. Doddridge wrote “Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul,” by means of which Wilberforce was converted. Wilberforce wrote a book, “Practical Christianity,” which fell into the hands of Thomas Chalmers. Surely this is fruit!
Some time ago a poor boy came to a city missionary and holding out a dirty and well-worn bit of paper, said, “Please, sir, father sent me to get a clean paper like that.” Opening it out, the missionary found that it was a page leaflet, containing that beautiful hymn beginning “Just as I am, without one plea.” The missionary asked where he found it, and why he wanted a clean one. “We found it, sir,” he said, “in sister’s pocket after she died. She used always to be singing it while she was ill, and she loved it so much that father wanted to get a clean one, and put it in a frame and hang it up. Won’t you give us a clean one, sir?” That simple hymn given to a little girl seems to have been, by God’s blessing, the means of bringing her to Christ.