Parable of the Sower

“ Jesus' parable of the Sower shows the care of our Master not to impart to dull ears and gross hearts spiritual teachings they could not accept. Reading their thoughts he said, “Give not that which is holy unto dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine.” The spiritual sense of Truth is indigenous to the soil of a “good and honest heart.” Spiritual seed can be sown in no other soil and bear much fruit, because the swine in human hearts rend it. ”

“ Luke's Gospel, the sixty-second verse, Jesus makes excellent use of this point when he says, "No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God."
The parable of the sower, in the thirteenth chapter of St. Matthew's Gospel, is a faithful picture of the environment of the farmer in the region of Galilee and Mount Lebanon. That primitive farmer does not sow his seed by means of "drills" in symmetrical rows. ”

“ Don't be making furrows all day; do get to your sowing. I fancy that those who promise most perform the least. Men who do much in the world have no programme at first, their course works itself out by its own inner force by the grace of God; they do not propose but perform. They do not plough all day to sow, but they are like our Lord's servant in the parable of whom he saith, "the sower went forth to sow."
Let the ministers of Christ also follow the rule of [84] advance. Let us go from preaching the law to preaching the gospel. "Doth the ploughman plough all day?" He does plough ”

“ Lastly, there is need of patience, Gr. ύπομονὴ, i.e., endurance in the labours and troubles of ploughing, sowing, &c., and long waiting for the reward and fruit of the harvest.
Observe: the end and scope of this parable is, that Christ would teach that He Himself is the Sower, the preacher of the gospel upon earth, that is to say, among men, but with different results among different people. For, first, not all who hear the gospel accept it; as seed, although sown in the earth, does not everywhere strike root in the earth. ”

“ If the Lord himself is represented as the sower the representation is inconsistent with the middle of the parable, in which it is declared that he neither aids nor understands the growth of the grain; if, on the other hand, men are represented as the sowers, the representation is inconsistent with the end of the parable, in which it is declared that they thrust in the sickle at the close of the dispensation and reap the harvest of the world. ”

“ I chose mirth and folly, I chose selfishness and sin, I turned my back upon all that I knew to be right, I led others astray, I forgot my God, and now there's but one text in all the Bible that I can recall to mind, and it haunts me night and day;" and in a tone that thrilled through the listeners, Sophy repeated the Saviour's most solemn question—"What is a man profited if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul, or what shall a man gave in exchange for his soul?" ”

“ You are the men that live in pleasures, pride, and wantonness, in fullness of bread and abundance of idleness: see if this be not the sin of Sodom. Lot received the angels: but Sodom was envious. You show forth the vain nature: you stand in the steps of them that crucified my Saviour, and mocked him: you are their children ”

“ But we may not expect to see all the seed which we sow spring up the moment we sow it. Sometimes, glory be to God, we have but to deliver the word, and straightway men are converted: the reaper overtakes the sower, in such instances; but it is not always so. Some sowers have been diligent for years upon their plots of ground, and yet apparently all has been in vain; at last the harvest has come, a harvest which, speaking after the manner of men, had never been reaped if they had not persevered to the end. ”

“ Jean Baptiste, be no longer ungrateful, and banish those anxious thoughts; for what could ever induce you to think that the Hand from which you have already received so much, would close against you when you grow old, and have greater need of help? I finished my prayer, and felt at peace."
XVIII. The work of the Sower is given to each of us in this world, and we fall short of our duty when we let [pg 032] those with whom we are brought in contact leave us without having given them a kind thought or pious impression. ”

“ Work done for Him is never resultless. True, His most faithful servants have often to say, if they look at their few sheaves with the eye of sense, 'I have spent my strength for nought.' True, the Apostolic experience is, at the best, but too exactly repeated, 'Some believed, and some believed not.' Christ's Gospel always produces its twofold effect, being 'a savour of life unto life, or of death unto death.' If the great Sower, when He went forth to sow, expected but a fourth part of the seed to fall into good ground, His servants need look for no larger results. ”

“ I do not want you to be like the sow that has been taken and washed clean, and then as soon as the door is open she goes into the dirtiest mud-hole there is in the neighbourhood. But as you have been washed in the waters of baptism and entered into the fold, I want you to remain clean and pure, and to labour for the welfare of Zion and the upbuilding of the kingdom of our God. If you act like the sow, then your last end will be worse than your first. ”

“ He is the sower—the good seed are the children of the kingdom, men and women into whose hearts the Truth has entered—the converted part of the Church. The sleeping of the servants is the unwatchfulness of the Church: coldness, indifference, backslidden. ”

“ A parent or minister or teacher has committed the good seed of the word to the hearts of his young people, with all due solemnity and care; and thereafter permits them to be steeped in a flood of folly, which he could easily have drained away. The good seed is drowned in that deluge; but it is the sower’s fault. It is true he cannot make it grow by his care; but he can make it not grow by his carelessness. We cannot do the saving; but we can do the destroying. Many pains and many prayers are competent to the sower, although he cannot directly control the growth of the seed. ”

“ And the watering of the earth is in order to its fruitfulness. Thus he makes it to bring forth and bud, for the products of the earth depend upon the dews of heaven; and thus it gives not only bread to the eater, present maintenance to the owner and his family, but seed likewise to the sower, that he may have food for another year. The husbandman must be a sower as well as an eater, else he will soon see the end of what he has. ”

“ But if this is novel and paradoxical, look to the sower, and consider, that he cannot in any other way gather more together, save by scattering what he hath and, letting go of what is at hand. Let us now sow and till the Heaven, that we may reap with great abundance, and obtain everlasting goods, through the grace and love toward man, etc. ”

“ He has to leave the seed in the care of the Lord who gave it to him, for he is not responsible for the harvest, he is only accountable for the care and industry with which he does his work. If no single ear should ever make [105] glad the reaper, the sower will be rewarded by his Master if he had planted the right seed with careful hand. ”

“ If there were three of the true seed in Sodom, was Sodom the Church? or did not the three constitute 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 Gellius and we should well consider that the sowers should, by the power of true faith and the co-operation of the Holy Spirit, be changed into the Spirit and nature of Christ, and should then teach or present to the people the pure, unadulterated seed, which is the word, without all abuse, leaven and hypocrisy, for where there are such sowers, there it will bud and bring forth. ”

“ Thus the Sohar tells us—“Each soul and spirit, prior to its entering into this world, consists of a male and female united into one being. When it descends on this earth the two parts separate and animate two different bodies. At the time of marriage, the Holy One, blessed be he, who knows all souls and spirits, unites them again as they were before, and they again constitute one body and one soul, forming as it were the right and left of one individual ”

“ VI. And since the Lord calls his promises covenants, and the sacraments seals of covenants, we may draw a similitude from the covenants of men. The ancients, in confirmation of their engagements, were accustomed to kill a sow. But what would have been the slaughter of a sow, if it had not been accompanied, and even preceded, by some words? For sows were often slaughtered without any latent or sublime mystery. What is the contact of one man’s right hand with that of another, since hands are not unfrequently joined in hostility? ”

“ Sowerby, and the Duke of Omnium, he had said to himself. He had to look to rise in the world, as other men did. But what pleasure had come to him as yet from these intimacies? How much had he hitherto done towards his rising? To speak the truth he was not over well pleased with himself, as he made Mrs. Harold Smith’s tea and ordered Mr. Sowerby’s mutton chops on that Sunday morning. ”

“ But in honesty I must tell you, my dear Sophy, I tremble for you. It is such awfully slippery ground. It is such a pleasant accommodation of religion to our fallen nature. It so feeds our impulsiveness and fortifies our natural religionism. ”

“ The sisters in the convent used to tell me of a day of judgment, when everything is coming to light;—won't there be vengeance, then!
"They think it’s nothing, what we suffer,—nothing, what our children suffer! It's all a small matter; yet I’ve walked the streets when it seemed as if I had misery enough in my one heart to sink the city. I’ve wished the houses would fall on me, or the stones sink under me. Yes! and, in the judgment day, I will stand up before God, a witness against those that have ruined me and my children, body and soul! ”

“ The whole iniquity and final consequences of our disposition are not laid before us in the mass; but to give the rein to any evil disposition is to yield control of our own life and commit ourselves to guidance which cannot result in good, and is of a nature to result in utter shame and wretchedness.
Turning from the rescued to the destroyed, we recognise how sufficient a test of their moral condition the presence of the angels was. The inhabitants of Sodom quickly afford evidence that they are ripe for judgment. They do nothing worse than their habitual conduct led them to do. ”

“ What hath befallen thee?" The other arose forthright and kissing ground cried, "Pardon, O King of the Age, before whom I have sinned." The Sovran asked, "How didst thou know this?" and he answered, "Because none other was with us and news of us goeth not out of doors; so needs must thou have been one of the twain and he who wrote the writ was thyself; for well we know that the kings read not in schools. ”

“ OF THE SOWER.
Behold a sower going forth To scatter o'er his field,
The seed that in the harvest time A rich return will yield.
And as he sow'd some precious seeds, Were by the way-side thrown;
The fowls of heaven descried them there, And soon the seed were gone. ”

“ Then the seedsman casts not in one seed alone, but a handful at once, one handful after another. To sow righteousness is to be rich in good works, to do good once and again, to join with faith virtue; with virtue knowledge, etc. Some do now and then drop out a good work, some little devotion to God, some petty office of mercy to men, but it is to no purpose in the world; no plenty in sowing, no fulness in reaping. (3) In things which follow after sowing. Great is the care that the seed put into the ground may thrive and prosper ”

“ Though Sodom is not merely a type of the heathen world, the restoration of Sodom and her daughters cannot consist in the reception of the descendants of the cities on which the judgment fell into the kingdom of God or the Christian Church, since the peculiar manner in which those cities were destroyed prevented the possibility of any of the inhabitants remaining alive whose descendants could be converted to Christ and blessed in Him during the present period of the world. ”

“ The apostle puts up a prayer to God in their behalf that they might be gainers, and not losers, v. 10, 11. Here observe, [1.] To whom the prayer is made—to God, who ministereth seed to the sower, who by his providence giveth such an increase of the fruits of the earth that we have not only bread sufficient to eat for one year, but enough to sow again for a future supply: or thus, It is God who giveth us not only a competency for ourselves, but that also wherewith we may supply the wants of others, and so should be as seed to be sown. ”

“ And I sought for a man among them, that should make up the hedge, and stand in the gap before Me for the land, that I should not destroy it; but I found none.—God promised not to destroy Sodom if there should be ten righteous men in it; He will seek for even one who is righteous in Christ's righteousness, in ecclesiasticism, to make up the wall of her goat-fold, and stand in the gap, that He should not destroy her ”

“ He says: 'I humbly declare in the presence of the Sovran Gods, whose praises are fulfilled as Heavenly Deities and as Earthly Deities, by command of the Sovran, dear, divine ancestor and ancestress who divinely dwell in the Plain of High-Heaven. ”