+II. By the operation of unchanging Divine law the reaping will correspond to the kind of seed sown and the nature of the soil into which it is cast.+--"Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh," etc. (vers. 7, 8). Men may wrong each other, but they cannot cheat God. To expect God to sow His bounties upon them, and not to let Him reap their gratitude and service, is mockery. But it is not God they deceive; they deceive themselves. For at last every one shall reap as he sows. The use made of our seed-time determines exactly, and with a moral certainty greater even than that which rules in the natural field, what kind of fruitage our immortality will render. Eternity for us will be the multiplied, consummate outcome of the good or evil of the present life. Hell is just sin ripe--rotten ripe. Heaven is the fruitage of righteousness. "He that soweth to his own flesh reaps corruption"--the moral decay and dissolution of the man's being. This is the natural retributive effect of his carnality. The selfish man gravitates downward into the sensual man; the sensual man downward into the bottomless pit. "He that soweth to the Spirit reaps life everlasting." The sequence is inevitable. Like breeds its like. Life springs of life, and death eternal is the culmination of the soul's present death to God and goodness. The future glory of the saints is at once a divine reward and a necessary development of their present faithfulness (_Findlay, passim_). +III. Sowing the seed of good deeds should be prosecuted with unwearied perseverance.+--1. _Because the harvest is sure to follow._ "Let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not" (ver. 9). Here is encouragement for the wearied, baffled worker. We have all our moments of despondency and disappointment and are apt to imagine our labours are futile and all our painstaking useless. Not so. We are confounding the harvest with the seed-time. "In due season"--in God's time, which is the best time--"we shall reap, if we faint not." Our heavenly harvest lies in every earnest and faithful deed, as the oak with its centuries of growth and all its summer glory sleeps in the acorn-cup, as the golden harvest slumbers in the seeds under their covering of wintry snow.