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 ([Greek: zizania]) 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.
[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 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.
[12] "The Land and the Book." Note by Principal 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 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
expositor[13] 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.
[13] Die Parabeln des Herrn, für Kirche, Schule, und Haus, erklärt
von Dr. De Valenti. Basel, 1841.
[14] It is quite possible that the separatists whom De Valenti
scolds, with more warmth than elegance, may deserve his censure; for
severe restrictive measures adopted by governments to suppress
religious dissent have frequently the effect of deteriorating its
character, on the principle that oppression makes a wise man mad.
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?
[15] Lange (_in loc._), having quoted Gerlach to the effect that
this prohibition refers to extremes of ecclesiastical discipline,
for the purpose of excluding all unbelievers and hypocrites, and
constituting a perfectly pure Church, timidly replies: "We can
scarcely agree with him that it contains no allusion to the
punishment of death for heresy.... It is well known that
Novatianism, on the one hand, and the Papal hierarchy, on the other,
have addressed themselves to this work of uprooting despite the
prohibition of the Lord, and that the Romish Church has at last
ended by condemning to the flames only the best wheat.... The _auto
da fés_ of the middle ages were only a humble caricature and
anticipation of that fiery judgment."
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.