03.01. THE SOWER

THE SOWER Matthew 13:1-9; Matthew 13:18-23 ; Luke 7:4-15 This parable had to be spoken. It gave expression to thoughts which burdened the mind of Jesus throughout His ministry. On the day He uttered it, he had left the house and was sitting by the sea-side, “and there were gathered unto Him great multitudes.” He had no difficulty in finding an audience. It is one of the greatest pleasures to listen to a good speaker. It is a pleasure which attracts young and old, rich and poor, educated and uneducated. A good speaker is always sure of an audience, and especially where he has not to encounter the rivalry of books. But as Jesus watched the crowd assembling, and perceived the various dispositions with which the people came. He could not but reflect how much of what He had to say must certainly be lost on many. He knew He had that to tell men which, if received, would change the face of society, and turn the wilderness into a garden. He was conscious of that in His own mind which, could it only be conveyed into the minds of those pressing around Him, would cause their lives to flourish with righteousness, beauty, love, usefulness, and joy. He had “many things to say” to them, things that never yet had fallen and never again could fall from human lips; and yet who, of the thousands that listened, would believe? They came, some out of curiosity, some saying within themselves, “What will this sower of words say?” some out of hatred, seeking occasion against Him; but all thinking themselves entitled to hold and express an opinion regarding the importance or worthlessness of what He said. They needed to have their critical faculty exercised upon themselves, and to be reminded that in order to benefit by what He had to say, they must bring certain capacities. The parabolic form of teaching is pleasant to listen to; it is easily retained in the memory; it stimulates thought, each man being left to find an interpretation for himself; and it avoids the offensiveness of direct rebuke. To the crowd Jesus speaks only of the sower in the fields, and makes no explicit reference to Himself or to them. The object of this parable, then, is to explain the causes of the failure and success of the gospel. Apart from experience, it might have been supposed that our Lord had only to proclaim His kingdom in order to gather all men to His standard. If it were so that God desired all men to enter into everlasting joy, did not this remove every difficulty, and secure the happiness of all? Could such a messenger and such a message fail to move every one who came in contact with them? Alas! even after so many centuries Christianity is not the one only religion men believe in; and even where it is professed, it is most inadequately understood and received. Why, then, is it so? why, to so lamentable an extent does every agency for the extension of Christ’s kingdom fail? It fails, says our Lord, not because the claims of the kingdom are doubtful, not because they are inappropriately urged — these causes may no doubt sometimes operate — but the kingdom fails to extend because the fructification of the seed of the word depends upon the nature of the soil it falls upon, and because that soil is often impervious, often shallow, often dirty. The seed is not in fault, the sowing is not in fault, but the soil is faulty — a statement of the case as little accepted by those in our own day who discuss Christ’s claims, as it was by our Lord’s contemporaries.

1. The first faultiness of soil our Lord specifies in the words, “Some seeds fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured them up;” and the interpretation or spiritual analogue He gives in the words, “When any one heareth the word of the kingdom and understandeth it not then cometh the wicked one and catcheth away that which was sown in his heart.” The beaten footpath that crosses the corn-field, and that is maintained year after year, or the cart-track along the side of the field, may serve a very useful purpose, but certainly it will grow no corn. The hard surface does not admit the seed: you might as well scatter seed on a wooden table, or a pavement, or a mirror. The seed may be of the finest quality, but for all the purposes of sowing you might as well sprinkle pebbles or shot. It lies on the surface. This state of matters then represents that hearing of the word which manages to keep the word entirely outside. The word has been heard, but that is all. It has not even entered the understanding. It has been heard as men listen to what is said in a foreign language. The mind is not interested; it is roused to no inquiry, provoked to no contradiction. You have sometimes occasion to suggest a different course of action to a friend; and, in order to do so, you mention a fact which should be sufficient to alter his purpose, but you find he has not apprehended its significance, has not seen its bearing — it has not fructified in his mind as you expected, and you say to yourself; “He does not take it in.” So says our Lord: there are hearers who do not take in what is said; they do not see the bearings of the word they hear; their understanding is impervious, impenetrable. Are there such hearers? Surely there are. There are persons on whom the seed of the word falls as by accident, and who have neither prepared themselves to hear it, nor make any effort to retain it. They are members of a church-going family, or they have formed a church-going habit of their own; they have perhaps their reason for being found side by side with those who hear with profit, but they do not come for the sake of hearing; they are not anxious to hear, thoughtful about what they hear, careful to retain it. There are careless persons who hear the word not as the result of a decision that it is to be heard; not as they would, on beginning the study of chemistry or of philosophy, seek out certain teachers and certain books; but as the hearing of the word happens to be the employment of the hour, they submit to this social convention, and they allow the seed of the kingdom to fall upon them with no more expectation than that with which they hear the passing salutation of a friend on the street, knowing that whether he says it is a fine day or not, it is equally without significance. This hearing of the word has come to be one of the many employments with which men fill up their time, and this hearer has never thought why, nor whether it does him any good or no. He has never considered why he personally should listen to this special kind of word, nor what he personally may expect as the result of it.

There are, in short, persons who, either from preoccupation with other thoughts and hopes, have their minds beaten hard and rendered quite impervious to thoughts of Christ’s kingdom, or from a natural slowness and hard frostiness of nature, hear the word without admitting it even to work in their understanding. They do not ponder what is heard, they do not check the statements they hear by their own thought; they do not consider the bearings of the gospel on themselves. When you propose to a farmer who is paying too high a rent to go to some part of the country where rents are lower, the idea will probably find entrance into his understanding. He may not ultimately adopt it, but it will stir a great many hopes and thoughts of various kinds in him, and he will find his mind dwelling on it day after day, and hour by hour, so that he can speak of little else. But the proposals made to the wayside hearer suggest nothing at all to him. His mind throws off Christ’s offers as a slated roof throws off hail. You might as well expect seed to grow on a tightly-braced drum-head as the word to profit such a hearer; it dances on the hard surface, and the slightest motion shakes it off. The consequence is, it is forgotten. When seed is scattered on a hard surface it is not allowed to lie long. The birds devour it up. Every hedge, every tree, every roof contributes its eager few, and shortly not a corn remains. So when not even the mind has been interested in Christ’s word, that word is quickly forgotten; the conversation on the way home from church, the thought of to-morrow’s occupations, the sight of some one on the street — anything, is enough to take it clean away. In some persons the word is admitted though it does not at once bring forth fruit. As in the old fable the words spoken unheard in the Arctic circle were thawed into sound and became audible in warmer latitudes; so when a man passes into new circumstances and a state of life more congenial to the development of Christian discipleship, the word which has apparently been lost for years begins to stir and make itself heard in his soul. But it cannot be so with the wayside hearer, for in him the word has never found any manner of lodgment.

2. The second faultiness of soil our Lord enumerates is shallowness. What we commonly understand by “stony ground” is a field thickly strewn with small stones; not the best kind of soil, but quite available for growing corn. This is not the soil meant here. Our Lord speaks rather of rocky ground, where a thin surface of mold overlies an impenetrable rock. There is a mere dusting of soil on the surface; if you put a stick or a spade into it, you come upon the rock a few inches below. On such ground the seed quickly springs, there being no deepness of earth to allow of its spending time in rooting itself. And for the same reason it quickly withers when exposed to the fierce heats which benefit and mature strongly-rooted plants. Precocity and rapid growth are everywhere the forerunners of rapid decay. The oak that is to stand a thousand years does not shoot up like the hop or the creeper. Man whose age is seventy years has a slowly growing infancy and youth, while the insect grows up in a day and dies at night or at the week’s end. The shallow hearer our Lord distinguishes by two characteristics; he straightway receives the word, and he receives it with joy. The man of deeper character receives the word with deliberation, as one who has many things to take into account and to weigh. He receives it with seriousness, and reverence, and trembling, foreseeing the trials he will be subjected to, and he cannot show a light-minded joy. The superficial character responds quickly because there is no depth of inner life. Difficulties which deter men of greater depth do not stagger the superficial. While other men are engaged in giving the word entrance into all the secret places of their life, and are confronting it with their most cherished feelings and ways, that they may clearly see the extent of the changes it will work: while they are pondering it in the majesty of its hope and the vastness of its revelation; while they are striving to forecast all its results in them and upon them; while they are hesitating because they are in earnest, and would receive the word for eternity or not at all, and would give it entrance to the whole of their being, or exclude it altogether, — while others are doing this, the superficial man has settled the whole matter out of hand, and he who yesterday was a known scoffer is to-day a loud-voiced child of the kingdom.

These men may often be mistaken for the most earnest Christians: indeed they are almost certainly taken to be the most earnest; you cannot see the root, and what is seen is shown in greatest luxuriance by the superficial. The earnest man has much of his energy to spend beneath the soil, he cannot show anything till he is sure of the root. He is often working away at the foundation while another is at the copestone. But the test comes. The very influences which exercise and mature the well-rooted character, wither the superficially rooted. The same shallowness of nature which made them susceptible to the gospel and quickly responsive, makes them susceptible to pain, suffering, hardship, and easily defeated. It is so in all departments of life. The superficial are taken with every new thing. The boy is delighted with a new study or a new game, but becomes proficient in neither. The youth is charmed with volunteering, but one season of early rising is more than he can stand: or he is fascinated with the idea that history is an extremely profitable kind of reading; but you know quite well when he asks for the loan of the first volume of Gibbon or Grote, that he will never come to you for the last. The action of the shallow man is in every case hasty, not based on a carefully considered and resolutely accepted plan: he is charmed with the first appearances, and does not look into the matter, and forecast results and consequences. Accordingly, when consequences have to be faced, he is not prepared and gives way. But how, then, can the shallow man be saved? Is there no provision in the gospel for those who are born with a thin, poor nature? This question scarcely falls to be answered here, because the parable presents one truth regarding shallow natures, which is verified in thousands of instances. Men do thus deal with the word, and thus make shipwreck of faith, and that is all we have here to do with. But passing beyond the parable, it may be right to say that a man’s nature may be deepened by the events, and relationships, and conflicts of life. Indeed, that much deepening of character is constantly effected, you may gather from the fact that while many young persons are shallow, the old persons whom you would characterize as shallow are comparatively few.

3. The third faultiness of soil which causes failure in the crop is what is technically known as dirt. The soil is not impenetrable, nor is it shallow; it is deep, good land, but it has not been cleaned — there is seed in it already. Sometimes you see a field of wheat brilliantly colored throughout with poppies; or a field of oats which it is difficult to cut on account of the dense growth of thistles, and of rank grass. But the soil can only feed a certain amount of vegetation, and every living weed means a choked blade of corn. This is a worse case than the others. No crop can be looked for on a beaten road, not much can be expected from a mere peppering of soil upon rock; but here there is rich, deep, loamy mould, that must be growing something, and would, if cared for, yield a magnificent harvest, and yet there is little or nothing but thorns. This is a picture of the preoccupied heart of the rich, vigorous nature, capable of understanding, appreciating, and making much of the word of the kingdom, but occupied with so many other interests, that only a small part of its energy is available for giving effect to Christ’s ideas. These ideas are not excluded from the thoughts, they are welcomed; the mind is full of intelligent interest in Christian truth, and the heart has a real and profound sympathy with the work of Christ in the world and with His spirit, and yet, after all, little practical good proceeds from the man — Christian principle does not come to much in his case— the life shows little result of a specially Christian kind. The reason is that the man is occupied with a multitude of other views, and projects, and cares, and desires, and the peculiarly Christian seed does not get fair play. It influences him, but it is hindered and mixed up with so many other influences that the result is scarcely discernible. The peculiarity of a good field of wheat is not the density of the vegetation, but that the vegetation is all of one kind, is all wheat. Leave the field to itself, you will in a short time have quite as dense a vegetation, but it will be of a multifarious kind. That the field bears wheat only, is the result of cultivation — not merely of sowing wheat, but of preventing anything else from being sown. The first care of the diligent farmer is to clean his land. And as there is generally some one kind of weed to which the soil is congenial, and against which the farmer has to wage a continual war, so our Lord here specifies as specially dangerous to us “the care of this world and the deceitfulness of riches.” The care of this world has been called the poor man’s species of the deceitfulness of riches, and the deceitfulness of riches a variety of the care of this world. There are poor men who have no anxiety, and rich men who are not misled by their riches either into dependence on their wealth, or desire to make it more. But among rich men and poor men alike you will find some or many who would be left without any subject of thought, and any guiding principle in action, if you took from them anxiety about their own position in life. It is this from which all the fruit they bear springs. Take the actions of a year, the annual outcome or harvest of the man, and how much of what he has produced you can trace to this seed — to a mere anxiety about income and position. This is really the seed, this is all that is required to account for a large part of many men’s actions. Our Lord therefore warns us that if the word is to do its work in us, and produce all the good it is meant to produce, it must have the field to itself. It will not do merely to give attention to the word while it is preached: the mind may be clean on the surface, while there remain great knots of roots below, which will inevitably spring up, and by their more inveterate growth choke the word. This is the mistake of many. It is proper, they know, to hear the word — proper to give it fair play. They do make an effort to banish worldly and anxious thoughts, and to give their attention to divine things, but even though they succeed in putting aside for the time distracting thoughts, what of that if they have not the care of the world up by the roots? Cutting down won’t do: still less, a mere holding aside of the thorns till the seed be sown. What chance has the seed in a heart from which these eager thoughts and hopes are merely held back for the hour? The cares of the world will just swing over again and meet above the good seed, and shut out the day and every maturing influence. You receive to-day good impressions, you give the good seed entrance, and it begins to spring in you, it prompts you to a reasonable generosity and self-denial. To-morrow morning the tender blade of a desire to purify and prepare your spirit by some real and devout converse with God has sprung up in you, but the habitual craving to be at your work and lose no moment from business crushes and chokes the little blade, and it can no more lift its head. Or the seed has produced even the green ear of a growing habit of living under God’s eye, of walking with God and bringing all your transactions before His judgment, — mature fruit seems on the point of being produced by you, when suddenly the promise of a rich harvest is choked by the old coarse thorn of a fondness for rapid profits, which leads you to ambiguous language, and reservations, and unfair dealings, such as you feel separate you from God, and dash your spiritual ardor, and make you feel like a fool and a knave both, when you speak of your citizenship being in heaven. It is vain, then, to hope for the only right harvest of a human life if your heart is sown with worldly ambitions, a greedy hasting to be rich, an undue love of comfort, a true earthliness of spirit. One seed only must be sown in and, you it will produce all needed diligence in business, as well as all fervor of spirit.

These, then, are the three faulty soils to which our Lord chiefly ascribes the failure of the sowing. The question arises, Does the result follow in the moral sowing and in the world of men as uniformly and inevitably as it follows in the sowing of corn in nature? In nature some soils are irreclaimable, vast tracts of the earth’s surface are as useless as the sea for the purposes of growing grain. They may indirectly contribute to the fruitfulness of corn lands by influencing the climate, but no one thinks of cultivating these tracts themselves, of sowing the sands of Sahara or the ice-fields of Siberia. But the gospel is to be preached to every creature, because in man there is one important distinction from material nature; he is possessed of free will, of the power of checking to some extent natural tendencies, and preventing natural consequences. Accordingly, we cannot just accept the bare teaching of the parable as the whole truth regarding the operation of the gospel in man’s heart, but only as one part of the truth, and that a most important part. The parable enters into no consideration nor explanation of how men arrive at the spiritual conditions here enumerated; but, given those conditions — and they are certainly common however arrived at — given those conditions, the result is failure of the gospel. In contrast, then, to these three faults of impenetrability, shallowness, and dirt, we may be expected to do something towards bringing to the hearing of the word a soft, deep, clean soil of heart, or, as Luke calls it, “an honest and good heart.” There are differences in the crop even among those who bring good hearts; one bears thirty-fold, one sixty, one an hundred-fold. One man has natural advantages, opportunities of position, and so forth, which make his yield greater. One man may have had a larger proportion of seed; in his early days and all through his life he may have been in contact with the word, and in favoring circumstances. But wherever the word is received, and held fast, and patiently cared for, there the life will produce all that God cares to have from it.

Honesty is a prime requisite in hearing the word, and a rare one. Men listen honestly to a lecture on science or history, from which they expect information; but where conduct is aimed at, or a vote is concerned, men commonly listen with minds already made up. It is notorious that men vote as they meant to vote, no matter what, is said. If a Liberal were found voting with Conservatives on any important point, some mistake would be supposed. The last thing thought of would be that his convictions had been altered by the speaking. But if we are to hear the word as we ought, we must bring an honest heart, we must not listen with a mind already made up against the gospel, with no intention whatever of being persuaded, cherishing purposes and habits, alongside of which it is impossible the word should grow. On the contrary, we should consider that this is the seed proper to the human heart, and which can alone produce what human life should produce — the word of God, which we must listen to gratefully, humbly, sincerely, greedily, and with the firm purpose of giving it unlimited scope within us. But where is the attentive, painstaking scrutiny of the heart which this demands? Where is the careful husbandry of our souls, which would secure a kindly reception for the word? Where is the jealous challenging of every sentiment, habit, influence, association, that begs for a lodging within us? For where this is, and not elsewhere, we may expect the fruit of the kingdom. But even this is not enough. The fruitful hearer must not only bring an honest and good heart, he must keep the word. The farmer’s work is not finished when he has prepared the soil and sown the seed. If pains be not taken after the sowing, the seed that has fallen on good soil may be taken away as utterly as that which has fallen on the beaten path. The birds scatter over the whole field. We must therefore set a watcher; we must send the harrow over to cover in the seed, and the roller to give the plant a better hold on the soil. The word must not be allowed to take its chance, once it has been heard. Mere hearing does not secure fruit; it goes for nothing. Your labor is lost unless your mind goes back upon what you hear, and you see that it gets hold of you. All of us have already heard all that is necessary for life and godliness; it remains that we make it our own, that it secure a living root and place in us and in our life. In order to this we must keep the truth; we must bear it in mind, so that whatever else comes before the mind throws new light on it, and gives it a further hold upon us. We must not let the events of the world and the occurrences of our day thrust it from our minds, but must confront it with these, and test it by these, so that thus it may become more real to us, and have a vital influence. One truth received thus, brings forth more fruit than all truth merely understood. It is not the amount of knowledge you have, but the use you put it to — it is not the number of good sayings you have heard and can repeat, that will profit you, but the place in your hearts you have given them, and the connection they have with the motives, and principles, and ruling ideas of your life.

And, therefore, meditation has always been, and must always be, reckoned among the most indispensable means of grace. Since ever saints were, their saintliness has been in great part due to a habit of meditation. Without it, the other means of grace remain helplessly outside of us. The word does not profit except the mind be actively appropriating God’s message and revolving it. Prayer is but a deluding form, that means nothing, expects nothing, and receives nothing, if meditation has not provided its material. Unless a man think upon his life and try his ways, his confession can but remove the scum from the surface, leaving the heart burdened and polluted; for the graver sins do not float, but sink deep, and must be dragged for with patience and skill, if not descried through a very rare natural clearness and simplicity of character. It is in the stillness and quiet of our hours of reflection, when the gusts of worldly engagements and desires have died down, that the seeds of grace are deposited in our souls. It is then that our thoughts are free to recognize reasons of humility and causes of thankfulness. It is then that the thought of God resumes its place in our souls, and that the unseen world reasserts its hold upon us. It is then only that the soul, taking a deliberate survey of its own matters, can discover its position and necessities, can assert its claims and determine its future, can begin the knowledge of all things by knowing itself. So that, “if there is a person, of whatever age, or class, or station, who will not be thoughtful, who will not seriously and honestly consider, there is no doing him any good.” But there is probably no religious duty so distasteful as meditation to persons whose habits are formed in a state of society like our own. We are, for the most part, infected by the hastiness and overdone activity of the business world. The rapidity and exactness of mechanical action rule and regulate all our personal movements. We are learning to value only what gives us speedily and uniformly achieved and easily appreciated results. We are civilized so nearly to one common level, and are in possession of so many advantages which hitherto have been the monopoly of one class, that competition is keener than ever before; and all our time and energy are demanded for the one purpose of holding our own in things secular. But the dissatisfaction with slow processes, and the desire to get a great deal through our hands, must be checked when we come to the work of meditation. There are processes in nature which you can’t hurry. You must let your milk stand, if you wish cream. And meditation is a process of mind whose necessary element is the absence of hurry. We must let the mind settle and discharge itself of all irritating distractions and fevering remembrances or hopes; we must reduce it to an equable state, from which it can look out dispassionately upon things, and no longer see the one engrossing object, but all that concerns us in due proportion and real position. The soul must learn to turn a deaf ear to the importunate requirements of the daily life, and turn leisurely and with an unpreoccupied mind to God. Were it only to keep the world at bay, and teach the things of it their subordinate place, these meditative pauses of the soul were of the richest use. A third and last requisite for the fructification of the seed is, according to Luke, patience. The husbandman does not expect to reap to-morrow what he sowed to-day. He does not incontinently plow up his field again, and sow another crop, if he does not at once see the ripe corn. He watches and waits, and through much that is disappointing and unpromising, nurses his plants to fruitfulness. We also must learn with patience to bring forth fruit; not despairing because we cannot at once do all we would; not sinking under the hardships, sacrifices, failures, sorrows, through which we must win our growth to true fruit-bearing, but animating and cheering our spirits with the sure hope that the seed we have received is vital, and will enable us to produce at last the sound and ripe fruit our lives were meant to yield. We must have patience both to endure all the privations, all the schooling, all the trial of various kinds which may be needful to bring the seed of righteousness to maturity; and also to go on zealously yielding the perhaps despised fruits which are alone possible to us now, and striving always to strike our roots deeper and deeper into the true life.