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" ([Greek: mê syniéntos]).
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.
[9] [Greek: Zôn gar ho logos tou Theoû, kai energês.]--HEB. iv. 12.
"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.