“The same day went Jesus out of the house, and sat by the sea side.
And great multitudes were gathered together unto him, so that he
went into a ship, and sat; and the whole multitude stood on the
shore. And he spake many things unto them in parables, saying,
Behold, a sower went forth to sow; and when he sowed, some seeds
fell by the way side, and the fowls came and devoured them up:
some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth: and
forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:
and when the sun was up, they were scorched; and because they
had no root, they withered away. And some fell among thorns; and
the thorns sprung up, and choked them: but other fell into good
ground, and brought forth fruit, some an hundredfold, some
sixtyfold, some thirtyfold. Who hath ears to hear, let him
hear.... Hear ye therefore the parable of the sower. When any
one heareth the word of the kingdom, and understandeth it not,
then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that which was
sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way
side. But he that received the seed into stony places, the same
is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; yet
hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when
tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and
by he is offended. He also that received seed among the thorns
is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the
deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh
unfruitful. But he that received seed into the good ground is he
that heareth the word, and understandeth it; which also beareth
fruit, and bringeth forth, some an hundredfold, some sixty, some
thirty.”—Matt. xiii. 1–9, 18–23.
The parable is, in our language at least, so uniformly associated with
this name, that it would not readily be recognised under any other
designation; but “The four kinds of ground” (viererlei Acker), the title
which seems to be in ordinary use among the Germans, is logically more
correct, inasmuch as it points directly to the central idea, and
expresses the distinctive characteristic.
At this period a great and eager multitude followed the steps of Jesus
and hung upon his lips. A certain divine authority, strangely combined
with the tenderest human sympathy, marked his discourses sharply off, as
entirely different in kind from all that they had been accustomed to
hear in the synagogue. Finding that instincts and capacities hitherto
dormant in their being were awakened by his word, “the common people
heard him gladly.” At an earlier hour of the same day on which this
parable was spoken, the circle of listeners that encompassed the Teacher
had become so broad and dense, that his mother and brothers, who had
come from home to speak with him, were obliged to halt on the outskirts
of the crowd, and pass their message in from mouth to mouth. In these
circumstances, the Preacher’s work must have been heavy, and doubtless
the worker was weary. Having paused till the press slackened, he
privately retired to the margin of the lake, desiring probably to “rest
a while;” but no sooner had he taken his seat beside the cool still
water, than he was again surrounded by the anxious crowd. At once to
escape the pressure and to command the audience better when he should
again begin to speak, he stepped into one of the fishing-boats that
floated at ease close by the beach, on the margin of that tideless
inland sea. From the water’s edge, stretching away upward on the natural
gallery formed by the sloping bank, the great congregation, with every
face fixed in an attitude of eager expectancy, presented to the
Preacher’s eye the appearance of a ploughed field ready to receive the
seed. As he opened his lips, and cast the word of life freely abroad
among them, he saw, he felt, the parallel between the sowing of Nature
and the sowing of Grace. Into that mould, accordingly, he threw the
lesson of saving truth. Grasping the facts and laws of his own material
world, and wielding them with steady aim as instruments in the
establishment of his spiritual kingdom, in simple yet majestic terms he
said, “Behold, a sower went forth to sow.”
Whether a sower was actually in sight at that moment in a neighbouring
field or not, every man in that rural assemblage must have been familiar
with the act, and would instantly recognise the truth of the picture.
The sower, with a bag of seed dependent from his shoulder, stalks slowly
forth into the prepared field. With measured, equal steps, he marches in
a straight line along the furrow. His hand, accustomed to keep time with
his advancing footsteps, and to jerk the seed forward with considerable
force, in order to secure uniformity of distribution, cannot suddenly
stop when he approaches the hard trodden margin of the field. By habit
the right hand continues to execute its wonted movement in unison with
the sower’s steps as he is turning round; and thus a portion of the seed
is thrown on the unploughed border of the field and the public path that
skirts it. Birds, scared for a moment by the presence of the man, hover
in the air till his back is turned on another tack, and then, each eager
to be first, come swooping down, and swallow up all the grain that found
no soft place where it fell for hiding in. Even if it should happen in
any case that no birds were near, the seed that fell on the way side was
as surely destroyed in another way: the alternative suggested in Luke’s
narrative is, that “it is trodden under foot of men.”
But while the portion of the seed that fell on the way side was thus
certainly destroyed, it does not follow that the rest came to
perfection: “Some fell upon stony places, where they had not much earth:
and forthwith they sprung up, because they had no deepness of earth:
and when the sun was up they were scorched; and because they had no
root, they withered away.” The stony places are not portions of the
field where many separate stones may be seen lying on the surface, but
portions which consist of continuous rock underneath, with a thin
sprinkling of soft soil over it. Here the young plants burst through the
ground sooner than in spots where the seed found a deeper bed: but when
the rains of spring have ceased, and the sun of summer has waxed hot,
the moisture is quickly exhaled from the shallow stratum of soil, and
forthwith the fair promise dies.
But yet another slip there may be “between the cup and the lip:” even
from the seed that falls on deep, soft ground, you cannot count with
certainty on a rich return in harvest. Although the plants should
without obstruction strike their roots deeply into the soft, moist
earth, and rear their stalks aloft into the balmy air, they may be
rendered barren at last by the simultaneous growth of rivals more
imperious and more powerful than themselves. Unless the grain not only
grow in deeply broken ground, but grow alone there, it cannot be
fruitful: “Some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up and choked
it.” Besides those plants that are more correctly denominated thorns, we
may include under the term here all rank weeds, varying with countries
and climates, which infest the soil and hurt the harvest. The green
stalks that grow among thorns are neither withered in spring, nor
stunted in their summer’s growth; they may be found in harvest taller
than their fruitful neighbours; but the ear is never filled, never
ripened, and the reaper gets nothing in his arms but long slender straw
adorned at the top with graceful clusters of empty chaff. The roots of
the thorns drank up the sap of the ground, while their branches veiled
off the sunlight, and thus the good seed, starved beneath and
overshadowed above, although it started fair in spring, produced nothing
in the autumn.
As Truth is one and Error manifold, so in regard to the seed sown, the
story of failure is long and varied, the story of success is short and
simple: “Other fell into good ground, and brought forth fruit, some an
hundredfold, some sixtyfold, some thirtyfold.” The design of the picture
is to reveal the various causes which at different times and places
render the husbandman’s labour abortive and leave his garner empty. This
done, there is no need of more. The seed, when none of these things
impeded it, prospered as a matter of course, under the ordinary care of
man and the ordinary gifts of God.
Three distinct obstructions to the growth and ripening of the seed are
enumerated in the parable. The statement is exact, and the order
transparent. The natural sequences are strictly and beautifully
maintained. The three causes of abortion—the way side, the stony
ground, and the thorns—follow each other as the spring, the summer, and
the autumn. In the first case the seed does not spring at all; in the
second it springs, but dies before it grows up; in the third, it grows
up, but does not ripen. If it escape the way side, the danger of the
stony ground lies before it; if it escape the stony ground, the thorns
at a later stage threaten its safety; and it is only when it has
successively escaped all three that it becomes fruitful at length.
In this case, the Lord himself gave both the parable and its
explanation; he became his own interpreter. The Master takes us, like
little children, by the hand and leads us through all the turnings of
his first symbolic lesson, lest in our inexperience we should miss our
way. The Son of God not only gave himself as a sacrifice for sin; he
also laboured as a patient painstaking teacher of the ignorant: he is
the Apostle as well as the High Priest of our profession. His
instructions have been recorded by the Spirit in the Scriptures for our
use; we may still sit at his feet and listen to his voice. He has taken
his seat on the deck of a fishing-boat while the waters of the lake are
still, and is discoursing to a congregation of Galileans from the
neighbourhood who stand clustering on the shore. Let us join the
outskirts of the crowd and hear that heavenly Teacher too.
He speaks in parables: he fixes saving truth in the forms of familiar
things, that it may be carried away and kept. We look with lively
interest on the scene which these words conjure up before our eyes; but
we should look on it reverently: it has not been given to us as a
plaything. Gaze gravely, brother, into this parable, for “thou art the
man” of whom it speaks: it reveals the way of life and the way of death
to thee. If a traveller who possesses an accurate map of his route turn
aside from it and perish in a pit, it will not avail him in his
extremity to reflect that he carries the correct track in his hand.
Alas! a literary admiration of the parable-stories which Jesus told in
Galilee will not avail us, if we do not accept himself as our Saviour
from sin.
From the Lord’s own exposition here and elsewhere recorded, we learn
that the seed is the word of God; that the sower is the man who makes it
known to his neighbours; and that the ground on which the seed falls is
the hearer’s heart. The main drift of the parable concerns the ground,
and to it accordingly our attention must be chiefly directed. The
lesson, however, is drawn, not from the inherent, essential properties
of the soil, but from the accidental obstructions to the growth of grain
which it may in certain circumstances contain: some notice, therefore,
of the seed and the sower in their spiritual signification is not only
profitable at this stage, but peremptorily necessary to the full
apprehension of the instruction which the parable conveys.
Seed has been created by God and given to man. If it were lost, it would
be impossible through human power and skill to procure a new supply: the
race would, in that case, perish, unless the Omnipotent should interfere
again with his creating power. For spiritual life and food the fallen
are equally helpless, and equally dependent on the gift of God. The seed
is the word, and the word is contained in the Scriptures. When we drop a
verse of the Bible into listening ears, we are sowing the seed of the
kingdom.
The seed is the word, but the Word is Christ: “In the beginning was the
Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God ... and the Word
was made flesh and dwelt among us,” (John i.) Christ is the living seed,
and the Bible is the husk that holds it. The husk that holds the seed is
the most precious thing in the world, next after the seed that it holds.
The Lord himself precisely defines from this point of view the place and
value of the Scriptures,—“They are they which testify of me”
(John v. 39). The seed of the kingdom is himself the King. Nor is there
any inconsistency in representing Christ as the seed while he was in the
first instance also the sower. Most certainly he preached the Saviour,
and also was the Saviour whom he preached. The incident in the synagogue
at Nazareth (Luke iv. 16–22) is a remarkably distinct example of Christ
being at once the Sower and the Seed. When he had read the lesson of
the day, a glorious prophetic gospel from Isaiah, “he closed the book,
and gave it again to the minister, and sat down. And the eyes of all
them that were in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to
say unto them, This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” As
soon as he had taken from the Scriptures the proclamation concerning
himself, he laid them aside, and presented himself to the people. The
Saviour preached the Saviour, himself the Sower and himself the Seed.
In the beginning of the Gospel, when the chosen band of sowers first
went to work upon the ample field of the world, taught of the Spirit,
they knew well what seed they ought to carry, and were ever ready to
cast it in where they saw an opening. One of them, and he the greatest,
formed and expressed a determination to know nothing among the people
save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. Twice in one chapter (Acts viii.),
we learn incidentally, but with great precision, what kind of seed
Philip the Evangelist carried always in his vessel, and cast into every
furrow as he passed along. When a large congregation assembled in the
city of Samaria to hear him, “he preached Christ unto them;” and when,
on a subsequent occasion, he was called to deal with an anxious inquirer
alone in the desert, “he opened his mouth and began at the same
scripture”—He was led as a lamb to the slaughter—“and preached unto
him Jesus.” This is the seed sent down from heaven to be the life of the
world.
The Sowers, although they have become a great company in these latter
days, are still, like the reapers, “few” in relation to the vastness of
the field. The Lord’s message to Ananias of Damascus concerning Saul,
immediately after his conversion, graphically defines the office of a
minister as a sower of the seed: “He is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear
my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel”
(Acts ix. 15). A vessel for holding Christ and dropping that precious
seed into human hearts wherever an opening should appear—this is the
true idea of a minister of the Gospel. Nor is the work confined to those
who, being trained to it, and freed from other cares, may thereby be
capable of conducting it on a larger scale. As every leaf of the forest
and every ripple on the lake, which itself receives a sunbeam on its
breast, may throw the sunbeam off again, and so spread the light around;
in like manner, every one, old or young, who receives Christ into his
heart may and will publish with his life and lips that blessed name. In
the spirit of the Lord’s own precept regarding the harvest, we may all
be encouraged to adopt and press the prayer that our Father, the
husbandman, would send forth sowers into his field.
We turn now to the Ground, and the various obstacles which there
successively meet the seed and mar its fruitfulness.
I. The Way side.—“When any one heareth the word of the kingdom, and
understandeth it not, then cometh the wicked one, and catcheth away that
which was sown in his heart. This is he which received seed by the way
side.” A path beaten smooth by the feet of travellers skirts the edge,
or, perhaps, runs by way of short cut through the middle of the field.
The seed that falls there, left exposed on the surface, is picked up and
devoured by birds. Behold in one picture God’s gracious offer, man’s
self-destroying neglect, and the tempter’s coveted opportunity!
The analogy being true to nature is instantly recognised and easily
appreciated. There is a condition of heart which corresponds to the
smoothness, hardness, and wholeness of a frequented footpath, that
skirts or crosses a ploughed field. The spiritual hardness is like the
natural in its cause as well as in its character. The place is a
thoroughfare; a mixed multitude of this world’s affairs tread over it
from day to day, and from year to year. It is not fenced like a garden,
but exposed like an uncultivated common. That secret of the Lord, “Enter
into thy closet,” and “shut the door,” is unknown; or if known,
neglected. The soil, trodden by all comers, is never broken up and
softened by a thorough self-searching. A human heart may thus become
marvellously callous both to good and evil. The terrors of the Lord and
the tender invitations of the Gospel are alike ineffectual. Falling only
upon the external senses, they are swept off by the next current; as the
solid grain thrown from the sower’s hand rattles on the smooth hard road
side, and lies on the surface till the fowls carry it away. The parallel
between the material and the moral here is more close and visible in the
original than it appears in the English version. But our language is
capable in this instance, like the Greek, of expressing by one phrase
equally the moral and the material failure: “Every one that hears the
word of the kingdom and does not take it in” (μὴ συνιέντος).
The cause of the failure in both departments is, that the soil, owing to
its hardness, does not take the seed into its bosom.
The seed is good: “The word of God is quick and powerful;”—that is, it
“is living, and puts forth energy.”9 Like buried moistened seed it
swells and bursts, and forces its way through opposing obstacles. A
heart of clay, smoothed and hardened on the surface, may hold it out for
a lifetime; but a heart of stone could not keep it down, if it were once
admitted, for a single day.
“Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world;” “If
any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink;” “Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;”—these and many such great solid
seed-grains rain from heaven upon us in this land: shall we close all
the avenues to our hearts and so leave that seed lying on the surface
till the enemy carry it away? or shall the groanings which cannot be
uttered, the convictions of sin in the conscience, rend at length the
seared crust, that the seed may enter and occupy the life for God?
If privileged and professing hearers of the Gospel come short of the
kingdom, the fault lies not in the seed—the fault lies not often or to
a great extent even in the sower, although his work may have been feebly
and unskilfully done. If the seed is good, and the ground well prepared,
a very poor and awkward kind of sowing will suffice. Seed flung in any
fashion into the soft ground will grow; whereas, if it fall on the way
side, it will bear no fruit, however artfully it may have been spread.
My father was a practical and skilful agriculturist. I was wont, when
very young, to follow his footsteps into the field, further and oftener
than was convenient for him or comfortable for myself. Knowing well how
much a child is gratified by being permitted to imitate a man’s work, he
sometimes hung the seed-bag, with a few handfuls in it, upon my
shoulder, and sent me into the field to sow. I contrived in some way to
throw the grain away, and it fell among the clods. But the seed that
fell from an infant’s hands, when it fell in the right place, grew as
well and ripened as fully as that which had been scattered by a strong
and skilful man. In like manner, in the spiritual department, the skill
of the sower, although important in its own place, is, in view of the
final result, a subordinate thing. The cardinal points are the seed and
the soil. In point of fact, throughout the history of the Church, while
the Lord has abundantly honoured his own ordinance of a standing
ministry, he has never ceased to show, by granting signal success to
feeble instruments, that results in his work are not necessarily
proportionate to the number of talents employed.
Nor does the cause of failure, in the last resort, lie in the soil. The
man who receives the Gospel only on the hard surface of a careless life,
is of the same flesh and blood, endued with the same understanding mind
and immortal spirit, with his neighbour who has already become a new
creature in Christ. Believers and unbelievers are possessed of the same
nature and faculties. As the ground which has been trodden into a
footpath is in all its essential qualities the same as that which has
been broken small by the plough and harrow, so the human constitution
and faculties of one who lives without God in the world are
substantially the same as those which belong to the redeemed of the
Lord. It was the breaking of the ground which caused the difference
between the fruitful field and the barren way side. So those minds and
hearts that now bear the fruits of faith were barren till they were
broken; and those on which the good seed has often been thrown, only to
be thrown away, may yet yield an increase of a hundredfold to their
owner, when conviction and repentance shall have rent them open to
admit the word of life.
Felix the Roman governor was a specimen of the trodden way side. His
heart, worn by the cares of business and the pleasures of sin passing in
great volume alternately over it, presented no opening for the entrance
of the Gospel. Paul accordingly, when called to preach before him, did
not, in the first instance, pour out the simple positive message of
mercy: he reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come;
thus plying the seared conscience with the terrors of the Lord, in the
hope of breaking thereby the covering crust and preparing a seed bed for
the word of life. But the earth, in that case, was as iron, and refused
to yield even to an apostle’s blow. From the heart of Felix the message
of mercy was effectually shut out. The jailer of Philippi was doubtless
equally hard in a more vulgar sphere, but his defences were shattered:
in that night of visitation his heart was rent as well as his prison,
and over the openings, while they were fresh, the skilful sower promptly
dropped the vital seed, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou
shalt be saved.” The word entered, and its entrance gave life.
At this point the parable addresses its lesson specifically to those who
have lived without God in the world, and who have lived in the main
comparatively at ease. They have not a real heart-possessing,
life-controlling religion, and they have never been very sorry for the
want of it. They have no part in Christ, and no cheering hope for
eternity. They are not ready to die; and yet they cannot keep death at
bay. They know that they ought to care for their souls, but in point of
fact they do not care; they know there is cause to be alarmed, and yet
they are not alarmed. They neither grieve for sin nor love the Saviour;
yet perhaps a dark cloud-like thought sometimes sweeps across their
brightest sky—We have not yet gone in by the open door of mercy, and
while we are delaying it may be suddenly shut.
The case might be understood well enough by those whom it concerns, if
the same amount of attention were bestowed upon it that is ordinarily
devoted to other branches of business. See the hard dry road that runs
along the edge of a corn field: you are not surprised to find it barren
in a harvest day; you know that grain, although sown there, would not
grow, and you know the reason. The reason why the Gospel does you no
good may be as clearly, as surely seen. Cares, vanities, passions, tread
in constant succession over your heart, and harden it, so that the word
of Christ, though it sound on the surface, never goes in, and never gets
hold. Think not that the saints are by nature of another kind: they were
once what you are, and you may yet become what they are, and more.
“Break up your fallow ground.” Look into your own heart’s sin until you
begin to grieve over it; look unto Jesus bearing sin until you begin to
love him for his love. Tell God frankly in prayer that your heart is
hard, and plead for the Holy Spirit to make it tender. The saints
already in rest, and disciples in the body still, were once a trodden
way side like yourself, as hard and as barren. Place your heart, as they
did, without reserve in the Redeemer’s hands; bid him take the hardness
out and make it new. Invite the Word himself to take up his abode within
you; throw the doors widely open that the King of Glory may come in.
When Christ shall dwell in your heart by faith, a godly sorrow
underneath will soften every faculty of your nature, and over all the
surface fruits of righteousness will grow.
II. The Stony Ground.—A human heart, the soil on which the sower casts
his seed, is in itself and from the first hard both above and below; but
by a little easy culture, such as most people in this land may enjoy,
some measure of softness is produced on the surface. Among the
affections, when they are warm and newly stirred, the seed speedily
springs. Many young hearts, subjected to the religious appliances which
abound in our time, take hold of Christ and let him go again. This, on
the one hand, as we learn by the result, was never a true conversion;
but neither was it, on the other hand, a case of conscious, intentional
deceit. It was real, but it was not thorough. Something was given to
Christ, but because all was not given the issue was the same as if all
had been withheld. In the rich young man the seed sprang hopefully, but
it withered soon: he did not lightly part with Christ, but he parted: he
was very sorrowful, but he went away.
A Christian parent or pastor, diligent in his main business and fervent
in prayer for success, observes at length in some young members of his
charge a new tenderness of conscience, an earnest attention to the word,
a subdued, reverential spirit, with frequency and fervency in prayer.
With mingled hope and fear these symptoms are watched and cherished: the
symptoms continue and increase: the converts are added to the Church,
and perhaps their experience is narrated as an example. This is not a
deception on the part of either teacher or scholar: it is a true
outgrowth from the contact of human hearts with the word of life. Man,
who looks only on the outward appearance, cannot with certainty
determine in whom this promise of spring will be blasted by the summer
heat, and in whom it will yield a manifold return to the reaper. When
you cast your eye over the corn field soon after the seed has sprung,
you may not be able to detect any difference between one portion and
another; all may be alike fresh and green. But, if some parts of the
field be deep soft soil, and other parts only a thin sprinkling of earth
over unbroken rock, there is a decisive difference in secret even now,
and the difference will ere long become visible to all. Come back and
look upon the same field after it has lain a few days without rain under
a scorching sun: you will find that while in some portions the young
plants have increased in bulk without losing any of their freshness, in
others the green covering has disappeared and left the ground as brown
and bare as it was when the sower went forth to sow upon it. Where the
earth is soft underneath, and so permits the roots to penetrate its
depths, the towering stalks defy the summer’s drought; but where the
roots are shut out from the heart, the leaves wither on the surface.
If the law of God has never rent the “stony heart” and made it
“contrite,” that is, bruised it small, you may, by receiving the Gospel
on some temporary, superficial softness of nature, obtain your religion
more easily and quickly than others who have been more deeply exercised;
but you may perhaps not be able to hold it so fast or retain it so long.
Testing trials are the method of the divine government, discipline the
order of Christ’s house. He that endureth to the end shall be saved, but
he that falls away in the middle shall not. The fair profession that
grows over an unhumbled heart “dureth for a while,” but does not endure
to the end. When tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word,
the religion which reached no further than the surface cannot maintain
its place there; it withers root and branch. The inward affection, such
as it was, and the outward profession together disappear. From him that
hath not shall be taken even that which he seemeth to have.
In the earlier centuries of the Christian era the profession of faith,
when lightly assumed, was frequently and suddenly scorched off the
so-called Christian’s lips by the pitiless persecution of heathen
governments: in subsequent ages, and down even to our own day, Papal
fires have burned fiercely in many lands, and before them every faith
has faded except that which is of God’s own planting, and grows in the
secret depths of believing souls. Nationally for several generations we
have enjoyed freedom; but let us beware. The divine law, “All that will
live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer persecution” (2 Tim. iii. 12),
has not been repealed. Nor is this merely a caveat thrown in to keep our
theology correct; it is a present and pressing truth. In every season
and in every climate the sun of persecution is hot enough to kill the
religion which grows in accidentally softened, natural affections, over
a whole and unhumbled heart. Experience incontestably establishes the
fact, although it may be difficult for philosophy to explain the reason
of it, that slight persecutions have often been as effectual as the
heaviest in blasting the deceptive appearance of religion, which, under
favouring circumstances, grew for a time in the life of an unrenewed
man. In point of fact, a sneer from some leading spirit in a literary
society, or a laugh raised by a gay circle of pleasure-seekers in a
fashionable drawing-room, or the rude jest of scoffing artisans in a
work-shop, may do as much as the fagot and the stake to make a fair but
false disciple deny his Lord.
Young disciples, whose faith and hope are bursting through the ground,
should be, not indeed distrustful of the Lord, but jealous of
themselves. “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.”
Deeper sense of sin, clearer views of the Gospel, warmer love to
Christ,—these are the safeguards against backsliding. Strive and pray
for these. Do not keep Christ on the surface; let him possess the
centre, and thence direct all the circumference of your life. “Whosoever
will save his life,” by keeping its central mass all and whole for
himself, “shall lose it; and whosoever will lose his life for my sake,”
opening and abandoning it to Christ from its circumference to its core,
“shall find it.” It is then only his own, when he has without reserve
absolutely given it away.
It seems to have been after the manner of the seed on stony ground that
king Saul’s faith grew and withered. It came away quickly at first, and
presented a goodly appearance for a while; but the ground, broken and
softened on the surface by Samuel’s ministry and the call to the
kingdom, was rocky underneath, and the rock was never rent. When he was
seated on the throne, with the thousands of Israel coming and going at
his word, he began to feel the restraints of piety irksome, and to count
the rebukes of the aged prophet rude. The sun of prosperity scorched the
green growth of religious profession that had suddenly overspread his
outward life. Michal, his daughter, better acquainted, probably, with
the kingly airs of his later than with the pious confession of his
earlier days, seems to have partaken of his inward hardness while she
had no share of his superficial piety. Like him, she was ungodly in the
depths of her soul; but unlike him, she disdained to wear the outward
garb of godliness. When she exerted all the force of her irony in order
to make her husband David ashamed of his own zeal in dancing before the
Lord, she truly reflected the inner spirit though not the external
profession of her father’s court. That taunt from the supercilious,
curling lip of the royal princess, who had honoured him by consenting to
become his wife, was a burning ray of persecution streaming on David’s
defenceless head. If his religion had been confined to the surface,
while the pomp and circumstance of royalty occupied his heart, it would
have died out then and there, as the tender sprouting corn, whose roots
rest on a rock, dies out under the scorching sun of Galilee. But David’s
faith was deep, and it ripened rather than withered under the scornful
glance of the worldly-minded princess, as corn, growing in good ground,
fills better and ripens sooner where the sky is cloudless and the sun is
fierce.
That deep-seated stony hardness of heart which defies all the efforts of
human cultivators is often broken small by the hand of God. It appears
that Lydia, through natural temperament or association with Christians,
or both together, had attained some measure of spiritual susceptibility,
for she confessed the truth and attended the prayer-meeting by the river
side; but the seed of the word which had sprung on the surface of her
life had not yet struck its root so deep as to withstand persecution if
it should arise. She is described as a woman who sold purple and
worshipped God: she had an honest business and a true religion, and were
not these enough? No; the next fact of her history was the cardinal
point of her life,—“whose heart the Lord opened that she attended to
the things that were spoken of Paul.” The seed from that skilful sower’s
hand went in and took possession, but it entered at an opening made by
the power of God. Whether the rock was rent by the dew of the Spirit
dropping silently, or by some stroke of Providence falling on her person
or her material interests, we know not. If ordinary providential
methods were employed, we know not, of the many instruments that lie
close to the Ruler’s hand, which he was pleased to use in that
particular case. Perhaps the child of this honest and religious woman
died, and her bosom, bereft of its treasure, rent with aching. Perhaps,
on the day that Paul was there, she came to the meeting for the first
time in widow’s weeds, and the stroke that tore her other self away had
left a wide avenue open into her heart. Perhaps,—for small instruments
do great execution when they are wielded by an almighty arm,—an adverse
turn of trade had left the hitherto affluent matron dependent on a
neighbour’s bounty for daily bread. Were other dealers, less
scrupulously honourable than herself, underselling her in the market?
Was her foreman unsteady? for, being a woman, she must needs depend much
on hired helpers. Or did a living husband grieve her more than a dead
one could? By some such instrument, or by another diverse from them all,
or without any visible agent, the Lord opened Lydia’s heart, and the
word of life entered in power. Henceforth she was not her own; Christ
dwelt in her heart by faith, and her life was devoted to the Lord her
Redeemer. Deep in that broken heart the seed is rooted, and now no
temptation, however intense and long-continued, shall be able to blanch
its green blade or blast its filling ear. Lord, increase our faith. When
trouble comes, whether under the ordinary procedure of God’s government
or more directly from his hand, whether in the form of bodily suffering
or spiritual convictions, possess your soul in patience and wait for the
end of the Lord. “No chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous,
but grievous; nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of
righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Heb. xii. 11).
III. The Thorns.—In the application of the lesson this term must be
understood not specifically, but generically. In the natural object it
indicates any species of useless weed that occupies the ground and
injures the growing crop: in the spiritual application it points to the
worldly cares, whether they spring from poverty or wealth, which usurp
in a human heart the place due to Christ and his saving truth.
The earthly affections in the heart which render religion unfruitful in
the life are enumerated under two heads,—“The care of this world,” and
“the deceitfulness of riches;” the term riches includes also, as we may
gather from Luke’s narrative, the pleasures which riches procure.
Both from our own experience in the world and the specific terms
employed by the Lord in the interpretation of the parable, we learn that
all classes and all ranks are on this side exposed to danger. This is
not a rich man’s business, or a poor man’s; it is every man’s business.
The words point to the two extremes of worldly condition, and include
all that lies between them. “The care of the world” becomes the snare of
those who have little, and “the deceitfulness of riches,” the snare of
those who have much. Thus the world wars against the soul, alike when it
smiles and when it frowns. Rich and poor have in this matter no room and
no right to cast stones at each other. Pinching want and luxurious
profusion are, indeed, two widely diverse species of thorns; but when
favoured by circumstances they are equally rank in their growth and
equally effective in destroying the precious seed.
In two distinct aspects thorns, growing in a field of wheat, reflect as
a mirror the kind of spiritual injury which the cares and pleasures of
the world inflict when they are admitted into the heart: they exhaust
the soil by their roots, and overshadow the corn with their branches.
1. Thorns and thistles occupying the field suck in the sap which should
go to nourish the good seed, and leave it a living skeleton. The
capability of the ground is limited. The agriculturist scatters as much
seed in the field as it is capable of sustaining and bringing to
maturity. When weeds of rank growth spring up, their roots greedily and
masterfully drain the soil of its fatness for their own supply; and as
there is not enough both for them and the grain stalks, the weakest goes
to the wall. The lawful, useful, but feeble grain is deprived of its
sustenance by the more robust intruder. Under the ground as well as on
its surface, might crushes right. Robbers fatten on the spoil of loyal
citizens, and loyal citizens are left to starve. Moreover, the weeds are
indigenous in the soil: this is proved by the simple fact of their
presence, for certainly they were not sown there by the husbandman’s
hand. The grain, on the other hand, is not native; it must be brought to
the spot and sown; it must be cherished and protected as a stranger. The
two occupants of the ground, consequently, are not on equal terms; it is
not a fair fight. The thorns are at home; the wheat is an exotic. The
thorns are robust and can hold their own; the wheat is delicate and
needs a protector. The weeds accordingly grow with luxuriance, while the
wheat stalks in the neighbourhood, cheated of their sustenance under
ground, become tall, empty, barren straws.
2. Thorns and thistles, favoured as indigenous plants by the
suitableness of soil and climate, outgrow the grain both in breadth and
height. The outspread leaves and branches of the weeds constitute a
thick screen between the ears of corn and the sunshine. Under that
blighting shadow, although the stalks may grow tall and the husks
develop themselves in their own exquisite natural forms, no solid seed
is formed or ripened. On the spot which the thorns usurped, the reaper
gathers only straw and chaff.
How vivid on both its sides is the picture, and how truthfully it
represents the case! The faculties of the human heart and mind are
limited, like the productive powers of the ground. Neither the
understanding nor the affections are endowed with an indefinite capacity
of reception. The soil, even where it is rich and deep, may be soon
exhausted, especially where the more gross and greedy weeds have taken
up their abode. You are convinced of sin and begin to cry for pardon;
you plead the Redeemer’s sacrifice and righteousness; you grieve over
your own backsliding, and come anew to the blood of sprinkling; the twin
emotions, confession and prayer, struggle together in your breast,
“Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” Thus far, it is well. The
field has been broken; the seed has been covered in the ground; the
covered seed has sprung; the sprung seed has grown apace and now seems
near maturity. The evil spirit that seeks to spoil this fair promise
seldom comes in the form of speculative unbelief. When you begin to fall
away, you do not begin by abjuring your religion, or denying the Lord.
You do not pull the grown but unripe corn up by the roots and cast it
over the hedge: the harvest is marred in a more secret and silent way.
The kingdom of the wicked one, cunningly in this matter imitating the
kingdom of God, “cometh not with observation.” Weeds spring up among the
wheat. At first they are small and scarcely perceptible; the
inexperienced, apprehending no danger, are put off their guard. The
first leaves which these bitter roots put forth are generally smooth,
tender, and apparently harmless, giving to the inexperienced eye no
indication of their rough and ravenous nature. But these thorns, if they
are not watched, curbed, and killed, may yet cause the loss of the soul.
If you are poor, anxieties about work and wages, clothes and food, wife
and children, become the thorn plants, harmless in appearance at first,
which in the end may choke the seed of grace in your heart. If you are
rich, the pleasure which wealth may purchase, or love of the wealth
itself, may become the bitter root, which in its maturity may overpower
all spiritual life within you, and leave only chaff, to be driven away
in the great day of the Lord. Watch and pray: these cares and pleasures
present themselves at first in humble and submissive guise; it is by
their gradual growth that they are enabled to inflict a deadly injury.
Their roots, if not checked, silently drain all the sap of your soul,
and the kingdom of God within you, although never formally abjured, is
permitted to sink into decay. Your time, your memory, your imagination,
your affections, your thoughts, late and early,—all that constitutes
your life, instead of being devoted first to the kingdom of God and his
righteousness, are usurped and absorbed by the things that perish in the
using. When you betake yourself to the word, to prayer, to communion,
your heart, already searched, drained, scourged by the greedy roots of
rank earthly lusts, is a sapless, impoverished, shrivelled thing, where
faith in God and loving obedience to his law can no longer grow. Thus
perish many bright promises; and high above the ruin, living and abiding
for ever stands the word of Christ a witness against all who have been
undone by neglecting it, “No man can serve two masters.”
Worldly cares nursed by indulgence into a dangerous strength are further
like thorns growing in a corn field, in that they interpose a veil
between the face of Jesus and the opening, trustful look of a longing
soul. It is the want of free, habitual exposure to the Sun of
righteousness that prevents the ripening of grace in Christians. Unless
we turn our eye often upward, and expose the struggling, springing seed
of faith to the beams of the Redeemer’s love, there will be no steady
growth of grace, and no ultimate fruit of righteousness. It is thus that
insinuating, overspreading, domineering cares quench both hope and
holiness: they hinder the simple, tender, confiding look unto Jesus
which is necessary to the increase or maintenance of spiritual life. The
love of Christ freely streaming down from heaven through the Scriptures
and by the ministry of the Spirit, when freely admitted into an open,
willing heart, by degrees turns fear into hope, doubt into faith, and
the feeble struggle of a child into the strong man’s glorious victory;
as unimpeded sunlight converts the minute mustard seed into a towering
tree, and the tender sprouts of spring into the golden treasures of
harvest. A thickly woven web of cares and pleasures interposed between
the soul and the Saviour is a chief cause of failure in “God’s
husbandry.”
Nor is the harvest safe although the thorny shade that overhangs it be
not completely impervious and constant. Fitful glances of sunshine now
and then will not bring the fruit to maturity. Stand beneath the
branches of a forest tree on a day that is at once bright and breezy:
you may observe on the ground at your feet a curious network of
flickering light trembling and dancing about in perpetual motion. The
sunbeams that penetrate at intervals through openings among the agitated
branches are barren though beautiful. The grass that gets no other
light grows slim and pithless, bearing no seed-knot on its slender top.
Sunlight admitted now and then through apertures in the leafy awning is
not sufficient for the processes of nature; the grain field must get its
bosom opened without impediment permanently to the sun. It is thus that
snatches of spiritual exercise do not avail to promote the growth, or
even to preserve the life of grace in a heart that in the main is
habitually overshadowed by a crowd of overgrown imperious worldly cares.
Evening and morning you may open the Bible and bend the knee, but the
tender plant of righteousness in your heart is not effectually revived
by these brief and fitful glances. Before the drooping leaves have had
time to feel the genial warmth, another cloud has closed the orifice and
left them again in the chill damp shade. Even the Lord’s day, as a gap
left open between earth and heaven, is not by any means so wide as it
seems; for the memory of the past week’s business and pleasure stretches
over on the one side, until it meet, or almost meet, the anticipation of
the next week’s business and pleasure, so that even on the Sabbath the
world still overshadows the soul of its votary. Shut out, except at
short and uncertain intervals, from the Light of Life, he passes through
the summer of his probation with a well-proportioned but empty form of
godliness; and the Lord, when he comes at the close to gather the wheat
into his garner, finds on that portion of the field only the rustling
chaff of a hollow profession, instead of the fruit unto holiness that
grows on living souls.
Some lessons suggest themselves in connection with this portion of the
parable, and claim a brief notice at our hand.
1. As the thorns are indigenous and spring of their own accord, while
the good seed must be sown and cherished; so, vain thoughts, lodged in
our hearts from the dawn of our being, have the advantage of first
possession, and get the start of their competitors in the race for
supremacy. Lurking unobserved between the folds of nature’s faculties,
before the understanding is developed, they come away early and grow
rapidly, and obtain a firm footing before the saving truth, the seed of
the kingdom, has burst the kernel and broken through the ground. Crucify
the flesh with its affections and lusts; begin that work early, and
persevere in that work to the end.
2. As long as the weeds live they grow. Every moment, until they are
cast out of the field, they spread themselves more widely over its
surface and drain away more of its nutritive juice. Delay is dangerous.
If it be painful to pull out the root of bitterness from your heart
to-day, it will be more painful to-morrow. Take for example the love of
money: we know well that though money is a useful servant it is a hard
master; be assured if it get and keep the mastery of a soul, its little
finger in the end will be thicker than its loins were at the beginning.
Avarice chastises its slave in middle life with whips; but if he abide
its slave, it will chastise him when he is old with scorpions.
3. The thorn is a prickly thing; it tears the husbandman’s flesh, as
well as destroys the fruit of his field. In like manner the care of the
world and the deceitfulness of riches lacerate the man who permits them
to grow rank in his heart. The vain man is continually meeting with
slights, or suspecting that his neighbours are about to offer them. The
miser is always losing money, or trembling lest he should lose it in
the next transaction. The world itself knows, and in its proverbs
confesses, that around the most coveted pleasures are set sharp thorns,
which wound the hand that tries to pluck the rose.
4. It was where the seed and the thorns grew together that the mischief
was done. If the grain is permitted to occupy alone the heart of the
field, the thorns that grow outside and around it may constitute a hedge
of defence, not only harmless but useful. There is a place for cares,
and for riches too,—a place in which they help and do not hinder the
kingdom of God. Kept in its own sphere, the lawful business of life
becomes a protecting fence round the tender plant of grace in a
Christian’s heart. Permit not the thorns to occupy the position which is
due to the good seed. Not as rivals within the field, but as guards
around it, earthly affairs are innocent and safe. “Seek first the
kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be
added unto you.”
5. When the husbandman perceives a huge prickly weed in the midst of his
field robbing and overshadowing the corn, he sends his servant to cast
out the intruder. In such a case, a bare spot is left where the thistle
grew; but at this stage experiences diverge and travel on different
lines towards opposite results. In some cases the blank is soon made up
again, and the corn waves level like a lake over all the field, so that
none could tell where the thistle stood: in others, the blank caused by
the removal of a rank weed remains a blank throughout the summer,
presenting to the reapers in harvest only a spot of bare ground. Why do
opposite effects proceed from similar operations? Time was the turning
point. In the one case the weed was torn out at an early period of the
summer; in the other case it was torn out too late.
We have often seen a soul placed in imminent danger by the overgrowth of
cares or pleasures that threatened by their rankness to choke the seed
of the word; and we have afterwards seen that soul delivered from the
danger, by a stroke of God’s providence that plucked out the weeds in
time. Many of the saved both in earth and in heaven now praise the Lord,
because he tore the idols from their hearts and spared not for their
crying. The love of Christ that had been planted in their youth, and
had, though hard pressed, still kept hold, soon spread again and
occupied all the empty space, whence the fortune, or fame, or living
treasures dearer still, had been plucked. When he came to himself, that
disciple, afflicted sore but comforted again, clearly saw and gladly
sang the mercy and judgment joined together that had cleared the room
for Christ in his heart. But examples of an opposite experience, here
and there one, stand on the edge of life’s crowded highway, ghastly as
the pillar of salt on the plain of Sodom, burning into the soul of the
passenger the warning word, “Be in time.” An old man has, by the hand of
the Lord in providence, been stripped of all his treasures. These
treasures, whether they were in themselves the noblest or the
meanest,—for when a man made in the likeness of God abandons himself to
the worship of an idol, it matters little whether the idol be made of
fine gold or of dull clay,—these treasures possessed and filled his
heart. Round them his understanding and affections had closely clasped,
so that his whole nature had taken the mould of the object which it
grasped. In this attitude the man grew old: the faculties of his mind
became hard and rigid like the members of his body. The bosom, no
longer pliable to open by gentle pressure, was rudely rent, and its
portion in one lump wrenched away. A deep, broad, dark chasm, like the
valley of the shadow of death, was left: and the chasm remained dark and
empty to the end; for neither the affections of the old man’s soul nor
the joints of the old man’s frame would fold round another portion now.
Ah! the cares and pleasures that drove Christ from the heart may be cast
out too late for letting Christ come in again to occupy the empty room.
“Now is the accepted time; now is the day of salvation.” “To-day, if ye
will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.”
IV. The Good Ground.—Guided by the Great Teacher’s own interpretation,
we have travelled through the series of successive obstacles which
hinder the growth and mar the fruitfulness of God’s word in the hearts
of men,—travelled through, weeping as we went. At the close of this sad
but instructive journey, a beauteous sight bursts into view: it is a
field of ripe grain on a sunny harvest day. The ground was ploughed, and
the seed sank beneath it from the sower’s hand in spring; the earth was
soft and sapful to a sufficient depth, and the roots of the springing
corn found ample room to range in; the soil was clean, and its fatness,
not shared by usurping weeds, went all to the nourishment of the sown
seed: therefore in the balmy air and under the beaming sun it is ripe
to-day, and ready to fill the reaper’s bosom. It is a refreshing,
satisfying sight; but, fair though it be, we shall not now linger long
to gaze upon it. By the parable the Master meant mainly to teach us what
things are adverse to his kingdom. Having learned this lesson from his
lips, we go away grateful for his pungent, deeply-traced, and memorable
warnings, without pausing to examine minutely the glad prospect to which
our thorny path has led. The traveller who has come safely through many
dangers by flood and field, narrates at large, with burning lips and
throbbing heart, the varied toils of the journey; but his home,—he does
not describe, he enjoys it.10
While all the ground that was broken, deep, and clean in spring and
summer, bears fruit in harvest, some portions produce a larger return
than others. The picture in this feature is true to nature; and the fact
in the spiritual sphere also corresponds. There are diversities in the
Spirit’s operation; diversities in natural gifts bestowed on men at
first; diversities in the amount of energy exerted by believers as
fellow-workers with God in their own sanctification; and diversities,
accordingly, in the fruitfulness which results in the life of
Christians. While all believers are safe in Christ, each should covet
the best gifts. No true disciple will be contented with a thirtyfold
increase of faith, and patience, and humility, and love, and usefulness
in his heart and life for the Lord, if through prayer and watching—if
by denying ungodliness and worldly lusts—if by sternly crucifying the
flesh and trustfully walking with God, he may rise from thirty to sixty,
and from sixty to an hundredfold in that holy obedience which grows on
living faith.
←Contents
II. THE TARES.
“Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of
heaven is likened unto a man which sowed good seed in his field:
but while men slept, his enemy came and sowed tares among the
wheat, and went his way. But when the blade was sprung up, and
brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also. So the
servants of the householder came and said unto him, Sir, didst
not thou sow good seed in thy field? from whence then hath it
tares? He said unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants
said unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up? But
he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the tares, ye root up also
the wheat with them. Let both grow together until the harvest:
and in the time of harvest I will say to the reapers, Gather ye
together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them:
but gather the wheat into my barn.... Then Jesus sent the
multitude away, and went into the house: and his disciples came
unto him, saying, Declare unto us the parable of the tares of
the field. He answered and said unto them, He that soweth the
good seed is the Son of man; the field is the world; the good
seed are the children of the kingdom; but the tares are the
children of the wicked one; the enemy that sowed them is the
devil; the harvest is the end of the world; and the reapers are
the angels. As therefore the tares are gathered and burned in
the fire; so shall it be in the end of this world. The Son of
man shall send forth his angels, and they shall gather out of
his kingdom all things that offend, and them which do iniquity;
and shall cast them into a furnace of fire: there shall be
wailing and gnashing of teeth. Then shall the righteous shine
forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Who hath ears
to hear, let him hear.”—Matt. xiii. 24–30, 36–43.
As the main design of the first parable is to exhibit the kingdom in its
relation to unbelieving men, who, in various forms and with various
measures of aggravation, ultimately reject it; the main design of the
second is to exhibit the kingdom in its relation to the wicked one, who
endeavours, by cunning stratagem, to destroy it. In either case there is
a conflict: in the first, the conflict is waged chiefly between the
word, which is the seed of the kingdom, and the various evil
dispositions which impede its growth in the hearts of men; in the
second, the conflict is waged chiefly, as in the mysterious temptation
in the wilderness, between Christ, man’s Redeemer, and the devil, the
adversary of man. In the first parable the obstacles to the progress of
the kingdom lay in the heedlessness, the hardness, and the worldliness
of men; in the second, the old serpent is the opposer, and wicked men
are wielded as instruments in his hands.
The picture is sketched from nature; the lines are very few, but each
contributes a feature, and all, together, make the likeness complete.
A Galilean countryman, after having fenced and ploughed and cleaned his
field, has watched the condition of the soil and the appearance of the
sky, until he has found a day on which both were suitable for the grand
decisive operation of the season, the sowing of the seed. With anxiety,
but in hope, this critical and cardinal act is performed; the seed is
committed to the ground.
It was “good seed” that the careful husbandman cast among the clods. If
the last season’s crop was of inferior quality, he and his children have
cheerfully lived upon the worst, that the best might be reserved for
sowing; if the last crop was scanty, the family were content with a less
plentiful meal; and if none of the previous year’s produce was well
ripened, better grain has been bought in a distant market, that at all
hazards a sufficient quantity of good seed may be secured for the coming
season. Those only who have lived among them, and shared their lot, know
how much the poor but intelligent and industrious cultivators of the
soil will do and bear in order to preserve or obtain plenty of “good
seed.”
The great crisis of the season is now past; and the husbandman, wiping
his brow as he glances backward upon his completed work, goes home at
sunset with limbs somewhat weary, but a heart full of hope. The next
portion of the picture is of a dark and dismal hue. When the farmer and
his family, innocent and unsuspicious, are fast asleep, a neighbour, too
full of envy for enjoying rest, stalks forth into the same field under
cover of night, and with much labour scatters something broadcast over
its surface. He is secretly sowing tares, with the malicious design of
damaging or destroying the wheat. As soon as the deed of darkness is
done, he creeps stealthily back to his own bed, and in the morning, when
he meets his fellow-villagers, does his best to put on the air of an
innocent man.
Weeks pass; showers fall; the seed springs and covers all the ground
with beautiful green. The owner visited his field from time to time in
spring, and thought it promised well. But at that period of the summer,
still a good while before harvest, when the ears of the grain begin to
appear, some of the farmer’s servants, looking narrowly into the quality
of the crop, discovered that a large proportion of it was darnel.
Forthwith they reported the sad intelligence to their master, and
requested permission to pluck out the intruders. It was agreed among
them that good seed had been sown, and the darnel or false wheat was by
common consent and without hesitation set down as the work of an enemy.
As to the treatment of the disaster now that it had occurred, the
master’s judgment was clear, and his order explicit: to pull out the
darnel at this stage, as the servants proposed, would hurt the wheat
more than help it; both must be permitted to grow together till the
harvest; they may be safely and effectually separated then.
Some interesting questions connected with the natural objects claim our
regard in the first instance, before we proceed to investigate the
spiritual significance of the parable.
What are the tares? The original term does not elsewhere occur in
Scripture, and in the total absence of examples for comparison, it is
somewhat difficult to ascertain its precise signification. The word and
the thing which it signifies have exercised the learning and ingenuity
of expositors both in ancient and in modern times. On such a subject as
this it is on the line of natural history rather than philology that the
investigation should mainly proceed; there, from the nature of the case,
surer results may be obtained. Through the increased facility of making
local inquiries which has of late years been enjoyed, it is now known,
and apparently with one consent acknowledged by intelligent inquirers,
that the seed which the malicious neighbour sowed in order to injure the
produce of the field was Lolium temulentum, or darnel, a kind of false
wheat to which the Arabs of Palestine at this day apply a name (zowan)
which bears some resemblance to (ζιζανια) the original word in
the Greek text.11 It has long narrow leaves and an upright stalk, and
is indeed in all respects so like the wheat, that even an experienced
eye cannot distinguish the two plants until they are in ear: the
distinction then is manifest, and any one may observe it. The grains of
the darnel are not so heavy as the wheat, and not so compactly set upon
the stalk. They are poisonous, their specific effect both in man and in
beast being nausea and giddiness. The remark of Schubert in his “Natural
History,” quoted by Stier, that “this is the only poisonous grass,” is
deeply significant in relation to the spiritual meaning of the parable;
it suggests the reason why the Healer selected this plant as the symbol
of sin.
But another question meets us here, more obscure and difficult than
either the appearance or the characteristic effects of the darnel,—the
question whether it is originally a specifically different plant, or
only wheat degenerated. Some maintain that it is wheat which, by some
mysterious causes in the processes of nature, has fallen, as it were,
into a lower type. This view imparts additional fulness to the parable
in its spiritual application. So interpreted, the picture exhibits not
only the low estate of the sinful, but also the fact that they have
fallen from a higher. In such cases, however, there is some danger lest
the beauty and appropriateness of the conception should entice us to
receive it on insufficient evidence. The fact that some plants in
certain adverse circumstances tend to degenerate, and in certain
favourable circumstances to attain a higher type, is well known in
natural history; but it seems questionable whether these changes ever
take place to such an extent, and in such a uniform method, as must be
assumed if we take darnel for degenerated wheat. Agriculturists in
Palestine believe and declare, that, when the season is wet, the wheat
which they sow in certain fields in spring grows as zowan in harvest. It
is difficult for one who is accustomed to observe the uniformity of
nature in the reproduction of each species from its own seed, to believe
that transformations so great are accomplished at a single step. An
American writer, one of the latest authorities, and, in respect to his
abundant opportunities of observation, one of the best, bears witness
that he has often seen the wheat and barley fields overrun with darnel,
and that the native owners stoutly declare that the good wheat which
they sowed has been changed into the false in the process of growth
during a single season; but he intimates at the same time that he
believes the men are mistaken, and that the presence of the darnel must
be attributed to some other cause, and accounted for in some other
way.12 The suggestion that the same peculiarities of season which
destroy the sown wheat may favour the springing of the darnel, that had
lain in the ground dormant before, may possibly account for the present
experience of the Syrian cultivators; or the effects may be in whole or
in part due to other causes of which we are not cognizant; but the
solution of this question is by no means essential to the right
interpretation of the parable, and therefore we shall not prosecute the
investigation further in this direction.
Dr. Thomson gives unequivocal testimony, at the same time, that at the
present day no instance is known of the growth of darnel among the wheat
being caused by the malicious act of an enemy. This, however, as he
distinctly owns, does not prove that the transaction depicted in the
parable had no foundation in fact. It must have happened substantially
in history, otherwise it would not have been introduced as a supposition
into these lessons of the Lord. Some travellers have stated that this
species of crime is known in India; but I do not set much value on the
discovery of precisely identical facts in modern times. The existence of
the representation in this parable is, simply as a matter of rational
evidence, a tenfold stronger proof that the facts in their essential
features actually happened, than any quantity of analogous cases drawn
from other countries in later times. It is of greater importance to note
that the malice which endured the toil of sowing tares in a neighbour’s
field grows yet, and grows rankly in human breasts. In different ages
and regions, that spiritual wickedness may clothe itself in bodies of
diverse mould and hue, but it is in all times and places the same foul
and malignant spirit, acting according to its kind. The same spirit that
sowed darnel among wheat at night in a corn field of Galilee, two
thousand years ago, will set fire to a stackyard, or hamstring the
horses, or shoot the overseer from behind a hedge in our own day, and,
alas! in some parts of our own land. As in the highest good, so in the
deepest evil, there are diversities of operation by the same spirit.
When we take into account the changes of fashion which occur both in
clothing and in crime, we have no reason to be sceptical as to the
ancient fact, and no difficulty in obtaining a modern specimen.
From the results already gained, it appears obvious that the translation
“tares” in our English version is unfortunate: it not only fails to
represent clearly the state of the fact, but leads the reader’s mind
away in a wrong direction. To an English reader the term suggests a
species of legume, which bears no resemblance to wheat at any stage of
its progress. By the use of this word the characteristic feature of the
picture is greatly obscured. Had the plant which sprung from the envious
neighbour’s seed been a legume, its presence would have been detected at
the first, and it could have been separated at any stage. The darnel, on
the contrary, cannot be distinguished from wheat until both are nearly
ripe, and the process of separation, whether in the field or on the
threshing-floor, is much more difficult.
Again the Lord becomes his own interpreter: at the request of the
disciples he explained to them in private the meaning of his allegory.
The points are great, few, and clearly defined. In this journey the
Master has kindly gone before us; reverently, trustfully, we shall
follow his steps. “He that soweth the good seed is the Son of man; the
field is the world.” It is in connection with the “field” that the
greatest difficulty has occurred, the greatest mistakes have been made,
and the deepest injury has been done. Few words of Scripture are more
plain; and yet few have been more grievously misunderstood and wrested.
At the entrance of the inspired explanation, the expositor, bent on the
defence of his own foregone conclusion, takes his stand, like a
pointsman on a railway, and by one jerk turns the whole train into the
wrong line. “The field is the world,” said the Lord: “The field is the
Church,” say the interpreters. It is wearisome to read the reasonings by
which they endeavour to fortify their assumption. Having determined that
the field is the Church, they are compelled immediately to address
themselves to the great practical question of discipline. If they were
prepared to admit that there should be absolutely no discipline—that no
man should be shut out from communion, however heretical his opinions or
vicious his practice might be, their task under the general principle of
interpretation which they have adopted would be very easy. The command
is clear, cast none out of the “field,” however fully developed their
wickedness may be, until the angels make the separation between good and
evil at the consummation of all things. If the field means the Church,
the exclusion of the unworthy by a human ministry is absolutely
forbidden. But the expositors are not willing altogether to abandon
discipline. They maintain, on the one hand, that this parable deals with
and settles the question of the right to eject unworthy members from
the communion of the Church; and on the other hand, that while it
condemns excessive and puritanical strictness, it permits and justifies
the ejection of those who are manifestly unworthy. Most of the
commentaries that have come under my notice betray on this point
weakness and inconsistency. If by this feature of the parable the Lord
gives a decision on Church discipline, he forbids it out and out, in all
its forms, and in all its degrees. The separation suggested, he permits
not to be attempted at all, until he shall charge his angels to
accomplish it at the end of the world. In my judgment, to contend for
the right of excluding some of the ranker tares, after admitting that
this parable bears upon the subject of ecclesiastical discipline, tends
not only to perplex the student, but to throw a reflection on the
authority of the Word. I see only two doors open: either cease to hold
that the field is the Church, or cease to claim the right of excluding
any from communion.
Good old Benjamin Keach, in a portly volume on the parables, addressed
“to the impartial reader,” and sent “from my house in Horsley Down,
Southwark, August 20. 1701,” indicates with clearness and simplicity his
own judgment; but, overawed by authority, seems afraid at the sound of
his own words: “The field is the world; though it may, as some think,
also refer to the Church. Marlorate saith by a synecdoche, a part for
the whole, it signifies the Church; though this seems doubtful to me,
and I rather believe it means the world.” The second of two reasons
which he submits as the grounds of his opinion is,—“Because tares, when
discovered to be such, must not grow among the wheat in the Church, but
ought to be cast out, though they ought to live together in the world.”
Here Keach reasons most naturally, and indeed irrefragably, against the
interpretation that the world is the Church, from the monstrous
consequence to which it necessarily leads. I am beyond measure amazed to
find the general stream of interpretation, as far as I have had an
opportunity of examining it, ancient and modern, German and Anglican,
flowing in this channel. When I find the great and venerated name of
Calvin contributing to swell this tide, I am compelled to pause and
examine the subject anew; but my judgment remains the same. We must call
no man master on earth; one is our master in heaven. It is not
necessarily presumption in one of us to oppose the judgment of the great
and good of a former age, especially on such a subject as this. In
regard to all the relations between the Church and the civil power, we
are in a better position for judging than either the early Reformers or
the Continental and Anglican theologians of the present day. The general
progress made since the time of Calvin in the historical development of
the Christian Church, and the particular experience through which
Christians in Scotland have in later times been led, greatly contribute
to elevate our stand-point in relation to the discipline of the Church,
and its right to freedom from civil control. As a child on the house-top
can scan a wider landscape than a man on the ground, although the child
may have been indebted to that man for his elevation; so we may own the
Reformers as in a right sense our teachers, and yet on some subjects
form a sounder judgment than they. Although no new revelation has been
made since the Lord’s apostles were removed from the earth, the Church
does under the government of her Head, advance from age to age; and the
principle embodied in the declaration, “The least in the kingdom of
heaven is greater than he” (Matt. xi. 11), emerges still in manifold
subordinate fulfilments. As to the greatest modern scholars of Germany
and England, the accepted and even lauded Erastianism in which they are
steeped is a beam in their eye, which dims and distorts their sight when
they look in the direction of the Church with its constitution and
discipline. While on other subjects their insight is such that we may be
content to sit at their feet, the view on this side is from their
stand-point cut off short, as if by a mountain in the foreground, and
they can afford us no help.
“The field is the world:” in the prevailing confusion we hold to this,
as the ship to her anchor in a storm. Men should remember when they
explain away the meaning of the term “world,” and teach that it
signifies the Church, that they are dealing not with a parable, but with
the explanation of a parable given by the Lord. The parable is
professedly a metaphor; but when the Lord undertook to tell his
disciples what the metaphor meant, he did not give them another metaphor
more difficult than the first. I venture to affirm that the expositors
would have found it easier to show that the “field” is the Church than
to show that the “world” is the Church. According to their view, it
results that the Lord proposed to interpret his own allegory, but only
gave on this point another allegory somewhat more obscure. The
outrageousness of the conclusion proves the premises false. In
affectionate tenderness to the twelve, the Lord Jesus undertook to
translate a figurative expression which puzzled them into a literal
expression which the feeblest might be able to comprehend. The “field”
is the metaphor, and that metaphor interpreted is the “world;” it does
not need to be interpreted over again. This Teacher means what he says.
He points to this globe, man’s habitation, and mankind its inhabitants
in all places and all times.
Into this world Christ, the Son of man, the Son of God, cast good seed.
The children of the kingdom are the good seed: in the beginning men were
made in God’s likeness, and placed in his world. Thereafter and
thereupon an enemy stealthily and maliciously sowed tares in the same
field. The enemy is the devil; and the tares which he by his sowing
caused to spring in the field are the children of the wicked one. In the
first instance, the Day in which the sower spread good seed in his field
was the day in which God made man upright: the Night in which the enemy
sowed tares was the period of the temptation and the fall. Both these
antagonistic processes are carried on still. The Son of man sows the
good seed day by day in the world, and night by night the enemy sows his
tares. Especially and signally in the fulness of time the good seed,
more completely developed, was again committed to the ground in the
ministry and sacrifice of Christ; and again the wicked one renewed and
increased his efforts to counteract and destroy it. These two, opposite
in origin and in nature, are commingled and interwoven in all the
ordinary relations of life. The children of the wicked one and the
children of the kingdom live together in the world, eat of the same
bread, and breathe the same air, and look upon the same light.
In the Galilean field, which the Lord employed as a type with which to
print his lesson, portions might be seen where, owing perhaps to
peculiar wetness and sourness in the soil, the wheat had wholly
disappeared, and the darnel grew alone; in other parts, probably where
the soil was warm and dry, the good seed had gained the mastery, and the
false scarcely showed its head; and in a third quarter the good and bad
might appear in equal numbers and equal strength. Such precisely is the
aspect of the world. Large portions of it have been heathen from a
higher date than that to which history ascends; large portions, which
were Christian long after the apostolic age, have been overrun and laid
waste by the blind but strong system of Mahomet; while in other parts a
vigorous Christian life appears, although even there the good seed must
maintain a struggle against bitter roots below and poisonous fruit
rearing its head on high.
I accept, therefore, in all simplicity, the Master’s own definition: I
see in the field of the injured husbandman a picture, not of the Church
in the world, but of the world in which the Church must for the present
live and labour. The ingenious effort made by a recent Swiss
expositor13 to find a middle path only serves to show how heavily the
difficulties of the common interpretation press on those who maintain
it. Having confessed, according to the terms of the text, that the field
or ground is not the Church, but the world, he proceeds, with a very
strong animus against what he calls puritanism or separatism,14 to
argue in the usual way against every attempt to purify the visible
Church except by the exclusion of persons who are notoriously heretical
or vicious. The grounds on which he pleads against separation from the
impure, in as far as this parable is concerned, are—(1.) That there
was no need of a revelation to make known the universally acknowledged
maxim that bad people should be tolerated in the world; (2.) That,
according to the terms of the parable, the farmer sowed wheat in his
ground, but did not sow the whole of his ground—so that the ground may
be the world, and the portion sown, or the wheat field, may still
represent the Church; (3.) That the parable of the fishing-net confirms
this interpretation; and (4.) That in the world there was no wheat until
the preaching of the gospel reached it, and consequently the mixture
is in the church, and not in the
world.
The first of these grounds seems most unfortunate; for corrupt
ecclesiastics, from an early age to the present day, have ever shown
themselves ready to cast those whom they call heretics, not out of the
Church only, but out of the world:15 the second is a refinement too
narrow for building any conclusion upon: the third applies a mistaken
view of one parable to support a mistaken view of another: and the
fourth is the second in another form. After having in effect explained
away his own admission, that the field is the world, and not the Church,
he freely concedes in the close that the openly heretical and vicious
should not be tolerated within the Church. But I ask what right has he
to exclude those whom, according to his exegesis, the Lord commanded
his ministers to tolerate in the Church?
In the intimation that it was while men slept that the mischief was
done, I cannot find any covert reproof of an indolent ministry in the
Church. It was night: all the community had retired to rest. The species
of criminal which the parable depicts was not numerous,—the crime was
not of daily occurrence. It was neither the practice nor the duty of the
people, after they had toiled all day in their fields, to watch their
work by night, to protect it from possible injury. The expression,
“while men slept,” is intended merely to indicate that the evil-doer
took advantage of the darkness to cover his deed: accordingly, in the
interpretation no specific meaning is attached to this feature of the
parable.
In regard to the servants, and their proposal instantly to pull up the
tares, the interpretation is attended with difficulty. With some eminent
ancient expositors I am convinced that, if not exclusively, yet
primarily and chiefly, the servants who offered to make the separation
are the angels. The parable stretches far into both time and space: it
comprehends the world, and the successive dispensations of God there.
Morning stars sang together when they saw beautiful worlds starting into
being at their Maker’s word: the same high intelligences must have been
surprised and grieved when they saw God’s fairest work marred by sin. It
is like the impulse of beings perfect in holiness, but limited in
knowledge, to offer themselves on the instant as willing instruments to
cast the defilers out. Pleased, doubtless, with their instinctive zeal
for holiness, but comprehending his own purposes better than they, the
Lord declined the proffered ministry. At the same time he intimated that
the separation which the servants suggested was not refused, but only
postponed. His plan required that good and evil, now that evil had
begun, should mingle in the world till the end. At the close of the
dispensation, when the Son of man shall come in his glory, he will give
the commission for a final separation to the angels who shall constitute
his train.
It seems to be generally assumed by modern expositors, that while the
reapers who shall separate the tares from the wheat in harvest are
angels, the servants who offered to weed out the tares while they were
yet green are the human ministers of the visible Church. Archbishop
Trench, for example, says: “These servants are not, as Theophylact
suggests, the angels (they are the reapers, ver. 30); but men, zealous,
indeed, for the Lord’s honour, but zealous with the same zeal as
animated those two disciples who would fain have commanded fire to come
down from heaven on the inhospitable Samaritan village” (Luke ix. 54). I
think the learned author is mistaken here, and that the preponderance of
evidence lies on the other side. The subject is interesting, and will
repay the labour of investigation.
Here two questions, distinct, yet closely connected, constitute the
case: on the answer which may be given to them the decision will turn.
One relates to the persons, and the other to their acts: Are the
“servants” who propose to pull up the tares in summer, and the “reapers”
who are commanded to make the separation in harvest, the same, or
different persons? and is the separation proposed by the servants
substantially the same in kind with that which is ultimately effected by
the reapers, or is it different?
I think the servants and the reapers are substantially identical. The
troop of servants who haunt a rich man’s house, and the band of
labourers who reap his patrimonial fields, stand far apart in our land
and our day. Not so, however, in the establishment of a Galilean
householder eighteen hundred years ago. When you take into view the
habits of society at the date and on the scene of the parable, it will
appear certain and obvious that the servants who proposed to weed the
fields in summer were, in part at least, the same persons who would be
sent to reap the fields in autumn. The reapers might be a more numerous
band than the servants who were employed throughout the year, but to a
large extent the constituents must have been the same. In another
parable (Luke xvii. 7–10), a servant, who has been ploughing or feeding
cattle, is obliged, after he returns from the field, to gird himself and
wait on his master at table. This shows conclusively that the division
of labour which obtains among us was unknown then in Galilee. The master
does not, indeed, say to the servants who made the proposal, I will
employ you in harvest to accomplish the separation: the form of
expression is, “I will say to the reapers;” but reapers and servants
were of the self-same class, and in all probability to some extent the
same individuals.
The second question can be more easily answered. The separation which
the reapers ultimately effected is essentially the same with that which
the servants at an earlier period proposed. It is an actual, material,
final separation of the tares from the wheat.
It results that there is no solid ground in the parable for the
assumption that those who proposed to make the separation at an earlier
date represent men, while those who were employed to accomplish it
afterwards represent angels; and that the separation which the Lord
prohibited was spiritual, while that which he permitted was physical.
In regard to the separation which he sanctioned, the Lord interprets
what the operation is, and who are the operators; whereas, in regard to
the separation at an earlier date proposed, he gives no interpretation.
Instead of beginning by giving my own assumption as to the meaning of
the uninterpreted part, I go first to the part that is interpreted to my
hand, and from the point which is illuminated I get light thrown back on
the point which was left in the shade. The reapers, I know, are the
angels; and the servants were the same, or at least the same class of
ministers, proposing to accomplish the work at an earlier date. The
separation which was actually effected in the harvest represents, we
know, the personal and local as well as moral and spiritual separation
of the good and the evil; thence I conclude that the separation which
the same ministers, or the same class of ministers, had previously
offered to make was personal and local as well as moral and spiritual.
The proposed and the accepted separations were precisely the same in
kind and degree; they differed only in their dates: while, therefore,
one of the two is interpreted to my hand, I have no right to attach to
the other an interpretation totally different. The assumption that the
separation which the Lord prohibited was only a spiritual sentence,
while the separation which he permitted was actual, local, complete, and
final, derives countenance neither from the parable nor its
interpretation.
It appears to me, then, that the Lord’s direct and immediate design in
this parable is, not to prescribe the conduct of his disciples in regard
to the conflict between good and evil in the world, but to explain his
own. Knowing that their Master possessed all power in heaven and in
earth, it was natural that Christians of the first age should expect an
immediate paradise. Nothing was more necessary, for the support of
their faith in subsequent trials, than distinct warnings from the Lord,
that even to his own people the world would remain a wilderness.
Accordingly, both in plain terms and by symbols, he faithfully,
frequently intimated that in the world they should have tribulation, but
that all should be set right at last. On both sides they needed, and on
both sides he gave, the instruction, that in this life they must lay
their account with a mixture, but that after this life they would
escape. Left to their own imagination, they would readily have expected
that their omnipotent Head would so rule over the world, and so instruct
his ministers, whether stormy winds or flaming fires, that evil, as soon
as it showed its head, would be weeded out of his people’s way: but with
this parable and other cognate lessons in their hands, they would not be
surprised at any amount of success which the enemy might be permitted to
obtain; they would possess their souls in patience, and wait for the end
of the Lord.
The parable condemns persecution, but it seems not to bear upon
discipline at all. In its secondary sense, or by implication, it
protects the wicked from any attempt on the part of the Church to cast
them out of the world by violence; but it does not, in any form or
measure, vindicate a place for the impure within the communion of the
Church of Christ. Arguments against the exclusion of unworthy members,
founded on this parable, are nothing else than perversions of Scripture.
Elsewhere Christians may clearly read their duty in regard to any
brother who walks disorderly; elsewhere they may learn how to counsel,
exhort, and rebuke the erring, and, if he remain impenitent, how to cast
him out of communion by a spiritual sentence; but in this parable
regarding these matters no judgment is given.
While the “Notes” of Dr. Trench on the parables are generally judicious
and valuable, his exposition of this and one or two others that are
cognate is injured by a secret bias towards the forms in which he has
been educated,—a bias that is natural and human, but not on that
account less hurtful. The body of the vast and venerable institution of
which he is at once a chief and an ornament, stands so near, and bulks
so largely, that where it is concerned his usual acuteness fails him.
The general announcement at the commencement of the parable, that it
concerns the kingdom of heaven, he seems to think is sufficient proof
that the “field” must mean the kingdom of heaven or the Church. It does,
indeed, concern the kingdom of heaven, for it shows that when that
kingdom has, by the Son of man, been introduced into the world, many
things spring up and mingle with it there to mar its fruitfulness; but
it betrays an unaccountable confusion to argue formally that because the
parable concerns the kingdom of heaven, therefore, of all the features
which the parable contains, “the field” must specifically represent that
kingdom, in the face of the express testimony of Scripture that the
field represents a totally different thing. The parable of the
mustard-seed concerns the kingdom too, but does the “field” in that
parable therefore mean the Church? No. The mustard-seed that grew in the
field means the Church, and the field means the world in which the
Church is planted. So in this parable the only thing that represents the
Church, or aggregate of individual believers, is the mass of the wheat
stalks that sprang from the good seed: the good seed are the children of
the kingdom, and the field is the world in which these children live and
labour. Looking minutely to the phraseology employed, we find that the
kingdom of heaven is not said to be likened unto a field, but unto a man
that sowed seed; pointing to the Lord himself as the head, and the good
seed as his members, and the wide world as their place of sojourn, till
he take them to himself.
Dr. Trench remarks further on this point, that the use of the term
“world” need not perplex us in the least; and perhaps he was led to make
that assertion because the use of the term did perplex him much. His
solution of the difficulty is this: “It was the world, and therefore
was rightly called so, till this seed was sown in it; but thenceforth
was the world no longer.” If it has any meaning at all, this sentence
must mean that what was the world yesterday becomes the Church to-day,
when some seed is sown, when some children of the kingdom are in it.
Does the whole world become the Church when one country is
christianized? or is it only the portion christianized that becomes the
Church? If so, how many Christians must be in a given portion of the
world, to constitute that portion the Church? If there were three of the
true seed in Sodom, was Sodom the Church? or did not the three
constitute the Church in Lot’s house, while the world raged around it
like the troubled sea?
Some of Stier’s remarks are good: “The parable moves in quite a
different sphere from that of the question concerning Church
discipline.” “The householder forbids and will not allow what the
servants wish. These would have all the tares removed entirely from
their place among the wheat, from the kingdom of Christ (ver. 41). But
because the field is the world, that were equivalent to removing the bad
out of the world (slaying the heretics),” &c.
The conclusion of the whole matter is, that whatever separation the
parable forbids, it forbids entirely: if it speaks of discipline, it
says there shall be none; so that they are wholly out of their reckoning
who lean on it for the condemnation of what they consider excessive
strictness while they would retain the power of excluding the worst from
communion. But, in truth, the parable has nothing to say on the subject.
When we have made our way through the discussions that have accumulated
round it, we return to the text in its simplicity, and grasp its plain
positive truth, “The field is the world.” It was all empty; nothing good
grew there, until the seed was brought from heaven and sown. The nation,
the family, the soul that has not Christ, is poor, and wretched, and
miserable, and blind, and naked.
“The good seed are the children of the kingdom.” They are bought with a
price and born of the Spirit; they are new creatures in Christ and heirs
of eternal life. Expressly it is written in reference to Christ’s
disciples, “All things are for your sakes” (2 Cor. iv. 15). For their
sakes the world is preserved now, and for their sakes it will be
destroyed when the set time has come. The darnel is permitted to grow in
summer, and in harvest is cast into the fire,—both for the sake of the
wheat. Because Christ loves his own he permits the wicked to run their
course in time; but because Christ loves his own he will separate the
wicked from the good at last.
The tares are the children of the wicked, and “the enemy that sowed them
is the devil.” Some people doubt, and some positively deny, the
existence of the devil; but one thing is clear, the Lord Jesus Christ,
the eternal Son of the Father, has no doubt on that point. He believes
in that doctrine and teaches it: he teaches it to the multitude on the
margin of the lake, and to the select circle of his followers in a
private dwelling.
Lively and energetic are the remarks of Fred. Arndt on this subject:
“Yes, Jesus says, in dry, clear words, ‘The enemy that soweth them is
the devil.’ But surely there is not any devil? Who says that? The Son of
God, the mouth of eternal truth, who knows the realm of spirits even as
he knows this visible world,—who is the highest reason and the deepest
wisdom, yea, even Omniscience itself,—he believes it. He holds it
reasonable to believe in it. He teaches what he believes. Dost thou know
it better than he, thou short-sighted being, thou dust of yesterday,
thou child of error and ignorance? He says it, and therefore it is
eternal truth. ‘But is it not intended to be taken figuratively?’ Well,
suppose it were meant figuratively, we can only comprehend the figures
of actually existing things, and the figurative representation of the
devil would imply his real being: but here in the text the speech is not
figurative; the expression stands not among pictures and parables, but
in the interpretation of a picture and a parable.”16 Whence hath it
tares? inquired the servants. Already in those days they had begun to
probe the question around which the conflict of ages has been waged—the
origin of evil. One thing in the answer of the Lord is fitted to pour a
flood of comfort into our hearts when they are agitated by the
difficulties of this tremendous problem,—“an enemy hath done this.”
Evil does not belong originally to the constitution of man, nor has God,
his maker, introduced it. Our case is sad, indeed; for we learn that an
enemy whom we cannot overcome is ever lying in wait seeking how he may
devour us. But what would our case have been, if evil, instead of being
injected by an enemy from without, had been of the essence of the
creature, or the act of the Creator? Our condition would have been one
of absolute and irremediable despair. What a strong one, who is our
enemy, has brought in, a stronger, who is our friend, can cast out—will
cast out. Be of good cheer; believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou
shalt be saved.
How grand is the view which this picture discloses, when in the
interpretation of it we closely follow the Master’s steps! It is,
indeed, a parable concerning the kingdom of heaven. The whole world
belongs to the King; he has placed his children in it, and commanded
them to multiply till they people all its borders. The enemy has
introduced among them evil persons, and within them evil thoughts. It is
not a part of the omniscient Ruler’s plan to remove, by the ministry of
either angels or men, all the wicked at once from his world. For his own
purposes, which are only in part discernible by us, he permits the good
and the evil to mingle and contend with each other until the fulness of
time, as he left the Canaanites in the land to chastise and exercise his
chosen people. When the tares prosper, the wheat languishes: when the
wheat prospers, the tares languish. Evil men have lived in God’s world
ever since sin began: evil thoughts and deeds will be found in God’s
children as long as they remain in the body. The angels are not sent
to-day to make such a separation as would leave the children of the
kingdom nothing to do, or to bear.
If you desire the heavenly to prosper within you and around you, fight
with the proper weapons against the devilish: if you desire the devilish
within and around you to languish and decay, cherish the heavenly. As
David’s house waxes stronger, Saul’s house will wax weaker. When Christ
gets more of the world and of our hearts, the devil will get less.
←Contents
![[Book’s spine: red with black embossing and gold lettering.]](images/spine.jpg)
![[Book’s cover: red, textured, black embossing and gold lettering.]](images/cover.jpg)
