01.03 The wayside soil
II. THE WAYSIDE SOIL Some seed fell upon the wayside soil. On the pathway trodden hard by the feet of men, the scattered seed finds no entry.
It lies upon the surface, and the birds which fly in the wake of the sower pick it up and carry it away. The wayside soil is the type of the hardened heart. (I) The heart is hardened often by the routine of daily life, monotonous and persistent. Work we must have; hard work it is well for us to have; but if work is to ennoble and not enslave, the inner spirit of the worker must be kept free, otherwise the whole life is pressed down, becomes hard and flat, narrow and barren. You remember that epitaph, so significant of the common failures of life, “Born a man, he died a grocer.”
“The daily round, the common task,” are indeed “a road to bring us daily nearer God.” But they are this only when the road is continually broken up by the free movement of His Spirit. There are three simple ways of preventing this hardening of the heart by the routine of life. One is Prayer. It is busy, hard-working men who have most need of the daily prayer. The habit of prayer keeps the character moist with the dews of heaven, open and responsive to the seed-words of God. The second is the right observance of the weekly Sabbath the rest for recreation: the pause, regularly enforced in the pressure of work, in which a man makes time to remember the Lord his God, and in the worship of the Church to enter another and a higher world. And these two are in close connection. For
“Every day should leave some part Free for a Sabbath of the heart, So shall the seventh be truly blest From morn to eve with hallowed rest.” The third is the momentary recollection of God in the midst of daily work as it is quaintly called, “the practice of the Presence of God.” You remember one Brother Lawrence, the monastery cook, who in the duties of the kitchen, by this means “possessed God in tranquillity.” These momentary upliftings of the soul to God, in shop and factory, in street and railway, keep the soil from hardening and make it responsive to the words of God.
(2) The heart is often hardened by the familiarity of religious language. The accustomed phrases fall on our ears or rise to our lips with dangerous facility. Unless they are constantly questioned and tested, they become a mere hardening patter of words. You have sung that hymn you have heard that sentence in a sermon you have used these phrases in your family prayers. Ask: “What does this really mean to me?” It is often a good thing to think quietly for five minutes about the tremendous import of the simplest phrases of religion. “From all hardness of heart and contempt of Thy word and commandment, good Lord, deliver us.”
TAGS: [Parables]