Seed to the sower , and bread to the eater .

2 Cor. 9:10.There are two ways of treating the seed . The botanist splits it up and discourses on its curious characteristics ; the simple husbandman eats and sows ; sows and eats . Similarly there are two ways of treating the gospel . A critic disects it ; raises a mountain of debate about the structure of the whole , and relation of its parts ; and when he is done with his argument , he is done . To him the letter is dead ,, he neither lives on it himself , nor spreads it for the good of his neighbours . He neither eats nor sows . The disciple of Jesus , hungering for righteousness takes the seed whole ; it is bread for today's hunger , and seed for tomorrows supply . But the scientific botanist may also be a husbandman ; and wise is he if he use his technical knowledge of the seed in sowing it more skillfully. He who examines most keenly the letter of the word , may get the spirit too . Criticism is lawful and useful when it helps to live upon every word of God . Those who have most learning must at last come down to the level of those who have none .  As might have been expected under the government of our Father in heaven , that which is necessary to life  is within the reach of all ;  the gospel preached to the poor is an acknowledged evidence that Christ has come . The philologist and the theologian must come down and stand beside the unlettered peasant , and there ,with him and like him , eat and sow the word of eternal life . The greatest scholar who only dissects the seed will die of hunger soon ; while the simple countryman who eats and sows it will live and prosper . Beware of resting in a hard dry dissection of doctrines ; after all our museum  knowledge of the structure of the seed , shall die in the midst of plenty , unless the gospel of the Lord Jesus  Christ  becomes the daily bread of our souls