Reaping

“ The solitary reaper alone in the great field goes round and round, the red fans striking beside him, alone with the sunlight, and the blue sky, and the distant hills; and he and his reaper are as much of the corn-field as the long-forgotten sickle or the reaping-hook.
The sharp rattle of the mowing-machine disturbs the corncrake in the meadow. Crake! crake! for many a long day since the grass began to grow fast in April till the cowslips flowered, and white parsley flourished like a thicket, blue scabious came up, and yonder the apple trees drop their bloom. ”

“ But if a reaper gets pains in his back, the farmer gives him the goat-skin to wear.66 The reason for this seems to be that the pains in the back, being inflicted by the corn-spirit, can also be healed by it. Similarly we saw that elsewhere, when a reaper is wounded at reaping, a cat, as the representative of the corn-spirit, is made to lick the wound.67 Esthonian reapers in the island of Mon think that the man who cuts the first ears of corn at harvest will get pains in his back,68—probably because the corn-spirit is believed to resent especially the first wound ”

“ God's reapers find it hard work to reap; but they gain a blessed solace when in one way or another they sit down and eat of their Master's rich provisions; then, with renewed strength, they rise with sharpened sickle, to reap again in the noontide heat. ”

“ A swift, pained perception of his age, his feebleness, gave Rose a sudden sharp pang of grief, of foreshadowed loss; the revelation that comes suddenly—like the opening of a window in the soul—of the mortality of those we love, of life’s awful uncertainty. ”

“ The wages of sin is death.
She rose, rose with an effort of will for her knees shook under her, and drawing herself together, summoning all her strength and her pride to hide the agony which was devouring her heart, she drew down her veil and slipped out unnoticed, silent, like a shadow. Once at the door, beyond the ring of that terrible young voice, she paused and steadied herself by laying her hand on a pillar of the portico. ”

“ The reapers are the angels of God, who are his servants: for as every lord or master has his servants to wait upon him, and to do his commandments, so the angels of God wait upon Him to do his commandments. The angels at the time of the harvest shall gather first all such as have been evil and [pg 027] have given occasion of wickedness, and go forward in the same without repentance or amendment of their lives. All such, I say, shall be gathered together and cast into the furnace of fire, “where shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” ”

“ Or how can we possibly expect to know the repose that should be at our command for every emergency, or hope to realize the great repose behind every action, when we have not even learned the repose in rest?
Think of Nature's resting times, and see how painful would be the result of a digression.
Our side of the earth never turns suddenly toward the sun at night, giving us flashes of day in the darkness. When it is night, it is night steadily, quietly, until the time comes for day. ”

“ The recoil, the pause, the terrible astonishment of that moment when Life, surging ahead with all his banners flying, flings himself in an instant against the immovable face of Death—leaves the soul dazed by the shock—dazed, and unbelieving. ”

“ The violence of the changed, yet mixed sensations, with which she was now assailed, made every pulse throb with so palpitating a rapidity, that she felt as if life itself was seeking a vent through every swelling vein. ”

“ Have not the fierce pangs of famine driven mothers to eat their own children, incredibly savage as it seems? In line, sleep itself, which is justly called repose, how little of repose there sometimes is in it when disturbed with dreams and visions; and with what terror is the wretched mind overwhelmed by the appearances of things which are so presented, and which, as it were, so stand out before the senses, that we cannot distinguish them from realities! ”

“ REPERCUSSION The principle of sympathetic vibration mentioned above also provides the explanation of the strange and little-known phenomenon called repercussion, by means of which any injury done to, or any mark made upon, the materialized body in the course of its wanderings will be reproduced in the physical body. ”

“ Sitting there in the dark and the cold, he grew barely conscious of his own pain. This is Nature’s mercy. When the wound is beyond bearing she draws away the sufferer’s consciousness, and an extremity of agony brings its own relief, if only for a little while. ”

“ The Reaper said, and smiled;
"Dear tokens of the earth are they,
Where He was once a child.
"They shall all bloom in fields of light,
Transplanted by my care,
And saints, upon their garments white,
These sacred blossoms wear." ”

“ It is so; and, when the dreadful repast is over, then again the pulse beats healthfully, and the wasted energies of a strange kind of vitality are restored to us, we become calm again, but with that calmness comes all the horror, all the agony of reflection, and we suffer far more than tongue can tell. ”

“ When it is physiologically understood that what is called stimulation or excitement is, in absolute fact, a relaxation, I had nearly said a paralysis, of one of the most important mechanisms in the animal body—the minute, resisting, compensating circulation—we grasp quickly the error, in respect to the action of stimulants, in which we have been educated, and obtain a clear solution of the well-known experience that all excitement, all passion, leaves, after its departure, lowness of heart, depression of mind, sadness of spirit. ”

“ Tears of perspiration collect in beads at the apertures of the pores; tears glide down the surface, and fall from all the salient points of our frame, from our elbows, from our finger-ends; a sweet languor creeps over us, and we feel as though, like a heathen god of old, we were dissolving into a liquid stream. ”

“ The reaper was shrewd enough to take it up, and told me that if I would talk, he would give me a bundle heavier than I could carry. So I began and repeated the alphabet to him. All the reapers as well as the gleaners stood in vacant silence, with mouths wide open, grinning with evident delight. ”

“ But in a little time came a relapse, and another repentance, and then a relapse again, and gradually the return of old habits and the flooding in of all his old way of life, with more violence and gloom, in proportion as the man was alarmed and exasperated by the remembrance of his despised, but terrible, warning. ”

“ Those that come on while the juices of the heart remain, seize upon the body of the heart, and hence the febrile flame is kindled, like the flame of a lamp from its wick. This is one of the modes of formation. ”

“ This picture has become the saving beam of light which has shot across the dark career of many who after a night’s revelry, and alone with conscience, refuse to drink further of sin’s deadly potion, but look back upon that early scene of innocence, and resolve to make it again a real experience. Although Remorse is the remaining guest of a night of sin, there is also the confident token of an angel of hope ever ready in the chamber of repentant despair. ”

“ In harvest-time, a great many of the reapers come to drink here in the heat of the day, and he that can read best among us takes up one of these books, and all the rest of us, sometimes thirty or more, sit round about him and listen with such pleasure that we think neither of sorrow nor care. ”

“ Pain is so often prolonged and accentuated by dwelling in its memory, living in a self-pity of the time when it shall come again! The patient who comes to his test with the bodily and mental repose already acquired, cuts off each day from the last, each hour from the last, one might almost say each breath from the last, so strong is his confidence in the renewal of forces possible to those who give themselves quite trustfully into Nature's hands. ”

“ I suppose now that you will agree that tribulation is every such thing as troubleth and grieveth a man either in body or mind, and is as it were the prick of a thorn, a bramble, or a briar thrust into his flesh or into his mind. And surely, cousin, the prick that very sore pricketh the mind surpasseth in pain the grief that paineth the body, almost as far as doth a thorn sticking in the heart surpass and exceed in pain the thorn that is thrust in the heel. ”

“ They do not realize that disturbances, originating in spiritual commotions, can only be cured by administering spiritual remedies,—that is to say, operating upon the soul as well as upon its physical garment—flesh, blood, bone and nerves. ”

“ It would make the stoutest Heart bleed to hear how many Warnings were then given by dying Penitents, to others not to put off and delay their Repentance to the Day of Distress, that such a Time of Calamity as this, was no Time for Repentance; was no Time to call upon God. I with I could repeat the very Sound of those Groans, and of those Exclamations that I heard from some poor dying Creatures, when in the Hight of their Agonies and Distress ”

“ But lastly, that the whole sensorial power is so employed on these trains of complete reverie, that like the violent efforts of volition, as in convulsions or insanity; or like the great activity of the irritative motions in drunkenness; or of the sensitive motions in delirium; they preclude all sensation consequent to external stimulus.
2. Those persons, who are said to walk in their sleep, are affected with reverie to so great a degree, that it becomes a formidable disease; the essence of which consists in the inaptitude of the mind to attend to external stimuli. ”

“ The first night that the fever took a favourable turn, and my burning eyelids at last closed to sleep, I had an awful dream, or inspiration, I will call it, to rouse me from a state of careless indifference to the future, and set before me the urgent necessity of self-examination and repentance. ”

“ Wreaths of dusky vapor overshadowed the fire, and from them proceeded a melancholy voice:——
“O mortal, sin has entered thine heart; blood is on thy hand, and the polluted can have no fellowship with the pure. Thine eyes may behold us no more forever!”
A fearful shudder passed through the student’s frame. ”

“ If this last order of resuscitated persons were not really dead, there is nothing wonderful in their revisiting the world, except the manner in which it is done, and the circumstances by which that return is accompanied. Do these revenans simply awaken from their sleep, or do they recover themselves like those who fall down in syncope, in fainting fits, or in swoons, and who at the end of a certain time come naturally to themselves when the blood and animal spirits have resumed their natural course and motion. ”

“ Some dim, half interpreted perception of this chilled her heart and stayed the passionate greeting on her lips; she stood a moment looking at him, terribly aware of the calmness of his bearing, his pallor, his dark troubled eye which neither kindled nor blenched at the sight of her, but met hers with a studied gentleness which expressed neither joy nor reluctance. A keen pang of dread tore her heart, but the next instant joy, wild, almost childish joy at the sight of him, welled up and swept away her doubts. ”

“ Yet at night you can scarcely sleep. Repose is made feverish by a still heat that keeps the skin drenched with thick sweat, or by a perpetual, unaccountable, tingling and prickling of the whole body-surface. ”

“ Each moment his agony grows more intense, his sufferings more acute, for the poison is thrilling through his veins,—he turns pale,—his eyes become blood-cast,—his breast quivers with emotion and his limbs tremble beneath him ”

“ How fitly and how fearfully hast thou expressed my case in a storm at sea, if I relapse; They mount up to heaven, and they go down again to the depth! [339] My sickness brought me to thee in repentance, and my relapse hath cast me farther from thee. The end of that man shall be worse than the beginning, [340] says thy Word, thy Son; my beginning was sickness, punishment for sin: but a worse thing may follow, [341] says he also, if I sin again; not only death, which is an end worse than sickness, which was the beginning, but hell, which [Pg 158] is a beginning worse than that end. ”

“ I know not whether the comparison be accurate or not; but the fact is, that is the way in which it is brought about. During rapture, the soul does not seem to animate the body, the natural heat of which is perceptibly lessened; the coldness increases, though accompanied with exceeding joy and sweetness. [5]
3. A rapture is absolutely irresistible; whilst union, inasmuch as we are then on our own ground, may be hindered, though that resistance be painful and violent; it is, however, almost always impossible. But rapture, for the most part, is irresistible. ”

“ They and their discoverer can well afford being laughed at. The author feels that when the great Reaper, Death, shall have done his work, these same truth-seeds will spring up into Form, Life, and Beauty:—all for the gladdening of the people:—and this feeling, this inner prophecy of and to the soul, contents and satisfies the being. ”

“ True repentance involves a change of mind, a change of purpose, a change of will, and implies not only a godly sorrow for sin —­sorrow not only because the sin has resulted in physical or mental or financial or reputational disaster—­but because it has grieved the Spirit of our God ”

“ Remorse, or a painful sense of guilt; casts down the countenance, and clouds it with anxiety; hangs down the head, draws the eyebrows down upon the eyes; the right hand beats the breast; the teeth gnash with anguish; the whole body is strained and violently agitated. ”

“ Looking back after the lapse of time, when the mad excitement no longer sends the hot blood leaping like molten lava through the veins, and when one can weigh things calmly and dispassionately, I am still of the positive conviction that we made no mistakes, and in accepting chances as they came were wisely guided in our selection. ”