February 15, 1857
“A sower went out to sow his seed.”—Luke viii. 5.
The passage: A sower went out to sow his seed.
Preachers sometimes think this parable applies especially, almost exclusively, to their own work. They sort their hearers into classes matching the soils Christ describes—wayside hearers, stony ones, thorn-choked ones. They sow the seed; the joy of fruit and the disappointment of waste are theirs.
I think this way of speaking hides real dangers. No distinctions are more precious or exact than these, given in this parable of parables, by which we are meant to understand all parables. Christ himself says they apply to hearers—but they must be handled carefully. If the mysteries of the Kingdom could be reduced to technical phrases, the living processes of nature would never have been called in to illustrate them; those processes are living and must be studied where they live. Still more, we must apply them not to our neighbors but to ourselves. A preacher becomes a grievous hypocrite if he tries to identify these characters by watching others rather than himself. “Cast first the beam out of thine own eye” must stay before him in all its terror. No one is exempt.
But thinking of the matter this way risks a still greater mistake—imagining that we are the sowers. Motives beyond vanity or clerical pretension may tempt us, secretly if not openly, toward this reading: it would let us dodge some puzzles theologians would rather avoid, if only we could think ourselves in some sense the persons Christ describes. But another parable, essentially the same as this one, tells us plainly: “He that soweth the seed is the Son of Man.” Whatever the consequences, we must start there; no other reading makes intelligible Christ’s own interpretation to his disciples, or any lesson he draws from it. No one who merely stands outside a man speaking words into his ear—well or poorly put, refined or crude—can sow the seed the parable compares to words. Only the One who made the ear to receive sound and the heart to receive words can do this work. Whatever becomes of the seed—carried off, falling on stone, choked by weeds, or bearing a hundredfold in good ground—the same holds: we cannot swap in another sower to suit our theories. The Son of Man, Lord of man’s heart and will, source of all man’s powers, must be the one who gives whatever might bear fruit, even where it perishes.
Consider what this means for how far and how deep the seed is scattered. A minister in a London parish may complain that three-fourths of his flock die without ever hearing his voice or knowing why he is set among them. Does he suppose they die without hearing the Voice of the Son of Man? Did they die without ever being poor or sick, without human ties, without inward struggle, without a desire formed and left unmet? Wherever these things were present, the Son of Man was present. Wherever any human sympathy fought against its counterfeit—mere animal appetite—wherever selfishness did not reign wholly unopposed (and who reigns in unopposed?), the Son of Man was there. You speak, not without truth, of certain places as hells on earth. I say: go down into them, and he is there. None of them lacks some remnant of the human face divine, however brutalized. And where that sign is, the Sign of the Son of Man is—truer, though more terrible, than the sign the Pharisees demanded from the heavens.
And wherever the Son of Man is, he is sowing his seed. The thought, however faint, in any fallen creature that there must be a way out of the pit to firmer ground, to some region of twilight if not day—this is seed of his planting, and could have dropped from no other hand. It may be snatched away at once, as he warns; it may sicken even in seeming sunshine; it may be choked after gaining some strength. But its source is certain. The man’s wretched circumstances did not put it there. His mocking, seducing comrades—who feel the same dim hope themselves—did not put it there. His own selfish nature did not put it there. It came from the Son of Man. Whether on the surface or buried deep, it would not be there at all had he not gone out to sow, as he has done since the world began.
But if the seed is the Word of God, how can this be? Do these wretched people know anything of Scripture? Are many of them not even acquainted with its plainest facts? And might not some who do know those facts only use them to sharpen their curses? All this may be true—yet if the Scriptures are true, there is no speech or language where the Voice of the Word of God is not heard. The earth and its pillars would collapse without him upholding them. Conscience could not accuse or excuse if he were not awakening and informing it. So the seed planted in men’s hearts must be the Word of God—it could have no living power if it were anything else. If there is good in it, it comes from him who alone is good; if it is to bear good fruit, the Creator himself must go out with it.
I know how hard this belief is to hold—even with Christ’s own assertion behind it, even though the whole parable collapses into contradiction unless the seed on the wayside is the same seed as on the good ground. The mind still asks: how can this be, if God is all-powerful? And those most insistent that we suppress every other doubt in favor of Scripture’s plain statements are often the ones most eager to nurse this particular doubt, and draw long chains of inference from it. I do not deny the difficulty; for some it may be painful. I do not see how it could be otherwise for anyone who has not settled that the Righteousness of God revealed in Christ must be held fast, however little we can explain the apparent limits on his Power. This Righteousness has been declared to us and our children as an eternal inheritance; to lose it is to lose everything. Power, I believe, serves Righteousness, not the reverse: he who is Love is clothed with Power, and that clothing can be laid aside, as when Christ took the form of a servant and submitted to death—but the Righteous, Gracious Will can never be laid aside; indeed it showed itself most fully in weakness. If we do not believe this, what is the Parable of the Sower, or any of Christ’s works, or Christ himself, to us? If we do believe it, why deny ourselves a lesson perfectly consistent with it, out of a jealousy for God’s Power greater than his own Son’s? I do not doubt Power will vindicate itself in time, and that the only Power that ever moved a heart—Love’s power—will prove mightier than we have imagined. But meanwhile let each of us say, in shame: “I know it is God’s Word, not man’s, that has met the rock and thorns in me. I know it is his gracious Will, declared in that Word, that my will has fought against. I have tried to persuade my conscience otherwise, and it will not swallow the excuse. It repeats God’s own words plainly: ‘I have called and ye refused; ye have set at nought my counsel, ye would have none of my reproof.’”
Decent and disreputable, wise and foolish, preacher and hearer alike need to make this same confession; each carries the witness of its truth within himself. Let each look back over recent years—even the years he would call his best—and ask: “Did no words come close to me, from loving lips, from open graves, from sorrows that might have crushed a prouder spirit? And did no idle vanity, no craving for approval, no bitter resentment scatter those words to the wind? The Son of Man was sowing his Master’s seed in me, and the Devil carried it off. God was in that place, and I did not know it, and would have put something else there instead.” Has it not been so? Does not the Spirit who brings all things to remembrance confirm it?
Or take the next part of the parable: have we not known a heart that seems anything but hard and stony—quick to feel, easily moved by others’ sorrows, ready to admire goodness and back every good plan—and yet is hard and stony, because these impressions never penetrate, never survive conflict, never displace the underlying love of ease? We have known such a heart—where? In some neighbor, some supposed model of a common modern type? Or have we found it at home, in ourselves? Has nothing shown us that we are likely to be, and often have been, our own such models—that the spirit of the age is our spirit? We must not shrink from that discovery, painful as it is. It is the Word of God revealing it, seeking through all our discipline to destroy that shallowness, that incapacity for depth and earnest purpose, which we could never cure ourselves.
Again—have we imagined that thorns and weeds choke the heart only of the idle rich man, or the merchant worn down by restless money-getting, or the poor man anxious about tomorrow’s bread? Is anyone without such cares? Is there a priest or layman among us who has not let them grow, planted and tended them himself? It is folly to deny it, madness to hide from ourselves that the fires of discipline around us and within us were meant to burn up these very thorns, so the Word of God might have room to grow.
But that good ground Christ speaks of—do we know anything of that in ourselves? Must we turn to the lives of the Saints to learn what it means and whence its fruitfulness comes? We may go there; they will teach us of their own stubborn, powerless wills, and the hard lessons that taught them all things are of God, that they could do good only because he worked in them to will and to do. But do we not have nearer, readier lessons? Are not the experiences already named just such lessons? Have we not resisted a Will we were made to obey? Were not the desires and hopes the Evil Spirit plundered from us God’s own inspirations? Was not that crust of vanity raised against a power that inwardly despised it? Were not those restless, frivolous cares a strange growth on soil meant, and known to be capable, of bearing something better? Is not the good ground simply the heart and will of every man, once he learns he is a man—not a beast, who could trust to instinct, not a god, who could follow his own will—but a man related to God, his servant and child, created in Christ Jesus and replanted in that divine root to bear fruit that remains?
Yes, brethren, it is our task to tell everyone this is their condition. We do not summon people to church so that the Son of Man’s discipline and the Word’s work may begin in them there—they come to learn they cannot escape him, that he is with them lying down and rising up, watching all their ways. They come to be told what that flame is that keeps breaking out in them, what those smoldering ashes are that they fear will reignite. We must tell them: it is the Word of God kindling that fire, burning up what is false and evil, and it will not stop scorching them until they yield to it and desire it to finish its work. We preach this to you, and to ourselves, knowing God preaches it to us all—not from the pulpit, but out of the whirlwind. A sermon is a poor, godless substitute for the lessons of life; it can be a godly interpreter of them, clearing away the confusion of not knowing whether the Lord of the universe works with us or against us, whether every effort of ours must overcome some reluctance in him to bless us, or whether he is working continually to overcome our reluctance to be blessed, and to keep us from ruining ourselves. So far as a sermon does this, its preacher is, in a very subordinate sense, a sower of the divine seed—not to the exclusion of others with different offices, and least of all in competition with the one Lord of the field who alone can make it bear. His task is only to declare that this Lord is unchanged from age to age—the same in Will as when he died for man, the same in Power as when he rose—and that there can be no barrenness in his universe once we stop measuring our will and power against his.
The Parable of the Sower, then, is better suited to testing each hearer’s own heart than to sorting hearers into classes. Yet it was spoken, like Christ’s other parables, to a multitude. The desire to sway crowds can be carried too far and brings real temptations. But there is also great justification for it. We might speak, as of reeds moved by one wind, or complain, as Paul does to the Corinthians, that crowds favor those who enslave and strike them. But such charges need weighing before they’re made. There is something awesome and elevating in the effect produced on a whole body of people by words addressed to them, however roughly, as spiritual beings. Hearing such words, they recognize themselves as bound together, sharing the same interests, addressed by the same God. May not the Son of Man, whatever the message and however mortal the lips delivering it, be present sowing his seed in the hearts of such a crowd? It matters that people are wakened to think someone cares for them and wishes them good; they think more truly of their Father in Heaven once they suppose he is not indifferent to them—even if they think he only means to punish their sins. And no crude, material threats of punishment are as terrible as the actual separation from goodness and truth that conscience testifies to, once awakened to it, perhaps for the first time. The grounds for fear are not exaggerated, though they may be misreported. What is needed is not to speak slightingly of such influences, wherever they come from, nor to explain them away, nor to boast that our own preaching is wiser because it falls more lifelessly on the ear—but to bear true witness to God ourselves, and so counter false witness of him. It is tempting, all too easy, to darken God’s character a little, thinking it will deepen men’s dread of sin; to lower, just slightly, the Apostles’ language that it is his wish all men should believe and know the truth. Is it safe to use such large words to congregations so indifferent, so besotted as ours often are? I answer those who trust their Bibles: “It stands written—dare you change it?” I answer those who believe in Christ: “You call him the Image of God. Do you think he is? Dare you make God other than that Image shows?” I answer those who appeal to experience: “Does distrust of God’s willingness to perfect you increase your power to become what you ought? Does doubting he will break the chain of evil habit from your neck make you less tolerant of that chain?” I answer those who cite the Church’s call to confession as the way to peace with God: “I rejoice she does. We ought to confess that we were made to bear good fruit and have not; that divine seed need not have been snatched from us, yet has been; that we need not have grown cold, yet have; that we need not have been choked by care and pleasure, yet have been. The Church bids us confess to God because he is good and wills our goodness; because he has redeemed us in Christ; because he has given and renews his Spirit in us. If he were not our good Father, we would lose nothing by separation from him; if he had not redeemed us, claiming redemption would be no duty; if no Spirit urged us to obey, disobedience would be no fault. Believing in one God, Father, Son, and Spirit—perfect Righteousness and Love—we can confess together, and he grants us absolution together.”
And lastly, to those who say it is impossible to address the multitude without darkening God’s character to them: Jesus Christ spoke to the multitude and said, “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in Heaven is perfect,” and the multitude said, “He speaks as one having authority, not as the Scribes.” He spoke his parables to a multitude with blinded eyes and hardened hearts, and those parables reveal a Kingdom of Righteousness, Peace, and Joy he declared near to publicans and sinners. They reveal the Will of the Shepherd who seeks the lost sheep in the wilderness, of the Father who so loved the world he gave his Son. These parables declare that God sows the good seed in his field; that the enemy, not God, sows the tares; and that in the end the tares will be burned, while what God has planted will bear fruit—fruit he will gather, and in which he will delight forever.