Sermons on Selected Lessons of the New Testament

^1. You have heard out of the Holy Gospel a parable well suited to the present season, concerning the labourers in the vineyard. For now is the time of the material vintage. Now there is also a spiritual vintage, wherein God rejoices in the fruit of His vineyard. For we cultivate God, and God cultivates us. But we do not so cultivate God as to make Him any better thereby. For our cultivation is the labour of the heart, not of the hands. He cultivates us as the husbandman does his field. In then that He cultivates us, He makes us better; because so does the husbandman make his field better by cultivating it, and the very fruit He seeks in us is, that we may cultivate Him. The culture He exercises on us is, that He ceases not to root out by His Word the evil seeds from our hearts, to open our heart, as it were, by the plough of His Word, to plant the seed of His precepts, to wait for the fruit of piety. For when we have so received that culture into our heart, as to cultivate Him well, we are not ungrateful to our Husbandman, but render the fruit wherein He rejoices. And our fruit does not make Him the richer, but us the happier.