The Parables of Our Lord Part 4

In the Galilean field, which the Lord employed as a type with which to print his lesson, portions might be seen where, owing perhaps to peculiar wetness and sourness in the soil, the wheat had wholly disappeared, and the darnel grew alone; in other parts, probably where the soil was warm and dry, the good seed had gained the mastery, and the false scarcely showed its head; and in a third quarter the good and bad might appear in equal numbers and equal strength. Such precisely is the aspect of the world. Large portions of it have been heathen from a higher date than that to which history ascends; large portions, which were Christian long after the apostolic age, have been overrun and laid waste by the blind but strong system of Mahomet; while in other parts a vigorous Christian life appears, although even there the good seed must maintain a struggle against bitter roots below and poisonous fruit rearing its head on high.

I accept, therefore, in all simplicity, the Master's own definition: I see in the field of the injured husbandman a picture, not of the Church in the world, but of the world in which the Church must for the present live and labour. The ingenious effort made by a recent Swiss expositor[13] to find a middle path only serves to show how heavily the difficulties of the common interpretation press on those who maintain it. Having confessed, according to the terms of the text, that the field or ground is not the Church, but the world, he proceeds, with a very strong animus against what he calls puritanism or separatism,[14] to argue in the usual way against every attempt to purify the visible Church except by the exclusion of persons who are notoriously heretical or vicious. The grounds on which he pleads against separation from the impure, in as far as this parable is concerned, are--(1.) That there was no need of a revelation to make known the universally acknowledged maxim that bad people should be tolerated in the world; (2.) That, according to the terms of the parable, the farmer sowed wheat in his ground, but did not sow the whole of his ground--so that the ground may be the world, and the portion sown, or the wheat field, may still represent the Church; (3.) That the parable of the fishing-net confirms this interpretation; and (4.) That in the world there was no wheat until the preaching of the gospel reached it, and consequently the mixture is in the church, and not in the world.

[13] Die Parabeln des Herrn, fur Kirche, Schule, und Haus, erklart von Dr. De Valenti. Basel, 1841.

[14] It is quite possible that the separatists whom De Valenti scolds, with more warmth than elegance, may deserve his censure; for severe restrictive measures adopted by governments to suppress religious dissent have frequently the effect of deteriorating its character, on the principle that oppression makes a wise man mad.

The first of these grounds seems most unfortunate; for corrupt ecclesiastics, from an early age to the present day, have ever shown themselves ready to cast those whom they call heretics, not out of the Church only, but out of the world:[15] the second is a refinement too narrow for building any conclusion upon: the third applies a mistaken view of one parable to support a mistaken view of another: and the fourth is the second in another form. After having in effect explained away his own admission, that the field is the world, and not the Church, he freely concedes in the close that the openly heretical and vicious should not be tolerated within the Church. But I ask what right has he to exclude those whom, according to his exegesis, the Lord commanded his ministers to tolerate in the Church?

[15] Lange (_in loc._), having quoted Gerlach to the effect that this prohibition refers to extremes of ecclesiastical discipline, for the purpose of excluding all unbelievers and hypocrites, and const.i.tuting a perfectly pure Church, timidly replies: "We can scarcely agree with him that it contains no allusion to the punishment of death for heresy.... It is well known that Novatianism, on the one hand, and the Papal hierarchy, on the other, have addressed themselves to this work of uprooting despite the prohibition of the Lord, and that the Romish Church has at last ended by condemning to the flames only the best wheat.... The _auto da fes_ of the middle ages were only a humble caricature and antic.i.p.ation of that fiery judgment."

In the intimation that it was while men slept that the mischief was done, I cannot find any covert reproof of an indolent ministry in the Church. It was night: all the community had retired to rest. The species of criminal which the parable depicts was not numerous,--the crime was not of daily occurrence. It was neither the practice nor the duty of the people, after they had toiled all day in their fields, to watch their work by night, to protect it from possible injury. The expression, "while men slept," is intended merely to indicate that the evil-doer took advantage of the darkness to cover his deed: accordingly, in the interpretation no specific meaning is attached to this feature of the parable.

In regard to the servants, and their proposal instantly to pull up the tares, the interpretation is attended with difficulty. With some eminent ancient expositors I am convinced that, if not exclusively, yet primarily and chiefly, the servants who offered to make the separation are the angels. The parable stretches far into both time and s.p.a.ce: it comprehends the world, and the successive dispensations of G.o.d there.

Morning stars sang together when they saw beautiful worlds starting into being at their Maker's word: the same high intelligences must have been surprised and grieved when they saw G.o.d's fairest work marred by sin. It is like the impulse of beings perfect in holiness, but limited in knowledge, to offer themselves on the instant as willing instruments to cast the defilers out. Pleased, doubtless, with their instinctive zeal for holiness, but comprehending his own purposes better than they, the Lord declined the proffered ministry. At the same time he intimated that the separation which the servants suggested was not refused, but only postponed. His plan required that good and evil, now that evil had begun, should mingle in the world till the end. At the close of the dispensation, when the Son of man shall come in his glory, he will give the commission for a final separation to the angels who shall const.i.tute his train.

It seems to be generally a.s.sumed by modern expositors, that while the reapers who shall separate the tares from the wheat in harvest are angels, the servants who offered to weed out the tares while they were yet green are the human ministers of the visible Church. Archbishop Trench, for example, says: "These servants are not, as Theophylact suggests, the angels (they are the reapers, ver. 30); but men, zealous, indeed, for the Lord's honour, but zealous with the same zeal as animated those two disciples who would fain have commanded fire to come down from heaven on the inhospitable Samaritan village" (Luke ix. 54). I think the learned author is mistaken here, and that the preponderance of evidence lies on the other side. The subject is interesting, and will repay the labour of investigation.

Here two questions, distinct, yet closely connected, const.i.tute the case: on the answer which may be given to them the decision will turn.

One relates to the persons, and the other to their acts: Are the "servants" who propose to pull up the tares in summer, and the "reapers"

who are commanded to make the separation in harvest, the same, or different persons? and is the separation proposed by the servants substantially the same in kind with that which is ultimately effected by the reapers, or is it different?

I think the servants and the reapers are substantially identical. The troop of servants who haunt a rich man's house, and the band of labourers who reap his patrimonial fields, stand far apart in our land and our day. Not so, however, in the establishment of a Galilean householder eighteen hundred years ago. When you take into view the habits of society at the date and on the scene of the parable, it will appear certain and obvious that the servants who proposed to weed the fields in summer were, in part at least, the same persons who would be sent to reap the fields in autumn. The reapers might be a more numerous band than the servants who were employed throughout the year, but to a large extent the const.i.tuents must have been the same. In another parable (Luke xvii. 7-10), a servant, who has been ploughing or feeding cattle, is obliged, after he returns from the field, to gird himself and wait on his master at table. This shows conclusively that the division of labour which obtains among us was unknown then in Galilee. The master does not, indeed, say to the servants who made the proposal, I will employ you in harvest to accomplish the separation: the form of expression is, "I will say to the reapers;" but reapers and servants were of the self-same cla.s.s, and in all probability to some extent the same individuals.

The second question can be more easily answered. The separation which the reapers ultimately effected is essentially the same with that which the servants at an earlier period proposed. It is an actual, material, final separation of the tares from the wheat.

It results that there is no solid ground in the parable for the a.s.sumption that those who proposed to make the separation at an earlier date represent men, while those who were employed to accomplish it afterwards represent angels; and that the separation which the Lord prohibited was spiritual, while that which he permitted was physical.

In regard to the separation which he sanctioned, the Lord interprets what the operation is, and who are the operators; whereas, in regard to the separation at an earlier date proposed, he gives no interpretation.

Instead of beginning by giving my own a.s.sumption as to the meaning of the uninterpreted part, I go first to the part that is interpreted to my hand, and from the point which is illuminated I get light thrown back on the point which was left in the shade. The reapers, I know, are the angels; and the servants were the same, or at least the same cla.s.s of ministers, proposing to accomplish the work at an earlier date. The separation which was actually effected in the harvest represents, we know, the personal and local as well as moral and spiritual separation of the good and the evil; thence I conclude that the separation which the same ministers, or the same cla.s.s of ministers, had previously offered to make was personal and local as well as moral and spiritual.

The proposed and the accepted separations were precisely the same in kind and degree; they differed only in their dates: while, therefore, one of the two is interpreted to my hand, I have no right to attach to the other an interpretation totally different. The a.s.sumption that the separation which the Lord prohibited was only a spiritual sentence, while the separation which he permitted was actual, local, complete, and final, derives countenance neither from the parable nor its interpretation.

It appears to me, then, that the Lord's direct and immediate design in this parable is, not to prescribe the conduct of his disciples in regard to the conflict between good and evil in the world, but to explain his own. Knowing that their Master possessed all power in heaven and in earth, it was natural that Christians of the first age should expect an immediate paradise. Nothing was more necessary, for the support of their faith in subsequent trials, than distinct warnings from the Lord, that even to his own people the world would remain a wilderness.

Accordingly, both in plain terms and by symbols, he faithfully, frequently intimated that in the world they should have tribulation, but that all should be set right at last. On both sides they needed, and on both sides he gave, the instruction, that in this life they must lay their account with a mixture, but that after this life they would escape. Left to their own imagination, they would readily have expected that their omnipotent Head would so rule over the world, and so instruct his ministers, whether stormy winds or flaming fires, that evil, as soon as it showed its head, would be weeded out of his people's way: but with this parable and other cognate lessons in their hands, they would not be surprised at any amount of success which the enemy might be permitted to obtain; they would possess their souls in patience, and wait for the end of the Lord.

The parable condemns persecution, but it seems not to bear upon discipline at all. In its secondary sense, or by implication, it protects the wicked from any attempt on the part of the Church to cast them out of the world by violence; but it does not, in any form or measure, vindicate a place for the impure within the communion of the Church of Christ. Arguments against the exclusion of unworthy members, founded on this parable, are nothing else than perversions of Scripture.

Elsewhere Christians may clearly read their duty in regard to any brother who walks disorderly; elsewhere they may learn how to counsel, exhort, and rebuke the erring, and, if he remain impenitent, how to cast him out of communion by a spiritual sentence; but in this parable regarding these matters no judgment is given.

While the "Notes" of Dr. Trench on the parables are generally judicious and valuable, his exposition of this and one or two others that are cognate is injured by a secret bias towards the forms in which he has been educated,--a bias that is natural and human, but not on that account less hurtful. The body of the vast and venerable inst.i.tution of which he is at once a chief and an ornament, stands so near, and bulks so largely, that where it is concerned his usual acuteness fails him.

The general announcement at the commencement of the parable, that it concerns the kingdom of heaven, he seems to think is sufficient proof that the "field" must mean the kingdom of heaven or the Church. It does, indeed, concern the kingdom of heaven, for it shows that when that kingdom has, by the Son of man, been introduced into the world, many things spring up and mingle with it there to mar its fruitfulness; but it betrays an unaccountable confusion to argue formally that because the parable concerns the kingdom of heaven, therefore, of all the features which the parable contains, "the field" must specifically represent that kingdom, in the face of the express testimony of Scripture that the field represents a totally different thing. The parable of the mustard-seed concerns the kingdom too, but does the "field" in that parable therefore mean the Church? No. The mustard-seed that grew in the field means the Church, and the field means the world in which the Church is planted. So in this parable the only thing that represents the Church, or aggregate of individual believers, is the ma.s.s of the wheat stalks that sprang from the good seed: the good seed are the children of the kingdom, and the field is the world in which these children live and labour. Looking minutely to the phraseology employed, we find that the kingdom of heaven is not said to be likened unto a field, but unto a man that sowed seed; pointing to the Lord himself as the head, and the good seed as his members, and the wide world as their place of sojourn, till he take them to himself.

Dr. Trench remarks further on this point, that the use of the term "world" need not perplex us in the least; and perhaps he was led to make that a.s.sertion because the use of the term did perplex him much. His solution of the difficulty is this: "It _was_ the world, and therefore was rightly called so, till this seed was sown in it; but thenceforth was the world no longer." If it has any meaning at all, this sentence must mean that what was the world yesterday becomes the Church to-day, when some seed is sown, when some children of the kingdom are in it.

Does the whole world become the Church when one country is christianized? or is it only the portion christianized that becomes the Church? If so, how many Christians must be in a given portion of the world, to const.i.tute that portion the Church? If there were three of the true seed in Sodom, was Sodom the Church? or did not the three const.i.tute the Church in Lot's house, while the world raged around it like the troubled sea?

Some of Stier's remarks are good: "The parable moves in quite a different sphere from that of the question concerning Church discipline." "The householder forbids and will not allow what the servants wish. These would have all the tares removed entirely from their place among the wheat, from the kingdom of Christ (ver. 41). But because the field is the world, that were equivalent to removing the bad out of the world (slaying the heretics)," &c.

The conclusion of the whole matter is, that whatever separation the parable forbids, it forbids entirely: if it speaks of discipline, it says there shall be none; so that they are wholly out of their reckoning who lean on it for the condemnation of what they consider excessive strictness while they would retain the power of excluding the worst from communion. But, in truth, the parable has nothing to say on the subject.

When we have made our way through the discussions that have acc.u.mulated round it, we return to the text in its simplicity, and grasp its plain positive truth, "The field is the world." It was all empty; nothing good grew there, until the seed was brought from heaven and sown. The nation, the family, the soul that has not Christ, is poor, and wretched, and miserable, and blind, and naked.

"The good seed are the children of the kingdom." They are bought with a price and born of the Spirit; they are new creatures in Christ and heirs of eternal life. Expressly it is written in reference to Christ's disciples, "All things are for your sakes" (2 Cor. iv. 15). For their sakes the world is preserved now, and for their sakes it will be destroyed when the set time has come. The darnel is permitted to grow in summer, and in harvest is cast into the fire,--both for the sake of the wheat. Because Christ loves his own he permits the wicked to run their course in time; but because Christ loves his own he will separate the wicked from the good at last.

The tares are the children of the wicked, and "the enemy that sowed them is the devil." Some people doubt, and some positively deny, the existence of the devil; but one thing is clear, the Lord Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of the Father, has no doubt on that point. He believes in that doctrine and teaches it: he teaches it to the mult.i.tude on the margin of the lake, and to the select circle of his followers in a private dwelling.

Lively and energetic are the remarks of Fred. Arndt on this subject: "Yes, Jesus says, in dry, clear words, 'The enemy that soweth them is the devil.' But surely there is not any devil? Who says that? The Son of G.o.d, the mouth of eternal truth, who knows the realm of spirits even as he knows this visible world,--who is the highest reason and the deepest wisdom, yea, even Omniscience itself,--he believes it. He holds it reasonable to believe in it. He teaches what he believes. Dost thou know it better than he, thou short-sighted being, thou dust of yesterday, thou child of error and ignorance? He says it, and therefore it is eternal truth. 'But is it not intended to be taken figuratively?' Well, suppose it were meant figuratively, we can only comprehend the figures of actually existing things, and the figurative representation of the devil would imply his real being: but here in the text the speech is not figurative; the expression stands not among pictures and parables, but in the interpretation of a picture and a parable."[16] Whence hath it tares? inquired the servants. Already in those days they had begun to probe the question around which the conflict of ages has been waged--the origin of evil. One thing in the answer of the Lord is fitted to pour a flood of comfort into our hearts when they are agitated by the difficulties of this tremendous problem,--"an enemy hath done this."

Evil does not belong originally to the const.i.tution of man, nor has G.o.d, his maker, introduced it. Our case is sad, indeed; for we learn that an enemy whom we cannot overcome is ever lying in wait seeking how he may devour us. But what would our case have been, if evil, instead of being injected by an enemy from without, had been of the essence of the creature, or the act of the Creator? Our condition would have been one of absolute and irremediable despair. What a strong one, who is our enemy, has brought in, a stronger, who is our friend, can cast out--will cast out. Be of good cheer; believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.

[16] _Die Gleichniss-reden Jesu Christi_, von Fried. Arndt.

How grand is the view which this picture discloses, when in the interpretation of it we closely follow the Master's steps! It is, indeed, a parable concerning the kingdom of heaven. The whole world belongs to the King; he has placed his children in it, and commanded them to multiply till they people all its borders. The enemy has introduced among them evil persons, and within them evil thoughts. It is not a part of the omniscient Ruler's plan to remove, by the ministry of either angels or men, all the wicked at once from his world. For his own purposes, which are only in part discernible by us, he permits the good and the evil to mingle and contend with each other until the fulness of time, as he left the Canaanites in the land to chastise and exercise his chosen people. When the tares prosper, the wheat languishes: when the wheat prospers, the tares languish. Evil men have lived in G.o.d's world ever since sin began: evil thoughts and deeds will be found in G.o.d's children as long as they remain in the body. The angels are not sent to-day to make such a separation as would leave the children of the kingdom nothing to do, or to bear.

If you desire the heavenly to prosper within you and around you, fight with the proper weapons against the devilish: if you desire the devilish within and around you to languish and decay, cherish the heavenly. As David's house waxes stronger, Saul's house will wax weaker. When Christ gets more of the world and of our hearts, the devil will get less.

THE MUSTARD-SEED, AND THE LEAVEN.

In the first two parables the kingdom of heaven is represented in conflict with its enemies; in the next two it stands alone, putting forth its inherent life and power. There we learn the strength of its adversaries, and here we learn its own. There we saw the efforts made to check the progress of the kingdom; and here we see the progress which, in spite of these efforts, the kingdom makes. There the combat is exhibited, and here the victory. Devils and men, conscious conspirators or unconscious tools, did their utmost, as explained in the first pair of parables, to strangle the kingdom in its infancy, or to overpower it at a later stage; but the kingdom, as we learn from the second pair, shakes its a.s.sailants off, emerges unhurt from the strife, and goes forward from strength to strength, until it has subdued and absorbed all the world. I have seen clouds gathering at dawn on the eastern horizon, with dark visage and a mult.i.tudinous threatening array, as if they had bound themselves by a great oath either to prevent the sun from rising or afterwards to quench his light; but through them, beyond them, above them, slowly, steadily, majestically rose the sun, nor quivered from his path, nor halted in his progress, until by the power of his mid-day light he had utterly driven those clouds away, so that not a shred of their tumultuous a.s.semblage could any more be seen on the clear blue sky. Such and so impotent in Christ's hands are the adversaries of Christ's kingdom, although they seem formidable to men of little faith: such and so glorious will be the final victory of the King, although even his true subjects may fret and fear over his incomprehensible delay. The coming of the kingdom is like the morning, as slow, but as sure. As smoke is driven before the wind, so shall the Redeemer in the day of his power drive away all those adversaries, whether within his people or without, that now impiously say, "We will not have this man to reign over us." Christ's disciples are on the winning side, whatever may be the present aspect of the world. "He that believeth shall not make haste."

The two parables which now claim our attention, although closely allied, are not in meaning and application precisely identical. Both show the progress of the kingdom from a small beginning to a glorious consummation; and both indicate that this growth, as to cause, is due to its own inherent unquenchable life, and as to manner, is silent, secret, un.o.bserved. Thus far these two are in the main coincident; but besides teaching the same lesson in different forms, they teach also different lessons. The parable of the mustard-seed exhibits the kingdom in its own independent existence, inherent life, and irresistible power; the parable of the leaven exhibits the kingdom in contact with the world, gradually overcoming and a.s.similating and absorbing that world into itself. Both alike show that the kingdom increases from small to great; the first points to the essential, and the second to the instrumental cause of that increase: in the mustard-seed we see it growing great because of its own omnipotent vitality; in the leaven we see it growing great because it uses up all its adversaries as the material of its own enlargement.

III.

THE MUSTARD-SEED.

"Another parable put he forth unto them, saying, The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard-seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches thereof."--MATT.

xiii. 31, 32.

We are familiar with the mustard-plant both in a wild and in a cultivated state in our own country. Although not the smallest, it is by no means the largest of our herbs. On this point it is necessary to recall and keep in mind the fact that when a given plant is indigenous in a southern climate, the corresponding species or variety that may be found in more northerly lat.i.tudes is generally of a comparatively diminutive size. I have seen a mahogany-plant cultivated in a flower-pot, the best representative that could be obtained here of those forest patriarchs in tropical America which const.i.tute the mahogany of commerce. The diminutive proportions of our mustard-plant prove nothing regarding the magnitude of the herb which bears the corresponding name in Syria. We know, in point of fact, that it grows there to a great size at the present day. "I have seen it," says Dr. Thomson, "on the rich plain of Akkar as tall as the horse and his rider."[17] Irby and Mangles found a tree growing in great abundance near the Dead Sea possessing many of the properties of mustard, which they suppose must be the mustard of the parable; but this suggestion seems incompatible with the main scope of the representation, for its turning-point lies in this, that a culinary herb became great like a tree. That a forest tree should be large enough to afford shelter to the birds, is nothing wonderful; the parable is hinged on the fact that the garden herb (?a?a???) became a tree (de?d???).

[17] _The Land and the Book_, p. 64.

But in this case an investigation exact and minute into the natural history of the plant is by no means necessary to the appreciation and explanation of the parable. It is not needful to determine what amount of credit is due to the witness who declared that he had seen a man climbing into the branches of a mustard-plant, or how far the fact, if real, was uncommon and exceptional. This plant obviously was chosen by the Lord, not on account of its absolute magnitude, but because it was, and was recognised to be, a striking instance of increase from very small to very great. It seems to have been in Palestine, at that time, the smallest seed from which so large a plant was known to grow. There were, perhaps, smaller seeds, but the plants which sprung from them were not so great; and there were greater plants, but the seeds from which they sprung were not so small.

But the circ.u.mstance that most clearly exhibits and indicates the appropriateness of the choice, is the fact that the magnitude of the mustard-plant, in connection with the minuteness of its seed, was employed at that day among the Jews as a proverbial similitude, to indicate that great results may spring from causes that are apparently diminutive, but secretly powerful. The expression, "If ye had faith as a grain of mustard-seed," employed by the Lord on another occasion, is sufficient to show that both the conception and its use were familiar to his audience.

The spiritual lesson of the parable diverges into two lines, distinct but harmonious. By the kingdom of heaven, as it is represented in the growth of the mustard-plant, we may understand either saving truth living and growing great in the world, or saving truth living and growing great in an individual human heart. In both, its progress from small beginnings to great issues is like the growth of a gigantic herb from the imperceptible germ that was dropped among the clods in spring.

I. The kingdom of heaven _in the world_ is like a mustard-seed sown in the ground, both in the smallness of its beginning and the greatness of its increase. The first promise, given at the gate of Eden, contained the Gospel as a seed contains the tree. It fell among Adam's descendants as a mustard-seed falls between the furrows, and lay long unnoticed there. With the Lord, in the development of his kingdom, a thousand years are as one day in the growth of vegetation. A man who in his childhood observed the seed cast into the ground, may live long and die old before the plants have reached maturity; but the seed of the kingdom has not lost its life, the G.o.d of the covenant has not forgotten his own. At the appointed time he will visit his husbandry, and fill his bosom with its fruits.

Never to human eye did the seed seem smaller than at the coming of Christ. The infant in the manger at Bethlehem is like a mustard-seed--an atom scarcely perceptible in the hand, and lost to view when it falls into the earth. Yet there lay the seed of eternal life--thence sprang the stem on which all the saved of mankind shall grow as branches.

Israel was feeble among the nations--a little child writhing in the grasp of imperial Rome; Judea and Galilee, with the heathenish Samaria between, const.i.tuted his beat throughout the brief period of his public ministry. The range was short in its utmost length, narrow in its utmost breadth. In a map of the world of ordinary size, the spot that indicates Palestine can scarcely be seen; yet from that spot radiated a power which is at this day actually paramount. The Christ who seemed so small both in private life at Nazareth and in the public judgment-hall of Pilate at Jerusalem, is greatest now both in heaven and in earth.

Christendom and Christianity are both supreme, each in its own place and according to its own kind. This world already belongs to Christian nations, and the next to Christian men. So great has the religion of Jesus grown, that its body overshadows the earth, and its spirit reaches heaven.