_THE PARABLE OF THE SOWER._
LUKE viii. 1-18.
In a single parenthetical sentence our Evangelist indicates a marked
change in the mode of the Divine ministry. Hitherto "His own city,"
Capernaum, has been a sort of centre, from which the lines of light and
blessing have radiated. Now, however, He leaves Capernaum, and makes a
circuit through the province of Galilee, going through its cities and
villages in a systematic, and as the verb would imply, a leisurely way,
preaching the "good tidings of the kingdom of God." Though no mention is
made of them, we are not to suppose that miracles were suspended; but
evidently they were set in the background, as secondary things, the
by-plays or "asides" of the Divine Teacher, who now is intent upon
delivering His message, the last message, too, that they would hear from
Him. Accompanying Him, and forming an imposing demonstration, were His
twelve disciples, together with "many" women, who ministered unto them
of their substance, among whom were three prominent ones, probably
persons of position and influence--Mary of Magdala, Joanna, wife of
Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, who had been healed by Jesus of
"evil spirits and infirmities"--which last word, in New Testament
language, is a synonym for physical weakness and disorder. Of the
particulars and results of this mission we know nothing, unless we may
see, in the "great multitude" which followed and thronged Jesus on His
return, the harvest reaped from the Galilean hills. Our Evangelist, at
any rate, links them together, as if the "great multitude" which now
lines the shore was, in part at least, the cloud of eager souls which
had been caught up and borne along on His fervid speech, as the echoes
of the kingdom went resounding among the hills and vales of Galilee.
Returning to Capernaum, whither the crowds follow Him, every city
sending its contingent of curious or conquered souls, Jesus, as St.
Matthew and St. Mark inform us, leaves the house, and seeks the open
stretch of shore, where from a boat--probably the familiar boat of
Simon--He addresses the multitudes, adopting now, as His favourite mode
of speech, the amplified parable. It is probable that He had observed on
the part of His disciples an undue elation of spirit. Reading the crowds
numerically, and not discerning the different motives which had brought
them together, their eyes deceived them. They imagined that these eager
multitudes were but a wave-sheaf of the harvest already ripe, which only
waited their gathering-in. But it is not so; and Jesus sifts and winnows
His audience, to show His disciples that the apparent is not always the
real, and that between the hearers of the word and the doers there will
ever be a wide margin of disappointment and comparative failure. The
harvest, in God's husbandry, as in man's, does not depend altogether
upon the quality of the seed or the faithfulness of the sower, but upon
the nature of the soil on which it falls.
As the sower went forth to sow his seed, "some fell by the way-side,
and it was trodden under-foot, and the birds of the heaven devoured it."
In his carefulness to cover all his ground, the sower had gone close up
to the boundary, and some of the seed had fallen on the edge of the bare
and trampled path, where it lay homeless and exposed. It was in contact
with the earth, but it was a mechanical, and not a vital touch. There
was no correspondence, no communion between them. Instead of welcoming
and nourishing the seed, it held it aloof, in a cold, repelling way. Had
the soil been sympathetic and receptive, it held within itself all the
elements of growth. Touched by the subtle life that was hidden within
the seed, the dead earth itself had lived, growing up into blades of
promise, and from the full ear throwing itself forward into the future
years. But the earth was hard and unreceptive; its possibilities of
blessing were locked up and buried beneath a crust of trampled soil that
was callous and unresponsive as the rock itself. And so the seed lay
unwelcomed and alone, and the life which the warm touch of earth would
have loosened and set free remained within its husk as a dead thing,
without voice or hearing. There was nothing else for it but to be ground
into dust by the passing foot or to be picked up by the foraging birds.
The parable was at once a prophecy and an experience. Forming a part of
the crowd which surrounded Jesus was an outer ring of hearers who came
but to criticize and to cavil. They had no desire to be taught--at any
rate by such a teacher. They were themselves the "knowing ones," the
learned, and they looked with suspicion and ill-concealed scorn upon the
youthful Nazarene. Turning upon the Speaker a cold, questioning glance,
or exchanging signals with one another, they were evidently hostile to
Jesus, listening, it is true, but with a feline alertness, hoping to
entrap the sweet Singer in His speech. Upon these, and such as these,
the word of God, even when spoken by the Divine Son, made no impression.
It was a speaking to the rocks, with no other result than the awaking of
a few echoes of mockery and banter.
The experience is still true. Among those who frequent the house of God
are many whose worship is a cold, conventional thing. Drawn thither by
custom, by the social instinct, or by the love of change, they pass
within the gates of the Lord's house, ostensibly to worship. But they
are insincere, indifferent; they bring their body, and deposit it in the
accustomed pew, but they might as well have put there a bag of ashes or
an automaton of brass. Their mind is not here, and the cold, stolid
features, unlighted by any passing gleam, tell too surely of a vacancy
or vagrancy of thought. And even while the lips are throwing off
mechanically _Jubilates_ and _Te Deums_ their heart is "far from Me,"
chasing some phantom "will o' the wisp," or dreaming their dreams of
pleasure, gain, and ease. The worship of God they themselves would call
it, but God does not recognize it. He calls their prayers a weariness,
their incense an abomination. Theirs is but a worship of Self, as,
setting up their image of clay, they summon earth's musicians to play
their sweet airs about it. God, with them, is set back, ignored,
proscribed. The personal "I" is writ so large, and is so all-pervasive,
that there is no room for the I AM. Living for earth, all the fibres of
their being growing downwards towards it, heaven is not even a cloud
drifting across their distant vision; it is an empty space, a vacancy.
To the voices of earth their ears are keenly sensitive; its very
whispers thrill them with new excitements; but to the voices of Heaven
they are deaf; the still, small voice is all unheard, and even the
thunders of God are so muffled as to be unrecognized and scarcely
audible. And so the word of God falls upon their ears in vain. It drops
upon a soil that is impervious and antipathetic, a heart which knows no
penitence, and a life whose fancied goodness has no room for mercy, or
which finds such complete satisfaction in the gains of unrighteousness
or the pleasures of sin that it is purposely and persistently deaf to
all higher, holier voices. Ulysses filled his ears with wax, lest he
should yield himself up to the enchantments of the sirens. The fable is
true, even when read in reversed lines; for when Virtue, Purity, and
Faith invite men to their resting-place, calling them to the Islands of
the Blessed, and to the Paradise of God, they charm in vain. Deafening
their ears, and not deigning to give a passing thought to the higher
call, men drift past the heaven which might have been theirs, until
these holier voices are silenced by the awful distance.
That the word of God is inoperative here is through no fault, either of
the seed or of the sower. That word is still "quick and powerful," but
it is sterile, because it finds nothing on which it may grow. It is not
"understood," as Jesus Himself explains. It falls upon the outward ear
alone, and there only as unmeaning sound, like the accents of some
unknown tongue. And so the wicked one easily takes away the word from
their heart; for, as the preposition itself implies, that word had not
fallen into the heart; it was lying on it in a superficial way, like the
seed cast upon the trampled path.
Is there, then, no hope for these way-side hearers? and sparing our
strength and toil, shall we leave them for soils more promising? By no
means. The fallow ground may be broken up; the ploughshare can loosen
the hardened, unproductive earth. Pulverized by the teeth of the harrow
or the teeth of the frost, the barren track itself disappears; it passes
up into the advanced classes, giving back the seed with which it is now
entrusted, with a thirty, sixty, or a hundredfold increase. And this is
true in the higher husbandry, in which we are permitted to be "God's
fellow-workers." The heart which to-day is indifferent or repellent,
to-morrow, chastened by sickness or torn by the ploughshare of some keen
grief, may hail with eagerness the message it rejected and even scorned
before. Amid the penury and shame of the far country, the father's
house, from which he had wantonly turned, now comes to the prodigal like
a sweet dream, and even its bread has all the aroma and sweetness of
ambrosial food. No matter how disappointing the soil, we are to do our
duty, which is to "sow beside all waters;" nor should any calculations
of imaginary productiveness make us slack our hand or cast away our
hope. When the Spirit is poured out from on high, even "the wilderness
becomes as a fruitful field," and death itself becomes instinct with
life.
"And other fell on the rock; and as soon as it grew it withered away,
because it had no moisture." Here is a second quality of soil. It is
not, however, a soil that is weakened by an intermixture of gravel or of
stones, but rather a soil that is thinly spread upon the rock. It is
good soil as far as it goes, but it is shallow. It receives the seed
gladly, as if that were its one mission, as indeed it is; it gives the
seed a hiding-place, throwing over it a mantle of earth, so that the
birds shall not devour it. It lays its warm touch upon the enveloping
husk, as the Master once laid His finger upon the bier, and to the
imprisoned life which was within it said, "Arise and multiply. Pass up
into the sunlight, and give God's children bread." And the seed
responds, obeys. The emerging life throws out its two wings--one
downwards, as its roots clasp the soil; one upwards, as the blade,
pushing the clods aside, makes for the light and the heavens that are
above it. "Surely," we should say, if we read the future from the
present merely, "the hundredfold is here. Pull down your barns and build
greater, for never was seed received more kindly, never were the
beginnings of life more auspicious, and never was promise so great." Ah
that the promise should so soon be a disappointment, and the forecast be
so soon belied! The soil has no depth. It is simply a thin covering
spread over the rock. It offers no room for growth. The life it
nourishes can be nothing more than an ephemeral life, which owns but a
to-day, whose "to-morrow" will be in the oven of a burning heat. The
growth is entirely superficial, for its roots come directly to the hard,
impenetrable rock, which, yielding no support, but cutting off all
supplies from the unseen reservoirs beneath, turns back the incipient
life all starved and shrunken. The result is a sudden withering and
decay. A foundling, left, not by some iron gate which the touch of mercy
might open, but by a dead wall of cold, unresponsive stone, the plant
throws up its arms into the air, in its vain struggle for life, and then
wilts and droops, lying at last, a dead and shrivelled thing, on the dry
bosom of the earth which had given it its untimely birth.
Such, says Jesus, are many who hear the word. Unlike those by the
way-side, these do not reject it. They listen, bending toward that word
with attentive ears and eager hearts. Nay, they receive it with joy; it
strikes upon their soul with the music of a new evangel. But the work is
not thorough; it is superficial, external. They "have no root" in a deep
and settled conviction, only a green blade of profession and of mock
promise, and when the testing-time comes, as it comes to all, "the time
of temptation," they fall away, or they "stand off," as the verb might
be literally rendered.
In this second class we must place a large proportion of those who heard
and who followed Jesus. There was something attractive about His manner
and about His message. Again and again we read how they "pressed upon
Him" to hear His words, the multitude hanging on His lips as the bees
will cluster upon a honeyed leaf. Thousands upon thousands thus came
within the spell of His voice, now wondering at His gracious words, and
now stunned with astonishment, as they marked the authority with which
He spoke, the compressed thunder that was in His tones. But in how many
cases are we forced to admit the interest to be but momentary! It was
with many--shall we say with most?--merely a passing excitement, the
effervescence of personal contact. The words of Jesus came "as a very
lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice," and for the moment the
hearts of the multitudes were set vibrating in responsive harmonies. But
the music ceased when the Singer was absent. The impressions were not
permanent, and even the emotions had soon passed away, almost from
memory. St. John speaks of one sifting in Galilee when "many of His
disciples went back, and walked no more with Him" (vi. 66), showing that
with them at least it was an attachment rather than an attachment that
bound them to Himself. The bond of union was the hope of some personal
gain, rather than the bond of a pure and deep affection. And so directly
He speaks of His approaching death, of His "flesh and blood" which He
shall give them to eat and to drink, like an icy breath from the north,
those words chill their devotion, turning their zeal and ardour into a
cold indifference, if not into an open hostility. And this same
winnowing of Galilee is repeated in Judæa. We read of multitudes who
escorted Jesus down the Mount of Olives, strewing His path with
garments, giving Him a royal welcome to the "city of the Great King."
But how soon a change "came o'er the spirit of their dream"! how soon
the hosannahs died away! As a hawk in the sky will still in a moment the
warbling of the birds, so the uplifted cross threw its cold shadow upon
their hearts, drowning the brief hosannahs in a strange silence. The
cross was the fan in the Masters hand, with which He "throughly purged
His floor," separating the true from the false. It blew away into the
deep valley of Oblivion the chaff, the dead superficialities, the barren
yawns, leaving as the residuum of the sifted multitudes a mere handful
of a hundred and twenty names.
These _pro tem._ believers are indigenous to every soil. There never is
a great movement afloat--philanthropic, political or spiritual--but
numberless smaller craft are lifted up on its swell. For a moment they
seem instinct with life, but having no propelling power in themselves,
they drop behind, soon to be embedded in the mire. And especially is
this true in the region of spiritual dynamics. In all so-called
"revivals" of religion, when the Church rejoices in a deepened and
quickened life, when a cooling zeal has been rewarmed at the heavenly
fires, and converts are multiplied, in the accessions which follow
almost invariably will be found a proportion of what we may call
"casuals." We cannot say they are counterfeits, for the work, as far as
it goes, seems real, and the change, both in their thought and life, is
clearly marked. But they are unstable souls, prone to drifting, their
direction given in the main by the set of the current in which they
happen to be. And so when they reach the point--which all must reach
sooner or later--where two seas meet, the cross current of enticement
and temptation bears hard upon them, and they make shipwreck of faith.
Others, again, are led by impulse. Religion with them is mainly a matter
of feeling. Overlooking the fact that the emotions are easily stirred,
that they respond to the passing breath just as the sea ripples to the
breeze, they substitute emotion for conviction, feeling for faith. But
these have no foundation, no root, no independent life, and when the
excitements on which they feed are withdrawn, when the emotion subsides,
the high tide of fervour falling back to its mean sea-level, they lose
heart and hope. They are even ready to pity themselves as the objects of
an illusion. But the illusion was one of their own making. They set the
pleasant before the right, delight before duty, comfort before Christ,
and instead of finding their heaven in doing the will of God, no matter
what the emotions, they sought their heaven in their own personal
happiness, and so they missed both.
"They endure for a while." And of how many are these words true! Verily
we must not count our fruits from the blossoms of spring, nor must we
reckon our harvest in that easy, hopeful way of multiplying each seed,
or even each blade, by the hundredfold, for the blade may be only a
short-lived blade and nothing more.
"And other fell amidst the thorns; and the thorns grew with it, and
choked it." Here is a third quality of soil in the ascending series. In
the first, the trampled path, life was not possible; the seed could find
not the least response. In the second there was life. The thinly
sprinkled soil gave the seed a home, a rooting; but lacking depth of
earth and the necessary moisture, the life was precarious, ephemeral. It
died away in the blade, and never reached its fruitage. Now, however, we
have a deeper, richer soil, with an abundance of vitality, one capable
of sustaining an exuberant life. But it is not clean; it is already
thickly sown with thorns, and the two growths running up side by side,
the hardier gets the mastery. And though the corn-life struggles up into
the ear, bearing a sort of fruit, it is a grain that is dwarfed and
shrivelled, a mere husk and shell, which no leaven can transmute into
bread. It brings forth fruit, as the exposition of the parable
indicates, but it has not strength to complete its task; it does not
ripen it, bringing the fruit "to perfection."
Such, says Jesus, is another and a large class of hearers. They are
naturally capable of doing great things. Possessing strong wills, and a
large amount of energy, they are just the lives to be fruitful,
impressing themselves upon others, and so throwing their manifold
influence down into the future. But they do not, and for the simple
reason that they do not give to the word a whole heart. Their attentions
and energies are divided. Instead of seeking "first the kingdom of God,"
making that the supreme quest of life, it is with them but one of many
things to be desired and sought. Chief among the hindrances to a
perfected growth and fruitfulness, Jesus mentions three; namely, cares,
riches, and pleasures. By the "cares of life" we must understand--
interpreting the word by its related word in Matthew vi. 34--the
anxieties of life. It is the anxious thought, mainly about the
"to-morrow," which presses upon the heart as a sore and constant burden.
It is the fearfulness and unrest of soul which gloom the spirit and
shroud the life, making the Divine peace itself a fret and worry. And
how many Christians find this to be the normal experience! They love
God, they seek to serve Him; but they are weighted and weary. Instead of
having the hopeful, buoyant spirit which rises to the crest of passing
waves, it is a heart depressed and sad, living in the deeps. And so the
brightness of their life is dimmed; they walk not "in the light, as He
is in the light," but beneath a sky frequently overcast, their days
bringing only "a little glooming light, much like a shade." And so their
spiritual life is stunted, their usefulness impaired. Instead of having
a heart "at leisure from itself," they are engrossed with their own
unsatisfactory experiences. Instead of looking upwards to the heavens
which are their own, or outwards upon the crying needs of earth, they
look inward with frequent and morbid introspection; and instead of
lending a hand to the fallen, that a brotherly touch might help them to
rise, their hands find full employment in steadying the world, or
worlds, of care which, Atlas-like, they are doomed to carry.
Self-doomed, we should have said; for the Divine Voice invites us to
cast "all our anxiety upon Him," assuring us that He careth for us, an
assurance and an invitation which make our anxieties, the fret and fever
of life, altogether superfluous.
Exactly the same effect of making the spiritual life incomplete, and so
unproductive, is caused by riches and pleasures, or, as we might render
the expression, by the pursuit after riches or after pleasure. Not that
the Scriptures condemn wealth in itself. It is, _per se_, of a neutral
character, whether a blessing or a bane depends on how it is earned and
how it is held. Nor do the Scriptures condemn legitimate modes and
measures of business; they condemn waste and indolence, but they commend
industry, diligence, thrift. But the evil is in making wealth the chief
aim of life. It is deceptive, promising satisfaction which it never
gives, creating a thirst which it is powerless to slake, until the
desire, ever more greedy and clamorous, grows into a "love of money," a
pure worship of Mammon. Religion and business may well go together, for
God has joined them in one. Each keeping its proper place, religion
first and most, and business a far-off second, together they are the
centrifugal and centripetal forces that keep the life revolving steadily
around its Divine centre. But let the positions be reversed; let
business be the first, chief thought, let religion sink down to some
second or third place, and the life swings farther and farther from its
pivotal centre, into wildernesses of dearth and cold. To give due
thought to earthly things is right; nay, we may give all diligence to
make our earthly, as well as our heavenly calling sure; but when
business gets imperious in its demands, swallowing up all our thought
and energy, leaving no time for spiritual exercises or for personal
service for Christ, then the religious life declines. Crowded back into
the chance corners, with nothing left it but the brief interstices of a
busy life, religion can do little more than maintain a profession; its
helpfulness is, in the main, remitted to the past, and its fruitfulness
is postponed to that uncertain nowhere of the Greek calends.
The same is true with regard to the pleasures of life. The word
"pleasure" is a somewhat infrequent word in the New Testament, and
generally it is used of the lower, sensual pleasures. We are not
obliged, however, to give the word its lowest meaning; indeed, the
analogy of the parable would scarcely allow such an interpretation.
Sinful pleasure would not check growth; it would simply prevent it,
making a spiritual life impossible. We must therefore interpret the
"pleasures" which retard the upward growth, and render it infertile, as
the lawful pleasures of life, such as the delights of the eye and ear,
the gratification of the tastes, the enjoyments of domestic or social
life. Perfectly innocent and pure in themselves, purposely designed for
our enjoyment, as St. Paul plainly intimates (1 Tim. vi. 17), they are
pleasures which we have no right to treat with the stoic's disdain, nor
with the ascetic's aversion. But the snare is in permitting these
desires to step out of their proper place, in allowing them to have a
controlling influence. As servants their ministry is helpful and benign;
but if we make them "lords," then, like "the ill uses of a life," we
find it difficult to put them down; they rather put us down, making us
their thrall. To please God should be the one absorbing pursuit and
passion of life, and wholly bent on this, if other pure enjoyments come
in our way we may receive them thankfully. But if we make our personal
gratification the aim, if our thoughts and plans are set on this rather
than upon the pleasing of God, then our spiritual life is enfeebled and
stifled, and the fruit we should bear shrivels up into chaff. Then we
become selfish and self-willed, and the pure pleasures of life, which
like Vestal Virgins minister within the temple of God, leading us ever
to Him, turn round to burn perpetual incense before our enlarged and
exalted Self. He who stops to confer with flesh and blood, who is ever
consulting his own likes and leanings, can never be an apostle to
others.
"And other fell into the good ground, and grew, and brought forth fruit
a hundredfold." Here is the highest quality of soil. Not hard, like the
trampled path, nor shallow, like the covering of the rock, not
preoccupied with the roots of other growths, this is mellow, deep,
clean, and rich. The seed falls, not "by," or "in," or "among," but
"into" it, while seed and soil together grow up in an affluence of life,
and passing through the blade-age and the earing, it ripens into a
harvest of a hundredfold. Such, says Jesus, are they who, in an honest
and good heart, having heard the word, hold it fast, and bring forth
fruit with patience. Here, then, we reach the germ of the parable, the
secret of fruitfulness. The one difference between the saint and the
sinner, between the hundredfold hearer and him whose life is spent in
throwing out promises of a harvest which never ripens, is their
different attitude towards the word of God. In the one case that word is
rejected altogether, or it is a concept of the mind alone, an aurora of
the Arctic night, distant and cold, which some mistake for the dawn of a
new day. In the other the word passes through the mind into the deepest
heart; it conquers and rules the whole being; it becomes a part of one's
very self, the soul of the soul. "Thy word have I hid in my heart," said
the Psalmist, and he who puts the Divine word there, before all earthly
and selfish voices, letting that Divine Voice fill up that most sacred
temple of the heart, will make his outer life both beautiful and
fruitful. He will walk the earth as one of God's seers, ever beholding
Him who is invisible, speaking by life or lips in heavenly tones, and
by his own steadfast, upward gaze lifting the hearts and thoughts of men
"above the world's uncertain haze." Such is the Divine law of life; the
measure of our faith is the measure of our fruitfulness. If we but half
believe in the promises of God or in the eternal realities, then the
sinews of our soul are houghed, and there comes over us the sad
paralysis of doubt. How can we bring forth fruit except we abide in Him?
and how can we abide in Him but by letting His words abide in us? But
having His words abiding in us, then His peace, His joy, His life are
ours, and we, who without Him are poor, dead things, now become strong
in His infinite strength, and fruitful with a Divine fruitfulness; and
to our lives, which were all barren and dead, will men come for the
words that "help and heal," while the Master Himself gathers from them
His thirty, sixty, or hundredfold, the fruitage of a whole-hearted,
patient faith.
Let us take heed, therefore, how we hear, for on the character of the
hearing depends the character of the life. Nor is the truth given us for
ourselves alone; it is given that it may become incarnate in us, so that
others may see and feel the truth that is in us, even as men cannot help
seeing the light which is manifest.
And so the parable closes with the account of the visit of His mother
and brethren, who came, as St. Matthew informs us, "to take Him home;"
and when the message was passed on to Him that His mother and His
brethren wished to see Him, this was His remarkable answer, claiming
relationship with all whose hearts vibrate to the same "word:" "My
mother and My brethren are those which hear the word of God, and DO IT."
It is the secret of the Divine life on earth; they hear, and they do.