Chaff

“ Let no man then become chaff, let no one be tossed to and fro, nor lie exposed to wicked desires, blown about by them easily every way. For if thou continue wheat, though temptation be brought on thee, thou wilt suffer nothing dreadful; nay, for in the threshing floor, the wheels of the car, that are like saws, [43] do not cut in pieces the wheat; but if thou fall away into the weakness of chaff, thou wilt both here suffer incurable ills, being smitten of all men, and there thou wilt undergo the eternal punishment. ”

“ As to making beds of chaff, while I have no personal experience with this material, it never impressed me as being the proper thing for the purpose, as it is out of place in the woods or fields. If a man comes upon a pile of chaff any where away from buildings, it instantly occurs to him as being queer that it should be in such a place. Do you not suppose that the wild creatures, whose very existence depends upon their sharpness of observation, are likely to note the unfitness of the thing quicker than we? ”

“ But few then are saved in comparison of the many that shall perish. For these same “few” will constitute in themselves a great mass. When the Winnower shall come with His fan in His Hand, “He will cleanse His floor, and lay up the wheat into the garner; but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.” [6] Let not the chaff scoff at the wheat; in this He speaketh truth, and deceiveth no one. Be ye then in yourselves among many a many, few though ye be in comparison of a certain many. So large a mass is to come out of this floor, as to fill the garner of heaven. ”

“ Gilbert White gave, I believe, the name of chiff-chaff to this little bird from its note. In the midland counties it is called the chill-chall from the same cause; and, indeed, this name is, to my ear, more accordant with its continuous ditty. Its cheery little voice is one of the pleasantest recognitions of returning spring. It is sure to be heard, just as in former years, in the copse, the dell, the belt of trees bordering a wayside; we catch its simple note with pleasure, for it brings with it many a memory of happy scenes and days gone by. ”

“ But if the Words be never so sound and orthodox, without Life they are but as Chaff; and what is the Chaff to the Wheat? why truly, Friends, you know the Chaff is for the Beasts; but the blessed Wheat, with which our heavenly Father feeds his Babes, is for the Children of the Kingdom, New Jerusalem, the Church of the living God, his House. ”

“ Good Heavens, if such a plan were practicable, how the chaff might be winnowed out of every man, and out of all human things; and ninety-nine hundredths of our whole big Universe, spiritual and practical, might blow itself away, as mere torrents of chaff whole trade-winds of chaff, many miles deep, rushing continually with the voice of whirlwinds towards a certain FIRE, which knows how to deal with it! ”

“ Therefore, knowing these things, let us use great diligence, while we are in the threshing floor; for it is possible while we are here, to change even out of chaff into wheat, even as on the other hand many from wheat have become chaff. Let us not then be supine, nor be carried about with every wind; neither let us separate ourselves from our brethren, though they seem to be small and mean; forasmuch as the wheat also compared with the chaff is less in measure, but better in nature. ”

“ From tip to toe, at all seasons and in all weathers, he looked conspicuously spick and span. Chaff provoked the solemn retort: "One should be well groomed." He spoke impersonally, considering it bad form to use for first person singular. Amongst the small boys he ranked as the Petronius of the Lower School.
One day the Caterpillar said grandiloquently, "You kids will oblige me by not shouting and yelling when you speak to me. I've a bit of a head."
"What's wrong with it?" said Fluff.
"It looks splendid outside," said John, in his serious voice. ”

“ Yet in the mysterious sense of this passage, Brethren, we recognise what is expressed most plainly in other places of the sacred books, that there are within the Church both good and bad, as I often express it, wheat and chaff. Let no one leave the floor before the time, let him bear with the chaff in the time of threshing, let him bear with it in the floor. For in the barn he will have none of it to bear with. The Winnower will come, who shall divide the bad from the good. There will then be a bodily separation too, which a spiritual separation now precedes. ”

“ That laboured chaffing of you at breakfast—how could you have borne it? I can't pretend amusement, and chaff is his only conception of human intercourse. I know I'm horrid—I know it; but it is the long, long accumulations of repressed exasperation that have made me so—worse than exasperations. I remember, during the first months of our married life, when I was becoming dreadfully frightened, catching glimpses on every side of my awful mistake—I remember once kissing him and saying something playful that hid an appeal for comfort, comprehension, reassurance. ”

“ For in all the whole multitude, that is, in the Church which is spread abroad in the whole world, is chaff, and wheat: the chaff flieth, the wheat remaineth; therefore, “in a weighty people will I praise Thee.” In a weighty people, which the wind of temptation carries not away, in such is God praised. ”

“ And if the chaff, how much more the tares? The wicked are here called chaff, because, like chaff, they are very light, worthless and useless, and good for nothing save for fuel of Gehenna. For unquenchable, the Greek has άσβεστω, unextinguished, eternal. Hence a stone which always burns is called asbestus. The figure of speech here used is miosis, for little is said, much is meant. The fire of hell is a άσβεστος inextinguishable, not only because it cannot be quenched, but because it does not consume the wicked whom it burns; nay, it excruciates them living and feeling with endless torments. ”

“ The ungodly are not so: but are like the chaff which the wind driveth away.’ He blindeth their eyes, so that they should not see. ‘Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment, nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous. ”

“ All things with which we deal, preach to us. What is a farm but a mute gospel? The chaff and the wheat, weeds and plants, blight, rain, insects, sun,—it is a sacred emblem from the first furrow of spring to the last stack which the snow of winter overtakes in the fields. ”

“ A person employed on a newspaper, whose business it is to separate the wheat from the chaff, and to see that the chaff is printed. ”

“ Yet on account of this form of godliness they are named among God’s people. As to the floor, until the corn is threshed, belongs not the wheat only, but the chaff. But will it also belong to the garner? In the midst then of an evil people is a good people, which hath received the Mercy of God. He liveth worthily of the Mercy of God who heareth, and holdeth, and doeth what the Apostle saith, “We beseech you that ye receive not the Grace of God in vain.” ”

“ For if you cling most firmly to what I urge on you with all my might, that every one is cursed who places his trust in man, so that none should make his boast of man, then you will in no wise desert the threshing-floor of the Lord on account of the chaff which either is now being dispersed beneath the blast of the wind of pride, or will be separated by the final winnowing ”

“ He who lives evilly in this Church eats and drinks condemnation to himself, but whoever lives correctly, another case and another person cannot prejudge him. The Donatists had protested against the parallel proofs drawn from the Maximianists, on the ground that a case should not be prejudged by a case nor a person by a person. On the Lord’s threshing-floor the chaff must be tolerated. He exhorts them to a faithful discharge of their clerical duties, especially in mercifulness and also in prayer for the removal of the schism. ”

“ Shady woods, well-timbered dells, and stream-sides with plenty of matured trees clustering round are beloved haunts of the Chiffchaff, which builds its nest on or near the ground amongst tall grass tangled with brambles and small bushes, hedge and ditch banks, and sometimes in ivy growing against trees and walls. ”

“ Master Jim Curtis and Master Mike Waters, but particularly Master Curtis, are amusing themselves by chaffing, or, according to their pronunciation, "charfin," Master Bill Sims. Chaffing, translated into intelligible language, signifies, "quizzing," "rallying," or "persiflage" Thus understood, it will at once be recognised as a species of intellectual diversion often indulged in by those moving in good society. No one, for example, who has paid attention, either temporary or permanent, to a young lady, can be otherwise than aware of this fact. "Chaffing," indeed, is a very venerable recreation. ”

“ Not only the residents, the stonechat and the little hedge and field birds, and the rook, crow, kestrel, and heron, but the migrants also. The chiffchaff uttered his name continually as he hunted in the scraggy budding oaks, the willow-warbler repeated his wavering refrain, crescendo and diminuendo, very like the bends in the “tail” in “Alice in Wonderland;” and the whitethroat was beginning to throw himself in ecstasy above the bushes. ”

“ It was long, long ago that Chaffin had first climbed those stairs and marvelled, with the stupefaction of a petty bourgeois suddenly transported into a scene of fashionable life, at all that magnificence befitting the "Thousand and One Nights!" He was then a poor professor, unattached, married, with a family of children. He had just been introduced into the château by the chaplain, as tutor to the youngest son. The priest, who had educated the older sons, was too old to undertake another task of the sort. ”

“ The "good Chaffin" was simply an unfaithful steward who had wallowed at his ease for ten or twelve years in the careless prodigality of his lord, and he was preparing to retire, pocketing a handsome percentage of a sum offered by a syndicate of dealers in curios for the treasures preserved intact at Grandchamp by the heroism of the grandmother. ”

“ For the Bridegroom was coming. It was He who was being described: it was on Him all our attention was fixed.
“Upon Thy right hand did stand the Queen” (ver. 9) . She which stands on the left is no Queen. For there will be one standing on “the left” also, to whom it will be said, “Go into everlasting fire.” [79] But she shall stand on the right hand, to whom it will be said, “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” [80] On Thy right hand did stand the Queen, “in a vesture of gold, clothed about with divers colours.” ”

“ Sometimes one of the little fellows would slip and stumble.
“I have it,” Father Red Fox told himself. “The fawns are learning to make a quick turn. Because they’d break their legs if they were to stumble that way in the underbrush.”
The old fox knew that he could never catch one by the usual methods. He did wonder, though, if he might not corner one by trickery. So, gliding from tree-trunk to tree-trunk, he crept nearer the unsuspecting little school, keeping always on the side where the wind could tell no tales! ”

“ I hearing the fear they were in, cried to them not to be frighted, for was not the devil, but a poor chapman, who could not get quarters the last night; a foul fa’ thy carcase, Sir, for our jock is through the midden dib, dirt and a’ thegither; he who went last came back again, the other ran into the house and told what he had seen. The goodman and his wife came running, he with the grape in his hand, and she with the Bible, the one crying out, Sandy, is’t true that the deil was in the barn? na, na, said she, it's but a chapman, but poor Jock has gotten a fright wi' him. ”

“ He does not bid thee kill a calf: give thou bread to the hungry, raiment to the naked, shelter to the stranger. But that thou mayest not make this thy pretext, there is a common apartment, that of the Church; throw thy money into that, and then thou hast received them: since (Abraham) there had the reward of those things also which were done by his servants. “He gave the calf to a young man, and he hasted to dress it.” (Gen. xviii. 7.) So well trained were his servants also! ”

“ For the head of the calf was the body of ungodly men, in the similitude of a calf eating hay, [48] seeking earthly things: because all flesh is hay. [49] ...And what now is more evident, than that into that City Jerusalem, of which the people Israel was a type, by Baptism men were to be made to pass over? Therefore in water it was scattered, in order that for drink it might be given. For this even unto the end this man thirsteth; he runneth and thirsteth. For many men He drinketh, but never will He be without thirst. ”

“ Why then did He ask, but to show Philip’s ignorance? And why He did this, we shall, as I have said, understand afterwards.
4. Andrew saith: “There is a lad here, who has five loaves and two fishes, but what are these for so many?” When Philip, on being asked, had said that two hundred pennyworth of bread would not suffice to refresh that so great a multitude, there was there a certain lad, carrying five barley loaves and two fishes. “And Jesus saith, Make the men sit down. Now there was there much grass: and they sat down about five thousand men. ”

“ And He said unto them, The harvest indeed is plentiful, but the laborers few: ask ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He would send forth laborers into His harvest. Go your ways: behold, I send you as lambs in the midst of wolves. Carry neither purse nor scrip nor shoes, and salute no man by the way. Into whatsoever house ye shall enter, first say, Peace be to this house. And if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon him: if not, it shall return to you. And in the same house remain, eating and drinking such things as are with them: for the workman is worthy of his hire. ”

“ Then, further, his account bears that the astonishment which the disciples expressed at finding how the fig-tree had withered away, and the reply which the Lord made to them on the subject of faith, and the casting of the mountain into the sea, belonged not to this same second day on which He said to the tree, “No man eat fruit of thee hereafter for ever,” but to a third day. For in connection with the second day, the said Mark has recorded the incident of the casting of the sellers out of the temple, which he had omitted to notice as belonging to the first day. ”