of His ministr}. They were so ready and prepared for the preaching- of the Gospel, that they were hke a field white for harvest. The expression, " lift up your eyes," is used elsewhere in Scripture, when mental attention is being called to something rem irkable. See Isai. xlix. 18 ; Ix. 4 ; Gen. xiii. 14, 15.
I am disposed to think that both views are correct. Our Lord wished His disciples to notice that both at Samaria and else- where the minds of men were everywhere ready to receive the mes-age of the Gospel in an unusual degree. Let them mark how willing the multitude was everywhere to listen to the truth. Let them know that everywhere, as in the apparently hopeless field of Samaria, they would find a harvest of souls ready to be reaped, if only they would be reapers.
Chrysostom, on this verse, remark?, " Christ leads His disciples, as His custom is, from low things to high. Fields and harvests here express the great number of souls which are ready to receive the word. The ei/es are both spiritual and bodily ones, for they saw a great multitude of Samaritans now approaching. This expectant crowd He calls, very suitably, white fields. For as the corn, when it grows white, is ready for harvest, so were those ready for salvation. But why does He not say all this in direct language ? Because by making use of the objects around them He gave great vividness and power to His words, and also caused His discourse to be more pleasant and sink deeper into their memories."
36. — [He that reapeth, &c^ This verse seems to me to show thai our Lord is speaking generally of the field of this world, and of the whole work which His apostles would have to do in it, not only in Samaria, but to the ends of the earth. The verse is a general promise for the encouragement of all labourers of Christ. The full meaning of it can hardly be brought out without a para- phrase. "The reaper of the spiritual harvest has a far more honourable and satisfactory office than the reaper of the natural harvest. He receives wages and gathers fruit not for this life only, but for the life to come. The wages that he receives are eternal wages, a crown of glory that fadeth not away. (1 Pet. V. 4.) The fruit that he gathers is eternal fruit, souls plucked from destruction and saved for evermore." See Daniel xii. 3; John XV. 16; and 1 Cor. ix. 17.
Burkitt, and several other writers, call attention to the fact that the harvestman's wages are much more than the wages of any o^:h'^r labourer, and hence draw the conclusion that no Christian will receive so glorious a reward as the man who labours to win souls to Christ.
[That loth 7ie..,^oweth...reajpeih...rejoice together.] These wo:;ds