VI

THE SOWER

"Now the parable is this: The seed is the word of God."— Luke viii. II.

WE have as the gospel for to-day1 the parable of the Sower. Perhaps, taking it altogether, it is the easiest of all our Lord's parables: and happily it is also the pattern of them all, the one by which the rest are best explained. This and the parable of the Tares are the only parables of which our Lord gave an express explanation. This was to all appearance the first which He uttered; and, when He had spoken it, as we learn from St. Mark, He said to His disciples, "Know ye not this parable? and how then will ye know all parables ? " It thus stands out as commended to our attention in an especial

way.

Let us then suppose that same question to be addressed to us : let us think of Christ as asking us, "Know ye not this parable?" Assuredly we shall 1 Sexagesima.

not know it in any sense worth mentioning, unless we fix our minds steadily upon it, and think about it very seriously. Nay, we may go farther than that, and say that we shall not know it till we have tried to act some of its lessons in practice. For, as all our Lord's teaching is most truly practical, so it is only when we begin to try to live according to its spirit that the best part of its meaning becomes clear and vivid to our minds. And even before we try to put it into practice, when we are, for instance, in church as we are to-day, listening to the parable itself, or to a sermon upon it, our best chance of understanding it is to compare it, step by step, with what we have already known of ourselves and our own hearts and our own lives.

The first thing that must strike us in hearing the parable is the description of the different kinds of ground on which the sower sowed his seed, and of what became of the seed in each of these cases. We are too apt to take for granted that each kind of soil can only stand for some one set of men; so that we might call one class of men around us the way side, and another the rock, and another the thorny ground, and another the good ground. But when we do this, we are almost sure to place ourselves in neither of these classes. We can hardly presume to compare ourselves to the good soil; but neither are we willing to allow that we belong to the way side or the rock or the thorns. Thus the parable becomes no lesson to us: we cease to have a place in it. Now it would be wrong to deny that there are persons who might on the whole be not unjustly described by these

different names.

But at least that is not the most

useful way to read the parable.

Let us begin at the beginning. We hear first of the sower himself. "A sower went out to sow his seed." Who is this sower? Neither St. Luke nor any other of the Evangelists tell us precisely who is meant in this parable. Christ Himself says that the seed is the word of God: and so we are sometimes led to think that by the sower must be meant God's ministers, ministers of His word, as they are often called, whose duty it is to preach and set forth the word. This is no doubt a true and lawful application of the language of Scripture; but assuredly it is not the first meaning of the parable. We may, I think, borrow the explanation from the next parable, that of the Tares. There is every probability that the sower here is the same as he who sowed good seed in his field, but was injured by his enemy sowing tares with the wheat. Now we are plainly told by Christ that "He that soweth the seed is the Son of Man." He without doubt is the Sower here. The parable is about Christ Himself, not merely about what He did or said as a Sower in the days of His flesh when He dwelt among us, but about His sowings before He became man from the beginning of the world till that day, and his sowings from the time of His ascension till now, the sowings which He is daily and hourly making among ourselves.

But how does He sow His seed? Assuredly not by the lips alone. If the heavenly sowing meant only sounds spoken by the lips, how little by comparison would be included in it? How much is

there which influences us to the

is never actually spoken to us!

highest degree which The ground spoken

And it is

of cannot be the ear. That is a mere passage to our hearts and minds, to our true selves. there, there within, that the sower is to be found. Whether it be the Divine Sower sowing only good seed, or the enemy sowing tares, neither of them can be outside of us, both must be at work within our hearts. He who sows the good seed is the same that made the ear and made the heart too.

As we learn from the parable, and indeed as we might see for ourselves, it makes a wonderful difference what becomes of the seed; some perishes at once, some lives awhile and then perishes, some lives for evermore. But whatever becomes of the seed, He, the sower, is always the same, and He has a hand in every part of the process. We know that the seed would not sprout and bring forth corn except it fell into the ground, and it is He that gives power to the ground to swell and burst the seed, and then He also puts in the seed to meet the power which He has already put into the ground. He fashions all our hearts such that they may receive His blessed truth. He not only made us, but made us to be His own tillage, to be at every step of our lives under His own constant care. And then He sows in us the good seed of His word that we may bring forth fruit to His glory, even the fruit of good living.

Thus, brethren, you see the reach of the parable is very wide. It goes further than any voices of men. True though it be that men, and especially God's

ministers, are as it were sowers under Him, preaching and declaring His truth, yet their voices only reach a very little way, they are heard for only a very short time out of the whole of our lives. The true Heavenly Sower's work is everywhere and at all times. The parable is true not only of church-goers, but of all. They may try to keep out of earshot of the preacher's voice, or any other human voice which speaks to them of God and His holy law; but they cannot move themselves out of the reach of the true Sower. There is not one, be he ever so ignorant, who can plead that he has received no seed from above. It does not rest with him whether it is sown in his heart or not,-God takes care of that; what does rest with him is how he receives it and how he suffers it to live and grow. "Take heed how ye hear," says Christ. Though no human lips may have spoken God's message, yet all in one way or another have heard the Son of Man's voice.

The

Mark the words, "the Son of Man's voice," for they are important words; the Gospel says expressly that "He that soweth the seed is the Son of Man." For though the voice be from heaven, it is not a voice out of clouds and thunder nor out of fire. Lord speaks to us in the still small voice of our own nature. The gospel teaches us that the last and fullest showing forth of God's glory, and telling forth of God's nature and God's will, was made in the form of a lowly man. The Son of God is known to us as the Son of Man. And with this agree most of the other ways in which the divine message comes to us, the divine seed is sown within us, in the ordinary