Do not wait. God will help you. You know not that you will be living to-morrow or next Sunday; and if you are, it will not be any easier then than it is to-day. Now is the day of salvation. 4. Give up all sin, give it up _now_, and give it up _forever_. You can not give it up for awhile and then turn to it again. That will do you no good. You might as well not give it up at all as to turn back to it again. And look to God for help, for present help, for all-sufficient strength. Tell Him by His help you mean to be His, no matter what it costs; and believe on Jesus Christ, His Son, as the bearer of your past sins and the giver of the Holy Spirit, and very soon you will be happier than the men who own these hotels and business houses and Broadway palaces and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yes; you will. I know from my experience and that of others. My text says, God will have mercy on you and will _abundantly_ pardon you. THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER. LUKE VIII: 5-15. Jesus may have seen a farmer sowing seed, and, directing the attention of the people to him, uttered this parable. He took the commonest and most familiar facts and occurrences and made them the means of expressing the great truths of His kingdom. So His ministers should try to do now--teach the truth of God in language easily understood by the men addressed. He divides the hearers of the word into four classes: be ready then to decide in which class _you_ are, for you are certainly in one. 1. The seed which fell on the hard beaten path is the word preached to men who do not receive any impression at all from hearing it. They have forgotten it by the time the sound of the preacher's voice has died away. It does not enter their minds and produce any _thought_; nor their hearts, and produce any _feeling_. Are there not thousands of people who go to church, who hear preaching constantly, and yet it produces no effect? They are no better, and _they do not try to be_. But in the twelfth verse we find who is the cause of this astonishing indifference and hardness--it is the _devil_ who causes them at once and forever to forget all that is said "lest they should _believe_ and _be saved_." There is an unseen adversary, then, who keeps us from thinking about religion all he can. If you do not think about it much, that is a proof that you are under his influence. 2. The next class consists of those who from impulse become religious without counting the cost. They do not stop to reflect that to be godly requires self-denial, humility, patience, crucifying the flesh with all its lusts. And so, when temptation comes or trial, they give up in disgust. They are like Pliable in Bunyan's Pilgrims' Progress--easily persuaded to start on the way to heaven, but just as easily discouraged and disgusted. There are lots of such people now. They lack stability.