According to the first of our parables, the treasure was hid in a
field. That is very largely local colouring, which gives veracity
and vraisemblance to the fact of the story. And there has been a
great deal of very unnecessary and misplaced ingenuity spent in
trying to force interpretations upon every feature of the parable,
which I do not intend to imitate, but I just wish to suggest one
thing. Here was this man in the story, who had plodded across that
field a thousand times, and knew every clod of it, and had never
seen the wealth that was lying six inches below the surface. Now,
that is very like some of my present hearers. God's treasure comes
to the world in a form which to a great many people veils, if it
does not altogether hide, its preciousness. You have heard sermons
till you are sick of sermons, and I do not wonder at it, if you have
heard them and never thought of acting on them. You know all that I
can tell you, most of you, about Jesus Christ, and what He has done
for you, and what you should do towards Him, and your familiarity
with the Word has blinded you to its spirit and its power. You have
gone over the field so often that you have made a path across it,
and it seems incredible to you that there should be anything worth
your picking up there. Ah! dear friends, Jesus Christ, when He was
here, 'in whom were hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge,'
had to the men that looked upon Him 'neither form nor comeliness
that they should desire Him,' and He was to them a stumbling-block
and foolishness. And Christ's Gospel comes among busy men, worldly
men, men who are under the dominion of their passions and desires,
men who are pursuing science and knowledge, and it looks to them
very homely, very insignificant; they do not know what treasure is
lying in it. You do not know what treasure is lying--may I venture
to say it?--in these poor words of mine, in so far as they truly
represent the mind and will of God. Dear brethren, the treasure is
hid, but that is not because God did not wish you to see it; it is
because you have made yourselves blind to its flashing brightness.
'If our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them ... in whom the god of this
world hath blinded their eyes.' If your whole desires are passionately
set on that which Manchester recognises as the _summum bonum_, or,
if you are living without a thought beyond this present, how can you
expect to see the treasure, though it is lying there before your eyes?
You have buried it, or, rather, you have made that which is its
necessary envelope to be its obscuration. I pray you, look through the
forms, look beneath the words of Scripture, and try and clear your
eyesight from the hallucinations of the dazzling present, and you will
see the treasure that is hid in the field.
III. Again, let me ask you to notice, further, the two ways of
finding.
The rustic in the first story, who, as I said, had plodded across
the field a hundred times, was doing it for the hundred and first,
or perhaps was at work there with his mattock or his homely plough.
And, perchance, some stroke of the spade, or push of the coulter,
went a little deeper than usual, and there flashed the gold, or some
shower of rain came on, and washed away a little of the
superincumbent soil, and laid bare the bag. Now, that is what often
happens, for you have to remember that though you are not seeking
God, God is always seeking you, and so the great saying comes to be
true, 'I am found of them that sought Me not.' There have been many
cases like the one of the man who, breathing out threatenings and
slaughter, with no thought in his mind except to bind the disciples
and bring them captive to Jerusalem, saw suddenly a light from
heaven flashing down upon him, and a Voice that pulled him up in the
midst of his career. Ah! it would be an awful thing if no one found
Christ except those who set out to seek for Him. Like the dew on the
grass 'that waiteth not for men, nor tarrieth for the sons of men,'
He often comes to hearts that are thinking about nothing less than
about Him.
There are men and women listening to me now who did not come here
with any expectation of being confronted with this message to their
souls; they may have been drawn by curiosity or by a hundred other
motives. If there is one such, to whom I am speaking, who has had no
desires after the treasure, who has never thought that God was his
only Good, who has been swallowed up in worldly things and the
common affairs of life, and who now feels as if a sudden flash had
laid bare the hidden wealth in the familiar Gospel, I beseech such a
one not to turn away from the discovered treasure, but to make it
his own. Dear friend, you may not be looking for the wealth, but
Christ is looking for His lost coin. And, though it has rolled away
into some dusty corner, and is lying there all unaware, I venture to
say that He is seeking you by my poor words to-night, and is saying
to you: 'I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire.'
But then another class is described in the other parable of the
merchantman who was seeking many goodly pearls. I suppose he may
stand as a representative of a class of whom I have no doubt there
are some other representatives hearing me now, namely, persons who,
without yielding themselves to the claims of Christ, have been
searching, honestly and earnestly, for 'whatsoever things are lovely
and of good report.' Dear brethren, if you have been smitten by the
desire to live noble lives, if you have been roused
'To follow knowledge, like a sinking star,
Beyond the furthest bounds of human thought,'
or if in any way you are going through the world with your eyes
looking for something else than the world's gross good, and are
seeking for the many pearls, I beseech you to lay this truth to
heart, that you will never find what you seek, until you understand
that the many have not it to give you, and that the One has. And
when Christ draws near to you and says, 'Whatsoever things are
lovely and of good report, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever
things are venerable, if thou seekest them, take Me, and thou wilt
find them all,' I beseech you, accept Him. There are two ways of
finding the treasure. It is flashed on unexpectant eyes, and it is
disclosed to seeking souls.
III. And now, lastly, let us look at the point where the parables
converge.
There are two ways of finding; there is only one way of getting. The
one man went and sold all that he had and bought the field. Never
mind about the morality of the transaction: that has nothing to do
with our Lord's purpose. Perhaps it was not quite honest of this man
to bury the treasure again, and then to go and buy the field for
less than it was worth, but the point is that, however a soul is
brought to see that God in Christ is all that he needs, there is
only one way of getting Him, and that is, 'sell all that thou hast.'
'Then it is barter, is it? Then it is salvation by works after all?'
No! To 'sell all that thou hast' is first, to abandon all hope of
acquiring the treasure by anything that thou hast. We buy it when we
acknowledge that we have nothing of our own to buy it with. Buy it
'without money and without price'; buy it by yielding your hearts;
buy it by ceasing to cling to earth and creatures, as if they were
your good. That trust in Jesus Christ, which is the condition of
salvation is selling 'all that thou hast.' Self is 'all that thou
hast.' Abandon self and clutch Him, and the treasure is thine. But
the initial act of faith has to be carried on through a life of
self-denial and self-sacrifice, and the subjection of self-will,
which is the hardest of all, and the submission of one's self
altogether to the kingdom of God and to its King. If we do thus we
shall have the treasure, and if we do not thus we shall not.
Surely it is reasonable to fling away paste pearls for real ones.
Surely it is reasonable to fling away brass counters for gold coins.
Surely, in all regions of life, we willingly sacrifice the second
best in order to get the very best. Surely if the wealth which is in
God is more precious than all besides, you have the best of the
bargain, if you part with the world and yourselves and get Him. And
if, on the other hand, you stick to the second best and cleave to
yourselves and to this poor diurnal sphere and what it contains,
then I will tell you what your epitaph will be. It is written in one
of the Psalms, 'He shall leave them in the midst of his days, and at
his latter end shall be a fool.'
And there is a more foolish fool still--the man who, when he has
seen the treasure, flings another shovelful of earth upon it, and
goes away and does _not_ buy it, nor think anything more about
it. Dear brother, do not do that, but if, by God's help, any poor
words of mine have stirred anything in your hearts of recognition of
what your true wealth is, do not rest until you have done what is
needful to possess it, given away yourselves, and in exchange
received Christ, and in Him wealth for evermore.