[1] In this parable the mystery of the Divine Providence is
laid open, its secret disclosed. _All ploughing is for
sowing; all threshing is intended for the preservation of
the grain._ When God chastens us, it is not that He means
to destroy us, but because He has set His heart on saving
us, because He has appointed us to life and not to death.
He works with discrimination. He employs various methods,
sends sorrows of all sorts and sizes, that He may adapt
Himself to every man's needs, and to all our varieties of
place, time, and circumstances. Just as the husbandman
varies his treatment of the soil, and allots to each kind
of seed a soil and place suitable to its kind; just as,
after the harvest has been gathered in, he employs only
such instruments as are best adapted for separating the
different kinds of grain from the straw and the chaff. With
like wisdom and discretion God deals with us, assigning to
each of us our proper station and lot, and, when we sin
against Him, adapting His judgments to our several needs.
The sorrows, losses, bereavements which befall us are but
as the sharp edge of the share, or the keen teeth of the
harrow, and are intended to prepare us to receive the good
seed, and to bring forth much fruit. Or again, they are
like the stroke of the flail, or the keen pressure of the
sledge, or the ponderous oppression of the waggon-wheel, or
the swift rattle of the horses' hoofs; and are designed to
separate the chaff from the grain, the worthless from the
worthy, the evil from the good in us, that we may be made
meet for the garner of God. "Cure sin and you cure sorry,"
say the reason and conscience of the world: _and the sorrow
comes that the sin may be cured,_ adds the prophet; the
very miseries that spring from evil are intended to
eradicate the evil from which they spring. The weeds call
for the plough; and the plough comes at their call; but it
comes and cuts up the weeds and the ground to which they
have taken root, only that the seeds of wholesome herbs and
the herbs of grace may be sown in the furrows. The chaff
calls for the flail, and the flail is sent, but sent only
to beat out the nourishing grain. Would that this
conception were as assured, and as familiar to us as to the
old Hebrew prophets! For, sooner or later, we shall all
have to endure sorrows, which rend our hearts as the
ploughshare rends the ground, or which bruise our hearts as
the flail bruises the corn.--_S. Cox, D.D.: Expositor,_
vol. i. pp. 89-98.