'Another parable put He forth unto them, saying, The
kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man which sowed
good seed in his field: 25. But while men slept, his
enemy came and sowed tares among the wheat, and went
his way. 26. But when the blade was sprung up, and
brought forth fruit, then appeared the tares also.
27. 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? 28. He said
unto them, An enemy hath done this. The servants said
unto him, Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?
29. But he said, Nay; lest while ye gather up the
tares, ye root up also the wheat with them. 80. 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.'
--MATT. xiii. 24-30.
The first four parables contained in this chapter were spoken to a
miscellaneous crowd on the beach, the last three to the disciples in
the house. The difference of audience is accompanied with a diversity
of subject. The former group deals with the growth of the kingdom, as
it might be observed by outsiders, and especially with aspects of the
growth on which the multitude needed instruction; the latter, with
topics more suited to the inner circle of followers. Of these four,
the first three are parables of vegetation; the last, of assimilation.
The first two are still more closely connected, inasmuch as the person
of the sower is prominent in both, while he is not seen in the others.
The general scenery is the same in both, but with a difference. The
identification of the seed sown with the persons receiving it, which
was hinted at in the first, is predominant in the second. But while
the former described the various results of the seed, the latter
drops out of sight the three failures, and follows its fortunes in
honest and good hearts, showing the growth of the kingdom in the
midst of antagonistic surroundings. It may conveniently be considered
in three sections: the first teaching how the work of the sower is
counter-worked by his enemy; the second, the patience of the sower
with the thick-springing tares; and the third, the separation at the
harvest.
I. The work of the sower counter-worked by his enemy, and the
mingled crops.
The peculiar turn of the first sentence, 'The kingdom of heaven is
likened unto a man that sowed,' etc., suggests that the main purpose
of the parable is to teach the conduct of the king in view of the
growth of the tares. The kingdom is concentrated in Him, and the
'likening' is not effected by the parable, but, as the tenses of
both verbs show, by the already accomplished fact of His sowing. Our
Lord veils His claims by speaking of the sower in the third person;
but the hearing ear cannot fail to catch the implication throughout
that He Himself is the sower and the Lord of the harvest. The field
is 'his field,' and His own interpretation tells us that it means
'the world.' Whatever view we take of the bearing of this parable on
purity of communion in the visible Church, we should not slur over
Christ's own explanation of 'the field,' lest we miss the lesson
that He claims the whole world as His, and contemplates the sowing
of the seed broadcast over it all. The Kingdom of Heaven is to be
developed on, and to spread through, the whole earth. The world
belongs to Christ not only when it is filled with the kingdom, but
before the sowing. The explanation of the good seed takes the same
point of view as in the former parable. What is sown is 'the word';
what springs from the seed is the new life of the receiver. Men
become children of the kingdom by taking the Gospel into their
hearts, and thereby receive a new principle of growth, which in
truth becomes themselves.
Side by side with the sower's beneficent work the counter-working of
'his enemy' goes on. As the one, by depositing holy truth in the
heart, makes men 'children of the kingdom,' the other, by putting
evil principles therein, makes men 'children of evil.' Honest
exposition cannot eliminate the teaching of a personal antagonist of
Christ, nor of his continuous agency in the corruption of mankind.
It is a glimpse into a mysterious region, none the less reliable
because so momentary. The sulphurous clouds that hide the fire in
the crater are blown aside for an instant, and we see. Who would
doubt the truth and worth of the unveiling because it was short and
partial? 'The devil is God's ape.' His work is a parody of Christ's.
Where the good seed is sown, there the evil is scattered thickest.
False Christs and false apostles dog the true like their shadows.
Every truth has its counterfeit. Neither institutions, nor
principles, nor movements, nor individuals, bear unmingled crops of
good. Not merely creatural imperfection, but hostile adulteration,
marks them all. The purest metal oxidises, scum gathers on the most
limpid water, every ship's bottom gets foul with weeds. The history
of every reformation is the same: radiant hopes darkened, progress
retarded, a second generation of dwarfs who are careless or
unfaithful guardians of their heritage.
There are, then, two classes of men represented in the parable, and
these two are distinguishable without doubt by their conduct. Tares
are said to be quite like wheat until the heads show, and then there
is a plain difference. So our Lord here teaches that the children of
the kingdom and those of evil are to be discriminated by their
actions. We need not do more than point in a sentence to His
distinct separation of men (where the seed of the kingdom has been
sown) into two sets. Jesus Christ holds the unfashionable, 'narrow'
opinion that, at bottom, a man must either be His friend or His
enemy. We are too much inclined to weaken the strong line of
demarcation, and to think that most men are neither black nor white,
but grey.
The question has been eagerly debated whether the tares are bad men
in the Church, and whether, consequently, the mingled crop is a
description of the Church only. The following considerations may
help to an answer. The parable was spoken, not to the disciples, but
to the crowd. An instruction to them as to Church discipline would
have been signally out of place; but they needed to be taught that
the kingdom was to be 'a rose amidst thorns,' and to grow up among
antagonisms which it would slowly conquer, by the methods which the
next two parables set forth. This general conception, and not
directions about ecclesiastical order, was suited to them. Again,
the designation of the tares as 'the children of evil' seems much
too wide, if only a particular class of evil men--namely, those who
are within the Church--are meant by it. Surely the expression
includes all, both in and outside the Church, who 'do iniquity.'
Further, the representation of the children of the kingdom, as
growing among tares in the field of the world, does not seem to
contemplate them as constituting a distinct society, whether pure or
impure; but rather as an indefinite number of individuals,
intermingled in a common soil with the other class. 'The kingdom of
heaven' is not a synonym for the Church. Is it not an anachronism to
find the Church in the parable at all? No doubt, tares are in the
Church, and the parable has a bearing on it; but its primary lesson
seems to me to be much wider, and to reveal rather the conditions of
the growth of the kingdom in human society.
II. We have the patience of the husbandman with the quick-springing
tares.
The servants of the householder receive no interpretation from our
Lord. Their question is silently passed by in His explanation.
Clearly then, for some reason, He did not think it necessary to say
any more about them; and the most probable reason is, that they and
their words have no corresponding facts, and are only introduced to
lead up to the Master's explanation of the mystery of the growth of
the tares, and to His patience with it. The servants cannot be
supposed to represent officials in the Church, without hopelessly
destroying the consistency of the parable; for surely all the
children of the kingdom, whatever their office, are represented in
the crop. Many guesses have been made,--apostles, angels, and so on.
It is better to say 'The Lord hath not showed it me.'
The servant's first question expresses, in vivid form, the sad, strange
fact that, where good was sown, evil springs. The deepest of all
mysteries is the origin of evil. Explain sin, and you explain everything.
The question of the servants is the despair of thinkers in all ages.
Heaven sows only good; where do the misery and the wickedness
come from? That is a wider and sadder question than, How are churches
not free from bad members? Perhaps Christ's answer may go as far
towards the bottom of the bottomless as those of non-Christian thinkers,
and, if it do not solve the metaphysical puzzles, at any rate gives
the historical fact, which is all the explanation of which the question
is susceptible.
The second question reminds us of 'Wilt Thou that we command fire...
from heaven, and consume them?' It is cast in such a form as to put
emphasis on the householder's will. His answer forbidding the
gathering up of the tares is based, not upon any chance of mistaking
wheat for them, nor upon any hope that, by forbearance, tares may
change into wheat, but simply on what is best for the good crop.
There was a danger of destroying some of it, not because of its
likeness to the other, but because the roots of both were so
interlaced that one could not be pulled up without dragging the
other after it.
Is this prohibition, then, meant to forbid the attempt to keep the
Church pure from un-Christian members? The considerations already
adduced are valid in answering this question, and others may be
added. The crowd of listeners had, no doubt, many of them, been
influenced by John the Baptist's fiery prophecies of the King who
should come, fan in hand, to 'purge His floor,' and were looking for
a kingdom which was to be inaugurated by sharp separation and swift
destruction. Was not the teaching needed then, as it is now, that
that is not the way in which the kingdom of heaven is to be founded
and grow? Is not the parable best understood when set in connection
with the expectations of its first hearers, which are ever floating
anew before the eyes of each generation of Christians? Is it not
Christ's _apologia_ for His delay in filling the _rôle_ which John had
drawn out for him? And does that conception of its meaning make it
meaningless for us? Observe, too, that the rooting up which is forbidden
is, by the proprieties of the emblem, and by the parallel which it
must necessarily afford to the final burning, something very solemn
and destructive. We may well ask whether excommunication is a
sufficiently weighty idea to be taken as its equivalent. Again, how
does the interpretation which sees ecclesiastical discipline here
comport with the reason given for letting the tares grow on? By the
hypothesis in the parable, there is no danger of mistake; but is there
any danger of casting out good men from the Church along with the
bad, except through mistake? Further, if this parable forbids casting
manifestly evil men out of the Church, it contradicts the divinely
appointed law of the Church as administered by the apostles. If it
is to be applied to Church action at all, it absolutely forbids the
separation from the Church of any man, however notoriously un-Christian,
and that, as even the strongest advocates of comprehension admit,
would destroy the very idea of the Church. Surely an interpretation
which lands us in such a conclusion cannot be right. We conclude,
then, that the intermingling which the parable means is that of good
men and bad in human society, where all are so interwoven that
separation is impossible without destroying its whole texture; that
the rooting up, which is declared to be inconsistent with the growth
of the crop, means removal from the field, namely, the world; that
the main point of the second part of the parable is to set forth the
patience of the Lord of the harvest, and to emphasise this as the
law of the growth of His kingdom, that it advances amidst antagonism;
and that its members are interlaced by a thousand rootlets with those
who are not subjects of their King. What the interlacing is for, and
whether tares may become wheat, are no parts of its teaching. But
the lesson of the householder's forbearance is meant to be learned
by us. While we believe that the scope of the parable is wider than
instruction in Church discipline, we do not forget that a fair inference
from it is that, in actual churches, there will ever be a mingling of
good and evil; and, though that fact is no reason for giving up the
attempt to make a church a congregation of faithful men, and of such
only, it is a reason for copying the divine patience of the sower in
ecclesiastical dealings with errors of opinion and faults of
conduct.