The Parables of Our Lord Part 3

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 const.i.tute a thick screen between the ears of corn and the suns.h.i.+ne. 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 G.o.d, "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 G.o.d 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 const.i.tutes your life, instead of being devoted first to the kingdom of G.o.d 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 l.u.s.ts, is a sapless, impoverished, shrivelled thing, where faith in G.o.d 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 "G.o.d's husbandry."

Nor is the harvest safe although the th.o.r.n.y shade that overhangs it be not completely impervious and constant. Fitful glances of suns.h.i.+ne 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 gra.s.s 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 s.n.a.t.c.hes 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 antic.i.p.ation 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 pa.s.ses through the summer of his probation with a well-proportioned but empty form of G.o.dliness; 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 compet.i.tors in the race for supremacy. Lurking un.o.bserved 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 l.u.s.ts; 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 a.s.sured 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 p.r.i.c.kly 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 const.i.tute 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 G.o.d. 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 G.o.d and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you."

5. When the husbandman perceives a huge p.r.i.c.kly 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 G.o.d'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 s.p.a.ce, 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 pa.s.senger 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 n.o.blest or the meanest,--for when a man made in the likeness of G.o.d abandons himself to the wors.h.i.+p 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 att.i.tude 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 G.o.d'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 refres.h.i.+ng, 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 th.o.r.n.y 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]

[10] It is not intimated by the parable that our Father the Husbandman finds any of the good ground in us: the ground, like the tree in another a.n.a.logical lesson of the Lord, is not good until it is _made_ good. It is beyond the scope of this parable to explain how the ground is rendered soft and kept free from thorns. The Teacher was content in this lesson to tell us what the good ground produces; we must discover elsewhere in the Scriptures whence its goodness is derived. "...The similitude from nature is no longer applicable to the mystery of the kingdom of heaven; as a parable, it has already reached its limits, when the truth goes beyond the similitude. There is a _miraculous_ seed superior indeed to all natural seed, so powerful that by its growth it can and will choke all thorns. Nay more, it can also break through the rock in striking its root down into the earth, and can make that to be again a field of G.o.d which was a way for the feet of the prince of this world."--_Stier in loc_.

Among the many incidental and collateral applications of which this parable is susceptible, one of the most interesting and instructive is--That every man has within himself the elements of all the four kinds of ground. The conception is thus presented by Fred. Arndt: "At the outset, the word of G.o.d finds all in the first unreceptive condition; we go away without experiencing its power, and remain in a state of nature, unconverted. Next, the word begins to take effect upon us, and we are awakened. Oh now the word of the Lord burns with a holy glow in our hearts! We give ourselves over with our whole souls in those first days of love. We have found heaven; we have seen it opened, and the angels of G.o.d ascending and descending on the Son of man. But this condition does not endure. The fightings begin from within and from without, and the flame is quenched. The heart becomes cold and empty. The life of faith becomes silent and slow in its course. We become languid in watching and prayer; the love of the world and its sinful pleasures awakes again; and before we are aware, we are trying to serve both G.o.d and the world. Then the war bursts out: this moment G.o.d is above us, the next beneath us, and we get no rest until we have renounced the world, and surrendered our heart and life to G.o.d wholly, and to G.o.d alone. Thus we pa.s.s, in the faith-school of the Holy Spirit, through all the four cla.s.ses, deceiving ourselves and being deceived, until at last, after many a bitter experience, we strike upon the narrow way, and through the strait gate."--_Die Gleichniss-reden. Jes. Chr._

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 G.o.d 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 unG.o.dliness and worldly l.u.s.ts--if by sternly crucifying the flesh and trustfully walking with G.o.d, he may rise from thirty to sixty, and from sixty to an hundredfold in that holy obedience which grows on living faith.

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 mult.i.tude 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 gnas.h.i.+ng of teeth. Then shall the righteous s.h.i.+ne 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 quant.i.ty 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 pa.s.s; 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 (???a??a) 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 gra.s.s," 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.

[11] "The Land and the Book," by Dr. Thomson. T. Nelson & Sons.

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 circ.u.mstances tend to degenerate, and in certain favourable circ.u.mstances 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 a.s.sumed 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.

[12] "The Land and the Book." Note by Princ.i.p.al Fairbairn in translation of "Lisco on the Parables."

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 quant.i.ty of a.n.a.logous 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 b.r.e.a.s.t.s. 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 fas.h.i.+on 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 thres.h.i.+ng-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 a.s.sumption. 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 const.i.tution 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 s.h.i.+p 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 G.o.d, cast good seed.

The children of the kingdom are the good seed: in the beginning men were made in G.o.d'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 G.o.d 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.