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.
[16] _Die Gleichniss-reden Jesu Christi_, von Fried. Arndt.
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.
THE MUSTARD-SEED, AND THE LEAVEN.
In the first two parables the kingdom of heaven is represented in
conflict with its enemies; in the next two it stands alone, putting
forth its inherent life and power. There we learn the strength of its
adversaries, and here we learn its own. There we saw the efforts made to
check the progress of the kingdom; and here we see the progress which,
in spite of these efforts, the kingdom makes. There the combat is
exhibited, and here the victory. Devils and men, conscious conspirators
or unconscious tools, did their utmost, as explained in the first pair
of parables, to strangle the kingdom in its infancy, or to overpower it
at a later stage; but the kingdom, as we learn from the second pair,
shakes its assailants off, emerges unhurt from the strife, and goes
forward from strength to strength, until it has subdued and absorbed all
the world. I have seen clouds gathering at dawn on the eastern horizon,
with dark visage and a multitudinous threatening array, as if they had
bound themselves by a great oath either to prevent the sun from rising
or afterwards to quench his light; but through them, beyond them, above
them, slowly, steadily, majestically rose the sun, nor quivered from his
path, nor halted in his progress, until by the power of his mid-day
light he had utterly driven those clouds away, so that not a shred of
their tumultuous assemblage could any more be seen on the clear blue
sky. Such and so impotent in Christ's hands are the adversaries of
Christ's kingdom, although they seem formidable to men of little faith:
such and so glorious will be the final victory of the King, although
even his true subjects may fret and fear over his incomprehensible
delay. The coming of the kingdom is like the morning, as slow, but as
sure. As smoke is driven before the wind, so shall the Redeemer in the
day of his power drive away all those adversaries, whether within his
people or without, that now impiously say, "We will not have this man to
reign over us." Christ's disciples are on the winning side, whatever may
be the present aspect of the world. "He that believeth shall not make
haste."
The two parables which now claim our attention, although closely allied,
are not in meaning and application precisely identical. Both show the
progress of the kingdom from a small beginning to a glorious
consummation; and both indicate that this growth, as to cause, is due to
its own inherent unquenchable life, and as to manner, is silent, secret,
unobserved. Thus far these two are in the main coincident; but besides
teaching the same lesson in different forms, they teach also different
lessons. The parable of the mustard-seed exhibits the kingdom in its own
independent existence, inherent life, and irresistible power; the
parable of the leaven exhibits the kingdom in contact with the world,
gradually overcoming and assimilating and absorbing that world into
itself. Both alike show that the kingdom increases from small to great;
the first points to the essential, and the second to the instrumental
cause of that increase: in the mustard-seed we see it growing great
because of its own omnipotent vitality; in the leaven we see it growing
great because it uses up all its adversaries as the material of its own
enlargement.
III.
THE MUSTARD-SEED.
"Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven
is like to a grain of mustard-seed, which a man took, and sowed in
his field: which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is
grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that
the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof."--MATT.
xiii. 31, 32.
We are familiar with the mustard-plant both in a wild and in a
cultivated state in our own country. Although not the smallest, it is by
no means the largest of our herbs. On this point it is necessary to
recall and keep in mind the fact that when a given plant is indigenous
in a southern climate, the corresponding species or variety that may be
found in more northerly latitudes is generally of a comparatively
diminutive size. I have seen a mahogany-plant cultivated in a
flower-pot, the best representative that could be obtained here of those
forest patriarchs in tropical America which constitute the mahogany of
commerce. The diminutive proportions of our mustard-plant prove nothing
regarding the magnitude of the herb which bears the corresponding name
in Syria. We know, in point of fact, that it grows there to a great size
at the present day. "I have seen it," says Dr. Thomson, "on the rich
plain of Akkar as tall as the horse and his rider."[17] Irby and Mangles
found a tree growing in great abundance near the Dead Sea possessing
many of the properties of mustard, which they suppose must be the
mustard of the parable; but this suggestion seems incompatible with the
main scope of the representation, for its turning-point lies in this,
that a culinary herb became great like a tree. That a forest tree should
be large enough to afford shelter to the birds, is nothing wonderful;
the parable is hinged on the fact that the garden herb ([Greek:
lachanon]) became a tree ([Greek: dendron]).
[17] _The Land and the Book_, p. 64.
But in this case an investigation exact and minute into the natural
history of the plant is by no means necessary to the appreciation and
explanation of the parable. It is not needful to determine what amount
of credit is due to the witness who declared that he had seen a man
climbing into the branches of a mustard-plant, or how far the fact, if
real, was uncommon and exceptional. This plant obviously was chosen by
the Lord, not on account of its absolute magnitude, but because it was,
and was recognised to be, a striking instance of increase from very
small to very great. It seems to have been in Palestine, at that time,
the smallest seed from which so large a plant was known to grow. There
were, perhaps, smaller seeds, but the plants which sprung from them were
not so great; and there were greater plants, but the seeds from which
they sprung were not so small.
But the circumstance that most clearly exhibits and indicates the
appropriateness of the choice, is the fact that the magnitude of the
mustard-plant, in connection with the minuteness of its seed, was
employed at that day among the Jews as a proverbial similitude, to
indicate that great results may spring from causes that are apparently
diminutive, but secretly powerful. The expression, "If ye had faith as a
grain of mustard-seed," employed by the Lord on another occasion, is
sufficient to show that both the conception and its use were familiar to
his audience.
The spiritual lesson of the parable diverges into two lines, distinct
but harmonious. By the kingdom of heaven, as it is represented in the
growth of the mustard-plant, we may understand either saving truth
living and growing great in the world, or saving truth living and
growing great in an individual human heart. In both, its progress from
small beginnings to great issues is like the growth of a gigantic herb
from the imperceptible germ that was dropped among the clods in spring.